greyduck.net

We know that the year twenty twenty delights in beating us down every chance it gets, but sometimes we get to punch back.

Since the diabetes diagnosis in late July I started taking a series of medications, started a daily exercise routine, and modified my diet. This week, the first test results came in to show if those efforts paid off or if I need to take more drastic measures.

Not only are the numbers good, but the key metric (called “A1C”) is actually in the normal range. I’m not even in “we’re still concerned” territory anymore, thanks to the last few months of changes and work.

Mind you, this means I need to keep at it. The medicines are part of my life now, as are the exercise regimen and dietary changes. But at least I have the chance of staying alive longer now, and even in this hellyear that counts for something.

Just some rapid-fire stuff…

• I built the LEGO Ghostbusters “Ecto-1”, the box for which I’ve had tucked away in my closet for years now, finally, to join the holiday-season LEGO display in the library (what’s supposed to be the dining “room” in this little apartment of ours), but my attempts to photograph the build process turned out poorly.
• Related to that, I’ve learned that I really need to avoid the “auto” modes on my new camera or it’s going to give me very grainy pictures. Ah well.
• The previous webserver is now shut down, I moved everything over, and it looks like we’re stable on the new server. Huzzah, and thanks again to Linode for making such a great VPS environment.
• I burned my first M-Disc archival Blu-Ray disc filled with music videos, mostly saved & converted materials from various DVDs on the shelf. It certainly took a while, but so far it seems to have worked. Check back with me in 1000 years to find out if the claims of lifespan for M-Disc media are proved by real-world experience!
• My main game right now is Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I finished my first run through a few days ago (I backed Edelgard, which… from a storytelling perspective is very questionable, admittedly) and now I’m in “new game plus” mode with all the advantages that entails, working with the Golden Deer faction. Archery everywhere.
• Summer is over. Thank all the deities.

Out of sight out of mind, the saying goes, and with a mind as dull as mine the saying is doubly true. A few days ago we unearthed some bins from the big closet in the master bedroom, and I realized that one of them had several old notebooks and 3-ring binders from my high school years.

Note that I’m not far from turning fifty, y’all.

This afternoon I finally turned most of that material into recycling. (And the rest into actual trash.) Old lyrics sheets and song timings and doodles and (ugh) poetry and (uggghhhh) story ideas, gone at last. It’s about time, really.

The other items in the bin with the old notebooks I decided to keep: A stack of old VHS tapes, stuff like Pet Shop Boys music video collections and Pink Floyd concert videos (the official releases, mind you), that I’ll need to track down on DVD before junking for good. I hope I can, because have you seen the price of a VHS deck lately… provided you can even source one? Yikes. I should’ve digitized those tapes a decade ago. Sigh.

I also found a whole mess o’ ducks I’d forgotten about. So, some day in the not-too-distant future, I’ll be doing another round of glamour shots…