Today is my birthday, turning 27 years old. Starting today—or rather when I get back from a conference, to maximize the bang for the buck when I buy the membership—I'll be heading to the gym at least twice a week to get some exercise, which will be a marked increase from the no exercise during the last 6 months or so. It feels like an admission of defeat, because of my distaste for what a friend calls "gym culture" and that they have that evil worse than Satan himself, cable TV. Also, I need to cut down on the junk, meaning ice cream and so-called fast food. Can anybody hazard a guess what the amount of planning around this I've done other than that?

My new motto is "28 by 28", which stands for losing 28 pounds by the time I turn 28 years old. That feels like a modest goal, though I will measure success more based on my energy and esteem at the end of the term compared to its start than what the cheap scale I bought a couple of weeks ago tells me.