Testament's new album has been out for a couple weeks. Somehow I missed that.

Disturbed's new one hits Tuesday on this side of the great water divide. Check local listings for drop-dates in your neighborhood.

Dethklok will rock the rock this coming Saturday at First Avenue. Interestingly enough, it may present me with my first opportunity for online/realworld crossover. Some dude some other place I hang is all up in my bidness about hanging together. I was like, "dude, I'll be the big bastard in the bugs bunny shirt at the death metal concert. I'm pretty hard to miss." He was less descriptive, "I'll be, um, me or something." So, yeah, he has to pick me out.

I'm not counting my chickens before they're fried and sammichified.

Outside of that, rock is rock. Booyah.

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We did the puppies rocking the drive-in thing over the weekend. Turned out not so horrible, though Pup2 spotted a kitty wandering the grounds right at the start of the first movie and almost came unglued. She loves her kitties. She doesn't get that not all kitties love puppies. I still remember the look of horror on her face she got when that kitty down in Iowa spatted at her. She just didn't understand it at all.

Outside of that, it went fairly well.

I stuck with my plan and went with a berry fruit smoothy, a touch of popcorn, and some type of chicken concoction from the concessions that I divided up with Mrs. NFB. I had, miracle of miracles, lost weight by the next morning. I was gunnin' for break-even with movie treats, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Then, yesterday, we went over to visit Mrs. NFB's dad. He's doing a lot of house modifications so we went to see all the stuff he's changed. He moved the bathroom and tore out the old bathroom to make the kitchen bigger. It was all pretty slick. While we were there, he told us he'd go pick us up Hardees for lunch. So, says I, "I'll just take a plain hamburger, small fries."

He looks at me like I'm completely nuts. Mrs. NFB says, "He's on a diet," with that wonderfully loaded way of saying diet that made it sound like a curse.

So, we had a chat on the way home about it. I said she's been saying I'm on a diet to a lot of folks, with some real loaded inflection. I said I'm not so much on a diet as just lowering the overall input into my pie-hole. People on a diet are people that make it everybody else's problem. People that say, "YOU CAN'T EAT THERE!" or babble on-and-on about how horribly everybody else is eating while they have their lettuce leaf and celery. Diet is a term associated with Atkins freaks, or those douchebags that run around calling themselves neanderthals and expecting everybody else to see it as a good thing. Or nutbags that spend an entire year surviving on nothing but Diet Pepsi and Ciggies and then getting pissed off at anybody that invites them out for a meal (Mrs. NFB's sister and certain other folks, I'm looking at you). What I'm doing is fitting my own needs into the pattern that's already sitting there before me. Asking her father to say, "hamburger, plain" was the most difficulty I've caused anyone outside of myself with this, and the most difficulty I plan on causing. In fact, that's probably easier than saying, "six dollar burger, loaded." So the argument could be made I caused him no difficulty at all.

Mrs. NFB detected I was mildly unamused with her ongoing digs at my dietary plan. She admitted she's a little bitter about it, because I'm just doing it and not including her. So, we get into the ongoing back and forth we've went through every time we've included each other on a food change and how it ends up failing because one or the other of us doesn't have their heart in it. I told her I'm doing what I need to do for my own sake, and she's welcome to do what she needs to do for herself.

Then she lectured me on how stupid it was that I've cut cheese from my intake.

Last night, as we lay in bed, she said, "honey, I'm proud of you."

"For what?"

"For your weight loss. I know that wasn't easy. And I'm not making it better. I'm sorry."

"It's not as difficult as you might think."

This morning, not one dig about my breakfast of Cheerios, fat-free lactaid, and a touch of honey. And she asked very nicely if I wanted chips or M&Ms in my lunch. I think we've passed denial and anger and headed into acceptance. She even asked nicely what would be a good meal tonight, and didn't seem disappointed with my suggestion.

I think I've passed my most difficult challenge with that.

Overall loss since this trip began: 8 pounds. WOO! Only two more to pass the first "threshold weight" that's one of my more difficult weights to get past.

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So, the pundits and idiots are on the air this morning babbling about how Senator Clinton will be conceding to Obama this Wednesday. Even the ones who have spoken either directly with her or with her campaign and have gotten word straight from the horses ass, er, I mean mouth that she will NOT give up, EVAR! They still say they expect her to concede.

I'm calling no concession. She's trying to make Puerto Rico a state for gord's sake. What's next? Counting the Canadian vote? Or Mexico?

Point of fact: She'll be calling for Obama's concession on Wednesday to bring the party back together. This will give her ample ammunition for later when the Democrats completely shatter to say, "see, if that black bastard had just dropped out like I told him, none of this shit would have happened!"

Politics. Bleh.

Well, it's Monday. Hittin' it.