Week 41 Weigh In

I am pleasantly surprised and rather pleased. I mentioned before that I have been eating a lot more than usual. I’ve been eating things that aren’t necessarily good for me too. I’ve been handling it all okay for the most part, though the couple of ounces of peanuts I tried to eat last night gave me the worst bought of nausea I’ve experienced since the start of this whole thing.

I expected minimal weight loss at best, and realistically with all the stress eating and difficulties of the last week I expected to gain a little weight. I did not. I lost 1.8 pounds, which under the circumstances feels like a ton. I now weight 222 even. My BMI dropped 0.2 points to 27 even. I’m inching closer to that mythical, magical 25 mark. My weight loss since the surgery is now at 209.4, and my weight loss since the first check in moved the 10’s column and reached 230.4.

At the wake Monday night I lost track of the number of times someone came through the receiving line and didn’t recognize me. While it was life affirming every single time, I also got a little tired of it. I get it, I am thinner. Can we focus on the topic at hand please? I don’t know. I felt guilty about feeling good about my health while my mother was 10 feet away in a casket.


On an unrelated note, I am watching the last few minutes of The Mandalorian season two, episode six. I just watched Boba Fett kick the crap out of a drop ship full of stormtroopers. If only the Book of Boba Fett season had followed suit. Oh well. I think I am going to include that show in my Mandalorian pre-season three prep binge anyway. It was good, it just wasn’t great. Except for the episodes with Mando and Baby Yoda, of course. Those episodes were stellar.

On another unrelated note, I took today off to recover from the wake and the funeral. It might be the best move I’ve ever made, career wise. I need a decompression day. Jen is working though so I am not going to play guitar through an amp all day. I am going to play guitar through an amp sim though. I have eight songs to put rhythm guitars on before I sleep tonight. I will get The RPM Challenge on track today, even if it kills me.

Rewatch Bonanza

I had a tough day today. It’s going to be tough the next couple of days but that’s not relevant to this post. The tough day resulted in a lot of time in the living room vegging in front of the television. That means I was able to finish my Star Trek Picard two season rewatch with tons of time to spare before the third season premiere on Thursday.

It also means I was able to start the two-plus season rewatch of The Mandalorian with oodles of time before the third season premiere on March 1st. Hell, I may even throw in the full season of The Book of Boba Fett rather than just the three episodes with Mando and/or Grogu. We will see.

Picard Rewatch

I got shit done on the RPM Challenge today, but on the plus side we got this week’s episode of The Last of Us two days early and it was freaking incredible.

Also, I just finished season one of Star Trek Picard, and I’m 7.5 minutes into season two. Will I finish before season three starts on Thursday? We’ll see.

Once the Picard rewatch is done I need to rewatch The Mandalorian before season three launches on March 1st. There is also new South Park, and each episode of The Last of Us requires multiple viewings (the show is that good) and I’ve got a couple of seasons (I think) of Star Trek Discovery still to go, as well as the last season of The Orville, and The Flash just kicked off it’s final season.

As far as TV is concerned, there’s a lot of good stuff to take in. The 10 episodes of Picard season two come first though.

Getting Through the Prep Work

My brother and sister and I met last night to work on the planning for the funeral. We picked music and readings and started asking cousins to play the various parts. We have one reader but still need one more. We have three pall bearers but still need three more. We have offers out for the remaining parts and are just waiting to hear back.

Jen and I were a little late getting out of the house. I called my father to let him know we’d be late for the planned suit fitting and he said he was tired and asked if we could reschedule to tomorrow, which is now today. I put in for a couple of hours at the end of the day so that we can head over earlier. Jen is off today so it should all work out. That still gives us the weekend to replace anything we bought that doesn’t fit him. We’re still in good shape.

I’ve been really hungry the last couple of days. My meals have gotten significantly larger and I’ve had more between meal snacks. I have to assume it’s an emotional thing. The good news is that yesterday I had actual food with every meal. I had protein supplements along with each meal, but that was just to make sure I hit my goal. Eggs for breakfast and chicken for lunch and dinner. I also had peanuts as snacks instead of protein bars. It wasn’t a lot of snack-level protein intake, but it felt pretty good to do it that way.

No music last night. Not sure if tonight will be any different. I am 2/5 of the way through Star Trek Picard season 1 episode 6 though. I’m more than 25% of the way through the two season rewatch with season three kicking off in six days. Probably not going to make it unless I do an alarmingly intense binge over the weekend. Of course The Mandalorian season three kicks off on March 1st. Can I follow the two season Picard rewatch with a 2+ season Mandalorian rewatch by 3/1? (2+ seasons due to the two episodes where The Mandalorian hijacked The Book of Boba Fett, right?)

Right then. Time to start getting ready for work. Talk to you later. Parents, tell your kids you love them. Kids, tell your parents you love them.

Yesterday was a Day

Wow… yesterday kicked my ass.

Jen and I left the resort to go to Hollywood Studios at a little before 8:00am. We got there before the park opened, but in time for early entry for resort guests. Yeah… privilege. The kids met up with us an little while later. They were running the Disney World Marathon so we got to see a bunch of runners on the course on the way in. That was really cool.

We did my three favorite rides, Rise of the Resistance (Star Wars), Smugglers Run (also Star Wars), and Toy Story Mania (not Star Wars). We also rode the new Mickey and Minnie’s Run Away Rail Road which sits pretty close to my list of favorite rides too. Also, Star Tours (Star Wars). I must have ridden that ride on some previous trip, but I really couldn’t remember it. Guess I’m gettin’ old.

Speaking of old, we didn’t get back to our room until about 11:00pm and I went straight to sleep. I didn’t even wait for my watch to charge so I could track sleep stats. It was insane. I was so thoroughly tired I couldn’t function anymore.

Today we are going over to the Polynesian, our first Disney resort from 2019, for a character breakfast. My camera batter is charging because I didn’t stay awake long enough to charge it last night. It will be fine though. After that we’re going back to Magic Kingdom for the morning. We have tickets to an after close event there late tonight so we’ll probably spend the afternoon resting up in the hotel room. We’ll be out until around 1:00am tonight having Magic Kingdom virtually to ourselves.

As of right now though, it’s 6:47am and I am the only one of us awake. I’m typing this in the dark while waiting for the gigantic image files from my Z5 to upload to Flickr. It’s gonna take a while.

Big Day for Me

Todays a big day for me. We are heading over to Hollywood Studios where I will get to spend some quality time fully immersed in Star Wars. Galaxy’s Edge awaits where I will fly on the Millennium Falcon, face off against Kylo Ren, and maybe… just maybe… meet Baby Yoda.

May The Force be with us all!

YouTube is Helpful

I’ve watched at least 10 videos on YouTube that walk through Nikon Z5 settings and menus. There was one question I had that none of them answered. How do you set the camera so that you can use the little joystick to set your focus point. While doing today’s faux-jog (pronounced faux-yog, with a soft “J”) I watched this one, which I think answered the question. I’ll check once my legs start working again.

Ever since the camera obsession was reborn back in June, YouTube has been a huge help to me, a source of Gear Acquisition Syndrome (what is this medium format of which you speak?), and it’s more or less replaced my constant television streaming. 95% of what I’ve watched is film related, but there are a bunch of digital folks that I have obsessed over too.

Of course January will bring us a new Star Wars show (The Bad Batch season two) and a new HBO show that I can already tell is going to be appointment viewing (The Last of Us), and there is more Star Wars and Marvel (I think?) and Walking Dead not too far behind that. TV will take back a lot of my time during faux-jog (pronounced faux-yog, with a soft “J”), but I think photography YouTube might be here to stay for a while.

For now though, let’s go see if the autofocus joy stick thingie can be switched on via the back display screen.


ADDENDUM: Okay, so I can’t embed the video. Sigh. You get the idea anyway, right? Here’s a link.

March 1st

Mando and Baby Yoda return for season three in March 1, 2023. This is the way.