mood: 
calm
music: silence
In my previous post
(way back on January 27), I noted that I had fallen behind in my
blogging and had some catching up to do. That was after a whopping 10
days of not posting. Well, it's now nearly a whole month later!
Some people have big gaps in their blog posts because their life had become
too busy for them to post. That sometimes happens to me, but that's not
my excuse this time. (Well, not my entire excuse.)
Instead, I had a few Very Important Topics to write about. Given that they were Very Important Topics, they would require Careful Thought and Finely Crafted Writing -- which I didn't have time the time or energy to do.
Where I went wrong, however, was in failing to write about the numerous trivial topics that I could have written about until I had time to write about the Very Important Topics.
That mistake will be corrected now. Prepare for a flurry (okay, a blizzard) of Pointless Trivia!
As a reminder of where I left off, on Jan 15 Dawn and I attended a showing of King Corn, which gave me even more reasons to think about eating local and
changing my food buying habits. So what have we been up to since?
Fun Time Station
On Saturday, Jan 19, we skipped the monthly gathering of the Springfield Area Freethinkers
and instead took Lando to something called "Fun Time Station" in the
Orr Building at the Illinois State Fairgrounds. It's an annual event
for kids, sponsored by the local PBS station, which basically involves
a variety of games and activities that kids can do. Eric and Patty met
us there, so Lando got to play with Sarah and Rose.
They had a small ball pit, tumbling mats, playdough, a sandbox, ring toss, beanbag
toss, etc; a real police car and a real fire engine; and demonstrations
by dancers, skaters, and musicians. In short, it's a way for kids to
run around and burn off some energy, even though it's bloody cold outside!
Oh, they also had a couple of people dressed up like
Clifford the Big Red Dog and Elmo, both of which we made sure to avoid,
based on Lando's past reactions to seeing such giant surreal
apparitions!
A Wedding Anniversary
Sunday, Jan. 20 was my Dad & Pat's wedding anniversary. I entirely forgot about it until just now. Oops!
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
Monday, Jan. 21 was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a state holiday, which means for me it was a day off. Hurray!
My Big Fat Greek Colonoscopy
No, I'm not going to go all gross on you here. Well, not too gross.
For the last few years, every few months I'd have some blood in the stool.
Of course, as soon as you see blood in your stool, alarm bells go off!
But then the next day there would be nothing. And nothing the day after
that. Huh. Okay, it was just one of those things. And then after 4 or 5
months... blood in the stool! And then nothing. And the cycle would
repeat itself.
Eventually I decided to stop wondering about it
and told my doctor about it. She agreed that it was probably nothing,
but recommended that I get a colonoscopy, just to be safe, so she made
an for me appointment with Dr. Howard Chodash, a gastroenterologist.
Coincidentally, this was not my first encounter with Dr. Chodash. A few years ago, when I was attending the GIS in Illinois conference in Chicago, while eating
lunch I swallowed a piece of steak that was just a little too large. It
became lodged in my esophagus, just above the entrance to the stomach.
It took a trip to the hospital to get it removed.
When I returned to Springfield, I had a followup visit with Dr. Chodash, who
sent a camera down my throat to take a look around and verify that
nothing was damaged. He also gave me a prescription for Prevacid, since
the cause of my problem was stomach acid irritating the lining of the
esophagus. Ever since I've been heartburn-free!
Anyway, back to the colonoscopy.
During the preliminary visit, he explained to me that the colonoscopy itself
wasn't a big deal. It was a short, painless procedure, and I'd be back
to work the next day. However, the preparation involved the day before the colonoscopy would be the unpleasant part.
Basically, I could have pretty much nothing to eat or drink the day before (with a
few exceptions, like clear liquids and Jello).
In addition, at noon I was to take a stool softener, then that evening I was to drink 2 liters of Halflytely. It tastes... not good. When I drank the first
glass, I thought, "well, it's not as bad tasting as I expected". Then I
drank the next glass. And the next glass. And the next glass. And the
next glass. And the next glass. And the next glass. And with each
glassful, it tasted worse and worse, and my stomach became more and
more full. And, of course, in between all of those glasses, I was
sitting on the toilet.
It was not the most fun I've ever had.
On this day when I couldn't eat anything and was spending all of my time
sitting on the toilet, some books that I had ordered from Amazon
arrived, including (ironically) Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss--and the Myths and Realities of DietingThe Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. (These are two of the Very Important Topics that I'll write about later. I hope.) I also received It's All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff. I guess a book about getting rid of stuff you don't need is appropriate for reading on the toilet.
I weighed 256.2 pounds on the morning of Jan. 22; I weighed 252.4 pounds
on the morning of Jan. 23, a loss of 3.4 pounds. I don't think
Halflytely Bowel Prep was the "new science of weight loss" that Rethinking Thin had in mind.
Jan. 23 was the day of my colonoscopy, and as he had said, the procedure was
short and painless. Actually, because another patient was running late,
they started mine an hour earlier than planned, so I spent even less
time waiting around than I had expected. I was awake throughout the
procedure, but sedated, such that my memory is a bit fuzzy. I remember
watching on the monitor, which was sort of interesting, but I wasn't
very alert and paid far less attention I would have if I weren't
sedated. The end result was that they found one polyp, which they
removed and sent off to be analyzed, but other than that nothing.
By the morning of Jan. 25, I weighed 257.6. So much for that weight loss plan!
Rethinking the Diet
One of my New Year's resolutions was to lose weight. I had started off well, losing 4 pounds in the first 2 weeks.
One of the books I received on Jan. 22 was Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss--and the Myths and Realities of Dieting by Gina Kolata, which explained that losing significant amounts of weight and keeping it off is just about biologically impossible. This is one of the Very Important Topics that I want to write about later. Remind me.
In any case, that sort of took some of the wind out of my sails and my
diet has stalled. I can't blame it all on that book, because part of it
was just getting busy and not counting calories, but it definitely
removed a lot of my motivation. I haven't decided yet whether I'm
convinced that it's hopeless; I'll have to research the topic some more.
Reducing the Stuff
Another book that I received on Jan. 22 was It's All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff by Peter Walsh. I decided to buy it after reading my brother's review. (Buying a book about having less stuff? Oh the irony!)
It was quite good, very motivating, and we've begun taking some
significant steps in that direction. I don't know that this quite rises
to the level of a Very Important Topic; perhaps I would call it a Rather Important Topic. In any case, I do plan to write about it more later.
Amazon's Return Policy
Of the 3 books I received on Jan. 22, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan definitely had the biggest impact on me. This is the biggest of the Very Important Topics that I want to write about later. (You've been warned.)
Unfortunately, when I received it, I noticed that this last 20 or so pages were
miscut. They were smaller than normal and were still joined together. I
could have just sliced them open and ignored the fact that they were
small, but since I had 2 other books that I could read while I waited
for this one to be replaced, I decided to return it.
I checked the packing slip for their return policy and saw that there was a web
address to handle that. At that web page, I selected the book that I
wanted to return and entered a description of the reason for the
return. Amazon then displayed for me a postage paid return label to
print and told me that a new copy of the book would be shipped to me. I
would then have 30 days to return the old copy.
Nice! If I finished the other 2 books quickly, I would still be able to read The Omnivore's Dilemma
while waiting for the replacement to arrive! (As it so happens, I did
just that.) And as an added bonus, the box that they were shipping the
replacement copy in would be exactly the right size to ship back the
defective copy!
Making a return doesn't get much easier than that!
A Foot of Snow!
On Jan. 31, the snow began falling. When we awoke on Feb. 1, we had 11 inches of snow on the ground! The next day we got another 2 inches
added to the total. The day after that we had rain and temperatures in
the mid-50s (?!), so the snow didn't last too long, but there was a lot
of it for awhile!
Home Expo
For whatever reason, every year Springfield hosts two competing home improvement shows at virtually the same time
(sometimes on the same weekend). This year, for a change, one of the
home shows decided to move up to early February, while the other will
be held in early Mach.
On Feb. 3 we attended the Home Expo in
the Orr Building at the Illinois State Fairgrounds. As usual in recent
years, our primary goal in attending is to get Lando out of the house
and give him a chance to run around and burn up some energy. (It never
seems to work, however.)
One highlight this year was watching
one of the exhibitors help Lando play bowling on a Nintendo Wii. Before
Lando became obsessed with drums and then knights, he was a big fan of
bowling. He has 4 sets of bowling pins, ranging from 1 inch
tall tabletop pins to 2 feet tall driveway pins. We've also got a
little bowling game on our Nintendo GameCube (Monkey Ball), and Lando loves watching us play. We plan on buying a Wii "one of these days", but not yet.
Schwan's is Going Bye-Bye... But Not Yet
After reading Plenty, I resolved to start getting more of my food from local sources. After watching King Corn, I resolved to eliminate corn-fed beef from my diet. After reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, I resolved to eliminate all industrial animal products from my diet.
But then on Feb. 5, the Schwan's delivery guy showed up, as he does every Tuesday. We still bought some stuff, but it was much less than we've bought in the past.
These things take time!
Funshop
On Feb. 6 we had our first Funshop session of the Winter semester. This
will be the last time Lando will be in the 2 to 3 1/2 year olds class.
Dinner at the Davises'
On Friday, Feb. 8, we went to Eric & Patty's house for dinner.
Patty had given up meat for Lent, which meant she was cooking
vegetarian anyway, so they decided to invite us over to help with the
eating. Lando, Sarah, and Rose spent the majority of the time down in
the basement playing, carefully watched over by the wireless
closed-circuit camera that Eric had installed.
I mentioned my new interest in avoiding industrial agriculture and buying more locally grown whole foods. That triggered some disturbing flashbacks for Patty.
Apparently her childhood involved large amounts of boiled oats, corn
meal mash, and lard. Somehow, when I think of fresh whole foods, none
of those 3 items features prominently. Her mother was Amish, so perhaps
that had something to do with it. I don't know.
In any case, if my weekly CSA box consists primarily of oats and lard, I'll skip it
next year. I don't think that's very likely, however.
Amazon Prime
Also on Feb. 8, I ordered yet more stuff from Amazon: 2 books & 4 DVDs -- In
Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto; How to get your Kid to Eat: But
Not Too Much; Who Killed the Electric Car?; Super Size Me; Wal-Mart:
The High Cost of Low Price; and The Corporation. (As you might imagine, there was some Very Important Topics in there.)
And I finally broke down and signed up for Amazon Prime,
which means free 2-day shipping on many items and free standard
shipping on everything. It costs $79 per year, but given how often
we're ordering from Amazon, I think it's worth it.
Lando's Links
On Feb. 9, I created a "start page" for Lando. In the last couple of
months, Lando has become quite skilled at using the mouse, having
mastered the tricky task of clicking and dragging. We had begun taking
him to various web sites with Flash-based games, which he would then
quietly play for 20 or 30 minutes. Given Lando's high-energy activity
level, this was amazing! The only problem was, if he was playing at one
site (say, The Backyardigans) and wanted to go to another (say, Peep and the Big Wide World), he couldn't do so on his own.
So, being the web geek that I am, I put together a simple HTML file with
images that linked to the various web sites. Now he can just go to his
home page and click on, say, Clifford the Big Red Dog to get to that
page.
Yes, we don't want him to turn into a computer zombie, but
it is handy to once in awhile turn him loose on the Internet for a bit
so that we can enjoy a nice, quiet living room. :-)
Darwin Day Dinner
On Feb. 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born. Here in Springfield, Illinois, Abraham Lincoln is a very big deal and everyone is gearing up for next year's 200th anniversary celebration.
On the exact same day,
Feb. 12, 1809, Charles Darwin was born. Not surprisingly, the
anniversary of his birth doesn't get nearly as much attention. However,
some of us celebrate Feb. 12 as Darwin Day. I'm the chairman of the local skeptics group, REALL, and each year we have a dinner to celebrate not only Darwin Day, but also the anniversary of the formation of the group.
This year we got together a couple of days early, on Feb. 10 at the Pasta
House. We had a nice turnout, with 30 people showing up, including 5
kids (Lando, Sarah, Rose, Andrew, and Matthew). I read a couple of
excerpts from On the Origin of Species, passed out a quiz to check on people's Darwin knowledge, and we each had a slice of birthday cake.
In past years, we'd had a dinosaur-themed cake that said "Happy Birthday
Charles". This year the dinosaur-themed cake wasn't available, so we
went with the primordial sea cake, more commonly known as Finding Nemo without the Nemo and Dory figures.
Feb 11: 2 books & 4 DVDs arrive; order book, DVD, CD for Dawn
Lincoln's Birthday
As I mentioned, Feb. 12, was Lincoln's birthday. Another state holiday, another day off for me!
Funshop Valentine's Day Party
Wednesday, Feb. 13 was Funshop's Valentine's Day party. Okay, "party" is a bit of
a stretch of the term. it was just the normal Funshop gathering, but
the kids each had a paper bag with their name on it. Everyone brought a
stack of Valentine's Day cards and dropped one into each bag. I'm
pretty sure we didn't even look at the cards when we got home. But hey,
he's 3!
Valentine's Day
Feb. 14 was Valentine's Day, the officially sanctioned day for being
romantic. I, as always, was pretty much unprepared. I gave Dawn a book,
CD, and DVD from her Amazon wish list. That was it. No flowers, no box
of chocolates. She gave me pants. What can I say? We're an Old Married
Couple.
Okay, I admit it. I sucked at the romance thing this
year. I'm going to blame it on the 3 year old this time and try harder
next year!
Freethinkers Meetup
Feb. 16 was the 3rd Saturday of the month, and for a change I made it to the
Freethinkers Meetup at Buffet King. None of the food was local, I'm
sure, and no doubt it was all industrial, but I ate least avoided the
beef and pork, limiting myself to fish and some chicken.
I don't remember exactly how the topic came up, but at some point I started talking about The Omnivore's Dilemma. Yes, I've become that guy, the one who's constantly talking about whatever food kick he's currently on! I'll try not to be that guy for very long; I promise!
In any case, it's sort of a difficult topic for me to talk about, because
it's complex and I find that I can seldom get more than a single
sentence out before I'm interrupted. Given that I was raised not to
interrupt others when they're speaking, I then find myself waiting for a
chance to continue my thought. And after I get out a second sentence,
I'm interrupted again! Part of it is my speaking style. I tend to want
to lay out the evidence and then state the conclusion. This takes
multiple sentences.
Okay, I admit it -- I can run on quite a bit. But if you got this far in this post, you already knew that, didn't you?
Presidents' Day
Feb. 18 was yet another state holiday! That's the good news. The bad news is
that we don't get another one until Memorial Day (May 26 this year).
For some reason, we have 8 state holidays during the 4 cold months of
November through February, then only 4 state holidays during the 8 warm
months of March through October. I think that needs adjusting!
Schwan's Delivery Shrinks Further
Feb. 19 was another Schwan's delivery. We cut this one back even further,
getting just a couple of cheese pizzas and some ice cream.
Funshop without Dawn; Lunar Eclipse
Feb. 20 was Funshop night, and because Dawn needed a break, I had suggested
to her that she take the night off and leave Lando to me. She agreed,
so it was just Lando and Daddy!
Later that night we watched the total lunar eclipse. It was bloody cold, but we took Lando outside 2 or 3 times and showed him the moon. I think his basic reaction was, "Wow! The moon! I want to go in now."
Deer Herd
On the night of Feb. 26 (2 days ago), a bit before midnight, I looked out the back window and saw an entire herd
of deer! Okay, it was just 4, but in a tiny backyard in the middle of a
subdivision, that qualifies as a herd. This look like a doe and 3
"teenagers". Several months ago I had seen a doe and 2 fawns.
I don't know what it is about our backyard that attracts deer,
particularly given that we are, as I said, in the middle of a
subdivision. They were just passing through and didn't stay around for
more than a minute or two, so I didn't get a chance to take a picture.
I'm curious what sort of shots I'd get if I set up a motion-triggered
camera back there.
Funshop
Yesterday, Feb. 27, another Wednesday, another Funshop. This time the theme was
teeth and brushing them. So.... Okay, I really don't have anything to
say about that. There were toothbrushes, a giant mouth with teeth in
them, and some books about teeth. I really just can't get very excited
about the topic.
Dawn's Sick
After Funshop we went to Bellacino's for dinner. To avoid industrial pork, I
had to give up my favorite (the BLT grinder) and instead compromised
with the industrial chicken (the chicken grinder, which sounds rather
disturbing now that I write it).
That evening, however, Dawn was
feeling very dizzy, with a sore throat and a sore back. Was it the
food? Or maybe the flu? Whatever it was, I sent her to bed.
When I woke her up this morning at 7:00, she was still feeling dizzy, so I
stayed home from work to take care of her and Lando. We went to urgent
care and found that she had "benign positional vertigo" brought on by a
head cold. Basically this means that the small calcium particles in her
inner ear are moving around whenever she moves her head, making her
feel dizzy and nauseous. They gave her a prescription and said that the
symptoms could last for 3-5 days. Also, she's not to drive until a week after the symptoms disappear.
I'm Caught Up! More or Less.
Okay, I'm pretty much caught up. Other than the Very Important Topics, I'd
also like to write about Springfield's planned winter farmer's market,
rearranging our living room furniture, pizza toppings, and copying
stuff from Tivo to DVD, but those topics will just have to wait for
another day.
sleepy
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