Day 7/365
I came across a great post by my cousin K on Facebook today and it was the YouTube video "Dear 16 yr old me". I didn't realize it was about skin cancer.
You can hardly see the scar, but it's about the length of the box. I was lucky, I had the "Good Cancer" - basal cell carcinoma. After being diagnosed by my dermatologist, I went to a surgeon to have it removed using Mohs procedure, where they slice away layers until it's gone. My problem was that instead of the mole around the size of a dime, it was an iceberg that stretched across both collarbones.
Oh yeah, this was done 2 days after my daughter was born. Nice eh? And the day before we signed papers to move into our house. Awesome.
Anyway, enough about that. I am a cancer survivor, even if it was a fairly small procedure and didn't require chemo or anything extensive. I'm not comparing myself to anyone else, especially anyone who's been through melanoma or has a loved one who has been through it.
I caught it early. The mole I had always had started changing shape and instead of brown, it was turning gray and got shiny. My wife had been bugging me to get it checked, and when it started getting shiny, I decided enough was enough and went.
Why did this happen? My doctor called it a golf spot because it was right where golf shirts don't cover. I always said I'd wear sunscreen, but I really never did unless someone nagged me about it. I wish I had worn more. Again, I was lucky, but I would rather have not had to go through that.
The point of my post? WEAR SUNSCREEN!!!!!! It's worth it, and it's not that big of a deal to put on. Also -
Check yourself regularly. And watch this video.
6/365
I've been trying to post things on my blog by writing them ahead of time and publishing them on specific days. You have to hit okay when you set the publish date or it won't publish 
Woke up late so Aidan was scrambling to get up and get out. Thankfully he made his bus so I didn't have to drive him to school.
Okay, I'm going to break in here with something kind of funny/nasty. Why is it that cats wait for you to come downstairs or get out of bed before they use the litter box? I have two cats, and they've nailed me twice already. One when I first came down and emptied the box - "Oh look a clean box, we can't have that!", and the other once I cleaned that out so I didn't choke. I guess they just want to go in a nice clean box. Little bastards.
So the kids are both off, and I'm sitting down to work, so I'm going to go now. Today should be fairly stress free, plus I have a physical therapy appointment today so I'm hoping she can massage some of the knot out again. It's feeling SO much better today I can't even begin to tell you.
5/365
Went into the office today, traffic was slow as hell, so I stopped at my bagel place. I've been at this job for about 6 years now and my friend A and I stopped there on one of my first days to grab a cup of coffee and I've been going off an on since. http://bagelboyscafe.co/index.html
They have snickerdoodle coffee, which is by far my favorite flavored coffee. I also get a sausage egg and cheese everything bagel, but we're not going to discuss that
It's about halfway to work from home so it's a good stopping point. Did I mention that my commute is 1.5 hours long if I'm lucky. Yeah, each way.
Generally I don't mind it, I'm so lost in my audio books that I don't even notice the time, but yesterday was rough. I dropped Gillian off at before school Band practice, so I didn't leave town until around 7:50. Got to work around 9:30 and went straight into like 3 meetings in a row.
Came home after accomplishing a lot and hung out with the kids helping them study for tests and watched some TV with Fae before I crashed.
4/365
I had my first physical therapy appointment today, and it isn't going to be as bad as I thought. One of the things I am bad at is posture when typing (jesus, I'm doing it right now). I tend to hunch my shoulders up into my neck and lean on my elbows and it's just a mess. This was my second surgery, my left elbow was done 2 yrs ago and has healed up really nicely. It was only as I was getting ready to think about going back to martial arts of some sort that my right elbow started complaining.
My right elbow isn't healing as quickly as the other one tho. I have a feeling it's because I am using it a lot more because I am right handed. The physical therapist confirmed that last night. I've been feeling a lot of tightness in the muscles that are connected to my elbow, so I was worried, but the surgery site felt fine. The tightness wasn't pain, but it was pretty uncomfortable.
So Mary, my physical therapist, put me through the motions and pretty much concluded that while the exercising that I will do would help, what she wanted to try was massage first.
Let me take a minute to describe Mary and me. I'm 6'2", about 230. Mary is about 5'2", maybe 110lbs. She started massaging my forearm and quickly found the knot. "This might take a few sessions to get rid of, I don't want to hurt you."
"Mary, I live for deep tissue, bruise me." She laughed and started digging, eventually getting to the point where she used her elbow. Painful? Engh. Uncomfortable as hell is a better word, but not painful. It's feeling a lot looser today than it has in the past, so I'm hopeful. I have another appointment on Thurs and Fri and two next week so far plus some exercises that will stretch things out in the affected area, and will consequently loosen up my shoulders and neck.
A new friend: 2/365
So my wife is a lot more perceptive than I could ever have asked for. I've been trying to find something to help me turn my brain off. I work from home 4 days a week, and I've had some trouble turning off after I'm done, so I wanted to find a hobby. I went to the library recently to pick up something to read, and for once, didn't pick up a fantasy novel. I grabbed one on Tai Chi, and a pair of beginner Bonsai books.
I haven't touched the Tai Chi one, and picked up a few more on Bonsai, interested in the different varieties of tree, and how some are easier than others, and other things.
I wasn't even try to lay out a hint or anything, I'm just not that subtle. So the day before my birthday, my friend J comes over with his son to wish me a happy birthday, he was flying the next day and wanted to be there to wish me a happy birthday. I came downstairs, and he and my wife have a cheshire grin between them.
Funny thing is, I saw it at his house a week or so before and remarked on it. He gave me some kind of non-committal answer about it, and I forgot all about it.
So this is Treebeard, and you can see, he's pretty small That's Pluto, my cat from hell sniffing around him. It's a Mt. Fuji Serissa tree.
As you can see, it's roots are elevated from the soil, and you can really see through them. It's about 7 yrs old now, so it's a pretty sturdy tree already.
There are several trunks to play with, I'm going to go to a gardening center nearby to get some tools (and advice) on how to train it. IE: bending the branches to move them into a more separated structure.
The neat thing about this tree is the fact that it has multiple blooming periods, so there will be small white flowers on it during the year.
Right now, I'm just going to concentrate on trimming it back for now and watering it properly and we'll see what happens.
So here is my post for day 2 of this year of my life.
A new year: 1/365
Okay, so my 43rd birthday was yesterday, and I have been trying to get things moving in other aspects of my life besides work. I believe I have let it take over too much of my day, mostly because being at home, I can always do things because it's right there. I do love what I do, which is really nice, but I need to keep hours to work on what they should be utilized for - being with the kids, being with Fae, doing things that allow my brain to shut down for a while and just relax.
It's been a pretty stressful year, so I want to leave 42 behind me and chronicle 43 to see if I can keep something like a daily log going. I have several reasons for this, but in truth, I kind of like having a check on myself so I can list out accomplishments, failures, goals, and thoughts. I think emptying my head on a regular basis will help.
Hence, the 1/365 in the title. I'm going to try and do things on a daily basis, including pics, a post, and maybe even some other stuff. I don't know. I've seen a lot of blogs that take a pic a day and I always thought that was neat.
So what do I have planned? Hell, I don't know. But I'd like to keep this up as much as possible.
Latest Accomplishments: Gillian and I have been doing 'workouts' together on a nightly basis for about a week now. We didn't last night because we were out to dinner and Daddy ate too much We've been doing some form of kicking/punching because she found that hitting balloons around her room helped with her frustration levels. She's in 3 advanced classes, in band, and the school play. She's stressing a little bit and she liked the idea of hitting the hand pads I have from when I used to teach TaeKwon Do.
So I started her off slow - 5 minutes of punching, some sit ups, and pushups - and we progressed from there. We decided that we wanted to keep track of things, so I have an excel spreadsheet on my desktop at home. I looked last night, and I have done more pushups and situps in the last week than I did all last year. Made me want to do some this morning, but when I tried to do some situps, my abdomen say NO! Going to take it easy on the situps for another day or so, but I'm going to continue with the pushups and start doing the punching and kicking drills I used to teach before using the bags. I want to work on endurance (for both of us), as well as getting form a little cleaner. Kicks are a lot more effective if you're stance is proper.
I also got a bonsai tree for my birthday from Fae It's a flowering Serissa: http://www.bonsaiboy.com/catalog/product5829.html
It grows small white flowers several times during the year and it's cool as hell because the roots come above the soil. It's 7 yrs old and it's about the coolest thing I've gotten in a long time. Hopefully I won't kill it That's kind of another reason for the enhanced blog. I'd like to chronicle how I'm caring for the tree to be able to look back and see what I did and what I did wrong. Plus I'm hoping to be able to get advice on how to begin trimming, pruning, and training it. It's funny because I had gotten a bunch of books from the library to begin reading on it, I didn't realize Fae was planning it based on all of the books I had. I didn't realize but at one point, I had like 5 I was reading at the same time.
Anyway, here's to the first day of my new year. Here's to new beginnings. And here's to hopefully a nice start to improving my life, my outlook, and my sanity
Doing Something About It – Day3
Good couple of days. I've been studying at least 30 minutes a day, Thanksgiving obviously I didn't, but I didn't use that as an excuse to not do anything for several days.
Wednesday - Studied for 30 minutes, started taking notes and realized quickly that it was jumbling things around.
Thursday - did some reading on exam prep, ate dinner with inlaws and friends.
Friday - Studied for an hour and fixed a few things I've been wanting to fix for a while but haven't had time.
Saturday - Didn't study, but took a nice relaxing day off.
Today - sat at Dunkin Donuts for an hour and made out more flash cards. Doing my blog entry Fae pulled something in her back last night so she's recovering. I'm going to put an idea of mine into practice in a little while. Been reading about some cool MDX stuff (don't ask) and I think it'll help with some of the things we're looking at.
Elbow hurts like fire, but thankfully it's a full day in the office tomorrow and then surgery for me on Tuesday.
Doing Something About it – Day 2
Today was a good day.
I got several important things figured out at work so I can continue the process of cleaning up some stuff to make it run more efficiently. I wrote some maintenance reports to help figure out when things are out of whack, and the nice thing is that they will help me, but they will also help some other folx at work, so bonus
On the Doing Something About It front (DSAI) - I accomplished a few regular tasks, but didn't get a chance to study. Had a job break, and some other things come up so I just didn't have the time to study today. Also, since the office closed at 3, I got to kick off early, so Fae and I took Gillian to see Breaking Dawn part 1. It was in a dinner theatre, but considering the prices, I'm glad Gillian couldn't eat any of it The good part about it is that I kept it in my head and will try to crank some of the tasks off tomorrow before we go to dinner with my inlaws.
Today was a bad day.
My arm hurts. A lot. I've been taking tylenol to hold off the pain, but it comes in waves, and about 2 hours ago it was a tsunami, so I took some painkillers. Problem is, now I can't study. Trust me, I tried. After reading the same sentence 10 times, I gave up.
Process broke for some unknown reason and I still haven't been able to tie it down. Running the process manually until I can figure out what the hell is wrong with it. Really knocked off my development today, but I did manage to tie up several important loose ends when I needed a break and didn't want to pull out any more hair.
The main reason for these posts and the concentrated focus on getting things done is from a serious concern I have for myself. I'm REALLY good at starting things, but sucky at finishing them. Someone mentioned it again the other day and it really upset me because I know for a fact I'm still doing it. Here's the rub tho...
What do I do to break that habit without trying to start up 10 things, which will overwhelm me and make me fail again. I want to write. I want to learn how to make mobile applications. I want to study more about tea ceremonies and historic Japan. I want to get certified. I want to be the Uber SQL dude, but where do I start?
I'm going to lie down and watch some violent martial arts movies because the pudding that is my brain right now can only handle so much.
Any suggestions would be great. Nice thing is, I did promise myself I'd post every day, and here I am. That's one thing at least.
Doing something about it – Day 1
Okay, so it's less than 12 hours since my last post, what have I done so far to get me out of my 'start good, finish bad' rut.
- I'm writing a blog post
- I've updated my list of things to do
- I checked on several things and moved them from my Tuesday list to my Wednesday list
- I'm focusing on important things instead of checking Facebook
- Make a daily schedule of times to do certain things - study, make new schedule, etc.
