A start

A start, and an immediate falling down.  Yesterday I started reading a new blog.  One on self-improvement, of course.  One post there made a reasonable case for gluten intolerance being a source of ill health that is many times undocumented.  As a suggestion it said to give up grains for 30-60 days to just see if it makes a difference.  Fair enough.  My birthday will be in 2 months to the day (yesterday),  Christmas Eve 2 months from today.  Easy to track when the trial period ends and to take a reading.  Down here my passion for sweat pastries hasn't found an outlet, something I was moaning to myself about just this week.  In fact, mostly what I'm eating is meat.  Not a lot of vegetables, and not a lot of bread or pasta.  So, at this point it will be easier for me to cut the carbs/grains.  I don't believe in jumping feet first into anything, as that sets me up for failure the first time I slip.  This is a good thing.  This morning I went down and only ordered eggs and bacon.  They had no bacon, only ham.  That was fine.  I specified no pancakes, something I had started ordering fairly often.  So far so good.  As an afterthought, he brought me 2 pieces of toast.  This is special for me, in that it took them awhile to figure out what I wanted with 'toast'.  I am a believer that it is better to go with the flow if it will make someone feel like they screwed up if I say something.  So, I ate the bread.  I'll go with cutting down on grain, and attempt to the best of my ability to not eat grains the rest of the day.  Tomorrow, and all next week, I'll eat at the DFac and will choose personally what goes on my plate.  At that point the responsibility is mine.  I also need to make more of an effort to find vegetable to eat.  In general I think I'm eating more healthy down here than I did up in the US, I just need to tweak it.  Right after I finish the 2L bottle of Pepsi in the fridge...

I find that there are things in my shipment that I am getting a bit impatient to have with me.  My paper shredder is one.  I'm getting a pile of papers that I don't want to just put in the trash without shredding first.  I'm not sure where the nearest shredder is at work, guess I could ask.  In the grand scheme of things it's not that much paper yet, so no one would probably be upset about letting me use a shredder there.  Which brings me to the fact that in many cases I just need to open my eyes.  There are indeed recycling containers in several locations at work.  No need to hang on to my plastic bottles in some miss-guided effort to not add needlessly to the trash here.  Also, while whining on the blog The Last Straw about 'needing' to drink from the horrid plastic bottles (trash-wise, they are horrid), I was reminded that when she (I think it's a she... could be a he) was in Guatemala last year she used a steri-pen to make the water drinkable.  duh.  I have 2 water filters at Mom's that didn't make the cut to go in the suitcase because of room/weight considerations.  So, I asked Mom to find my filters and mail them to me.  I can filter 4L at a time with that filter.  If I get more paranoid I can add micro-pur tablets, or buy a 3rd world filter, they do make them.  I hate it when my problems are due to my own myopic eyes and/or brain that only sees what I lack and not the solutions that are right in front of me.

Some other things I wish were here are my knitting (to give me something to do other than wander the internet at night) and my slow-cooker so I can cook some soups.  In a week or so I'll move up to the apartment and at some time (hopefully soon!) after that my stuff will arrive and I'll be swimming in too much stuff.  Then I'll have to find something else to complain about.