Atherton Family Notes

When I visited the treasury below the great cathedral, I missed the “no photographs” sign and took about 100 photos. Nobody told me not to use my camera, and I didn’t see the sign until I walking out. So I ended up with a set of pictures of the various objects from the treasury.

The treasury is fairly dark and I found it difficult to take the pictures. Because of this, I often took multiple pictures of the same object, which makes fine territory for an accidental stereogram.

Below is one of several stereograms I’ve recovered from the photo set. These statues used to be on the exterior of the cathedral, but they have been moved inside to protect them from the elements. The Cathedral exterior (like these statues) is made from from a very soft sandstone and is literally melting due to exposure to rain and pollution. A staff of artisans is constantly making new pieces of the facade and installing them in the place of older pieces.

Photos originally from April 5, 2003

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I have struggled with my weight all of my adult life. The problem is, I guess, that I like food; I will eat whatever is available whether it’s good or bad for me and whether I need it or not. This is not a unique problem in the United States for sure, but some people can get away with it for longer than others.

I’m a pretty big guy in any case. At more than six feet tall, I have lots of places to hide fat, and so it takes a lot of weight gain for it to become really obvious. That has been part of the problem over the years.

Sometime in college, I hit 240 pounds. During the one summer that I took classes, I got back down to 225, but by the time Sandi and I got married (just after I graduated), there was no looking back. About 11 years ago, I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. My weight was 288.

Since then, I’ve managed to get my weight down as low as 245 (while we lived in Europe). For almost four year now, though, I’ve been back on the American diet, and my weight has been steadily increasing during that time.

By the end of April 2009, my weight was back up to 278 — ten pounds from my peak weight. In the last 2 months, I’ve managed to get back to 269, which is what I weighed this morning when I got up. I’ve lost about half of that weight in the last 2 weeks — thanks in no small part to Sandi, who has gotten on a real fitness program recently — and I’ve decided to go along for the ride.

The last two weeks have not been as difficult as I thought they would be. It’s mostly been about making better food choices, walking nearly every day and staying the heck out of the kitchen when it’s not meal time. I actually feel very good about the fact that I spent all of last week on a business trip in Florida, eating restaurant food and not walking as much as I should have (thanks to the humidity), but still managed to lose weight.

While I was out walking yesterday, I decided that it’s time to make this lifestyle change permanent. As of today, there are 150 days until my 40th birthday, and I’m making it my goal to lose 40 more pounds by then. Forty by forty.

On December 11th, I’m going to weigh 229 or less. Mark my words. That is a little less than 2 pounds a week, which should be possible to achieve. 229 is not my ultimate goal, but it will be a huge step in the right direction.

I’m going to report in once a week, win or lose. Hopefully, having to publically state how I’m doing will help motivate me.

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Most of what I posted yesterday was actually written on Monday. On Tuesday morning, we I got up for the official weigh, the scale stopped cooperating. For one thing it said I was at least three pounds heavier than I was on Monday morning, and for another, it couldn’t give me the same answer twice.

Sandi had the same problem when she weighed in– she was 2 pounds heavier than the day before, which we knew couldn’t be true.

So we decided to replace the scale. True to the spirit of our goal, we decided to walk to the local Bed, Bath and Beyond to buy the replacement. Round trip, the walk is 8 miles, so it was good for our diet!

The net result is that since I’ve changed scales, the original start weight I listed the other day is no longer valid. I weighed in this morning with the new scale and it said I was 266.8.

So my new forty by forty goal weight is 226.8.

I have 149 days to get there.

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I was happy when I stumbled across this accidental stereogram of one of the most famous sites in Germany, Neuschwanstein Castle. These pictures were taken when my parents came to visit us in October of 2002.

The pictures are taken from the floor of the valley below the castle and based on the clues from parts of the pictures that I have cropped I estimate that the two shots are taken about 30 feet or more apart. This makes the 3d effect stand out a bit.

A quick Google search doesn’t reveal any other publicly available stereograms of the castle, so it has that going for it as well.

Stereogram of Castle Neuschwanstein

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Sandi discovered an interest in Michelangelo while we were living in Europe. As part of our travels, we saw, for example, the famous collection in Florence, the pieces in the Vatican and the Louvre, and this piece in Bruges, Belgium. We were planning to visit Bruges anyway, and once Sandi found out about this statue, it moved to the top of the list of things to see there.

The Madonna of Bruges is a small statue, very reminiscent of the the Pieta, and famous for being the one piece of Michelangelo’s sculpture to leave Italy during his lifetime. Visitors are not allowed to get very close to the sculpture, which is unfortunate because of its size.

I put together this accidental stereogram out of two shots: one is a close up of the sculpture, the other was a shot of Sandi with the sculpture in the background (in the typical fashion of tourists proving they went somewhere. ) The 3D effect is pretty nice, and allows you to see detail that is not apparent from a simple photograph.

Stereogram of the Madonna of Bruges, taken April 14, 2003

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Sandi says I have been posting too many stereograms recently, and it’s true, I have been going through our old pictures and building stereograms when I can find pictures that work. Most of the posts I’ve made since late May have involved a stereogram in one way or another. For me, though, it is a way to get a second chance to post about things we passed by the first time. Plus, I love the 3D effect that, in my opinion, preserves the moment in a special way.

So, I’m probably going to continue posting stereograms — but now that summer is in full swing, we’ll also be posting more traditional pictures. We’re already falling behind on some events that have happened this summer such as the theater camps that the girls have gone to.

Sandi and I spent the last few days in St. Louis with a visitor we have been hosting for the last week from France (by way of Spain), Tiphaine. Tiphaine is the oldest sister of Colleen, who was Carissa’s best friend at school in France. We’ve kept in touch with the family over the years, and were happy when the Auvignes suggested that Tiphaine come to to visit us for a few weeks this summer.

A trip to St. Louis was on the agenda so that we could show Tiphaine the Gateway Arch, the tallest monument in the United States. The first two days we were there, it was too cloudy to go, but on Thursday, it cleared up, so we headed out bright and early. After our trip to the top of the Arch, we took a short cruise on a riverboat (from which I sent this postcard). While we were waiting for the trip to start, I took a couple of quick photos with my iPhone, since the battery in my little died during the trip up the Arch (I accidentally left the charger in Indy!)

As usual, the photos aren’t of the greatest quality, but I was able to salvage a decent shot with some filtering using one of my favorite iPhone apps, Camera Bag.

This shot has been altered using the Helga filter, designed to replicate the characteristic vignetting of this camera. It creates an elegant shot that highlights the center of the picture. I used this photo to create the postcard using another iPhone app, Postman. It’s amazing what you can do with a few on-the-go tools.

Finally, here is the stereogram I built from the same set of shots.

Stereogram of the Gateway Arch, as seen from the SS Tom Sawyer, July 24, 2009

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