The Little Halter Top as a Weapon of My Mass Destruction

So far, so good. About three to four pounds less of me, something that will be nice to declare to my training team. And there is a fool-proof way, now, to keep my sensible eating on track:

It's the little halter top, or in my case, the No-Boob Sports Bra. This piece of armor shoves the excess me all over the place, so to contemplate myself all geared up to run is to perceive the full horror of those rolls and curves--they have no place to hide. Since my goal is to be able actually to go out and run in this item of clothing, without having to add the excess layers on top of it as a disguise (only to myself, everyone else knows where the fat is), my most effective weapon is the halter top seen in its full glory in my mirror.

It's either lose weight or die of the heat.

Summer Reading

Once in a while, something comes along that threatens to undo the family finances. For many, many years now I've been buying books at Amazon.com because when I went back to school to study clinical psychology, there were almost no professional publications in Spanish except those dealing with psychoanalysis. And those were, to put it mildly, quite traditional. I built up a psychology library of such proportions that professors began to recommend to their students that they contact me if they needed some unusual reference material. But no, that didn't break the bank...it was a slow and immensely pleasurable process. I also learned that when you loan a book, you'd better ask for a deposit equivalent to the value of the book plus tax, because you may never see it again in its original condition.

It costs more to have a book shipped to my house than the book itself costs, so for a long time I would make periodic trips to Laredo with friends or family, and there I would visit my post office box to gather up the bookish loot waiting for me. No, this did not put me in the poor house either. Indeed it can be such a pain in the butt to make the ever-so-boring trip that I would often let things pile up in order to make the whole procedure less painful.

But, alas, or hot damn, all that has changed, and my finances teeter on the brink. There on the Amazon page was the irresistable picture of the Kindle, along with a map showing the areas in Mexico covered by Amazon's free Whispernet service for downloading books. You guessed it: I live in the big fat middle of this blessed area. With horror--or elation, depending on my funds--the service even reaches me at the quinta. So I bought the thing, and life has not been the same.

At the click of a blasted key, and the groan of a credit card, books flow to my Kindle apace. If it were possible to keep one's head steady while running on a treadmill--good luck trying that one--I might never see the street again, because I'd be reading for five kilometers.

Here are my recommendations so far, some little things that will distract us from the monstrous weather:

"The Post-American World" by the brilliant Fareed Zakaria.

"Appetite for Life" by Noel Fitch, the fascinating biography of Julia Child.

"Ultimate Punishment" by Scott Turow, his erudite considerations on the death penalty (he can't decide, it seems. Scott Turow is a lawyer, by the way..)

Anything by Ruth Rendell and P.D. James

"Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela.

And last but highly enteraining, "Absolute Monarchs" by John J. Norwich, a history of the popes--and a bigger group of scoundrels has rarely been gathered under one roof, but their lives are rollicking indeed!