My last day

 Monday was my final day of being scoutmaster and it was full of emotions.  We had our quarterly court of honor where we give the boys all their badges, ranks and awards for the past three months.  After the regular ceremony we even had an eagle court of honor.  The last part of business was my final bit and being scoutmaster for four and a half years has been so good for me and the ol diabetes.  One family in the troop that joined about the same time I did with my son was so nice to collect stories from everyone and what I meant to each of them.  It was this awesome 30 page book of things even I forgot about or didn't even know it affected the other person so much but it was extremely humbling to receive.  Then they said some nice things about me and gave me a lithograph picture of Norman Rockwell's "The Scoutmaster."  That was the cherry on top.

As a boy my first scout handbook (and only handbook) was the ninth edition with the most awesome Norman Rockwell picture on it of what in my head was the perfect day out camping.  Boys cooking, adults overseeing and advising, and others playing around.  When the tenth edition of the scout handbook came out it had these pictures of scouts rappelling and camping but it was not this nostalgic rendition of what camp was like.  So to get the awesome picture of "The Scoutmaster" was amazing and I stayed up till12:30am reading all the stories (OK yes I shed a few tears).  I remember as a kid my best friend and I sitting on my couch thumbing through the pages of our scout handbooks, looking at the pictures of snares, fishing nets, camp gadgets and with all the instructions on how to build them.  This was the true dangerous book for boys in my mind and will always be my favorite scout handbook.

 



 One of the boys mother made me a book bag with my name on it and sewed this 100 aniversary of the eagle rank patch on it.  How do all these people know me so well?  One thing that has always bugged me was using those re-usable grocery bags, because they are all made with girlie looks and colors.  I have two Texas Rangers bags but the rest are flowery and stuff.  Now I can add this to my re-usable grocery tote stockpile and get groceries like a real man with one less girly bag.

Last thing I have to say is these CGM things are awesome, I totally love this sucker just there are a couple of non-related related issues.  The first is just before I was aware I was a diabetic like all the time but, I only knew what my BG's were ten times a day.  Now, I always know my BG's, everyone at work knows my BG's, and it stresses me out with those freakin arrows.  Last is now that I am not just aware of my diabetes all the time, know my BG's all the time, everyone around me knows my BG's and trending it creates this non-eating thing inside of me or if I do want to eat I want to be very pro-active with the insulin just so I don't have to go over another hill on the roller coaster of BG charts, just to watch it fall fast to the sea level marker.  How do the rest of you do this?  I guess after a while I will get used to it, just for right now I am aware of anything that is near me that might even be considered a carb.

Ouch my Butt.

 Saturday the whole family went for a bike ride.  We did the "Autumn in Bonham" bike rally and all three of us did the 65 mile course.  I need to figure out a way to carry a camera on bike rides.  I always have my cell phone on me but it is sealed in a zip lock bag and tucked away in my emergency belt thing and is impossible to get into while riding.

 The ride was alot of fun and had nice rolling hills, good rest stops, and great people along the course.  Above you can see a picture of my bike seat.  Now if you are not familiar with bikes and their seats, mine is of the larger and wider side.  These kind of seats are considered the basic seat for someone who has no callus on their bums and need the cush on their toosh.  I could move to a more aggressive seat but for now it feels great.  I really like the shape of how the front part I can use for aggressive pedaling, then the rear part I can use to crank it up hills in the sitting position then when I get tired the middle section has a nice dip in it so to give me a relaxing spot during the long boring parts of a ride.  Put the three parts together and I have a great multi-position seat.

Back in 04 or so a friend of ours gave me a seat he had that was what he considered as old (like two seasons) and had no use for it any longer so he gave it to me.  This was a very expensive seat in its day and probably should still be considered expensive now.  This seat though is an extremely aggressive seat that I call "The Battle Axe" because it feels like you are sitting on an axe after about two hours on it.  My son loves this seat because it is Italian and done up in all sorts of cool stuff.  The thing is on a 65 mile bike ride his bum was worn out in about two hours for several reasons.  First was he trained a bit too much during the week, then he was having an allergy cold, and last it is a freakin axe between your legs.  So the nice father that I am switched seats for the rest of the ride and my son completed his first 65 (technically it was like 64.7 miles but who is counting) and lived to see another day.  I was real proud of him for pushing through the pain of his back, butt, and cold to see it through and I was walking afterwards like I wiped my but with a cactus.  Man that seat is a killer.

Diabetes Christmas!

 Today is Diabetes Christmas, Today is Diabetes Christmas, Yes it is Diabetes Christmas for me!  That special day all of us pumping diabetics love, when we get a new pump.  I have shown you pictures of my quality Animas IR 1200 which has taken a licking and kept on ticking but her time has come and should have been about two years ago but I was a dummy and tried to do the Omnipod thing and have been left to resort to my old pump ever since.  The first thing my dietitian and I went over was the cool new One Touch Pingy thingy that is a glucose meter that communicates to your pump.  Now I can test my BG's and send over my bolus from my pingy thingy.  This was one of the few features that the Omnipod had that when I resorted to the IR1200 I missed but now I get it back.  The thing is about the pingy thingy is that the meter almost feels like of some quality build and material.  That is different from any other meter I have ever used.

 The next Diabetes Christmas item I got was my Dexcom seven thingy.  Now this thing is like cool, and yes I know that I am about the last diabetic on the planet that now has a CGM but now my BG's are a game and keeping the dots between the lines is fun.  Now for the freakin 1980's case is something less than desirable even for a dork like myself so if you know of another way to fashion this thing to my belt please shoot me an email: davehennesey@hotmail.com

 Then the pup itself, is the pump called the pingy thingy or is the meter the pingy thingy?  Either way I call it my pump and the meter is the pingy thingy.  This thing is kind of a small let down in certain ways but kind of good in others.  The thing is there is nothing different from the interface, look, and feel of the pump from my old IR1200 which is good for a non-techno idiot that I am.  The bad is when you get something new you want bells and whistles to say "hey I have a new pump" not something that looks 100% like your old pump.  The first thing I did with my old pump was to take the battery cap, cartridge cap thing and the belt clip in my spare parts bag.  Since I have been an Animas guy for a while I know how much those things cost and how often they break.  The things that are not warrantied by Animas are always the things that go.

Today I spent 1 hour and 50 minutes with my mail order pharmacy for almost no reason.  I must tell you that mail order pharmacies are 90% hate for me and 10% frustration because you talk to call center morons that tell you they can't do this or do that because it is corporate policy but they never thing about how if you don't get it you are dead.  The first thing was they did not receive my insulin prescription from my doctor and my old script expired two days ago.  Now lets talk about the three, almost four years I have been getting my insulin from them and they can't send me any out because it expired two freakin days ago?  I am not ordering 1-800 flowers, I am getting live saving meds and I use you every 90 days.  The next thing was since I switched to the pingy thingy I needed to get strips ordered but my script is for freestyle and the pingy thingy takes one touch.  Do you think they can just fill the script with the different strips?  Oh hell no they can't because they are not the same and they don't do the same thing so I needed a new script for the pingy strips.  I let the person know how stupid that sounded that I would have two scripts on file (for the same thing) that I can get both filled every 90 days because the company sees them as different, hey I just found out a way to scam my insurance company for 900 test strips every month.  Now I know to get a script for five different meters so now I can get 900 test strips (oh yeah I test 10 times a day) times five scripts every 90 days.  Bring on the apocalypse because I am going to be stocked with test strips for a long time (or until the insurance realizes how freakin stupid they are and change the policy to just allow one script for test strips).  When you go to your local pharmacy you get to know the people behind the counter pretty well (because you are diabetic and you are there every week) and with that relationship you both can reasonably deduct and find solutions to problems the short, fast, and easy way.  Call center mail order pharmacies will be the death of all diabetics in this country, mark my words on it.  Company policy over three years of ordering insulin and oh yeah my insurance covers it.  That is truly dum with a "b" at the end of it.

Am I getting too old?

 My friend Don and I were running this nice trail in Plano and we were talking about all the things along the trail that he had names for, there is a power station thing and he told me that he called it something and I told him how I called it the cancer station.  Then he told me how the power lines that run along the trail cause interference with his meter and so it made him think of how even though he is outdoors running it is still underneath these cancer emitting lines.

 I am sure most of you have heard about Plano, TX and how it is like this innovate city and stuff but one thing they did do really good was their ability to make something useful out of unoccupiable land.  Say these high voltage power lines, you can't put buildings under them so the city made these sweet wide trails for bikers, walkers, weirdo's, freaks, and others to enjoy.  Don and I tried to figure out how long you can travel on just trails in Plano without having to follow a road and with minimal street crossings we came up with about 30 miles of continuous trails but, if you did some fancy neighborhood usage and a couple of major street crossings you add another 40 or so miles easily.  Then they sprinkled in baseball fields, dog parks, Frisbee golf courses and all sorts of things for everyone to come out and enjoy.

I stole this picture from Nikki's twitter page  @Celiabetes because I not only LOL'd once but I LOL'd twice it was so funny.  The thing is we all probably know at least three people off the top of our heads that are like this.

How am I getting too old you ask?  I was in my truck a while back listening to the radio.  Usually I have the radio on some solid AM talk radio due to Dallas has the worst music stations on the planet.  The radio was playing this song and I was really into it and started to sing along saying: "Hot Sauce to the Moon" and my son looks over at me like I am from another planet and proceeds to tell me that he was not sure of the words to the song but he knew I was a million miles away from whatever they were saying in the song.  So I did a little research so I could download the song on my Zune Player (Microsoft phones are the bomb!) and found out it was by Chevelle and of course my son was right because he was not saying: "Hot Sauce to the Moon" but instead was saying: "Hats off to the Bull."  Now, I feel like my father felt when I was in the backyard one day playing my new Aerosmith "Pump" cassette while chopping up tree limbs.  He was so lost listening to them, now I am not lost listening to today's music, I just need an urban dictionary to understand the words.

Tags and stuff

 I was driving home last night and came across this sweet Range Rover.  These Range Rovers are like 70 grand and then I notice their license plate and they have a personalized tag that if you can't read it in the picture of "PIPKIN."    Who in the world pays that much money for a car and puts a personalized license plate tag of pipkin?  The only thing I think of is when I read it is: kick me in the nuts because my license plate says pipkin.  Aren't personalized license plates like tattoos, where you get something that is close and personal to you?  Freakin pipkin, if I came across pipkin in a dark diabetic alley trust me they would be holding their nuts because a swift one would come their way.

 During my Saturday run my buddy Don was telling me about some of the T-shirts he designs and puts out on the inter-web.  One of them cracked me up so much I almost had to stop running because I was laughing so hard,  Gardening:  It's all about the ditches and the hoes.  How funny is that, I am so going to have to get one made from this inter-web page my friend puts these on.

 No matter what it is, or where it is, if it is something that is popular in this country it will eventually make it's way to Dallas.  We recently had the latest trend open a store here and that is the "Trader Joe's" healthy store thing.  While I was in San Diego in June the locals kept talking about Trader Joe's and since this new one opened up down from my work I thought I would take a walk down the isles.  I came across these "Teeny Tiny Yellow Potatoes" which I guess they are genetically modified in some sort of organic way that makes them safe for Joe's to sell them.

The question that kept popping in to my head was, what in the world do you do with these teeny tiny potatoes?  Do you make miniature baked potatoes, do you make miniature fries, do you make miniature potato salad, or miniature mashed potato's, or miniature scalloped potato's?  What do you do with these things?  They are the cutest thing in the world but I could not figure out what you do with them.

Yoga Doggie Style

 This past Saturday I hosted my first Dawn Phenom event and even though we did not have the best participation it was a ton of fun had by all.  We did a nice run down a local trail system that has well over 20 miles of connected continuous wide lane trails.  I did a solid 8 miles then as the rest went on I saw a group doing some exercises that I thought to leech on and join.

 I see these people in a field doing some yoga and since I just ran eight miles it seemed like a good time to join them.  The good thing about being a social butterfly that I am and having the abilities of a leech to join in I grabbed some grass and went straight into plank with the rest of the group.  We did a few yoga things, something like downward diabetes thing, and warrior insulin pump other thing, then the group broke out their dogs and did obedience training.

 Come to find out this was a yoga-dog training class and they mixed in yoga, obedience, and circuit training.  I was so jealous of the rest of the class and wanted to have my little hellions, I mean dogs with me to get in a good workout with the pups along my side.  Once the class was over the instructor was nice and let me know they meet there every Saturday at 9:00am and I was more than welcome to come next time with my dogs and we got into a discussion about diabetes and he let me know about a friend of his that their son was just diagnosed with type 1 (the bad kind) sugar diabetes and I just felt so bad.  I never like hearing about anyone coming down with this damned disease and he let me know that the boy was the only diabetic in his school as well.  That totally reminded me of my school days where I was the only freak that could not eat candy and had to leave in the middle of class to get a freaking peanut butter and cracker snack every day and write it down.  School was about the most depressing thing for my diabetes and I felt like the stupidest kid that couldn't eat candy.  Why couldn't I have one of those designer diseases where you lose your hair, have seizures, body deformities, but no I just cant process sugars and that  sucked.  OK, so back to my day and we talked and I told him about www.insulindependence.org and how he needed to get this kid with us so that he could feel normal and hang out with others that know how to properly duct tape snicker bars to your inner thighs just so you can sneak them past the "you shouldn't be eating that police."

Since we were next to a dog park others came by with their dogs and the teacher was so nice to work with them and the other participants joined in and everyone was like family.  I felt at home with this group and am going to have to do a future dawn phenom event with these people.  Don't you just love it when a day is so perfect and everyone is nice and the dogs let you pet them and to top it off you get some good exercise with good people.  Sometimes having diabetes puts you in the right place, at the right time, with the right people.

I am either one or the other?

OK, so you probably can't read the test results above but they are from my recent visit to the Endo and they show that my HGB and HCT thingies are low.  From what my doctor says is that is my iron.  What do you do when you get results back from your doctor and things you are not aware of say "high" or "low," of course we all go on the inter-web and do some research.  I find out that low iron causes two things, lowered energy and increased heart rate.  Then at that moment the ceiling above me opened up and light shined down from above and an orchestra did that dumb, dumb DE dum thing with the kettle bells because this might be another part of my laziness, I mean tired, lack of energy, and increased heart rate while exercising.  The doctor says to just take an over the counter iron supplement and all should be well.  Then I grabbed my truck keys and drove off to my friendly CVS.

I get to CVS and run over to the little coupon machine and it spits me out some horrible makeup coupons and buy one get one free candy coupons (don't they know I am sugar diabetic?) and haul booty to the vitamin area.  The vitamin area is set up in alphabetical order so I scan through the vitamin A's on through the G's and H's then it skips over Iron and on to the rest of the alphabet.  I then go to the next brand and it does the same and so on and so on.  Then I think about it and maybe Iron is not called iron in the vitamin world, maybe it is like GMBH or something so I look at all the vitamins that I don't know what they do and no such luck on Iron.  I break down and ask the pharmacist where the iron is and she lets me know it is in a different section than the rest of the vitamins (they segregate vitamins?).  The nice lady shows me that I can get iron either in some sort of infant pedialite with iron in it or the menopause supplement section.  So this makes me wonder why either infants or older ladies, does this mean I am going through menopause or something, and of course all the iron pills are on the bottom shelf so I have to get on my hands and knees in the menopause section reading the labels about fast acting, long slow release, and settle on your tummy formulas till I decided on just getting the highest dosage I could find.  Now that I have had a few days if iron in me (OK, I am a guy and all guys take about 500% what the bottle says if we can get a faster reaction out of the stuff) and feel like the stuff is doing some good in me.  Saturday I had my first dawn phenom event and we ran 8 miles at a good 10 minute mile pace and I joined a doggy training/yoga class afterwards (I am a leech and kind of just jumped right into the class) which was real fun.  The other wierd thing about this iron supplement is how my blood sugars ride at a nice level now even after polishing off half a pizza sunday.

Sniff, Sniff, looks like surgery

 Sometimes I don't know if I am just a complainer (I blame it on the sugar diabetes) or if I really do have issues (more than just mental issues).  I have told you all about my extreme tiredness since February and I thought for sure the summer would cure it because my allergies usually go away when the heat hits the high 90's but no cure for this diabetic camper.  I saw my endo and she tested my testosterone and I am not lying but she said: "Dave your little testes are working to the max."  I could not stop laughing at that because what she meant was that my testosterone level was at the high end instead of the low end which can contribute to being tired and stuff (so they tell me).  Now we are at the end of summer and the camping season is picking up and I don't have the energy to first exercise at any sort of good pace and second my want to go camping is at a weird low point.  When have I ever not wanted to go camping?  Something has to be wrong.

I finally went to one of those eyes, nose, ears, head and toes, head and toes (wait that is a song not a doctor) I mean ENT doctors and he had me do a kitty cat scan, put me on some antibiotics and steroids.  I was a bit upset with him not telling me what steroids do to a diabetic.  Lets just say you take the pill and in about thirty minutes your meter will tell you things like high, 400, what the freak are you eating, and so on.  I made the basal adjustments and my endo said I was a gold star performer while on the roids.  Then a couple of days ago I get the news at my most recent visit to the ENT doc and he says, no more roid rage for you buddy it is time for a nose job and balloon thingies.  The top picture he said needs the two big circles to not have the grey at the bottom so some sort of balloon thing will be injected into my nose and he will reshape the insides of my scull.  Then the bottom picture he says is my crooked nose that needs bone taken out to allow proper snot flowage or something. 

The office has not called me yet to make the date for surgery but there is one thing I really like about this doctor.  He told me that my wussiness is caused by this and he will be the guy that can fix it with me.  Have you ever had a doctor tell you something like that?  Usually they are like, well umm it could be this or maybe that and lets do a little of this and that.  I don't like doctors that can't hit the ball and this guy gave me a game plan, let me know what I needed to do, what he was going to do (something about a lobotomy?), and tests down the road so I know why I am a wuss.  Now I have hope for the future that I can run a 5k in under 30 minutes again and be a normal sugar diabetic like the rest of you.

Sometimes I wonder who puts this stuff out there.

I am always on the lookout for camping tips, diabetes tricks, and outdoor adventures that are on the cheap.  Recently I was searching the inter-web about "diabetes camping" to see if anyone had put anything out there that I was not doing and could try for myself.  I came across an item on the JDRF inter-web page about "Hiking and Camping Smarts" and had to read it right away.  Maybe they read my blog and decided to see what the number one expert in this field does, but how I was so disappointed on many levels and also surprised at the things I did learn.

http://kids.jdrf.org/index.cfm?page_id=109735

Above is the link to the inter-web page and the two ladies that are given credit for the article have some good background on the subject and are medical professionals but I personally dislike it when there is a huge focus on the parents, doctors, families to do the work for the diabetic no matter what the age (OK so like under 9 they should all be doing this but with the diabetic involved in every step).  I have cut and pasted from the inter-web below:

Older kids going away from home should work closely with their care providers to adjust their routine; Dr. Simon advises that children under age 8 not be away from parents (Mom or Dad: consider going to camp! You can serve as a cook or other staff member and be available if needed).
- This part is pretty good, having the diabetic work with people on what they should do.  Remember diabetics are the one with the disease and need to be able to do it themselves and then educate others how to take care of them if anything comes up, and don't be a cook at your kids camp just to keep an eye on them let them get out from under your wings.

When going to a nondiabetes camp, such as a scout or church camp, your parents, care providers and camp medical staff should make a game plan ahead of time. For instance, each day at dinnertime Dr. Simon receives a phone call from her patients' camps to discuss daily food and activity so she can prescribe proper dosages.
- If you are calling your doctor everyday from camp either you have too much money or need to get kicked in the nuts for having to discuss meals with your doctor hundreds of miles away.  Freakin learn your diet either it is carb counting or something else but your doctor did not see what you did all day nor do they know what you are doing later.  Hang up the phone and have fun and test all the damn time if you are worried about your numbers getting low and work with the staff medic.  It is a thing called "trust" get familiar with it because you need it with diabetes.

Make sure you can call your doctor anytime from camp. If your camp is not willing to cooperate with your needs, don't go!
- The camp medic should have your medical form on file with your doctors name and number and be aware of your disease and be willing to work with you but if they let you even use a phone at camp that is a camp to never attend again.  There is a reason it is called camping and not sitting in the city on your computer and cell phone LOL'ing with your doctor all day.

Always keep water with you. On hikes, carry water purification tablets. With diabetes you are at extra risk of dehydration.
- This is great advice and I have mentioned it several times on my blog.  Water purification tables fit in anything and can save your life.

Be eco-smart and prepare ahead of time for carrying out your used supplies from a hike. Clip your needles, recap and then double-bag with used lancets and other trash.
- A little bit of common sense here but don't stress the "eco" part too much, first be safe with your disease then worry about that carbon insulin foot print thing later.

Pumpers: Always carry supplies for shots in case of emergency, as well as extra batteries and insulin.
- This is very important and you need to know exactly what to do because I have had every sort of issue with my pump in the backwoods and having a brain on my head and some simple backup supplies has helped me tremendously.  When in doubt bring two extras of everything.  I carry three extra meters because once I had two meters go dead on me.

Make sure an adult will be checking you in the middle of the night, especially after a day of strenuous activity.
- I don't know about this one, I recommend the tent buddies or bunk mates to be aware and willing to help if anything arises.  Trust me when you are low whoever is in that tent with you will be awake and should know what to do.  The tent buddies should know where the adults are and know to get them once you have stuck the diabetic in the but with his glucagon and stuffed his mouth with gummy bears.

When hiking, carry your supplies in the middle of your pack next to your back, so the sun will not be beating down on them. Also consider packing a second set elsewhere, in case one falls into a river or ravine!
- This is excellent advice and I have never thought about teaching this, see what searching the inter-web can find you new learning's all the time, even for the diabetic camper himself.

Keep your meters inside your sleeping bags. They won't work or will provide inaccurate readings if too cold.

- I found this one out the hard way and now do this anytime it is below 50 degrees.  Remember there are no meters made to be outdoors for more than like ten minutes.  They are free pieces of crap that go in the trash every six months or so.  Heck if it is pretty darned cold use several types of meters and do an average of them all. 

Why do people do this to me?

 Recently I was behind this Honda Fit car and I noticed they put a couple of bumper stickers on the back that really stood out to me.  Now I never claim to be the smartest person in the room, and I am about as sharp as a box of wet hair but I do know my basics about life.  The bumper sticker on the right says " it's a chicken not a choice."  What in the world does that mean?  I remember a disturbing TV commercial from my childhood where a guy sitting in a chair with gym shorts on, no shirt, and puts on one sock then the commercial cuts away and a voice person says "saving a life is as easy as putting on a sock."  I saw this commercial all the time and finally asked my mother what it meant and she told me it was a reference to putting on a condom.  At that point I realized that my mind is stupidly curious about dumb stuff.  So my question to all of you is what in the hell does this bumper sticker mean and why did I take pictures of it?

Here is my son doing a little archery last Saturday.  This was part of a program where they are trying to promote archery in the school system.  I think it is like bring a bow an arrow instead of a gun to school kind of thing but I am not for sure.  He was a little upset with me at the beginning because I told him not to bring his bow because they provided everything.  I figured they would have state of the art equipment to get the kids into the sport but instead it was generic low poundage compound bows and if I would have at least had him bring his bow he could have used it once we saw the equipment they provided (leason learned for me).  In the end he had a blast and they did 3 rounds at 15 yards, 3 rounds at 10 yards, then had this cool thing where they had everyone shoot at a pile of boxes they set up about 80 yards away and did one of those brave heart shots with everyone shooting at the same time (just without the people being hit on the other side).  The only bad thing is that archery and bow hunting are worlds apart so if I invested 2,500 bucks into an archery bow, I still would have to get him a hunting bow.

Fajita mix!

 This has been the summer of salsa for me.  I am currently probably eating two to three gallons of salsa a week.  I used to buy two 32 oz jars a week now I buy more and make trips to the store for extra at weak times.  I think it is just that salsa is so good in the heat and a few weeks ago while stocking up on chips, cheese, and salsa I came across this fajita seasoning mix.  I was curious because we like fajitas and usually just grill up chicken add in some peppers and onions and call it done but a seasoning to make fajitas I had to try.

 First you grill up some meat and we always use chicken because it is cheap, healthy, and easy.  I have one of those George Foreman style paninni sandwich maker things and just do two chicken breasts.

 Then I sauteed some onions in a pan with a table spoon of oil or so.  They cook up till about 3/4 done before adding the meat and seasoning with some water to mix it all up.  I only use onions because it is 1.29 for a three pound bag of white onions and bell peppers are running a buck each.  Originally I started with just one onion but grilled onions are great so now I do like three onions to the two chicken breasts.

 Here everything is all cooked up and let me tell you something, this fajita mix is the bomb.  I don't know what is in it but even my wife is like "This fajita mix is just about as good as any restaurant." Now that I have looked at other stores besides Aldi, I see that most grocery stores carry some sort of fajita mix and if you like fajitas then you must try this stuff.  I have had this for almost every night for two weeks and I need to go back to the store to get more.  This has also been a year for crunchy tacos so this mix goes into a crunchy shell with some refried beans, alot of salsa, and the mix.

A few years ago my wife bought some jalapeno refried beans and I have been hooked ever since.  The only problem I ever come across is occasionally my son wants some refried beans and he does not like jalapenos.

If you are bored with your everyday cooked chicken and boring vegetables than I must recommend getting some of this fajita mix stuff.  I think there must be crack in it or something to make it so good.

Windows 8 phone

 This has been a pretty exciting week for people like me who adopt the smallest, fringiest, and remotest technologies.  I have told you all about how freakin awesome the windows phones are and this week Nokia released their new phones running on the windows 8 platform thing.  Something like dual core this and gigahertz thingy that with bells and whistles galore.  All I want to know is can it do the same stuff just better than my phone?  The Zune player is the greatest invention on planet earth.

 The first phone on the windows 8 platform was released by Samsung but it was a European model so I am not sure how to convert everything from euro this to dollar that or even centimeter those to inches of these thing-a-ma-bobs.  I did read that Samsung took  like physical architecture into the feel of their phone and it like has the right bezel to not get smudged and the buttons have textures and elevations to be able to find them while not looking.

With all these patent lawsuits and every smart phone looking and doing the same stuff got me thinking.  The handset makers should do each phone for a different use.  Currently the all look like shiny black bricks and sound and look the same but what if they made one for film and photography and it had some sort of awesome 300 giga-things to take pictures and it also had manual zooms and things.  Then they make another one for people like me who want great sound like my current phone the HTC surround with its first and only phone to have surround sound speakers built into it.  Then they could make one small for people who like their phone to fit in their pocket and another phone for outdoor use that was like from the factory water resistant and had the rubber band thing made into the phone say like those Panasonic smartbook laptops do.  In the end is any of this stuff important to them, no they just make more black bricks with nothing to stand out from the next black brick cell phone.  Last I noticed that the screens are getting to the size of some peoples home TVs it looks like.  Don't get me wrong, seeing my screen is important but when do we call it quits on making cell phones bigger again?  Who knows maybe these new fancy phones will come out and be on sale and I can get one earlier than my usual wait for them to go down in price and on sale.

last weekend I spent my first night in the new High Peak Sirius 50 degree sleeping bag that I picked two up for 20 bucks with 5 dollar shipping.  These are actually quite nice sleeping bags with only the side girth as an issue so far.  The diameter of these bags are on the smaller side so they do the mummy thing to you but so far I have been extremely happy and can't wait to spend more nights getting cozy in this bag till the winter season hits.

Winding down

 Wow how time gets by me and I miss two quality days of posting on my blog.  Sorry to all you out there I just got busy at work and sometimes you have to make the money so you can afford to play on the blog.  Any way I know it is the end of the summer when my insulin pump starts looking like the photo above.  There is a good reason why everything I have is always covered in dirt, dirt just likes me.  I told you all about how I have learned the secret to not sweating your pump site off in 100 degree heat while trying to mow 15 acres with a push mower, and that is the glory of baby powder.  The only thing is that baby powder isn't just good at keeping sweat off your pump site but it also gets everywhere.  Someone needs to come up with a device that is used for cleaning insulin pumps.  Kind of like a multi-tool for diabetes.  My dietitian cleans my pump every time I see her so I also know it is time to make an appointment.

 The other day my son had an orthodontist appointment and we showed up a good 30 minutes early so we hung out in the parking lot and noticed this rabbit harassing the birds.  Kind of seemed funny a rabbit chasing birds and running around in the parking lot like they owned the place.

Three hours after the appointment I found out they took off his braces instead of doing an adjustment.  He was so happy to have those things off.

Last weekend my son and I started to work on his life goal of shooting a deer and that started with me first trying to mow down some weeds and us planting some rye grass and oat seeds for a food plot.  Then we put out deer treats so maybe if we spend enough money he will get one.  The above pictures are of my neighbors dogs out by our land.  I know what you are all thinking, that the beagle looks just like MoMo and yes he does,  The scouts named him Buddy back in April and now I guess he has a basset hound that my son named "Los Hombre" which he tells me means the friend.  These are the best two dongs on the planet, they wanted to play with our dogs (our dogs are not so friendly) and they hung out with us all night and followed us all over.  One time back in May we were out on the ranch and I had this deer come running at me and then turned and Buddy was right after him chasing him all over the place.  Can a dog be used to hunt deer?  I really have to figure out this hunting thing.  My son went out to shoot dove the other day and came back with a squirrel?