diz tibe ei habe a code ad by doze id blogged. Part II

What a quandary and a dizzying probability it is that I may be afflicted with more than one malady at one time. My back and side pains methinks are due to an acute lower back injury, that feels like the deuce by morning from all the extra tossing the turning in bed that I am apt to. What is not cute is its lingering aftereffects and the pain, which when it arrives in the middle of the wee hours, means that one is laying there in bed, aware, awake and in pain before it is even respectably early enough to awake. It is, however, curious that I should discover this duality now, whence it had happily disguized itself in my long litany of ailments, maladroit injuries and confounded ill health. I had confused it with the flu and while I certainly have a case of cough and sneezing due to cold, and a weak head; the effects upon my vertibrae are now thought to have arisen from a completely diifferent set of cirsumstances and from something abjectly larger than something so small as a virus. How? I do not know. I blame the lack of real exercise.

I do have a rather bad case of a sinus headache and the sinus cavities mush be as jam-packed as a weekend nightclub on Granville Street, and about as slimy. I rather disapprove of detailed descriptions of the less-the-solid matter than my body is so keenly manufacturing and regularly ejecting of late. I should happly subject myself to the cure of a vacumn pump: one that would rapily evict the flood of transparent and otherwise unwanted mucus and infected nasal slime that now inhabit my sinus cavities. I also, unfortunately, shudder at the abject and maddening pain which would just as rapidly follow suit. The wincing thereupon would be as if some joker had plunged an ice pick into the space between one's eye and one's nose. Physicists and physicians alike would marvel at the possibilities of studying the dynamic fluid movement through the skull and sinus cavities as I move my head from side to side and any other movement which I must now undertake slowly - for the slow-moving musuc fluids arrive distinctly later than my head and it runs itself rather stressfully against the already sore insides. Then again as I've said before - all science students ought to be taken out and shot. Then then would learn about pain first-hand.

With the generous amount of fluid already drained from my sinuses, it is a wonder that any space is left over for the original inhabitants: the brain, the optic system, the ear and it's easily strained systems of canals and balancing forks. I wish that I could remove the front half of my head and scoop out the offending crap there and then put it back after giving it a good wash. Nothing a little vim or harpic couldn't fix.

Alas.

diz tibe ei habe a code ad by doze id blogged. Part I

It seems forever when I wrote here last. Two weeks can be forever when you're busy but are quickly whittled down to acceptable dimensions by the drudgery of whincing, moaning, sniffling and coughing my way through most of this past weekend and workday week. The influenza virus which has thus far seen fit not to fly from me, as afflicted various bodily processes. Not the least of which has been my lungs and very noticably - my ability to type. The haze and the attending throbbing dull sweel that is my sinus headache seems to be able to have me starring at the computer keyboard as if I had never seen anything like it in my entire lifetime and that it has not in fact been discovered yet. For the sake of recording this event for posterity, I shall describe my list of symptoms:

It began in the middle of last week, when I had the distinct memory of something small and sharp lodged in the back of my throat, much like a nasty bit of dry toast stuck in your tonsils - try as you might with your tongue, you are never quite able to dislodge it and on you go, swallowing and drinking, eating and hacking, trying to dislodge it for you know that if you fail to do so, it will rapidly manifest itself as a real malady. I failed to do so. So it was that I wasn't feeling all that well on the weekend. I could not help but intently stare at the pink and sickeningly moist wall that make up the swollen sides of my tonsils. With torchlight in hand and faced pressed against the mirror in the bath, I shone what feelble light into the back of my throat and am surprised to see no attending spots or unwelcome signs of sickness. For once, I am baffled; I am definately ill and yet see no visible signs except for the steadily growing volume of spit and phlegm and the attendant coughing and sneezing. The head is light and I am feeling weak and a curious development will make this 'flu more insidious than ever before: my ribs and sides ache when I sleep and it seemed that the only position that I could and can now still hold is that on my back and it still results in a cold and aching back when I awake. It is also perhaps time to replace the vitamins, as when I take these now (and admittedly have not done for some time), I am afflicted by which seems like heartburn. The stomach swells and I feel as if I am digesting on air and it is not agreeing with me. The weekend passes and I am faced with the unhappy prospect of attemping to make it to work at UBC, through the inclement winter weather, to a job that at best is to be described as interesting. It is with much effort that I rouse my aching back and sides from the bed and deliver myself unto the gaping maw that is the skytrain station's escalator at Lougheed Mall. I am jolted into semi-consciousness as the bus lurches to a sudden halt at the bus loop.

Warriors and soldiers.

Let me get something straight - we not longer have warriors. We are no longer supposed to have warriors. We are supposed to have soldiers. Soldiers in the modern Canadian context, are citizen who by unbiased and uncoerced choice have decided, volunteered, to become part time warriors. Part time within that microcosm of the human existence withch has become the bane of it as well as a source of morbid fascination and coutless tales - war. The citizen soldiery submits to law and the lawful command of lawfully appointed officers. To deal out death and destruction when and where instructed - if and only when instructed to do so by lawfully granted authority. Granted by the Crown in right of Canada, by the order in coucil of the Parliament of Canada, by the whole Parliament of lawfully elected representatives of the people's voice - vox populi, by the behest of a lawful and representative group of citizenry - to aid in civil matters. Not at their own behest. No the the behest of a small number of readily outspoken and aggressive A-type characters simply because it's funny, it suits it, it's deserved or not. Such things are the actions of warriors, born and bred within a warrior culture, with its own arcane rituals of character and attitude warping to produce a malleable soul, to usurp effort to the good of the leader only. Nazism - warrior castism write large? Perhaps. It exists today and I fear that it rears its ugly head in our schools and in any other setting where large groups are artifically posed together for periods of time. High school and the army have much in common - for it is only the the expanses of university, when school-goers begin to spread out and become wary of cliques and the dangerous mob mentality that springs up so quickly and readily. School gands owe much to the Western world's fascination with cultivating enough warrior types to resist the invading Moslems and Easterners - that we may only just be remember to turn that particular tap off.

I can emulate a warrior. A part-time warrior when called upon to remember that I am capable of acting as a bloodthirsty pack of savages like what I am paid to do. But doing so in a rational environment wherein I have rules to abide by and not the personal whims of what I or a groupd of friends believe. There is a reason and justification why might must not ever control right - for we would end outselves very quickly.

We are, as yet, unfortunately, still necessary in this flawed yet wonderful world. I shall be only too willing to give up and get out if we as humans are capable of change - as I have said for a long time: to negate the police force, is to negate the armed force. But people have not changed and we need an army to defend ourselves of our collective evils.

I am a soldier of the Queen. An officer of the Crown. I must protect those who cannot protect themselves - and some of these wear the same uniform as I.

What a tangled web we weave...

I shall absolutely be undone if there are more days and nights like these which try not only the spirit, but wracking the soul as we share the pain of others going through a struggle, the pain of which one cannot lift a finger to ease.

I am tired to hearing stories of how the old army used to be - of countless days and nights of mean fun, some boyish and others of the ugly spirit that causes hazing. Some people believe that a perfect warrior is created in a bond of kinship of like spirits; who must endure a rite of fellowship and whose bravery and aggressive demeanor must be worn not only on the sleeve for all to see, but displayed regularly lest a softer side be betyayed as weakness. The people undoubtedly believe that pure loyalty regardless of rhyme or reason is more important that right, or doing the right thing. I have seen this thing first hand and the work it fashions - not without purpose nor good of its own, but I fear that the good that it does produce is overcast by the darkness that it brings to what is light in our spirit. The need for acceptance in a male-cultured, male-structured environment is not new, nor is it isolated to one race or country or region. But it is distince to one culture - the culture of the warrior. I am not acquainted with female-warrior societies, so I have to reference point, and therefore, I am de facto talking about male warrior culture. I must needs talk in generalities for to speak in specifics will betray the truth and I fear that not all are ready and willing to accept it wholesale, regardless of what they may like to hear themselves say.

I am tired of hearing about what used or did not used to be done on the floor of the Sergeants' mess, or which bimbo or trench trollop did what with which and to whom. I would much rather hear about how you intend to make this all better. I want to hear about how you intend to bring this Regiment forward in though and action, to be better integrated (no, we are not) with the community at lrage wich mostly is indifferent, if not fearful and distasteful of our presence and existence. This is born of ignorance partly, but also of a stylized recasting of our image by the media, in literature, and by what we see and hear. So much is weighed upon our first impressions. I fear that the army does not leave good ones. I want to hear how you intend to take this Regiment forward into a new era of understanding and being closer with our communities by participating and become a live and active boon to our surround, and not a drain. I want to progress, not be dragged into the 1950s and 60s when things were remenesciently nice for you and when you were comfortable talking about women as if they were dirt or pieces of meant or reproductive organs on a pair of legs. Those days are gone and good riddance to bad rubbish. It is precisely this persistent hanging on to the ill-starred past that surely must have brought about our unhappy state of recent events. I will not get into details for I don't know all that has occured. But I cannot simply stand around for leadership is wanted. Real leadership. The officer corps must do something. We cannot sit idly by and hope that it either goes away or worse, is not important enough for us to do something that displays for all to see and hear, what we are truly made of. I fear that the senior leadership is too much of the old school to do the right thing or with enough vigour that the question is no longer in doubt - that the officers are for good and right and a sense of decency, not the crass and low-born animal reaction, to be accepted and a desire to bring about the ways of yesteryear a reality! How can it be? If that course of events are allowed to manifest than I shall indeed be aggrieved to call myself an officer of any worth in this Regiment. I am willing to see that justice will take it's due course as it should, but that it is not trifled with.

It is infuriating not to know details for the mind asks over and over, like a neophyte at school on the first day, but I am tired of fruitless quests for right when it all seems to and too readily given up for the temporary sin of being acceptable for now. Have we come so far from our beginnings and yet learnt so little? Can this really be the end of so proud a battalion? It is perhaps a little due to that pride which helped foster so mean a spirit that the evil dared rear it's head in the sinful thought that perhaps some people aren't welcome in the battalion. We will have fallen into our own devices if we fall back upon the erroneous belief of darwin - that we should be kept busy fighting one another, when the true evil is that much harder to see and find.

I was ready to step up to the plate and speak to the CO, but it seems that under the guise of talking about his own departure, Rob has beaten me to it again. I was quite ready and willing to put my career in the reserve into my own hands and speak up for what I hold true, but well, Rob's a good man in his own right as well and I am thankful for him. I shall be deeply annoyed when and if he goes.

O, what a tangled web we weave, when we practice to deceive. - Sir Walter Scott (1808) Marmion

Be careful for what you wish for - you may get it and yet not be part of your wish.

The day began with such promise. And in some way it was not without triumph - and not without hopes and disappointment. It end with less angst and frustration that it normally ends in and for that I am thankful. I am also thankful for friends which made the extra effort to come down to the armoury on a free day when they could have been elsewhere. I only wish that they both would have had more time to explore the infinestismal bric-a-brac and artefact that is the bit-peice tradition and memory of the Regiment. Of the day itself I will write later.

It has been long and with the hour approaching midnight, I am finding comfort in being home among my things, my space and finding myself even further away and removed from the current world.

It ends somewhat spent yet yearning for a new day to wash itself over my head like a torrent, bringing new adventures and experience and new and old faces to colour the canvas of my mind.

Unlocking. Extraction. Ejection. Loading. Insertion. Locking. Firing.

Repeat as necessary.

=========

G-R-I-T or GRIT = Group, Range, Indication, Type-of-Fire

e.g. Two Platoon, 100 (metres), reference lone pine at 2 o'clock, two fingers right at edge of tree line - enemy hiding behind bush, RA-PID FIRE!

It's nice being able to write whatever I want to - not that I need to but since I'm tired, I though tI'd take a moment to concentrate on the things which I haven't had to use in a while and practice. Greg is very well read and surpasses even myself and probably all the officers combined. Bit of a prick. Annoying as well but still very well read and a definate know-it-all. This contrasts with Rad who is young, eager and Polish. Which makes him very eager and agressive and not so concerned with authority unless he works directly for you and can't either outrun you or outfight you - anything else in any shape rank or form is fair game for his wanton lack of respect. I'm sure being chosen top candidate did not a little to swell his head.

How is anyone supposed to weave this disparate mob into a team of officers who can work together in the field and not get themselves, let alone their troops, killed?

Lieutenant John Milne is the senior subbie, or subaltern. He is 37 and living in Portland, Oregon with his ex-girlfriend, now his new wife, Katherine, while he finishes up his cyropractic education. John is a lean, jovial, friendly scot with a border accent in his head (that'd be the Scottish border) and we are always exchanging knowing glances when we catch each other using the humour and wit of the old country and it sometimes seems that we only know. John reminds me greatly of what the English, or British still do right - they grow up with a good sense of right and 3wrong and don't have a huge hangup about 2 very annoying North American traits: the worry about liability and the political correctness. When he and I say "handicapped" or "crippled", there is no malice in it. He does not bat an eyelid and doesn't hesitate to have some holigan up against the locker by the scruff of their collar or neck. For all my education and experiences, I am less prone to doing stuff like that but the sentiment is there. "Good luck" he says to me as he leaves for Portland - knowing that I'd be lef tin a sea of new officers with little to do about control and everything to do with keeping sane and "helping" them alone with how officers should act.

Impressionables: Vlad, Nick, Roland - mostly well entrenched into the Rad version of life, seeing as they want to learn from the best, and rightly so. Too bad they the subbies are mostly on their own and don't have anyone to rein them in, so we dont' churn out little monsters like Rad who admitted that he doesn't intend to take prisoners. As far as he's concerned, other than it being beyond his capacity as a warrior-leader, the precedent has been set somewhere and he is intent on following it to his utmost. Whatever doesn't get his troops killed.

Well, what happens when the troops start dying? I have no doubt that Rad will be the first to win the VC. With his natural athleticism and boyish need to fulfill himself, he will do well. But I seem to recall the old adage - don't share a trench with someone braver than you are. Luck and fortune, true to its own adage, are with him for he is nothing if not audacious.

For now.

Then again, it is meet that junior officers should be wild for if they are not, they are already useless, for they will not act when need be and the ability to know what can and cannot be done is best learned by being told and no-one tells you if you do the cautious thing all the time. Where's the senior subbie when you need him. Hang on - I'm the senior subbie when John's not here.

Good luck indeed.



Must try to find a copy of John Masters' "Bugles and a tiger".

What a gyp it is to be waiting for something that you end up not doing. Procrastination isn't just not nice - it is a terrific waste of time.

It has certainly been an interesting journey and one heck of an amusement ride.

Head tired from not sleeping enough during the week, when I average about 3.5hours per night. I suppose daydreaming with yout eyes open during the week doesn't really count. Already decided on Christmas holiday time. Actually decide by Carole, who wants time off from about 18 Dec until the new year - is it just me or is that 3 weeks? I get 2 for the first time in many years. What am I going to do? Why does Gord want to be at work for the days leading up to Christmas? Doesn't he have anything better to do? Presents to wrap, peoplel to visit? Bottles to buy. Speaking of the buying season - On the bus home from picking up my uniform, I noticed that people are out doing Christmas shopping already. These keeners need to join the other group of people who are being force-fed the lard, but in their case, the grinch needs to empty out the space under their Christmas tree just before they wake up on Christmas morning. Or else fill their stockings with dirt. Coal's too expensive these days.

Will likely be going over to the parents' tomorrow to do some laundry and then to take them out to dinner again. These trips, 'tho nice, are beginning to get somewhat expensive, since I'm doing all the buying. Except for the one time that the place we went to didn't take interac and I only had about $40 in cash on me - the meal came to $80 - so Adrian chipped in what ever he had in his wallet. Otherwise everything else has been my treat so far and I'm going to have to cut back on the family visits.

Que sera sera

Ei hab a code id by doze

Actually it's all over me, but mainly concentrated in my head. So perhaps it is a head cold. I nearly did not come into work this morning because I have a bad headache and the nagging concern that I've forgotten to do something. The throat is not getting better and I shall be going into Remembrance Day with a sick head and a sore throat and some dicky thing or other. Dicky heart, dicky bladder, dicky leg - something's got to give sooner or later. The whole logistics officer thing has thrown me into a funk and a big blue funk at that. I remind myself that I haven't been despondent and exactly lethargic these past 6 years at the Seaforths and they have time and again called upon my time and effort and I am finally taking a mental breather, except that there are no breathers allotted - mental or otherwise.

I am tired in many ways, but I keep reminding myself - rightly or wrongly, that the effort alone is well worth it and that the drive to accomplish things embues energy in and of itself. But am I merely wearing myself down. There are some days when I wonder if all this effort and pain and suffering and doubt and fear and guilt and struggle - is really worth it.

I console my self - soul and body that it is, in fact the struggle and all that makes life itself, not the momentary solitute, peace and pseudo-spiritual "awakening" that we tell ourselves that we have experienced when we walk through the primaeval jungle or gaze at the known world below from the top of the mountain, is the very essense of life. Of our struggle to overcome the vast gulf between the way we are and they way we can be.

From time to time, we all very often find ourselves huddled in the expansive dark corners of our conscience, bundling our knees into ourselves and screaming out for help. Wondering and worrying about money, relationships, work etc. How much more could we be if we really tried and not wallowed in mediocrity simply because it was easy to be just that? DO get by with a modicum of effort. That must be the very central thing that gnaws away at us - out human potential crying out at us, telling us to be bold and free and yearns to see a true effort and not the mere fruits of that's-all-I-need-to-do-to-get-ahead - hang around. Is it? There is something more. It is certainly part of me. There is a bound spirit that yearns to be free and life as we are meant to that finds itself muffled and chained by circumstance and fear/guilt. Do I really have what it takes?

I don't know. i think about my very short existence in a battle zone and cringe that I may get myself and others uselessly slaughtered because I was either too cautious or not cautious enough. I don't see a warrior when I look at myself. I rather see a General. But who in their right mind would let a 3-rate logistics old man with the body of a old prosperous merchant take soldiers into battle?

Geoff Atkins is here: "you could get shot if you took this long to get an answer in battle".

Typical.

Loyalty, like fame - is fleeting. Especially if the one in whom you must place it, is a barren vessel.

I used to think that engineers were the most organized and efficient of people - I now recognize that they tend to be somewhat efficient and organized, and have a great capacity for detail, but that extends only to their own project and the scope of the world beyond the confines of their office is blurred and small in its totality. How?

Leaders and managers must, by definition, lead and manage, but must by compulsion also resist the temptation to extend their self-styled divinity to the realm of thing over which they do not have actual control. To control and arrange the daily lives and work haibts of people at the business end of how things work, is to foul up the cogs yourself. Micromanagement at its worst sows the seeds of frustration and hate, and the lack of trust that is at the very heart of its messsage, does not send the good, relationship forming signals that are required to make any team work.

The nitty-gritty details of how things are done are best left to those who have to actually perform the task. That's why managers were invented - so that people could prepare a general direction and the actual forms to be filled, tasks to tbe completed and deadlines are best left to those who can interact with their partners in the various departments to better decide what is need and when and what is the most efficient method of doing this within the confines of what is required by the overall policy.

My respect for my employer (notice I didn't say boss), has shrivelled to an acceptance that he has a good memory. I hear that he is a good strategic think all the time. I am not now so convinced of this - he takes a lot of good ideas and brings them here. That is commendable to be sure, but the many-varied demands on his time, not the least of which is his strike to complete his PhD, has short-circuited his memory, all the while, he remains gruffly agressive over what he feels is his right and perogative as a Director to mete out edicts and directives as he sees fit - regardless of the exigencies of the current plethora of tasks and a myriad of other things which he has committed himself, and therefore, all of us who work for him, to accomplish. His annoyance is then too quickly transferred back to his complaining and whinging minions, when he is in turn, reminded by those parties of his commitments and that his contrived plans did not work and he expects us to lightning-fast change tack and place whatever he is telling us at the moment to be his ultimate priority. What about those other things? Well, those are priorities too. As can be expected, his solutions all appear to work on the surface, but deeper digging finds that they are all of the ad hoc kind and born of a too-busy mind - and he is that - busy. Too busy.

I have ranted before about not wanting to stay where I am at UBC, but this has to be tempered with the awful truth that I have a mortgage to contend with and it must need be my primary concern. Does this then mean that be have to belittle ourselves and stifle our needs and concerns, as human beings never mind as employees? I don't know. This will be a question for the ages - and a little daring would prove useful but we tend to lose more and more of that spark called daring when we age. fortes fortuna juvat - fortune favours the brave. I could do with some better fortune.

She busy. Let go - see if she comes back one last time.

Olivia Fetherstonhaugh.

43263029

Blue Chip Cookies

Must see. She nice. Face like old friend. Gave me her hand. Friendly.

My mind and I - a conversation.

Diet?

Yes please.

No, no, that means you have to go on one.

Oh.

Yes, so you'll have to watch what you eat...

i do that already.

Yes, I don't mean literally. I mean that you have to eat healthy.

Er...

Fruits and vegetables.

Fruits and vegetables?

Yes, and less proteins and fat carbohydrates.

No steak then?

Steak?

Yes, steak

Look, did you hear what I'd just said?

What.

Fruits and vegetables.

Oh, right. And everything in moderation, right?

Yes, exactly. Less sweets and more fibre.

Like chicken?

well, no, like...

Fish?

No.

Mutton?

No.

Pork? (incredulously)

No. (annoyed)

Hmmm...

Listen, please. Try vegetables, rice, grains, legumes, er.. beans

(nasty expression)

okay?

Okay.

Oh yes, and exercise.

Exercise?

(sigh) yes, exercise - you do know what exercise is, don't you?

Look, of course I do...

When's the last time that you had some?

Wouldn't you like to know? That's somewhat personal...

Exercise.

Oh.

(pause)

Well, I walk everyday.

Good. How far and how long?

From the house to the skytrain station and then from the bus loop to the office and back again.

(incredulous) Do you do anything that you have to sweat for?

What's with all the personal questions?

I'm your conscience since you don't seem to have one.

Oh. Well, some personal stuff once or twice a day.

Like what?

You know.

No.

Er... like choking the chicken.

Huh? What?

Choking the..

Look, you needn't go on - I'm talking about healthy physical exercise here - you need to work on your cardiovascular and some weight training wouldn't be bad either.

Oooh.

Yes, that right - you need to raise your heartrate higher than that of a knitting hamster.

well...

Try working it in slowly.

(a sigh of relief)

But you must get some exercise and start running and try swimming.

(nasty expression)

Don't wince - it'll eb good for you.

Alright.

And next time let me know when you're coming around - I'll have the workmen remove the door frame so that you can get into the room.

Okay.

Good. You can stand up now.

i am standing.

Oh. Perhaps some surgery is called for.

No, no - I'll be fine. I'll just go now.

(grunt)

(grunt)

(grunt)

Er..

Yes?

No steak?

No steak.

(mumbled) shit.

♪ Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen... salty old Queen of the Sea... ♪

Sang Danny Kaye as Hans Kristian Andersen, er Anderson. It certainly seems frosty enough these mornings. I am starting to feel a certain telltale tickle at the back of the throat - heralding the onset of the of a sore throat. I am unsure what brought it around this time - and I surmise that it is likely the sudden propensity to breathe in the freezing cold air, which musn't do very good things for the throat, never mind the hands, neck and other tender and frost-bitten extremities.

I am also not feeling well about myself - image-wise that is. I went to Mountain Equipment Co-op last Friday to buy a climbing harness package that would have let me go rock climbing with the other Seaforth officers on the weekend. Dave has already had them over 3 weekends in a row and I'd managed to duck out. Not that I was concerned over the height issue, for I do have a fear of heights but in my mind a several hundred plummet wouldn't be as bad as say, a 50-foot one. At least you'd have a bit more time to chew it over and get used to the idea of arriving with a sudden alarming splatter against some immovable rock, who is likely just as surprised and likely just as annoyed. Afterall, who wants to spend the rest of the lovely afternoon outside of their skin and in gobs and bits rather than coherent and epidermis intact. Truth is, I didn't want to waste money by renting something and while not a skinflint, I am in some dire financial straits right now. Penny wise, pound foolish? That's me alright.

So anyway, I am told that the size 34 is XL (extra large) and in my incredulity, I try it on and it bloody well doesn't fit. Are all rock climbers built liek beanstalks? Someone should tie them up and forcefeed them lard or something. Any any rate, I find that I need to get a XXL, which they don't have in stock and he doubts if I will fit an XXL and perhaaps require an XXXL, or in other words, ecnonomy-sized, your-butt-is-larger-than-a-bus-sized, you-should-not-be-doing-this-since-it-will-likely-kill-you-sized. All very dishearteneing and made me not feel very well about myself and so I have decided not to go rock climbing until I have thinning myself down to a size popular enough to be carried on the shelves without someone yelling, "hey, someone here needs a triple extra large, do you know if they make them"? All sorts of people at MEC require extra long regimens of lard force-feeding.

I am not bitter about it but am certain that something must be done to retard the slow and unseen process of packing away the fat in the body's crevices. I do not have the natural fat-burning abilities of a woman and need to revert to a regimen of exercise and proper diet.