Tuesday, August 16, 2016

LENS and Life, week of 8/16/16

No sites yet this week.  My doctor seems to be pretty busy this summer, I guess.   If we're being fair, this is only the second summer I've been her patient/client/customer/whatever the PC term is these days.  Should see her next week though.  Since I can apparently go for about 4 weeks without relapsing too hard, it's basically fine.

It took an extra day because the postal service and the manufacturer weren't as careful as they should have been, but my tablet is finally back in my life.  It came back to me wiped clean of data, unfortunately, so I'm still piecing things back together.  All my apps, for instance, and the configuration.  Things like my RSS list (news, webcomics, humor sites) are gone entirely, and have to be re-added from scratch.  I estimate about 30% of what I had is gone for good.  Not everything I read was hugely popular, and I read a lot of things.  So I can't find some of it any more. I did have a momentary recollection of one of those fringe comics, and thankfully got it re-added before the moment deserted me, so perhaps all is not lost.

Except for the data issue, the manufacturer all but gave me a brand new tablet.  It came back to me in like four kinds of packaging and padding, with an effectively new case, carrying pouch, and charger.  I've paid the same amount of money for a repair from a local store and only gotten the immediate problem fixed.  I also didn't have to put up with nearly as much exasperation for the repair, but it's hard to argue with good presentation and overzealous repairspeople when they're not charging you extra. 

I kind of had a grudge against the manufacturing company prior to this, to the point that I was unwilling to buy their products ever again.  I might have to rethink that.  If we're being fair, the grudge was understandable but maybe not quite fair.  Between knowing that and the impressiveness of the repairspeople, I may just drop the grudge and buy from them again.  (Also, dear reader, please note that I am well aware serious grudges are hugely bad for you, and if this one had starting eating at me, I would have dropped it.  I have enough problems in my life without keeping a list of all the wrongs that've been done me.)

So now that the tablet is back, I can once again play Pokemon GO!  Chris and I went out on Saturday to walk downtown.  It was definitely hot and humid.  I did find a few silly things to post on my Instagram, though, so that was fun.  We walked around the blue bridge area, as there were sightings of my favorite Pokemon there.  No luck with that one unfortunately, as it's a rarer one, but we did catch a bunch of other ones and got restocked on items.  There were a lot of people out there!  We snuck by two wedding parties getting photos taken on the bridge.  Unfortunately we also got accosted by someone claiming to be homeless and hungry, but her story got less and less credible when she mentioned having coupons to the local food and rehabilitation place but not bothering to stop by there.  I may stop by that organization and get a few coupons myself.  An older friend of mine routinely has a pack of those, and she's able to basically ward off questions for money using them.  That's partly her experience, partly the coupons.  Each coupon is good for a full meal at the organization, and that organization also handles training people for jobs, beds and housing for people who don't have any, etc.  One stop shopping, I guess.  Each coupon is only a dollar, too, so if I'm going to be walking downtown, I think it'd be well worth my time.

I got sidetracked from exercise.  Oops.  If all goes well, I may exercise three times this week.  Chris and I will be meeting up tomorrow for lunch.  I was hoping to do a picnic type thing, but he developed a hatred of sandwiches during his childhood, so he'll probably pick up takeout Chinese.  But I'll bring a sandwich and we'll go to a park, eat, and hunt Pokemon there together.  I'm also going to Meijer Gardens on Friday to walk with a friend of mine.  I should get my bike checked over and reassembled.  Chris and I been talking about going on a bike ride on Saturdays, to hatch all the eggs we keep collecting.  You have to move a certain distance (2 km, 5km, and 10km) to hatch eggs, and while you can do that on foot, it's much faster to bike it.  You get eggs so quickly they pile up if you don't hatch them quicker, plus I like biking.  Just need to get our bikes in shape and find a place to go. 

I mentioned awhile ago that I was going to be checking into the condition of my heart, to see if anything had gone wrong or if there was a breakdown in the system that wasn't allowing me to improve while jogging, ever.  I did finally see the heart doctor, but he didn't run any impressive tests on me.  Apparently the test I was expecting to do was really not applicable to my situation.  The heart doctor did order a sleep study for me, though... so now it's going to be a few months before I hear about that.  And I'm unsure about how much Medicaid will cover for it, as well.  Sleep studies are expensive.  Also very uncomfortable, I'm going to end up sleeping in a laboratory, hooked up to a gadzillion machines.  If I'm lucky, though, it might explain why I still don't wake up refreshed in the morning.  I did notice earlier this week that the bruised darkness under my eyes is fading, so that's pretty cool! 

The other thing the heart doctor did was tell me that the 1,500 calorie restriction I pulled off a year or so ago wasn't a sufficient test of my metabolism for weight loss purposes.  Apparently he sometimes prescribes diets as low as 800 calories per day, in extreme conditions such as preparation for fat removal surgery.  He suggested I try 1,400 calories.  I found that annoying and not productive enough, so I'm trying 1300 calories, as of a couple days ago.

I can't decide if I expect this to work or not, but if it does, it occurs to me that I'd best not be too zealous about it.  I've already had my measurements taken for my dress.  I shouldn't be able to lose 20 pounds or whatever before my wedding, but if I did, it would be annoying for my costume-maker extraordinaire friend.  I'll settle for 5-10 pounds, if it even works at all, and then try to hold my weight steady.  That shouldn't be too difficult to adjust for, and it'd probably be helpful for my self-esteem, too.  I'm so tired of not fitting into my clothes very well... 

If this doesn't work, I could boot my calories down to 1,100, I guess.  But if I have to do that, I'm going to be really tempted to give up on weight loss forever.  So let's hope it doesn't come to that.

Finally, I started on a B vitamin complex last week.  I have yet to see any impressive effects.  But that also includes a lack of burping B vitamin "flavor," so I'm kind of okay with that.  My only question is whether it's doing me any good.  As to that, it's probably still too early to tell.  But I would say it's probably not a miracle cure or a significant piece of the problem.  Still might be helping, though. 

No comments:

Post a Comment