wild_turkey

I hate to break it to you, but everywhere you go has people taking Instagram pics, from Texas to Paris to Machu Piccu. If that bothers you, your options for travel get significantly reduced. If you’re worried about the image people are projecting on Instagram, and what travel destinations constitute being a “world traveler “, maybe it’s time to unplug from Instagram. I don’t think about that shit at all.

We’re going to Tulum for the weekend. We needed to get out of town, wanted a place with warm weather, easy access from DFW, no mega resorts or all-inclusives, and fewer families. My goals are to lie on the beach, watch the wife hang out in skimpy bikinis, drink margaritas, and eat good food. Tulum checks those boxes for us. We’ve been interested in places like Mayakoba or Punta Mita but those are mostly bigger resorts and seem a little more family friendly, so we’ll put them on the back burner if we ever have kids. We’ve also done Playa del Carmen a couple times and it’s fine but not our current preference. Cancun proper is probably not our cup of tea.

Austin is also a trendy place lacking infrastructure. I’m not sure what kind of infrastructure you would really need in Tulum. The main road along the beach sucks, but once you are there you can walk or ride a bike most places.

The skin thing was extremely bothersome and it had been going on for 5+ years. My ears constantly itched and I didn't like the appearance of having scaly skin there. That's all 100% normal now. I also wanted to know why I had leukopenia and thrombocytopenia.

Blood work normalized with a year. My blood counts were just barely low to begin with so it didn’t take much to get me back in the normal range. I don’t think there was a significant threat from continuing through life without knowing about it, but that’s also because my symptoms were primarily dermatologic and I consider that fairly tolerable in a relative sense. Hydroxychloroquine is a pretty good and effective medication for a lot of autoimmune diseases, but it does have a possible side effect of vision loss. That requires vision screenings which I do routinely, but my biggest concern is the possibility that I would have to eventually discontinue the medicine in 5-10 years and have to move onto something else that is less effective, more expensive, or has other side effects. And yes, this does affect my approach to patients with these conditions. I like to think it makes me better in that specific area, or at least more empathetic, but the reasons for that are fairly detailed and probably beyond the scope of this thread.

Many autoimmune diseases take a long time to properly diagnose because the symptoms are general and can be attributed other things early on. In my case, I had scaly skin on my ears that multiple dermatologists couldn’t figure out and kept saying was pre-cancerous. Treated me with 5-FU and different steroids with minimal improvement. Did multiple skin biopsies. This was over a period of 6-7 years in my 20s when I saw about 5 dermatologists without getting an answer. Then, in my early 30s, I had shingles twice. My medical training was that a young healthy person with shingles needs at minimum a CBC and HIV test so I pushed for that. Luckily the HIV was negative but the CBC showed low WBC and low platelets. That led to more blood work and I got referred to a hematologist who did a bone marrow biopsy that was inconclusive. My new dermatologist at that time was the first person to suspect lupus so she ordered an ANA which was positive. A positive ANA is suggestive of autoimmune disease but not specific, and many normal people have a positive ANA without having autoimmune disease. That led me to a rheumatologist who did a lab workup that showed high anti-dsDNA antibodies which is fairly specific for lupus. Started treatment with hydroxychloroquine and my skin symptoms went away and all blood work normalized for the past ~5 years.

Fine now. Prior to being diagnosed and starting hydroxychloroquine, I had low WBC and PLT.

I have lupus (SLE). My symptoms were mostly random skin problems until I started hydroxychloroquine about 6 years ago, which pretty much controls the problem. Luckily no other major medical issues so far, but I occasionally get random joint or back pain that I suspect is lupus related. I’m a physician so I constantly interact with other patients with lupus. The scary part is when I meet people who were happily in remission for 10 years and then out of the blue they got pericarditis or kidney failure. I’m in my 30s and very healthy (apart from lupus), but no telling what could happen in 6 months, 5 years, or 20 years.

Has this thread simply become a discussion of airport lounges? I miss getting tips on accruing and redeeming airline and hotel points. I haven’t seen many good deals in the last couple of years but maybe I don’t try hard enough.

The pictures of the crash site are unbelievable.

I no longer have U-verse or any subscription TV packages, just individual streaming apps. What's the easiest way for me to stream this game? Should I sign up for the DirecTV Streaming 5-day free trial?

Should we start a support group?

Did you say this pays out the top 46 places?

The standard car is probably a Kia Picante or similar. It will have some trouble climbing some of the hills, depending where you go. Do yourself a favor and ask them to upgrade it to a Mini Cooper, which they will do.

Mizumi, Sinatra, and O are all excellent choices. The adult pools at Wynn and Encore have upbeat music but it isn’t an overly loud raging party. That’s what Encore Beach Club is for. You can relax at either of the adult pools and your wife can read a book if she wants.

Man I really wanted to go to St Barth in April or June but we’re pretty booked up right now. Tulum in March, Vegas in May, Kauai in June. It’s almost bikini season.

wtf was that?

Well it seems like Putin had already set Russia back 3-4 generations in the short span of 2 weeks. It’s quite impressive to see a major country destroy itself so quickly, but also extremely sad because a lot of common folk in Russia didn’t have any role in this war, yet their grandchildren will now have a worse quality of life because of Putin.

Just curious why you would plan a flight based on lounge locations instead of simply picking the best flight?

Yeah, Imitation Game was great and BC was great in it. He’s a good actor but his acting in Power of the Dog was decidedly average. Probably not his fault because his character didn’t have much depth. I think people see a movie like this, and even if they didn’t love the movie, they feel some need to praise BC for a job well done. Why? Because he’s a good actor and surely he must’ve been good in this too. Right? No. His character was one dimensional and an easy role to play. Nicolas Cage could play a brooding cowboy without many lines. I could play that role. It’s dull and doesn’t require much talent. Jonah Hill had a more challenging role in Superbad. People get blinded to these things because they think and say what they think they’re supposed to say.

I reluctantly watched season 1 after family members kept saying how good this show is. What a slog that was. When it first aired, it didn't look like a premise I would be interested in. I should've trusted my gut on this one. I put Billions in the category of bad television pretending to be good television, alongside shows like Ozark, Yellowstone, and Handmaid's Tale. I don't like any of the main characters. A few of the secondary characters are ok, but they get overshadowed by people I really don't care for. Chuck and Wendy are not sympathetic at all and the premise of their marriage combined with their respective careers is hard to swallow. I get the feeling that Axe is supposed to be the type of villain that you silently root for but I don't think he has any redeeming qualities. He doesn't seem especially intelligent or clever or charismatic, just manipulative and vindictive. He's like a Lance Armstrong of hedge fund investors. They could've added a little more Jordan Belfort or Don Draper to his personality and made his character much better. I binge Band of Brothers every 2-3 years. I'm concerned that if I continue watching, my hatred for Axe will spill over and make it hard for me to like Dick Winters. The employees of Axe Capital are laughably bad. They are supposedly top Ivy League grads but they continually do dumb shit and they dress like they work in IT for a school district. Not casual-trendy tech startup style, more like sales rack at Kohl's style. And then at some point 3 of them set out on their own and they torpedo their new company because they are dumb enough to bet everything on a false tip from Dollar Bill. Uh huh, Ivy League grads. They all look mostly incompetent. If this was only 2 seasons I would probably ride it out to get to the conclusion. When I saw 6 seasons and 12 episodes each...time to bail. You can't have Chuck and Axe playing cat and mouse for that long and keep it remotely interesting. Maybe I'll watch those YouTube recaps that are intended to refresh people for new seasons, just to get a quick summary of how things play out. Not even sure it's worth that effort. Television shouldn't be a chore

Booked at Encore May 6-8. We normally go once a year but skipped last year. Looking forward to going again.

Prone is only face down. Face up would be supine.

I ran the Cowtown Marathon last week. First full marathon for me in 11 years. Pace was 8:36/mile until mile 22, then I had some knee pain which slowed me down considerably. Final time was 4:04. I was happy to finish given the knee problem but a little disappointed with the time. The knee issue seems pretty classic for IT band syndrome. I’m a lifelong runner - usually long recreational runs are in the 8-13 mile range at various points throughout the year, and I never have any injuries, but obviously increasing to 26.2 miles can always introduce new problems. It started 2 weeks before the marathon, then I basically took the last 2 weeks off to avoid further inflammation, did some stretching and NSAIDs. Felt good until mile 21, then flared up on me. It hurt pretty bad just walking around the first few days after. I realized I was paying the price for running through it. Not unexpected. It feels normal again 8 days later. I think I’ll stick to Peloton and outdoor cycling for about 3 weeks, then maybe start out with some slow 3 mile runs and see how it feels. Long term goal is to be able to comfortably finish another marathon without IT band problems, hopefully later in the year. I’d rather do a slower recovery now than try to push things and have an ongoing lingering knee problem. Anyone else been through this? What was your experience recovering?

Watched it tonight and loved it.