Domestic Geek

I read a Sneaky Sugars article on Discovery Health earlier this week that talked about the incredible amounts of sugar in our diets. It said that 7 grams of sugar (on the nutrition label) is approximately 1 Tablespoon! Not small t teaspoon, but large T Tablespoon. I was appalled. Out of curiosity, I looked at the label of the Dannon Frusion I've been buying for breakfast lately (thinking it was healthy). One little 10 oz. bottle of mixed berry flavor had 48 grams of sugar—almost 7 tablespoons! Don't even get me started that part of that sugar was High Fructose Corn Syrup. No wonder I don't lose weight. Then people have the audacity to wonder why our society is so overweight. I'm making a concerted effort to rid my diet of as much processed sugars as possible. I'll still have an occasional Starbucks or a coke for a treat, but no more white sugar in my tea, no more processed beverages daily, no more!

Today is the last day that The Tattered Cover Bookstore will be open in Cherry Creek. I'm heading over there to have one last wander around. It's kind of sad since it's been there so long, but at the same time, maybe i'll go more often now that it will be somewhere that has close free parking. Now I have to park in the Cherry Creek mall's parking garage or park in one of the neighborhoods several blocks away and walk over. I hope it's not overly busy, but I'm afraid it will be. I'll kick myself if I don't at least give it a try, though.

Marcus bought a pretty good scale recently. Turns out my old scale was off by 15 pounds...and not in my favor. My metabolism is already slowing down with the reduced food intake (I'm going into starvation mode, I guess) and I've gained weight this week. Marcus and I went for our first bike ride of the season. My poor butt hurts! My goal is to ride from 2nd & Potomac to Chatfiled by the end of the summer (Marcus thinks it's about 20 miles one way). Every week I'm going to get a little farther until I make it. By Christmas of next year (2007), I'm going to have lost 140 pounds—a whole person—the old me.

It's no secret that I hate Blogrolling. Luckily there haven't been as many problems as there was a year ago, but I wanted the recently updated feature and most times it doesn't work anyway. I still end up going through most of my links to see if anybody has anything new. So, I saw awhile back that Yoshi was working on an Expression Engine Linklist module. He finally finished and released it, so I took the time this weekend to download and try it. I need to figure out how to customize it to my liking, but now I no longer have to watch my site spin while it tries to load stuff from blogrolling.com! I like the little favicons showing up. I need to get off my duff and make one. I used to have one when this place was LaDonnaBlog. Oh, well...someday!

I started working on my design business web site yesterday. Marcus bought me a starter set of business cards. Hopefully I'll be up and running for business by next week. I really need to find a client. Most of the designers I've taked to say they get business by word-of-mouth. Unfortunately, you need clients to get clients! There are some things going on at the job that I really hate, but I've decided not to air work crap here. I will say, however, that I've got some confidence in my design ability now and it's time I start making what my skills are really worth.

I'm poor. It's been a long time since I've been this bad off financially. Marcus says it's the growing pains of escaping pizza and that things will get better. I need to make them better NOW. I don't have money for anything extra...like food. LOL This week I'll be getting rid of everything totally unnecessary on eBay to raise cash. In addition to the necessities in life, I was a vacation, I want to move, I want a monitor that isn't fuzzy, I was a faster Mac. All these darned things take MONEY!

The exercise regimine gets restarted this week. I haven't gained weight, but I am terribly out of shape. Desk jobs suck. I didn't realize how much exercise I got making dough, but a walk around the park with Marcus on Saturday totally kicked my ass! I was so sore yesterday, I could barely move--FROM WALKING! I guess it will be time to resurrect the old Loser blog, too.

OK, my lunch is over, so I had better find something to do here at work.

Once again President Bush is giving me one more reason to be totally pissed at how he's running his presidency. Yesterday he asked congress for $7.1 Billion to prepare for the minute chance of an Avian Flu Pandemic. A disease that has killed only 120 people in the whole freakin' world so far. They're all foaming at the mouth for a world-wide diaster. Well, we saw how well the government handled a real disaster when hurrican Katrina hit. They want to stockpile enough vaccine for every American. Last I heard, health people were scrambling to create a vaccine. Does anybody remember last year's flu vaccine shortage? We were all going to get the flu since we hadn't been vaccinated and we were all going to die! Well, I didn't get the flu, nor did I or anyone I know die.

How about being worried about a real health scare? Illegal Mexicans are bringing all sorts of disease into the country with them:If you're really so worried about the health of Americans, stop the flow of illegals into this country.

Happy Halloween!

Well, I was given a little reprieve by the bosses here at the screen printing place. Today was supposed to be my last day, but I've been allowed to stay until I find other work. I hope that happens soon, though. I really, really don't want to be here anymore. Besides, this place isn't going to be open much longer anyway. Nobody will come right out and say it, but between the things I've heard and the things I've observed, it won't be long. I wish I could just start my own damn business. That's what I want more than anything. I'm just not in a place financially to make that happen right now. I'm tired of being someone's employee and not having any say in how things are run.

I need to find a way to get my teeth fixed. I'm having incredible pain right now. It totally sucks. I've been downing NyQuil to be able to get any sleep. I've been taking so much ibuprofin that I'm probably ruining my stomach lining. I hate how out-of-control health and dental costs have gotten. I know I'd be in better shape if I had seen a dentist regularly, but I've been screwed over by so many dentists in my life that I put off going to them until it's too late. I haven't had insurance since I got too old to be on my Dad's policy in my early 20s. It's hard to justify spending so much money out-of-pocket to be tortured. I wish I had the bucks to get implants. It's too bad the technology to regrow human teeth is still in its infancy. I read some articles a while back that said it should be doable in about five years. They've already done it in mice. I guess they just need to figure out how to tell the tooth what kind of tooth to be.

Well, on that note, I guess I better get going. I need to run by the credit union on the way home and make my car payment. They weren't open on Saturday when it was due. Oh, well.