I've wondered about this pretty much my whole life. While I don't doubt my testimony and I've felt that it was a marvelously great blessing to be born into a family where the gospel was taught, I've always wondered if I would have joined the Church if I hadn't been born into it.
Recently as I was reading the Book of Mormon one day I was thinking about how I seem to always believe in things that are a little on the edge. Tell me about the Electrical Universe and let me do a little reading about it and I become convinced that the Sun is not a nuclear furnace but a ball of plasma that is part of a great web of electrical energy that drives the cosmos. Tell me about eating low carb to control diabetes and I'll read tens of books about it and start doing it no matter what people tell me about how it's impossible to stay on the diet or is bad for me. Same with colloidal silver (silver water). As I was thinking about this it occurred to me that if I hadn't been born in the Church and someone gave me a Book of Mormon to read and some tracts, what would I do with them? Of course I'd have read them, I read everything someone gives me, and then the Spirit would have had a chance to work on me. Of course this would have depended on someone wanting to give me a Book of Mormon which might not have happened, but I'm sure now that I would have read the book.
It's funny the thoughts that you have answered while you read the Book of Mormon. I'm not sure that I've ever formally prayed about would I have joined the Church, but it's been in the back of my mind for ages and now it's not.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Monday, December 19, 2011
Another Grandbaby and no Jury Duty
Well this blog has a new look, and the last post was obviously about some things that happened a while ago. I'd written that post and then when I got ready to post everything on the Google Blogging site had changed and it took me a while to get a chance to figure out what had happened. Actually the changes were not that great but it took a while to figure things out. Anyway when I went back I found that I had already written that last post and forgotten about it and just got around to posting it.
We've been blessed with another grand baby. This one is Corry Arron Nichols. He was born 12/2/11 exactly one month after his cousin Jonathan Ryan Nield. I think that's pretty cool.
Here's is the account of Corry's birth. He was supposed to be induced the day that he came in to the world naturally. However, that day the hospital was so full that they couldn't induce and Iwalani was very upset, but later that day she went into labor naturally and I was glad because that meant that I was able to go to the hospital and be there when Corry was born. Brian was there with Chantel and he asked me something and I said that I wasn't that experienced with babies being born, and he said that I'd been there when my kids were born and I said that the last time that happened was 20 years ago when Chantel was born.
Anyway it was a super cool I thought. There was one funny thing that happened. Right after he was born I was talking to the other Grandfather and some how we decided that his name was supposed to be Corry Ryan. I thought it was a little weird that he had the same middle name as his cousin. It didn't occur to me I was full of smelly stuff and I sent out a text message to my family with the wrong name. I didn't realize what I'd done until the next morning when Kiki called and asked if kidding about the name, or if I'm just really dumb. I had to admit that I'm just dumb, and then tell all my sisters and brother that I'd screwed up.
Here's a health report, that deals with silver water somewhat. So far this winter I haven't caught my annual bout with bronchitis/pneumonia and that's great. That's also meant that I've been exercising regularly since after the surgery, and I was riding my stationary bike up until just a week before the surgery but I had to stop the body weight exercises sometime before that. I'm thinking that this is good and I was thinking that my Phase 1 physical (which is the physical I get every year with my job that proves how reliable of a person I am). So I'm having my EKG and then the nurse calls in a "Truck on 115653." I'm thinking 115653! That's my Z number, what the heck is a truck? Are they calling an ambulance on me? Then the nurse tells me that my EKG is abnormal and I can't leave until a doctor (or PA) looks at my EKG. Then the nurse tells me that it's probably not a problem because my heart beat was low and that sometimes causes a low voltage which is what the EKG said. So this is the second abnormal EKG I've had in 4 months. No one told me anything about why I had an abnormal EKG last time so hopefully it was the same thing and there's nothing wrong with my ticker.
I'm finishing this up this Monday morning. It's snowing pretty hard here and the Lab closed. It's pretty funny what happened. I drove to the train station this morning and before I left I checked to see if the Lab was on a delay or closed and nothing so I drove to the train station. Right before I got out of the truck I checked again and they had put the Lab on a delay. I came home and went to back to bed. I got up and it was really snowing and I thought the roads would really be sucky to drive on so I called the Lab and they were still on a delay. So I drove to the train station again and right before I got out I called again and the Lab had been closed for the day. So I drove home again. Then Goose called me and I told her the story and she said; "Wouldn't it be ironic if I had both these days off?" That's what I was thinking as well, but the thing about this type of a day off is that if you had already scheduled the day off you can't change it to "Report Pay" (which is how we report the day on our pay report) so I had to have been planning to go to work to get the day off. Unfortunately with my hernia operation and Aaron's funeral and everything else I've barely go enough vacation time to cover going to Kristen's wedding and the time between Christmas and New Years when the lab closes. Anyway I thought it was pretty serendipitous that each time I got out of the car the message for the day had changed.
We've been blessed with another grand baby. This one is Corry Arron Nichols. He was born 12/2/11 exactly one month after his cousin Jonathan Ryan Nield. I think that's pretty cool.
Here's is the account of Corry's birth. He was supposed to be induced the day that he came in to the world naturally. However, that day the hospital was so full that they couldn't induce and Iwalani was very upset, but later that day she went into labor naturally and I was glad because that meant that I was able to go to the hospital and be there when Corry was born. Brian was there with Chantel and he asked me something and I said that I wasn't that experienced with babies being born, and he said that I'd been there when my kids were born and I said that the last time that happened was 20 years ago when Chantel was born.
Anyway it was a super cool I thought. There was one funny thing that happened. Right after he was born I was talking to the other Grandfather and some how we decided that his name was supposed to be Corry Ryan. I thought it was a little weird that he had the same middle name as his cousin. It didn't occur to me I was full of smelly stuff and I sent out a text message to my family with the wrong name. I didn't realize what I'd done until the next morning when Kiki called and asked if kidding about the name, or if I'm just really dumb. I had to admit that I'm just dumb, and then tell all my sisters and brother that I'd screwed up.
Here's a health report, that deals with silver water somewhat. So far this winter I haven't caught my annual bout with bronchitis/pneumonia and that's great. That's also meant that I've been exercising regularly since after the surgery, and I was riding my stationary bike up until just a week before the surgery but I had to stop the body weight exercises sometime before that. I'm thinking that this is good and I was thinking that my Phase 1 physical (which is the physical I get every year with my job that proves how reliable of a person I am). So I'm having my EKG and then the nurse calls in a "Truck on 115653." I'm thinking 115653! That's my Z number, what the heck is a truck? Are they calling an ambulance on me? Then the nurse tells me that my EKG is abnormal and I can't leave until a doctor (or PA) looks at my EKG. Then the nurse tells me that it's probably not a problem because my heart beat was low and that sometimes causes a low voltage which is what the EKG said. So this is the second abnormal EKG I've had in 4 months. No one told me anything about why I had an abnormal EKG last time so hopefully it was the same thing and there's nothing wrong with my ticker.
I'm finishing this up this Monday morning. It's snowing pretty hard here and the Lab closed. It's pretty funny what happened. I drove to the train station this morning and before I left I checked to see if the Lab was on a delay or closed and nothing so I drove to the train station. Right before I got out of the truck I checked again and they had put the Lab on a delay. I came home and went to back to bed. I got up and it was really snowing and I thought the roads would really be sucky to drive on so I called the Lab and they were still on a delay. So I drove to the train station again and right before I got out I called again and the Lab had been closed for the day. So I drove home again. Then Goose called me and I told her the story and she said; "Wouldn't it be ironic if I had both these days off?" That's what I was thinking as well, but the thing about this type of a day off is that if you had already scheduled the day off you can't change it to "Report Pay" (which is how we report the day on our pay report) so I had to have been planning to go to work to get the day off. Unfortunately with my hernia operation and Aaron's funeral and everything else I've barely go enough vacation time to cover going to Kristen's wedding and the time between Christmas and New Years when the lab closes. Anyway I thought it was pretty serendipitous that each time I got out of the car the message for the day had changed.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Jury Duty and a Grandbaby
A few months ago I got a letter in the mail that said that I was called to federal jury duty. Well after I got that letter I filled out everything online, then I got a hernia. Then I got a summons about two weeks before my hernia surgery, and on the day I was supposed to get a colonoscopy. So I freaked out and left them a message that I needed to have these medical procedures taken care of and when I called back they said that I didn't need to show up. That was nice of them.
However, I got another summons on 10/31. That's right Halloween and the last day of my jury duty, but this time I got picked for jury duty, federal jury duty. Actually it was not that bad of an experience and it was pretty enlightening but the situation at work was pretty tense so I was hoping that I wouldn't have to serve. But I did get picked.
First of all it was a civil case not a criminal case so there were only 8 jurors. It was a skiing accident where someone uphill hit someone who had stopped downhill and broke his hip so that he had to have a hip replacement. The first thing we wondered about was why it was a federal case at all. I asked and it was because the plaintiff and the defendant were in different states that it was a federal case. So when someone says don't make a federal case of it they're being realistic you really can make a federal case of something and this is what happened.
We decided that it was an accident and that no one had been negligent. At the end of the trial the judge invited us up to her chambers and we all went up, the jurors that is. This was probably the most enlightening part of the whole experience.
Actually it worked pretty much the way that I thought that it would with the information that I picked up from TV and John Grisham novels. A jury pool is called, there was 28 of us, and they put everyone in random order. I was 12th which is not a very good position to be in. The lawyers ask us questions which is a process called "voir dire" which is a French term meaning "to tell the truth" at least that's what they told us. After they ask us questions the judge and lawyers go in and decide which jurors they will use. They lawyers get to challenge a certain number of jurors for whatever reason they want, and the judge said that the lawyers always challenge lawyers in the jury pool because no one wants a lawyer on the jury. After that they dismiss jurors for cause. After that they take jurors numerically. However, when they called us they again called us randomly so I didn't know it until the judge told us.
We don't really know how they picked us. There was one juror who said that he owned his own business and that if he wasn't there he didn't earn an income. However, during the trial we learned that he had family that was visiting from Germany. When the judge learned about that she said that she would have dismissed him for that but that she couldn't dismiss him for financial reasons. I admitted that I'd tried snowboarding once and hurt myself in the first 1/2 hour. I was trying to be honest, but I was kind of hoping that they would thing that I would be biased against snowboarding, but apparently that didn't work. Turns out that 5 of the jurors said something, 3 didn't, and we were a cross section of society; young, old, middle age, and seemed like a cross section of economic means as well.
I did find one thing interesting about being a juror. In the movies everyone stands for the judge. We stood for the judge at the beginning, but after we were called as jurors everyone stood for us when we entered or exited the court room. I thought it was pretty cool. On a personal level I didn't have to commute to Los Alamos so that's always a plus, and I got to go see Halloween and Trisha's house. Trish said that they didn't even put that much stuff out for this Halloween.
Thennnnnn. Kiki brought little Jonathan Ryan Nield into the world Wednesday. Yeah.
However, I got another summons on 10/31. That's right Halloween and the last day of my jury duty, but this time I got picked for jury duty, federal jury duty. Actually it was not that bad of an experience and it was pretty enlightening but the situation at work was pretty tense so I was hoping that I wouldn't have to serve. But I did get picked.
First of all it was a civil case not a criminal case so there were only 8 jurors. It was a skiing accident where someone uphill hit someone who had stopped downhill and broke his hip so that he had to have a hip replacement. The first thing we wondered about was why it was a federal case at all. I asked and it was because the plaintiff and the defendant were in different states that it was a federal case. So when someone says don't make a federal case of it they're being realistic you really can make a federal case of something and this is what happened.
We decided that it was an accident and that no one had been negligent. At the end of the trial the judge invited us up to her chambers and we all went up, the jurors that is. This was probably the most enlightening part of the whole experience.
Actually it worked pretty much the way that I thought that it would with the information that I picked up from TV and John Grisham novels. A jury pool is called, there was 28 of us, and they put everyone in random order. I was 12th which is not a very good position to be in. The lawyers ask us questions which is a process called "voir dire" which is a French term meaning "to tell the truth" at least that's what they told us. After they ask us questions the judge and lawyers go in and decide which jurors they will use. They lawyers get to challenge a certain number of jurors for whatever reason they want, and the judge said that the lawyers always challenge lawyers in the jury pool because no one wants a lawyer on the jury. After that they dismiss jurors for cause. After that they take jurors numerically. However, when they called us they again called us randomly so I didn't know it until the judge told us.
We don't really know how they picked us. There was one juror who said that he owned his own business and that if he wasn't there he didn't earn an income. However, during the trial we learned that he had family that was visiting from Germany. When the judge learned about that she said that she would have dismissed him for that but that she couldn't dismiss him for financial reasons. I admitted that I'd tried snowboarding once and hurt myself in the first 1/2 hour. I was trying to be honest, but I was kind of hoping that they would thing that I would be biased against snowboarding, but apparently that didn't work. Turns out that 5 of the jurors said something, 3 didn't, and we were a cross section of society; young, old, middle age, and seemed like a cross section of economic means as well.
I did find one thing interesting about being a juror. In the movies everyone stands for the judge. We stood for the judge at the beginning, but after we were called as jurors everyone stood for us when we entered or exited the court room. I thought it was pretty cool. On a personal level I didn't have to commute to Los Alamos so that's always a plus, and I got to go see Halloween and Trisha's house. Trish said that they didn't even put that much stuff out for this Halloween.
Thennnnnn. Kiki brought little Jonathan Ryan Nield into the world Wednesday. Yeah.
Friday, October 28, 2011
It's Been a While
It's been a while since I've written and things have been crazy.
Well I guess the first thing to say is that Chantel, my baby, is engaged to Brian Nowlen. He's a nice guy and Goose seems ecstatic when she's around him.
I've been doing some reading that I'm really excited about and I hope that I can get caught up on on my other blog.
However, things have been going crazy around here, and at work at the same time. Karen left to help Kiki because she's have trouble with her pregnancy. A couple of weeks after she leaves Nini starts having trouble with her pregnancy. She starts having contractions and is admitted to the hospital. 'Remy texts everyone that she's in the hospital while we're in Church. I decided to go home after Sacrament Meting because I wasn't going to be able to concentrate. So I pick up Chantel and Brian and we're on our way to the hospital while Chantel is talking to Karen when Karen finally realizes that Nini is in the hospital, and Chantel stops talking to Karen and turns around and asks if anyone told Mom about Nini. I thought it was pretty funny.
So now we have two problem pregnancies going on. This has been a bad pregnancy year for the Evans' family. Hopefully for Christmas this year we will be celebrating with two new little additions to our family.
My job has suddenly turned crazy. Actually, it's not all that bad and it's probably a blessing. Two of our DBs became corrupted somehow. I kind of think that we were set up, but the problems that we've had have forced us to really learn how our systems are running, and how we can keep them running. I keep thinking that if we get through this patch we'll be able to get the system running smoothly and then we'll have a chance to catch our breath and things will calm down.
Well I guess the first thing to say is that Chantel, my baby, is engaged to Brian Nowlen. He's a nice guy and Goose seems ecstatic when she's around him.
I've been doing some reading that I'm really excited about and I hope that I can get caught up on on my other blog.
However, things have been going crazy around here, and at work at the same time. Karen left to help Kiki because she's have trouble with her pregnancy. A couple of weeks after she leaves Nini starts having trouble with her pregnancy. She starts having contractions and is admitted to the hospital. 'Remy texts everyone that she's in the hospital while we're in Church. I decided to go home after Sacrament Meting because I wasn't going to be able to concentrate. So I pick up Chantel and Brian and we're on our way to the hospital while Chantel is talking to Karen when Karen finally realizes that Nini is in the hospital, and Chantel stops talking to Karen and turns around and asks if anyone told Mom about Nini. I thought it was pretty funny.
So now we have two problem pregnancies going on. This has been a bad pregnancy year for the Evans' family. Hopefully for Christmas this year we will be celebrating with two new little additions to our family.
My job has suddenly turned crazy. Actually, it's not all that bad and it's probably a blessing. Two of our DBs became corrupted somehow. I kind of think that we were set up, but the problems that we've had have forced us to really learn how our systems are running, and how we can keep them running. I keep thinking that if we get through this patch we'll be able to get the system running smoothly and then we'll have a chance to catch our breath and things will calm down.
Monday, September 19, 2011
The Surgery was Successful
Well the surgery was successful I'm told. The surgeon told Karen that the hernia was bigger than expected and there were two kinds of hernia, or something like that. I have a follow up appointment with the surgeon next Thursday.
Work has been crazy coming up to this point. I guess things could be crazier but it would be hard to imagine. It all started in April when we had a V&V which means verification and validation. What that meant is that a auditor came to look at our computers at work that handle letting people into buildings. The computer that they looked at ended up being the worst computer that they could have picked. Our team had written a security plan (SP) that assumed that we were running an application on the network that the Laboratory provided us. However, they never looked at our application but only looked at how we did network stuff. Suddenly we were running a network. So that meant that we had our jobs all redefined for us. Then we had to get our computer system certified and our team leader had me help with that. Then suddenly we learn that our primary system administrator, the guy that basically built everything, is taking a new position. The first week he's off is the week that I'm off for surgery. So why am I saying all this? Because my stress level seems to have been heightened, and I keep getting the canker sores but because I have the silver water they haven't become a great set of sores in my mouth. I think I've had about seven canker sores start and then not get bad because of the silver water. Well I think it's the silver water. So I'm trying to get everyone using it. However, the test, for me, will be if I can get through the winter without getting bronchitis or pneumonia.
Work has been crazy coming up to this point. I guess things could be crazier but it would be hard to imagine. It all started in April when we had a V&V which means verification and validation. What that meant is that a auditor came to look at our computers at work that handle letting people into buildings. The computer that they looked at ended up being the worst computer that they could have picked. Our team had written a security plan (SP) that assumed that we were running an application on the network that the Laboratory provided us. However, they never looked at our application but only looked at how we did network stuff. Suddenly we were running a network. So that meant that we had our jobs all redefined for us. Then we had to get our computer system certified and our team leader had me help with that. Then suddenly we learn that our primary system administrator, the guy that basically built everything, is taking a new position. The first week he's off is the week that I'm off for surgery. So why am I saying all this? Because my stress level seems to have been heightened, and I keep getting the canker sores but because I have the silver water they haven't become a great set of sores in my mouth. I think I've had about seven canker sores start and then not get bad because of the silver water. Well I think it's the silver water. So I'm trying to get everyone using it. However, the test, for me, will be if I can get through the winter without getting bronchitis or pneumonia.
Friday, August 26, 2011
We Said Goodbye to Aaron
Monday morning Karen called me at work and told me that her Dad had died. It wasn't expected or unexpected, but Karen was with him when he died, and that was unexpected.
Sunday I'd brought the priests over to give Aaron the sacrament and that was very special. Matt Vigil was one of the priests and he was at the funeral. I mentioned it to him and he said that he'd already thought about it and was glad he'd been able to administer the sacrament for him the last time.
Aaron was a very special father and father-in-law. At lunch I shared with Shawn, Barry and the twins how shortly after Karen and I were married Aaron told me about how people had asked him if he was worried about me marrying his daughter, and he told me that he'd told them that people could change. I know that he'd had to convince Norma that things would work out with me marrying her daughter. I always thought that he was in my corner in the Bond Family.
The thing about LDS Funerals is they always seem to be a joyous/sad event. Joyous because they are like a family reunion, sad because we are not going to get to meet or talk to Aaron again in this life. However, Kiki and Chio came from Texas. Teandra flew in from Indiana. Chantel took some time off from school, and her "friend" Brian came out. Iwalani is always here so all my girls are together again and I decided to take off work so I get to spend time with them so that's joyous for me. Shawn's family all came, without wives, which is sad because I like their spouses, and Kelsey and Josh brought their kids. Greg and Donna brought their kids, and Rachel brought little Carson "CB" Ethington. Carson is the cutest kid. He's small for his age so you don't think he can walk then suddenly he pops up and takes off walking like a pro. "CB" stands for Charlie Brown because he has this round little tow head, just like Kiora used to have, except he has more hair that Kiora had. Shaun and Rachel came down and Darby and Eddie brought their kids. So it's like a family reunion and a lot of fun but it's a sad occasion as well.
Writing this gives me some insights, as the last few funerals have given me insights. First, I used to suppose that those on the other side were not lonely, but why wouldn't they be? I suppose Aaron will miss Karen as much as Karen misses him. Second, we're having a good time with family and reminiscing and I suppose Aaron's having a "family reunion" on the other side as well where Aaron will be having a good time as well meeting people he hasn't seen in a very, very long time, and he could be telling Jaden about his Mom and how special she is.
I believe the phrase is "on Earth as it is in Heaven."
The funeral was a good one. Greg did a great job on the eulogy. He got the tone just right especially about Linda. He said that Aaron meeting and marrying Linda was a miracle, and that she probably saved his life. I'll always be grateful to Linda for what she did for Aaron, and I'm pretty sure that Karen feels similarly. I remember the first time Aaron saw Linda. He was introducing me as a speaker at a single adult activity, and he forgot my name. He later said that as soon as he saw Linda he forgot everything else, including my name. Apparently he'd had a dream of a woman and Linda was that dream.
Now we enter a new phase in our family and I'm not sure how it's going to work. I guess we've always been a blended family, but now I'm beginning to realize it. Here's a perfect example of what I mean. Tonight I was talking to Chantel, and said that she was now down to one grandparent, but she didn't say anything. I asked her how many grandparents that she thought she had and she said two right away. I then asked Kiora how many she had and she said one right away, meaning that she doesn't really think that Linda is her grandmother but Chantel does.
We're going to treat Linda as a part of the family. We always had to be sure that we told Linda what was going on with our family if we wanted Aaron and her to show up. If we invited Aaron he never came. We never figured that one out. Anyway we're going to tell Linda (Nan) that she's invited to come over to our family dinners every 2nd and 4th Sunday, just like she and Aaron have always been invited. Chantel is an adult and she'll invite her grandmother to whatever is going on in her life. Karen see's Linda more as a friend than a mother, someone she's grateful for what she did for her father.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
A Week of Doctors
This week seems to been some kind of a peak and I think it's because of the doctor visits.
First I talked to Dr. Lowe who is a surgeon that was recommended by Dr. Anderson. I brought Karen with me, which when I do, seems to result in the doctors getting a better idea about what is going on with my health. The doctor obviously wanted to check out the hernia. He pokes his finger up around the hernia and then he touches it and says "Does that hurt?" Why do they do that? I'm sure they must know that it hurts, perhaps they just want to see how much it hurts.
During the check up the doctor finds out that I've been constipated, and suggests that I should have a colonoscopy. Then he found out that our family participated in the colon cancer study, and he felt even more that I should have the appointment, before the hernia surgery. Dr. Lowe got me an appointment with colonoscopy doctor and I got the appointment on Friday.
Into the colonoscopy doctor I go. I told him about the rectal cancer study, and it seemed like he knew about the study, but didn't sound like it led to much. He found about the hCG diet and didn't seem very impressed about it, but he didn't know anything about the diet, but he felt that he could advise me against doing the diet. I guess that OK on a certain level. Most diets are probably not too good for you, but that doesn't mean that every diet is bad for you. I guess my default position would be that I would probably advise against most fad diets. In fact the first time I heard of the hCG diet it sounded crazy to me too. Take a hormone that's found in pregnant women's pee? Your kidding right!
The long and short of it is that I found out that I definitely do have a hernia, and now have a date for getting it fixed. I also have a date for the colonoscopy. Knowing definitely about the hernia is a relief. However, the doctor said that the hernia is probably not what is making me feel so run down, and that was part of the reason that he wanted me to have the colonoscopy.
This week Karen sister Shawn and Barry came to visit. I'd told Barry that I didn't think that I'd be up to playing golf so we didn't do that. Instead Barry spent most of his vacation being a plumber by helping install a dishwasher, a disposal, a bathtub, and finishing up the tiling of a shower. I felt kind of bad, but I hadn't know that they needed the help, and with my visiting and helping my Mother I don't have very much time. There that's my excuse and I'm standing by it.
Finally at the end of the second week I lost about 1.3 pounds, which really sucks except that according to the data I lost around 4 pounds of fat and put on around 2 pounds of muscle. Now I don't know how much I trust that. It would seem to be impossible to be putting muscle on but that is what I would like to see, a loss of fat and going up in LBM. Karen noticed that my stomach just hangs wierdly because it must be mostly skin right now. She called it a dewlap, and that's pretty much what it looked like. It was pretty silly looking. This is going to be the last week, and I'm glad. I won't have to go back on the diet again. I'm going to keep the weight off, and hopefully lose some more weight. Hopefully the Primal Diet will do the trick. Perhaps I should actually read about what the Primal Diet is since I say that I'm following it now. That at least sounds a little better.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
I'm In Trouble and I Don't Know Why
OK the title is a lie, I do kinda know why, but it's not fair. The world's not fair.
Karen and I went on the hCG Dieting Phase where we eat ~500 cals a day. However, I'd been doing the Primal Diet before this phase and realized I could do the Primal diet on the hCG Diet. What I do is eat my fruit during the day then eat my vegetables and protein at night a couple of hours apart. It's a very cut down Primal Diet but still the Primal Diet.
Anyway it looks like I've lost about 9 pounds the first week.
I'm starting to try and look at the connection between the water and BF%. There is obviously a connection between the two because when my BF is low the water percentage is high. One day this week lost 6 pounds in one day. When I checked the water it looks like I actually lost 4 pounds of water that day as well. That makes sense so I'm going to look at it a little closer.
I'm pretty sure that I have a hernia. My groin area was really hurting on Tuesday so I went into an urgent care facility to get a second opinion. The doctor didn't impress me very much but when I described my symptoms he said that it sounded like I had a hernia and gave me a referral to one of their doctors, but they gave me an appointment sometime in September, then I called my doctor and he referred me to a surgeon that I was able to get into next week. After sitting around on Tuesday I was feeling pretty good for the rest of the week, then I went over to Linda Bond's house with the Priest Quorum to help tear out her bathroom, and now I'm not feeling so good.
So that's about all that's happening, we're on the second phase of the diet and I think I've got a hernia.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
"Trails to Testimony" by Brad Harris
I've been tracking my weight lass losing the scale that Chantel got me for Christmas. It's a nice scale and it measures weight and body fat percentage (BF), and water percentage as well. I've heard that these scales are not especially accurate in the BF measuring area, but they are easy. Well I've noticed that the BF and H2O% are closely connected. The higher the H2O% the lower the BF. I don't know why this is but every time I have a good BF reading it means that the H2O% will be high as well. The BF is going down consistently but it jumps around quite a bit.
When I used to follow the Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle book the author of that book said that the best way to determine fat content, besides an underwater weighing, which is obviously a very difficult thing to do, is to do a skin fold test. Certainly a skin fold test would not be a subject to jumping around as much as the scale.
So last night I found the old spread sheet that I was using to track my BF last year. (It was pretty easy because it was on Google docs. I really like Google docs.) The skin fold test had gone from 15mm to 9mm which is pretty good I think. Actually I had a bout 2 months worth of measurement and they'd actually gone from 20mm to 15mm. Also, the measurement around my gut had gone from 45" to 42". I would have like to see that measure be better but what the heck.
Here's my quandary. According to the scale I'm at 26% BF, and the skin caliper it is 15.32%. That's quite a big difference. I don't have any idea how to decide which one is right. It's a difference of about 25 lbs. I guess I'll just go through the next phase of the diet and then think about a way that I might be able to figure out a little better which one is the right one, although I think that I lean towards the caliper test, I'm still going to have to think about it.
When I used to follow the Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle book the author of that book said that the best way to determine fat content, besides an underwater weighing, which is obviously a very difficult thing to do, is to do a skin fold test. Certainly a skin fold test would not be a subject to jumping around as much as the scale.
So last night I found the old spread sheet that I was using to track my BF last year. (It was pretty easy because it was on Google docs. I really like Google docs.) The skin fold test had gone from 15mm to 9mm which is pretty good I think. Actually I had a bout 2 months worth of measurement and they'd actually gone from 20mm to 15mm. Also, the measurement around my gut had gone from 45" to 42". I would have like to see that measure be better but what the heck.
Here's my quandary. According to the scale I'm at 26% BF, and the skin caliper it is 15.32%. That's quite a big difference. I don't have any idea how to decide which one is right. It's a difference of about 25 lbs. I guess I'll just go through the next phase of the diet and then think about a way that I might be able to figure out a little better which one is the right one, although I think that I lean towards the caliper test, I'm still going to have to think about it.
I've been tracking my weight lass losing the scale that Chantel got me for Christmas. It's a nice scale and it measures weight and body fat percentage (BF), and water percentage as well. I've heard that these scales are not especially accurate in the BF measuring area, but they are easy. Well I've noticed that the BF and H2O% are closely connected. The higher the H2O% the lower the BF. I don't know why this is but every time I have a good BF reading it means that the H2O% will be high as well. The BF is going down consistently but it jumps around quite a bit.
When I used to follow the Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle book the author of that book said that the best way to determine fat content, besides an underwater weighing, which is obviously a very difficult thing to do, is to do a skin fold test. Certainly a skin fold test would not be a subject to jumping around as much as the scale.
So last night I found the old spread sheet that I was using to track my BF last year. (It was pretty easy because it was on Google docs. I really like Google docs.) The skin fold test had gone from 15mm to 9mm which is pretty good I think. Actually I had a bout 2 months worth of measurement and they'd actually gone from 20mm to 15mm. Also, the measurement around my gut had gone from 45" to 42". I would have like to see that measure be better but what the heck.
Here's my quandary. According to the scale I'm at 26% BF, and the skin caliper it is 15.32%. That's quite a big difference. I don't have any idea how to decide which one is right. It's a difference of about 25 lbs. I guess I'll just go through the next phase of the diet and then think about a way that I might be able to figure out a little better which one is the right one, although I think that I lean towards the caliper test, I'm still going to have to think about it.
When I used to follow the Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle book the author of that book said that the best way to determine fat content, besides an underwater weighing, which is obviously a very difficult thing to do, is to do a skin fold test. Certainly a skin fold test would not be a subject to jumping around as much as the scale.
So last night I found the old spread sheet that I was using to track my BF last year. (It was pretty easy because it was on Google docs. I really like Google docs.) The skin fold test had gone from 15mm to 9mm which is pretty good I think. Actually I had a bout 2 months worth of measurement and they'd actually gone from 20mm to 15mm. Also, the measurement around my gut had gone from 45" to 42". I would have like to see that measure be better but what the heck.
Here's my quandary. According to the scale I'm at 26% BF, and the skin caliper it is 15.32%. That's quite a big difference. I don't have any idea how to decide which one is right. It's a difference of about 25 lbs. I guess I'll just go through the next phase of the diet and then think about a way that I might be able to figure out a little better which one is the right one, although I think that I lean towards the caliper test, I'm still going to have to think about it.
New Phases
Nothing much has happened for the last week. Today I went over to see my mother and helped Trisha clean the rocks around her path through the grass. Trish probably didn't need the help, but as she said it's fun to work with other people. Oh yeah I call Trisha "T" now. Here's the story. When I got my new iPhone I slowly started entering the texting world. Turns out that some people seem to communicate better through texting than any other method.
My daughters Teda, Chantel and Nini started the family on texting. I'm not sure how it started with Teda and Nini, but I'm pretty sure husbands were involved. Or boyfriends that became husbands were involved. Or (especially in Chantel's case) Church callings were involved. Anyway our Verizion plan did not include texting. We had a "Friends and Family" plan that allows us to all call each other and Teda and Chantel added texting. When I got my iPhone I added texting one day and Karen pointed out that that was stupid because I had an unlimited data plan so I could get a free texting app and text for free instead of paying for it. Anyway through various machinations it turns out that we now all have unlimited texting on our Verizion plan so we're doing much more texting.
OK that was pretty random but what I'm getting at is that I finally started texting my sister Trish who never answers her phone, but I was appalled to see that the first text that I sent her started with "Trash"!!! What!? How did I do that? The 'a' and 'i' keys are not very close together. Then I realized that the iPhone was helpfully changing "Trish" to "Trash". Now that's not a nice thing to call your sister at all, and Trish seems to accept that the phone is doing it to me, however the very first time it happened was on Facebook so the entire world got to see that. How embarrassing. Well I was texting her today and when I was reading back through the texts it had happened again. So I decided that's it I'm calling her T from now on, and then I realized that Chantel calls Teda T as well so it must be a cool this to do.
That is a new phase for me, but the real new phase is that Karen and I are going to start another dieting phase of the hGC diet today as well. The fun thing is that when you start the diet you do two days of what is called "gorge" days where you're supposed to eat a bunch of fatty foods and stuff to get your body ready for the diet, to make sure that you have fat reserves and what not. Cool huh? And fun. That's what we've been doing today. I decided that I would eat some Atkins junk food so that it would really screw up my system. It did and it gave me horrendous gas. I think that I've been put on the list of international criminal list for crimes against humanity for using chemical weapons. You know very powerful farts. Karen's going to make me go sleep with the dogs, only we don't got any dogs, so maybe I'll have to go sleep at Grandma and T's house because they do have dogs. Actually Karen and I started a pre-gorge day yesterday since the way things are turning out we're having one of our gorge days fall on a fast Sunday, and that just doesn't make much sense at all. We're thinking that the half a day of gorging on Friday then the gorging after fasting on Sunday will count as one day of decent gorging. I don't think it really matters all that much.
My daughters Teda, Chantel and Nini started the family on texting. I'm not sure how it started with Teda and Nini, but I'm pretty sure husbands were involved. Or boyfriends that became husbands were involved. Or (especially in Chantel's case) Church callings were involved. Anyway our Verizion plan did not include texting. We had a "Friends and Family" plan that allows us to all call each other and Teda and Chantel added texting. When I got my iPhone I added texting one day and Karen pointed out that that was stupid because I had an unlimited data plan so I could get a free texting app and text for free instead of paying for it. Anyway through various machinations it turns out that we now all have unlimited texting on our Verizion plan so we're doing much more texting.
OK that was pretty random but what I'm getting at is that I finally started texting my sister Trish who never answers her phone, but I was appalled to see that the first text that I sent her started with "Trash"!!! What!? How did I do that? The 'a' and 'i' keys are not very close together. Then I realized that the iPhone was helpfully changing "Trish" to "Trash". Now that's not a nice thing to call your sister at all, and Trish seems to accept that the phone is doing it to me, however the very first time it happened was on Facebook so the entire world got to see that. How embarrassing. Well I was texting her today and when I was reading back through the texts it had happened again. So I decided that's it I'm calling her T from now on, and then I realized that Chantel calls Teda T as well so it must be a cool this to do.
That is a new phase for me, but the real new phase is that Karen and I are going to start another dieting phase of the hGC diet today as well. The fun thing is that when you start the diet you do two days of what is called "gorge" days where you're supposed to eat a bunch of fatty foods and stuff to get your body ready for the diet, to make sure that you have fat reserves and what not. Cool huh? And fun. That's what we've been doing today. I decided that I would eat some Atkins junk food so that it would really screw up my system. It did and it gave me horrendous gas. I think that I've been put on the list of international criminal list for crimes against humanity for using chemical weapons. You know very powerful farts. Karen's going to make me go sleep with the dogs, only we don't got any dogs, so maybe I'll have to go sleep at Grandma and T's house because they do have dogs. Actually Karen and I started a pre-gorge day yesterday since the way things are turning out we're having one of our gorge days fall on a fast Sunday, and that just doesn't make much sense at all. We're thinking that the half a day of gorging on Friday then the gorging after fasting on Sunday will count as one day of decent gorging. I don't think it really matters all that much.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
The Best Laid Plans...
The last time I went to the doctor was right before our quick visit to the Taylors, our cousins in Arizona. I was thinking that that would be the last time that I'd visit in a long time. My BG was under control and I was hoping that I was going to be able to keep from getting sick with the bronchitis now that I had the silver water and the allergy stuff however...
When we were going to Arizona I felt something that felt like a fish flopping in the right side of my abdomen area. That's what it felt like, it was probably a muscle or something, and I felt it a few other times on that trip. It didn't bother me while I was exercising in the week following so I wasn't that worried about it, then last Tuesday for the whole day it felt like I'd been kicked in the groin. Particularly the right testicle. I thought I had a hernia and made an appointment to see the doctor. He said that I had an infection in that area that was causing the problem and gave me an antibiotic to take. It was a wide spectrum antibiotic that makes you sensitive to the sun so I've been wearing long sleeve shirts and a hat (when I remember) since then. I thought it would be something that I would get over quickly, but the doctor said to come back if I wasn't feeling better in 3-7 days. I kept exercising, and on Saturday I went for the first long bike ride I'd done this summer.
I've been planning on taking a long "real" bike ride every week, as opposed to riding my exercise bike in the mornings. However, things have turned out so that I've only gone on one bike ride with Mark when Teandra and Mark were visiting. I rode just under 25 miles and I was pretty excited about it because my average velocity was 11.9 mph which is the highest average I've ever had riding that route. For some reason I thought that it'd be a good idea to stop by Grant Stoddard's house in the morning and surprise him that I'd ridden that far and say "Hey Grant lets go for a ride." I figured I'd knock quietly on the door and then if someone was up they'd hear the knock and if everyone was asleep it wouldn't bother them. Well I knocked and then the dog started barking. Great idea. No one answered and I kind of slunk away with my tail between my legs. Then the next day, Sunday, I asked Grant if he'd been home on Saturday and he asked me if I'd been the one that knocked on their door early in the morning. Man do I have good ideas.
Then I gave Tanner Boren a hard time about him not going on the hiking trip that we're planning on for next week. I called him a sissy and said that was the only reason that he wouldn't be going. Then I started noticing that I wasn't really feeling any better in the infected area. On Monday I was thinking about calling the doctor because it didn't feel like anything was getting better, but I didn't. Then yesterday it felt like I hit a wall. I just started feeling completely fatigued. I called the doctor and got an appointment for today. He said things were about the same and gave me another antibiotic. The thing that has me concerned is that I'm totally fatigued today, and I don't think that's a good thing when you're messing with an infection, that and it's still pretty painful. I woke up this morning weighed myself, then took my medicine and went back to bed, which is something that I rarely do.
I've told the bishop that I don't think that it's a good idea for me to go on the hike next week with painfully swollen man parts that could get worse. Now I'm going to have to put up with being called a sissy by Tanner when I see him next since the only excuse for not going on the hike is being a sissy.
I've also got two painful canker sores. I guess that silver water can not over come stupidity. I had these two canker sores that I kept biting over and over. Both of them were bleeding, and on one of them I could feel a loose piece of flesh. That's got to be a sign of stupidity that you bite yourself until you bleed. Anyway they became pretty painful, but every time they really start hurting I rinse with silver water which seems to take away the pain and help with the swelling. At least that's what it seems like to me. I've had this happen before and it seems like it was much more painful then, although I may have selective memory.
I was also wondering why I would get an infection when I was taking the silver water. The guy who sells the generator one time said that silver water wasn't like a magical elixir that would make you live forever and that there were some things that it can't deal with. When I thought that I remembered that I'd had something like this happen on my mission that had me laid up for a couple of days. However, that was much more painful than this is, but the symptoms seem similar, so maybe the silver water is working. The thing on my mission seemed to go away quicker though. Of course I was 20 then so that might have something to do with it.
When we were going to Arizona I felt something that felt like a fish flopping in the right side of my abdomen area. That's what it felt like, it was probably a muscle or something, and I felt it a few other times on that trip. It didn't bother me while I was exercising in the week following so I wasn't that worried about it, then last Tuesday for the whole day it felt like I'd been kicked in the groin. Particularly the right testicle. I thought I had a hernia and made an appointment to see the doctor. He said that I had an infection in that area that was causing the problem and gave me an antibiotic to take. It was a wide spectrum antibiotic that makes you sensitive to the sun so I've been wearing long sleeve shirts and a hat (when I remember) since then. I thought it would be something that I would get over quickly, but the doctor said to come back if I wasn't feeling better in 3-7 days. I kept exercising, and on Saturday I went for the first long bike ride I'd done this summer.
I've been planning on taking a long "real" bike ride every week, as opposed to riding my exercise bike in the mornings. However, things have turned out so that I've only gone on one bike ride with Mark when Teandra and Mark were visiting. I rode just under 25 miles and I was pretty excited about it because my average velocity was 11.9 mph which is the highest average I've ever had riding that route. For some reason I thought that it'd be a good idea to stop by Grant Stoddard's house in the morning and surprise him that I'd ridden that far and say "Hey Grant lets go for a ride." I figured I'd knock quietly on the door and then if someone was up they'd hear the knock and if everyone was asleep it wouldn't bother them. Well I knocked and then the dog started barking. Great idea. No one answered and I kind of slunk away with my tail between my legs. Then the next day, Sunday, I asked Grant if he'd been home on Saturday and he asked me if I'd been the one that knocked on their door early in the morning. Man do I have good ideas.
Then I gave Tanner Boren a hard time about him not going on the hiking trip that we're planning on for next week. I called him a sissy and said that was the only reason that he wouldn't be going. Then I started noticing that I wasn't really feeling any better in the infected area. On Monday I was thinking about calling the doctor because it didn't feel like anything was getting better, but I didn't. Then yesterday it felt like I hit a wall. I just started feeling completely fatigued. I called the doctor and got an appointment for today. He said things were about the same and gave me another antibiotic. The thing that has me concerned is that I'm totally fatigued today, and I don't think that's a good thing when you're messing with an infection, that and it's still pretty painful. I woke up this morning weighed myself, then took my medicine and went back to bed, which is something that I rarely do.
I've told the bishop that I don't think that it's a good idea for me to go on the hike next week with painfully swollen man parts that could get worse. Now I'm going to have to put up with being called a sissy by Tanner when I see him next since the only excuse for not going on the hike is being a sissy.
I've also got two painful canker sores. I guess that silver water can not over come stupidity. I had these two canker sores that I kept biting over and over. Both of them were bleeding, and on one of them I could feel a loose piece of flesh. That's got to be a sign of stupidity that you bite yourself until you bleed. Anyway they became pretty painful, but every time they really start hurting I rinse with silver water which seems to take away the pain and help with the swelling. At least that's what it seems like to me. I've had this happen before and it seems like it was much more painful then, although I may have selective memory.
I was also wondering why I would get an infection when I was taking the silver water. The guy who sells the generator one time said that silver water wasn't like a magical elixir that would make you live forever and that there were some things that it can't deal with. When I thought that I remembered that I'd had something like this happen on my mission that had me laid up for a couple of days. However, that was much more painful than this is, but the symptoms seem similar, so maybe the silver water is working. The thing on my mission seemed to go away quicker though. Of course I was 20 then so that might have something to do with it.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Three Weeks Have Flown By
Wow three weeks have just flown by. The last time I wrote on the blog was the day after the Los Conchas fire started. That fire is the biggest in New Mexico history. Last I heard it was something like 140,000 acres, which I actually have no idea how big that is but I'm sure it's pretty big. Sounds big.
I didn't mention this last blog but when I left for work on June 27th I hadn't heard that the lab was closed. I missed the train that morning, which turned out to be a blessing, and as I'm driving towards Santa Fe I see this hugh cloud and I'm hoping that it might rain, but when I get to it I see that it's all smoke, so I look up towards where Los Alamos is and it's dark up there and I think to myself that no one could possibly breath in that so I decide to call the hot line to see if maybe work was canceled. What the heck it's worth a try. The hot line says that the Lab is closed and I was passing an exit on the freeway and slammed on my breaks and took the exit and came home.
Apparently I was the only person in my family who hadn't heard on the news, or some other source that the Lab was closed. So I decided that I would start to clean off the side yard. I say side yard but it is actually the area out the outside of our fence next to the road that the city says that we're responsible for and every year they come and say that we need to weed it. Karen has planted some wild flowers there and they look really nice for a couple of weeks, but pretty scruffy the rest of the year. When we first moved in we tried putting down some crusher fines to keep the weeds down, but we didn't get enough delivered the first time, and perhaps we couldn't afford to cover it all at that time but I didn't finish. Also, the red lava rocks that we'd laid down had a bunch of weeds grow up in it and it looked bad. I'd been thinking of cleaning it up and decided to start while I had this unexpected time off. I started on Monday and thought it would take a day or two to finish. I actually finished with everything that Saturday so it took 6 days instead of a day or two. I think it looks a lot better now. Karen says she misses the wild flowers but I don't.
On July 4th we went to the ward breakfast in the morning with Goosy, then in the afternoon we went to a party with her that someone from her work was giving. Goosy really is growing up when she get invited to "adult" parties from work that we get to go to. (The Goosy growing up part gets way worse in this blog than this.)
The Los Conchas fire was gotten under control and we had to go back to work. On the first day that I went back Karen asked me about my crappy lungs and how I would fare in smokey Los Alamos. A few years ago I was tested for asthma and while I don't have asthma the doctor told me: "You have crappy lungs. It's a good thing you don't live somewhere with pollution like LA." I told Karen I'd be OK, but by 9 that morning I was starting to get very congested lungs and was losing my voice. I looked at the Park and Ride schedule and found out that the last bus had left about 3 minutes before, so I called Karen and asked her to come pick me up, and she very kindly came up and picked me up. I took the rest of that Wednesday off, and Thursday. I also went and bought a hepa filter for my cubicle for when I got back to help keep the air around me cleaner. It seems to have worked. Right now the air up there is pretty clean and I think that I'll start trying to figure out how to bring the filter home.
That Thursday Cathy called and said that she was going to be taking Grandma Evans to Arizona to see Aunt LaVon at their Arizona family reunion. She said that Beth (my cousin) would be there, Lisa would come as well from Mayer and did we want to go with her? Cathy loves to plan things out in advance. It was a lot of fun to be go and see everyone and get to spend time with my sisters, and to see my cousins. We hadn't seen everyone since the last time we went there. It was fun to spend time with Grandma as well, but she doesn't visit very well. We stopped at Earls in Gallup and ended up getting Karen about $100 worth of jewelry. Gooey went with us as well. It was a fun weekend, even if it was thrown together at the last minute.
I went back to work and the HEPA filter worked pretty good, but I had to leave my cage quite a bit, and my lungs started to get a little congested. It was especially bad when I walked to the bus stop because the fire was still burning down south and the smoke would get blown in and it was very smokey and that was bad. However, I saw that a couple of people had gotten the face masks that Occ. Med. was handing out. I asked if they worked and was told that they worked really well, so on Tuesday I went and got a mask and got made fun of, but it seemed to help a lot.
This last weekend we had the youth conference and had a very interesting service project. We went to the Catholic cemetery and picked up trash and weeded. We picked up a ton of trash. They divided up the cemetery into six zones and I was working in the first zone and didn't realize how much was getting done until I took my first full bag on weeds to a trailer and saw how heaped it was. By the time we were done it was a mountain of trash. I was talking to the high councilor that was there and he said that the caretaker was pretty much overwhelmed with gratitude. It was a hot day, and Karen got a touch of heat stroke, and I was pretty wrung out so we left in the afternoon when Karen stood up to sing a song and said that she nearly passed out.
So that's pretty much what has happened in the last few weeks. Karen and I are in the 3rd week of the maintenance phase of the hCG diet. Karen is following the rules pretty good but I'm not. However, things seems to be going to way that I would like them to. I've gained 8 lbs but 6.9 lbs of that is lean body mass (muscle) and 1.1 lbs of body fat. I was worried about how much muscle that I lost during the dieting phase and I've gained about half of it back. I have to admit that I was hoping I would be able to gain the muscle and lose more fat. Actually I'm amazed that I'm able to gain weight at all with how few calories I'm eating. I'm averaging around 2100 a day, as well as I'm still exercising pretty vigorously in the morning (now that I have some more muscle) so I would think that I'd be losing weight but I'm not. The body is a pretty amazing thing.
I also went and had another HA1c test. It was 5.5 which averages out to 111 which is pretty good but I was hoping that it would be a little closer to 100. I don't know when I'll go back and get the next test I'll just have to wait and see. However I've gone from 7.6 (171) to 6.4 (137) to 5.5. That's pretty good and I'd have to say that I've got my BG better under control. I'm taking 2 grams of metformin a day because I like eating fruit, and I'm pretty sure that it would be higher without the metformin. In fact I've forgotten to take it a couple of time and I can see that my BG has gone up every time. Hopefully after the next round of the diet I'll get my weight down even further and the control will be better. I'll just wait and see, but right now I'm thinking that it's worth taking the the metformin to be able to eat fruit. Fruit is the only thing that I've added to my diet that I didn't eat before.
I didn't mention this last blog but when I left for work on June 27th I hadn't heard that the lab was closed. I missed the train that morning, which turned out to be a blessing, and as I'm driving towards Santa Fe I see this hugh cloud and I'm hoping that it might rain, but when I get to it I see that it's all smoke, so I look up towards where Los Alamos is and it's dark up there and I think to myself that no one could possibly breath in that so I decide to call the hot line to see if maybe work was canceled. What the heck it's worth a try. The hot line says that the Lab is closed and I was passing an exit on the freeway and slammed on my breaks and took the exit and came home.
Apparently I was the only person in my family who hadn't heard on the news, or some other source that the Lab was closed. So I decided that I would start to clean off the side yard. I say side yard but it is actually the area out the outside of our fence next to the road that the city says that we're responsible for and every year they come and say that we need to weed it. Karen has planted some wild flowers there and they look really nice for a couple of weeks, but pretty scruffy the rest of the year. When we first moved in we tried putting down some crusher fines to keep the weeds down, but we didn't get enough delivered the first time, and perhaps we couldn't afford to cover it all at that time but I didn't finish. Also, the red lava rocks that we'd laid down had a bunch of weeds grow up in it and it looked bad. I'd been thinking of cleaning it up and decided to start while I had this unexpected time off. I started on Monday and thought it would take a day or two to finish. I actually finished with everything that Saturday so it took 6 days instead of a day or two. I think it looks a lot better now. Karen says she misses the wild flowers but I don't.
On July 4th we went to the ward breakfast in the morning with Goosy, then in the afternoon we went to a party with her that someone from her work was giving. Goosy really is growing up when she get invited to "adult" parties from work that we get to go to. (The Goosy growing up part gets way worse in this blog than this.)
The Los Conchas fire was gotten under control and we had to go back to work. On the first day that I went back Karen asked me about my crappy lungs and how I would fare in smokey Los Alamos. A few years ago I was tested for asthma and while I don't have asthma the doctor told me: "You have crappy lungs. It's a good thing you don't live somewhere with pollution like LA." I told Karen I'd be OK, but by 9 that morning I was starting to get very congested lungs and was losing my voice. I looked at the Park and Ride schedule and found out that the last bus had left about 3 minutes before, so I called Karen and asked her to come pick me up, and she very kindly came up and picked me up. I took the rest of that Wednesday off, and Thursday. I also went and bought a hepa filter for my cubicle for when I got back to help keep the air around me cleaner. It seems to have worked. Right now the air up there is pretty clean and I think that I'll start trying to figure out how to bring the filter home.
That Thursday Cathy called and said that she was going to be taking Grandma Evans to Arizona to see Aunt LaVon at their Arizona family reunion. She said that Beth (my cousin) would be there, Lisa would come as well from Mayer and did we want to go with her? Cathy loves to plan things out in advance. It was a lot of fun to be go and see everyone and get to spend time with my sisters, and to see my cousins. We hadn't seen everyone since the last time we went there. It was fun to spend time with Grandma as well, but she doesn't visit very well. We stopped at Earls in Gallup and ended up getting Karen about $100 worth of jewelry. Gooey went with us as well. It was a fun weekend, even if it was thrown together at the last minute.
I went back to work and the HEPA filter worked pretty good, but I had to leave my cage quite a bit, and my lungs started to get a little congested. It was especially bad when I walked to the bus stop because the fire was still burning down south and the smoke would get blown in and it was very smokey and that was bad. However, I saw that a couple of people had gotten the face masks that Occ. Med. was handing out. I asked if they worked and was told that they worked really well, so on Tuesday I went and got a mask and got made fun of, but it seemed to help a lot.
This last weekend we had the youth conference and had a very interesting service project. We went to the Catholic cemetery and picked up trash and weeded. We picked up a ton of trash. They divided up the cemetery into six zones and I was working in the first zone and didn't realize how much was getting done until I took my first full bag on weeds to a trailer and saw how heaped it was. By the time we were done it was a mountain of trash. I was talking to the high councilor that was there and he said that the caretaker was pretty much overwhelmed with gratitude. It was a hot day, and Karen got a touch of heat stroke, and I was pretty wrung out so we left in the afternoon when Karen stood up to sing a song and said that she nearly passed out.
So that's pretty much what has happened in the last few weeks. Karen and I are in the 3rd week of the maintenance phase of the hCG diet. Karen is following the rules pretty good but I'm not. However, things seems to be going to way that I would like them to. I've gained 8 lbs but 6.9 lbs of that is lean body mass (muscle) and 1.1 lbs of body fat. I was worried about how much muscle that I lost during the dieting phase and I've gained about half of it back. I have to admit that I was hoping I would be able to gain the muscle and lose more fat. Actually I'm amazed that I'm able to gain weight at all with how few calories I'm eating. I'm averaging around 2100 a day, as well as I'm still exercising pretty vigorously in the morning (now that I have some more muscle) so I would think that I'd be losing weight but I'm not. The body is a pretty amazing thing.
I also went and had another HA1c test. It was 5.5 which averages out to 111 which is pretty good but I was hoping that it would be a little closer to 100. I don't know when I'll go back and get the next test I'll just have to wait and see. However I've gone from 7.6 (171) to 6.4 (137) to 5.5. That's pretty good and I'd have to say that I've got my BG better under control. I'm taking 2 grams of metformin a day because I like eating fruit, and I'm pretty sure that it would be higher without the metformin. In fact I've forgotten to take it a couple of time and I can see that my BG has gone up every time. Hopefully after the next round of the diet I'll get my weight down even further and the control will be better. I'll just wait and see, but right now I'm thinking that it's worth taking the the metformin to be able to eat fruit. Fruit is the only thing that I've added to my diet that I didn't eat before.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Hurray Last Day of the Diet (this phase at least)
Today is the 43 day of the diet, the very last day, and I'm really looking forward to tomorrow and being able to eat again. It's going to be interesting to see what happens with my BG. My BG has been excellent on this diet. I've finally gone from taking 2 grams of metformin to cutting one of the tablets in half.
Karen had been telling me that I should maybe stop taking the merformin because I was getting reading in the 70s which is below normal. The morning that I woke up with a 78 was the day that I decided to try and stop taking it. However, in the afternoon of that day my BG was up to 106, so I decided to start taking half a tablet at a time. When I was telling Mom about it she thought that it's funny that I now think 106 is too high. Going to the half a tablet twice a day seems to be working nicely.
So the diets done pretty well. I'm down 33.4 lbs. Unfortunately I've noticed that I lost 14.26 lbs of LBM according to my scale. That's not very good, but they say that the scales are notoriously not very active, but that they can show you trends which can be helpful. The hCG Made Simple site said that you should exercise lightly. However, it also said that if your used to exercising you can continue, but if you lift weights that you should probably cut back. Well I couldn't do my body weight exercises. I tried but while I could do one day of them, the next day I was just wasted and couldn't exercise. Losing that much muscle mass probably explains what is going on.
The next phase is called the maintenance phase, and it says that
"Now that you have lost weight, it is imperative that you step up the exercise a notch and allow your muscles to tone, your metabolism to kick into full gear, and your body to secure itself as a fat burning machine!"
So that sounds to me like they're expecting you to put some muscle back on. I hope so. I really can't imagine that I'm not going to lose weight on this next phase of the diet. I'm supposed to have something like 2700 calories a day, or maybe that's back when I was 34 lbs fatter. Anyway I'm just going to follow the rules of their diet and see what happens. Hopefully I'll be able to put some muscle back on in this phase and maybe lose some more fat.
I guess that I could go back to using the calipers on measuring the fat percentage but that's harder than using the scale so we'll just see what happens.
Karen had been telling me that I should maybe stop taking the merformin because I was getting reading in the 70s which is below normal. The morning that I woke up with a 78 was the day that I decided to try and stop taking it. However, in the afternoon of that day my BG was up to 106, so I decided to start taking half a tablet at a time. When I was telling Mom about it she thought that it's funny that I now think 106 is too high. Going to the half a tablet twice a day seems to be working nicely.
So the diets done pretty well. I'm down 33.4 lbs. Unfortunately I've noticed that I lost 14.26 lbs of LBM according to my scale. That's not very good, but they say that the scales are notoriously not very active, but that they can show you trends which can be helpful. The hCG Made Simple site said that you should exercise lightly. However, it also said that if your used to exercising you can continue, but if you lift weights that you should probably cut back. Well I couldn't do my body weight exercises. I tried but while I could do one day of them, the next day I was just wasted and couldn't exercise. Losing that much muscle mass probably explains what is going on.
The next phase is called the maintenance phase, and it says that
"Now that you have lost weight, it is imperative that you step up the exercise a notch and allow your muscles to tone, your metabolism to kick into full gear, and your body to secure itself as a fat burning machine!"
So that sounds to me like they're expecting you to put some muscle back on. I hope so. I really can't imagine that I'm not going to lose weight on this next phase of the diet. I'm supposed to have something like 2700 calories a day, or maybe that's back when I was 34 lbs fatter. Anyway I'm just going to follow the rules of their diet and see what happens. Hopefully I'll be able to put some muscle back on in this phase and maybe lose some more fat.
I guess that I could go back to using the calipers on measuring the fat percentage but that's harder than using the scale so we'll just see what happens.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Julie Got Baptized.
This blog needs to go under boy is Max dumb category. I wrote it but for got to post it last week.
Man have things been hectic, so I haven't had a chance to blog for a while. Obviously.
The biggest thing that has happened in the last couple of weeks is that Julie Stringfield got baptized, and the amazing thing is that she asked me to baptize her. I have to admit that I was surprised and honored by her asking me to baptize her. We'd heard that she wanted to get baptized, but Chantel said that she didn't want everyone to know about it. Wesley Hendricks knew about it and when I talked to him about it he said he knew about it and that Chantel was going to be speaking at it. Chantel hadn't said anything about it so I just thought whe hadn't mentioned it. Julie said that she wanted to talk to Karen and I before the baptism, and we'd tried to set up a couple of appointments but they fell through. Julie had sent a text message to me, but she sent it to my work blackberry and I don't check it that often, but on the Thursday before the baptism I checked it and saw the text message, and wrote her back giving her my and Karen's phone numbers. She got in touch with us and met us that night. That's when she asked me if I'd baptize her, and she asked Chantel to speak. I later asked Chantel if she'd already know about it and she said that she hadn't. See that's funny because she then got to stress out for the next few days before the baptism.
A funny thing happened during the baptism. I didn't know how to do the baptism. I didn't get the hands right and so the branch president had to try to get me and Julie standing correctly so that I could hold her hands with my left and raise my right to the square. When we finally got it right everyone had a good laugh. It was still a great experience, one that I'll always remember. The Stringfield's had BBQ at Julie's sister Jessica's house. That was a lot of fun. I'd never really met Julie and Jackie's sisters before and I really liked both of them. The younger sister had had some oral surgery and she had to have her jaw wired shut, so I felt a little sorry for her, but could empathize because Karen and couldn't eat anything either. We went to Julie's Sacrament Meeting the next day for her confirmation. Over all it was a great weekend.
The weekend before was fun as well. We got to go see Alex the Younger, and Chio (and there parents were there as well). One of Iwalani's missionary companions got sealed in the Dallas Temple and they asked us if we wanted to come with them. Well of corse we did. Chantel came with us, and we all rode in Iwalani and Jeremy's Impala, so that was a little tight. We left on Thursday after work and drove all night. It was possible because we had 5 drivers to help with the driving. We came home the following Monday which was Memorial day. It was a lot of fun, as it always is, to visit with them.
Finally the hCG diet is going pretty well. I'm not dropping weight as fast as I did during the first two weeks, but it is still coming off. I've also had to poke a couple new holes in my belt, so that's pretty dang exciting. The really exciting thing is that my BG is very low. My weekly average on my meter is around 94 and I've had a few readings in the low 80's. I think is partly the diet, and also the losing of weight. The lower the weight the better the better insulin sensitivity.
Man have things been hectic, so I haven't had a chance to blog for a while. Obviously.
The biggest thing that has happened in the last couple of weeks is that Julie Stringfield got baptized, and the amazing thing is that she asked me to baptize her. I have to admit that I was surprised and honored by her asking me to baptize her. We'd heard that she wanted to get baptized, but Chantel said that she didn't want everyone to know about it. Wesley Hendricks knew about it and when I talked to him about it he said he knew about it and that Chantel was going to be speaking at it. Chantel hadn't said anything about it so I just thought whe hadn't mentioned it. Julie said that she wanted to talk to Karen and I before the baptism, and we'd tried to set up a couple of appointments but they fell through. Julie had sent a text message to me, but she sent it to my work blackberry and I don't check it that often, but on the Thursday before the baptism I checked it and saw the text message, and wrote her back giving her my and Karen's phone numbers. She got in touch with us and met us that night. That's when she asked me if I'd baptize her, and she asked Chantel to speak. I later asked Chantel if she'd already know about it and she said that she hadn't. See that's funny because she then got to stress out for the next few days before the baptism.
A funny thing happened during the baptism. I didn't know how to do the baptism. I didn't get the hands right and so the branch president had to try to get me and Julie standing correctly so that I could hold her hands with my left and raise my right to the square. When we finally got it right everyone had a good laugh. It was still a great experience, one that I'll always remember. The Stringfield's had BBQ at Julie's sister Jessica's house. That was a lot of fun. I'd never really met Julie and Jackie's sisters before and I really liked both of them. The younger sister had had some oral surgery and she had to have her jaw wired shut, so I felt a little sorry for her, but could empathize because Karen and couldn't eat anything either. We went to Julie's Sacrament Meeting the next day for her confirmation. Over all it was a great weekend.
The weekend before was fun as well. We got to go see Alex the Younger, and Chio (and there parents were there as well). One of Iwalani's missionary companions got sealed in the Dallas Temple and they asked us if we wanted to come with them. Well of corse we did. Chantel came with us, and we all rode in Iwalani and Jeremy's Impala, so that was a little tight. We left on Thursday after work and drove all night. It was possible because we had 5 drivers to help with the driving. We came home the following Monday which was Memorial day. It was a lot of fun, as it always is, to visit with them.
Finally the hCG diet is going pretty well. I'm not dropping weight as fast as I did during the first two weeks, but it is still coming off. I've also had to poke a couple new holes in my belt, so that's pretty dang exciting. The really exciting thing is that my BG is very low. My weekly average on my meter is around 94 and I've had a few readings in the low 80's. I think is partly the diet, and also the losing of weight. The lower the weight the better the better insulin sensitivity.
The Diet's Almost Over!
I've got to tell everyone that I'm excited that this phase of the diet is almost over. I'm not really hungry while on this diet, but I do miss eating. We only get the same stuff everyday, and I'm even worse than probably most on the diet because I just eat the same thing every day.
I've learned a few things on this diet. One, it looks like I can maybe start eating fruit again. It hasn't hurt me while I'm on this diet, in fact this week I've had a couple of BG reading that are below 80 which is the below the low normal for BG. Karen thinks that I should stop taking the metformin, but I keep saying that I'm going to keep using it until I run out of it, and use it while I'm on the maintenance phase to see what happens when I'm eating more food. The second thing that I've learned is that it's very convenient to have food planned out. I put all my food in a bag and so I know what I have to eat all right there so it's easier to plan. I've read that this is a good way to handle a diet, but I've never done it, because I'm lazy. Of course it's pretty easy to put all of 500 calories in a little bag for a day, and I've actually forgot a couple of times to do that. I just need to make a commitment to doing this though because I think that it will help a lot.
As of this morning I've lost 26.8 lbs. That's great, but I'm more happy with what's going on my BG. Right now my 7 day average is 89, and by the way that's below 90. The 30 day average is 94 and the 90 day average is 105. This shows that the trend is down and that's great. I hope that it stays low when I get on the maintenance phase of the diet.
Speaking of the maintenance phase. The diet plan says that you should not let your weight fluctuate +/- 2 lbs from your weight on the last day of your taking the hCG. However the level of calories that they suggest is very low between 1800-2000 for a man. That's near the level where you body goes into starvation mode. I personally don't see how that level of eating won't cause you to lose weight during the maintenance phase. I'm hoping that I'm going to lose weight. We'll see.
One thing that I read about while reading about the hCG diet that was interesting. It said that our digestive track is basically like any other great ape, and that it's designed for use to digest food that we're eating all day long just like the apes. The cruise around all day grazing on whatever they can find. That make a lot of sense, especially with a lot of people saying that your diet will work better if you eat a lot of small means during the day instead of a few big ones. The hCG people said that eating a couple of big meals, a day especially when there are a lot of refined carbs in it, can overwhelm the endocrine system and it start locking away the fat as abnormal fat.
A few more things about the diet. It's hard to exercise on it. I started out tying to do my weekly turbulence training, and I started a new phase of that as I started the hCG diet, and I just was not able to do it. Karen was worried about me and now it looks like she's right. Anyway I finally started just doing the exercise cycle and pushups. I got to where I could do those again, and decided that I'd try going back to phase 1 of turbulence training. So I did that on Monday and the next day I'd gained two pounds! I just don't see how that happens, and I was totally wasted and could not even do the exercise cycle the next day. Later in the week I read an article on the Dr. Mercola site about it being possible for the body to gain muscle on a reduced calorie diet. Maybe that explains what happened. I don't know that I'm even going to try do turbulence training next time we do another phase of the hCG.
Well as you can see the hCG diet pretty much rules my life right now. One funny thing about this is no one has to worry about cooking me anything for Fathers Day, and next week is my 50th birthday, and no one can do anything for me because I can't eat anything. I guess that really show how central eating is to any celebration that we now have.
I've read some interesting books and listened to some interesting lecture series, but I'll be writing about them on my other blog.
I've learned a few things on this diet. One, it looks like I can maybe start eating fruit again. It hasn't hurt me while I'm on this diet, in fact this week I've had a couple of BG reading that are below 80 which is the below the low normal for BG. Karen thinks that I should stop taking the metformin, but I keep saying that I'm going to keep using it until I run out of it, and use it while I'm on the maintenance phase to see what happens when I'm eating more food. The second thing that I've learned is that it's very convenient to have food planned out. I put all my food in a bag and so I know what I have to eat all right there so it's easier to plan. I've read that this is a good way to handle a diet, but I've never done it, because I'm lazy. Of course it's pretty easy to put all of 500 calories in a little bag for a day, and I've actually forgot a couple of times to do that. I just need to make a commitment to doing this though because I think that it will help a lot.
As of this morning I've lost 26.8 lbs. That's great, but I'm more happy with what's going on my BG. Right now my 7 day average is 89, and by the way that's below 90. The 30 day average is 94 and the 90 day average is 105. This shows that the trend is down and that's great. I hope that it stays low when I get on the maintenance phase of the diet.
Speaking of the maintenance phase. The diet plan says that you should not let your weight fluctuate +/- 2 lbs from your weight on the last day of your taking the hCG. However the level of calories that they suggest is very low between 1800-2000 for a man. That's near the level where you body goes into starvation mode. I personally don't see how that level of eating won't cause you to lose weight during the maintenance phase. I'm hoping that I'm going to lose weight. We'll see.
One thing that I read about while reading about the hCG diet that was interesting. It said that our digestive track is basically like any other great ape, and that it's designed for use to digest food that we're eating all day long just like the apes. The cruise around all day grazing on whatever they can find. That make a lot of sense, especially with a lot of people saying that your diet will work better if you eat a lot of small means during the day instead of a few big ones. The hCG people said that eating a couple of big meals, a day especially when there are a lot of refined carbs in it, can overwhelm the endocrine system and it start locking away the fat as abnormal fat.
A few more things about the diet. It's hard to exercise on it. I started out tying to do my weekly turbulence training, and I started a new phase of that as I started the hCG diet, and I just was not able to do it. Karen was worried about me and now it looks like she's right. Anyway I finally started just doing the exercise cycle and pushups. I got to where I could do those again, and decided that I'd try going back to phase 1 of turbulence training. So I did that on Monday and the next day I'd gained two pounds! I just don't see how that happens, and I was totally wasted and could not even do the exercise cycle the next day. Later in the week I read an article on the Dr. Mercola site about it being possible for the body to gain muscle on a reduced calorie diet. Maybe that explains what happened. I don't know that I'm even going to try do turbulence training next time we do another phase of the hCG.
Well as you can see the hCG diet pretty much rules my life right now. One funny thing about this is no one has to worry about cooking me anything for Fathers Day, and next week is my 50th birthday, and no one can do anything for me because I can't eat anything. I guess that really show how central eating is to any celebration that we now have.
I've read some interesting books and listened to some interesting lecture series, but I'll be writing about them on my other blog.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
hCG, Another "Ah Hah!" Moment
Mom and I have started the hCG diet. It's a diet that Darren, Patrick his father and Marilee his mother, who are all in our ward, have done and they've been very successful at it. I've been thinking that I would try it, and Mom has as well, and Mom decided that we would start immeadiatly, so we started on Monday.
Of course, as with anything I'm thinking about, I researched it first. hCG is a hormone that women produce only when they're pregnant. In fact it's what they use in pregnancy tests. In looking around for information I eventually found this pdf file on line called "Pounds and Inches" by Dr. Simeons. I found that book by reading a review of a book by someone named Kevin Tredeau. His book was called "The Weight Loss Cure They Don't Want You to Know About," but a lot of people say that he's really a charlatan, and that he's just implementing Dr. Simeon's diet, which you can find on line for free (although Amazon also sells it as a book as well). So I read "Pounds and Inches."
You can read a lot about hCG and Dr Simeons on Wikipedia. Basically though, Dr. Simeons was a gifted endocrinologist, and he wanted to find a solution to obesity. He felt that although there might be many causes to obesity, there had to be an underlying cause that would apply to all who were obese. While he was in India studying pregnant women in India on calorie-deficient diets, and "fat-boys" with pituitary problems. The "fat-boys" were young men who had unattractive deposits of fat and underdeveloped sexual organs (it's called Froliech's Syndrome). He noticed that the pregnant women seem to be able to carry the babies without depleting their lean muscles, and that low doses of hCG to the young men allowed them to develop their sexual organs, as well as lose weight, again without depleting their lean muscle mass.
When he went to Italy he developed the theory that there are 3 type of fat
It's Dr. Simeons theory that the reason that women produce this hormone is so that the fetus and women can survive during pregnancy. It makes all reserves of energy in the body available to the baby and the Mom. He also thinks that what happens during a regular attempt at dieting is that the body first burns off the normal fat, the the structural fat until there are not more reserves there, then it starts burning off the abnormal fat. This is why dieting can be so hard, and why people hit the "wall" so to speak. This makes since to Karen and myself for the following experiences in our lives.
So as I'm reading about this stuff it's hitting home to me. Then I read that the FDA has come out against it! Well that's like ringing a bell for me. Turns out that Dr. Simeons developed a very rigorous protocol at his clinic. First it is low carb, high protein restricted diet. OK I like that obviously. However it is VERY restrictive at 500 calories. a day. However, you don't feel hungry on the diet because the deficit is made up by all the fat that your body can easily burn because of the hCG. There are also very strict rules about types of shampoo, body soap, make up, deodorant, vitamins etc that you can use because many of these products have fat's and other things in them that can cause you to stop losing weight.
Dr. Simeons would inject the hCG into his patients daily; 125 mg. In the US you can get homeopathic blends of the stuff. The FDA has kindly pointed out that there is no evidence that homeopathic hCG works. Thanks FDA for trying to keep us fat, and diabetic. However, there can be vitamin charlatans out there so I asked Darren what he was using and he said he used the HCGMadeSimple.com site. He also said that he'd started using another brand but felt miserable on the diet, until he switched to the hCG from this site. He found this site because his uncle's chiropractor used it, and his uncle lost over 130 lbs on it. OK if someone proves to me that something works and it doesn't sound totally crazy I'm willing to give it a shot, and so is Karen. Karen got a membership at the site and bought the hCG. The site has a lot of very helpful information and I think it was worth it.
The results. We've only been on it for the first week, which included the first phase which is called the "gorging phase". Really that's what it's called, and the HCGMadeSimple.com (HMS) said that many people don't really gorge on this part because it seems counter intuitive, but it's important to have your normal fat reserves full for the diet. Also, the hCG is not effective during the first two day anyway. I didn't weigh the first day we took it the hCG, but I did gorge. I weighed the second day. HMS says to weigh right after you get up in the morning and do your business. I know this is true, because your weight can swing widely during the day, however, I like to weigh after I exercise because then I get the water weight loss of exercise, but then that's variable as well, but I've now repented.
I weighed 251.8 the first day, then 255.6 after the second day of gorging (See I'm good at something) or the third day of the diet. However, that morning my BG was 156! Yikes, and it stayed high all day only getting down to 129 at it's lowest. OK I did stupid gorging that I knew that I shouldn't have and I felt pretty miserable for it. However, today I weighed 242.2 and my BG was the lowest in the morning that it's been since I started monitoring again after the last scare of super elevated BG. Also, the diet calls for a couple of pieces of fruit a day. I did the calculations on the fruit and figured that if I cut the orange or apple in half, I might be OK, but I needed to check. Turns out that it's OK to do that. I'll have to make sure that it's still OK when I go off this 500 calorie a day diet but I've been eating fruit for the first time in 10 years or so this week, and really enjoying it. Also, I'm really not hungry it's amazing. Although, I do think about eating my next meal, I'm not ravenous like I've been on some diets that had more than 3 time the calories allowed in this diet. There have been a couple times where I've forced myself to eat the last little bit of food for the day. I mean I knew that I need it, but I could have gone without it. Karen's also lost around 5 lbs this week, but that's still really good. She hate's it that I lose weight faster but that's part of having a higher metabolism because of more muscle mass, and the fact that I'm exercising more than she does. The diets say that you don't have to exercise but if you do it's more successful. It also says that during the diet is not a time to start a new exercise program, but that if you've been doing an exercise program you can continue it. That's where I'm at, I've been exercising so I'm just going to continue. So I'm losing weight and my BG seems to be going in the right direction as well. Over all I'm really pleased with the results so far.
Of course, as with anything I'm thinking about, I researched it first. hCG is a hormone that women produce only when they're pregnant. In fact it's what they use in pregnancy tests. In looking around for information I eventually found this pdf file on line called "Pounds and Inches" by Dr. Simeons. I found that book by reading a review of a book by someone named Kevin Tredeau. His book was called "The Weight Loss Cure They Don't Want You to Know About," but a lot of people say that he's really a charlatan, and that he's just implementing Dr. Simeon's diet, which you can find on line for free (although Amazon also sells it as a book as well). So I read "Pounds and Inches."
You can read a lot about hCG and Dr Simeons on Wikipedia. Basically though, Dr. Simeons was a gifted endocrinologist, and he wanted to find a solution to obesity. He felt that although there might be many causes to obesity, there had to be an underlying cause that would apply to all who were obese. While he was in India studying pregnant women in India on calorie-deficient diets, and "fat-boys" with pituitary problems. The "fat-boys" were young men who had unattractive deposits of fat and underdeveloped sexual organs (it's called Froliech's Syndrome). He noticed that the pregnant women seem to be able to carry the babies without depleting their lean muscles, and that low doses of hCG to the young men allowed them to develop their sexual organs, as well as lose weight, again without depleting their lean muscle mass.
When he went to Italy he developed the theory that there are 3 type of fat
- Structural Fat: The kind of fat that surrounds and cushions your organs. (Karen found that their is structural fat on the heel of your foot that pads the heel, and that some people, herself for instance, start to have pain in their heels when they walk because they lose that fat.)
- Normal Fat: This is the fat that the body store excess glucose as, and draws on if for energy when needed.
- Abnormal Fat: This is a kind of fat that the body deposits when there is excess sugar, but because of a problem in the diencephalic region of the brain. (According to Wikipedia it's also know as the "interbrain". You can find out more about it as diencephalon.) This region get out of whack and starts to store this abnormal fat in a way that it cannot get access to it again.
It's Dr. Simeons theory that the reason that women produce this hormone is so that the fetus and women can survive during pregnancy. It makes all reserves of energy in the body available to the baby and the Mom. He also thinks that what happens during a regular attempt at dieting is that the body first burns off the normal fat, the the structural fat until there are not more reserves there, then it starts burning off the abnormal fat. This is why dieting can be so hard, and why people hit the "wall" so to speak. This makes since to Karen and myself for the following experiences in our lives.
- Karen has always lost weight overall during pregnancies. Meaning that she genearlly weighed less after delivery than before the pregnancy started.
- Karen says that her feet hurt when she tries to diet, which would follow that she's burning structural fat of which the pad on the heel is part of.
- I can follow a pretty rigorous diet and exercise program, and I know that I'm losing weight and getting smaller, but I my big ol' gut and double chin never seem to get much smaller.
- When my Dad died, he was skin and bone, everywhere except for his little pot belly that he always had.
So as I'm reading about this stuff it's hitting home to me. Then I read that the FDA has come out against it! Well that's like ringing a bell for me. Turns out that Dr. Simeons developed a very rigorous protocol at his clinic. First it is low carb, high protein restricted diet. OK I like that obviously. However it is VERY restrictive at 500 calories. a day. However, you don't feel hungry on the diet because the deficit is made up by all the fat that your body can easily burn because of the hCG. There are also very strict rules about types of shampoo, body soap, make up, deodorant, vitamins etc that you can use because many of these products have fat's and other things in them that can cause you to stop losing weight.
Dr. Simeons would inject the hCG into his patients daily; 125 mg. In the US you can get homeopathic blends of the stuff. The FDA has kindly pointed out that there is no evidence that homeopathic hCG works. Thanks FDA for trying to keep us fat, and diabetic. However, there can be vitamin charlatans out there so I asked Darren what he was using and he said he used the HCGMadeSimple.com site. He also said that he'd started using another brand but felt miserable on the diet, until he switched to the hCG from this site. He found this site because his uncle's chiropractor used it, and his uncle lost over 130 lbs on it. OK if someone proves to me that something works and it doesn't sound totally crazy I'm willing to give it a shot, and so is Karen. Karen got a membership at the site and bought the hCG. The site has a lot of very helpful information and I think it was worth it.
The results. We've only been on it for the first week, which included the first phase which is called the "gorging phase". Really that's what it's called, and the HCGMadeSimple.com (HMS) said that many people don't really gorge on this part because it seems counter intuitive, but it's important to have your normal fat reserves full for the diet. Also, the hCG is not effective during the first two day anyway. I didn't weigh the first day we took it the hCG, but I did gorge. I weighed the second day. HMS says to weigh right after you get up in the morning and do your business. I know this is true, because your weight can swing widely during the day, however, I like to weigh after I exercise because then I get the water weight loss of exercise, but then that's variable as well, but I've now repented.
I weighed 251.8 the first day, then 255.6 after the second day of gorging (See I'm good at something) or the third day of the diet. However, that morning my BG was 156! Yikes, and it stayed high all day only getting down to 129 at it's lowest. OK I did stupid gorging that I knew that I shouldn't have and I felt pretty miserable for it. However, today I weighed 242.2 and my BG was the lowest in the morning that it's been since I started monitoring again after the last scare of super elevated BG. Also, the diet calls for a couple of pieces of fruit a day. I did the calculations on the fruit and figured that if I cut the orange or apple in half, I might be OK, but I needed to check. Turns out that it's OK to do that. I'll have to make sure that it's still OK when I go off this 500 calorie a day diet but I've been eating fruit for the first time in 10 years or so this week, and really enjoying it. Also, I'm really not hungry it's amazing. Although, I do think about eating my next meal, I'm not ravenous like I've been on some diets that had more than 3 time the calories allowed in this diet. There have been a couple times where I've forced myself to eat the last little bit of food for the day. I mean I knew that I need it, but I could have gone without it. Karen's also lost around 5 lbs this week, but that's still really good. She hate's it that I lose weight faster but that's part of having a higher metabolism because of more muscle mass, and the fact that I'm exercising more than she does. The diets say that you don't have to exercise but if you do it's more successful. It also says that during the diet is not a time to start a new exercise program, but that if you've been doing an exercise program you can continue it. That's where I'm at, I've been exercising so I'm just going to continue. So I'm losing weight and my BG seems to be going in the right direction as well. Over all I'm really pleased with the results so far.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Numb feet can be a benefit
This weekend was the Priest Encampment for the stake. I showed up because I'd kind of felt like I should, and I'd asked Mom if she though that I should. She said that she thought that I should go, so I did. It's actually amazing how many YM in our ward don't have active fathers.
However, I did have a true father thing to do which was show up at Spring Institute Choir Concert, of which Chantel was a participant, so I left early. When I showed up in the morning it turns out that the Bishop was going to go early as well, I guess, because Jaron needed to go to prom.
The one thing that I was somewhat looking forward to about the Encampment was the 3 mile hike that was involved in getting to the site. However, when I showed up I started talking to Bro. Moseman and volunteered to help him deliver the drinking water for the event. That meant I got a ride into the site. Well that took care of half that amount I was planning to hike. Oh well.
I decided to walk out with the Bishop and his sons. We got about half way out and the Bishop realized that he'd left his backpack. He really wanted to get that backpack so he was going to try and drive his little car in to pick it up. That road was really rough and I didn't think he'd get the car in so I volunteered to go back an pick it up for him. What a guy I am right? Actually walking at the Boren speed was killing me and I thought what the heck I could walk back at my pace, do a good deed, get in a little extra hiking and I could read my book on my iPhone (which I couldn't do at Boren speed).
We were about half way there when I went back. We'd just started coming out of the canyon; the canyon with the nice tall trees and cool shade. I went back and got the backpack, then when I hit where we came out of the canyon I'm suddenly walking in the New Mexico desert (it's amazing how quickly the landscape can change in NM). About 4 miles in it's hot, and I'm realizing how much my feet hurt and how sucky my boot are for hiking. I finally made it, delivered the Bishop his backpack and he seemed very grateful. Then I came home and took a shower. I was looking at my toes and thinking how much they hurt. It felt like my toenails were going to be all black and ready to fall off, but I couldn't see anything. I decided I'd try to stretch out my toe and see if that made any difference. When I did that I realized that I could feel my toes at all, all I could feel was how much the toe nails hurt. I'm going to admit that while not feeling my toes does somewhat bothers me, in this case it wasn't to bad.
And on that note, I'm still doing pretty good at keeping my BG down. I'd like it to get lower, but I guess that high normal isn't too bad. I'd like to lose some more weight but it doesn't seem to be coming off, and the BF% on the scale doesn't seem to be going down too much either. However, all my cloths are fitting much better, and I'm thinking that I'm going to have to punch a new hole in the belt that I just got. All that's good I just wish the weight was coming off as well. I'd really like to see what would happen to be BG if I lost 50-60 lbs.
At work I gave a lady some silver water that wanted to use it on her shingles. She came in the next week at told me that it was working for her, that she was about two weeks ahead of it healing up than with anything else she'd tried. She thinks that if she'd been able to jump on it right away it wouldn't have gotten bad in the first place, but she'd given it fours days before she could get the silver water. I got another canker sore that it kept from getting bad, and when I got the first I could feel another coming on that never developed. So it seems like this stuff works fantastic against canker sores. I'm very pleased.
However, I did have a true father thing to do which was show up at Spring Institute Choir Concert, of which Chantel was a participant, so I left early. When I showed up in the morning it turns out that the Bishop was going to go early as well, I guess, because Jaron needed to go to prom.
The one thing that I was somewhat looking forward to about the Encampment was the 3 mile hike that was involved in getting to the site. However, when I showed up I started talking to Bro. Moseman and volunteered to help him deliver the drinking water for the event. That meant I got a ride into the site. Well that took care of half that amount I was planning to hike. Oh well.
I decided to walk out with the Bishop and his sons. We got about half way out and the Bishop realized that he'd left his backpack. He really wanted to get that backpack so he was going to try and drive his little car in to pick it up. That road was really rough and I didn't think he'd get the car in so I volunteered to go back an pick it up for him. What a guy I am right? Actually walking at the Boren speed was killing me and I thought what the heck I could walk back at my pace, do a good deed, get in a little extra hiking and I could read my book on my iPhone (which I couldn't do at Boren speed).
We were about half way there when I went back. We'd just started coming out of the canyon; the canyon with the nice tall trees and cool shade. I went back and got the backpack, then when I hit where we came out of the canyon I'm suddenly walking in the New Mexico desert (it's amazing how quickly the landscape can change in NM). About 4 miles in it's hot, and I'm realizing how much my feet hurt and how sucky my boot are for hiking. I finally made it, delivered the Bishop his backpack and he seemed very grateful. Then I came home and took a shower. I was looking at my toes and thinking how much they hurt. It felt like my toenails were going to be all black and ready to fall off, but I couldn't see anything. I decided I'd try to stretch out my toe and see if that made any difference. When I did that I realized that I could feel my toes at all, all I could feel was how much the toe nails hurt. I'm going to admit that while not feeling my toes does somewhat bothers me, in this case it wasn't to bad.
And on that note, I'm still doing pretty good at keeping my BG down. I'd like it to get lower, but I guess that high normal isn't too bad. I'd like to lose some more weight but it doesn't seem to be coming off, and the BF% on the scale doesn't seem to be going down too much either. However, all my cloths are fitting much better, and I'm thinking that I'm going to have to punch a new hole in the belt that I just got. All that's good I just wish the weight was coming off as well. I'd really like to see what would happen to be BG if I lost 50-60 lbs.
At work I gave a lady some silver water that wanted to use it on her shingles. She came in the next week at told me that it was working for her, that she was about two weeks ahead of it healing up than with anything else she'd tried. She thinks that if she'd been able to jump on it right away it wouldn't have gotten bad in the first place, but she'd given it fours days before she could get the silver water. I got another canker sore that it kept from getting bad, and when I got the first I could feel another coming on that never developed. So it seems like this stuff works fantastic against canker sores. I'm very pleased.
Friday, April 22, 2011
My Legs Hate Me and They're Letting Me Know
Let me start off by saying that apparently writing a blog and posting it is two different things. I wrote that last blog about how smart Mark was last week while he was still here, but didn’t realize that I hadn’t posted it.
This week I started doing my Turbulance Training (TT) program once again. This time I’m going to stay with it for the full six months – I hope. In the past it seems like I get sick and stop doing them around the 4th month or so pretty regularly. I’m hoping that the silver water and the allergy medicine will help me finish the series this time. Actually once I would have finished it, but I got towards the end and decided that it wasn’t good enough for me so I stopped TT and tried something else, then I got sick.
I had been exercising for a while, but all I’ve been doing was exercise bike riding, planks and push up. However, apparently that doesn’t help your quads when you start doing body weight squats. So my legs are mad at me.
I started on Monday and did the first days exercises, then I was so tired that I had a hard time even getting up on Tuesday and Wednesday. I did exercise again yesterday, but not all the sets, then today on Friday my legs were once again shot. I should start getting my endurance built up so that I can exercise more.
My BG was below 120 this whole week, after Sunday that is. It’s pretty apparent that exercise helps me keep the BG low, so as I get more endurance and can exercise harder I hope that I can get it even lower. Oh yeah and I hope that I lose weight because that helps keep the BG down as well.
This week I started doing my Turbulance Training (TT) program once again. This time I’m going to stay with it for the full six months – I hope. In the past it seems like I get sick and stop doing them around the 4th month or so pretty regularly. I’m hoping that the silver water and the allergy medicine will help me finish the series this time. Actually once I would have finished it, but I got towards the end and decided that it wasn’t good enough for me so I stopped TT and tried something else, then I got sick.
I had been exercising for a while, but all I’ve been doing was exercise bike riding, planks and push up. However, apparently that doesn’t help your quads when you start doing body weight squats. So my legs are mad at me.
I started on Monday and did the first days exercises, then I was so tired that I had a hard time even getting up on Tuesday and Wednesday. I did exercise again yesterday, but not all the sets, then today on Friday my legs were once again shot. I should start getting my endurance built up so that I can exercise more.
My BG was below 120 this whole week, after Sunday that is. It’s pretty apparent that exercise helps me keep the BG low, so as I get more endurance and can exercise harder I hope that I can get it even lower. Oh yeah and I hope that I lose weight because that helps keep the BG down as well.
Teda's Mark is Very Smart
And so is Chantel. Everyone is very smart around here but me, and I've got the proof.
I wanted to finish up the front cement stones that we'd made. Mark, Teda and I finished them last year after the Balloon Fiesta and before I could finish them up I got pneumonia and didn't finish them. The new stones that we made were a little lower than the old ones, and Karen says that she trips on them. We had a little bit of the sand and cement mix that we had used to set the stones on our patio left over that I wanted to use to raise the stones up. Since it was cement we couldn't leave it out in the rain or it'd get ruined so I stuck it in the garage. I'd hoped that it was only going to be a few days because once it was in there we couldn't get to hardly anything in the garage. Unfortunately, as I said, I got pneumonia so I wasn't able to move the cement sand mix and it was in the wheelbarrow so the garage was pretty much off limits.
Anyway, today I decided to raise the steps. I did mention that it's been about 5 months since we made the stones and didn't fill in the gaps with sand? Now the gaps were filled with leaves and stuff, so when I raised the stones that I needed to I was cleaning out the leaves and stuff, and that was taking some time. After I used up the stone and cement mix I decided to get some more sand and try and finish the rest of all the stones and sand. Goose showed and started helping me. Goose said that the leaves and stuff between the stones was her definition of "detritus" was the leaves and stuff between the stones. It was pretty funny because Goose probably pronounced it the way it's supposed to be pronounced but it wasn't the way that I thought it was supposed to be pronounced. Of course in my mind I generally just say things in my mind, and when I hear them pronounced out loud I'm surprised. Shortly after that we were talking about how it would be nice to just blow the leaves out of the rocks, and then we thought, almost at the same time, that we had a blower that could blow the leaves out. So we grabbed it and in about 45 minutes we were done. Goose is really smart.
I then started pouring the sand in the cracks by hand the way we did on the patio, and sweeping the sand into the cracks. The patio was not that big and the stones were a lot bigger so it didn't take that long to finish the patio. The stones were taking a lot longer, and I was wondering if we were going to have to finish it the next day, when Mark comes out and says why don't you just pour the sand on the stones then sweep them in the cracks! I didn't think it would work, but it did, it worked great. We got done in about a half an hour. Mark is very smart.
And here is the final proof. Mom and Goose went to a play tonight and when they came home really late and made us all go outside to look at something, and it turns out that I'd decided it would be a good idea to hang my keys on the trucks antenna. I don't have any idea why I decided to do that but you have to admit that it's not that smart of a thing todo. It's going to take a while to live this one down. Mom's already said that it goes right up there next to the time I left my tooth brush in the refrigerator.
There that proves it. I don't have good ideas, like Mark and Goose, but I do put my keys and toothbrushes in strange places.
I wanted to finish up the front cement stones that we'd made. Mark, Teda and I finished them last year after the Balloon Fiesta and before I could finish them up I got pneumonia and didn't finish them. The new stones that we made were a little lower than the old ones, and Karen says that she trips on them. We had a little bit of the sand and cement mix that we had used to set the stones on our patio left over that I wanted to use to raise the stones up. Since it was cement we couldn't leave it out in the rain or it'd get ruined so I stuck it in the garage. I'd hoped that it was only going to be a few days because once it was in there we couldn't get to hardly anything in the garage. Unfortunately, as I said, I got pneumonia so I wasn't able to move the cement sand mix and it was in the wheelbarrow so the garage was pretty much off limits.
Anyway, today I decided to raise the steps. I did mention that it's been about 5 months since we made the stones and didn't fill in the gaps with sand? Now the gaps were filled with leaves and stuff, so when I raised the stones that I needed to I was cleaning out the leaves and stuff, and that was taking some time. After I used up the stone and cement mix I decided to get some more sand and try and finish the rest of all the stones and sand. Goose showed and started helping me. Goose said that the leaves and stuff between the stones was her definition of "detritus" was the leaves and stuff between the stones. It was pretty funny because Goose probably pronounced it the way it's supposed to be pronounced but it wasn't the way that I thought it was supposed to be pronounced. Of course in my mind I generally just say things in my mind, and when I hear them pronounced out loud I'm surprised. Shortly after that we were talking about how it would be nice to just blow the leaves out of the rocks, and then we thought, almost at the same time, that we had a blower that could blow the leaves out. So we grabbed it and in about 45 minutes we were done. Goose is really smart.
I then started pouring the sand in the cracks by hand the way we did on the patio, and sweeping the sand into the cracks. The patio was not that big and the stones were a lot bigger so it didn't take that long to finish the patio. The stones were taking a lot longer, and I was wondering if we were going to have to finish it the next day, when Mark comes out and says why don't you just pour the sand on the stones then sweep them in the cracks! I didn't think it would work, but it did, it worked great. We got done in about a half an hour. Mark is very smart.
And here is the final proof. Mom and Goose went to a play tonight and when they came home really late and made us all go outside to look at something, and it turns out that I'd decided it would be a good idea to hang my keys on the trucks antenna. I don't have any idea why I decided to do that but you have to admit that it's not that smart of a thing todo. It's going to take a while to live this one down. Mom's already said that it goes right up there next to the time I left my tooth brush in the refrigerator.
There that proves it. I don't have good ideas, like Mark and Goose, but I do put my keys and toothbrushes in strange places.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Diet Update and more Colloidal Silver
I hate that diet sems to be the thing that I mostly seem to be writing about on here. However, eating is something that we all have to do and when you have diabetes diet becomes even more critical.
I'm striving to get my blood sugare under control. I seem to be doing pretty good but hopefully I can do better. For a while there I was getting readings below 100 pretty regularly. I then caught a cold, then, apparently have alergies and they kicked up. That was weird because I started coughing on a Friday afternoon at 2:00. I was talking to someone at work when it happened and I thought it was wierd because nothing seemed to cause it. I didn't have a runny nose or anything else, I just started coughing. By that night I could hardly talk and I wasn't able to sleep because when I layed down the coughing got worse. Karen went with me to the doctor the next week and with Karen talking to him they decided that it was probably allergies. That's OK, if that's what it is, because hopefully I'll be able to keep it from turing into an anual case of bronchitus. However, with the possible cold and hay fever making it hard to exercise my BG started getting a little higher.
When I went to the he ran another HbA1c. The first test on 1/25 was 7.6 (171 mg/dl) and this last one on 3/24 was 6.4 (137). That's a pretty good improvement but I was hoping that it was better.
Also I've lost a little wieght, but even more importantly on the scale that Goose gave me that made me fat and stupid it says that I've reduced my body fat percentage by 3%. That pretty good. I've lost about 4 pounds as well. Losing weight can also help me get my BG under control as well. I guess that I'll just have to keep trying the slow and constant method.
I've thought that the HbA1c was an average of 3 months with the last month being a little more influential. My doctor said it gives a reading for the last 2 weeks. I hope that's not right, and since I usually follow what's in the Bernstien book I guess I'll just keep following that. I'm just going to schedule the next test 3 months from now so there won't be any overlap.
I got a rash on my hand that was pretty painful. Iwanlani and Karen said that it was probably exzema. Someone or somewhere I've heard that it is caused by the chickenpox virus. (I thought Nini told me this but she says that she didn't.) I don't know if that true or not, but after a couple of weeks it got worse and was cracked and bleeding. I showed it to Karen for some sypmathy and she asked if I'd poured the silver water accross it. I said that I was going to wash it with the silver water to see if it'd get rid of it. That's wat I did, and by that afternoon it was cracked an bleeding and didn't itch anywhere near as bad. Karen was pretty impressed, and fankly so was I. So fat the silver water seemed to clear up the congestion in my lungs, kept 3 canker sores from getting painful, pretty much a little hole starts in the mought that you know is going to be a canker sore, and the silver water just keeps it there and then it goes aways. Doesn't become a hugh painful crater. Then it seems to have cleard up the rash/exzema on my hand. Not bad. I think the stuff actually works.
I'm striving to get my blood sugare under control. I seem to be doing pretty good but hopefully I can do better. For a while there I was getting readings below 100 pretty regularly. I then caught a cold, then, apparently have alergies and they kicked up. That was weird because I started coughing on a Friday afternoon at 2:00. I was talking to someone at work when it happened and I thought it was wierd because nothing seemed to cause it. I didn't have a runny nose or anything else, I just started coughing. By that night I could hardly talk and I wasn't able to sleep because when I layed down the coughing got worse. Karen went with me to the doctor the next week and with Karen talking to him they decided that it was probably allergies. That's OK, if that's what it is, because hopefully I'll be able to keep it from turing into an anual case of bronchitus. However, with the possible cold and hay fever making it hard to exercise my BG started getting a little higher.
When I went to the he ran another HbA1c. The first test on 1/25 was 7.6 (171 mg/dl) and this last one on 3/24 was 6.4 (137). That's a pretty good improvement but I was hoping that it was better.
Also I've lost a little wieght, but even more importantly on the scale that Goose gave me that made me fat and stupid it says that I've reduced my body fat percentage by 3%. That pretty good. I've lost about 4 pounds as well. Losing weight can also help me get my BG under control as well. I guess that I'll just have to keep trying the slow and constant method.
I've thought that the HbA1c was an average of 3 months with the last month being a little more influential. My doctor said it gives a reading for the last 2 weeks. I hope that's not right, and since I usually follow what's in the Bernstien book I guess I'll just keep following that. I'm just going to schedule the next test 3 months from now so there won't be any overlap.
I got a rash on my hand that was pretty painful. Iwanlani and Karen said that it was probably exzema. Someone or somewhere I've heard that it is caused by the chickenpox virus. (I thought Nini told me this but she says that she didn't.) I don't know if that true or not, but after a couple of weeks it got worse and was cracked and bleeding. I showed it to Karen for some sypmathy and she asked if I'd poured the silver water accross it. I said that I was going to wash it with the silver water to see if it'd get rid of it. That's wat I did, and by that afternoon it was cracked an bleeding and didn't itch anywhere near as bad. Karen was pretty impressed, and fankly so was I. So fat the silver water seemed to clear up the congestion in my lungs, kept 3 canker sores from getting painful, pretty much a little hole starts in the mought that you know is going to be a canker sore, and the silver water just keeps it there and then it goes aways. Doesn't become a hugh painful crater. Then it seems to have cleard up the rash/exzema on my hand. Not bad. I think the stuff actually works.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
My funny Las Vegas experience
I've been in Las Vegas this week for the ISC West. ISC stands for International Security Conference and there is a series of them all over and this is the West one. I suppose it stands for Western US. There are a lot of foreign people here so the International is certainly apropos.
Mom, this week, is visiting the grandkids while I'm in Las Vegas. We'd talked about her coming with me, but she said that she didn't want to stay with a boring person who just came back to the motel and wanted to stay in his room at night (she knows me very well) so she went to visit the grandkids instead. I thought that I wasn't coming on this trip because of the government funding problems, but last Thursday I found out that the trip was back on.
Here's the funny experience. Funny as in "Dad you're an idiot" funny. I made a reservation at a hotel that was 1 mile from the Sands Convention Center called the Holiday Inn LAS VEGAS FLAMINGO AT PARADISE. That's exactly the way it is written on my itinerary. All I saw was FLAMINGO. I'm pretty sure that I saw the Holiday Inn part but I just thought that Holiday Inn must own "The Flamingo" When we got into town I was dropped off by Scott McDuffie at "The Flamingo." After I got dropped off I walked through the hotel casino complex (that's the only word for these things they're immense) and found the check in which had a hugh line which I waited in for half an hour, and then was told I was in the wrong place. The receptionist was nice and gave me a minimal map with the general area where I should go. I take off walking and after I hit a street that I thought should be called Paradise but was Korval, I realized that I was going to need a better map to find where I needed to go. Then I realized I had an iPhone and I was excited. I entered the address, which was 4055 Palos Verdes, and presto a map with directions. I love technology. I've really liked the GPS feature on the iPhone, but never this much. The hotel isn't even actually on FLAMINGO or PARADISE it's just "at," or near those streets. It was a about a mile away from "The Flamingo" and I had to drag my suitcase. I thought it was pretty funny. It would have been fun, maybe, to stay in "The Flamingo" but I think that I actually like this place better. There's not 10 gazillion people every where, and the building isn't designed so that I never want to leave but just stay in one place and eat, drink and gamble there until I leave town.
The spectacle of walking down the strip is pretty overwhelming. I mean the hotels are huge and marvelous. It amazing. I've always been amazed when I've been here and it doesn't ever seem to get less amazing. I've never stayed in Las Vegas just passed through it a couple of times and walked down the strip. I think I once even rode the monorail, which all I remember is that it was boringly slow.
The conference is pretty good. I've been going to classes and only took a little stroll through the exhibition between classes. It was the biggest exhibition that I've ever seen. It was pretty spectacular as well. They actually had a semi in there that was pulling the Bosch mobile presentation set up. I didn't get a chance to see it, but I mean a semi in a convention center! That's pretty good. I'll bet the CES is just amazing. I'd like to go to that someday, especially if I can get work to pay for it.
Mom, this week, is visiting the grandkids while I'm in Las Vegas. We'd talked about her coming with me, but she said that she didn't want to stay with a boring person who just came back to the motel and wanted to stay in his room at night (she knows me very well) so she went to visit the grandkids instead. I thought that I wasn't coming on this trip because of the government funding problems, but last Thursday I found out that the trip was back on.
Here's the funny experience. Funny as in "Dad you're an idiot" funny. I made a reservation at a hotel that was 1 mile from the Sands Convention Center called the Holiday Inn LAS VEGAS FLAMINGO AT PARADISE. That's exactly the way it is written on my itinerary. All I saw was FLAMINGO. I'm pretty sure that I saw the Holiday Inn part but I just thought that Holiday Inn must own "The Flamingo" When we got into town I was dropped off by Scott McDuffie at "The Flamingo." After I got dropped off I walked through the hotel casino complex (that's the only word for these things they're immense) and found the check in which had a hugh line which I waited in for half an hour, and then was told I was in the wrong place. The receptionist was nice and gave me a minimal map with the general area where I should go. I take off walking and after I hit a street that I thought should be called Paradise but was Korval, I realized that I was going to need a better map to find where I needed to go. Then I realized I had an iPhone and I was excited. I entered the address, which was 4055 Palos Verdes, and presto a map with directions. I love technology. I've really liked the GPS feature on the iPhone, but never this much. The hotel isn't even actually on FLAMINGO or PARADISE it's just "at," or near those streets. It was a about a mile away from "The Flamingo" and I had to drag my suitcase. I thought it was pretty funny. It would have been fun, maybe, to stay in "The Flamingo" but I think that I actually like this place better. There's not 10 gazillion people every where, and the building isn't designed so that I never want to leave but just stay in one place and eat, drink and gamble there until I leave town.
The spectacle of walking down the strip is pretty overwhelming. I mean the hotels are huge and marvelous. It amazing. I've always been amazed when I've been here and it doesn't ever seem to get less amazing. I've never stayed in Las Vegas just passed through it a couple of times and walked down the strip. I think I once even rode the monorail, which all I remember is that it was boringly slow.
The conference is pretty good. I've been going to classes and only took a little stroll through the exhibition between classes. It was the biggest exhibition that I've ever seen. It was pretty spectacular as well. They actually had a semi in there that was pulling the Bosch mobile presentation set up. I didn't get a chance to see it, but I mean a semi in a convention center! That's pretty good. I'll bet the CES is just amazing. I'd like to go to that someday, especially if I can get work to pay for it.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Too bad this was great
Mom sends out a recipe to everyone on her family email list. Mostly she's sending things to her kids, who are now grown women, and they are crafty type things so I'm not that interested. Anyway here's what she sent today.
Oven Fried Mustard Chicken
1 ¼ c Italian Bread Crumbs
½ Parmesan Cheese grated
½ c Dijon Mustard
6 skinless chicken breast halves
350 degrees.
Mix cheese and bread crumbs,
Put Dijon Mustard on chicken breasts, roll in crumbs and cheese.
Baking sheet lightly sprayed with oil. Bake for 20 min or until chicken is done.
The she cooked this for us tonight for dinner. I thought it was great. After Mom was done with it she said that's the last time she's cooking it because she doesn't like the mustard that much. I love it though. I think I might rethink making the mustard BBQ sauce now though.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Reread Getting Thing Done with Help from Kiki
I was just going to re-read parts of the book, but I'm pretty sure that I ended up reading the entire book. It was excellent again. I've read many books about being organized and getting your life in order. I know it's important. I've known it ever since I read that Brigham Young kept his workshop so organized that he could find any tool in it in the dark. I seem to remember him saying that we have to learn this kind of organization so that we can run worlds, solar systems and even universes. While that sounds good I'm nowhere near that level of organization although I think it is something to strive for.
Why do I like Getting Things Done (GTD)? I like it because it deals with how to get things done on an every day basis. I remember being in a class talking about how to use the Franklin Day Planner (which I love and think is a great system, and Hyrum Smith and Steven R. Covey are my heroes) and we were going through the exercise of determining if things were an A, B, or C task and he said sometimes you had to assign things an A when you didn't want to or nothing his boss wanted done would get done. And that's the point where all these systems they seem to break down on the day to day basis, at least they do for me. I would make a list and then copy it to the next day and that would depress me. I like the David Allen way of doing things. All work is either
1) Planned Work
2) Work that Showed up
3) Defining your work
Also, he says that you can't do projects you can only do actions. You might have many projects but you only have actions that you can do. Once you've decided your actions then you have a lot of freedom to decide what "actions" you will take in whatever situation you are in.
I really learned a lot from this book. When I read it the first time it said to reread the book in six months so I put down in my calender to reread it, and when it came up I didn't because the way I was using it was breaking down. So what caused me to reread it finally (and I'm glad I did)? Well when I bought an iPhone I gave my iPod to Kiki. Kiki called me and said that she was afraid that she had cleared my Todo account. I told her not to worry about it, that I should be able to download everything from the web. Well whatever happened we (Kiki and I) managed to wipe out my Todo lists on my iPhone. So since I was going to have to start over anyways I decided I should reread the book. I started out thinking that I would just reread parts of it that I thought would be applicable but I think that I eventually read all of it, and some parts twice. The book seemed different. I'd gotten a message from Amazon that there was a new version and it seemed very different. I don't know if that's because it actually changed or because I'd just forgot most of it. Anyway I liked the book quite a bit and recommend it to anyone who might be trying to improve there productivity or life.
Why do I like Getting Things Done (GTD)? I like it because it deals with how to get things done on an every day basis. I remember being in a class talking about how to use the Franklin Day Planner (which I love and think is a great system, and Hyrum Smith and Steven R. Covey are my heroes) and we were going through the exercise of determining if things were an A, B, or C task and he said sometimes you had to assign things an A when you didn't want to or nothing his boss wanted done would get done. And that's the point where all these systems they seem to break down on the day to day basis, at least they do for me. I would make a list and then copy it to the next day and that would depress me. I like the David Allen way of doing things. All work is either
1) Planned Work
2) Work that Showed up
3) Defining your work
Also, he says that you can't do projects you can only do actions. You might have many projects but you only have actions that you can do. Once you've decided your actions then you have a lot of freedom to decide what "actions" you will take in whatever situation you are in.
I really learned a lot from this book. When I read it the first time it said to reread the book in six months so I put down in my calender to reread it, and when it came up I didn't because the way I was using it was breaking down. So what caused me to reread it finally (and I'm glad I did)? Well when I bought an iPhone I gave my iPod to Kiki. Kiki called me and said that she was afraid that she had cleared my Todo account. I told her not to worry about it, that I should be able to download everything from the web. Well whatever happened we (Kiki and I) managed to wipe out my Todo lists on my iPhone. So since I was going to have to start over anyways I decided I should reread the book. I started out thinking that I would just reread parts of it that I thought would be applicable but I think that I eventually read all of it, and some parts twice. The book seemed different. I'd gotten a message from Amazon that there was a new version and it seemed very different. I don't know if that's because it actually changed or because I'd just forgot most of it. Anyway I liked the book quite a bit and recommend it to anyone who might be trying to improve there productivity or life.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
6 am and I haven't slept very much at all.
Last week I was talking about how great I thought the silver water was. Well it was very good, but Saturday I started coughing and the cold came on strong. After doing some more reading I decided that I needed to use more of the silver water and I was getting a little low on the water that I had so I called Cathy's friends husband and asked if I could get a couple more bottles to tide me over. While I was there with him he told me that he had the older generator that made larger particles. So I got even sicker on Sunday but I kept doing the nasal wash and finishing with silver water and using it in the nebulizer and by Monday morning I was feeling well enough to start exercising and able to go to work. I took a bottle of silver water with me to work and kept doing the nasal wash and I kept getting better. I thought that I was through with it. If I can get though a cold without it turning into bronchitis that's great in my book.
However, I spoke too soon. Friday I started coughing at 2:00. It weird how I can tell when it starts. Well I was hoping that it was just the one cough. I came home early to surprise Nini when Mom took her to dinner before the going to the Legally Blond play. The coughing kept getting worse.
I was impressed enough with the silver water that Cathy's friend gave me that I decided that I'd buy a generator for us, and it arrived on Thursday so when I got home after dinner on Friday I decided to mix up a batch. Supposedly I've got a newer Micro-Particle Colloidal Silver Generator. The smaller silver particles are supposed to better than larger particles generated by other methods. The first batch I mixed didn't work so I thought I might have the wrong kind of distilled water. The directions said that the Wal-Mart brand was best, but there is a sensor on the generator that senses if there are too many minerals in the water for it to work correctly, and the light was bright green. When it didn't work I was so tired I just went to bed. However, my cough was such that when I laid down it got worse and I wasn't able to sleep. When Mom got home I was starting to lose my voice. So since I couldn't sleep I decided to try to mix another batch so I went back to Wal-Mart at 12:00 and it turns out that I had got the right kind of water, but it wasn't a total waste because Mom asked me to get her some ice cream. When I got back I decided I would clean the mason jar really well before I put in the distilled water and it worked great. It takes 3 hours to make a quart of this stuff, so I went to bed again, but was still coughing when I laid down. So I got back up and waited for the batch to finish and started using it, and that's what I'm doing right now. I don't think I've slept very much because the cough and hacking is back. I read in the book that I got with the generator that many people will do what they call loading with silver when they first start and will drink 4 oz 3 times a day for 10 days and then go to a maintenance level of 1 oz a day. Maybe I'll try that.
The funny thing about this cough is that I was thinking that in the past I've tried to just work through a cold, and it will seem like I've done it, and then it will suddenly take a turn for the worse and the bronchitis will start up. However, I really thought that I'd beat it this time when I started coughing. I was surprised the first time it happened at 2:00 and was hoping that it just a spare cough. Hopefully this fancy new micro silver water will get this cough back under control.
One other thing this week. Last Friday night I did something that I just love. I bit my lip and caused a canker sore. These sores sometimes just go away and other times they become super painful just like all the rest. These sores are what make me think that canker sores are related to a virus or something like that. Anyway the sore this week didn't hurt. When it started hurting I would rinse with silver water. The sore didn't go away. It felt like it went through the canker sore stages it just didn't hurt.
So I have a generator and I'm hoping that I can get through this cough without it taking for ever. I hope so, but even if it keeps canker sores from being so painful that would be a really good thing.
By the way I've started a new blog called "A Mormon's Thoughts on Mormonism." This is my attempt to help portray Mormonism on the web.
However, I spoke too soon. Friday I started coughing at 2:00. It weird how I can tell when it starts. Well I was hoping that it was just the one cough. I came home early to surprise Nini when Mom took her to dinner before the going to the Legally Blond play. The coughing kept getting worse.
I was impressed enough with the silver water that Cathy's friend gave me that I decided that I'd buy a generator for us, and it arrived on Thursday so when I got home after dinner on Friday I decided to mix up a batch. Supposedly I've got a newer Micro-Particle Colloidal Silver Generator. The smaller silver particles are supposed to better than larger particles generated by other methods. The first batch I mixed didn't work so I thought I might have the wrong kind of distilled water. The directions said that the Wal-Mart brand was best, but there is a sensor on the generator that senses if there are too many minerals in the water for it to work correctly, and the light was bright green. When it didn't work I was so tired I just went to bed. However, my cough was such that when I laid down it got worse and I wasn't able to sleep. When Mom got home I was starting to lose my voice. So since I couldn't sleep I decided to try to mix another batch so I went back to Wal-Mart at 12:00 and it turns out that I had got the right kind of water, but it wasn't a total waste because Mom asked me to get her some ice cream. When I got back I decided I would clean the mason jar really well before I put in the distilled water and it worked great. It takes 3 hours to make a quart of this stuff, so I went to bed again, but was still coughing when I laid down. So I got back up and waited for the batch to finish and started using it, and that's what I'm doing right now. I don't think I've slept very much because the cough and hacking is back. I read in the book that I got with the generator that many people will do what they call loading with silver when they first start and will drink 4 oz 3 times a day for 10 days and then go to a maintenance level of 1 oz a day. Maybe I'll try that.
The funny thing about this cough is that I was thinking that in the past I've tried to just work through a cold, and it will seem like I've done it, and then it will suddenly take a turn for the worse and the bronchitis will start up. However, I really thought that I'd beat it this time when I started coughing. I was surprised the first time it happened at 2:00 and was hoping that it just a spare cough. Hopefully this fancy new micro silver water will get this cough back under control.
One other thing this week. Last Friday night I did something that I just love. I bit my lip and caused a canker sore. These sores sometimes just go away and other times they become super painful just like all the rest. These sores are what make me think that canker sores are related to a virus or something like that. Anyway the sore this week didn't hurt. When it started hurting I would rinse with silver water. The sore didn't go away. It felt like it went through the canker sore stages it just didn't hurt.
So I have a generator and I'm hoping that I can get through this cough without it taking for ever. I hope so, but even if it keeps canker sores from being so painful that would be a really good thing.
By the way I've started a new blog called "A Mormon's Thoughts on Mormonism." This is my attempt to help portray Mormonism on the web.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Colloidal Silver and Atkins Cookies
This has been a fairly eventful week. My sister Cathy had a friend that had told her that she used to get bronchitis and pneumonia quite a bit but that she'd started drinking something that kept her from getting it anymore. She asked if I'd be interested in it. I'm pretty much interested in anything that might help me keep from getting sick a couple months a year. Turns out it's called Colloidal Silver. She got a couple of bottles of the stuff and the lady gave her a printout of information about Colloidal Silver. It was very interesting stuff. The information that I got didn't say anything about how much I should be taking or what the concentration of the Colloidal Silver that I had. Then I looked up some more information about Colloidal Silver on the internet, including Dr. Mercola's web site, an alternate medicine site that I look at. Eventually I got hold of Cathy and she gave me the names of the people that she got the silver water from. I gave them a call and was able to talk to the husband, Bill Norton. He talked to me a while about it, but basically he told me that I should drink about an ounce a day prophylactically. He also mentioned that he had a nebulizer and that he put the silver water in the nebulizer instead of the saline and albuteral. He also reminded me about a web site called thesilversource.com, which was mentioned in the literature. I went to the site and found that a lot of people there spayed the silver water in their noses to help keep from getting colds.
I have to admit that I was pretty surprised when I woke up the next morning and felt a lot better. My nose was nowhere near as runny as it usually is in the morning when I exercise. My chest didn't feel as heavy. I was pretty impressed. However, the next day Thursday I woke up and I felt wrung out completely. I tried just riding the exercise bike but couldn't do it, so I went back to bed for 1/2 an hour. Later that day it felt like a cold was coming on. I decided that I'd try doing the salty nose thing and finish up with silver water, and try drinking some more of the water. Friday I woke up feeling better. I have to admit that I'm pretty impressed with the stuff.
The diabetes front is going pretty good. I re-read the section of the Diabetes Solution about medication. He mentioned that there was some stuff called R-ALA (Alpha Lipoic Acid) that acted like an insulin memetic. I decided to try and get some and try it. The book suggested that I get a brand called Insulow so I ordered it from Amazon. I started taking it at night but that actually seemed to start raising my BG in the morning a little. I then tried taking it before meals as the direction of the bottle says. That started to work really well I was getting reading below 100 right around 90 and even had some below 90. I was getting pretty excited, and then this week for some reason the readings started going back up above 100. I don't know what's going on, but that's still not too bad I think.
I'm starting to build up some endurance in exercising. Last week I was to tired to fully exercise a couple of day so I only did the exercise cycle a couple of days. This week I've been able to work out every day except for Thursday and I think that that might have been caused by a cold that started coming on.
Today I decided to try and see if the Atkins Cookies would be as bad for my BG as I thought they would be. They were bad. I don't know if they were as bad as I thought they would be but they were pretty bad. I guess that I'll not try those again for a while. Perhaps when I lose some weight I might try the cookies again.
I've been watching my diet and cutting back on the calories. It seems like my weight is going down some. I guess about as much as I can expect them to. The BF% is going down according to the scale that Goosie got me. From what I understand about the scales they're not the most exact devices, but they do log trends, and the BF% trend is down and that's good. According to what I've read everything says that the more weight that is lost the better your insulin sensitivity becomes. That's what I'm hoping anyways.
I have to admit that I was pretty surprised when I woke up the next morning and felt a lot better. My nose was nowhere near as runny as it usually is in the morning when I exercise. My chest didn't feel as heavy. I was pretty impressed. However, the next day Thursday I woke up and I felt wrung out completely. I tried just riding the exercise bike but couldn't do it, so I went back to bed for 1/2 an hour. Later that day it felt like a cold was coming on. I decided that I'd try doing the salty nose thing and finish up with silver water, and try drinking some more of the water. Friday I woke up feeling better. I have to admit that I'm pretty impressed with the stuff.
The diabetes front is going pretty good. I re-read the section of the Diabetes Solution about medication. He mentioned that there was some stuff called R-ALA (Alpha Lipoic Acid) that acted like an insulin memetic. I decided to try and get some and try it. The book suggested that I get a brand called Insulow so I ordered it from Amazon. I started taking it at night but that actually seemed to start raising my BG in the morning a little. I then tried taking it before meals as the direction of the bottle says. That started to work really well I was getting reading below 100 right around 90 and even had some below 90. I was getting pretty excited, and then this week for some reason the readings started going back up above 100. I don't know what's going on, but that's still not too bad I think.
I'm starting to build up some endurance in exercising. Last week I was to tired to fully exercise a couple of day so I only did the exercise cycle a couple of days. This week I've been able to work out every day except for Thursday and I think that that might have been caused by a cold that started coming on.
Today I decided to try and see if the Atkins Cookies would be as bad for my BG as I thought they would be. They were bad. I don't know if they were as bad as I thought they would be but they were pretty bad. I guess that I'll not try those again for a while. Perhaps when I lose some weight I might try the cookies again.
I've been watching my diet and cutting back on the calories. It seems like my weight is going down some. I guess about as much as I can expect them to. The BF% is going down according to the scale that Goosie got me. From what I understand about the scales they're not the most exact devices, but they do log trends, and the BF% trend is down and that's good. According to what I've read everything says that the more weight that is lost the better your insulin sensitivity becomes. That's what I'm hoping anyways.
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