Project updates
- Math relearning – With some projects at least half my time is spent whittling my idealistic plans down to more realistic ones, and that was certainly true of this one last week, which you can read about in this update’s Kindergarten comments. As much as I’d like to be done with Kindergarten, I’m going to take another week to work with some of the Kindergarten exercises I think would help me and to read some relevant sections of books and other documents, and then after a break I’ll be back to the search for a faster pace. Sometime I’d like to do a project where I can settle into deep and thorough reflection for weeks at a time, but with math there’s just too much to cover.
- Diet – 5 weeks to go till the blood test that will end this phase of my low-carb experiment. I did less cooking last week, aside from my usual scrambled egg breakfasts: muffins again, half plain this time and half with sugar-free strawberry preserves, still mushy at the bottom and sticking to the bottom of the pan, so next time I’ll use baking cups, which will be soon, since I’m addicted; and today (Sunday) I finally got around to making my low-carb version of my mom’s potato-and-sausage thing, which substituted a jicama for the potatoes and ended up sweeter than I was expecting, but it’s still good.
- Daily routine – Last week I tried approaching sleep like I approach my work schedule, treating lost time as a deficit that I have to make up later, which could help me think more carefully about how I use my time. I figured sleep didn’t really work on that kind of schedule, but I found that I lost 3 hours the first night I kept track, and the next day when I went to bed a couple of hours earlier, I woke up only 8 hours later rather than with my alarm, which makes me think it’s even more complicated than I thought, but I’m going to keep trying a similar approach this week. With the sleep experiment and a focus on my other projects, plus some lollygagging, I didn’t pay much attention to my devotions and walks last week. Someday maybe I’ll manage to juggle everything I feel I need to do each day, but balancing life is hard.
- Health
- Teeth – I finally got myself to a dentist last week to give my teeth a cleaning, and they feel much better now. The first dentist I called was booked till next February, so I went to the closest one that dentist recommended, and it was the type of good experience I’m used to from dentists, with a staff that was friendly and professional. Dentists always like my teeth, and it’s a relief to have areas of my life I don’t have to worry much about.
- Ulcerative colitis – By contrast, my colon continues to be a problem, and I have an appointment with my gastroenterologist this week to talk about switching from Humira to Remicade. My condition is actually pretty good on my current array of medications, but it’s still not normal, and it would be nice to be normal after 8 1/2 years, especially with the problems that can come with continuous inflammation.
- Dusk – I made a few visits to another forest preserve. Sorry if you’re getting bored with these. They’re variations on a theme, so I think they’ll all start looking the same if you’re not as stuck on the theme as I am at the moment.
Taken 6/11/16. Forest preserve #3. Fishermen searching for a spot.
A photo posted by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on
Taken 6/11/16. Forest preserve #3. I think this one is actually redder than it looked to my eyes.
A photo posted by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on
Life updates
- Scary stories – Every once in a while I wander into the darker side of my interests and entertain/educate myself on weird topics like the paranormal. Last week was one of those times, and in this phase I listened to a bunch of YouTube videos in the genre of scary story readings, mostly from Reddit and mostly about encounters with creepy people. I typically only listen for the purpose of injecting some drama into my day, but it ends up being a thought- and empathy-provoking exercise where I put myself into the story and think about what I’d do in different characters’ positions and how I can avoid ever coming across as creepy as the villain (easy to avoid for violent cases, sometimes tricky in cases of overattachment, such as this). One video led me to spend quite a while studying this thread on a controversial confessional story by a former creeper.
- VR – Recently I found out math YouTuber Vi Hart streams on Twitch her experiments in VR programming, which is very interesting to me because I want to code a bit of VR eventually. Last week I watched her reproduce an art piece called “Wall Drawing 273” by Sol LeWitt to determine whether its lines were truly random or only arbitrary (purposeful but made to look random).
I’m not on Instagram, so I’m glad to see your photos here.
Oh, good. 🙂 I’m glad you like them.
Hehe you were studying how to not be a creeper. 😀