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A very mild tum upset yesterday gets me to the weight I'd gloomily figured I might hit in four weeks, just before surgery. It won't last, but in celebration I ordered in Indian food and wisely ate only a third of it. My cheekbones are shyly beginning to emerge amid the squirrel face, so vanity is satisfied as well. And of course it would be nice to drop another two kilos if possible, just for neatness' sake.That would be 16 pounds less pressure on the joints. Of course, by that calculation, I've lost 60 pounds of pressure since January but you can't prove it by my mobility.

Last finished?

Introduction to Court Poetry and Hamabe no Kafuka part 1.
-- don't know what to do about Kafka. Couldn't wait to finish the Japanese so I could go back to the translation, and now the translation feels off and I want the Japanese, but I won't get it any time soon even if I were to buy it from honto.jp. Dou shiyou, dou shiyou.

Coupla Hazel Holts, easily swallowed mysteries

Reading now?

Still with Piranesi, not liking where it's going at all.

Miner, Japanese Poetic Diaries
-- next up in the classical Japanese litrachure back reading

Robert Lowell, Imitations
-- next up in the 'get it off the shelf' poetry purge. Lowell was a git and his Introduction shows it.

Next?

No idea. I'm beginning to have deer in the headlights reaction to impending surgery, which rather shortens the attention span. Console myself that there's even odds it won't happen, as Covid cases keep on mounting and the hospital continues not to have its act together.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Congratulations, that's a huge and tremendously impressive drop!

I was just thinking last night, with a cat on top of me, that each cat weighs on average 6 kg, so in the last 18 months I have lost three cats' worth of fat.

Good luck with the surgery, whichever way it goes.

Amazing what happens when you stop drinking, I must say. And have a squirrel cage to run in for 30 minutes a day. Your loss is far more impressive, but then you were literally running IIRC.

My Canuck gauge is bags of road salt, each of which weighs 10kg. I've lost a bag and a half over the last three years. So walking up stairs *should* be easier, she grumbles.

Eh, I got the date wrong. It would have been three cats' since 2017, and two cats and a tail or two since April 2019. No running, the knees can't take it. The elliptical first, plus taichi, then swimming and taichi, stretch-band exercises and portion control after I moved countries and got daily access to a pool.

The point of pain for me has always been going down, rather than up. Which I discovered on the Kumano Kodo trail. Thank goodness for (a) hiking poles and (b) a nightly soak in an onsen. I'm not ever going on a walking holiday outside Japan again....

I thought an elliptical involved running, but I guess it's walking sort-of?

At a certain point both up and down weight on one leg only, no matter how much you lose, which is a nuisance way to do stairs.

Your feet don't leave the track, so there is much less of an impact issue, but it's still good cardiovascular exercise. The track goes up and down, with your feet on them, a bit like cycling while standing. I've heard they started out as training devices for cross-country skiing.

https://www.nordictrack.com/ellipticals

https://bikeadvisorpro.com/how-to-use-an-elliptical/

I’ve put the fabric masks in the poet, btw, so fingers crossed they reach you this time.

Thank you very much. Shall keep fingers crossed at this end too.