In preparation for my first weekly weigh-in this morning I found the motivation to tackle a mountain yesterday.  Such as it is.

I’ll let the pictures do my talkin’ about my walkin’.

You gotta start somewhere, so I started by walking out my front door…

…and into the street…

…from where you can view my ultimate destination.

This storefront seemed to be offering me encouragement to plod on…

Came to a fork in the road–to the right the road leads up to the Grand Hyatt. To the left–who knows? I went left…

…making progress…

…but first I must manage these many, many steps.

After all those steps I was not in the mood for an exercise break…

So I followed the path that lead steadily upwards…

I was getting hot and sweaty, but not feeling philosophical about it…

Almost there, but had to breach the wall first…

Not a particularly clear day, but Seoul is still awesome…

That’s my hot, tired and sweaty look…

Goal achieved!

A bitter reminder that all the locks in the world won’t chain the heart of a soul who yearns to be free…

So, I screwed up on the way down. I was thinking I was on the path that would lead to the National Theater and figured I might even find a cut-off leading to the Hyatt. By the time I realized my route was taking me to the wrong side of town, I had a pretty good bit of backtracking to do–mostly uphill. So I eventually found a trail with the word “Hannam” in it, and I figured close enough. Especially since it was going downhill…

And I wound up on the opposite end of Itaewon/Hannam from where I live.  I had planned on a two hour walk, why not two and a half?

There’s always something interesting to see on the mean streets of Seoul…

I didn’t walk at a brisk pace…I guess you could say I was dogging it…

But I had a Great Dane anyway. *ahem*

When I finally reached home I was tired and hungry. Baby back ribs were my reward…

So I ate and took a nap.  Then did my usual Saturday night gig at Shenanigans.

Which means keeping my lady friends entertained…

And that brings us to this morning’s weigh-in.  I’ve been doing reasonably well on the diet. I don’t think the walking adds much value other than keeping me motivated to not eat my usual junk thereby negating the time and effort spent on walking.  As I mentioned last week, my goal is to lose 50 pounds.  So if I can average losing one pound a week I’ll get there in less than a year.  Last week I was 269.2 and this week–

Woot! Down 5.8 pounds! More than I dared hope for. Of course, in the early stages of the diet you get bigger drops, and then your body adjusts and it gets tougher. Still, just give me one pound a week and I’ll be happy…

I guess I’ll just have to keep on keeping on.

Week 2 Kickoff breakfast. Eggs , cheese and salsa with leftover ribs..

And an afternoon stroll to the Han River is in my immediate future.

Took an ass whuppin’ in darts last night, so let’s not talk about that.

I managed a 45 minute lunch time stroll yesterday and added another 45 by taking the long way to darts (including a stroll up “gay hill” and down “hooker hill”.  I only got propositioned on one said hill.  I’ll leave it to your imagine which one.  I did not however partake of what was being offered.

After the dart match we are not going to talk about I went straight home.  Which avoided my consuming additional beer carbohydrates (our dart venue was out of Miller Lite, so I had to go with the full bodied Cass, of which I had three).  In bed by 11:00 p.m., woke up and hoofed it into work.  I was very surprised to find it was almost a straight shot from my villa to my office.  I used the walk-in gate near the kimchi pots in Haebongchon and instead of going around the 8th Army HQ building like I have to do in my car, I found a pathway running behind the USFK HQ (aka The White House) and was at my office in 15 minutes!

I rewarded myself with a ham and cheese omelette from the food court, skipped lunch and got a haircut instead, then satiated my hunger with celery and cheese sticks in the afternoon.

My new doo. No need to carry around that extra weight from a full head of hair…

Walked home (15 minutes back as well, go figure).

Did some laundry…

…and hung it up to dry…

Washed up some dishes, the pulled out my new George Foreman grill…

Only big enough for two hamburger patties at a time…

But I was finally able to put some real food in my belly…

Well, as real as it gets around here anyway.

Still got 30 minutes of walking to finish, so I will meander around the neighborhood and perhaps discover a back way to Shenanigans.

And you thought this post would be devoid of adventure!

…so I prepared the traditional holiday lunch.

Homemade* clam chowder with a sweet potato slathered in butter and cinnamon

* By homemade I mean I opened a can of Campbell’s Chunky Soup and heated it up on the stove in my home.  Don’t be a hater!

Well, I survived the physical examination.  It might have been touch and go.  I checked in with my blood pressure at 160/80 which is quite a bit higher than my normal 135.  So they gave me some medicine and made me wait, then checked it again.  Still too high, so they gave me another pill and I waited some more.  Finally they consented to proceed with the various tests (apparently high BP can create problems with the results, who knew?).

So, I got weighted (121kgs yikes!), had my vision and hearing checked, gave a blood, urine and stool sample, chest x-ray, MRI like thing, ultra sound on my vital organs, prostrate exam, and then the colonoscopy and endoscopy.  I was asleep for the last two thankfully.  A cute young woman did my prostrate check but it still was not fun to have a stick stuck up my ass.  Ah, for the good ol’ days when they used a finger.

Before we started they reviewed with me my results from two years ago.  I had a fat liver then, who knows what 40 straight days of drinking has done now.  Well, I will know on the 16th when I see the hilarious Dr. Yu for my results.

I actually wavered on going for the physical because if I’m dying sooner than I’ve planned, I’d rather not know.  On the other hand if they find something that can be fixed and give me those ten years, why not?  We’ll see soon enough.

When it was over I’d been 24 hours without solid food and I was famished.  The hospital gives a coupon for a traditional rice porridge at a nearby Hannam-dong eatery.  It was damn good, but I expect anything would have been at that point.  When I got back to the house I made myself a proper tuna sandwich and took a long nap.

Back in my usual chair at Shenanigans last night so I guess things are returning to normal.

…and it is going to be a shittier night.

No beer tonight. Just a bunch of liquids and water to insure I shit through the night.

Getting my bi-annual physical tomorrow.  So this morning I had the dis-stink honor of scooping my poop into that little black jar.  It was a shitty experience.

So, at 6:30 I drink whatever is in that tube.  Then at 7:00 I drink my first bottle of whatever it is that makes you shit (with a liter of water).  I’ll do that again at 9:00.  That should have me shitting through the night.  But I’ll wake up at 5:00 to drink another bottle.

I’m just hoping there is nothing left to poop when I leave for the hospital.

Oh well.  It’s great to be me!

UPDATE:  Dinner is served!

Piping hot chicken broth… Yum!