Go have an adventure

Summer is upon us.  Living in Los Angels summer is mostly a year-long event.  I am thinking of summer as a frame of mind.  Last week I was listening to Gretchen Rubin's podcast with her sister, and they pointed out the importance of planning an adventure for the coming summer.  Don't blink because it will be back to school before you know it.  My husband and I are thinking of vacation time from his job.  Where should we go?  Asking for a friend. No camping suggestions, please.  We probably can only go away for a week, and we very likely have to take our critter.  That narrows our options, but I like to think we can dream big and make the most of our real opportunities.  Let's go have an adventure!

What I am chuffed about this week

I finished my computer upgrade.  It's a nerd-fest. I have a MacBook Air with a 128 GB hard drive.  I filled it up, and I have been peeling off programs to make room for more work.  Ideally, everything should fit inside.  I found instructions on how to upgrade the hard drive DIY on youtube with a guy called The Bearded Gammer.  Many other videos showed part of the process, but this guy gave the whole how-to, from what tools and components to buy and how to save your system to bring it back to life.  It was hard to wrap my mind around it, but it was just a matter of patients and an Amazon account.  The mechanical aspect was easy, as was the project's software side.  Apple has a program called Time Machine.  I had not used it previously.  It saves a backup to your whole system in the background.  I would highly recommend setting up Time Machine if you are not using it already, even if you are not upgrading your gear.  Once I had the machine on, I tweaked a few settings to make the new drive compatible, most drives are preset for Windows, and the Time Machine backup copied itself back onto the new drive in about an hour.  It seemed daunting, but it moved right along once I started.

What I am working on now

I am doing a diet reset.  There are three weeks with no dairy, sugar/sweetener, and gluten/ flour.  I am interested to see if I can optimize my health by removing one or all of the usual suspects for inflammation and autoimmune triggers.  I am sidelined by an autoimmune condition called Crohn's disease.  I have a batch of drugs I take and weekly treatments.  I would feel pretty dumb if it turned out a change of diet would help, and I did not give it a second or third try.

What  I a reading

The Autoimmune Fix  | Tom O'Bryen  It also doubles as what I am. up to this week.  I skipped the book's first half and went right into the diet plan and tracking suggestions.  I already have first-hand experience with my affliction.  I am looking for relief.  I don't think it will hurt to try a restricted diet to confirm if I can or can't get some relief by skipping bread or butter.