Weekend Update - Decembewr 16th

The Recovery – Part 9A
I call this Part 9A because it is between doctor appointments and rounds of tests. I am feeling great and continue to gain strength.

One of the consequences of being sick was a loss of weight. Losing the weight was probably good for me because I am not carrying around 45 pounds – 20 kilograms of dead weight and fat.

I did not expect the weight loss to result in me not being able to use my biometric security feature in the laptop. I set up the security feature to either accept a password or my fingerprints. I can’t use my left hand finger because of the weight loss; my fingerprint shape has changed because of the weight loss and is not readable.

Oh well, there is always the password to rely on.

I have not been able to wear a ring on my right hand because of the weight loss. It continually slips off of my finger. It has taken a while to get used to not having the ring since it have worn the ring now for over 40 years.

This week, I read an article about cholesterol levels in American adults. I have a high cholesterol level and have been taking medicine to control if for several years now. The article said an ideal combined cholesterol level would be a value of 199 for an adult. I checked my combined cholesterol level to see where I stand. My combined level, at my last physical, was 156.

I felt great.

Visitors
We had a strong week for international visitors this week. We had visitors from Texas [6], Finland [3], Lithuania, United Arab Emirates, Poland, France [6], Germany [3], Turkey, Mexico, Canada [5], Australia [6], Ireland, Indonesia [4], United Kingdom [5], Spain, Costa Rica, Honduras, Brazil, Korea, Azerbaijan, Singapore [3], Malaysia [4], Philippines [2], Switzerland [3], Italy, Taiwan, Japan [10], Belgium, Hong Kong, Thailand, Iran, Austria, India, Sweden, Romania [2], Netherlands, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Malta, Andorra, and South Africa.

We had three first visitors from Azerbaijan, Malta, and Andorra. Welcome to the Blog.

We also had one visitor who stopped by for 14 minutes. This visitor apparently liked the KT So images. We had another visitor who stopped and looked 29 pages; I think this visitor was interested in the Sunisa Kim images.

The top three exit pages this week featured Aiko Tanaka, Sunisa Kim, and Eiko Koike. This is not a surprise for me.

I do appreciate all of you who took time out of your day or night to stop by the blog. Visitors coming to the blog are one reason why I continue to write.

Haircut
I got my haircut on Friday.

I wanted to be certain that Amber would be up in time. I sent Amber two reminder emails. One email had Doug’s suggestion that I should have made my appointment for Noon instead of 11:00 AM.

Amber replied to the last email at 2:00 AM on Friday morning. She said she was up reading. When I read her reply after my breakfast, I wondered if she was reading about how to cut hair and whether she would be at the salon on time.

Amber arrived at the salon before me. She opened the door and gave me a big hug.

Perfectomundo.

Then, she nagged me about how bad my hair looked. I pointed out that I had been sick and the temporary place was not the nicest to go to plus you had to climb a set of stairs and I could not have done that very well after the operation. I also pointed out that someone had overslept when I had my last appointment.

Amber allowed that I just allowed that I might have some reasonable excuses for my appearance.

Amber also wanted to know about the operation and how I was doing on my recovery. I should have suggested that she could read the blog. I gave her the short version of my health while she washed my hair. Amber finished off the shampoo with a very nice and very well received neck massage.

On balance, I was very pleased with how I looked after the haircut.

The only down side of the haircut was that I didn’t get much a chance to talk to Natalie the Receptionist because she was working in the back of the salon. We did have a chance to say a brief hello as she came out into the salon and then returned just as quickly.

Speed Test
I somehow wandered onto a web site that offered a free test of my laptop’s download and upload speeds. My laptop tested out very well I think, download was just under 2.7 Mbps and the upload was 760Kbps. Nice speeds since my DSL connection is only rated at a download speed of 3.0 Mbps.

Other Thoughts
I got my Friday download notice from Microsoft. It featured the Office 2007 Service Pack 1. I clicked on the download because I have Office 2007 on the laptop and was shocked at the size of the file.

215 MB.

That is one incredible amount of bug fixes and patches.

I was glad that I had a high speed connection because a 56 Kbps dial-up connection listed the download time in hours. I think I downloaded the file in about fifteen minutes.

Sweet.

I ordered an Apple iPod Nano this week because I got an email from one of the credit card companies whose plastic I carry. The email said I could order a Nano because I had enough frequent buyer points.

Doug thought it would be a good idea to get one because I could listen to it while I took my walks. That made sense to me.

I was surprised that the Nano arrived three days after I ordered it. That is very good mail service for this time of the year. I couldn’t get over how small it was and that it still could hold 8 GB of music. I can remember when Doug got his first iPod and how large it was in comparison to the Nano.

Now, all I have to do is load my approximately 2,000 songs onto the Nano. Doug said I should download iTunes so it would be easier to transfer some of my CDs to the Nano.

For the record, I should point out that Doug offered to load the Nano for me. I graciously declined his kind offer; our tastes in music are so far apart that we don’t agree on very much.

Doug stopped by after his Saturday night birthday event. He helped me set my Nano up and we loaded some Rolling Stones songs. It took a while to accomplish everything. I think it will be really nice when I go out for my walks.

I asked Doug to take a new photo of me. I figured that now was a good time to update my photo in the blog profile. We took them in the building courtyard. I had troubling uploading the photos so it may be a while before I can add the new image of me.

Company Winter Break, Hanukah, Christmas, Kwanza, Boxing Day Party
My school had its Christmas Party on Saturday night at the Improv in Irvine.

It was not well organized. I was told to arrive around 7:00 PM for dinner and the show. The show was supposed to start at 7:00. This resulted in me eating my dinner much faster than I would have liked.

I was very disappointed with the entertainment. The featured comic seemed to have an extremely limited vocabulary. All of his attempts at humor were laced with gratuitous profanity, course, base, and vulgar language. Most of it was completely unnecessary. I know that some comedians will use an occasional bit of profanity in their routines and that is acceptable to me. I can understand that usage. But, this comedian went way beyond reasonable or necessary for humor.

It looked like close to a third or more of our group did not show, based on the empty seats. I ended up sitting at a small table with three women. This was a mistake on my part. I should have found a better location to watch the show.

Traffic driving out to the Improv was terrible. Normally, it should have taken me about 45 minutes to get there. I ended up needing 90 minutes to get there.

Lunch with Doug
Doug came over to my place on Friday. It was more convenient for him to link up with his friends to see I AM LEGEND on the IMAX screen at Universal City. He went his way to dinner on Friday and I did the same.

I got up early on Saturday to go to school. Doug was sleeping.

I phoned Doug to see if he wanted me to pick him up a sandwich at Giuliano’s on my way home. He said sure and asked me to get him a large meatball sandwich. I decided on a pastrami sandwich as I drove home.

Giuliano’s was crowded when I got there. That was to be expected. I ordered our sandwiches and then picked up some potato chips and semi-sweet chocolate chip cookies. Courtney the checker asked where my handsome son was when I paid for the sandwiches. I said he was at my place and would have said a very gracious “Hello Courtney,” if he had been with me.

We ate our sandwiches in silence when I got home.


That was my weekend. I hope you had a great weekend.

Be well and stay happy.