A fictional crime boss made me what I am today.

I’m talking about Tony Soprano … if you’ve seen his show on HBO, you might’ve cringed at the sight of him waddling around with his Escalade spare tire straining the fabric of his wife-beater undershirt.

It got to the point where I could look at myself sideways in the mirror and realize: holy shit, my gut looks just like his. See, if you’re the boss of a crime family, you don’t fret over fat because if anybody gives you any crap about it, you can whack ’em. Or maim if you’re feeling oddly merciful because you hate mayhem on Mondays.

I was fine with Tony being alternately charming and homicidal. You take your quality TV where you can get it — even if it celebrates remorseless killers who earn a living shaking down smalltime entrepreneurs and skimming union pension funds. The show has a lot going for it (irony, pathos, soap-opera melodrama). I just couldn’t abide having Tony’s gut.

So, thanks Tony. I’m down about 30 pounds since I started keeping count back in January. Here’s how I did it:

Sweat, yes; sweets, no: I didn’t get my diet out of a best-seller. I just stopped eating Melissa’s chocolate chip cookies every day (these are the best cookies in the known galaxy, so giving them up is no small sacrifice) and started exercising long and hard. I had Melissa put little mini carrots or celery slices in my lunch and I munched on them between lunch and dinner.

Don’t run, walk: Running just tears up your knees; walking is great exercise, but only if you do it as fast as you can, for as long as you can. Or uphill. Or, better yet, both. My usual morning walk is three miles downhill, then three miles back up. Takes me about an hour and 45 minutes. I do this three or four times a week, then do a major hike on the weekends.

Avoid ruts: You have to keep throwing something new at your body — otherwise it’ll adapt to your new exercise/diet regimen, recalibrate your calorie-burning and leave you wondering why what worked last week isn’t working this week. I walked at a normal pace for the first couple months, then added steep hills, then added extra speed, then added speed on the steep hills. Lately I’ve been walking Nordic-style with poles (like cross-country skiing, minus the skis) … it’s hard work — burns 40 percent more calories than walking alone — and I’m not losing much, but I’ve been able to sneak a bit more beer and ice cream back into my diet without weight gains.

Fix it in stone: Most people figure their work’s done when the weight’s off. Thing is, it’s only beginning. I’ve already lost many of my motivations: the Tony gut is mostly gone; I’ve hiked as much as 16 miles up hills I’d never have imagined climbing a year ago. But I’ve one thing going for me: I’ve accepted that the only way to stay in shape is to constantly look for new hills to climb. The cool thing is that the view’s always better up there.

Saturday dawned rainy, windy and foggy on our little hill, so I figured it was a perfect day to spend in out of the weather. It was the last day of the San Francisco International Auto Show, which is one of the biggest and best in the country. If you’re into cars.

The show’s in the Moscone Convention Center downtown, taking up parts of three sections of the place, which is massive.

It’s all about he possibilities unleashed by the internal combustion engine — this one has the sides removed so you can see the pistons, valves, drive belts, etc.

Ask any guy and he’ll confirm: It’s impossible not to look at a naked Nissan pickup truck.

They’re several years shy of earning their learners’ permits, but they can always dream.

The three elements in this Cooper Mini’ s headlight assembly fascinated me — in a just world there’d be three settings on every headlight switch: normal, high and thermonuclear for those losers who won’t dim their lights when they’re coming at me on two-lane roads late at night.

Every car show Walter Mitty imagines himself at the wheel of one of these racecars when he hops into his Camry for the drive home. Which is why I took BART to the city.

This impossibly cool Lamborghini (impossibly expensive at $193, 955), reminded me of something my good friend Gerald once told me about how the character of two European nations is reflected in their cars.

“Italians crave style, Germans crave power.”

Here’s one of those German muscle cars: A Mercedes designed to rip up the Autobahn.

The whiz kids over at Porsche mock the pretensions of mass-market automakers like Mercedes. I imagine their engineers bumping into each other in Berlin bars — first one loudmouth mocks his rivals’ brake caliper design; from the other side comes a taunt about fuel injectors. Soon a melee ensues. Pocket calculators are smashed against skulls, eyeglasses crushed under heels. Look, after you’ve stared at a hundred cars you’ll never hope to own, you have nothing but your fantasies.

Back here on earth among cars Real Americans drive, it appears the folks at Ford have given their Mustang a new nose reminiscent of a ’70 Mach 1 and are pretending it’s a whole new car. Scads of people fall for the gambit.

Now this is a Ford I could get excited about. And I’ll have a getaway car for the bank robbery required to make the first payment.

A bunch of these guys had to stand up up there for hours and recite the wonders of their automotive wares. This guy seems to be saying “why on earth wouldn‘t you buy this car?” I was seriously bummed that there weren’t more sexy female spokesmodels, but this is San Francisco, after all.

This guy has a bright future in late-night infomercials: he was hawking this miracle stain remover as if it’d been Fed-Exed from Heaven Above.

What’s that, a 60-mile-per-gallon Zap-mobile making love to a Hummer H1?

And what could this be but its hydrogen-powered H2 love child?

That’s a lotta Miatas — sorry to all of you who thought yours would be a collector’s item.

Mint-condition Corvette from the first model year: priceless.

Souped-up Pinto racer: pointless.

So those are my highlights. I have this strange adoration of cars, because I’m perfectly happy driving my Ford Focus ZX3 — it’s cheap, comfortable, paid off, all the things I need in an automobile. On some theoretical level I’d love to be able to drive a Porsche or Ferrari, but it’s enough for me that these cars exist and that somebody gets to make them, and drive them.

After I got bored with the car show I started heading back down to Market Street
to catch the BART train back to the East Bay. Somewhere along the way I spotted
Coit Tower, which didn’t look too terribly far away (actually it’s a couple
miles) so I figured what the heck, how about a little urban hike?

I paused for lunch at the San Francisco Brewing Company … which has good
beer made on site and not-too-shabby sandwiches. I had a sausage sandwich and
fries that were pricey but tasty. The great thing about San Francisco’s world-class
restaurants is that they force all the other eateries in town to raise their
standards. So even bars like this one serve food with gourmet touches.

That’s the Transamerica Pyramid down the street. I know I should resist the
temptation but I always want to take pictures of it when I’ve got my camera
handy.

Here’s Coit Tower. Note the perfect blue sky — a storm blew through last night
and washed away all the air pollution.

On the right it’s the Bay Bridge from Oakland.

On the left it’s the Golden Gate to Marin county. This is probably one of the
few places in the city where you can see both bridges.

And, of course, Alcatraz. I can’t remember the skies being so clear in all
my previous visits to the city.

I walked past these on the way back downtown to catch the BART home.

All I could think of was this: don’t mess with Satan, he’s got three
testicles.

The fact that we live in a glorified hunting cabin did not deter Melissa from
crafting a Thanksgiving feast with turkey and trimmings. There is the small
issue (in here, all issues are small) that the kitchen is also the dining room,
so it’s hard to find pretty pictures when the background is full of the industrial-strength
implements of holiday excess.

This is as elegant as it gets around these parts. Melissa kept the table understated
so as not to detract from the food.

There it is: the boid. Melissa spread butter under the skin and basted it about
a million times. There was no dry turkey breast in these parts, thank you very
much.

Melissa gets the gravy ready. Not that this turkey needed gravy, mind you.
It was just one of those nice-to-have things.

Melissa’s homemade pumpkin pie — she made the crust from scratch and added
upmteen spices and secret ingredients to some canned pumpkin. Scrumptious.

It was crowded on that table, and most of the food hasn’t even arrived yet.

Candles in apple cores form the centerpiece.

Trimming a leg down to the bone.

Melissa’s thankful that she can finally start eating some of this stuff, which
she spent all day cooking.

The aftermath.

Oh, and to Whoever’s in charge of such things: thanks for the sunset.

Today’s the 43rd anniversary of my arrival on this planet. I wish I had one
of those Pulled From the Head of A God stories of my birth, but I suspect it
was mostly normal. Or at least as normal as anything involving me could be.

I liked 42 better because it was Douglas Adams’ answer to the ultimate question
of Life, the Universe and Everything, but this one will do. People ache and
whine and moan over their accumulating years but as far as I’m concerned, I’d
rather be accumulating them above ground.

So I’ve been taking a little mini-vacation — call a six-day weekend — and
as has been my habit of late I’ve been wandering the countryside with my handy
digicam to document the visual highlights. It’ll have to do till they perfect
the transmissions of smells and sensations over the Internet. Today’s pix are
in three parts: Day 1 was at Coyote Hills Park and Don Edwards National Wildlife
Refuge; Day 2 was at Grant County Park; Day 3 was a day trip Melissa and I took
to Mendocino, a nifty little coastal burg about 200 miles north of us.

Day One: Coyote Hills and Don Edwards Wildlife Refuge

Coyote Hills Park is in the background from this spot at the wildlife refuge.
The hills are just high enough to provide a mild workout and offer great views
of the surrounding countryside. The southern end of the San Francisco Bay forms
the park’s western boundary.

Lots of cool rocks in the Coyote Hills. Didn’t see any coyotes, but I’m sure
they’re sneaking around somewhere.

Weather was cold, windy and all-around nasty, but that’s a good motivator to
keep moving down the trail.

From the top of the hills, the marshes beckon. And besides, the wind’s not
so biting down there.

Though the arrival of winter rains has greened up the hills a bit, brown is
the operative color. Any dab of brighter color on the landscape is an excuse
to take a picture. These seem to be wild berries that ripen at this time of
year

A boardwalk goes right out into the middle of the marsh.

The prettiest pictures need no caption.

Ducks must be the hardiest of waterfowl. Seems like every body of water bigger
than a mud puddle has a few.

Those are the highlights of the Coyote Hills. After a few hours there I hopped
in the car and drove over to Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge, which is
just down the road a couple miles.

There weren’t many birds around … my hunch is that many of them have migrated
by now. This wading bird was kind enough to stick around and have its picture
taken.

More trees doing wacky stuff. You think all a tree has to do is lean toward
the light and produce leaves, but around here they seem to have so much more
personality.

This tree looks like it was sent in from the plains of Africa.

The first explorers who came to the San Francisco Bay reported seeing millions
of birds that would set off a roar when they took off in flight. As more people
arrived, the birds began to disappear. I saw a few hundred, max. Just one more
example of humans not being worthy of such a swell planet.

Day 2: Grant Count Park

Grant County Park has something like 50 miles of trails, with lots of hills,
trees and wildlife. I was lucky lucky to have sunny, breezy weather (this time
of the year it rains about every other day) and mostly dry trails. The park
has flatlands, steep hillsides, shady groves of trees — just about everything
but people, if you go on a weekday as I did.

I was hiking up to a place called Scenic Overlook, which faces out over Silicon
Valley. High winds and storms from a few weeks back must’ve knocked this tree
down.

"Hey, look, it’s George W. Bush’s heart." I know, I need to get over
the election.

Walking up hills framed by cloud-dotted skies helps.

Here’s the top of the trail. Nice of them to leave that picnic table. I had
me some lunch and headed back down the hill.

These fence slats with their coating of moss are rather quaint. I don’t think
that fence could hold back a strong breeze after all these years, though.

OK, Cool Dead Tree No. 9349. Turns out there was something even cooler about
this one.

See, it’s full of all these holes, each of which has an acorn tightly wedged
into it. At first I wondered if squirrels were the culprits, but I found out
later that this is the work of "acorn woodpeckers," which carve these
holes in dead trees and fill them with acorns. A whole flock of woodpeckers
will use this tree to store months worth of seeds to last all winter.

I walked about 11 or 12 miles at the park. Didn’t see any wildlife, though
I’m almost positive I heard the snorting of wild pigs that live on the grounds.
I hear these pigs can grow big, ugly tusks. I’m not into finding out for sure,
though. It’s just too humiliating to be chased across a park by a pig.

Day 3: Mendocino (and Fort Bragg)

So Mendocino just sits there along the coast and all these tourists coming
over from Wine Country tours stop by and pay absurd prices for stuff.

The town has cute Victorian homes, lovely shops and these great big old water
towers that date to the time when people here had to work for a living doing
stuff like fishing and cutting trees.

We found this little burger joint tucked in behind a bunch of shops. This old
guy grills the burgers and does crosswords while the food’s cooking.

Melissa brings lunch: Two quarter-pound cheeseburgers, two orders of fries,
two Cokes — $24.50. Nothing like Disneyland prices to get you in the mood for
gawking.

Model sailboats in a shop window. It’d be a shame to part with such a prize,
which might explain the markup. (I didn’t see the price tag on it, but the eight-dollar
cheeseburgers told me not to expect bargains at the shops down the street).

Santa Season!

One shop sells humorous paintings by a local artist. This one is titled "Heaven."

Melissa scans the wares at the local yarn shop.

A newspaper from 1928, when another Republican won the presidency. Can’t help
hoping history doesn’t repeat itself.

While we were in the area, we drove up the road to Fort Bragg and stopped in
for a beer at the North Coast Brewing Company, which is billed as one of the
world’s best brewpubs.

Oatmeal stout, a couple kinds of ale and a pilsner. You tell from the foam
that this is the good stuff. I haven’t sampled all the world’s brews, mind you,
but this is some kick-ass beer, definitely among the best I’ve ever had. (Most
brewpubs would be better off serving Budweiser but this place had beer crafted
by a true brewmaster. Sure, it’s a 220 mile drive, but it’s worth it.)

Large stuffed Elk on wall not approved by the Sierra Club, I assume.

We found some cliffs to watch the sunset. I love the way pointing a digicam
at the sun at this time of night creates the impression of an atomic blast going
off.

Melissa was definitely coveting that house on the coastline.

And that’s the last of it.

… but the People have spoken and they prefer the go-it-alone fraternity president to the lets-take-some-friends-along Eagle Scout.

Kerry’ll have to face the music in the next couple days and admit he needed more than an Electoral College strategy. He needed a way to win Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, the Carolinas.

Now the spectre of Republicans running virtually everything has come to pass. They own the White House, the Congress, the Courts, the boardrooms of every American corporation, and, oddly enough, the loyalty of the most devoted Christians.

One thing they don’t own is me.

To vote Republican I would have to believe that the rich white guys who already control 90 percent of the cash and influence in America need little ol’ me to help ’em get a fix on that last 10 percent. Sorry guys — mind you I’d trade places in a heartbeat — but you’ve got all the help you need.

And stop telling me that the gays, the minorities, the poor, the intellectuals are the enemy. They’re my neighbors and they’re fine folks, for the most part. It’s annoying to be told they’re dragging the country into the gutter. It’s just a dirty old lie designed to trigger the basic human fear of anybody who’s different.

I don’t need that, and neither does the country. But you’ll never go broke telling people what they want to hear and keeping ’em scared of people they’ve never met. And you’ll certainly keep on winning elections.

Till the People wise up. Funny thing is, they always do.

I’ve got a few days of vacation coming at the end of the week so I’m gonna use some of that time to blather here a bit.

Speaking of the weekend, give a look at stopping by the local movie house and seeing “Ray,” the biopic about Ray Charles. Wonderful acting, wonderful music, nice direction and pacing. Probably owes a bit too much to “Bird,” Clint Eastwood’s movie about Charlie Parker, but it’s far more upbeat, mostly because Ray lived long enough to realize he needed to kick heroin or lose everything. It’s not all hearts-and-flowers: Ray was a shrewd businessman and a notorious womanizer, and the movie doesn’t gloss over any of the pain he caused. If anything, the director zeroes in a bit too much on the melodrama at the expense of exploring the wonder of Charles’ music. But if you like R&B you can’t go wrong.

Another thought before I call it a night: I’m beginning to entertain the possibility of Kerry winning the election. If he loses, though, I’m comforted by the notion that all previous predictions of the apocalypse have proved premature.

I saw a baby mountain lion on the road this morning.

It was trotting along the westbound lane about a mile and half down the hill from where we live. I was in the car on the way to work. I thought that looked like an exceptionally large house cat as I got closer. Then I got closer and noticed the spots on its body, the very large paws, the long tail. It looked right at me before it fled up the hillside. Housecats don’t have faces like that.

I got to work and looked up mountain lion cub pictures on the Web. I wasn’t sure it was a mountain lion till I saw the pictures. Yep, a positive identification.

The slightly unnerving thing about this sighting is that I walk right past that area pretty much every morning. Fortunately, mountain lions prefer to feed on deer. Unfortunately, our neighborhood is run rampant with deer. So there’s a fair chance I’ve been strolling through this cub’s mama’s range for months now.

Babies are cute, mamas are another matter. And daddies.

I’m definitely getting a walking stick and a whistle to scare off any more kitties that might be hanging around.