Sugar

I know I should have a lot of variety in my diet, but I have so many food allergies, I just eat a few things all the time. And now that I am limiting my calorie intake, there is extra effort in in reading and recording nutrition facts - making a plan to stay under the limits so I can consistently lose weight.

I have a problem with sugar. I tried to switch from Metamucil sweetened with Sucralose (Splenda) to a Target brand sweetened with sucrose (sugar). I had a real bad reaction to the Target brand - I felt awful in my GI tract.

Shortly after moving here, I found that I had a hard time with fruit. When I tried to eat them, they tasted sooo bad. Fuji apples were my favorite, but I couldn't stand them. I keep saying that one of these Fridays, I am going to buy one of several kinds of fruit, and try eating them again, but I never do it.

I have been getting most of my sugar from watermelon. It was the one fruit that I found still tasted good. There might be others, but it was the only one I discovered. Hurricane Ike has caused a shortage of Watermelon, so there was no watermelon last Friday. So I switched to Casaba melon. I really didn't like how it tastes. I used the Casaba melon for 3 days. (I shop on Fridays and Mondays - twice a week, so I always have fresh fruit and veges).

Today, I just felt horrible all day. I couldn't figure out the cause. It was a sinking feeling - very depressing. I fought it all day. They had watermelon in the store today, so I bought some. I made a watermelon smoothie to drink on the way to Dance Class (8PM). By the time Dance Class was over at 9PM, I was feeling great. Obviously, I was not assimilating the sugars from the Casaba melon. Or it did not have as much as the Watermelon. Before Dance class, all I wanted to do is curl up in a ball and cry, now I feel good.

Vacuum 3

This is the amount of grime and fiber my vacuum picked up today. I vacuumed yesterday, and got the same amount of both. That's pretty solid evidence that this is something that has accumulated over time. Both days, I vacuumed very slowly, giving time for the suction to pick up as much as possible for every square inch.

My apartment only has 880 sq ft of visible wall-to-wall carpet. This is totally gross. I imagine all the homes and apartments across america that have wall-to-wall carpeting. I suspect that most apartments and homes have it. We cannot see under it. So we vacuum the surface of the carpet quickly, and go about our day. And since most vacuums don't let you see how much you have vacuumed up, there is no way to judge how much was picked up, and how much may still be left under the rug.

I would never have guessed this, until I bought a vacuum that allowed me to see what was in the canister without opening it.

A Swelling in the Bosom

I have been trying to foster a feeling of well-being throughout the day.

I used to meditate using mantras. It was a mental exercise - keeping my mind focused on one thing, and eventually I would feel real good. It would start with me being aware of my body. Then I would hear a high pitched squeal - it sounds very distance. Then I would have a swelling in my bosom - a feeling of warmth. It would take me 20 minutes to get to the self-awareness, then 20 minutes to get to the burning in the bosom. If I meditated for more than an hour, I would get very hot, and have a light sweat.

My therapist suggested that instead of using a mantra, that I focus my attention on my bosom, how I felt in my heart. He also suggested that I meditate while wearing the alpha-stim on my head. The affect is pretty good. I am able to hear the high-pitched squeal within a few minutes. I liken the alpha-stim to a trickle charge on a battery. Within 5 minutes, I am feeling a stirring in my bosom. So by 20 minutes, I am feeling bouyant. ( I do wear the alpha-stim for at least 90 minutes a day - the meditation comes last, just before I leave for the day).

During the day, when I remember, I focus inward again. I am able to generate the stirring feeling in my bosom while driving and when I take walking breaks at work (I can't sit too long - lumbar starts to hurt). I am beginning to have a sense that I can, through practice, fell like that all the time. That would be wonderful!

There are other effects that I have noticed. I am more aware of my body all the time. I am more sensitive to it's needs. Whenever I eat, I need to floss. I can feel the stuff between my teeth and I don't like it.

Vacuum 2

I just vacuumed the apartment again. after the livingroom and the small bedroom, the 9 inch diameter, 9 inch high cylinder was 1/3rd full of fiber. I checked out the filter. Why does a vacuum have a filter on it! This filter is before the stuff goes into the canister. How insane! The filter cavity is so recessed, I cannot see well all the way to the back. So I use a flashlight. Wow! Behind the filter carriage was tightly packed fibers - which I did not clean out last week. It has started backing up into the external hose of the vacuum - so I cleaned that all out. Had to use a set of needle nose plyers to get back that far into the filter caivty.

Then I took the sponge out of the filter slider. I didn't want the vacuum clogging up anymore. I started over at the livingroom. I filled the canister again, just like last week. As I think about it, I think that the rotating brushes in the vacuum intake suction head are actually pulling fibers out of the wall to wall carpet. The fibers do look like cotton - or synthetic - not like hair.

I emptied the canister after doing the whole apartment, and started over in the livingroom a third time. This time I pulled up a chair, and vacuumed a 4 foot by 10 foot section very, very slowly. I filled the canister about 1/10 th full, with a bit of grim and dust, too. So I emptied that, and started over in the same area, vacuuming very, very slowly. This time I got no grime/dust, but I still got a ball of fiber about 3 inches in diameter.

I think I am going to vacuum again tomorrow and try to get as much of this up as possible. Yuck!

Stalled

OK - It's Firday, and I weighed myself this morning instead of at night. Something was telling me to wait until tonight, but I didn't. I lost no weight this week. Still at 265 LBS.

Here is what was different this week - I decided to lose weight slower, so I allowed my self to eat more - not a lot more - minimal. The only excesses were a small plate of normal food at a Singles Dance I attended last Saturday night, and a pre-packaged sushi lunch on Tuesday. I don't think it was the food.

It was lack of exercise. I only did Cardio Exercises 1 day last week - on last Friday. On Saturday, I got home too late after the Dance, so did not do it. On Sunday, I was flushing out my colon and had to stay home. The rest of the week, I was not able to take my NSAID to control pain, so I did not exercise, so as not to aggravate my colon, in the hopes I would sleep better. Last Night was the first night I could take all my pain medications when I went to bed.

So, this week, I will work out. I was migrating towards a mind set that if it was too late at night, I would not workout, so that I could consistently get up at 7 AM. I have to decide which is more important - regular sleep habit, or weight loss. I choose weight loss.

So when I get home from a meeting or activity at 9:30 PM, I will still workout. I have something like that 2 or 3 times a week, sometimes 4. FOr me, working out is 30 minutes, plus cool off time - I can't take a shower until I cool off - and sometimes that takes a long time. I strip off all my clothes to speed that up, but it takes a long time. It is difficult to be ready for bed by 11 PM.

Results & Planning

The Colonoscopy went find - my colon is squeaky clean. They only found 1 polyp, and it was clean (although not yet confirmed by tests). Dr. Edling said that from his experience, there was nothing to worry about - and he would see me again in 5 years.

I spoke with a friend about retirement planning last Saturday, and we talked about Florida. He told me to look into Southern Texas, especially Corpus Christi. The cost of living would be much less, and there is a lot more variety of fresh vegetables in Texas than Florida. I might take a trip down there to check it out someday.

Lest we forget how fragile we are

What a horrible night! In a few hours, I will be getting a colonoscopy. I was on a clear liquid diet all Sunday, and fasting since midnight. I am handling the fast fine - it is the restrictions on my medication that are hurting me. Because of the possibility of needing anesthesia during the exam, I was not allowed to take 2 of my night-time medicines: Lyrica for pain and Zolpidem to help me sleep.

My joints hurt all night. I went to bed at 10:00 PM, but did not fall asleep until 3 AM. At 6 Am, Silly woke me up wanting to be petted. She woke me by licking inside my elbow. I was upset with her, and pushed her away. Putty came in multiple times during the night wanting to scratch his nails on the box srings (probably because it is the only cloth ocvered piece of furniture I have, and he is a very nervous cat).

I feel totally drained, and the lack of food is affecting my mood. I was easily able to forgive the cats. I am struggling internally. Old habits are wanting to be depressed, to think that nothing will improve, that no woman will ever love me or want me again because of my health restrictins, etc. new habits ocunter that, pointing to my successes in the past, and my recent successes, which are not trivial.

I can do things that most people can;t do, even now that I am old and when I am not 100% well. After I washed myself up this morning, I looked into my bloodshot eyes in the mirror, and spontaneously thought "I love you". I did it several times, and finished by saying it verbally. I wasn't just saying it, I felt it - I meant it.

Part of me said: it would be so easy now to have them find cancer in my colon and then die. The pain and loneliness would be over. That isn't going to happen.

Through this, I have decided to go to the Temple every week now, on Tuesdays. it is just 20 minutes from my home. Can't do it tomorrow, though. It's my turn to go out with the missionaries. My purpose in going to the Temple is to become passionate, and to know what it is I want - and to truly want what I say I want.

Yesteray, I discovered my poor friend Kofi has no food. He is an old man from Ghana. His hometeacher is unconcerned. He filled out a food order form for Kofi to the Bishop's storehouse 2 weeks ago, but left it to Kofi to go get it. Kofi has no car nor money. His nephew ran away. Everyone is leaving it to me to get info on Kofi. I could not find Kofi at home. He had no power, so I could not call him on the phone. His accent is so strong, I cannot understand what he says. It took me several times to realize Kofi had nothing to eat. I went home and brought him food from my pantry. I will take him tothe Bishop's storehouse Tuesday. The only reason I was able to help Kofi is because he lost his apartment, and was sharing a room with a friend - so he had access to electricity, and could charge up his phone - so I was able to learn his new apartment number.

Vacuuming

I have been wanting to make an entry on this topic for awhile, but was avoiding it because it shows how lazy or down I have been. I went a long time before I started vacuuming regularly in my new apartment. It has only been the last 2 months where I felt like I had the energy to vacuum, so now I do it every week.

2 Saturdays ago, I noticed the vacuum wasn't working well, so I investigated. It was FILLED with fiber. The vacuum has an interesting design, lots of tubing. The entire vacuum, from the suction foot to the holding tank was completely full, tightly packed with fiber and grey dust. I bought the vacuum as a kit, so I took it apart, cleaned the entire thing out, and put it back together.

Yesterday was the first time using the vacuum since I cleaned it. When done, the holding tank was full of fiber and gery dust - but it wasn't tightly packed. The holding tank is a cylindrical drum that is 9 iunches across and 9 inches high. I made sure to choose the setting which is one above "bare floor", and I vacuumed slowly so that it would pick up as much as possible. I have been grooming Silly every day to eliminate her as a possible source of the fiber. I only have 3 small rooms. Where is all this fiber coming from?

I think it is a build up of rug fibers over the years. If previous tenants did not vacuum much, and did it quickly, a layer of silt builds up. In our first home, when we upgraded the carpets, I was shocked when we piulled up the old carpet. There was a layer of dust under the carpet that was a quarter of an inch thick. Our vacuum wasn't picking it up. Since then I have tried several vacuum types to see if I can control this better.

Since I cleaned out the vacuum, I have noticed a big improvement in the air quality in the apartment. I will keep this practice up until the amount of fiber and dust in the tank drops. I cannot believe that my 2 cats and I are creating that much junk on the floor. It has to be historical buildup.

weight Loss is too fast

I am down to 265 LBS. 5 LBS in one week. definitely too fast. I am going to slow it down. I want to lose 55 LBS more. 2 LBS a week is 28 weeks - 7 months. I can wait that long.

My waist has decreased enough that I have to buy new clothes. I am going to buy slowly. I am hoping I continue to get 10$ off coupons from Casual Male XL - they come in the mail. all my blue jeans are way too big now - so I am wearing casual slacks all the time.

Today was a strange day - I went to work, but I really didn't want to be there. It was all I could do to make myself stay.

I am learning Google Sketchup and ASL slowly. I am enjoying it.

Do I like Ike?

It is 2PM. Hurricane Ike is 120 miles away, having traveled 90 miles over land. The winds have slowed from 100 MPH to 60 MPH. The rain started 1 hour ago - it is just another rainly day so far. I've done my shopping - got a little wet. Ike is traveling at 16 MPH, so we have about an hour before the edge of the hurricane reaches us.

It is now 6PM. Ike is passing on the east side. it is 90 miles away (70 miles to the east), and the winds have slowed to 45 miles perhour. It is moving north at 20 MPH. All we have is light rain now. Ike was a Category 5 hurricane when it reached land, but now it's not even a category 1.

Identity Theft

Someone stole my identity today. I got a call at 1PM from a financial institution that suspected that the transaction was fraudulent. The transaction was cancelled when I confirmed that I had not done it, and I immediately went home and changed all my passwords. I want to monitor the activity, but I am afraid of logging back in in case there is a phishing virus on my system. I have reconnected my modem long enough to make this entry, then I will disconnect for a few days.

Take it slow

I was feeling pretty good today, and my mind was very clear. as a result, I diud too much at work and wore myself out. I was able to clean up a data model that I will be updating in the future with new tables. In reviewing the model, I saw that it was in VERY BAD SHAPE. So I contacted our technical lead, and asked permission to clean it up. He was happy to allow this. I figured out a way to do it very quickly and easily.

As a group, we have needed a way to work independently of a common repository of data models, so we could work at home, and then upload our changes to the repository and have it sync up our file with the structure of the data model in the repository, and do version control as well. The obvious way to do this in our toolset does not work. It allows the update, but you lose all your versioning, and many other serious losses. It took me 3 hours of study and experimentation to figure out how to do it. This is what I used to routinely do (5 years ago) and it felt good to be able to do it again. The 3 hours was not at a leisurely pace - I was working fast. If I had done it at a comfortable pace, it would have taken 2 days. I wrote up a tutorial and published it to the team.

Then I went home - very tired.

I bought an umbrella to keep in my laptop case so I would not be caught running in the rain again. I also retrofitted a plastic bag to fit over my laptop case when I use the extended handle and wheels on the bottom of the case. I bought a scale, too. Now that I am 280 LBS, using a scale at home is reasonable. At that weight, it won't be accurate for very long because my weight will compress the spring that is the active mechanism in the scale. But I will continue to lose weight. And the scale was on sale.

CTR

In my faith, CTR stands for "Choose The Right". Children in my faith learn this at an early age, about a decade before they learn the political ocncept that right is conservative and left is liberal. This political spectrum takes it's meaning from early european lore, loosely based on Judeo-Christian teachings from the Bible. I wonder if focusing on "CTR" so early in life is the reason for the statistic of a high correlation between Mormons and being a Republican - it's 70%. Jews are 70% Democratic. These are the extremes of most faiths in America.

The concept of right/left having the meaning of good/bad is not in Asian lore (I think). In Asian countries, wehre there is political freedom, I wonder how the generations of Mormons born in the faith line-up with conservative/liberal polotical beliefs

Momentum

I had a great day at work yesterday - I got a lot done, and I had some good non-work related conversations. I fiorgot to take my morning meds yesterday - so BP is high today.

I have a product called the Alpha-Stim which I use instead of antidepressant drugs. I use it for 90 minutes each morning. My medical doctor said that it would do no harm to me. My psychologist was very familiar with it, and was going to suggest I get one. He was amazed that I already knew about it and had one. He said that I could use it for much longer each day - suggesting 3 hours. So last night, I had the idea that I could use it twice a day. So I used it for an hour when I got home from work. Wow - that really helped. I was in such a happy mood. I am going to continue to do that.

In my calorie counting plan, I allow myself to eat half of a small watermelon a day. I actually wasn't eating the whole thing. My stomach has shrunk to the point that I feel full after I have eaten 1/4 of the watermelon. I was throwing the rest away, but now I scrape out the melon, and blend it to make a fruit smoothie. I use the smoothie at 2PM, when the body sugar level drops each day. That has really helped me at work.

I weighed myself last night. The comlex gym scale had been re-adjusted to zero. So it is inaccurate again. So I have no idea if I have lost weight or not. I go in for a coloniscopy on the 22nd, but I doubt they will weigh me. Where does one go to weigh themselves - the YMCA?
I'm not going to waste money on a home scale again - I know that they do not work for me.

Second Dance Lesson

That's right - I am taking dance lessons. I have always wanted to, and I found some place that was really inexpensive. Once I get comfortable, I will start going to the free group lessons. I am doing OK. I am able to keep in time, keep my feet moving correctly, and talk at the same time. I actually did a partner turn where I was dancing backwards. I enjoy my lessons.

I have been studying a free tool from Google called SketchUp. It is really well written software - the GUI is very good. I found out today that it can be used for making animation. So Insanity Claus is back-in-business. I never got an answer back from hash.com if Animation master works on Windows Vista. BTW - DON'T GET WINDOWS VISTA. It sucks. I am so unhappy with it, I am switching back to Macs when I get my next computer after using windows for 10 years.

I am getting better control of my sleep habits and I have higher energy levels during the day. I am getting more done around the apartment and getting more done at work. The brain is still rather slow somedays - things that should be obvious sometimes take several minutes to sink in. My hearing seems to be getting worse - and I am having a harder time understanding people with accents.