I had a scare tonight.

For the last three weeks or so, I've been eating whole grains, making (or rather, failing at making) my own granola bars, scarfing sunflower seeds and fruits and nuts in an effort to change my eating habits.

I started taking 2 ounces of Raisin Bran and half a cup of 1% milk to work for breakfast. Lunch was, for the first few days of this, fresh local tomatoes, 4 mozzarella Ciliegine balls, a few leaves of basil and some olive oil. The afternoon snack became two 95-calorie granola bars and a cuppa joe. Dinner was whatever Miss Significantly Other shot and killed in the forest that day (usually Mediterranean Musk Squirrel).

So that morphed into the two 95-calorie granola bars and coffee for breakfast, a lunch of tomatoes and basil, yadda, yadda.

That became 2-ounces of failed homemade granola bars (read: tasty oat crumbs) for breakfast (because I didn't want 11 grams of sugar exploding in my colon all at once), a lunch of last night's nutritionally balanced MedMusk Squirrel and two many-grained tortillas (the small ones), a snack of sunflower seeds and a dinner of more goddamn squirrel.

But none of that was the scare I had tonight.

I've also taken to taking a walk after dinner. Now, I have chronic bursitis in both of my heels - right where the Achilles tendon joins to the heel bone. I have it because I never learned to walk right and because my widdle feets ain't built for carrying 205 pounds.

I am in pain most of the day at work because I have to be on my feet all of the time. But I've forced myself to go out for a walk after dinner in an effort to add a little bit more to the old metabolism while I'm gearing down on calories and other nasties.

But that isn't the scare I had tonight, either.

Constant readers (yes, both of you) will recall that I like knives and flashlights. I don't collect them as much as I buy them for specific uses. Miss S.O. might differ with me on that definition but, really, I don't have any of either just sitting around and not being useful.

So I bought this used Rayovac 3-C battery Cree LED light from a fellow on a message board I frequent and I haven't tried it outdoors yet.

As I had to go down the block to the bank and as it was after dinner and as I was in need of keeping up my after dinner routine of taking a walk, I decided to walk down to the bank. I also decided to take the new light with me to try out.

After doing my banking at the smiling automated teller machine, I decided to go east a block or two and walk through our unlit park.

This was 7PM. Hardly the dead of darkest night but still dark around these parts.

So I'm walking along the sidewalk in the dark park, shining my new/used light at stuff to see how far it throws and how brightly. I flash it on the only completely solid structure in the park - the single-user bathroom hut and what happens? Some dude sticks his head around the corner of the building, right into the beam!

Three things hit me all at the same time:

1) I'm a fat 44-year old guy with a noticeable limp and sore feet

2) I have $50 cash in my pocket

3) I may have just pissed off an ice-hearted ravening robber/vivisectionist

Now, one of the great things about liking knives and flashlights is that I tend to carry them on my person all of the time. I was, in fact, carrying a pretty intimidating Kershaw Black Blur. The Blur is an "assisted opening" knife that is as close to being an automatic knife (and thus, illegal for me to carry) as you can get. The problem with using a knife in self-defense is that the thing being self-defended against has to be within arm's reach for the knife to work on it.

On the four block walk back home, I kept one eye over my shoulder, one eye off to the side (in case of cut-across), and one eye on the street ahead. I also kept one hand on the Blur, one hand on the flashlight (which would have to have served as a bludgeon) and one hand on my penis to keep from wetting myself.

So I just bought pepper spray off of eBay. If nothing else I should be able to throw the canister on the ground near an attacker to distract them while I'm peeing myself.