"One of the Most Intelligent and Humorous Responses to Date"

Friends, bills in your wallet, hairs on your head, pixels on your TV screen, and inches of your intestines all have one thing in common: you can never have too many. Initially, I've been under the impression that probiotics also fall into this category. But now I'm not so sure. After starting a new dosage of probiotics I go through the same cycle: bloating, discomfort, gurgling, frequent trips to the throne room, you get the idea. After four to seven days, the symptoms subside. But with this latest dosage, I have not yet returned to my awesome self. It has been two weeks-ish since I started taking the powdered form of the probiotics with the 0.9 TRillion live bacteria, but I haven't normalized. So I'm beginning to think that a TRillion bacteria might just be two much of a good thing. The last few days I have dropped back to just half a packet per day (450 Billion Bumbling Bacteria). We shall see if this helps in the coming days.

So I am taking English Composition II this semester. I took AP English my senior year, and I got a 4 on the AP English Language test, which allowed me to test out of English Composition I. Now, Ohio State may have the dumbest rule about testing out of freshman English, which I did thanks to my 4. At OSU, if you test out of freshman English, you still don't take sophomore English until sophomore year. Essentially they say, "Wow, you're so good at English you tested out of this class. Why don't you stop writing any assignments at all for a year and then come back and see how good you are." Well the joke's on them. My first writing assignment was to select an essay that we read on family values and write a summary, analysis, response to it. The first paragraph summarizes the essay, the second paragraph analyzes the writing techniques used, and the third paragraph is my response to the essay. Well, I hated every single anti-establishment, uber-liberal, anti-religion, anti-traditional family essay in the family values section. That is, all except for one: The Man Date, by Jennifer 8. Lee (Yes, her middle name is 8). It was about the rules and all-around uncomfortableness surrounding one-on-one, heterosexual male bonding that does not involve business or sports. I wrote my essay in about 40 minutes while watching the Titans-Steelers football game. My goal was basically to give him the impression that I am going to do everything possible to write humorously and give my personal twist on every topic I write on, while also following his prompts. I also wanted to see how he would react to what I wrote, as in how much he would let me get away with. His comments at the end of the essay went like this: "An excellent paper. I think you had one of the most intelligent and humorous responses to date. Look forward to your work this semester. A." In other words: "You are the greatest writer in the history of America. Write whatever you want for the rest of the semester, and I'll love it blindly." Ever since he has greeted me at the beginning and end of every class. We had another essay due last week. It was a short research paper about a topic of our choosing about family values again. In the two papers, I have referenced Seinfeld, the NFL, the Office, the Brady Bunch, and Two and a Half Men. Our third paper is due on Friday. The goal is to get a How I Met Your Mother reference in some how. I have a few ideas.

Speaking of the NFL (go back, you'll find it), I have always been a Browns fan, except for the three years that they did not exist, and my fandome was in a brief state of limbo. I have never, EVER seen a football team as wonderfully awful as the 2009 Cleveland Browns. They are terrible. They are simply awful. Take away a Josh Cribbs kick return and a garbage touchdown in Week 1, and the Browns have scored just 15 points. Five field goals. In 12 quarters of football. If you aren't a Browns fan (lucky you), they drafted Brady Quinn out of Notre Dame a few years back, and that year Derek Anderson went to the Pro-Bowl. Ever since that season D.A. has been awful. This year Brady won the starting QB position. He has not been good at all. So Mangini decided to put D.A. in for the second half this week against the Ravens (the team formerly known as the Browns), and he promptply threw three interceptions. I was embarassed for them. So I have made my final decision on the matter. I am now a Titans fan first and a Browns fan second, instead of the other way around. You may be thinking, "Hey wait, the Titans, like the Browns, are 0-3." There's a difference between the two records, though. The Browns have been outscored 357-29 in three games. The Titans have lost their games by 3, 7, and 7 points. They are close games. And with Chris Johnson they are exciting games. So go Titans.

Speaking of football, the Zips football stadium is fantastic. InfoCision Stadium at Summa Field is a total gem. It's beautiful. Really. Well, at least it was. We in northeast Ohio have been having our yearly early fall wind storms the past day or two. Every year, usually during the last few weeks of September or early October, we have this weather pattern that rolls in with hurricane-force winds and rain. It marks the end of summer and the beginning of pre-winter. You're probably asking yourself what this has to do with the stadium. Well the eastern edge of the stadium is a seven-story facade that contains the press box and all of the private seating areas. The prevailing winds, in northeast Ohio, come out of the east and slam right into this facing. Long story short, the D, I, U, and M blew off the face of the stadium. It now says, "InfoCision Sta." I find it humorous that the school spent millions of dollars on this stadium and the sign isn't even strong enough to make it through the first season. You would think that the designers would have thought to make the outdoor northeast Ohio facility weatherproof.

The football team at Akron is not the football team at Ohio State. They are not the pride of the school. The pride of Akron would be the men's soccer team. The #1 nationally ranked men's soccer team. While I was there, my high school's soccer teams were very, very good. The men's team won a state title, and the women's team won a national (yes, national) title. I went to many of the big games. I don't know much about soccer, but I like it a lot. Being the sports connoisseur that I am, I am pretty good at picking up rules governing a game by watching for a short time, which is what I've done with soccer. I've simply watched and learned. I think I've picked up most of the basics, but few of the subtleties. Anyway, the Zips men's soccer team is the best I've ever seen play. They dominate every game I've been to. The problem with soccer, though, is that the score doesn't always indicate how dominant one team may have been over the other. For instance, a few weeks ago, the Zips beat the #6 ranked Indiana Hoosiers 1-0. It sounds like a close, competitive game. It wasn't. The Zips controlled the ball for nearly the entire 90 minutes. Needless to say, I missed the only goal. That's right. The Zips had a penalty kick, were setting up, I looked to my left, and the student section erupted in cheers while the team chased the Walsh Jesuit-alum who scored up and down the pitch (that's right, WJ-alum scored the one and only goal and I know that the soccer field is called a "pitch"). Wednesday night the Zips play the Buckeyes of Ohio State. I'll be there to watch Akron once again destroy the Bucks.

If it isn't obvious, I'm not really sure what I should write about sometimes. This post was mostly a self-indulgent, journal/diary entry. I haven't had a post in almost three weeks so I feel it is necessary to post something. But I don't always have material. I am simply going by the thought that something is better than nothing. Feel free to comment or e-mail me with any questions or comments you may have.

Later, yo. -IW

Does All This Weight Make Me Look Fat?

You may remember that a few weeks before my freshman year of college ended, I wrote a blog effectively jinxing the freshman fifteen (and by effectively, I mean ineffectively). For various reasons it didn't work, and I was as low as I had been when I returned home in the middle of June. And it stayed that way until just after my final (knock on wood) kidney stone annihilation procedure. Then, my weight jumped two pounds and plateaued for a week and a half or two weeks. Then it jumped another two pounds and plateaued again. In all, I have gained 8 pounds since the middle of July. I know what you're thinking: "What the what?!" It's true, though. 8 pounds in just under two months. Four of the last five days have been my four heaviest morning weights since my days on TPN.

I've been reflecting upon this weight gain for a while now (just under just under two months). I know that it is partially because I am home. I am home, eating good food prepared with a short-gut diet in mind. I am home, eating a lot of good food prepared with a short-gut diet in mind. But I've eaten good food before without results like this. I think, nay, I know it's something else.

It has been 22 months, and one week, since my resection. I remember being in the ICU in Pittsburgh, and the surgeon told me that the small intestine continues to grow and adapt after a resection for two years. Well I am on the eve of my two-year anniversary, a day that once seemed so unreachable, and yet, here I am. My doctor at the Cleveland Clinic told me that some research suggests that the small intestine will continue to adapt up to 5 years after a resection. Thinking about this, I think I finally figured out why I am gaining weight. My intestines finally woke up. They realized that there was no way we could get by weighing as much as Babe Ruth's bat. And the window for peak adaptation was approaching. I am guessing that peak adaptation occurs between 2 and 5 years after a resection. It's just a hunch. I could be wrong (although, I rarely am). But I think the scale is currently speaking for itself.

8 pounds. It doesn't sound like much, but it is. I can feel those 8 pounds. I can feel it when I get up in the morning, when I walk around campus, and when I am reheating dinner late at night. I feel like I am getting closer to the pre-11/2 me, again. I am standing up straight when I walk again. I am holding my head at a confidently high angle again, high enough to suggest that I am quite certain of how awesome I am, but not so high that you can be sure this is the message I am trying to send. And I have my crooked, pre-11/2 smile back, complete with both dimples on my freshly plump, yet not bloated cheeks. All in all, I have my swagger back ... well, almost. Another 20 pounds or so, and I'll have it all the way back.

The campus I am walking around, I feel compelled to add, is the University of Akron. It's only the third week of class, but I am 100% certain that I made the right decision to transfer. In terms of professors: at Akron, they are there to teach me; at Ohio State, teaching me was time that could be better spent doing their own research. In terms of on-campus food: Akron has a Subway; Ohio State didn't. In terms of people: yesterday I was in the library doing a little homework in between classes, and a friend of mine that I used to work with happened to walk in and sat down; at Ohio State, I saw a few friendly faces around my floor, and that was it.

Sure, the University of Akron football team is no Ohio State Buckeyes. I mean Akron lost to Penn State last week. It's not like the Buckeyes lost to the Nittany Lions- oops. Well Ohio State was closer to Penn State last year than Akron was this year. Akron lost 31-7. The Buckeyes were never embarrassed by that much- oops.

Sure, OSU has the legendary Horseshoe, but Akron has InfoCision Stadium which will host its first game this Saturday. This first football game on Akron's campus since 1940. Since then the Zippers have always played at the Rubber Bowl (basically a less flashy, less well-known Horseshoe with a less-successful team). But this is a state-of-the-art facility, being called "a gem." Plus, I get in free. I paid about $150 for football tickets last year. And I was four rows from the top, behind a support beam, and not in the student section. This year, if I get there early enough, I could be in the first row right on the end zone line in the student section with the rest of the AK-Rowdies. And that's exactly where I plan to be.

The final point I'd like to discuss tonight is perhaps the most important to those living and dealing with short-gut. PROBIOTICS. Live bacteria that I have been taking to deal with SIBO. I have been taking VSL-3 which costs $50 per bottle containing 30 doses. My mother, ever the frugalista, has found a way to get -wait for it- two months worth of doses at - wait for it - four times as many live bacteria for - wait for it - $40. I'll give you a minute to let that sink in ... ... ... That's right. Eight times as much for $10 less. The probiotics she found are in powder form that need to be mixed with a non-carbonated beverage. One dose of this is nearly a trillion (with a "TR") live bacteria, swimming eagerly in my Powerade Zero, ready to take on the bad bacteria in my small intestine. I know what you're saying: "What the what?!" She took the prescription to the pharmacy, the pharmacy filled it, and she paid $40 because insurance covered the rest of the cost. The same insurance company that told her on the phone that it didn't cover this medication because it "isn't a necessity." Well joke's on you Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield, we only paid $40. Deal with it.

That's all for now, but expect a post about how awesome the game is this Saturday.

Go Zips! -IW

Author's Note: I will, as soon as I return from InfoCision Stadium, change into my James Laurinitis jersey and scarlet hat, and plop down on the couch to watch Ohio State return the favor to the men of Troy. Go Buckeyes!