After running my New York City dry run yesterday I headed further north to visit a friend in Albany whose company I had gone embarrassingly long without. He works in public health which I admire and have considered him the slightly more version of me that could emerge should I get my shit together. The night I arrived we mostly talked and walked around Albany and I took what I thought would prove to be nice HDR shots of the New York capitol buildings at night. We retired to Denny’s and my host and I requested pitchers of diet cola while shit-talking medical ethicists. The server thought herself clever and gave us instead carafes which would have worked if: 1) she had added ice to them. 2) refilled the carafe instead of the drink glasses as the whole point of requesting pitchers was to reduce the work required of her. Pat ordered mozzarella sticks which had the flavor and texture of cheese-flavored sawdust from hewn particle board and politely asked the server to remove the largely untouched appetizer from the check. He hesitated for a moment at this request until I said “ma’am, see that one that’s not entirely eaten? That one was mine. I’m a fat man and I couldn’t even finish it the thing was so bad.” She nodded approvingly in a matter that said “yes, you both fat AND of sound logic” and the item was dropped.
Category: Moment of Fatness
Not Quite There
I was happy to find that Chicago’s extravagant food hadn’t affected my waist line as much as I thought so in victory I put on the new pair of paints a size smaller than I normally wear and smiled confidently as I brought them through my normal range of standing motion. The waist was comfortable and the legs had enough space as I did a few kicks and steps. I ended with a pants-testing maneuver I call “The Crucible” where I squat down and then lean forward as if grabbing something from the floor. About 1/2 way through this maneuver a tear propagated like a lightning bolt from crotch to knee with an almost Marvel Comic-esque “RIIIP” noise. Barring kevlar pants, I shall remain at my current pants size.
Judging the Judge Shirt
Nick D brought me the new judge shirt back from PT: San Diego and I was excited to try it on. The previous judge shirt was creatively termed “the zebra stripes” and had the dubious distinction of turning into a midriff-bearing shirt if the wearer was over 6’1″ or had a dunlopus majoris protruding more than three inches. I was going to start the next paragraph with the phrase “I put on the new shirt” but putting on implies several things such as the gowning process being free of grunts, cries and panhoots and of being easily reversible. I more accurately applied the new judge shirt and later peeled it off.  The arms were splendidly sized but my first attempt to pick up garbage would have turned the button line into a sartorial fragmentation grenade (Magic players: I was tempted to make a Triskelion joke).  I nearly lost my shirt when another player said “Bruce Banner, I just hit your car.” This was the largest shirt available.
My mass is exceptional and I fully recognize that I should incur extra cost due to it . I pay more for food, clothing, transportation, health insurance, and the niceties that streamline corpulent living but among all possible communities that would require clothing of exceptional size the Venn Diagram of sedentary, pedantic, and gourmand which coalesces with “WoTC judge” should be the acme of need. I’ve heard a large judge took to his shirt with scissors and made patches of the embroidery to put on a larger shirt (which mentally led me to another card allusion). I enjoy judging and don’t wish to abandon it, but should it become necessary I may need to start scouring for an embroiderer, shirt laster, or personal training. God forbid the latter.
The Littlest Cable Install
The technician returned today ready to do the install. By “ready” I mean “lacking the basic tools do the job” and “do the install” I mean “ask me repeatedly to help him”. He was about 5’6″ and completely incapable of accessing the cabling in our drop ceiling so every time he had to thread something I was the one on the stool. I should have just grabbed him by the legs and shoved him into the ceiling. During the process, he did discover that the previous wiring job was done via Narnia as there was a wall where two cables went in and three went out.
During the process I learned that the term “drop ceiling” comes from “droupe sheallang” which is old English for “place where mice poop”.
At least my dad has The History Channel in time to see “Grover Cleveland and the Occult: The Nazi Diaries” or what ever tripe pseudohistory they’re peddling.
Another Reason to Lose Wait
Many moons ago, Teejay Green and I made a list of things that nag us as fat people. One of them was “cloths that fit that are purchasable in regular stores” or Fat Reason #28. To that I add an addendum of “be able to buy special print run shirts that only go up to vintage cut 2XL” for the following reason:
Hippopoticorns!
The 3 Hippopoticorn Moon shirt… until they all come home.
Chin Meme Spreads
I don’t mind fat jokes. Most are poorly thought out and merely show the speaker as an idiot. I do salute innovative jibes or ones specialized to someone’s particular corpulence.  I make fun of Jason Ergott for his double chin to the point where I’ve anthropomorphized it and have pondered trying to get it a talk show. I was delighted to learn that my attacks have rubbed off as relayed by the victim.
Jason’s Mom: I bought some plums and they are quite juicy. If you’re going to have one you may want to put a bowl under your chins.
ZING!
Chin Meme Spreads
I don’t mind fat jokes. Most are poorly thought out and merely show the speaker as an idiot. I do salute innovative jibes or ones specialized to someone’s particular corpulence.  I make fun of Jason Ergott for his double chin to the point where I’ve anthropomorphized it and have pondered trying to get it a talk show. I was delighted to learn that my attacks have rubbed off as relayed by the victim.
Jason’s Mom: I bought some plums and they are quite juicy. If you’re going to have one you may want to put a bowl under your chins.
ZING!
Blood Drive Interrogation
I came into work late today not remembering I had a blood drive appointment at 1:30. I saw the reminder note to myself at 1:20 and gunned it to the appropriate building in our complex. I arrived sweating but on-time and was immediately hurried in to make it on time. I sat down, had my blood pressure taken (120/80 in your face obesity!) but was rejected because of my pulse being too high (100 BPM), probably because I’d ran to the building. I was then approached by the coordinator.
Coordinator: Sir, your pulse was too high to donate do you have any conditions that’d cause this?
Me: Not really, I did just run over.
Coordinator: Hm… Have you had a stressful day? There seems to be a lot of stressed people in.
Me: Nope, I just got in, but I did just run over here. If you give me a minute, I’ll be fine.
Coordinator: Do you have a history of a high pulse in your family?
Me: I don’t think so, although I imagine all our pulses go up after running.
Coordinator: Hm… You’ll be ok. I’m going to give you a note that you can’t donate for the day because of your pulse and you should really see a medical professional about that. 100 BPM is not healthy.
Well, I’m glad they’d already taken my pulse and BP as it doubled over the course of her ignoring the fact that I’d just ran to the building. I’d be curious to see if deafness is correlatable to proximity to the end of the work day.
Going Off Early
I downloaded StickWars for my iPhone, a game where one flicks away stick figures attacking one’s castle walls. New enemies appear over time and new countermeasures can be bought and I kept having problem with my suicide bombers. Normally, one hits the little bomb button and a little stick figure holding a bomb is launched from your castle which explodes killing all nearby units when one shakes the phone. Mine kept blowing up early and I think I may have found the culprit:
When playing brace the phone against my gut. The action of me feverishly swiping away attackers sometimes hit a resonant frequency with my flub exaggerating the movement of the device until the phone interpreted this motion as me shaking the phone causing my bombers to explode. Odd, normally my paunch is more of a shock absorber. I wonder if this is why Steve Wozniak started exercising more.
Into the Woods
Sam: Where’s Terry running?
Teejay: I think he heard something.
*Sam and Teejay emerge out of woods onto road I was panting*
Me: Damn. I thought I heard an ice cream truck.
Me to Teejay while walking up a hill: Is this what exercise feels like?
Teejay: I hope not, it feels suspiciously similar to effort.