Carb-loading and loaded words

At left: More pretty foliage on the ODU campus.

Oh, dear. I don't know how much more turkey I can eat! I had been luxuriating in leftovers, but turkey seven lunches and suppers in a row is a bit much. Today I got creative and made a sandwich with bread, a layer of turkey, a layer of stuffing and a layer of mashed potatoes and gravy. It was, of course, delicious...as most insane culinary concoctions are. Yes, I'll have carbs and protein and carbs and carbs with more carbs on top! The mashed potatoes and stuffing are slowly but surely disappearing, but the turkey? I eat it and eat it, and there's hardly a dent! I finally had to break down tonight and eat something else for supper. The turkey is still moist and delicious, but I just couldn't take any more.

Now for the loaded words portion: Last week Tom called me, so this week I called him. The chat went well. Then at the end, he said something along the lines of: "As always, if anything major changes in my life, I'll let you know." My mind was racing with a thousand questions, but there were none I could ask without it being awkward, so I replied something like, "Great. I'll talk to you soon. Bye."

"As always, if anything major changes in my life, I'll let you know?" What does that mean? Maybe Tom thought I had been calling too much and he wanted me to stop. No, he called me last week. I'm reciprocating. It's not like I'm calling him a lot or out of the blue. I've been asking about his job hunting. Maybe Tom was tired of that and wanted me to stop. Maybe he (or a friend) read about the Jake thing in my blog, and Tom wants me to know I can tell him about it. Maybe Tom's warning me that he's about to tell me about something major that's happened to him -- like he's started dating...Aaah! Or Tom could just mean exactly what he said, which is a bit awkward, but much less alarming than any of the other options. Todd thinks the statement is brilliant in its ambiguity, and Rose thinks I should go with the final, reassuring interpretation. I agree, though that is the interpretation in which I am the most neurotic. Hello, neurosis!