Fugit Irreparabile Tempus

... whether or not you're having fun.

On June 24 2013, I was treated to a nice lunch at one of my favorite restaurants with a few people from my workgroup.  After lunch, I went back to the cubicle, took one last walk around the facility, chatted with a few people, then turned in my laptop and security card and walked out the door for the last time after thirty-two years of daily cubicle attendance in the same location. That was a moment I had been contemplating, planning for, and eagerly anticipating. Yet, having arrived at that moment, I realized that contemplating a thing is not the same as experiencing it.  A phrase from an Emily Dickinsom poem played in my mind: 

"For heaven is a different thing

Conjectured, and waked sudden in,

And might o'erwhelm me so!"

As I walked to my car, the realization of what I was doing at that moment swelled in my mind. I was closing the door on thirty-two years of time that had irretrievably passed; thirty-two years of stable employment with a middle-class salary and benefits; thirty two years of professional development and continuing education; thirty two years of life experiences, raising a family, growing older. A lump formed in my throat, and I was overcome by a a wave of nostalgia as I faced the fact that so much of my life was now behind me.

A warm, bittersweet feeling rose in my chest, tinged with anxiety about the future, but without any feeling of regret. I had looked forward to this moment with great expectation and had spent hours dreaming and planning and looking forward to it.  Now it was time to move forward and embrace the fall season of life.

Now, six weeks later, I can report on how it's going so far. So far, so good. No big surprises or disappointments at this point. The time has passed quickly, it seems. I'm enjoying the freedom to take life more at my own pace, and I haven't yet felt like I need something more to do to fill my days.

Healthwise, I've completed a 22 session cardiac rehabilitation therapy program, and have settled in to a daily exercise routine. I've grown accustomed to my new vegan no oil diet, and am back to doing all the normal physical activities that I was engaging in BHA (before heart attack).

My wife and I are continuing our French language courses, and we spend considerable time together studying.  We are also taking a free online course from www.coursera.com called "The Science of Gastronomy".  

I also have a new occupation as a financial manager, caring for a small portfolio of investments that is now our livelihood. I'm not really qualified to do this, but I'm too cheap to pay a professional fee to someone else for doing it. My wife helps out a lot with this.  Before retiring, she did a series of prototype budgets which we did test runs on and refined them to get something we were confident would work for us.  Now is the first real "production run" of our plans. It will be an adventure to see if it works out - too early to know at this point.

Part of each day is dedicated to vegetable gardening.  Gardening has always been one of my main hobbies, and it's nice to have more time to dedicate to that pursuit.  I was given new gardening uniform as a retirement gift: a pair of denim overalls and a big straw hat. I wear a bright red and white Hawaiian shirt with it. It's my new daily work uniform, and I've discovered that it hardly ever needs to be washed... just hang it up on a nail to air out overnight, and it's ready to wear again the next day!

I spend considerable time planning meals and cooking, incorporating garden produce wherever possible.  Everyone who eats here is subjected to the vegan experience. My wife endures it stoically, even saying that she likes it at times. However, relatives who have come to visit for a few days have left complaining of too many beans and uncontrollable flatulence. I tell them that they're welcome here anytime :-)

We have a new granddaughter who was born on August 14, and another grandchild due to arrive sometime in November. So, as it turns out, there is life after the cubicle.

I'd like to sign up for another twenty years or so of this kind of living, but I don't know who to ask, or where to subscribe, so I guess I'll just take it a day at a time and embrace what each day brings.

Please Pass the Seitan

I've always adhered to Aristotle's philosophy of "moderation in all things". I believe that the process of perfecting and optimizing involves searching for the right balance point, rather than pushing toward the extremes.

A few years ago when I saw the need to move to a healthier diet and lifestyle, I began to search for exercise and diet options that might help me lose weight, lower cholesterol and control blood pressure. What I found in my search was a bewildering array of advice from a multitude of sources about diet and lifestyle options for achieving my goals.  I read most all of it; from Atkins to Weil and everything in between. I studied the USDA's new "Food Guide Pyramid". I read about the ancient Ayurvedic method of selecting diet based on body type. I became educated about the evils of inflammation, gluten, refined products, artificial sweeteners, preservatives, GMO, salt, fats and oils.  For every advocate of a given diet, I found an equal and opposite detractor.

What to do? Well, I took refuge in Aristotle's philosophy of "moderation in all things". It seemed like there was a general consensus that a move toward less salt, less meat, less processed food, and more whole plants was a good thing.  So I began walking daily for exercise and following a balanced diet called the DASH diet to help me lose weight, lower my cholesterol and control my blood pressure.  I rejected the extreme ideas and opted for something moderate.

It worked.  I lost 30 pounds, my total cholesterol level came down by 45 points, my blood pressure dropped by 10 points, triglycerides came down to the normal range.  I was proud of myself. I wrote this accomplishment down in my little book of successes and was feeling good about my health.

... but it failed.  Now, after about 4 years of this new "healthy" lifestyle, I have suffered a major heart attack.

Humbled, disappointed, and incredulous, I went crawling in to my cardiologist and asked him if he had any recommendations for diet and lifestyle changes that would help address the cause of my heart disease.  He said "Well, there's a general consensus forming among cardiologists that moving toward a whole foods, plant-based diet can help.  There's a book by Dr. Esselstyn, a well respected doctor from the Cleveland clinic, that is a good reference."

I read the book.  It's extreme.  No meat. No oil. No fish. No nuts. No Avocado. No animal products. Only whole plant food.  Esselstyn seems to think that this diet can prevent and possibly cure heart disease.  A few others sort of agree.  Lots of people think it's ridiculous.  Some people say it's just impossible to follow this diet.

This extreme Esselstyn vegan no oil diet is my new way of eating.

What would Aristotle think of me now?  By way of explanation I could at least tell him that my total cholesterol level is now down to 76 from 198.  Take that, Aristotle.  Maybe I should have abandoned your philosophy years ago.

My new mantra is: Vegan. It’s not who I am, it's just how I eat.

On a lighter note, I leave you with these corny vegan jokes:

Q: Did you hear about the vegan devil worshipper?
A: He sold his soul to seitan!

Q: What do you call a Vegan with diarrhea?
A: A Salad Shooter

Q: Why are vegans detrimental to the earth?
A: Because they produce immense amounts of methane.

A vegan has a carrot sticking out of one ear, celery out of the other, and a mushroom up his nose. He goes to the doctor and asks him what's wrong. The doctor tells him, "Well, for one thing, you're not eating right."

This is the big one, Elizabeth!

Back in the 70s, there was a TV sitcom called Sanford and Son.  If you remember the show, or have watched an episode or two at some time in your life, you probably remember how Fred Sanford (played by Redd Foxx)would look up (as to heaven) with his hand across his chest in times of distress (and he was always in some kind of self-imposed distress) faking a heart attack and addressing his departed wife with these words: "This is The Big One, Elizabeth! I'm comin' to join ya', honey!"

Back in the 80s, there was a man named James Fixx whose best-selling book "The Complete Book of Running" led tens of thousands to take up jogging and made him a guru of the running world. One day, while out running, Jim collapsed and died of an apparent heart attack. Friends described him as being in fine physical condition and said he had not complained of any symptoms while running 10 miles a day and pursuing other vigorous physical activity. An autopsy revealed that Mr. Fixx's left circumflex coronary artery was almost totally blocked; only trickles of blood could flow through the pinholes that were left of the inside of that artery. About 80 percent of the blood flow in the right coronary artery was blocked. The chief nourishment to Mr. Fixx's heart came from blood flowing through the third artery, the left anterior descending, which was less severely affected. Nevertheless, half that artery was blocked in places.

Not so far back, in March, 2013, I had an experience which brought memories of Fred Sanford and Jim Fixx to the forefront of my mind. Let me explain.

On March 26, I was standing at the bottom of the stairs in the lobby of Alliance Francaise Paris, where my wife and I were attending French language classes.  This was the penultimate class in the four week series we were enrolled in.  We were in two different classes. Hers was on the fourth floor, mine was on the third. My class usually got out a few minutes before hers, so I had a few minutes to wait before she came down the stairs.

That morning, we left our apartment as usual and took the twenty minute walk to school.  Along the way, we passed now familiar places near our apartment on Rue de Sevres - Le Bon Marché department store and Le Grand Epicerie supermarket. After turning the corner and heading down Boulevard Raspail, we passed a Mini Cooper dealership on the left and a Smart car dealership across from it on the right.  In the center median of the boulevard was the city's major marché biologique (organic market) where we had shopped for fresh produce, meat, and cheese on the weekends. We were living a long-cherished dream of mine to spend a month in Paris and learn a bit of french via immersion.

The classes were held three days a week for three hours each, with a short break somewhere around the midpoint.  That day, I began to feel something funny in my chest part way through the first half of the session.  By break time, I was feeling moderate discomfort, but walked down the stairs and got a café crème, then back to class to learn some more french. By the end of class, I was convinced I was having a heart attack.  I had the classic symptoms of chest pain, with pain radiating down my arm and up into my neck and lower jaw.  However, It wasn't intensely uncomfortable, so I walked down the stairs and waited for my wife to come down from class. When she arrived, I told her I wasn't feeling so good, that I thought I was having a heart attack, and that we needed to call for emergency help. We went to the front desk, found someone who could speak English, and explained that I was sick and needed emergency help. (I have since learned that "crise cardiaque" is passable french for heart attack. I hadn't learned that in class.  All I could think of was "coup de coeur".  If had gone around saying that and holding my chest, I might have ended up in a  psychiatrist's office instead of a hospital.)

The lady at the desk summoned the school security person, who escorted me to his office, where I sat on the floor and waited while he called the pompiers.  The pompiers arrived within a few minutes, asked me a few questions, and hooked me up to their portable heart monitor machine.  Blood pressure and pulse were normal, and at first, they were indicating that there might not be any serious problem.  They hooked up some electrodes and did a quick EKG, which showed some problem.  They then called for an ambulance with a doctor on board.  The ambulance arrived within a minute or two, they carried me out to the ambulance, and the doctor confirmed that I was indeed having a heart attack and needed to be transported to the hospital.

So off we went to the hospital, with my frantic wife riding in the front of the ambulance and me in the back.  WEE-OOH WEE-OOH.  Our first (and hopefully last) ambulance ride. That was the beginning of five days in cardiac intensive care in Hôpital Cochin Paris, complete with two angioplasties and three stent installations.  We extended our stay in Paris for an additional two weeks before getting a doctor's release to travel back home.

Overall, it was quite an experience, and gave me a first hand view of the French health care system.  In terms of quality of care and cost, I would recommend it to anyone who is contemplating having a heart attack.

After arriving back home, I took one more week off work, and then came back to the cubicle with a whole new perspective on life, or what's left of it for me.  This experience has been a demarcation point. I feel like my old "cubicle career" life is over, and I am ready to launch into a new phase of living.  After thirty-two years of corporate cubicle life, have decided to retire from the company.

In a serendipitous turn of events, the corporate overlords have rolled the "restructuring/work force management" guillotine out of the closet and are preparing it for another round of job cuts. This time the plan is to cut two percent of the workforce, or about four-hundred fifty people. I was notified today that my head will roll.  (It also means that I will get a fairly generous separation package, which is a nice surprise.)  My last day of employment here will be 28 June 2013.

With this post, I plan to return to more actively posting in this blog.  I expect to follow this post with some reflections on my cubicle career, followed by more tales of a transformational journey through a new, post-cubicle phase of life.

As someone who is approaching the autumn of life, I leave you with this little verse to contemplate:

I like spring, but it's too young,
I like summer, but it's too proud.
So, best of all I like autumn.
Because its leaves are a little yellow,
Its tone mellower, its colors richer;
And its golden richness speaks not
Of the innocence of spring nor
Of the power of summer,
But of the mellowness and kindly wisdom
Of approaching age, and knows the
Limitations of life, and is content.

- June Douglas 1919 - 2008

Pop That Rag!

A few weeks ago, I spent five days in Las Vegas at a "business conference". In keeping with the generally accepted amnesiatic social convention of letting things that happen in Vegas stay in Vegas, I won't tell you everything I did there, but there was one notable activity which I would like to share with you.

Vegas is a city where you don't need any excuses to do something risky with your money or your life. You can get married at 1AM to a stranger you just met a 12AM or blow all your money on craps or roulette, then mortgage your house or hock your car to get in on a game of high stakes poker. All manner of illogical, destructive, and risk-laden activity is expected and excused if it happens in Vegas... and the best part is, you can do all these things, then go back home and say "I attended a business conference in Vegas". No further explanation or details need to be provided. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Anyway, as I said before, a few weeks back "I attended a business conference in Vegas". During the conference, I did something which I have rarely done in my adult life, and haven't done at all in probably thirty years or more.

I got a shoe shine.

The shoe shine stand, tucked away in a side hallway, caught my attention as I was leaving the conference center. It was attended by a petite, immaculately groomed, middle aged man. His shoe shine stand had two chairs, one of which was occupied by a customer, the other being empty. On impulse, I stepped up into the vacant chair and waited my turn.

When it was my turn, I sat and observed the meticulous work of the shoe shiner and the perfectly organized drawer of supplies which he opened and closed as he did his work. I watched as he tucked my shoelaces into my shoes to keep them out of the way while he cleaned my shoes, then applied polish, then brushed, then used a polishing rag to bring out a brilliant, deep shine. As he applied the final coat of liquid dye to the soles of my shoes, untucked my shoelaces, then tapped the bottom of my shoe to signal that he was finished, my mind was flooded with a long-forgotten memory.

I was remembering a boy I once knew who had a shoe shine stand in his grandfather's barber shop. This boy was about ten years old when he started shining shoes, and worked in the barber shop shining shoes on Saturdays. At first, it took a tremendous amount of courage for him to approach customers and say: "Shoe shine, sir?" (I challenge you to say that ten times fast - it's a real tongue-twister). I remember that he had a portable shoe shine box so that he could shine a customer's shoes while they were in the barber chair if they were pressed for time, or were using that as an excuse not to get a shoe shine. I remember how he used to pop his polishing rag to add a little flair to the final polishing process and hope it would get him a bigger tip. I remember him being terrified of getting polish stains on customer's white socks. I remember how, toward the end of the day, he would walk across the street to the bank and deposit some of his earnings into his savings account.

Yes, I remember being a shoe shine boy in my grandfather's barber shop. That was a long time ago - almost fifty years now. It hardly seems real. It's one of those childhood memories that has reduced down over time to a sweet, nostalgic reminiscence. Looking back, the life of that boy seems so simple and carefree.

Before you go, you might enjoy listening to this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh5A2qmWjf0

A Matter of Perspective

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WARNING TO CAREERISTS

This posting includes examples of behaviour which are not acceptable on the part of those who are focused on having a successful corporate career. If that is your goal, please don't read the rest of this post. Instead, go read this: http://www.ehow.com/how_2135494_handle-change-work.html

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Even if you come to work every day and stand on your head in a corner in a pile of bull excrement, eventually you will get used to it. After a while, your perspective will change to the point that the world will again appear to be right side up and the excrement will smell like roses and taste like candy to you. It's all a matter of perspective.

The more flexible you are, the sooner this change of perspective will come about. In the world of cubicle workers, our corporate masters place a high value on "flexibility". From their perspective, "flexible" workers provide a more efficient match between labor resources and the work required. The general idea is that any one will be willing to do any thing at any time. "Flexible" workers have multiple skill sets, work variable hours, and multi-task among multiple job functions as needed; they are open to changing organizations and job responsibilities on the fly. From the perspective of the corporate executive, this all adds up to lower cost and increased agility for the corporate elephant. From my perspective, this is all well and good... up to a point. At some point, reality intervenes and sets limits. Elephants are good for heavy lifting, but aren't great tap dancers.

As my thirty-year anniversary with the company approaches, the smell of reality permeates my cubicle, and it doesn't make me think of roses. I suppose it is evidence of some sort of sclerosis on my part that recent changes in my organization and job function have sent me into a sort of apopleptic fit. I guess I'm just not as flexible as I used to be - or maybe I'm just not as naive. I've been around this block before. I've heard this restructuring dog bark many times.

The memos announcing an organizational change usually start with a phrase like "I am very excited about the opportunity..." The message is full of corporate speak and replete with buzzwords like leverage, synergy, stakeholders, and "customer intimacy" (yeah, right, I can hardly wait to get "intimate" with MY customers). The memo then ends with a phrase like "I know that I can count on you all to stay engaged and focused during this challenging time...", followed by a repetition of the "I am very excited..." phrase. Included is an attachment with a new org chart.

Last December, I scanned the latest org change memo with a jaded eye, expecting to ignore the changes for the most part and just continue with my cubicle duties. Beyond having a different "reporting structure", I didn't expect much to change. I planned, as usual, to follow my time-tested "hide and watch" tactic as people jockeyed for position and power in the new organization. This can be a fun game to watch, but not one I want to participate in. So, I settled in to watch the show. At first, it was quite entertaining.

Immediately after the announcement, three first-level managers bailed out of their newly assigned positions. One (the one I was supposed to begin reporting to) left the company. Two others maneuvered into positions elsewhere within the company. This set off a flurry of activity among my "cubicle careerist" peers. They put on their best faces, polished up their resumes, and set out to pursue newly percieved opportunities to advance in their corporate careers. This was all great fun to watch... for a while.

After a couple of months, the new selections were announced via yet another org change memo in the same format as usual, with the usual revised org chart attached. Scanning through this one, I began to feel increasingly uneasy. This didn't look like the same old dog barking again. This was a different animal, one that could bite.

In this latest memo, it was announced that two of my peers would become managers. I would be reporting directly to a guy who used to be my walking buddy, and his boss would be another of my peers who had recently joined the company and with whom I had often clashed fiercely... but the part that bites is that the number of people in my group is reduced from eight to five, and my new "role" is a combination of two jobs - my old one plus a new set of tasks consisting mostly of corporate transactional administrivia.

Over the next few days, my brain was a pressure cooker of emotions stewing in their own juices. I felt high anxiety, punctuated with periods when I was just livid, seething, and shaking. I wrote down some notes on how I was feeling, along with some ideas about the role I wanted vs the one I was being given. I "shared" this with my new manager, who was probably a little overwhelmed by it. His reaction was: "So, are you refusing to do your job?". That wasn't exactly what I had expected. Obviously, we weren't going to be walking buddies any longer.

Not being satisfied with my ex-walking-buddy's response, and still intent on sabotaging my corporate career, I composed an email message outlining my thoughts and feelings about my new role and sent it off to my first, second, and third level managers. I got a similar response (Are you refusing to do your job?) from my second-level manager(who also used to be my peer), and no response from my third level manager. I assume it is bad corporate form for a manager three levels up to respond directly to someone whining at the bottom of their newly-formed organization.

In the end, my dear wife of 35 years came to the rescue, providing relief and comfort as she has always done. She went to the library, checked out the book "Who Moved My Cheese?" by Spencer Johnson, brought it home, and read it to me, cover to cover, in one sitting. In case you haven't read it, it is a silly little story about mice in a maze that purports to "reveal profound truths about change that give people and organizations a quick and easy way to succeed in changing times". I'm not sure that this book has lived up to it's billing, but I am sure that it, along with "The One Minute Manager", has made Spencer Johnson quite wealthy. People who haven't changed since it was published in 1998 still have this book on their cubicle shelves.

Anyway, I've settled down a bit, and am making plans to go find new cheese. I have also relocated my magnetic cut-out likeness of Wally (my hero from the Dilbert Comic strip) to a prominent place near my cubicle entrance. Each day, as I enter my cubicle, I pause and bow slightly to this image, while silently asking the great Wally for guidance throughout my work day.

I am sure that one day, hopefully not long in the future, I will walk into my cubicle one morning and say: "What a beautiful day it is today! It smells like roses in here!". After all, it's only a matter of perspective.

Until then - color me disaffected.

PS - If anyone has a good home remedy for stubbornness or hemorrhoids, please let me know. I've been having trouble with both lately. Also, I am in the market for a new walking buddy...

I leave you now with a new reader-submitted comic for your perusal and enjoyment:

A New Month Begins

Today, I am rejoicing in my cubicle. A new month has begun, replete with fresh opportunities as destiny beckons me to reach toward new heights in cubicle achievements!

Happy April fool's day...

Expandable Pants

In my closet, I have two or three pairs of expandable pants. You know the kind I'm talking about, right? The kind with elastic cleverly disguised in the waistband. I'm assuming they are designed for old guys whose waistline is expanding ever more rapidly and who want to avoid buying a bigger pair of pants every six months or so; or maybe it just appeals to one's vanity. Think about it - if you keep on buying pants with the same waist size, you don't have to admit you're getting fatter. It also means that you can go to an all-you-can-eat buffet and really get your money's worth without having to unbutton your pants midway through the meal.

Of course, there are alternatives to expandable pants... for example, some men just move their pants lower and lower as their girth expands, so that they end up buying shorter pants, but not bigger around. I guess that serves the same purpose as expandable pants, but it means that you run a few risks. If you are wearing your pants underneath your belly, they tend to keep sliding down and you have to continually hold them up or they'll fall down around your knees at some inopportune moment. Also, as you move your pants lower and lower on your torso, you have to buy your shirts longer and longer to avoid the notorious crack exposure syndrome with which plumbers are famously afflicted.

I bought expandable pants because, well, I am getting older, my girth was increasing slowly but surely, and above all, they were cheap. Cheaper than any other pants in the store. Even cheaper than jeans. Not that I really needed more pants - I already had a dozen pair or so of perfectly good pants in the closet - but it was getting to the point where most of them were tight enough that I really couldn't wear them comfortably. Actually, it had been a few years since some of them were wearable, but they weren't worn out, so I was keeping them just in case. Pants last a long time if you leave them hanging in the closet. They only wear out if you wear and wash them. Sure, they may go out of style, but that's not a problem for me, since I am... well, let's just say I'm stylishly challenged, but fiscally aware. I'm more concerned about cost than chic.

So I bought expandable pants partly for comfort, partly to boost my vanity, partly to mitigate risk of me reaching up and my pants suddenly falling down, partly to avoid the added cost and inconvenience of wearing suspenders to hold my pants up, and partly as insurance against having uncomfortably tight pants which are left hanging in the closet and not being worn. You see, I had plenty of good reasons... and to top it all off, they were cheap. A wise decision on my part, don't you think?

I smugly wore my expandable pants while feasting on burgers, fries, Skittles, donuts, cookies, and other delectable and delicious things. For a while, as my girth and pants automatically expanded, so did my feeling of contentment and well-being.

However, long before my expandable pants began to show any wear, my contented, smug reverie was shattered by a trip to the doctor for a yearly checkup. I am not one to go to the doctor of my own volition. However, as I have aged, I have yielded to increasing pressure to have yearly physical exams. I am told that once you reach a certain age, there are some things that need to be monitored closely. I am told that my colon must be periodically examined via a rather invasive procedure called a colonoscopy; my prostate must be examined using a procedure which I don't know the name of, but which involves dropping your pants and bending over in the presence of a doctor wearing a surgical glove on his raised index finger; my blood pressure must be monitored for signs of hypertension; my blood must be regularly sampled and tested for signs of various improper levels of things like cholesterol, blood sugar, and triglycerides. This is only a partial enumeration of a long list of things that must be checked yearly, according to people who know about these things. I resisted the pressure for a while, but finally yielded when I discovered that these yearly checkups are free as part of my healthcare plan.

I was escorted to the examining room by a nurse who took my blood pressure, then left, saying the doctor would be in shortly. Eventually the doctor came in and probed various orifices in my head and nether regions with an assortment of tools and probes, including the gloved index finger previously mentioned. Once this examination was complete, he sat at his desk, opened his laptop, and entered some information. He then told me that my blood pressure was a little high, and he could see that in the past, my cholesterol levels had been a little out of whack. He asked me to go down to the lab and have some blood drawn, printed out a copy of the DASH diet, gave it to me, and said "Try following this diet, and go easy on the salt. You could stand to lose a few pounds."

I went into the doctor's office feeling healthy, smug, and content. I left feeling sick, deflated, and anxious, thinking that maybe expandable pants weren't such a good idea after all. But the real blow came about two weeks later in the form of a lab report and a note from the doctor, which said something like: "Your lipids are high. I am ordering a prescription for Simvastatin. Begin taking it, then come back to the lab after three months for a follow-up." I was devastated. I envisioned myself a few years from now, sitting down at breakfast time with one of those weekly pill organizers to take my assortment of prescription drugs every day. Simvastation was only the beginning, I thought. Next, it would be blood pressure drugs, then diabetes drugs, then who knows what else. I wasn't ready to start down that road just yet.

I ignored the prescription, changed my eating habits in accordance with the DASH diet, lost 25 pounds, and went back for another lipids test. This time, the results came back with a note from the doctor which said something like: "Your lipid levels are responding well to Simvastatin, and your liver function is normal." I then sent the doctor a letter in reply, telling him that I wasn't taking Simvastatin, but had changed my diet and had lost some weight. That was almost a year ago. I never got a reply from the doctor. He's probably not very happy with me. I'm not sure if I have the courage to go in for another yearly checkup and face being chastised for not following orders. Maybe I'll just skip the checkups for a while.

I'm not so proud of my expandable pants any more. I don't wear them much, and when I do, I don't have that smug, contented feeling like I used to. However, the good news is that I can now wear any of the pants in my closet, and I won't have to buy any new ones for a long while.

Meanwile, back in the cubicle

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I apologize for not including any subject matter on cubicle life in this post. Let me just say that the cubicle drama continues. Last week, my walking buddy becamy my boss, and another of my peers with whom I have often clashed fiercely, became my boss' boss. More on that in my next post. It's a story you won't want to miss!