And while we're on the topic of weight loss and health, here's strange news:

U.S. life expectancy has hit another all-time high — 77.6 years — and
deaths from heart disease, cancer and stroke continue to drop, the government
reported Thursday.

Still, the march of medical progress has taken a worrisome turn: Half
of Americans in the 55-to-64 age group — including the oldest of the baby
boomers — have high blood pressure, and two in five are obese. That means they
are in worse shape in some respects than Americans born a decade earlier were
when they were that age.

So does this mean that the baby boomers are going to start croaking en masse? Looks like President Bush can stop losing sleep over the future of social security!

Here's an inspiring story about Governor Huckabee of Arkansas (R) losing over 100 pounds . . .and reversing Type II Diabetes.

The American Derriere

Ooohh, la, la!
Here's an interesting take on why we Americans are fat, from Mark Morford writing in the San Francisco Chronicle. Hopefully, with all the embarassment Condi is causing Americans over here in Europe, my French friends will not be exposed to this article. (Ingres, a local boy, painted this rather large French derriere!)

"It's just one of those wicked telling signs, one of those sad little
cultural punches that make you cringe and sigh even as you stifle a laugh
and roll your eyes at the state of it all, as you read the one about how an
increasing percentage of people -- mostly women but half of the men, too --
aren't receiving their proper dosage of medicine when given a shot in the
rear by a nurse at the hospital because, well, their butts are just too damn big.

Which is to say, the needles are now too damn short. Too short to reach
what remains of the gluteus in most increasingly obese butt-exploded people in
America, and hence hospitals are now having to use longer and longer needles to
penetrate all the fatty acreage in the average American rear and deliver the
meds these people so desperately need to, you know, help lower their cholesterol
and treat their diabetes and try to prevent the imminent heart disease
that's coming upon them like a steam engine due to all the, uh, obesity."

Nameless sheep on viewer's right died a tragic death. 

The New York Times has a fascinating article on the rapid demise of a couple who won a huge lottery jackpot:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/05/national/05winnings.html?incamp=article_popular_3

While one might feel a bit smug upon finishing the article, there is a VALUABLE moral provided by this story and the deaths of this couple: throw out all those self-improvement books because you cannot possibly change who you intrinsically are.

Your demons will always haunt you and you’ll always ignore your beautiful qualities.

After reading this article, I called my mother later in the day to chat. I hadn’t mentioned the lottery article to her, when she started telling me about finding a stack of letters that she, my brother, and I had written to my mother’s mother when she was dying of cancer.

My mother and brothers laughed heartily as they read the 30-year-old letters, because each one of us letterwriters was complaining to Nana about someone else in the family . . .and all of now admit that those complaints were absolutely valid . . .and that the same complaints could still be accurately lodged against us as adults. None of us changed.

I still talk too annoyingly loud . . .et al.

Rather disheartening that we humans are stuck on an endless personality treadmill; but I suspected as much.

When my son was born, almost twenty years ago, I had a very strong impression of how I thought his personality would develop . . .just from the way he responded to me . . .and I was absolutely correct in my assumption. He’s very laid-back, goes with the flow, but over-analyzes EVERYTHING.

When I had to go back and re-read my journals for the I.R.S. audit, I see that the same crap has been bugging me for the past ten years. I think I'm so witty in my journals, but I'm just hashing out the same worthless concerns year after year.

So my theory, which can be proved by the lottery story, my son’s personality development, my journals, and the discovery of the old family letters, is that you are who you are from the moment you’re born . . .barring some sort of hideous interference in your development, such as child abuse, or war, etc.

Accept this fact and just enjoy who you are . . .you no longer have to fret about how much you weigh, how much money you have, or changing any aspect of yourself . . .because you can never change who you really are.

If you’re unhappy because you’re overweight, you’ll be unhappy when you’re thin.
If you're a serial murderer, that's just the way you are . . .not even an intervention from Dr. Phil can help you.
If you’re miserable with your current meager salary, winning the jackpot won’t cure your blues.

You’ll always be lugging along all your same foibles and attributes . . . embrace them and enjoy the life you have.

I have a dead sheep floating in the pond outside my office window reminding me that no one has enough time to waste wishing for better days to come . . .the best days are here, right now, TODAY!

Organ Donation in France

Reading the article about the first face transplant I learned that if you are brain dead in France, it is assumed that you are an organ donor:

Brain-dead patients in France are presumed to be organ donors unless theyhave
made explicit provisions to the contrary, and approval by next of kin is not
normally required. But given the delicacy of the case, the donor's family was
consulted about the possible harvesting of part of the donor's face during
the initial interviews that are undertaken to ensure that the deceased had
not given instructions preventing organ donations.

So, without doing research, I'm going to make the wild supposition that it's easier to get an organ transplant in the "socialist" French health care system than it is in the free-market U.S. system.

From I.Kidney.com I find a synopsis of an U.S. research paper that advocates changing to the French, now European, system of the presumptive donor protocol.

This Week's Dead Sheep

I took an hour long nap this afternoon.

When I woke up, I went outside thinking that I would give the sheep a little dose of grain before they went to bed. It had been pouring down rain all day, and even though I took them out for an hour long grazing walk around mid-day, they spent most of the day lying under a protective tree. I thought they would probably appreciate the extra food.

As I stepped out the front door, I noticed some sheep poop next to the Moulin, and thought it seemed fresh.

I called for the dogs; heard Antoinette barking. They showed up happy and out of breath, their tongues hanging out of their mouths. Regrettably, I didn’t pay attention to the direction from which they came.

I looked over at the small sheep pasture and only saw three sheep, the perfect young sheep, standing in a far corner, looking at me. I noticed that there was a white blob by them but just dismissed it as some rocks.

I was starting to have the feeling that something was not quite right.

I walked toward the pasture to retreive a bucket in which to put the grain. I saw that the three corner posts of the pasture fence had been ripped out of the ground and the sheep buckets were scattered everywhere. Something was terribly wrong.

I quickly walked over to the three sheep and as I approached, I saw that the white blob was Blanche, writhing on her back like a giant Galapagos turtle turned over on its shell. She was too fat to right herself. Thankfully, the three perfect sheep stayed with her . . . or I may not have seen her. Sheep don't yell out when they're in physical trouble because it just alerts predators to their predicament.

I couldn’t find the other sheep.

I took the dogs back to the house. Beat Attila and smacked Antoinette a good one, and then tied them both up.

Based on the fresh sheep dung by the mill, I went around the back of the mill to see if the sheep had run back into the woods. To my horror, I saw a dead sheep floating in the mill pond. I was scared out of my wits to walk further around the corner, fearing that all five of the missing sheep, including Soixante-Douze were floating out of sight.

On the verge of vomiting, I slowly walked to the head of the mill pond and found the five sheep, huddled together on a narrow concrete walkway, ready to fall into the mill pond at the slightest provocation.

I called them but they were too frightened to move. I couldn’t go get them because the walkway was too narrow and my presence might have scattered them into the water.

I returned to the front of the mill. Beat Attila some more and threw him in a room in the mill where I could lock him in.

I retrieved Blanche and the three perfect sheep and they followed me to the mill pond. The five shocked, stranded sheep saw Blanche but still wouldn’t move. Then, to compound matters, one of the perfect sheep decided to step up on the narrow walkway and join the stranded flock. So now I had six sheep in jeopardy.

I turned Blanche around and the other two sheep followed us, but still the flock didn’t follow. We waited out of sight for a couple minutes, but the sheep didn’t budge.

So, I took Blanche and the other two sheep back, and we walked past the sheep as if we were going for a walk in the woods . . .this is all happening as it’s getting dark. That trick worked. The sheep formed a single file, and began to walk down the walkway towards us. . .except the lead sheep, Soixante-Douze then balked at crossing a hole in the walkway and thank goodness for little midget Biberon because she passed Soixante-Douze, jumped over the divide, and Soixante-Douze and the rest followed.

We filed past their dead comrade. I can't tell you how grateful I was to the sheep gods that the floater wasn’t the belier!!!!!

With the sheep back in their pasture, I righted their fence to the best of my ability, fed them some grain and hay, and then got in with them when Blanche made it clear that she wanted to be comforted, and spent a half-hour hugging everyone that wanted to be hugged. Which was everyone except Soixante-Douze . . .but even she made some timid advances before backing away.

My father used to say, “When your number’s up, it’s up.” And that was certainly the case with this week’s dead sheep.

Three days ago, the flock disappeared, and my visiting friend them next to the Count’s chateau . . .but this new sheep wasn’t with them. I was convinced that someone took her. But then, 24 hours later, she showed up.

Now she’s dead, floating in the mill pond. I have two plans on how to remove her:
1. . . . hope the weather gets so cold that she and the pond freeze until the Husband arrives in two weeks and he can deal with her,
2. . . .barring a change in the weather, I’ll have to wait for her to float to an advantageous position where I can get a rope around her leg and pull her water logged body up onto the cement barrier . . .and then wait for my third visit from the dead animal collector. (Talked to the Husband and he told me there's a huge pitchfork with an extremely long handle in the barn which should come in handy for the task.)

Happy Anniversary America!

You did it, 1000 people executed by the judicial system since capital punishment was reinstated in 1977 . . .and the honor goes to North Carolina. Way to go, N.C.! I feel safer already.

Smith's wife witnessed the execution, along with Thomas Curry's niece and
her husband. Maher, a small group of law enforcement officials and journalists
also watched through the thick, twin glass panes between the viewing room and
the stark death chamber.

I wonder if this will piss off the Australians . . .they seem to be just a tad upset about one of their citizens being executed in Singapore. Take the Australians views with a grain of salt . . .after all, they are the descendents of boatloads of criminals . . .

Media commentators said Australia's biggest trade and investment partner in
Southeast Asia had seriously misjudged the harm the hanging would do to its
image here, where capital punishment has been abolished.

The top law official from Nguyen's home state of Victoria, Attorney-General Rob Hulls, was flying to Singapore Wednesday to make a last-ditch plea for his life, saying the execution
would be "barbaric".

The Progeny (Preston) was accepted at the University of Montana! We're very proud of him.