Category Archives: Health

Stuff of the Day

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Update of the Day: Finally got my meds yesterday, then rushed off to an event to support a friend. Was really not very productive last night at all.  Frittered away time on the net and with TV.  Just one of those nights, ya know?

Started on the new drug this morning.  Hormone supplement therapy.  Oh, what the hell.  AndroGel – testosterone gel.  My labs with Dr. Doctor came back showing me as having low testosterone.  Go ahead, feel free to make the “less of a man” jokes.  She decided to test me for it because I’d expressed some concerns over a lack of sexual stamina that is uncharacteristic for me.  Low testosterone is linked to a lot of other symptoms that I’ve had, that I never would have connected to it, but now that I’m aware of them, it makes total sense.  Fatigue/lack of energy, depression, even some of the difficulties I’ve been having in this diet working as well as I believe it should may all be tied to this.  While the mental concept of this treatment is a little disconcerting to me, the thought that it might just make me feel better overall is appealing.

Link of the Day: Japanese single-serving food packaging

Spam of the Day: “10 secrets to make her want to give head”

Funny of the Day:  Hey Kids, the Moral is . . .

Pic of the Day: Gotta get me one of those. (What she’s wearing is optional)

Quote of the Day: “Dare to be yourself.” – Andre Gide

Stuff of the Day

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Update of the Day: Maybe just a tiny little trace hint of ketones in my urine this morning.  

So, I finally get semi-industrious last night, and try to go install the water filter I bought like 2-3 weeks ago.  The primary thing for which I borrowed James’ cordless drill/driver.  I clear out all the cleaning supplies, trash bags, etc., out from under the sink, and worm and maneuver myself up under and into there to get at the hoses running from the cold water valve to the faucet.  After all this contorting and work, I discover . . . the hose is larger than the one that came with the filter.  Like, 1.5x the size.  Thus, to my dismay, the filter I bought . . . yeah, totally won’t work with the plumbing for my kitchen sink in my apartment.  

Now, the reason I bought the under-sink in-line filter, was because the sink itself is really shallow, and the faucet head arcs out in a very low arc, giving maybe 7 inches, if that, of clearance between the bottom of the faucet and the sink.  I’d originally planned on just an on-faucet filter, but if I go with one of those, I’ll lose around an inch to an inch and a half of clearance, on something that’s already a small space.  I suppose I could replace the entire faucet assembly, but that’d be a lot more work than I’m comfortable with right now, would run a much higher risk of being noticed by the complex . . . and I think I’d still have to come up with some sort of adapter or something to go from the weird size of tubing from the valves to the faucet.  Oh, and it’d cost a lot more money.

So, I don’t know, maybe I’ll have to go with a filter pitcher or jug or something.  Not really happy either way.  If Midland water wasn’t so terrible, I wouldn’t care so much.

Called Dr. Doctor’s office this morning, to try to get her to pick up the ball she – or someone – dropped and get my damn prescription sorted out with the insurance company and pharmacy so I can start the treatment I apparently need.  Haven’t heard back yet.  I’m going to give them another 10 minutes or so, and call them again if I haven’t heard anything.  And then every 2 hours until 1, at which time I’ll start calling every hour if they haven’t taken care of it.  Ridiculous crap.

So, finally, Dr. Doctor said to come in and see her, briefly, she wouldn’t charge me.  I went in for an 11:10 a.m. visit.  Waited about 5 minutes, then got in to see her, spent slightly more than 5 minutes on the phone (she kept saying if it took more than 5 minutes she was going to charge me for a visit, and said she was watching the clock).  She griped at me for being impatient with her staff, then apologized to me.  Supposedly the pre-approval is taken care of, and I should be able to get the actual script filled now. 

Link of the Day: Geocities to (finally) close. – Amusingly topical, as I decries Myspace as Geocities 2.0 on Twitter today, and apparently that’s the funniest thing since suicidal clowns.

Spam of the Day: “Prepare for every possibility” – Uhm . . . how, precisely?

Funny of the Day: “We’re fucking marketable“

Pic of the Day: I didn’t realize cameras were required for that, Pentax.  I’ve been doing it wrong?

Quote of the Day: “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is a little voice at the end of the day that says… I’ll try again tomorrow.” – Anonymous

Of Course, Nothing Can Be Simple

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So, I go to my local HEB to get my prescription filled, and figure I’ll grab a few things while I wait.  I make sure they have my number this time, so I don’t spend 30-40 minutes in the store before finding out that something’s amuck with the script.  In about 10 minutes, they call me, informing me that it requires pre-authorization from the Insurance Company.  So, I call the insurance company, in the store.  While I’m talking to them (irritating lengthy system of voice menus it took me a while to bypass and get to a human), the store pharmacy calls me AGAIN to tell me the same thing.  :/

Anyway, to cut a lot of cruft out of this recounting, I’ve got to call Dr. Doctor in the morning and get her to call the insurance company to request pre-authorization.  *mutter*

Stuff of the Day

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Update of the Day: So, I’m feeling MUCH better today.  Caffeine, breakfast, lunch, all those things rather tend to help not being cranky, tired, unfocused.  Imagine that.  I ended up going to bed stupid early last night because by about 8, I had a horrid, raging headache, so the thought of trying to do anything productive, or even just zone out and XP in WoW was about as unappealing as a rancid sore on a 3-day old carcass of an armadillo fart.

Last night I grilled steak and portabellini mushrooms (officially started back on the low-carb diet after a week break yesterday, figured with the fasting and all it was as good a time as any).  I had them again for lunch today, with provolone cheese melted over.  I added some celery for green fibery goodness.  I meant to take a picture of it to post here at lunch, but I was hungry and started tearing into it before I remembered to go get my camera.  Woops.

Link of the Day: This brings a new meaning to “sleepwear”

Spam of the Day: “Travel the world doing what you love. Be a Massage Therapits” – Therapits?

Funny of the Day: Now that’s Ownage.

Pic of the Day: Google is hiring, apparently.

Quote of the Day: “What’s gayer than gay?” – James Cross

Eventful, Good Times of Late

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Didn’t make any posts this weekend – not even Daily Stuff.  This has been, overall, a busy, eventful, unexpected, and altogether excellent weekend.

Last week, I pretty much decided that with my upcoming paycheck on the 6th, along with my income tax return, with what I had in checking/savings, it was finally time (Again – the near $1200 of car repairs delayed me by a bit more than a month on my plans) to move on the whole Apartment/Getting-my-own-place-again goal.  Having already done a lot of the initial work of investigating, evaluating, eliminating apartment complexes here in Midland in January, this time it was a briefer process, starting with a short list of candidates.  Four complexes that were any real serious consideration, and another I called just to check on it as an option, and because it’s literally throwing distance from our office.  They were the most expensive, so that was pretty much an easy elimination.  

Of the other 4, I went and looked at all of them – 1 of the 4 I’d seen a 1BR Townhome before, which I liked a lot.  Really liked.  I just know Baby, my cat, would love the stairs there, and I liked the layout, but it was a little bit beyond what I would be comfortable with based on my projective budgeting.  Rent in Midland is stupidly costly right now – prices are still high from rapid rising over a few years of oilfield prosperity.  The oilfield prosperity is starting to show some real, true (worrisome to oilfield/oil company employees) signs of decline, but any drop in the inflated rent prices will take several more months, if not a year, before they start to happen.  In Huntsville, I had a 2BR, 1.5Bath 1100 square foot townhome for less than I’m (going to be) paying for a 710 square foot 1BR/1BA flat here in Midland.

So, anyway, after checking out all of the other 3 options, with some drama and surprises involved there, I decided on going for what’s supposedly the nicest/best rated of the complexes, Windscape.  Current schedule is to move in on the 13th.  Friday the 13th . . . I can’t help but feel that with everything that happened last week and weekend, it’s something that’s meant to be, and any luck I experience on that day will be Good.  It’s just going to be a tight week for me financially until my payday+ this Friday.

Friday night was looking to be pretty uneventful – I tried to get hold of a couple of people to see about doing something interesting:  seeing a movie with a friend, or going out for whatever workable (she’d mentioned wanting to go to a karaoke bar) with another, female, friend – but it seemed that stuff just wasn’t going to be happening that night.  So, without someone to make going out (and thus spending money) a worthwhile excuse, stay home and . . . apparently watch Seabiscuit with my dad.  During which I find out about some bad medical news about a friend of mine.  Not horrible stuff, but still unfortunate and unpleasant, kind of a bummer, which had (and still has) me worried for her.

Then at 10:15 that night, I get a text from Ms. Fire, commanding me to head down to the hotel lounge she’s in and ask her to dance.  I hop up, change shirts, brush my teeth, and head off to the lounge.  She seemed surprised I “actually came.”  To my surprise (though only a little bit) it was Tejano Night at this club.  I haven’t danced in like 9 years, and I haven’t danced to something other than techno/trance in a good dozen.  I wasn’t very good, but it didn’t seem to matter – the intent and effort, and quite possibly the fact she was a bit inebriated, seemed to matter more.

I’ll not go into further details on the rest of that night . . . but it was wonderful, and surprising.  

Saturday, despite lack of sleep, I got out to see that movie (The Street Fighter Chun-Li one) with my friend Ivy.  It wasn’t bad.  It wasn’t great either, but it was entertaining (even though I think Kristen Kreuk is just wrong for the role).  It had some very nice cinematography of Bangkok in it too.  

Sunday, I had a date to try to see Les Miserables at  MCT.  I type “try” because when I attempted to buy tickets Monday of last week, they were nearly entirely sold out – they only had 3 seats left, none of them anywhere near each other.  The nice old lady at the box office suggested I show up an hour before the show to try to get no-show seat tickets.  After discussing this concept with J, my supposed date, she said we should go ahead and try for it, and plans were made for her to meet me at the theater, see Les Mis, and then who knows?

I dress up as I thought reasonably appropriate for going to the Theater (to discover there later that several folks just went in whatever – but I still felt good about my clothing choice, I think dressing decently for the Theater is still respectful), and show up there a couple of minutes before 1:00.  I’m 4th on the list for no-show seats, with the box office manager informing me that she has no doubt I’ll get tickets.  I wait, seeing tons of people stream in, mingling, talking to friends . . . and then run into a good friend of my Mammaw.  People take their normal, had their tickets in advance, seats, being ushered and hurried into the theater by staff, and at 2:00, the box office manager starts calling out names for the no-show seat tickets.  J still hasn’t shown up (I’d been looking for her, for the entire hour).  I let the box office manager know my date didn’t show, someone else should get the other ticket, and she snatches back the pair she handed me, hunts around frantically, and then gives me a single ticket.  It was a decent seat.

Les Mis was excellent.  One of the best Community Theater productions I’ve ever seen (and most of my comparisons are from MCT shows, so that’s good comparisons, as MCT has been one of the best Community Theaters in the nation for a long time).  Not only was David Odom, who was a friend of mine in High School, on the debate team with me, in the play (as I knew beforehand and expected), but Robert Reed, another High School friend was in the cast as well.  I graduated with both of those guys.   There were other people who I knew from when I was involved in the theater back in the 90s.  I’m considering volunteering for a few shows, maybe auditioning for a part or two.  If not, I’ll at least get a membership, and make MCT a regular part of my entertainment options.

I’ve been trying to get in touch with J the last two 2 days, with no luck thus far.  I don’t know what the deal is, what happened – if there’s a good reason she wasn’t there, a bad reason, if I was just stood up, or what.  If I was stood up, oh well, her loss.  My weekend overall was so good, it doesn’t really upset me.

The Kind of Low-carb Encouragement That WORKS

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So, I took a late lunch, to run to our local HEB store, to look for a few things, in general, and specifically stuff I couldn’t find at Albertsons yesterday. Found the Queso Blanco (frying cheese), found the Carb-smart Breyer’s Ice Cream, and when I stopped to look at the sweeteners section out of curiosity, found a down-right hottie.

 Albertsons had one kind of Stevia-based sweetener. HEB had about 6, plus some other stuff other than the huge Splenda display and some Nutrasweet and Sweet’n’Low and your standard Sugars. I was looking at a couple to compare them, and this woman walked up and started looking at a couple of the different varieties of Stevia-based sweeteners.  She was, at a guess, 5’5″ish, brunette, late 20s to early 30s, very nicely sized and shaped (not too damn thin, but certainly what I would call “slender”), with probably 34D or so breasts.  Believe it or not, I didn’t look at them too much.  Oh yes, very pale blue, sort of icy, eyes.  

After half a minute or so, I asked her if she’d tried any of these before.  She hadn’t, we talked for a while about the different kinds, she asked me if I’d tried them, mentioned a couple kinds she’d used that she got from the “Health Food Store,” talked about how in (cold/cool) tea one of the ones she used sort of stayed clumpy and didn’t dissolve very well, etc.

I took heart in seeing this hottie there, talking naturally with her, and seeing her, in the shape she was in, going for the same sort of diet plan.  That’s the kind of thing that grabs one’s attention, and encourages you (well, me at least) to stay with this, to stay strong, and think that given a couple of months, you’ll be in the shape that looks like it belongs with such a sexy woman.

I regret being distracted and not taking note of whether or not she had a ring on, and of not being smart/brave enough to say something like, “hey, why don’t you call me sometime and let me know how whichever one you decide to try is?”  Also, probably would have been a smart thing to ask which “Health Food Store” she was tired of running to, “all the time.”  Hard to try to facilitate another run-in with this hottie if I don’t have any other idea of where to try to find her, other than “randomly in the weekday afternoons at HEB.”

Semi-random Thought

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The health care and the clothing industries need to get together, and introduce a stealth fat-tax.  

Why?  Because presently (with the exceptions of grossly larger food bills for whale-class folks), it’s more expensive to be healthy and slender and fit, than it is to be out of shape and overweight.  This is fundamentally fucked up.

Huge money industries are passing a stupid tax on to us as a whole because they’re going for shorter-term profits instead of more financially responsible and beneficial long-term ones.  It’d be cheaper for them, in the long run, and in turn, cheaper for us as a people, if they fiscally encouraged being healther and fitter.  I’m saying these things with absolutely no active research, no cited facts,  no specific figures to back them up. See if my chain of thought makes sense to someone other than myself:

Eating healthier costs more than eating cheaply and less healthily/unhealthily.  Yet being less healthy makes a person a higher health risk, be more expensive to care for medically.  

Bigger clothes, for the most part, cost the same as smaller clothes.  This one really makes no sense to me.  A Small shirt costs the same as an Extra Large shirt, but there’s significantly more physical material involved (which, at some point, equates to more time or labor involved as well – more stitches to sew, longer to cut, etc.  It may be a small amount per garment, but with thousands as a multiplier, it’ll add up).  Sometimes that same-cost-as thing extends up beyond Extra-Large.  Kohls, one of my more tempting places to look for clothes at, have no price differences between Small and XXL.  The only place that I can remember, offhand (I’m sure there are more), that differentiates a little here, is Walmart, where for “extended sized” it’s $2 more for some things.  This one really makes almost no sense to me.  Sure, I’m sure some folks in our quick-to-offend, self-absorbed, hypocritical, prudish society would be quick to bitch and moan about “size discrimination” or some such idiocy – but it’s a basic fact, there’s physically more (or less, depending from which side you approach it) actual, real, phsyical goods there.  Where else do you see people buying  different amounts of things for the same price?  Certainly not food – 9 chicken nuggets costs you more than 6 chicken nuggets.  Not gas – 3 gallons costs more than 2 gallons.  A queen-size mattress will certainly cost more than a full-size mattress.  

This concept is almost as if garments are being treated like intellectual property or entertainment.  You’ll pay the same ticket price for that 86 minute mediocre brainless comedy as you will for the 140 minute thought-provoking, emotion-rending drama.  280 page mass-market paperbacks may cost the same as 560 page mass-market paperbacks (not always, but it can and does happen).

So, the healthy, fit guy buying a large shirt for $20 is paying more for his clothing – per ounce, or square inch of fabric, or whatever metric you wish – than the guy who’s less healthy and bigger (we’ll presume same height for each and similar bone structure) buying the XXL shirt for $20.  

This just all seems stupid to me.  By not financially incentivizing being in better shape, healther, etc. – which tends to cost less, overall, medically –  it’s a sort of tacit encouragement for people to be lazy unhealthy drones, who have higher risk of health problems, higher cost of treatment, and thus, by aggregate, drive up the costs of health care for everyone.

But no, let’s continue overcharging the people who need less physical clothing for the same degree of decency and protection, and let’s continue profiting on cheap, processed, refined flour based and other cheapo carbohydrate laden foods.  Drive that carb addiction for short-sighted profit!