Judith's thought-provoking soul-searching journal

what have i done today?

judith@livejournal.com — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:42:28 GMT

Sometimes I feel like I do nothing all day. So today I am going to list:

made bed
cleaned bathroom countertops, both bathrooms
swished toilets, both bathrooms,
washed and dried load of laundry
folded another load of laundry
did quick mop of both bathrooms
finished family calendar and ordered it!
cleaned sinks in both bathrooms thoroughly
mailed phone to joey, holiday card to aimee
finished one Christmas stocking (five to go)

to do yet:
quick vacuum of carpet in all carpeted rooms
make slow-cooker ratatouille
complete another stocking or two
there's more...can't think...

utilities

judith@livejournal.com — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:12:11 GMT

I went into tier 2 in electricity last month. Only a tiny amount but I always wonder what kicked it over when this happens. Gas stayed in tier one.

shopping

judith@livejournal.com — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:39:41 GMT

Yesterday I went on the hunt for a couple of ingredients to use in the making of vegan ice cream. I was thinking chocolate and coffee particularly, so I wanted semisweet and dark chocolate and instant coffee, plus full-fat coconut milk and possibly non-dairy yogurt and silken tofu. I went to Trader Joe's first because I was thinking maybe I'd find good chocolate there.

No. There are nice chocolate candies but I found no baking chocolates at all. Could I have missed them?

And no coconut milk, no non-dairy yogurt, no silken tofu. I did buy other things, mostly fresh vegetables. Then on to Costco because I was thinking of potatoes and thought if I could get bulk packs of the tofu and coconut milk that would be good because they keep. No such luck. Of course I got the potatoes. No chocolate even. I was getting a little worn, a lot worn, by then.

Then to Vons. got baking chocolate and semisweet chips, good enouigh, and finally found the coconut milk. Well hidden, I might add. No non-dairy yogurt, no silken tofu except in the tubs and I wanted the sealed packets that go on the shelf. Those are getting harder to find.

But enough, anyway, I did get to make a chocolate ice cream and a coffee ice cream or maybe mocha.

Sometimes I just get to feeling so very tired, though.

239.5

judith@livejournal.com — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:58:22 GMT

I bought potato chips yesterday, ate half the bag. Then ate another Tofurkey sausage. Not low-fat, these items. I also had good stuff - black bean soup and another subway-type sandwich and pomegranate juice with sparkling water.

I used wii fit plus for 30 minutes. I did a lot of short routines, a lot of them balance-oriented. Because of my knees my balance is not the greatest but it is not as bad as it was a few years ago.

Getting it out of my system

judith@livejournal.com — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 23:01:01 GMT

I went downtown today to buy some fabric. As I was driving through town I noticed Woodstock's, a pizza place, and memories of its "wilde bread" came to me. I wanted some. I determined I would have some.

I bought my fabric, got in my car to see if I could find a space near the pizza place, and failed. As I was driving along Marsh, though, I thought of an alternative. Another pizza place across from a parking garage. I went there and had their version of wilde bread, which turned out to be not as high in fat but still with plenty of herbs, and I was satisfied. It's out of my system. For now.

lunch

judith@livejournal.com — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 22:10:38 GMT

I wanted to get out of the house today. I pretty much want to get out every day. I call myself a "nester" but in some ways I guess I'm not.

So I went to a coffee place, had tea and an orange and wrote emails and stumbled around the web for a bit. I was proud of the laptop sleeve I made yesterday, crude though it is:

I didn't even come up with this idea. I got it from Generation T, a book that takes recycling T-shirts to a whole new level.

So I went to the coffee place. From there I went to Subway, ordered a footlong veggie, sat down at the back of the store. For some reason the chip rack had been moved there, near my table. I grabbed my chips from there before I sat down. Then a worker hauled a large cardboard box into the space near me, opened it, and started refiling the rack. She came and went, grabbing other large boxes, throwing them around, slamming the chips into the rack. It seemed like it would never end but it finally did. Then she pushed the rack toward the front of the store. So that was why it was back there - to be refilled. If I had figured that out I would not have sat there.

She ran into a table - BAM! - on her way to the front, then came back later to straighten it out, and finally to put away the remaining boxes.

I had been drinking lemonade. I decided, when I was done, to refill the cup and take it with me. But the lemonade had run out. I grabbed some ice tea instead and left, feeling sour. The noise, the slamming of the table, the missing lemonade all made me think about never going back again. I know that I will go back but for me it takes so little to get into a bad mood.

safe drinking water for all

judith@livejournal.com — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 20:13:51 GMT

utilities

judith@livejournal.com — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 22:54:06 GMT

Once again I stayed in the first tier for both gas and electricity last month. Good for me!

Take it with a grain of salt.

judith@livejournal.com — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 01:59:27 GMT

Dead At 79

From Cancer

View my profile: thejudester

Find out when and why you'll die, take The Death Test!

There is hiking and there is hiking

judith@livejournal.com — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 22:42:55 GMT

Today I tried out a trail I had not tried before. I discovered it on the Paso Robles city website, where a nice little pamphlet is available to download, that includes a map of trails citywide. I had been on only one of them. Many are just little paths inside parks, but there are others that look more promising. I chose one of those.

It is called the Watertank Loop and it starts at the intersection of Creston Road and Golden Hill Road and is described as "Just under 2 mile paved loop trail". It looked easy to get to but when I got to the intersection I did not find any trail signs. I drove the trail, as it happens, discovering that it is entirely a sidewalk, although the sidewalk in some places rises and falls away from the street. The best place to park is inside a shopping center at that intersection, so that's where I parked.

As I walked the path, nursing hip pain unfortunately, I was reminded of Einstein's theory of relativity. There is no doubt that this path taken at a walking pace (in my case, about two miles per hour) is not the same place as this path taken in the car. So yes, time is the fourth dimension. It isn't fair to describe a path that you haven't taken on foot for this reason.

It's a good path for runners and even for cyclists. Not much of a path for nature lovers like me. But I was okay with it simply because it was new to me. I enjoyed a large oak that was clearly protected by a rock wall on three sides and no building nearby. I saw a little bird that didn't look right - it let me pet it. It was moulting, I think, probably could not fly. I worried about it but decided to let nature take its course, whatever that might be.

I felt the sun on my body - I didn't even think of the vitamin D that I was getting! but yay! I also saw a tiny bit of nature on the corner of the shopping center, where a large drainage pipe cut under the road and where water was allowed to sit sometimes.

The path surrounds a relatively new housing subdivision. Across one street I could see hills so far undeveloped, and across another I saw older homes with farm implements and steep driveways and I guessed that the folks in those homes thought they were in the country...until recently.

My reward was the Subway sandwich (veggie, of course) that I had when I got through. Very convenient, right there in that shopping center near my car. It's unlikely I'll do this route again but I will write about it on the Sierra Club trails site: http://connect.sierraclub.org/community/trails.htm I have added sixteen trails here already and hope to add many more. Eventually others will find these trails and be glad I took the time. That's all I want.

shelves

judith@livejournal.com — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:35:24 GMT

There is a reason I do not attempt many home improvement projects. I am not good at them. However, I can usually put together a piece of furniture or a shelf that is in a kit. So I attempted to put together a shelf that goes on the wall.

The item is from Ikea. I bought the box of pieces Friday, July 17. I have wanted this shelf for some time. The following Monday I screwed together the shelf itself. Tuesday I installed the hardware on the wall. The way this thing works is that you hang the shelf from these hardware pieces that you screw to the wall.

The brackets on the wall

With a little bit of difficulty (it is much better as a two-person job) I hung the shelf on the wall. I slid the little posts into the holes in the shelf, but I did not realize that the next step was to insert little pins to hold the posts in place. When I started to load the shelf with books it came crashing down.

Fortunately, no harm done. I looked at the instructions again and realized my error. I got the shelf back on the wall and started to insert the first pin. And the shelf fell down again. This time with disastrous results. One end of the shelf had broken off. I could see inside, could see the construction of the shelf.

If these shelves had been simply wood all the way through the solution I came up with would have worked. My plan was to buy long wood screws and glue and glue and screw the parts together. I decided to screw in a bit closer to the center from the existing screws.

The first difficulty was in finding long wood screws. I ended up with lag screws that were fat and had to screw in. I got one of them in most of the way but discovered that it was pulling the inside of the shelf out. The inside was not attached to the frame of the shelf. A curse on these types of shelves!

I went back out to get shorter screws, because I realized I had overdone it. I found wood screws at the smaller size and I started to screw one into the far end of the shelf, where it would go into the solid particleboard corner. For some reason I kept running into blockages, like there was metal in there somewhere. I could not get it to work.

The shelf end was starting to look like it was diseased.

I thought of other ways to make it work: getting some kind of angle iron to wrap around the corner and...screw in...that didn't sound like it would work; and liquid nails. That might work but it's iffy.

My sister called from Ohio to chat about her visit to Ikea to get some things for her new house. I told her my sad Ikea story, relieved to have an outlet. Somehow talking about it made it seem not so terrible and made me seem not so awful, such a klutz. Cathy offered to pick up another one of these shelves the next time she was at Ikea. Her Ikea is a lot closer to her than I am to any of the Ikeas in California, so I said that might be a good idea. Needless to say, this is not one of the items available for shipping direct from Ikea.

Yesterday she called. She had the shelf! She is going to mail it!

Elfin Forest

judith@livejournal.com — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 17:49:05 GMT

Yesterday's walk:

I met a couple on the walk as I was just starting out on the boardwalk. Middle-aged or older, with hats for shade, sturdy clothes and shoes. Well, actually, it's the couple you see most often in the slideshow above. The man came by and asked, "Have you seen anything extraordinary?" He had a British accent.

"It's all extraordinary," I said.

He gave me a disbelieving look and said, "You need another drink." We continued on our way but kept passing each other as one or another of us would stop to look at something. I noticed the two of them bending over to look closely at a plant and I came by and said, "You probably know what you're looking at".

The man said something to the effect that there is no good spoiling a story with the truth.

Oso Flaco Lake

judith@livejournal.com — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:19:39 GMT

I did this lovely walk yesterday.

El Chorro hike

judith@livejournal.com — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 23:49:34 GMT

I did the oak woodlands hike in El Chorro Regional Park today. It's 2.2 miles if you don't take the extra path to Eagle Rock, which I didn't. I always pay in my knees, my hip, but I don't feel too bad right now. We'll see how the night goes.

I was determined to get back into hiking and now I am doing it.

Portola Point

judith@livejournal.com — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 13:57:40 GMT

Yesterday I did the Portola Point hike, a bit over two miles. I wasn't sure how I'd manage it.

A view of the hike:

From Portola Point hike

It took me about an hour and 25 minutes, longer than it has in the past. I stopped frequently to catch my breath. Initially I felt some pain in my legs and knees but it wasn't terrible so I kept on. I came to a time when my legs felt almost normal, a bit stiff but no real pain. Toward the end I felt some twinges but again, not that awful. I felt stiff and when I went to a movie later I had to work my right leg a bit after, to release the pain, get on with it.

Last night I took a couple of acetaminophen tablets to help me sleep and I slept well. No cramps, no shearing pains. Encouraging.

utilities

judith@livejournal.com — Sat, 30 May 2009 20:23:16 GMT

Curses. I stayed within tier one for gas but went into tier 2 for electricity last month. I wonder what I was using electricity for. More than usual.

WorldFest

judith@livejournal.com — Sat, 16 May 2009 13:15:52 GMT

Yesterday I drove to Santa Monica. I am going, with Elaine and Ed, to WorldFest today, and we are staying together in a nice suite in a small inexpensive motel near the beach. Our rooms are up there:

From Santa Monica

Up the stairs to the left are blue gates. Through those gates, a little outdoor corridor with plants and four rooms, including ours.

I took a couple of walks while waiting for Ed and Elaine to arrive. One thing I noticed on the first walk, down Main Street, was this painting:

From Santa Monica

I admit I'm a sucker for the Tromp L'Oeil stuff.

Later I went in a different direction, down to the beach. The bike path was not overly crowded. It isn't yet the season and it was a weekday. I did see a variety, though:

From Santa Monica

We had food last night from Real Food Daily, picked up. There are many vegan restaurants here. Today it's off to WorldFest. Where there will be many stands of vegan food. And tonight, more adventuring in Santa Monica. I love this city. I could live here - if I could.

Info on meds for swine flu

judith@livejournal.com — Sat, 02 May 2009 15:30:31 GMT

Reprinted from the pages of WorstPills.org:

Swine Flu: Important Advice from WorstPills.org

As of the end of April 2009, swine flu (H1N1) had sickened almost 100 people in the United States. While it’s normal to be anxious about the spread of this disease, taking medications to prevent or treat the disease without having a full understanding of the medications’ side effects could have a serious impact on your health. The most effective ways to avoid any infectious illness are safer and cheaper than any medication. To avoid disease, the CDC recommends:

* Washing your hands or using hand sanitizer frequently
* Avoiding sick people and surfaces that they have touched, sneezed or coughed on
* Not touching your nose, mouth or eyes

What drug treatments are available to treat swine flu?

You may be tempted to take zanamivir (RELENZA) or oseltamivir (TAMIFLU) as a cautionary measure to prevent swine flu. However, these medications are not very effective against typical flu strains. A 2006 Cochrane review concluded that for prevention of influenza, “compared to placebo, [these drugs] have no [significant] effect against influenza-like illnesses.”

Further, not everyone should consider using these drugs to prevent swine flu.

The CDC is recommending that only two specific groups of people take the antiviral medications RELENZA or TAMIFLU to prevent infection with the swine flu:

1. Household close contacts who are at high-risk for complications of influenza (e.g., persons with certain chronic medical conditions, persons 65 or older, children younger than 5 years old, and pregnant women) of a confirmed or probable case
2. Health care workers or public health workers who were not using appropriate personal protective equipment during close contact with an ill confirmed, probable, or suspect case of swine-origin influenza A (H1N1) virus infection during the case’s infectious period.

The CDC also says that a limited number of other groups may consider using these drugs to prevent infection:

1. Household close contacts who are at high-risk for complications of influenza (e.g., persons with certain chronic medical conditions, persons 65 years or older, children younger than 5 years old, and pregnant women) of a suspected case.
2. Children attending school or daycare who are at high-risk for complications of influenza (children with certain chronic medical conditions) and who had close contact (face-to-face) with a confirmed, probable, or suspected case.
3. Health care workers who are at high-risk for complications of influenza (e.g., persons with certain chronic medical conditions, persons 65 or older, and pregnant women) who are working in an area of the healthcare facility that contains patients with confirmed swine-origin influenza A (H1N1) cases, or who is caring for patients with any acute febrile respiratory illness.
4. Travelers to Mexico who are at high-risk for complications of influenza (e.g., persons with certain chronic medical conditions, persons 65 or older, children younger than 5 years old and pregnant women).
5. First responders who are at high-risk for complications of influenza (e.g., persons with certain chronic medical conditions, persons 65 or older, children younger than 5 years old, and pregnant women) and who are working in areas with confirmed cases of swine-origin influenza A (H1N1) virus infection.

It is not known whether these drugs would be more or less effective against swine flu. Although these drugs have been proven in laboratory tests to have an effect on swine flu, the drugs have, of course, never been proven in clinical trials in humans for this particular strain.

Patients should also be aware that RELENZA can cause asthma.

utilities

judith@livejournal.com — Fri, 01 May 2009 18:57:09 GMT

Stayed within the first tier of both gas and electric again last month. Yay!

My xm day

judith@livejournal.com — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 02:21:06 GMT

I am going out of town for about a week tomorrow. I figured it would be a good time to get my xm radio working again. For several weeks it has been receiving no signal, which is a mechanical issue, not an xm issue. It's the radio, in other words. So I called the auto sound place and made an appointment for this morning at nine, to take a look at the antenna.

Turns out it was the radio itself that was at fault, not the antenna. The guy said these radios rarely go bad but once in a while...and so I'm the lucky one. The car audio place doesn't stock portable satellite radios. I asked what they do have. He said it would mean removing the radio I have and replacing it with one that also takes xm signals. He quoted me a price for entry into that market.

Well, thing is, this is what I really wanted to begin with. The portable dingus that was sitting next to my gear shift was always getting in the way and I couldn't always see what it said, so I was thinking maybe now is the time to get the real thing. Of course I didn't really want to get rid of a perfectly good radio but...

I figured if I am going to do it I should get a replacement that is at least as good. So I sold myself on the wonder radio: one that not only gets the usual am and fm and plays cds, but also plays mp3s, has a usb plug (think ipod), has bluetooth so I can talk through my radio instead of my phone, and is satellite radio equipped. It's everything I want and will actually use. So I said sold, how soon can you install it?

An hour, hour and a half, he said. I went for a walk while he did that. When I came back he set up the phone, we tested it, and he told me to call xm to register the new radio and get it activated. He told me the battery in my car was low so he left the car running while installing to be safe. So I drove home, delighted that I could call my daughters from my radio and actually hear them better than I do on the phone. That little feature alone is so worth it.

I got home, called xm, placed the car where it had no obstructions, left the car in the lowest ignition place, where just the accessories work but the engine isn't running, for the required fifteen minutes. I went out to find the battery dead and the radio along with it.

I called the auto club and got the car started. Better World Auto Club, by the way. Works just like the other one only it's more environmentally friendly.

After scanning the manual and not finding a way to reset the xm radio I called the car audio people again. They talked me through the phone and then said they'd better deal with the xm part, so I drove it back, where they took it out, reset it. Said it should pick up the signal now, just park in a good place and wait.

I got home, called xm again, found out that you can't refresh the signal less than three hours after the first time. The guy said the signal should still be strong, I should be able to get it. If not, after three hours I could go online to refresh it.

No good after several checks, during which I left the engine running. After three hours were up I went online to refresh. It said "success!". And to wait 15-20 minutes to get the signal. I waited and waited and checked and checked and no.

Finally I called xm again, after six pm. I got a woman who looked at my history and discovered that the previous one had never been fully completed. The changed radio had not gotten completely accepted. So we waited while she sent the signal to accept it and while we waited she chatted about the fact that she actually never listens to xm because her 19-year-old daughter assumed she did not need her radio so she took it and put it in her own car. The woman was fine with it because she has stations she likes, bluegrass, country...and she can listen to them all day. I told her I love listening to radio plays and books and so on, as well as music, and that books are especially good on long trips.Make them go faster.

Finally the radio was accepted and we waited while the refresh signal was sent. When it finally came through she said that's it, it should be fine now. I trusted her. I waited another fifteen minutes or so and LO!!! I HAVE RADIO!! Wooo! And I discovered stations I did not have when the last one went dead, including Book Radio. Perfect!

I thought the radio fix would be done by ten this morning. It is just now done. But I'm happy. I love my new radio and I'm looking forward to testing it out on my trip.

utilities

judith@livejournal.com — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:44:42 GMT

Once again I have stayed within the baseline usage for both gas and electricity. I'm proud.

Auto Stress

judith@livejournal.com — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 20:09:53 GMT

I have known many beaters in my life. The first car I called my own, sort of, was a Ford Falcon station wagon bequeathed to me by my sister Mary when she went into the Peace Corps. I honestly don't remember what I did with that car - I may have given it back to her when she returned. I do remember that I never liked it, that it did not do anything particularly well, and I do remember a frightening incident:

I was moving. I dumped many boxes and bags of things into the back of the station wagon and I added in my cats. I did not have cat carriers (did they even exist then? this was some time around 1967). When I was on a Los Angeles freeway, headed for my new place, I discovered that I had neglected to close the back door, the hatchback. I was frightened for my cats, afraid that they had fallen out onto the freeway.

I got off as soon as I could and discovered that they were all alive and well and inside the car. It was a great relief.

After the Falcon I owned a 1958 black Volkswagen beetle. I banged that baby up every which way and it still drove. But I didn't do regular maintenance on it. And when the oil light stopped working I did not get it fixed. And so when the oil ran out and the engine threw a rod...

The good memory of that experience is that on my way home from Hollywood,where I had thrown the rod and limped into a repair place to hear the bad news, I was deeply sorry for myself as I drew up to a stoplight somewhere around Pasadena. I was driving slowly because that's all I could do and the car was thumping like crazy. I knew there wasn't a new engine in my future and that I was minus a car. A guy next to me at the stop light yelled out, "Hey! Your mechanic is stuck in the trunk!"

And that changed everything. Suddenly I was able to laugh about it. Somehow knowing that a fellow driver knew my engine was shot and was joking about it changed my outlook. This was a universal condition, something I shared, and that mattered.

After that, the Karmann Ghia and the VW station wagon. I loved VWs dearly yet one after another I did not care for them as they deserved. So it was one death after another, one way or another. And understandably I grew to be sensitive to car noises.

Even now I have that sensitivity. I own a car I bought new (a first for me) and I maintain it regularly, following the manufacturer's recommendations. I recently had to have a new clutch put in and was still wondering what went wrong because it went out at 70K when a clutch normally can last 90K miles or even more. More, though, I have taken to being suspicious of the care my car is getting at the dealer's.

I know. Dealers are notorious for overcharging and some think they also make work, create problems where there aren't any. I have not had that sense of this dealer and it has won a number of "people's" awards for best service so I am not alone in that sense. But here's the thing: I brought the car in with clutch problems one day and the mechanic found that the car mat had slipped up and under the clutch pedal and believed that this was the problem. I wasn't able to depress the pedal all the way so it wasn't engaging properly. Well, that was part of the problem but not all, and I was back soon after. This time the mechanic found that the clutch was indeed bad. So the question in my mind was, did he really check it thoroughly the first time? Or had he found the first problem and left it at that?

So here I am with a new clutch and all is well when I start to hear noises. Rattles in the front of my car, at low speeds. And my first thought is, did that guy do a good job installing the clutch?? I got to listening for the noise every time I took the car out and worrying my head off about it. Finally I made an appointment and this morning I brought it in.

The service person at the desk said that the inspection for this type problem costs about $100. I said "If it has anything to do with the new clutch I'm not paying anything." and he agreed, I shouldn't.

Turns out it did have to do with the clutch and I did not have to pay anything. It was a loose bolt. Not ready to fall off but not tightened enough. The service person was very apologetic, the car was given a nice car wash, and I was on my way. It was the right thing for the dealer to do and I do feel good about it.

But I now have this lurking feeling that the service at that dealer has started to get sloppy, after all these years. One loose bolt and one missed clutch problem - it does seem like a trend. More, though, what distresses me is having to make more appointments because everything was not taken care of at the first one. This clutch thing has taken three appointments when it should have been just one.

It isn't a huge deal but I hate having to deal with these kinds of niggly things more than once. Each time it seems harder to get to it. I really have to push myself to make the call. I have enough trouble making appointments for anything at all, frankly. I make my teeth cleaning appointments at the end of each one, at the desk, because I know I won't otherwise make the call. I try to make it so that they call me, I don't call them. I think that's really what is bothering me about this car thing. I have the time, there is not big deal about getting the car there, they have a shuttle (not to mention wifi in the waiting room), so I am not much inconvenienced. But I just hate making the calls.

Backing up

judith@livejournal.com — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:48:26 GMT

Back in the old house, where I had stacked things horizontally as well as vertically - imagine a bookcase in front of another bookcase, for example, but not as simple as that, more like a ledge with magazines on it in front of a cupboard, for example, and there might even be a third level, something in front of the magazine ledge - if I wanted to do something, to clean something, rearrange, add, whatever, I had to back up several times.

For example, I might look at a wall and have a vision of a new bookcase on that wall. But to add the bookcase I would first have to move the plants, lamps, pile of magazines, strange little table, and a dozen other things that were in front of the wall. I would have to decide where to put these things. When I thought of a good place for each thing that meant I had to find a place for whatever it would be displacing. In the end, it meant I would have to rearrange the entire house to put in that one bookcase. Usually I just gave the idea up.

I have a similar thing happening now. My house isn't in as bad shape as the old one, of course, and it is not as cluttered. I have, however, let my office become something of a landing zone for whatever needs to be got out of the way. And my new cat addition, Peanut, hides in there. Peanut is afraid of the other two cats. With some good reason because they tend to attack him frequently. It's also part of his nature. He is the scaredest cat I have ever met.

As is often the case, the impetus to do something, to change something, comes from left field. In this case it has to do with arthritis. Here is how it lays out:

1. The arthritis in my knees (which has also spread to my hands, by the way) prevents me from doing several things I love to do. My goal is to reduce the pain so I can do more.
2. My weight aggravates the pain. It's funny that this seems obvious and that's what I thought when I saw yet another health study proclaiming that people who are heavier have a harder time with knee arthritis. It is obvious yet some people are going to be able to move freely even with extra weight. This because they are strong in the right places. Extra strength in certain muscles can compensate for joint weakness. I am working on those muscles now. But obviously, for me, losing some of that weight will make the whole enterprise easier.
3. I recently got a copy of McDougall's Maximum Weight Loss book. I have used McDougall in the past. His recommendation for everyone is to eat a whole-foods vegan diet, and he has reversed many diseases with this diet. Because Elaine and Ed awoke my past interest in McDougall I thought what the hell I'll get this book, and I did.
4. I lost the book. It is somewhere in my office, I am sure, because I would have dumped it there while cleaning some place else. But Peanut is hiding in there too and lately he has not used the litter box in the hall, but has instead used some parts of the office for his poops.
5. So for me to get my knees in better shape I have to clean poop from the office. Which, ironically, is on the floor and it's hard for me to clean things when I have to bend my knees. I'll work it out.

So there you have it. But of course it's a bit more complicated really. Because of Peanut's fears I have decided to get a baby gate for the office door and to put in a litter box and food dishes so he can hang there all day. The other cats can find and see him but can't touch him, if I do this. My hope is that eventually they will get enough used to each other that I can remove the gate and he can become a regular part of the family.

Peanut, the fat cat with the funny ears.

Jon Stewart does it again

judith@livejournal.com — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 19:17:12 GMT

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Unedited Interview Pt. 3

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

Flight wisdom

judith@livejournal.com — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 17:02:35 GMT

Last night I watched some of Flight of the Conchords, second season of the HBO series. I had seen advertising but had never watched the show before. I first watched some introductory stuff on ondemand, then took in an episode.

In general I don't find it all that funny. I think it's a kind of low-key humor, like the British The Office, that I don't exactly guffaw at. It's perhaps too close to true, not enough exaggeration? I am not sure.

But there was one little comment that stuck with me.

One of the pair - the Conchords is a duo from New Zealand (and I admit the jokes that keep confusing where they are from are pretty good) - mentioned in the intro piece that he is essentially a lazy person, and that "people like me oughtn't to be made to work so hard".

I like that. I relate to it, and I like that he took it away from himself, said that others should not make him work so hard.