May 2026

The cruise reveal had somehow been kept under wraps for 6 months! Revealed as part of the gifts early morning on S3’s birthday, then celebrated with dinner at Morimoto in Disney Springs. They had no idea — still surprised we managed to keep it secret for that long, and completely worth it for when the moment lands. I admit, there were some almost slip-ups on my part!

Started taking Claude a bit more seriously this month and generated the Smart Bucket List — a personal app to track goals — went from 30 mins to full fledged and out on GitHub, Cloudflare, and Supabase later that day! The dynamic nature of the whole enterprise was compelling. Make a change, see it immediately. It’s gobbled up my gaming time!

By the last week of May the packing was done, the cruise gear ordered, the back wax endured. Flight to Seattle on the 28th, Pike Place Market on the 29th, embarkation day on the 30th. The Norwegian Bliss. The itinerary runs: day at sea, Sitka, Juneau, Icy Strait Point, Ketchikan, Victoria, then back to Seattle… more photos to follow in the next month’s update!

The numbers told a decent story in May. Weight started at 162.4 and was down to 159.7 by departure day — dipping under 160 twice. The extra walks, the pre-cruise motivation, something was working. Sleep was more erratic through the build-up weeks; the tracker shows the short nights around the 4:30am app sessions. Mood stayed fairly consistent through it all, which is its own kind of win for a month with that much going on.