Hope you are all having a happy, fascism-free Tuesday.
I was having a calm, yet somewhat productive day today. The minute I finished lunch all hell broke loose. It became a crazy, hectic, tense, productive day. You know how it is.
Now I am about 20 minutes away from the end of my work day and hopefully things are calming down. Everything seems covered at the moment. Breath in, breath out. You’ve got this, Robert.
I have half a personal day booked for tomorrow. Robin the Cat has a vet appointment. Just her annual check up. I have meetings booked all afternoon though, so it’s going to be busy tomorrow too. At least I’ll have three episodes of Star Wars Andor to plow through before the work day starts. They come out at 9:00 Eastern time tonight. I am ready. There was a new episodes of The Handmaids Tale over night last night. I watched it while doing my morning exercise today. It was excellent. Here’s hoping Andor holds serve on the which-show-about-people-fighting-fascism-is-more-awesome sweepstakes. At this point it’s anyone’s game.
Oh good. 10 minutes away from quitting time and it just started to rain. It’s freakin’ pouring out. Good, good.
I am trying today. I am doing my best. My best, however, ain’t gonna be good enough.
I am trying to not get mentally bogged down by idiotic shit going on in the federal government. I just want to have a day where I ignore the morons and concentrate on work for a change. Something tells me I am not going to be terribly successful in this endeavor though. Don’t get my wrong, my work is getting done. No worries there. I just find myself distracted by all the other bullshit.
I am in the office again today. This makes four business days in a row for me. Ugh. Yesterday I left the house at 7:30 and got to work at 9:10. Today I left the house at 7:20 (makes sense, right?) and got to work at 9:10. Oh for crying out loud.
On the way out the door I told the cats to take care of my wife while I am out. I always tell them that. I don’t know if they ever listen though. They aren’t really team players, you know? They just do their own thing and mostly ignore anything I say. They’re cats that way.
Remember back in the ’80s when all of those cold war movies showed the bad guys, the commies, stopping their poor oppressed citizens on the street and asking to see their papers? Remember how evil that felt? The poor saps having to cough up their legal documentation to the secret police at a moment’s notice?
I wonder why I have been thinking of that lately.
So a couple of weeks ago my US passport expired. My state drivers license is going to expire soon as well, and when I renew it I have to get the new federal “Real ID” because we live in a police state now. Unfortunately you need to have an appointment to setup the Real ID and a month ago when I booked one the best date I could get was after my license expires.
The good news is, my passport renewal went off without a hitch and I got it done WAY faster than I expected so I can use my new passport in the Real ID process. That’s cool. I wonder if I can renew my state drivers license first and then replace it a short time later with the federal document. I am guessing I would have to pay twice if I did that and I’ll be damned if I am going to give that tariffing fucker a penny more than I have to. Not that I am cynical about the collapse of my former country or anything. You know how it is.
You know… some days… I really wish I could just stay in bed and wait for something to come along that magically picks me up and moves me and my family to somewhere in Europe.
I mean, what the fuck?
First, the orange shit clown announces he is going to reopen Alcatraz and use it for what he says is the worst criminals in the country but what we all know is to use it as a concentration camp for people who don’t like him. We all know that, right? Why ship immigrants to El Salvador when you can ship them to Alcatraz? Forgetting the fact that it failed as a maximum security prison once before and that it is just a museum now… Seriously… what the fuck?
I was hanging my head in embarrassed shame after reading about all of this and that’s when I heard the second idiocy of the day. The orange shit clown has announced a 100% tariff on… wait for it… you’re not going to believe this one… movies. That’s right, you read that correctly. He just doubled the price of a movie ticket. He took an industry that has been on death’s door since Covid and doubled the price of admission in order to… checking my notes… save it.
Again I ask, in all seriousness… what the actual fuck?
Here’s a photo of two cats with stunned, disbelieving looks on their little cat faces. Both of them have asked me why we’re not packing up to move to Europe where people are less certifiably insane than they are here in the country formerly known as the united states and currently known as fucking moron land. I don’t know, cats. I just don’t know anymore.
A 100% tariff on… movies… yeah, that’s going to make america great again for sure. Finger right on the pulse there, you fascist schmuck.
Happy anniversary! Three years ago today I went under the knife and had my insides rewired. Gastric Bypass. Weight loss surgery. Most of my stomach was tied off and a big chunk of my intestine was skipped. It was a brutal experience that required all sorts of lifestyle and diet changes and had all sorts of icky side effects but it was oh so worth it. Health care wise it is the single best move I’ve ever made. Overall it doesn’t quite measure up to marrying Jen and being a step father, but it tops just about everything else.
I weighed myself this morning and was pleasantly surprised to see I was down a little since the last time I stepped on a scale. That’s nice, huh? My first appointment at the weight loss clinic was January 19, 2022 and I weighed 452 pounds. Yup. The day of the surgery I did not weigh myself. The most recent number I had was from April 29, 2022 when I weighed 431.4 pounds. On the one year anniversary, May 4, 2023, I weighed 204.8 pounds. Suck it, morbid obesity! The lowest weight I ever recorded was the magical day of September 22, 2023 when I weighed in at 198.4 pounds. Sub-200! Glorious! We were told to expect our post-surgery weight to bottom out at some crazy number and then start climbing up again to a more reasonable, sustainable value. That’s been the case for the last year and a half or so. At my two year anniversary I was 211.2. The last time I weighed myself was the three year anniversary of the first check in, January 19, 2025, and I was 222.6. This morning, the first thing I did when I got out of bed was step on the scale. I was expecting something between 220 and 230 and I got 218.6! Down four pounds since January and back in the teens, babie! Currently I am down 212.8 since the surgery and 233.4 since the start of the process.
I still have problems with food getting stuck on the way into my new digestive system but not nearly as often as before. I can have trouble if I don’t chew enough, or eat too fast, or eat too much in one bite, but these days I can go faster and more per bite than I could have two years ago. Eating is easier now than it was before. When it goes bad it still goes bad. If a bite of food can’t get into my stomach (it’s actually technically called a pouch now) then it has to go somewhere. Either it just hangs out and blocks the path so that nothing else can get in (until it breaks down enough to enter) or it comes back up to say hello again. That’s life these days, but it doesn’t happen nearly as much as it used to.
In closing, here’s my selfie a day video from the first year. Enjoy watching me melt away.
Another weekend without sunlight and another weekend without me shooting any film. I guess I can just post a bunch of pics from the last batch I had developed. That will hold me over… forever.
I just had some really good thunderstorm luck. I went grocery shopping even though the sky looked like it was going to fall. I made it into the store, through all of my shopping, and back out to the car before it rained. I loaded up the car, put the cart away, and got in the car and at the exact moment I closed the door the first rain drop hit my windshield. Perfect timing.
As I drove home, the rain was so heavy I really couldn’t see. It sucked. I made it home in one piece though and I sat in the driveway for a few minutes waiting for the rain to calm down. Magically, it stopped all together! Nice! I needed three trips from the car to the kitchen and back and it wasn’t until I was on the third trip that the rain started again. I was only in it for a couple of seconds. A small price to pay given the risks involved. I’ll take it.
Suck it, thunderstorm. Of course it’s down pouring again now, but that’s okay. I’m in for the rest of the day.
Earlier today we drove to Boston for a few minutes. Enjoy the obligatory stuck-in-traffic-getting-on-to-Storrow-Drive-looking-at-the-Zakim-bridge pics.
I mentioned a few times last week that I had a medical thing last Tuesday. It involved anesthesia through an IV. Today I noticed that the area around the IV point is now a giant yellow bruise. Like… how did I not see that yesterday or the day before or whenever? Did the bruise form four days after the fact? Not likely.
I mentioned in a post yesterday that I stubbed my toe on the end of the bed while I was getting ready for work. It hurt like a mutha. It continued to hurt a little for the entire rest of the day and my foot felt a little swollen. It wasn’t bad enough to have a negative effect on me or anything like that, it was just there. Last night when I went to bed I took off my shoes and socks and found that my forth toe on my left foot is a dark purple, almost black, bruise of epic awful ugliness. It is definitely not broken but it is swollen and ugly and gross.
So those are two things I have going for me on this gloomy Saturday morning.
The sun was out this morning for the first time on a Saturday in something like 35 years. Did my camera and I make it outside to take advantage? Nope. I way over slept. Is it too late? The thunderstorms are rolling in so yes, it is too late. I am enjoying a nice breeze as Miss Robin Sparkles the cat and I are sitting next to an open window in the bedroom. That’s something at least, right?
Inside the Red Head's Head 