Photos and Stuff and a Diabetes Update

On Friday I spent a lot of the day working on my iPhoto libraries.  iPhoto is cool, but the library can get huge.  In order to fight that I've found that I could use a program called iPhoto Library Manager that will let you launch different instances of iPhoto.  What I've started doing is keeping an iPhoto Library on an external TerraByte drive and a library on my laptop.  The library on the external drive has 16000 items and is 50 GB.  The one on my laptop has 1600 and is 5.6 GB.  See how that is a little better and easier to work with?  Well Friday I spent some time trying make sure that Karen, my and the Big Dog (that's the external drive) were all in sync somewhat.  AFter that I started working on trying to fix my blog the way that I would like it.  The faces really helped set up the slideshows that I used on my blog, and the photo of Karen.

The next day I was feeling virteous and decided that I would scan in the pictures that Karen had left for me on my desk.  It was a very big time consuming job.  It turns out that these were photos that Karen had gotten after her mother passed away, and they were some very cool pictures that I'd either never seen, don't remember seeing, or hadn't seen in a long time.  I finally just conked out working on the pictures Saturday night, and thought that I'd be able to finish up on Sunday.  I thought that I'd gotten all of the photos out of the envelope but I moved it on Sunday and realized that there were a lot more pictures in the envelope so there was still a long way to go.  I was to disappointed to finish, so I did a few other things, like balance our checkbook.

So today I finally finished scanning in all of the photos.  Turns out there were 265 pictures scanned in when I was done.  I thought that some of the family might like to see, or copy these photos so I put them up on the web.  I think that our daughter might especially like the photos of their Mom when she was in High School.  I assume that she was in high school, it look like that about her age.  There's also a few pictures of her on her mission.  So for whoever is interested here are the different slide shows that will link back to the albums.

I'll start with pictures of Grandma Norma and her family. Some of these you'll have to check with Mom to see who they are. This also includes a painting of the picture of Phillip, Mom's brother that passed away.


Next are photos of Karen from when she was a curly headed little girl, similar to Teda when she was young, to the beautiful lady she became.


Next are family pictures of our family as we got older, and in my case bigger. These also include pictures of Mom and I by ourselves or with family members.


Some of my favorite pictures are pictures that I call daughter pictures. They pictures of our daughters in different combinations.



The girls as the grow up starting with Kiki and working down to Gooey (Chantel).













Diabetes Good News
I have some good news on the diabetes front. I was excited when I was able to keep my BG under 120 for a whole day. Well on Saturday I was able to keep in under 100 for a whole day. This included the dawn effect. I exercised then ate breakfast and measured my BG two hours later and it was still under 100 BG. It stayed that way for all 4 readings. I was so excited that I didn't risk testing it at bedtime. I felt a little guilty about that but I didn't measure it anyway. I started feeling guilty and thought about getting up and measuring it but by that time I was just too tired and let it ride. Sunday the BG was still under 100, but I knew that since I wasn't going to be exercising. That was right it rose to 115 BG then started to fall by the time I went to Church around 1:00. When I got home it was again under 100, however I forgot to take my merformin. I don't know why it just slipped my mine. I slipped my mind until I measure by BG before bed and it was 127. I was a little depressed because I didn't think that I'd taken anything that would cause that spike. However that was when I realized that I had forgot to take the metformin. I guess that metformin stuff does work. Today it wasn't belier 100 when I got up, but it's been hovering around that all or a little below.

Tonight Mom and I tried one of the recipes from "The Diabetes Diet." It was parmesan crusted pork chops. Actually the recipe called for lamb chops, but we substituted pork chops. It was good but let me just say that next time we hope that the cooking will go a little smother. While we were shopping I read a suggestion on a package of feta cheese that suggested trying to put some feta cheese in mashed potatoes. I thought that sounded great and throughout that it would be good in mashed cauliflower. That's the substitution that is suggested in the diabetes book for potatoes and it's pretty good. So we tried that as well. Over all it was a pretty good dinner. I'll test my BG and let everyone know what it is right before I sign off tonight.

Well the final reading for the day is 116.  That means for the day it was 103, 103, 98 then 116.  That's not that bad but I've started getting used to the lower readings so it's a little disappointing.  It might be that I simply ate to big of a meal.  There is something called the "Chinese Dinner Effect".  I don't have the book with me (I lent it to someone) and don't remember exactly how it works, but I do remember that it does work.

Random Thoughts on Diabetes

First Though Gooey Made Me FAT – or Stupid

A while back we moved some stuff around the house and someone set my old scale on it's side and we left it there for a while. That is not the way to treat a measuring device, even a bathroom scale. It was fun to use though because you could easily lose 10 lbs. However, you could also gain the same amount. Well I stopped weighing everyday, so that meant I could eat whatever I wanted. Everyone knows that when a tree falls in a forest it makes no noise unless someone hears it; well that means that if you don't measure weight gain it doesn't happen right? Well that's how I see it. Then I caught my annual bought with bronchitis/walking pneumonia so then not only did I not weigh but I decided that I could eat as much comfort food as I wanted. Now an intelligent person could see that this is not a good situation.

Well Gooey is intelligent and knows how much I liked to weigh everyday, so for Christmas she bought me a new scale. It is a very good scale that measures body fat and water percentage. Gooey also programmed it for Mom and I to use. However, I did mention that you only gain weight when you measure it right? so I didn't start using it for a while.

Then I had an appointment with a Nephrologist. They had me do a 24 hour urine test and when I went back to talk to the Nephrologist the report said that my blood glucose was 170! Yikes! That was very bad.

I knew that I had to start weighing again and so I was going to use Gooey's gift that she gave me. The first time I used it it said that I weighed 260 lbs and 44% body fat. Oh my gosh that was terrible. Gooey made me fat, very fat. 44% body fat that was unbelievable but not really that much worse than 170 mg/dl blood glucose, so I decided that I'd just accept it and start trying to improve my diabetes control.

Teda called Mom and I started talking with her and was complaining to her about how fat Gooey had made me. Teda couldn't believe how fat Gooey made me. Well we both knew who to blame...Gooey.

Then I used the scale again and noticed that there were two readings, body fat and water percentage. I had missed the body fat reading and was looking at the water percentage. Oops. Well my body fat was still unacceptably high at 35%, but that's way better than 44%.

I hope everyone can see how Gooey has made me fat, by getting me a scale, and made me stupid by getting a scale I can't use.

Blood Sugar is Getting Better

I went to my doctor about the bronchitis and the blood sugar since it was after the nephrologist appointment. They gave me a blood sugar test and it was 196 mg/dl. That was terrible. Awful. They also did the first HA1c test I've ever had. When I first started controlling my diabetes the HA1c wasn't being used and since I had my blood sugar mostly under control I've never had one. The HA1c gives an average of your blood sugar over about a 3 month period but it is geared towards the last couple of weeks. Well my HA1c was 7.6. You can get a quick reading on what that means by multiplying by 21 that's a 159 mg/dl average. However, that 21 number really works best if you're blood sugars are close to average. If you're really interested you can see the real formula here. If you run through the equation my actual average was 171.42. That sucks even worse.

I needed to get things under control. However, I still had a lot of comfort food around so I decided to eat it before I started getting the blood sugar under control. That makes sense right!? Right. I also had a new glucose meter, but I decided to put off using it until I figured out which strips my new insurance company would cover. Eventually, after a couple of weeks, I started monitoring. The first reading was 196 mg/dl. OK that depressed me but what depressed me even worse was that I kept getting readings that high, one was 206 mg/dl. So I then started taking my Metformin as well. It is an insulin sensitizing agent, which means that it makes your body more sensitive to insulin and helps you get the blood glucose under control. That helped quite a bit.

Here's a funny story in an ironic kind of way. I bought a pound of shrimp from Wal-Mart. Breaded popcorn shrimp. I know that I shouldn't eat stuff like that but I really didn't know how bad it could be, because I'd never measured it before, thank goodness, because it was 282. That's the last time that I do that.

I started measuring my blood sugar and the first week the average was 156 according to my meter. After a while I realized that I should really start logging everything so that I can see what is happening and start really getting a grip on what is going on. I'm also trying to make sure that the stupid bronchitis thing doesn't kick back up. I started exercising again, very slowly. The first week that I started was also the week that it got bitterly cold. My BG (that stand for blood glucose) was 169 an hour after exercising, and then I measured it again after walking to work and it was 177. That's terrible. My BG used to shoot up immediately after exercising and would return to near normal after about an hour. However, that was very vigorous exercise and this exercise hardly broke a sweat. Then I got sick again, so sick that I had to take another day off even though I didn't want to. The next week I felt pretty good by Monday so I started exercising again, and was adding pushups. I got sick again, but didn't have to take off work but I did stop exercising the next week and stopped walking to work. Mean while my diet was greatly improving and my BG was going down. This week I started to exercise again and while I started to feel sick at the beginning of the week I kept it up and felt better towards the end, and today.

I kept thinking about the BG readings and I realized that I needed to start logging them so that I could correlate what was going on when I ate different things. When I first got diabetes and kept a log, I did it in a little note book. This time I realized that I could probably find an iPod app that would do it and I found a really cool app called LogFrog. The ratings on the app made it sound like it was an app for kids. They said that the way the entries are made made it fun for kids, but it looked easy and like it kept track of everything that I needed it to do so I got it. It has a really cool graphing feature that I like here's picture of it the graph. The app is very fun to use, and pretty ingenious. I like it.

The graph is pretty cool. You can expand it just by using the reverse pinch motion on the iPod. I've squeezed everything down so that all the reading show and you can see the trend. You can also see the shrimp meal spike.

You can see by the graph that the readings are trending down. It also highlights the target range which I have set at 80-120. Wednesday was the first day that I had readings all in the normal range. Thursday I almost had them all in, but I had the morning exercise increase so I had a couple readings above 120 but it wasn't too bad. I've been working to try and figure out how to keep the morning readings down. Strangely enough I do it by eating. On the last fast Sunday my first reading was 126, then it was 145 a couple of hours later, then right before church it was 122 and then 115 after church before dinner. I noticed that the metformin bottle said that it should be taken with food, so I decided that I would try taking the metformin with a snack at the same time before exercising, but I was going to experiment with it by not eating any food with the medication at the first of the week and then try it with food at the end of the week.

It doesn't seem to really change the morning readings that much, but I started eating a little snack and taking the medicine right before I'd walk to the bus stop in the afternoon and the first time I did that the reading was 83. That's the lowest reading I think I've had in ten years. The next day it was 92. Thursday someone gave me a ride to the bus stop and then the reading was 115. Seems like exercising in the afternoon works great.

Right now my weekly average is 115 so that's much better. My monthly average is 130, but it still has to deal with the 282 reading. Once that falls off it will probably improve greatly. I'm supposed to be going in for the next check up in another month or so where I'll get my next HA1c. My weight and body fat is down as well. Getting my weight down will help with the BG so I'm getting serious about losing the weight once again. I'll keep everyone updated.

The blogs I like

I added some blogs that I like. They are all my family and they're great. The only one who is not a family member is Mild Manner Musings. That is a blog that is written by a nice person that I met on line. I love to learn about religions, all kinds of religions, and I believe that the best way to learn about religions is to talk to people who know about their religions. So I decided that I would go on line to talk about religions to other people. Unfortunately the best place to talk was a Christian Forum but they didn't accept Mormons as Christians. It was a little frustrating but I got on the site and decided that I should help defend Mormonism because people there were saying things about Mormons that were crazy. Chris was someone who treated Mormons pretty good and I always liked his comments, and then I came to really like his blogs, even though I don't agree with them all the time.

Nini's goal of blogging every day about what she's thankful for is very fun to follow. Her's is called Nichols and Dimes.

Kiki's is called Thoughts on Everything but Poop because her husband wrote a blog that was something about Poop so Kiki's was anti Poop. Her husbands blog is no more so I can't tell you what the name that inspired her was. Kiki is a great writer and I love it when she blogs about the greatest grandkids in the world.

Teda blogs occasionally and her's is a great blog as well. I love the name The Pfeil Files.

Actually all of my daughters new last names are fun to make a play on the name. Nini's and Teda's are pretty straight forward. I like to say things about Kiki's last name like "The Nields, kneeled in prayers." or something like that. I guess that they all think that they improved their last names over Evans. It's a little hard to do a play on the name of Evans.

The last blog is my sweet wifey's blog called Home Alone Mom. She's very glad though about Skype and phones because she talks to her daughters nearly every day. I'm very thankful for my wonderful wife and the fact that she is close to our daughters and stays close to them.

I'm glad this week is over

This week was a triple whammy with having to get up early. Somehow I discovered that if I catch the early train (that leaves at 4:25) and then leave work an hour early then I get home around 6:30. When I was driving to Santa Fe to catch the bus then driving home I'd get to the Chaple around 7:05 or so. Going early get me back sooner and I don't have to drive to Santa Fe. So that's what I decided to try this week.
A funny thing happened however – funny in a dumb kind of way. I missed the early train. That was because I didn't realize that the first train left at 4:25 instead of 4:30 like I thought it would. So I missed that train, then I went home because I couldn't find my glasses and I'd decided that I would just try to go to work without them, but since I missed the train I went home and found them. Then I wrote an email and did few other things, lost track of the time and missed the second train. I didn't want to drive to Santa Fe because a snow storm was supposed to be coming in that afternoon so I waited for the next train there in the parking lot. Turns out that that was a good decision because it did snow and the roads were kind of slick when we got to the train station that afternoon. I still left early because we were having a Priest Quorum Presidency meeting that night. That was Tuesday.
Wednesday I needed to get back early for a Priest Laural activity that we had at our home because the chapel had a pipe break and it wasn't fixed yet. However, the train had a malfunction of some time and I got home about 30 minutes late. This getting home early really depends on the train which is not very reliable.
Thursday I needed to make it into Albuquerque Thursday for round table. Because it is so much further I drove to Santa Fe, which turned out to be a very good idea because the train was supposed to be running 50 minutes late. I don't know if that's true or not because I drove into the meeting. So the long and short of it was that I had a meeting three days and had to stay up late for all of them, or fairly late for me. The cool thing was that I didn't have to drive as much as I used to. I talked to my manager and he seemed OK for me coming in early like this when I need to.
Today I had to work 10 hours to make up for the hour I missed on Tuesday. So the week ended on a long note but at least it's over now.

My Discovered Recipe

Karen is visiting with Teandra and Mark, with Kiki and her kids. I've got to admit that if Karen didn't live with me in Rio Rancho (RR) I would soon move. Chantel came and visited after her church meetings on Sunday. I was pretty excited when I came home from my meetings and saw her car in the driveway. I told her that I was planning on cooking the spinach that was left with some hamburger. When we told Karen that she suggested that we use the feta cheese that she'd bought to go with the spinach. Karen may feel OK just throwing everything together and cooking it, but I don't, especially when it involves baking. So I sorta got a recipe online and tried it. It turned out pretty good.

Here's the online recipe.

1 (10 oz.) pkg. frozen chopped spinach
4 eggs
3/4 c. cream
1 1/4 c. milk
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tbsp. lemon juice
2 tbsp. parsley, chopped
1/4 lb. Feta cheese, crumbled
1 quiche crust (pie crust)
3 tbsp. fresh grated Parmesan or Romano cheese

Drain spinach and squeeze out as much moisture as possible; it should be fairly dry. Mix the eggs, cream and milk. Add the salt, pepper, lemon juice and parsley. Stir in spinach and Feta cheese. Fill quiche crust and place the grated cheese on top.

Bake at 375 degrees for 30 to 40 minutes or until a knife inserted in center comes out dry. Cool for 10 minutes before serving. Can also be served at room temperature.

Here's what I did different. I used fresh spinach that I cooked. We had a pound of spinach so I took out what I thought was about 10oz of it. I was going to mix one cup of cream with a cup of water, but when I got the cream out to use it looked like it was on the edge of going bad so I used all of it which turned out to be about 1.75 cups and then .25 cup of water. I also cooked about a pound of hamburger with onions and bell peppers with greek seasoning. We didn't have any Parmesan or Romano cheese so I used the Goulda that Mom had bought. I didn't use a crust but poured the whole thing into a baking pan and cooked it for 40 minutes. I think it turned out pretty good, and Goose agreed. I've got a ton of it to eat for the rest of the week now.

My newest "first" blog

Everyone once in a while I sit down and decide that I'm going to start blogging more seriously. I have a lot on my mind and I like to rant so maybe I should give my wife a break and rant on line. While that is true I also would like to learn more about what web programming. One day I would like to think that I could retire from the Lab, spend more time with Karen, go on a mission – things like that – and being able to make a living programming would be really really cool.

I would really like to learn to program on the web. Actually I like programming on almost anything but it looks like the future is the web. I would also like to learn to program on the Mac/iPad/iPhone which is Objective-C. A few years ago I got interested in looking at running a web page as part of a Wood Badge Ticket. I tried to get a web site set up using Expression Engine (EE). My idea there was to set up a site that my wife and kids, primarily, but whoever wanted to could have gotten involved, and that we could use it as kind of a central clearing house of information for the whole family to stay connected. The only problem with that is that there are tools that do these kind of things already (like this site) that would allow us to do the same thing, only way better. I learned a lot with that experience but the thing that I really want to do is to do development, the programming that lies behind the beautiful web sites. Also, since I have remarkably little artistic talent that's probably a good thing.

So my last great thing to try is Ruby on Rails programming. I'm liking it, and it turns our that there are a few things that remind me of EE, which makes sense, since Rails and EE are both frameworks. Well I guess EE is more of a content management system (CMS) but it reminds me of a framework.

I'm pretty sure on that I'm settled on working on Ruby on Rails, and I'll be using our family as a resource in developing it. I hope that everyone that reads about it is excited. I'll bet that no one can guess what the first thing that I'm going to try and develop is going to be. I'll wait and see if anyone can guess.