fat wednesday

Back to a normal diet, yay! Also, spoons is on twitter if you are into that sort of thing. :)

coming up this week

With his ever-increasing mobility, Spoons got back to work at his office on Thursday and Friday afternoons last week. The subway ride was a fair bit of work - balancing, sitting in not-so-comfortable seats, people jostling everywhere - but he made it. He said it was a good workout! Since a full day of sitting is still a lot, he'll probably go in for the afternoons again next week and work from home in the mornings. The predicted time off from work for this surgery is 4-6 weeks, so he's definitely doing well, with really only 1.5 weeks fully off, this week and next week working mostly from home and some shorter hours, and then probably back full time in the office around the 4 week mark.

We went also went to Manhattan yesterday to see the NY Philharmonic (see the program if you want to know more). I won the tickets last summer at a concert in Prospect Park in Brooklyn by signing up for the Philharmonic's mailings, and I had months and months of concerts to choose from. As we were sitting down last night in our very nice Philharmonic-provided seats, I noticed that a work colleague of mine and his wife had the seats next to ours! (He was even wearing an ATLAS neck tie!) They had also won the seats by filling out something for the Philharmonic - a pre-concert talk survey in their case. So we both had won some kind of drawing, we both picked the same concert, and then we got seated next to each other. So funny. The music was good and it's always fun to get out and do real New York things.

The week ahead for me is an exciting one - I'm interviewing for two jobs. One is a job at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, in Berkeley, California, to keep doing research like I am now and to help organize an important physics publication, and the other is a faculty position to be a Physics professor at NYU, where I would keep doing research but also other professor-y things like teaching. If I don't get these jobs this year, I have one more year to work at Columbia before my contract there is over and I have to find something else. This Monday and Tuesday I'll interview in California (I'm on my way there now!) and Thursday and Friday I'll interview at NYU. I am excited about both positions and San Francisco and New York are both places where we would like to live and where Spoons could keep working at Google. So, wish me luck! And don't worry - our NYC crew is taking good care of Spoons (as always :) ).

quote of the day

Spoons [wistfully]: "I think I miss egg yolks most of all."

One more week til egg yolks!

the reboot

Since the surgery, it's like Spoons has had a reboot and has had many firsts: first glass of water, first shower, first ... of various digestive things. So, we've been joking every time we introduce something new: "first mushrooms!" "first pasta!" and sometime next week when the low fat regimen is over, it'll be "first butter!" and so on.

Today there were two good firsts: first pint of beer (it was the first time he was really feeling up for it) and first time wearing real pants! He's been wearing pants of course, but always sweat pants or pajama pants until today.

weekend: cocktails and quarantine

This weekend at home was good - people came over to visit which is always nice and there was a lot of sunshine so we made some "feels like it's almost summer" cocktails as well as a jasmine tea/honey/lemon/grapefruit non-alcoholic version that was very tasty.

Spoons continues to feel better - more appetite, more awake, wider range of motion - and he can even put on his own shoes now! He keeps walking a lot, which you can see on Run Keeper (thought it's more of a "Walk Keeper" for now).

Unfortunately, as Spoons's health has improved, mine has declined. Even though everyone has been telling me to take good care of myself (and I have tried!!) I got sick yesterday with a fever and sore throat and stuffy nose and everything. Because Spoons really cannot get sick right now, I'm in quarantine in my own house! Good thing we have a comfortable guest bed. Last night I slept upstairs, where I had crazy fever dreams about octopuses. Tonight I'm hoping for a more relaxing sleep, with maybe a little less crazy dreams. :)

As the tables have turned, Spoons was cooking for me today, and we watched a movie tonight on separate couches, like roommates, before he headed downstairs to bed. I haven't had a fever since early this morning, so as long as I continue to improve hopefully I can get out of quarantine soon.

Movie reviews:

Animal Kingdom: Australian crime family, bloody, pretty slow moving but with some good parts. Guy Pearce does his best Gary-Oldman-Commissioner-Gordon impression.

The Prestige: Speaking of Batman, in this movie directed by Christopher Nolan (Batman Begins) Batman (Bale) and Wolverine (Jackman) are rival magicians in nineteenth century London. Also David Bowie is Nikola Tesla. That pretty much sums it up.

what to eat

Here's what we've cooked at home so far. Since it can be difficult to think of things to cook, I thought I'd keep track and post the ideas and recipes at the end of the two weeks in a place where other people who have to be on this diet for a while can find them. Until then, here's a list. FF= Fat Free

Breakfast
FF yogurt with fruit
Toast with jam

Lunch/Dinner
Potato soup: potatoes, carrots, celery, onion, garlic, broth, stir in egg whites at the end
Borscht: beet soup with leeks, dill, lemon, black-eyed peas and lots of other stuff, FF sour cream
Gnocchi with tomato/basil sauce, spinach salad with FF dressing and FF feta cheese
Red lentil soup with homemade croutons and salad with FF dressing
Egg white/egg beater omelet with mushrooms, zucchini, onion, etc

Snacks/Desserts
Sorbet
Fruit
Fruit smoothie/juice
Smart Start cereal with skim milk and fruit
FF Cottage cheese and fruit
Chocolate milk/hot chocolate with Santa Cruz chocolate syrup
Vanilla Carnation instant breakfast shake with skim milk (chocolate has fat...)

On the list to make
Black beans and rice, serve with egg whites/beaters and salsa
Black bean soup
Squash soup
Stir fried vegetables with thai curry paste + rice
Indian food: yellow lentils, cauliflower/potato/tomato dish or spinach or beet side dish
Polenta with stuff
Quinoa with stuff
Fat free cookies?

Other ideas? Recipes? Let us know!

learning to diet

Today was the first full day at home, and it was certainly nice to have Spoons back. He can do most things on his own -- just the socks and shoes are a problem, and he's not allowed to left anything too heavy. He was walking a lot in the hospital for exercise, and kept it up today, going on two walks around the neighborhood at about ~1 mile each. I went with him on one of them, and it was exciting to see signs of spring: buds on trees, crocuses blooming, people outside.

I also went shopping to try to find a bunch of foods that we would normally steer clear of: fat free yogurt, fat free sour cream, fat free salad dressing (hint: it's mostly vinegar without the oil). Often, the "full fat" versions of these foods are just milk, while non-fat versions have a lot of other stuff to compensate, like lots of sugar. I did manage to find some good ones, though, I think, and we had homemade borscht for dinner with a bit of fat free sour cream as a garnish, and it was tasty. Because grocery shopping is usually pretty easy for me, it was a new feeling to walk around and think "nope, shouldn't buy that" and "off limits!" -- I felt lucky that usually, most of the things I want to buy are the things that I can buy.

In general, I feel very lucky this week - lucky that we have access to good health care and good insurance, lucky that we both have jobs where people care about us and are flexible with our schedules, lucky that we have people to help us both close by and farther away. I think bad stuff happens to everybody eventually, and I feel glad that we were in a place and time that we could deal with it and go forward. Spoons' brother Ben said it seemed to him like we thought the surgery and chemo were "wildly inconvenient" but not much worse, and I'd agree. If "wildly inconvenient" is the worst it's been, then I think we are doing pretty well.