I don't know why I treat that like it's an EVENT. It comes every week, after all. And it's not like my job is one of those hellhouse offices where you live for the instant the clock strikes five.

Still. Friday is a Good Thing in my world. Especially this week when I find I'm having a lot of difficulty with the time change. By the time I get home from work, it's completely dark out, which makes the evenings feel very, very short. I'll adjust, I know, but right now I'm having some psychological difficulties.

Of course, the fact that it's been drizzling ice for the past two days doesn't help. I do miss the sun and this morning's roads were horrendous in places. I whomped into a curb (came around a sharp corner onto a stretch of pavement that was solid ice) with a fair amount of force on the drive to work this morning. Guess I'd better go have my alignment checked.

Okay, we all know it's coming, so let's get it over with.

The diet.

I was not, in fact, down half a pound at last week's second weigh-in. I was up half a pound. Whatever. That still puts me down over two pounds for the week, okay?

The way I've been eating since then has discouraged any further weigh-ins, so I haven't returned to the scene of the crime yet. I have to check in with the FN's tonight, but I won't be having another official weigh-in until Monday.

Monday!

That's a significant Diet Date. Next week, is when I give it all up. I'm sick of the entire thing so I'm taking a month or two "off" of dieting.

The fact that I'm losing weight, getting thinner, developing muscle tone, and have gone down two sizes in pants notwithstanding, I'm just sick of the entire thing. I'm tired of measuring the food, writing it all down, and hauling myself 45-minutes across town in rush hour traffic twice a week to check in with the FN's.

I have a lot of qualities, good and (mostly) bad, but none of the good ones have anything to do with finishing what I start or being the kind of personality with drive, determination, and self-discipline.

So, anyhow, I'm going in Monday and Thursday next week, then I'm taking a little hiatus from my quest for youth. Then, sometime in December or, more likely, early January, I'll start up again so I can take off another 5 or 10 lbs before mid-February.

It's my hope that my doctor, even though she didn't tell me I should lose weight, will be appropriately appreciative of my efforts at better health.

I have no idea why I care. Like I said, she's never mentioned my weight at all.

Okay, the truth is that with my social life in the state it's been for the last two or three years, the only person in the world who ever sees me unclad is my doctor. If I get hit by a bus, I don't want anyone's last memory of me to be the flabby blob I looked down and saw at my last physical.

Also, as a consequence of my job, I've done a lot of research on health-related issues over the last year or so and I was shocked and actually impressed by the fact that I could lower my risk of developing heart disease, osteoporosis, and type 2 diabetes by forty percent or so just by dropping 20 pounds and taking a 20-minute walk five or six days a week.

Anyhow, even in my self-indulgent brain, that looks like a lot of profit for a fairly simple investment.

(Yes, if I give up smoking, I can lower my risks by another 30 percent, but I'm not ready for that yet.)

Next up: NaNoWriMo

Checking the old schedule and my social calendar, I still can't figure out how I'm going to find time to write 50k words in November. It may be time to take myself off the hook for this.

I do still encourage the rest of you to play along, though. I'll be here on the sidelines, cheering and making admiring noises.

The trouble with this blog thing is that it's a lot harder to do when you don't have anything to say.

Oh, by the way.

West Wing?

This week's episode?

Yes, we GET IT that if the President is out of sorts, everyone is out of sorts. Aaron Sorkin gave us this situation a couple of seasons ago and with a lot more nuance and subtlety.

I do hate being hammered over the head with plot points, especially when they should be subtext.

IMO, this episode looked like it was written by someone who didn't really understand or care about the ins and outs of politics, so they applied a heaping helping of melodrama to the show's personal relationships to try and distract from the lack of actual, you know, content in the episode. (Yeah, I know the writer worked with Sorkin in the past. IMO, that means there's even less excuse for how off-base this episode was.)

It was all retread ideas. Josh's supposed power in negotiating with Congress, CJ blurting out something she shouldn't have during a briefing, Amy burning all her bridges for one political 'win' - it was all rehashed moments from earlier episodes.

Someone please tell me that this isn't part of the show's vaunted "new direction"?

Someone please reassure me that the advertised addition of a "right-wing viewpoint" isn't going to be handled by making the current characters into two-dimensional idiots.

Pierce is very annoying, but Russell is surprisingly interesting. Much more so than I'd expected him to be.

I did not see Will deciding to switch jobs! Nor does it seem to me to be in character. Is this the man who is so driven to finish what he starts that he actually managed to win a campaign even though his candidate died before polling day? I don't think.

Why is C.J. suddenly the goat? Why is Leo suddenly on her case all the time in that ham-handed fashion?

Who are these people and where are my characters?

This was a travesty. It was nearly as bad as I feared the show would become after Sorkin's exit.

I don't like "ripppped from the headlines!!!!" television and a show can be timely without being exploitative.

A show can also be intelligent and absorbing without featuring a cast of unbalanced, unprofessional idiots, but you wouldn't have known that from this week's WW.