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Hi everyone. Our room block is nearly booked at the conference hotel, the Embassy Suites Chicago, O'Hare. While we do have a block at another hotel, the Comfort Inn - O'Hare Convention Center which is about 2.5 miles away, I'm sure there are some that would like to stay close. The Embassy Suites is an all-suites hotel which means that each of our guest rooms is a 2 room suite with a bedroom and a living space with a pull out couch. They all sleep 4-6 people. If you have a room and are willing to share, please post here. You are welcome to post specifics like you are only willing to share with a female, or someone who doesn't snore, or someone who doesn't laugh hysterically in their sleep for no apparent reason(guilty). Obviously room sharing also cuts down on costs for everyone! If you are looking for a room to share and do not have one yet, this is a good place to post as well. Please feel free to contact me at conference@clusterbusters.org with any questions. - Eileen

Urs, What the earlier photo of my fillet of the King salmon didn't show is what I do next. I take a tablespoon and scrape the meat from above and below the backbone on both sides. As you can see, when I'm done, there's very little meat left... "Spooning" the 40 lb King shown in this photo yielded nearly two pounds of very delightful sashimi and California roll makings... as did the fresh salmon roe... The tips, tail and belly meat were already in a brine when I took this photo. They went in the smoker a little over two hours later... Virtually nothing goes to waste with salmon the way we do it... What was left of the salmon in this photo went into a shrimp pot we dropped to 450 feet in Stag Bay, 25 minutes from the house in Pelican... Two days later we pulled the shrimp pot and this was the result. A half 5-Gal pail of 4-Spot Shrimp ~ 10 lbs of tails... And I took the anti-inflammatory regimen with ~ 15,000 IU of vitamin D3 every night... That made the entire 24-day fishing trip to Pelican, CH pain free. Four of us ate a third of the 4-Spot Shrimp along with some nice Lamb Loin Chops later that evening. It all went down great with frosty mugs of Alaskan Amber... I prepared a shrimp, mushroom and cheese omelet for breakfast the next morning... That still left enough shrimp to top our salads the next night to go with the grilled King salmon. Oh yes... That wasn't a sole... It was actually a 45 lb halibut... You can see why I can't wait to get back up to Pelican, AK... I'll make another trip towards the end of August for the Silver/Coho Salmon run... then we pull the boat out of the water, scrub the hull, service the outboards and winterize the house before flying back to Bremeton, WA. I'll spend the last half of September through late May of 2018 preparing for the next fishing trip to Pelican... Take care, V/R, Batch

Thank you Matt, Spiny, Bejeeber, CHfather, and Twisted-Melon for all of your comments and help. This is the place where I am getting so much support and help....all thanks to you. Enough about me! How are you guys doing? Is life pretty normal and good for you guys right now? Are you guys managing the beast or have any of you kicked the beast out of town recently? The 80MG of Verapamil I am taking doesn't feel right. I feel like I did some speed or something. Sort of a pressure feeling in my chest and a chemical taste in my system. But good news is that I haven't had a night attack in over week so that means I am sleeping which I desperately needed to do. I keep feeling and thinking that I am coming out of my cycle and the beast will be gone for a long long time. I need a long stretch of pain free days for that to happen! I had 2 day time attacks last week that ripped me up bad and I went on this forum and starting typing to you guys about seeds. I was getting desperate and was ready to try seeds. I felt so "sick" as I was typing I lost the page and never sent it. But that is where I was on Sunday, hoping for seeds help. Maybe even ready for shrooms! I am so grateful right now that I am fairly pain-free, I don't think I could have been able to handle more multi-attack days and nights. It's been over a month that this cycle has been going. I can't stand taking all of the medications. It feels unnatural and unhealthy taking them but if they work, I have no choice but to ingest. I'm also sort of worn out right now of trying to figure out what works and what doesn't work. I've been mostly caffeine, sugar, gluten, and dairy free for almost 2 weeks now and my improved health may be because of it. Who the heck knows! I miss exercising. But if I workout, a nasty headache is almost certain. I sure hope you guys aren't in any cycles right now. And I pray each day that you will never experience a headache again. I would give every dollar/possession (happily) to never experience that horrible left eye ball pain again. My friend at work has been dealing with this since he was a child and he sort of is resigned to things. I think he takes a huge dose of Verapamil every day. I'm trying to encourage him to try new things but he basically has tried everything he tells me. He thinks he just has to "grow out of it" in time. Here is a quote from my Buddhist mentor Daisaku Ikea that I hope gives everyone strength and courage to keep fighting and believing that this can and will be defeated! Wishing you and your families good health because that is really what's most important. To be healthy. To your excellent health always, Jimmy- Hope transforms pessimism into optimism. Hope is invincible. Hope changes everything. It changes winter into summer, darkness into dawn, descent into ascent, barrenness into creativity, agony into joy. Hope is the sun. It is light. It is passion. It is the fundamental force for life’s blossoming.