Russellmania.com

Joy of package delivery in the Boonies

04.27.2014

This past week my normal Amazon order contained a programming book. It's not something I was in a rush to get, but my timing of the order allowed that it would be delivered seperate from the rest of the order and should arrive on Saturday. Saturday deliveries are rare, and I'm curious about deliveries and the logistics of Amazon so I looked up who would be delivering the book. It was marked as "FedEx Smartpost", so that FedEx hands it off to the post office at some point. This should work in my favor, as FedEx packages seldom find their way to my house without ending up at someone else's house first.

The USPS mail runs late on Saturday. I honestly think they skip Saturday most of the time. Saturday evening around 7:00 I thought to check the shipping status of my order.

Incorrect Address? My address hasn't changed in 15 years. I get almost-weekly orders from Amazon. How could my address suddenly be wrong? I went on to "See Complete Tracking History".

Carrier could not locate the delivery address. Ok, that makes a little more sense. My house is hard to find (just ask the FedEx guy). Although I can normally get packages delivered to my front porch by the USPS carrier, maybe the Saturday person doesn't normally follow the route and doesn't know that the gravel drive 10 feet to the right of the 4 mailboxes leads to 3 houses. I can allow for that. I wouldn't try too hard to find a missing house after making stop-and-go trips to mailboxes all day on a Saturday. Just because I was curious, I went on to the USPS tracking webpage to see what they had to say about the details of my parcel's route.

Notice Left (No Secure Location Available). Since they couldn't find a house to leave the package at, they left a note in the mailbox to come to the post office and pick it up. That sounds different than unable to locate delivery address. How would I pick up a note telling me they couldn't find my address if they leave a note at my address? The logic of it all doesn't make sense. I went on to see if there was more information about this last step.

Ah, it's not the Amazon definition of not finding an address, it's that they couldn't find anywhere besides the mailbox to leave the package. That makes more sense. I think.

At some point I'll venture to the post office and pick up the book. Maybe not, as I've found there's a more recent edition and this may be a way to wait 15 days for the post office to return the package to Amazon without me forking over the shipping fee to return the book. Since it would be my choice to return an item with no defects it would fall upon me to pay shipping fees for an item even though shipping to me is free - I know how Amazon works!

Permalink Amazon

6-Month Post Op

04.19.2014

Thursday I went to the doctor for my 6-month post surgery check in. Time to see how the doctor thinks I'm doing.

The good news:

I've lost 125 lbs since my first visit in Jan. 2013.
My blood work showed no problems
- Everything seems to be smack dab in the middle of the range it should be for "normal" people.
- He was surprised by how high my protein was measuring.

The bad news:

I'm not losing weight as fast as he wants.

Unfortunately, there was no fix offered along with the bad news.

I've been putting off writing anything about this for a few days while everything sank in. My weight pretty much plateaued for a month which would slow down any observed loss. Since my 3-month check-up, I've lost about 20 pounds. Between surgery day and the 3-month point I had lost roughly 70 lbs. I feel a lot better, and feel better every day. Why would my weight loss slow down so much? I went back and looked at the recipet the scales of doom print out.

	01.31.2013	09.24.2013	01.17.2014	04.17.2014
Weight	439.2	410.8	380.4	315.4
Fat Mass	258.6	249.8	218.0	119.0
Fat Free Mass	180.6	161.0	162.4	196.4
Total Body Water	132.2	117.8	118.8	143.8

Fat Mass = How much fat I'm lugging around.
Fat Free Mass = Bones, Muscle, & Water. Me without the fat.
Total Body Water = How much water is in my body, at least that's how I understand it.

Taking in not just the past 6 months, but the past year+, a couple of things jumped out at me.

1. I lost 39 pounds before surgery (Jan 2013 - Sept 2013). In that time, my Fat Mass went from 258.6 to 249.8 (9 lbs) while my Fat Free Mass went from 180.6 to 161 (19 lbs). Most of what I loss was muscle.

2. Since Sept, my Fat Mass went from 249.8 to 119 (130 lbs). My Fat Free Mass increased from 161 to 196.4. I've gained 35 lbs of muscle. Muscle! Muscle and water, but muscle is the way I'm looking at it.

3. Everyone else I've talked to after they go in for their 6-month check-up is told to increase their vitamins or their protein intake. Evidently 3 Calcium, 2 Multi-vitamins, 2 Iron, 1 B-12, and 110gm of protein per day is what I need to be in the normal range.

4. I've yet to have any negative side effect from surgery. I haven't thrown up. No nausea when eating (or after). No hair loss, which was the one thing I was really worried about (and the big reason I down 2 Iron vitamins per day along with all of that protein). I don't have folds of flappy skin from rapid weight loss, although I do have a jiggly belly no one sees when I bend over.

5. The biggest side effect the doctor seems to worry about is gallstones developing from rapid weight loss, as he tells me what to look for as symptoms each time I go. I think I'm not losing weight fast enough to worry about this, and in my mind that's a plus.

6. Although not a measurement on his scales, I now wear jeans that have a 12" smaller waist than I did when that first weight was taken. My waist is a foot smaller. Another 8" and I'll have the same size waist as I did in high school.

7. Gina and I now walk 5 times per week. Our walks are usually a little over an hour, and we walk roughly 3ï¿½ miles. My knees still can't handle the pounding of a jog, and the limiting factor on our speed is not me trying to catch my breath, but the burn in my leg muscles (see those 35 pounds of muscle I've gained?) or general soreness in my knees. By the end of our walk I'm a little tired but breathing normally. I still remember being out of breath trying to cross the parking lot at work a year ago.

With all of this, I've decided that if I'm not losing weight fast enough that it's ok. I'm still losing. My quality of life has shot through the roof. Everybody is still supportive and proud of what I'm doing, which has made more of a difference than I originally thought.

I have another check-up in 3 more months. No blood work is required this time, so I won't get an update on my vitamins and protein. We'll see if my progress speeds up any by then. If not, and I'm still feeling like I do now, everything will still be good.

In the words of Matthew McConaughey, I'm feeling "Awright Awright Awright!"

Permalink diet gastric sleeve

More Painting

04.12.2014

After a couple of months, or at least it's felt like a couple of months, I can now say I've finished painting my latest batch of Dust Tactics/Warfare minis.

Axis Battle Grenadiers

My first painting project was the basic starter set, which has 3 Allies squads + a walker along with 4 Axis squads + a walker. Point-wise they're even although there's an extra Axis squad. The only drawback is that thanks to the requirements of how to make platoons, there's not much variety in how to mix up those squads when playing.

Axis Recon Grenadiers

That made my first follow-up project to paint some extra Allies squads, after making sure what I picked would fit into some legal platoon(s). This led to doing the same with extra Axis squads.

Axis Panzer Killers

Now I've got enough troops to mix it up a little. I still haven't played this game. I only hope I have as much fun eventually playing as I have getting ready to play.

Permalink gaming miniatures

311

04.04.2014

Time for another post-surgery weight-loss update. 6 months after surgery I'm down 90 lbs from what I weighed on surgery day, and 130 lbs from my max last February.

My weight-loss has slowed/stalled over the past month, but now it looks to be picking up again. We'll see how this plays out over the next couple of weeks, as I don't know of anything that I've been doing differently.

I had to get blood taken this week for my surgical follow-up in 2 weeks. That's when I learn how vitamin-deficient I am. I haven't suffered from any of the normal post-surgical side effects yet - I've still got all my hair! I'm interested to see what the doctor says during my visit. I would be a little worried about my weight loss slowing down (I think I've lost 20 lbs since my last visit), except I feel so freakin' good!

More updates when something happens.