Category Archives: Health

Stuff of the Day

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Update: Slightly better today – Rodney popped my back a little yesterday at work, and it helped a bit, but it’s fresh anew this morning.  He mentioned something about a pillow, and said that I might have “a little neck thing” and that that part on my inner shoulder blades is there neck issues would show up.

Still very happy about being able to open my car door from the inside.  Such a small thing, but so appreciated after being deprived of it for a week and a half.  Jimmy also got me a front license plate mount ordered.

Got paid today.  My financial status has changed from “broke” to merely “poor.”  Rent paid, electric paid, ordered more cat food, ordered a surprise for someone.

Link of the Day: “The Spy Who Accepted My Friend Request”

Spam of the Day: “As catwalk in refill. An a willpower.”

Funny of the Day: Craigslist Wanted ad

Pic of the Day: The truth about Godzilla

Quote of the Day: “There is a pervasive tendency to treat children as adults, and adults as children. The options of children are thus steadily expanded, while those of adults are progressively constricted. The result is unruly children and childish adults.” – Thomas Szasz

Stuff of the Day

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Update: Went home after work yesterday, and took an evening of very easy rest, aided by 2 beers.  Tried Shiner Light . . . it was OK.  Stronger taste than most light beers, and a little, to me, unusually yeasty.  Not BAD, but I’d still prefer Shiner’s Bock or Black Lager to it by quite a bit going by sheer taste.  Also tried the Shiner Hefeweizen.  Interesting beer, probably the best Hefeweizen I can remember trying, also very yeasty.  Still not overly a fan of Hefeweizens overall as one of a preferred styles of beer, but I’ve certainly tasted far worse.

Got a text message this morning from Bounce Energy, informing me I had a pending disconnect on my account.  39 minutes on the phone with them again, probably all but about 5 of that on hold, talked to two different people, one of which talked to his boss and the business office.  He read some of my notes back, and said, “Unbelievable.”  I said, “Yeah, unbelieve is a word I’d use for pretty much all of my dealings with anyone there for the last 3 months.”  James piped in with, “I’ll second that.”  After a while, he informed me that he’d make sure it’d get taken care of TODAY, and that someone would call me back to let me know when it had, indeed, been taken care of.  Yeah, we’ll see.

Link of the Day: Artifice Clothing

Spam of the Day: “Scheme of J Lo’s silicon”

Funny of the Day: A Horgy.

Pic of the Day: Underwater Dreams

Quote of the Day: “The phone is vexing me today.  If it continues to vex, i’ll be tempted to hex.” – Kara

Stuff of the Day

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Update: After my day at work yesterday, where I sort of screwed up because I was so tired, after I left, I had two things in mind: Quick trip to HEB, and sleeps.  I went to HEB – the plan was to pick up Atkins bars, a 12 pack of soda, and the smallest, cheapest bottle of nail polish remover I could find.  I left HEB with Atkins bars, a 12 pack of Diet Cherry Dr Pepper, and a container of Breyer’s Carb Smart ice cream Vanilla Frozen Dairy Product.  No nail polish remover.  When did I realize I forgot the nail polish remover?  When I was outside, in the parking lot, in the pounding heat, leaving.  I looked back at the store, briefly considered going back in . . . and decided, “screw that.”

I went home, ate a pork loin chop and an Atkins bar, watched Attack of the Show, and crashed.  Zonked out hard.  I slept most of the evening, and most of the night, waking up a couple of times briefly.  Had some very, very weird dreams.  All I remember from any of them is being at a job interview or something, and the last thing I was asked being, “What’s the recipe for the perfect tomato soup?”  Well, not entirely true.  I remember vaguely about who my waking dream this morning when I finally got up was about – and that it must have been a nicely naughty dream.

I badly needed the sleep.  I’d been running on a sleep deficit all week, since the July 4th holiday weekend.  It was a very good weekend that I enjoyed tremendously.  I just didn’t get anywhere near adequate sleep during it.  Today is the first day of all week where I haven’t been tired all day at work.

Link of the Day: Potential for Life may be hardwired into the universe.

Spam of the Day: “Point me mistakes, please”

Funny of the Day: Me, I’m wondering what Christ Cakes would look like.

Pic of the Day: Neil Gaiman Apocalypse Balloon Mosaic (zoom in, and keep zooming)

Quote of the Day: “(630): According to my dad, my tongue ring makes people assume I give a lot of blow jobs because, as stated by him “that’s what it’s for” – another from TFLN

Stuff of the Day

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Update: Yesterday was a rough start to things for the week.  Did something I haven’t done in quite a bit: managed to go totally zombie and apparently shut off my alarms and oversleep.  Woke up to a text message at 8:18 a.m. from James asking if I was planning on coming in to work.  Eek.  Yes, but late.  *sigh* Symptom of the sleep deficit I was running on from the weekend I guess.  It was a Good weekend, though.

After work yesterday, I ran by HEB to pick up the second half of my Androgel prescription.  They of course didn’t have it ready, despite my calling in on Friday and using their automated system to request the (half) refill.  Which was supposed to be ready by 11 a.m. on Saturday.  I was really not very pleased.  Got it eventually sorted out, got my meds, grabbed some Atkins stuff, some eggs, and got out of there.  I’m a poor, poor boy until payday – and that paycheck is going to have to stretch a whole bunch of different ways already.

Said “yes” to a “want some company” message last night.  Ended up watching Yes Man with Mummy Chick – I was a tad amused, because if I hadn’t said yes to her on a general sort of “sure, might as well” basis, I wouldn’t have seen that surprisingly excellent movie.  I like the core concept the movie is based around a lot.

Link of the Day: My Jello Shocks post made it onto Mancouch – It’s so nice of them to repost my entire article there, but use my bandwidth for the images. :/

Spam of the Day: “Grow Giant Snake in Pants”

Funny of the Day: Hmm.  Maybe some sort of ass-garter system?

Pic of the Day: Uh, maybe not?

Quote of the Day: “My next cast is going to have shag carpeting.” – Kara

Stuff of the Day

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Update: This will be a pretty brief one again.  Sorry for no post again yesterday.  That was just lazy.  It happens.

Had a friend over last night.  Watched a couple of episodes of house.  Had some other fun.  Mixed feelings there on a few points.  Seem like the doubled dosage on the Androgel (which I got a phone call instructing me to start doing that, that my testosterone levels were still a bit low, a few days ago) might be doing some good.  One incident isn’t proof positive, but still . . . good sign.

Ended up feeling kind of worse today.  Maybe . . . exertions last night when I’m still fighting off/getting over this bug wasn’t the wisest call.

Had a very nice and good Wednesday evening.  Hanging out with a good friend, playing on furniture at Ashley, not getting my mind made up there on any option yet, being harassed by a creepy saleslady.  Thai food, yogurt, not-right tarzan smoothie thing.  Lots of talk.  It was good.  I could use more of that in my life.

Link of the Day: Modern Vampires

Spam of the Day: “Suiciders online” (Oh boy, I’m just waiting to see what AdSense makes of that)

Funny of the Day: Seems like sound logic to me.

Pic of the Day: Che Guevara’s granddaughter wearing only a Bandolier Of Carrots!

Quote of the Day: “though, “i am not a google samich” might bear repeating just because it is so random. i’m loling at it still.” – Kara

Stuff of the Day

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Update: Sorry for the fail to update Friday.  Or the last two days too.  Friday, I was simply too tired.  I was working on about an hour and a half of sleep.  I was up far, far too late the night before.  It was probably worthwhile.  There was a redhead female involved.

The last two days, I’ve been trying to fight off getting sick.  Monday I had a throat that started off tickly, and proceeded to scratchy and raw.  Yesterday, and today, throat is better, but I’ve got massive head congestion, and mucus production is in overdrive.  Meh.  Also, I worked late the last 2 days, and have been really very busy both of them, so I didn’t take the time to post stuff.  At least making token effort today.

Link of the Day: Fake Time Travel to Land Your Female Friend?

Spam of the Day: “Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo”

Funny of the Day: “Bartender, fetch us from frosty beers and fancy outfits!”

Pic of the Day: I honestly have no clue what to make of this.

Quote of the Day: “and cheap, srsly, i would never sit in a stranger’s noodles for only a buck” – Kara

Stuff of the Day

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Update: Dunno what to say really. Worked late yesterday, working late today.  Going out tonight, will have to not drink at all, or drink -very- conservatively.  Seriously don’t want to wreck my diet again.  Dating front continues.  Small progressions, nothing notable yet.  Playing Poor until Friday.

Had a decent weekend.  Saturday was good, even though I had to work a half-day Saturday morning.  Got a good start on getting automatic updating working for our product, though it’s still not fully working with patches.  Haven’t sorted out why, yet, but I will.  Hung out with a friend Saturday late afternoon/evening into the night.  Worked on her very old, way slower than I thought, laptop, trying to get it updated and functional and reasonably reliable.  It informed her of a SMART disk error and impending drive failure the very next day.  :/

Link of the Day: Photos inspired by the 7 Deadly Sins

Spam of the Day: “Hey, open it up”

Funny of the Day: Kangaroo-like Pouch

Pic of the Day: I’d date her.

Quote of the Day: “If you like nerdy n’ dirty girls, she’s it, in fact, she’s kinky n’ thinky!” – Chris Gore

Low-Carb Diet Survival: My Lunch Today

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So, sometimes doing the low-carb diet thing can be rough.  It requires a lot of willpower.  Not just to resist things that aren’t compatible with the diet, but also to alter behaviours that will have you doing things that will upset the diet and knock you way out of ketosis.  Like, oh, a sizable amount of drinking Thursday night.  Followed up by pizza Friday night, and a real, full-blown entirely sugared up soda.  Yeah, when I weighed this weekend, I was very unhappy with myself.  So, from Saturday afternoon on, I’ve been strictly “good” (ok, I did dip my finger in for a teensy bit of incredibly delicious, creamy, chocolate frosting) diet-wise.

Today for lunch, I went to a bit more effort than I usually do.  First, I grilled up some portabella mushroom slices:

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Next up, I’ve been working on some beef shoulder steaks (HEB sale special, I’m not made of money).  Normally, I thaw these out (these have been thawing since Saturday), throw some spices on them, and toss ’em on the grill and call it done.  With these, partly out of lazy last night, and partly out of a fit of fancy, I marinated them overnight.  The marinade was a homebrew concoction, with wine (cabernet sauvignon) and spices (salt, pepper, garlic, soy sauce, tabasco).

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While the first steak was grilling on my trusty Foreman Grill, I broke out some frozen broccoli florets (I’d have preferred fresh broccoli, steamed, but I cooked and ate the last of that last night with my steelhead trout).  Cooked them in the microwave most of the way, then finished up the last bit with butter and slices of colby-jack cheese melting on top of them:

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While they were cooking, my first steak (these are pretty thin, so they grill very quickly) finished:

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I have to say, after tasting the steak (I’ve had some of this shoulder steak before, I bought 4 packages of it when it was on sale) this time, the overnight marinating was definitely worthwhile.  Far more flavorful and tender than before.

Here’s a shot of everything put together, what I actually ate for lunch today:

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Altogether, delicious.  Aside from the prep time on the steaks, this was pretty quick – I went home, grilled and nuked everything, ate, flossed and brushed my teeth, watched twitter blab about Apple at WWDC a bit, in around 45 minutes.  I’ve got more mushrooms grilled and waiting, and steak for another 4 meals easily.

Stuff of the . . . Week?

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Update: Yeah, so . . . I’ve been “bad.”  Long weekend, with Monday off, and I didn’t bother to do anything on the computer all that time.  Well . . . that’s not true.  I -did- play a rather lot of Plants vs. Zombies.  If you haven’t played it yet, check it out.  There’s a free demo for it, with 1 hour of play.  Trust me, it’s enough to get you hooked.

So, then, the work week.  Been pretty busy most of this week, and the other days where I wasn’t, I was chatting online with someone.  Not the best of news there, but I’m remaining confident.  So, some of my not updating any day this week except Friday, today, was part slacking and part being really busy with work stuff.  I want for stuff on the new product version to hurry the heck up, so we can shoehorn it out the door and then I can get the raise I’ve been assured will happen.  I can survive on what I’m being paid right now, but if I want to do interesting things, go places, have fun other than sitting at home watching tv/movies and playing too much WoW (I’ve done enough of that the last 5 years, thanks), I need more money.

So, I could probably make one heck of a mega post just devoted to catching things up from the last several days.  Screw that, here are the links:

Link of the Day: Google Wave

Spam of the Day: “cuttlefish”

Funny of the Day: Yes, and then cookies.

Pic of the Day: LeVar Burton is fucking awesome! (via @wilw)

Quote of the Day: “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” – Frederick Douglass

Stuff of the Day: Can I Get Health Care For My Checking Account Balance? Edition

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Update of the Day: I didn’t post anything yesterday because while I was at work, due to the time missed for my Dermatologist appointment, I was really busy, and once I got home, I was just really tired, didn’t feel like doing much of anything on the computer, and just sat/laid in bed watching TV, catching up on House, Chuck, Heroes, and Reaper.

After Monday’s frustrations and stress with the electric mess, Tuesday was another joyous day of hurry the hell up and wait.  I had a 2:45 appointment with the Dermatologist, so everything I did at work that day was harried and busy and just didn’t give me much time for slacking off productivity improving “zoning out.” I was informed that the Dermatologist would probably eat up the rest of my afternoon and wouldn’t be able to get back to work.  It actually took slightly less time than that, I got out of there right before 4:30, dropped my prescriptions off at HEB, and headed back to work and had around 25 minutes to pick up support emails that came in while I was sitting and waiting.  

Oh yeah.  Those prescriptions.  Three of them.  Apparently, I have Rosacea.  Damn my Northwestern European heritage, the Curse of the Celts.  Why couldn’t I get more love from the Comanche side of my blood for my face/skin/complexion?  The Dermatologist wrote me three scripts. An oral antibiotic (Doryx, etended, time-release Doxycycline – why some older, cheaper tetracycline won’t work, I don’t know), and two different face gels, Metrogel and Finacea.  I didn’t know how much these were going to cost me.  I figured they probably wouldn’t be the lowest-cost per my prescription plan, at $15 each, though maybe the antibiotic might be.  I figured, “well, probably be like $90 for these, maybe I’ll get lucky and it’ll only be $65.  Nope.  $50 each, the max cost for a monthly supply per my CareMark coverage.  When she cute girl at HEB rang me up, I let out something like a cross between an audible gasp and gutteral profanity.  When the signature screen asked me “Is this amount: $150 ok?” I commented that I really didn’t want to click  Yes, it’d be lying.  No, it’s NOT ok.  But, resigned, I paid it.  

Today, on  the next page of happy medical adventures, I spent even more time than yesterday at the Opthamologist’s office.  They’re really big on the waiting there.  Face time with someone of medical value in scrubs?  Maybe 15 minutes total, and that’s probably pushing it.  Time in the office? Almost 2 1/2 hours.  I came out of there with my eyes numbed, tinted with yellow dye, and massively dilated.  With another prescription.  I haven’t been to the pharmacy to pick it up yet, but I hope it’s not another $50.  My checking account balance has just been taking hard shots all week long, and it’s only Wednesday.  So many potential plans have just dried up, and now it’s going to be a lean 3 weeks at least until my second pay check of May on the 15th, and I’ve already got additional expenses delayed until then.

At least I’ve got something to look forward to this weekend.  Might post something about that later, might not.  For now, it’s a secret. 🙂

Link of the Day: LED Hard Drive Clock

Spam of the Day: “We sell the best alarm-clocks for your small buddy down there.”

Funny of the Day: Obama’s First 100 Days, per Facebook

Pics of the Day: Kamamara Matsuri or the Festival of the Steel Phallus

Quote of the Day: “Always take a job that is too big for you.” – Harry Emerson Fosdick