Happy New Year From The Fort Worth Fat Man

2012 New Years Day Morning Polar Bear Swim

Happy New Year.

I'm starting off the New Year doing something drastically different on my blog. Instead of my usual morning view from one of my viewing portals on the outer world, I am starting off my first blogging of the New Year already out in the outer world.

It got into the 70s here yesterday. This made this morning's Annual Polar Bear Swim much more pleasant than last year's much colder Polar Bear Swim.

The Polar Bear photo rather clearly documents the number one problem I am going to be confronting in this New Year.

That is my obvious HWG (Hideous Weight Gain).

In late December of 2010 I started a blog to chronicle my struggle with obesity, documenting my attempt to get back under 200 pounds and down to 190 by the time of the Super Bowl. I managed to do that, and then managed, over the course of the rest of the year, to reverse what I'd managed to do.

This has me now weighing almost 220 pounds. Most of this poundage seems to have grown in my gut zone, giving me a beer gut without having had the pleasure of drinking beer.

I don't find myself having any difficulty zipping up the Tandy Hills, which makes this added poundage thing a bit perplexing. Maybe it is all muscle and what I think is a beer gut is actually a really muscular abdominal zone. Yeah, I'm sure that's it.

Changing the subject from me being a fat slob to some other mistake I made.

A couple days ago when I blogged about getting sour cream at Krogers because I was making Beef Stroganoff, cd0103 asked me for my recipe. I don't do a lot of measuring and don't think in terms of recipes when I am doing the cooking thing.

So, I typed out my directions for how I make Beef Stroganoff, for cd0103. A short time later a nice Anonymous person commented that I'd missed a key ingredient. I hit the publish button on that comment without really reading the entire comment. I get a lot of comments, sometimes when I realize it is not a spam comment and the person is making a useful point I hit the publish button without reading the entire comment.

Last night Betty Jo Bouvier emailed me telling me she was using my Beef Stroganoff directions to make New Year's Eve dinner. I then went back and looked at my directions. At that point I read the Anonymous comment which told me that "You made, no doubt a tasty dish, but it was not Beef Stroganoff." Anonymous then informed me my directions lacked sour cream.

I was mortified. The directions should have said that after the Strognoff mixture is done cooking, turn off the heat and stir in a pint, more or less, of sour cream. Without the sour cream it wouldn't even taste like Stroganoff.

I immediately emailed Betty Jo, hoping she was not already eating the non-Beef Stroganoff.

Well, tragedy was averted. Betty Jo knew Beef Stroganoff has sour cream in it. I'm guessing Betty Jo may have known this because in the blogging, with all the bad mis-direction, I said I'd gone to Krogers for sour cream for my Beef Stroganoff. Which I suppose in my mind was already in the directions without adding it to the directions I typed out for cd0103.

Changing the subject from Beef Stroganoff to New Year's Eve.

I think I may be too close to being elderly to stay up past midnight to ring in the New Year. Doing this did not used to be exhausting. Staying up way too late caused me to get up way too late on the first day of the New Year.

I do not like getting up late. New Year's Eve of 2012 I am not going to be awake ringing in the New Year. That is one of my New Year's Resolution. Along with ceasing being a Fat Tub of Lard.