I am a great maker of lists. Not much on actually getting things done, but if you need a list, I'm your man.

Here are some of the things I need to do, and I'm being serious (well, as serious as I can):

(By the way, I hope this blog doesn't sound like the Perils of Pauline, but I'm hoping that Chris is right and that my story may resemble someone else's, and that someone may take something useful away, if nothing else than the knowledge that {violin mode ON} you are not alone {violin mode OFF}.

1. Drugs. No, not those drugs. I take way too many meds right now. Part of the problem is that I started taking psych-meds back when I hated my life a lot more than I do presently, and now I have a physical dependency. Plus the fact that people who know (or think they know) my history get nervous when they think I might "go off my meds." But I'm not nuts. Really.

Then there's the diabetes meds (because I'm too fat -- see item 2) and the blood pressure pills (my Doc says I need them so my Diabetes meds won't wreck my liver). Add to that various allergy meds and my bloodstream starts to look like that nasty pond out behind the local Monsanto plant.

2. Body. I gotta lose weight and get stronger. I used to be a gym rat and a marathon hiker/climber. I could lift for an hour, play two hours of raquetball, then take on several miles of the Ouachita Nat'l Forest follwed by a free climb up the side of a razorback, a quick descent down the spine and another hike back to the car. After that I was ready to break a real sweat by dancing all night.

Now, I see spots just going from by computer to the pissoir. I get short of breath playin Madden '04. I mean, its bad, man. A hundred extra pounds'll do it you every time. Yep. A hunnert, as in One-Zed-Zed. I like petite gals. I didn't sign up to carry one on my back day and night.

The extra weight also did delightful things to my blood sugar. A couple of months ago I found myself at the ER with a glucose level of 310 (that's about thrice the normal). Now I did eat a lot of birthday cake that weekend, but sheesh! My A1C showed normal glucose for the prior 6 months, but nevertheless my Doc has me on 2 kinds of diabetes meds (plus the anti-hypertension chaser). I don't think I'm diabetic. I think I was completely stressed out, ate bad for a week, and my endocrine system blew a fuse. But I gotta conince my doc. The good news is I decided I'd better shit my get together. In the last 12 weeks I've lost 15-20 lbs and the weight loss is picking up. I've started hitting the vitamins and minerals and I'm feeling a lot better. My aforementioned bad liver has responded well -- the liver test shows that I went from 98 whatevers (cirrohsis high) down to 35 (Morman low) in only a month.

3. Gear. I need to start getting my gear together. I want to find a reliable, tough, lightweight notebook computer. I also want a good travel radio. Of course the all important boots and bag are on the list, and, depending on where I decide to go, good cold/hot/wet weather gear.

4. Cash. I already covered that. But I want to look into some virtual consulting/freelancing. Despite what I'm writing now, I actually can turn a phrase, and have pretty good edititing and proofing skills. I've done a little technical writing. There seems to be a demand for upper level types in the TEFL community, so there is sort of a careerpath in that industry that I want to explore. I also have some contacts with multinationals in South America and Asia, but the last thing I want to do is trade the US rate race for a foreign one, at least here I speak the language!