Yesterday I went to Med Clinic and found out that I'd actually lost some weight. I don't remember exactly how much, but it was fairly significant. It was unexpected news...when I look in the mirror all I see is "gut". I thought I would have GAINED weight during the last three months since I was there. It sure ain't coming off of my waist, I can assure you of that.

I'm still reading Koontz's "Intensity". My opinion of it hasn't changed much since I last mentioned it here. The story has picked up somewhat. But I still think his writing is dismal. I believe Stephen King called him a "hack". I'm tempted to agree. "Light reading" indeed, but I guess that's not such a bad thing every now and again.

I read some while waiting to see the doctor at the Med Clinic. It's usually an hour and a half wait to see the doc for 5 minutes. When I first started going there I would get very irritated and annoyed that the wait was so long (I've seen people get almost violently angry because of the lengthy wait). But anymore I just take a book, relax and think of it as a good time to take care of a nice big chunk of whatever book I happen to be reading at the time. The other people there, thought they are loud and often annoying, don't really bother me too much anymore. I've learned to tune them out. There's only one guy who distracts me...he has some quite bizarre conversations with himself. I can't help but stop in mid-paragraph to try and hear what he's talking about.

So, when I finally do get in to see the doctor I don't mind that I will only spend 5 minutes with him. After all, he's not my personal psychiatrist. He knows it, I know it, not a big deal. Basically he's just there to write a prescription for the same medicine I've been taking for the last year and a half (which, thank God, seems to be working).

But he's a pretty cool guy. Our entire visits generally consist of him asking me what I'm reading, me telling him, then him commenting on it. Most of the time I agree with him, although I was somewhat offended when he said that Charles Dickens' novels put him to sleep.

Yesterday, when I showed the copy of "Intensity" I was reading, he mentioned that he thought Koontz was okay, that he had a "dark side". He contrasted that with his view that Stephen King wrote with a similar "darkness" but was more the kind of author who "kept you hanging on the edge of your seat". Koontz was a much more subdued writer, in his opinion, but, he reiterated, definitely wrote about "the dark side".

And so he does, I suppose.

When I finish this one I think I'll move on with Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. I'll be on Book 5, so I'm familiar with it's locales, it's characters, it's themes, et. al. I plan on reading the entire series (which is 11 books long at the moment), but I always read a few books in between installments, so I don't get burned out on them.