Losing a part of me

Tag: Writing

  • Day 1277

    It has been three months (and then some) since my fitness watch measured a sleep score of 89. Last night was bliss. I only slept 7.5 hours, but I woke up refreshed and ready to face the day.

    After ten complete days on the program, my weight has dropped slightly over twenty pounds. Yes, that is a great feat. I am still just about fifteen pounds heavier than I was the day my terrible issues started near the end of March. I will be past that in three weeks, mark my words. In fact, by Friday August 1 I would like to be there. I am hoping that it will not take as long, but within six weeks (from today) I would really like to drop below the terrible mark… and hopefully that will be the last time I ever cross that threshold in either direction.

    There are some things that are seldom discussed, and others that are just taken for granted. However, it has always been the purpose of this blog to be open with my journey. You read these past two days that Friday was a difficult day because of a blockage in my colon that affected my back as well as my bladder. All of that is behind me, but I was standing in the washroom last night peeing and thinking to myself how easy it is to take for granted the satisfaction from a strong urinary flow. I have been peeing well since the blockage cleared (as can be read in yesterday’s journal) but it has been consistent. I am trying to drink more water than I had been (which is hard because I was drinking a lot) so it is frequent, but knowing what it was like Friday to try to squeeze out a few drops… just a big relief.

    I placed an order for more meal replacements yesterday. I have enough shakes to last me until Friday midday, and I ordered two more weeks’ worth which should take me through the first week of August. If I can continue to order every two weeks then I think it will be easier to manage both from a financial and from a space standpoint – after all, the boxes are not small and do need to be stored. Two weeks at a time should be just fine.

    I will be at my desk working for most of the day today. Not only do I have to study for my exam (which is more important than anything else), and I also have to prepare for the class I am teaching tomorrow, but I also have to rebuild my demo lab environment. Owing partly to flaws in the version of Windows Server that I used, and partly to a very minor but critical error I made some weeks ago, the environment that I had built is no more… or at least, a lot of work needs to be done to restore it. That work will be done today (and in fact is already underway) so that tomorrow during class I will be able to demonstrate my concepts should I need to. In other words… it’s going to be a long day for me.

    I have been having issues with the computer keyboards that I have. I have three of them but one the keys stick (especially when it is humid, but not exclusively); one of them some of the keys do not work unless you hit them twice. The last one (the one that I had been using) seems to randomly pop open other windows as I type – as an example, if I am typing into a web browser it might randomly open a new tab. While it is possible that it happens because I am fat-fingering, I suspect that it happens far too often and far too consistently for that to be the reason. Either way, I need to be able to type quickly and reliably without needing to constantly delete fifteen consecutive characters after a key stick, or having to stop six times mid-post so that I can close out new tabs and then find the original browser tab that I had been working in. I do not consider myself extravagant with regard to keyboards – the three that I have include one that was purchased for me by my company six years ago, one that was gifted to me, and one that I needed for a second computer (on which I needed to be able to type simultaneously and without needing to un-plug and re-plug the keyboard. I did not order a cheap keyboard, but I also did not go wild. I am hoping that this Bluetooth Logitech keyboard and mouse set will last me for years to come. It will arrive tomorrow. Yay.

    I suppose, with that, I have procrastinated quite enough for the day and should be getting to work. Actually, I have been working on the servers all this time, but only on reinstalling the host operating system on the two physical servers… and copying the contents of my Storage Area Network (SAN) onto a physical disk so I can re-configure the SAN while I am at it. I will take 30 minutes to prepare my notes for tomorrow’s class, and will then spend the remainder of the day studying.

    …and I should mention that this keyboard is sticking as well. I wonder if it is the humidity? Just in case that is the case I have closed the balcony door and turned on the air conditioner. That will drastically lower the ambient humidity of the apartment!

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 1276

    Yesterday was not a fun day. The day actually started quite normally as far as things go, but then it went bad. I started writing as I usually do at the usual time, but partway through the second paragraph of my article I realized that it would be an article much more appropriate to my professional blog rather than my weight loss blog, and before 1pm I had banged out 1800 words on certification exams that published on my blog as Not Passing and Failing.

    Following the publication of that article, I got up and made my second meal replacement of the day, and then sat down to write in this journal… which I try to do before I do much else, but that did not work out. I obviously had a lot to say because the entry is pretty long (over a thousand words, which is long for a weight loss journal entry), but at a certain point in the writing I realized i was quite uncomfortable, which I wrote about in the last paragraph. It was discomfort until it was pain. As I wrote yesterday, it felt like a solid piece of waste was stuck in my colon and pressing on (and blocking) my bladder, as well as pushing on nerves that affected my back and possibly even my kidney. I went outside to read in the ‘comfy chair’ but that was only good for maybe thirty minutes. I needed to do something and the urgency was growing. (Yes, I tried that, but the waste was far too solid to want to go anywhere, and every time I tried it just got a little worse.

    If I was right about the cause (and I really hoped that I was) then I could think of two things that might help, and the two could bee easily joined. The pharmacy is just over a 1km walk from here, and I hoped the walking might jostle something to move. Whether it did or did not, I would be able to ask the pharmacist about a topic on which I have heretofore remained ignorant: I asked the chap if there was a difference between a laxative (which I had already taken, but so far was not helping) and a stool softener (which I do not think I had ever taken). I explained my predicament, and he agreed that the symptoms I was describing might very well be caused by that. While we did go over the differences (in brief: laxatives affect how we digest, stool softeners should affect what we have already digested), when I told him that the laxative was left over from when I had my colonoscopy, he asked if it was the pill or the powder (both were necessary to prepare for it), and that thee powder would likely be much more effective than the simple pill. As those are kept behind the counter (despite not requiring a prescription) I asked him for a box of those. I then walked home.

    When I arrived home I prepared and ingested the concoction exactly as directed. Assuming that the results would not be immediate, I decided to do something I have never done before. In the middle of the afternoon I took a THC gummy from the jar my buddy gave me a few months ago. I then looked at my dear puppy and realized I might not be fit to take her out in the evening, so I texted my neighbour asking her to do so. With that taken care of, I got into bed at 4:45pm, still in discomfort… until the gummy did its thing. Possibly 20-30 minutes after I lay down I realized I was not in any discomfort. I could rest.

    I woke up at 8:15pm (I did not sleep through, but I did get some rest). I was lying there looking at my phone when I felt… something. It felt like something that had been stuck suddenly dislodged. I knew the THC had not yet worn off, but I suspected that if it had then I would suddenly not be in so much pain. This did not result in immediate results in the water closet, but I suspected it would be just a matter of time.

    I sat on the balcony relaxing with my third meal replacement of the day and just enjoying not being in severe discomfort. It was a relief to be able to sit in one position for more than a minute or two without needing to adjust. It was shortly after 10pm when the urge struck. Over the next few hours there were a number of trips back to the little boys’ room, and in those trips a lot more than one or two meals worth of waste was finally flushed from my colon. That, however, was not the only result. I mentioned in the second paragraph that thee blockage was also blocking my bladder? Between 10pm and when I finally went to sleep I peed 3-4 times which is not unusual… but the duration and strength of the flow was; the first voiding was solid and strong… and possibly as much as two minutes in duration. Wow.

    By the time I went to bed (much later than usual) I felt like I had dropped ten pounds… this morning I would find that it was just over 2.5 lbs. from the previous day, making my current weight loss 19.4 lbs. in nine days. Yes, I will gladly take that my dear reader!

    My sleep score last night was an abysmal 59, but that is because it only measured the second time I slept. I suspect that had it accounted for my first lay-down it would have been slightly better. I am not worried though… Today is my day of rest and while I might do some studying, I will mostly be reading my book on the balcony.

    I should mention that yesterday’s caloric intake was short; I only had three meal replacements which means that excepting the pinch of cheese and my coffee my actual intake was 675 calories which is not smart. Of course, severe and discomfort in the digestive tract will always put a damper on one’s appetite. Knowing that my issues are resolved (for now) I doubt I will have any issues with that today.

    Considering I felt like I was near death yesterday, today is looking and feeling much better. Of course, I did not feel anything yesterday until after 1:30pm, and it is currently just 11:05am. I am optimistic though that today will be a good day.

    I should mention that while i will increase my daily dosage of fibre, I am glad that the meds I bought yesterday came in a box of two packages, so if I do get blocked up again I know I have another one without having to trek to the pharmacy… although the steps likely did me some good.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 1275

    It felt like I was walking around with an anvil on my back from the moment I could not sit my exam on Tuesday until the minute I received an email from ISC2 at 2:00pm yesterday afternoon telling me how I could now rebook my exam. Precisely forty-nine hours and fifteen minutes. That weight is now gone, leaving the weight of preparing for what is likely the hardest exam that I have taken in a long time and the stress and anxiety that goes along with that… but there is a deadline for that which is next Wednesday at noon. Suffice it to say I am not making any social plans for this weekend so that I can prepare for the exam, as well as for the class that I am teaching Monday. I maintain a spreadsheet of every certification exam I have ever sat, and for the first time ever I created that new line for my upcoming exam in advance. Why? I do not really know, but it likely has something to do with my anxiety.

    My food intake yesterday was in most respects identical to the previous day. Aside from two things I was able to stick to my program again, but when I got into my car to drive out to the cigar shop I realized the remaining peanuts from what I had purchased the previous day were there, so I finished them. Additionally, once again felt the need late at night to take a pinch of grated cheese. I can assure you that Princess Sophie is happy that I continue to need that as she always benefits from it.

    Even with the cheese my weight continues to drop at a rate of not quite one pound per day, which is tremendous. At this rate (which of course will not continue) I could not only drop below the terrible mark in the next month, but also by winter I could be back in almost all of my tailor fitted shirts and jackets! Wouldn’t that be something… but we have to assume that within the next week or two that rate will drop to 3 lbs. per week, which means that it is going to be springtime before I am back to where I was when I was at my lowest weight and then started slipping. I never want to be this big again… but of course I have said that before.

    My sleep score this morning was the best it has been since June 19, with the comment that it was restorative. It was such a relief after the previous night’s problems with my back that kept me awake. The only thing I took (which I do almost every night) is melatonin. I did wake up a couple of times to pee but other than that I had no problems. I had been worried the last few weeks that it was Princess Sophie sleeping in my bed that caused my sleep issues, but that was obviously not the case last night. Woohoo!

    I was reminded yesterday of two masonic events coming up this summer that I am being encouraged to attend. I made the conscious decision to decline both as they are both food-centric. I do not need to attend a corn roast as (I love sweet corn, especially in season!) and I do not need to attend a fish fry, as much as I enjoy fried fish. I was not at all tempted (nor was it even suggested I attend) by the pig roast that one of the lodges is holding. Religious observations aside, I am satisfied with the progress I have made thus far, but I do not think I am ready to subject myself to temptations. I do not think I have the willpower to resist yet.

    My plans for the day are to read, study, and smoke cigars. I was thinking that I had a couple of things I needed to pick up from the store, but I decided to order them from Amazon instead.

    In the last hour I have been experiencing more discomfort that feels somewhat similar to what I was feeling a couple of nights ago, but while it is radiating into my back, it feels like it might be related to my digestive tract. It feels like something extremely solid (akin to every other bowel movement I have had this past week) is lodged in there and is applying pressure to both my bladder and a couple of other nerves. It has gotten much worse – so much so that in the middle of this paragraph I got up, found a laxative, and then decided to take a shower to try to ease the discomfort. It might be a little better now than it was thirty minutes ago, but I am definitely looking forward to the time when the laxative begins to work. While writing these last three paragraphs I have had to stand up several times to alleviate the discomfort. Suffice it to say that as soon as I am finished with this journal entry I will be shutting my computer down for the next few hours. Hopefully my ‘throne’ chair on the balcony will be more comfortable. By the way, the answer is yes, I have been adding fibre to my meal replacements at least once per day. My program, being an extreme one, is going to cause disruptions to my body. This is not the first time I have started this same program, and I have experienced changes each time… and not the same each time. I know I have had some discomfort in the past and I only hope that this abates over the course of the day so that I do not have to reconsider staying on the program. Of course my first course of action would be to reincorporate a single solid meal per day… but I am hoping that can wait for a few weeks at the least. I would love to get down well below the terrible mark before I have to do that… but my health comes first, and if I have to then I will do it sooner.

    Okay, it is time for me to grab my book and a cigar and to see if my throne is more comfortable than this desk chair. Have a great day folks!

  • Day 1274

    Last night was not a good night. I do not know what happened, but shortly after I got into bed I realized my back was uncomfortable… and then in pain. Between 11:30pm and 2:30am I got up several times to

    1. Take a couple of Aspirin
    2. Rub Votaren on my back
    3. Remake the bed ensuring the bottom sheet was taut (Princess Sophie did not appreciate being interrupted by this)
    4. (only ever a last resort) grab a THC gummy

    In the meantime I tossed and turned and just fought to get comfortable, which was just not happening. The discomfort was not at all pleasant, but nor was knowing that the morning was coming too soon and that I could not handle another lousy night sleep. It was only out of desperation that I took one of the gummies that a friend had given me. I was worried that I would have trouble getting going in the morning (every time I have taken one of these I have spent the night in extreme thirst and woken up dizzy and with a bit of a headache) but that beat waking up without having gone to sleep, so I went for it.

    (I did wake up at 6:15am and decided that I would pee quickly then get right back into bed because despite the light of day shining in through the window I was definitely still… intoxicated.)

    Despite all that, my fitness watch still gave me a sleep score of 72, which honestly makes very little sense to me considering how little sleep I got. It is possible that before I realized I was in pain I did get some sleep, so who knows?

    It happened too late to affect my morning weigh-in, but I was happy to have an amazing bowel movement this morning. It was not painless, but it was well worth the strain. I only wish that it happened first thing in the morning… before coffee and meal replacement, and of course before my weigh-in.

    Today marked the one week milestone of my renewed program. In that week, with my daily pinch of cheese and yesterday’s peanuts, I have dropped an astonishing sixteen pounds. While I certainly have a long way to go, and while 16lbs is only a drop in the bucket compared to what I want to lose, it is still a huge accomplishment for seven days. It is encouraging, and gives me the strength to keep carrying on… despite all of the obstacles that life continues to throw my way.

    I mentioned yesterday that I weighed myself a second time after my second sleep, and that based one whether or not this morning’s weigh-in was higher or lower than that I would decide whether or not to keep it. In fact my weight this morning was slightly higher than yesterday afternoon, but I am still not going to delete that measure from yesterday. Hopefully by tomorrow I will drop below that number again, but either way I am still quite pleased with my progress.

    So let’s see… yesterday I went shopping to pick up coffee, and I also picked up a little cheat of some peanuts. I know, I should not be cheating, especially so early in the program. If after all that happened the last few days the worst thing I did was eating a handful of peanuts then I am going to chalk that up as a big huge win.

    While I did some studying yesterday, I confess it was not a lot. As I wrote in my journal, I got a whole lot of sleep yesterday during the day, and after the stress and anxiety of the previous day I did not need to push myself. I also knew that the new novel in my favourite series was downloaded onto my Kobo and ready to be dived into. I spent quite a few hours reading. I plan to continue reading it until the end, at which point I will resume my deep-dive studying for the exam.

    Before I sit out on the balcony to read, I need to make a trip out to my (not-so-local) cigar shop. While I have as many as a hundred cigars in my humidor, most of them are high-end special, rather than every day cigars. I do not want to sit outside smoking a $100 cigar… especially when I have so few of those left. I will prepare my meal replacement to enjoy before I head out because I do not want to find myself hungry and tempted to cheat along the way. I need to stay on track and so I need to minimize my exposure to any temptations, which are everywhere despite my best attempts.

    I am hoping that my body does not repeat last night’s debacle so that I can get some good rest. I plan to proactively strip my bed and do laundry – a freshly made bed is usually my best chance for good sleep, or at least of the physical factors within my control.

    Have a great day folks.

  • Day 1273

    I slept two nights since yesterday. I’ll explain.

    After the debacle that was yesterday I knew that I would not be going to the Grand Lodge event in Toronto today, but I had promised someone that I would give him something there. I arranged for a brother to drop by to pick them up on his way. I did not fall asleep until nearly 1am, so when my doorbell rang before 6:00am I was not nearly well rested, but I got up and dressed and did my thing… which is to say that I took Her Floofness for her walk, and when we came home I fed her, brewed a half pot of coffee (I realized I did not have sufficient coffee to brew a full pot) and mixed my meal replacement shake. I sat down at the computer and did my email thing and even opened up my blog page to write… but did not write a word. My sleep score was 56 – plenty of deep but not nearly enough overall.

    At 8:30am I realized how exhausted I was and decided to lie down for a bit. Princess Sophie jumped at the opportunity to join me. I am not sure that it was as deep as the overnight inadequate sleep, but it was actually longer – I woke up around 2:30pm! I prepared my meal replacement shake, I actually had a bowel movement (only my second one in nearly a week), and brushed my teeth again. While I would normally never do this, I weighed myself again, and was pleased to see that I had dropped another pound and a half since this morning. With that said, I have not decided if I will keep it… weighing myself at 7am versus 3pm? Yeah… it will depend on what the bathroom scale says tomorrow morning. If it is down from this afternoon then I will keep it, but if it is up then I will wipe it. Anyhow, I then sat down at my computer to pay some bills.

    I am trying to think more positively today than I did yesterday afternoon. Yes, the exam cancellation completely screwed me for the next several weeks, but nobody is shooting at me. I will try to be patient and wait to hear back about rescheduling the exam. In the meantime, I am going to drive to the supermarket – I am out of coffee, and I have some dry cleaning to drop off. Once that is done, if the rain has abated then I will take Her Floofness for another walk before sitting on the balcony with my book – an author that I love releases a new book in his series every July 15, and I downloaded it that day planning to read it after my exam. Since that did not happen I will try to read it today.

    Have a great day folks.

  • Day 1272 – Afternoon

    I did not pass my exam.

    In my defense, I also did not fail my exam. I arrived at the testing centre as prepared as I could be, perfectly at peace in the knowledge that I very well might (dare I say would probably) fail the exam. At least I would know what I was up against, and what my shortcomings were. I would then come back home and relax for a couple of days… and then I would reschedule the exam (at great expense, but leave that for now) for sometime in August or September, and I would continue studying… with greater focus on the areas that I needed to focus on. Because I was comfortable knowing that I would probably not pass, I was just glad that the stress and anxiety would be behind me.

    I drove into the parking lot, I paid for parking. I walked into the building and walked down the long corridor (I have been here before so while I forgot what floor it was on, I at least knew my way there). In the hallway there were emergency lights blinking… not a good sign. I got to the elevator and a building maintenance manager flagged me to get my attention. There had been an electrical issue that was not resolved and was deemed to be a safety issue; the building had been evacuated. It did not bode well for a quick turnaround that I did not see any large groups of students or workers congregating outside of the building waiting for the all-clear signal to return to their classes or offices or whatever. The maintenance manager told me that the power company had to come in to do a safety inspection on a transformer, and if that was the case then it was highly unlikely that anyone was going back to work today.

    I stood outside the front door of the building and logged onto the testing centre website to try to reschedule. With any luck, they would be able to book me for the next hour at a test site within short driving distance (there is one that is a 20-25 minute drive from where I was standing). Why did I do this all standing outside the front door? It was the only shaded area, and while I love the sun my smartphone screen does not, and would have a) been hard to read with my polarized sunglasses, and b) would have, within a few minutes, have gone into sum/heat protection mode (I do not know what the actual term is) which would dim the brightness to the point of near-illegibility. I logged into the site, paid my dues chatting with their AI chatbot, and then finally was chatting with a person. I never expected they would be able to accommodate that quick reschedule, but hope springs eternal. SPOILER ALERT: I was right and they did not.

    While I knew that would likely not happen I was at least hoping they could reschedule me for tomorrow… or later in the week… or next week. They could do none of that. In fact, the global body for the testing centre had not been informed that the local testing centre was evacuated so they are not even sure that I will get a replacement voucher (the exam costs USD$750) in order to reschedule it. As I type this it is two hours after my original exam time and at least three hours after the building was evacuated and there is still no indication (either from the testing centre or from the local news) that there was anything, so I am starting to sweat about that…

    When I got home I called them, and they told me to call the testing organization (Pearson Vue administers tests for hundreds of organizations and I would need to escalate to the certifying body). At least they gave me a direct phone number… it astounds me how difficult it is to find someone to speak with these days.

    After several minutes on hold with the ISC2 (that’s the certifying body) I spoke with a very nice and sympathetic gentleman named Edgar who promised to escalate my case and assured me that the team he was escalating to would help me to reschedule. When? That’s a good question… it might take 3-5 business days for them to get back to me with my rescheduling voucher and then it might take another 2-3 weeks for a free appointment at the testing centre.

    What does all of that mean?

    1. I am obviously no further ahead on my certification than I was when I woke up this morning.
    2. The anxiety and stress that I have been experiencing over this exam is still with me, but now instead of having a set date when I would be past it, I have another unknown which might be… who knows when.
    3. Instead of coming home with the exam behind me I know I will now be continuing to study until… WHENEVER THE F&CK THEY LET ME TAKE THE EXAM.
    4. Instead of coming home and booking airfare to Newfoundland to go visit friends, I am… well, NOT doing that.
    5. Instead of going to my Provincial Lodge event tomorrow (and hopefully smoking an extremely fine cigar to celebrate passing) I am staying home and studying.

    …the list goes on. This literally screwed up the rest of my summer.

    So why, you may ask, am I writing this here? Because it was all that I could do to not stop off at a pub and order two pounds of chicken wings. I was so sorely tempted, knowing how f&cked things are, to throw my hands in the air and to give up. I did not do that. I came home, made my phone calls, and then sat at the computer to type this. Once again, something else blew up the next few weeks of my life… but this time I was able to stay on track. How? I have no idea.

    This evening I will be smoking cigars on the balcony. I suspect I will take the night off from studying, and might even rent and stream the new Karate Kid movie. If I can be strong then I will not open a bottle of scotch (which right now I am sorely tempted to do). Tomorrow I will resume my studies and will wait… I was about to say wait patiently, but who are we kidding? I will wait very impatiently to hear back from ISC2 so that I can rebook the exam. The absolute earlies that might happen would be late next week but I doubt I will be able to book before the week after. Yay to two more weeks of my anxiety stress and dialed to a fourteen.

    …and I know that when I finally do walk into the testing centre it will take every bit of willpower for me to not yell at them that the least they could have done was phoned in that they were evacuated so I would have received an email canceling and I would not have driven down there and paid for parking. I have this image of a kid from a movie in the 1980s who is trying to collect for his paper route and keeps yelling ‘I WANT MY TWO DOLLARS!’ Yes, parking cost me all of $7 but that is a very small cherry on top of the very large heap of shite that this inconvenience caused.

  • Day 1272

    As I prepared for bed last night I realized that my hunger was going to keep me awake… especially when paired with my anxiety over the exam I am writing this afternoon. I am still studying, but I am at peace with the fact that I am almost certainly going to fail. Anyways, back to the hunger. I had enjoyed my last meal replacement around 8:30pm, and two (three?) cigars since. I had ingested the Rideau Canal since 6:30pm. What was I to do? I bit the bullet and took another pinch of grated cheese. Yes, I have one small pinch every morning as I feed Her Floofness, but I make it a point to not take more after that. Nothing doing… desperate times call for desperate measures. I took another pinch of it before heading off to bed.

    I still did not fall asleep until 1:00am, but at least I slept pretty well… my sleep score was just barely down from the two previous nights to a 76 and according to my fitness watch, it was ‘Fair, shorter than ideal, with plenty of deep.’ I can live with that. I also only got up to pee once after finally falling asleep, and that was at 2:00am, which means that from 2am to 7:30am I slept five consecutive hours. I did stir at 6:15 or so feeling the urge to pee, but I decided I could wait. Ultimately this afforded me an entire extra 75 minutes of sleep that I likely would not have had if I had gotten up after 6:15.

    While I have been stressed and anxious since mid-March, that has mostly been for personal reasons. Today’s heightened anxiety is for professional reasons – I am nervous about my exam. While I do have more to say about my weight loss program, I really want to spend the next two hours getting the last minute studying and cramming in before heading out for the exam centre. Depending on how things go, you will either hear from me again later today… or tomorrow morning. If I do not post again today do not read anything into that – I might just be distracted.

  • 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 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.

  • Day 1221

    As do many adults, I enjoy a drink from time to time. I have for years followed the guidance that when I feel I need a drink then I do not drink. I have never wanted alcohol to be a crutch. That seems to have gone by the wayside these last few weeks (and especially the last two). I am not drinking to excess, but I am pouring myself a double almost every evening. I would like to say that I need to stop… but for the time being, I have more pressing things going on in my life, in my head. If it’s simply a couple of drams of whisky or rum in the evening then it is much better than it might be.

    I spent most of the last five days cramming for an exam for which I still felt that I was not fully prepared, but I needed to pass it by yesterday in order to be able to teach the class this week. It paid off, and yesterday evening I passed the Microsoft Cybersecurity Architect exam. Don’t get all excited – while it is certainly a bear of an exam, I do not think of anyone who passes it as an architect or anything close. I actually failed it on Thursday (I started that morning with another crushing email that threw me and my emotions (which had already been in the toilet) completely asunder. I then spent ten hours Friday and eight hours Saturday preparing to retake it, and I was able to eke out the passing score in the evening. I did not ace it, but it was also not a borderline pass. What a relief.

    That is the good news, and the fact that the related course seems to be in huge demand all of a sudden means that it was a smart move. The bad news (not really bad, but…) is that this week’s class is another Central Europe Standard Time class – another week (well, four days) of overnights. It will be grueling, but I will make it through; I always do.

    It is time for me to start my day… even though I wish I could just crawl back into bed I have commitments. Her Floofness decided that nearly five hours was enough sleep for me, and would not let me stay in bed. Now I have things to do, so I will hit it.

    Have a day folks.