I had a pretty awesome time tonight, which was a nice counter balance to this morning (which I will get to presently). Tonight I was hanging out at my usual Thursday night thing, singing at my local open mike night. I had just finished a two song set on guitar, and then the MC says, "Next up, Joey wants to sing a song..." It turns out that Joey was none other than Joey Fatone, whom you might remember from NSYNC. He's a nice guy, and also my celebrity stalker (not that he knows me from Adam) -- he keeps showing up at places where I am at. So anyway, I'm glad I didn't know he was there until after I finished singing. I probably would have choked. Or, worse, attempted an acoustic cover of Bye Bye Bye.

The other big thing that happened this evening was that my housing development was completely closed off by the police for several hours. Turns out that a guy (who will surely be nominated for Father of the Year) left his car running with his four-year-old daughter in the back seat while he ran inside a local pawn shop, and while he was inside another guy decided to steal the car without realizing there was a kid inside. As soon as he realized that he was a kidnapper on top of being a car thief, he ditched the car in my neighborhood with the kid still inside. The child is fine, btw, although I bet her mother isn't very impressed. So anyway, the police sealed off the entire area while the searched for the suspect. There were police cars everywhere, helicopters, news vans, the whole deal. Big excitement. As far as I know, they never caught the guy. I bet dad gets cited for reckless endangerment of a child, though.

As for my morning, I only have two things to say about it. So let's get to it.

Really? Really?!? More than eleven months of hard work, enjoying even the mediocre and bad stories, coming off of arguably the best of the Fifth Doctor ere, and here we are with the most annoying, unpleasant, screw-you-fans Classic Who story ever made. I get the desire to shake things up and move in a new direction, but this? This is just gross malpractice.

So let's talk about it.

Wow, forty days went by quickly. Considering I spent over two months each with the First, Second, and Third Doctors, and a full three months with the Fourth, it seems like Five came and went at blinding speed. It will only get worse from here, Six should only take me about three weeks. In any case, as of this morning I have finished the Peter Davison era and am now tumbling into Colin Baker's. I also woke up fat this morning, which was a bit frustrating, so it seems like getting below 240 is going to be a real battle. Which I guess is fine, but I have become just competitive enough to want to cross that next milestone.  Time will tell.

So let's talk about Peter Davison's last day as the Doctor.

Look, I'll be honest - I have had a very long evening, I'm tired, and I want to go to bed. Long story, blah blah, the end result is everything is fine. But I can't go to bed without making my daily post, so let's talk about the first half of the last Fifth Doctor story.

Today was a fun and productive day. I did my workout, did my yard work (I will never get used to the fact that in Florida you still have to mow your lawn in January), I finished some other projects around the house, and I got to spend a nice afternoon drive out with my wife. So, a good day all around. Even today's viewing was pretty dang good.

So let's talk about that.

Today marks the eleven month anniversary of the day I started this ridiculous project. In that time I have walked 1,119.57 miles on the treadmill while taking 2,180,619 steps, watching 617 episodes and 133 stories of Doctor Who, and losing 62.38 pounds in weight. That's a little over two pounds since last month, which on the face of it doesn't seem that great. Part of it is because I got sick earlier in the month, so between that plus my colonoscopy two days ago I missed more days on the treadmill this month than in the entire first ten months combined. My weight spiked up about three pounds, so I have actually lost more like eight pounds this month -- it's just that I lost three of those pounds twice, which was a little counter-productive. Ah, well.The simple fact is that my moving average is lower today than it ever has been since I started this progress, and while the graph is certainly filled with ups and downs the downs continue to outnumber the ups, and I am happy. I keep reminding myself that when I started this project my only stated goal was to feel better, and I undeniably feel significantly better today than I did eleven months ago. Twenty pounds ago I thought I had hit my leveling out point, and yet here I am. This has been an amazing transformation for me, and I still have several months to go before I hit the end of Doctor Who. Of course, then there are the spinoffs...

So anyway, I watched the first half of Peri's first story as a companion. She arrived in a bikini. Hubba hubba. Let's talk about that. 

Good news: I'm back to normal today, all lingering after-effects of yesterday's procedure gone. Bad news: today's viewing was the back half of the damned Dalek story. So, kind of a mixed bag today. Especially because today featured the departure of the truly defining companion of the Fifth Doctor era.

So let's talk about that.

I had great intentions of getting on the Time Treadmill this afternoon or evening, but the lingering after-effects of anasthesia have disabused me of that notion. Let me say this about that:  Gentlemen, take your health seriously. My father passed away from colon cancer more than twenty years ago. He went from happily retired, to diagnosed with colon cancer, to deceased in under a year. I started my screening early because of that, and it is a good thing I did. If I had waited until age fifty, I would not have reached age fifty. My last screening, a pre-cancerous polyp was found and removed. Early detection absolutely saved my life. This morning's screening, another polyp was found and removed. I will find out in a few weeks what the biopsy says. The bottom line is that colon cancer is extremely common, and when found early it has a 90% survival rate. I fully intent to spend many more years with my family and friends, being creative, writing awesome code, and just generally not-cancer-having. It may go the other way, I can't predict the future, but I can surely do everything I can to nudge the future in the right direction. You should too.

It seems perfectly appropriate that I am watching another damned Dalek story on the same two days that I am on a clear liquids diet and then having a colonoscopy. There's a metaphor there somewhere. How stupid is this damned Dalek story? Have you looked that the picture above this post?

Let's talk about it.

I barely slept last night (for no good reason), didn't work out this morning, but finally got in my treadmill time this evening. I don't mind missing a day if I am sick, or traveling, or something like that. I hate to miss a day just because I am being lazy. The pleasant side effect is that right now I am exhausted, and I hope to be sound asleep within fifteen minutes of posting this entry.

To that end, let's talk about the second half of Frontios.