You are part of the night, just like me. We're not afraid of the dark—we come alive in it. We're thrilled by it.

Forgive the radio silence. A new year, and the new me still continues to percolate up. I'm happy to report that I'm now back where I started before my long Christmas holiday; despite big meals, long junk-food road trips, my Great-Aunt Dolly's lasagna via my sister, Christmas ham and riced potatoes and gravy, gooey Chinese take-out, beer, whiskey, short ribs with sauerkraut, port-wine cheese, chicken a la king and a trip to Matt's Bar (home of the Jucy Lucy!), I gained only four pounds. Not bad, and definitely not as much weight as I feared I'd put on.

But I did keep busy while on vacation, and tried to keep myself as physically active as possible. There was the snowboarding and the skiing and the ice-skating, all of them with a surprising dearth of wobbliness given that I've done none of them in over a decade, and then were the floor exercises. Jackie from PPCS was nice enough to email me a workout—something I could do without a bag or proper equipment—and my wife was nice enough to yell things at me while I sweated and groaned on the floor in front of the Christmas tree while the dog slapped me in the jaw with his wagging tail and Man Vs. Food played in the background.

I didn't do any running in Minnesota, since it was alternately blizzarding or cold as hell, and since neither my run-crazy sister nor my run-crazy cousin goaded me into it, for reasons of pregnancy and hangover, respectively. A good trip home, all in all, and I'm glad I came back only incrementally more pudgy than when I left.

Because I drank so often while in Minnesota, I haven't really felt the urge to do so since I've been back, which meant that I was the boring sober guy on New Years Eve who, instead of having fun, whined and went home by 11 PM in order to watch Back to the Future. The wife and I went out on Saturday for a fancy-ass steakhouse meal, and I did have a few glasses of wine then, but malbec is a far cry from bourbon shots. Oh, and I had a mimosa on Sunday and then took a nap.

I'm back in the groove workout-wise, with my goal being five kickboxing sessions a week. I'll need a few weeks of this—and a number of muay Thai classes—before I'm ready for Combat Conditioning, I've decided. We'll see how that goes.

I have 20 pounds to go, which may be an ambitious estimate, but one that I think I can accomplish in the next few months. It's hard for me to say what my ideal weight even is these days, since I've yo-yoed so much in recent years. At my skinniest as an adult, I weighed 150 pounds, but that was stupid skinny—Aaronrexic, my coworkers called me at the time. I also had no muscle whatsoever, just willowy fatless limbs onto which I could pull the teeny-tiny women's jeans I wore. My hipsterdom deserved a good slapping, and I got it, in a way, through completely fucking up my metabolism by never eating. I've been gaining weight steadily in the six or seven years since then. So 150 is too skinny, especially given the considerable amount of muscle I've been growing like some creepy sweaty petri dish. I'm shooting for 175. When I hit 175 on the scale, we'll take another look and see what needs to be done. I imagine that throwing villains off of cathedrals will be part of it.

Oh! Before I forget, I've obtained several Batman-helpful books over the past few months that I will now tell you about, because what are you going to do, stop reading? The first of these, which I ordered from Amazon about when I started, is The Batman Handbook, a truly goofy read which has helpful little sections on, say, how to fight someone using a whip or how to drive on two wheels or how to bulletproof your car. In that similar vein, my mother-in-law got me The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook, which is really handy if you want to know how to escape from a locked trunk or ask someone, in French, to hand you a towel to mop up all the blood. The last was a terrific memoir by former Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni, Born Round, in which he talks about his lifelong struggle with weight. Yeah, I know—Lifetime movie blah blah blah—but it's engagingly written and Bruni thinks about food in much the same way I do. (He also got, like me, super-fat.) These have been my dorky little companions.

Today: a regular-gym workout during lunch and then, possibly, a muay Thai class before pub quiz. We'll see.

I think I'm starting to sound more like Moriarty than Sherlock Holmes.

I have been lazing off on the Batblog for a while, and this may be just because things that until recently seemed so novel—my shiny new muscles, my diet, my ability to climb stairs with neither huffing or puffing—all seem sort of normal now. This will change soon, for reasons I'll get to in a minute.

So, had a good rest of the week, exercise-wise, although I didn't work out at all on Friday, due to a work holiday party during my lunch and then a show to play in the evening. While my workouts generally only take up about two hours a day, they occasionally run head-on into my work or social life, and I get unreasonably irked every time this happens. But Friday was an altogether okay version of that; playing music is something I'll never, ever stop doing, even if it sometimes steps on the toes of my regimen. Maybe I'll make a Bat-band.

Another kickboxing class on Saturday (remember when I said I'd do it three times a week? Yeah, now I feel lazy if I don't get four or five in). On my way out, the owner of the place asked me, "So how is this working for you?" I grinned and told him, "This has been just amazing. I've lost 25 pounds and I'm getting all muscley and I really couldn't have done it without you guys." He and his co-owner were amazed and pleased and asked me if I'd write them a testimonial. And then Tony said that I'm probably ready to start Combat Conditioning.

Combat Conditioning is, you'll remember, the very first class that I ever took, the one for hardcore fighters, that Tony let me sit in on once while then shooing me over to kickboxing because of my sissiness. While not as cardio-heavy, Combat Conditioning is muy intense, and leans a lot more toward the personal-training side of things, with a ton of strength, flexibility, speed and technique instruction. I'm flattered that he thinks I'm ready for it, and I have yet to decide if I'll give it a shot today or go to the regular gym for a half-hour of elliptical and Deadwood-on-my-iPhone instead. CC will up my toughness considerably, and I hope I'm ready to take it on.

Today's my last day of work before I hop in the car and troll northeast to Minnesota for Christmas. I'm wondering if there's an unhealthier holiday than Minnesotan Christmas, which is analagous to mainlining gravy with one hand while pouring a mixture of beer and half and half down your throat while giving yourself a ham enema and snorting cinnamon rolls. And will I partake in this because of tradition? Bet your ass, I will. But I'm also keen on spending a lot of time doing outdoorsy exercise: ice-skating and skiing and running in the snow a lot like in Rocky IV. And, failing that, I can always make my wife count out 30-second increments in a bored tone of voice while I do cherry-pickers or burpies or V-ups or baby bounces or any of the catalogue of little floor exercises I do and she watches What Not to Wear. I know I'll regain some weight in Minnesota—there's simply no way I can't, given the folksy gluttony that is my birthright. But I can do my best to minimize that, and you know what I've kind of figured out? I'm not in bad shape. I would daresay my shape is okay.

We impose meaning on the chaos of our lives. We create form, morality, order. It's a choice we have to make every second of every minute of every day.

Had a great kickboxing session yesterday. My kicks are getting fast and hard and explosive, a quick pivot on my front foot, swivel of the hips, then my foot totally shows up in a place it wasn't a moment ago, presenting itself with a loud, loud SMACK on the bag. My form and technique are improving, and my knee problems from a few weeks ago have disappeared as I've gotten better. Likewise for my punches; yesterday, the instructor had to keep dragging my bag back onto the mat from my surprisingly effective left hooks. All of this is stuff I never would have thought I'd be thinking or writing about, a few months ago. Me? Punching? Weird.

This isn't a mud pit. It's an operating table, and I'm the surgeon.

Well, I've apparently powered through my 20-pound-or-one-month malaise. After Friday and Saturday kickboxing—both of which were just brutal and made for a sore n' hobbling sort of weekend—I found that I was losing weight again. And I've continued to do so since, at sort of ridiculously fast rate. Since Friday, I've lost five pounds, and that's with a weekend of light-ish drinking and not-so-great eating (I made tacos on Sunday night. How many did I have? Six. That's how many). I'm to the point where I'm unembarassed to share my actual weight with you, dear Bat-Readers: 196. That's with me having lost 25 pounds. Let's do the math together. Let's see: five plus six, carry the one—that adds up, let me figure. Oh, yeah, it adds up to: fucking fat. 196 is too fat for my frame, too, let's not have any illusions about that. But that 196 has been hard-won, and it also means that I'm past the halfway point for my goal weight.

My workouts have long become habit, but now they're also something I really miss, and it says something about my retarded resolve that if I miss a day of kickboxing, I'm overtaken with the same kind of guilt generally meant for child-murderers. A great deal of this does, I think, have to do with the fact that I'm becoming simply fascinated with what's happening to me, like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly.* It's like going through a second, more bad-ass puberty. Where did these bulges come from? What does it mean? What is happening to me? WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?

It sort of goes without saying that I'll be punching and kicking the shit out of things again today. Then a regular gym workout, then I'm going to join a friend for a drink, because I can do that and what are you gonna do? Try to stop me? Ha.


*Apologies to Patton Oswalt.

Not you, Robin. They have strict licensing laws in this country. A boy of your age is not allowed in a drinking tavern.

Feeling great today, and against all odds, I've shed another pound.

Kickboxing was excellent yesterday; normally the class is run by one of two female instructors, but yesterday, Tony, the co-owner of the place, ran it. Instead of the usual workout, we were treated to a while of technique instruction. I can honestly say my kicks are coming with more force and accurary than they were yesterday morning. After that, it was a long period of dancing around the bag on the balls of our feet, keeping our heads forever moving, while Tony yelled out things for us to do. A great workout and more fun than doing, say, ladders. But damn, am I sore—all that time on the balls of my feet is like college for my calves. Calf-college, we'll call it.

I'm getting impatient with myself. I figure, weight-loss-wise, I'm about halfway to where I need to be. And I want to be where I need to be, you know, now. But I'll just take a breath, keep working hard and stay on the trolley. Regular gym and kickboxing again tonight, and again-again Saturday, and then I'll probably take Sunday off. Good times.

It's called a compound fracture, rapist. It'll never heal. Not right it won't. You'll remember me every time the air goes wet and cold.

It is -11° here. Last night with windchill is was -30°. Clearly some supervillain has travelled from the future, built a weather machine and tried to forestall my training by making it so cold I want to do nothing but stay inside and eat great bowls of pasta, thereby fattening myself up. You won't win, Hypothetical Supervillain From the Future.

Anyway, I am stalled at the same weight as last week, missing my goal by two pounds. Several people have told me that this tends to happen, roughly twenty pounds or a month in, and to just keep plugging. My body, in other words, has wised up to me, and is trying its damndest to hold onto its fat stores like Scrooge McDuck onto his gold. So I will keep on plugging and work through this.

I missed Monday kickboxing because there was a bout of layoffs at my company, and instead of kickboxing, I felt like drowning my survivor's guilt in drink. So I did. This was obviously a weak move, and even as I drove to the bar to meet some friends after work, I felt guilty. About an hour later, I got a text from the owner of the combat gym, but by then I'd already had a vodka. Mas de guilt.

I did, however, have a great workout yesterday, and discovered a neat little inner reserve that lets me throw my punches with a great deal more speed and force. It wasn't that I was necessarily pulling punches before—although after half an hour of nonstop punching they certainly didn't have a lot of weight behind them—but that I never really felt it necessary to punch as hard as I can. The combat gym has hardened and given ridiculous heft to my arms, and with my newfound punch, that'll only grow.

Getting out of the shower this morning, I looked in the mirror and was amazed to find that you can actually see the outlines of stomach muscles on my torso. Not down where my slowly-melting gut still is, of course, but higher up, there's the phantom of six pack growing. There's still plenty to be done, of course, but my pear-shaped body is gradually taking on the a V shape. Or, failing that, maybe an H.

Non-punchy workout today at lunch, and then pub quiz tonight. Since I missed Monday kickboxing, I'll go tomorrow, see if I can fit in a session on Friday night, and then hit it Saturday, as well. No rest for the tubby.

But wherever my grave is... someone's standing on it ... waiting on it ... stomping the hell out of it. Someone who wants me to eat ice cream.

Google totally stole my idea! (Yes, I, too stole my idea. Shut up or I'll throw you off a cathedral.) Google is now my archnemesis, and will soon be thrown off a cathedral.



It is far too ridiculously cold out: -3 before windchill according to my iPhone. This is Colorado, not Minnesota, so you'll excuse me for knitting my bat-brows together in consternation that I have to worry about my van starting. Snow is fine. Dump it all day every day as far as I'm concerned. But this kind of weather? It's horse-hockey, is what it is, and I'm going to throw Old Man Winter off a cathedral.

So, I discovered yesterday that kickboxing is a terrific cure for a mild hangover; my tiredness and vague sense of ill-being just melted right the hell away after an hour of punching and kicking. I would not recommending using this cure for anything more than a mild hangover, however, as it's likely to end in copious vomiting.

So yes, I drank at pub quiz the night before last and ended up having more than I'd planned to. My reasons for this are certainly not good, but I was in sort of a celebrational mood, what with the full moon and the wintery weather and the Christmas tree with which I shared the stage. Seasonal joy turned into not enough sleep, but I'm pleased with myself for going to kickboxing despite my tiredness.

I am stalled at the weight I've had since Wednesday, no doubt in part to alcohol consumption and my desire to hibernate given the weather. This means I have three pounds more to go before Monday. I think I can do it; I'm going to Saturday kickboxing tomorrow, and I might stick around for Big Boy Boxing if I'm not too wrecked after that. A few runs, eating decently and some gym time today should get me there. Otherwise, if I'm looking for someone to throw off a cathedral, I might as well look in a mirror. [Pause for effect.] Let's do this.