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About a 18 months ago I thought I was having a heart attack, but the doctors found nothing wrong. When it happened a week later I didn’t waste time at the ER again, I just pushed through it. I had been eating a vegetarian diet for quite some time and had only recently began eating meats again, so I suspected it was my gall bladder, despite what the doctors said.

A couple days ago I began to be sore around my right rib cage and thought I must have pulled a muscle. Then it got worse… way worse, back to that same feeling of a heart attack again. Now I’ve never had one, but I imagine that your chest, back, sides, and everything being in such pain that all you can do is rock in a fetal position and find no comfort anywhere, would be kind of what it feels like. If you’ve ever had an abscessed tooth, multiply that in size by 50 and imagine that in your chest. So I knocked myself out with a double dose of codeine meds left from my shoulder surgery, and managed to get some sleep last night. When I woke up, it was still awful so I went to the ER and of course all the tests came back normal. Here we go again I thought.

At the last minute they decided to do an ultra-sound and found gallstones. Not too bad they said, only one was large. (you can clearly see my gall bladder in full attack mode in the picture) They suggested surgery, especially if the attacks are frequent. Last night I would have cut that sucker out myself and stomped all over it had I known, however, after they mainlined me with morphine I was pretty mellow and decided not to do anything rash at this point. Three attacks in one and a half years is not frequent, and maybe I can eliminate the problem with a better diet anyway. So, for now I will try to eat right again, probably sticking to a vegetarian diet for a while. Certainly no fatty foods and red meat.

Whats kind of odd is, that it’s been several months since any meat has tasted that good to me. Even in good restaurants, the steaks and other meat dishes have seemed bland and unsatisfying. The hardest part about eating a vegetarian diet is how much work it is… it takes a lot of effort compared to just popping some burgers and dogs on the grill, not to mention the extremely limited choices you have in eating out.

Well, Wendy and I will go on our first cruise ever, a 5 day Caribbean tour. We’ll be on the Carnival ship, Holiday, their oldest and smallest ship. At 733 feet, though, it doesn’t seem small to me. Our destinations are Progreso, Yucatan, and Cozumel, Mexico.

I’ve been browsing around, reading cruise reviews, and of course you can find everything from horror stories to excellent reviews. About 75% are positive. One review in particular was straightforward and helpful.

I just hope it’s not 5 days of waiting in lines for everything we want to do and heavy crowds everywhere we turn. Some good food, good company, and a relaxed atmosphere would be really nice. We’ll be in good company anyway… Wendy’s parents and sisters are going, and we always have good times together.

We’ll be on the starboard side, lowest deck, with a picture window, situated just about mid-ship. They do have wireless Internet access, and if it’s less expensive than gasoline I’ll probably use it.

I found this picture while looking for something else, but it caught my eye. When I looked at the picture in full size, I was sure. This F-15 Eagle jet is flying directly over the condo’s where Wendy and I have spent several vacations. The wing tip is actually closest to the room we stay in, the bottom floor, just on the corner. I added the arrow…

What are the chances of finding this? The meta data on the photo says it was taken May 19th 2005. I think we were actually there in May 2005 as well.

More coincidence… I was looking for photos referring to a weapon system I used in the Air Force to use in another post on my bigfatgeek.net blog, which itself was about a coincidence.

Even more… Between Ft. Walton and Panama City Beach is where I flew when pursuing a private pilots way back in the day, and I saw this view minus the condos in 1978 and 79. Of course Jeremy just got his license last week.

The condo is named Moonspinner.

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This is the full name, 1,913 characters long, for tryptophan synthetase, a protein, which has 267 amino acids in it. From The Word Lover’s Dictionary by Josefa Heifetz, also in Mrs Byrne’s Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words
Never challenge the gods.