Blog For Free!
Archives
Home
2004 December
2004 November
2004 October
2004 September
2004 August
2004 July
2004 June
2004 May
2004 April
My Links
Canadian Diabetes Association
American Diabetes Association
Kraft Diabetic Choices
Thoughts Interrupted
JennsAbsent
Chicalookate's Blog
Scubadiva's Blog
Sulkbrarian's Blog
Librarianguish's Blog
Islandartist's Blog
Ladyblog's Blog
Almsthvn's Blog
James Lileks
Etiquette Hell
Dave Barry's Blog
The Onion
My Underrated TV Shows Poll
My Songs You're Ashamed to Like Poll
My "Classic" Movies You Didn't Like Poll
tBlog
My Profile
Send tMail
My tFriends
My Images
Sponsored
Blog
|
| Heading off again! |
| 06.29.04 (7:39 pm) [edit] |
What a busy time of year - I'm heading out of town again! This time for purely vacational purposes, happily. :)
We're off with our friends M&S to beautiful Birch Bay, WA tomorrow until Monday night. I love it down there - my parents have owned a trailer in the vacation RV park since I was tiny. When I was a kid, I practiced my swimming in the pool, we went to the beach, and got ice cream at the locally-famous C Shop. When I graduated from high school, my girlfriends and I spent some summer vacations there suntanning, shopping, having fires on the beach, and getting ice cream at the C Shop. And now that we're all grown up, we go down either as a couple or with another couple and swim, barbeque, shop, and get away from work and stress. And get ice cream at the C Shop. :)
Here's just a general scenery picture:
See you next week! Happy Canada Day to our Canadian tbloggers and Happy Fourth of July to our American ones!
|
|
|
| |
| Starbucks |
| 06.29.04 (12:49 pm) [edit] |
My husband bought me the latest Starbucks "Bearista" last night - it's an aviator bear. We have a semi-collection of them - we seem to have started a tradition where he gives me one for Valentine's Day. But he likes this one, too - it's a boy bear. :) He's so cute! I love the leather jacket and goggles.
I was interested to hear on CNN this morning that Starbucks is coming out with a light frappuccino this summer - only 110 calories rather than 400+. I'll have to try one, although I doubt they'll be as good as the regular ones. I've only had the regular ones a couple of times, because I know they're so fattening, but on hot days they look soooooo good! :)
|
|
|
| |
| Tipping the scale the other way |
| 06.28.04 (7:12 pm) [edit] |
With all of the hoopla over SUPER SIZE ME!, I thought I'd take a look at the other side. I admit right off the bat, I haven't seen it yet (though I probably will). And I think it's great that people want to eat better and are showing such an interest in the fact that eating a lot of fast food can be unhealthy. And I'm sure this movie really drives that point home and highlights how unhealthy such a diet can be. But I've been reading about it and it seems to me like a lot of facts get left out or overlooked.
So, since I haven't seen the film, here's the summary that I'm going on. I realize it doesn't show every aspect of the film, but from other things I've heard, it sounds like it sums it up. It's from an article I discuss to below http://www.techcentralstation... "Dishing It Out, But Not Taking It":
"In "Super Size Me," Spurlock consumes more than 5,000 calories a day at McDonald's -- twice the level necessary to maintain his weight -- for 30 days straight. He eats the daily equivalent of NINE Big Macs every day. That's three at breakfast, three at lunch and three at dinner. Or 18 hamburgers. And he doesn't exercise. The result: He gains 24 pounds and feels miserable." (During the interview, he doesn't contradict the 5000 calories statement, so I'm assuming it's true.)
From the first time I heard about the film, it just seemed like a "well, duh" issue to me. Eat nothing but McDonald's, get fat. I don't see why this is coming as a shock to people. If you're stupid enough to eat 5000 calories of crap in a day (in the Dishing It interview, he also admits to snacking at McD's in addition to the 3 meals), then it's your own problem. 5000 calories is over twice the recommended daily amount. You could eat 5000 calories worth of ANYTHING and gain weight!
And the great thing is, a woman named Soso Whaley is doing the same thing, eating every single menu item and nothing else at McDonald's for 30 days, but she's not doing it in an utterly ridiculous, over-the-top fashion. She says she wants to show that "the Super Size Me film didn't prove anything except that you can eat a lot of food and gain weight." She wants to show that it's possible to take responsibility for your eating and make smart choices.
For more info on her project: http://www.cei.org/pages/debu...
This site http://www.cei.org/pages/debu... has some excellent stuff de-bunking Super Size Me.
I particularly enjoyed the "Dishing It Out, But Not Taking It" interview, especially his reaction to Soso Whaley's experiment involving calorie-counting and exercise:
"What are the two things no American does? Americans don't eat less and we don't exercise. You know, these--of course you're going to lose weight if you eat less and exercise. That--those go hand in hand. Welcome to America, where that doesn't happen."
So....his opinion is that Americans (and Canadians, I'd imagine) are lazy slobs and that somehow this is the fault of McDonald's. Seems rather questionable to me. Maybe it's the fault of us not getting up off our asses once in a while.
Spurlock also questions her "motives" because she works for the Competitve Enterprise Institute which believes "believe that consumers are best helped not by government regulation but by being allowed to make their own choices in a free marketplace." But it doesn't matter why she decided to do it, it's her results that matter and those results indicate it's possible to eat nothing but McD's and lose weight.
I also enjoyed the examples of similar films one could make in Super Size Thanks:
"Make That a Double," wherein our intrepid filmmaker resolves to drink alcohol as his beverage of choice for all three meals. If asked to "make that a double?" he must say yes. And he must eventually try every liquor on the premises. Result? His liver looks like a Brillo pad and his brain looks like Spongebob Squarepants.
"I'll Have a Venti!" wherein our intrepid director takes all his drinks at Starbucks, paying the extra twenty cents for a super-grande mega-trough of energy-packed java when asked if he'd like to do so. Result: jittery, paranoid, and voluble...
Any company that wants to sell you something wants to sell you more of it if they can, whether it's food, cable TV services, a phone plan, an extended warranty on an appliance... that's their job. You still have to decide for yourself whether or not you want or need whatever it is that they're offering though, right? (Or as my husband puts it: "Just because Safeway is running a "buy one get one free" offer on potato chips this week doesn't mean I'm going to go home and eat twice as many chips; it just means I won't bother to buy another bag next week.")
And while I know McD's has recently introduced their "new" healthy choices menu, that's mostly just marketing - they've been offering at least some healthy alternatives for years (since I was a teenager, so that's at least a decade). The main point of their new menu is to highlight which things are healthier - in order to sell people what they say they want, i.e. healthier food. Examples of long-standing healthier choices include:
- Serving only low-fat ice cream (not uber-healthy, but a better choice for dessert than, say, a pint of Ben and Jerry's).
- Low fat muffins
- Salads (perhaps not always 100% consistently offered, but they've been around for years)
- The chicken fajitas are low in fat and have lots of vegetables.
- They offer fruit juices as well as pop.
- They changed the deep-fried pies to baked pies (again, not overly healthy, but it's a dessert, it's not supposed to be)
- Chicken McGrill has no skin and isn't deep-fried
- Even a regular small hamburger isn't particularly bad for you - it can be healthier than adding a bunch of fattening stuff to a salad, from what I've read.
My husband just made a good point, too - even if all McD's cared about was making money, regardless of how they do it, the absolute worst way to do so is to make their customers sick, solely in order to sell them an extra 30 cents worth of French fries. The obvious reason being, that if you make your customers sick, they're very unlikely to come back to you.
Look, it's not that I don't get Spurlock's point. It's definitely a good thing to look at the food choices you make. But it's up to YOU to make them. And really, I think people are getting better at it all the time. Witness the large number of gyms opening, the fact that most restaurants (fast food or otherwise) do offer healthier choices, people drink more water... It's everywhere! So I'd say that that shows we ARE capable of looking after ourselves and not eating ourselves into a food coma. If this movie makes some people realize that they eat too much junk food and it's time to change, that's excellent. But, sometimes an occasional Big Mac is just an occasional Big Mac.
|
|
|
| |
| Weekend |
| 06.27.04 (3:17 pm) [edit] |
Not much to report, but it's been a pretty busy weekend. But here's what's been up.
On Friday we went to Bard on the Beach, Vancouver's Shakespeare festival http://www.bardonthebeach.org..., with our friends M&S. We saw Much Ado About Nothing, which is one of my faves. I love Beatrice and Benedick. They set it after WWII, so there were neat costumes and all kinds of fab music like Cole Porter. I sometimes don't like modern settings, because they can get carried away, but this went well with Beatrice's independence and the men returning from the war, etc.
Yesterday we went to the mall to buy a big new fan for our living room. We had a very small, cheap plastic one that just wasn't doing the job. Poor husband had to carry it back on the train. I also used some more of my $200 bookstore certificate from work. And we bought a new board game, Gray Matter, which is fun. It has multiple choice questions, so you can always just guess if need be. :)
And today was Book Club day. We had 2 books, which is unusual - Lucky in the Corner and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. I only got about 1/2 way through the first, it just didn't grab me. The Curious Incident, though was a really quick, interesting read. The author did an amazing job of writing from the point of view of an autistic boy.
This morning before I left and when I got home this afternoon, I staged an attack on our disgusting bedroom. I just got mad and decided it was time to at least get rid of the worst clutter and vacuum the damn thing for the first time in ages. We're such slobs. So, I have to go and vacuum up the carpet deodorizer and then it's time to head to my parents' place for our weekly Sunday dinner.
Hope everyone had a great weekend!
|
|
|
| |
| Sounds more painful than piercing your private parts! |
| 06.24.04 (9:47 am) [edit] |
Apparently there's a new fad in Holland - eyeball jewelry! I read about it in Cosmo and, sure enough, tis true. Here's a http://msnbc.msn.com/id/46859... I was going to paste in the photo, but it's not for the squeamish, so I'll leave it up to you to look at. :)
All I can say is WHY? Why on earth would you want to do this? And who came up with the idea of sticking something to the EYEBALL? How bored and how much money do you have to have to blow to decide to do this? Wouldn't it always feel like you had something in your eye? That's a horrid feeling when there's something accidentally in there, I can't imagine having it all the time.
|
|
|
| |
| Another substitution |
| 06.23.04 (9:24 am) [edit] |
I'm a big mocha girl, so I was worried about having to give up the sugary things. But happily I've just discovered that a latte with Equal and cinnamon is quite nice indeed. Cinnamon is supposed to help lower blood sugar, so I'm trying to work it into my eating. It's also pretty good with cottage cheese.
But I've been feeling pretty hopeless lately. Not in a huge, depressed way, just kind of an it doesn't matter what I do way. A few chocolates here, extra crackers there, a little piece of pie... everyone's been telling me I need to cut myself some slack and splurge sometimes, but I think I've been doing too much of it lately. But it doesn't even really feel like splurging, because it's just small things and I end up feeling guilty anyway. I don't know if I've got it in me to stay so disciplined. And then it seems like my blood sugar is always going to be high, no matter what, so why bother? Ugh. I'm getting tired of having to haul myself out of the apartment and after dinner and go for a walk. I know it's good for me, but I hate feeling that it's something I [b]have[/b] to do, even though it is. Diabetes sucks.
|
|
|
| |
| It's a scam! |
| 06.23.04 (9:16 am) [edit] |
Someone gave me this link about the Share Your Experiences thing. Turns out it's a scam. I should've thought to Google it or check Snopes.com, which is what I almost always do when it comes to spam. It was just so convincing and bizarre.
http://www.mit.edu/people/klund/files/sh yexp.html" title="http://www.mit.edu/people/klund/files/sh yexp.html" target="_blank"http://www.mit.edu/people/klu...
|
|
|
| |
| What in the hell??? |
| 06.22.04 (5:39 pm) [edit] |
I have another, non-Gigi e-mail address and I just looked in the Junk folder and found this weird message from a site called ShareYourExperiences.com saying a posting had been made about me. I clicked and, sure enough, there was this list of 6 posts with my e-mail address with headings like "Have Information" and "Seek Information" and then things like one person knows me socially, one professionally, one knows me very well. But that's all I can find out.
Apparently the site is designed for people to "talk about you behind your back."
Does anyone know about this site? I'm not that concerned, but it's just so bizarre. Are they trying to get money from me? Am I really that intriguing? What?!
|
|
|
| |
| Berrification |
| 06.22.04 (1:12 pm) [edit] |
I don't know about the sporty part, but the rest is pretty true. I [b]loved[/b] Strawberry Shortcake and her pals when I was a kid. I think my dolls are still in a box in my parents' basement. :)
which Strawberry Shortcake character are you? quiz by: carrie
|
|
|
| |
| I'm back! |
| 06.21.04 (10:55 am) [edit] |
Back to work...feels kind of weird. The Summer Reading Club starts today, so there will be no rest for me. Well, a bit this morning, but I'll be signing them up this afternoon. Which is great, of course, just a bit tiring.
It's nice to be home, although I was kind of enjoying eating in restaurants all the time. Tricky for the Big D, though, so it's better to be home. But thankfully Victoria is a fab city for walking, so I was able to do lots.
My much-anticipated massage was a bit of a bust, though. I got to the spa 15 minutes early, as requested, and there was no-one there! Door locked, lights out. They're supposed to be open until 8:00 (it's 5:45), so I have no idea what's going on. So I went down to the front desk (it's in a hotel) and the guy there didn't know anything and couldn't get them on the phone. He had me phone and leave a message, which I did (an irritated one). So, I left and wandered over to a huge hotel up the street to see if they had any spa openings. But I figured maybe I should try the other place one more time, so I gave them a call and lo and behold, someone actually answered. Big story about the manager having to leave early and the manager thought the masseuse would be there, etc. The hair salon person was apparently there, but she certainly wasn't answering the phone or watching the door. Yeesh. But, anyway, I went back down the street and all was well.
Well...sort of. When I booked the treatment, it wasn't as blazingly hot as it was last week, so hot stones really weren't the best choice. And her massaging HURT. Holy dinah. I always do sort of forget that I don't like the really deep tissue massage, but this was in a league of its own. I'm really tense by nature, so I guess she felt she had to rub hard, which hurt, so I tensed up even more, so she rubbed harder. At one point she asked if the pressure was okay and I said no and she tried to lighten up, but didn't really.
And when they say hot stones, they mean HOT. It felt kind of nice after the initial searing heat, but I don't think I'd choose that treatment again. The legs/feet and arms/hands parts were really nice, so maybe I'll stick to that and facials in the future. I actually woke up sore the next day, which I guess could mean I really needed to be kneaded, but I think I'll skip it in the future.
|
|
|
| |
| Quick hello from the conference |
| 06.18.04 (11:37 am) [edit] |
Hi, all! Thanks to one of the sponsors, they have a bank of free Internet terminals in the conference centre. So, I thought I'd just pop in and say hi.
The conference is going well and this morning's speaker, Bill Richardson (author, former librarian at my library, radio personality) was worth the trip all by himself.
It's blazingly sunny and Victoria's as beautiful as always. I've been doing lots of walking around but haven't bought my chocolates yet, I don't want them to melt. I'll have to make a trip just before it's time to get to the ferry tomorrow. :)
The room-mating is going pretty well, except our room is on the NOISIEST corner in the whole city and is incredibly hot with no A/C, so we have to keep the window open and hear all of the trucks rumbling along, ambulances, and people arguing loudly on the street at night, etc.
I did get roped into a dinner from hell, but apart from that, things are going well.
Hope all's well with y'all!
|
|
|
| |
| To the library conference I go! |
| 06.15.04 (7:38 pm) [edit] |
Well, I'm leaving tomorrow morning, but I have to pack, so I won't have time to blog tomorrow.
I'll be in beautiful Victoria for the rest of the week, so here's a vintage postcard of one of my very favourite places, the Empress Hotel.
|
|
|
| |
| End of the diabetes clinic |
| 06.15.04 (1:22 pm) [edit] |
Today was the last day. I learned a fair bit, but I still don't feel very confident, I must say. I guess it all comes down to practice and trial and error. Which seems so...haphazard for your health.
I wish they'd touched more on the emotional stuff. I'd like to know how to stop feeling so sad about it all the time. They talked a bit about stress reduction and how depression is a major factor in developing diabetes (as far as I can tell, I had almost all of them except age - stress, overweight, sadness), but not how to deal with the feelings it brings up. I guess we're not supposed to feel sad or angry or hopeless, we're supposed to just beaver away at changing our entire lives and be happy about it. But then, it wasn't really within the scope of the clinic. Probably about the only thing they could've said would be to seek therapy. It would've been nice to feel like I wasn't alone in feeling these things, though.
We do have to go back in 6 months, but they don't actually contact you or anything. So you have to call the clinic for an appointment, and there's yet another 3-month waiting list, so we'll actually be going back in 9 months. You can't schedule it ahead because their computer system can only track the next 3 months. Ah well, at least they do [b]some[/b] follow-up, I'd figured that was it - have a good life trying to figure out this disease, bye now!
|
|
|
| |
| And you thought Cardio Striptease was racy! |
| 06.14.04 (12:55 pm) [edit] |
(It's actually not - I bought the DVDs. It's a bit bump-and-grindy. Although I haven't gotten to the advanced workout yet - maybe it gets sexier.)
A recent blurb in Cosmo alerted me to yet another sexy workout craze, the Shag Workout! http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/...
Whaddya think? I like the concept and could totally go for a video version of it (as with the Striptease), but I don't think I like the "partnering up" idea and moaning in front of strangers.
|
|
|
| |
| Plans |
| 06.13.04 (12:42 pm) [edit] |
I decided that, since I had to have the stress of sharing a room, I needed to plan things to keep me out of the hotel room in Victoria. I figure I'm on my own with nothing else to do, I may as well enjoy the opportunity. :)
These include: walking around the Inner Harbour, visiting the fab British Candy Shoppe (even diabetes can't stop my love for Cadbury's chocolates - I'll just have to eat them slowly rather than the whole bag full in 3 days, like I used to do), and getting an aromatherapy hot stone massage at a spa. I'm particularly excited about that last one. I hope they have space, though - I only have one time slot when I'm not at a conference session and they're open late. I was going to skip out of a session to go, but I figured sure as the world the deputy chief would be scheduled for that one, too, and know that I'd registered for it, as well.
It's weird and kind of sad - for as long as I can remember, my vacation plans centred largely on food and they still do (there's also a great cheesecake place in Victoria...). Even our jaunts to the beach across the border make me think of wonderful American junk food that I can't get here. It's going to be really hard to break out of that.
|
|
|
| |
| Spam titles |
| 06.11.04 (10:02 am) [edit] |
At the risk of sounding like Jerry Seinfeld, what is the deal with spam e-mail titles these days? I realize they're trying to get around filters by not putting obvious words like Viagra in them, but the current trend of stringing together random words is just as obvious.
Today I received:
living with 4837 but
light bulb 34 bodice rippers
polygon bottleneck cellular
In addition to one that was clearly for Cialis but had a couple of extra characters in the middle and a whole bunch that are just complete gobbleydegook symbols. The only clever one "Hey are you coming?" which was probably for Viagra (ewwww) but at least it could possibly have intrigued someone into opening it.
|
|
|
| |
| I'm trying not to get too excited... |
| 06.10.04 (12:11 pm) [edit] |
...but I just saw an ad for Hershey's 1g of sugar chocolate bars!! I'd want to look at the nutrition label first to see if it's too good to be true, and I bet they won't be sold in Canada (lots and lots of things aren't, sadly - it seems like there are tons of sugar-free products that I can't get here), but I'll keep my fingers crossed.
http://www.hersheys1g.com/index1.html" title="http://www.hersheys1g.com/index1.html" target="_blank"http://www.hersheys1g.com/ind...
|
|
|
| |
| I don't WANNA share a room! |
| 06.10.04 (9:53 am) [edit] |
Next week I'm going to the library association conference in Victoria. The conference sessions themselves aren't all that exciting, but I didn't go last year and you always learn at least something. And Victoria is one of my favourite places. I lived there for a while in university, so I know my way around.
So, I filled out my professional development request, including the "How much do you expect you'll pay for accommodation" line. Weeks ago I found a cheap hotel near the conference centre, and made my reservation. For the only other conference I've been to that required a hotel, I paid and was reimbursed by the library.
Originally, we'd planned that my husband would join me because after he got off work for the week. But next week he has to work day shifts, so it wouldn't work out.
And it's a good thing, because I found out yesterday that the library makes accommodation plans to keep costs down and that we have to share rooms. Ugh!! I mean, I totally understand the cost-cutting measures, but I was never told they did this and I find out about it a week beforehand, after making my own arrangements. So, I have to cancel my own reservation and be stuck sharing. And who am I sharing with? The deputy chief librarian!!! She's super-nice, but still, she's my superior and I don't know her that well. Not well enough to share a bathroom with, that's for sure.
So, I'm really cheesed off. I offered to pay the difference, but of course then they'd have to pay full price for her. Everyone keeps telling me to make lemonade out of the situation, but I'm really stressed about it.
It's so awkward. I'll have to make conversation with her all weekend. I'm REALLY bad at small talk. Even the old saw about "Just ask them questions about themselves and let them do the talking." doesn't work because I freeze up so much that I can't even think of questions.
Don't get me wrong, there are worse people I could have to share with, but I just think about having to take my medication and check my blood sugar and stuff, ugh. I know I can lock myself in the bathroom to do that, but still.
And what's the etiquette for watching TV and stuff? If I'm sitting there reading and she comes in, do I have to stop reading and chat? Do I have to turn off the TV? What if I snore? Your perception of a person changes when you share a room with them. She'll come back to work knowing the noises I make in my sleep and that I have to sleep with a buckwheat pillow and what I look like first thing in the morning and personal stuff that my boss does not need to know!!!!
|
|
|
| |
| Donut latecomer |
| 06.09.04 (2:18 pm) [edit] |
|
Sometimes our great security guard brings donuts in the morning. He brought in donut-holes yesterday. I didn't start work til 1:30, and this turned out to be a good thing, temptation-wise. Not only were they getting stale, the only ones left were boring glazed (sour cream glazed, yes, plain, not as good) and those weird ones with the raisins that no-one ever likes. If there had been any chocolate ones left, I'd probably have given in, even though I'd been at the no-sugar, give it all up diabetes clinic all morning.
|
|
|
| |
| Not too much to report |
| 06.08.04 (1:27 pm) [edit] |
Day 2 of the diabetes clinic today. Some info on artificial sweeteners and reading nutrition labels that was helpful. And also what over-the-counter things I can and can't take, which will be useful when I get the inevitable cold from the hacking children at the schools we're visiting.
And, happy news, according to my scale this morning I've lost around 20 pounds - hooray! But my stars, I miss having big, gooey desserts. :(
|
|
|
| |
| The Books |
| 06.07.04 (10:28 am) [edit] |
Gentleblackcat asked which books I got on Friday. Here they are:
[i]Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination [/i]by Helen Fielding
(I'm SO excited about this one! I loved, loved Bridget Jones and have been dying for her to write another book!)
[i]Azur Like It [/i]by Wendy Holden
(her books are very fluffy, but always fun)
[i]Boy Meets Girl [/i]by Meg Cabot
(I loved her [i]Boy Next Door[/i], hope this one's as good)
[i]Angels [/i]and [i]Sushi for Beginners [/i]by Marian Keyes
(already read them, but hers are some of the few books I always buy)
[i]Score, Pandora, Rivals[/i], and [i]Polo[/i] by Jilly Cooper
(I love her books and have worn mine out!)
And, for my husband, [i]Sharpe's Tiger [/i]by Bernard Cornwell
And there's still some money left, so I'm going to look at my list of books I've asked the library to order that haven't been ordered and get some of those. Woo hoo!
|
|
|
| |
| Wow, I know what time it is! |
| 06.07.04 (8:54 am) [edit] |
I've been going around without a watch for ages now. I have a cute classic Winnie the Pooh one (good for a children's librarian :) ) but I kept getting crappy straps for it that got dye all over my wrist, giving me very unattractive brown marks. So I stopped wearing it and then the battery died and I just never got around to getting it fixed. But my husband had to get new batteries for his watches. The other day he felt like he'd been on a pretty long break at work, so he finally left the break room and discovered it was indeed 15 minutes later than it should be :) So while we were at the watch place, I had a look and they had stainless steel ones, which I thought would be a good solution to the wrist-marking problem. So, I am now sporting the one at the bottom of the picture (couldn't get the individual one to load):
Pretty snazzy, eh? :)
|
|
|
| |
| Just to gross you out... |
| 06.06.04 (11:50 am) [edit] |
|
Note to self: do not prick finger for blood glucose test, think it's stopped bleeding, and then start typing. Ick.
|
|
|
| |
| 80's music quiz |
| 06.05.04 (12:04 pm) [edit] |
I bet a lot of you have seen this one, but it fits in with my Songs You're Ashamed To Like Poll (it's over on the left, feel free to answer! :) ) since the 80's gave us so much music to be ashamed of. I was surprised I did so well, although I guess some of them and I'd done it before a few months ago and then forgotten about it.
But I was surprised at the number I knew - I wasn't much of a popular music kid. I was a big Madonna fan, though and I developed my loooooove for Aerosmith years later, so those helped.
All right, from my perch here in the den, I can see that no-one is using the pool right now, so I'm off for a dip. I hope no-one dives in before I get downstairs - I [b]hate [/b]sharing the pool! (Partly because no-one needs to see me in a bathing suit and partly because I tend to bump into people while swimming. :) )
|
|
|
| |
| Retail Therapy |
| 06.05.04 (11:58 am) [edit] |
Sorry for the moaning yesterday. I'm just feeling overwhelmed having to think about the Big D all the time this week.
But my husband decided I needed some retail therapy and I received that book store gift certificate from work (with a nice card thanking me for all my work, which was nice), so off we went to the mall.
It was SO much fun to buy any book I wanted - I'm so used to having to wait for the library to order them and then place a hold and wait some more. I was like a kid in a candy store. And the guy behind the counter was so nice - they're starting a buy 3 paperbacks, get the 4th free sale on Monday, but he gave it to me anyway, so I got 2 already-free-to-me books for free! It was SO much fun. And because of the sale, there's still money left, so I can have more therapy another day. :)
My husband spent some of his first paycheque, too, which was neat. He collects Lego, so he bought this World City Coast Watch set that he'd been eyeing:
I voted for one of the Spider-Man 2 sets, but he thinks that the Coast Watch one would stop being made sooner than Spider-Man would. And, as he pointed out, he'd probably be back at the store in 2 weeks, anyway. :)
|
|
|
| |
| Test stressing |
| 06.04.04 (10:09 am) [edit] |
Oh my god, am I stressed out. I can feel it in every part of my body and I can't concentrate on work.
I've been trying to be good little diabetic girl and test my blood sugar before and after every meal, 7 times a day. But it's so discouraging. It's never as low as they say it should be. And it looks like anything except pure protein makes it shoot up, yet they tell us to have 6 servings of carbohydrates a day. And to have fruit, which also causes it to rise.
To lower it, I'm supposed to exercise after every meal. That's fine for dinner, in fact I've made it a regular habit. But what am I supposed to do at work? An hour after breakfast I'm at work and they don't tend to look kindly on you taking a stroll right after you walk in the door. The only time to take a mini-walk would be right after lunch, if I'm lucky, but that's too soon after eating to affect it.
I understand it's important to take care of myself, but people in the real world have jobs that require you to be in certain places at certain times.
The constant testing is supposed to show us what we should and shouldn't eat (so far I've learned that eggs for breakfast are good), which I understand. But then I have to eat nothing but those things for the rest of my life, like the diabetes educator? They keep saying that there's nothing you *can't* eat, but I absolutely do not believe them. If you're going to control it perfectly, which is the goal, then life's going to be pretty damn rigid from now on.
Oh, another nice tidbit we learned on Tuesday was that 80% of diabetics will die from heart disease. Of course, lots of non-diabetics die from heart disease, so we should all be taking care of our hearts, but it's so nice to have yet another thing to be worried about. And she repeated it about 6 times, just to make sure we were all good and stressed about it. And, of course, if we take care of ourselves, then it might not happen for "2, 5, 10, 20 years!" she kept saying. Hmmm...that would make me 49, at best, woo hoo. Of course, I think she just didn't realize that not everyone in the room was middle-aged or elderly, but still.
That's the other thing - stress seriously raises your blood sugar, yet how are you not supposed to be stressed when you have a chronic illness and have to worry about everything you eat? There's no escape. I think I'll just give up now and enjoy my chocolate before I die of a stroke.
|
|
|
| |
| Pharmacare update |
| 06.04.04 (9:49 am) [edit] |
Well, they did send us the affidavit form to fill out to prove [b]both[/b] of our incomes for 2003. Forget that they already have all of my information at least twice over, we both have to fill out this form.
And just because they're the government and have to be confusing, they sent the Pharmacare registration form (which I filled out over a year ago) which asks for your financial information for [b]2002[/b], which is the whole ^#@%! problem, since there is no information for my husband for 2002. Plus another form called application for review, which you fill in if your income has decreased by 10% over the last year, which ours hasn't. Arg!
My nice mom called them up for me yesterday (I just don't have time and honestly, I have zero energy left for dealing with them) and the woman on the phone scoffed at them for sending us the registration form - "Of course you don't need to fill it out - you're already in the system. Why would you have to register if you're already in the system?" so my mom felt at least she was sympathetic. She still tried to convince mom that we had to fill out the review form, but I don't think we will. Apparently she rarely gets them returned with the affadavit. Hmm, maybe because it's a totally different thing?
So, sometime when both my husband and I are available on a weekday morning (ha!) we have to go and get the stupid thing notarized. If we can get to city hall, it's free, otherwise it's $25. If that's the case, I want to write on it "Our income is now $25 less because you made us get this notarized." Bleagh.
|
|
|
| |
| Scary things |
| 06.03.04 (8:24 am) [edit] |
My brother-in-law called us yesterday and told us that the night before (presumably quite late) he'd found a lost little girl by the train tracks. She wasn't more than 2, he said. She was wandering around by herself. He tried knocking on a few doors, but no-one answered, so he took her to a store, where they called the police. But the scary part is, 2 minutes after he found her and took her away from the tracks, a train came. Who knows if she'd be alive if he hadn't found her. It really shook him up. Don't know whether the police were able to find her parents, although presumably they'd have eventually realized she was missing (one would hope) and called to file a missing persons report.
I'm all for blaming the parents for being negligent, but my husband pointed out that at 4, he managed to escape from his babysitter's house and start toddling towards home because he was bored. But still, it seems pretty fishy to me.
*****************
The other scary thing is one I happened to see in the paper while I was out buying lunch the other day. A 17 year-old girl has vanished with her "boyfriend" who is wanted on charges of pimping and something like assaulting a child. But the thing that really caught my eye was the girl's name - I recognized it as one of the kids who enters our library's writing contest every year. I came back to discuss it with the library folks and it turns out she's a page at one of the other branches, which I did know but had forgotten.
She's a straight-A student, bright future, and she's thrown it all away on a criminal who came to her church and was helped by the pastor not once but twice, but he kept screwing up. The child he's charged with abusing was the son of a woman he was seeing. He was engaged when he met our page and dumped the fiancee to be with her. Her mother thinks she's been abducted, but it sounds like she's run away with him. Apparently they were spotted in Edmonton the other day.
It's so sad. I heard she designed her own beautiful grad dress but didn't get to wear it because she ran off. The paper reported that she gave her cell phone to someone at the airport, saying she was going to Edmonton to get married and wouldn't be needing it. Her poor family. I hope they can get her back, but I fear she's lost. At least until she comes to her senses, if this criminal gives her enough time to do that.
There are stories like that in the paper every day, sadly, but this is the first time I've known, even peripherally, the person involved.
|
|
|
| |
| The Clinic |
| 06.02.04 (9:58 am) [edit] |
So, I had my first class at the diabetes education clinic yesterday. It was pretty good. A lot of it was the same as the rundown they'd given us at the 2-hour one in May. I think it'll be more in-depth next week.
Since my husband's now working, my dad came with me. He was really interested because his doctor told him that he has diabetes, but not to worry about it! Now, my dad is 71 but he's also the healthiest person I know. Exercises every day, eats well, thin, happy, lots of interests. But the dr. told him it was genetic (which it almost always is) and not to worry about it. But, as I've read in every book, you can't be a bit diabetic, it's like being a bit pregnant. So, even though his dr. won't advise him, he came with me and they even gave him a glucose monitor, even though he's not officially in the program. So I'm glad he's taking it into his own hands.
I have to test my blood sugar 7 times a day every day this week, but I already forgot this morning. Oops. I haven't been sleeping well and I'm so glad to see my husband when he comes home in the morning that my mind wasn't on it. So I'll have to do it at lunchtime. I'm worried about having to do it at work. It's not a big deal, but it's just kind of.... I dunno. Not really embarrassing, but private. Not that anyone will see me in my office, but it just feels weird.
I also don't like testing it, since I know it'll almost always be high. But that's the point, to learn what foods make it high so you can learn to plan your meals.
The diabetes educator has diabetes herself, so she was telling us about her experiences. But she's had it for so long that she has it under really good control, so it doesn't help all that much. It also sounds as if she eats the same things almost every day of the week. Her bedtime snack is half a turkey sandwich, every night. She makes bunches of them and freezes them. It's the only snack that doesn't make her glucose go up at night. How very dull.
Also, she tried to turn diabetes into a positive. I'm all for looking on the bright side (well, not really, only when I'm in the mood - usually I'm pretty darn dark :) ) but when she was trying to convince us how great it was that we could now get "biofeedback" from our bodies by monitoring our blood sugar and that "no-one else gets that!" I felt like telling her that everyone else was welcome to it.
So, I was right - it's going to be constant vigilance from now on. Ugh.
|
|
|
| |
|
E-mail Me
About Me
Take the 100 Acre Personality Quiz!
|
