Ping Pong humor!

So I love going to my local rec center.  I have told you how I am not like captain athlete and stuff.  So going to a gym and feeling the burn is about four level's above my athlete grade.  So the rec center is full of random middle aged people like me fighting off the last bad meal that we ate.  Wednesday nights I like to swim, oh and I realized that the more a pool is used the less pee there is in it and the rec center has teams practicing all the time in it so they have to clean, treat, and remove the pee on a very regular schedule.  Anyways, Wednesday nights is also ping pong and bad mitten night at the rec center.  I love being in the locker room during ping pong talk.  I overheard a couple of guys talk about how you don't buy a ping pong paddle.  You buy the wood or polymer that you like, then the glue and the pad separate and make your ping pong paddle.  Therefore you can control the bounce and grip and all sorts of stuff.  I was fascinated with this conversation.  Oh, and they all carry the paddles in hilarious bags.  One guy has a metal pistol case he keeps his in and most guys have those toiletry bags with their paddles and balls in them.  About a month or so ago I was walking from my truck to the rec center and I heard the funniest conversation ever on the planet earth (or at least to me it was)!  Like three guys were walking up to the door at the same time I was, holding their shaving kits, I mean ping pong paddle bags.  Then a guy comes out by slamming the door open and all red faced saying in a loud ping pong voice: There is no F-ing ping pong tonight.  The other guys are like, what?  The red faced guy: They are F-ing redoing the basketball court floors again so they aren't having F-ing ping pong tonight.  The other guys join in: No F-ing ping pong tonight, but it is Wednesday night and that is always F-ing ping pong night.  Then another guy says, they just F-ing re-did the basketball courts, why couldn't they tell us last Wednesday that F-ing ping pong is going to be canceled for this Wednesday?  This was all I got from the conversation but, to hear grown men using the "F" word with ping pong and being mad as hell was absolutely hysterical.  How can anyone be mad and be able to say F-ing ping pong in a serious tone? 

Bag of Diabetes

Back in August I was out camping.  I was prepared with four spare infusion sets, long acting insulin in case my pump broke, some IV prep, and of course the usually millions of test strips and batteries.  We headed out on a Friday night and by the time it was 11:00am on Saturday morning I only had one infusion set left.  At this point I made the call to my good buddy Jeff who was off the wagon, I mean his pump for the past two or so years.  It has been fifteen years since I haven't had a penis, I mean insulin pump attached to my belly.  So he and I talked over the phone and I saved my last infusion set and went to old school diabetes 101 basics of long term insulin and short term insulin.  I of course shot short on all my insulins at first not wanting to go low while pooping in the woods or anything.  In the end the rest of the camping trip was a success but I lingered for more of this non pump lifestyle.  So I kept my pump off for another day, then a week, and now it has been something like two months and being pump free has been the most amazing diabetes break of my life.  I now know why the caged bird sings or something like that.  I understand why Jeff stopped using his pump.  I don't know how long I will stay this way but for now I am enjoying it.  The other cool thing is that I quit using my diabetes man purse and went to another cool trick that Jeff does.  He just puts his diabetes crap in a zip lock bag and goes with it.  I started doing this and have loved it as well.  I embrace the scared person who actually can see a needle in my bag or a vial of clear liquid.  The shock and awe I see in peoples eyes finally lets me show the world that I have a disease and let me have it.  Not, hey you just don't eat cookies and everything is good right, kind of society.  I embrace my diabetes and if you ever want to see men and women nearly go into a panic attack, I recommend you to do the zip lock bag test and report to me what you see.

Biolite review

You all know that I am slightly obsessed with flashlights and lights in general.  If you don't then let me tell you that I am obsessed with having a flashlight to run with, a flashlight that is brighter than the sun, a flashlight in my truck that is easily used as a weapon, and a flashlight or area light for my tent.  My current tent light is approaching near death and when I replace the batteries there is always the fear of losing an eye because one of the springs isn't connected any longer and shoots out when the battery is pulled from it.  Technology has come a long way in the whole area light backpacking/camping world and I have had my eye on this thing called the powerlight by biolite inc.  It is an area light, a flashlight, and also has a USB thing to charge things.  Then the coolest part is that you can get these LED attaching lights that connect to it and you can string them up in trees and make a outdoor party atmosphere (it does not come with a margarita mixer).  The next thing I knew was it went on sale, buy the whole system and get an extra two area lights and free shipping.  I was instantly sold and bought one.

It is hard to tell but this sucker is amazing!  The only thing that I should have done differently is turned off the main powerlight and just used the area lights.  Plus the guys didn't make fun of me (or at least to my face they didn't).  That is a huge win in my book.  Right now we are having fun with an ongoing joke about "North Face" people.  You know the types that have the rainbow North Face logo on everything they can get and drive a Subaru while eating gourmet hand fed granola and free range chocolate bars from third world countries and stuff.  So anyways we usually say something like: That is what those North Face people would do.  Then the other person goes into a shame explanation how it was on sale and bla bla, bla.  Good times with the comedy.  There are all sorts of new area lights coming out that probably do a better job and are cheaper but I just love the little things that biolite put into this system to give it that extra quality and care, like they use this stuff themselves and realize that a fabric cord is so much easier and softer to roll up or the magnets to stick it to things.  Small things matter in my life so this gets three syringes and a pricked finger for how awesome and good the powerlight and area lights work from biolite.

I did "it" or something like "it"

I saw this picture thing on the book of faces and had to snag it for myself.  Very under rated diabetes comedy in that one.  So anyways, I have always had dreams of actually almost being in the athletic crowd all my life.  I kind of almost feel that way when I do marathons, but have always known that I had to do something bigger and diabetesier than that.  Then I met my favorite diabetes mentor Vic.  He is captain cool and ultra athletic and has allowed me to almost follow him around two steps behind him or so.  Then one day he told me to do one of those 70.3 triathlon things.  I almost peed my pants, puked up non diabetes friendly food, and kicked him in the shin for saying that.  Complete shock.  This was like two or so years ago.  Ever since then I have been trying to do athlete style things and wearing athlete style outfits and eating athlete looking food.  The thing was every year I would get so far then oh a heart surgery, or allergies, or diabetes would rear its ugly head up and put me out of the game for several months.  Then it was start it all over again with the athlete sleeping schedule, and athlete tv shows.  You get the point, that it felt like I would never stay alive or healthy long enough to actually be able to give someone lots of money to let me finish one of their 70.3 triathlon athlete events.  Then this year happened, I did one marathon and felt good, did another marathon and felt good, did a 100 mile bike ride and still felt good, so I put the small fortune down to be a participant in the Redman 70.3 triathlon in August.

I was so nervous about the swim and bought a wet suit and have been in the pool most Wednesdays (not in my wet suit) trying to slightly almost keep up with the actual triathlete people or the little kids in swim classes.  The funny thing was that the 1.2 mile swim was the best part.  I felt like doing the 2.4 mile swim would be great.  The bike was rough (Oklahoma winds just really started to get annoying after a while) and the run was of course 91 degrees in the middle of the afternoon (yes people because I am slow) but it was great.  I walked a bit, ran about 3/4 of a mile, walked a bit and loved it all.  I think this constant year after year, issue after issue has pushed me into just relaxing and having fun mode that I love.  When I finished I was tired but knew that I beat my personal time of arrival (I figured 8 hours and did it in 7:46 hours).  Baby sat my nephew that night and slept in till almost noon the next day and now I can officially say that I am almost arms distance from being only a couple of miles away from being the athlete type of person and am proud of my participation medal (we are supposed to not accept participation medals because only first through third should be able to show off their accomplishments or something like that I am told).  So I am going to keep training and see if I can't be ready in just slightly under a year for the Wisconsin actual ironman official full triathlon athlete thing.

https://jstrawberry.wordpress.com/

 

I have an update on my last post.  First I have to apologize to Jules (she is the lady who writes the above blog) that when she read my last post about her blog about our dates.  She was actually on time to the first date and I was late fifteen minutes because of getting turned around.  I enjoyed dating her for the short time it was but am pretty sure that my complete idiot'ness and getting everything messed up has ruined my opportunity for anything more to happen (she also wasn't impressed when I read on her blog that she was going to call it off with me and I had all of you post nice things about me a winning move either, it actually did the opposite).   

A view from the other side

I love that there are almost many people that miss reading my blog.  For some reason I have just been in like a year long or so funk and haven't had the energy to post random things that happen in my life lately.  I miss it as well and have recently had a gaggle of things that I have been trying to write about but they all just come down to half baked ideas and thoughts that aren't blog worthy.  Till recently when I just got the amazing juices flowing.

I have been single for a while now and dating ladies is a lot of fun.  The getting to know the basics of kids, home life, and hobbies.  Then the first date and everything else about the whole process is great.  I embrace pretty much anything and everything that comes my way or is in my life, sometimes I embrace having diabetes too much some say.  Who knows, but I just enjoy all of it and love the amazing adventures and opportunities that have come my way.

Recently I dated a lady who is right up my alley.  She loves to hike, has a great personality, and is very attractive.  We have been on three fun dates and then the wildest thing happened.  I was on the inter-web and came across a blog that she has.  How amazing is that?  Another huge awesome quality we share so she earns another gold star.  Curious as I am I clicked on the blog and it was like opening Pandora's box or something.  Come to find out that she is like a serial dater and her blog and not to mention book she has written is all about finding guys to date and write about it on her blog.  I enjoyed reading it so much because it is like seeing the dates from her point of view without telling me them directly making it more sincere and stuff.  From the beginning I knew that this was not "the one" or anything.  She is a brilliant thinker and I am closer to a box of wet hair in the deep thoughts category, but she has so many things that we share that dating would be fun.  So here is here blog:

https://jstrawberry.wordpress.com/

 

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that I am played by the character named "Doug" and a few small details have been left out (I think to make me seem less awesome than I already am) like that she was actually 15 minutes late to our first date breaking her own rule number 1, I asked several follow up questions to the softball game but she is a fast walker and had to try to slow down and respond which might be why she  doesn't remember it all.  I did apologize about being late for dates number 2 and 3, but in her defense I went right into comedy and let her know exactly where I messed up with being on time.  Finally the science thing was during the movie and I enjoy short funny comments during a movie but didn't want a thesis statement about the real world and comic book wrong world science during the movie.  I would have loved to hear it afterwards.  My friend Ken is great at those discussions and I enjoy hearing them.  Small things, but I just wanted to share.  So if you would so kindly leave a quality response on her blog mentioning about how awesome this "Doug" guy sounds and lets have some fun with this!  Thanks for waiting so patiently while I gear the blog back up!

screws and pins!

The world of diabetes is always out to get us.  No matter what we do we are at risk of not doing something or the risk of actually doing something and it all affects our diabetes.  Last sunday my buddy Jeff was riding along with myself and a gaggle of other people in a "Tour de Cure" tune up ride when I first blew a tire hitting the largest street sink hole on the planet.  So about eight of us fell into a second group that stayed together.  When we ride we don't leave any riders behind, that should be the motto of all diabetics as well in every aspect of our lives.  Anyways, back to the story at hand.  We were coming up to the second rest stop at about mile 20 when my friend Robin and I stayed at a stop sign to show the rest of our group where to turn.  Then we started towards the friendly gas station when we see up the hill Jeff start to turn then instantly go down.  I raced to see how my favorite diabetic buddy was and he was discombobulated, a bit shocked, sore, stiff, and out of it.  We knew instantly that it was time to call in for a car.  Jeff and another rider leave and he decides that the pain is just enough to visit the emergency room to get a professional opinion.  In the end he wound up doing some quality hip damage and in the picture above you can see one of the pins they put into his hip.

Jeff is now out of riding for something like six weeks, and not able to run for like ten weeks.  He is in good spirits and we joke about how the worst place on the planet for a diabetic to ever be is a hospital because we always get dumb questions like: do you take anything else for your diabetes besides insulin? Like insulin isn't enough to take for diabetes.  What I always take out of times like this, besides all the quality grandpa hip replacement jokes we get to make fun of Jeff with, is that we must always live our life to the fullest.  We can't sit around and be scared of diabetes and stuff.  We have to understand that anything can happen to us at any moment and doing nothing would mean not living life to the fullest. 

New Year!

I don't know why but it bugs me to hear people talk about new years resolutions, or even to ask me about mine.  The truth is I have one every year and it is the same as the year before and I haven't broken it yet.  It is to stay alive all year long.  40 years and counting and I still keep that one resolution.  The truth is that living with diabetes is a constant chain of resolutions, goals, and obstacles that everyone not just us chosen few diabetics should do.  There are the three month goals which is to get that A1C as close to that perfect range of 6.0 to 6.5 (OK, so that is my perfect range) where your endocrinologist isn't scared that you are having too many lows and where you feel comfortable around any other diabetic and accidentally comparing numbers (we aren't supposed to live by our numbers but that is the only thing that we have to go by). So mine is always above 7.0 and below 8.0 and that is why I just think we should just have colors instead of numbers, like green for 6.0 to 7.5 and yellow for 7.6 to 8.8 and lavender for everything else.  Anyways, we then have daily carb counting and insulin regime.  Then there is constant weight, sickness and everything else.

I really just enjoy doing the best I can and if one day is a failure I can pick it right back up where I fell off.  With a resolution it sounds like if you break it once you can't get back to it.  The idea of goals, ambitions, with lots of planning and positive influences are much better in my opinion than just thinking that since it is a new year we should just try to be better.  Let's show those without the sugar diabetes that a resolution is nothing and that daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly diabetes is a bad reminder but just the hand we were dealt with to keep us between the lines.