Yesterday's Steak Saturday was FANTASTIC!

1. 9 oz. ribeye...
2. ...followed by half-a-package of bacon...
3. ...and 2¼ sticks of butter for the day with 6 cups of coffee.

I could unfold the strategy for Saturday, but I do not own a pocket protector. I have always thought owning one is a good idea! It would totally match these suspenders I wear now!

The key to life really is to disconnect from the keychain and drive, isn't it?

As Duran Duran's Come Undone plays on, the title of a lost post from then, this phase of 2024 feels like 2019 to me:

Words, playing me déjà vu
Like a radio tune, I swear I've heard before

No, I don't suppose Stranger Things season 3 will be releasing this July 4 any more than this Billy could visit the Starcourt Mall. But, 2019 felt like something different...maybe like this?—I started to believe. On a low-calorie approach, I got down the scale to where I am currently camping, though 2019's October was shipwrecked by an emotional response, the subject of Kelly Hogan's latest video, Let's please fix this: EMOTIONAL EATING.

I suppose I ought to consider this 220-210 lb place to be threatening time with my risk of blowing up in size. Failure points of...

• Nov '18: 218 lbs then a 77-lb gain
• Oct '19: 211.25 lbs then a 65.75-lb gain
• June '23: 215 lbs then a 59-lb gain

I survived it in 2021, though the time frame lasted for 4 Expeditions: 220.25 → 213 → 209 → 210 → 197.5. I tinkered a bit with things and I got it fixed.

This time around with my HFC #2 macro-focused with its mental toughness built-in via my Fat Focus days twice a week, I fully expect to just leap over any kind of challenge. I skipped most of the 220s on it and I am in position to just skip the 2-aughts.

In THIS year, I want to claim that 182 mark of 2021 and push further to that Everlong standard, the fabled 163, the place I was when the world was a different place: 1995. It is right there for the taking...Right Now!

Not related, but I was delightfully surprised as I stumbled across Taylor Swift's synthwave song, Fortnight, which has got to be a callback with its tune to the new wave band, New Order's Bizarre Love Triangle. Fortnight's video reminded me of the equally visually beautiful and powerful Smashing Pumpkin's Stand Inside Your Love.. OH! And I loved the Ethan Hawke cameo! That 1970 is a good vintage: Matt Damon, Tina Fey...

These days fall off the calendar into a stack of tedium, but my heart drives along the river in a sunset through retrowave hues. I have hope before me of something on the horizon, a shift of life, a genesis of who I always was; once, a glimmer could be seen back when I was unrecognizable.

Those years pining for Memphis were for naught. The walking dead overran its streets long ago. But, I knew Neil Diamond's streets and Marc Cohn's walks are yellowed portraits in a musty book housed within the Pink Palace of my mind's eye. And yet, the roar of a crowd at the Liberty Bowl with the sound of the siren's call of a rumbling train wrangled my heart toward a past that rails brightly through the shadows.

I ride my yesteryear's steel stallion of thunder beneath halos of street lamps. "Look at these passing, purple frames! No, no they are not there—not the way they were! If you could only see..." I fill in the missing lines from memory. "No, tomorrow is the past of my days."

We have mostly wasted time
Half-asleep and have-to-buy
Waiting for the faintest lie
And waiting for these wounds to heal
No, we're never as lost or as found as we think we are

The Midnight, Lost & Found

Each night as I lay in bed, I look forward to the next day. I am excited at the prospects that lay ahead. It is more than a taste of what I laid out at the year's start.

I feel as though I am amidst change. I referenced the other day how I have found I am no longer interested in console gaming. Last night, I realized that outside of a deck-building game, I have not played a PC game since moving to Bartlett over a year ago. Now, I regularly watch one being played, typically by City Planner Plays, and have enjoyed his take on Manor Lords that will be released later today.

Just as console gaming has played a foundational role in my life, PC gaming has done so even more. Long ago was the Texas Instrument TI-99 as a 5 or 6-year-old. Later there were shareware disks, and "playthroughs" on Aldus PageMaker—a near endless parade of games along the way that included a rich tapestry of people in my life whether...

...watching over friends' shoulders with Bard's Tale in the late 80s and EverQuest in 2000,

...competing after a Bible study with Unreal Tournament LAN parties in 2002,

...and team building at work at UofM with end-of-the-day Battlefield 1942 Desert Combat mod in 2003 that would evolve into a virtual world of World of Warcraft in 2005.

Just like pickup games in basketball, sparring in Taekwondo, and shared smiles, I never knew the last one was the last one.

I am just interested in...real-world PC gaming. Instead of building things on a screen, it is there before me, shaped by these two hands, not clicked into existence. I typically do not reach out for that sort of thing because of the actual expense, labor, and expertise required. I tend to gravitate toward playing in this sandbox.

What is the meaning of it all? What do I have to show for it? Longing for a reality that could never be? It is funny how I will look over my life with computers, leisure, and career and just think, "What a waste," at least it comes off as pretty hollow! In the end, the relationships along the way were all that mattered. Solving puzzles was just the background context. It is an artificial life.

But what else could there have been?

'Cause the free wind is blowin' through your hair
And the days surround your daylight there

America, Ventura Highway