Skinny People Problems - Toilet Time

Fair warning.  This is a bathroom post featuring genitalia.

My weight loss journey has brought me down under 220 lbs, my guess is that it'll be a few pounds under after today's massive poop... but my sit-down time this afternoon has presented me with one of the problems I am adjusting to as I shed pounds.

Over the last week, there have been a few times when as I sit on the pot, my balls take a dip.  This is a new experience for me and it confused me at first, because the water level in the toilet didn't seem higher, and my nuts don't seem to hang any lower than the did before, so why has this started happening?  It took a few brief moments of contemplation to realize the most likely answer is my weight loss has left me with several inches less padding on my posterior and thus I have lowered my important bits when I am seated. Do all skinny guys deal with this?

I had previously noticed that sitting on a hard surface, be it bench, chair, or toilet seat, is a less comfortable experience, with my ass feeling boneier than ever...  My solution to that was going to be to do some ass-centric workouts and put on a little meat back there... so far motivation has been even slimmer than the new "skinny me" though.  Maybe with this new discomfort I will re-invest in some squats, lunges, and back kicks.

Ingress is an augmented reality game that I play.  Unlike most people I play solo.  Back when I started you had to get an invite from a player to play, or request an invite from the game.  I overheard some people talking about it in a restaurant and asked the game for an invite, and mine came about 2 weeks later.  I never used any of the invites I was awarded by the game.

The main crux of ingress is basically going to public places of interest and claiming them for your team, or damaging the claim on it made by the opposing team.  I am part of the Resistance (blue team) opposed to the Enlightened (green team).  These places of interest are called portals in the game, and Ingress has had a system of identifying new spots for portals and editing portals that are inaccurate.  I noticed that many of the "info" fields about these places have been left blank, which is a shame, since part of the game is finding these things in your community.  I think I'm going to put some effort into researching some of  the local portals and getting some of the information about them shared.

Accomplishments

Oh yeah... I forgot to mention earlier, that I did, at the age of 35, finally complete an associates degree.  I graduated after the summer semester from Johnson County Community College with an Associate of Arts - Liberal Arts, an Associate of General Studies, and an Associate of Science - General Sciences degree.

While on the topic of awards and accomplishments, after 4 months in his Karate lessons, we let Minion earn his Karate Gi (uniform) today.  Very proud of our little man.  Today has almost been backwards compared to my last post about him.  He was a model citizen in his Karate class, despite plenty of distracting influences around him, but had 2 potty accidents today, which has become highly uncharacteristic from him of late.

Little Updates - Kids + Weight loss

For those of you keeping up on my boys, they are well.

All of Nugget's health issues previously mentioned have passed. He is doing a lot of pulling himself to standing and scooting along the edges of things. His favorite food right now seems to be paper products he finds within reach of his grabby little hands. He's typically happy and low maintenance.

Minion is doing pretty well, too.  I feel like were over the hump on the whole potty training thing finally.  He's in underpants during the days now, and his accidents are very rare.  He's been a rotten listener in Mr. Stillwell's karate classes when other students are there, so we are mixing in a few private lessons to help him focus.  His swim lessons came and went. He enjoyed them and wants to take more... we'll probably arrange for that. On our annual float trip, Minion came with me on the raft for the first time this year. He liked it pretty well.  He's a little river-rat, like his Dada and his Beba.  Would have been  in the river more and the raft less if I would have let him.

For those of you keeping up on my post-barbaric progress, it's going well.

I weighed in at 243.2 this morning. So I've lost about 154 lbs in a little over 6 months.  Still not hungry.  I don't eat myself sick anymore, but still eat to discomfort more than occasionally. Eating so much less, and with mine being a relatively low-fiber diet, there's been a lot less pooping.  I've gone from probably 10 or more times a week to 1-2 a week. Still an adjustment, but it's not a bad thing. loose skin is unpleasant, but tolerable.

I can run now... not fast or for long, but "run" is now on of my options for locomotion when it wasn't before. I also performed a few tricep dips; an exercise I haven't done in over a decade is available to me again now, too.

Soon I'll talk to you all about what going's on in my photography, but I'm out of steam tonight - going to go pass out, now.

The Dream

I am thankful for my job.  I get paid well for what I do. I have an excellent benefits package, too.  But... I know I am capable of more.  There is little about my job I find truly satisfying.  I used to adore interacting with my photographer clientele, but corporate has pulled the purse strings so tight now there there is no payroll budget to have any form of leisure time to glad-hand our pros.  I am a 100% balls-to-the-walls one-man-band style production when I'm in the lab.  Juggling the needs of the 3 or 4 people using our kiosks to place orders, filling ink, keeping the printer churning and burning, doing maintenance, calling old orders, cleaning up messes and general dirt and dust. We can't afford any overlapping shifts any longer. There is not actually time to tell someone I like there work and have a discussion about it. Since Nick left my lab, it's been a slow downward slide. None of the litany that have been in to take his place really care about photography. Some care about the lab, and the business, but not the art. Some of my pros quit feeling special, and left to go find more personalized treatment elsewhere. Others have just moved away. We're not attracting new artists. But the long and the short of it is that I am still damn good at my job, my job is easy for me, but the part of my job I was passionate about has been taken away from me.  Now it's just what I do to earn money.

When I had applied for a different position some time back, the interviewing manager asked if I thought my new position would be as fulfilling creatively for me. I don't remember if I actually laughed out loud, but I know my soul burst into a guffaw.  I don't find my work creatively fulfilling, my avocation is my creative outlet, my job is how I afford my avocation.

In the same interview she asked me to describe my ideal, dream job. I laid out a situation in which a rich patron decides they love my photography and offers to fund my experimentation into the medium - I simply shoot and edit and create the art I want, and get a steady, generous stipend for doing so.

Is that too much to ask?

In the intervening years, I've considered how I would prefer to make money.

The "dream" right now would be to have a fine art photography studio, with lots of space and spaces devoted to shooting everything from Micro- and Macro- photography through large scale studio shoots. There would be darkroom and a light-room editing suite. Attached to the studio would be a gallery where my artwork, and perhaps the artwork of my photo associates, is on display and for sale. and of course an office where the paperwork gets handled.

In the dreamiest versions,  my closest photog friends and I use the studio, and go out on shoots, develop our art, and our gallery becomes a destination. Like Studio 291.  I hire my buddy Jake to be the manager and maintain the staff and paperwork and stuff, and he and my photogs make good bank doing this.

But...
instead...
I'd better go find my namebadge...
I will need it to punch the clock tomorrow so I can go earn some money doing the daily grind, utilizing a skillset most highschoolers could develop, only doing it at a masterclass level that comes with 15 years of spinning your wheels in the same profession.

I'm still here.

It's been a while since my last update. I have 2 unfinished draft-posts floating around out there... one from the first of June and one in early July...  They are no longer as topical and timely as they were... I may re-edit and post them anyway.

As for my weight loss journey.  Things are going well. I'm down a little more than 150 pounds since I started the per-surgery liquid diet at the very end of January. I'm under 250 pound, maybe for the first time in my adult life. Depending on the brand I'm wearing L or XL shirts and a few XXLs that I refuse to give up on yet.  I'm in size 40 "loose fit" cut jean shorts.  Size 42 carpenter cut.

One of my buddies talked about buying himself a new wardrobe of nerd fandom clothes once he loses about 30 pounds or so.  I was a little jealous. I have very little in the way of nerd fandom clothes right now. I have some very nice, quite sensible, professional looking hand-me-downs that I am very grateful and thankful for.  I actually really like my new silk shirt I inherited, but when it comes right down to it. Nothing about anything in my wardrobe is something I went out and got because I wanted it. None of it says anything about me.

One thing about me is I'm broke.  Well not REALLY broke... I'm actually doing better than most, financially... but I have a lot of expensive things I want to buy, so my money is spent before I even earn it. I want to finish stomping our mortgage out of existence... My wife is in need of a newer car... I intend to acquire an upgraded camera... I want to get a new ultra-wide angle linticular lens, too... eventually I am going to pay for skin removal surgery...  All big ticket items that means my clothing budget is in the "you're broke" range, even though we make acceptable incomes and have no debt other than our home.

But since I'm "broke" and want clothes, I go where broke people shop for clothes.

I get a batman teeshirt and boxers, 2 belts I like, the afore mentioned jean shorts, they had polos on clearance, and I got several for $5 each. And though their nerd-tees are not over priced, and there is currently a wide selection... I balk at spending the cash especially since I typically wear my work clothes all day so I'd only dress in my geek-gear 2 days a week at most.

But later... on amazon...  I had a brilliant idea.  Iron-on patches! I'm going to nerd up my cheap-ass polos that I wear to work with some nerd patches, which run between three and four dollars shipped. So for $9 or less I'll have a work-appropriate nerd shirt. Genius!

None of this is actually what I logged into Blogger to post about tonight. I was about to delve into that here... but then thought "tl;dr"

This is enough for one post.  I'll make my intended topic it's own post.

We'll see

Today I may have convinced one of the managers at my location to start coming to Judo with me.  Don't know if he'll actually show up though. We'll see.
On Thursday, Minion was still awful in his afternoon karate class.  The new girl is setting him off. There's a boy there about his age who is acting dead-on perfect though... I asked Minion to emulate him instead of her.  We'll see.
The camera and lens I loaned to another photographer 3 weeks back came back today. The one I loaned out 8 months back came back last week. Still out on loan is a tripod to one photog and a camping tent to another... don't know if I'll ever see either of those again.  Guess we'll see.
So far I have gotten perfect scores on both of my Econ quizes, and on the one assignment that's been graded.  Will my second assignment, and the work that I have yet to turn in all come back with all the available points scored? We'll see.
Potty training with Minion is progressing slowly.  I had hoped he'd be out of his diapers by now. How much longer will this phase of his life take? We'll see.  But no matter how frustrated I become at this, I cannot understand this "father" beating his 3 year old son son so hard it killed him, over potty training. That's something I could have gone without seeing.
My cousin's daughter ran away yesterday.  I learned about it this morning on Facebook. The police found her this afternoon. I neither know what prompted that decision, nor what will happen next. We'll see.
I'm re-working a poster of the managers and administrative staff at work to reflect recent promotions and transfers. Some people had expressed a level of distaste for the image currently being used for them, so I made a sign to post offering re-shoots since I am re-working the poster now anyway. Wonder if anyone will take me up on that. We'll see.