Tag Archives: health

Living In Oz

Posted by anachostic on August 30, 2025 No comments

There’s something about me that I don’t bring up often here and don’t really mention to anyone in person. That is, the fact that I’m diabetic. One of the self-made ones, not one of the born ones. I’ve recently decided to describe it as having a long, abusive relationship with sugar. While thinking this post out, I had a lot of ranting and validation I wanted to say, but I’m ditching all that. The bottom line is, this condition doesn’t define who I am and I don’t let it stop me from being me.

That prelude out of the way, I’ve been on a cluster of medications to manage this condition for years now. I thought I had reached a point where I was satisfied, but it was not what my doctor was satisfied with. I steadfastly refused to begin insulin injections, and that was pretty much the final step that could be made. That is, until recently. After a lot of deliberation, I accepted that a GLP-1 med would be acceptable. And so we swapped out one of my meds for Ozempic.

Before I get into the details of my experience so far, I feel it’s worth saying that going on Ozempic gave me a little bit of guilt. It is a very high-profile drug, very headline-grabbing. It’s been tabloided as a quick fix cure for famous people to lose weight. It’s been hyped to the point of supply shortages, where only the rich people can get it and the ones who need it for actual diabetes are left short. So being associated with that whole thing is a little shameful. I never really feel I deserve any special treatment, especially with how I treat myself. But here I am, five weeks into treatment.

Oz has a unique feature in that it slows the emptying of your stomach, so you feel full longer. That is how it achieves the weight loss. My doc said I need to lose weight, but I didn’t believe so. I’ve been hovering around 200lbs for years and while, yeah, I do have a gut, I’m not what I would call obese. And I’m generally pretty body-positive, so I’m not ashamed of how I look, and losing a lot of weight by taking a drug that rich and famous people take to lose weight is not what I’m about. I’d rather be somewhat fat.

I said that I’d been maintaining my weight for a long time. And that’s despite the diet I was keeping. Prior to my first dose, I would consume a full bag of pretzels each day. That’s about 10 servings, 1200 calories. And on top of that, I would have a couple packs of peanut butter crackers, sometimes a small bag of gummy bears, and my typical morning apple and portion of carrots. Lunch would be the same as ever, a small pizza or a burger meal. Dinner, could be whatever. This was a routine. And balanced with the exercise I was doing, everything seemed stable.

I took my first .25ml dose on a Sunday morning and assumed nothing would immediately change since it’d need to get into my body, and I was correct. But Monday morning, everything did change. Like my experience with the SSRI, Ozempic is literally magic.

I did not snack. AT ALL. I did not open a bag of pretzels. I did not eat any crackers. I ate my morning apple, but didn’t eat any carrots. Lunch came and I could only eat half of my normal amount. Dinner came and again, less than half before I was full. And as others on Oz have said, I didn’t even have to eat. I wasn’t hungry. I only ate because these feeding times were a strict routine for me to get out of the house.

As the days and weeks went on, this pattern became the norm. I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t exactly nauseous, but I didn’t feel good. Food wasn’t appealing. I didn’t get any increase in energy, I only got lethargy. Today, as I write this, I’ve spent more time lying down than up and around. This isn’t the utopia it was supposed to be.

Some days are better than others. Today just happens to be a worse than normal day. I can still get out and hike on good days. Some days a meal can be satisfying. But right now, it feels like I’m holding out for some payoff. I’ve lost 12 pounds at my last weighing, but I won’t know the effect on my guiding star, the A1C, for another couple months.

I’ve searched before for Ozempic malnutrition and that does appear to be a thing. While the core of my diet isn’t super heathy, the cuts to my diet have all been useless calories. But they were a massive source of carbs which gave me energy – the energy I am severely lacking right now. And this goes back to something I’ve repeated multiple times here in my blog, why live a long life in misery? If you’re not happy, why are you living? I’ve got like 10 bags of pretzels in my cabinet that have expired because I haven’t opened any in over a month.

I’m going to wrap up this post and go lay back down.

Banding, Again

Posted by anachostic on August 3, 2025 No comments

During the blog’s offline era, I took on a new hobby: cycling. I say it’s a new hobby, but it’s really just a return to being a kid again. Let’s go ahead and discuss that before getting on to the titular topic.

I don’t exactly know when or why I decided that I wanted to start riding a bike again. I had tried this a while ago with a clearance bike from Sears many years ago and that turned out to be terrible. I had a road bike many years before that and never really liked it. I hadn’t ridden in any appreciable amount for maybe 30 years? But I just decided that I wanted to do it again.

And after the road bike dislike and the cheap mountain bike experience, I was sort of lost. What kind of bike do I want? I want the most simple bike you can get. No fancy gears, brakes, or features, just a bike. This is exactly what beach cruiser bikes are, but man, I did not see myself riding one of those. And doing some research, I learned that adult-sized BMX bikes were now a reality. I found my bike.

After removing all the gaudy stickers from it, I rode that bike everywhere. Well, I rode it everywhere that I could drive it so I could ride it. Suburban nonsense, amirite? And that was really good for me. It made me happy. But, like every hobby of mine, it soon becomes not enough. I wanted more. This bike was great for riding the paved trails that were available, but trails leading into the woods kept beckoning me. My tires are road tires and the one time I tried riding in my back yard, I ended up crashing down on my side when the tires just slid out under me. So then what? Upgrade time?

Hell no. You should know me by now. You never get rid of anything. That leads to regret. The answer is another bike. And after research, I chose a gravel bike, which is midway between a mountain bike and a road bike. Not perfect for either, but can do both acceptably. And taking advice from the girl at my local bike shop, I found a deal on FB marketplace for a high-quality gravel bike.

And that was fun, until summer arrived. It’s been a couple months now that I can barely go outside at all, much less consider expending the energy to bike on a trail, paved or god forbid, unpaved. But someday, that’s going to change. And when that happens, I hope to be ready with some additional data collection. I’m talking about a new fitness band.

At lunch today, I wondered when I last had a fitness tracker. And my blog indicates it was a little over six years ago. And Amazon confirms that I had spent a little over $50 on a cheap Chinese fitness tracker. Well, times have changed and that same fitness tracker is now $10 more, but who would want to buy that same model as trackers have advanced a lot in 6 years.

Hmmm. You know, I did consider getting a band when I started biking, but at that time there was a huge tariff scare and when I researched prices, they were all really high. Not that ANYTHING is any better now, but an Amazon price tracker showed that a device with which I would be happy dropped its price nearly 50% in the last month – to a ridiculous $29. I mean, what’s the argument to not pick up one of the highest rated "budget" (I’d still just say cheap) fitness trackers at that price? And that’ll be here tomorrow.

It won’t go completely to waste. Sometimes I do get in a short hike when I can. None of that 8 mile shit right now. This weather is good for maybe 3 miles. And the tracker can still gather some data from that. I’m curious about my sleep, which I feel has kind of sucked lately. And the heart rate and SpO2 and "stress tracker" (?) will be useful at some level.

Rest easy lads, you’ll be on the road again sometime.

The Cookie Killers

Posted by anachostic on July 30, 2025 No comments

I read in the news today (oh boy) about a new thing called nitazenes which are magnitudes more deadly than fentanyl. This news sort of sucks the wind out of a post I had planned to make long, long ago on fentanyl, but I guess the story is still the same. So now’s the time to write it.

When you hear stories about overdoses on street drugs – copycat pharmaceutical drugs especially – because they’ve been cut with something much stronger, like fentanyl, the question comes up: why are drug dealers so stupid? Why kill off your customers? And while in most cases, the dealer isn’t the drug maker, you can still point the finger up the ladder: why are you killing your customers? And it’s not that they want to, they really don’t. They’re just making cookies.

If you read much of my blog, you should know I don’t cook at home. I eat out for nearly every meal. But, I can cook. You know, I can do the basics. And another basic that I can do – and I do it well, I might add – is chocolate chip cookies. So I could also be a drug maker, I suppose. And the results would likely be the same.

Let’s look at the cookie making process. If you haven’t made cookies before, it’s quite simple. Put some flour, baking soda, sugar, more sugar, eggs, and butter in a bowl and use a spoon to mix it all up. Then you add chocolate chips and mix them in. Then you portion them out and cook them. That’s really it. Even I can do that.

So let’s say that customer research has found that 7 chocolate chips is the perfect number of chips to have in a cookie. Companies that specialize in cookie making will have spent a lot of money on equipment that ensures that every cookie has 7 chips in it. No more, no less. And they will have quality control to ensure that remains true. Because when you’re selling cookies, your customers demand perfection because they are spending their hard earned dollars with your company.

But my cookies? You might have some cookies that have 7 chips, or 5, or 3, or some might have some extra, like 9 or even 12. Additionally, some cookies might have a extra mix of butter in them, which is always a treat. That’s part of the charm of homemade cookies.

The problem with drugs is, 5 chips might be a little disappointing, but 9 chips will kill you. And to be sure, I didn’t want to kill you. That’s just how the cookie crumbles.

Tea, Lots Of It

Posted by anachostic on September 21, 2024 No comments

Throughout this blog, there is mention of Nestea, a brand of iced tea with which I have a long history. For many years now, I’ve been satisfied with the imported Canadian Nestea from Amazon. It ain’t cheap, but it’s the real deal.

Something else that I’ve recently kind of been obsessed with is seeing how long things last in my household. Being a household of one and not really having the unfortunate financial burdens of the younger generations, I buy the largest size of things to get the most product per ounce or whatever unit of measure it is. I figure, I’m going to use it all eventually and it’s not going to spoil, so if I buy something that will last a long long time, I just won’t have to go to the store as often.

So, I buy the 100ct of garbage bags, when I use one a week. I buy 350 dryer sheets when I do load once a week. I buy the bulk packs of soap and the largest shampoo I can find. The funny thing about doing this is that buy the time I repurchase an items, the branding design has usually changed and shrinkflation has also usually occurred. I’ll write the date I started using the product on the package with a sharpie. Just for note, I recetly found can get over 9 months out of the largest shampoo bottle.

But anyway, this is about tea. I’m not going to bother researching how long a canister of tea lasts me, because there’s really only one size and it’s whatever. It’s not something I’m going to shop for alternatives on. But I am going to measure something else. I do not make my tea to Nestea’s specifications. I make my tea light. And I mean really light. Like tea flavored water. So here’s the numbers after counting the number of servings I just made from my latest can.

A canister is reported to make 68 servings. I counted 154. I might have been able to scrape another out of it, but because of the constant absorption of moisture as the can is opened over and over, you have to use more mix at the end than at the beginning, and honestly, the quality isn’t as good. So 154 is close enough for my needs. So right off the bat, I’m getting double the servings, so I’m using half the recommended amount of mix.

But wait. I said I like my tea light. These servings on the can are 16oz glasses. I drink my tea in a 32oz beer stein (my teacup). So my servings are double the recommended as well. So I’m using a quarter of the recommended amount of mix. The hard math on this is: a canister will make 1,088oz of tea. I made 4,928oz of tea. I am using 22% of the recommended amount of mix.

Now, let’s look at the downsides to this. Each serving of Nestea has 31g of sugar, which is 31% of your recommended daily intake (how convenient). So you can drink like three glasses a day. Yeah, yeah, I know that’s not how recommended intake works. Just play along. So each of my servings is 6.8% of the recommended daily amount and I can drink four of my servings to match one of Nestea’s servings. So I can have 12 a day. How many do I drink? Well, I don’t think it’s 12. Could be more than 6, though.

And you probably think that’s bad, especially since I’m not in great health. But I’ll tell you something. When I worked in an office, I didn’t have Nestea there. I had Coke. And I drank lots of it. Not as much as my tea, because Coke is very heavy and my tea is like water, but still, a lot. And since I’ve been working at home for the last 3 years or so, my A1C has dropped significantly very likely due to this change in intake. So, there, it’s not bad, relatively speaking.

2024 Hike Log

Posted by anachostic on January 28, 2024 No comments

Last year’s hike log was a modest success, at least in that it kept track of each of my hikes. So let’s do it again for 2024.

Date	Location	Distance	Notes
1/13/2024	Green Swamp	4.3 mi
1/27/2024	Blackwater Creek	4.3 mi

2023 Hike Log

Posted by anachostic on March 5, 2023 Comments Off

So let’s try something different this year. This time, I’ll just make one post and update it throughout the year with dates, location, distances, and notes. That should be easier to maintain and I’ll be more apt to just put a quick log entry in here than trying to write a blog entry on a hiking trip.

So let’s start.

Date	Location	Distance	Notes
1/7/2023	Colt Creek	3.6 mi
1/14/2023	Alafia	1.2 mi	Thin trails with lots of opportunity to climb, but much more bike-oriented than hiker.
1/15/2023	Colt Creek	6.7 mi	How long? How long? How long to the point of know return?
1/22/2023	Tenoroc	2.7 mi	Blue loop; nice elevation changes and great views.
2/18/2023	Gator Creek	5.3 mi	Deer Run loop. 1 tortoise, 1 gator.
2/25/2023	Colt Creek	2.7 mi	No real hike. Just back and forth on spur trails.
3/5/2023	Colt Creek	6 mi	First half of Yellow trail
3/21/2023	Green Swamp	3.7 mi	First weekday hike after DST change
3/26/2023	Colt Creek	4 mi	Second half of Yellow trail
5/30/2023	Gator Creek	2.3 mi	Yellow trail
	Laziness	0.0 mi
11/23/2023	Green Swamp	1.7 mi	Something’s not right. No stamina. Need to start over?
12/5/2023	Green Swamp	5.4 mi	That’s more like it. Still sore, though.
12/7/2023	Green Swamp	5.0 mi	Tired, but not sore.
12/25/2023	Green Swamp	5.3 mi
12/30/2023	Gator Creek	5.3 mi	Deer Run
12/31/2023	Tenoroc	4.3 mi	Red Loop

Being Stupid Outdoors

Posted by anachostic on August 27, 2021 No comments

Somewhere around 10 years ago, I got into hiking, which is a more impressive way of saying walking outside. The local terrain doesn’t really constitute what I would call hiking, since it’s just flatland. But regardless, it is outside and it is on a trail, so I can say that I hiked trails. I was a hiker.

I did that for some time and eventually it kind of stopped being a thing. I just slowly stopped doing it. But recently, I’ve decided I want to start doing the hiking again. it was a tentative beginning, I wasn’t sure if I would still enjoy a physical activity and honestly, I didn’t see any way it would be fun. It sounded boring now, but whatever I was or wasn’t doing around the house was as much or more boring, so I also didn’t have much to lose. And anyway I needed to do something to take positive strides in my health.

I was 10 years younger back then, and as you get older, that nice round milestone becomes more and more significant. However, I never have seen myself as the actual age I am. Maybe I’m deluded or stupid or something, but I don’t think I am my age. I probably think and act my age, but I don’t perceive myself that way. The point I’m trying to make here is, however I was then, that’s how I think I am now, and I’m probably not. And that’s not smart. My new experiences with hiking have been a collection of smart and not so smart things; mostly the latter. So I will chronicle the most recent events.

A couple weeks ago, we had a tropical storm moving in. This caused me concern, not because of the storm itself, but because of the coming rain. All of the nearby trails have been flooded from the summer monsoon and it pisses me off. If there’s a couple days without downpours, the flooded trails can turn into muck instead of lakes, which makes the hike more tolerable. The first time I had visited this particular trail, I had left the house and a mile down the road realized I did not change into my hiking boots, I still had my sneakers. "It’ll be fine," I said. "This trail is not as low as the other one I go to." When I get there, right past the entrance gate – lake. I had to go back home and change into my boots. I haven’t made that mistake again.

Since that time, I’d been back to that trail and the water had gone down, mostly. But today I was trying to get in a hike before the tropical storm hit. I checked the radar and it looked fine. I did not consider, and I should have known, weather here changes fast. So I get a mile or so out on the trail and I’m seeing some dark clouds forming. "It’ll be fine." Then it becomes obvious that it’s not going to be fine and I need to get back to the car, like soon. The moment of my realization was captured by my fitness band.

Screenshot_20210814-161341

I suffered a few minutes of downpour, but I escaped the worst of the storm, and there was no nearby lightning, which was the bigger concern, since these trails are open fields. Lesson learned? I got caught in another downpour on another day and I was far enough out on the trail to cause me to don my rain jacket I carry in my pack. So, no.

Last week, I decided I was going to do a bigger hike, which at this point in my redevelopment is over 5 miles. If you think that’s weaksauce, remember I am doing this while the temperature and humidity are over 90. To reduce UV exposure, I wear a long-sleeve sun shirt, but I’m still wearing shorts. I need to get some water-wicking hiking pants. I reset my GPS and set my exercise band and go. And very quickly, the sweat starts to go too, because I’m upping my pace to cover more ground quickly. 10 years ago, I could cover 5 miles in an hour. Based on past hiking records, I move about 75% of that speed now and I need to get that speed back.

I have a trail map and I refer to it frequently, but it’s disintegrating from being soaked with sweat in my pocket. At some point, I checked my band to see how far I’d gone. My sweat-soaked sleeve had impersonated a finger and cancelled my recorded hike. That had happened about 1.5 miles in. No idea how far I’d gone since then. I checked my GPS and it said I was about 2.5 miles. Ugh. Onward I went, referring often to the soggy paper map for what path I wanted to take to loop me around and back close to the entrance.

I ended up on an unmaintained part of trail and worse, it was flooded. I thought I’d be better off pressing forward than backtracking so I navigated the water best I could. Luckily none was over ankle deep so my socks stayed dry. Still it slowed me down. I checked my GPS to see where I was, relative to the path I had taken so far. The GPS battery is dead. Right now, I have no idea if I am better off going forward or backward or exactly where I am on the trail. I really have no idea how hikers survived without GPS units.

As luck would have it (because it ain’t been brains), I had purchased replacement batteries and packed them just before leaving for the hike. With a quick swap of batteries, I had GPS again. And I saw that the GPS had died some time ago. So now, I had no reliable track from either my band or the GPS to tell me how far my hike was today. Yay. I’m done.

The trail continues to be flooded, so at the first sign of a cutoff path that would lead me back to my prior track, I took it. Granted, it was not on my paper map, so I was making an educated (if that’s even possibly appropriate at this point) guess. The trail dried out and and I also continued to dry out. After a certain point, your body won’t absorb moisture quick enough to replenish what’s been lost, and I feel I was there, or close to there. I was mouth breathing at this point. My gait was unsteady. I was walking with a forward lean. None of this was good.

But as I’m not writing this from the afterlife, I did make it back to my car. Not without getting bit by a deer fly, twice. It’s almost been a week and I’m still suffering from the bite on my knee.

Despite the stupidity I’d accomplished so far and my knee still swollen and itching (but not sore or painful), I decided to grab a quick hike after work yesterday. Again, I planned this as a 5+ hike. I would go to the trail nearest me to start as soon as possible. I got on the trail at about 5:30. The first mile was a warmup pace, then I sped it up. I didn’t have a trail map, but had a decent memory of the trails and the path I wanted to take. After a short trail ended in a tiny loop, I doubled my path and ended up on the big loop. I had been on the trail a couple weeks ago and it was totally flooded, so I hoped things had improved. I was pleased to see that the area that stopped me before was dried out. And I kept going.

Probably about 50% of the way through the trail loop – lake. About 30 feet of water with no high spots and certainly more than ankle deep. I had plenty of expletives to summarize the situation. I had no choice but to backtrack my whole track, which was over 3 miles at that point. Not only that, but the sun was going down.

Once I got all the swearing out of my system, I just resigned myself to my fate. And no point in pretending to be tired, sun’s setting, gotta go fast. And so I did. I upped my pace to the quickest of the entire hike and went back the entire length of the trail. And lets not discount the fact that mosquitos really love dusk, in a swamp.

All told, that hike was 6.75 miles, accomplished in exactly 2 hours. So far, my dumbest hike this year. But there’s still plenty of days left in the year, plenty of chances to beat that record.

Screenshot_20210826-211540

Aerobic training effect: "Improvement". Fuck you.

The Race Intensifies

Posted by anachostic on June 28, 2020 No comments

Still watching the races, much to my dismay and angst. Last night I had a moment of disbelief. All those people insanely claiming, "this is all a hoax!" and "It’s all fake." For once, those people almost made sense. And the reason for that was the pure incredulous of the numbers I was seeing. I mean, look at this chart:

You see those tiny bars near the beginning around 6/1? That’s 1,000 new cases a day. Back then, that was an unbelievable number. It had me shaking my head at the stupidity of my fellow residents. These last few days, what can I say? Well, we went through multiple 1k days, then multiple 2k days, then 3k days, then 4k days. And then, things changed. There was one 5k day, but there wasn’t a 6k or 7k day. It went straight to 8k. Then 9k.

What are you supposed to think when something like that happens? If you follow the drama and opposing viewpoints, right around that time, it is claimed that the numbers are being inflated so that they can be reported lower later on. But that doesn’t make any sense to me because you still have the record of the shit days. You can say it’s better, but better relative to the worst? The worst still happened!

And it just seems like there’s some sort of disinformation campaign going on, just like everything has been in the last three years or so. But the data is still there and it’s just an argument over how to interpret that data.

While on that topic, in a previous post, I put up an image that I consider misleading. Let’s revisit that.

Now let’s compare that to how things are right now.

In that old post, I said the chart was misleading because there was a delay as to when deaths were reported, so the true numbers were at the beginning of the chart and because of the delay, it would always look like the numbers were falling. Well, look at the chart now. Looks pretty flat, except for the most recent days, where you can expect less reported deaths.

So what’s going to happen is, as the deaths are reported (later), it’s going to make the chart look like it’s climbing, but the chart only has 30 days to work with. As long as there is a 2-week delay in death reporting, that should keep the numbers pretty low. But even if not, it will still look better. It makes you wonder what a chart longer than 30 days would look like.

Watching The Races

Posted by anachostic on June 3, 2020 No comments

I’ve been keeping an eye on the COVID race for a few months now. The players I watch are all standout players: FL, TX, PA, and GA. Those are the places that have people that I know, so I watch their progress.

I remember when FL was the star, I seem to recall it was in the top 5 for a while. But PA put forth a massive effort and shot right up the charts. TX was a slow starter, but it’s been doing pretty well lately. GA has always been mediocre, which I suppose is a good thing, honestly. But FL is recently finding its mojo and is climbing in rank again. Go, FL! Obviously, no one is going to take the crown from NY, and NJ is probably always going to be second to NY (in everything), so there’s only so far you can go.

For three of my players, I watch their personal progress dashboards. Two of them, FL and TX, use the same software, so it kind of gives some equal comparison of the numbers. But in both cases, they use graphs that are misleading. Well, they aren’t if you understand the data, but for casual observers and those that don’t want to put the minimal effort into understanding, the response could be either, "this isn’t so bad", or "this is great" when the reality is neither of those sentiments.

Take a graph from FLs dashboard:

Wow, that’s impressive. Deaths are falling, and dramatically at that! This is all behind us, let’s go party!

But there is a small disclaimer below the chart, for those that care to read: "Death data often has significant delays in reporting…". That means that those low numbers in the near term are low because there’s no data yet. Those numbers will rise as time goes on, but that’s just fine, because there will be newer, lower numbers to report as time goes on as well.

Here’s a graph from TX’s dashboard.

This is just dumb design: plotting two values, one that will constantly increase, and one that will remain relatively constant on the same scale. This will have two effects. First, the number of deaths per day (in blue) looks like a really small value. And comparing 20 to 1,698 does make 20 seem very small. But as the total number grows, and it will, every day, the scale is going to eventually have to be adjusted, and the daily value is going to be insignificant.

TX does the same charting with the number of cases, with the same effects.

Maybe its incompetency that made these charts, but in the current political climate, and judging that these two states have pushed very hard to justify their reopening plans, it might not be a stretch to think this is just propaganda. The numbers don’t lie, they’re not telling you anything false. It’s just being presented in a way that looks most favorable.

Things That Go Bump In The Night

Posted by anachostic on February 24, 2020 No comments

Last Friday I had to call off work unexpectedly because I was sick. And when I say I was sick, it wasn’t like the usual can’t-be-bothered-to-get-up kind of sick. This was the puking sick.

But also, it wasn’t that kind of sick. First off, I don’t get sick. Well, there was that one time I tried doing CrossFit and puked, but that was a totally different experience and reason. Even when I had the flu, which is a really rare occurrence in itself (because I don’t get sick), I didn’t throw up. Second, there was no reason for me to get sick like that. I hadn’t eaten anything out of the ordinary, in fact, I didn’t even really eat anything for dinner at all. I had no warning signs, it just came up on me quickly. I woke up with massive stomach pains.

Obviously, I’m not telling the whole story, because there is a probable reason why I got sick, but I didn’t put the two together until later that day and had to get some confirmation from a friend and later, online.

Normally, when I go to bed, I leave a small kitchen light on. It’s a single bulb light and I’ve discussed the special wiring in the Casa blog when I was changing it to LED. Normally, as I say, that light is on. But you can read in many places that in order to get the best quality sleep, you should sleep in complete darkness. Since my sleeping has been variable for quite some time, I decided Thursday night to leave that kitchen light off, which does leave my house dark.

Despite the small change to my sleeping ritual that night, everything else was kept the same. My additional sleeping aids of the sound machine and 1mg of melatonin were applied and effective. And, right on schedule, I woke up at around 3am to go to the bathroom. Nothing out of the ordinary.

But was out of the ordinary was the extra darkness. I’m not sure if it’s like this for everyone, but when it’s really dark, and sometimes with my eyes closed, I feel like I can still "see" the room. It’s like an infrared vision or like an x-ray. Maybe it’s just a memory, because I have never considered trying this special sight in an unfamiliar room. But anyway, I made my way to the bathroom using my night vision, still half asleep.

And my vision failed me terribly. I misjudged how far into the room I was and turned straight into a door frame, cracking my forehead on the corner of the molding. After a brief pause and some self-deprecating comments, I continued in the correct direction and rested my skull in my hands while on the toilet. The return trip to the bed was less eventful and I fell asleep again quickly.

About two hours later I woke up with the major stomach pains and wandered back to the bathroom, where I chewed up some Tums to settle my stomach. I had made it to the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water when I got the unmistakable, undeniable, certain feeling that there was going to be some puking soon. And I was correct. However, there was nothing in my stomach. Well, some Tums, but nothing else.

I went back to bed and reasoned that if I was sick enough to puke, and I don’t puke, I should call off work. Oddly, my manager didn’t answer the phone, and his manager didn’t either, so I had to go to the third in command to submit my request. And afterwards, I fell asleep for another 5 hours.

The rest of the day I sort of wandered around in a daze. Food helped and didn’t make me any sicker. I didn’t really feel weak. I had no more nausea. But later that afternoon, I had a memory somewhere about concussions causing nausea and vomiting. Well, that makes my head injury seem a lot more important now. After confirming with my friendly paramedic, and later reading about concussions online, yeah, that’s probably what it was. If I was being extra attentive and sensitive, I could note that I had brief flashes of headaches come and go.

As it turns out, I guess I did take the best course of action and rested for the weekend. Everything was pretty normal by Saturday, and I got some extra napping in, too. Am I going to be any dumber for the incident? I don’t know how I would know. Wait, is that a sign?

Anachostic