30 Days hath September…

February is the only month that for some reason or another receives an extra day approximately every fourth year.

This year isn’t even a Leap Year, so this post is either one year too late, or a few too early.

According to the Gregorian calendar, which is the calendar used by most modern countries, the following rules decides which years are leap years:

1. Every year divisible by 4 is a leap year.

2. But every year divisible by 100 is NOT a leap year

3. Unless the year is also divisible by 400, then it is still a leap year.

But, who originally decided that February should be the month to have 28 days instead of 30 or 31; and why is it that on Leap Year we put the extra day at the end of February?

They really should let the other eleven months take turns having the extra day. Why is February so special? If it were up to me; instead of February being affected every qualifying year (according to the above rules), I’d stick the extra day on a random month each qualifying year. I would also wait until the latest possible moment to tell the printing companies which month, and make them pay me for the information. That would be my plan, and I would be rich.

Pft. Yah, Right!

Today, I received SPAM, presumably from “Microsoft” about a “critical update”. I wanted to post something about it here, since I seem to (personally) know a lot of people who have NO clue when it comes to spotting HOAXES in their email.The mail read:

Dear Sir/Madam,

We kindly ask you to install this update to your PC as soon as possible.

In the libraries of OS Windows® critical errors have been found. This errors lead to destruction of the system files from your computer without an opportunity on restoration. The given service-pack fixes libraries and does not allow various Trojan modules to penetrate into your computer.

Yours Faithfully,

Microsoft INC

The mail came with an attatchment with an “.rar” extention. (That is a type of file compression if you aren’t already familiar with “.rar” files.)

Microsoft will NEVER email you with the actual update as an attachement. They also (hopefully) have personnel with the forsight to use spell check and proper grammar for all correspondence. If you get an email like this, do not… DO NOT…DO NOT download the attachment.

If you need to check to see if your Windows is up to date – visit the Microsoft website: (http://microsoft.com/windowsupdate)

Back to the Routine

I am back from some much needed time off. I took some vacation time and I actually did get more sleep than I do on average. I learned a few things along the way:

Yes, there is a way to force Tim into near-complete silence for an entire meal. Last week, a group of us went out to dinner at a local steakhouse. We were waiting for the table, and waiting for Tim to find a parking spot. I offered my daughter, who loves any opportunity to make a dollar, an “acting job”.

I told her that when the server comes to our table, point at Tim and tell the server that Tim doesn’t speak english, and tell him or her that you are practicing translation and you will help with all of his ordering. If you can do it without laughing I’ll give you a dollar.

When Tim arrived, my daughter informed him that he didn’t speak english, and when she talked “gorbalie goork” to him not to worry, because it isn’t a real language and he “should just say something back to her in the same language.”

When it came time to order, Tim softly said something fake to my kid in the fake language. Tim is the type of person that orders basically the same thing every time. (NY Strip steak, Medium-Well, house salad with ranch dressing… you get the idea. The only thing that varies is whether he choses french fries, mashed potatoes or a baked potato.) I had to help my daughter “help” our non-english speaking friend order his dinner.

The waitress, clearly confused (and at the same time fascinated) by this language, asked my daughter “What language is he speaking?”

She looked at me, and then at Tim. She then looked at the waitress and said, “French.”

We really should have discussed exactly what he was wanting to eat before it was time to order. (small oversight– We got MOST of it right, but he ended up with garlic mashed potatoes when he wanted a baked potato).

For the first half of the meal, Tim was forced into near silence, because each time the waitress was at a nearby table he was reminded to “shhhh”. I finally got a conscience and told my daughter that she could be the one to tell the waitress that Tim really CAN speak english, and that I had “dared” her to try to trick their staff.

Finders are not always Keepers.

Especially when the finder has NOTHING to gain from whatever was found.

While wandering around at a scenic snowy mountain overlook, I noticed something on the ground. When I picked it up it was an Oregon State Driver’s license. I put it in my pocket and made jokes about walking up to any people we passed, holding it up and comparing the photograph on the license with the person I had encountered.

I didn’t see anyone that looked like the photo, and we assumed she had left already. The only address on the license was a PO Box, so I decided we should go to a post office and mail it to her. For a return address, I just used an e-mail address. (Afterall, no good deed should go unnoticed.) I have not heard anything from her yet. I don’t know if she has e-mail or a computer, but I have looked for some type of thank you for the last three days.

Dam-it, part 2

Continued from the previous post. It will make more sense if you read it before this one, but should make sense on some level by itself.

The stuff I don’t understand about my insomnia: .: I have had this problem since I was as young as six years old. One theory that I have is that this pretty much rules out diet related problems. I have tried dietary changes from cutting out dairy, alcohol, chocolate and heavy meals for “dinner” without successfully changing anything long term.

.:People with Night Owl Syndrome generally are very tired during the day and their body’s internal clock is screwed up. Medical “Experts” have stated that going outside during daylight hours, ie; waking at a “normal” hour in the morning and going outside during the day, exposing yourself to bright sun will reset this clock. I don’t have a problem falling asleep. I have a problem staying asleep.

This problem occurs regardless of whether it is day or night. This theory is also kicked to the side due to the fact that I’ve had this problem since I was six or seven years old.

Other things that had no effect on my sleeping habits included eliminating all caffeine from my diet, which I succeeded in doing for two months. The cycle of periodic insomnia continued. While I was sleeping better the last half of 2004 (possibly due to the strict eating plan I was following), I still had some degree of insomnia every few weeks.

Because of the frequency of these cycles, I don’t wish to pop a pill (The American Way). I am looking for some natural remedies, keeping in mind that “herbal” and “natural” doesn’t mean it can’t have drug interactions or cause allergic reactions. (Allergies to ragweed mean that chamomile and some other herbal teas give me a sinus headache.)

Dam-it, I Just Want to Sleep.

This post was started at 3:13 am Tuesday Morning. I finished writing it and decided it was entirely too long for a single post. The second part of this will be published in a few days.

Somewhere beneath the surface, deep in my brain lies a cave where my fears, hopes, unfinished projects and all of my worries dwell. Once I fall asleep, they all creep out and torment my weary mind until I wake up. Once I wake up, the collection of fears, hopes, unfinished projects and all of my worries bounce around for hours, preventing me from falling asleep again.

Case in point: A few nights ago, I spent some time on line talking with friend, which we breezed through a couple of hours worth of time discussing our music tastes (and swapped a few files around, but don’t tell on us). At 12:10 am, I said good-night and signed off, since I had plans of getting up around 5:30 am to get started on all of the stuff I need to get done.

By the time I had finished with updating my iPod, “sleeping” the computer, brushing and flossing and changing into my boxers, it was probably 12:30 am. I fell asleep quickly (which is usually the case) but woke up at 2:00 am. I drank some water and returned to bed, and lay there listening to my heartbeat for about fifteen minutes (with the clock mocking me one minute at a time) and I finally slipped back into a shallow semi-sleep somewhere in the next twenty minutes.

I waded around the shallow end of the sleep pool, fragments of not-quite dreams just out of reach, with random clips of recognizable faces and events dancing around behind my closed eyelids. I woke up again, quite suddenly, feeling anxious without knowing what had caused it. With the abundance of fears, hopes, unfinished projects and all of my worries I harbor–I suppose only my deep sub-conscious mind could answer that question.

I remained in my bed, trying desperately to push all thoughts out of my head and relax enough to fall asleep again. I gave up around 3:15 am. The way I look at it, I’m laying there unable to sleep, and I’m not even tired, so why continue to try to force sleep to come? This has been a problem for me for most of my life, I call them the insomnia cycles.

The sleepless part of the cycle generally lasts about two weeks, followed by my brain, most likely out of mere survival instinct, flipping some switch and finally allowing me to sleep without thought for an entire nine or ten hours. After that first night, I sleep relatively well, averaging five hours sleep for the next three or four days. Then the interrupted sleep cycle starts, and gradually gets worse over the next ten to twelve days.

During the interrupted sleep cycle, I still manage to fall asleep within fifteen minutes of laying down; typically waking up after two or three hours, and falling back asleep within fifteen or twenty minutes, then waking up approximately every hour (and so on) — until I give up and get out of bed.

…to be continued

Exit in 49 Seconds

Tim bought an Earthmate GPS Receiver for his laptop, and he talked me into testing it out with him. This little yellow box connects to your computer via USB, and has voice recognition, so you can ask it “Where am I?” or “Are we there yet?” and it will respond with a computerized lady-voice. The GPS tells you ahead of time when your next turn is, and even tells you how many seconds away you are from the anticipated turn.

We set the route coordinates to begin from a Starbucks in Vancouver, WA and end at a Barnes & Noble in Portland, OR. In order to test it properly, we had to go from my house to the START point (Starbucks) and then drive to the END point (Barnes & Noble), which meant driving from where we were (my house) which was closer to the END than the START in the first place.

To me, this was backwards from the most logical way to do it, which would have been to START at Barnes & Noble in Portland and END at Starbucks in Vancouver.

At some point during the trip, Tim decides that we should “Turn on the wrong street or go “left” when the voice says to go “right”, to see how the computerized lady-voice reacts to the error. We tried to confuse it, and ignored it’s directions that were attempting to navigate us back to the route that was entered in to the program before the trip began.

The Earthmate was not only able to keep up with where we were, but it knew how to get us back to where we should have been before we tried to confuse it, then, once we were back on the right road, it mapped the rest of the trip back to the END of our journey.

Dream Elements

I was in charge of a new trainee for work. It was Charlize Theron, only she was not the Charlize Theron, just someone who looked and sounded exactly like her. Wearing dark blue pants and a white T-shirt. (booyah!).

It was a very hot afternoon, and we are climbing stairs to the second floor of a white two-story house-converted to an apartment- building, which happened to be where I live in this dream. (I’ve never lived in a building like this.)

She sits down at the kitchen table which is next to a window, with the afternoon light shining in. This was making the apartment hotter than it already was. I felt very thirsty. She looked very hot (pun intended).

I open the 1950s style refrigerator and offer her some cold water, which she accepts. As I hand her the bottle, I say, “Be sure to keep the top to it, or the cat will drink it.” As I say this, I point to the fat black cat (which I actually own outside of the dream in actual life.)

I woke up in my room, which felt too warm and I was extremely thirsty. The cat was on the pillow next to my head. Unfortunately, Charlize wasn’t there.

Egg-cident Scene

It’s All Fun and Games…

Games - teagames.com: This site has a nice selection of flash based games that is worth spending time investigating. I’ve learned that I cannot play virtual putt-putt very well.

poos scoop Flash game. Someone let the dogs out and they are dropping poodies in the park. Your job is Poody Duty. It pays fairly well at $10 a poop. (That’s a pun, ya know).

Today is DeLurking Day The Neurotic Fish has brought it to my attention. Don’t just sit there, we all know you aren’t THAT shy. Say hello. I promise, we don’t bite.

Speak up, you might just make a friend.

Little Blue Piggy

Starting 24 December I fell off the eating well for health reasons plan so hard that I think I will feel like crap through the end of February. I have definitely felt a difference in how well I sleep, and how I feel throughout the day.

If you are just joining me, I had eliminated “bad carbs” in July of 2004. This is not the same as the Atkins diet, which is very unhealthy in my personal opinion. NOBODY should ever consume that much fat – no matter what they cut out of their diets. The things I “had” to eliminate included: Sugar, Flour (read on), Yogurt (you’d be surprised how much sugar they add), Potatoes (hidden sugars that are natural but take a toll on a body that has a problem with insulin break down) and I had to drastically decrease the amounts and frequency of: Pasta and Rice.

I quickly found some items that eased my “suffering”, since a life without any bread at all for a sandwich lover is not all that fun. If you have access to a health-food store, you may be surprised by some of the non-flour variations available for no-flour-products cast-a-ways like myself. When I do drink a coffee any way other than black, I switched from dairy to soy (not so bad — really).

There are a few fairly good no sugar added ice creams (Bryers for example) if you can find it where you live. I do suggest that you spend a few weeks (I spent four) not consuming any of the things I listed (including the rice and pasta, which I added back in after the fourth week).

Anyway, I fell off this plan so hard, I feel it and I am sure it will take me a few weeks to get back to the happy me that was actually sleeping for more than four hours in a day that I was before the “holidays” hit.

To sum it up, I feel like a blue piggy. Depressed and having no motivation to do much of anything. I have never been fat. I have always eaten relatively well, and the past six months I had felt even better than I had since I could remember (at least during my existence as an adult).

For the next two weeks, I’ll be avoiding all of the listed evil things, and making an attempt at limiting myself to 1-2 cups of coffee in a day rather than 1-2 pots. (I am not sure this part will be as easy as it seems). Right now I am drinking green tea and feeling guilt as well as fatigue. I feel like I went to a party, had a lot of alcohol but its not quite a train-wreck hangover. (no headache, no nausea, just that severe no energy at all – in every other part of my body). My hair has even changed texture.

This doesn’t seem very fair; after all, I only ate a few bad things. (a few cookies here, little bit of bread there, pasta more than a few times a week.) I will say that the other day the big green S(tarbucks) was ‘out of soy’ so I ordered my Latte with regular milk. Talk about feeling heavy later. I can’t say I expected that.

So, for me, it’s back to -high-fiber / high-protein (low-fat) / lots of fresh produce / no sugars / no flour / (no) pasta or rice for two weeks. After that two weeks I’ll add portion-controlled servings of pasta or rice 3x a week- just as I should have been doing over this past ten days or so.

Look out produce managers – I’m on my way, and I am one picky shopper. I prefer my tomatoes unbruised and a little bit on the pink side, my lettuce without slimy brown spots, my apples to be Granny Smith – extra tart, and I hope that whatever else is in season is high on my edibility scale. I’ll be there sometime today to make my selections. You may want to warn the Meat Department Manager, too, if you like him at all.