Category: Personal Stuff

These updates keep getting later and later. Here I am on day 7 writing about Day 6. Before I jump into it, I wanna share some absolutely useless and tangential information. I’m driving into work this morning, listening to the local KISS affiliate (I usually listen to NPR, but I tune out during the give-us-money drives — I do, in fact, give money, so quell that right there), and they play this new song by Nelly Furtado. The chorus was almost something out of Kylie Minogue, to be honest, which made me a bit happy (because my Kylie CD is now here). Nelly’s voice is a bit deeper and throatier in the verses, otherwise I would’ve thought it to be a Kylie release. Bleh, whatever. Useless, I told you.

So the fast. Yesterday was also a fine day. I flushed a bit. Not all of it flushed, but some of it did. No idea what happened to the rest of the saline. I did not, in fact, flush this morning, because again there was this thing I had to do really early. Pretty much, it was the same thing I had to do on Tuesday, except that Tuesday’s journey was unsuccessful. Today’s was a success. Tomorrow is another early day for me, as we’re looking at a drupal demo bright and early at work. This means that I’ll flush this evening instead. That, in turn, means I should be done with my lemonade for several hours before I get home (usually I finish the last bits of it at 4:30pm/16:30 so it’s only 2 hours till “dinner”). That, in turn, means that I’ll be pretty much famished by the time I get home this evening. Heck, going home at 17:30/5:30pm causes me hunger.

I also couldn’t talk about food on the phone with Aimee yesterday, because that made me hungry. Ironically, the smell of food had no effect. In other news, my sister is still going strong, and her fiance has pledged to reboot his fast on Monday. That should take him right to the beginnings of Christmas (2 – 3 days to transition to regular food, post-fast) foods.

Well, day 5 is almost at en end. As you can see, I decided forge ahead. There were a tempting few moments yesterday, filled with thoughts of veggie soup, sushi and chocolate (in that order), when I thought I’d quit. But since Aimee is pretty much on a soup diet (she a mde a big batch the day before), there won’t be cooking smells around anyway, and hey, I’m at the halfway point besides. So there we have it, I’m going on with the fast. About the flush — I couldn’t yesterday due to scheduling concerns. I have to leave aside almost 2.5 hours for it, and I had some stuff I had to do early yesterday morning. I thought about doing the flush in the evening when I came home. But, I forgot.

Oh yeah, sorry, I’m writing this on the morning of Day 6 instead of the evening of Day 5. So no cravings as such, except for a faint desire to eat chicken at some point during the day. I think it was during the drive. Specifically, it was chicken curry that I had thoughts of.

And, it’s cold. I think probably winter time is not a great time to do the cleanses. In the future, I’ll cleanse before and after, but not during. I definitely feel colder than most. I actually had my big heavy winter jacket on inside the building during the day at work. Granted, the conference room I was in for 90 minutes was colder than the rest, but I really felt it. I came back to the desk and hung out in my winter coat for half an hour. Then that afternoon, just sitting at my desk I got cold, and on came the winter coat.

Today, I’m taking a fleece sweater with me 🙂

So, things did change today. Aimee’s cold stepped up in intensity. She’s been achy and throat hurty all day. We decided it was best she go off the fast, and onto some soup. She had some veggie soup tonight for dinner (carrots, celery, red potatoes, white potatoes, mushrooms, squash, onions, and tomatoes). Smelled great. I helped her with the veggie chopping.

Now, I know why this time around has been so easy: there wasn’t any food smell in the house! Tonight was a definite struggle for me. Not that I was craving anything in particular (though I did crave chocolate for a little while this afternoon), just that I wanted to eat something. I decided to, um, stay the course, since I’m almost halfway through the fast anyway. Aimee’s feeling bad and guilty for leaving it, though she has absolutely no reason to. It’s better, I think, she take the soup and stuff to help her body fight the cold.

We’ll probably do another cleanse in January or February, and we’ll do it together then. I’m rather inclined to wait till the worst of winter is over, because frankly this fast does make you a little cold anyway. Granted, the cayenne’s heat helps to warm one up a little, but it doesn’t last overly long. It’s especially cold after a flush.

Speaking of flush, I didn’t even do it this morning, because I woke up so damned late. I have a thing against public toilets, as I may or may not have mentioned in a prior post (I’m pretty sure I did), so I wasn’t going to go to work with a full flush still to go.

Tomorrow will consequently be a big flush, I guess, because it’s been 3 days since I’ve really flushed anything. Here’s hoping.

Today was a pretty good today. I have had no cravings at all. I’ve been hungry — or rather, I’ve had the inclination to eat — several times today, but nothing overwhelming at all. In fact, I’ve not even had overwhelming urges to drink the lemonade. Since this is Aimee’s first time, she’s had cravings pretty much all day: cinammon rolls and deep-dish chicago style cheese pizza in the morning, and homemade spinach/tomato pizza this evening. And, we stopped by this new plaza near here that has a really good ice-cream shop in it. As we walked by it on our way to a gift shop, she was quite tempted by it. She’s being strong though, which is great. We’re done with Day 2 now, which means that we have a little over a week left!

Oh yeah, remember how I said the salt water flush tasted posionous. Well, it’s no wonder. Remember kids, don’t do things when you’re lacking sleep. Instead of two teaspoons of salt per quart of water, I put in two tablespoons per quart. That explains the nausea, the incredible thirst, etc. Today’s flush was very light — I think my body absorbed all the water instead. Weird, because I did drink quite a lot of water yesterday all day.
Aimee had early morning class, so she skipped the flush. The senna tea did have a painful effect on her this morning though.

It’s weird to see what she’s going through with familiarity from having been through it myself. I’ll say that so far, this second cleanse is going a lot more easily for me.

Day 1 went off fairly well without a hitch. We started the day bright and early with a yucky salt water flush. I’d forgotten exactly how yucky it really is on the tongue. I remember it being fairly salty last time, but this time it almost felt like salt-poisoning or something. To boot, it made me feel a little ill to my stomach for a while (until the flush part of it). Aimee had similar symptoms. Strange effect, and I’m thankful it’s a one-a-day type situation. I’m almost dreading tomorrow morning.

Turns out my sister and her fiance started on Thursday, then ate out Thursday night because, well, they got hungry. They realised that that’s not how this works, so they restarted today.

I did not feel hungry today at all. There was free pizza at work for the company meeting and they even had cookies and eclairs for dessert. The pizza smelled great, and the eclairs looked fantastic, but both failed to induce thoughts of fast-abandonment in me. It’s just Day 1 though. Aimee, meanwhile, had a different experience. Her colleague brought in coffee cake, and that did lead to thoughts of abandonment, but she stayed strong. She was definitely hungry by 17:30 (5:30pm) when I got home, so we had our 5th glass each soon thereafter. Our final glass of the evening was at around 20:00 (8pm) and we had senna tea 2 hours later. She stayed strong. My prediction is that the next 3-4 days will be really rough on her. I don’t know how tough it will be for me, but it’ll certainly help to know that we’re doing this together (and hence neither one will have food cooking).

In summary: salt water flush tastes nastier than I remember; it’s as flushy as ever; lemonade tastes great still; cayenne gets hot the longer it sits in the drink; Yogi Tea’s senna tea tastes better than this other brand we bought. (More details + links on the teas tomorrow).

So, as you might know, I got my blood work results back last week. My liver enzyme levels have fallen and I’m almost normalised. I should get there in the next couple of months. Additionally, the enzyme that indicated the gluten allergy is elevated, but not nearly as much as it was (less than half of what it was during what I thought was the faulty reading). In fact, it’s less than half that level. And so the doctor doesn’t believe it to be alarming.

I was going to do my second liver cleanse last week, but stuff came up which affected that and my running. So, on Wednesday last week, Aimee and I went running (day 2 of week 3). But because it’s dark early these days and I wasn’t paying as much attention as I should have, I walked right into a concrete and wooden bench. Not so bad, except that it hit me on both knees. I was sort of out for a while with the running after that (tender knees, with a wound on my right). So I was kinda out of the health thing for a while. Excuses, excuses.

Anyway, I picked up the running this past Friday and redid day 2 of week 3. It was tough, but I was able to do it. I’ll be doing day 3/week 3 tonight, but I’ll probably just redo week 3 entirely after that, just to build my stamina etc back up.

Also, I did my liver cleanse on friday night/saturday morning. OK, I’d heard about this, but I didn’t believe it. People all over the internets claim you only eject small stones on the first go, but bigger ones on the subsequent cleanses. And you know something? They’re right. I ejected stones that were almost the size of a dime this time (instead of just half-peas as last time. They were not as green, and they actually look like some of the pictures out there. This gets me thinking that I’m definitely going to be doing this again in 2 weeks.

And now, my sister is interested in it as well. I hope she goes through with it. Not like she has any issues with her liver, but it’s always good to cleanse.

When I was growing up in Zambia, my family and I would go to Zimbabwe (“Zim” to those in the know, though I can’t imagine anyone going there these days) to visit. Zimbabwe was great because you’d get coca-cola (which was banned in Zambia at the time), and not only that, it came in a can! All we had was coke in a glass bottle (which, arguably, is the superior packaging, because there is a distinct taste difference). And also, you’d get Ginger Beer in a can, and Spar-Letta drinks! Those were yummy. Oh yeah, and you’d get cheezy corn curls and all manner of potato crisps and so on. Oh right, and they had Wimpy’s Burgers (subsidiary of Burger King, I think, but I could very well be wrong). Wimpy was the fat dude in Popeye comics who was always eating burgers, remember him?

All we had in Zambia were Tip-Top sodas (not a cola among them), but they tasted decent, and they got Satwant Singh to pimp them. Great commercial that was, by the way. A shot of him driving to the finish line in his famous car, and taking a swig of some Tip-Top, finishing with a “Tip-Top: It’s tops” while looking at the camera. Even he couldn’t suppress his laughter in that commercial. As for chips, we had salt-and-vinegar (at least it’s good) and some cheezy corny curly thing called Choooz with three o’s in the name. For a while the joke was that you could recognise Zambians overseas because they were the ones ordering cokes by the liters in restaurants and airport lounges.

Right, where was I going with this? Oh yeah, Zimbabwe also had toys. I mean I was 7 or 8 when we first went there, and so it was like heaven with all the toy shops etc. I remember getting cowboy style six shooters, and a few rolls of caps. Good times.

So, we used to go to Harare (the capital), but we also used to go to Kariba (I know what the link says, but the lake divides Z from Z), and Victoria Falls (Vic Falls, to those in the know).

On one of those trips, we went to a Lord Kitchener’s store, which was basically a random collection of crap. So you’d see like this small black box which said on the cover “How to screw in the dark” with two pairs of eyes looking suggestively at each other. And on the inside? What else but a screwdriver, a match and a candle? You get the idea, but look when you’re 10, that stuff’s hilarious, ok? So anyway, knowing that my parents wouldn’t spring for that, funny as it was, I managed to get them to agree to buy me these two cardboard mini-poster thingies. They were brightly coloured with comic-like font and “witty” sayings. I didn’t know from sayings, so I just picked two and put them up in my bedroom. And they stayed up there till I graduated high school and came to the US. They were about A4 or letter sized and thickish cardboard.

The first one was bright orange and it said:

if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull

.

I think the last word was supposed to be bullshit, but it was marketed to kids, right?

The second one I didn’t really get, and neither did anyone else, and so for some reason that made it hilarious:

Be Alert! The world needs more lerts.

.

I wonder if my parents kept those…

I still have no idea what that means, and it still makes me smile that I don’t.

So Aimee and I started off week 3 of our running programme last night. We were both a little uncertain as to how the 3-minute jogging blocks would go for us. I’d have to say we were both rather pleasantly surprised. It was definitely a tiring workout, but we could have both continued beyond the 3 minutes. It really was rather amazing — and a first for us.

I keep thinking, though, that I need to supplement the running with some upper body type exercises — press-ups and crunches and stuff. I may try one of the lower key Tae-Bo DVDs I have, or I might just do the bits before the floor stomping stuff. We’ll see.

At Dan’s house on Friday, we went to a Hallowe’en party. Since my hair is closely cropped anyway, I decided to “bic” it. Meanwhile, Aimee bought some fiery phoenix type wings. She wore a black outfit and strapped on the red/yellow wings and voila — phoenix lady. I bought a gangster hat that, to me, actually looks more like a reporter’s hat from those old movies. Anyway, I wore a black suit/black shirt with a green tie and the hat over my shaved hat. That’s right, I had 3 costumes on. With the hat, I was a mobster. Without the hat, I was Lex Luthor. Without the hat, sitting down, I was Professor X.

I may put up an actual pic sometime.

Bonus points if you recognise the title of this post.

So, Friday I went in for my verification blood test, as planned. I guess I’ll find out this week some time whether I really do have a gluten allergy or not. While I’m all for being the rare exception, this time it just doesn’t appeal to me. I’d rather be below the radar when it comes to medical things.

Aimee and I also did our third day of jogging week 2 on Friday evening. I got home early in the afternoon (right after my blood test), so we got to go while the sun was still up. It was, however, a little cold. Speaking of the cold: ever since it got cold around here, it seems my knees are acting up somewhat. The tendon or something below my knee cap on both legs (and both sides of each) hurt a bit when I bend my knees, etc. I’ve been applying Tiger Balm every night to my knees and to my achilles’ tendons. It has mainly helped, but my right knee (which I injured about 10 years ago on the b-ball court) still aches a bit on one side.

So anyway, long story short: the run was very good for my spirit, but a bit painful on my lower legs. In many ways, it was the easiest day, but in other ways, it was really really hard. On week 2 runs, you basically do 6 jogging stints of 90 seconds each (with 2 minute walks in between). The first and last 2 jogs were painful, but the three in the middle were like gold. Towards the last few, though, I had to run on the grass rather than the concrete sidewalk, for a bit more comfort.

Yesterday, most of the Boston conspiracy met up for lunch/brunch in Brookline. I did not make it, because my wife and I do the Indian food thing on the weekends. We did not go on Saturday, because the weather was a prohibitively unfriendly. It was basically the perfect day to stay in and drink soup, which we didn’t. We instead had vegetarian chilli, and we had to make a quick run to the grocery store for some ingredients.

Thus, on Sunday we met up with SpanKY and his girlfriend at Boston’s best South Indian Restaurant. Actually, I daresay Chennai Woodlands is simply the best Indian restaurant in the greater Boston area. I grant you, they’re not actually in Boston. In fact, from our house, it takes 45 minutes to get there, with about 75% of that time spent on the freeway travelling at high speed. And it’s always completely worth the journey. The thing is, I don’t like to pimp places, (I like my secrets!) but that’s honest to goodness the best Indian food you’ll find for miles around (barring people’s own home cooking).

They’ve always been friendly, but now it’s gotten to the stage that they know what drinks we want, and what kinds of dosai we want. Maybe that’s sad. And if it is, I’m happily sad.

Anyway, we wound up talking and chatting till the wee hours of the afternoon, so by the time we got back home, the sun had set and the wind had picked up. We decided to demote Sunday from being Day 1 of Jogging Week 3. Monday (tonight) has been promoted to that title, in its stead. I have to say, the whole daylight savings thing helped in screwing that up. Now, every day for the rest of the season, I’ll arrive home after dark, which sucks.

OK, I’ve been asked on a number of occasions since Saturday how I feel. Truth is I don’t feel that much different, physically. The only noticeable thing is that my digestion seems faster, but I’ll chalk that up to psychological.

There is a behavioural difference, though. What I’m not sure about is whether that’s the result of the liver cleanse or the master cleanse. That is this: I chew my food a lot more now, and as a consequence I eat a little slowly. I used to eat really fast, but now, I takes my time about it. I’m still fast, I think, but definitely a lot slower than before. We’ll see how long that lasts. The other thing is this desire for raw foods that I have. Last night we made a pizza and had salad. I had a lot more salad than I did pizza. Also, during the day, I get hungry and I want to eat apples and grapes and stuff. I bring more fresh fruit with me to work than I do leftovers.

Now, let me tell you about Saturday night’s running experience. One word of warning — if you do a liver cleanse, please stay in bed or a couch the whole day/evening. In other words, relax. I thought I was all that and a bag of chips. we hadn’t run since Wednesday. Friday I started the liver cleanse, and couldn’t ingest anything (not even fluids, I don’t think) after 6pm, so running was out then too. So we thought we’d try on Saturday evening. It was really chilly and cold as it is, but we went out.

Saturday for lunch, we went to a Japanese restaurant to have some sushi. Well, I wanted some easy to digest raw food, so miso soup and avocado and cucumber sushi seemed quite appropriate and tasty. I did have a little bit of vegetable tempura as well, mind you. The food was delicious, but let me tell you this. I was feeling pretty tired after the cleanse. Plus, I lost a lot of water in the process, that I apparently didn’t make it up during lunch.

So, five minutes into the running (the second 90 second jog), my lungs and chest started hurting as did my right side. I had to stop because the pain just intensified. So, we decided to just call it a night and started walking home from the park (which is just down our street and across the road). Partway down our block, I started blacking out and feeling like collapsing. I spent a few minutes prone on the ground to get my wind or whatever back. I struggled upstairs and just went to sleep for a few hours, drinking water every now and then. For dinner I had some saag from the dhaba.

Sunday, we went out to Framingham for the superior South Indian food that I hadn’t had in weeks. It delivered as per usual. Oh, here’s a surprise. I didn’t even know. This weekend was Diwali. Aimee and I usually light up candles all over the house to celebrate it, but we didn’t even know it till my sister told me late on Saturday night, and they confirmed it at the restaurant (by wishing us a happy one). Weird.

You might be happy to know that we did indeed go running last night. We decided we’d just do week 2 of the run over again this week. It went well and felt great!

To end: I will do the liver cleanse again in two weeks — my intent is to do it several times until the pea green stuff stops coming out.