Where I’m at

Time to tell you where I’m at.

I am seated in front of my computer, in my bedroom, in my apartment at Francis and One Road, which is in Richmond, which is part of the GVRD, which is in British Columbia, which is a province of Canada, a country in the Northern Hemisphere of Earth.

Thanks for asking!

Seriously, though, where am I on the road of life right now?

For one thing, I am worried. The acidic state of my stomach seems to be getting worse instead of better, and it is beginning to seriously concern me. I had an attack of very sour stomach this afternoon that was painful enough to make me worry. I took a Ranitadine (or Zantac for those of you who are down with the OTC) and it helped a little, but the only thing that truly made the problem go away was eating and hence giving the acid something to work on.

I am beginning to wonder if I have had this acid problem for a long time but just didn’t take it seriously until it started giving my acid reflux symptoms. For the last few years, I just got used to the fact that my stomach would go pretty acidic when I got hungry. The solution was simple : eat! Or if it wasn’t time to eat yet, just drink lots of water to dilute the acid.

That’s no real solution, though, and now that I realize I have been pushing this problem out of my mind for a long time now, I am beginning to worry about what damage this chronic acid issue might have already done to me.

Luckily, I am going to see my GP on Friday anyhow, so I will definitely bring this up then.

Not that I am looking forward to this particular appointment. It is never a good sign when you go to your GP, he sends you to the lab for testing, and then a few days later his office calls you asking you to make an appointment Real Soon Now.

In fact, it feels remarkably like being called to the principal’s office, especially when like me you know you have been bad.

I am not good at the diabetes. I take my pills and do my insulin nightly, but I never test my blood sugar and I still eat way too many carbs.

I really need to break my carb addiction before it kills me. Find things to munch on that are tasty and fun but low or no carbs. Bulk out my diet with those in order to keep my stomach juices from going nuts without as many carbs to process.

But then again, I always know what I should do, don’t I? I just… never do it.

So anyhow, I will be seeing my GP who presumably is going to say my blood sugars, especially those a1c levels, suck duck taint and I need to get my shit together NOW.

Really? No kiddin’.

I am also kind of worried about my brain. It is getting harder and harder to concentrate and way easier for my mind to wander off in the middle of doing things.

It’s like I feel this constant tug at the edges of my mind trying to get me to do… something. I can stay focused when I am concentrating on a task (mostly) but other times, the urge to just fade out gets stronger all the time.

Maybe I need to just go somewhere and do nothing but think for a while. Someplace nice, with fresh air and a nice breeze and something pretty to look at. Someplace where I can finally clear the goddamned cobwebs out of my head so I can think straight.

Watched the action-comedy The Watch today (who watches The Watch? I do, apparently). It was pretty good. It stars Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughan, Jonah Hill, and Richard Ayoade AKA Maurice Moss from The IT Crowd, who sadly plays that exact same character, down to the same hairstyle and clothes, in The Watch too. Only the names are different.

Of course (spoiler alert!), in The Watch it turns out he’s an alien, wheres in the IT Crowd it’s only suspected, never proven.

It’s a fun flick. The four leads play guys who form a Neighborhood Watch and end up stumbling across an alien plot to destroy Earth. They, of course, band together and put a stop to it.

A surprising costar is Costco. Stiller’s character manages a Costco and the alien’s base of operations turns out to be that selfsame Costco.

I enjoyed that, because I love Costco. I used to just like Costco, but then I learned all about how they are this kickass employer who treats their employees like gold, and it blossomed into love.

I’ve also watched Hugo, which was okay but nothing special, and Tintin, which was very generic. Just one enormous visual spectacle after another and very light on character. plot, or intrigue.

Plus they gave Haddock the Generic Funny Scottish Voice, and that irritated me immensely. When I (sort of) read Tintin comics when I was young (they were in French, so I only got some of it), I always imagined Haddock having a harsh, kind of scary Southern France accent.

The movie version isn’t scary at all, he is in fact the comedy relief. What a sad demotion!

And finally, of course, I did a vid today.

I feel good about this one. I worked extra hard on it. and I had fun doing it, too. I figure I can allow myself one slideshow a week without feeling like I am totally slacking off.

And today, I just did not feel well enough to do anything more complicated than just choose pics and record riffs on them.

Still, I hope for more ambitious stuff in the future.

It would be nice to be able to produce a steady stream of things that make me feel good about myself.

Sadly, that is not quite how art works. But it’s enough to keep us trying.