A Post in Which I Admit I Was Wrong, I Was Wrong Again, I Hid Something from My Mother and I Refuse a Challenge

We had a great morning today. A friend we haven't seen in more than a year was in Sydney and came over for breakfast. Since he left the company, Mark has been travelling the world (mostly Pacific islands and Central and South America) and we were lucky enough for him to find time to stop over before heading off to Singapore, Vietnam, China and Russia before eventually finding his way back to the UK.

He had great stories, and looked great. It was fantastic catching up.

If I am going to post today, though, I am going to have to be quick about it, so I will just do a few updates to some of the most recent posts.

1)Two days ago I wrote this about my new friend Shane the Plumber:

He is coming back tomorrow to correct whatever it was he did. I assume he will turn some handle ten degrees and everything will be fixed. Or, just as likely, he will tell me it was nothing he caused and we need thousands of dollars of repairs. Because with my new friend, I am starting to wonder if I am going to take a bath before I can take a shower.

Well, Shane came by yesterday afternoon. He turned some handle ten degrees and everything was fixed. He was very embarrassed that he had forgotten to do that the last time. I told him not to feel bad because we all make mistakes. (Like me, thinking he was conning me. Only I didn't tell him, of course.)

Linda was delighted to have full pressure in the shower and the washing machine. She did, however, keep mentioning that if I had called three weeks ago it would have made life a lot easier. I told her we all make mistakes. Like me, thinking everything would fix itself without calling the plumber back.

2.) In that post about my long-haired days, I wrote:

I can also remember my parents being - as always - tolerant of the goofy look I was sporting. But I don't recall too many people being invited over whenever I visited them.

Let's just say that my mother did not agree with my memory. "We had people over when you visited," she said. "I don't know why you would think we didn't. Besides lots of people were wearing their hair that way back then."

On the joint principles that A) you never argue with your mother and B) I can't remember things from last week let alone 30 years ago, I humbly apologize to my mother. Which is more than I did with Shane the Plumber.

3.) In the post about my brother Bob's birthday, I wrote about playing a rather rough game with him and our chihuahua. It was called Buttons Ball, and it was not so much a game as a scientific experiment to prove that the smaller the creature, the tougher they are.

The day after the post, I was talking with my Dad who quietly told me that my mother was a bit surprised because she never knew I did that with my 9-year-old brother when I was babysitting.

I was obviously not having a good blogging week with Mom. But if she was surprised at some of the things she didn't know I did when I was 17, wait until I work my way up into my 30's! Actually, given her reaction to the post about my long hair, maybe I won't get into all of that.

(By the way, in case you missed the comment to my post about Bob's birthday, I once again made my sister-in-law Sandy cry. I am beginning to feel like I am the donut shop of blogging. Cry at twelve of the posts and you get the next one free.)

4.) In the post following up on the New Year resolutions, I confessed that I hadn't been very rigorous in following the South Beach Diet. Well, technically that's not true. I was rigorous, but only for a day or two.

Soon after that I received an email from my friend Robert. He is challenging me to a weight loss competition. He suggested that between now and June 4, we would see who could lose the most weight. His rules are relatively straightforward:

1. You cannot stop drinking your cruse ship standard alcohol intake." Happy Hour two for one & wine with dinner "

2. No liposuction.

3. No cutting you head off for an extra 10 lbs weight loss.

4. No Linda can't hold your legs up while you sit on the scales for extra weight reduction.

5. Yes you have to put your entire mass on the scales now and again on June 4, 2008.

I haven't answered him yet because I cannot decide whether to accept his challenge like a man or waddle away in disgrace.

My biggest issue is that I don't think of weight loss as a competitive event. Sure, they have eating contests - who can eat the most hot dogs, pies, or whatever. But going in the other direction losing weight just doesn't seem like much of a sport to me. If it's going to go ahead, at the very least it will need to be set up like boxing or wrestling. I obviously would compete in the super heavyweight division, but you could have different levels - middleweight, welterweight (whatever that means), lightweight, featherweight and bulimic.

My second biggest problem is that by eliminating liposuction and not letting me have Linda hold my legs up while weighing myself, Robert is proposing rules that are obviously designed to make me lose.

If I do go ahead with this, I have decided that I will tell him that as of today I weigh 475 pounds. That should make it relatively easy to beat him - and let him try to prove otherwise! My mother didn't raise her boy to be a liar. But then, perhaps I should leave her out of this one given the week I've had.