Always Learning New Things

It’s been almost a year and a month since my Gastric Bypass and I find I am still learning new things.

Yesterday I learned that melted-to-the-point-of-liquified protein bars are icky-gross. Today I learned that Atkins brand, keto-friendly BBQ fake potato chips are super duper spicy, and not being able to take a drink of water for an hour after you finish eating makes eating super duper spicy fake potato chips rather uncomfortable.

18 minutes to go before I can wash the spicy down. Hang in there, bypass boy.

12 < 15

Idiot.

I took a swig of lemonade at 11:42am, just as my last meeting in Foxborough was wrapping up. I left the building, went to the car, and started driving to my next meeting in Westwood. I took a little protein snack out of the package and took a bite at 11:54am.

What’s wrong with this picture?

I am supposed to wait 15 minutes after drinking something before eating something. 11:54 – 11:42 = 12 minutes. 12 is less than 15. Like our elementary school teachers taught us, 12<15.

Idiot. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t wait the full 15 minutes. Stupid. I won’t have anything more until after 1:00pm, so my stomach should be good and empty by then. Still… it’s called a clock, moron. Use it.

Trying Something… Maybe

The kids are here and I am about to cook dinner on the grill. I am thinking of trying something that I haven’t tried since before the weight loss surgery. I am thinking of having an actual hamburger. Like burger patty and a hamburger roll, together.

I am afraid, but I think I am up for it.

Wish me burger-luck.

That was a Day

DSCN3468

Her old apartment was on the second floor. Her new apartment is on the third floor. So many stairs.

If today’s events had happened a year ago, pre gastric bypass, I probably would have died of a massive heart attack by lunch time. I was very pleased that I got to help Bellana in a time of need. I’m also very pleased that I was physically able to pull it off without dropping dead. That felt good, though I’m in tons of pain tonight and I’ll probably sleep until dinner time tomorrow and tonight’s very late dinner gave me the foamies and I’ll probably need another hour to recover.

I wish Jen had been with me, but outside of that it was a really good day.

Courteous Bad Stomach Fun

I’m having another unhappy stomach day today. It’s not bad. I won’t have any problem working or anything like that. The stomach pain feels like bad gas so far so maybe I will try to take a Gas-X pill and see if it clears it up.

The pain is nothing but courteous this time as it waited until morning to start bothering me. I didn’t wake up with it at 1:30am or anything like that. I woke up with it at 5:30am, which was when my alarm went off. Nice of my stomach, eh?

Change of subject, I think I just did something I’ve never been able to pull off before. I think I just saved an external hard drive. Sort of, at least. The drive I had been using for my Time Machine backups corrupted itself somehow recently and went into read only mode. I tried fixing it with Mac Disk Utility but didn’t have any luck.

I replaced the drive with a new 2tb drive over the weekend and yesterday I had my first successful backups. This morning, in between powerful burps and even more powerful farts (sorry) I tried fixing the first drive again but it wasn’t happening. I reformatted the drive instead and remounted it and whatdayaknow, I can write to it again. It’s now my music files backup disc and maybe it might be my Flickr backup disc too if I ever get the energy to back up the zillion photos I have stored there. Yeah, I should do that soon. There’s so much to lose on that account. Now is the time.

My stomach has made me late to get started for work. It’s 8:21 now and I still need to take a shower and get dressed and all, so I will do that now. Happy burping, everyone.

Meeces to Pieces

It’s time for our two new cats to prove their worth to the household. Yesterday we started seeing clear signs that they were stalking something. The hunt was on. Last night Harry got a brief glimpse: a mouse. Later, Jen and I also saw it hiding in a tiny space between a cabinet and a wall. I tried getting it with a broom but failed miserably.

The cats were hyper vigilant throughout the night but haven’t had any success yet. There was a moment this morning where I heard them attacking from the next room, and also heard their prey squeaking in terror. I felt kinda bad, but that’s the price you pay for invading our home.

The cats have two responsibilities in this house. One is to be adorable and let us pet them and snuggle them. The other is to eliminate small furry invaders. It’s time to hold up your end of the bargain, Robin and Lily. I have full confidence in your mousing abilities. Make Daddy proud, girls.


No problems last night as far as stomach pain goes. I was a little nervous before bed. I was a little queasy. Not bad, but just aware that I wasn’t at 100%. I was also so thoroughly exhausted that I couldn’t really think straight. I turned in at about 11:00 but I forgot to clean out my CPAP mask so I went to sleep without it. I woke up at about 3:30. My first thought was, here we go again. Then I realized what woke me up. It wasn’t in my stomach, it was on my stomach. Miss Lily had jumped on me and was very insistent about showing me some affection. I gave her what she wanted. She doesn’t really show me any attention like that, so I wasn’t about to say no.

Once she had her fill I tried going back to sleep, but I was pretty much awake. I just sort of laid there for a while, then I got up and got a new CPAP mask out of my closet. I had to deal with Miss Robin who ran inside while I had the door open and wouldn’t come out. I swapped out the drool’d in mask for the new, clean one and went back to bed. I got to listen to an attack on the mouse before I fell asleep. My alarm was set for 7:00am but I snoozed it until a little before 8:00. So the good news is, no stomach issues or anything health related. The bad news is I didn’t sleep through the night the way I was hoping. The lesser good news is that I did snag about seven hours of sleep that I very much needed, though I am still feeling really tired this morning.

Here’s hoping tonight continues to show improvement.


I was afraid of this. I have fully committed myself to binge watching all of Star Wars The Clone Wars. There are 133 episodes. It’s going to take a while. I know I tried doing this once before but fell off the wagon very early. Why? What stopped me?

During this morning’s faux jog (pronounced, yog) I found out. Season one, episode eight… the entire episode focuses on Jar Jar and it is just as insufferably awful as you would expect. I made it through without vomiting but it did sap my re-watching enthusiasm by about 65%. Oh well. Maybe I’ll go back to the X-Files for a couple of days.


If I don’t get a haircut today I am going to go insane. Just warning you. Ya know, in case I start posting things that are more insane than normal. If I do, you’ll know why.

Not Bad, Just Weird

So last night. It wasn’t bad, it was just weird. Weird in that I haven’t experienced anything quite like it before, but also in the way that it mirrored the bad time from the night before without actually being all that bad.

I went to bed at around 10:30 and dropped off to sleep pretty much instantly. After the mess that was Wednesday night, that was all I had hoped for. I woke up around 1:00am feeling a bit nauseous. I actually spit up into my CPAP mask, just a little bit. I guess my fears about wearing it the night before we justified? I got to the bathroom, spit up a little more, and felt better. I never vomited and the nausea passed quickly. In it’s wake was some gas pain. That scared me. Any pain in the stomach would, after all of the crap from Wednesday. Unlike Wednesday though I was able to lay back down without getting worse and I actually went back to sleep for half an hour or so.

I woke up again and the pain in my stomach was worse, but still not like the night before. It felt like gas still, but it also felt like hunger. I got up for a tiny little snack and brought it back to the bedroom and had it. When I did that on Wednesday I immediately knew that it wasn’t going to help. Last night I didn’t have that feeling. It may have helped a little, but really burping helped more.

I sat up in bed for a little while, then went back to the bathroom, which I also did on Wednesday night, but that didn’t help. The pain was there, but it was never even remotely as bad as the night before. Wednesday was probably a 6-7 on the pain scale from 1-10. Thursday was maybe a 3-4. I was still burping and farting a lot and I was afraid I was going to wake Jen with all the racket so, like Wednesday, I went out to the living room.

This was the point where things went out of control on Wednesday. I was a little afraid of a repeat, but pretty sure it wasn’t going to happen. I was able to lay down on the couch, which I couldn’t do the night before, and I actually fell asleep again. I didn’t have my CPAP machine so I would sleep for a little while then wake up then repeat. At 4:30 or so Jen came out looking for me and I reassured her that apart from some gas I was fine. She asked if I could go back to bed and I did. I changed my alarm from 5:00am (for yogging purposes) to 7:00am to help with the exhaustion a little. I didn’t put my CPAP machine on because of the drool factor. I need to clean that sucker tonight. I slept until about 6:00 and then just drifted between dozing and awake until 7:00.

So all in all it wasn’t a bad night, just weird. I could have stayed in bed the whole time but I was afraid I would make too much noise and wake up my dearest. I really wanted her to have a good night’s sleep. I messed her sleep up the night before and I absolutely did not want to do that again.

Tonight? I guess we’ll have to see. I am thinking about sunrise photos at Salisbury Beach tomorrow so hopefully I’ll get a good sleep before waking up stupidly early in the morning. We’ll see how it goes, I guess. I am sure it will be fine.