Yo Yo Man

First, the good news.  I have lost 20.2 lbs this year, 7 lbs this week alone.  The bad news in addition to losing 20.2 lbs this year, I have also gained 13.2 lbs.  In other words, the 7 lbs. I lost this week is the only weight I truly lost all year.  And since I tend to gain back all the weight I lose, we really can't be certain that those 7lbs we'll stay gone.

At the end of last year, I weighed myself as I do every Saturday and I weighed 259.6 lbs.  I estimated by losing 1 lb a week for 10 weeks I could be below 250 by Saturday, March 11th. Today is March 11th and I now weigh 252.6 pounds.  During those 10 weeks, I lost weight 6 different times and I gained weight 4 times. 

Perhaps a little historical perspective would be helpful here.  I weighed 174 lbs when I was a Freshman in high school. When I graduated high school I weighed 174 lbs.  During high school, I could eat all the time and never gain weight which is exactly what I did.  Between 18 and 33 the year I got married my weight went up gradually to somewhere between 200 and 220.  In the first 16 or so years of my marriage it continued to go up until about 8 years ago I weighed myself and saw that I was 285 lbs.  

In the past 8 years is when the yo-yo-ing began.  Yo-yo-ing is only marginally better than unchecked gradual increases.  Since June of  2021, I've gone from 262 pounds in June to 227.6 on Christmas Day 2021 but was back up to 263 by January of this year. That's a year 1/2 long yo-yo. 

I've been wanting to post about my weight loss/weight gain struggles here for a while.  I feel a little like Piglet in the opening of Winnie The Pooh and The Blustery day. He's raking leaves and generally gets blown around by the wind when he says I don't mind the leaves that are leaving, But I don't like the ones that are coming.  I don't mind losing 20 lbs in 2.5 months. I just hope the next time I say that I weigh 20.5 lbs less than I did 2.5 months before not just 7. 

P is for Prokofiev

Last year in my A to Z challenge on my blog Random Acts of Roller. My theme was State Capitals.  I stated in my introduction ...

My Theme will be Capitals. Due to the random nature of my blog, and specifically my mind, each entry may only be somewhat related to the capital mentioned. For example, it is entirely possible that Friday April third's entry will feature the Krispy Kreme themed love song I wrote in 1995 because I wrote it while living in Columbia, South Carolina where I encountered my first  Krispy Kreme.

I mention that here. because today's post about Sergei Prokofiev will tell you probably a lot more about me than Prokofiev. But let's at least start with Prokofiev.

Sergei Prokofiev

Years lived before 1921: Thirty

Years lived after 1921: Thirty Two

Sergei Sergyevich Prokofiev was born in April of 1891 in the Ukraine. . Sergei and I have something in commo that we both share the first name of our father but not our grandfather.  The way you can tell this with Prokofiev is that according to his Wikipedia page his father's name is Sergei Alexeyevich  Prokofiev. In Russian the 2nd name is the patronymic name which means it is derived from the father's name.  Boys names end in -ovich or -evich  and girls  patronyms  end in -ovna or -evna.  So Prokofiev's Dad's name was Sergei and  his paternal grandfathers name was Alexei. The way you can tell it with me, is cause I'm telling you. You'll have to take my word for it, as I don't have a Wikipedia page. 

I first became aware of the music of Prokofiev was when I was a kid watching the Disney version of Peter and the Wolf. It is narrated by actor Sterling Holloway best known as the original voice of Winnie The Pooh. Different instruments play different characters in the folk tale.

                                                    Sterling Holloway

                                                    Years lived before 1921: Fifteen

                                                    Years lived after 1921: Seventy-one

                                                    Winnie The Pooh aka Edward Bear

                                                    Years lived before 1921: zero

                                                    Years lived after 1921:100+

My family watched a lot of Disney, but we also listened to a lot of Alan Sherman also to a lot of the Boston Pop's conducted by Arthur Fiedler. In 1964 Sherman, Fiedler and the Pops produced an Album called Peter and the Commissar which is a parody of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf.  This was a family favorite and I was overjoyed to see it available on Spotify.  

The next time I encountered Prokofiev was in the early 1990's I was living in Russia as a Southern Baptist missionary.  My job was to teach English classes and help start a student ministry.  In that capacity I got a lot of invitations from my students to experience traditional Russian culture.  I got invited to a a concert one afternoon and it was some sort of adaptation of Rome and Juliet.  As I watched the performance I realized that the instruments were kind of telling the story not exactly like Peter and the Wolf but there were some similarities.  At the break I looked again at the program and read in Russian that the composer had also writeen something called Peotr y Volk which in English is Peter and the Wolf.  

Here is the London Symphony Orchestra playing a famous selection from Romeo and Juliet ...

Well that was a more random look at Prokofiev.  I hope you enjoyed it.  Tomorrow we'll have to mind our p's and q's as we are dealing with royalty.  For more of the A to Z challenge click here.  

A Bargain for Frances - A Review

I really like Frances.  She is one of my favorite children's characters.  If I had to pick one reason why I like Frances so much, it would be the songs.  Frances, like Winnie the Pooh and myself likes to  sing her inner dialogues.

There are 3 or 4 Frances books that rotate as being my favorite.  The distinction for best is generally incumbent upon which one I am reading at the time.  A Bargain for Frances may well be the best of those 4.  For the purpose of  full disclosure, I did read it to Puppy at bedtime tonight.

One of the reasons I like it so much is that it deals with the sensitive issue of being taken advantage  of  or manipulated by a peer  and does so in a perceptive, and wry way.

As indicated in  Lillian Hoban's delightful cover art, The titular bargain in " A Bargain for Frances has to do with a tea set.  Frances is saving her money for a china tea set, and is tricked by her friend Thelma to buy her plastic one instead.  She is tricked, even though her mother had just reminded her that whenever Frances plays with Thelma, Frances gets the worst of it.Frances  definitely gets the worst of the tea set transaction when Thelma uses the proceeds from the  sale to  buy the very type of tea set Frances had been saving for.  Finding she has been hoodwinked, Frances cleverly turns the tables on Thelma.

There is so much that I adore about this book.  The best part , for me, has to be Frances' comment to a rebuffed Thelma that they could be careful or they could be friends.  And as Frances says at the end of the book, being friends is better. 

The New Pooh Review

On January 13th I posted the trailer for the new Winnie The Pooh film entitling the post six months and two days from now to signify when the film was coming to theatres.

The film came out today (Friday July 15th 2011)

My Six words: Six Months Two Days go fast!

I mean, wow do they fly. The whole family and I were all planning on going today. Amy had other things going but I took 3 kids and 3 stuffed animals and we had a fantastic time.

The film is just over an hour which is about the only bad thing I can say about the movie. It takes all the best elements of the books and movies and blends them together for a hilarious, mesmerizing and extremely satisfying experience.

One review of this movie said this was a perfect film for Pre K and Kindergartners and they are not wrong. I think it is also a perfect film for older children and adults. My soon to be 7th grader was laughing the loudest of anyone in the theatre.

Animated movies have grown up a lot over the years. There are some that are so adult that I wouldn't ever consider taking my children to. Winnie The Pooh is quite the opposite. It is a film that I would want to watch even if I didn't have children. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

For more Six Word Saturday click here.

6 months and 2 days from now

This opens . . .



I can hardly wait!

Six Word Saturday

Every day as part of our school day we read aloud from a book a chapter at a time. We are currently working on Winnie the Pooh. This week when Emma was reading to us the part where Pooh gets stuck in Rabbit's door my mind drifted to the animated version.

The movies introduces a character name Gopher, who happens to be a gopher. Gopher has the signature line "I'm not in the book." The line actually has a double meaning. The straight forward meaning is that gopher's excavation services are not listed in phone book. The second meaning is that since the character was created for the movie, he is literally not in the book.

I have always appreciated children's entertainment that also has adult humor thrown in.

Which brings me to today's six words . . .

When did adult lose a letter?

When I said adult humor a moment ago perhaps some of you thought of risque or inappropriate humor. I actually meant the second definition of the adjective adult found in my Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary which states " of relating to, intended for or befitting adults, ex. an adult approach to a problem."

Webster's offers a third definition of adult as dealing in or with explicitly sexual material. But it seems that these days that is the most common definition. Adult used to mean mature, deep, grown-up. Adult has become a four letter word.

So here I am a 45 year old who does not swear (use adult language), drink alcohol (adult beverages) or watch pornography (adult videos). No wonder my parents often sit me at the kids table at family gatherings.

Seriously when did the word adult become strictly a euphemism for things we don't want kids to do? Aren't there more adult uses for the word adult?

Not sure exactly where this diatribe came from or where it's going. It's been brewing in my cranium for some time and I thought I would try to let it out. If you would like to see more Six Word Saturday head on over to Show my face dot com and join in.

Next Time: Structured and Unstructured