Check Engine Light

My check engine light came on in the mini yesterday which pissed me right the hell off. We just had a butt ton of work done to it for all the seals in the stupid engine because she was leaking oil. And we have to get the brakes done, that's next. She has 143k miles, she's a go kart with a BMW engine. She is fun and good and I like her but. 

Shit, bitch we just took care of you so much so hard. The hell? 

Because we're at a hotel, there's stores and stuff all around us, and after work I took her over to the Auto Zone to ask if they could read her, let me know if the code was benign or deadly. 

Turns out it's somewhat benign, but it will need to be fixed before the end of the month when she needs to go for her emissions test. Fair. The guy told me "there's nothing for you to buy from us, just take her probably to a dealership for this one, not a regular mechanic. That way they'll get it all figured out for you." 

No charge. A saint, a gentleman, lovely. 

Today I had an afternoon of meetings, and Linda went over mom's to work over there, take her to lunch, and possibly go through mail and futz with some cleaning. She said mom didn't need anything cleaned really, she didn't have a lot of laundry. So she was able to get work done while I talked in meetings. 

She brought my lunch back late, so that was dinner. I pondered just ordering delivery or running over to 5 guys but there wasn't a big enough break time between meetings. The hotel internet went out right before our Office Hours for work, so I ran downstairs and the kid behind the counter and I did things, tested things rebooted their router in the office, and he ended up calling tech support while I pulled the meeting up on zoom on my phone, after downloading the update, and re-authenticating into the platform blah blah blah. Only 5 minutes late. Not too bad. 

Lin and I played videos and songs, listening to the Trans Canada Highwaymen, a bunch of Tiny Desk, I introduced her to Muna (both in Tiny Desk and in "real" format) and Foxing. 

Before we knew it, 11pm got up on our faces. Bed time.

No picture today. Probably stuff tomorrow. I am taking the morning off, I haven't pulled my weight with mom this week, and I'm sure there is shit I can be doing before my 1pm meeting, 2pm meeting and 3pm meeting. 

Digits below. 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. treadmill for a quick break 15 min/.82; 10k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

8:30am: 127
4pm: 91
10:45pm: 129

food & meds:
8:30am: jardiance+phentermine
10:15am: apple w/pb
1pm: met+glip
4pm: buffalo fingers over a small salad w/bleu cheese dressing
6pm: small piece of cheesecake
6:30pm: bowl of trail mix
7pm:met+glip
wine+diet gingerale 

BBQ Ride

Today we drove over to the new restaurant one of mom's favorites (and one of our favorites) is working at. LL wasn't happy with the situation when the foodrinkery that mom loves changed hands. Her brother opened a BBQ place (he owns a food truck but was ready to stop rolling). 

Mom has only seen her once since she left the foodrinkery, so we wanted to take her over. And we'd get to see her too. 

It was further than I thought, and I ended up taking a 2 hour lunch but made up for it by working through the evening. 

We had a lovely visit, it was great catching up. LL looks super happy but she misses everyone from the old place. Her brother is a lot of fun, full of stories and loves to tell them. 

We bought "merch" because he had t-shirts and sweat shirts for sale. And we got a slice of cheesecake (LL bakes all the desserts!). 

I highly recommend the joint, if anyone is on the north side of the canal in the Buzzards Bay/Bourne area. Get the cheesecake (we are saving ours for tomorrow). 

Digits, below. Mom and LL, and a fun whale.

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. Treadmill this morning, 15 min/.88 mi; after lunch 10 min/.46 mi; finishing the day, 20 min./1.03 mi. 10k+ by bedtime

blood glucose:

7:30am: 124
5:15pm: 140
10:15pm: 132 

food & meds:
8am: jardiance+phentermine
9am: 2 sausage patties w/ american cheese on english muffin
1:30pm: pulled pork sammitch on a nice roll w/coleslaw and a lil'bite of mac & cheese; met+glip
5:45: bowl of trail mix
wine+diet ginger ale

Lunchies with Mumsie

We had a pretty busy day. Lin was spreadsheet crazy and I only had one meeting, but there was a lot going on. I left around 12:30 to go get mom to go to the foodrinkery, and one of her friends was sitting there at the bar so we joined her. A favorite bar tender, a favorite waitress, people coming over to say hello. There's a guy who hangs out there who is a Steelers fan so he and I always like to catch up and talk football.

I had her home before 2, and I asked her if she wanted me to hang out. She said no, it was naptime. 

I stood in the driveway and watched her as she made it to her front door and unlocked it. Just to make sure she didn't trip up the steps. 

Back at the hotel, it was back to work and crafting an emergency alert for the team. I am (I think) getting better at this. I hate the process. It is complicated and easy to mess up a step. I prefer to write the alert and let someone else send it. But it worked and I was glad. 

Lin was still working so I went down to the treadmill. I didn't walk around as much as I usually do at home, so I needed a lot of steps to hit the goal. Made myself go 30 min, and if I made myself go to 40 min, it would have been 2 miles easy. But the goal is met. 

We didn't order dinner. I was still pretty full from lunch, and Linda had a pizza I brought back for her, so it was snacky snacks and winey wine for supper. 

Tomorrow another adventure. We're going to have lunch where one of mom's very favorite bartenders has moved to. No bar at this location but it is a BBQ joint, and hopefully lunch will be stellar. And it will be nice to see one of mom (and our) favorite people. 

Here's a mirror selfie from today. Digits below! 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. 30 min/1.83 mi on the treadmill; 10k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

8:30am: 146
5pm: 150
10pm: 104 

food & meds:
8:30am: jardiance+phentermine
9am: egg mcmuffin-ish brekkie sammitch in the hotel
1pm: chicken cutlet sandwich w/lettuce, tomato, american cheese, onion rings; glass of pinot grigio
2:30pm: met+glip
7pm: trail mix, some cheese & pita chips; wine+diet ginger ale
8pm: met+glip

Sunday and Monday at the South Shore

Sunday
Lin and I woke up Sunday morning at stupid thirty because her body at 6:30am said it was 7:30am because, you know. We flopped around the hotel room and at some point I said, ya know, I will go now to the treadmill and get it out of the way. 

Good plan. 

We had some fun together here at the hotel and before we knew it, time to go over to mom's. She normally does not go to the foodrinkery she's fond of on Sundays but called us to tell us what time we should go. 

We pointed out it was Sunday but okay. We'll go out of turn. The restaurant recently changed hands, and there has been a lot of staff turn over. But one of our favorite long-timers is still there and she was behind the bar. We love her. I left her an obscenely large tip and we held down the corner of the bar for quite some time.

Jess came down and met us for lunch, which was nice. After lunch we took mom back to her place and she was ready for a nap so we felt it was good to leave and go hang out at the hotel. Jess hit the road and got home around 9.

Gotta say, it was super fun watching a Patriots game with a ton of Pats fans because it got wild there at the end!

Linda and I then spent the evening listening to music and talking. I introduced her to The Frames and Glen Hansard, Fitzcaraldo still kills me every time I hear it. 

Monday
I didn't take time off of work this week except for Thursday when I'm driving back home. So both Lin and I set up our laptops and started working. I always try to bring the lap desk so can lounge on the bed! I kind of regret not taking the whole week off or anything, but there's a lot to do. 

Hit the ground running today with our devs who were working on the problems of one of our products last week. Had a couple meetings, very productive. Linda and I basically didn't leave the hotel room, it was just all work, all the time. She had a late call with her boss and we decided to just walk across the parking lot to the 99 restaurant. "The Nines" as the kids call it, I guess. 

On our way down, we discovered the pool was drained and being worked on. That's disappointing! We were hoping for some pool time before I go home Thursday. Alas. Well. Next time, pool! You heard me.

Dinner was good. We bitched about the gubbmint. 

Found ourselves forcing awakeness until 10pm, because bed at 9 is dumb. I went to the treadmill at 8pm because I was over 2500 steps away from the 10k, so that was a good choice and I crushed it. I even was trotting. Not jogging, not running, trotting. Like a great big horse. Thump, thump thump... 

Daylight Saving messes me up so very badly, I swear. 

Tomorrow, lunch with mom. We didn't go see her today. Just basically worked our asses off and ate dinner. 

So Excite. But hey. I did it with my sistew. And that's all that matters.

Here's a picture from Sunday lunch of us hanging out! Digits for two days below. 

Sunday digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. Treadmill early in the day, 31min/1.83mi; 10k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

9am: 107
xpm: forgot to tak a reading
9:30pm: 150 

food & meds:
9am: jardiance+phentermine
mimosa morning
9:30am: small plate of scrambled eggs, sausage patty, slice of cheddar 
I forget if I took met+glip at some point. Didn't record it, won't say i did.
2pm: buffalo chicken salad
8pm: met+glip
trail mix from ronnie
white wine (a bit too much)

Monday digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. Short treadmill walk waiting for lunch delivery. 15 min/.78 mi; 8pm revisit, 22 min/1.25 mi. 10k+ by bedtime

blood glucose:

8am: 139
5pm: 107
9:30pm: 167 (wanted to wait to test after 10pm but could not stay up... )

food & meds:
8am: jardiance+phentermine
8:30am: hotel bacon and one small egg and veggie "frittata"
1pm: buffalo chicken wrap (delivery from local pizza joint); met+glip
7:15pm: smothered steak tips (w/onions & peppers) broccoli, mashed potatoes, gravy; white wine
8pm: met+glip

Before 5am after Midnight

Woke up at 3am, per usual. Too early. Didn't have to pee. Made myself fall back asleep. 

Woke up at 4:10, also per usual. Had to pee. Decided to get up. I hit the bathroom, started the coffee, put the cookies in a container, unloaded the dishwasher, loaded and started the dishwasher. I wanted to be on the road by 5am but I sat down on the couch to finalize laptop loading and Toffee got all cuddly. 

I didn't have the heart to just boot her. So we had some time here, and I started this entry. 

Good morning. 

I was on the road at 5:15am, a brand new way to drive up this way that I've never gone. And it was beautiful and still very fall. Didn't run into nonsense until Connecticut (which, you know, how much I love). Made it to mom's at about 2:30. I tried to nap while Linda was on the way but there were leaf blowers going. 

We had dinner at the 99 with mom, and after she left we got into our hotel to hang out, listen to music, and we talked to our cousin Jimmy a lot. A lot. 

And I'm exhausted. Thankfully the clocks turn back tonight so we get an extra hour of sleep tonight because your girl is exhausted. 

More tomorrow.

Here is a picture of a cat that showed up at our front door and Geoff took this picture for me. Hi cat. And my breakfast. Digits below.

digits

exercise: 11/12 hours.  missed 9am. Managed to hit all the hours otherwise and the treadmill. 25 min/1.34 mi. 12k+ by midnight 

blood glucose:

4:30am: 149
4pm: 87
9pm: 120 

food & meds:

4:30am: jaridance + phentermine
8:30am: sausage, egg, cheese croissant at Wawa
11:30am: met+glip
1pm: 4 chicken mcnuggets
5:30pm: buffalo chicken fingers & cole slaw; white wine
8pm: met+glip
one chocolate chip cookie
white wine+diet cran

It's the Spoopiest Day of the Year

This morning, I hit the ground running with a small emergency accidentally caused by our developers on one of the products. They pushed a bunch of little code fixes, but one of the things in the package was our Daylight Saving code that changes all the calendars. 

Ha. 

Several direct emails and some angsty help desk tickets... I reached out to the team and one of them said "well, it'll correct itself Sunday." 

Oh honey no. Please roll this part back. 

But here's the thing, I'm not a product owner or the boss of them. I can point stuff out but I can't tell them what to do. So I had to wait for the director on that team to come online, and she usually starts at 9 or a little later ... thankfully she caught our slack conversation because I pinged her directly. 

It was all fixed before 9am. Before my boss even knew what was happening. He asked if we needed to do an announcement/alert and I told him that since it is fixed, I'm not a fan of letting people know after the fact. 

In the afternoon, another thing with this product broke and yes. That did require an announcement to alert all the clients. 

Do you know how hard it was for me to not make all kinds of monster, ghost, halloween references in the announcement? So hard. So. Very. Hard. I'm very disappointed in myself. 

After work, we got our bowl of candy ready to go, and Doug and I set up on our porch. We didn't do a bonfire, the wind was 20mph with gusts of 40+, so we thought better of it. 

We had about 30 kids come by, which I think was a goodly amount. I had hoped for more because we had enough candy for 3000.

Earlier today I discovered one of my bedroom bureau drawers is busted. Must have been a casualty of the move but because I have not even touched my clothing to start putting it away, I hadn't noticed. Fuck. Not sure what to do about it, but I can't do anything about it tonight, right? Moving along.

After Halloweeners were done, I packed a bag, and folded 9000 pounds of laundry. 

I talked to Linda for over an hour. Getting ready for my trip tomorrow. I remembered that I promised Geoff I'd bake cookies tonight and then there I was at 10pm mixing up a batch. 

All told a really great day even with the work shenanigans. Looking forward to my trip tomorrow. One last thing to do before bedtime and we are good to go. 

digits, below. I didn't take a lot of pictures of the Halloweeners, but this mom and her baby cracked me up.  Taken with mom's permission. 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours.  Quick walk before halloweeners came, 25 min/1.31 mi. 11k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

8am: 102
4:30pm: 107
11pm: 87 

food & meds:

8am: jaridance + phentermine
10:45am: english muffin w/pb & low sugar j
1pm: met+glip
3pm: roast beef & swiss on 647 bread
5:30pm: shrimp & alfredo sauce over a little bit of spaghetti; white wine
7:30pm: met+glip
11pm: 3 toll house cookies
more white wine

Wildlife Management Guy

Oh, the show we're watching with John Hannah that I didn't remember the name of last night is Rebus. Looks like we're in for a big surprise - Hannah leaves the show and is replaced by someone else.... Hmmm. 

Anyway.

Earlier this week, I'd reached out to the pest inspection company we did our home inspection with to see if they do squirrels. They do not. The lady in the office said "No, we help with pest control for bugs and things, but you need a wildlife specialist." She referred me to "the best in the county."

Being new here, it is good to know one or two folks to reach out to for things. Our realtor gave us her favorite contractor, painter, handyman, and plumber and told us to always mention she sent us. I didn't ask her about this, I just figured I'd start with the already really good pest control folks (so nice) and then later emailed her to see if she'd say the same and she sure did. 

So Mr. The Best In The County came over yesterday morning. This is a busy time of year for them because critters are needing to check themselves into warm cozy places for the winter. But he was in the neighborhood and came by to do an assessment. 

What a character. This guy was amazing. He's rather old. And I say that with kindness realizing soon I'll be 59, then 60, then rather old myself. But he has to be in his late 70s if not his 80s. He told me he and his dad started the business and he recently sold it to a friend "on just a handshake, like the good old days." 

He and Doug talked about where the squirrels are coming in, and he's coming back Sunday while I am out of town with his two nephews to get up on the lift, pull off the vent, and set up a one-way out, no-way back in setup. Problem solved, 450 bucks. 

I am kind of disappointed I won't be here for this. 

The guy told us all kinds of critter tales. He's working over at the local cemetery because there is a red fox who is really interested in attending the funerals. An entire giant family of woodchucks under a house a few towns away, like 10 of them. 

Party time. 

He showed us his right pinky and how it is just flaccid. It just hangs there. He's having surgery for it in December when things are much slower. "And then therapy after that! Can you imagine?!" Yes sir! Do your therapy. I showed him my Duputryens and joked that John Elway and I are buddies. He thought that was hilarious.

He had this incredibly thick Mid Atlantic Accent, we call it the Big O sound. Pittsburgh is close to this too, but around here between DC and the burgh, it's very prevalent. More than Pitt. Very interesting.

I went to the supermarket this morning to grab milk for coffee and I happened to see the marked down for quick sale baked goods in the dairy area. I ..... was tempted. Sticky buns and donuts, they were calling to me.

A woman came over, and she was commenting on how good this discount rack always is. She was missing quite a few teeth, and was telling me that she lost over 100 pounds recently but loves to come get a little treat once or twice a week. 

"They have really good cheesecake slices, I wait to see when they're over here. None today! But over in the bakery they are $6 a piece! Can you believe that?! Six whole bucks!" 

"Well, that would keep me from buying them, I guess. It'll help me lose weight! If they were 3 bucks a slice ... I'd be tempted!" 

I bought a tube of 6 plain bagels. Marked down from 6 bucks to 2 bucks. 

The market is very very expensive. Worse than the Giant by our old house. I got milk, crisco (I want to make pie crust), 2 focaccia loaves (I was disappointed in the bakery choices), some pumpkin pie filling and evaporated milk. It all came to 30 bucks. Damn. 

It was fun to go to the market at 10am. No one was there. I thought about heading over to the Pennsylvania Dutch market, but I didn't want to go to two stores this morning. 

All I really needed was milk. 

Busy work day with a very quiet morning. Two sleeps and I'm off to see my mom and sister. Thankful tomorrow is Friday. Yes please.

No image - but digits below!

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours.  walk, 18 min/.9 mi; indoor walk, 10 min/.53 mi. 10k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

7am: 134
4:30pm: 154
10pm: 187 

food & meds:

7am: jaridance + phentermine
10:45am: bowl of mac&cheese w/bacon
noon: met+glip
2:30pm: apple & pb
6pm: 2 bowls of chicken soup w/ a few big pieces of focaccia bread
8pm: met+glip
gin & diet tonic 

Late Flowers

Meant to do a full post with a story and all, but after dinner we watched a TV show about some Scotsman Detective Guy played by John Hannah, which is pretty good. Can't recall the name. Suddenly it was 11pm. 

Managed 3 walks today? One because I had a half hour break between meetings and needed a stretch, then somehow 15 minutes in the house doing stuff, followed almost immediately by a walk with Doug and Toffee. 

The zinnias and the roses keep giving. I cut some today and I'm happy I did. It is going to pour rain tonight, and maybe be frosty. I'm wondering how long they'll go?

Digits below!

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. first walk, 17 min/.85 mi; second walk around the house inside, 15 min/.25 mi. (not sure what I was doing but the fitbit said I was walking!); final walk with Doug and Toffee, 40 min/1.88 mi. whew. 12k+ by bedtime

blood glucose:

8:45am: 144
5pm: 124
11pm: 87 

food & meds:

8:45am: jaridance + phentermine
9am: last of the oatmeal cookies
1:30pm: chicken salad and small side salad of mixed baby greens, cherry tomatoes, Caesar salad dressing
2pm: met+glip
6:30pm: country style pork ribs (2) in low carb fajitas w/cheddar, sour cream, and fresh sliced avocado
8:30pm: met+glip; ramekin mixed nuts
2 beers 

Soup Season

It is officially fall for me. And officially a sign of I live in this house now. 

Last night was cookie baking night, and today I made chicken salad for me and Doug for lunch. I realized I still had the chicken carcass from the roast the other night so whipped that into a pot to make stock. 

Everything was amazing smelling and looking. I fit things in between helping my client get her site ready for launch. She was so good and wonderful to work with.  

I took a walk before my series of three one hour meetings. Around 4:30 Doug went for a walk and invited me, but I was still in the middle of all the things, so he took Toffee solo while I made dinner. I was going to make meatballs but went with just a basic meat sauce. Too tired after all the things. 

Around 8pm I noticed that even with all the movement today I still managed to be way short of the 10k steps. 

The playlist worked well for me, and the 1900 steps I needed turned into 3k. Going from Gorillaz to Rage to Ghost to the Monkees to Guster to C+C music Factory to Rush .... I didn't do any running, and I would have finished up the Killers but it started to rain and was rather chilly, to be honest. 

Busy day. Busy yummy day. House smells great day. Digits below. 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. Two walks, one solo, 19 min/.98 mi (should have gone that extra minute!); after dinner solo 27 min/1.43 mi. 11k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

8am: 108
5pm: 91
10pm: 141 

food & meds:

8am: jaridance + phentermine
8:30am: 2 oatmeal cookies w/coffee
12:30pm: met+glip
1:15pm: large bowl of chicken salad w/apple, walnut, mayo, cream cheese
5pm: 2 oatmeal cookies
6:30pm: beer
7pm: bowl of pasta & meat sauce
8pm: met+glip

An Oatmeal Cookie Kinda Night

It was a busy day today with a 2 hour session with a client that is launching their website tomorrow afternoon. She and I combed through all the pages, found what was undone and needed done. I couldn't find some things in the site that usually are pre-made by our site builder but he emailed me at 9:30pm and at least I know where they are. I can make edits/links/finalize things ... in the morning. 

Then another check in with a client on a different product, it should have been a half hour and that turned into two hours because I answered every question he had, and got him all buttoned up on the product. And it would have gone on even longer but his internet crashed! So he emailed me from his phone on his personal email to let me know he thinks he's all set and can do everything that is left without me being "an angel guide." 

At about 5:30, Doug was still working, I wanted a walk and well.... so did Toffee, so I took her with. Usually I want to play pokemon and that is a two handed job, and she drives walks on the leash like a drunken maniac. It makes it difficult to hold the phone. Instead I said screw it, let's go playlist and walk. 

She actually was pretty good today, we did a 3/4 mile loop and I brought her home. Doug was cooking dinner so I told him I was going to extend my walk and did another 15 min. I got home in time for the steak coming off the grill, and a freshly made salad. 

I worked more after dinner, doing some tickets and answering questions. I chatted with a colleague about how I can't read this report dealie and she told me where to zoom in and what to ctrl+f and find. That helped so much. 

And then it was football time. I wasn't super interested in KC vs. WAS so. I baked cookies. Since someone else made dinner, I figured I'd repay the favor. Plus, I wanted the last 2.5 cups of oats in a GIANT container removed from the cabinet. Helpful. 

Digits below. And I get a cookie tomorrow, I think. Picture is a little blurry because the light in the kitchen is not the best. I'll take a better shot tomorrow. 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. Walk with Toffee while Doug cooked dinner - 31 min/1.5 miles; 11k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

8am: 154
5pm: 104
10:15pm: 106 

food & meds:

8am: jaridance + phentermine
10:30am: english muffin w/pb
1:30pm: met+glip
2pm: zero sugar yogurt w/crushed granola bar
6pm: steak on salad w/ goat cheese & bleu cheese dressing
8:30pm: oatmeal cookie; met+glip; White wine

Toffee's Off Leash Adventure

Toffee gets to be off leash all the time in our yard. But we walk a lot in town, and we take her places and she needs to be on leash. 

Today we went for a walk on the C&O canal starting just north of mile 103, and walking almost to mile 105. And Doug let her off leash to run. I was displeased because it is against the rules. 

Doug said "In the government shut down, there are no rules."

Sigh. No, that is not how it works. 

It also concerns me for her to be off leash in case she gets too far from us, and runs into another hiker or hiker with dog/s, or a cyclist. I don't know how she's going to react. 

Turns out I didn't have much to worry about. She is a very good listener, and came right back when called when she got too far ahead of us on the trail. She ran off trail and into where the canal used to be, down into the gully and back up, big circles all around us. And when we saw people long before she did, we put her back on leash and stepped off the trail. She couldn't care less about the bikes. And we saw no other dogs.

Big adventure for our girl. She earned her big nap when she got home!

I'm glad we let her have some free running time. I think of all the years we took dogs, for 25 years, into the woods off leash, and they just ran themselves stupid. She got to run herself stupid. 

The trail is very flat and easy. We saw cyclists with full rack packs, obviously biking the full trail and camping along the way. My friend Martin wrote about it here in this wonderful article. A younger me would want to do it. After all, as Martin says in the article, it is "blissfully flat."

So a round trip walk of a little over 3 miles. Toffee has been out cold on the couch except for eating dinner and going out once to pee. I'm sore as hell. But it was a great day. 

No breweries or visits anywhere, we came home. Doug and Toffee napped hard and I played games on my phone. Big work day tomorrow, trying to get a client ready for website launch on Tuesday. Wish me luck! 

Digits below! But a couple pictures first. Miss Thing looking into the woods. Mile post (MP) 104. We parked just north of MP 103, and didn't quite walk as far as 105. Miles seem much much longer in the woods, it seems. And finally, the Potomac river here seems incredibly low. The water was an amazing green. None of my camera phone pictures can do it justice.

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. Big big walk with Doug and Toffee on the C&O canal. 1 hr 17 min/3.34 miles; 13k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

8am: 154
4pm: 100
9:45pm: 112 

food & meds:

8am: jaridance + phentermine
10:30am: egg mcmuffin w/double sausage
12:30pm: met+glip
4:15pm: white wine, crackers, spready cheese
7pm: jambalaya, rice mix from Aldi w/chopped kielbasa thrown in
8:30pm: met+glip, some mixed nuts; white wine

The Walnut Game, Chapter 2

This morning, Doug went out to his walnut stash. The man is rich in nuts. 

Which the squirrels have been absolutely wrecking. Our carport, driveway, sidewalk, street, everywhere.... there are walnut shells and mess. Apologies to all my neighbors. We've, I mean HE HAS, made it too easy for them and they're "going nuts" as it were.

I've been perturbed about this, so he opted to see how hard it is to shell the walnuts with the tools he has. It was a big challenge. So no. Not going to be able to be farmer Doug, harvesting his giant crop of walnuts and crackin' them open with hammer, plyers, and needle nose dealies. 

He said what he managed to get out was delicious (didn't bring in any for me to try, thank you very much) and he sat down to shop for a "professional but not too crazy professional" nut cracker. 

Who knew there was such a thing you can just buy online. You can get what looks like a vice grip with a basket and tools and all sorts of stuff for about 100 bucks. You can also buy the industrial kind for 19,000 bucks. Yes. Nineteen THOUSAND dollars. If you have a farm with 300 trees, you want that. 

So the tool is ordered and will arrive shortly. And we'll have some fresh walnuts to enjoy in all kinds of dishes and ice cream and stuff. 

That will be Chapter 3, I am sure. 

He went to take a nap and the dog went with him so I took a walkjog for about a half hour. It is a decent temperature, not too hot and not windy. It felt pretty good. I thought about going around another block but even with the playlist pumping the good tunes I was bored.

After Doug woke up, he went to the market and bought way way too many Pantry Items, like 20 cans of tuna. We have nowhere to keep things when he buys this much (oh, yes. 4 jars of mayo. Genius) so Geoff and I did our best putting things away. 

I thought we'd start thinking about getting ready to maybe start dinner but he suggested we take a ride to Pen Mar and High Rock, and make Geoff go with us. He really has not been enjoying the area because he's focused on class work, and I am glad he agreed to come with us and get out of the house. 

We stopped at Upper Stem brewing for a beer. Geoff stopped drinking while he's in school (not 100%, he'll maybe have a beer on Sunday while watching football but that's about it), and he was reluctant to break his own rule tonight. I told him I admired that. But he should be kind to himself. He had fun at the Pen Mar and the Rock, let's chill by the fire with the dog and some strangers and have one beer. 

At home, Doug whipped up this "Pad Thai" meal from Aldi, which was indeed a noodle dish, and there were some peanuts, and some chicken, not a lot.... We should have grilled up the 2 chicken breasts that we have and then I could have made some bomb ass peanut sauce. 

I wouldn't say I hated the meal, for sure it hit the spot and was nice but ... we could have punched it up. 

Doug said the football games tomorrow all suck, so my hope is that he at least sweeps the walnut shells that are all over and gets them up off the ground, and we can do something fun in the afternoon. More to come, I'm sure. 

Here are two pictures from High Rock. So many people, it was nearly impossible to get a human-devoid shot. I do like the one of the two women on the rock... And digits below. 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. walk/jog 30 min/1.63 mi. 11k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

9am: 100
4:30pm: 117
10:30pm: 143 

food & meds:

9am: jaridance + phentermine
noon: left over grilled chicken, coleslaw, a little guacamole
3pm: met+glip
4pm: some club crackers
7:45pm: some asian noodle and chicken thing from Aldi that doug picked up (not bad, needed more chicken)
8:30pm: atkins protein bar
9:30pm: met+glip

Covid Booster and Flu Shot

Doug and I both had to get bloodwork done today so we made noon appointments in a city 20+ min away from here. I took the entire afternoon off. He forgot to, and had to go back to work. Technically, I could have come back and done some more things but I think it is best if I hang back. 

Treat myself to a no-work moment.

But I picked up the laptop at 4 and started pounding through tickets and didn't stop until like 10... I'm so very looking forward to my colleague coming back from vacation so she can take her tickets back. Overall, I've learned a lot, and I still want to know more about troubleshooting the new thing we've got going on. But I've struggled with "why is it doing this," and a couple clients that I don't usually work with were kind of dicks. 

My usual clients who use my product, well they have been lovely and understanding. Working with me instead of demanding at me. 

Anyway, bloodwork went well and I decided I wanted a flu shot. And Doug isn't 100% behind covid boosters with lots of reasons and stuff, but I still wanted one. I feel better about that going into the fall and winter season. 

Doug went to the gas station and got propane for the grill. Thankfully. I've missed having some grilled things. So we had a great marinated chicken and the rest of my coleslaw. He then went to the market to get ice cream but didn't get sugar free or low carb ... jerk. 

I am in the mood for baking and I wanted some shortening to make a crust. I've finally got a big enough counter area to be able to make pie crust from scratch, so i'll wait for the Big Shop sometime this weekend. 

Nothing else fun to report since we didn't have a Friday afternoon off Fun Day. Not sure what is planned for tomorrow, but hopefully a lot of fun. or a little fun. We'll see. 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. Two walks. One in the neighborhood 20 min/1.17 miles; around the house inside, 25 min/.74 mi. 10k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

8:45am: 154
5pm: 100
10:30pm: 94 (tested 3 times and results were all in that range. go figure)

food & meds:

8:45am: jaridance + phentermine
11am: bowl of mac & cheese w/bacon
1:45pm: met+glip
6:30pm: grilled chicken, cole slaw
8:30pm: met+glip; pub cheese & crackers
white wine

It was worth it for the sunrise and the sunset

I got my butt up early, just before 6am. I was on the road by 6:30, and my goal was 6:45. Traffic wasn't too bad until I got down I-270, but I got off the highway and whipped into the parking lot for the metro at 8:10. Pretty much expected 90 minutes and it delivered. 

The metro ride the rest of the way to the office is also very long, The Red line is shaped like a U and my station is the top of the left side of the U. My old neighborhood was the right side of the U, 5 stops from the office. I had a playlist blaring, enjoyed looking at new scenery. 

I got to my desk at 9:10, slightly late for my first meeting of the day but I warned them it might be a possibility, and told them to start without me.

My work bestie made it to the office around 10. She was delayed because now she puts her son on the bus at 8:30 instead of the old pre-pandemic life when he got dropped off at day care and she was on a train at 7am from Baltimore. 

We had some fun time together, I attended a couple meetings, and she had to go at 2:30 to get home in time to meet his after-school program bus. 

We didn't get a selfie together, and I'm disappointed. She said next time. But she did steal a picture of me and a selfie of herself while I was working. I told her she's a creep. 

I got home at 6:30pm, exactly 12 hours after going out the door. The ride home was fairly easy, I left the office at 4:30pm so the full trip was 2 hours on the nose pretty much. 

I have to say, the highway up here is lovely and the hills covered with trees changing colors, and the cotton candy clouds at sunrise made 6:30am tolerable. The orange soda ice cream float clouds on the way home with the sunset also made for great enjoyment. 

I did not bother pulling over to take a picture, because my camera could in no way capture what it looked like or how gorgeous it all was. 

So for a first excursion, not bad. All told, not bad. 

We ordered pizza for dinner, I didn't want any so I ordered buffalo fingers. 

Surprised I'm still awake, to be honest. So I am headed to bed. 

I took a "proof of life" selfie to send the work bestie to show her I was up, dressed, ready, and didn't roll back over to go back to sleep. I don't take many selfies. But I noticed something. I look like my sister in this picture. I don't see that too often with photos of us. Huh. 

Digits, below. 

digits

exercise: 11/12 hours.  Somehow missed 12pm but I thought I got it. Oh well. 2 walks to and from the metro, 10 min. one way, 14 min. the other way. half mile each. 10k+ by bedtime

blood glucose:

6am: 105
4pm:156
9pm: 126

food & meds:

6am: jaridance + phentermine
11:30am: atkins protein bar
1pm: roast pork w/mashed potatoes, and broccoli & cauliflower, and rosemary gravy
2pm: met+glip
8pm: buffalo fingers & bleu cheese; wine+diet ginger ale
8:45pm: met+glip

Food Processor

I have a food processor, it isn't a cuisinart or some high-end fancy machine. I bought it to help with Boy Scouts to slice peppers and onions for the annual big town bbq. It may be a Kenmore of all things?

I rarely use it. Mostly because in the last two houses, it was stored in cabinets that made it hard for me to get to the stupid thing. 

But here, it is super accessible. We have wonderful cabinets. I have drawers that are currently empty, that's how many cabinets we have.  Doug accidentally bought cabbage the other day instead of iceberg lettuce. He suggested we make corned beef and cabbage but no one has any corned beef for sale at the market right now. Naturally. Because. Irish thing. 

But I can make coleslaw. In between meetings, I got the machine out, and bonus fact - when we moved, I found the disk that I need to use to do shreddy dealies. I've been using a blade thing that chops things up but doesn't shred. 

Moving was awesome for me to find the things I need. And now I still need to find the things I need. Ha.

I also had a small bag of baby carrots that needed to be used, so ... in you go. I got a recipe for slaw dressing, it was a little more watery than I would have liked but, still tasty! 

Using the food processor was tons of fun. I'm easily entertained I guess. 

Doug and Geoff went to get our car from the shop, and I got that all made and happy. I expected Doug to return with a new propane tank but he forgot to take it with him. So okay. I can't grill the chicken I wanted to. That is okay. Geoff had a back-up plan, and we had the coleslaw to go with his backup plan. 

I took myself for a walk. Geoff had taken Toffee earlier in the day and Doug wasn't in the mood to go with. So, activate playlist and let's get out there. I extended my walk longer than I planned mostly because the Beastie Boys and Stevie Wonder encouraged me to loop another block. 

After dinner, Doug's mom called and it appears we are planning a mid-November journey up there to help with some things at the old house. There are a couple pieces of patio furniture I have always wanted, that she isn't moving to the new place and we've been hearing for years that she's just going to stick this really nice set at the end of the driveway. But now, we have a place for it. 

It may be me and Doug, it may be Geoff and Doug, but people are going. And Linda and I have been planning a trip up to our mom, so that will probably be November 1. 

Still figuring that out. Time to go visit the mamas.

And tomorrow, I'm going to go into the office. A colleague is visiting from away and I wanted to see her. I gamed out the trip, I could drive to the MARC train, which is almost an hour from here, and then take an almost 90 min. train ride, and then walk 3/4 of a mile to the office. i'd be looking at a 2.5 hour trip. I could drive all the way in, but our parking garage is under construction. So I'd have to street park and I don't know what that'll be like. And, it used to take way over an hour to get there from our house 12 miles away from the city. 

So I'm opting to ride to the nearest Metro station, which hopefully will be an hour drive, and then a 45 min. subway trip to my office stop. 

I sometimes question why we did this. I also could have planned better, gone to S&S's house and stayed the night but we didn't have our car back from the shop until late this afternoon. Wish me luck here, kids! 

So a good day with kitchen gadgets and a long walk. No picture, but digits below! 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours.  solo walk, 33 min/1.67 miles; 11k+ steps before bed

blood glucose:

7:45am: 105
4:30pm:127
10:30pm: 122

food & meds:

7:45am: jaridance + phentermine
8:15: 2 chocolate chip cookies w/coffee
11am: bowl of mac & cheese and hamburger
1pm: met+glip
6:30pm: 2 fish filets, some homemade coleslaw, some curly fries
8:30pm: met+glip
no wine/alcohol

Pocket full of Kryptonite

Ohhhhhh Cookies. How do I love thee. You are indeed my weakness.

Last night, I was bored and slightly drunk off 4 beers, and the ESPN stream stopped working. All of Sling TV stopped working. So I folded laundry. I baked cookies. 

And I didn't eat any cookies, Doug and Geoff did. I exercised self control. 

But this morning, your girl had no chill. Absolutely no chill.

Doug and I were both awake at about 4am for a while. Too early to get up and start the day, we both made ourselves go back to bed. I think he slept well, at least his soft snores were an indication that he was able to go back to sleep. 

I kind of fluctuated and fell asleep for a while, but I was cold, then hot, then cold... and Toffee was very close. I ended up getting out of bed before 7. 

I had to pee, after all. So that was a good enough time to get up. And there were cookies. 

There is nothing more lovely than dipping a chocolate chip cookie in a cup of coffee. Nothing. And I maybe had ... 3 to start with. More before noon. Had to convince myself to stop it for the sake of the blood sugar. 

I goofed off on my phone and checked Slack. There was a lot of action already at work so I slid into things. One of my colleagues is the support manager for a big project that just launched, and she's going on vacation tonight so I did a crash course on how to spot problems with content sent to the new platform. I love learning things, and also love learning things that actually click and make sense to me in the long run.

Around 3:30, things were quiet so I decided to go for a walk. Managed to pull a full half hour out and did some jogging, but not as much as yesterday. A good mile and a half plus. Knowing what routes are the best for me to do is important. 

Doug took Toffee for a walk and I made dinner. Tuesdays and Thursdays, Geoff has school so we're on the hook for our own dinner. The mini is in the shop (we can pick it up tomorrow) so I made do with what we had in the fridge. 

After dinner, around 7:30pm, I knew I was about 2k shy of 10k, so I told Doug I was headed out to walk to the end of the street and back. This is usually a goodly amount. I was a block away from the house and there was this massive streak of lightning followed by a tremendous burst of thunder. 

I ... jogged the rest of the way home. I was going to turn up the side street and come back down through the alley to throw in some more steps but nope. 

Doug was waiting on the porch for me, he heard the thunder and was wondering how far off I was, so he was relieved to see me hit the corner right before it started pouring. 

And that was it. It poured for a few minutes, no more thunder or lightning. Done. Huh. Funny that.

And that's about it. Not much else fun to mention. Just a super busy day. 

I think Friday afternoon we are both taking off. We have to get bloodwork done and because we moved far away from our doctor's office, it is a schlep to get to the lab. But we're gonna do it! And maybe come back and work. Maybe. 

Digits below! No pic today but I thought of taking one. Just didn't do it. 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. Solo walk (not as much jogging as yesterday but a little). 30 min/1.57 mi. Forgot to activate my fitbit tracker to count the walk at the end of the day, but that was about 12 minutes, less than half a mile. 10k+ steps by bedtime.

blood glucose:

7am: 94
5pm: 95 (had to check it 3 times to be sure, seemed wrong!)
11pm: 133

food & meds:

7am: jaridance + phentermine
7:30am through the morning... several chocolate chip cookies (so good) dipped in my coffee
12:15pm: Turkey & mayo on 647 bread; met+glip
vodka tonic (around 6pmish) 
7pm: nachos, chips, cheese, ground beef, guac, sour cream
8pm: met+glip, another cookie
gin & diet tonic

Don't Call It A Comeback

Work was very slow today because of a giant internet services outage. 

Someone posted on Threads "I am literally very shocked at the amount of companies that use AWS." I was thinking "uhhhhh, how could you be? AWS runs the entire freaking internet. Where have you been!" 

Whenever we move a service or product onto AWS I die a little bit inside. When one of my very favorite people on earth left our company to go work at AWS, well, I died a lot inside. 

Luckily, none of our client websites were down because of this. A few tertiary clients that we do work with haven't been able to update their websites since last night (if they updated them at all over the weekend). 

With that quiet comes the knowledge that I do have some project work I could do. I had zero meetings today, and no motivation to do things. I worked on mocking up a website for one of my clients, we're meeting tomorrow and I didn't do anything with the knowledge I had that he wanted to do a thing 2 weeks ago, and I answered helpdesk tickets. 

Around 3:30 I figured it was a good time to go for a walk.

 Geoff had taken Toffee for a walk already today and so I slipped out for a solo jaunt. 

I didn't play pokemon but listened to the gym playlist, and I even jogged a bit here and there. 

Don't call it a comeback, I guess. But here we go with trying our best to get back to where we were at the beginning of the summer. 

I wish my phone would let me record video while listening to music, because you would have (probably) been entertained by me jogging to LL Cool J's "Mama said knock you out," and singing along. 

Hilariously. 

I didn't plan on going the way I came, and only wanted to be out 20 or so minutes to get back to work but I did a bear left instead of a go straight. I came upon a cool stone house that we've driven past a bunch of times, and noticed on the stone wall outside it has a name, Graystone Manor. 

A quick google search returned a little bit of information about the history of the property. The info seems outdated by several years and I wonder what the current situation is of the property. It's funny because the sign says Gray Stone Manor, there's clearly a space there between the two words and it is GRAY here. But all the info on the internet is GREYSTONE. 

No wonder people have a hard time doing research on the web sometimes. 

Maybe I'll go by again and head further down the road to where the driveway is to try and see what the story is back there. 

I got home and worked a bit more. Doug decided to walk Toffee and nothing else was happening at work, so I went with. We went on a longer loop in the opposite direction that I went earlier, stopping to smell the smells and stare down the squirrels. 

After dinner, we were watching football and ESPN streaming went down. So Doug put on Toast of London, which we've watched through before and I don't enjoy. So I decided to bake cookies. 

Realized my cookie scoops are missing? Can't find them anywhere and I thought the kitchen was 100% accounted for but .... there is another box somewhere. 

Anyway. Chocolate chip cookies with pecans were the result of my boredom baking. I didn't eat any, may have had a wee bit of raw dough but. I'll have a cookie tomorrow. 

Digits below this picture of beer from sitting on the patio while Toffee ran after squirrels. Patio life in late October is so sweet. Especially after two walks. 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. Solo walk, did a little trotting as well. 20 min/1.13 miles. With Doug and Toffee, 30 min/1.34 mi. 12k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

7:15am: 108
5pm: 120
10:30pm: 148

food & meds:

7:15am: jaridance + phentermine
11:45am: bowl of tuna salad, no roll/bread
1:15pm: met+glip
6:30pm: kielbasa, pierogis, peas, beer
9:45pm: met+glip
2 more beers 

Getting Scrappy

Doug slept until 10:30am, must have needed it. He went down to the guest room somewhere between 5 and 5:30am. I was awake, then asleep, and then woke up and he was gone. Toffee usually follows whoever goes downstairs but she stayed with me. 

I rarely make it all the way through the night without needing to use the bathroom. Someday we'll have a bathroom up here and it will be nice, but, for now we slog downstairs. When I went to bed last night, my belly was expressing itself and singing the song of its people so I thought for sure I'd need to hit the head after 2am... That never happened. 

But at 7ish, I did need to pee. So Toffee and I went downstairs, I fed her, did my bathrooming whilst she ate, and let her out. It was warm but very windy. I sat on the patio for a while, barefoot, and came in when she was done with her shenanigans. 

Doug watched football and during the 1pm game, almost to the end, he suggested we go to the dog park. I was happy for that to do steps and get walkies in.When we got there, the only dog present was a great big huge brown lab mix. They seemed to get along really well at first, and I was very happy. 

Then, he tried to mount her. And she was having absolutely none of that and let him know. And it was kind of scary. 

They got snappy, bitey, and I have to admit it's the first time I've seen her really go at it. They both were fine - and the other owners were pretty cool, very apologetic. I said is it your apology or ours? because I think my dog could have handled that better maybe? So we were apologetic too. 

They ran and played and chased balls and another dog came, some sort of Doodle something, Her name is Pepper and she is super sweet. And all three of them had a grand old time together. After about an hour, Brown Dog left, another dog arrived and we were ready for more football, so we packed up. 

I told Doug we really need her collar or her harness to stay on. I know he likes for her to have all her mobility and not get overheated with the harness on, but. Note to self. Something to grab is very helpful. 

We got home and she passed out on the floor, just like the old Meg play dates, which, of course, makes me miss Meg. 

With the weather cooling off a bit, I thought it was time for a roast chicken. So Geoff went to the market while we were at the dog park, got all the fixin's and I got everything rolling. It started to storm, we were in a big thunderstorm line but it kind of went north, not due east. Still may catch some something. Tomorrow it will barely be 60 after this front comes all the way through. 

Cold for these parts! 

Work will be busy this week. Hoping Doug gets propane for the grill. He cleaned it on Saturday and I wanted to do some chicken breasts for salads but we're in need of that one important piece of grilling necessity. 

Digits below this cute rock I found in a garden last weekend and forgot to publish! 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. Technically, 3 walks. Fitbit detected me doing movement for a continuous period of time around the house today. 15 min/.37 mi. Walk to dog park, 13 min/.63 mi. Walk home, 16 min/.72 mi. 10k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

7:45am: 93
4:15pm: 123
10:30pm: 108

food & meds:
7:45am: jaridance + phentermine
11:30am: brekkie egg sammitch. English muffin, sausage pattie, egg, american cheese
2pm: met+glip
5pm: trail mix
6:30pm: roasted chicken w/mashed potatoes, carrots, stuffing, gravy
7pm: a little more trail mix
8:30pm: met+glip
vodka+diet tonic w/lemon

Olde Mother and the Squirrels

 Welcome to homeownership, amirite guys? 

We've owned this house for 5 weeks. The other day I was sitting here in the bedroom, the AC was off, the fan was off, and I was folding laundry. I heard the pitter patter of very fast feet. I thought to myself, huh... noisy little jerks running on my roof. 

We have squirrels. A LOT of squirrels. They love the black walnuts. 

Doug was outside this morning and came in to get me. He noticed that the attic little vent dealie at the top of the house was damaged, and he saw a squirrel go into it.

Well shit. Little jerk/s. Running IN my attic not ON my roof. 

I honestly think this is very very new, because there is no way the home inspector would have missed this. And we hadn't heard anything until I did the other day. It's the time of year when little fluffy things look for happy warm places to be, and unfortunately this guy or guys or guys and gals picked our attic. 

We had a bit of a disagreement about next steps. Because of course we did. 

Doug said he's going to borrow our neighbor's ladder and climb up and fix it. I said no you are not - that's a young man's game. You're going to call a professional to remove the squirrels and THEN they'll fix the dealie. 

If he goes up there, he'll "fix" the thingie and trap those little dudes or that one little dude in there - and then it'll run around for days losing its mind. And then it will die and then my house will stink, so no. 

Or he will plummet to his demise.

Nope no. Nuh uh. Nope. I'm going to call the pest inspector guy who did both our home inspections and ask for recommendations. He's super nice, and if he doesn't remove squirrels, he'll know someone who does. And then fix the vent dealie on the attic there, both ends of the house, and check on the chimney area too. 

Anyway.

Today we knew we had to go to a V store to return our modem/router. Service ended at the old house on the 21st of September and you've got 30 days to return the thing. 

Our new town does not have V as an internet option, so there are zero retail stores here. We had to drive to Frederick, about 25 miles away. 

Interstate 70 is really a pretty drive, and the leaves are turning, it is beautiful. Bright, Sunny, 75 degrees. Yes. We dropped the modem off and got a print receipt. Success! 

Then to downtown Frederick. There is a nice brewery in town that Doug & Geoff went to while I was out of town a couple years back. So he wanted to take me there.

 Olde Mother Brewing Company has been rocking downtown Frederick for 10 solid years. Gorgeous little tasting room and there's a burger joint attached but separate. I should have had a burger, but we just had beers. 

The beers were tremendous and super beer tenders were also super nice. We walked in and Pink Pony Club by Chappell Roan was pumping over the speakers which made me want to make a big flourishy entrance of some sort. 

"Who is this, I don't recognize this song," Doug says to me. "Is this ABBA?"

Oh, honey no. It is not ABBA but I bet she'd love to know she was mistaken for them. 

We left our tab open and took a walk down the street a ways. Doug got distracted by an antique store, and when we walked out I told him I needed to pee, so we headed back to the brewery. 

On the way home, we took back roads. Stayed totally off the highway. It was a lovely drive (and, there was a Sheetz on the way and you know your girl had to pee again). 

Digits below some pictures, the roses are continuing to bud and the zinnias are going bananas!

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. Two walks, one with Doug around Frederick (with a large stop at an antiques store), 17 min/.7 miles; Solo before dinner, 11 min/.56 mi. 10k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

8am: 128
n/a pm: x
10pm: 138

food & meds:
8am: jaridance + phentermine
11:30am: apple w/pb
12:45pm: met+glip
3pm: 3 beers at Olde Mother
6:30pm: very large bowl of bacon corn chowder a la geoff (had potatoes in it)
8:30pm: met+glip; ramekin of candied nuts

Oh Hooray it is FriYay

 

A short work week but it felt like a long one. Next week my boss is out Monday and Tuesday; and two other co-workers are out Wednesday through Friday. So it should be interesting. We just rolled out a new product that I don't support, but with both of them out it could be very busy. 

That's okay. I actually understand the product and can help people out. And I'm so proud of all the work they did - I have been super way on the periphery of it all. Sometimes it is like that. We have a lot of products, and I'm not in charge of them all. 

I had two client meetings today. One was to go over a problem a staffer was having with a product I support. She was doing things almost alright. But. There are things she could do better and I helped her out a lot. We also had a lot of laughs. I really love her - and that makes things fun. End of day, I trained a brand new client on that same product. I was happy to let them know they are probably the last people I'm training on this product in the state it is in. We're getting ready to launch a reboot/refresh of this product and they will be happy to see all the new things that are coming.

Two hours later.... 

They were also fun, and I really can't wait to see what they do with this tool. 

Around 5pm today, Toffee was napping with Doug, so I slipped out for a solo walk. Without her, I can walk faster so I pounded through 20 minutes for an exact mile. After dinner, I needed to do more steps so I went out again and took her with. She did pretty good. At night when there is no traffic I'll walk her in the streets and on the asphalt where she won't stop to sniff every three inches. I got back to the house and dropped her off, and went back out for another 10 minutes just by myself. I trotted a little bit, not a lot, but it felt like jogging.

So far, for the month of October, I've only missed 1 day of 10k steps. So I feel like I'm back in the game walking-wise. Goin' an gettin' it. 

Not sure what are plans are this weekend but I have a little bit of a list of things. Doug may have things he wants to do. And I do hope we get some things not at the house. We'll see what the days hold. 

Digits, below.

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. 2 walks; solo 20 min/1 mile; with Toffee, 20 min/1.05 miles. 10k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

9am: 94
5pm: 109
10:30pm: 155

food & meds:
9am: jaridance + phentermine
11am: apple w/pb
2pm: met+glip
5pm: atkins protein bar
6:30pm: creamy chicken stew w/tomatoes, black olives, onions, some sort of wontons? (thank you Geoff)
9pm: met+glip; bowl of fritos
vodka & zero sugar san pel. 

Recycling and Dog Park Day

The recycling and trash guys don't move in the same circles. Our trash is done with a truck that has arms. At 4:30am. Recycling guys come later in the day, and they do not have an arm truck.  

I had put our recycling and trash out last night. With the normal bottle/can/plastics recycling, the freaking giant blue bin was absolutely full. I packed in a couple crushed boxes, the 2 pizza boxes from last Thursday, and I collapsed as much cardboard into other cardboard so what looks like a box that used to be mac and cheese is really 201 other boxes smooshed in. 

I try to be as compact as possible. 

So I heard the truck coming down the road. I had also put out 2 large moving boxes full of packing paper. And I wanted to make sure that was okay. 

I have..... a lot more boxes. 

The dude was super sweet but slightly confused. He asked how much I had and if I wanted to bring it on out. Um. No not yet. I just .... wanted to make sure these two boxes I put next to the container were okay. 

He looked at me funny and said "oh yes ma'am. You're fine. You can put out all the boxes you want, just try to crush them down and put them inside each other." 

"Well, these ones are full of packing paper that needs recycled too, but yes. I'm the queen of box condensing." He laughed and picked up one of the boxes. 

His co-worker picked up the second and said "oh man, this makes me feel like I'm super strong!!!" He hoisted the box above his head and made grunting and struggling noises until he could lock his arms fully upright. Then he howled in victory. 

Walking to the truck he then made motions as if he was losing control of this giant heavy load. The first guy yelled "Oh no! I got you! I got you!" and they got to the back of the truck.

Hi-Fives all around. 

Who knew the recycling guys could be this much fun?

I swear I'm just seeing the beautiful side of people lately. It makes my heart fly. 

At about 4:30pm, we took Toffee to the dog park. It is getting darker earlier, and pretty soon 4:30pm is going to be dark o'clock. We talked about how we're going to possibly Dog Park in the dark and cold months. 

There were only two other dogs there, a big black lab mix named Beau who played hard, fast, rough, and awesomely with miss Toffee. And a big mutt named Buddy who just kind of chilled by his momma and watched, and then dragged his ass across the grass (but no! HE DOESN'T HAVE WORMS!!! IT JUST FEELS GOOD I GUESS! his owner said). 

After Beau left, Buddy followed, and there were no other dogs. We decided to walk home and get dinner started. Geoff was at class today, so it is on us to cook, and it was already 45 minutes past when Toffee gets dinner.

Doug has been to the dog park more than I have, and he has yet to see the same dogs and owners twice.Timing is everything, I guess. 

After dinner, in order to make sure I got all my steps for the day in, I went out and did another 15 minute walk just on the side street with sidewalks, from our corner to the end, turn around go back to the other end, turn around, head home, walk up to where the sidewalk ends... that's a solid walk. And it put me into the 10k mark before 8pm. 

The rest is gravy, as they say. 

So thankful tomorrow is Friday. Short weeks are nice but you have to pack 5 days of work into 4 and that can be a lot. 

No picture today but .... digits below. 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. 3 walks, to and from the dog park with Toffee and Doug. 12 min/.52 miles; 15 min/.68 miles. Solo after dinner to hit the 10k mark, 15 min/.73 mi. 11k+ by bedtime

blood glucose:

8:30am: 100
4:30pm: 138
10:45pm: 129

food & meds:
8:30am: jaridance + phentermine
11am: small bowl of mac & cheese and bacon
12:15: quesadilla w/bacon on 2 low-carb fajita wraps
2pm: met+glip
6:45pm: bowl of chili: beans, meat, tomatoes, shredded cheddar, sour cream, fritos
9pm: met+glip
sugar free san pel. w/vodka (2 glasses)

Sunbeam Dog and Daylight Saving Changes a Comin'

We had Toffee give up a couple good things to move here. Her window in the guest room where she'd sit on the bed and watch the back yard and side street, queen of all she did survey. And the mailman. She had to give up her lovely Dave and her daily treats. I miss Dave too. 

Around 3pm here, she gets whiny and pushy. I have to be careful if I'm in a meeting to go sit in a chair and not on the couch because she will get all up on me and it is not pretty. Some folks are entertained but it is utterly unprofessional. 

Our mailman in this town sometimes does not come until after 5pm, which is weird. And he does not have an affinity for Toffee, nor is he super friendly. 

But she gets something here that she never had at the old place. 

Our livingroom window faces south/west and in the afternoon, the sun begins to set, and she gets to sunbathe. Pitties love to lounge in the sun. And here, she doesn't even have to go outside. 

She "disappeared" this afternoon, and I got up, went to the kitchen for a glass of water and came back to find her just .... passed out on the floor. Okay then there, girlie. You enjoy that. 

Perhaps a new 3pm ritual? Until we jump back with the clocks in a couple weeks and she gets all confused. 

Geoff cooked dinner for us. He bought some pre-made burgers at Lidl and they were okay. He fried them in the frying pan because Doug said we shouldn't use our grill until he gets a chance to clean it. I would have preferred these grilled... but I'm not complaining. He also cooked some curly spicy fries, and those were very tasty. Luckily he did not cook the whole stinking bag or I would have over indulged. 

While he cooked, Doug and I took Toffee for a walk. 5:30pm seems to be a good time to go. But I knew our walk wasn't going to be enough steps for me to hit 10k, so I made myself go out after dinner. 6:45pm is a really good time to go out right now. The sun is setting, the lights are on in the big park, we're kind of on a hill that gives you a view to downtown steeples. Church bells ring in the distance during the 6pm hour. Seems to be a thing here. 

Doug started watching some BritBox cop show called No Offence which takes place in Manchester, England. It's pretty good. I think we are up to season 2 after just a couple days. Feels a lot like Law & Order without the courtroom stuff. 

Alrighty then. Check out the sunbeam dog. She blends with the floor too. Digits below. 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. (my fitbit app says I missed 11am but the fitbit itself says I got it so. Ha.) two walks, pre-dinner with Doug & Toffee, 20 min/.93 miles; after dinner solo, 25min/1.2 miles; 11k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

8:15am: 111
4:30pm: 140
10:30pm: 101

food & meds:
8:15am: jaridance + phentermine
12:30pm: pb & low sugar j on 647 bread
2pm: met+glip
6pm: one cheeseburger, no bun, and some spicy curly fries
8:30pm: met+glip
no wine/alcohol

Starland

Fun fact about this area, we seem to have a lot of roller rinks! I've counted 3 in a very small area. 

One is actually in our neighborhood. 

I was out for a walk a couple weeks ago, and there is a pokemon stop (to get supplies, it's called a "spinner") about 2 blocks away and up the hill. I figured it was a church. Churches are often pokestops and gyms (where you battle other pokemon trainers), but this. This is a roller rink. They are open Tuesday nights for Family Night and weekends. 

After dinner, I was about 3,000 steps shy of 10k. Part of me said screw it, but ... another part of me said "you've hit 10k just about every day for a flippin' week. Go get it. I know that about 20 minutes is usually 2500 steps, and we did that before dinner, so I knew I had to hit 25 to 30 minutes to hit the goal. Feh. 

Off I went. No baseball game at the field so no night lights on. That's going to be dark all winter. I walked that direction, up the hill 2 blocks, turned right, turned right again, heard a lot of commotion over at the park where the dog park is, night time over there seems to be sketchy and wild. So I turned back toward our house, and then walked over to the roller rink. 

I could see the neon light from a long way off, so weird in the neighborhood like that. 

I took a picture, I wish my camera was better at night. I got this new phone a while back and Doug talked me out of the really nice one that I wanted, with the muchmuchmuch better camera. So ... I suffer. For my art. 

The road that divides the incorporated and unincorporated parts of my town runs right by the roller rink, and it was super dark, so I didn't walk to my street that way to pickup the sidewalk where it ends. I turned down the road that runs parallel to my street. Tons of Halloween decorations out, I hope our neighborhood is a lot of fun. In my heart I already miss all the kids at the old neighborhood. 

Anyway. Productive day at work today even though it was a Monday on a Tuesday vibe. My work bestie and I knocked two DNS changes out of the park and sent out email to two other clients to get them rolling with their changes. This is a project on top of the DNS project that I did starting this time last year and it took me until the beginning of this summer to finish. 

Geoff went to return our router to our former internet provider but didn't have our cancelation notice number, and I texted it to him but his phone didn't work inside their office so he came home. He's on school break this week, so he has idle time. I wonder if he'll try again tomorrow? I also notice he didn't deposit a check he had that he deliberately took with him to deposit. Our bank got bought by another bank, and the nearest physical offices are 20 min. one way and 30 min. the other so I think we're going to change banks. 

I hate changing banks. I hate going through all the ACH automatic transactions and accounting for everything. Sigh. 

Our new bank's website sucks, and we're supposed to be able to use our old username and password to log in but hell if that doesn't work. I may end up at the bank in person soon. 

Right then. Bedtime. Digits below this lame out of focus night shot of the building...

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. 2 walks. One with Doug & Toffee, 20 min/.94 mi. Solo, 25 min/1.26 mi. 10k+ steps by bedtime.

blood glucose:

7:30am: 140
5pm: 144
10pm: 110

food & meds:
7:30am: jaridance + phentermine
9am: atkins protein bar
12:45pm: met+glip
1:30pm: pb & low sugar j on 647 bread
6:30pm: piece of chicken parm
7:45pm: met+glip
small glass of wine to kill the bottle, mixed with diet ginger ale

The Williamsport that is not in Pennsylvania

Doug says to me at about 11:30am "Do you want to hear my plan?"

Of course I do. What would we like to do today. 

He suggests we head to Williamsport, walk along the C&O canal, walk about town, visit the brewery in town, and be home by 5. 

Sweet. Yes. Let's go. 

Unfortunately, right about then I started to feel rather sick to my stomach. Not sure why. I ate an English muffin, like ya do, at the time that you usually do. Maybe too much coffee? I don't know. But I thought I might throw up? 

I let him know I was feeling less than perfect but that wasn't going to stop our excursion. I just didn't want to overdo it. I felt like Homer Simpson did when he promised to take the kids to Duff Gardens and he wasn't going to let food poisoning stop him (mmmmmmm, sandwich). 

Williamsport, Hurrah! And if you know the Simpsons, you know what I'm talking about here.

Riding down the highway, I said "Isn't Williamsport in Pennsylvania? Where the Little League World Series is? Are we going to Pennsylvania? I didn't think the C&O canal went all the way up there." 

"Wrong Williamsport," he tells me. "That's very far away. But yes, that's where the Little League World Series is." 

And yes, it is far. 

From our house, the Maryland one is about a 15 minute drive if you use the highway, 20 minutes if you go non-highway. Not far at all. I had no idea it was there. 

It is right by the West Virginia border, naturally, since the Potomac River is the border and the C&O is the canal that helped everyone on earth get around the rocky and rough Potomac! We crossed the bridge on Rte 11 just to say hello to West Virginia, and turned around and came back to park. 

It was cool and windy, but nothing like the storm far to the east and north of us. Lots of bikers and a few hikers, some fishing, and no one out on their boats. We walked on both sides of the canal on the tow-path, and I sat a lot, feeling rather bloated and bubbly. 

Toffee had a lot of fun. So many things to sniff. 

Rte 11 over the Potomac, to WVA.

The Cushwa building, and yes, this is where the brewery gets its name

I've seen this name before on a bridge in Savage Mill, MD

We walked over to the welcome center which is closed due to the gubbmint shut down (both sides are to blame, don't come at me). Happily, I didn't have to use the bathroom or anything so we just walked about having the whole place to ourselves.

Doug wanted to go over to the Lock House, and technically it is an easy walk from where we were but he was merciful to me and my not feeling good. I opted to sit in the car and just rest a bit. There is a giant decommissioned power plant right there, and it is super cool and wicked spooky looking but my heart wasn't in it to poke about and take pictures. I listened to the Allman Brothers Band live from the Fillmore East.

So you know I didn't feel right if I didn't want to walk about and take pictures. 

Doug came back and our next stop was the Cushwa Brewing Company, which has a location in Colombia MD and over here in Williamsport. 

They share their space with pizza shop Rad Pies, so of course, let's have some pizza and beer. 

I have to say, I felt much better after a slice of Detroit Style pizza and a nice beer. The wall art for the pizza place is hilarious, and the pizza itself was fantastic. I'd honestly not had "Detroit Style" pizza but I have had Sicilian style. They're similar but different. The Detroit pizza seems to have this cheese crust additional to the Sicilian style, sauce on top, and yes. a light and fluffy dough for the pie. 

For years I've complained about being trapped in Pizza Jail here in Maryland. So far, this area's pizza is outstanding and wonderful, and Rad Pies has a rad pie. 

Wishing I felt better and had more than one slice. But I didn't want to tempt fate and over eat with how I was feeling. 

Have to say though, this did make me feel a bit better. 

Miss Toffee was welcome inside, which is good because it was kind of drizzly and damp out by the time we got there. Tons of people came over to pat her and tell her how wonderful she is. Like she doesn't know. She was exceptionally well behaved, compared to two summers ago when we first got her and she was an absolute nightmare out in public. 

And there were no other dogs there, which was helpful. 

Home, and a nap. Only I didn't sleep. Geoff made supper and I was in the guest room trying to rest. I wasn't bothered because honestly I couldn't imagine making dinner. We would have had toast for dinner if I was in charge. 

He made a nice baked ziti with meat sauce and garlic bread. I had a small bowl. 

All told, at the time of this writing I still feel sick but I had some alka seltzer and I'm ready for bed. Happy to have done something with 2/3 days of the weekend. 

Digits below my dog and the cool art on the recycling bin at the pizza parlor. 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. a leisurely walk along the C&O canal and aqueduct, 32 min/1.34 miles. 10k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

8:30am: 126
5pm: 144
10pm: 122

food & meds:
8:30am: jaridance + phentermine
11am: english muffin w/pb & zero sugar preserves
2pm:met+glip
3pm: slice of Detroit style pizza, 2 beers
6:30pm: baked ziti and a piece of garlic bread
9:15pm: met+glip