Bad Habits

You may remember that back in January I promised to lose 30 pounds by Christmas. So as the calendar nears the midway point of 2009, how am I doing? Drum roll, please....

I've gained one pound.

Now, I could point fingers at my circumstances and make all kind of excuses about my schedule and how the new job has completely thrown off my circadian rhythms ... but the bottom line is I just haven't gotten it done.

It's time to call in professional help.

And I know just the person. Stay tuned.

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Waiting for our aerobics class to begin, several of us ladies were standing around having a chat about fitness and diets.

One woman said that her brother-in-law had quit smoking but had also gone on a diet so he wouldn't gain weight. Not only did he not gain weight, he lost a lot of weight in the process.

Thinking to myself that no human being could possibly do this without acquiring at least one other undesirable habit to compensate for the stress, I jokingly asked her, "So what did he start doing instead of smoking or eating?"

After a slight pause, the other woman smiled and said, "Well, my sister is pregnant now."

[Joe's Clean Laffs]

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WONDER for YOUR WEEK: Can I say I'm on a low fat diet if every day my fat hangs a little lower?

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Kiss Descriptions

Thanks for your Valentine Day suggestions for the missus and I. Not sure which one I'm doing even at this late date, but there were several possibilities.

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IF COLLEGE PROFESSORS HAD TO DESCRIBE A KISS

COMPUTER SCIENCE
"A kiss is a few bits of love compiled into a byte."

ALGEBRA
"A kiss is two divided by nothing."

PHYSICS
"A kiss is a contraction of the mouth due to an expansion of the heart."

CHEMISTRY
"A kiss is the reaction resulting from the interaction between two hearts."

ACCOUNTING
"A kiss must be considered an investment that is profitable when returned."

ECONOMICS
"A kiss is one of those things for which the demand is always higher than the supply."

PHILOSOPHY
"A kiss is persecution for the child, ecstasy for the youth, and homage for the old."

THEOLOGY
"A kiss is divine."

EARTH SCIENCES
"A kiss is a clean, green, renewable energy resource that works best when recycled often."

PHARMACOLOGY
"A kiss is an oral stimulant taken by mouth that can often cure what ails you."

LAW
"A kiss is when the party of the first part and the party of the second part have reached a mutually beneficial understanding that two (2) pair of lips shall co-exist in, for all practical purposes, the same space and time for a temporary period."

POLITICAL SCIENCE
"A kiss is that which will cost your career if experienced with anyone other than your spouse."

ENGINEERING
"I'm sorry. I'm not familiar with that word."

[selected from About.com with lots of additional material by Mark Raymond]

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I love Valentine's Day. Not because I'm a big romantic lug or anything, but because when Valentine's Day rolls around, it usually means that Spring Training is right behind! Woo hoo!

Remember to check out the blog. I've put up some extra bonus material this week. See you on Monday.

Mark

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WEB SITE of the WEEK: We all know how much our newly-elected President loves his tech. In fact, they finally encrypted his "Blackberry" enough to let him keep and use it, even as President, when every single email, phone call, text message, and document becomes part of the historical record. Or so we're told, anyway. So it should come as no surprise that under President Barack Obama the White House now has a blog. Seriously. And they update it a bunch. Check out http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/. Keep tabs on your First Family.

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Mark's Musings is available via RSS Feed and is sent each weekday via email using Ezine Director and those folks are certified by Habeas to be a safe sender of e-mail. That means you can trust what I send. And I promise never to send spam or give your address to anyone who will. Subscribe, view past issues in my Archives, and otherwise click to your heart's content at my web site. To contact me and sooner or later get a reply, click here. Despite what Punxsatawney Phil said, we just had a week of a nice February thaw. If February keeps this up, it may yet get off my "most hated month" list. Hey, you can forward or reprint "Mark's Musings" freely but please keep the credits attached. Keeping the credits attached is as easy as doing nothing. Really. No, seriously. Original material and commentary © 2009 by Mark Raymond. I update this blog with a copy of the post daily and occasionally toss in bonus material whenever the mood strikes. Look for the label that says "bonus" and you can bring them all up with one click. My personal mission statement remains John 3:30. What are you still doing up? Go to bed.

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WORDS for YOUR WEEKEND: "There are two kinds of light - the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures." (James Thurber)

Mixed Message?

Pretty dresses, aren't they? I saw them on the "Mental Floss" blog. They're made by Brazilian artist Adriana Bertini and they're on display at the Fowler Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles until March 11.

Here's the kicker: the dresses are made entirely from discarded condoms that couldn't pass the quality control test at the factory. It's part of an AIDS awareness push and there are 14 outfits in the entire collection.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. I do know that unprotected sex outside of marriage is not good. For that matter, any sex outside of marriage is probably not a good thing, but it would be sheer lunacy on our part to think it's going to stop.

Now, unprotected sex inside of marriage leads to a whole different set of issues, but I'll leave that by for another time.

Of course, no one has yet come up with a better solution for preventing sexually-transmitted diseases than abstinence.

But if a woman had the nerve to wear one of these things, I'm wondering what kind of message it would actually send...?