I live in the suburbs

It was 8 years ago this month that my life underwent a sea-change. Inspired by the millennium, I dropped from 220 to 170 by drastically changing my eating habits and starting running. I was 48. I thought, If not now, when?

Diet and exercise. Gotta have both, otherwise it'll be transitory with the yo-yo effect. I try to maintain at 180 now, exercising at least 5 times a week. My diet sucks though, the function of cooking, or not, for one. I could do a lot better in both diet (plan ahead more and eat better) and exercise (train smarter and add weight training).

I wouldn't go back to where I came from eight years ago for anything. Not even if you removed those searing five years of fortune-wrecking and health-ruining nuclear divorce litigation, not even if my three now-adult sons started talking to me again, not even if all my old suburban "friends" came back. (I wouldn't want the men sitting down in my house and breaking all the chairs, nor could I stand to listen to the bossy banter of the women as they engaged in their apparent lifelong goal of obsessively sheltering their children from every possible real or imagined harm.)

Suburbia. Where I live is a great running venue (my yard borders the 40-mile long W&OD Running Trail) but none of my neighbors speak to me because I guess my lifestyle is so different from theirs. (Left: People walking on the W&OD Trail as seen from my driveway.) Whenever I run by, their backs always seem to be turned towards me as they do whatever it is they do in taking care of their yards or their children or their dogs. Actually, that's not entirely true. The town mayor lives about eight houses up from me. If I call out, "Hi Robin" as I run by, she'll always say "Hi" in return. That must be the pol in her.