All right, everyone, it’s time for me to discuss one of my major pet peeves.

What has me so annoyed, you may or may not ask? Well, there are times when I get a call on the phone. When I ask who’s calling, they respond with a first name only. Now, when I say I get a call “on the phone”, I mean on the land line at the house. Those of you who know me know that’s an instant red flag, because NONE of my friends or coworkers know the phone number at the house. Not even Misty knows it. The reason is because ALL of my calls go through my cell phone. So, in other words, this is not someone I know personally.

Anyway, so I ask, “So-and-so who?” Said person then reveals that he or she is in fact with a company or a political campaign. Very sneaky, guys. I can see how this works: the caller is trying to trick the person into taking the call by pretending it’s someone the recipient knows on a first-name basis. I don’t know about anyone else, but being tricked into taking a call by semi-trickery is not something I appreciate, and in fact sours me to whatever you were trying to sell me on in the first place. More to the point, I’d be even more apt to avoid or recommend against it than I might have been.

So, what prompted this rant, you might ask? Well, I got an example of such a call a few minutes ago. If anyone’s wondering, it came from Barack Obama’s campaign, which is heavily working in advance of the primary on Tuesday.

So, congrats guys. You managed to turn me off him even more than I might have been already. You might have said he was for change, but this kind of change into campaign tactics I consider dishonest isn’t a change I consider for the better.

Well, I went ahead and weighed myself on Friday. Weighing myself on Monday was mainly done to get a starting figure, as that was the day I began the diet. I was afraid that there wouldn’t be any change… or worse, that I would have gained weight.

I lost four pounds. Go me.

I don’t really expect to be able to keep up losing four pounds a week (or per four days), but even if I lose one or two pounds a week, I should come close to my goal of losing sixty pounds by the end of the year. Even then, if I don’t lose sixty pounds but lose six to eight inches off the waistline, I’ll be equally happy.

To celebrate, or to be more precise have my “splurge” meal, we went to Texas Roadhouse at I-45 and FM 1960 for dinner last night. We had never been, so it was a new experience for us. It turned out it was very much like Logan’s Roadhouse, which was a plus in my book. I ended up getting a single margarita (and water for the rest of the night), a burger (with a house salad w/ Italian dressing instead of fries), and a brownie a la mode. As hefty as that sounds, I usually eat MORE when out and about. I would have normally gotten an appetizer and chowed down on fries, plus probably have had more than one margarita. It was good, and I’m actually looking forward to going back. :-)

Also on the food front, we had a bit of an amusing exchange at dinner. Mom made spaghetti in a tomato meat sauce for dinner. While she was serving, she said, “I made this using a low carb pasta, so you don’t need to worry.” At that moment, Dad raised his head up from his own bowl, turned, and glared at her with a dirty look. Oblivious, Mom continued, “It’s the same stuff I’ve been serving for the past two years.” Dad blinked, went back to his dinner, and muttered, “It’s a good thing you said that…”

In any event, tomorrow brings week two. Hopefully things go as well this week as they did last week. We’ll see…