Hey, wait a second!!!!

I was reading this article today, and almost let it slip by.

I almost was okay with it.

I almost thought there was a valid point.

Then the quote from the spokesperson for the Council on American-Islamic Relations hit me between the eyes:

"After watching the premiere, I was afraid to go to the grocery store because I wasn't sure the person next to me would be able to differentiate between fiction and reality."

Oh, really, Rabiah Ahmed? So you were afraid that the other patrons of your grocery store, sight unseen, as a group, were incapable of that distinction. What a broad, racist brush to paint with, my friend. Let's break this down for the slow kids:

You're afraid that you, as a presumably Middle Eastern Muslim, would be judged unfairly for the actions of a handful of fictional characters because you share a religion or ethnicity with those characters. You base this fear on relatively rare incidents of stereotypically Middle Eastern Muslims being singled out for harrassment as a result of 9/11, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, etc. So, you're prepared to judge pretty much the entirety of the non-Middle-Eastern-Muslim population of the United States on the actions of that handful of people, and further assume that that same non-Middle-Eastern-Muslim population is too stupid to tell the difference between a TV show and real terrorism.

I guess when you can play the put-upon minority card, you can get away with crap like that and no one will call you on it.

Shame on you, sir.

I will be waiting by the phone for your apology.

And yet, the holidays weren't a total loss

Although I can probably attribute 100% of it to the past 4 days, if you do the math between the last two posts, I did manage to lose 6 pounds between December 19 and this morning. Not quite the almost-a-pound-a-day I'd need to average to make my latest goal, but given the quantities I consumed (and the egregious lack of exercise), losing at even close to half that rate is a flat miracle.

69 pounds, 79 days

Official start weight, as of this morning: 319 lb.
Goal date: March 19.
Goal weight: 250 lb.
Skewed view of reality: check.

I actually took sufficient MediFast with me to be good, and a couple of mornings, I even had the oatmeal (shudder) for breakfast. I need to figure out some other way of dealing when I'm at home. Everyone wants to cook, and there's ALWAYS food in the house. And it's GOOD food. My sister B makes these sweet stuffed sausage rolls (basically little smokies wrapped in crescent dough, baked in a honey/brown sugar glaze), and my sister L makes mac & cheese that Daughter calls "Aunt L Macaroni" (which she requests whenever we visit). Plus, Mom's gotten it into her head that she needs to get up and cook us breakfast several days while we're there (bacon or sausage, scrambled eggs, toast...) At home, I can just not buy/not stock the ingredients and the problem is more or less solved by out of sight/out of mind. Clearly, if I'm going to maintain a healthy weight once I get there, I need a strategy for dealing with family food. Lucky for me, the next time I'm planning to be up home is after my latest goal date, so maybe I can let success speak for me. I just don't want to hurt anyone's feelings by snubbing their work. But I guess there's a reason that there are only three or four of us (including in-laws) who could be said to be in "good" shape, and mostly, they're the ones who are known to have some peculiar (if not healthy) eating habits.

I may have to break out a Dr. Phil "food-is-not-love" speech.