kajota.com

ok, here’s my 9/11 story (such as it is)

In 2001 I was working on the XM satellite radio repeater network – getting it ready for when the service launched in late Sep 2001. So I had been flying to Atlanta all year from Dulles.

On Monday Sep 10th I took an afternoon flight from Dulles to Atlanta. (when I got there, XM told me that they were drive testing in Atlanta so I couldn’t work on the repeaters anyway. It was a wasted trip – fuckers). The next morning, I got a call from one of my friends telling me that one of the World Trade Center buildings had been hit by a plane. I turned on the TV in the hotel and watched what everybody else that day saw. I knew my brother often worked in Manhattan so I spent some frantic time calling his cell phone over and over again until I finally got a hold of him. Luckily, he was working in Pa.

Since they stopped all flights and closed the airports, I was now stuck in Atlanta. My scheduled flight back was Thursday night. I was hoping that flights would be running again in time for that flight.

Thursday comes around and it sounds like they *might* be flying again, So I drive to the airport to see if I can get a flight back to Dulles. I figured if there was ever a time to fly and not have to worry about a hijacking, this was it. I get to the Atlanta airport and the place is empty. I mean nobody but a few national guardsman with M16s manning the metal detectors and a few airline people at check-in. Seeing the Atlanta airport empty was very strange. It was like the twilight zone or something. That place is usually packed with thousands of people.

I go to check-in and ask when flights will be starting back up. (By this time I pretty much figured I’d be driving home). They tell me that they are just starting flights back and that mine will be one of the first to leave the airport since 9/11.

So I make the long walk to the gate through the deserted Atlanta airport. I get to my gate and see about 20 or so people waiting there. I find out that we can’t leave yet because they only have about half a crew for the airplane. After waiting for a while, we learn that there is another flight leaving for Dulles (I guess – it could have been leaving for somewhere else and Dulles was on the way; I don’t remember). Anyway, they combine the crew and passengers from that flight with my flight.

Now, I finally board the plane and take my seat. This was another twilight zone kind of scenario. No one on the plane is doing anything but watching for someone to try something. Everyone is on high alert. No one is reading or listening to music or sleeping. This would not be a plane where you’d want to get out of line.

On high alert, I’m sitting in my plane when I notice a not unattractive woman get on. She’s looking around at everyone on the plane (like we all did, trying to figure out the most likely person to be a terrorist). She sees me and heads for my seat. It’s as if she was looking for a big guy to hide behind in case something happened. She sits in the middle seat next to me (I’m on the aisle seat). She puts her hand on my forearm, leans close to me and says “get ready to kick somebody’s ass”. As if I weren’t already wound up tight enough, now I’m ready to kick someone’s ass just out of general principal. Anything to get rid of this adrenaline.

We have an uneventful flight back to Dulles. Everyone stayed wide awake, and everyone was on guard duty. That woman kept her hand wrapped around my forearm for the entire flight.

I’m pretty sure my future will not be like any of these cartoons:

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Today sucked. I had to put my dog down. He was a good dog and has set the bar high for any dog I might get in the future. RIP Roscoe P. Coletrain.

This is the Christmas card to send me. I think it’s great. Unfortunately, all Gingers don’t have the same sense of humor that I do.

This is not me.

In my seemingly hopeless quest to stop being a fat ass, I joined a gym yesterday. It’s an LA fitness close to where I work. I picked this particular gym for two main reasons: a friend of mine goes there and recommended it and it’s close to work. Having a friend to work out with is the main reason I decided to go there. It also doesn’t hurt that there aren’t scores of teenage kids meandering all over the place like the last gym I went to.(it was a community center).  As an added bonus, the scenery is very nice. Unless you’re a gay man. Probably nice for lesbians though.

In any case, they offer a free session with a personal trainer. The purpose of this session is to give you an idea of what a personal trainer can do for you, and to convince you to start paying for said personal trainer. Well, I figured, it’s free, what the hell. So, even though I had no intention of spending $100-$200 a month on something I got in the army and high school football for free, I had a session with the personal trainer. He    kicked     my     fat ass. Holy shit. It was probably 30 minutes total. 5 minutes on a treadmill to warm up and then it was all calisthenics. Of course I’m very much out of shape, but I didn’t expect to be crushed so easily with my own body weight. (I should have known better considering how much body weight I have). Here’s some advice for all you personal trainers out there: don’t make the first session so painful that your prospective client can’t walk up and down stairs for days afterward. That’s probably not a good idea.

After receiving my personal trainer ass kicking, I decided to spend 20 minutes or so on the elliptical machine. (my heart rate was at 150 after the calisthenics). The elliptical that I was on was close to the large room where they have aerobics classes.  Through the glass walls, I could see everyone in there dancing to whatever music they have playing. Luckily I can’t hear the music. But, I do have my own music being played through my headphones. So all of those dancy people were unknowingly dancing to Machinehead’s Aesthetics of Hate. Which made me giggle. I’m sure my giggling made me look even dorkier than your standard fat man on an exercise machine -  bonus dorky for all those around me.

Here’s another tip for everyone out there: When I mentioned that I just joined a gym, it is useless and annoying to start telling me about all the other gyms I could have joined for cheaper. Seriously. Stop it. Don’t make me kill you.

First month has gone well. Started at about 290 and I weigh around 278 now. I’d like to get below 200 but I’ll settle for 220 or so.

I’ve been out of work sick for the last couple of days with a cold, flu or whatever. It actually started on Saturday so I got to be sick over the weekend too.

Today I started on what’s called the Hacker’s Diet. It’s an engineering approach to dieting written by the guy who started AutoDesk. It’s a little old (1991 or so) but the book is free. Basically eat less than what you need to maintain your weight. I’m using a program on my iPhone called Lose It that helps you track how many calories you’ve eaten and how many calories you’ve budgeted per day. One of the major points that the Hacker’s diet makes is that you should pay attention to a moving average of your weight instead of what you weigh day-to-day. This makes a lot of sense to me.

The other thing I’m doing is making sure that I have an accurate calorie count for everything that I eat. Since a two or three hundred calorie difference per day can seriously add up, if I don’t know how many calories are in something, I find something else to eat.

Hopefully this will work better than the other diets I’ve tried.

If there are frequent updates on this blog about the diet that will mean I’m doing well. If you never hear about it again, that means it didn’t work. We’ll see.