It was a weird day of viewing today. Usually I watch two 25-minute episodes per day, and usually the stories have an even number of episodes. In fact, prior to today the last time there was a story with an odd number of 25-minute episodes was with The Dæmons all the way back in the Third Doctor's second season. With Delta and the Bannermen only being three episodes, I had originally intended to just watch part three of that story today and fill the rest of my time with special features or something. But then I realized two very important details: the next story was also a three parter, and if I started that today instead of waiting until tomorrow, then I could make Mel go away a day sooner.

So let's talk about the end of one story and the start of the next.

A week ago I added pushups to my morning workout routine. Being a total wimp, I could only do three. Since then I have been able to add another one each day, such that this morning I was able to do nine pushups without resting. That's a 300% increase in only a week!! at that rate,by my math, by the end of March I will be doing.... let's see... 729 pushups in one go without resting. How cool will that be? Wait, what, that's not how it works? Huh. Well, anyway, after a year of primarily cardio I am slowly introducing strength training. It's a little tough, with an hour of each day committed to the Time Treadmill, but I am doing the best I can. I just did the math, and it is going to be August before I complete this project.But pushups are a good start, and I will add more variations as I can. If anyone has advice on what home strength training tools work vs what ones are scams, please send me a note. I would love some practical advice.

Meanwhile, over on Doctor Who, I watched the first two thirds of possibly the most batshit insane plot ever devised for the show. Let's talk about that.

I know this will shock and astonish you, but when I was a teenager I played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons. There are a couple other role playing games I remember fondly - one also made by TSR called Gamma World, which was basically just D&D in a postapocalyptic future with mutants instead of goblins, and another called Paranoia which was set in a dystopian future where everything is run by an insane computer. Great stuff. So anyway, in one of those games a friend of mine had a character named Ped Xing, thus named by his parents after a holy artifact they had found from the before times.

What made me think of that today? Well, today's story featured characters named Bin Liner and Fire Escape. In the Target novelization one of the other characters is named Drinking Fountain. Great stuff. So let's talk about that.

I am a child of the 80's. I mean, I was born in 1968 and was certainly present during the 70's, but I was a teenager throughout the 80's and that is where my pop culture heart will always find anchor. I don't have to remind you that, being the heart of Cold War and with Reagan driving the politics here in the States and Thatcher driving the politics in the U.K,, both post-apocalyptic and dystopian themes were ascendant in genre entertainment. From quality films like The Road Warrior and Brazil to trashy cash-ins like Solarbabies or Cyborg, my entertainment was filled with pessimistic visions of the near future. I saw news reports recently about a study that basically said that the music that you love when you are 14 becomes the foundation of the music you love for the rest of your life -- you certainly might expand your interests, but more likely than not you will frequently find yourself back enjoying the same styles that tickled your brain back then. I think that applies not just to music, but to your other entertainment preferences as well.

Which is a long-winded way of saying, holy crap but today's viewing of Doctor Who on the Time Treadmill played on my teenage neurons like a maestro at Carnegie Hall. So let's talk about that.

You know, I have posted something to this blog every single day for over a year. Some days it's nearly a novel, some days it's barely a sentence, but there's one there for every single day. Today is no different. And that's about as profound as I feel like getting on this particular day.

Yeah, I also watched Doctor Who while walking on a treadmill, so I guess I'll talk about that too.

So I am out at a social gathering tonight, and order a baked mac & cheese dish to eat. A friend sitting across from me looks at it when it is brought to the table, then she says to me, "That's on your diet?" 

"If you burn enough calories," I reply, "you can eat whatever you want. Just ask Michael Phelps."

In other news, I rather abruptly got a new Doctor today on the treadmill. Let's talk about that.

Today marks the one year anniversary of the day I started this ridiculous project. In that time I have walked 1,224.96 miles on the treadmill while taking 2,369,202, watching 654 episodes and 143 stories of Doctor Who, and losing 60.54 pounds in weight. To say it has been a remarkable year would be a bit of an understatement. I have reached a bit of a plateau, and my personal trainer has instructed me to start doing pushups every day immediately after I finish the treadmill, so today I started with a pitiful 3 pushups. I'll be curious to see how that progresses. Aside from being my long-distance personal trainer, Chuck Rogers is also the author of the very excellent novel Heroes' Road and he wants me to be in fighting shape for when HBO options it as a new series and casts me in the role of.. myself (Lord Miles, Landgrave of Thunisia). I would hate to disappoint him.

In other news, this dropped today and I love it to bits:

Also, I finished The Trial of a Time Lord (and, by extension, the Sixth Doctor) this morning. So let's talk about that.

Brutal honesty, the trend line on that historical weight chart on the right has been driving me nuts. I've been stagnant in the 240's since before Christmas. In the last week the trend line moved upwards significantly for the first time since I started this ridiculous project. And yet, this morning I weighed in at my lowest weight since beginning the project. Which is both awesome and frustrating. I am going to finish up the Sixth Doctor tomorrow morning, and he will be the first Doctor in the project with whom I have gained weight. As if Colin Baker hadn't suffered enough indignity already. When I started I said very clearly that I didn't care about weight, that it was just a good gross number to track progress against, and that I had no particular destination in mind. I really need to get better at convincing myself that this is true.

Anyway, I finished the latest sub-story in this stupid Space Trial this morning, so let's talk about that.

Here's the weird thing about losing weight: it's a psychological bear trap. Case in point, I was really pretty upset with myself at the apparent weight gain I had experienced in the last two weeks. Bear in mind that also during those two weeks I pinched a nerve in my neck rendering my right arm anywhere from annoying to either numb or painful, and I also traveled out of state for a work conference where I had either limited or no access to a workout facility or treadmill. For six days I did not even have a scale to weigh myself. The natural and expected outcome was a slight weight gain, but it still bothered me (particularly because I nosed back up above 250, and getting below that number was a huge milestone for me). Today, with my pinched nerve slowly but progressively getting better, with my arm only being an occasional mild annoyance, and with drinking more fluids and getting back on my regular workout routine, my wieght has dropped back down to within 1.2 pounds of my all- ...