admin, Author at iWatson Blog

Thanksgiving Weekend

One shot I took at Temple Square. The snow made it look epic!

Thanksgiving weekend is coming to a close. It is Sunday night and in 12 hours, I have to be back to work! I’m not super excited to go back. Another vacation day could come my way, and I wouldn’t care. 🙂 We had a great time. Here is how it was spent….

Wednesday, 11/27/2019, I took a vacation day to spend the day with my boy at home. We hung out in the morning and then about 1pm, he headed upstairs to play. I ended up watching a movie or two and checked on him. He would yell “Go downstairs”, so I obliged. So much for hanging out with him. Later that day, he ha a friend over and they had a bit of a tiff. We went out for desert to intervene (@ Purple Turtle) — All in all it was a great night.

Thursday, 11/28/2019, Thanksgiving was pretty crazy. We met up with Carla, Mother-in-law, and Jessica (Sister-in-law) at The Big Bear Diner. We had a great meal! They ha a modified menu, so it was pretty small. Due to my Menieres disease, I had to avoid the turkey. A big fat burger was what I had (see image). The others had the Turkey dinner. After dinner, we went to see Frozen II, which was SO good! We loved it. My boy even sat through the movie and he was super quiet! Amazing! When the movie was over, I went Black Friday shopping with a friend. We had a great time battling the crowds! It was awesome spending time with the in-laws and with my friend Bill. I even met Glen Stucki at Walmart while shopping. He is a cool guy, you should check him out! Celebrity!

Black Bear Diner Thanksgiving Dinner – Burger – It had a little problem with the meat.

Black Bear Diner Thanksgiving Dinner – Turkey

Friday, 11/29/2019, was a little unplanned. Our friends talked us into driving up to SLC to have a little stay-cation with them! We packed clothes for 1 day if we decided to stay over night. Unfortunately, when we decided to head up, a storm was moving through, so the drive up was a bit crazy! I hate driving in snow, so I was freaking out a bit! We made it though and went to a place called Dave and Busters for some food and games. We checked into a hotel and then took Trax up to Temple Square to view the lights. If you haven’t been, I’d suggest going to view the lights if you do it during Christmas. It’s a beautiful place all year around, but the lights during Christmas are pretty epic!

Saturday, 11/30/2019, We slept in until 9:30a and then decided to go swimming before we checked out of the hotel. About 11:05am, I got a text that said “KSL NEWSRADIO: NB Lanes of I-15 blocked at Lehi. First responders may need to close SB lanes as well for hazmat response. ….“. My friend had also sent an image and another warning (see image). It was insane. So 9 hours late they would re-open the freeway, but it was super crazy! We decided to just have fun instead of going back home, so we went swimming for about 5 hours. For dinner, we ate at our favorite place, Charlie Chow’s, and then went Ice Skating (our boy did, not us). We had a great time, but it was a bit of a crazy day!

Sunday, 12/1/2019, We cleaned up the basement and setup the tree and decorations. It was a pretty relaxing day! The boys schedule was all jacked up from the stay-cation. It wasn’t your typical relaxing day, because of all the cleaning we did. We had fun though. As we brought out the ornaments we were telling stories about how they came to be. When my wife showed Jacob the ornament we bought when we found out we were going to be his parents, he came over an gave us both hugs! It was pretty precious! There were many hugs after that. I’m a grinch, but that warmed my heart! It was pretty cool!

I hope you all had a great weekend! I only touched the surface of what we did. We have some great friends we spent the last 3 days with. It was awesome! I’m thankful for friends and family!

Gratitude

“The quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.” – Oxford

Thanksgiving is this week, November 28th, and I’m pretty excited. I love spending time with my family! We don’t do anything special. This year, we are going to go to Black Bear Diner for their Thanksgiving dinner. We have been going to Sizzler which is pretty good, but there are family members that 1) Want leftovers and 2) Don’t want to over eat! I have one suggestion for #2 –> Willpower! 🙂 I usually don’t exercise any kind of self control.

I’ve been checking out the Black Bear Diner menu and I will most likely get a hamburger, since I know I can get one with out salt and make it low sodium! Having to live with food restrictions puts a burden on family. I’m pretty thankful for my wife and her ability to make low sodium meals. She is able to salt her food and make it taste better.

I wanted to write a few things that I’m thankful for.

Family – As I mentioned above, I love my family and spending time with them! The older we get the lower the numbers get! My parents are both gone and my brothers do their own thing. We hang out with my in-laws and it is fun. We like to go to a movie after dinner and possibly do some shopping after. Black ~~Friday~~…~~Thursday~~…Weekend. — It’s pretty much a joke, but I like going out! There are some good deals and I enjoy seeing the madness. I hope that I can spend more time with my family in the coming months. Making time to see them is my problem and I need to work on it.

Job – I am thankful for the Job that I have. The people I work with are awesome! They make going to work worth it. My job allows me to be creative and think of new ways to solve problems. The job can also be very stressful, but I’m thankful for the opportunity to grow.

Home – I am extremely thankful for the house we live in! It keeps us warm and safe. I’m thankful that I have a job to help us pay for it. We live in a great neighborhood and have awesome neighbors! They are what makes it great to live here.

Vehicles – I am thankful that I have something that can get me from point A to point B.

Health – My health isn’t the best, but I’m glad I can still be mobile and get around and do the things I want. Improving my health is something I need to work on. Hopefully I can keep up on it!

I have only listed a few of the things I’m thankful for, but there are many-many more! This list could go on for ever. There isn’t a day that goes by where I’m not grateful for many things. Being more verbal about the things I’m thankful for is one of my goals.

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving week(end)!

Meniere’s Disease

“Meniere’s disease is a disorder of the inner ear that can lead to dizzy spells (vertigo) and hearing loss. In most cases, Meniere’s disease affects only one ear ” – https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/menieres-disease/symptoms-causes/syc-20374910

For several years, I’d get sick once a year around spring. I’d get a little dizzy and feel nauseated. On May 26th 2017, We were up in SLC for a little stay-cation and swimming in the pool and I got sick again. I was dizzy and could hardly walk. I sat got out of the pool and waited for about an hour, before I could walk back to the hotel room. After a good night of sleep, I was better.

The following Monday, we were celebrating my son’s birthday at Chili’s and I started getting sick again, which included the chills, dizziness, and an upset stomach. Sleep was the only thing I could do. There were several more times that I would end up getting sick, before visiting the doctor. The Dr looked at me and said. “You may have Meniere’s Disease”. Let me send you to the best doctor for Meniere’s.

I did some research and noticed that I had all the symptoms. I have had tinnitus for several years in my right ear and losing hearing in it. After several tests at the new Dr Office, they diagnosed me with Meniere’s Disease. I was devastated since there is no real cure, but there is a diet you can do to control the symptoms. The hardest one is limiting your sodium intake! WHAT!?!?! Everything good has sodium in it! All the quick and easy meals are loaded with sodium! I have to limit my intake to 1500 mg a day.

Let me back up a bit. An “Episode” of Meniere’s can be different for different people. In my cases, I would get extremely dizzy and the room would feel like it is spinning! I get sick to my stomach. There are things you can take to hep, such as motion sickness pills or some narcotics prescribed by the doctor. These episodes can come on without warning. Mine would usually hit at work. It usually takes about 4 hours to recover from an episode. You are usually left with a foggy head for a day. It’s super hard to explain. I’m so glad I work for a company that is willing to let me sleep off an episode in my office!

When I was diagnosed, I watched my sodium like a hawk. My sodium levels were way out of whack, due to my paranoia. I ended up getting sick, because I wasn’t eating enough sodium! The Doctor told me “You are severely dehydrated, and I can either send you do the hospital or you can go buy two bottles of Gatorade and drink them!”. I was able to get myself re-hydrated and back on the mend. I was always a fast-food type of person. It was easy to grab something to eat when you are in a hurry. Unfortunately, there is way too much sodium in fast food. Fast food has become a thing of the past, unless they can hold the “salt” on the fries and burger!

I have had Meniere’s for 2.5 years now and I’m still trying to figure out what I can eat. There are somethings I miss that are high in sodium and I will try a little here and there when I can. You have to weigh the consequences of eating that high sodium meal. Is it worth getting sick!? There are times you get away with a 2000 mg day and others where a 1200 mg day will get you sick. It’s super crazy! My weight has dropped by 40 lbs after making the dietary changes. I miss stuffing my face with fast food!

I have found a couple Facebook groups that have helped me deal with this disease.

Living with Meniere’s Disease – This is a great group for questions about Meniere’s. While reading the group, you need to remember one thing: Everyone is effected differently by this. The people on this group are not all the same and you will see some that can’t function at all and some that have episodes 1 to 2 times a year. I was completely freaked out when I joined this group, because I thought, I was doomed!
Shaking the Salt: A Low Sodium Lifestyle – I love this group for finding low sodium alternatives. I’ve found some awesome products on here that I’ve been able to incorporate into my diet, such as low sodium chips, salsas, etc.

Meniere’s is tough, but I think you can do it if you are disciplined and willing to make changes. I suggest you find a great support group, because you are going to be overwhelmed! Episodes are going to happen, so have a plan! Carry your rescue medications with you! (Dramamine is my first line of defense)

National Adoption Month..

November is National Adoption Month.. I have been thinking about this all week. Adoption has touched our life, but it wasn’t an easy road! I can’t remember when our journey started I think it was around 2010 or earlier. We always knew we were unable to have children of our own and this is the road we would have to take.

Adoption requires a lot of training. It seems like you have a lot more training than a lot of parents have. I feel like we were more prepared than most, but yet still scared and unprepared as them too. We had many disappointing moments through our journey. Where we were picked and then they chose someone else. It is always so heartbreaking to go through.

We had one adoption that went pretty far and the birth mother (BM) decided to parent two days after she gave birth. She had one son prior to this birth, but was sure she couldn’t parent the second. We were pretty certain this would go through until she wouldn’t let us come see the baby for two days. We received a call Sunday night and our case worker calling to tell us the bad news. It was devastating. It felt like someone had died! You go through a lot of emotions and it takes a toll on you.

Several months after we went through the failed adopting, my wife had a friend contact her. This friend had a sister that was thinking about placing her baby. We contacted her and did a lot of chatting and getting to know her. We had planned a trip to Hawaii, but she wanted to meet us. The week before we were going to go to HI, we had to jump on a plane and went out and met the birth mom. It was a great visit. We took her to dinner and chatted a ton! It was awesome! The next day, we met up and hung out all morning. We visited a park and went for a walk. We didn’t want to take up too much of her time. It was a great visit and we felt that it went pretty well!

While we were in Hawaii, we got a call from the BM and she decided to pick us! It was some excellent and scary news! We were just picked, which was exciting, but now we had to make plans! In two months, a baby would be due! After our previous experience, we had to be extra cautious. It was super exciting though! There are so many things to prepare, but you don’t want to get too excited to jinx everything.

We got a call on a Friday, almost 2 months later, with news that the BM was going to give birth that night sometime. We jumped on the next plane and were able to get out there and be there for the birth. It was an amazing experience. We were able to be in the room for the birth and I was there to cut the cord. Amazing experience. We had to spend the next week in a Days Inn until the paperwork was signed, so we could fly back home. I could write a super long post about all the things we had to do.

One awesome thing is, We have been able to maintain a great relationship with our BM and her family, and her mother is still considered Grandma (one of three). It’s been great!

I watched a movie last night called “Instant Family”. It dealt with Foster Care. Very good movie! It was very interesting. The situation where you are placed with a child for a few months and then they are removed from your home, for whatever reason. This is a situation that would be hard for me to deal with. I feel like it would be almost as bad as getting to the point of a placement and having it fall through. I have a lot of respect for foster parents and birth mothers who place their child.

Abortion is a bad word in my vocabulary, but I don’t want to open a can of worms here. I know there are situations where this may be the only answer, but I don’t condone it. I have several friends that are looking to adopt and I’m sure there are many more I don’t know that would be willing to adopt a child that is given a the opportunity to come full term.

Continue..Inspiration..

I wanted to continue on with who inspired me. I thought about it this week, and I realize what I like others may hate. It’s like when I want to share my favorite restaurant, Charlie Chows, with my friends and I talk it up and how good it is but when I take them there for the first time they are like “blah, that was OK”. The glory about this place is you have a million ways to make your food and you are in control of how you make it. It’s really hard to get it right the first time. There is nothing worse than that. I feel like I let them down. To each their own, so I won’t take offense if you don’t agree with me here. If you want to try it, let me know, I will go with you 🙂

I always had a dream to play the guitar. I have spent the last 3 years taking lessons, but I kind of stopped earlier this year. I got frustrated with my hearing and ability to play. I don’t know much about music theory, so it is pretty frustrating. I love music and listening to it. I wish I could sing, and I feel like i’m pretty good when I’m in the car singing to myself. I’m sure I’m like all those people on American Idol that get laughed at :). I found this one singer named Mike Posner and he has a cool sound and some accoustic songs I’d like to play. Some of his famous songs and my favorite are “Be As You Are“, “Move On“, and “I took a Pill in Ibiza“. I found out this week that he has a podcast (“What does this all mean?”) and I became obsessed with it this week. I haven’t listened to all of them but what I have heard, they are pretty good. He is a big thinker and into meditation and self improvement. It is pretty interesting.

One of his stories is about his father that passed away from Brain cancer. He has a song called January 11th, 2017 that is about his father. Since he works for himself (he mentioned this in an interview and in the podcast and they talk in the song), he was able to move home 10 months before his father died and spend those 10 months living in his house with his father. It’s an amazing story, he talks about it in his first podcast “Happy Father’s Day”. I encourage you to listen to it.

My father passed away when I was 15 years old. It was almost 30 years ago on November 30th, 1989. I was sitting in school about 11:30a waiting to go to lunch. Someone came over the intercom and said “Could you please send …. to the office”. I went. My aunt was there bawling and we went out to her car and she gave us the news and took us to the hospital. It was INSANE! I wasn’t able to say my goodbye’s or spend 10 months knowing. I found that pretty cool that he was able to spend the time he needed. I will have to write about my Father in a future entry. I have a TON of stories that I could tell.

Mike Posner has a pretty interesting story and I just found it pretty interesting. He walked across the united states, which was pretty insane! (see the link ). One last story that he told, was how he felt about seeing a homeless person walking without shoes. I’m going to butcher it, but if he has 10 pairs of shoes at home, why can’t he just give him his own shoes to help? I thought that was pretty profound. I have a ton of extra stuff that sits in my closet unused. Why can’t I give them to those that are in need? Winter is coming on and there are people freezing, and I have a ton of coats I need to donate. 🙂

Lots of rambling here.

Inspire…? Dream…?

Have you ever watched a video on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or whatever that gave you the warm and fuzzies. One that really motivated you for 2 or more seconds. 🙂 This is my favorite kind of videos to watch. I do like watching the fail videos, but if I cringe or have to feel sick inside after the video, I try and void it. 🙂 There are a few content providers that I watch that have videos that make you feel good and spark deep thought after watching. Here are a few, of the many, I watch regularly…

Prince Ea is one of them that I like to watch. He is pretty good at his video production. I don’t like some of his click bait, and I usually avoid the ones that seem like click bait. For instance, the video title “STOP saying ‘I Love You'”. I have yet to watch this video. I love saying “I love you” to my wife. He usually has that, but he has a reason for his advice, but WHAT? I’m going to have to watch the video after typing this now. For the most part, he has a lot of really good videos. They leave you feeling good and wanting to change the world.

Here are a few (of many) I like:

Dear Future Generations: Sorry — I totally feel for the future generation. My son is going to have to deal with a lot of crazy stuff. I’m sure my parents felt the same.
What if? — This one is short, but I found it very interesting.
Before You Punish A Child, See This — This one makes me want to be a better father/person. Be mindful about what you say. Very powerful.

Dan Mace is another YouTuber that has some videos that inspire me. His videos are put together pretty well and very interesting. In his second season, he started this thing where you can go to his site and ‘plant a seed’. “A seed is a thought you’ve always had and wanted to act on” (www.notnormalshow.com) It is an awesome idea and he explores some random ideas.

Breaking the law in international waters (with cop and gang lord) — This one is pretty interesting. Have you ever looked at someone and made a quick judgement and profiled them before you even got to know them? Have you ever been able to get to know someone you’ve done that too? How did it turn out? I think about this all the time with Criminals and Cops. Cops are generally pretty cool people. Some “hoodlums” are pretty cool if you get to know them. You have cops keeping you behind bars, because you broke the law. The criminal hates the cop because he is keeping them in jail. I find it interesting. These two could look past their differences and become pretty good friends. 🙂

Yes Theory is another good channel with awesome content. They have a lot of excellent videos that inspire and leave you feeling good. From their About page it says:

“We believe that life can be as authentic and fulfilling as you wish if you seek discomfort. “

These guys had an Instagram challenge over the summer called “100 Days of Sweat.” I never participated, but I followed the updates from many of the other viewers and it was pretty inspiring. A lot of people made some great changes in their life and looked great! A few of my favorite videos are:

2 Strangers Swap Lives Across the World for 72hrs!! – What a crazy video. They find two strangers that agree to take a flight and swap lives with someone. They find the perfect people to switch and it turned out to be a pretty epic video. It is definitely worth the 23 minute investment 🙂
I Took My Pizza Delivery Guy Around the World — This video is just crazy. Kind of cool random event that you could do with a stranger. Would you do it? I would.
Overnight on the Most Dangerous Bed in the World!! — I am scared of heights! So I can totally feel the pain the one guy is going through with this challenge! It looks like a beautiful place to visit, but I don’t think I could make it out on their without passing out or dying. Facing my fears is one of the things I do not do well. Aside from heights, I think public speaking is another big fear.

Check these videos out. Feel free to post some videos that inspire you! I’d love to see them.

Where are you from?

We are owners of a timeshare. Yes, I was a sucker once, or I still am, but I bought into the dream of owning points into a timeshare where I could vacation all I wanted. I could “even sell the points to family and friends to make back my dues”. It’s a bunch of crap they tried to feed us so we would buy into their property. Now it is 19 years later, and they are still trying to find ways to make you spend more money. Timeshares are a bunch of crap, but there are some cool benefits from using them and going on vacation.

Strangers are one of them. There are many opportunities in life where you can talk to complete strangers, but there is nothing better than sitting in the hot tub with complete strangers and striking up a conversation. It seems like no one is phased by you asking “so where are you from?” It is a pretty simple question. We’ve spent the last 5 days here and have met some pretty awesome people in the hot tub. We all come from completely different backgrounds. We’ve met people from all walks of life: A Plumber, A Oil Field Worker, A Single Mom with 4 kids, and Even a Marine just getting out of boot camp. It’s been pretty awesome. Some of these people you would never imagine meeting.

It’s pretty fun playing the getting to know you games with complete strangers. We usually sit in the hot tub until the security guard comes and kicks us out at 10pm. We usually say our good byes “It was nice meeting you”, “Have a great trip”. Some of them we have talked to a couple of times. We never share Facebook links or Instagram names. We may never see them again. It would be fun to keep in touch. With Facebook, you can at least see their feed and be like “Hey, I know these guys from Tuscan, Arizona.”, or “There is that crazy guy from California that likes to grow stuff in his back yard.” The 30+ minutes you spent connecting with a complete stranger was well worth it and it has meaning, to me at least. I enjoy those times.

It reminds me of a time over the summer, where we were staying in Park City, Utah. I went for a walk to check out the homes up there. Some other random stranger was taking a walk, he was a resident up there, and we crossed paths. He ended up inviting me to go for a walk with him. He had a daily route he took, so I walked it with him. He told me about his failed marriage and his crazy ex-wife. He talked about his kids and his plans to sell his house in Park City and move to some ski town in Idaho. It was pretty interesting. Real cool guy. I’ll never see him again, but it was an awesome experience.

I say take time to talk to random strangers. Get to know those around you. Everyone has a story to tell. It doesn’t take much to sit back and listen and ask questions.

New Home…

About 6 years ago I purchased a hosting account with a company called host4asp.net. I was looking for a place I could host some NODE applications on as well as C# .NET applications. I do a lot of custom software at work and we’ve hosted sites before. My boss was the hosting guru, I just helped write the code for the sites. He did all the work to get it setup. I wanted to learn the magic, so this was my chance. Hosting with them has been the worst experience so far. They work, but they are super slow and have switched companies a couple times since host4asp.net.

I’ve had a lot of troubles with them, but lately it has been the super slow response times with WordPress and various other issues. My coworker told me about this cool company he uses called Vultr. They have super cheap plans, so I wanted to give it a try. I setup a super small machine, hosted in NJ (Furthest away from my home) that is $3.50 a month. He also mentioned a site called Ploi.io that is super easy to setup and deploy your machine. I was able to setup my machine with MySQL, WordPress, ssh, etc really quick. When I say really quick…I mean it was fast, but I did have a bit of a learning curve. I accidentally setup a new beefy server that probably cost me $0.03 to run for an hour before I realized my mistake. Super easy though.

I’ve spent the last week moving this site over from host4asp.net to https://blog.iwatson.net – It’s been an interesting adventure. My domain is hosted somewhere in an old account and I’m working on moving it over with my other domains. I had a heck of a time trying to figure out how to create a new A record for the domain. Forwarding my old site to this new url.

I’m sitting in a condo in San Diego, family vacation, at 12am and I’ve finally figured it all out. Vultr has sped up my WordPress site a good deal. I’m super excited! I have everything forwarded over and hopefully everything is setup correctly.

I can’t wait to start migrating over some of my other sites to Vultr. My next adventure is to try and get the mail server setup, so I can completely remove this domain off the old hosting company. I’ve prepaid for their service, and I’ll continue to use it until I can close the account. I will keep you updated on how Vultr is going, so far so good! I’m pretty happy!