More News about Julian

It's hard to keep up with this kid!

You may recall that I mentioned Julian was taking Chinese classes "just for fun" on Sunday afternoons. I don't remember if I mentioned it was a cute girl that talked Julian into the classes, although he didn't need a lot of convincing.

You may also recall that he was in a competition with other class leaders for a trip to China this summer sponsored by The Asia Society. He didn't win, but we knew he placed very high in the finals. We found out today just how highly he placed -- First Runner Up. So if someone dropped out for any reason, Julian would be next to go.

Which is why the Asia Society called today -- to see if Julian was still interested in going -- to China this summer.

China.

This Summer!

We're still working out the details, but it looks tentatively like he'll be gone July 1st - 23rd. So posts might be a bit thin for me for a while -- I've got to come up with $700.00 pronto for the trip.

~~JD~~


PS: China!!!

Nineteen Years and Counting

May 28th, 1988 -- this gorgeous woman married the likes of me. Lucky, lucky me.

Julian says "Yaaaay!"

~~JD~~

Happy Memorial Day

Two Videos which are really resonating around my brain at the moment:





This first one in particular resonates because my 12-greats grandfather, Christopher Long, was General Washington's color-bearer throughout the Revolutionary War (i.e., he carried the American Flag for Washington's troops.) With Faith Hill singing the Star Spangled Banner behind it, you can't go wrong.




This second one is an interview with Robert Mitchum in 1966 about the Vietnam War. Hear the words of a man who lived through the last war we won -- we haven't "won" a war since his generation fought World War II.

And If I need to apologize for the cigarette smoke or the frank brutal reality of the quotes, then you really need to focus a bit more.

~~JD~~

Friday Night, 2.6 Miles

Samantha the Wonder Dog; Doing what she does best.


Mileage 5/25: 2.6

AM Glucose (5/27): 102*
AM Glucose (5/26): 99*
AM Glucose (5/25): 88
AM Glucose (5/24): 72
AM Glucose (5/23): 92
AM Glucose (5/22): 99*
AM Glucose (5/21): 68
AM Glucose (5/20): 79
AM Glucose (5/19): 74
AM Glucose (5/17): 57
AM Glucose (5/16): 57

Today's Weight: 291.5
Weight Loss: 34.5 pounds


That little bit of rebound on the weight (1.5 pounds) was kind of expected -- I lost almost 10 pounds in 8 days there, so I'm not too worried about it.

When i started having those ultra-low blood sugars in the fifties the middle of the month, I started thinking about doing things different, like changing my eating habits (adding a nightime snack, etc.) Starting the 19th, though, I began to see a noticeable difference in the blood sugars. It took a few more days until I realized I had put the wrong strength medication in my medicine boxes. (I usually take 10 mg of glyburide at night and 5mg in the morning -- I had accidentally put 5mg in both boxes.)

In other words, I've cut my dose of diabetic meds by 1/3rd. That's a really good thing!

Additionally, the starred dates (5/22, 5/26, & 5/27) are days I forgot to take my nighttime medications entirely. (It's easy to determine -- if the pills are still in the box when I wake up in the morning, I didn't take them, did I?) This would mean that apparently I can cut my dose of diabetic meds by 2/3rds with no apparent ill effects.

I can't wait to see my Hemoglobin A1C test in September. But I'm not completely silly. I'll continue to monitor this with only cutting the 1 pill, and wait for the doctor to tell me to cut the 2nd.

But still, this is good! A couple more pounds and I might even be able to get off the meds entirely. An other good motivator for me to lay off the Klondike bars and hit the road walkin'.

Off we go!

~~JD~~

Happy John Wayne's Birthday

From WIKIPEDIA:

"Born Marion Robert Morrison and later changed to Marion Michael Morrison in Winterset, Iowa on May 26th 1907, popularly known as the 'The Duke,' he was an iconic, Academy Award-winning, American film actor. He epitomized rugged individualistic masculinity, and has become an enduring American icon. He is famous for his distinctive voice, walk and height.

In 1999, the American Film Institute named Wayne thirteenth among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time. A Harris Poll released in 2007 placed Wayne third among America's favorite film stars, the only deceased star on the list and the only one who has appeared on the poll every year."

And almost every single one of his films are set in South Texas -- with the one notable exception of The Quiet Man, which is set in the one locale with more ornery fighters than south Texas -- Ireland.

Happy Birthday, Duke. God Bless John Wayne.

~~JD~~

No, I didn't forget . . .

May 23rd is always a little hard for me.


Yesterday was Nana's 101st birthday.

~~JD~~

Diabetes Update

For some odd reason, this picture reminds me of Samantha and I walking along. For some reason. . . .


Mileage 5/22: 2.7

Mileage 5/19: 2.6
Mileage 5/17: 1.2

AM Glucose (5/23): 92
AM Glucose (5/22): 99
AM Glucose (5/21): 68
AM Glucose (5/20): 79
AM Glucose (5/19): 74
AM Glucose (5/17): 57
AM Glucose (5/16): 57

Today's Weight: 290
Weight Loss: 36 pounds


Keeping that morning blood sugar low seems to be the key. I started an evening shift last week in preparation for classes next fall (It's so much easier to get classes during the day versus Evening classes, which are almost always filled up.) The first two days I was waking up with extremely low blood sugars ("57" is actually borderline dangerous). I think this is because I was working until 11pm, then going to bed, with only my evening sandwich and yogurt to support my metabolism. And given my size and decrease eating at night (Hey, I'm working right up to bedtime almost!) resulted in low blood sugars. So I've started carrying a little snack with some kind of carbohydrate base to it, like a Nutri-Grain bar or Peanut butter sandwich to eat before bed (hopefully on the way home.)

The large weight loss (Eight pounds in ten days) is partly from that, and some from switching scales. Coming to work at 2:00 pm means I can't weigh myself first thing in the morning like I used to, so I bought a digital scale that seems to be within a pound or two (probably two) of the scale at work.

So maybe two pounds of it is scale-switching. But not all of it.

In related news, the new belt I bought in January because all of my other belts were too big -- is now too big itself. Plus Ariane has informed me that my too-big pants look like those of my beloved Bozo the Clown's pants now, so we have to go shopping at the Dickies Outlet this weekend in San Marcos for new pants.

Cool!

~~JD~~

Flurfy the Norwegian Forest Cat is Sailing the Fjords . . .

Flurfy died this morning at 9am. That makes three cats in just over five months. We've avoided the contam- inated cat foods, and none of the younger cats are sick, so this just seems to be old age catching up to them at once (they were all 18 to 19 years old.)

As you can imagine, Ariane is pretty broken up about this. I'm not doing so well myself.

If you need to refresh your memory, you can click on the title of this post to see Flurfy's original post here.

~~JD~~

Blog Updates

A couple of new things to the old 'blog here, in my never-ending quest to make my 'blog look more and more like Homer Simpson's.

The first is a Playlist from Imeem .com, which is a lot more than just a list of songs of whatever I'm listening to today. You can double-click on the green "Play" button to actually listen to the Playlist in it's entirety (assuming you have a set of speakers and a sound card available to your computer.) Alternately, you can click any one of the single selections noted there and start listening with that particular one. And from time to time I'll be changing the playlists as well -- I've already started working on the Christmas Playlist.

And you know how I love Christmas Music . . . .


The other new item is my joining a webring, which is a collection of (somewhat) like-minded 'blogs. This webring is called the Texas Connection, and has a list of other 'blogs from Texas for your perusal.

Or in Mike Workman's case, something to do while you're pretending to work, Bubba.

Enjoy!

~~JD~~

Jimmy Olsen; Teen-aged Renaissance Man

Jimmy Olsen was not just a cub reporter and photographer in the Pre-Crisis DC Universe. He also knew the identities of every teen-aged superhero in the DCU. If you were ever a "Robin" to somebody's Batman, he knew who you were. He also knew the identities of Batgirl, Bat-Girl (all three versions), and the name of the vet who "fixed" Ace the Bat-Hound, Krypto, and Streaky the Super-cat. He was a close personal friend of both Mr. Mxyzptlk and drinking buddy to Bat-Mite, and had all the Teen Titans on Speed-Dial. He was also his own super-hero, possessing powers as Elastic Lad, Turtle, Boy, and god knows how many others. It's a small wonder he wasn't a member of the X-Men, with his mutant ability to display bizarre and terrifying superpowers at the drop of a hat. According to Wikipedia his super-identities included:

* Giant Turtle Boy (Jimmy Olsen #53 -1961)
* Elastic Lad (Jimmy Olsen #37 -1959)
* Flamebird (in the shrunken Kryptonian city of Kandor)
* Speed Demon (1956)
* Radioactive Boy
* Gorilla Boy (Jimmy Olsen #24)
* Monstrous beard growth Lad (I am not making that up)
* Telepathic Jovian Boy. (Aliens transformed him, of course, but they were apparently very stupid aliens -- any reader of the Legion knows that natives of Saturn's moon Titan are Telepathic, NOT Jovians.)
* Teenaged Wolf-Man (Jimmy Olsen #44 -1960).
* Hippie - Jimmy grew a beard and joined a Superman-hating band of hippies (Jimmy Olsen #118 -1969)
* Teen-aged Viking - Jimmy put on Viking armor and mistakenly thought he'd been transported 1000 years backward in time. (And great evidence of the brain-damage all these transformations caused, I think.)
* Doomsday (All Star Superman #4 -- Jimmy takes a serum and becomes a version of Superman's foe Doomsday. Apparently an April Fool's Prank on Superman gone horribly awry.)
* A Teen-Aged Genie
* A six-armed teenager (Teen-Aged "Spider"-Man)
* A fire-breather (Why does "Teen-Aged Circus Freak" not surprise me here?)
* A water-breather (Teen-Aged Aquaman)
* A Human Porcupine (Jimmy Olsen #65 -1962)
* A gorilla's husband (Gorilla-Boy gets married, apparently)
* Superman (On another planet, but he got upset because the civilians knew who he was. Durned temperamental super-heroes!)


His "Elastic Lad" identity earned him an Honorary membership in the Legion of Super-Heroes in the 30th Century; Even though he had more powers and identities than most of the Legion put together. This just makes my cerebellum ache thinking about the Time Paradoxes that might have resulted. In fact, there's a decent chance we can pin the Crisis on Infinite Earths, Zero Hour, and the Infinite Crisis on the Time Paradoxes resulting from a red-haired cub reporter bouncing back and forth between the twentieth and thirtieth centuries on a regular basis.

And to make matters worse, one of his Honorary Legionnaire "buddies" was Insect Queen -- Lana Lang, one of Superman's crushes from Smallville. I have always personally thought that Jimmy Olsen has a high probability of being the Love Child of Lana and Superboy after a passionate night at the prom and put up for adoption in the big city of Metropolis. So if that's true, that means the whole Legion thing meant that Jimmy was hanging with his Mom; both of them in skintight suits, which put me off the Legion until post-Crisis Continuity erased this creepy time-paradox nightmare.


Jimmy Olsen; Teen-aged Renaissance Man.

~~JD~~

Sunday Night, 3.7 Miles

I was just noticing that as of this month I've been doing this 'blog 2 & 2/3rds years. I've created 252 posts, and this year I've already done more posts (61) than I did all of last year (49) or the first year (41).

Who knew I could whine so much?

Mileage: 3.7
AM Glucose (5/13): 129
AM Glucose (5/12): 115
AM Glucose (5/11): 58
AM Glucose (5/10): 66
AM Glucose (5/09): 86
AM Glucose (5/08): 61
AM Glucose (5/07): 79
Weight Loss: 23 pounds



We took the western route today to our explored limit, then went one block beyond just for good measure. I'm claiming the extra tenth of a mile, whether it's true or not. Samantha did pretty well, considering she's still wearing her winter coat; but at least she didn't almost have a heatstroke like when we walked to he Interstate. We did have a scary moment when her collar came off in the middle of a traffic-filled street, but apparently I've trained her well -- she stayed right at my side until I could get the collar and leash back on.



Julian had the band awards dinner last night (Oh, Look -- there's my plate!) and we ate at one of the numerous Mexican restaurants in San Antonio. Julian won two gag awards for "Most Likely to be seen on a Dating Show" and "Most Likely to be seen on COPS" (heh!) He also found out he'll be First Chair in the Chamber Orchestra next year. Today he had graduation for the (voluntary) Chinese class he's been taking this year. His class average was 99.8% (100% on all tests and 98% on the Final).

Ariane's grades from this semester are still pending. I'm sure they're all A's and B's.

~~JD~~

Sunday Evening, 2.6 miles

I've been taking it easy on the walking this week, and my weight is showing it. I got as low as 304 pounds and started yo-yoing up as high as 307. However, as soon as it stops raining almost every day here I plan to start walking again 3-5 times a week again. We haven't had this much rain since the year we moved here.

I think this pretty much effectively ends the drought everyone has been worried about.

Mileage: 2.6
AM Glucose (4/30): 101
AM Glucose (5/01): 105
AM Glucose (5/02): 90
AM Glucose (5/03): 108
AM Glucose (5/04): 102
AM Glucose (5/05): 77
AM Glucose (5/06): 83
Weight Loss: 19-22 pounds

The last seven days I've been able to keep my blood sugar below 110, which is a new record, and I'm pretty tickled with it. In fact, I've been under 110 for 16 of the last 18 days; also a record. Plus there were a few cheats in there (ice cream, potato chips), so I'm learning to be careful when I cheat. That's the beauty of Type I diabetes; you can really eat any food you want, as long as it's in moderation.

Of course, when I've got my hand in that bag of chips or on the ice cream scoop, moderation be damned -- I WANT IT ALL!!!

Samantha is sitting next to one of the benefits of the extra rain. These are West Texas thistle blooms, which have big white floppy flowers the size of your palm with yellow and red centers. They'll tear the hell out of your clothes, but they're gorgeous. The vacant lot next to our apartment has about a hundred of these, which is 90 more than I've seen in the last five years combined.

Very pretty stuff.

~~JD~~