I went and saw the knee doc for my last follow-up appt. I complained that my knee is still killing me and he said it could be up to 6 months before it really started feeling good, but that I can do whatever I want and I won't be hurting anything. He said to keep up the Advil when it hurts and just carry on. I think it makes sense that it would take that long because I'm using my knee all day. Hard for things to really heal up quickly when you are annoying them all the time.

I did some high intensity intervals on the low-elliptical trainer on Sunday and I think that inflamed my knee up pretty good. I finally got myself to the gym again yesterday afternoon and it hurt too much to do the bike or anything so I did a circuit upper body workout to get my heart rate up. I started with a core circuit and then went to chest and back supersets. By doing sets in high reps, moderate weight with only the time it takes to get from one exercise to the next for rest you can turn a weight training workout into a partially aerobic one. By the time I was done I was really sweating and puffing so that felt good. I made the mistake of getting a small Jamba Juice afterward. While I was sipping on my Protein Berry Pizazz (with protein boost) I eyeballed the nutritional info and almost fell over. 48 grams of sugar!!!! That didn't stop me from enjoying every last sip. It does explain why I bloated up later in the evening and why I'm up a couple of water pounds today however. I knew it would be full of sugar and made the choice to have it anyway. I used to get the 32oz ones, but the 16 was just right for me yesterday. I won't be doing that again for a while.

Food wise yesterday I was CRAVING all day. Sugar sugar sugar sugar. I haven't had that kind of a day in a long time. I sat back and thought about what might be going on and I realized I'd forgotten to take my meds for a couple of days. Nothing compensates for low serotonin like carbs and sugar! So last night and this morning I made sure and got those in, and I brought plenty of protein and veggie snacks for the day. I already feel better. Its entirely possible I was just having an off day and it had nothing to do with me missing my Wellbutrin. Thinking that way did help me come to terms with the crappy food day I had yesterday and help me get back on track today.

I have another appt with a plastic surgeon at the end of the month. This one I had seen before, almost 3 years ago in fact. I liked him then, but wasn't too confident about his level of experience with post WLS patients. Over the last few months I have emailed back and forth with more than one OSSG member that has had work done by him and they have been very happy, plus he's had 3 years more experience by now! He uses an assistant surgeon too. Two is always better than one when it comes to a procedure that lasts hours. I have thought about the other surgeon in SF that I was considering before. He had talked to me about working as a "team" with me training his patients pre-operatively etc. It sounded like a really great deal but after some thought I realize that I just did not get a good vibe from him. The mojo was wrong somehow and I've decided against it. As much as I would love that arrangement, it just didn't feel right.

Did I mention I have my 1st client starting next week? She wants to train a couple times a week and we have a gym right here at work which is the perfect place for me to get her started and train her on weight days. She can go off to Bally's where she has her membership on the other days for cardio or whatever else we come up with. I'm totally excited. If I can whip this girl into shape, I can whip anyone into shape. I'm considering tracking her progress online as well. Maybe set up a separate page here that she can get to and update. I've also registered a domain name for my business and plan on registering a fictitious business name. My girl Shae is going to register hers as well. She's getting into the Events and Wedding planning business. She has done so much for her girlfriends in the way of baby showers and wedding showers that she might as well be getting paid for it! Plus she's very good at it.

My plan is to have the website up by the end of March. I may be having plastic surgery by then, but its a goal for completion.

I spent at least 1.5 hours each on Saturday and Sunday in the gym. Yesterday I did high intensity intervals and yet again, my knee is killing me. I iced it after too, but obviously not enough. It felt really good to sweat. I know I need to step it up to really rev up my metabolism again. My core exercises are getting easier and easier. I have killer abs underneath my Fred. I can't wait to get this extra skin off of me!!!

Work has been kind of ass lately. As part of our team "move" to Denver one of our guys is moving to a new group. His responsibilities have been to watchdog our nightmare Email backup system and guess who gets to take that over? So, I've learned the ropes this past week, learned what a PIA this system is, and am hanging tight for now. When we set up the system we had a requirement to keep email data for 30 days. Now our Legal dept is asking that we keep EVERYTHING. That request came through back in June, and we have been keeping every single nightly backup since. Well, since we were originally set up for 30 days worth of storage, we have slowly been running out of room, so the solution we came up with (since Legal wasn't coughing up any $$ for new hardware or systems to meet this requirement) was to install tape drives at our corprate office. This way we can off load the old backup jobs to tape and archive them. WELL, dragging 25G of data across a WAN with a teeny tiny network pipe is not going as well as we hoped and now I'm up a creek without a paddle in a couple of offices cause we are out of room and we don't have enough bandwidth to off load jobs. LOVELY. If any of you are in IT, you will know what I'm talking about. For those that aren't, to sum it up, I'm trying to suck a Jack in The Box ice cream shake through a swizzle stick instead of a straw. Dammit, it just ain't happenin'.

That's been causing me no small amount of stress, and I really think that me jumping into that system on Monday contributed to me getting sick again, or the virus never really leaving. I feel a lot better today than I did yesterday, but I think this weekend is going to be all about napping and chilling at home. MAYBE we can go boarding the last weekend of the month.

Next week my boss and my new "teammates" are coming to San Francisco to meet with the old team and do knowledge transfer. This will be the first time I have met my boss of the last two months. Should be interesting.

Next Tuesday I have that appt with the plastic surgeon. I'm pretty excited. Sometimes I don't believe I will ever get it done. Sometimes I think I should just save the $$ and deal with it. Keep losing fat and see if I can stand the skin you know? Get back to running and hardcore weight lifting and get back into those Size 7 Jr's "superlow" Levi's I wore when I was at my lowest. Even though I had no lower body muscle to speak of I felt SO good at that size. I wonder if I can get there but not lose the ass and quad muscle I've built up since? It's just SO much money....I know its financially feasible, now I just have to get my head in order.....