I am in such a good mood! I feel vibrant and alive!

I know, I know, this is NOT the stuff of Internet writing...

It is NOT the stuff of an upswelling torrent on the horizon...

It is NOT the stuff of a fist-shaking, keyboard rabble-rouser...

Maybe it is from AccuRadio (as I listen to Everybody Wants to Rule the World) (1985). Listening to this channel reminds me of being a kid again at the FM radio (does my room need to be cleaned?), knowing generally what the genre is to be played, but each selection being a tiny surprise of a gift. Now, I wouldn't slide Bon Jovi's Runaway (1984) into 1980s & '90s Lite Hits Fun & lite adult contemporary hits.

While this does make me feel good—I used to think (Everything I Do) I Do It for You (1991) was the best song ever as it was being released, music alone isn't the driver. It is not the independent variable; it doesn't make this machine go.

My nutrition has been on point, exceedingly so.

Perhaps, it centers on the bevy of supplements I've recently referenced...

Perhaps, it is this dynamic duo of beef liver and sardines...

Perhaps, it is all the cayenne with its capsaicin goodness...

1999! I probably got too giddy there from I Want It That Way (1999)—hey, don't judge me, you have your guilty pleasures, too! Ah, indeed, These Dreams (1985).

Three weeks ago today, on a July 8, I began a sardine fast to smash through a weightloss stall—TOTALLY did that by the way. I did 4 cans a day which involved eating them straight out of the tin. I wrote how on the 4th day, I threw my hands up. I thought I was done with those little nutrient-packed fish!

Curiously, four days ago, last Thursday, I began adding them back, first 1 can, then 2 cans the following days. I actually prepped them from the rewards of @199, made 'em spicy, browned them on top of the range, and used bacon fat or butter. I now look forward to 'em! NOW that's what I call a transformation!

I am returning to that sardine fast I set aside. My plan is to have 4 cans per day, two for breakfast and another set for lunch. It'll be in that 10-11 oz range. Last night, I finished prepping 8 ¼ days of worth. Each day also includes 8 tsp of my recent spice rub, so 4 tsp of cayenne; 1.3 tbsp of butter; and a drizzle of mustard. I'll also be doing my daily couple of sticks of butter in 32 oz of coffee.

I do not know if I will take off 13 lbs for The 40th Expedition on August 18. I want to skip the 190s altogether to unlock the two-star perks! A 6.4% drop is on the upper end of my ability, but I did do a 6.2% in 37E. But it is conceivable at this weight, for following a weightloss stall, I dropped 12.5 lbs (210 to 197.5) in summer '21.

As far as body composition goes, I now regularly wear my black, 36" Amazon Slim-Fit Stretch Golf Pants. They're great, but totally restrict my kicks!

As I pen this diary entry, my site only exists in a text editor. I mean, if you gussy VS Code up, you could call this thing a "code editor" that lingers around the Integrated Development Environment store on weekends.

But, it feels like I have just a box of text docs...YEARS and YEARS of text docs! We could go back to 1989 on my XT clone running DOS 4 and we could read these words. We would have to store all uncompressed 2.8 MB of this site on both sides of EIGHT 5.25" floppy diskettes. I'm assuming my 11-year-old self had access to the typical 360 KB ones instead of the 1.2 MB.

And whala, I just moved my domain registration from NearlyFreeSpeech (NFS) to the massively superior Cloudflare. The thing is a BEAST! I would have left everything alone, but NFS has made a departure from being apolitical—hey, I prefer their old snarky IT voice, as if my web host was Nick Burns, Your Company's Computer Guy. They have been that way for a good long time, at least since I signed up with them some 7 years ago.

Transferring my domain to Cloudflare didn't cost me anything beyond renewing my domain for an additional year; it's now expiring in April 2026. They even provide free privacy of your contact info from DNS lookups, something I used to plop $3 down each year.

Domain registration is one thing. What about the core purpose, NFS's role as my web host?

This is where moving to Jekyll/markdown years ago plays a significant role! Cloudflare Pages provides a FREE option. As listed here under the Pages side heading:

• 1 build at a time
• 500 builds per month
• Integrated web analytics
• Unlimited free admin seats
• Unlimited sites
• Unlimited requests
• Unlimited bandwidth

Going live wasn't too challenging: I have to use a third-party Git site to host my markdown. In figuring out its deployment, I had to run down two issues: one, it didn't autodetect my usage of Jekyll so I had to specify; and two, it failed on my gem file of...

gem "jekyll", "~> 4.2.1"

...whereas it rendered when I updated it with...

gem "jekyll", "~> 4.3.0"

ChatGPT proved to be invaluable as a companion in all this. Especially with awkward NFS documentation that is an astounding 427 muddied words in length! All of it could be remedied with a screenshot and MAYBE 5 bullet points. If the writer wants to meander, he ought to make a blog on Cloudflare.

To put it into perspective, this post is 440 words at this point.

Another good channel on AccuRadio: Top 40: April 23, 1985 Radio's top hits when you had your first (and maybe last) sip of "New Coke."

I am backpedaling from my decision to return to Spotify. I am just not jazzed up to create playlists anymore, something that once was a mainstay of this website.

I figure I'll just listen to AccuRadio, something like its Decade: '90s. I appreciate it as I listen to Hey Jealousy.

Man, I miss people.

Of course, there's always Idagio, something that a minute ago, I realized that I listened to the last time I was in my 190's.

And the radio shifts to Shiny Happy People...then How Can We Be Lovers.

Yeah, I miss folks who are just long gone. It's a Saturday night, the evening I become the most wistfully nostalgic. I don't feel 46. Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls.

I don't need Spotify. It's such a lonely place anyway. I'd rather spend that $13.13/month on a cologne sample or two, or in the case of my '90s Michael Jordan, most of that 3.4 oz bottle.

...or buy habanero powder to get set for my 180s.

I know I haven't changed...I mean, I'm not as reckless as I once was...I even don't smoke the cigars I once did, in fact, it's almost 12 years to the day since I smoked my last one. I was back living on campus having just earned my MA upon my return from the Czech Republic, my last night there, a July 27th, being the opening ceremony of the London Olympics. I stood on my balcony and listened to Duran Duran playing live at the Botanical Garden, specifically their song Save a Prayer.

My 2020 post Jan Hammer - Crockett's Theme '84 captures what that time meant to me.

These days, I feel younger than that 34-year-old. I hear AccuRadio playing Be My Lover and I forget this beard of mine is of a gray wolf's.

Shouldn't I be embarking on my old Bolton-to-Beale route, that fabled drive through the night I would do before there was a 385? A drive out to my school, then down Hwy 14 to ride north 240 to Riverside Drive, then circle on back with the southern loop.

It has been 30 years, but I still see the time clock, the breakroom—even the parking lot at Kroger. As we were pushing carts back under the moonlight, the prettiest girl there told me that although she had been asked out by another guy that very same night, she was more interested in going out with someone "smart"—her words, not mine*. She heavily hinted that she meant me. So I asked.

Funny how that sort of thing happened again to me at another grocery store a little bit over a year from then. But, I drew the prom wild card. Eh, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Who knows life at 17?

To be fair, I did have a busted chin, a scar that remains to this day. Some things never change.

And Runaway Train plays, the song that along with Don't Cry will forever remind me of her, someone who saw something in me that I couldn't see, long before girls were emboldened toward me. Her photo never ages.

I set those memories aside.

And the air outside, so soft
Is saying everything
Everything

All I want is to feel this way
To be this close, feel the same
All I want is to feel this way
The evening speaks, feel it say

-Toad the Wet Sprocket (1992)