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A friend and I were trying a ketogenic/very low-carb diet and I quickly learned that starting a new diet that tracks uncommon macronutrients is an exercise in container twirling. Barbecue sauce is high sugar as is ketchup. Some light salad dressings are problematic in addition to whole classes of foods.

We purchased deeply of cheese, pepperoni, sour cream, cream cheese, seafood, bacon, and other meats with broccoli and spinach as our greens of choice. It was expensive, or so I thought, until I returned and realized the enormous quantity of food I had purchased. My normal purchasing pattern is “what will I need to stock my kitchen” rather than “what will I need to last me the x days until I go food shopping” which can result in overbuying and spoilage if one doesn’t eat enough.

Dinner that evening was buttered chicken thighs and dessert was a fist full of almonds. Our snack was pepperoni and cream cheese. To dieting.

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I drove 10 hours for the opportunity to pull into someone’s garage. I couldn’t be happier.

I went to a party this evening with a fusillade of fireworks. These were all store-bought but in sufficient quantity even these can impress.

[flickr album=72157631509822174 num=5 size=Thumbnail]

Photographing fireworks is an exercise in timing and framing. I have a few nice shots of starbursts but without some sort of reference, they look flat. I have a few incredibly sharp pictures of flower pots, but the sky looks like a field of blue-black ink when adjusted to be bright. The camera’s autofocus wasn’t fast enough to contend with the explosions so I pegged it to infinity and backed off a little. Photography is one of the few places where I can refer to something as “close enough to infinity” and I smile at that.

I collapsed that evening in a too hot room and slept very very well.

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Julia had a few people over her new house in the wake of The Firing of the Temps and Mike and I joined. Her new place was reasonably large and largely devoid of dead bodies despite her concerns. The house had ample space for both books and secrets. On top of this, it had a trampoline and a pool, things I both very much enjoyed at past points in my life.

The trampoline was enticing and was rimmed with rust as salt rims a margarita glass. Some of the springs were broken and it wasn’t quite level but I was bouncing happily soon enough and, by the end of the evening, almost able to do a 360 in the air. Mike also took to the trampoline but beyond him, no one else. Trampolines normally have maximum weight limits and these are functional limits. I remember using a trampoline rated at 250 lbs at a time when I was. My butt hit the ground with each bounce. This one was a 325 lb trampoline and with practice I’d be able to do somersaults.

The pool was a pond of disappointment. I had loved pools as my ponderous size wasn’t held against me in them and the amount of exertion I could put forth was infinitely variable from a deadman’s float to swimming laps. But this joy was now gone. Apparently, I no longer float. I had to tread water just to keep my head up and even when inhaling fully, my head would still go under. Walking around on the bottom was novel but now I needed floatation to simply tool about.

Sure, I had regained the trampoline, but at what cost?

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Randy and Kelly Booz invited me out to the St. Michael’s Fair in Tullytown. It was a fair with a wide assortment of fried food and my standard prayer that there were yet to be any STDs that had gone airborne. Should aerosolized syphilis someday be discovered I’m confident I have met its patient zero.

Randy and Kelly were there with their sidekicks Chris and Jess and with Caleb as special guest. The night was hot and I consumed neither rides nor food, but I did take advantage of the soft lighting that comes from omnipresent bulbs.

From 2012-07-05 St. Michael's Fair

Fairs and I have a long history of getting along. The last I attended was on Thanksgivinga few years ago and fairs were the first place I had seen rock candy, those combination umbrella hats, a biplane, and rubber band guns. This fair had no such charm. I would be elsewhere soon.

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Today was my first day of non-temporary unemployment as an adult since… ever. I had a theoretical stream of payments in the form of unemployment and a few thousand dollars in savings that have come from me saving for an abdomenoplasty but it appears that frugality would be the watchword of my near future.

It was 10am, I had woken up earlier than I often did for work. Max didn’t know I was jobless, the cat didn’t know I was jobless. Most of my friends had no functional idea that I was jobless except my sudden free schedule.

I set myself a goal that I’d apply for at least five positions per week in a successively wider geographic region. I also set myself a limit of two social engagements per week until that application quota had been met. I cancelled a few recurring subscriptions like Audible, and made a leisurely lunch.

I was unemployed and wasn’t dead. Here we go.