$12.00 worth of our favorite person

Had a bit of fun tonight with S and going out to the 9:30 club in DC. Always such a joy to go see live music, and enjoy someone we mutually adore together. Like Guster or Ben Folds, and here with Amythyst Kiah.  She opened for a band neither of us know, Larkin Poe. 

It's funny because some people don't come for the opener and they just show up for the main act. To be honest, I always feel bad for them, especially in this case. To see Amythyst perform, hear the power in her voice. She's just so incredibly good - I cannot recommend her enough. Anyone getting there late and missing her is poorer for it.

Then there is the other side of the coin, when people come for the opener and leave. A few years back S and I went to see AK open for Josh Ritter. I only knew a couple Josh Ritter songs, but he'd opened for Guster the August beforehand and I loved him so was happy to go see him with his full band. And with AK opening, two of the finest songwriters around. Such a joy. 

There were women sitting next to us who got up after AK was done and they left. They.... left! They said "enjoy the next guy," and I was surprised they were leaving. "Oh we only came for Amythyst. We're not interested in Josh Ritter."

Well. 

Pay tickets for full price to leave after 1/3 of the show is over. Okay? At least stay for a couple songs? At least stay until he plays "Kathleen," maybe? 

Their loss - he and his band were phenomenal. 

S and I took the metro into DC and went to a brewery where the food is pretty good. Only tonight it was not. Sorely disappointed by the food and service. S spent dinner (no fault of hers!) trying to get her 2 tickets she purchased on StubHub transferred to her Ticketbastard account and it was not working. So she got to their support and got nowhere. Doors at 6pm. it is 6:15. I'm thinking no problem, doors at 6pm mean AK goes on at 7?  So I went to StubHub, and bought us 2 tickets for $12 each compared to the $108 she spent on 2 tickets. She ended up telling them she wanted a refund and they said she'd get one. 

Good. 

We headed over, got in line, got inside, 6:15 and AK was into her third song. The fuck? Doors at 6 and AK starts at 6? I asked at the door and they said "with early shows it's this way. I said there was no indication that this was the case, if it said Doors at 5, and AK starts at 6. 

Lady, DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND WE ARE ONLY HERE FOR THE OPENER? And we are missing her. 

We didn't miss her all the way, we got our good dose of Amythyst and afterward she went to the Merch table and we were able to say hello.

"Have I met you before?" she asks. 

Yes. like. Four other times yes. Hi. She laughed. So fun. She is so genuine and sweet and kind. I look forward to seeing her again in a headlining situation, and on time. 

S and I decided we were not interested in seeing Larkin Poe after all. We were mad because we had to fight with technology, and we got our $12 worth of AK. 

So we became those people who leave after the opener. And I was super okay with that. 

Around the corner we went to a nice looking bar. No food, no wait staff, you had to order at the bar and they slapped a 22% gratuity on the tab. The fuck? We did all the work. Busing our own table, bringing our own drinks over. Jesus that's crap. Glad S caught it because she added another 20% onto her tab (they leave the blank tip line on the receipt for those of us dumb enough to miss the fact we've already paid 22%.) 

She filled out the other receipt that says customer copy and on the tip line she put "you charged me already!" 

We headed to the Metro, she was feeling hungry and we thought about stopping in Silver Spring but went up to the end of our line to the metro stop right by her house. Her husband and her son H came out to join us, hilariously. We had a wonderful finishing up of the night. 

Let's say it wasn't perfect with how we had to fight with technology and I hope to hell she gets her money back from StubHub, but I'm glad we got to see AK and have time to sit and talk and catch up because that was the best part of it all. 

Home tired, ready for bed. Good night!  Digits below!

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours.   No measured exercise but we did walk around the streets of DC. 10k+ by bedtime

blood glucose:

8:30am: 123
4pm: 118
11:45pm: 145

food:
coffee/water
8:30am: Phentermine
10am: met+glip
10:45am: roast beef and colby jack on 647 bread; couple spoonfuls of potato salad
4:45pm: pb&low sugar J on 647 bread (while waiting for my friend... hungry!) Met+Glip
5:30pm: fried chicken sandwich on brioche, small side salad, cheese curds, beer
7pm-8:30pm: a couple glasses of wine 
after 9:30pm: some spicy egg roll things, a few slices of square pizza; 2 High Noon seltzers
11:45pm: jardiance

Shit Sherpa

You know I love our dog, I have loved all our dogs. The one thing I sometimes hate is being a responsible human being and picking up their poop. Especially if we are a mile from the house on a walk. Carrying the bag of poo is not fun. 

And it is tacky as hell to drop your poop in someone's trash barrel. It's just very uncool. So I see why people don't pick up after their dogs. They're assholes, yeah. But I understand it. 

Since I've been walking a lot more, sometimes I like to just go by myself, solo. No dog means no stopping every couple feet to sniff things, or pee, or ... poop. I can put in a lot of steps in 30 minutes. But Toffee does love a walk, and Doug didn't go tonight. He thought it was about to start raining. But I needed my steps and it was too late in the evening to go to the gym. 

I took Toffee with me. 

While Dahlia was still here I ordered these little things to attach to the harnesses to carry the poop bags. They arrived after Dahlia got adopted, and I forgot to put hers in the box to send to her family. But I use Toffee's every day. I have to tighten her harness (as mentioned, girl dropped some pounds) but it's kind of nice that the little dealie just stays on her harness, you attach the poo bag to it, and they get to carry their own crap. 

Makes taking a walk much more enjoyable. 

We have two parks at either end of our neighborhood where there are trash containers to drop the bags off, and usually I will go a little out of my way to go to either one of them, depending on where we are. Tonight we just walked, it was buggy out and I figured going to the park would be extra buggy. 

Toffee looked super cute tonight, so I got a pic of her with her baggie. It's so heavy, it pulls the handle over all the way to the side. That's a big ole poo. sigh. 

At least I don't have to carry it, and she's adorable.

Tomorrow I'm going to DC to a concert with S. It's so funny because we were so stoked to buy these tickets forever ago. And then all of a sudden, it's time. I find I suck going out on weekdays, and even Friday nights are a challenge. 

Boston based comedian Joe Fenti did this video and I felt it. Deeply in my heart and soul. Make sure you watch the whole thing all the way to the end because this is so valid. So completely valid. And true! 

But we will have a great time, I know it. We're both bailing from work early because the venue doors are at 6 and we would like to be down front. Or up on the second floor on the rail. We'll see how that goes. Dinner beforehand and a nice night out. Her son is super mad that we're going to a concert without him, but he'll survive. Sometimes you gotta let mom have a night off! 

Anyway. Here's a picture of Toffee and her Turd Bag. Digits below! 

 digits

exercise: 12/12 hours.  30 min/1.38 miles (should have been at least 1.5 but the dog factor slowed me down). 10k+ by bedtime

blood glucose:

9am: 111
5:30pm: 158
10:45pm: 104

food:
coffee/water
9am: phentermine
10am: met+glip
11:30am: bowl of mac & cheese w/hamburger
3pm: several chunks of grilled chicken from last night
5:30pm: met+glip
6:30pm: 2 pork chops by geoff in a bourbon maple sauce
8:45pm: 3 celery sticks w/pb
10pm: jardiance

Fool me once

Today I had one full hour break at noon. I grabbed a quarter for the parking meter, taped up my box, grabbed my wallet, and ran out the door. I'll be home in no time. Piece of cake.

Note to self. 

How many times have you gone to that specific post office over the years and waited on line for a half hour? You bring one quarter to this dog and pony show? Twelve minutes for a quarter. Math. Christine - what were you thinking. Also, you have a team meeting with your department head, and she is so hard to get audience with. Be there.

I walked in to see a big line, and really should have just turned around and walked back out. There were two people working. One is this HORRIBLE older woman who is the rudest person I've ever met, even for a post office. Then there's this younger guy, he's slow as hell. After every customer, he goes out back. Like, is he taking a break because he just sold some stamps?

The lady was having a fight with a guy, while also trying to help a family do their passport for their brand new infant. Someone walked up to her and said he needed tape and she screamed at him that it isn't free, get a roll off the retail rack there and pay for it, it's five bucks. 

Yelling, yelling so much yelling. This is the world's worst post office. I have two other options. One with free parking but getting there is such a challenge traffic-wise, and the other is just too far and it is dumb to go there.

I started to sweat it. 

I was already in there 20 minutes, and the parking enforcement dude was walking up and down the street handing out tickets like christmas cards. 

I knew my meter had expired, but there was only one person ahead of me. The slow dude got up and went out back again and I groaned - no please please please dude, come back! I'm going to get a ticket. 

Kind of not realizing I was muttering this out loud, the lady in front of me said I should go put another quarter in the meter, she'll gladly hold my place (so kind of her). But. Thing is, I didn't have another quarter. I'm stupid. I let her know that, and also how stupid I am. 

So she hands me one, and I looked at the guy behind me like how do you feel if I get out of line here and come back?  

He said "Parking tickets in this town are 50 bucks, so however much your box is gonna cost to ship, add 50 bucks to that. Run go feed the meter, you're good." and I run out to feed the meter. I ran back in relieved. 

Ten more minutes I'm still there waiting my turn. It literally took 2 minutes to do my transaction. Here's the box. I pick the how fast do I want it to go, it is $10.50, here's a 20. 

He doesn't know how to make the change. 

It's $9.50. I tell him this. He looks at me blankly. Another girl is standing behind him and says "give her a 10 dollar bill." 

I tell her no, it's too much, it's $9.50. 

She says "don't sweat it.  I got you." 

I said "maybe put the 50 cents into a little cup for someone who may need to feed the meter." I thanked her profusely, told her she was my hero. Told the woman who was in front of me she was my hero. The guy behind me - my hero. 

I rushed home, got to my computer 2 min before the meeting start. relieved. Great meeting with our department head. We're all going through a lot right now and she's really bearing a burden. So we all had a good moment together. 

I took Toffee to a vet appointment at 4pm. She's gone from 67lbs to 58. Our vet had encouraged us to not feed her as much ("the bag says to feed her that much but the dog food people want you to buy more dog food. She doesn't need that much.") And she had four straight months of Dahlia with face fighting, chasing, wrassling, running around the yard at 90 miles an hour so she has peeled off some weight. I'm interested in seeing if she gains anything back now that she's back to potato mode. It is the one thing I'll truly miss about Dahlia is their play times. 

There was a late call with a client that ran to 6:15pm. It went very well, they launch their site tomorrow and they're ready. Afterwards, I grilled some chicken that I had marinated earlier in the day with some homemade potato salad. I called my mom to wish her a happy birthday while the chicken was grilling. Earlier today I ordered her flowers to have delivered on Friday - right in between her birthday and Mother's Day. So I told her unlock her porch in the morning so the delivery person can drop the flowers where she can get them. 

She told me the same story three times. Then she said "oh! did I tell you this?" no! you did NOT you keep telling me about some guy who called you on the phone. Three times you tell me this story but you don't tell me that other one I need to know. Okay. 

Dinner was ready so I said goodnight, goodbye, I love you. She always says "I love you more," and I always reply "Not possible." It's a little game we play. 

After dinner I needed to do a walk so I went. I've been trying to connect with someone to conspire to something special and beautiful for a gift, and we finally got a chance to talk, so I lengthened my walk desire by 15 minutes just to keep talking to her. It paid off as you can see in the digits. 

Finally, I promised that "soon" was going to happen. And it has. Digits below the picture. 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours.  37 min walk/1.82 miles. 10k+ by bedtime

blood glucose:

8am: 122
4:30pm: 167
11:15pm: 104

food:
coffee/water
8am: phentermine
10:30am: met+glip
2:30pm: pb & low sugar j on 647 italian bread
4:45pm: the rest of yesterday's tuna salad
6:45pm: grilled chicken breast, homemade potato salad w/egg and bacon. Met+glip
red wine
10pm: jardiance

In the Forgetfulness Zone

My last meeting today ended at 3, and I told myself that I'd run my errand to the post office to send my little gift off to Dahlia's new family but do that after 4, 4:30 or so.... At about 5:15 Doug came upstairs to get Toffee for a walk. 

As they say in the midwest, "Ope." I forgot to go. 

Just in the zone getting some things done, I guess. Tickets, emails, and we had a client trying to do a DNS change for his website and it was not working. Frustrating for him but I don't know how we help him. My work bestie BW and I tried everything we know, and it still isn't going. 

We ... aren't DNS experts. Just supportive and we know enough from my big project to at least get 90% of things done before we start having to find . I think tomorrow we will try again, third time is the charm right? 

So Doug left and I wanted to get dinner started but also I wanted to walk. But I didn't want to go to the gym. Walking inside while dinner was prepping was my answer. 

Geoff got home and we got grilling, tonight was a final for him for one of the two summer session classes he was taking. Tomorrow is his other one. I forgot to ask him if he is registering for anything for 2nd summer semester or not. I'll try and remember to do that tomorrow. 

After dinner I did need to go get a pokemon stop and we have two on our street. If you walk up to one, turn around come back past the house and go to the other it is a 20 min walk-ish. So I did get a second walk in and got the 10k steps easy. 

Gotta get back on my walking grind! That slacker day on Saturday was disappointing, breaking my streak for no good reason. Anyway. 

Tomorrow Toffee has a vet appointment to do her heartworm test, she's overdue for it and I'm wondering what her weight is. They had recommended she drop 5-7 pounds when we brought her in the first time so we did scale back on her dog food from 1.5 cups per meal 2x a day to 1 cup per meal. 

Pretty sure she has lost weight because her harness is too big even though we have adjusted it, it's just so loose across her chest where it didn't used to be. Bet my girl is under 50 now! We're both slimming down, you could say. 

Off to bed. late time zone hockey can't keep me awake and interested. 

Digits below. 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours.  2 walks. One inside for 35 min/1.61 miles; then pokemon walk, 21 min/.94 miles; 10k+ by bedtime

blood glucose:

7am: 108
5pm: 113
10:15pm: 86

food:
coffee/water
7am: Phentermine
9am: 2 tollhouse cookies (dippin' in coffee, so good)
10am: met+glip
12:45pm: 3 pieces of bacon w/tuna in a low carb wrap
3:15pm: last 2 pieces of bacon, w/mayo in a low carb wrap
5pm: met+glip
6:30pm: one cheeseburger w/some tater tots
10:15pm: jardiance
no wine/alcohol

Earworms and Misheard Lyrics

I get earworms. If you don't know what an earworm is, it is usually a song, or just one part of a song, that just plays over and over in your brain. 

It's not an RFK Level Brain Worm but damn, it is as close to one as you can get. 

For the past couple days I've had a doozy. It's a song called "If You Have Ghosts," and the version stuck in my head is the one by the band... Ghost. How appropriate. Not the original version, not the John Wesley Harding version, nope. I hear Tobias' voice over and over. 

But the funny thing is I had the words wrong all along. I thought the lyric was "I don't want my bangs too long." The real line is fangs. Fangs too long. If my sister is reading this I am sure she is laughing at me.

And this is all because of me trying to grow out my bangs because I do want them long. Then this song crossed my mind...  And I've been in my head singing it. I always wondered why on earth the person wouldn't want their bangs too long. And now it makes sense because ... that's not at all what they were singing. I get it now. 

I linked to this nice acoustic version. Watch and enjoy. 

I've had a lot of misheard lyrics in my day but one of the funniest ones is my sister. In Guster's song "Demons," the line is "honest is easy," but she hears "Aunt Esther's easy," which of course makes less sense than bangs being too long but we sing it every time. Much to our self-entertainment. 

There's another good one for Frank Turner fans. In the song "Reasons not to be an idiot," fans hear "invisible llama" instead of "invisible armor." I can hear that one too, but it makes absolutely no sense for a fantastic songwriter to say someone would be wrapped up in invisible llama. 

Still, the collective mind finds it amusing and fans will sing it together. 

Brains are funny things. Be sure to ask me about "Peek Freans and Booze are the colors I choose" someday. 

Today was a busy day. Lots of tickets and a few meetings with clients. Clients that I like, and I love to talk strategy and "should we do this or this," and sometimes I have no proven "this works better than that," but I do have advice like "you don't have a big staff so THIS one is easier than the other." 

During a break in the middle of the day I whipped up some toll house cookies. I have a little box of things for Dahlia that I wanted to get to her new family, her prescription for flea/tick/heartworm, some other meds that I forgot to give them. And I figured I'd also bake cookies for the humans to make the box worth while. 

And yes, I did eat cookies. They were so good.

I was going to go to the post office to ship the box and then hit gym around 4, but unfortunately didn't wrap up until after 5. I grilled dinner, we ate, and I figured if I didn't go to the gym I wasn't going to get steps. We had some wild weather on the way. And sure enough, I did 22 minutes on the treadmill and wanted to go home. Never go straight to the treadmill after eating. Plus, the gym is mobbed at 7:30pm. 

Sadly, I should have stayed on the treadmill or something because there was an epic storm. Hard to see while driving home, I relied on the tail lights of the car in front of me. The lines on the road were completely invisible, and it was a little nerve wracking. Thankfully I was on the phone with Linda while driving and that kept me calm. 

Got home for some hockey night action, and dishes to load into the dishwasher. 

So if I can be a motivated human, I can go to the post office in the morning and mayyyyyyybe the gym? I have a 10am meeting, so that may be cutting it close. We'll see what happens. 

Digits! below.

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours.  Treadmill, 22 min/1.21 miles. 10k+ by bedtime

blood glucose:

8am: 146
5pm: 203
10:45pm: 98

food:
coffee/water
8am: phentermine
10:30am: met+glip
12:30pm: pb+low sugar j on 647 bread
1pm: chocolate chip cookie (I was baking and it fell apart. oops)
2pm: another cookie
5pm: 2 baby bell cheeses
5pm: met+glip
6pm: 3 grilled sausages, peppers & onions
red wine + gingerale
9:30pm: jardiance

A day of a whole lotta nothin

Today we did nothing. I took two small naps, I must have needed them. Doug took one big giant one.  It was pouring most of the morning, and while I do have a lot of indoor things to do today was just not the day to do it. I wanted to go to the garden store and get plants but in the weather, both of us were "meh" about it.

Doug took Toffee for a walk while I made dinner, so while they were out I walked inside. I didn't think I'd get a real/decent walk in today and at 5pm found I was only at about 4k for the day. Eep. 

It cleared up late in the afternoon and so I made use of the time after we ate. I've managed to play Pokemon for 40 straight days which is crazy for me. I usually go weeks without playing. But with walking the dog/s as much as I did in the last monrh or so, it made sense to revive the participation. 

22 minutes is a touch less than a mile, I should have walked up the street and back again to get 30 but just didn't feel motivated. I rewarded myself with some wine. Good job, Chris! you did it!

At about 8pm I realized I had 2k steps left for the day. Oy. Can I do it? 

I did. I ran in place in the bedroom for several hundred steps, and walked around while watching hockey. I unloaded the dishwasher and walked the length of the kitchen between putting things away. We did it. Hooray. 

Aside from talking about houses, we really didn't do much. And some days you need that. Right? 

Digits below.

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. 15 min. Indoor walk while Doug took Toffee out. 15 min/.7 mile. Pokemon walk, 22 min/.99 mile. Pushed to get to 10k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

8:30am: 125
5pm: 137
10:30pm: 90

food:
coffee/water
8:30am: phentermine
10:30am: met+glip
2:45pm: pb& low sugar j on 647 bread (I wasn't hungry... but felt I should eat)
5pm: met+glip; 4 oreo cookies
6:30pm: big piece of chicken parm w/sauce
red wine+diet gingerale
8pm: ramekin of mixed nuts

Crazy Random Happenstance

Doug pitched the idea of going out to Front Royal today, rather on the late side. We didn't leave until after noon. We put the dog in the car, and off we went. Doug wanted to go look at a specific neighborhood, which it turns out on paper it looks good but wow. Dirt roads, out in the woods, further out in the woods than it looks like on the map. 

The two houses we did a drive by on were nice. Super nice. Unfortunately, too remote for my liking and I don't want to do this to us. The very first snowfall when Geoff has to leave for school, it is going to suck. 

We went back into town and there are two houses for sale right next door to each other near the private military academy right in town. We walked around the yard and the bells were chiming on campus, and it was very nice, very relaxing. 

Both houses are listed by the same agent, one looks in better shape than the other, but both are being sold "AS IS." And the as is, well it's rather more than I think I'd like an as is to be. 

There's a LOT of potential there but I don't want that. I want move-in ready and hang up Guster posters. Not hire contractors and gut the kitchen because it is from 1972.   

"We bought fixer uppers in the past, and we never really got to fixer uppering on them," I said to Doug.

But our mortgage could be a thousand bucks on one of them. That's tempting. 

We decided to go to another brewery. The dog was being so good, riding in the car and everything, she needed a break. We hit up Backroom Brewery, and it was slightly confusing because they have a BIG function hall that we thought was the taproom, but there was a private event happening there. A tiny little "taproom" sign pointing the way to the back of the property. We were not sure at all we were in the right place, no other cars were there. 

We parked and I got out of the car to go see what the situation was. There was a tiny little sign on the door that said "Taproom" but really, it felt weird. 

A car pulled up behind us, and four people got out. 

I looked at one guy and said "Is this really happening?"

He replied, "I don't know, you tell me."

It was an old co-worker who left our employer back in 2021. Of all people. Right there, deep in the woods, far from everything. 

We hugged and one of his friends said "Oh they really do know each other!" We confused her, she had no idea what was going on. 

I said hi to his husband, who I hadn't seen for years, and met the two friends with them. We went to check out the taproom, with Doug sitting in the car wondering what the hell was going on with me hugging some rando dude in a parking lot. 

The taproom was indeed open, they served food which was important because I was feeling way drained from being out all day driving around hell and half of Appalachia. 

Doug brought Toffee in and there was a nice sitting area where we all hung out. I caught up with my former co-worker, talked a lot about Guster (well, they asked! and he knew exactly what a fangirl I am), and we just had a really sweet visit. 

A little thunderstorm rolled through, we had this hangout space all to ourselves and a wonderful chill time. 

How weird. 

Lost two hours of steps by sitting in the car, and I didn't feel like trying to cram 4k+ steps into the evening once we got home. 

Today is the first day in like 32 days that I didn't knock down 10k steps, so I let it go. 

Here we are. How fun.

digits

exercise: 10/12 hours.   Missed 2 hours while riding in the car. No exercise, 6k steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

8am: 145
n/a
10:30pm: 119

food:
coffee/water
8am: phentermine
10am: met+glip
11:30am: english muffin w/pb & low sugar j
5pm: 2 beers, bratwurst (skipped the roll) cole slaw
7:30pm: left over chinese food, met+glip; mixed nuts
2 more beers
9:45pm: jardiance 

Bagpipes and Cats

I heard Geoff come upstairs at about 7am, he started the coffee and fed Toffee. She came into the guest room with me, and waited patiently for me to get up and let her outside. She's a world of difference from the other dog. So patient.

At about 7:30 I figured it was important to get out of bed because I had to pee. I've made a little promise to myself to get up and not get back into bed if it is after 7am. Pledge to me kept. 

Doug had to get up by 8 because he took today off to do more errands and work on things for his Aunt. He had a 9am meeting at the local bank branch that has her mortgage. He is trying to get a direct deposit set up for her to pay them, and see if they'll pull a credit report for her. Thankfully she doesn't do business with the Big Bank that we refuse to ever deal with. But this is an equally shady ass giant bank and he's not happy about talking to them.  As I expected, he came back with nothing solved and a lot of anger and frustration over this. He has to get his Aunt and make an appointment in person with her to get what he needs set up. His power of attorney paperwork was fine at the local credit union for getting everything he needed from them, but he is literally trying to make it so her mortgage gets paid and this. fucking. bank. 

So he had to express his frustration loudly, repeatedly, and that's okay. I get it. I hear him. He needs to take her in person to do some things, which he should be able to get done as the power of attorney but some banks are like 'hell yeah, we'll help you,' and other banks are like 'fuck you, you're not the customer.' So he was mad that he has to take yet another day to do things. 

I asked him if he was going to go get her today, but he had a doctor's appointment at 3pm and no. Not driving to Virginia to help her today. 

Geoff cheffed up some dinner. He likes to find these recipes in a braising meat cookbook, It was pretty good, and sometimes I have to supervise but tonight he nailed it. Next time, thicker pork chops would be a good idea. 

Doug took a nap after dinner and I took myself for a walk. Didn't intend to do a whole half hour but it happened,  Down the street from us there is a kid who is learning the bagpipes. Which I'm sure many people would read that and cringe, but, I'm all for it. Sometimes he is out practicing in the front yard while his dad does the gardening. 

I walked past and cheered and told him he is doing GREAT! I'm sure this is so hard but keep it up! The dad had to laugh and smile. 

A cat came running down the sidewalk to see me, and I asked if it was their cat. He said no, and pointed to the neighbors. The neighbors also have a giant Rottweiler named Max, so I said "oh! This is Max's cat." And I stopped to pat it. It walked up the block with me, very sociable, very sweet. 

I was incredibly relieved I didn't have Toffee with me. Not easy walking her around cats. She's horrible. So I got some cat time and it brought me joy. 

I took a picture today but will save it for tomorrow. Digits down below! 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours.  Indoor walk before starting work, 20 min/.9 miles. Neighborhood walk, 30 min/1.49 miles. 11k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

7:30am: 156
5:15pm: 108
11:45pm: 111

food:
coffee/water
7:30am: phentermine
noon: met+glip
1:30pm: pbj on 647 bread
5pm: met+glip
6:30pm: 2 thin pork chops in a sauce with pineapples/onions/orange (geoff found the recipe) and a lot of broccoli. 
9:45pm: jardiance and the rest of the broccoli no one wanted to eat (can't throw broccoli away... sad)
no wine/alcohol

Cloud Talk

On the Simpsons, Bart is hanging out with the bullies and they're shooting the shit, looking at the statue of Jebediah Springfield, and up at the clouds looking for shapes of things. Like, a school bus driving off a cliff, a cherry bomb, the statue of Jebediah Springfield with its head cut off. 

They say it would be so cool to take the head off that statue. So. Bart does it. 

And he shows them the severed head, and they get MAD at him. "That was just cloud talk, man." 

Cloud talk. 

Sometimes we sit around talking about stuff. We do our own version of cloud talk. And other times we get closer to cutting the head off of the statue of the town's founder, the guy who iced a bear with his bare hands. 

Doug and I are looking at houses out around Front Royal. As much as we love just taking a ride out there for a day trip, we had our ulterior motive last weekend.

Now, many of you know what happened to us in 2008 2009, 2010, and even 2014, with our old house, when we were in the middle of a refinance with our mortgage company and a certain bank bought it, and ... well. Things got epically fucked up. 

Doug swore that he would never ever buy another house, that no bank would never ever make a penny on interest from him. Ever. Scorched earth. We've been renting ever since.

The pandemic and post-pandemic ponderings have put him in a different state of mind in regards to housing. We were incredibly happy to be in the house we were in when we first moved here, but the owners wanted to sell so we had to move. We managed to get incredibly lucky and found this house 3 doors down the street in 2021, and moved in here. We didn't want to buy the first house, they didn't even offer us right of first refusal they just told us basically we had to move. But anyway - still. Didn't want to buy it anyway. See Doug / no bank / etc.

When that first house here went up for sale, they asked 400k, and it sold for 443k. I checked zillow and it is now "worth" 540k if they were to put it on the market. That would be a fair price for this area. The house we rent right now is "worth" 557k. It's a great little house, great little neighborhood. But we could never afford to live here. 

I don't feel like this is a half million dollar house. 

So we are pondering these things. Rent forever just to stay here? We don't need to commute into work much. Doug has been in three times this year, I've been in twice so far this year. For Doug to get in, sometimes it is a 2 hour ride to go just a few miles to get to his area of Virgnia. For me, I have the metro so that's easy but it's brutal on him.  

Later this month, I've got to go in for a big meeting for 3 days. And there is a day in July that I know I'll be in the office. Aside from that, thank God both of our employers have not instituted a come back into the building work policy. I may never have to enter the building again. 

And Doug can more easily get to where his office is from out West there, than it is to get there from here. And for me, I can drive to the end of one of the metro lines in Virginia there, and Metro in. It'll take forever but I won't have to try and drive into the city at all, and park at my building. 

So technically, we can live anywhere. My colleagues live in Connecticut, Vermont, Denver, Atlanta, Chicago... Nothing is keeping us in this spot, necessarily.

Doug has recently been just feeling that. It's crowded here, it's busy here. The county is expensive. We don't go into the city much. We're over 7 years into our time here, and he's got that wanderlust. 

So we started looking out at Front Royal. There's a lot to like, as far as "vibes" go. And it is affordable. 

The big huge what-if is Geoff. We decided a couple weeks ago not to bring this up with him just yet, you know, in case this is truly just cloud talk. He started talking to us this morning about what he needs to do to enroll in his Associates Degree program. He is taking two prerequisites right now, and the semester is coming to an end so he is thinking it's time to fill out the enrollment process thingie...At the school he's currently attending. 

So Doug and I both figured, now's the time to talk to him about this. 

He took it much better than I thought he would, and MUCH better than 2017. We explained all our justifications. We make DC money but can live out west, it isn't that far away. In fact, if he still wanted to go to the school he goes to, he can. It's an hour drive door to door, but it's already an hour drive door to door with how close we live. 

And, he can transfer. There's a great community college right near where we'd move, and he could enroll there and continue this exact program. He went downstairs with his lunch and came back to talk about driving and commuting and colleges. 

We also showed him that the Shenandoah River has some of the best kayaking, canoeing, tubing in the east. 

"You could go tubing and drink a beer," says Doug.

"That's not safe," says Geoff. 

Hilarious when I think of all these hoards of college students who go on a float with a cooler on its own air mattress. He's still such a Boy Scout, isn't he?

The only thing he'd have to do is decide when to quit his job, when we know what we're doing. And we told him this is all still cloud talk so don't mention it to his boss. He gets it. 

I feel like we all had a really good resolution to that conversation. 

I took myself on a walk while we waited for chinese food delivery. Didn't feel like taking Toffee and having her pull and sniff and drag. I just wanted to listen to the playlist and go. After dinner, I still needed 3,000 steps so... I took her out for a walk to knock down that number. 

Funny, when Dahlia was here, and she was on house arrest, I'd walk her around the house in the morning, several times. And do that several times during the day. Hitting 2k by noon was never a problem. 3k by 3, boom. Today at 5pm I was only at about 4k and I couldn't believe how far behind I was. Gotta up my game during the day so I don't need two walks. 

It was hot out today, mid 80s, humid. We put the AC on at about 5pm. First time this year. 

I was surprised at how well I tolerated the heat when doing both walks. It didn't almost kill me. So I'm feeling improved in so many ways lately. The cat in his picture though, it ws looking for respite anywhere and meowed at me when I said hi. 

I got a nice shower at about 10pm, I never ever shower before bed, but I would have been miserable trying to fall asleep tonight and catching whiffs of my pits. Ha.

Digits below. 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours.  2 walks. One solo, 24 min/1.15 miles. one with Toffee, 26 min/1.14 miles. 10k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

7:30am: 135
4:30pm: 155
11pm: 195

food:
coffee/water
7:30am: phentermine
9:15am: met+glip
12:30pm: english muffin w/pb and bonnie maman's cherry preserves
1:45pm: protein shake
5pm: met+glip
7:30pm: chinese food (general tso's chicken, hunan beef, a little combo rice, 1 spring roll, 3 peking ravioli) 
no wine/alcohol 
10pm: jardiance

Living in my head rent free

My phone rang at 8:30am. I had just snoozed my alarm, wanting to linger for a bit. Who is calling me at 8:30am? 

Jess! 

Oh my, I wonder if something is wrong, this is so early! I answered. 

"I have a very not important question for you," they said. 

I laughed. "Okay - ask!" 

"What musician said "Y'all like Buddy Guy? I sure do!" Because that lives rent free in my head."

"Oh. That's Stevie Ray Vaughan. From a live album. I think he did it with... I think, Albert King and Buddy Guy. When Buddy Guy came out to perform, he asked the audience that. And they cheer."

The mystery is solved. That answered the question. It came up because last night they went to the movies to see Sinner, and Buddy Guy is in it. 

"To be honest, I really thought he had passed away..." they said. 

Well no. He has not. He's alive and kicking. And wonderful. We had a great chat and it was nice to start my day with the sound of their voice. 

Work was good. No client meetings but somehow all my check-ins with colleagues got piled up into today, which was kind of nice. 

We lost our power here at the house at 5:30pm, so both Doug and I stopped what we were doing and started to futz around for something for dinner. Power came back on, both of us were like "meh, not going back to work now!" 

Geoff was at school, so we just made the mac & cheese (by we, I mean me) and the ground beef. I thought the protein would balance out the carbs but I see my sugars are high today. Unfortunate side effect. Will do better tomorrow. 

I took Toffee for a walk at 7:30. I was just going to take her down the street and back, and then continue walking solo to get the steps in. At 7:30pm I was only at 4500 steps, so that's pretty low for me. I knew I'd have to walk extra this evening. 

She ended up doing a good job on the walk, unlike last night when she tried to get a feral cat that was prancing around in the street. How very dare he. 

Today was a breeze. We did see a lot of people and other dogs. And then we came back to the house, I cooled off (it was hot) and rested a bit. Then went out and continued my efforts. It got dark fast, and I quikly noted how few streetlights there are on my favorite walking routes. I adjusted and went a different way. Met a husky and some big white dog I've never seen. It's amazing how many different dogs there are just a half mile away from our yard. 

I got back and Doug was talking to his mom, getting all caught up on the family dramas. 

Finally, whenever Buddy Guy gets mentioned, I think about South Park when the Canadians are having a fight. They call each other Friend, Guy, Buddy when talking. So it turns into a big round robin of 
"I'm not your friend, buddy!"
"I'm not your buddy, guy!" 
"He's not your guy, friend!" 

So the fact they set it up that it is always buddy and guy in the same pairing, not guy and buddy.... it always makes me laugh. 

I'll leave you with this. This is what lives in MY head rent free.
Digits below. 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours.  2 walks. One with Toffee, 24 min/1.03 miles; by myself 23 min/1.07 miles (and I thought Toffee slows me down but hey. the measurement doesn't lie!) 10k+ by bedtime

blood glucose:

8:30am: 128
4:30pm: 120
10:45pm: 129

food:
coffee/water
8:30am: phentermine
11am: met+glip
noon: roast beef & mild cheddar on 647 bread
2pm: no sugar yogurt
5pm: met+glip
6:30pm: 2 large servings of mac&cheese and hamburger 
red wine
9:45pm: jardiance