Small talk is just social lubrication.

Or, in my case, social sandpaper.

Whenever I see "lede" I think of you and your old-school journalism schooling.

It drives me crazy that Web Boggle won't allow that.

It doesn't? Web Boggle deserves a Special Comment, then. Blah, blah, Magna Carta, blah blah, Fourth Estate. Have they no respect? (Sort of a reader's digest Special Comment. Forgot the telegraph and some thing that totally makes sense to jocks but leaves the rest of us in the dust till the end...a telegram to Ty Cobb, perhaps?)

Sounds like an overall good appointment, askye, even though you're frustrated by the amount of weight loss. Particularly good about the no bad cysts. Excellent.

She said again she wants me walking 5 times a week.

maybe the hardest part, but it is the best thing you can do. To put it the way my doctor does, the more you move the big muscles - the more glucose you use. The more glucose you use - the easier it is to control what you eat ( oddly too much glucose that your body isn't useing is what makes the cupcakes at the grocery store 3 miles away scream your name.) But useing the big muscles is the key - it doesn't have to aerobic- just move. Actually this might be a great place for a pedometer- just push for more steps

It was a good appointment. I was worried about cysts but my ovaries were okay and the weight not coming off is due to stuff I'm not doing. But I'm making changes.

Beth, there's a group of women at work who've started walking about 1 1/2 miles after work 3 times a week. And I've done it a few times and it's nice, because it's relaxing after being stuck at work. I think that on the days I don't walk with them I'll go and use Mom's treadmill, then she and I can catch up on things and I can get some exercise in.

Glad it was a good appointment, askye, and I like the sound of your plan for walking.

Yay for a good appointment, askye! More good than bad, certainly.

About the talking thing. I tend to dislike it. But then I know I dislike it, so in an attempt to keep perfectly nice people from having to be around a silent, forbidding type like me, I do the social chitchat. But what often happens is my on switch goes from "social chitchat" into babble, inane babble, and gods help me I can't shut up. I'm getting better at hearing that pitch in my voice when the word velocity and voice intensity starts to climb and shutting the system down. But sometimes I'm sure it seems like I just...stutter to a stop, to people who have no idea what the idiot strange woman is on about.

It sometimes sucks to be human. But it's often good for a laugh.

I try to walk during lunch. Though for some months, I'll take a good book to a bench on the Mall and read for a few minutes. In inclement weather, duck into a museum.

Hate small talk. I'm terrible at it, not least because I seem to have nothing in common with most people with whom I'm obliged to talk small.

And talk in elevators ok as long as everyone knows everyone else and is part of the conversation (even if not everyone is talking).