The musings of a madman...

       At the big-ass age of 45, I have been alive for 11 rounds of the summer Olympics. Two of the games have been held in the United States thus far, 1984 and 1996. I will not pretend to REMEMBER the ‘84 games, but had been about as attentive as one can be to the games since 1988 and on. I can say with absolute certainty that the last-week-concluded games seemed to gather the most interest and discussion of any in history. It could be that NBC/Peacock had round-the-clock coverage of the games, it could be that America’s Uncle Snoop Dogg seemed to have devised a means of being EVERYWHERE in Paris at the same damned time, or it could be the effective building of storylines across sporting disciplines gathering our collective interests.      LA is getting the games back in 2028 and will have big shoes to fill, given the can’t-look-away nature that the Paris games gave us. There is generally about a 2-full-weeks break between the regular Olympiad ...

       I know it feels like I talk about this a lot lately, but by the time the two of you read this, I will be within 20 ounces of the lowest I have weighed since I discovered food and alcohol as a combination. Even that low-water mark was the result of a bad accident that led to a broken jaw and me off of solid foods for eight weeks in 2003.      Covid season created a world wherein I was ABSOLUTELY not social outside of what could be attained from my phone or one of my computers. I was work/eat/sleep/work/drink/sleep/work, week in and week out and the weight that had been yo-yo’ing between 245 and 270 was firmly at 265. I felt like shit and decided to do something about it. July 2022, I decided to take out the running shoes I’d already acquired and hit the pavement. Three weeks later, I ended my (then-) 26-year relationship with alcohol. The first few pounds slid right off no problem. Nothing noticeable, not on a “go buy new clothes” level,...