The two weeks before school starts are always busy, but that is not why I stayed quiet. I was waiting for the studio portraits our son had taken over the summer to mark his fifth birthday, and I wanted them to be the first post in September.
I have said before that I usually prefer photos with a little more everyday life in them than formal studio shots. But photography is a skill, and my skills in that department are limited. So I turned to a studio in Wuxi. If we are going to keep memories of the young master, they might as well be pretty. The response was good: 142 likes and 53 comments.
Yesterday the photos arrived, and I could not wait to sync the negatives from the CD to my phone and post them on WeChat Moments. The boss at home reminded me not to put the group photos online. As a subordinate, I do not always grasp the boss's meaning. I assumed she meant not on the blog, so I posted all the photos to Moments. It turned out, as usual, the boss was right and saw further ahead. See the picture.
My last attempt to quit smoking was serious, and the result was miserable; I kept smoking. This summer's checkup produced a report with seven problems, and the message was clear: quit smoking and drinking. Many people list reasons 1, 2, 3, and 4 to explain why this is impossible; here is another example. A colleague who neither smokes nor drinks also got quit smoking and drinking on his report. He nearly fainted: how exactly was he supposed to quit? Jokingly, he said he would have a cigarette and a drink tomorrow and then start. For me, quitting smoking can be done in stages; quitting drinking is harder. But after reading the report, I have stayed away from alcohol because my gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase index was high.
Yesterday experts from 101 Hospital came to campus for a Q&A. When I asked about it, an old doctor told me kindly that my blood production was normal but some indices were elevated. If I do not exercise, I should smoke only about 10 cigarettes a day; if I do exercise, about a pack a day is acceptable. As for the gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase index, it was only slightly high; drinkers often have that, and I just should not drink too much.
I am truly grateful to that grandpa.
There are a few other small messes I will not record. But one last thing is worth mentioning: because I was offline for so long, I had not read many friends' posts. I glanced at Feedly and saw a huge pile of unread articles. I shamelessly marked all as read.