So there I was, screaming at this old lady I didn't know.

You have to picture the scene. It's late afternoon and I'm driving to the gym, a medical fitness center affiliated with a local hospital. I'm about to turn into the members-only parking lot, but the driveway is blocked by a big car that's stopped halfway to the gate. I can see the little old lady behind the wheel rummaging through something, no doubt looking for the pass that goes into the scanner to open the gate.

Fifteen seconds go by. Thirty. A minute. I honk. The old lady waves her arm at me angrily. I honk again, gesturing. She waves again. I start yelling. I'm screaming at the top of my lungs.

Now, I don't generally make a practice of yelling at old people. But what I was trying to communicate to her was the fact that the gate was standing open the whole time.

She no doubt thought I was just an asshole. She kept at her search, eventually found the pass, pulled forward, inserted it in the scanner, and drove into the lot through the gate that had at no point been keeping her out.

I couldn't really be upset with her. I should have been at the gym at least two hours earlier. I'm my own worst enemy too.

I'm not one to announce my daily word count, but I will say that progress is beginning to be made. Today it was made at a Starbucks on Greenview after I got my B₁₂ shot at the doctor's office. Yes, it turns out I have quite a B₁₂ deficiency, which might explain the tingling I sometimes feel in my back and legs, not to mention my frequent fatigue and general lack of energy. I think it's too early to chalk today's productivity up to the vitamin boost, though.

199. I'm just sayin'.

In other braggable news, my personal trainer insisted I brag to someone that I did 27 tricep pushups on my toes in tonight's session. Not all at once, though. In my first set, I did 12 on my toes and 13 on my knees. In my second set, I did 15 on my toes and 10 on my knees. This was between bouts punching and kicking the water bag and doing different sorts of crunches.

I've mentioned before that Laura and I are seeing a personal trainer to combat what I call "Chicago spread." Since starting about two months ago, I've gone from 217.5 lbs to 201.5. My all-time high two years ago, immediately after returning from Blue Heaven 2006, was 231.5. I am 2.5 lbs away from getting back to where I was on my wedding day, and I plan to keep going down from there. So expect more shouting when I'm down under 199.

And now I'm very self-conscious about talking about my workouts, so I'll stop.

Laura and I have started seeing a personal trainer—and boy are my arms tired! (Bah-dum!)

Of the many factors prodding us toward car ownership, this is the one that finally pushed us over the edge. It's an hour each way on the bus, with at least one transfer, to travel the mere 3.4 miles to Payne Management.

Our bus yesterday, once it deigned to arrive, we dubbed The Prop Bus. I didn't seem possible that it was a real bus. I was sitting in a seat adjacent to the railing around the rear door, and when I leaned against it the railing gave way. The streets announcements were more than half a mile out of sync with our real location. And at every stop, the bus driver got out of her seat to wrestle the fare box, which was not securely bolted to the floor, back into its proper spot. I'm surprised this bus didn't let us off on the shores of the River Styx.

Our buses back home were better, but it's no fun spending fifteen or twenty minutes awaiting your transfer unprotected from the subzero wind and bathed in the aromas from a nearby Popeye's Chicken. I said to Laura, "That smells like the Promised Land, the Celestial Kingdom, Paradise, Nirvana, and 72 virgins all rolled up together and deep-fried."

By the way, Laura took the accompanying photo Saturday on a gleaming new bus on North Avenue. I can understand why the older buses are in such raw shape if Chicago has problems with random drilling on public transit.

Or maybe they want to keep passengers from trying to repair city buses.

Now that I am in the second week of a sometimes debilitating cold, and wondering if it's really something worse, I am reminded of the occasion a few years back when Laura was sick with something similar and visited a doctor in our neighborhood whom we had never gone to before.

He was, it turned out, a fat, hairy Greek doctor with his shirt unbuttoned to reveal a gold medallion, and who reeked of cigarettes. He sniffed near Laura's face.

"Eureka!" the doctor exclaimed.

"Eureka?" said Laura, nonplussed. What had he found?

"Eureka da strep!" said the doctor, writing her a prescription for an antibiotic. "I smelled when you come in."

True story.

I took it easy last night, no running out into the insanity that is the Irish pub scene in Astoria to drive out the snakes. It was just the dog and I, Laura having stayed over with a friend in Brooklyn to get a quick start on the half-marathon they're running this morning.

Me, my plan was to take Ella to the park for our standard two-hour Saturday outing, then get her medications in her and head out to New Jersey for Lunacon. But when I woke up at five, I could barely move. Every muscle in my body ached. I couldn't get back to sleep. It's no secret I've been burning the candle at both ends, but I don't want the flame to go out today.

Ella needs her walk, so we'll head out in a few minutes and see how that goes. (Though I'm seriously tempted to take a car service to the park. It's a half-hour walk.) I'm full of water and coffee, and an Aleve will go down the pipe next. I hope when we get back I will no longer feel as if the Huns of Ill Health are lying in ambush just beyond the next rise. Ella is pouting on the floor, but maybe her enthusiasm once we get underway will scatter those ruffians!

Meanwhile, I have accomplished a different weeks-old goal by not even focusing on it. Moments ago I passed a kidney stone, my first ever. I suppose it's like that Douglas Adams bit, where the way to learn to fly is to throw yourself at the ground and miss, which you can only accomplish by not thinking about it.

This means my distracted, irritable, insensitive, curmudgeonly days are even closer to being past than expected. Good news, some of you will no doubt think to yourselves.

That unexpected clink! will be forever engraved upon my memory.

Scratched my cornea yesterday on a tree branch while trimming the branches hanging over the fence from a neighbor's tree. Found this out when I went to the emergency room this morning because my eye still hurt so badly. Have antibiotic ointment now to squeeze into my lower lid to coat my cornea with. Should be healed in a couple of days, they say, but man it hurts in the meantime.

The triage nurse at Lenox Hill was a real character. Tall, portly, white-haired and -bearded man with a short red-dyed ponytail. So much huge turquoise- and other-stone-encrusted silver jewelry on his hands and wrists it was almost like he was wearing greaves. Necklace of what looked like bone segments around his throat. When I told him how it happened, he said, "Should have stayed inside, man. I always say, work is hazardous to your health."

Pleasant ER visit, as those things go. Sunday morning at 7:40 is apparently a good time to go. Took only about an hour from our arrival until filling my prescription at a pharmacy a few blocks away. We were the only ones in the waiting room when we arrived.

Off to coat my eye with goop.