I have just spent a number of months on a program to lose weight. Running, cross-training, weight lifting, alligator wrestling - you name it, I was doing it four or five times per week. And it did some good - I shed twenty or twenty-five pounds over 5-6 months. Of course, a good seven pounds of that was a portion of the left arm snapped off by an alligator. Nevertheless, it was somewhat successful.

But no matter what I did or how much success it seemed that I was having, I still saw a fat guy in the mirror.

As it turns out, it was Dom DeLuise.

Apparently, his aunt used to own the house; he had been living in our attic since we moved in four years ago and sneaking out at night to forage. Which explains why we could never keep any cheese nips around, the thieving bastard.

But I digress.

When confronted three weeks ago, Dom flatly refused to leave, shinnying up the ladder to the attic much faster than should be possible for an eighty year-old, three-hundred pound guy carrying a full box of cheese nips. He got the salsa too, damn his eyes.

Since then, I have been completely unable to get rid of him. I tried a series of exterminators, but the poisoned meat we left out had no effect on him. A trainer from the local zoo tried tranquilizer darts, but either the darts couldn't penetrate his three inch hide or his normal diet of Nyquil and cheese nips built up too much of a tolerance.

Almost in despair, I turned to the local church for an exorcism . There, I thought I had finally found some luck. They began taking down my information and acted interested, but hung up abruptly when I disclosed I was over sixteen.

The zookeeper had given me the number for Burt Reynolds, stating that he had driven Dom out of a pork butcher's place of business some five years previous for a reasonable fee. Out of desperation, I dialed him. Embarrassed about the whole thing by now (and still wary from the brusque send-off from the local diocese), I tried to keep my inquiry vague.

I had been told, I explained to Burt, that he offered services related to Dom DeLuise. It turns out he did. He had a whole list of services involving Mr. DeLuise I discovered, but exorcisms were not included in that rather extensive list. Frankly, I am still trying to figure out what two of the offerings are and why a canoe would be involved.

But I digress.

In short, I offer two pieces of advice. One: the lens we view ourselves through is not always clear. We have to be careful because our own expectations and experiences distort our own image of ourselves. This distortion can make us either gloss over our flaws or magnify them; neither is particularly healthy. Two: if you perform heavy, heavy fumigation of an attic, make sure that all of the food in your pantry and kitchen has been moved out of the home or is sealed in airtight containers.