Good morning, campers! You might have noticed that a post went missing last week, the first Tuesday Big Skeezy hasn’t written since Week One. That means that there are two weeks of catching up to do. That being said, let’s break it down, shall we?
It feels a bit weird having missed last week. I was actually flattered by the amount of people who asked me what happened and were worried that I’d just thrown in the towel. Far from it, my friends. I was in San Francisco over Labor Day weekend, returning Tuesday night. I landed and went straight to bed (more on that later). When I awoke on Wednesday and went to work I was swamped, as I had left 240 people unattended for one day which is like leaving a kindergarten class in a china shop for eight hours. It’s not “if” something will get broken, it’s “when” and “how badly”. At the end of Wednesday I decided just to wait until today to summarize the last two weeks. It’s actually kind of crazy when you stop to think about what we’ve seen happen in two weeks. Labor Day, the start of the NFL season, the tenth anniversary of 9/11, and Cosby Sweaters’ first birthday (never forget).
So let’s take it back two weeks. The week went well blah blah blah and then I left for San Francisco on Saturday morning (Sept. 3). I arrived early and was greeted by my friend “Todd” and two other friends, “Stephen” and “Abigail” who I hadn’t seen for years. How long had it been? They were dating the last time I saw them. When I arrived in SF the married couple met me with their three children – who are adorable, by the way. We went to a place called Hobee’s and had breakfast. On Stephen’s recommendation, I had the tamale pie, washed down with a mimosa and coffee. Oh yes, we kept it classy. After breakfast it was off to their homestead in Oakland which is where I would remain until Tuesday morning, venturing out only for breakfast and supplies, really. We ate breakfast the next day at the Oakland Grill. You see, every time I’m out for breakfast ata new place I have eggs benedict because I LOVE eggs benedict. This place has them but made with crab cakes instead of ham. Um, yes please! I ate them, washing them down with a mimosa.
We had a barbecue which was a make your own taco sort of thing, with grilled chicken, steak and shrimp. The bar was, of course, fully stocked and I got to meet their awesome friends. There was eating, drinking, and a pretty big karaoke contest later with Todd won twice.
Tuesday night was my return flight to L.A. so Todd and I went into the city to kill some time beforehand. I said goodbye to the family and we headed to Fisherman’s Wharf, where I had been dying to get my hands on some clam chowder in a bread bowl:
I didn’t eat the bowl (well, not much of it) but I destroyed that chowder. The smaller collection of fish towards the back there is dungeness crab. It was amazing.
My flight finally left SF and it was back to good ol’ SoCal. The rest of Labor day week was pretty quiet until Friday when my pal “Kyle” and I decided to get a quick bite after work. We went to a sushi place…and then another sushi place. Our friend “Courtney” met up with us at the second joint and we ate until we nearly burst. What had started as a “let’s get some happy hour sushi and call it a night” quickly became “let me run home and get my stack of free drink tokens and I’ll meet you guys at the Tattle Tale.” Yes, that’s how that went down. Another trip to the Tattle Tale for us, and our friend “Jackie” came along for the ride. It was awesome.
I awoke early the next morning, as my friend “Abby” and I were going to do a desert burn to the Fantasy Springs Hotel and casino for the day. We arrived around noon and spent most the day by the pool. We met some great people (it was one lady’s birthday) and met up with them later that night at a club called “Lit”. The club was fun – live band, good music, cheap yet tasty drinks, etc. The best part was the not one but TWO bar brawls that broke out while we were there. These weren’t just a couple of guys shoving each other, either. These were 1970’s Burt Reynolds movie-someone-gets-his-head-put-through-the-jukebox-which-cues-the-honky-tonk-music-and-then-Burt-and-Dom-DeLuise-end-up-getting-thrown-through-the-front-window bar brawls.
After just a couple of hours sleep Saturday night (ah, casinos) it was up at 6AM and back on the road to get home in time for football. I had a decent sized houseful of people over on Sunday to enjoy kickoff weekend. We had the traditional McDonald’s breakfast and later had the non-traditional Arby’s late lunch. We even added a new staffer to the Cosby Sweaters family. Her name is GIRL BABY, pictured here handling remote control duties and eating beef jerky while writing her first post. The two gentlemen in the picture asked that their anonymity be protected.
So the weekend gave way to the work week and a typical yet disappointing Monday for Big Skeezy. Knowing full well today would be bad I stepped onto the scale and discovered that I’d gained three pound, bringing me back to 283 and 88 pounds lost. Now you might be wondering why I would indulge myself so much for two weeks. The simple fact of the matter is that, yes, I ate like a jerk in SF and over-indulged on the liquor just a tad but I needed to. I was starting to get complacent with the BSC. I was bored with it and needed to feel overindulged in order to re-light the fire. I wasn’t hitting the gym as hard, I wasn’t being as careful about what I ate, and the results were showing it. That’s why I decided to wait until today to write again. I wanted to get my mini-bender out of the way so I could wake up, tell all of you this story, and reset my frame of mind. It really hit me on Sunday. That’s when I felt the worst and knew that my plan had worked. Now I’ve got my determination back. It’s amazing what feeling like a fat tub of crap will do for your motivation. I also did get some good exercise in these past two weeks, which is why I was happy it was only a three pound gain. I had visions of it being much, much worse. So now I’m back on the wagon and ready for a huge push towards the end of the year.
Get mad. See you next week.
