Stormy weather re-routed my workout this morning. I did my typical VR warmup, but what to do for my steps? And miles? Would I apply the outdoor gusts as a headwind or a tailwind? I tabled the discussion for another day. I chose inside. And thus I walked in a tiny 1000 sqft. house, nimbly sliding into unoccupied spaces at suboptimal speeds. My audiobook was my traveling companion.

And as it would play out, Garmin "indoor track" activity, could not track miles to fulfill that mile-a-day marker. Still, I'm about 7 miles into 2003 and it's only the 3rd. It's not a set back as I do need, I need to temper this ramp up of activity. I've been red-lining it.

I need to add beta and gamma days to my alpha schedule.

Speaking of Greek, I did have a successful Koine Greek day...well, it was like a successful first day in the semester Greek day. I had some credit with Udemy, so I basically purchased the class for free. However, I did purchase his textbook for $25 from Logos. It's a good deal overall, because I'm assuming it's the same course that he offers on Logos, but with a $399 pricetag.

I began my 3rd audiobook of 250 for 2023:

1. Steven Ambrose - Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne, from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest
2. Malcolm Gladwell - The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War
3. Brian Glazer - A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life

Clanging like a metal trash can down a flight of stairs, Facebook is a jarring experience first thing in the morning after I go do my Bible+commentary+book readings for the day.

And yet, there's a reason I'm there. Even if it remains to be seen.

Bacon is back on the menu! Today, I've had 6 oz of roasted lamb leg and half-a-package of bacon. While I'm right where I want to be with the protein around 75 grams of protein, lamb is so lean! I've got 50 grams of fat to go. While I've already had my 7 tbsps of butter, I need another 4...so, let's recap: a pile of bacon and EVEN MORE BUTTER!

Yeah, I'm totally out there...and I'm winning.

Funny how our culture at large still buys into Ancel Keys rhetoric.

The 28th Expedition: Ready Player One has arrived safely into the harbor. I have lost 30.5 lbs (-10.5%). To put it into context, it is the most I've lost in a keto/carnivore diet in an Expedition. Yes, I've dropped more in my first approach, but who CAN'T lose weight in a semi-starved state? That said, I wanted to beat out The 13th Expedition's 8.3%...and I did.

Next up? The 29th Expedition: Erebor. I want something greater than 6% as I had a couple of Expeditions at that percentage (The Expeditionary Manifest); it would set it as a 16 lb target. And I just might expect that throughout the 200s, but who's to say? I just tried to hover above the 75 grams mark on protein and eat in excess of 200 grams of fat.

For the first seventeen days of The 28th, I didn't monitor my protein intake. I suspect not paying attention to it explains my wonky numbers in years past. I just ate all the meats back then. And between the excess protein conversion to sugar and that Devil's cream...well, look, I think sometimes, my weight gain is like this:

Dwight Schrute: Through concentration, I can raise and lower my cholesterol at will.
Pam Beesly: Why would you want to raise your cholesterol?
Dwight Schrute: So I can lower it.

It's around lunchtime as I write this. Normally, I would post that sort of thing first thing on this site. But, one of the drawbacks to sending content over to Facebook is that I neglect this site!

And I had my doubts about posting my success on Facebook. People want you to spear salads, choke on spinach and fight endlessly against appetite. There's just an expectation of being miserable when losing weight. There's a character/morality thing attached to it. People don't want to know that I've lost 30 lbs by eating half-a-package of bacon per day for 17 days, then thirty days of 5-7 oz of pork belly. That doesn't show superhuman power of the will!

And I think maybe that they bought into the carb world, that an appetite just can't be quenched. We've all had our Lay's; we've never shared the Sharing Size Snickers. But, it's not appetite's fault; it's carbs. Carbs just fail to satisfy. On the flip side, air fry up 3 oz of ribeye fat, and that'll do. No mas!

Cue the Also sprach Zarathustra; throw on See See Rider: 2023 has launched!

This morning, I had the first of many 3AM-something mornings. Regenerating my morning mana, it came to me to change the way I do my scheduling. While I had 2023 mapped out, I just had space carved out on the calendar. Time slots are easy to ignore, so I converted them all to Google Tasks. As it doesn't provide a block of time, I just had to make a note as to the length, but in practice, it was all just a guideline anyway. The takeaway here is the value in having a manual interaction with the objective, something for me to verify and tick off.

After that, I invested about thirty minutes into a VR workout and followed it up with a 5K walk around campus, thereby maintaining the pace I've set out for the year regarding my Garmin challenges. To start down that road of 250 audiobooks, I listened to Ambrose's Band of Brothers, a book I last read in Flagstaff in 2004 and have watched the HBO mini-series many times hence.

I wanted to put more time in with my roadwork so that I have a bank of steps to pull on a rainy day, but these legs haven't moved in a while. I sure don't want to blow out a tire! With a monthly goal to hit, it's no different from my reading objective and will be more forgiving than a daily goal...it's more of a daily target of 10K to get to 300,000. And I'll have to cover the "days off" of February.

I am back on Facebook! It's the one point in my Destination '23 that I nearly deleted before things became final at midnight. In fact, I had just clicked to be in the queue for An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination when I was notified of my first friend. I mean, I was right on that page! And so, it was decided; I was all-in. And unlike the past, I now gotta hit that mark of staying on the platform.

It's no different from any of the other marks I'm going to achieve. The value is making myself available while bringing some value in the world. And I'm not going to hammer with what ills the world on there. If I need to vomit that emotional release, hey, I've got a blog! Long have I thought folks ought to get a place like this instead of micro-blogging it on that platform. And hey, it can TOTALLY be free for 'em on Github Pages—gone are the days of Geocities with a handful of pages and a random banner ad! I could just as easily host this thing there (and have). Maybe the vomit is a viewership thing? *shrug*