A Gallon of Gas is still Cheaper than a Gallon of Airline Water

Airline travel has been degenerating steeply since 9/11. It's not getting any better.

At least they still think that drinking from the bathroom tap is "just not classy."

I mean, they have *some* standards!

I'm not looking forward to my next plane trip, on any airline.

Sunday

Went over to Steph and the Old Man's today to help them put together the last of their shelves down in the basement. Learned how to properly use a power drill. They've been remodeling their bathroom all week, and using my shower while theirs is out of commission. Their bathroom looks like a real Oakwood bathroom now! Not a pink-tiled monstrosity from the 1940s! It's a miracle. Like Steph said, it looks like something out of a Pottery Barn catalogue.

It's been fun to help them out with the occasional thing around the house, whether it's building shelves or moving furniture or painting doors. It's a taste of what it'll look like if I decide to buy my own 1940s fixer-upper (tho I suspect mine would be in the 90-100K range and not the 120-130K range. Yes, I'm talking house prices. This is Ohio. House prices are the only advantage to living here).

I had some other things to say, but they popped right out of my head. Um.

So I guess I'm done.

One for the Road

Once Upon a Time...

August

The grass is brown, and the season puts me in the mood to look up, and up, always, for the first dead leaves of the season. Even though it's just August, it's the beginning of the end. Maybe I'm just reminded of Alaska, when the leaves were falling in mid-August, when the storms were coming in, when you got to watch it all go, swept away, in just a few short weeks.

Today I bought at least four kinds of cheese.

I laid out in the sun, I thought about August, Alaska, thought about who I used to be before I got sick. Kept wondering, god, who the hell am I now?

In some ways, I was worse then. I wasn't a nice person. Way worse than now. I'm not sure how much better I am now. But for me, back then, the summer was going to last forever. Things would just keep getting better. You blaze through on the way to somewhere. You keep going. The weather might change, but summer doesn't end.

Now I don't really know who I am, or what I do, really. Most of all, I don't know what I want, and that's what's been killing me.

Why Am I So Tired?

Went out and watched The Dark Knight again with a couple guys from work, and paid more attention to the gender dynamics that folks were mentioning. And yeah, it's true. It's so classicaly comic-bookey in the good way (good vs. evil, chaos vs. order, epic villian vs. epic hero, etc), and in the bad way. The one female character who's not a wife or girlfriend who gets blown up or introduced merely to act as revenge catalysts for the guys is Ramirez, and you know that part was written for a guy and they congratulated themselves for casting it the way they did.

It was still half an hour too long, and WTF is up with that *entire* Hong Kong sequence?

But anyway, by the end of it I realized I was incredibly tired, and it was only 8:30. This may be because I spent all day proofing our Ops Manual, then spent the next three hours sitting at a movie, and all that non-movement makes you pretty sluggish.

I've also been working at getting back into dating the last couple of weeks, and corresponding with bunches of folks, and I think that took some stuff out of me. Socializing can be hard work for me, even in the written form. Ever since the last breakup, I haven't been as self-confident when it comes to dealing with the dynamics of dating. Not that I was ever good at it, or socializing in general, and hence why I'll make huge efforts for a few weeks and then just... stop. To recover. Because it's just exhausting. It's why I don't have a lot of friends, either. Keeping social relationships together is really tough for me. I'm working at getting better at it, but it's a struggle.

When it comes to self confidence, I've been working hard to get that back, too, but it's slow going. Some of that, I know, is missing because I'm not getting any real writing done. I get all my energy from writing, and I've had nothing to show for it for several months but a bunch of company websites, an Ops Manual, and enough sales letters and corporate correspondence to cripple a horse. It concerns me. And it's not good for me.

In the end, what I mean to say is, it's just been a long week for some reason. A week that needs some sleeping here at the end of it. Some writing during it. And then I need to get back to the gym next week.

Need, need, need.

But for now, the sleeping.

And I Feel Fine

Science fiction will save us.

Notes to Myself

Is it a good or a bad sign that as I'm proofing our 300 page Ops Manual I'm thinking, "Well, at least this doesn't need to be SEO-optimized."

I've think I've officially become a corporate writer.

Avenge me....

One for the Road

All I Want for Christmas

Met with my pod educator tonight to go over how I'm doing. My numbers have improved dramatically, and it looks like I'm evening out. She went through some more advanced things, like programming an extended bolus and temp basal, which eluded me (apparently some folks find that doing a 30%/70% bolus split for pizza does wonders. That is, you can program it to give you 30% of the amount you take to cover pizza up front and the other 70% over the next 3-4 hours as your sugar starts to *really* spike. God, could you imagine if I could figure out a way to eat pizza again without being sick?). So I'll be playing around with those.

She also gave me a few tips for keeping the pod on during exercise. Some people actually apply extra super glue between the pod and the adhesive (it's actually made to move a little bit with your body, but you can secure it tighter) or to stick it on just below my arm, towards my back and underneath my bra - so my sports bra would, effectively, also serve as my pod bra. Ha.

I've dated some guys who are pretty squeamish and easily weirded out, so I was concerned, at first, about having the pod on my stomach. When I realized you could wear it on the back of your arm, well, hell, there goes the last squeamish thing I had about the pod. Stuck to the back of your arm, it's less likely to get in the way, and less likely to make a partner squeamish or weirded out.

Also, she showed me how the backlight works! Oh, man, you have no idea how fucking sweet this is. All these nighttime sugar checks are a bitch with no backlight. I have to use my cell phone. Back in the day, I'd have to turn on my book light or a bedside light, which isn't bad when you're sleeping alone, but I do hate it when I have a partner and have to bug them.

She cautioned me about my tight target. My target is set at 85-95, and damned it all if the damn thing doesn't fucking keep me there. Today's numbers:

5:33 am: 98

12:13 pm: 81

3:00 pm: 121 (post-lunch correction, look, I'm getting better!)

7:48 pm: 80

With a tight target, though, you do have a better chance of going low, so I need to be aware of it. You're also at risk for developing hypoglycemia unawareness, which I need to watch out for (hasn't been a problem yet, but some people have it right off the bat). I *have* noticed that I feel low more often now when I'm not low at all. I tested twice with this meter and again with my old meter a couple of times when I could have sworn I was low, but was at a respectable 90-something. So it'll be interesting to see how that pans out. I assume that as my body gets used to being constantly at 80-100, that'll happen less often.

I want an A1c under 6. I just do. Under 6 is normal. Under 7 is "target" for a diabetic. But I don't want to be a diabetic. I want to be as normal as possible while living abnormally.

I was dancing around in the hallway today at work for no reason, and realized how great I've been feeling. I can't just bottle this stuff up. I have to work hard for it, everyday, and you know...? It's worth it.

So. Fucking. Worth it.

T1 Ironman Blog

Good reads, my T1s, good reads.

Mmmm Equality

Personally, I've been striving toward equality to empower my fellow women with the desire and opportunity to get boob jobs. Also, cardio strip classes are waaaay more practical than kickboxing. The moon is also made of cheese and Jesus rode a T-Rex to school, which makes me happy.

No?

Killing Us Softly

Women and "women" in advertising.

A touch dated in presentation ("they now use computer imaging to make fake women!") but the ads - and the messages - are still the same.

(it's all good, but be sure to check out the Special K ad at the end)

Quote of the Day

“The price of discipline is always less than the pain of regret."
- Robin Sharma

Omnipod By the Numbers

5:34 am: 96

12:12 pm: 95

3:15 pm: 155 (still working on that post-lunch correction)

6:51 pm: 95

No fucking shit.

The bitch is back, yo.

Catherynne says..

"In the days before I got the bright idea to start writing novels, I ran that particular obstacle course. I dutifully ate the scorpions and walked the highwire, dredging up my childhood abuse and past relationships and anything else that seemed suitably dire to please a professor. It really makes for an alarming personality type: someone who has lost all notion of appropriate social filters, and views their private pain as public discourse.

You know, a blogger."

Read the rest

WoW No More

My WoW account expired yesterday, much to the delight of my book contract and my waistline. I suspect the 5 lbs I've gained over the last three months have just as much to do with too much WoW as they do with too many flourless peanut butter cookies.

Now that I'm on the pump, I'm paying even more attention to what I'm eating. Again, as I discovered back when I did my health assessment, it's funny that I'm one of those people who can't let things slip for a few months. A few months of WoW and cookies and it's all over. Sucks to be me, but that's the way it is. At least I catch myself now.

Still working at fine-tuning the insulin for workouts. I hate having to re-calibrate everything again after just getting it down. Not doing well on that front. Continuing to do my workouts at work, but not my additional 2 at the gym. I need to face my fear and just fucking do it.

Just do it.

Personally, I always like the "No Fear" slogan a lot better.

Consistent Incompetence

Some people, seriously.

One for the Road