Category Archives: Health

Going Out, Health, Introspection, Personal Development

Life changes

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Over the weekend, I’ve decided that it’s time to slowly institute some changes in my life. I’d love to say that I’m going to do them all, and that’s my eventual desire, but I don’t want to set up a goal I find I’m unable (or unwilling) to keep, only berate myself for the failure. So I think I’m going to make this a long term list of things I plan to accomplish over the next several months. Some of them may happen overnight, others may take a while. And some may be “hit or miss” in that I do them for a while, but then slack off. In that case, I’m giving myself permission ahead of time to accept it when it happens and just eventually start back up again.

First, I’ve decided I need to put some effort into decorating my house. I’ve already started by putting out my singing bowl and getting a bear figurine for the end table in the living room. And I have a plaque to hang by the door that says “Live Well, Laugh Often, Love Much.” I’ll also have to figure out where I want to hang my picture of Icarus, and work on getting other items.

You see, I’m terrible at house-keeping. The living room is a complete mess, the kitchen table is all cluttered up (though it’s a lot better now that I spent twenty minutes going through a lot of the clutter, tossing junk, and finding homes for some of the important stuff), and the carpet is in desparate need of vacuuming. I think the reason for this is that I don’t think of this house as a home yet, so I don’t treat it like my home. (I’d never be this messy in someone else’s home, so why would I treat my own home like this?) So I think I need to invest a little time and effort into making the place look and feel like a home, my home. Hopefully, once I put the effort into it, I’ll take more pride in it, and keep it a bit tidier.

The next thing I want to do is to spend more time out of the house on a regular basis. I’ve slowly been withdrawing into solitude, and that’s not good. Last month, I realized that working on the POC was consuming too much of my time, so I backed off so I could have a life. Well, now it’s time to have more of a life. I’ve spent all of last week and some of today out and about and it’s done wonders for my state of mind, I think.

This is going to be hard for me to keep up with, though. It’s going to be a mental juggling act for a while. After all, I’ll still be going out on my own. And that means that there’ll come a point were I’ll start to wonder why I’m bothering. After all, what difference does it make whether I go out or stay in if I’m still on my own either way? But the going out is good. And it leaves open at least the possibility of interraction.

As an aside, I have noticed I’ve been a bit more social when in public recently. For example, while I was at Eastview Mall yesterday, I found myself walking behind this family. The little girl, about four or five I think, was pestering her mother, saying she wanted something. The mother turned to the little girl and said blatantly, “And I want a million dollars. Are you going to give it to me?” The little girl ran ahead (to bug her father I think) and I walked up next to the woman, smiled, and said, “I really loved your response,” and we both laughed at that. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything like that. Between that and making more eye contact (like turning around and saying “thank you” or “you too” to a store clerk when they wish me a good day as I’m leaving rather than just mumbling it as I continue out the door), I think I’m starting to make progress in being more socially engaging. Hopefully, this is a good sign that continues to develop into a lasting change.

I’m also working on getting more physical activity in throughout the week. My original goal (as of two weeks ago) was to go to the fitness center they just added to my apartment complex three times a week. I didn’t meet that goal last week and probably won’t this week. But considering the amount of time I was on the my feet at the zoo, in the malls, walking around downtown State College, walking along the Susquehanna River, and checking out Highland Park, I just don’t feel it’s been necessary. I’ve had plenty of physical activity.

One thing that’s conspicuously absent from my list of goals is losing weight. Sure, that’s something I want to do at some point. But I feel it needs to wait. I need to learn to like myself how I am now, I think. I need to allow myself to feel and be attractive at my current size. Once I do that, I think I’ll have an easier time at setting, meeting, and maintaining weight loss goals. I think I’m currently sabotaging any such attempts with the belief that I’m not and can’t be attractive. And by association, I think that means I subconsciously can’t be thinner, because that would mean I’d also be good looking, which just can’t happen. So I need to work on the mental block where I am now before I can effectively seek to change that part of myself. (Gee, I hope that makes sense to someone else.)

The next six months should be interesting.

Health, Personal Development, Randomness

1496

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That is the number of words I have written, according to the unofficial, “lightweight” NaNoWriMo word counter. It’s funny, because the Word Count utility in MS Word gives me a number that’s about twenty words less. Oh well, I’m trying my best not to let the numbers get to me anyway.

Yes, I’ve decided to give my novel idea a try. I’m not sure how it’s going to turn out. I may decide to delete it all and call it a failure next week. But I’ve given it a start. And so far, I think it’s been a pretty good start. And I’m thinking that maybe I can get a basic “skeleton” worked out and then go back to it after all this madness is over. After all, I feel I really need to research a few issues a bit more (maybe get some feedback from more experienced people). But then I’ll at least have something to work with. Perhaps researching and rewriting will be easier than trying to do everything up front and then writing it all done. Only time will tell.

In other news, I went to Tinker Nature Park today. The World Wide Labyrinth Locator indicated they had a gravel and brick mideival labyrinth there, and it’s about ten miles down the road from me. So I decided to check it out. It was pretty good, though I think I’d prefer to walk a labyrinth that had actual walls rather than one that’s just laid out on a flat surface. I think the sense of beign physically enclosed would have added to the experience. But I guess we can’t be too picky, can we.

While there, I also checked out some other parts of the park. It actually looks like a pretty neat place. I may suggest that Dad and I check it out together next Spring or Summer when he’s up for an evening. I think he might enjoy the fitness trail. It seemed like a neat idea, and I’m considering doing it myself at some point. (We’ll have to wait and see.) And I still need to check out the nature walk and nature trail itself. Not to mention the homestead and farm museum. It’s quite a neat place. And to think, I’ve been living here for two months already and never realized all that was so close until today.

Health

Health Update

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Today, I went to see Dr. Lee. It was time for my four month follow-up appointment. I guess things could’ve gone a lot worse, but they could’ve gone better, too. In the last four months, I’ve gained back 16 pounds. That puts me back up to 288. Granted, that still makes a net loss of 23 pounds since November 2, so I guess I shouldn’t berate myself too badly. (Besides, berating myself doesn’t accomplish anything other than to sap my desire to pick up where I left off and try again.) And my glycohemoglobin was up to 7.1, compared to 5.6 in March. This doesn’t surprise me, but it does upset me. However, Jenn did point out that the change probably wasn’t drastic as all that. My last bloodwork had covered the period where I was having numerous drops into the danger areas, so my last results were probably a bit low, anyway. She figures a more reasonable result last time would’ve been somewhere around 6.5. Of course, I think she partly said that just to make me feel better. After all, one of her primary duties is to keep the patients motivated, no matter what the news.

Dr. Lee decided to put my on Byetta, which is apparently a relatively new drug (as I understand it, it’s actually a hormone) they’ve come out with for treating diabetes. Dr. Lee didn’t want to put me back on glyburide or start me on insulin, as he was concerned either of those options would have me bottoming out severely like last time. The downside to Byetta, however, is that it has to be injected (in the thigh or abdomen, no less!). So I’ve had to learn to give myself an injection. Actually, it wasn’t too bad. Jenn showed me how to do it, and she has a pretty good method for convincing patients that it’s not as hard as they think. By the time she’s done, you realize that actually lancing your fingers to test your bloodsugar hurts more than sticking the needle for Byetta (or even insulin, I understand) in does. So that was a pleasant surprise. So hopefully, I’ll start this and get back on track with my diet and exercise, and things will go well.

Health, Work

Health Stuff and Job Stuff

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I haven’t been online for a couple days, so I have a handful of events to talk about in this entry. We’ll start out with the fun news from Dr. Lee. He had someone in his office call my house yesterday. He’s instructed me to discontinue my glyburide over the weekend on an experimental basis. I am supposed to take my blood glucose readings as normal and then send them to him Monday mornng. He’ll check them and determine from that whether to make it permanent. Last night, my blood glucose was roughly 110 and this morning, it was 89. So by the looks of it, I may officially be done with one of my medications! How awesome.

I’m also down another pound or so, too. According to the scale at work, I’m somewhere between 275 and 276 pounds. Considering I started this trek at 311 last November, I think that’s fantastic. My coworker, Mike W., saw me at the job fair (I’ll have to write about that too). I was wearing a pair of black pants, a red dress shirt, and a burgandy sweater over top it. He said that with the wait loss, I looked absolutely incredible. I thought I looked darn good in it too, but it was nice to hear someone else say it. I was going to post a picture of it, but Mom didn’t get home until an hour after I did on Thursday, and by then, I was ready to change into something different. The sweater was just a tad bit too warm in the house.

Yeah, I went to a “job fair” (and I use the term loosely) for Lockheed Martin. They were mainly holding it for their Owego facility (though they did have their Syracuse facility represented too), since they’re looking to fill over 700 new positions. I’m not sure I want to work for Lockheed Martin (and after yesterday, I’m even less sure), but I figured I’d check it out. I learned exactly one thing while I was there. I was way underprepared. I might have gotten more out of it if I had spent a few days scouring their website and printing out and reading specific job listings they have posted. That way, I could have asked questions about specific jobs I was looking at. As it was, I had about four or five general questions to ask. They didn’t even have project descriptions or anything there. I was expecting it to be much more informational on their part, and it was quite obvious that they were expecting to collect hundreds of resume and spend between thirty seconds and two minutes chit-chatting with each person. I tend to agree with Mom when she heard about it and commented it didn’t sound like much of a “job fair” to her.

Of course, the thing that really got me was the one manager from the software engineering department I spoke to. He asked me what my GPA was. Now, I will be the first to admit that I haven’t done a lot of inteviews in the last seven years. But the few interviews I did five years ago when looking for my current job, I didn’t have one single person ask about my GPA. By that time, most of them were interested in the three years of in-field experience I’ve had since school. I would’ve expected that eight years later, any potential employers would be even more interested in my experience. So to even be asked about my GPA seemed weird.

And then when I told him that I got a 3.06 GPA, he commented that “made the cut, but just barely.” And then he told me that I’d have a lot of competition. If I would’ve been thinking more clearly at the time (I was a bit shocked by this time), I probably would’ve told him to fuck off at that point. That probably would’ve been a bad idea, so it’s just as well I was too shocked at the time. But it sure makes me want to go with my first instinct to find a job that isn’t with Lockheed Martin.

Health

Fabulous Day, Fabulous Progress

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Today, I had another visit to the endocrinology department. I didn’t see Dr. Lee, though. This was my chance to have follow-up meetings with Jen and Faith. And I have to admit that I had quite a pleasant time with them. Of course, the good news right at the beginning helped that a ton.

I got to the office at about 2:45, checked in, and paid $100 on my outstanding bill. That’s about half of what I owe from my last visit. I would’ve paid the other half too under other circumstances. However, with this being a non-payday week and already having spent a significant amount of money on other bills this past week, I decided I should wait another week or two to pay the full amount. At least I figured roughly 50% would be a “good faith token” that I am paying it and will continue to do so. So having checked in and taken care of the business portion of the visit, I sat down in the waiting room and patiently waited for my appointment. Faith was running a bit late and didn’t get to me until almost 3:15, for which she apologized. I didn’t mind, other than the fact that I was beginning to wonder if something had come up or something, but things turned out fine.

So before leading me into her office to pour over my food diary, Faith has me jump up on the scale to see what I weighed. And there was the pleasant surprise. It seems that since November 2, I have lost 18 pounds. I was a bit shocked. I had known I had lost some weight and I was hoping it was at least five or even ten pounds, but I’d never expected such high results. Needless to say, Faith was quite ecstatic, too. So we rushed into her office and I pulled out my food diary for her to look over. She went through it and was quite impressed with it. She commented that I was missing a few foods on the first page, which I explained was due to the fact that my mother and I had to spend the first few days doing some grocery shopping to help with my change in diet. (My family has never been very good about incorporating an adequate amount of fruits and vegetables in our diets, so it meant doing some serious restocking of foods for us.) She also commented on the few days where I seemed to “skip” meals and was fairly relieved when I explained that this was due to me forgetting to update my food diary in a timely manner and not being able to remember what I just ate. I did assure her that I ate, though, and she was satisfied. She said that I seemed to be doing quite well at making sure I hit all the major dietary needs as well as spreading my food intake throughout the day.

We even talked about my weight loss, and she reiterated her position on that. I actually like it. Her whole philosophy is that while she’s always happy to see her clients lose weight, it’s not her main aim. Her main aim is for them to do the work of eating a properly healthy diet of the proper proportions. In her mind, the weight will then take care of itself in turn. So I’m endeavoring to keep that in mind, because I think it’s a helpful philosophy. So my plan is to continue to keep track of what I’m eating in writing and monitoring my glucose levels. Then I can let the weight take care of itself.

After our conversation, Faith told me she’d like to see me again in a couple months and we determined that we could schedule my appointment on the same day that I go back to see Dr. Lee, which is March 3. After this, she handed me the paper and went to see if Jen was ready for my appointment with her. Jen was ready, so Jen popped in Faith’s office and had me come talk to her. Faith had already filled her in on the whole weight loss thing, and Jen was equally excited about it.

She went over my exercise calendar and saw that I’ve consistently met my goal of taking three twenty minute walks each week. She was quite pleased with this and inquired if I’d given any thought to any changes I might want to make to my physical activity. I told her that I had thought about it and decided that I did not want to increase the number of days I’m walking, due to the fact that it might prove difficult to make it someplace to walk more than three days a week when the snow starts falling. (Speaking of which, it was flurrying on the way home, but that’s probably best left for a different entry.) However, I did mention that I was considering the possibility of increasing the length of each walk to twenty five or even thirty minutes instead of the current twenty minutes. She felt this was an excellent idea.

I also discussed my plans to try and recall as many of the ballet exercises I did in my college dance class and make a twenty minute workout of that. She thought this was another excellent idea, especially as it would add a number of stretching exercises to my physical activity. Overall, that meeting was quite positive, and she commented that I wouldn’t have to come see her again as long as my therapy kept moving in a positive direction (i.e. going off medications rather than needing more). Since I’ve been walking so much, she also gave me a free pedometer from a bunch that she gets as gifts from one of the pharmaceutical companies. I checked it out when I got home and it’s kind of neat. It’s a talking pedometer, which I think is kind of cheesy, but it’s still a neat idea. Tomorrow sometime, I plan on measuring the length of my average step and entering it in. Then I can start seeing roughly how many steps and miles I walk during my exercise routine. Also, Jen suggested that I see how much walking I get in from a typical day when I’m not taking my walk.

Apparently, I also have Jen to thank for my reduced medication. According to her, Dr. Lee missed the numerous glucose readings in the fifties a couple weeks ago. He had sent her a copy of my readings with his recommendation of “no change.” She immediately sent them back to him with all the low values circled and a strong suggestion that he cut my glyburide. So it’s thanks to Jen that I haven’t been bottoming out this week. Well, other than Wednesday. But that was due to an insufficient supper, I think.

This was a highly positive visit for me. It seemed great to see the weight loss and know that I’ve made my goals. And it’s really encouraged me to keep going. I think I’ve about convinced myself to keep up with keeping track of my exercise and food diary, even after I don’t have to show them to anyone. And to celebrate, I ran to Vestal and ate at the Chinese buffet. It was absolutely tasty. I thought I’d had a bit too much, but I guess I didn’t do too badly. When I got home and tested my blood sugar two hours after eating, I was at a 78.

Health

Don’t want to do that often

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So, I had quite the adventure yesterday. I got up at 10 in the morning, checked my blood sugar, and took my pills. Then I sat down to my computer and played Insaniquarium (I beat the adventure!) while I waited the requisite thirty minutes. Once that time elapsed, I decided to go ahead and have breakfast. I got everything around and ate, then spent the rest of the morning puttering around online. It gave me a chance to get caught up on friends’ diaries and respond to a few emails and posts on message boards.

As it got to be about 12:30, I decided it was time to think about lunch. I decided that I wanted to go out for lunch, as I was having a restless day and just needed to do something to get my mind and body in a calmer state. So I took my shower and grabbed an apple out of the bag. I ate it as I drove to the mall.

I got to the mall at about 2:00. I knew I had to take my walk (it was my last chance to get the third day of exercise in for last week), so I decided to get that out of the way before I ran upstairs to eat. I wasn’t all that hungry since I had the apple, and I was feeling great. So I took my usual circuitous route through the halls of the mall and through a few of the anchor stores. Towards the end, I was getting hungry, but I finished my twenty minutes before getting my back out of the locker at the entrance and heading up to the food court. Once inside Friendly’s, I gave my waitress (Diane) my order and then headed for the bathroom. I was feeling a bit lightheaded, so I decided it was time to get out my glucometer and check my blood sugar again.

Well, I had trouble with it. For whatever reason, the first time I stabbed myself with the lancet, my finger didn’t want to bleed. I got a tiny drop and decided to try it. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough blood there to fill the test strip and the machine errored out. So I grab another strip, and poke another finger. Now by this time, I’m starting to get concerned because I’ve started sweating profusely. I know I just went for a brisk walk, but I didn’t exert myself that much.

The second time, I got enough blood and the machine flashed up a number. That number was 50. So I immediately spotted Diane, flagged her down, showed her the results (fortunately, she understood what I was showing her) and asked her to get me something sweet NOW. She blinked, ran back into the kitchen and came out with a full glass of Coke for me. (She didn’t even take time to put ice in the glass, bless her heart.) Needless to say, I chugged that down. By this time, the patron sitting at the table across the aisle from me has figured out what’s going on and starts in asking “are you okay”? (Note: While the concern is appreciated on some levels, diabetics are not exactly in the best state of mind when they’re blood sugar is critically low. As such, overbearing acts of concern like CONSTANTLY asking if they’re okay is not a good idea. If you’re in that situation, give the diabetic person something with lots of sugar — fruits are best — and then leave them alone. I managed to be courteous, but not much more than that.)

I get the impression that Diane also went back in the kitchen and told them to move my order to the front of the line, because it wasn’t that long after that incident that my food came out. It may have just been that they were having a slow day, but it just seemed rather fast to me. But I got the soda and real food in me and in fifteen minutes my blood sugar was up to 72. That’s not fantastic, but it’s generally stable for me. And by the time I got home, I was clear up to 166. To tell you the truth, I’m surprised that it wasn’t even higher with all the sugar from the soda. Not that I’m complaining, mind you.

So I learned a very important lesson. Even if I had a late breakfast and a light snack, I will NOT go walking before I eat if I’m having a late lunch. I should’ve known better, really. But I figured I ate breakfast late enough and had that apple so that my blood sugar should be just fine. Apparently, I was wrong. Not that this totally surprises me. I’ve found incidents where my blood sugar level seems to be time-dependent as much as food-dependent. For example, I’ve noticed a tendency to have higher blood sugar in the evening if I eat supper after 5:30 than if I eat it around 5:00. The fact that I take my medicines later and test my blood sugar later when I do that doesn’t matter. Even with everything moved the same amount of time later into the evening, the results come back higher. So apparently, this is another of these oddities.

Health, Love, Personal Development, Randomness

Christmas shopping and Health

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It’s been a pretty good day. I went for my walk on my lunch break. That’s the second one for this week. I need to get one more in. I’m looking at Saturday for that. I figure I’ll give myself tomorrow off. Besides, I have to run out to lunch tomorrow. I figure I’ll need the extra time to stand in line at Subway.

While I was at the mall today, I picked up Mike’s Christmas present. I got him one of those “pictures in motion.” They’re a neat idea. Basically, they’re a picture of some scene with water in it. There is a light behind the picture and there is some sort of mechanism that causes the light to shift slightly. The net result is that the water looks like it’s actually flowing. The specific picture I got Mike has a watefall flowing into a pool. It’s absolutely gorgeous. Hopefully, he likes it. I think he will, because he was practically cooing over such “moving pictures” when we saw them at the Carousel Mall. So when I found the same place had a kiosk set up at the Pyramid Mall, it became a pretty obvious gift idea.

This evening I tested my blood sugar when I got home. It was 55. Needless to say, everything got dropped and I made a quick hunt for food. I ended up having yogurt, six cups of popcorn (the proper serving I’d normally have in the evening is three cups), and a quarter cup of dried pineapple — which had way too much sugar added. Frighteningly, though, when I tested my blood sugar again at 9:30 or so, it was still only up to a 78. This is just insane. I hope Dr. Lee changes my medications soon-ish.

Car, Health

Brief review of the week

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This has been a bit of a hectic week. Between getting the rust spot on my car fixed, taking care of work, and doing my stuff for the endocrinologist, I’ve been a bit busy. And on top of that all, I’ve been trying to get more rest. I feel like I’m still on the verge of being sick again. I think I’ll be fine, but only if I can keep myself rested up and relatively well. That’s why I haven’t been online much this week. I mean, heck, I’ve even been late reading Catharsis on a few days. Reading the latest Catharsis strip is usually one of the first things I do when I have access to the Internet. But things have been so crazy, it hasn’t been happening.

I’m curious to see what’s going on with my blood sugar. I’ve come pretty darn close to bottoming out on two nights this week. On Wednesday night when I checked it at 7:30 (about two hours after supper), it was down to 67. I immediately had a yogurt before Mom and I ran the van to the body shop. And then Thursday night, I was clear down to 59. I stood in the kitchen eating a snack and I felt like I was wolfing it down. I also felt myself slightly shaking at the time, too.

The good news is that it was quite a bit better last night. When I got home and took my “after supper” reading, I was at a 96. I’m not entirely sure what made the difference. The only thing I can figure is that I actually ate supper half an hour later than normal. I’m not sure why that’d make a difference, but it’s the only thing I can figure. Everything else, I did practically the same on each of those days.

I have about another hour before I can test my blood sugar tonight. My parents and I went out for supper and that made for a late meal. I’m a bit concerned about what it might be. After all, I had a lot to eat tonight — the restaurant we went to gives ridiculously large portions — so it might be a bit high. But then again, it can be up to 140 before Dr. Lee’s going to get too concerned. And if it’s only one test out of the entire week, that’s probably not too terrible anyway. I just can’t make a habit of it. (Taking the test every day and having to send it in to Dr. Lee’s office sure helps keep me honest about just how habitual something like that is becoming, too.)

My car is fixed. The body shop managed to get it in on Thursday and finish the job up yesterday. So I left work about two hours early so that I could get there in time to pick up my car before they closed. They did a fantastic job. If I ever need body work done again (may the gods forbid!), I’d definitely consider going back there. Once I had the car, I also decided to run to the Ford dealership. I need a second key made. And unfortunately, I have one of those cars that uses the keys with the anti-theft microchips in them. So that’s something you have to get directly from the dealer. On top of that, because I only have the one key, the dealership has to program the keys by hooking the car up to the diagnostic computer. To do the “easy programming” method, you need two previously-programmed keys. I’m a bit annoyed about that because it means I have to pay a bit extra. But ce’st la vie, I suppose. I’m getting it done on Monday morning because they said they couldn’t do it yesterday. They said it would take a half hour to do the job and everyone was getting ready to go home for the evening. I just stood there shaking my head. It was only 4:30. Most of us have to work until 5:00. But nope, these guys were “getting ready to go home” and therefore couldn’t start a half hour job. People talk about “banker’s hours,” geez, I want to start working “mechanic’s hours.” Oh well, now I’m just being silly. I’m not really upset, but it gives me something to mutter about. Sometimes, it’s just fun to do that.

Books, Health, Paganism

My evening and witchy thoughts

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I went for my walk this evening. I didn’t get out of bed or get laundry started early enough to commence my walk in the afternoon as has become my custom. And without clean laundry, my only other option was to walk in the nude. The chances of that happen are one in a google. Maybe even one in a google plex. Besides, considering the temperature out right now, that’s jut not an option.

Overall, I give my exercise effort a B this week. I’m half tempted to go with a B-, but I think that’s being too hard on myself. I actually managed to walk four days this past week. It’s only one less than the five that I’m aiming for. I missed yesterday’s walk because, quite frankly, I wasn’t feeling well enough to go for a walk. I wasn’t sure that I wouldn’t get half way through it and suddenly find myself in dire need of a bathroom — which would be nowhere to be found.

After my walk tonight, I went out and bought some music. I bought a sampler of trance music. I’m checking it out now. It’s actually pretty good. I’d love to get more. Now I just have to find out who I might like. That’s always the fun part. I know absolutely nothing about music. And to be honest, I don’t have a huge desire to learn. I’m very superficial about my music. All I want to know is “this song sounds nice.”

I also ran to Friendly’s for supper. I had a lovely bacon cheeseburger. One of my favorite things. I was in a mood for some good beef. I probably had way too much, but it was worth it.

While there, I also read some. Friendly’s is my favorite reading spot, after all. Much less distractions than at home. I continued on in my reading of Huson’s book, “Mastering Witchcraft.” I’m still having mixed feelings about it. I still think the guy’s being more than a little pretentious. What gets me is that he always adds “of art” to the end of most things he’s talking about. “Using your brush of art, write these runes on it with your paint of art.” It just strikes me as being ridiculously wordy. I just have trouble imagining any of the witches I know and respect — all who seem to be rather down to earth and plain spoken — using such phrases.

Of course, the underlying reason for using such phrases also leaves me wondering. He’s one of these people who seem to think that every little thing that you use in magic should only be used in magic. It should never be used for anything else. Now, in many cases, I agree with him. I think that the major altar tools — such as the knife, the cup, and the censer — should usually only be used for those purposes for which they were consecrated. There are good and sound reasons for this. But I’m not sure that really applies to such things as paint and other supplies. These are not the “great tools.” These are “things a witch finds useful.” And it seems that the no-nonsense style of witch magic would call for just pulling whatever was needed from an already existing of “mundane items.” You need a piece of red thread? You go to your sewing kit, get the spool of red yarn that you bought to repair that dress, and you cut off what you need for your magic. You need to paint symbols on a tool or talisman? You grab the paint cans from when you painted the bedroom and you use a small quantity of it. Now sure, maybe the paint should be consecrated. So you pour out the small amount you will use into a smaller container and you consecrate it. You don’t consecrate the entire bucket, thereby risking wasting it if you don’t use it before it dries up. And I see no need to go buy something special for magic when you have a perfectly usable quantity of the same thing already.

I don’t know, I just see the idea of keeping two separate sets of supplies for “mundane” and “magical” uses as entirely impractical. And that goes against the nature of witchcraft, in my opinion.

Health

Happy to be wrong

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Two days ago, I said that I probably just took my last walk outdoors for 2004. It turns out that I was wrong. It was such a beautiful and sunny day out, so I decided to take another walk outdoors. It was a bit cool despite the sun (Weather.com says it’s 64*F (or right about 18*C for you metric-heads) in my area), the wind was low and my light jacket was enough to keep me warm. This was especially true after my blood got pumping and the exercise kept my body heat up. But it felt good.

I’m also glad to see that I’m slowly starting to get used to walking again. There for a while, my legs started really bothering me. I was starting to get concerned that something was wrong with them and that I was going to have to run back to the doctor. But it looks like it’s just a lack of regular exercise, and now they’re starting to protest less and less. Of course, I’m still not going quite as fast as I was when I was really focused (I used to go another 200 yards or so in the same amount of time I’m walking right now). I’m a bit bummed about that, but I expect I’ll gain that back as I get working at it again. After all, that was also when I was twenty pounds lighter. I’m still upset I put on that extra weight since July, but I’m determined to take it right back off — and at least another 100 pounds right after it. Though I think I’m going to stretch it out over a year or two if I can. I don’t want to start doing the weight yo-yo game, after all.

Today is a fairly dull day at work. I’m waiting to have a meeting with Nate so that we can go over the new development tools for his project. I’ve configured and used them, and now I have to teach him to do likewise. I suppose I could also work on my specification for Steve’s project, but I’m not in the mood for that. I really hate writing documentation. It’s the one part of my job that I wish I could get out of.

The biggest problem with having a slow day like this — or a day where the only thing I need to do is something I’d like to do — is that it’s the kind of days where my willpower is weak. I find myself tempted to go to the vending machine and get a tasty — but fattening — snack for myself. It’s really quite funny. On days when I’m busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest, I don’t even consider it. I just go on. Heck, I’ve even skipped supper until much later in the evening if I was sufficiently busy. I’ve heard that some people will eat — particularly junk food — as much out of boredom as out of hunger. I really think I’m one such person. It’s quite a frustrating trait. I wonder if there’s an effective way to break the association between boredom and eating.