Progress report

or rather, a *lack* of progress report. Still nothing newsworthy, and frankly I'm a little peeved. Where are the toxins, and the cancer makers, and the years of buildup that are making me weak and undermining my health without my even knowing?! Why will they not flush?? I don't know if my expectations are too high, I mean it's not like I'm expecting to produce glowing stuff with a biohazard sign on it, but I'd like a little result here. Something noticeable, or even something different enough that I can reap the psychosomatic benefits of thinking something's happening.

I want drastic results, so I think it's time for drastic measures. I'm going to have a second smoothie this afternoon. It's potentially risky, but I seek the cleanse. I need to GET THE DEMONS OUT! I may also not have any cheese today. Perhaps I will have a nice spinach salad for lunch, and something lentil-y for dinner. I live on the edge, motherf*ckers!

Nothing ventured, nothing gained right ? (or lost as the case may be)

Stay tuned, tomorrow I hope to have a tale of Woah! to share.

Another random dog pic. And one of the beach.

Dog keeping watching while I'm lying on the ground. I believe Judas Priest's "The Sentinel" would be the appropriate soundtrack here.

Polished rocks and sticky seaweed.

Day 1 results- the real day 1

so lucky you all, you get to follow me through the chronicling of my cleanse. Day 1 results were ok, but nothing to write home about. And definitely nothing I would send to a website, so it's back to the drawing board with me. I give it a 7 out of 10, and a firm "I can do better"
I'm into learning lessons the hard way, so I'm not stopping until something potentially regrettable happens.

Yesterday I maybe didn't eat as healthy as I was going to, I had quiche with cheese for lunch, which might be counterproductive to the cleanse goal, but then I did have 3 bean veggie chili for dinner, which I thought would even things out. And still, meh.

So this morning I tried stepping it up a notch. I added a seriously heaping teaspoon of psyllium to my morning's smoothie, and this time I left out the banana. I'm looking for results people! I want my colon to sparkle mother f*ckers! Sorry, got carried away there. It's kind of what I do.

Anyhow, today's smoothie was
-flax (1 jigger)
-almonds (1 handful)
-raspberries (a bunch)
-cranberries (a few)
-spinach (a bunch)
-PSYLLIUM
-milk to fill the cup

Breakfast was rounded out with 3 glasses of water*, a Vitamin B and a ProBiotic complex capsule. Apparently cleansing can backfire and remove friendly bacteria as well when it gets to the very lining of the intestines, so it's best to supplement with the probiotics. The B is just in case, and because I giggle at nuclear pee.

*3 glasses of water seems like a lot, but psyllium expands and congeals when added to liquid. My smoothie this morning was of the consistency that when I held the glass upside down, there was no discernible movement. So I was taking basically bites of what should have been my drink, then washing it down with huge gulps of water. Psyllium can also backfire internally if you don't get enough fluids, and I'm not going out like that. Tomorrow, I will likely increase the fluid/solid ratio in the smoothie, perhaps by as much as 35%. It's all very scientific.

Not much else going on these days. Ernest Shackleton was the man is all. What a lesson in project management.

What's that smell?

it's.....FREEDOM bitches! The piano is officially GONE, but not forgotten. And I donated it to the bar up the street so I can even go play with it now and again. Funny is 5 skinny emo dudes trying to lift a piano, only to be surprised by the fact that it's heavy. No worries though, they were able to rally and get it done, with my invaluable moral support and cheers of "yay!" to get them through. The last I saw of it, it was loaded into the back of one very sad looking little pickup truck, being played by one of the aforementioned emo dudes, which overall made for a happy little ending.

So now I have a giant half empty hole in my heart and my living room but I can finally breathe. Let's all take a moment to mock my commitment-phobia and inability to cope with not being utterly mobile, even though I have no plans to go anywhere anyway. There. Now, moving on.


Travel plans are underway for the 2nd annual HN/KS storm the world extravaganza. As Guatemala did last year, Alaska keeps popping up this year. We're thinking 2 weeks out, and then HN will stay on and either work with friends or ride his bike around. None of this is finalized yet, HN is still considering other possibilities but I know a divine sign when I see it, and the one I'm seeing says "Go to Alaska". It has NOTHING to do with the 9:1 male:female ratio.

At all.

And also: I'm reading South by Ernest Shackleton. Holy shit. I might never complain again about something being hard to do. Ok, that's a lie but I bet I don't for at least a week.

Chuck Norris doesn't throw up when he drinks, he throws DOWN

I'm amazed at the outpouring of support on the colon cleansing thing. Who knew so many of my friends were also curious? Anyhow, I sort of stalled out on that, but as of today I'm back on track.

Today is the first day of (at least) 90 days of healthy living, so it seemed only right to cover all the bases. The real impetus for the 90 days thing (aside from seeing if/hoping I feel better) is that I'm signed up for a 10K in June, and HN has expressed skepticism. Nothing motivates me more than a detractor, so I intend to get my shit together, run this race and quite possibly do the dirty bird across the finish line. Today, I get my derailed training back on track. I was comfortably up to 3.5 miles as of a few weeks ago, so I'm utterly confident I can do 6.2 miles but for the purposes of securing bragging rights it is VERY IMPORTANT I get this done. I am serious. I went out of my way this weekend to brag myself into a corner, and I turned it up. There will be no end to ridicule if I don't skate through the tape here.

And so I thought that since I was going to start training, which means being mostly careful about what goes in (sangria contains fruit and is always ok), I should also work on getting historical bad food choices out. Seriously, I can see myself becoming addicted to this, and not just because I'm compulsive and love having routines to stick to. I don't know that I'll be one of those people writing to the websites and sending pictures in (why write to strangers when I can describe to friends!?) but I've given the psyllium it's own dedicated scoop and put it right next to where the Magic Bullet is (smoothie making central). I've also bought the biggest jar of probiotics I could get my grubby little hands on, and there's plans to return to Whole Foods to round out the cleanse with some tea "they" recommend (and while I'm on the subject, god bless the internet and it's myriad of other people who love to cleanse and poo!).

With the day's opening smoothie out of the way, I'm now planning the rest of the day's meals. It's going spinach salad and delicious quiche I made for lunch and lentil soup for dinner. I'm totally tempting fate with the amount of fiber I'm looking at for the day overall, but I'm in it to win it. I just need to make sure that fiber expulsion doesn't coincide with running/climbing. That could get weird.

Speaking of climbing, I'm off to Portland, OR in just over 2 weeks now. It's a work trip, but since I will have friends and a couple of weekends out there, expect great things in the climbing field. Here's a pic of Mt Hood from the parking lot, from the last time when I went glissading. The cars help with the scale, but you still don't get it. Huge about covers it I guess.


And here's a view down from one of the places we stopped to catch breath. This is the sunset, and had the camera not died, I would have had some bomb ass full moon on the snowy mountain pics as well. Ah well.

Check out my sweet axe. We should battle.

Day 1- post psyllium

nothing worth reporting. Going to increase dosage and see what happens.

ahscuse me?

You got a problem?

imminent explosions

Now that NSI is up and live, I can see the joy in life again. This means I am back to inflicting myself and my completely juvenile sense of humor on the masses. Feels good.

Yesterday, I was talking to one of the Drs and I was discussing an ftp server setup. -ness being an amazingly versatile suffix in my life, I began to discuss the ftp-ness, meaning all things related to the ftp job in question. After about the 3rd time saying it I realized it sounds a bit like ft-penis. I did very well for the first 10 seconds after figuring this out, but then I kept forgetting what I was saying because of the running "you said Penis. do not laugh" monologue in my head. I didn't last very long after that, and said Dr was horrified, though I'm not sure if it's because he got it and my 12 year old-ness irked him, or because he didn't get it and I burst out in mysterious laughter and walked away mid conversation. That one kept me going for a while though, man. Sometimes.

Today someone sent me a "YOU ARE OBVIOUSLY RETARDED HERE IS WHAT I MEAN IN ALL CAPS AND VERY SMALL WORDS" email. So naturally, I wrote back and asked for clarification. I think the dude blew an O-ring, some people *really* need to relax.

oh! and I've been playing "will it smoothie" some more (you can never taste spinach and always taste corn, which does not go with Banana), but also I was in Whole Foods and saw a bunch of Colon cleansing kits. I know, I'm venturing a bit out there with this one, but I've talked about these things with friends. I'm intrigued, the stuff they show on the web is just unreal and I am curious to know if I too will be 5lb lighter, feel better and live longer by dumping 5lbs and 7ft of sticky nasty cancer making toxins, and I'm this close to finding out. However, I'm not quite there yet.

So I was checking some of the ingredients and noticed these Psyllium seed husks always seem to be involved. Coincidentally, Crazy Aunt Purl was talking about them too and I decided twice is a sign so I put back the 7 component master blaster pack and grabbed up a container for the bargain price of 3 AMERICAN DOLLARS. I'm sorry but you can't beat that with a stick, and furthermore, if it's the same thing in metamucil but this cheap, I know of few of you out there who ought to try this as well. It's huge! and good for you!

I was a little nervous about adding too much to this morning's smoothie, as I'm in meetings all day and I think we all remember the last fiber incident, so I went half the dose they recommend. I'll let you know in not too much detail how it goes. Fingers crossed!

But so far I've settled the smoothie at milk, a scoop of flax seeds, a packet of almonds, and a banana. Other items to be added and subtracted at will, and I will let you all know once I reach smoothie nirvana.


And now, so this doesn't feel too academic, I present you with "filthy dog trying very hard to look serious"