Upside down.

After working a full night and then some at the PD on Sunday, I hurried home, and changed clothes and went to the Fire Department. After doing a thorough vehicle check on a new piece of apparatus that we had just gotten second-hand from a larger department, I went to get my physical.

One of the reasons that I went to get my physical is because September is National Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, and it was time to see if my PSA had fluctuated at all. The last couple of years, my Prostate Specific Antigen has been so very low that the chances of me being one of the one in six men who develop prostate cancer are extremely low.  I get this every year. No, I've not had the digital-rectal exam in some time. Yes, the PSA test has a certain false result rate. But over the years, getting multiple negatives tends to show a trend line.  Get yourself checked, gentlemen. It was part of the same blood draw that they did for my overall workup. My insurance pays for the wellness check once a year for FREE, and that's not at all uncommon. One single stick in my left arm, and I get to find out all kinds of things about myself. You need to do this.  And you need to donate to the outstanding fundraising efforts being coordinated by my good friends for Kilted To Kick Cancer.

While at the doctor's office, I endured his very nice, but kind of embarrassing praise about my recent weight loss. I guess that 30 lbs is a lot to most people, but when you start at over 300 pounds, it's really just 10%.  My doc asked what I've been doing, and I shrugged and said that I've been moving around a little more, eating a little less, and I've cut carbohydrates in my diet. This last part makes me sad, because it's akin to scrubbing on a stain for 10 minutes, and realizing that you're actually making progress. Dang it-- I'm going to have to keep at it. :(

As you can see from my trend line on my geeky homemade spreadsheet, the progress is slow but sure.  But no one wants to read about someone's diet; I apologize.

I then took the Fire Chief's city truck in to get serviced, and found myself waiting in the lobby of the dealer maintenance department for 2 hours, realizing my blunder: I hadn't eaten all night and all morning, because I was NPO for the blood draw! Curses!  I stopped on the way back to the FD and ate heartily of sandwiches without their buns.

Getting to sleep after 3:00pm, I expected to get up and work on my EMT class online from about 11:00pm until 7:00am. I woke at 3:30am-- I had slept the clock around. I've not done that in a long time. But I'd been up for about 23 hours, too.

So it is that I'm now finishing my weekend kind of upside down. I got up this morning at about 1:30am, when I should have gotten up 10 hours or more before. Today is going to be rough at work.

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I just now was getting my workout gear together, for a half-hour workout before my wife and kids get up. The majority of my marriage, I've been on opposite shifts from my wife. I have learned how to gather clothes in the dark pretty well. By accident, I've learned the value of a blacklight flashlight.  It turns out that I can shine a pretty bright UV flashlight around the bedroom as I get my stuff together, and this doesn't bother my sleeping wife the same as even a weak white light would. The reflected UV light just doesn't seem to penetrate the eyelids. So now I've got one on my bedside table.