Four more days till beer.

This weekend is going to be probably the hardest of the whole challenge. Not because it's so close to the end of the self-imposed dry spell, but because it's Halloween weekend, and Halloween means parties.

Here I sit, up bright and early (for me at least) at 11 AM. I've cancelled on at least 3 official parties that I know of for Halloween. I'm planning on going to Dunn Brothers, getting some freshly roasted beans, grinding the shit out of them, and then making coffee. And then drinking coffee all day while bouncing between various video games. Aside from that, no plans. If I were to go out, I'd end up with a beer in my hand within 15 minutes. I know I'd cave. I know I'd want to have fun.

I'm not the type of person who goes out to a bar and sits around drinking soda water and has a good time. I've gone 6 months without drinking before, just as an experiment, and what I found is that hanging around while other people get lit up isn't much fun for me if I'm not joining them. It makes me bitter that I'm not having any fun, then I get dark, sullen, and am generally an asshole to be around. I don't like hanging around with people like that, so why in the name of all that is holy, would I want to voluntarily foist that kind of asshole on other people? Short answer? I don't. So I'm not.

I can hear the arguments now. Oh man, if you can't even go NEAR a bar you must be an alcoholic! If you get irritated that you can't drink you MUST be an alcoholic! If you have ever displayed any enjoyment of tasting any alcoholic beverage EVER you MUST be an ALCOHOLIC. Fuck that, seriously. I have a fridge full of arguably the tastiest beer in history - Surly Wet and SurlyFest. It's been staring me in the face for three weeks now. Not a drop has been touched. I have wine in the fridge. It's still there. If I were truly an alki, it wouldn't have survived a day.

If I were pregnant, or had heart problems, or were under 4' 6" tall, and these conditions prevented me from riding roller coasters, why in the fuck would I agree to go to Cedar Point Amusement Park, the roller coaster capital of the world?

The diet's still been pretty easy. Between making a couple batches of PaleoCrunch for snacking, a few roasts with onions, carrots, sweet potatos, and some stir-fries, I'm down 6 pounds. I'm guessing it's all fat loss as well since my performance in the gym has stayed steady if not improved slightly. I can really tell when I accidentally miss breakfast now, though.

My long term plans are to stick with the Paleo thing, but mixing in a little bit of beer, and refined sugar in the form of Spree and KitKat here and there. I think I'll probably end up around 95% clean. We'll see how I actually feel once I start introducing the cheat stuff back in.