foggy as hell out there

We got our first real bit of snow here early Saturday. Just a couple of inches where I live, then it changed to sleet and freezing rain which crusted it over, which made shoveling a lit bit more annoying.  The turkey has been a bit unhappy about the snow. I don’t blame him seeing how he has to go around in bare feet.

But today warmer air is overrunning the snow and it’s foggy from that.  It’s supposed to rain later on.

—-

It was a couple of weeks ago I was in one of the supermarkets near my home and I noticed they were selling beef heart. It’s the first time I had ever noticed beef heart being sold in the supermarket and I also noticed it was cheaper than all the other cuts of beef like roasts and steak. It was also cheaper than pork roasts and pork chops. My first reaction was a sense of weirdness, since I had never really heard about anyone eating a heart of an animal. Well, I had seen it once before on an episode of Dual Survival, where those two guys demonstrated a survival situation on a small island near Nova Scotia. In that episode, the one guy killed a porcupine and they ate its heart. Waste nothing was the motto.

Plus I also reasoned that the heart is simply muscle, slightly different muscle, but muscle just like you eat when you eat a roast or steak. So I then used my google-fu to find out some ideas about how to cook beef heart. Last Friday, I bought ~3 lbs of beef heart and this last Saturday, I cooked up a beef stew with the heart.

It’s got a slightly different flavor from regular cuts of beef, but it’s still recognizable as beef. I think it’s a good flavor, the slow cooking I did of it in the crockpot resulted in a very flavorful gravy. So hopefully if the supermarket keeps selling it, I might make it a fairly regular part of the meal rotation.

The next thing I might try, since I see they’re selling it as well now, is beef tongue. That’s got a slightly more awkward psychological barrier to hurdle than the heart (although it felt a little strange when I was dicing up the heart for the stew). Plus from what I’ve read about its prepartion, the whole part about having to remove the skin or peel of the tongue might have a certain ick factor to it.

—

I continue to make progress with Esperanto. Reading is becoming easier and easier, almost every time I begin reading something that’s written in Esperanto. I definitely have good stretches where I just read it as Esperanto and understand it as Esperanto, with little to no translation into English. I’ve improved at recognizing how the sentences tend to be structured, so there’s much less of me of having those instances where I need to labor through figuring out the meaning of what was written.

It’s making me feel better about the chances I have of being able to learn a language well enough to think in it and use it. There were times with French I was feeling extremely frustrated, wondering if my use and knowledge of English was so deeply embedded there might be no room for me to ever acquire another language. But with Esperanto I see it coming. The understanding is growing steadily. Plus when I watched a couple of completely new videos this last weekend with people speaking Esperanto, I was pleased by how much I understood. The big remaining barrier is having me beginning to produce Esperanto output, speaking it, writing it.  But I have a sensation like if I were to have an opportunity of going some place where there were people consistently using Esperanto around me, that I would probably figure it out fairly quickly.

For now, I’ll keep on reading as much as I can in Esperanto, and maybe I’ll start working on translating stuff that it already written into Esperanto.

Once I get Esperanto really working well in my head, then I’ll return again to more diligent study of French, knowing that it will take more time because of its irregularities, but also knowing that it won’t be impossible.

Winter Classic

Before now, I suppose my biggest time of interest in hockey was in the 80s. First there was the famous miracle on ice team of the US hockey team in the 1980 Olympics at Lake Placid. Then my interest in hockey got another boost some in 1985, not really because of anything going on in the world of hockey, but because of how I got diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. There I was, March 1985, in the sort of empty sterility of a hospital, my life changed more than I could possibly know, stuck with my quiet tumult of thoughts. The Flyers had had a famous hockey player, Bobby Clarke and he was a type 1 diabetic and he still is since he is still alive.

Now I’ve always been a fan of the Philadelphia sports teams. So I became a bit more of a Flyers fan now that I shared a metabolic problem with one of the Flyers players. I also remember that one night while I was still recovering in hospital, the Flyers and the Blackhawks had a game.  According to NHL reference, the Flyers lost that night, 5-2. I can’t remember all that much in terms of my feelings towards the game, I do remember there seemed to be a lot of charging back and forth, up and down the ice by both teams and the game was fairly exciting in spite of how I was probably rather disappointed at the result. In a limited it would be nice to get a good favorable sign egoistic perspective, I would have rather liked it if the universe showed a little justice and sympathy by having the Flyers win.

Oh well. Wishes have little bearing upon the outcomes of reality. Reality is the cold hard relentless brutality of itself. Oh well.

I watched yesterday’s Winter Classic with the Flyers and Rangers. I’ve been following the Flyers pretty closely this year, I’ve had my interest in hockey re-inspired due to some influences from 2009 and 2010, although there was also a core emotional reaction of feeling some angst about associations with hockey from events in 2010.  Funny thing about that day in May I rode home on a train. When I got off the train, Roy Halladay was approaching the end of pitching a perfect game for the Phillies, and the Flyers and Blackhawks were playing the first game of the Stanley Cup Finals. Once again, the Blackhawks would deliver a message in beating the Flyers.

But since the Flyers are a relatively solid team, I’ve been able to push down the despair from certain emotional associations with hockey, and I’ve followed them this year. Claude Giroux is an exciting player to watch.

—-

It was warm this past weekend, Saturday and Sunday and I golfed both afternoons. I could have had a fairly good round on Sunday if my putter had behaved. I did have another important swing realization — I need to keep my tempo slowed down on the backswing. I have a horrible tendency to get quick. It’s very very bad. It came through very clearly to me on the 1st hole of Sunday. First I yanked my tee shot left some with a bad hook. Then I sort of chop hooked my next shot. Then I thinned a 9-iron back behind the green. Fortunately I save bogey with an up and down from there. It then hit me what was going wrong. I was jerking the club back fast and there was no consistent swing resulting from that. I slowed down the tempo of my swing and from then on, I began striking much more solidly with better consistency.

So I’m thinking of putting a new mark on my golf balls with a Sharpie — EZB. Easy back. So I can look at the mark every time I tee up the ball and remind myself not to get quick on the backswing.

—-

I had one of those crazy maze-like dreams last night, one that got creeped out by the sensation of evil lurking somewhere in the dreamscape. It woke me up at 2:11.

 

Fighting Darkness

The winter solstice is now 10 days away. I’m struggling badly this year with the sense of being surrounded by darkness.

To try to do something a bit indulgent but positive yesterday, I did some cooking. The first bit of cooking was making some cornbread, and I ate a piece of that along with some roast beef, potatoes, carrots and gravy I had made in the crockpot back on Friday. Then after I had finished my early lunch, I then prepared some stuffing to use with a chicken I had bought in the morning. I used the giblets, onions, celery and mushrooms, then added the leftover cornbread to the pan. Once it was thoroughly heated up, then I put it into the refrigerator.

When the time came later in the afternoon, I stuffed the chicken with the dressing and began roasting it in the oven.  The smell of the chicken and stuffing cooking was very good.

When the chicken began approaching its time to remove from the oven, I then worked on preparing mashed potatoes and peas.  After the chicken had been removed and there was time in between carving the chicken and mashing the potatoes, I used the drippings in the pan to make gravy. So with that, ended up with a pretty full meal of roast chicken, stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy and peas.

Now I’ve got plenty of leftovers to put together lunches and dinners for the next couple of days. Then whatever chicken I have left on Wednesday might get put into some sort of soup or stew-like concoction.

—-

Over the weekend, I decided it was about time again to get the wax buildup out of my ears. My ears have always been prone to producing and collecting wax. I remember lots of times having the doctor going in and carefully digging out the wax plugs that would form in my ears. But nowadays, I’ve found good success with using Murine ear drops, although the pattern has been it takes a few hours in the evenings to get the plugs expelled, through repeated applications of the drops followed by using the bulb to irrigate the canals. Saturday morning, though, I got the idea of putting the ear drops in before going into the shower. Then after a decent amount of time in the shower, I first removed the wadded up tissue in my left ear that I had used to keep the drops in and then filled up the bulb with water. The first squirt of water resulted in water getting trapped behind the plug and against the ear drum. The second squirt didn’t change that, but the third squirt worked and the plug dropped to the shower floor. The right ear also went down in a few squirts and my ears were clear of the wax plugs.

—-

My understanding of Esperanto continues to get better. I try do some reading of it every day. In the car, I mostly listen to Radio Verda podcasts, and I notice that as I replay through them, I tend to understand the stories better each time.  I don’t have full understanding yet, but I’m getting closer. Also right now, before I go to sleep, I will listen to the reading of Alice in Wonderland aŭ La Aventuroj de Alicio en Mirlando.

I think I’m at a point now where if I were to meet up with someone who is capable to speaking in Esperanto, I could understand a good deal of what’s being said. I would probably be a bit slow at producing replies, but I could do a decent job. Although I’m still a good distance away from being comfortable at speaking and thinking in Esperanto.

The bottom of darkness

We’re now 3 weeks away from the winter solstice here in the Northern hemisphere.  It sometimes feels like living in cave. Wake up when it’s dark, leave work as it’s getting dark. Even when I do get outside in the sunshine, it doesn’t feel all that substantial, the sun sits low in the sky and there’s likely to at least be a chill in the air and it will likely keep getting colder for some time now.

I have, for the most part, been sleeping better. At least my dreams seem to have dropped in intensity. I’m having fewer prolonged middle of the night wakeups, but maybe it’s just because I’m so weary I could fall asleep again after most anything.

I feel rather disconnected whenever talking with anyone else. It feels like there’s this impossibility of communication somehow, that it’s impossible to convey anything. I end up wondering whether anybody ever actually communicates with another person. Maybe it’s all illusion, an illusion that people convince themselves of because it’s otherwise a peak into a reality that’s nearly madness. But that’s ridiculous and I know that, but that doesn’t mean I can consciously direct my feelings to behave themselves. The feelings are just there.

 

What the frozen left shoulder taught me about the right elbow

So all this year I’ve been slowly recovering from my left shoulder getting frozen by adhesive capsulitis.  The last 6 weeks or so I’ve been noticing more visible improvement, the arm is beginning to regain some of its reach.

As one might expect, the shoulder problem has created some difficulty with swinging a golf club, although there was a short stretch this year where it seemed like it greatly simplified my golf swing and I was seeing some favorable results because of that, in spite of the distance I’ve lost. But the last few months as the left arm has started getting more mobile again, it’s led to some difficulties. I began having great difficulty having any consistency with ball striking.

But then something fell in place yesterday and I now feel very excited I’ve made a huge leap of understanding in the golf swing.  In Ben Hogan’s book, 5 Lessons, he advocates a few points about how the arms should be — that when you set up at address of the ball, your elbows should not be pointed out to the sides, , but that you should turn your forearms so that your elbows point towards their respective hips.  Earlier this year when I tried doing that, I couldn’t turn my left arm like that, the shoulder would hurt. But about a month ago I noticed I could turn things that way, but I didn’t implement it in my game.  I had mostly gotten in the habit of turning my right arm into that position, but I would leave the left elbow facing forward.

That left elbow led to a couple of problems sometimes. It was easy for me to break my left arm during the backswing, and I was prone to that because I wanted to get further back. Sometimes by focusing on keeping my left arm straight I would avoid that, but it still happened sometimes if I didn’t concentrate on it.

But all of that meant something else as well. My right elbow has always had a tendency to fly away from my body. Some of that was because when I first started playing in 2005, after my right shoulder had gotten mostly better from its frozen shoulder, well, I couldn’t externally rotate my right arm fully and that made it impossible for my right elbow to stay tucked in close to the body.  Over time that improved, but mostly my swing was about trying to get the right elbow back into the body after it got separated.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. A lot of PGA players will let their right elbows get away from the body on the backswing. But what they are all very good about is getting the elbow tucked back in.  On the other hand, if you look at video of Ben Hogan’s swing, the right elbow is almost always right beside his body.

So yesterday, on about the 5th hole of the first 9 holes I played, I keyed up that thought of pointing my elbows at my hips at address and I then felt how my right elbow kept close to my body and I hit my first real good drive of the day. I did that again at the 7th hole. I missed it on the 8th hole when I let my concentration lapse, but that helped to drive home the lesson — I need my right elbow to stay tight to the body.

That then led me to doing something I’ve never done before in all the times I’ve played the front-9 at Delcastle. After my group had completed our first 9 holes, we elected to go play the front-9 again where the course was open because of the time of day and no one going out to start new rounds of play. But in all my prior times out on the front-9, I have never hit the first 5 fairways in a row with my driver.  But late yesterday afternoon, first hole, a beautiful light fade that started out down the left side and cut back in towards the middle. 2nd hole, again. 3rd hole, again. 4th hole, again. 5th hole, again. It almost felt automatic, if I kept that right elbow tucked against my body, the swing was simple. Hitting the ball solidly with a little bit of fade was simple.

It doesn’t mean I’ll hit a perfect shot every time. But I realize what it does mean is that if I keep my right elbow in close, I greatly improve my chances of returning the golf club in a much more consistent path and plane to the ball.  And that’s why you see the PGA guys hitting the balls as consistently as they do, they’ve mastered the art of getting the right elbow (or left elbow for lefties) back tight against their bodies when they make the downswing.  I finally really felt that clearly yesterday. I’ve probably had some awareness of it before, but never so forcefully and so consciously, with such a feeling that I now know what is key for me when I play golf. Or with the feeling that began to have yesterday that I can have confidence in my swing like I’ve never had before.

I suppose back in 2006 and 2007 when I was able to shoot in the 80s pretty consistently I was sort of closing in on that in an unaware way. Through lots of play, when I’d play 2 or 3 times a week, my body sort of unconsciously got better at getting the right elbow back in against the body, but I wasn’t really keyed in on how to accomplish it. And of course the swing would still break down a lot. Then the less I played, the harder it would get to have any sense of the right elbow being grooved into getting back to the body.

But now it feels like I know, really know. And I understand why Ben Hogan kept the right elbow so close all the time. It simplifies things greatly.

Everything becomes forgotten

I don’t think there’s anything new or profound in the title statement. It’s just an observation after a day of trying to be thankful and joyful. Or semi-happy. Or quarter-happy. Or a smidgen happy. I’ve just been thinking about it some lately, when I had the opportunity to drive someplace which I hadn’t driven to in more than 15 years maybe. Yeah, I remembered some stuff, but so much was forgotten. And I’m not someone who forgets easily. Things get stuck in my head. But even me, eventually I’ll forget.

That saddens me. I suppose it’s useless, but it saddens me. It’s a sensation of wrongness, how memories fade, evaporate, get erased, lost, crumpled, wrecked, broken, smashed, torn, eradicated, wiped away, wiped out, removed, deleted. I wonder — would it be a happier world if we could remember everything or would it be happier if we could forget everything? Both questions are useless, they aren’t realistic. I just wonder how it is some can put memory into the past so easily and let it fade into nothingness. They are probably happier people, I guess.

This last weekend, there was the Philadelphia marathon and half-marathon. I ran the half-marathon there from 2007 to 2010. But not this year. 2 men died running the marathon this year there. I still remember a lot about the ones I ran 2007, 08, and 09. Last year’s was more of a blur. I was probably depressed when I did it last year and it was a struggle. I wasn’t trained for it. But I did it because I had paid the money to do it. The other ones were far more meaningful to me. 2007 for the way I got a chance to say, “Fuck you, type 1 diabetes, you can’t stop me.” 2008 for doing it again and fighting through some of the worst cramping I’ve ever known. My legs cramped up to all hell and I refused to give up. 2009′s seems to be nearly etched into my memory because of who I ran with that day. Because of what I gave up that day. I had been prepared to run a full marathon, a feat that not all that many type 1 diabetics have accomplished. But I gave that up because of what I felt to be more important, the person that I ran with. Now I don’t now whether I’ll ever commit myself to the idea again of running a marathon. Maybe, maybe not.

But one day all those memories will be gone. My eyes, if they aren’t already shut, will be shut, if I die peacefully some place. Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll have the misfortune of some terrible accidental death. The point is my brain will stop functioning and all that was me and all that was my memory will be gone. Poof. And there’ll be no memory of the small inconsequential things of my life. No memory of the somewhat amazing things of my life. It’ll be nothing and no more. Nothing. Rien. Nada. Nenio.

 

one of those bad diabetes days

The diabetes and me have been coasting along pretty good over the past month and a half. I suppose it was time for one of those weird days to happen.

All day yesterday, I kept coming out low. The highest glucose reading I got was 123 mg/dL after stuffing myself with carbs in response to a low. A bad low. A low which had me in a bit of confused daze and sweat popping off my arms and body.  I don’t know what happened yesterday. Did my liver decide to take a vacation? Did I maybe take 26u of Lantus insted of 21u? Did I inject into some layer of tissue that got more rapid absorption?

I ask that last one of those three because when I woke up this morning, I had to pee something awful, but first I tested. 337 mg/dL. That’s my worst hyper in a couple of years maybe, maybe longer even. So what if the Lantus got absorbed in 18 hours instead of 24? Then maybe my timid guesstimate shot at covering the carbs I ate in reaction to the hypo ran out around 1 AM this morning along with the Lantus and my blood sugar began climbing.

But there’s no real way of knowing for sure.

The hypo after dinner last night was bad. I had begun to feel empty headed maybe around 1 hour 15 minutes after dinner, but I just shrugged it off to me being tired from not sleeping well the night before and waking up early.  By the time I checked my blood sugar around 45 minutes later, I was feeling really off but in one of those vacant and unknowing states. My thoughts were repeating themselves.  I reacted to seeing 30 mg/dL on my meter by wondering if it was 80 mg/dL instead and thinking maybe I just ought to go lay down on the bed for a while. It took about 15 minutes for the fact of 30 mg/dL to sink in and make me wander to the kitchen to search for carbs, even though I had glucose tablets in my bedroom. I think I opened and closed the fridge door a few times before the fact there was orange juice finally registered and I also somehow avoided a temptation to grab a diet caffeine-free Dr. Pepper instead.  Then I ended up drinking a couple of large glasses of orange juice and the carb replenishment panic set in. I ended up eating a couple bowls of spicy Doritos to satisfy a fairly overwhelming desire to suffuse my body with carbs and chase away the nasty feeling of being low. It was way too much and I wasn’t keeping track well, but it was just basic survival instincts guiding my actions by then.

When I was later recovered, I made a conservative guess about how much carb I needed to cover with insulin, but I was conservative.

Another reason I for maybe ending up at 337 this morning is that my liver really kicked in and did a prolonged period of glucose dumping.

Oh well, I’m alive, but feeling rather bolloxed by everything of yesterday and overnight. Hopefully this day will settle in to a better range. I got down to 183 before leaving for work and was at 165 when I arrived at work.

Dreams of Esperanto in Russia

Last night I dreamed I was jogging in Russia. I have no clue why I would be dreaming that. My memories of this dream are somewhat fuzzy now, but at some point there ended up being a couple of guys moving along with me and they were, being Russian, speaking Russian. Or what I dreamed to be Russian. I heard one of them use a word which sounded like dek, so I turned to them and said, “Dek estas la vorto for 10 en Esperanto.” This made them give me a look like I was crazy and they ran off.

I don’t believe I’ve ever had a dream like that, a dream about imagined Russian and then me spitting out a sentence that was both Esperanto and English.

—-

I came across the word naztruoj yesterday. Naz means nose. Truoj means holes. Nose holes. Nostrils. Yes, the Esperanto word for nostrils is nose holes. This makes me laugh. Naztruoj ridigas min. Nose holes makes me laugh.

There’s a bit of an unfortunate effect. If you turn naz into a verb, it becomes nazi. Although I don’t really know if Esperanto does like English does so often with bodyparts. I don’t know if oni povas nazi something out. Checking the Lernu vortaro doesn’t reveal nazi being used as a verb. So probably not.

I came up with the sentence La vorto naztruoj ridigas min fairly intuitively yesterday. In Esperanto, ridi means to laugh and it’s an intransitive verb. But Esperanto has a way of turning verbs that are intransitive into transitive ones, you use the suffix ig. Ig means to cause or make something. So if I add ig to rid, I’ve got something that makes or causes laughter. Ridigi is to make or cause laughter. Then I attach n to mi because it’s the object of what’s causing the laughter.

Rideti is laugh a little, which becomes to smile. I don’t know if I entirely agree with that meaning, I think chuckle could be more appropriate, but it’s commonly accepted that to smile in Esperanto is rideti. If we add ig to that, we get ridetigi, to make something or someone smile.

There are some amazing features that arise out of Esperanto’s short set of rules and word building capabilities.

 

The roller

I first got a foam roller a few years back. Since then, I’ve had an intermittent love-hate relationship with it. When I foam roll my muscles with regularity, it is a good thing. The problem that happens is I always get lazy and stop doing it. Then over time, the muscles get knots in them and I start tightening up, but it happens slowly and I don’t really notice it. Until over the past couple of days since I deadlifted. I was a bit sore the day after, a bit more sore the next day, less sore yesterday but still with some aches.

And I looked at the roller yesterday and thought that I ought to do it.

Yow. Wow, it hurt. Every muscle that I rolled, there was pain. The worst was the back. But I sure felt better after a couple of rolling sessions, one in the late afternoon and one before bed. I believe I also felt a bit better getting out of bed this morning. So I got to get back into practice again with the roller. It helps.

2 bad dreams last night. 1 pleasant dream of sorts, I dreamed that Frodododo was alive again, that I was petting her and she purred happily.

—-

Me legis la libron, La Hobito.

I finished my first reading of La Hobito yesterday. I’ll certainly spend some time reading it again. Trying to read some Esperanto every day has been quite helpful, I usually end up picking up on a few new words and reinforcing others. I also now understand more of the Radio Verda podcasts. I don’t get everything, but sometimes I get a topic or two in a podcast that I understand a great deal.

a little sore

For the first time in a while, I did a bit of weight lifting last evening. It was very simple. Deadlifts, 5 reps at a time, 1 minute break in between sets. I ended up doing 10 sets which was as far as I planned to go. I knew that with not having done any lifting in many months, there was no need to push myself to the edges, because going that far could have ended up with me very sore the next. I’ve got a little soreness today, but it’s not bad, it’s just that soreness you feel when you’ve done a good bit of work.

—-

Reading comprehension in Esperanto has taken a huge leap forward. Of course, I’m nowhere close to being able to read as fast as I can in my native English, but it’s a much faster pace now, with a lot more of the text’s meaning being clear without too much effort.  Sentence structures and words that would have stymied me some are now becoming more transparent and a greater portion of the material I don’t have to translate into English. I just read it as Esperanto.

Listening comprehension is getting better too. My biggest difficulty with listening is that I have a strong tendency to have the translating I do into English end up leading me off into other thoughts in English, then I have to yank myself back into listening. I seem to be a lousy listener that way. But hopefully that’ll get better and when that does, I think it will help step me along to being able to produce thinking and expression in Esperanto. I can’t get long chains of thought presently, but I do have little blips pop up during the day, so I think as long as I keep getting exposure and practice, expression will begin to emerge.

—-

I really hate this time of year some. It’s the darkness of it, the growing darkness. I hate having the alarm clock go off and it’s still dark out. Then it gets dark all too soon after getting home from work, and eventually it’ll be pretty dark by the time I do get home. I sometimes think this coming time of year will kill me. Not with anything dramatic, but it’ll just simply extinguish me, erase my will to live and there’ll be nothing more to keep my heart beating and lungs breathing.