Went by the office this afternoon. It was still locked, but Tripper had returned at some time to tape a large envelope labeled "Reports" to the front door. Pretty shotloose, I thought, deciding to head for the library to make a copy of each page. (Wonder if there's a template for the form that I can add to my computer?) Closest copy shop I could find turned out to be in the general neighborhood of the sushi bar. Why not check out the rest of the menu? I decided.

The dinner crowd was fuller than lunch had been. I returned to my table from the last week and made my order, a replay of the "meal for two," but with different selections. My waitress was the same; only this time she made no comment about my order. Points for you, girly!

Discovered I have plebian tastes when it comes to sushi. My favorite items remain variations of fish that I've eaten since childhood: salmon, tuna and whitefish. Once I'd finished with my first course, I even ordered a dinner plate of salmon sushi (service for three!) and finished it, too. When I received my tab, I could swear the girl'd left off my salmon platter. But when I tried to point this out to the waitress, she refused to change the bill. Who am I to argue?

10/11/01
[2:11 p.m.]

Bea has a scale in her bathroom, incidentally - which, frankly, surprised me. When I stepped on it, I discovered that I was (wait for it!) twenty-plus pounds over 200.

Why am I choosing this moment to mention the fact? Well, I just received a nicely apologetic email from Ample Stuffer. Apparently, he assumed that I set up my web log to document my weight gain. According to AS, there are women out there who do this, just as there are chicks who blog to discuss their diets. (Guess the public forum is supposed to act as an additional motivator for both types of women.)

He sent me a list of sites devoted to women's weight gain, which apparently is a source of much drooling 'n' fantasizing among a certain type of male. So what's the point of this fantasy? Aren't there enough real-life fat chicks out in the world, already? I don't get it.

But some friendly advice, AS. Get yourself a word processing program and use it - especially the spell-check function. . .

10/11/01
[2:08 p.m.]

Stopped at the ATM to deposit my checks (can't believe I waited a day! - was too focused on work, I guess). Then I went over to Bea's. She's about an inch taller than my 5'6" (look, AS, "concreat" numbers!) and much of the clothes she has are a lot younger than I normally feel comfortable wearing. But there were plenty of jeans and dresses in sizes from 16 to 32 - and a variety of tops that ran the gamut from one to multiple XLs. Bought some size 22 jeans for five bucks apiece, and the two of us worked our way through a couple packages of Eggos for breakfast. At one point I asked Bea if it bothers her, being the size she was.

"Surprisingly, it doesn't," she told me. "Was a time it would've. But these days I feel fine the way I am." The turning point, she said, was a night two years ago when an extraordinary man and woman entered her restaurant. They were the largest people she'd ever seen, and her first reaction on seeing 'em was to giggle. There was some kind of big event at the armory next door, and she thought they might've come for the shindig, but they hadn't. Instead, the pair ordered everything on the menu (apiece!) and proceeded to spend the rest of the night eating it all.

She'd never seen anything like it. But somehow, over the course of the night, Bea found herself feeling "in tune" with the mega-sized woman. "It was, like, the more she ate, the hungrier I started getting. There was something magical about the two of 'em. One thing's certain, I'd never seen two people eat so much in one night.

"Perhaps," she giggled, pouring a healthy pool of cinnamon maple syrup on her second stack, "we were visited by the Fast Food Gods."

Perhaps, I answered. But something about her story rang truer than she probably knew.