Day 144 - Going Through the Closet, A Journey Back in Time

Now that the weather in Los Angeles is actually feeling winter like (and yesterday, city is inundated with strong gust like wind), I began to feel that the leather coat that I've been wearing the past 2 months is inadequate.  I bought the coat back in 2004 (I think).  It has the benefit of being loose enough for me to wear.  At my maximum weight, I was having problem fitting into it.  As this week's cold weather have shown me, the coat is now way too large to offer me protection against cold.

So I dig into my closet (I almost never throw anything away) and look at a leather jacket that I haven't worn in at least 3 years.  When I first bought it all those years ago, it was a loose fitting jacket.  Now, it still feel very tight, and didn't help that my belt is now encumbered with 2 smart phones holster and a Leatherman multitool.  But wearing these older clothes that I discarded on my way up the weight scale is akin to traveling back in time.  Perhaps I don't have to buy as much clothing as I feared.

I only managed to do one instance of Heroic yesterday (all of the justice points will go towards my retribution offspec, so the urgency is not there).  I did spend a bit of time yesterday leveling my Death Knight, first spending over a hour mining obsidium (to 500 mining so I can mine everything else in Deepholm).  I then spend the next 3 hours doing 2/3 of the Deepholm quests (getting 2 out of 3 Wolrd Pillar fragments).  By the time I handed in the second pillar fragment, my character reached level 83.  Seeing that I'm leveling the Death Knight mainly to level the mining and blacksmith, I opted to go to the next zone, Uldum.  So now I get to experience the entire Uldum leveling experience all over again, except this time, I'll be level appropriate.

115/71/59 242.6lb 104 mg/DL

Day 143 - And Paying the Price

Ok, I cannot eat cake.  I have my father's birthday cake this morning, albeit, I was being rushed out of the house, so I ate faster than I had planned.  Still, my digestive system is currently giving me the clear and unambiguous message of "What are you thinking of?"  I'll lay off of cake from here on out.

I'm also starting to drink decaffeinated coffee at the office.  I can only drink so much Crystal Light before I got sick of the flavor.  I'm also starting to get sleepy again.  Last night, at 9:30 PM, I literally doze off in the midst of farming for ores in  Vashj'ir.  Thus, I actually got in 7 hours of sleep last night.

And this morning, I'm becoming utterly broke in Warcraft.  I spend my last 6 thousand golds getting Elementium Earthguard.  Perhaps I should wait for some Blacksmith in guild to make the Hardened Elementium Girdle.

109/71/57 243lb 96 mg/DL

Day 142 - Going for the Forbidden Fruit

Today's my father's birthday.  So on my way home, I'll be dropping by the Cuban bakery to pick up a strawberry shortcake.  A couple of months ago I blogged about my experience with office cake party.  That was an uncomfortable experience.  2 3/4 months out, lets see how this cake panned out (by the way, the office cake and this cake I'm picking up are both from the same bakery).

122/80/74 243lb 100 mg/DL

Day 141 - Three Down Two to Go

Last night, I ran a couple of guild members through two and a half heroic instances (still cannot go through Grim Batol heroic).  Of the two that we went through, one was easy (Lost City of Tol'vir) and one was fun (The Deadmines).  In the midst of heroic The Deadmines, I got exalted with the Ramkahem faction which means I got three out of five PVE factions reputation maxed out.  In addition to the tanking bracer Ramkahem sells 2 camel mounts at exalted reputation level.  That brings my mount collection up to 130 mounts.  There really isn't anything that I can use from The Earthen Ring faction, so I'm now concentrating on Guardians of Hyjal as the faction to grind next.  Fortunately, thanks to the ridiculously amount of reputation you get just from doing Hyjal quests, I'm now about half way through revered.  Tanking cloak awaits.


123/79/81 243.6lb 105 mg/DL

Day 140 - Things You Notice in the Mirror

I look at myself naked in the mirror about once a day (shower). I really don't pay much attention to myself, after all, it's me. Therefore, there are times and things that I don't realize sneaking on me.

For example, I actually notice my collar bones at this morning's shower. To be sure, it's always been there, but for the first time in recent memory, I can actually see the outline of the bones, instead of buried under a mound of fat. And to that extend, I can also see more of my shoulder bones as well, not as well defined as the collar bones, but still, another reminder of the progress.

Yesterday, for breakfast, I opted to add in toasted croissant into the mix.  Now, when I did this, it was 'round 9AM, and I was actually in so much of a hurry to get out of the house to go watch Tron Legacy, I didn't even finish my coffee/protein drink until I got back.  For lunch, I had some of the left over stuffing/mash potato from Christmas dinner, plus the Costco chicken noodle soup (minus the noodle of course).  The number came out today and it was encouraging.  One thing is puzzling me is the blood sugar measurement.  It's been 103 for 3 days straight.


117/75/65 242.2lb 103 mg/DL

Day 139 - End of Week 20

08-07-2010 Front

08-07-2010 Side

12-26-2010 Front

12-26-2010 Side

Sorry about the photo today.  Tried using a different light source, and the camera wasn't align straight.  I will try something different next week.

This week has been trying for me in terms of weight.  3 our of 7 days I was stucked at 244.2 pounds, and even went up one day.  I'm still not where I wanted my bodily function to be, but we all need to take it one step at a time.

My Paladin Dianora has now finished all of the leveling content of the new expansion.  I took a bit of time this weekend and finished up the last 2 zones that I completely skipped, Mount Hyjal and Uldum.  I've already covered Uldum in a previous post, but I was surprised at how much reputation you gain from Hyjal.  By the time I'm through with that zone, I'm 9000/21000 towards exalted.  With all of the other factions, I have to grind through heroic dungeons wearing their tabard.

I also got engineering up to maximum level, mainly for the 2 epic crafted item.  In doing so, I blow through most of my bank roll, and there won't be any more easy quests I can do to level up.  I guess I'll have to start asking for guild members to help me out with leveling jewelcrafting, which will be expensive as well.

118/78/73 243.6lb 103 mg/DL
Week to Week 1.8lb
Total Weight Loss 84.4lb
Body Mass Index 34.95

Day 138 - Christmas Day 2010

Well, the tally from yesterday's food intake (I also have 2 bowls of Hot & Sour Soup with 4 dumplings for dinner) was agreeable.  I'm back down to 244.2 pound.  At least I'm making some progress.

As usual, since we didn't buy stuff early enough, Costco ran out of seasoned turkey roast.  So we're going to have to settle with what we can get.

This weekend, I planned to finished up the 2 remaining zones I haven't done yet, Uldum and Mount Hyjal.  Uldum quest is divided in two.  The first half is the Ramkahen quest chain that also gives out reputation to that factions.  It ended suitable with the Ramkahen defeating their zone wide enemy.

The other half is the Harrison Jones quest that also spanned the entire zone.  To say this is Indiana Jones territory is an understatement.  Whole scenes straight out of the 4 movies are used in this quest chain.  I look forward to leveling my other alts here.

115/80/70 244.2lb 103 mg/DL

Day 137 - Buffet Again

I had a scheduled blood donation this morning.  Seeing that I barely wake up at 7AM, that idea is moot.

My uncle's family are in town in so we went back to The Odyssey again.  I think I did far worse this time than last time.  Plus, my bowel movement wasn't great this morning.  Lets see what the damage tomorrow is.

117/76/68 245.2lb 105 mg/DL

Day 136 - Additional Exercise in the Afternoon

Yesterday, I decided to try to do another 30 minutes of walking into my daily routine.  After 10 minutes, I have to stop, seeing that was my limit.  I didn't have problem doing the 30 minutes of walk this morning, so perhaps my attempt at doubling my exercise routine is going too far.  I'll aim for 15 minutes this afternoon.

Yesterday I have Sashimi again for lunch.  And as part of my experiment, I ordered 1 bowl of white rice.  I only ate about half of the rice, but that's enough to boost my morning blood sugar measurement up by 8 points.  I'll stay off of it for a while.

104/81/74 244.2lb 108 mg/DL

Day 135 - Archaeology in World of Warcraft

I'm totally being consumed by the new World of Warcraft Secondary profession archaeology. It's designed as a time sink and a way of imparting in game lore. But what I really wants are the rare artifacts. I've already solved Fossilized Hatchling which earn Dianora the title of Assistant Professor.  I've also solved Chalice of the Mountain Kings which summons 4 dancing dwarf swordswomen.  Now, I'm trying to concentrating on solving Fozzsilized Raptor which will bring my mount total to 128.  Unfortunately for me, there's no keystone for fossil artifacts and i have to gather the pieces the old fashion way.  30 more pieces of fossil to collect.

Update...

Well, got my Raptor mount with matching hatchling pet.  Next project, Clockwork Gnome.



124/79/75 244.2lb 101 mg/DL

Day 134 - Suviving Office Lunch

Yesterday, I was invited to go to an office lunch about 2 miles away from work. It was raining cats and dogs outside. I've never been there before. It also have almost no parking. So getting there is a bit of challenge. On top of that, the restaurant is a Teppanyaki style restaurant. Now, I do enjoy this kind of grilling now and then. But with my greatly reduced stomach size, I know eating would be a challenge. I ordered shrimp with steak that's cook rare. Eating the shrimp isn't much of an issue from my experience with the buffet 2 weeks back. After getting the steak, I know that in the future, I should ordered the steak cook medium, but that's for future consideration. The meal also come with miso salad (I took a couple of bites), soup (couple of sips), grilled onion (once again, I already am grilling onion at home) and fried rice. Now, I know full well that I won't be able to eat the steak with rice, so I took about half of the steak and all of the rice home for dinner. And I was able to finish the dinner without much issue.

This morning's measurement is the one I was kind of dreading considered what I ate previous day (McDonalds scramble eggs with bacon and sausage, grilled shrimp and steak with fried rice). Surprisingly enough, my number came in much better than expected. I guess I've finally graduated to being able to eat rice.

108/75/65 244.8lb 100 mg/DL

Day 133 - One Pound Gain?

This morning I got awaken by the yet another incident.  As a result, I forgo my usual breakfast, and head into office.  I have to postpone my exercise until this afternoon, and of course, I forgot to take my morning vitamin.

Another unpleasant surprise this morning is that I weigh one pound more than yesterday's weight in.  Now granted, I did this at 5AM today, and 9 AM yesterday.  But it's still an unpleasant shock.  I guess Costco chicken noodle soup with actual noodle is not such a good idea.

Now, I'm hunting for breakfast with protein.

Oh, yesterday, I took the leave of running Dianora through heroic until my brain melt.  I only did 2 heroic and all of the cooking/fishing daily.  I did spend a couple of hours leveling a Worgen hunter alt Kycilia.  This is the second Worgen alt I've started, so the Worgen starting zone is familiar to me.  It's what happened after I got out of Gineas that differentiated the 2 alts.  Right now, Lonchaneyjr is sitting in Stormwind just doing daily cooking/fishing.  I decided to do the entire Redridge Mountains zone because I've heard that Blizzard have put their spin on Rambo in the zone.  By the time I finished the zone, I was already 2 level above the zone, but the experience is well worth the effort. 

122/85/80 246.4lb 102 mg/DL

Day 132 - End of Week 19

08-07-2010 Front

08-07-2010 Side

12-19-2010 Front

12-19-2010 Side

I swear, if my head wasn't attached to my head I would have lost it.  Lets just leave it at that.

This week is another week of modest improvement (as oppose to no improvement).  It's been 2 weeks since I stop taking my diabetic medication.  I've been on Metformin (one form or another from 500mg to 100mg) for almost 10 years.  Not having to take it is a different experience.  Not exactly sure how long it will take for Metformin to leave my system.

Much to my surprise in my daily heroic run today, Pauldrons of Edward the Odd dropped.  I won it, and it's a very good upgrade for me.  Odd that I still have not get past Grim Baton's first boss in heroic, let alone the entire instance. 

114/76/72 245.4lb 105 mg/DL
Week to Week 3lb
Total Weight Loss 81.6lb
Body Mass Index 35.21

Day 131- On Call Saturday

Sorry for another very late post.  Things got busy today.

Normally on Saturday that I'm not on-call, I'm the one placing the flowers at my mother's urn.  This weekend, my brother also went on-call.  Since I do have remote method of handling my on-call duty, I decided to stick to my normal schedule of buying flowers at Costco, Rose Hills, Lunch and then home.  Added to the wrinkle to this schedule is the rain that has dotted the freeway.  Southern Californian simply do not know how to drive when the road is wet, and the rain added to the delay.

I've also decided to replace the CRT tv in my room.  I've been struggling with the audio on the TV for the longest time, and it's time to put it to someone else's hand.  And I pick up 27 inch flat screen from Costco near my house.  I can afford bigger one, but I don't have room for it.

114/78/72 245.2lb 102 mg/DL

Day 130 - More Adventures in Sleepless On-Call

Nothing much to report today, except to say that being on-call is a serious drain on my sleep time.  I didn't bother trying to go into work due to the 4 hours I spend this morning working on a severity 2 issue starting at 2 AM.  I may still try to do my exercise later today, but I sincerely doubt if I have enough energy to do that.

114/74/71 246.2lb 105 mg/DL

Day 129 - Uneven Melting of Fat

I oversleep this morning.  As part of the new on-call procedure, I now also need to be on-hand to check the systems that were patched.  That took far longer than I anticipated.  Also didn't help that I turn off alarm on Tuesday night, since I work from home on Wednesday.  Note to myself, always check alarm when I'm in the working rotation.

I've noticed that shedding of fat is going about in a very uneven pace throughout my body.  If you looked at my before/after pictures, it's pretty obvious that I'm loosing inches around my belly.  In particular, I have another notch smaller for my belt.  But that belt region is loosing fat much faster than the areas above and especially below.  My love handle felt very loose, but much of it remains.  The area of my stomach remains stubbornly larger.  So what I have are these two valley of depression to the right and left of my belly button.  Perhaps I should start doing sit ups.

117/82/73 246.2lb 104 mg/DL

Day 128 - Traffic

The drive back from yesterday's support group meeting is just utterly horrendous.  I got out of the meeting at 7:15 PM.  It took me 90 minutes to traverse from Cedars to 101 Freeway.  I also noticed that Google Navigation seem to be going out of its way to directing me into really weird turn.

Managed to upgrade my Droid to Android 2.2.1.  The smallish 2.2 to 2.2.1 upgrade zip refused to work on my phone, at least with the way I de-installed things.  I have to get a more complete package.  Haven't had much of opportunity to do things with it yet.

117/76/78 247.2lb 95 mg/DL

Day 127 - Amusement Park

Due to my weigh and how much I don't enjoy walking with them, the past couple of years, I've not been avid attendee of amusement parks.  I get tired easily, and it's becoming difficult to fit me into the standard size seats.  Last night, I have an company event at a well known amusement park, and for a change, I actually enjoy it far more than before.  I have to pick up my older brother first before heading down there, and the drive was so dreary boring that I had to slammed on the brake hard once to avoid rear ending someone.

Once there, due to a slight mistake in taking the off ramp road, I spend the next 15 minutes trying to get back on track to the park.  By the time we got there, it was 8PM already, so the first priority is to get something to eat.  My usual restaurant was not open, so I opted for BBQ Pork sandwich.  I ate the meat only, with pickle and some fruits.  The BBQ sauce was a bit too sweet for me, and since I didn't bring any water out of the car (I wasn't sure of the policy of carrying water into the park), I went without water the whole night.  We manage to walked and ride around for 3 full hours.  By the night's end, I was feeling slightly cramp on my calf muscle, but I managed to get home without much issue.

This morning, I got up at my usual time of 5 AM.  I had debated whether to do my morning walk and decided to stick to the routine.  Even as I write this, I'm still feeling the burn in my thigh muscle.  The morning numbers are encouraging consider what had happen the previous night.

Tonight is the support meeting, which last occured 3 weeks ago.  I'm down  10.2 pound since then.

Since I got home at 12AM, obviously I didn't spend much time on Warcraft.  I did got bored and decided to do some archaeology digging around and advance my skill a bit.

114/74/71 247.4lb 99 mg/DL

Day 126 - 80 Pounds Lost

I've lost 80 pounds since 2 days prior to the surgery.  This particular 10 pound mile stone seemed to take longer than last time (3 weeks).  But any gain towards my goal is better than no goal.  I'm about half way through my targeted weight of 163 pound.  Most literature I've read on the effect of the surgery states that the first 6 months is the golden period of weight loss.  By 6th month, the body will have adjust to the new stomach, and the weight loss will become tougher.

Ran 4 Heroic instances, 2 of them as a replacement tank (Blackrock Cavern and Thrones of Tide).  One of them lead by a guild healer (Heroic Shadowfang Keep), and one as an all guild run (Stonecore).  Stonecore is definitely harder than the rest, but not impossible.  Managed to pick up several pieces of upgrade, including the Earthen Ring revered head enchant.  The guild also managed to grab the new Tol Barad raid run with whatever we have on-hand.  Since not all guild raiders have gotten up to level 80 (and geared yet), the raid make up is weird.  After 3 wipes, we got him down.

I now have a bit of decision to make.  I level Earthen Ring reputation for the head enchant.  Their epic plate item does nothing for my tanking.  Wildhammer Clan's epic tanking plate boot is great for me, but it's at exalted.  Guardians of Hyjal has a easily reached tanking neck piece at honored, which if I go through their entire quest chain, I should be able to reach.  Ramkahen at Uldum has both an epic tanking wrist and the fun camel mounts.  After one week, my time playing WoW will be much more limited, not to mention that today I start my on-call agian.

127/86/69 248lb 99 mg/DL
Milestone 80lb

Day 125 - End of Week 18

08-07-2010 Front

08-07-2010 Side

12-12-2010 Front

12-12-2010 Side

Now that I'm allowed to have one shot of coffee a day, I've changed my usual 2 eggs breakfast a bit.  I put dietary fiber, protein powder and blend them into a latte.  It actually has more protein (at least 25g of protein vs 14g) than my old formula, and it taste good.  I'm going to have to get some more sweat shorts, another one of my old trusty is not only too big, but the draw string on it broke.

Last night, I got into two different pickup group random heroic dungeon run.  The last one is the most fun I've ever had at dying at Worldcraft.  The group seemed to have high tolerance for wiping against the unknown, so as long as we learn how to do the content.  We draw Heroic Deadmines.  Deadmines was one of the best designed instance in the original World of Warcraft.  In Cataclysm, for maxed level character, it has been updated to Heroic, which means things hits a whole lot harder.  In all, I picked up 2 piece of upgrade loots: Cookie's Tenderizer which despite how it looks is a dream weapon for dual wielding Death Knight.  I'm using it for tanking.  I also pick Foe Reaper, which is a significant upgrade from my quest 2 hander for the Retribution set.

121/82/75 248.4lb 96 mg/DL
Week to Week 3.2lb
Total Weight Loss 79.6lb
Body Mass Index 35.64

Day 124 - Buffet Aftermath

Well, the moment of truth...  As I stepped on the scale after the morning exercise, my weight actually came in lower than yesterday.  It's still higher than Friday, but still better than I expected.

I'm seriously considering doing the exercise when I get home.  That will take my routine to 1 hour of 3.5 miles per hour walking.  Lets see how it works out tomorrow.

115/75/77 249.6lb 92 mg/DL

Day 123 - Lunch at Buffet

Today's the last day of vacation for both my brother and I.  So he decided that he want to take our father out to a restaurant for lunch.  We pick The Odyssey and eat the buffet there.  Now, I just order clam chowder and nibble on the other seafood that they bring.  Perhaps this is not the best of ideas as I still feel very full 5 hours after the lunch.

My character reached the max level last night, and I decided to get some upgradable gears.  Fortunately, I do have enough PVE currency around to upgrade both my head and shoulder armor.  Since I'm revered with  Therazane, I can buy the lower version of the shoulder enchant.  Therazane also sells iLevel 346 rings, so I got those as well.  I also just bought the tanking pants from Earthen Ring faction.

129/89/86 250.4lb 89 mg/DL

Day 122 - Fourth Months Since Surgery

Today is the fourth months since my surgery.  The weight loss is slowing as I would expected.  But I'm happy about my progress.  My main character is currently at level 84, one more level to go.  Unfortunately, Twilight Highland starting quest Aiming High! is bugged, so I guess I'll be spending some time doing Deep Holmes quest to gain reputation for the shoulder enchant.

119/78/63 249.8lb 96 mg/DL
Month 04 14.4lb

Day 121 - Worgen Druid

After the many run of instances yesterday, I decided to closed out the night by leveling the worgen druid and mostly to enjoy the starting zone.  I have both feral and spell caster gear send over to her, and the mail box is literally 30 yards behind the character creation.  The worgen starting quest is fast and good.  I ended at level 7, after my infection curse took place and I was made a worgen.  As good as any spot to finish.  I got her up to level 12 this morning, but the current round of quest appears to be bugged on my server, so I cannot advance any further.

120/78/83 250lb 101 mg/DL

Day 120 - Catacalysm

Sorry about the late post.  Being busy all day with the expansion.  For some mysterious reason, Fry's Electronics wants to do a invoice write up of individual customer before they'll sell the Collector's Edition.  That particular system wasn't working, and I opted just convincing them that they have me on record anyway.

I choose the watery zone of Vashj'ir to start leveling.  Hellfire cease fire that we experience during the first expansion was definitely not around this time.  Some of the quest was not anticipating the sheer number of players involved.  Some pick up item from the floor basically devolved into players clicking as fast as possible.  I saw 30 to 50 players of both faction trying to tag the quest mob.  And of course, standing on top of the quest NPC to provoke accidental attack is a time honored tradition.  Some of my guildy give up questing and opted to just do instance.  I ran through 4 instances: Blackrock Cavern twice, Throne of Tide twice, Vortex Pinnacle 3 times and Stonecore once.  In the order of difficulty, that is the order.  In order for us to queue up using dungeon finder, we have to meet certain criteria, minimum level and gear requirement.  We also have to discover the entrance of the dungeon.  Most of the are easily found, but Stonecore is a bit of a challenge.  You do get send to Deepholme until level 82, and I was tanking BRC and ToT at level 80.  I have to be summoned to outside of Stonecore to get into the instance while at level 81.

I also leveled up the new secondary profession Archaeology a bit.  It's somewhat tedious, and I haven't gotten anything but vendor trash.  It does reward experience point, so it's not a total waste.

113/86/68 250.6lb 89 mg/DL

Day 119 - Annual Donation Drive to Indian Casino

Today is the first day of my week long vacation.  It's also the lastest quarterly followup check with my primary physician.  The numbers from the blood test done last Thursday was good, my Glycated hemoglobin is 5, well in range of 4-6 of my lab.  As a matter of fact, it's my best number ever.  So, I'm officially off Byetta and Metformin.  I'll still have another follow up in 3 months, and if that goes well, my check up will be 6 months after that, and then just annual physical examine.

After the doctor's appointment, I took my brother to the company store to do his office Christmas shopping.  One particular item jump out and he decided to buy 21 of them, thus finishing all of his shopping in one trip.  By the time we got there, the restaurant was switching from breakfast to lunch, so I just have an espresso double shot for breakfast.

And now for the title of this post.  I usually take one week off early in December so I can still accrue vacation time.  This year happens to coincide with the next Warcraft expansion, so it works out well.  On the Monday of every one of these week long vacation, I usually take out the amount of money I'm comfortable donating to the Indian casino and drive there to have lunch and a little bit of gambling.  I call it my annual donation drive to the Indian casino because that's really what's happening.  I go with my usual method of limited action: put the winning into the winning pile, and when the original pile is through, the gaming is done.  I watch as other people come in and casually loose $500 in less than 4 hands.  My little pile of money lasted me about 30 minutes, and I have the exact same amount of money as I started.  At least the Casino didn't loose their shirt on me, as we have lunch there.  No buffet this year as it makes no sense this time around.

118/82/65 250.8lb 96 mg/DL

Day 118 - End of Week 17

08-07-2010 Front

08-07-2010 Side

12-05-2010 Front

12-05-2010 Side

Consider the way my weight behaved all week, I'm happy with the very modest 1.2 pound of weight loss.  More on that later.

126/84/70 251.6lb 93 mg/DL
Week to Week 1.2lb
Total Weight Loss 76.4lb
Body Mass Index 36.10

Day 117 - Another Make Up Post

This is yet another make up post.  I spend so much time yesterday leveling my gnome priest that this daily posting slipped my mind.

Technically my vacation does not start until Monday December 6, so I have some schedule work related task that I have to do.  Lets just say that the work is done, and I considered myself on vacation.

124/92/72/252.4lb 96 mg/DL

Day 116 - New Pants, New Belt, New Stomach Sensation?

I posted this over at DiscussWLS, but worth repeating over here at my own blog.

I'm not sure about the rest of you, but I tend to wear loose fitting clothing before my surgery, and continue to do so after the surgery inside my own house. With me going through at least 2 different pants size change, I finally dug out older clothing that doesn't have elastic bands around this weekend. I also have to buy new belt, as my current belt will not go with the smaller pants.

I'm day 5 into my new pants/belt experience, and I'm feeling something weird. I've gotten used to how my stomach feel in the past 4 months since surgery. But this current round of clothing change, I'm feeling physically incapable of eating a whole lot more than with my previous clothing. Just tossing this out to see if anyone experience this.

I wrote back in November 27 how farming Mr. Grubbs was different for each one of my max level characters.  Well, Fidie got to  Eastern Plagueland yesterday, and I did the questing normally, not going out of my way to farm creatures for the pet.  The pet dropped out of the third bag of extra loots.

123/89/79 253.4lb 94 mg/DL

Day 115 - On Healing with Gnome Priest in Warcraft

I got my gnome priest up to level 42 last night.  Since I had the dual talent specification bought, I might as well use it to heal as my off spec.  Mind you, when I started in vanilla World of Warcraft, my one and only max level character is my paladin.  Back then, you basically have one option if you raid as paladin, you heal.  I got used to just looking at my Grid raid frame and topping everyone off.  About 6 months into the first expansion, The Burning Crusade, I got burned off from healing, and switched to tanking (Blizzard finally acknowledge that warrior only tank was not an option, and actually made tanking viable option, albeit, on TBC, paladin was pigeonholed into AoE trash pack that was specifically designed for, Mt. Hyjal).  In Wrath of the Lich King, all 3 specs are made viable, so I have my protection spec for raiding, and retribution for my off spec.  My my reckoning, it's been at least 2 to 3 years since I heal in either instance or raid.

I figured that I can probably get into random dungeon finder faster if I queue up as a healer.  And sure enough, I got into Scarlet Monastery Cathedral.  Healing that was not much of an issue, fixing my keybind and Clique setting was.  After getting my feet wet, I went back to shadow to dps in the next queue, Mauradan Princess section.  The rest of the evening is split between questing and queuing up for more instance as healer and fixing the UI.  While I have no problem healing in Uldaman, the last instance I ran in the evening is far more problematic.  Scholomance, is a significant step up in terms of difficulty from everything I've done prior on this character.  For one thing, the trash pack has fearing or knock back ability that will wipe the party.  Crowd control is recommended if you got one in the party.  For another thing, no one in the party except me have actually been to the place before, and I became the party leader to do crowd control and pulling.  We wipe 3 times, but I feel that it's time well spend.

On other news, my weight seemed to be at a standstill this week.  I actually weight 1 more pound than yesterday morning at the scale.  I'll try to drink more water and see what will happen today.  Today is also the day I get my blood drawn in preparation for my quarterly appointment with my primary physician.  Unlike the vitamin test, they only need to draw 3 tubes of blood, and the technician claimed that they were able to spot a juicy vein right away.  Unfortunately for me, she had to prod a bit before finally hitting the vein.   

120/80/74 254lb 92 mg/DL

Day 114 - New Companion Pets

So after the excitement from Monday's failed expansion of food choice, I'm back in the office today.  Unfortunately I forgot my water bottle, which means another opportunity to experiment again.  I'm currently going through the office supplied non-caffeinated tea bags, so I can avoid drinking plain water.  Thus far, if I don't think of them as tea, and just as hot drink with flavor, it works.

For today's lunch, I actually went back to the same restaurant.  Ordered the same thing, except skipping the noodles.  I still feel that I overate, but at least this time is mostly just the soup.

Yesterday, Blizzard introduced 2 new companion pets, Moonkin Hatchling and Lil' Ragnaros.  Seeing that I'm a dedicated pet collector, I bought them as soon as I found out they're in the store.  $5 of the proceeds from the hatchling goes to charity if you don't want to just donate the money to Blizzard.

120/80/77 253lb 90 mg/DL