Electronic Willpower

We had a lovely church youth group get together at the little park across from my house at Lake Palestine this weekend. We sat out by the shore in folding chairs and enjoyed one of the last warm weekends of the Fall. We dragged out the guitars and banjos and our brand new washtub bass and had a good old songfest.

After a bit, the kids began to get restless, so we played a game and then had a short sermon talk before releasing the restless hordes of children for lunch. As we closed the meeting with prayer, a friend shot the picture of me leading prayer with the sun pouring down through the trees and the smoke from our campfire. It was a nice shot.

Now for the confession part of this. The photo to the right has been doctored. No, it's not the rays of sunshine. That photo was a straight shot.

Nope, what got altered was me. In the original photo I am about 35 or 40 pounds heavier than I am in this picture. When I first saw the picture I was shocked at how heavy I had become over the past 18 months since Micah's death - stress will load the pounds on you. I instantly vowed to stop eating for three weeks or till I lost 50 pounds. I imagined myself drinking lots of water and only eating fresh fruit and veggies day after day. Start walking 2 miles every day, do some cardio and maybe work out on the ab-machine, quit spending so much time on the computer......

"Hmmmm?" (faint smell of smoke as long disused portions of my brain fire up suddenly).

I double click on Photoshop and load the picture.

"Mmmm-hmph"

I select the "clone" tool. Select the parameters and make a couple of quick swipes and voila!

Forty pounds are history!.

Wow, how great is that?

Of course, I should still probably cut back a little on the cheese a bit anyway. And I don't like desserts much, so I could probably skip that.

"What?"

"Suppertime?"

"Be right there, honey...."

I wonder if there are any of those cheesy puffs left?

I just love technology!

Just one man's weakness...

Tom