I just had salad. Really.

Lauri reacts as Maria (right) glares at her ex at Pizza Hut.
I have yet another reason not to like Pizza Hut.
I've long felt theirs was the closest thing to generic pizza around. They compound the felony by serving only Pepsi products.
But I agreed to go with the flow today when Maria and our friend Lauri decided they and I and coworker Sam should go to Pizza Hut for lunch.
About 10 minutes after we were seated, Maria glanced up and noticed her ex, his wife and her children at the salad bar.
They pretended not to notice and we made no effort to greet them.
Unfortunately, Maria isn't at the same place with her ex that I am. I harbor no ill feelings for my ex. I don't seek her out, but I don't go out of my way to avoid her, either. She's re-married to a genuinely nice guy and I'm glad she's in a relationship that makes her happy.
Unfortunately, Maria's divorce wounds are still festering, largely because of the way her ex has turned his back on their kids. So the encounter, call it a sighting, wrecked her mood and soured her stomach.
I haven't blogged for a few weeks - not since the mid-February blizzard - because I came down with a cold and lost all of my motivation.
One area where I have remained motivated is in the weight loss program Maria and I are on. Since Jan. 1, I've lost about 24 pounds and Maria is down nearly 20 pounds. And we're feeling fine with the diet and aren't tempted to dive head-first into a 55-gallon drum of ice cream. It's a doctor-supervise deal and we check in every Wednesday morning for weigh-in, blood pressure and pulse checks. The three components are drugs (phentermine, chromium and vitamin B12), diet and exercise in the form of 10,000 steps/day as measured by a pedometer. Neither of us has done 10k steps in a day since we started the program, but now that the weather is breaking, the dogs and iPods are beckoning and it's beginning to look more convenient.