It's been a week of weighing in at 281.
So, it looks like 283 is no longer my plateau.
So, this means I've lost 10 pounds since I stopped driving last December.
Unfortunately, I have to go back to driving next month.
But, if I work hard, 279 shouldn't be that hard to achieve.
Ten pounds a year and I've only got five years to hit my target of 230.
According to the current BMI calculator, I should be 200, but my doctor said that would make me too skinny.
Imagine! Too sk
I guess I'm going back to driving. I went to the hazmat fingerprint place today and gave the government images of my arches, loops, and whorls. I should get the approval in a month. Then it's back to finding a company that'll employ me as my previous employer has made it clear they don't want me. In some ways I'm glad.
On the writing front, basically, I'm not. I don't exactly know why but that seems to be the situation right now. There are still stories in the bin to be written, but they do
If at some point in the future a doctor offers you Gabapentin for pain control, run away as fast as you can. Our GP seems to think this is the latest and greatest panacea to be available.
This is a dangerous medicine.
Yes, it will probably cause you to be drowsy, but a good twelve hours of sleep takes care of that. Do you have four extra hours, plus a couple more of feeling very drowsy? I didn't; and I wasn't up to the theoretical theraputic dose. I was only takeing 400 mg and it was wip
One of the joys of getting older is the need to subject yourself to various and sundry tests and procedures meant to diagnose cancer early.
Beware of the Flexible Sigmoidoscopy.
It's not like a Colonoscopy because it doesn't turn the corner between the traverse colon and the descending colon. It only goes up to the corner. Also, they don't use any drugs to ease the comfort of having your colon blown up like a balloon or having a long, hard, flexible probe run up the tunnel.
It was ni
Well, I guess it was inevitable that The Artists would end early. After a nine month hiatus, strings become frayed and some brake unexpectedly. There just didn't seem to be sufficient need to go on because it could've gone on. The story was setup to go on for at least the four years the freshmen, Six and Casey, had ahead of them. But, it wasn't to be. Sometimes life just gets in the way of what you're doing.
So why give Casey HIV? I suppose to kill him off, too, so that future stories, if
I tried writing an entry yesterday, as it was my 60th birthday, but luck would have it I was in a pissy mood.
Maybe it was the mojitos I had the previous night. I'd never tried one, much less two. They're good, but they remind me of the mint growing like weeds where we searched for wild asparagus when I was much, much younger. You know, kid days, when tromping around in mint to find fresh asparagus heads was fun.
Or, maybe it was the news, which I've been watching too much lately. The gu
Although I'm not quite ready for it, the new story is coming up out of the depths of my imagination.
Sci-Fi this time. In the far distant future on a planet far, far away.
People live long lives due to nanotechnology's ability to continuously keep their bodies vibrant and viable. The protagonist, Martello Conger, dreams of living long enough to become King of the Planet even though he is seventy-third in line and realistically has little hope of achieving that august title. Barring some
I am so not ready for today's forecasted high temperature.
On the other hand, I am enjoying the reading on the bathroom scale every morning after gallons and gallons of sweat have seeped out of my body overnight. This is the kind of weight loss program a couch potato loves, except I'm not a couch potato. I have a recliner. A Lazy Boy at that.
The good thing about the hot weather is having a bit of an incentive to work on The Artists. It looks like this story will definitely end at Ch
We don't do hot here worth a damn. Drizzly rain yes, but not heat. As the song goes, "we're having a heat wave." And not liking it one bit.
For the record, our friends at NOAA have posted Excessive Heat and Air Stagnation Warnings. Not good.
Plus, humidity is going up. Or, like I enjoy saying, hum-a-ditty, like, "we're having a heat wave." Run that one through your brain a couple times and you, too, will be humin-a-ditty. Over and over and over and over. Can't get those things out of you
For the past month or so I've been reading Blake Bailey's biography of John Cheever. Rather I should say up until this morning I've been reading this bio. It's one thing to suffer from depression and quite another thing to read about someone who not only was exceedingly depressed, but was drunk most of the time. I've done the drunk most of the time bit and it wasn't fun reading about the fifths of gin and whiskey Cheever was downing on a daily basis.
So why start? Well, I didn't know he was
Okay, I seem to be getting over whatever it was that had me down.
It's not that happy days are here again, but the sun is shining and I'm looking forward.
I've returned to working on The Artists. This gives me two long stories to write, learning Spanish, learning my digital camera, forcing myself to read poetry, and coping with near constant pain in my knee. I might even tackle an upcoming Anthology.
I did not get a new knee. I am not old enough. Replacement knees only last 15 to 20
Hatch Mesa, east of Green River, UT
Went to Orthopedics to discuss relapse of knee problem with PA-C. Offered three options: deal with it as I have been, which is not an option because I need a good knee to drive; get a shot of cortisone into the joint, which is not an option because this is only a temporary cure and the problem will come back; or, get a new knee.
I need a good knee to do my chosen line of work.
It takes about a month for the process to go from deciding to do and get
The Three Gossips in Arches National Park, UT (from our knee pain shortened road trip)
Still trying to get my life back in order.
I've started working on a short story about an old man dying in a nursing home; or, he may already be dead and just hasn't realized it. It's more of an exercise to keep me writing than a real writing project. Then, again, maybe it will work out to be something.
My knee is back to the way it was before surgery. Going to Ortho tomorrow to talk about what nee
She was my great-great-grandmother. She came into the marriage with children having lost her first husband in the California Gold Rush; she bore a few more.
There were two tintypes; one of my great-great-grandfather and one of her. She looks very dark, too dark to have been out in the sun too long. Her features are very Native American. There is one family story that says she was half Indian. My grandfather said she was born in Norfolk, Virginia, but he never acknowledged her as being half I
I am trying very hard not to be overly depressed about this because we are in Flagstaff, AZ, and that's a long way from home. Day before yesterday I drove from Moab, UT, to Moriarty, NM, 432 miles which isn't all that far considering we stopped a few times to stretch the legs, but it was no use.
The knee I had surgery on isn't as well as I thought. In fact, it's almost back to being a bad knee.
Yesterday we drove from Moriarty to Flagstaff, with a side trip through Petrified Forest NP (l
The real side of me has set up an account on Facebook and has been looking for friends and acquaintances, but since I have few friends or acquaintances I've been forced to add relatives to the mix. So far I've found, in order of discovery, a nephew, a niece, and a cousin. There is a blog friend who sent one of my aliases a note to join, but though I responded, she hasn't acknowledged the request to hook up.
This morning my cousin (there are six of us, a year apart) sent me an email to catch
I've kind of known about Diabetic Retinopathy for years as a former co-worker's brother had juvenile diabetese and was going through it as a young adult.
Yesterday I took the wife (Type II Diabetes for 18 years) to see an ophthamalogist because her optometrist said there'd been a change in her left eye.
After the doctor examined my wife and escorted her to the laser room to have her weak capillaries photocoagulated, he gave me a booklet, "Understanding Diabetic Retinopathy."
The alar
When I went to the shrink last Wednesday I told him about being super irritable to the point where people were noticing. Hell, I was noticed the change first. Not only was I irritable, I was downright dangerous. The possibility of road rage incidents was coming back with a vengence. Anger management was out the window.
We discussed the situation and he said the irritability was probably due to the Zoloft working too well and throwing me over to the manic side of my mood stabilizer which has
Well, our son isn't going on vacation with us. He's just quick smoking, again, so his nerves are just about shot and he doesn't want to put up with his mother's stupidity and non sequiturs for two weeks. The good thing is we get to go where we want to and don't have to go his way.
We went out to his place on Saturday and now I took a few shots of Mount Stickney, which he can see from his driveway. I'm still getting used to the camera and hopefully the shots will get better.
Haven't writt
I thought of doing a blog entry, but that's too easy.
I thought of working on the stories I'm not working on, but wasn't too interested in going there.
I thought of what?
So, without anything to do, I joined Facebook with the sole purpose of finding a few friends from the past. I guess I'm the only one of my circle that's thought of that. No one. Nada. Out of my high school class, there was one, possibly two, but no one else. I did find out that the friends I had have really common n
Renting a motor home didn't work out because of tow weight limits and Bonita being a nonhuman species, which seems to bother some people, why I don't know.
We're renting a Suburban or Expedition, instead. Our son and I will drive, leaving the wife and Bonita to do whatever it is they do while riding in a vehicle. I know the wife usually falls asleep a few moments after drive is engaged, which is one of the reasons she won't be behind the wheel, and Bonita quites lays in her carrier thinking
Something weird is happening.
The wife got her hearing aids on Monday and her left ear can literally hear a pin drop, which is driving her batty because there are a whole lot more sounds out there louder than a pin clattering onto carpet. She'll be calling Miracle Ear this morning.
Last night I got the screwy idea of renting a motor home and heading down to Arkansas to visit the wife's family. I asked what she thought of the idea of asking our son to go along and maybe allowing us to tow
I'm kinda getting used to this night stuff, even if I end up sleeping during the day. Of course if I stay up all day, I sleep most of the night. I've been working very hard on getting up before seven in the morning so that I can take the mood stabilizer doses twelve hours apart, as they're supposed to be. So far, that's working.
Tonight I actually worked on Chapter 18 doing a bit on Six. Didn't write much, but at least I wrote something. It has been too long since I've posted anything on thi
As usual it's close to 02:30 while I'm starting this entry.
The surgery went well, I suppose as the meeting with the surgeon it's till next week. Pain medication lasted a few days meaning I still have lots if I need them in the future.
I've started to teach myself Spanish (Latin American). I subscribed to Rosetta Stone and have finished two units so far. I like their immersion process as it is similar to the language training (North Vietnamese) I had in the Air Force back in the late Six
It's 02:30 now and, of course, I'm awake. It's a given, although last night I slept clear through. So the sleeplessness, like the depression, comes and goes. (I wonder if there's a link; well, of course, there's a link. That's already been established by the shrink. Only, I'm not depressed right now.)
Why am I awake right now? Because I haven't gone to sleep yet. I'm wound up from nervousness because I have to be at the outpatient surgery clinic at 10:30 in the morning for the arthroscopy of
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