More Retirement Discussion

I had a very long lunch with a church cell group brother. He is a few years younger than me, but we have similar backgrounds: Chinese immigrant and finance/MBA education. However, he is married with one young child, and he started his own business several years ago. I told him a week ago that I was feeling anxious about my upcoming retirement now that the time has arrived.

In summary, he suggested I try to stay on part-time for another year to soften the transition from working full-time to not working at all. I likely overshared a lot, yet he was patient and listened to everything I had to say. I am not convinced that I want to stay any longer than I have to but maintaining a few work relationships longer does sound attractive. I think my boss will have some sort of decision or suggestion on transitioning my current role so maybe I can discuss the part-time idea.

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Lunch was close to four hours. We ate curry first but felt pressured to leave after eating since the restaurant was a bit busy. We then went to a dim sum place that has a bar counter, got tea and a few dim sum dishes, and talked further.

Not good at all for my blood sugar.

Rice = bad

Super High Glucose Readings

Not counting the four units of Humalog I shot at 6:00 am, I shot a total of 42 units today. So far, I only had a protein shake for breakfast and a chicken sandwich at Islands for lunch at 1:30 pm. Since SPR, I have not had French fries that often so maybe my glucose is a reaction to that? The glucose spike from lunch did not start until an hour after the meal and got as high as 360 on the meter. I did not save a screenshot but did input the reading into the inpen app, which suggested ten units. I shot 14 units instead and finally did the readings start to fall. I just checked again at 8:30 pm and it was still really high at 270 so I shot 14 units again. I have not had anything to eat since 2:00 pm. Since I am not hungry, I think I will skip dinner to see if I can get my glucose levels back to normal.

Glucose Sensitivity

Since the SPR program ended at the end of September, I have held my weight steady. I was worried that I would rebound and gain back all the weight I lost in Q3 while on the program. However, since the program ended, my blood sugar has been extremely sensitive to carbohydrates, and it has been difficult to control with insulin shots.

Here is an example from yesterday. I went to sleep around 10:00 pm. for no apparent reason, my blood sugar began to rise at 3:00 am. The increase was slow at first but then a high glucose alarm woke me up at 6:00 am. I have not eaten anything since the night before. At that time, I shot fourteen units of Humalog and went back to sleep. When I woke up again at 9:00 am, my blood sugar was back down to 93.

What is going on? This happens during the day as well. I would measure my blood sugar, inject insulin as instructed by the inpen app or a manual sliding scale, and yet my blood sugar would seem to increase faster than the insulin can handle. The levels would eventually come back down, but after a huge spike in the CGM reading. If I try to chase the glucose high with more insulin, that often leads to low blood sugar, something enough for me to feel physically. I did bring this up to my endocrinologist and she agrees that I may be more sensitive to carbs after a diet program that had minimal carb intake.

I thought after the program, I could mix in some rice/bread/pasta once or twice a week. However, it does not look like it is practical since each time my blood sugar would go crazy like above.

Erewhon Smoothie

A friend posted on Instagram that she finally tried a smoothie from Erewhon. For those that do not know, Erewhon is a market chain in Los Angeles that makes Whole Foods look like a 99-cent store. I jokingly asked her if it was a $30 smoothie, and she said I was close.

$22! That seems very expensive for a smoothie. If you look at the ingredients list, the word “organic” shows up eleven times. That is $2 per original ingredient. My friend said it was pretty good. I have been making smoothies at home for the past ten weeks for my diet/exercise program with frozen fruit from Costco. I probably spent less than 50 cents per cup. Probably not all “organic” though.

SPR Weight Update – Week 7

After seven weeks on the Six Pack Revolution program, I am down about 22 pounds. I have been following the diet pretty closely but started slacking on some of the exercises. That is probably why my weight loss has slowed, but it was bound to happen anyway.

As a reminder, I started the program on July 10, which is the last high weight point at 245.8 pounds.

Four weeks left.

Costco Baijiu

Costco is selling baijiu.

Baijiu literally means white liquor and it is an evil tasing liquor from China. Typically, baijiu is distilled from sorghum, but other grains can be used, like rice or wheat. It has really high alcohol content, often over 50%. I have not seen the brands that Costco is selling. The most famous brand out there is Maotai:

I tried baijiu several times in China, usually during business dinners. It tastes horrible and burns. I image it would be like drinking acetone or paint thinner.

SPR Low Blood Sugar

I posted about two weeks ago about a low blood sugar event while driving to my friends’ house. Well, after starting the SPR program, the problem is getting worse. Overall, it is good that my blood sugar is averaging much lower, but the extreme lows are scary. I received a critical low blood sugar warning Thursday on the way to work:

The reading actually got down to 53 on a prior scan. That is really low. I was brought to the ER when my blood sugar dropped to below 40 post-heart transplant. I mentioned this to my nephrologist yesterday and she said I should taper down my Toujeo insulin shot until my morning blood glucose is over 100.

After fighting high blood sugar, especially after the kidney transplant, it is refreshing to see a consistently normal blood sugar reading, especially with less insulin shots.

Neuropathy 20230529

So, after having the pain point move around all weekend and losing two nights of sleep, I took a nap in the late morning and got up at 1:00 pm. As soon as I woke up, the pain started up again in yet another location. This time the pain is happening on my right foot insole, and it is very painful. Each attack also leaves the entire foot numb as well. I messed up my ugly feet diagram so I will need to find another one to mark the pain attack locations.

This sucks. It seems like each time there is a holiday, I end up at home and exhausted due to an intense neuropathy attack. This current one has been happening for about four hours and is getting worse.

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Th make matters worse, I have not really eaten anyt5hing since lunch yesterday. It was an AYCE shabu place, but I really did not eat that much. With the CGM readings spiking after every minor bite of food, I have been trying to not eat anything to see if I can get the readings lower, but now I am feeling really hungry.

This is from the Libre 2 app. The only thing I have had today was a small protein shake at 8:00 am.

Microwave Programming

Since my parents moved out, I have been doing a lot of microwave cooking. Purely by accident, I found out this week that you can preprogram power and time settings if the heating instructions requires it. On my microwave (Panasonic), you first set the power level followed by the cook time. If you hit the power level button again, you can put in another power/time combination and the microwave will continue cooking/heating using the second set of settings.

For example, I get these Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches that require a defrost program and a heating program. I used to do them separately, one after the other. Now, I can set 30% power and 90 seconds immediately followed by 100% power and 50 seconds then walk away. Of course, I do not get to flip the sandwich, but it came out fine.

In addition, I like the croissant sandwiches better than the muffin ones. They have the same content: sausage, egg, and cheese, but the muffins become chewy and hard to bite when heated in a microwave.

That is not me

Nutritional information if anyone is interested:

Late Night Walk and Chicken Fingers

As I was going to bed last night, another peripheral neuropathy attack started. I found a simple diagram online and will start tracking pain location each time.

So, this time the pain was on the inside of my right foot. It just started suddenly and quickly got worse. At some point, I decided to try and go take a walk to see if that would relieve the pain. This was my first outdoor walk in a while after COVID.

It was a short 0.9 mile walk at 12:30 am. Since I have not exercised, I was fully expecting to run out of breath right away. However, I managed to go about two-thirds of a mile before feeling anything. When I experienced plural effusion previously, I could not even walk to the end of the block. Still, I am having some issues climbing stairs without breathing hard, so I need to get back to walking more.

After the quick twenty-minute walk, I felt really hungry since I did not eat dinner. At 1:00 am, the only food options were In-N-Out or Raising Canes. I chose chicken fingers. Even at 1:30 am, the Santa Ana location still had many customers. Surprisingly, I was fourth in the drive through line. The location was open until 2:30 am.

Amazon Fresh Delivery

I started ordering from Amazon Fresh about a year ago. I typically just go to my local Albertsons since it is near my house. I only order from Amazon Fresh when I am buying Amazon branded groceries, like their chips. Previously, you only needed to order $35 to receive free delivery. When I tried to put in an order today, I saw that Amazon raised delivery costs by a lot. Now you need to order $150 to receive free delivery. For orders less than $150, the costs are:

• $100-$150: $4
• $50-$100: $7
• <$50: $10

I would also tip 10% on my orders, even if that makes Amazon Fresh products more expensive than Albertsons. With the higher delivery costs, my $40 order is now costing 35% more than buying similar products in person. It is nice to get groceries delivered, but it is not worth the additional cost for me. Amazon should be saving money on storefronts and logistics and should pass some of that savings to its customers, who already pay $140/year for Prime membership.

I guess I will have to make the three-minute drive to Albertsons later today.

Fast Food Decisions

I do not cook that much. When I was still married, I did cook more often since my ex-wife did not like to cook. We also ate out a lot. Now, ever since my parents moved out, I rarely cook. Meals are a combination of take-out, eating at work, food from parents, or frozen food. Thank God for canned soup and frozen dumplings.

On days when I do go into the office, I often start thinking about whether I should stay after 7:00 pm and get food from the work cafeteria, or leave and pick something up on the way home. Most times, I would leave the office, ponder several fast food options, then go home empty handed. Sometimes I will heat up something, but often I just crash and fall asleep as soon as I get home. For example, I left work early at about 1:30 pm. I did not eat lunch yet and I contemplated about four or five places to stop on the way home. As usual, I just kept driving and ended up at home without any food. I still have not eaten anything (it is almost 5:00 pm) so I guess I will just wait a bit longer and eat dinner.

Life just feels so disorganized however.

Dumplings 餃子

While I was dog sitting at my sister’s house, I only got take-out food twice. Excluding meals at work, almost everything else I ate was frozen. My mom had bought several bags of frozen dumplings, so I had them for dinner often. I went through a bag of fifty, eating ten at a time, so that accounted for five meals.

These were made by some lady in her home, and these have just pork and napa cabbage as the filling. Evidently, my mom has been buying dumplings from her for over thirty years. She usually sells to restaurants but will take large orders from ordinary people. Currently, the paster from my parents’ church would place a large order, and individuals would pick them up at his house. I believe they are ~$20 for a bag of fifty. That is a decent price, and the dumplings are bigger than those you get in the supermarket. I have three more bags and one bag of wontons, so that will last me a few months.

Christmas Dinner

Since my sister is out of town (hence the dog sitting), my parents and I had early Christmas dinner tonight. I ordered dinner from Darya Restaurant in Orange. There are a lot of Persian restaurants named Darya and the name seems to mean wealthy. We ordered our typical chicken kabob, though my mom decided to try shrimp this time.

The food was good. My JP Morgan investment guy took me to lunch there a few months ago. It is more expensive than Panini Kabob Grill, however. Our dinner cost about $75; it would have been $50 at Panini.

There was no salad included, though the shrimp entree was supposed to include it. They gave us some thin flatbread/tortilla instead. There was a lot of rice, and I was able to pack a decent lunch for tomorrow.

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I ate the leftovers this morning for breakfast and like what happened at work last week, I threw up some of it up after eating. IIRC, there was a lot of coughing both times so maybe that is the trigger. I only threw up about the last three bites, but it still sucked. There were no food issues last night, and I packed the leftovers right away. I ate the rest of the food after resting a bit.

Throwing Up at Work

To celebrate the completion of a large project, we had lunch catered today at work. The food was from a local Mediterranean restaurant with chicken kabobs, rice, salad, and pita bread. The was the second time we catered from this place in the past month, and the food is pretty good.

There were about twenty people in one of the larger conference rooms. I grabbed a plate of food, sat down, took three bites, and felt the immediate urge to throw up. I ran out of the conference room and made it to the bathroom before I threw up all the food I had just eaten. I threw up a lot after my bypass surgery and lost a lot of weight as a result. However, I have been fine for the past two years. The food tasted fine, and I managed to finish it after taking a break. I am still uncertain about what happened.

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The food came from a local chain called Chicken Maison. Their restaurants are mainly located in the South Bay, but they have two locations in Orange County. I may try getting take-out from there for our next family dinner.

Amazon Prime Delivery

Even though I have had some issues with Amazon’s deliveries, having fast shipping does make online shopping more convenient. I recently had some items delivered overnight, and it was crazy convenient. However, even with something as great as fast shipping, there is a thing as being too fast.

I just placed two Amazon orders. The first was with Amazon Fresh for some groceries. When I initially placed the order, the only delivery time available was from 10:00 pm to midnight. Midnight!? Anyway, I forgot to order some milk so the second time I checked out, 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm was available. It is now 8:17 pm and I am waiting for my milk (and other stuff). I am still surprised that they will deliver as late as midnight.

I also placed an order for some protein shakes, the breakfast of champions. For that order, they can deliver overnight, or one-day shipping by end-of-day tomorrow. Since I am going to work, I selected overnight in case they get it to me super early. The protein shakes do not need to be refrigerated, but I am hesitant to leave them outside all day in 90+ degree weather. Right afterwards, I got a notification of a prescription delivery. This is for a large order of insulin, which was supposed to arrive Wednesday, when I am working from home. The insulin absolutely cannot sit outside all day, so now I am going to wait for all incoming shipments to arrive before heading into the office.

Crazy. It is about 8:30 pm and I am going to get four deliveries within the next 12-14 hours (Amazon order is coming in two overnight deliveries). I hope Amazon gets their Rivian EV vans soon.

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Just got an app notification that my Amazon Fresh order is three stops away. Here is part of the Amazon Prime order:

Last time the order arrived at around 6:30 am. I hope the last order is delivered before 11:00 am. Even at noon it take almost an hour to get to work.

Dairy Queen Ice Cream Cake

I turned 54 today. When I was younger and relatively healthy, my ex-wife and I joked that we only want to live until 50 since growing old sucks. Well, after a divorce, heart bypass surgery, dialysis, and a kidney transplant, I am still alive.

Several years ago, our family decided to forgo gifts for birthdays. Instead, we would just gather and have dinner and cake. For today, my parents got some dishes from a nearby Chinese restaurant, and my sister-in-law bought an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. I was quite surprised since I thought DQ went out of business years ago, and ice cream cakes come from Baskin Robbins. The last time I was inside a DQ store was probably more than 40 years ago in Mississauga.

The cake was quite good. After we ate, there was still about 40% of the cake leftover so I brought it home. I will have to cut thin slices and slowly eat it over the next week to avoid a sugar high.

Favorite Soup

This was my second most favorite canned soup. My number one favorite is the old school Chunky Chicken Noodle soup, but they changed their manufacturing contractor years ago and I do not like the current version. The older version had flat noodles, sliced mushrooms, and a thick broth. Today’s version has twisted noodles, no mushrooms, and a very watery broth. It looks and tastes the same as several other brands of chicken noodle soup. Since it is no longer available, Beef Barley is my favorite soup by default.

I remember when Chunky canned soup was $1.99 at the market. The regular price now at Albertsons is $3.49. Sometimes you can get it cheaper when it is on sale or you find coupons, but $3.50 feels expensive for a can of soup, even if you really like it. Fortunately, I found it on Amazon. I bought a dozen a month ago for ~$23, and just reordered two dozen at ~$27/dozen. I usually pour the contents into a plastic bowl and microwave for three minutes. In fact, the can label only gives microwave heating instructions, as if no one uses a stove and pot anymore.

Oddly, Campbell’s website does not include any information on this product. It does have all the other Chunky soup varieties I see at the market. I had to get the nutritional information from the actual label:

	Per Serving	Per Container (2 servings)
Calories	150	310
Total Fat	2g	3.5g
Saturated Fat	0.5g	1.5g
Trans Fat	0g	0g
Cholesterol	15mg	30mg
Sodium	790mg	1710mg
Total Carb.	23g	50g
Dietary Fiber	4g	9g
Total Sugar	4g	9g
Added Sugars	1g	2g
Protein	9g	20g
Vitamin D	0mcg	0mcg
Calcium	30mg	60mg
Iron	1.3mg	2.9mg
Potassium	350mg	780mg

First, the math is a bit wonky. There seems to be two plus a bit servings in each can, but the ratios are not very consistent. There may be even a typo for the Total Fat line. Anyway, the most worrying item is the high sodium content of around 74% DV (but it tastes so good!) and a decent amount of potassium. The carbohydrate content is about 18% DV and 10% DV for cholesterol. I should only eat half a can and pair it with a salad.

Strange Blood Sugar Readings

These are my blood sugar readings for the past two and a half days. I have a continuous glucose monitor (CGM), although I do not know the sample interval. I worked from home on Monday and my blood sugar was consistently high. I do not remember eating anything that should have kept it high all day. There was a spike Tuesday morning, but I did not eat anything after dinner. I probably took an insulin shot to get the levels down to normal. Yesterday (Tuesday), I ate lunch around 1:00 pm. It was the last bit of leftovers consisting of some rice, tofu, and beef slices with onion. My blood sugar rose and fell but spiked at 5:00 pm when I got a cup of coffee from a machine at work. It did not taste sweet, but I guess I need to avoid it from now on. I did take a shot around 8:00 pm and ate some dinner but fell asleep soon after. I woke at around midnight feeling like crap, and my blood sugar had dropped to 78. It was very unclear why that is the case, so I took one glucose tablet and had a bowl of cereal and milk. My blood sugar stabilized but rose again at 7:00 am for no apparent reason. I slept the entire time without any food or drink intake. What the hell is going on!?

The CGM is nice since it gives me a continuous blood sugar readings. However, it is causing a lot of confusion as I cannot match the readings with food intake or activity. The readings do correspond with food most of the time, but there are many instances where the readings were really high or really low, and all I was doing was sleeping.

Amazon Fresh Addiction

After returning from our Europe trip and testing positive for COVID, I found myself trying out grocery delivery for the first time. I have several apps, including Albertsons and Instacart, but decided to try Amazon fresh since I have a Prime account and the physical store is not too far away in Irvine Marketplace. Since “free delivery” was offered on orders > $35, my first order was about $40. That was on June 24. Since then, I have made three more orders, with the most recent being delivered about two hours ago.

Initially I thought the prices would be much higher than if I shopped in person, but the prices on Amazon fresh are competitive with what I find at the local Albertsons. I am still not sure about relative product availability, but I was able to find most items I was looking for. Since delivery is usually after two hours, I have not had issues with frozen or refrigerated goods. I usually tip 10% of the order for the driver so costs may be slightly higher overall, but justifiable. I still go to Albertsons regularly since stuff like soda and bulkier items are not great with delivery. Maybe I will start alternative weeks between online and real-life grocery shopping.

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Hmm, with the Omicron BA.5 COVID variant case count increasing, grocery shopping online also seems a bit less risky of getting infected again. Since the driver sends a notification when he/she is about to arrive, I have been opening up the garage for them so they do not have to navigate the walkway to my front door.