Category: health

Welcome to December

Hello and welcome to December 1, 2020. It is really hard to believe we are here, but we are. We are just a couple of weeks away from the first day of Winter. When the lock downs started back in March it was at the very end of Winter. All of Spring, locked down. All of Summer, locked down. Pretty soon all of Autumn, locked down. If you stop and think of it, it is pretty overwhelming. For that reason, I suggest you don’t stop and think about it. Just put your head down and keep moving forward.

I’ve done 10 album in a month projects over the last 10 months. Today marks the start of project #11. I think I want to restrict myself to just my Les Paul, a Klon Klone overdrive pedal, and my two 15 watt tube amps. I need to put new strings on the Les Paul, but I can do that tonight. I still have five songs left on the re-recording project too so those might be Les Paul. We’ll see.

November was noteworthy for this here little bloggie. It had the most page views in any month since I created the account. It also had the most unique visitors of any month since I created the account. How about that? The numbers are still teeny tiny in terms of most real bloggers’ goals but for me it was kinda cool. Thanks for dropping by, everyone. Ya’ll come back now, ya hear?

Today is my weigh in day. I was down a little. That’s nice. I hit a minor milestone. That’s nice too. I was paranoid that I was going to be up, and out of fear I did my entire 30 minute exercise first thing this morning. I doubt it had any effect on the scale, but it sort of made me feel almost better at the time. I find myself doing this on most Tuesdays now. Whatever works, right?

I Forgot

I was up late last night because I’m dumb. It was coming up on 1:00 AM before I finally conked out.

I woke up about an hour and a half later and realized I wasn’t wearing my CPAP mask. Where the hell was it?

I forgot to put it on when I lay down for the night/morning. I’ve been doing this for a year and a half now, how the hell can I still be forgetting it after all this time? How is that possible? They say when you do something repeatedly for… is it three weeks or three months… it becomes routine. After 17 months, this should be pretty routine.

Didn’t Think of That

Intermittent Fasting and Daylight Savings don’t play nicely together. I just got a notification from the Zero app telling me that I hit my 16 hour goal. How is that possible? It’s not 1:00, it’s only noon.

Oh yeah. There’s an extra hour today. Daylight Savings time starting in the Spring is going to make it worse. My 16 hour fast won’t end until 2:00 on that day! Crap!

Complete change of subject:

Yesterday I brought a bag of trash outside to the barrels and there was a deer in the trees about 10 feet from me. We scared the crap out of each other. She ran off about 20 yards away and then stood there watching me. I stayed too and had a little chat. I tried the trick you do with cats where you close your eyes to show that you trust them. When I opened them again she looked away. Did it work? I managed a picture. It was awesome.

Amazingly, almost exactly the same thing happened today! I went to the trash barrels and there was a stirring in the trees just a few feet away from me. This time the deer was calmly walking away. I caught a good look. It was a buck with antlers! I think there were three points… assuming I know what I’m talking about, which I honestly don’t. He didn’t stay to chat, which was sad. He strolled up a little hill just inside the tree line and vanished.

November 1st

As I was turning to head back to the house I saw a doe too. She’s probably in this picture at the far right. They camouflage so well, the little furry bastards.

I want to be friends with them. We can’t have people over anymore, so maybe the deer could keep coming for visits? That would be nice.

Don’t Start This Crap

I told myself I wasn’t going to do this but here we are. No one wants to read about my weight. Sure, there’s more than enough of it to go around but no one cares but me so don’t go posting shit about your weight, Robert. No one cares.

Today was my eighth weigh in since I started intermittent fasting and I hit the 20 pound mark. Now I just need to mind the words of the great Han Solo who once said, “great kid. Don’t get cocky.” I still have about 500 pounds to go. 20 pounds isn’t anything special in the grand scheme of things.

Still… feels pretty good.

Take That

Sure, I only got four hours of sleep last night but I still have my 30 minutes of exercise finished before 10am. Take that, morbid obesity.

I don’t know why I couldn’t fall asleep last night, but it was about 2am before I managed it. I need to stop doom scrolling twitter. I should have just watched some Netflix. I’m halfway through Haunting of Bly Manor. It’s not as scary as Haunting of Hill House but it’s still really good. I probably would have had a better night had I just let the show scare the crap out of me then letting America scare the crap out of me.

No more doom scrolling twitter after 10pm, Robert. Let’s put an end to that stupidity, shall we?

Becoming a Hobbit

Remember that scene in Lord of the Rings where Peregrin Took laments missing his normal meal time?

What about second breakfast?
I don’t think he knows about second breakfast.

I have suddenly found myself sympathizing with ol’ Pip.

I finished my 44th consecutive intermittent fast thing today. Because of my work meeting schedule I was about an hour late getting to break last night’s fast. That was rough. This morning I was really hungry. My stomach was rumbling and I was feeling a little sick/hungry. I came really close to ending it early. I’m glad I didn’t, but I probably should have.

As soon as my meeting ended I went to the kitchen and made lunch. I brought it back to my desk and ate it. Then I went out to the kitchen and made lunch again and took it back to my desk and ate it. If that’s not indicative of an eating problem then I don’t know what is.

What about second lunch?
I don’t think he knows about second lunch.

A First

I’ve mentioned this a bunch of times, but in the immortal words of David Coverdale, here I go again.

On September 9th I started challenging myself to do 30 minutes of light exercise a day. Today is October 19th and I have yet to miss a day. This light exercise is either walking in place at as brisk a pace as my calves can manage, riding our new stationary bike as fast as my legs will manage, or doing yard work or carrying laundry up and down the stairs. Stuff like that. Anything that my Apple Watch recognizes as exercise counts.

Today marks an important first in that personal challenge thingie. Today is the first time I did the full 30 minutes in one sitting. Sitting isn’t the right word, but you get it, right? I walked in place for 30 minutes straight. The watch estimates I went 1.8 miles, but that’s probably just because it knows I am super tall and each step I take should be longer than the average bear’s.

30 minutes. I am pretty sure that I won’t be able to move my legs tomorrow, but I feel happy right now.

I also had to monkey with the intermittent fasting tracking today. I have meetings from 1:00 to 4:00. I have the fast set to end at 1:00, which is when I usually try to eat lunch on work days. Last night I started the fast 30 minutes early so that I could go to lunch at 12:30 and not be fasting straight through until dinner. I didn’t actually eat anything after dinner last night, so I technically could have started my fast for the night at a little before 7:00, but I figured I’d stay as close to the normal routine as I could.

I weigh in tomorrow. I’ve been good, but I don’t feel particularly good this week. I feel like the scale will not be kind. Maybe it’s time to start watching what I eat as well as when I eat it. Urgh. My kingdom for a safe, effective fat-be-gone pill. Oh yeah.

“Happy” Seven Months

It’s October 13th. Happy (I mean that sarcastically) Seventh Covid-Quarantine Monthiversary.

This fucking sucks.

Last night one of the guys in the band floated the idea of having a mask-wearing, spread out all over the room band practice. Another guy immediately said yes. The third guy commented but didn’t say yes or no. Then I was the asshole. I’m really tired of being the asshole. Like… really tired of it.

I was going to mix one of the songs last night. I replaced all the bass and drum parts and made sure everything lined up correctly. There was one spot toward the end of the song where the vocals sounded weird. I had two tracks singing the same thing. I’m not sure why I did that, but I did it for the first three songs I recorded. In this particular instance there was a drop out that cut a whole word out of one of the takes. How did I miss that?

I listened to just the vocal tracks, one at a time, and there were little drop outs all over the place. What the hell? I was mostly able to comp together one full track out of the two that I had, but there was one line where both tracks had a drop out. Fortunately it was in a chorus so I was able to fly in that line from another part of the song.

It really pissed me off though. How did I miss that when I was in the car? I knew I was having signal loss issues that day but I thought I was catching them as they happened. I’m so mad at myself. I did the same thing with the two other songs I recorded that day and they both had a drop out or two, but they weren’t nearly as bad. I comped together a full take pretty easily. I then did the same for the four songs I recorded yesterday, when I wasn’t doubling tracks, and everything was fine. I don’t have to redo anything, but it still pissed me off like crazy.

I also had my first bad news on the exercise front, though it wasn’t unexpected. When I started this I said I was going to do the intermittent fasting and 30 minutes of exercise each day and see what happens. I explicitly said I was not going to screw with what I ate, just when I ate it. I have been weighing myself every Tuesday morning and I was losing weight. Today was the first weigh in where I was up. Only a pound and a half, but I was not happy. Not even a little bit. I told myself that weight loss wasn’t my primary goal, but now that I’m up a pound and a half I think I have to face the reality that maybe it actually is my primary goal. Crap. I thought I was more evolved than that (that’s a joke, I didn’t really think that).

The good news is, last time I cut the grass I would do about 10 minutes of mowing and then have to sit for half an hour to recover. After a month’s worth of multiple little “work outs” each day, when I cut the grass this weekend it was more like 20-30 minutes of mowing with little 5-10 minute breaks to recover. That was my original goal for all of this shit. I consider that a small success in an otherwise garbage universe.

Kiss my ass, Covid-19.