Come Together They Said

      I'm writing this now, because I once again got screwed over. I was told that the person that occasionally comes and takes my mom for a short while would be here today ( no time was given, and never is ), but they have failed to show up or even let me know they are not coming. I actually made plans based on that, and told friends I would meet up with them for a little much needed social time. Looks like that won't happen. This is my life now, and once again I am reaffirmed in my knowledge that those that say they will help, truly don't mean it. This goes back all the way to the beginning of this. I was told to ask for help and that they would. I was even told that we should all come together for my mom. Turns out, what that meant was that I should give up everything and listen to how I should do it all a different way. I was invited to a friends on the 4th for dinner and to watch the season finale of The Walking Dead. I was going to ask the person that was coming today if they would just come over and sit so I could do this. I was already doubting that they would say yes, now I absolutely sure that they won't. When this is all over, they will get nothing from me. I will be done with all of them. I have asked for very little, and not even the minimum of my requests can be answered. When family fails you, you truly have nothing left.

     With that out of the way, lets get to something more pressing. I'm going to get a political for a second, so if you don't want to read that, skip to the next paragraph. This is for the third part voters. I get it, I understand that you want immediate change. I do as well, but this election is far to important to enact your privilege to vote for a third party candidate. That happened the last presidential election and look what we have now, two stolen supreme court seats. Put your privilege aside for a moment and do what is right for the country. I beg of you, but as you saw above, my pleas are rarely answered, so I fully expect this election to be another crap shoot.

     As you know, I'm a little monster, as in I'm a Lady Gaga fan. She released a short film for her latest song 911, and it's weird, but by the time it ends, it comes together and slaps you in the face with sense. It is an amazing video and it is the one I"m going to share with you today. So, here is Lady Gaga with her new short film "911".

      I'm just going to go and make an early dinner and call it a day. Peace in and goodnight

Another Day, Another Day

     Nearly forgot to write this today. It's easy to fall out of a habit, and much more difficult to reestablish one. Part of the reason I nearly forgot, is that I really don't know what to talk about. I guess I'll start with the accountability photos. You can see just what a disaster I have become by getting a little out of control with my eating. Once again, still eating healthy, I was just eating whenever I felt like it with no plan.

     You can see that I am quite a bit softer than I used to be. This has sidetracked me in a ton of photos I've been wanting to take. I back on program now, and recommitting to myself and better fitness. Just to put it in perspective, here is a photo from before.

     I will get back there and better. My eating times are much more strict and fasting has been put back in place. I'm still wary of doing a 72 hour fast, due to the pandemic. When you go for more than 24 hours, you put your immune system at jeopardy. If you can stay home that entire time, plus a couple more days, you will come out better off, but since I never know what the schedule is, since people will not let me know when they are coming or when they are calling, I have to give up on a reboot fast. I really would like to do one, not for weight loss but for the whole baseline aspect of it. I just want a good full reset. It would be nice to start over fresh at something.

     Guage, aka, Baby Girl, aka The Shnuggie is doing great. She is fully healed up and not having any problems with her ears at this time. I'm sure that will all change, but for now, it's really nice to not have to worry about her. That is one thing at least, off my plate.

     Oh, I do have something I can talk about. Me and my buddy will be doing a couple of videos soon. Not right away though, because we have to prepare for it. We have to spicy challenges ahead of us. The first one will be the easier of the two, but stating that it is easy, is a misnomer. It is called the Death Nut Challenge.

     If you blow that up, you can see what is in each section of nuts. The very first one, is made with two of the hottest peppers in the world. Granted, in this form they shouldn't be as hot as the pods themselves, but they should still be far above what most people would ever eat spice wise. I expect the first set of nuts to be slight above Ghost pepper level. The idea is that you have to have each section in your mouth for a full 15 seconds, and then you have to wait 1 minute before going to the next stage. Once they are all gone, I think there is a 5 minute burn, that you have to get through without having any water, milk, whatever to try and quench the fire. As you can see, saying that is the easy one, should have you pondering what the next one is.

     Challenge 2 is the Tube of Terror. I think it is 30 peanuts that are stage 5 of the Death Nut Challenge. You can only eat them 2 at a time, and you have 10 minutes to finish the tube with a 5 minute burn to follow. The big difference with these, is that they put capsaicin crystals on them the measure 13 million on the Scoville Heat Units scale.13 million sounds like a lot, and it is, but although they haven't officially measured the scale of these nuts, they believe that they are at about 3 million. That is hotter than a Carolina Reaper, but quite a bit. It wouldn't be the hottest thing I've ever had. I did have an extract that measured out at 7.1 million, and I can tell you that it was insane. The downside of extracts is, that they have a chemical taste to them, which is pretty nasty. I've seen that these nuts supposedly have a really great flavor to them, so I'm a little worried and excited about both of these challenges.

     Although are tolerance is pretty high right now. We need to get it a bit higher before we do both of these challenges. For me right now, my tolerance is at a point where habaneros hit me like a jalapeño. I barely feel any heat from them at all. I just know that there is a slight burning sensation on my tongue. In order for me to really feel the heat and get my eyes watering, I have to eat something higher than a Ghost pepper. That gives me a minor sense of panic still. I'd like to be eating reapers at the level. Then I would feel pretty confident going into both of these challenges. Regardless of how high we get our tolerances, it won't really prepare us. These are going to be brutal. It's going to be fun.

     Since I only do this once a week (for now), I have been missing out on Favorite Song of the Week. I thought I would add it to this weekly post, just so that I can have something pleasant for you. This one is from a Russian guitarist, that is out of this world. He does some pretty amazing things with an acoustic guitar. His videos do have some tracking, so not everything is actually played live, but about 90% of it is, and when you watch this, you will understand just how difficult it all is. This is Alexandr Misko, with an original song from his current album called, "Eventide Lullaby". I hope you enjoy it.

     That's it for this week. Please be kind to each other. Peace in and goodnight.

Time to Recommit

      I'm going to try to make this one more positive, since I got a lot of stuff thrown at me from the last post I did. Last week before everything came collapsing down around me, I had the chance to see the new Bill & Ted movie. 

     It was everything I hoped it would be just silly fun, and I really needed that. Today, while I'm writing this, Syfy is having a Bill & Ted marathon, except they are playing them in reverse order, which is really weird. Nevertheless, I am watching Excellent Adventure right now, and plan to put on Face the Music afterwards, so I can get the whole Bill & Ted experience. 

     I have recommitted to my fitness and am also trying out a new way of eating. It's not really all that different from how I was eating, but a more regimented schedule and a little different approach to intermittent fasting. So far, it's working out well, and I should have pictures next week. Still not ready for accountability photos, but they will come.

     Averted a near catastrophe on Friday night. As you know, Baby Girl now knowns as Schnuggie, has trouble since her surgery. From time to time, she gets a fluid buildup in her cheek that migrates up to the ear where the old drainage port was. When this happens, it ruptures and well, you have a mess. Friday was rupture time. I caught her early on, so I only had to clean up sporadic messes, and squeezed most of the blood and fluid out of her into a papertowel. I cleaned her up then bandaged her up, which she was not fond of, but it was able to last through the night so that she could get some uninterrupted sleep.

     That bandage only lasted the night. I recleaned the wound and bandaged her up again, but that one didn't even last an hour. The good news is, that the wound has sealed up well, and she will be blood and fluid free for a while. She can never seem to catch a break with all these health issues, but she is such a relaxed and chill dog, that it's hard to believe that everything that led to these problems were from the abuse she received from her previous owner. Right now, she's sleeping on the floor next to my chair, and that puts a smile on my face.

     I did get a bit crafty this week, and it was all in an effort to improve my fitness. This is all part of that recommitment. When I do pushups, I use parallettes. Those are small bars that sit 8 inches from the ground. The goal is to do a planche pushup, which is basically doing a pushup without touching the ground with anything but your hands. Seems impossible, but it's not. Anyway, The problem with doing pushups with those bars, is that my body angle wasn't hitting my chest in the best way, so I built a box that is 8 inches tall, so that I can put my feet on that and then use the parallettes. This gives me a deeper stretch on the bottom, because I can go below where my hands are, and it hits my chest in the right place.

     It didn't take me long, but the way I built it made it kind of tough. I built the outer walls first, then made inserts to go inside for stability, then made inserts to cap the ends. Trying to get those to stay up while I nailed them in place from the inside, wasn't easy. It didn't come out perfect, but good enough for what I need. I tested it by standing on it and jumping up and down, and it is almost as solid as if it were one block of wood.

     I did pushups off that set up, and they were amazing. Hit exactly where I wanted it to, and being able to go below parallel made a huge difference in the stretch at the bottom. Really looking forward to how they change the shape of my chest.

     I do have one more thing that is positive that I could talk about, but I'm hesitant about jinxing it. Seems like ever time I talk about this particular subject it all goes down hill once I do, so, I'm going to sit on this one for a little while and maybe get back to you next week on this one.

     Part of my recommitment to fitness is also writing this once a week for now. Mental fitness is just as important as physical fitness, and it is fitting that today is the first day of suicide prevention awaremess month. Yeah, we suicidal types don't get a full month, but we have something. Make an effort to listen to people more. You may have problems, but if you don't listen to those whose problems are different than yours, you may lose someone in the process. Still not used to not saying goodnight, but as I write this in the middle of the day now, I'm going to just have to accept it. Peace in and good day.