Author: robertjames1971

I'm wicked tall.

Nickname

Daily writing prompt
What’s the story behind your nickname?
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Let’s start this from the very, very beginning. My father’s name is Robert. Folks call him Bob. When my mother was pregnant for the second time she and my dad decided if they had a boy they would give it the same name as my father. That boy would be Robert, Junior. That boy ended up being me.

So my name is Robert. There are two syllables in the word Robert. To shorten it down to one syllable , thus making it easier to say, people started calling me Rob.

In other words, I don’t really have a nickname. Sorry, daily writing prompt.

They Got ’em!

robertjames1971's avatarRob Shoots Film

Just got the email from the film lab saying they received the two rolls of film I shipped out on Tuesday!

WOOHOO!

Expect some newly developed and scanned shots at some point in the next 5-10 business days.

I reiterate: WOOHOO!

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Two Things

robertjames1971's avatarRob Shoots Film

Two things to note. First, we’re going back to Disney World in September. It’ll be just for a few days and I haven’t decided if I am bringing a film camera again. Second, I sent two rolls of film to the lab! New film shots coming soon, I hope!

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Spoke Too Soon

I got up this morning to watch the new episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds while doing my morning exercise and I found that there were two new episodes, not one. They released a Lower Decks cross over a few days ago and somehow I didn’t catch it. How the hell did that happen? That episode was fun. This week’s episode is dark. Woah, babie is it dark.

That’s not what this post is about though. Yesterday I wrote something about having a good day food-wise. I spoke too soon. Not that when things went bad it was that bad. It was not. It wasn’t even technically a problem. I was hungry when I left work. Really hungry. I had a protein bar on the drive, which put me over the 80 grams of protein goal for the day. I figured I’d have a little bit of supper with Jen and then I’d be set for the day. That was the plan.

When I got home though, she had dinner waiting for me. It was quinoa with chicken. She used taco sauce in the vegetable stir fry. It smelled like heaven. Amazing. I put a big spoonful onto a plate… then another big spoonful… then a smaller spoonful. I never thought I’d eat it all, and I didn’t. Not even close. What I did do was eat too much. WAY too much. I stopped when my stomach was feeling uncomfortably full. I should have finished 5-10 minutes earlier, but I didn’t. In the first few minutes after I stopped the uncomfortable full feeling started getting worse. I set a timer for one hour because I still had my evening vitamins to take even though I was already over my water goal for the day. I figured I’d have a few ounces of water with the two calcium pills and then I could move on with my life.

When the hour timer went off I was still painfully full. I set another timer for 30 minutes. I was still not good when that went off. I did it again, and again, and again. I had stopped eating at 7:22pm. At 10:20 I was still feeling too full to take the pills. I was also seriously exhausted so I just went to sleep. I wasn’t happy about missing a vitamin dose, but I could live with it given the circumstances.

At 2:00am I woke up needing to pee (TMI, sorry). My stomach felt normal again at that point, as I suspected it would. I took those two calcium pills with two ounces of water. Sure, they were taken on the wrong calendar date, and it was 9-10 hours later than I like to take them, but I got them in. I also did the dishes, which I was planning to do before I went to sleep but failed to. I felt pretty good.

There were a couple of weird things though. First, when I woke up I was dripping with sweat and my bed sheet was down right soggy. What the hell happened there? I have no idea. I didn’t feel hot at all, quite the opposite. Why was I sweating buckets during that 3.5 hours of sleep? On top of that, when I eventually laid down to sleep I couldn’t. What the hell, Robert? I was still feeling super tired. It just took me about half an hour to get back to sleep. Weird.

Okay, I just finished today’s Star Trek episode. It was really good. I mean, really good. I think next week will be a musical episode with songs written by two former members of Letter to Cleo. Boston music across the stars, babie! I am not sure that’s what’s going on, but that’s the rumor I’ve heard. Check Kay Hanley’s social media for details. I’ve been avoiding it out of fear of spoilers.

For now though, it’s time to get ready for work. Have a good day, everyone and if you’ve had gastric bypass surgery, don’t over do it with the taco flavored quinoa, no matter how spectacular it tastes.

Strategies

Daily writing prompt
What strategies do you use to maintain your health and well-being?
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I tell you what, one strategy I should start using to maintain health and well-being should be to stop using the WordPress.com MacOS app to write posts because it doesn’t have a built in spell checker like the browser app does and I am just not that skilled a speller to be flying without a safety net, you know what I mean?

But seriously folks…

I never really thought about strategies yadda yadda. I clearly have them but I just never spelled* it out like this.

There are two types of well-being in play here. Physical and mental. The physical health strategies are, like everything related to my physical health these days, come to me via the weight loss clinic and their instructions to keep me healthy post-gastric bypass. Exercise every day, at least 64 ounces of water every day, at least 80 grams of protein every day, no sugar, small bites of food, chew every bite until it’s obliterated, don’t eat too fast. Those are the big ones. There are also things like keeping in touch with the clinic and not blowing off my regularly scheduled follow up appointments.

So that is the physical question, what about the mental well-being situation? I don’t think I have any specific strategies. It’s more like things that make me feel like maybe I deserve to be thought of as a not-so-terrible human being. That combined with things that just make me feel good in general will have to suffice. I treat my wife with the love and respect that she deserves. When I do that my well-being feels pretty well. When I fail… everything about me fails. Same with the kids. Treat them the way they deserve to be treated. For me that includes loving my two step kids as if they were my own. I do, so that’s pretty easy.

My family is the biggest part of this, but what else is there? Doing a good job at work is important. Helping my staff be the best they can be is incredibly rewarding. I’m honestly surprised by how good that can make me feel. Playing guitar, writing shitty songs, playing with home recording projects. All of that is good for my mental health. Taking a lot of pictures, writing on this silly blog. Those are important too. They help me to keep my head on straight.

I’m sure if I took more time to think about this topic I could add one or two hundred more things to this list. What I have here will do for now though. Hopefully everyone is able to answer this one for themselves, and in doing so keep their heads on straight for another day. This is a good thing.

*See what I did there? Spelled it out? Spell check? Get it? Yeah, I’m so damn clever.

Long Day

Today is my first day back at work after a four day weekend. I’ve been punched in for about eight hours and 11 minutes but if feels like 2523972 hours and 237923603 minutes.

One bad thing happened at work today. I was prompted to reboot to take a Windows update. I had no idea (because I didn’t check before I rebooted) that the update in question was a full update to Windows 11. Ah, hell.

After a few less than perfect days in a row in terms of gastric bypass side effects and the like, I have now had two very good days. Well, yesterday was good and today has been good so far. I am really tired though. I only got four hours of sleep ahead of my sunrise jaunt yesterday. Last night I got six hours but I never put on my CPAP mask so maybe it wasn’t the most productive six hours. I am trying to remember why I didn’t put it on when I went to sleep last night and I can’t recall. I know there was a reason at the time, but what was it?

Did I mention I mailed off two rolls of film yesterday? I was hoping to maybe get an email saying the lab had received them today, but I didn’t really expect to. Maybe tomorrow? One roll was loaded into Dad’s camera on either Christmas day or Christmas eve, so there will be a few Christmas shots. There was also some snow in the back yard stuff, and then the first day of Bellana’s graduation weekend. The other roll was my first roll of Kodak Portra 800. Really my first use of a professional level film. I get shivers just thinking of that, and know that everything I took will likely suck because I am clueless. That roll has mostly graduation weekend stuff, and a few pics from yesterday’s stop at Plum Island.

We are going to see Harry this weekend. I expect a lot of Doctor Who discussions. Maybe I will make him watch an episode of the original show, just for laughs. Maybe I’ll Google something like “best forth doctor episodes” and see if there’s something we can watch out of sequence.

I just did exactly that and found that Douglas Adams of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy fame wrote three episodes of Doctor who in 1979. Only two aired as the third was derailed by a labor strike. I think we might have to investigate this further.

Okay, the work day is coming to a close. Time to start packing up. I hope you all had a good Wednesday, and I hope it didn’t feel like it was 941760497 hours long.

2023 50/90 Challenge Day 22/90

I owe a recap post from last night. My lunch break at the office seems like as good a time as any to play catch up.

Small progress yesterday. After my fun photography morning I was able to add lyrics and melody to two songs and then mix two additional songs. Neither of the finished songs are very good. That’s sort of a theme this year, I think. I might post them later, but not now.

No clue what, if anything, I will be able to get to tonight when I get home from work, but I have four songs ready to add vocals to so there might be a car music in the morning. I’m sure I’ll let you know.

Travel Plans

Daily writing prompt
What are your future travel plans?
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I feel like I just wrote this post. What was I talking about then?

Travel plans! There were three, there are now two.

Next month, Jen, Bellana, and I are going to a wedding in Bar Harbor, ME. We are turning it into a long weekend kind of trip. Jen and I have been there once before. It was a Memorial Day weekend visit that was also celebrating our anniversary. It was a good weekend trip.

2012-05-26 to 28 - Bar Harbor 186

The second trip is another Disney World trip in September. It’s just me and Jen this time. We were reading up about crazy people who book short, weekend style visits to Orlando and it inspired us. Granted, the weekend has turned into a four or five day weekend, but that’s okay with me.

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There was also a possible trip to Dallas, TX that was built onto of a business trip for Jen, but that appears to be off now. The business plans are still on but our personal travel is off for now. We’ll see if we can come up with something to replace it. I’ve never been to Texas and really I am not exactly dying for a visit… unless it’s just me going to music stores looking for cool guitars.

And that’s it for travel plans for the moment. I am hoping we’ll be able to sneak in another weekend get away or two before the summer ends. We’ll see.