At my heaviest, I weighed 272 pounds. Perhaps, I was wider than taller at that point. I dropped to 260 and then stayed there for years. Just before the fire, I got down to 254, but right after the fire I went back up to 266.

When I entered the hospital last year for emergency surgery, I weighed 258 and I came out 10 days later weighing 244 pounds. Today I weigh 228 pounds. So, I decided my birthday gift to myself in early November would be 220 pounds of me. We’ll see.

I did ride the stationary bike for one hour today!

One of the reason we bought 5 acres out here in the valley, besides getting out of the fire zone, was I knew I would have to stay very active to keep up with this place. I do a lot of walking each day without ever leaving the property – probably about 20,000 steps a day, sometimes as many as 25,000 steps. For a gimpy old guy, that is a lot of steps.

This past week, we decided the 3 koi and 1 comet fish needed a bigger space than the little pool at the bottoms of our landscaped water feature. We were told koi need 100 gallons of water per fish.

So, we got a 300 gallon container, dug out some of the little hillside we created, put retaining blocks around it, added the plants.

Then I sat back and watched as others tried to capture the fish from the old pond, in a bucket which the fish kept trying to jump out of off, and put them in their new home. My daughter said, “I do the strangest things when I come over here.”

Now I am going back outside to work on the little orchard and try to lose a pound!