I'm Gonna Be In And Out The Next Two Months, Visiting My Brother Kevin Soon

I wanted to give you a quick update about what's happening with my schedule before I leave out of town on Sunday after church. I'm about to go into about eight weeks of nearly non-stop busy, busy, busy with my schedule. Some of that time I will be near my computer and able to blog as usual. But other times I won't.

Here's a rough sketch of what is coming up for me:

Sunday, July 6, 2008
I'll be in Durham, North Carolina again to meet with the Triangle Low-Carb Meetup group as they gather together at 6:30pm at the Golden Corral on NC-55. Christine and I will be there and will have lots of fun and valuable door prizes to share with those in attendance. If you missed us on our last visit to Durham, then I hope you can make it out this time around. Anyone who is interested in the healthy low-carb lifestyle should come out and meet your fellow low-carbers in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area.

Monday-Tuesday, July 7-8, 2008
Christine and I will be visiting with Dr. Eric Westman at the Duke Lifestyle Clinic to see if he can help identify what is happening with my weight this year. We've got a series of tests set up, including a glucose tolerance test to measure blood sugars and insulin after I consume a low-carb meal. I'm anxious to see what this finds. We'll also be running cortisol levels, vitamin D, and a few other blood tests to try to rule things out. We'll be discussing the reactive hypoglycemia theory espoused by Dr. Keith Berkowitz to see what role it might be playing in this. I'm anxious to figure this thing out already!

Wednesday, July 9, 2008
I've been invited to New York City to be one of the first to see, hear about, and taste the new products from food manufacturer Cargill Foods that are made with Truvia--a sweetener derived frm the stevia plant. You'll recall I blogged about Cargill and The Coca-Cola Company trying to get FDA approval for stevia as a sweetener and apparently that ruling is coming soon. The event I will be attending is located at The Rockefeller Center and will be taking place at the Truvia Greenhouse where there will be tons and tons of stevia plants all over the place. They've invited me to bring my video camera, so I plan on shooting some YouTube footage while I'm there. I'll be flying in from Raleigh/Durham that morning and flying back that afternoon, so it'll be a quickie trip! But I'm excited since it's only the second time I've ever been to NYC--we won't talk about the nightmare I had the first time I was there two years ago (this time I will have a car service taking me to and from the event so I don't have to worry about a crooked New York City cab driver again!).

Tuesday-????, July 15-???, 2008
Christine and I will be driving down to Pensacola, Florida to visit with my brother Kevin perhaps for one final time before the good Lord takes him home. I want to tell you how much I sincerely appreciate all the outpouring of love and support for me and my family during this difficult time with not knowing how much longer Kevin will be with us. I hope and pray we can spend a week or so one last time together and have one final happy memory with my only full-blooded brother. He's a good man who deserved so much more from this life than the hand he was dealt. I'm honored to be called Kevin's brother and will cherish this time with him and the rest of my family. I will not have any Internet access while I am in Florida other than on my iPhone, so there will be no blogging while we're there that week or so.

Saturday, August 16th to Monday, September 1, 2008
Coming up in August, I've got something pretty incredible happening in the Nashville, Tennessee area. You'll recall I interviewed former "Biggest Loser" contestant Isabeau Miller about her experience on the weight loss reality show. Well, she's now a personal trainer and wanted to give average, everyday people a chance to feel what it was like being on the show. That's why she started FitCamp which will take place over a two-week period in July and then again in August. Christine and I will be coming to the August session along with several of my readers who were the winners of an essay contest and received scholarships to come. I have already told Isabeau that I want to go through all the daily exercise and activities just like everyone else and I'll be video-blogging the entire experience as well as checking in each day with pictures and how it went. Considering I haven't lost any measurable weight since my sudden 30-pound weight gain earlier this year, this could be a great chance to get the scale moving in the right direction again. I'm so excited about this trip and can't wait to meet Isabeau and everyone else who will be there.

So that's about it going on in my life the next two months as far as trips go. I'm also in the midst of writing at least one and probably several books that will feature many of the most popular blog posts I have written at the "Livin' La Vida Low-Carb" blog. This has been a special request from many of my readers who know I've blogged about an issue they care about, but they can't seem to find it. I'm trying to remedy that problem by putting my best blog posts in a series of books. The working plan right now is to release a trilogy (Volume 1-3) that will contain thematic groupings of my best posts on a variety of subjects, including vegans and vegetarians, the failed low-fat diet, inspirational and motivational posts, the real fad diets, and so much more! I'm excited about this project and will be telling you more about it when we get closer to publication.

I've gotta get some sleep now since our choir is singing at the early service tomorrow morning for the 4th of July weekend. And you're not gonna believe what my church is doing as a churchwide event--they're serving red, white, and blue pancakes!!! UGH! The red comes from strawberries, the white is the whipped cream and the blue is from blueberries, but COME ON! PANCAKES?! I guess I don't have to tell you that Christine and I will be going to Denny's for a Grand Slam to get some good eggs, bacon, and sausage for our healthy low-carb lifestyle. Okay, rant over. SEE YA SOON! :D