After publishing yesterday’s update I decided to nuke my phone in an attempt to fix a battery issue. For the last several weeks my phone has increasingly been unable to hold battery life. At one point it was so bad that my phone died from a full charge in 4.5 hours. Thankfully a hard reset seems to have fixed it.

Due to a rough night of sleep the previous night and a long day, I was able to fall asleep quickly and sleep well throughout the night. I slept for nearly 8 hours with about half of that being deep sleep. 

With only one meeting on my calendar for today I used it as an opportunity to catch up on project reviews and administrative tasks.  

Just prior to my meeting our Christmas tree was delivered. Since it has been raining all week in the Bay Area, we are giving the tree a couple of days to dry before we decorate it on Sunday. While not as wide as last year’s tree it is still tall and smells beautiful. 

I left a message for our neuro oncologist to talk through some of the questions that came up while Laura and I were talking through our decisions yesterday. She is in clinic today and tomorrow  

As the day wound down I was able to get a bit of Christmas shopping done for Laura while she was out running errands for work.  

While the majority of my shopping is done online, there are still a few things that I like to buy in-person. Unfortunately we realized that this year that will be hard since I’m unable to drive. We’ll figure out a way around it but still a funny side issue to deal with from the seizures. 

After work I went next door to workout. Since my shoulders were still feeling good I decided to complete another regular workout using 10 pound dumbbells. They’re a far cry from what I used to lift but it feels good to lift again. 

I wanted to complete a legs workout and try something new so I tried this simple (but extremely exhausting) workout from Scott Herman: 

Pyramid down from 15: 

• Dumbbell Goblet Squat
• Dumbbell Stiff-Leg Deadlift

Finisher - 50 - Bicycle Crunch (1 - 1 count) 

For those that don’t understand what a reverse pyramid is, it is when you perform 15 of an exercise then 14 then 13 and so on. So, that means that today’s workout was 120 squats and stiff-leg deadlifts followed by 50 bicycle crunches (per side). 

I came back home, took my post-workout drink followed by a protein shake, caught my breath for a while and then subjected myself to the torture device aka a Trigger Point GRID foam roller for 10 minutes of mobilization work. 

I’m already feeling my legs get sore but hoping that I can go for a run tomorrow morning since it has been 2 weeks since I last got one in.  

Ideally I would have worked out my legs earlier in the week so that I wouldn’t be sore for tomorrow morning but I am still happy that I have pushed myself to get back to lifting weights this week, no matter how light they are…for now. 

Tonight Laura cooked sautéed chicken, garlic broccolini and brown rice. It was delicious and healthy! 

We’re now enjoying some wine, DVR and relaxing at the end of the week. 

One thing that has been rattling around in my head is beginning to embed media (photos/videos) into my updates, where appropriate. I purposely haven’t done it thus far because I wanted these updates to feel more like a journal and less like blog posts. But, I put it to you - what say you?