What did you do today?

[Flyover]

@zannej
You said you have a table saw. Get to millin'!

That's crazy about the lady with the cart. Just taking out a gun and waving it at people, like firing "warning shots", is a crime in most places with sane laws. If someone is truly posing a clear and imminent threat to your life or that of someone nearby, by all means try to shoot them. Otherwise you keep your weapon holstered. That lady should have gone to jail. Also, the fact that she couldn't control a shopping cart tells me she might have been on painkillers or something.

 

[Eddie_T]

That's what concerns me about concealed carry, not that I would change it. People with short fuses can be also carrying so I guess it is up to all of us to be civil, and watchful as well.

 

[Flyover]

Well, I'm pretty sure "Concealed carrier with short fuse takes out gun and shoots someone who wasn't actually seriously threatening him" actually happens approximately never. "Concealed carrier with short fuse takes out gun without being seriously threatened, gets shot" might happen slightly more often than that. (This is based on zero research, just intuition.)

 

[Eddie_T]

I hope you're right but people are being people and some are easier to set off than others.

 

[zannej]

Flyover, LOL. I wish I could lift those trees to put on my table saw. I do have a chainsaw but I don't think the blade is long enough to cut through.

The woman wasn't having trouble controlling her cart, she was just being a b***. She deliberately hit the lady's car (she admitted it to the lady) bc she was mad the lady didn't yield to her. She also deliberately tried to run me down- I could see the pissed off look on her face. She was just trying to bulldoze over people who she felt were in her way. Came off as very entitled.

I wish I could say you were right about the concealed carry with short fuse never shooting people. Sadly it happens here. I know people who conceal carry & open carry who have no business owning guns. Like the local animal torturer/killer who threatened to kill people and still didn't get arrested or have his gun confiscated. I have a few stories of the short-fuse guys. Years ago some teenage girls went in to a local convenience store. They went to pay for their purchase & were literally one penny short of the amount. Rather than forgive it or say "put something back", the owner pulled a gun on them & threatened to kill them for daring to come up short. When I was in freshman year in high school, some kids from my grade were told the could TP another kid's house (kid said his parents were ok with it). Neighbor across the street saw them & pulled a gun and fired pot shots at them. They ran and took off but realized they left one of the girls behind. Came back to find the guy holding a gun directly to her head saying he was going to blow her brains out if they didn't get out of the car and surrender to him. Cops were called & everyone was given a warning-- guy was told not to pull guns on kids. Then there was the jerk who was parked on the side of the road near the bridge. A 16-yr old girl drove by & her tires hit a puddle. It splashed the guy's truck. He got so enraged he jumped in his vehicle, took off after her, pulled out his gun, fired shots at her and ran her off the road. There is a LOT of meth use in my area & violent crime rate is pretty high.

I know those are only a few instances & I'm sure there are a lot more instances of the violence *not* happening, but there are idiots out there who should not have guns. I'm in favor of gun safety classes-- even if they are free at community centers. Should initially be done with guns that have blanks to avoid major injury (but not tell the people they have blanks). I also think anger management/meditation might help for some.

Since we are on gun stories, I may have told this one before, but back in the late 70s early 80s one of my dad's co-workers from Border Patrol was at a donut shop (which was full of cops). Some flaming moron came in with a gun & tried to rob the place. He pulled his gun on the clerk, said "Give me all your money!" The co-worker was right next to him- in uniform. He stood up & put the gun to the guy's head and disarmed him. In the court transcript he said "Freeze, police!" or something like that, but the witnesses said his actual words were "April Fool's, motherf***er!" The "good guy with a gun" stories are not told enough on the news. There isn't a balanced representation and people like the idiots I mentioned above ruin it for the rest of us.

My sister called to chat for a short bit & check on us. She couldn't talk long because she has meetings in the morning. She's not thrilled with having to deal with people. She said "They're supposed to be smart but I have to explain things to them!" LOL. She is an actual genius though so things that seem simple to her might not be to others.

 

[Flyover]

@zannej I suppose there's always an exception if your corner of the US resembles Thunderdome...

 

[zannej]

It really does fit a lot of the negative stereotypes of small rural towns. We've got corrupt cops, corrupt mayor, a lot of uneducated & ignorant people. Local school is like a frickin' prison. Years ago they made it so the kids in public school have to wear uniforms (which is just unAmerican, IMO). The intention was to stop the bullying of poor kids who couldn't afford designer clothes, etc. Unfortunately, the uniforms are sold by specific stores that charge $$$. They have to be very specific shirts, not just the right color types (my private school had more lax uniform rules-- so long as the shirt was white, had a collar; sleeves weren't too short; no colored logos except US flag or an eagle; navy blue pants/skirts/shorts; & shoes that were red, blue, or white-- it was all good). Girls weren't allowed to wear shorts in the public school so I wore shorts (fairly long ones) in private school. Even with uniforms you can still spot the poor kids bc they have the tattered ill-fitting stained uniforms. They allow corporal punishment in the schools-- which gets abused-- so a lot of kids end up dropping out & having issues with authority figures. It's almost as if they want to fill the prisons.

I miss my private school. They moved campus, have a swimming pool and now teach robotics classes. If they'd had a swimming pool when I'd been there I would have been in there all the time. I spent about 80% of my summers in the pool when we lived in California. The curriculum is more advanced than almost all the colleges in Louisiana. LOL. There were so many cool subjects available & they weren't gender restricted like the public school was. It's been decades but we had no girls sports teams, girls weren't allowed to use the weight room, girls weren't allowed to take woodworking... I moved to Singapore & I was able to take woodworking, weightlifting, aerobics, computer design, art, ceramics, & electronics. They even had martial arts. I took them all. LOL.

Don't mind my rambling. Felt like crap last night and early this morning. Trying to get myself feeling better.

I couldn't get comfortable bc of my shoulder so I played around with Sketchup. Figured out how to make cabinets more easily using push/pull and offset tools. Also found that with the newer version I can hit an arrow key to lock to red, green, or blue axis then I hit a number and start typing in the measurement, hit enter and it draws the line to the exact measurement instead of approximate. The old way took hours to draw & it still didn't line up properly. So I deleted my old wonky cabinets and made new ones. I installed Blender to see if I can make more advanced curved shapes. Going to watch some tutorials later.

 

[Flyover]

I am usually inclined to believe stereotypes are built around a kernel of truth, but for some reason I'm also usually inclined to believe that reality typically diverges from stereotypes. Maybe as if stereotypes are a theoretical point at the center of a normal distribution curve, and reality lies along all the other points of the curve. So, I'm sorry to hear you say your town fits a lot of negative stereotypes, that really sucks.

 

[Eddie_T]

My experience has been that crime is mostly in the cities. I have a pocket pistol but do not normally carry it. I do carry a handgun in the car when I return home at night. I live alone and make sure I am alone when I re-enter my house. I constantly hear (mostly on forums) of people that carry even in their home. Life with EDC would be an uncomfortable life IMO.

 

[ctviggen]

Went to the doctor for regular checkup. A1C was 8.5 (too high). Fasting sugars was too high. Cholesterol was great (bad cholesterol was low enough and good was high enough). Everything but my sugars looked good. I did mention the kidney stones but there isn't much they can do for that. He recommended cutting out white rice, white milk, white flour, white potatoes, etc. (I'm going to pretend that is an excuse to drink chocolate milk since it's brown). I mentioned the stew my brother makes and he said we could use rutabagas instead of potatoes in it & they were delicious. He was right on that. He also recommended trying almond milk saying you can hardly tell the difference. He was wrong on that. We got some almond milk and it has this nasty bitter aftertaste.
I've been put on Metformin for insulin resistance.

I've been on a ketogenic diet for 7+ years. That A1c you got qualifies you as being diabetic. I'm surprised you did not get insulin.

If you just think that everything you think you know about diet and health is wrong, you'd be correct. "Bad" "cholesterol" isn't bad for you and it's not "cholesterol". Fat from animals is good for you. Fat from plants is not.

Your A1c should be near 5. The only way to get there is to stop eating carbs. That's it. Fasting helps, but that takes a while to do.

I'd eat everything people said you can't eat. Bacon and eggs for breakfast. Red meat, particularly beef, which I think is the healthiest for you and the planet. Eat lots of meat, few vegetables if you can. Eliminating bread, potatoes, sweets, is a good way to start.

 

[zannej]

ctviggen, I don't have insurance so I think my doctor wants to avoid a diabetes diagnosis in case it means I can't get insurance later (if something happens where pre-existing conditions aren't covered). Not really sure.

From my experience, each person is different and what works for one person may not work for another. My father cut carbs & rapidly lost weight at a point that it released toxins in his body & started killing his muscles. It contributed to his early death at 61. He looked terrible & didn't feel good.

I know I need to cut back on carbs. My doctor is a fan of lower carb diet. I eat a lot of chicken but I also like broccoli and mushrooms (I know, fungi, not veggie). He said the biggest thing is I need to walk more. I'm too sedentary and don't burn calories enough. Since I have a heart condition where I lose oxygen if my heartrate goes up, he said I can just walk at a comfortable pace and not exert myself. He said bacon & eggs are fine.

Eddie, I've been lucky enough that the only large city I ever lived in was Singapore and it was very low crime. This rural area and small town has the highest crime rate of anywhere I've lived. But I do think it depends on the culture in the area. I would never want to live in a big city again. Too many people, not enough space.

I went to the post office and Walmart for some more groceries and RX. Brother went with me & was feeling crappy from yesterday. Apparently he did remember what day it was and spent the day in his room crying after he went to the dentist. I wish I'd known, I would have hugged him & spent more time with him. I posted pics of my dad on FB and several of my cousins (on mom's side) commented on how much they missed him. He used to take them to Sea World and one of them came to live with us for a year when her stepfather kicked her out (she was 17 but he took the door off her room & made life miserable for her). She said he was the best man she'd ever met. She didn't have a relationship with her own father & she kept in touch with mine over the years. One of our friends commented on the time we went hiking & my father had my brother carrying the skull of a deer that had rotting flesh on it and stunk. He didn't really want it, he just wanted to see if he could make my brother carry it and he teased him the entire time while my brother complained about how awful it smelled.

I stopped by the local hardware store & my best friend was driving through so he stopped to see me & chatted with my brother while I went inside to talk to the owner about the barn. Owner's late father had our car port put up & it's good quality. Took massive oak trees to take out part of it but most of it is still standing. There are technically two separate car ports with a small space between them. I'll have to get pics sometime. More details in my barn thread.

The battery powered earth auger arrived so I took it over to my friend's after we went to Walmart. He put it together and dug a hole as deep as it could go in less than 10 seconds. Battery needed to charge since it was fresh out of the box, but it still ran. His neighbor from across the street came over to talk to us briefly. We noticed her yard was dug up and there was a new clean-out. Friend said that the plumber told him the clogged sewer was on the city's side but the city claims it's on his side-- yet all of the people on the street are having to get their sewer lines dug up & snaked. Next door neighbor had his yard marked for digging. Neighbor from across the street was saying they were bsing my friend & they should have to fix it, but they won't. She got him in touch with her landlady to give him the number of the plumber who came out-- although she said the plumber was very rude. Friend said he was going to keep digging when the battery charged to see if he could find his sewer pipe. He's kinda pissed that the city is still charging him for sewer services when he hasn't been able to flush his toilet in over a month (none of the other fixtures are connected to the sewer-- his shower & sinks drain in to the backyard. Not really legal, but it works. I think the P-trap fell off his shower though because he said wasps were coming up from the drain. I don't think he glued it when he put it together. Wish I'd been there when he'd installed it bc I would have glued it.

I'm about to see if Mom is hungry again and if she wants me to make shepherd's pie.

 

[Flyover]

From my experience, each person is different and what works for one person may not work for another

+1 to this.

Humans evolved in many different places where different kinds of foods and food preparation methods were available to them and their ancestors. A few thousand years is plenty of time for differentiated digestive traits to evolve, and this is indeed what we see: people from northern Europe produce lactase throughout adulthood, unlike people most everywhere else; the Inuit are able to survive on extremely high-fat diets that would probably make most other people very sick; Mediterranean people respond very differently, in a metabolic sense, to red wine than East Asians; and so on.

It's funny, I rarely see genetic background mentioned in discussions of diet, but it seems obvious as a first step, doesn't it?

 

[zannej]

Flyover, very good point. My dad's ancestry was mostly Scott-Irish. Mom is a mix of Scott-Irish & Germanic (Austria/Hungary/Transylvania). My father lost weight on the low carb diet but my mother did not. Although, dad went the extra mile (literally) by walking a mile per day around the perimeter of our yard. Mom has been sedentary as long as I can remember. Dad said she got fat a year after they got married (they waited 4 years to have their first kid). But then, there are also differences in weight loss by gender. It is usually harder for women to lose weight for some reason. I read one of the theories before but can't remember it. Although, even in families each person has their own individual metabolism & siblings sometimes need different diets. The diet that worked for my sister did not work for me. But, I also have food allergies she doesn't have and I inherited the heart problems from both sides but she and my brother didn't.

There have been some studies that found the bacteria in your stomach and intestines can affect your digestion/metabolism and weight loss. There is something called a fecal transplant where they take bacteria from a healthy person's intestines and they transfer it to the intestines of someone who is having health issues & it changes their digestion and weight. A very skinny woman with some sort of digestive issues (crohn's or IBS or something like that) got a transplant from a woman who was borderline overweight but who had no digestive issues. The condition went away in the skinny woman and she gained weight. They also found that transplanting bacteria from skinny healthy people in to fat people helped the fat people lose weight. (It was on some medical program on TV awhile back). I'm not sure if it was coincidence or not. Not something I'm interested in trying. LOL.

There are so many different factors that determine how people are affected by food & exercise. I remember seeing programs where this one super skinny woman who looked like crap was trying to tell people to change to her diet. The people reportedly felt awful. The key is to eat in a way that makes you feel good (and I don't mean short term gratification). If your diet makes you feel lethargic & sick, it's not for you. I vaguely recall Richard Simmons used to have a diet program where he would evaluate things based on the individuals rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. I really need to load up some of his Sweatin' to the Oldies videos. I met him once at the LA airport- very sweet & funny guy. Even he struggled with his weight in recent years after his knee surgery. His clinical depression afterward didn't help either. There are just so many factors that affect weight loss/gain.

My best friend is mixed European and Native American. He's related to Clint Eastwood on his mom's side-- apparently Clint changed her diapers when she was a baby. Friend can't seem to gain weight even though he eats a lot, constantly drinks sodas, and does not eat vegetables or fruit. He doesn't hate the flavor of vegetables or fruit, but he can't stand the texture. It's weird. LOL. We were comparing notes on things & he was talking about how he was one of those kids who didn't like dirt & liked to play inside where it was clean and would immediately wash his hands if he got dirt on them. Now he gets his hands dirty working on cars & stuff. I was always a little dirt monkey. I played in the mud, climbed trees, squashed berries from trees & bushes, and was all about the outdoors. I still have no problem getting my hands dirty, but I don't like to be outside much-- mosquitoes, sunlight, & humidity bug me.

I went to bed early last night and am awake at this hour because the dog decided to walk across my head. LOL. I need to find out what time my brother's foot doctor appointment is. He may need an outpatient surgical procedure on his big toe.

 

[Spicoli43]

I've been on a ketogenic diet for 7+ years. That A1c you got qualifies you as being diabetic. I'm surprised you did not get insulin.

If you just think that everything you think you know about diet and health is wrong, you'd be correct. "Bad" "cholesterol" isn't bad for you and it's not "cholesterol". Fat from animals is good for you. Fat from plants is not.

Your A1c should be near 5. The only way to get there is to stop eating carbs. That's it. Fasting helps, but that takes a while to do.

I'd eat everything people said you can't eat. Bacon and eggs for breakfast. Red meat, particularly beef, which I think is the healthiest for you and the planet. Eat lots of meat, few vegetables if you can. Eliminating bread, potatoes, sweets, is a good way to start.

Yep. I have seen many testimonials to Keto. I have seen the entire documentary series "The Real Skinny on Fat".

"High" Cholesterol used to be 280, then 260, then 240, then 220, then 200. Now it's 180 I think. It's all to sell more drugs, and it's all Bullshyte. Same with Blood Pressure. First off, the reading is automatically high if your arm is on the arm rest. It needs to be hovering even with your Heart for an accurate reading. as far as "High" Blood pressure, it used to be 140, now it's magically 130 to sell more drugs.

The fun thing about High Cholesterol and High BP drugs is they do exactly that. They deplete your body of the nutrients that automatically keep your body in check. People are told they need drugs by "Doctors" that are trained in drugs by the drug companies. It is very rare to find an actual Doctor that knows anything about how the body works because the entire Medical school is sponsored and paid for by Pharma.

In the 50's, the owner of Crisco, Proctor and Gamble, paid the little known organization called the American Heart Association a little over $1M to say that their Crisco was good for people. That Million dollars was the best bribe in History, as it rings true today that they say Coconut Oil and Butter are bad, which is completely the opposite of the truth, and that Margarine, Corn, Soy, Safflower, Sunflower, Canola etc. oils are good, when they cause the epidemic disease.

There's a reason more than 70 percent of people in the US are Obese. It's the drugs and the diet.

 

[zannej]

The preservatives in the food don't help with weight loss, that's for sure. Also, f**** whoever decided to use corn syrup as a sugar replacement. It's disgusting. It's part of why I don't drink sodas much- aside from hating carbonation.

Took my brother to the foot doctor's office but they wouldn't let him see the doctor because he has Medicaid. They said even if he tried to self-pay or have someone else pay for him, they couldn't see him. Medicaid forbids them from seeing any of their clients. If Medicaid had been supplemental they could have seen him, but since it's his primary they won't. Clerk apologized for the mess. It seems at the time he had initially tried to schedule an appointment last year, he still had insurance through his employer & would have been covered. They only agreed to see him because the records erroneously showed that as his insurance but when he got there they rejected him. Really asinine system we have here. He would have been better off claiming he had no insurance at all.

Spicoli, I do think a lot of stuff is exaggerated & they make up excuses to give people medicine. That said, I have felt better since I started on at least some of my meds. The thyroid meds were necessary at least.

 

[Spicoli43]

The preservatives in the food don't help with weight loss, that's for sure. Also, f**** whoever decided to use corn syrup as a sugar replacement. It's disgusting. It's part of why I don't drink sodas much- aside from hating carbonation.

Took my brother to the foot doctor's office but they wouldn't let him see the doctor because he has Medicaid. They said even if he tried to self-pay or have someone else pay for him, they couldn't see him. Medicaid forbids them from seeing any of their clients. If Medicaid had been supplemental they could have seen him, but since it's his primary they won't. Clerk apologized for the mess. It seems at the time he had initially tried to schedule an appointment last year, he still had insurance through his employer & would have been covered. They only agreed to see him because the records erroneously showed that as his insurance but when he got there they rejected him. Really asinine system we have here. He would have been better off claiming he had no insurance at all.

Spicoli, I do think a lot of stuff is exaggerated & they make up excuses to give people medicine. That said, I have felt better since I started on at least some of my meds. The thyroid meds were necessary at least.

Yeah, Corn Syrup is worthless and tied for #1 with the worse things you can put in your body, right up there with Meth. That wasn't good enough though, so they needed High Fructose, like Cocaine wasn't good enough, so they invented Crack.

I don't know anything about Medicaid, I'm forever locked into the VA, which is beyond worthless. They hire the best and brightest. My old "Doctor" said my hands needed to be amputated because I had Eczema on them. Nothing to do with drinking more water, eating better, healing the gut, getting a humidifier etc. Nothing about that, get the Reciprocating Saw!!!

They also sent me a letter saying if I was ever out of poverty according to tax records, they would "review" my disability status.

If you feel good on meds, then go for it for sure. The problem is, none of them work effectively and they aren't tested effectively. The commercials alone are an indication of that, with the 50 ways they can maim or kill you. Even Tums can cause a massive Heart Attack.

I would just suggest looking up a Functional Medicine MD in your area. They can get you off all meds that are only bandaids, and help to heal any root cause for your problems. The best reference for everything I have found is Green Med Info, which bases every single article on Scientific data. For instance, just handling store receipts a lot can mess with your Thyroid because of the BPA.

https://www.ifm.org/find-a-practitioner/
https://www.greenmedinfo.com/search/google-cse#gsc.q=thyroid

 

[zannej]

Oh the VA absolutely sucks. A late elderly friend of mine had been going there for years. He'd been getting his heart checked regularly & they somehow missed that he had TWENTY blockages in his veins. It was compounded when he went to the local hospital to get skin cancer removed. The cardiologist there is a complete quack (and an a-hole to boot). He couldn't properly diagnose that the old man had recently had a heart attack, decided not to run some of the necessary pre-op tests & gave approval for the procedure. The procedure itself went well, but he never recovered from the anesthetic. He was taken home & put in a hospice bed to die within a few days. That was after the VA botched his eye surgery. He had to go to a different eye doctor to get his other eye fixed properly. Told me when he was having the eye worked on at the VA, they brought in a student to do the procedure & partway through he heard the student say "Oops. Uh-oh!" and the lead doctor said "Don't worry about it".
My aunt had knee surgery at a different VA & they botched it. They chipped the bone, damaged a nerve, and her leg was shorter. She's now in a wheelchair bc it permanently disabled her.

I could go on about horror stories from the VA... It was always a miserable place to go. Long waits, Doctors who didn't understand English, not enough wheelchairs, none of the wheelchairs had foot rests...

I checked the "find a practitioner". None within 100miles of me. I'm not surprised because this place sucks. My dad had to go to Houston for some of his treatments. I like my property/home but I wish I could transplant it somewhere else.

I'm trying to motivate myself to go for a walk. My brother has a doctor's appointment today & he will probably want me to drive him. His truck needs some work so he hasn't been driving it much.

I also need my Mom to go with me at some point to the DMV because the registration forms for two of our vehicles disappeared. Not sure WTF happened to them. I keep my vehicles locked. Last I saw them, my mother was messing with them. Took them out of the glove box & I never saw them again. I have the stickers, but I need to get the new cards.

 

[Spicoli43]

Yeah, I was lucky enough to have an introduction to bad practices at Civilian hospitals through friends and family, and learned about the VA long before I was eligible through some Nam Vets. It was admittedly much better under Trump than Obama for little things, but I will never let them cut me and I'll never take their drugs.

You might consider exploring an appointment with a Functional Medicine MD online. Here is one I found, picked her because she graduated from Bastyr University, which is the Gold Standard for Functional Medicine, where people from all over the World go for the best training. I have experience with a Bastyr Acupuncturist and one that didn't go there, and it was like Night and Day.

https://www.healthprofs.com/us/natu...557935?sid=605df84c651af&ref=3&tr=ResultsName

 

[zannej]

Thanks, Spicoli. That's over 100 miles away . Roads on the way there really suck (narrow, twisty, single lane, poorly paved) & I don't want to drive that far to see a doctor. It's not worth it to me to have to be on the road for 4 hours. I'll stick with my current doctor. I do appreciate the info though.

 

[Spicoli43]

To each their own, but I would see if I could get an online consult. Maybe even video.