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This was the second of two no-weight-tracking weeks, as I've been seeing how my body takes to amlodipine. The answer: really, really badly for a couple weeks, but I'm experiencing enough relief yesterday and today that it does make sense to do what my doctor suggested today - stick with it another week or two, unless bad reactions come back. 

Speaking of doctor...

This summer my A1C, the measure of long-term overall blood glucose level, was at 8.3%. The range for healthy adults is 3-6%. As of the test two weeks ago, it's 5.5%. There'd been a delay in getting the results delivered to Dave so he was actually looking through the report while I was there. He turned the page, read that line, put the report down, turned to me, and nearly shouted, "Dude!" (For which he apologized later, but I giggled. I'm willing to forgive an exuberantly happy doctor.)

He'd been hoping for about half a percentage point improvement. Apparently each half-percent reduction in A1C reduces the risk of kidney and liver failure and of damage requiring amputation of fingers or toes by about 20%. I asked him if a three-percent reduction meant I should expect to be growing anything. He didn't think so. :) But he says it's the best result any patient of his has ever achieved in the initial six months.

So I'm a happy camper today. Measuring weight resumes.

Chris Sims strikes again.

Such as:

In the Core Marvel Universe, the most popular person is a 120 year-old Canadian berserker samurai who has who has been to the moon and was in love with a psychic who destroyed an alien planet and came back from the dead, married to both Japanese royalty and a green-haired terrorist, and had a child with a woman from a hidden region of Antarctica where dinosaurs and cavemen live. When he is not fighting his enemies -- most of whom are versions of himself, some of whom have claws made of lasers -- he reaffirms his status as as tough-as-nails loner as a member of at least three superhero teams.

In the Core Marvel Universe, a "gritty crime story" is one where a blind lawyer ninja dressed as the Devil fights a massive Sumo wrestler with a cane that shoots lasers, who employs both a Major League Baseball pitcher who killed a batter with a fastball and the blind lawyer ninja's girlfriend, the daughter of a diplomat who herself became a ninja, died and came back to life, and was once replaced by an alien shape-shifter.
 

Lots more at the link, and some good comments, too.

 Commentary would be irrelevant:

I'm not actually tracking my weight this week. With new medication and other hoorah, it didn't feel like there was much point. I plan to skip this report and the one for next week, and have actual data again for week 29.

 

So. High blood pressure. Really, really high blood pressure. I can deal with that.

What leaves me feeling sad, on this evening I'm tired and sad about other things, is the prospect of one more obstacle to the prospects for a real transitioning. Family history of breast cancer, diabetes, now this...it's of course no time to draw any sweeping conclusions, but the risk factors pile up and up. Must talk about it with counselor, I guess.
 

This morning's appointment went very well. I'm happy with my progress. Dave is really happy with my progress. We reviewed my diet, blood glucose readings, exercise history, some personal developments, and like that, and he sees much to be happy with. He thinks I'm being a good patient, which makes me happy, as I'm trying to be.

My blood pressure sucks. A lot. It was 200/112 in his office at 9 am. This is not good. I am therefore going to try some blood pressure medication for a couple weeks, and go in for a quick reappraisal the week after Thanksgiving. He is confident that we'll find the thing that helps, though.
 

It turns out that the reason this particular bunch of shaving gel absolutely failed to foam up well is that it was shampoo.

I'm off for a checkup this morning. Time to update the blood chemistry tests, and I'm really looking forward to finding out what's up.
 

A setback week: up most of a pound, to 306.4. Happens sometimes; I'll just have to keep at it and resume moving the right way.
 

At this pace I wouldn't even have 10,000 words by the end of the month, and stressing about it isn't helping.

I want to tell this story, but I think I'll do better to give up on the timetable and let it take its time.

Darn it, I wanted to have my first new-persona year include a NaNoWriMo success at last. Maybe next year.
 

I have new shoes.

Now, to a lot of people this wouldn't be a big deal. But those of you who know just how sick I've been in recent years may get a sense, and I'll see if I explain it to the rest of you.

I spent five years really pretty much housebound, you see. And early in that time I developed very severe edema in my left foot, ankle, and shin. I had to wear sandals, unless I were going to try hunting out men's size 15 or 16 or so, instead of my regular 12-13. (I'm not sure any available size would actually have done the job, but it would have to have been at least that much.) It was depressing. I couldn't go anywhere much and couldn't wear anything appropriate if I could, and it was just a very bad loop.

This year, of course, I've been improving a lot, and with winter starting to close in, it became clear that I both should and could have some real shoes again. So last night I went out, hunted unsuccessfully for a while, and then got first-rate service at a nearby Macy's. (I've realized that I take it as a good sign whenever I run into someone who's paid by commission and willing to talk slowly. It seems to go with quality attention.) Now I have a nice pair of well-fitted black casual oxfords, which will do me just fine.

I am really, really happy about this. 

Down 0.4 pounds, to 305.6. I think I've "actually" lost a bit more than that, but I've had a couple days of rotten digestion. In any event, I've gotten a lot of good exercise, eaten pretty well, and feel fairly pleased.

A very great thanks to Lisa Harney for tipping me off to this wonderful moment from Belgian TV:

I've been very, very busy in real life, and very, very happy. Ongoing reunion and reconciliation with someone who matters a lot to me, and it feels wonderful and demanding. But it's not really at the stage where I'm comfortable writing a lot about it yet.

More when it is. :)
 

Ahhh. I got out to the Ingersoll Center's weekly trans support group for the first time since, um, several months ago. (I'm too lazy to go look it up, but it was summer.) I've just had one thing after another, but resolved to make it happen again, started specifically carving my schedule to allow it, and this week it fell into place.

It is so, so good to be in a roomful of people who actually do know what this part of my life is like.

Down 1 pound exactly, to 306.0. I think, actually, that it may be "actually" a little lower than that, since I had an allergic zonk yesterday evening and often get a little bloated and water-retentive in the wake of those. But I am in any event very deeply pleased. I've gotten great exercise this week, and also real human company several times, which is soooo good for my morale and great motivation to get this damn wretched body in better shape so I can do to it what needs doing.

That's 24.2 pounds in 24 weeks. Feeling very, very satisfied.

I've done really well disengaging from nearly every place online I used to habitually waste a lot of passion and time in ultimately sterile argumentation. But not completely. And since I want November to be a month rich in writing time, I'm starting off with a week off from RPG Net to see if I can take the time I put into that into NaNoWriMo and commercial writing instead. Here's hoping. :)

I am really, really, really sick and tired of people saying things that join the ambient environment full of vileness and stupidity and then getting hurt when they're taken as more vile, stupid people rather than the witty bon vivants they feel they obviously are. It's not that text is innately incapable of conveying deadpan humor. It's that we live in a fucking crazy world, with much of the craziness deliberately encouraged by people who fancy themselves using others' gullibility for evil ends. It simply is very difficult to distinguish yourself from the sincerely deluded, the calculatedly anti-immoral, and the just plain deranged by anything like the extremity of your position. It's an extreme time.

So please, give it up. You're not Jonathan Swift. Nor are you Hunter S. Thompson. Be funny some other way.

Swiped from Jonquil:

Name five effective uses of songs in movies or tv shows.

#1. In Lost Highway, when the protagonists first notice each other, Lou Reed's cover of "This Magic Moment":


#2. In Until the End of the World, as the characters fly deep into the Australian interior, a nuclear explosion in orbit kills their plane's electronics. Peter Gabriel's "Blood of Eden" accompanies them to the ground (and yes, she's been handcuffed to the plane door, and they don't have the key):


#. In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, James Horner's wonderful music for the Mutara Nebula battle scene. I couldn't easily decide between something from this or The Rocketeer, the two movies that I think show off Horner's generic action music to best effect, but settled on this as the one where it really lodged in my head:


#4. In the Children of Dune mini-series, Brian Tyler went far, far beyond the call of duty in actually writing a song in Fremen for the scene cross-cutting between Chani giving birth and Paul's agents rounding up the conspirators:


#5. In Koyaanisqatsi...okay, the whole movie, but I love the moonrise:

*blink* *blink blink* Down 2.6 pounds, to 207.0 even. It looks like the diet changes I put into place did help, along with some social goodness. 10.2 pounds to the "down 10% from when I started" threshold, and I'd really like to hit that by the end of the year.

If you know Gahan Wilson's work, you know you want to see this collection of several dozen works from his prime years. If you don't...trust me, this is one of the great American cartoonists of the 20th century, and anyone who likes reading me ought to enjoy looking at him.