This week, my weight has stayed pretty steady.  Impressively, it even survived a trip to Chipotle last night where, for the first time since 20/20 started, I had a fajita burrito to myself.  (No chips or soda, however.)  If I hover here just below 200, I think that would be a fantastic weight for me.  I don't even remember having been below 200.  That's what, my middle school graduation weight?  Seriously!

We've been getting a ton of exercise this week.  We undertook a major lawn renovation this weekend, and Saturday left us feeling bruised and sore.  Sunday, after church, we drug ourselves back out for more.  We were even more sore and sunburned on Monday, but we got a lot done on our yard.  The outside looks mostly decent now -- I'm feeling good about it.  Emilie is too, though she's less comfortable with how much we spent on dirt and mulch to make it happen.  (As she asked at one point, "Where did the expression 'dirt cheap' come from?")  On top of that, I've had two 10,000-step days in a row this week, which are usually enough to wipe me out for a day or so after individually.  So, not doing so poorly on the activity front.

I was in a meeting yesterday, and one of the guys from my 20/20 group showed up from the other team, Vipul.  He was glad to see me, and we chatted for a bit.  On the way out of the building, we were continuing to chat, and we ran into a third guy from our group.  I said "Hi," and he kind of half-acknowledged me and proceeded to talk to Vipul.  I said "Hello" again, and he looked in my direction, did a double-take, and exclaimed "Oh my god!"  I admit it's dramatic, but not on the level of deity....

We've been having issues with our small group from church.  It was started by our quasi-friends Brian & Suzannah, with the goal of getting a Bible Study going with some people our age.  However, we've had two things happen to derail that....  First, the composition of the group.  We've had a couple "older" (40-something) couples join us, one of them insisting that the night we meet on shift from Tuesday to Wednesday.  That made one of the other couples drop, because Tuesday was the only night they had free.  Because they're all from the "delay marriage until later in life" camp, we're in the odd position of being both the youngest people in the group, and the longest-married.  The other thing is that they decided to study the book Wild at Heart, which is of a vein of Christian literature that Emilie and I can't stand.  (Emilie calls it the "beat on your chest for God" cult.)

Taking some samples from the early chapters I managed to stomach, he posits that:

• Every man needs to see himself as a warrior, and have a cause to go to battle for.  Oh, yes, I remember all those Biblical scenes where Jesus picks up a sword and starts slaughtering the Pharisees.  Never mind that when Peter took a sword and tried to interfere with Jesus' arrest, He not only rebuked Peter, but healed the man Peter assaulted before submitting to the officers.
• Our role model should be William Wallace, not Mother Theresa.  I dunno, I personally wouldn't mind being known for ministering to the poor and needy, rather than leading an army turning to battle as a solution to a legal problem.  But maybe that's just me.

When the group was discussing what we wanted to study next, we told the group that we didn't really want to get into the whole "gender issues" realm -- the Bible speaks a lot about us as people than about us as males or females.  The group not only overrode that, Suzannah cornered Emilie afterward and told her that she obviously had issues in the area of gender roles (because she doesn't agree with Wild at Heart), and she should really dig into the book and confront her issues head-on.  C'mon -- if this were the Bible, we'd say "God's right, I disagree, so I need to sort this out."  This isn't the Bible -- this is some guy's opinion book which, frankly, reads like a novelization of his mid-life crisis with a few Bible verses attached in random places.

As a result of that, we made two decisions:  First, we're going to take a break from the group and go with the church's summer Bible Study led by our second-favorite pastor for the summer.  That will give the group time to finish Wild at Heart, and we'll see how things sit with the group after that.

Second, we decided to reconnect with the couple that left due to scheduling -- they were the ones in the group that we clicked with best, and we've really missed them since then.  We e-mailed them, and arranged to meet for supper last night.  It.  Was.  Fantastic.  We both loved spending time with them, and even though they don't live as close to us as we'd like, we get along well, and we just seem to understand each other.  Hopefully, we can at least stick with them as friends.

And really, if we need to start our own Bible Study on Tuesday nights with two couples to start with, we've been there before.  It's not a bad place.