Kefir smoothie with blueberries, check. Egg-white omelet with peppers and onion, check. Entire pot of coffee, check. Two baked tilapia fillets, tomato sauce, peppers, cottage cheese, pickle, green tea, pear, side salad, check check checkity check check. Pretty sure I just closed my eyes for a moment and daydreamed of a steak, or a pizza, or better yet a steak pizza, but woke up and all I could find was more celery.
Author: Matt (Page 5 of 41)
Another morning of kefir smoothie with blueberries, egg-white omelet with peppers and onion, and another morning spent drinking an entire pot of coffee (hey, it’s allowed!) to try to fill the gaping hole in my stomach. For lunch I was able to switch it up with the leftover turkey chili from dinner last night (yay), but then came the infinite 3pm hour and I found myself eating anything and everything from pickles and cottage cheese to celery and peppers with dressing. I even made myself some green tea, and (you guessed it) still hungry. Dinner consisted of a giant chicken breast with some baked asparagus. Two hours after I finished first dinner I was back to eat the other chicken breast I cooked and was saving for tomorrow’s lunch.
Where the hell is all this food going?!
Breakfast
Kefir smoothie with blueberries
Egg-white omelet with peppers and onion
Lunch
Pan fried tilapia fillets
Side salad
Cottage cheese
Dinner
Turkey Chili (no beans)
I’ve lost 1lb in 24 hours. I’m not sure how long I can sustain this as constantly being hungry is not very high on my list of things to do.
With 11 days left until DEMF, when C requested we go for another cycle of the 17 day diet before we left, being the good husband I am I said “sure”! This was Sunday, so after spending a few hours at the grocery store stocking up we of course had our “last supper” of pizza, wings, and beer before beginning the diet.
Monday dawned full of possibilities and excitement as I ate an egg-white omelet with some peppers and onion and a kefir smoothie w/ blueberries. It only got better from there with a tilapia fillet with some tomato sauce and a side salad for lunch, a bunch of random shove-in-my-face-as-many-as-I-can fruits and veggies through the afternoon, followed by eggplant parmesan and skillet chicken for dinner. So here I am summarizing day 1, and I’m still going to bed hungry (surprise).
Sure it sounds great, and even tasted great too, but those of you who know me know that even on a good day filled with carb splurges or fried gluttony I’m hungry again within an hour or two (it’s a curse, really it is). I wasn’t going to keep a journal because honestly how many times does anyone really want to read me making reference to staving third world children (remember the cabbage diet?), but here I go anyway!
Things have been moving pretty quickly around here the past few weeks so I haven’t have a lot of time to reflect on the fact that it has been 10 months since Monty’s diagnosis with GME, 3 months since his last Cytosar chemo treatment, 2 months since his last dose of Prednisone, and 1 month since his last dose of any medication of any kind. As of today he will see the neurologist bi-monthly with the goal of phasing them out long term, and the rest of the lifestyle restrictions have been lifted.
It has been an exceedingly difficult road to get where we are today, but it has also been exceedingly rewarding.
After enriching the last twenty years of my life with fourteen books and almost 12,000 pages of text, how do you appropriately say “thank you” to an author? How do you adequately explain the profoundness of getting to know characters and live their life through such intricately described points of views? Why would you give a rat’s ass about a fantasy series some dude on the internet thinks is awesome?
It was 1992, I was still too young to drive so I would often ride my bike to the library (yeah, I was that cool). I was looking for something new to read, and little did I know what I was getting myself into by checking out “The Eye of the World”, book one of the Wheel of Time series from Robert Jordan. I’m pretty sure that summer I blew through at least thew first 3 books without even blinking, so you can imagine my annoyance when around the fourth or fifth book I had caught up with the author. By book five it was taking on average two years to complete a book, so I must have re-read the series from the beginning at least three times waiting for new books to come out. Then in 2007 any series reader’s worst nightmare happened, the author passed away, and I was afraid I would never see the books through to the end after being so involved for so long. Enter Brandon Sanderson, chosen by the original author’s wife & editor to finish the series and final book (which ended up being 3) using extensive notes.
All of this led up to today, when I turned the final page of the final book and the only thing that I could process as a thoughtful summation was, “I wonder what happens next?”
Finally, took you long enough…
I manage an Exchange 2010 messaging environment with two mailbox servers and two public folder databases that replicate between each other. The migration from 2003 to 2010 went smoothly and 2003 was decommissioned back in September 2012.
Recently out of the blue I had an issue where the public folder replicas decided to stop replicating causing some major confusion in user-land. After a few hours running commands, checking reference links, and tracking diagnostic log events I wasn’t able to determine a specific root cause other than replication messages were being generated but staying queued on the local server and never making it to the other. Even after some creative googling I wasn’t able to come up with any matching symptoms, and the replication queues continued to grow.
Then low and behold I happen to stumble on a blog post outlining a similar situation. I was able to replicate his error message using ExFolders, so taking a leap of faith I went into ADSIedit and deleted the empty CN=Servers container from the old administrative group in CN=Configuration,CN=Services,CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=OrgName,CN=Administrative Group,CN=OldAdminGroupName. Running ExFolders again worked as intended, and suddenly new data was successfully being replicated! Unfortunately the existing queued replication messages did not want to clear out, so I ended up removing these and forcing replication from each server.
Really wish I knew why 7 months after decommissioning the old 2003 environment this snuck up all of a sudden without warning, but thankfully I was able to sort it out quickly enough to avoid too much of an issue. And since it took several hours of banging my head on my desk to find the answer, maybe by posting this it will save someone else a little headache.
Monty’s monthly neuro checkup was today, and while his white count was still on the low end it has come up a little since last month. Everything considered he is doing remarkably well and as of today he has taken his last dose of medication. I was warned this is a very dangerous time for the possibility of a relapse, so we’re continuing to keep a really close eye on him but remain optimistic considering everything we’ve been through.
After 9 months all of this is no longer needed.
In general, I hate people. I hold myself to a very high standard and when others can’t or don’t follow suit, disappointed doesn’t quite reach the level of adjective I tend to reach for. Then something happens that changes everything, puts it all in perspective, and in a moment nothing is the same. Life is funny like that.
Tuesday night our good friend John Walker was involved in a horrific accident while leaving his second home, the music studio, to be with his wife and children, and at this time he remains in a coma and in critical condition at the Baylor ICU. Hearing any kind of news like this is shocking, but to have it strike so close to home and within your inner circle is devastating. How does the universe allow something like this to happen to such an amazing person? I was numb, angry, I hated people even more, and I didn’t want to acknowledge it. The normally emotionally stalwart C shed tears, and I’m not ashamed to admit I cried.
But then something started to happen. Word spread. My Facebook feed lit up, exploding not with informal half ass condolences some might expect, but truly inspiring and emotional outpourings of love, energy, and support. Having the privilege of getting to know John since moving to Dallas it was however no surprise. You may not have met him yet, but he is already your friend, and one that you could count on for anything. Soon friends, friends of friends, acquaintances, business contacts, even people he never directly met were mobilizing, coming together to offer anything and everything they could, and I am absolutely humbled by the response. A donation page was set up and within 24 hours $13,500 had been raised to assist John and his family through this trying time, with many additional benefit events in the works. Even more importantly a Facebook group 900 strong has people pledging and scheduling to help with the kids, house cleaning, cooking, transportation, and anything else to help the family keep focused on John and his recovery. To be sure, he has a long road ahead, but he WILL get there with the kind of support he has.
Live life, love and be loved, smile, and surround yourself with good people.
I’m both honored and proud to know John and so many other good people here. He is an inspiration, as is the overwhelming outpouring of support that I have borne witness to.
For anyone who would like to contribute please visit: http://www.gofundme.com/2for2w