Losing a part of me

Tag: Family

  • Day 10 Reset

    My alarm went off and I reached for it to hit snooze. I must have missed the mark because nearly 90 minutes later my eyes popped open to see… just how late I was. I burst out of bed and cut my morning routine by 45 minutes. I was at my computer with a cup of coffee in my hand with about 22 seconds to spare, with my dog looking at me questioningly about the briefness of her walk.

    After the terrible cheating I did yesterday (two bowls of chocolate granola, plus a couple of handfuls of almonds) I expected my weight to be up this morning. In fact, after a .2 rise yesterday (the first rise since I restarted the program), this morning’s measure saw my weight drop by .4lb. . I was relieved, and I am going to look at it as my one gimme. I am not going to take any chances, today I am back on the program. So far, so good.

    Aside from having to wake up in the middle of the night for a few minutes for dog-related activities, I thought I had slept pretty well. My fitness watch disagrees. So far I am not as sleepy or as listless as I was yesterday, but I would be lying if I said I would object to being able to lie down for thirty minutes.

    Oh, crud… after that thought I had the sorry realization that not only do I have a meeting at lunch today (which means I cannot just lie down for 30 minutes), but I also have a meeting after class to mentor someone because a close friend asked me a favour. There will be no 30-minute naps today.

    I am hungry… but not hungry enough to need to break from the program today. I want to be back on track.

    Have a great day!

  • End of Day 2

    I have not been posting religiously every day as I have on previous diet reboots. With that said, I am at the end of Day 2… although I do not even want to think about how many Day 2s I have gotten to the end of. It is not ‘Fall down seven times, stand up eight.’ It is more like my twentieth attempt.

    My son the elder is living with me in my new place. When I told him on Saturday that I would be starting the program on Monday, he asked me what he can do to support me. I told him that I did not know, but if I thought of anything then I would let him know. Since then I have:

    • Asked him to surrender my ‘large cube ice trays’ so that I could use them in my meal replacement shakes;
    • I told him that the larger of the blender cups, as well as the blade cover, needs to be available and clean. I did order more cups of that size though, so now it is only about the blade;
    • I warned him that there would be times, especially during the first week or two, when I would likely be in a very crappy mood, and that if I took it out on him then I would need for him to forgive me PDQ;
    • Over the first few days, while I am sluggish until the ketosis kicks in, I asked him for some help with my dog, especially the evening walks.

    He asked me a couple more questions: Would I still be drinking coffee, and would I still be taking milk in it? Yes… and sugar, although I am severely cutting down on the sugar. Would I be eating anything other than the shakes? Hopefully not… but in the event that I needed to, I would buy unsalted peanuts or almonds.

    I did nearly blow my top today, but he was not around, and it had nothing to do with him. I thought for a minute that I might leave my firearm in the safe for a few days, but I was extremely well-trained in firearm safety and discipline. I will not be drawing it unnecessarily.

    There are so many things I want to write, but it is 9:45pm and I just sat down at the computer because I was having my final meal replacement of the day, so I am not going to write essays. With that said, there are two things I want to put down before they slip my mind:

    1. I still have some of the meal replacement that I have always used left. I brought it from Canada, and I have a ten-day supply. They used to have an equivalent product (under the same trade name) in the USA, but from what I can tell it seems like they stopped selling it. I had heard about a year ago that they might have, but this was the first time I had to check. I will have to find an equivalent product, and fortunately there seem to be a few options which I can research later this week.
    2. I know I tried to start again in 2026, but it never really lasted very long. There have been so many changes to my life since I was last fully open and honest and transparent in this journal. Over the next few days I am going to try to cover some of what was going on.
    3. I do not remember the first time Connie emailed me offering her support, but she has been so amazing in trying to back me over the past few kicks at this can. I realized I know very little about her, but she has been the one constant and completely supportive cheerleader in my corner these past few tries. I cannot tell you how much her emails mean to me. We have never met or spoken, and I do not even know what country she lives in… but when I posted last week that I was planning to start again she emailed me, and it meant so much. I started to write a sentence that would have been perceived as a shot at someone and I do not want to do that. We all have to do what is best for us. I suppose all I will say then is thank you so much for your support Connie! You will never know what it means for me.

    I don’t know if I will write tomorrow, but over the next few days I’ll fill in some gaps.

    Have a great day.

  • 2026 Day 10

    I fell off the wagon today.

    This weekend was supposed to be a quiet one, relaxing at home and such. When a Lodge brother texted me yesterday afternoon asking if I would be able to come to help his sister with her computer, I said I would be delighted to. This morning I took that opportunity to book a haircut as I really needed it, and my barber is near his sister.

    The list of things that I did wrong is long, but it all started with my bathroom scale. I was good yesterday, following the program as I should. How then, please tell me, could I have gained five pounds from yesterday morning? I swore, I cursed, and the fact that a couple of my attempts had be only about two pounds up from yesterday did not change that my weight is so severely up from yesterday. I know, it is a bad idea to weigh myself every day; I also know that weight loss is about the overall trend, and not about individual plots on the graph. None of that changed the fact that I was in a shitty mood and ready to throw it all in and dive into a plate of chicken wings.

    After leaving my buddy’s sister’s house (with an appreciation bottle of scotch in hand) I realized how hungry I was. I had my morning meal replacement around 8:30am, and it was now… 3:00pm. Had it been a normal day I would have stopped and picked up some peanuts. As I weighed as much as an elephant this morning despite my best efforts, I also picked up four slices of dried mango. I only ate three of them (more on that in a minute). I was really in a bad mood, and I was close to giving up.

    As I walked from Bulk Barn to Dollarama (to buy sugar free chewing gum) I had a loud altercation with a driver. After I yelled at him he rolled down his window and said ‘Didn’t you see me enter the intersection? Why did you continue crossing?’ I replied: ‘Do you mean did I see you blow through the stop sign ignoring everyone else’s right of way because you think you are more important than the rest of us?’ He replied with a comment that I will not repeat here… and as he pulled away he found himself slapped on the cheek by a flying slice of dried mango. Four slices became three.

    I am still down about the weight, even though I know that tomorrow things will be back to normal… or at least I hope they will be, but the mango and peanuts might impede that. I might be going out with someone this evening, and if I do then I will try to not eat… and if I do, it will be a very light cheat. Tomorrow, rain or shine, up or down, I will be back on track with my program.

    Have a great day.

  • Day 1308

    We are half way through the week. This morning I woke up at 12:45am and said to myself that there are only two more ridiculously early mornings left before I can resume a normal schedule. I am truly looking forward to that. Once again, I got a bit of sleep in the afternoon yesterday, and then I got four hours of sleep at night. I would have slept much better in the afternoon had I put my phone onto ‘silent’ mode. I do not ever ignore phone calls from my sons, and I was happy to hear from my son the elder. After he gave me a not-so-brief rundown of what was happening in his life I told him I wanted to go back to sleep and he understood. As inconvenient as if initially felt to be awakened, it was fortunate that I was because there was a message from a friend that he was coming over… I had completely forgotten that I had invited him! Aside from wanting to catch up, he also had a portable hard drive that I had loaned him. When I thought to back up my computer over the weekend I realized I did not have it and knew exactly where it was.

    The friend who came over is one who was on the same program that I am on. He was even under the care of the same doctor that I originally did it with. As such, I felt comfortable discussing the frustration I am feeling over the company’s supply chain issues. We discussed possible alternatives, and he had some good insight for me. In the meantime, the replacement meal replacements did arrive yesterday, and I had my first one just a few minutes ago. It was palatable if not delicious. I just have to remember that it will be six per day rather than my usual four. With that said, I will not be resuming the full program today; I have food in the house for two more days, and I do not want to waste it. I also do not want my class to suffer for my Day One Syndrome.

    My weight had shot up terribly over the previous week, and I am relieved that after a peak a few days ago I am back on a downward trend, even though I am not back on the program, and my circadian rhythm (sleep cycle) is shot to smithereens. I have dropped three pounds from my peak (not Day One)

    I am tired as I type this, but I am sure I will be able to make it through the day. I only have 8.5 hours left of teaching. How fun.

    Have a great day folks.

  • Day 1291

    With regard to my weight loss and health, this morning is a big one. My sleep score was an 86, which is absolutely wonderful for me. I had a very small bowel movement, and on the bathroom scale my weight was down… about 1.5 lbs.! Happy day!

    I expected yesterday to be more of a challenge than it was. I took my son for lunch at his favourite restaurant and ordered a cup of coffee. I did not eat so much as one chip! I did eat the carrots off his plate of chicken wings… and I confess that I did not try to wipe off the very small amount of barbecue sauce that had found its way onto one of them. Yum! I did not stop for peanuts – not on my way there, and not on my way home. I did have a little bit of grated cheese that I share with Princess Sophie, but that was it. Oh, and I only had three meal replacements, and not four as I normally should. I will not make a habit of that, but I know that the cheese compensated for the caloric deficit.

    I am going to see my son again in a few minutes, and then I will drive out to Hagersville to pick up some cigars. I have been smoking them way too quickly. It is not an addiction by any means, but I do use them as a nervous crutch – when I am anxious or nervous – in addition to just relaxation, and occasionally for celebrations. My humidor is not empty by any means, but most of the cigars I have are not to be smoked… at least, not yet. I have five boxes (which might amount to 50 cigars) of Davidoff Limited Edition cigars… I am going to sell them eventually. What I can earn off of these fifty cigars would conservatively buy me six hundred everyday cigars. No, I am not smoking those. Additionally, I have 46 Davidoff Limited Edition cigars (two cigars each of twenty-three releases) that I was planning to save for a decade… to see how well they smoke with ten years on them. I am not ready to break into those just yet – the oldest of them still need another couple of years.

    There were times when I would smoke high-end cigars on a daily basis, but right now times are lean – and because I cannot travel either to the United States or to Cuba (the State Department still has my passport) I am forced to pay Canadian retail prices. To give you an idea of what the difference is: I have two boxes of Davidoff Year of the Dragon (2024). The two boxes that I have still have the retail price sticker on them – they were selling in November, 2023 (when I bought them) for USD$59 per cigar. If we converted that today it would be CDN$81.30 per cigar. One of the stores that I shop at on Native land (which is not bound by import duties or tax laws as we would be off the rez) sells them for $190 per cigar. That is a significant markup. Davidoff pulled out of Canada a few years ago because the import duties and tobacco taxes are so ridiculous as to price their cigars in the stratosphere (in Ontario, because of those taxes, a box of 20 cigars that sells for USD$250 (CDN$345) in the United States will retail for $1,067 in Canada. Thank you, I am going to mostly smoke decent but not great cigars for the time being… until I can buy them abroad, or until I win a very huge lottery jackpot.

    The cigar that I smoked the night I passed my CISSP exam was a USD$500 cigar. That was a special occasion cigar. I still have several of those, which I will smoke when I pass a very significant exam or celebrate another milestone. For the every day smoking… Yeah, it’s the more pedestrian cigars for me.

    All of that to say I am driving out to pick up cigars after I see my check in on my son, and then I will come home and study for an exam I am sitting on Wednesday. I will try to not cheat, but I also will not short myself on meal replacements. The only reason I will do that is if I do cheat.

    Speaking of cheating, I need to stop at the supermarket to pick up milk, and I am going to pick up more grated cheese. The cheese is not for me, it is for Sophie… but I do enjoy the spoils 😉 I have a lot of it left in our current bag, but I found a whole lot of mould in it, so a new bag is in the cards.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 1284

    In my usual manner, I woke up this morning to the same morning routine as always. Impatient as I am with my weight loss progress, I was still satisfied with the same-old .8 lbs. drop from yesterday. I say same-old because following the initial tremendous drop the first few days, the most common day-over-day drop has been that. I got dressed, took Her Floofness for her walk, and then returned home to feed her, make coffee, and prepare my meal replacement.

    Between preparing all of that and actually starting to ingest it I felt the urge, and went to the water closet to try… and indeed succeeded. Yay! I decided that since I had not already eaten that I would get nekkid and re-weigh myself. Dropping another .6 lbs. from my initial attempt, it brought me to a great milestone: since Day 1 (today is Day 18) I have officially dropped twenty-five pounds!! That is no small feat, and is certainly worthy of recognition.

    Wonder of wonders, my sleep score this morning was good for the third day straight… and the second night in three was a 90+. Okay, it was 90 on the dot, but that is still considered excellent. I cannot think of too many times since I started wearing this watch that my sleep score was ninety or better. I am going to do my best to make sure I am in bed and with the lights out by 11:00pm as often as I can. That seems to be making a difference.

    As planned, I spent the afternoon yesterday in St. Catharines with a couple of masonic brothers – one of which I have known and been friends with since before I was initiated, the other one who I have only known on Facebook. He and I hit it off like gangbusters. There is a saying that in Freemasonry there are no strangers, only friends you haven’t met yet. I don’t know about that; I do know that this gentleman and I absolutely hit it off in our love of History, our first-hand knowledge of the Middle East, and our understanding of and respect for each other’s culture. I am so glad that I drove down there, and it was worth the nearly 2.5 hours I sat in traffic on the QEW.

    Unfortunately, I was weak… I stopped along the way to pee and decided while I was there to pick up some peanuts. At least they were the unsalted kind. While all cheating is cheating, there are better and worse cheats. It turns out though that it was a good thing that I cheated. When I arrived at his house he offered me an alcoholic beverage (I politely declined, explaining to him that my current diet forbids it), and there were bowls of snacks – party mix, nuts (the salted kind), and chips freely available and within arm’s reach. Had I not eaten the unsalted peanuts en route there is a very good chance that I would have succumbed to these temptations. He also offered up that his wife makes the most amazing zaatar pita that I have tasted outside of Lebanon, and would gladly make some for us. I asked for a rain cheque for when I was not on my diet. This was probably the hardest offer I have had yet to refuse. If you know, you know.

    My son the elder is coming over this afternoon for a drink. Next weekend his mother is driving him down to North Carolina to begin his Master program at university, and this will be the last time we sit down before that. He and I have had a complicated relationship, and while he has freely admitted over the past decade or so that I have made huge positive changes, it still took him a long time to fully trust and accept ‘the new me.’ Over the last few months he has reached out to connect with me a handful of times; I suspect he thinks me a good sounding board for some of his thoughts and ideas, and when I do offer advice (which I try to do sparingly and only when asked) it is reasonable and wise… and from a very different perspective from what his mother and the other adults in his life might offer. He does from time to time like to try to shock me as well; while he knows about some of my past, I suspect he knows but the tip of the iceberg of what my true experience is. He has on a few occasions mildly surprised me, but thus far has not come close to shock. I hope he does not push the boundaries in his attempts, because his health and safety are too important to me!

    He is bit of a feinshmecker in many respects, especially with respect to alcohol. He has been working these last couple of years at the largest LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario – the official alcohol retailer in Ontario, and the largest single purchaser of alcoholic beverages in the world), and so for me to have a bottle that he has never seen is always a treat for him. Last month a friend was in British Colombia and sent me a picture of a bottle he came across that was so completely different and that is not available in Ontario. If he does want to try it then yes, I will open the bottle and yes, I will have a dram which will definitely be a diet cheat. It is not every day that my son comes over to celebrate starting a master of law program at a top U.S. school!

    Other than that, I expect today will be a quiet day for me. I will try to get some work done, and might have to spend some time on the balcony reading. While I have been listening to the audio book Moby Dick, I think I am going to revisit one of the early Dan Brown novels that I have sitting on my shelf. He has a new book in the Robert Langdon series coming out in September and I will definitely read it, but I confess I think all of his subsequent novels have paled in comparison to Angels and Demons and the Davinci code. So be it, I will still read the new one. Hope springs eternal.

    Since writing that paragraph I decided to completely organize my bookshelves, organizing them by category. It is amazing how many religious texts I have, in addition to the myriad books on Jewish thinking, on Israel, and on Israel’s wars. Most of these non-religious books in those categories I was given by my father’s widow, a friend of our family for most of my life, when she sold her house and moved into a retirement complex. There are two shelves of cigar books, and a very small one for fiction. I love fiction and read it all the time… I just do not usually keep them when I am done with them.

    Also since writing that paragraph, a buddy of mine texted me and asked if he could come over for a cigar. He is driving here from Grimsby, and while he says he is just passing through and thought it would be great to see me, I know that I saw him yesterday, and he might have something that he needs to talk about. My door is always open for my friends.

    Aside from a wee dram with my son, my plan for today is to stick to the program. I hope I can succeed… I know that I promised that one week from tomorrow I will be recording videos, and I want to look as good as I can. That will not be very good… but at least I can try to drop another five pounds this week.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 1268

    It was Sophie’s fault.

    Okay, that is both wrong and unfair. The explanation for it, unjustified though it may be, is that I was extremely hungry as I prepared to end my class yesterday, and my plan was to have a meal replacement shake before taking HRF Princess Sophie out for her walk. She was having none of that. She was ready to go out immediately and no amount of coaxing would change her mind. We went out for a long walk… she insisted on seeing the sights and greeting her friends and possibly sniffing every blade of grass in her park.

    When we got home I was even more ravenous, but knowing that I was on Day 1 of my program I could not go crazy. I did, however, decide to prepare those three eggs that I was going to give away or throw out. All in all I could have done much worse, but I still felt guilty about it.

    This morning there were no eggs in the house. After we got home from our morning walk Her Floofness wanted to go to see the neighbour, and knowing that Sue had told us that Charlie would be there today, I was more than happy to accommodate her. I came back home and put on the coffee before preparing my meal replacement shake.

    Four shakes per day for the foreseeable future. Not fun… but I have put on a disastrous amount of weight since my life fell apart, and it is time to get off that ride and to try to get control of my life back from my emotions. That starts by losing the weight… again.

    It pains me to know how heavy I am. I had done so well, and then my life fell apart… in fact, it happened twice over a 19-month period. Thanks, Lady. No, I will not go into detail. Yes, I am somewhat bitter. That doesn’t matter though… it is time to pick myself up off the floor and get back on track.

    I got an email yesterday that my new sports jacket and shirts are en route from Hong Kong and should arrive by the end of next week. I am excited to receive them; I am equally hopeful that within a few months they will no longer fit, and I will be back to wearing my original weight-loss wardrobe… hopefully by the beginning of September?

    I have been sleeping poorly the last week, in which my fitness watch registered a sleep score over 70 only once. Last night was the first night in over a week that it was slightly better… an 81. I hope to continue that trend.

    It is Friday, and thus my last day of class. I had some technical issues yesterday which means that I am going to have to rush through a little of the material today but I am still confident that I will be able to get through it all. This evening I will light the Sabbath candles as usual, but for the first time in a long time I will not be eating my ritual challah bread to say that blessing. Nor will I be saying kiddush on the wine… I am back on the program.

    Because I had eggs for both breakfast and dinner yesterday I might consider yesterday to have been a Day Half rather than a new Day One. Sabbath or not, today I am drinking my meal replacements, coffee, and a lot of water… and that is all that I will be ingesting. I hope that I can follow that discipline for a few months and not just a few days. I have fallen off the wagon too many times. I have to be strong this time.

    Have a great day folks.

  • Day 1263

    This weekend has been unique in my experience. I drove to Strathroy Friday morning and my buddy greeted me and immediately took off. He and his wife are spending the weekend away. I walked into the house and was greeted (somewhat) by sixteen legs… two children (9 & 6 years old), a dog named Buddy, and two cats. If you know me at all you will realize that the first eight legs were no problem, but I am quite allergic to the last eight. Won’t this be… fun.

    We spent Friday afternoon in the back yard. They had a blast on the trampoline, and I sat on the patio trying (unsuccessfully) to read. I mostly watched them and relaxed. I prepared spaghetti for dinner, and then we took Buddy for his evening walk to the park. Buddy is a four-year-old Labrador retriever who probably tips the scale at around 100 pounds. He is not overweight that I can tell, he is just a lot more dog than I am used to. As a comparison, HRF Princess Sophie weighs in at just under 18 pounds. The difference did not really hit me until we were out on the walk, with the kids on their bike and scooter. Buddy stopped to sniff and chew and whatever, and when I pulled on his collar to tell him it was time to go I was met with a resistance that I am just not used to. Walking him would actually be exercise.

    Did I mention that sometime during the afternoon, as I was sitting in the house for a few minutes, he threw up? This is not unusual for dogs, I know. What was unusual was the size and texture and odour of what came forth. It smelled terrible, but looked like it should have come out the other end! I grabbed some paper towel and picked up the now-confirmed solid component of it and put it in the kitchen sink. Whatever it was, you can be sure that it had spent some time in his digestive tract, if not actually in his stomach. I apologize, I am not an expert in these things. Once I had cleaned up the entire mess, I returned to the sink and rinsed off what ended up being three very small (6-year-old sized?) socks. I was not quite sure what to do with them, but I did not want to potentially contaminate the laundry basket which would not be addressed for at least two days. I decided to leave them to dry off in the basement bathroom. I made a mental note to tell Amanda they are there.

    Taking care of very picky children and eating well can go one of two ways: You can prepare two separate meals for you and your charges… or you can resign yourself to eating crap. With the knowledge that my extreme diet starts Thursday, and that I would have to pack them into the car and take them to a supermarket, inviting the constant fight of ‘Uncle Mitch can we get this?’ I opted to try to do my best with what they were eating. As I mentioned earlier, I prepared spaghetti for dinner Friday. I had been told that the kids took care of their own breakfasts (mostly cereals) so Saturday morning I made myself an omelette and a bagel (of which Buddy stole half when I was not looking).

    The kids had started haranguing me to go for fast food for lunch on Saturday within 20 minutes of my arriving on Friday. Their dad had already told me that it was okay, so we ended up at Wendy’s. I tried in vain to get them to accept Harvey’s but at a certain point there is no point in arguing with a 6-year-old. Had I known that there was a toy giveaway at Wendy’s it would have made more sense. The meal was enjoyable though – the kids really are well behaved, and a lot of fun – so I did not mind.

    While they tried to convince me to either go out for or order dinner in (as well as every other meal all weekend), I managed to convince them to pick something that we had in the house. Chicken nuggets and French fries are not the worst things they could have picked. I eschewed the nuggets for some pasta salad that was in the fridge.

    When I told my buddy Friday that I had packed ten cigars, he told me that they would last me at least until the following morning. Ha ha, right? Well I do have one cigar left as I sit writing this two days later… but only one. I also expected there might be something to drink by way of adult beverages… I mean, what kind of person leaves their kids with someone and doesn’t make sure there’s at least a bottle of scotch somewhere? To add insult to injury, I noticed Friday afternoon there was a wine bottle in the fridge… but when the kids were in bed I discovered it was half a bottle of peach Bellini. Not cool.

    Okay, at least there were three bottles of decent beer in the downstairs fridge.

    Today is my fifty-third birthday. With all of the well-wishers on Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as a few more personal ones, I do not feel much like celebrating. Truth be told, if I was not here with the kids I would most likely be working on my computer at home, possibly preparing for my class tomorrow (although I think I’ve already done that), and then smoking cigars on the balcony. It was nice to be feted last week at the barbecue, but I really have not felt festive this year. Can anyone blame me?

    I should mention that my godson’s birthday is in two days, so I ordered him a present from Amazon which was delivered yesterday. I do not think they realize that today is my birthday, and I am fine with that. When I find out what time the parents are due back I will decide whether or not I will take them out for lunch… I probably will because I doubt they will be home before 1:00pm. We’ll see.

    I should mention that I have not wasted my time here. Last week I booked my CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) exam for next week, and I have been studying for it. I brought my study material, and have read over a hundred pages of what I need to read. While I am still certain I am going to fail the exam, at least I will do so knowing that I did take it serious and tried my best. I will spend at least an hour every night this week reading and studying and preparing for the exam which I am sitting next Tuesday. I am teaching a different cybersecurity class this week and while the content is not the same, it is the same general realm which will be helpful. I am not going to go into that exam unprepared. On the other hand, it is probably the highest level and most important certification exam I will have taken to date… and if I get it then it will open more avenues for me professionally – both for teaching and for consulting. Am I nervous? In ways that surprise me.

    While I am thinking about it, I am probably going to downgrade my home lab that I built over the last few weeks. The host operating system on the servers seems to be troublesome, and there is a lot of talk online that the latest server version from Microsoft is not very stable. I have found at least three issues that might be caused by an unstable host, and I do not want to spend anymore time troubleshooting it. Fortunately, it is only on the actual physical host servers that i am experiencing the problems. The virtual machines (the vast majority of the work) is stable, and can just be dropped onto the new hosts if I end up doing that. We’ll see. This might be a thought I have while I am 200km from home, but falls by the wayside when I am in front of the keyboard. We’ll see.

    Have a great day folks.

  • Day 1243

    My plans for yesterday were simple. If I heard from either of my children I would have dropped everything, but I did not expect to. After breakfast I was going to sit on the balcony to study for an exam that I needed to take later in the day. Following the exam I was going to drink myself into a stupor.

    As it happens, I did hear from my son the elder! It does not happen often, but when I went out onto the balcony to study I left my phone in the house, and so I missed his call. I phoned him back and he gave me some terrific news – he was accepted to an amazing school to do his Master’s Degree! He had to work soon but I told him I would come to see him at his job – he works at the LCBO, so if I was going to drink it worked out perfectly. He was working the cash so he did not have a lot of time to talk, but he asked if I wanted to do something when his shift was over. I invited him to come over for a drink and a cigar to celebrate.

    I went home and made dinner – a piece of rainbow trout that I bought (I actually only prepared half of it) and a side dish of white rice. I finished up a few things and then prepared for his arrival. We had a very lovely visit and while I drank a lot more than he did (I did not have to drive) I think we both enjoyed our conversation.

    Oh… and yes, I passed the exam… but some exams are not worth bragging about. This exam took me about sixteen minutes from start to finish.

    While I got nearly eight hours of sleep last night, my fitness watch still gave me an abysmal sleep score… a 44. I am sure the alcohol had something to do with it. I will make sure to get a few hours of sleep this afternoon before I have to teach tonight.

    I will spend the day today preparing for the class I am teaching this evening – yes, it is another overnight class, but it is a single-day class and I am not as worried about the recovery as I am when it is the entire week.

    Life still sucks… but at least I got to spend a very pleasant evening with one of my sons.