The word of
the week is remonstrate.
Jan 30 –
Better than apples?
A grape a day
may keep the doctor away - or something similar.
A new study
has found that eating 2 servings worth of grapes each day significantly cuts
the risk of early-onset Alzheimer's disease, the first study to directly link
the intake of a single route to a significant decline in this terrible
affliction.
It's one
thing to have a healthy body, but it means little if the mind is deteriorating
at a faster rate. I know that for myself, I am more concerned about losing my
wits then losing my health, especially as Alzheimer's currently has no known
cure or effective treatments.
While the
study didn't specify whether red or white grapes were used, it's a significant
step forward as the research will now move forward on what specific benefits
grapes can for towards staving off Alzheimer's in those who consume them.
Maybe in the
near future, wishing someone 'sour grapes' will turn into a phrase linked to
wishing them good health?
Jan 31 –
Preparing the road...
Six months
from now, I hope to have my home business up and running.
Which means
that I have to get all the groundwork in place now, so that when my Glowforge
arrives I can immediately get to work with it and start to repay my investment.
Part of my
business plan is to offer my services to folks in the USA, as it's a large
market and while there's plenty of Glowforge owners out there, not all of them
are going to be offering their services over the Internet as I will be.
However, part
of the problem is that shipping is so darn expensive and back goes all the
moreso for sending to the USA. To date, I haven't found a decent solution to the
problem of significant cost being added to what I would be charging for my
various services.
That is,
until I came across a random post that mentioned a company called ChitChat Express, whose business is to assist Canadian customers with sending packages
to the USA and internationally for significantly less cost than Canada post can
offer:
I'll have to
check it out in more detail, but it's encouraging to have found the company
like this, as it means that my market isn't limited to just a customers but can
include those both south of the border and internationally.
Small
steps...
Feb 1 –
Playmobil is Busting It...
New month?
New toys! Er, collectibles...
Yes, I
realize that I seem to be on a bit of a collectible theme lately, but when
something really cool comes out that speaks to me( or more accurately, my
inner child )then I feel the need to comment... and heck, it's my blog,
after all!
Obviously,
I'm a huge Ghostbusters fan, as many kids of my day were. As such, I felt that
the toys of the time weren't all that great, in that they were really usable
with anything else and necessitated year collecting a whole bunch of
odd-looking toys that only worked within their own line, like so:
Now it's
2017, and the age of liscencing has brought us: Playmobil Ghostbusters! Feast
your eyes on these magnificent figures, all of whom are perfectly compatible
with the entire Playmobil line, meaning you can( if you own them )line up the
Ecto-1 to bust some ghosts in a City playset, or similar environments with the new Ghostbusters line:
 |
| So cool! |
It's really a
huge step forward for Ghostbusters fans. Playmobil has released thousands of
different playsets over the last few decades, all of which are interoperable
and having the Ghostbusters as part of this will make it a ton more fun. Not
that I'll be buying any Playmobil anytime soon, as I sold off( well, mainly gave away )most of the old
sets I had, which were admittedly rather play-worn.
Well, maybe I
can get the Demon Dog set...
Feb 2 – It's
THAT day again!
I know I
know, I do this every year, but I can't help myself.
It's Groundhog
Day!
My sister and
I watched the movie again tonight, as has become our tradition every year. I
don't think there's any movie that I've ever enjoyed re-watching as much as I
do this particular one, and each time I read watch it I find something new that
I hadn't noticed before or that I love about it.
Heck, this
year I learned that Groundhog Day was a special day in the recent Doctor
Strange movie, as it was the day that Stephen Strange began his hero's
journey by crashing his car and losing control of his surgeon's hands.
That's all
I've got, save a fading glow from seeing the film again.
I can't wait
until next year!
Feb 3 –
Keeping Steady
One thing
that's still bothering me though is how much I can currently eat.
It seems that
in the last few months, my ability to eat a decent sized meal has decreased,
probably exacerbated by my illness after Christmas when I couldn't eat my
regular meals, having to resort to proteins shakes and the like for
nourishment. As a result, I think my stomach has shrunken, and combined with my
inability to process meals quickly thanks to my lack of a gall bladder, it's
proven somewhat problematic when it comes to digesting things.
My solution?
Continue to eat smaller meals more often, while adding water to each of them
before, during and after to assist with general lubrication and digestion. My
theory is that this will assist the meals and moving along normally, and I'll
probably add some digestive enzymes to the largest meal of the day, which I'm
expecting will be lunch, as that will give me time to help things move along
before bedtime instead of running into problems after midnight as I have
before.
I'm just a
work in progress....
Feb 4 – Fett
On The Shelf!
"He's no
good to me packaged..."
I've always
had a soft spot for the gruff-and-ready bounty hunter from Star Wars, who
always gets his target, yet for some strange reason I've never actually owned a
Fett figure, which in retrospect is for a fairly obvious reason:
None of them
looked authentically badass enough. Until this arrived yesterday:
Now, me being
me, I wouldn't justify any Boba Fett figure... though I will admit that I drew
the line at spending more than $50 before shipping, as some of those
collectible figures out there can run into hundreds or even thousands of
dollars.
That being
said, the above figure from MaFex is the best version of Fett ever released, among what
surprised me to learn are far fewer figures of Fett compared to dozens of
Chewbacca's, for example. There's even a Top Ten Fett Figure review that goes through some really cool figures and lists both
the ESB and ROTJ figures as their #1 pick... it doesn't get better than that!
Part of my
evening was spent watching Venture Brothers and Dirk Gently with
my lady, a thoroughly delightful experience for us both. I've become quite
enamoured of Dirk Gently, and I'm a bit sad that after tonight there's
only two more episodes left.
Ah, but it's good
to see more of Douglas Adam's work done well on the screen!
Feb 5 –
Winding Down
It was a busy
weekend, with this and that.
So I was glad
to just relax today, do the usual household tasks, and think back on how it was
a solid week, with some great highlights:
I had more
good news on Friday, when I saw a Rheumatologist who told me in fairly certain
terms that I didn't look to have any sort of disorder of my joints, muscles,
and ligaments - w00t! She also said that there's no particular reason to be off gluten and dairy, so I'm going to ease those back into my diet one at a time, and see if there's any inflammatory effects from either, though I'm going to steer clear of excess for either, as well as dairy cheeses for now, darn it.
That good news, coupled
with the solid EKG earlier in the week, has gone a long way to alleviating my
overall anxiety levels, which have been dropping steadily the last week anyway:
my heart's been beating a solid, steady pace and I've experienced no chest
pains whatsoever, leading me to eliminate a few more 'ticks' from my What Is
it? list of things that are causing me discomfort of late.
Good stuff.
So let's end
the weekend on a high note, with a haunting voice in winter:
Right now, the biggest hurdle I have day to day is a tense solar plexus, which apparently is directly related to anxiety AND interferes with digestion, being called the 'abdominal brain' as it's a mass of nerves. So I'm working all this week to relax my abdomen and KEEP it that way, so I can enjoy more than just the occasional small solid meal...
