Yesterday was my Baybee’s birthday, and other then wishing her a happy one that morning, I shamefully had nothing else for her. No card. No gift. No cake. I did suggest we go out for dinner to celebrate this weekend to a local place we’ve been wanting to try, but there was no mistaking I had dropped the ball on this one.

Honestly, I don’t think she minded THAT much. She’s a lot like me in that lower the key any recognition the anniversary of my birth gets the better. It’s really no big deal.

But still. Lower key doesn’t mean no key at all.

In my defense, my schedule is non-birthday conducive. Case in point: when mine rolls around next month I’ll be spending it doing a final exam for the public safety training I’m currently in. Woo. Hoo. But on top of my educational obligations and conflicts, Tuesday’s best laid plans to go out and get her something/anything were knocked askew thanks to a coyote who showed up in our backyard about noon, followed by an afternoon spend worrying where our cat Pumpkin was (all’s well; he came back after about 3.5 hours).

So it was that at around 11 a.m. I decided to take Ranger for a walk around the neighborhood. And so it was that about mid-way along that walk I found a decidedly moderne style make-up bureau that someone had kicked to the curb. Not only was it intact and in decent shape and with all its drawers (tongue-and-groove, too; though missing all its drawer pulls — and the mirror that would be mounted on the posts extending above its surface), but more importantly regardless of its condition, I just knew it was something that Susan would have given me the BIG EYES about had she been with us and passed by it. Basically what Susan wants, Susan gets. Seriously, I made the mistake of NOT retrieving the drawerless skeleton of a well-made dresser we didn’t need and while she has stopped reminding me, I’m sure it’s still lingering there in her mind as the one that got away because of me.

Not that we NEED a makeup bureau, or have a place to put it. But that’s not stopped Susan in the slightest during previous discoveries. With the one exception of that dresser I’ve hauled home chairs, tables, trunks, you name it.

And then Ranger was all, “Dude. You totally blew her birthday. This can be her Day-After Birthday Present!”

And I was all, “Dawg! That’s righteous!”

And then we both riffed on our air guitars. Whay!

So Ranger and I hustled back home, I grabbed my keys and hopped in the truck and bippity-bang, boppity-boom the bureau is now sitting in the foyer as seen below, waiting for Susan to come home and find it, replete with a hand-writting “Happy Day-After Birthday!” Card.

My day-of birthday skills certainly need to be honed, but my belated skills have at least saved the day-after.

Love you, Bay-bee!

I just read that the city of Pasadena has opened up its first “bicycle boulevard,” which comes during the same weekend that the city of Glendale unveiled its brand new Trail Safety Patrol Program. The best LA could do is get its mayor to sign a bike parking ordinance — not insignificant, mind you. But still somewhat indicative of a gridlocked metropolis that has its head stuck up a collective tailpipe.

Speaking of Glendale, it was my pleasure this Super Bowl Sunday morning (before heading down with Susan to my friends Arnold and Martha’s place in Newport Coast and cheering on the Ravens to victory) to be one of the first to be of service in a volunteer capacity in the Verdugo Mountains as part of the freshly minted program.

For my first excursion (timelapsed above), I and my fellow volunteers Paul Rabinov and Mark Kobayashi rode up into the Verdugos on a purely magnificent high-definition visibility day via the Beaudry North Motorway from the trailhead to the benches at the intersection of the Brand and Verdugo motorways before coming back to visit Tongva Peak and then heading back down to the trailhead via the Beaudry South Motorway.

It was an absolutely amazing day to be on the trails, introducing ourselves and the patrol to practically everyone we met along the way.

If Los Angeles was even half as open-minded and forward thinking about its open space trails being rightfully accessible to all modes of user instead of patently and institutionally discriminatory against the type I happen to favor then I’d be devoting my time to a trail safety patrol program in that city. But it’s not and it’s a safe bet to say they never will be. So Glendale? I’m all and proudly and bright-yellowly yours.

Glendale Trail Safety Patrol volunteer Mark Kobayahsi. and my smugly satisfied, blindlingly yellow-fied self atop Tongva Peak on such an incredible clear day. Photo by fellow volunteer Paul Rabinov.

Four years separating similar results. The colors of the flag I proudly fly have faded. As is the hope that buoyed me back in 2008. But the sense after yesterday’s election I get is that there’s a fresh determination to put politics aside and work together going forward. Operative word: forward. Let’s hope.

On September 21, I wrote about how it was waaaaay too soon for me to be stepping onto the scale and having it read 200.6. The previous day I’d dropped to a new low at that point of 203 pounds and it was just completely anomalous for me to follow-up the very next weigh-in with another such big drop.

As such I violated my rule of weighing myself one-time-and-one-time-only each day and recording the result whether it was fantastic, depressing or indifferent, and I stepped on the scale again immediately, wherein the numbers read 204.4 — a far more realistic measurement.

I might not have re-weighed that day if it had read 201-something, but because the 200 mark is almost as monumental a milestone as my ultimate diet goal of 190, I wanted the achievement to be legit and inline chronologically with my roughly pound-a-week loss program, not the result of a fluke or the scale’s failing battery.

That’s why, almost four weeks after that September surprise, when I stepped on the scale this morning I just flat out accepted it and figuratively high-fived myself when it read:

200.6

Honestly, I can’t pinpoint when I was last 200 pounds. All I remember is that I was sub-200 throughout high school so  it was probably nineteen hundred hellyeah and eighty three-ish for those of you-ish keeping score at home.

As to anyone looking for a more visual quantification, behold below my torso in a relic I’ve never ever before been able to comfortably wear for the 22 years, 6 months, 2 weeks, and 2 days I’ve owned it — a memento from my participation in the Jimmy Stewart Relay Marathon that took place on April 1, 1990, in Griffith Park. I kid you not, even on the day of the event my extra-large frame (augmented by an even more extra-large spare tire) was too wide for this slim-fit tee:

With Endeavour’s morning arrival in Los Angeles delayed, I scratched plans to bike up to the Observatory for her impending fly-by and instead just parked an adirondack chair atop the roof of our house and camped out until she arrived.

Here’s a still of me and Endeavour taken by my timelapse cam, followed by a photo of Endeavour across Micheltorena Ridge to the west. Last but not least is the brief YouTube clip of the timelapse of me biding my time until Endeavor shows up right near the end:

The scale this morning read 204.2. Subtract that from the weight of 234.8 from which I started this downward journey on March 1 and the result is I crossed over the milestone of 30 pounds lost.

In terms of my overall goal, I’ve changed things up a bit and gone with a longer view. These past few months my aim has been to lose four to five pounds a month, but since that’s what I’ve proven to be averaging across this past half-year, rather than continue to go for short yardage, I instead went deep down field with my next deadline. My aim now is to reach 190 pounds by January 1, 2013.

New Year’s resolutions don’t get any better than achieving them on day one.

PS. To celebrate, I bought a pair of 36-inch-waist pants yesterday. After 25-plus years of never buying anything less than 38s (at best… 44s at my heaviest point), that was REALLY nice.

Given this weekend, my uneducated guess is sometimes you just gotta over-eat to get your metabolism to lighten up. How else can you explain the scale showing me a new low-low of 220.0 pounds this morning following a weekend of ultra-indulgence that began Friday night with ribs and papaya salad and larb and green tea ice cream from Leela Thai, then continued Saturday with a late-night mega-binge of a Costco-sized bag of pine nuts (seriously, I munched on masses of them through the Harry Potter finale like they were popcorn), which was then encored by Sunday’s richly rich brunch for Mother’s Day at Tam O’Shanter in Atwater Village.

Whatever the reason, it’s so very good to be back here at 220 after SO long away.. even if it’s only for a moment before I bounce back for a return trip to Room 222.