It’s cold here. Well, kind of cold. Okay, California cold – 49 degrees. I know some of you are thinking, that’s nothing – it’s a lot colder here in <fill in name of your town>. Still, for a guy used to putting on a sweater when the temperature falls below 75 – it’s freezing. In fact, we had frost on the cars this morning and I’ve got two long sleeve shirts on to keep me warm while I write. I’ll be looking for a blanket soon.
I don’t like the cold – goes right to my bones and keeps me out of my workshop. You see part of my work area is basically outdoors in a fenced off part of the car port and the indoor part is only heated by the little electric heater – likely it would take most of the afternoon to make the space livable.
And while I am complaining – I had to work part of yesterday and today. Also I am not losing weight, my knee hurts and I am sure I saw a gray hair this morning.
Thank you. I feel better.
You could call complaining a hobby of mine. I enjoy it but don’t take it too seriously. After all I am still alive and even with the cold air there are things I can do. Like work.
No, I didn’t really want to work this weekend. My job does have its own seasons and rhythms. January is the month that I upgrade all the servers I maintain and that generally means working odd hours and taking extra on-call duty until they’re all done. It’s also a time of a bit of extra stress when I discover that my upgrade plan goes wrong and Murphy’s Law catches up with me.
Sigh…
I am hoping the season changes soon and I can get back into working in my workshop and start complaining about sore muscles, splinters and scraped knuckles. There are a lot of things I’d like different. For instance, California just started a 1% tax on lumber – what’s up with that? Guess now I need to start working on my black market sources of wood. Wonder how well they guard the Oregon border…
My health could be different. It’s basically good but not great. Like most middle age men, I’d like to be more fit and lose twenty pounds – except that I doubt there is enough ibuprofen on the planet to help me recover from the 10 hour a day workouts that would require.
At a deep level I find health in middle age to be a bit discouraging. I eat reasonably well – lots of fiber, low-fat salads for lunch, sensible dinners. Most days I walk for 40 minutes and I do everything the doctors tell me. Still it hasn’t helped me reduce a dress size my waistline or keep my hair from thinning.
But then, who wants fat hair?
I did find an interesting book on health that I’ve started to read, “Fat Chance, Beating the Odds Against sugar, processed food, obesity, and disease” by Robert H. Lustig. Heather heard Dr. Lustig on a radio show on Friday and told me about it. I looked up the show notes on-line and found what he had to say interesting. After a bit of web searching I found his book and a video of one of his lectures (linked below).
Actually both Heather and I are reading the book. So far I find his ideas and science compelling. It’s kind of hard to describe his whole theory here but it comes down to this:
Sugar is a toxin and causes a number of chronic diseases.
The list of diseases that Dr. Lustig made includes just about every thing I’ve got and looks more like a copy of my medical report. Except for the type 2 diabetes which I am at risk for but have not developed. I haven’t gotten far enough into his book to know what to do but I am sure it involves not eating sugar. I’ll let you know if he suggests doing anything other than not eating sugar.
Were I to sum up the week, I would call it the cold week when I discovered sugar is evil.
Andrew's View of the Week 