Well, I’m back from yet another trip. This time, I took a short journey to Seattle to visit with a friend. As a bonus, another friend was also in town, and I met someone I’ve only known online. You can’t do better than that.
But this blog has been dying for some time now; quite a long time. I’ve been deciding on whether I want to continue it, scrap it, revamp it, or continue ignoring it.
So, I thought I’d mention the various bits and pieces of my life that seem to be dominating these days.
- Back surgery in May of 2022
- Carnivore diet since September 2022
- Bilateral knee replacement in January 2023
- 7500+ mile road trip in June 2023
- A quick trip to Seattle just this past week, September 2023
The back surgery was unexpected and was needed as I had a herniated disc between L4 and L5 that was causing drop-foot. I was losing control of my legs as the nerve was being pinched off. Thank you, Dr. Noh, a bit of emergency surgery fixed me right up. The hardest part wasn’t the surgery or the PT. The hardest part was the six weeks I wasn’t allowed to do much of anything: bend over, lift over ten pounds, walk for more than a total of thirty minutes, or even twist.
The results were great, especially the change in my attitude about health. I’d been low(ish) carb for years but gained a fair bit of weight. I decided to lose weight and get strict about carbs again. The weight started coming off, but honestly, I hated figuring out my macros for each meal. And then my weight loss stalled. I ended up moving to a carnivore diet in September 2022. I lost more weight and, within a few months, had a great waist-to-height ratio of 1:2. My BMI is also normal for the first time in decades.
This is good because while recovering from the back surgery and doing more and more, I discovered that my knees, a problem since my twenties, had finally given up the ghost. I had bilateral knee replacement surgery in late January 2023 and started another recovery journey. It was worth it. But that isn’t to say it wasn’t painful or that now, eight months later, I’m completely recovered. I can do much more than before surgery, but I still have aches and pains. It’s not arthritis anymore, the carnivore diet seems to have cleared that up, and it’s inflammation from continued healing. I’m told, and I believe them, that it will be up to a year and maybe some more before I’m entirely recovered…whatever that means.
So, of course, a few months after surgery, I went with my buddy Barry on a 7500-mile road trip. We took in Idaho, Utah, and Arizona, including Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park, the Grand Canyon, Saguaro National Park, and good friends along the way. Next, we went through some of New Mexico, missing the old nuclear testing areas. And then there was Texas, more Texas, and yes, more Texas. We made it to San Antonio, saw the Alamo, and walked the RiverWalk. Next, we drove to Houston for baseball, New Orleans for music, Tuscaloosa for friends, and Juneteenth. Nashville, Chattanooga, and Owensboro made the list, the latter with the Bluegrass Hall of Fame and RompFest! We then went off to Omaha for steak and one of the final games of the College World Series! Heading north, we saw the Crazy Horse Monument clouded in mist and Mount Rushmore in the clear. Finally heading back west, we took in the Custer Battlefield Monument and learned that the graves of the Native Americans killed that day have finally been marked and honored. The end of the trip included Several days in Yellowstone and some Fourth of July celebrations back in Idaho.
All of that travel meant that I needed to go to Seattle, with the excuse of seeing the Mariners play Houston! It wasn’t completely successful, but I did keep score. And that is something I documented learning here on this blog using a tutorial from this site:
https://swingleydev.com/baseball/tutorial.php
During all of this, I continued to facilitate ten-minute meditation sessions at work, though held online. I may also start posting some of those here, though there are much better ones out there!
Enough for now.