Quick blog:

• All thought is a list, all rhetoric is a list. Lists are the most fundamental organizing principle and can serve as categorization, ordering of items, dependencies, and as the most concise form of communication. Any document is really a list of statements. A program is a list of commands. A list manager, therefore, is a fundamental tool for organizing thoughts, composition, and the persistence of knowledge. Seems like nested lists is the way to go. Good thing org-mode can handle that nicely.
• Keto diet is going really well. I am down well over 10lbs and much further ahead of where I need to be to hit my goal weight. I haven’t “cheated” yet and am still feeling incremental improvements in mental acuity, energy, and lack of pain from inflammation. It’s pretty amazing. Sorry if I sound like a zealot but this is keeping me motivated.
• A show I’ve been watching that I find really fascinating lately is Frontier. The idea of frontiers is fascinating. This basic proving ground of humans since the dawn of time can seem lost to us. The unexplored, lawless region on the outskirts of civilization that is there be mapped and exploited. With this great opportunity and relatively little oversight comes brutal competition and great risk. While it is exciting to view historical dramas about the fur trade in Northern Canada I do hope that when we explore our new frontiers - space, undersea, technological, genetic - we will try to treat each other better and work toward a common good instead of just trying to out-exploit our fellow humans. It’s time we put aside all the competition and got in a cooperative mindset. I am not sure what people get out of crushing their enemies but I suspect it has a lot to do with being abused as a child and never feeling safe unless you have power over others. We have to get away from that. It starts with making sure children are safe and happy. If kids grow up in a good environment they are not driven to hurt others just to keep themselves from being hurt. As a society, committing to keeping children safe may be the greatest thing we can do to ensure a peaceful, prosperous future. Perpetuating the aggression and violence of our past is not going to lead us anywhere good.

Going on second week of keto and I feel great. Very little inflammation and my commitment to eat enough fiber is keeping the ostomy situation under control. Rapid water weight loss has stopped so I’ll need to watch my portion sizes to keep losing weight but my hunger is well controlled and I have tons of energy (and very little pain). So far, so good!

So this is a quick one. I am down something like 8 lbs since Monday morning. This is the “start of Keto” and is totally because yesterday I peed about 5,000 times. This rate of weight loss WILL NOT CONTINUE so there’s little point in my posting a chart with a trend line showing me going into negative weight in a couple months.

Here are some take-aways:

• My arthritic pain is greatly reduced and centralized to a few trouble spots which will probably go away soon… This is HUGE and I need to refer back to this post when I decide it’s OK to have a burger bun on the weekend or something.

• I am not tired, at all. I mean I was appropriately tired at bed-time. Just through the day, I feel good!

• Tonight is my “Scott Time” (Friday night!) so I am going to write up the outline I worked on while waiting for my car to get an oil change the other day. It is a good one. It is my 100th try at an outline for a novel I’ve been trying to work out for YEARS. I am feeling good about this one. It feels complete. It is sort of The Man Who Fell To Earth meets Neuromancer. Could work.

• starting off new year with a Keto Dutch Baby and a little fruit. Small portions are the name of the game. I actually had a few beers last night and are way too much. Happy New Year!

• 2019, year of the purge? Starting it off with a toy purge to make room for the new stuff from Christmas. It has been challenging, but we are trying it with our preschooler and hoping we are laying the foundation for a healthy relationship with “stuff” going forward.

Today was a rough day for me, personally. It wasn’t a terrible day by any objective measure. Even the fact that I was at the dentist twice (yes, twice) was not a huge downside since everyone there is really nice.

It was more that I kept dropping things. I also had a bad inflammation day (probably because I ate fast food at lunch, etc). With the fusion in my neck and spine it seems like sometimes there can be issues with nerves. Limbs going numb, weird pains, etc. Anyway, sometimes my hands just drop stuff. I have techniques I use: carry bags by wrapping the handles around my hands rather than gripping them, hold important stuff either against my body or with two hands, and trying to stay very mindful of my hands when I am carrying things.

But today I dropped everything. Starting with the morning in the kitchen. I dropped eggs, bowls of fruit, utensils, a container of olives, and so on. It was extremely frustrating and time consuming to waste food and have these messes to clean up.

To an outside observer I just seem clumsy but it feels like I have lost control of my body at times like that. As the day went on it stopped happening. I worry that this will get worse as I age. Fortunately, it doesn’t appear to affect typing or driving, etc. It is more when I am holding something and not 100% mindful of “holding”. My hand will just let go. Arg.

This weekend was pretty productive.

• assembled more Ikea stuff (mostly not me)
• assembled some Lego with the boy
• got Christmas decorating done inside
• got outside lights up
• got tire pressure checked and pumped up BEFORE I put used the extension cord for the compressor to hook up outdoor lights
• purchased a Santa hat for the boy for his daycare stuff that actually fit!

In computer news, I am trying to move my entire “personal” computer set up to my VPS. This means Emacs is all on the terminal on the VPS and I’ll only run Syncthing on the VPS and my phone, etc. We’ll see how it goes.

Made it through the night without snacking! Felt full and slept well. My inflammation is lowering as time goes on and I feel pretty “woke” in terms of brain fog. I need all the mental acuity I can get. After work I am taking my son to a friend’s house for a social gathering with a large group. Dinner will not be served (AFAIK) and my son is clamouring for a Happy Meal (which would be extremely convenient given the locations involved). I am not sure what I will do. I am considering buying 2 McDoubles and combining them, throwing away one of the buns. I would normally get the chicken ceaser but I don’t want to count on the lettuce being available and not being riddled with e. Coli.

Getting more of this Hugo blogging system figured out in the 15 minutes I spend on it each day. The theme is OK but I am looking for a better one.

Today besides work I managed to get a shelving unit into my office closet. My office is near the kitchen. The shelf will be used to hold less frequently used appliances (vac sealer, slow cooker, electric griddle, etc). Also stuff like paper towels and toilet paper. This will also let me organize all the Christmas gifts (don’t tell the boy).

Very tired, need sleep.

This was a pretty action-packed weekend. We got a ton of organizing done which involved assembling a lot of Ikea storage. A little trick I used was to wrap the end of those cheap Allen Keys with painters tape. This means the “turn, turn, turn” motion where you are drilling in those long bolts are much easier on the fingers.

This also freed up a bunch of old storage that had been toy room storage built using a bunch of blue recycling bins. Since these are freed up I can use them in the garage for a much more organized recylcing set up (currently a pile of loosely tied bags I untie and haul into the kitchen every couple of nights and separate an overflowing bin into).

Health-wise, not a great weekend. Definitely wrenched my back coming down the stairs, didn’t get enough sleep, and no stretching or real walking to speak of. However, I did manage to get a lot of movement in with all the cleaning and assembling. Plus some shovelling. All good.

Vacation day 1 - the mountains are beautiful and we aren’t even all the way into them yet. Tonight we’re in a motel that reminds me of my childhood. Beds are comfortable, though. Sadly, the WiFi is garbage. :)