Have you ever seen the Fox show Family Guy?

If you're looking for ways to be offended or appalled, then don't bother, but if you just want to see some raucous, irreverent fun, tune in to the Family Guy.

If you watch it, then you'll know who Stewie is. Currently, Stewie is Joe's (my son) latest "idol." Stewie rocks, that's for sure.

So, I had a hard time deciding between two t-shirts I found:




I decided on the one on the left because, while Joe loves Stewie's 'tude, he also has a sense of what's appropriate and what's not in public. I'd like to get a poster or desk sign of the one on the right for when the faculty comes in and pisses me off, however.

I'm down another half pound, making a total of 9.5 lbs. in just a bit shy of 6 weeks. My goal is simply one pound per week, but I'll take whatever I can get! The goal was to lose all the excess weight by our anniversary next July 4th weekend. At the pace I'm keeping, and assuming that I stay on pace (which, realistically, probably won't happen because people "plateau" on weight loss efforts more often than not), I can reach the goal by early May. Just in time to wear shorts again -- not so bad. I nearly choked at Curves on my first night when they measured me, and calculated my body fat at *ulp* 36.7%! 60 lbs. of me is pure fat.

While I've fallen short of my goal of an average of 10,000 steps per day, I've still had many days with more than 10,000 steps, once in excess of 15,000. I'm continuing to strive for that 10,000 a day, while at the same time going to Curves no less than 3 times per week. This week is going to be tough with Thanksgiving and all, but I extracted a pledge from Lisa that she'd go walking with me while we're in Pennsylvania for the holidays. Her parents have a HUGE, STEEP hill immediately behind their house, and I think that would be quite the challenge to go up and down a few times. The Curves in her hometown won't be open Friday. Bummer.

Denver shut out the Jets yesterday. They've really become a very talented team -- not at all what their first game of the season suggested we could expect. Plummer remains 7th overall among the current starting quarterbacks, with a QB rating over 90. Denver kept the ball offensively for 45 out of 60 minutes. That's how you win games...

But the game of the week was Indianapolis and Cincinnati. 62 total points scored by halftime -- an NFL record. But, while it was an extremely exciting game, with very few points separating the two teams at any given time, I think that both teams might want to take a good, long look at defense. Both teams gave up more than 300 yards defensively -- with a combined total of 700 yards of offense between the two of them. Indie needs to specifically concentrate on the run defense -- having given up 150+ rushing yards to Cincinnati.

The way I see it is that, if Indie can get past Pittsburgh next week, and San Diego in week 16, they've got a really, really, really good shot at finishing up the season unbeaten.

The area in PA where Lisa's parents lives is expecting up to 7 inches of snow between tomorrow morning and tomorrow night. Snow seems to be on the menu for us here, too, but all they're saying for sure for the moment is 1-3 inches tomorrow. Snow is in the forecast for Wednesday and Thursday (Friday, too), but they're saying it's too early yet to tell how much. I'm a bit anxious about it, as we're supposed to drive down to PA on Wednesday and Joe will be traveling down to Bath to spend the holiday with his sister on the same night. I think he said he was planning on trying to come back on Thursday but, without knowing how much snow, if any, is expected, I'm not really thrilled about his traveling any more than I am our own. Going down to PA also brings travel through the mountains -- curving, winding, treacherous roads.

We'll take our emergency kits, snow boots, stuff like that in case we end up having to walk for any reason. We have space blankets in our vehicles, too.

Lisa got up this morning tired, but much better than she's been for a long time. Taking Friday off "sick" did her a world of good. She's never done anything like that before and now realizes the value of taking a "mental health" day here and there. I'm such a bad influence on her!

I've been doing much better lately since I started taking a sleep aid on Tuesday nights. I seem to sleep the night through without my limbs jumping around and I'm rested for mid-week. On weekends, I just stay in bed until I'm "slept out" so I don't really think that once-a-week sleeping pills are going to hurt me all that much.

My youngest daughter called me Friday night. I was stunned, surprised, and pleased. We chatted for the better part of 3 hours. I chatted with my grandson, who is quite the jabber jockey on the phone (he comes honestly by it, with his mother). We didn't talk about the rift that had grown between us, just chatted. It was nice. I think Linda missed her mom, although I doubt she'd ever admit it.

My father's surgery Friday took longer than expected, also. He went in for a hernia operation (he'd had one or two before), and they said they took lots and lots of scar tissue out. He's been a bastard (no big surprise) from the pain and nicotine withdrawal. I figure that, as soon as they get him up walking, he's going to be outside smoking. Hopefully he'll feel better before they're due to come up to my place for Christmas.

Lisa and I went goofy buying stuff for Christmas dinner. We went to Party City and got confetti for the table, as well as bendable figures of Santa, reindeer and snowmen that I thought would be cute holding place cards. We got a couple of red table cloths to put on either side of the green one we already have, as we're going to have to put two 6 ft. tables end-to-end for this dinner. Dinner that day will include Michelle and Doug and their three kids, my aunt Wanda and her husband, my father and his wife and step-daughter, the three of us, and Mary. Fourteen people -- more than I've ever had before. I'm really psyched!

We made Lisa's cranberry salad yesterday -- I ground up the apples and cranberries while she peeled, washed and picked out the bad ones. It's her family's tradition, that Lisa makes a huge, gigantic bowl of this stuff, and takes it down.

I suspect that, over the weekend, they'll be drawing names for Christmas, too. Last year, even though Lisa was completely "out" to her family, they didn't include me in the name draw, claiming that it would be too "confusing" for the children and they didn't know how to tell them. Seems to me that, with the youngest being 12, it's not going to be all that confusing provided there's some compelling need to stand up and make an announcement that "Pat is included this year in the name draw because your Aunt Lisa is gay and she and Pat are a couple." Seems to me that the name draw can occur and, IF anyone has any questions, they can ask them. Otherwise, can't they just draw their own conclusions?

I was furious last year, that they didn't include me. Not because I wanted to get presents or anything like that, but because of the message it sent. I flatly refused to spend the holidays in PA when Lisa was due to go down. I told her that, until they recognized our relationship as one that didn't need to be "hidden" or whispered about, or even ignored, that I didn't see any point in going down. She went down alone last year, because I told her it was completely OK with me if she went because she needed to actually tell her mother and father that we'd been married. After all, how can they "get it" with regard to our relationship if Lisa doesn't help them "get it?"

I don't want the holidays to be a stressful time for Lisa, but we need to get this straightened out because it will always continue to be something between us until it IS straightened out.

Time will tell...