Nick.

I'm excited to be offering my first regularly-scheduled class starting tonight and continuing on mondays, 7-830PM.

It's going to be a unheated vinyasa flow with a strong breathwork component, all shapes/sizes/levels welcome. Donation-based, pay what you can.

Hope to see many of you there!


Vadalna Dance Studio
284 Amory St -- The Brewery
Jamaica Plain, MA

As I get deeper into this purging of bad habits that seems to have taken hold of me lately, I find myself forced to confront how I use the internet. I've started to catch myself falling into a pattern of going through an endless cycle of scanning the 'net looking for entertainment, trying to fill the void left by cutting out TV. The habit has been there for awhile, but it is coming into focus as something it is time for me to get rid of.

This is tricky, though, because so much of my functional and professional life happens on the web, I can't just eliminate using the net for a period.

I have three big culprits:

- porn
- dating sites
- news sites

Declaring a 120-day ban on porn and dating sites is a simple one...particularly given that I'm seeing someone.

News sites are trickier. I can spend hours looping between cnn/washingtonpost/huffingtonpost/538 obsessively looking for updates and reading (and rereading) articles I really don't care about.

The problem is that I really do like knowing what is going on in the world. I've generally found that quantity limits (e.g. only read cnn once a day) are an ineffective way for me to break habits, so I am forced to consider several options I consider suboptiomal.

My first option is a full news media fast for 40 or 120 days, likely with an exception for books.

My second option is some manner of printed media. In Cambridge, I think my only real option is the Globe, which is near worthless. Financial times, I guess, but that is expensive and not quite what I want.

My third option involves getting an eInk device and going digital. This is a topic I've been mulling for some time. ( Read more... ) Unfortunately, if I want a way of getting reasonable news that doesn't involve the computer, the Kindle seems to be my only viable option. And I'm just not ready to make the "sole content provider" commitment amakindle wants me to.

So I think I'm calling it for a 120 day ban on continuously updating news and social media sites. Facebook gets exempted as an messaging site (it is helped by the fact that I utterly and completely despise it, so I'm only there when strictly necessary).

I guess this means I won't be seeing y'all here for 4 months. I start monday. Two posts planned for tomorrow.

( Alcohol )

( Marijuana )

( Television )

( Going raw )

Hi All.

It's benefits enrollment season, and I'm thinking of doing custom LASIK next year -- which I'd want to funnel through my FSA. So I have three weeks to figure it out. If nothing else, I really don't want to deal with contacts on playa next year. They are generally a slightly-less-epic fail than glasses, but a fail nonetheless.

My vision plan(VSP) gets me a discount and an enforced maximum, but isn't accepted by either of the two offices I'm particularly excited about. I have this strange preference for going with somebody of the "been doing this since it came on the market, specialize in it, have published papers about it" persuasion...as opposed to most of these offices, which seem to just list it as a one bullet point out of 13 things they do.

Anybody have someone they can recommend? Is this one of those 'doctor hits a button, it doesn't actually make too much of a difference' situations?

Amanda Palmer (lead singer of the Dresden Dolls) came to my yoga class today. She's a friend of a friend, so it isn't an overwhelming surprise, but still -- local celebrity showed up to take my class.

I went out to lunch with her and Geeta afterwards. She talked about going to China with her boyfriend next week because he's working on a book. It came out a little while later that her boyfriend is Neil Gaiman. It is funny how much lives in the interpretation of the sentence:

"I'm going to china with my boyfriend because he's researching a book there"

versus

"I'm going to china with my boyfriend, Neil Gaiman, because he's researching a book there".


I am amused.

Woot -- mika is performing in boston next week. I've got tickets up close.

This is going to rock; I feel like a teenage girl and a creepy old man all rolled into one.

The good news is, the oral surgeon was able to save my tooth. He had put the odds at about 50% going in.

While I wouldn't exactly recommend seeking out the experience, I was really impressed by this guy. Honest, direct, skilled, confident, and surprisingly cheap. His equipment all looked like it was 30 years old, which was alaming at first -- then I got a closer look at it and realized it was all really sturdy, solid stuff. Equipment built to last. That I respect. He billed about half of what the internets told me to expect it to cost and through some two-stepping with my dental insurance company, I'm ending up with a bill of around $100. For serious oral surgery, that rocks.

Here's the part I don't get, though:

What is it with dentists and the phrase "I'm not very responsive to lidocaine. You need to give me more than usual."

Since my first root canal, I've known this to be true. The stuff comes on weak and wears off fast in me. My siblings too. And I always get the "yeahsurewhatever" reaction from dentists. For fillings, etc, I'm at the cusp of just not having them use any. For slicing into my gums and scraping out hunks of tooth and bone...yeah...I kinda wanted to be good and numb.

I felt it starting to wear off before they even started. The initial slices were ok, but once they got in. Damn. Ow. I can appreciate that once he was going there was no stopping him -- he wasn't going to leave me with exposed bone while waiting for another shot to take effect and I was clearly handing the pain ok. But I do wish he'd actually listened to me and doubled up on the meds.

Oh well. At least I get to spend the next couple days in a vicodin haze. This should be amusing.

So, I started making some green juices in my vitamix a couple months ago -- basically spinach, kale, and frozen blueberries. Blend into oblivion and drink. Part of the raw food/vegan/general health kick I've been moving into gradually.

A week or two ago, I started filtering it out using a nut milk bag, as I got kinda tired of drinking something the consistency of...well...shredded spinach. While I was aware that I was wasting a lot of the nutritional value, I was surprised by how much more potent the juice got. Drinking it started stepping from a chore to a craving. But cleaning the bag was a royal bitch and I didn't like the waste, so I ordered a breville centrifugal juicer from amazon.

I'm disappointed with the efficiency, cleanup is a pain, produce is expensive, and the amount of waste matter produced is bothersome. But, that aside, I am completely hooked. I finish a glass and immediately want another. This weekend turned into an exercise in "I wonder what celery tastes like", run to whole foods, "ooh. delicious. I wonder what broccoli tastes like", run to whole foods, repeat.

I've got a book or two listing alleged medical benefits of juicing certain vegetables and was really surprised to find that the things I'm liking the most seem to be the ones that treat symptoms I'm trying to manage.


I broke down last night and ordered a masticating juicer (an omega J8006), which should get a higher yield, less foam, and be easier to clean.


I think my next step is going to be some manner of composting. I'm just producing too much vegetable waste not to do something with it. Maybe I'll use it to grow wheatgrass. Any other suggestions? My biggest hesitation on composting has always been "what the hell do I do with it?"

So, after countless rounds of poking and prodding, I finally had somebody tell me something useful and anatomically relevant today.

I went to see a dentist about a MAD (basic idea: pull the lower jaw forward a few mm with a retainer-like-device). He noticed that I have an unusually large tongue and showed me pictures/diagrams/xrays that made it very clear exactly how and why that causes apneas. It also made it pretty clear that MAD can work pretty well.

Now we're cooking with gas.

MAD looks like a much better solution than CPAP, although still not one I'm too terribly fond of. But it also jives with one recent article I read that showed effectiveness of tongue exercises in reducing apnea. I guess that means it's time for my tongue to start getting all lean. Maybe put it on atkins and have it start doing HIIT training :-P


It's good news. We are moving away from "force air into it" and towards "get the system working better". I like this direction.

This summer seems to have been one big series of doctors for me. Starting with a shoulder injury, then the apnea diagnosis, then my hospital stay with a staph infection. It's been interesting, though difficult to call pleasant.

My foot is back to about 99% (still some new skin growing in). ( Read more... )

The apnea has been another story entirely.( Read more... )

...finally.

Yesterday was a great adventure in visitors. Between a bunch of people from google, roommate, gRob, mary, and natalie all stopping by throughout the day, I ended up with a surplus of food and feeling very loved by the greater community. That was really nice.

Thanks for all your good wishes!

Natalie even brought me a kindergarden-style "have a ton of people sign a big sheet of butcher paper", which was really really sweet.

A few people also called to help me stave off boredom.


Test just revealed that it is not MRSA, which was a big concern, but they think I'm going to need one more night here and two runs of vanco tomorrow. But I should be out by saturday night.

Doc sez it is looking better, but she isn't letting me out of here till it is almost completely gone.

2-3 more days.

*sigh*


I suspect it is time to start marginally abusing the check box that says I can have adavan.



VISITORS VERY WELCOME. I AM BORED OUT OF MY SKULL.

Seems they've decided to switch me to a broader spectrum antibiotic and actually take swabs of the wound for testing. My guess is this has something to do with the new regions on my foot and leg showing signs of the infection. I kinda wish a doctor would talk to me about that.

I just looked up the wikipedia page for what they switched me to. Vancomycin. The phrase 'drug of last resort' is not an encouraging one. I'm going to assume they are just being aggressive, I asked the nurse and she says they use it quite regularly.


Anyway. Thanks to mas and the roomie and grob and mary for swinging by. Hopefully I'll be getting out of here soon.

I'm at MGH.

Can visit until 10pm tonight.

The information desk will be able to look up my location (they are in the process of moving me, which will take an indeterminate number of hours).

And the verdict is: I get to spend another night here.

Joy.

The guy I'm sharing a hospital room with is having a SeriousDiscussionAboutOutRelationship(tm) with his wife.

I really don't need to be hearing this.



Apparently, she is allowed to cry and doesn't like the 'symbols' of his name showing up everywhere. He's threatening to get his own email address.



They get all chatty whenever the nurse enters, but I think they forget I'm on the other side of the curtain.

So, my ankle has been a mess for about a week.

I though I'd managed to sprain or strain it or something.

Co-workers shared infection horror stories with me over lunch today, and I got mildly panicked. Headed to MGH to actually get it looked at.

Now they want to keep me here overnight for heavy iv antibiotics.

Joy.


At least I had the foresight to bring my work laptop. Which would have been a wonderful idea. Except my VPN doesn't seem to work on their wifi. So now I'm stuck here and can't get any work done.

Now this is what I call an apnea treatment.

I hope the neighbors don't mind...

So, after I tore some skin off my biceps doing a too-rapid descent, my silks teacher introduced me to 'new skin' last night. Cool stuff. Hurts like a bitch, but vasty superior to bandages once on. I went out and got a bottle.

This morning, I was reapplying and was surprised that it wasn't stinging. That's when I noticed I had picked up the bottle of brush-applicator krazy glue right next to my bottle of new skin. I rinsed for awhile and then put on a layer of the real stuff...but this has me marginally concerned.

Bottle says seek medical attention for eyes/mouth, but that skin is fine. It doesn't say anything about open wounds. I think I've heard of superglue being used to seal wounds in emergency situations, so I _think_ it is ok. But I don't know if superglue and crazy glue are different.


Should I be getting myself to a doctor before my arm falls off, or just wait it out unless bad things start happening.


Anybody?