Bearlee is ...

[Sloth the Enduring]

That’s crappy. Non stop antibiotics is one path to sloth belly, but there isn’t much you can about it. You’re already doing the right things.

[Bearlee]

13 hours ago, Emma said:

You have my sympathy re: cub 2. It is very hard to do that. Sometimes it helps if you can  accept that it's going to be difficult and  just has to be done. Gird up your loins and plunge into the battle. Find a non sugar reward for winning the battle of the toddler and look forward to it. Maybe a half hour walk all by yourself would be possible when Mrs. Bear gets home?

No pity allowed here (but, yes, sympathy), you are a good parent doing what needs to be done.

 

Odd you should suggest a walk. After dropping the Cubs off at school/daycare I went to the local park and strolled around.

 

13 hours ago, Emma said:

Non stop antibiotics is a bad idea. It does affect munchkin's growth. Nephew was on antibiotics for his first five years because the bean counters didn't want to pay for the kidney surgery he needed. I told his mom to collect his records and get a second opinion from another doctor. Munchkin was admitted to Stanford for the surgery in a couple of weeks. Grown now, his older and younger brothers are 6'4 and he is 5'8. A respectable height but nowhere near what he would have been without the antibiotics those five years. His smarts are fine. I would go with the ear tubes.

Random thought. Is there any way to turn the nebulizer into a game? Like the clown noses that pediatric dentists use? Distraction is also good with that age. Hold him in your lap and distract him with a toy or tv show?

You will win this battle one way or another!

 

Any medication, especially for kids, has me extremely worried. I know it’s necessary at times but this seems too long and they aren’t saying why he’s getting ear infections or if there is anything I can do to prevent it.

 

Cub1 is my savior of sanity, without his help I don’t know if I would be able to give Cub2 his nebulizer. He helps hold down one hand and at the same time holds up an iPad to play nursery rhymes from YouTube. Cub2 is doing better than I thought too, he struggles a few times but otherwise he sits pretty well and breathes in the fumes while watching his videos.

[Bearlee]

12 hours ago, Sloth the Enduring said:

That’s crappy. Non stop antibiotics is one path to sloth belly, but there isn’t much you can about it. You’re already doing the right things.

 

The other crappy thing is that he also has some sort of virus (Summer cold?) and he doesn’t want to eat much of anything. And the antibiotic he’s on is suppose to be taken with food. Tuesday he was having a fit shortly after taking his medicine and I wonder if it’s because his stomach was upset from the medicine. That’s the other thing that makes it hard is that I can’t communicate with him to know what’s really going on. But you just push through the best you can because it needs to be done.

[Bearlee]

Bearlee is ... Grateful!

It seems like I shouldn’t be with recent things that are happening, but I am. After dropping kids off at school I walked around my local park and I was just soaking in the wonder of nature. Not only was it a near perfect morning but I saw the wonder of life going on all around me. I was greeted by a couple of geese families with newly hatched goslings. A little further a troop of bird watchers watching birds. Then got to the larger pond and saw schools of fish hanging out just under the surface. A couple of turtles lounging in the lake. And a chipmunk running along the shore. And even on the drive home I saw the local ground hog hanging out by the creek bed. And I just felt a sense of ease and thought things just aren’t that bad.

 

Now that being said, the next couple of days are going to be rough. I didn’t get much sleep Tuesday because I’m a dumbass. Wednesday I’m working 16 hours (8 regular hours and 8 hours of surprise safety class), then pick up Cubs and watch them till mom comes homes. Sleep at best for an hour and return to work for another 8 hours. Meanwhile having to listen to wife complain about how she is being put out because she has to take kids to school. I’m tempted to go set up a tent in the local park and become a hermit, but I can’t find the tent poles from when my siblings took down my tent in October when I had my medical issue. Guess the universe didn’t want to tempt me.

[WhiteGhost]

On 5/9/2018 at 4:12 AM, Emma said:

Hold him in your lap and distract him with a toy or tv show?

That was the only way we could get Ghostlet to keep his face in the mask of his nebulizer when he was very small

 

On 5/9/2018 at 6:13 PM, Bearlee said:

It seems like I shouldn’t be with recent things that are happening, but I am.

Good that you are able to keep an eye on the silver linings through all this

[Bearlee]

Good that you are able to keep an eye on the silver linings through all this

Thankfully Cub2 is actually quite calm now when we are doing the nebulizer, almost too eeriely so. We put on YouTube videos and he almost goes into a trance.

I may be going to woo woo with the gratitude stuff, but I’m finding if I think about positive stuff I actually feel positive (duh) and it’s surprising how many things a person can feel positive about if they just take a moment.

[Bearlee]

My vitamins seem to be working, I’m seeing some real growth. [emoji23]



Friday I decided I was going to go fishing and the weather was threatening rain and bad weather but turned out to be a good day. I was actually quite pleased that I went, I finally caught my first fish of the year (the largest one above). The Bass in the above picture may be the biggest Bass I ever caught.

Bearlee is ... Grateful!
While I didn’t do great while fishing I thought I did a decent job. And while I lost some lures to trees, bad knot tying, or fish braking a line I didn’t get upset; I just thought of them as learning experiences and thought how lucky I am to be able to go and and fish if I want to. And beyond that I had some new polarized sunglasses and was surprised at how much underwater ecology I could see. I was fishing with hotdogs and that got small Sunfish excited which drew out big Bass trying to feed on the small Sunfish which led me to change lures to a crankbait which allowed me to catch a few large Largemouth Bass. Plus turtles and other assorted fish I couldn’t identify. Was just really a nice day. Plus I got some mileage in since I had to walk about 3/4 of a mile to get to the fishing spot. Funny how in years past I would bitch about having to do that.

[WhiteGhost]

26 minutes ago, Bearlee said:

I may be going to woo woo with the gratitude stuff, but I’m finding if I think about positive stuff I actually feel positive (duh) and it’s surprising how many things a person can feel positive about if they just take a moment.

I am a very strong proponent of gratitude.  It is really amazing how much of a positive influence a little gratitude can have, especially in turning around a bad mood.   (something I really need every time I get stuck in traffic  )

 

Congrats on getting that fish.  Now you can call yourself a fisherman without adding that question mark  

[Sloth the Enduring]

Hey! Where’s the beard?

[Bearlee]

On 5/14/2018 at 5:08 AM, WhiteGhost said:

I am a very strong proponent of gratitude.  It is really amazing how much of a positive influence a little gratitude can have, especially in turning around a bad mood.   (something I really need every time I get stuck in traffic  )

 

Congrats on getting that fish.  Now you can call yourself a fisherman without adding that question mark  

 

Thanks. Don’t know if I ever questioned being a fisherman other than not having caught a fish. Think the only thing I question being is a runner because 1. I’m not good at it and 2. Don’t know if it’s something I want to do.

 

On 5/14/2018 at 12:49 PM, Sloth the Enduring said:

Hey! Where’s the beard?

 

First couple of warm days and it came off. Having a beard here in the hot and muggy sucks. I think the people that have full time beards around here are a special kind of crazy.

[Bearlee]

Things have been sucking lately. Came down with a Summer cold here recently and I’ve gone into man child mode. I’ve also had a very distinct lack of sleep this week and for me that’s saying something. I’ve also become very much so addicted to sugar again and can’t think of a day in the past couple of weeks where I didn’t have an ice cream, cake, or soda. Another round with that boss fight coming up.

 

Bearlee is ... a Walker!

Even though I’ve been feeling terrible I’ve actually gotten more steps in this week than what I’ve been getting recently. Found some new Podcasts and I’ve been doing the Iowa thing (Idiot Out Wandering Around). Sure TML has probably heard that a couple of times.

 

Bearlee is ... Grateful!

Thought I was having a bad day at work and thought I was going to complain to my foreman until I remembered that he’s going through a crisis where his Dad has brain cancer and only has months left to live. So my shitty little complaints don’t seem like much. I’m grateful that I and my family are all healthy and we don’t have to go through that kind of B.S.

[WhiteGhost]

31 minutes ago, Bearlee said:

Don’t know if I ever questioned being a fisherman other than not having caught a fish.

Yes, I had to go back and check because apparently I had mis-remembered.  

 

Hope you get feeling better soon

[Bearlee]

My body seems to be in a full on revolt and is trying to kill me (great man/child drama there right). My brain won’t let me sleep and my nose is keeping from doing anything. I think I figured out why I haven’t been sleeping well this week. If there is a task I think absolutely needs to get done my brain won’t let me sleep. This week is that the lawn needs to be mowed. Sunday, when I normally cut the grass, my wife went to work so I did’t mow then. Ever since I haven’t been able to sleep. Wednesday I took an hour out of my sleep time to actually mow the yard and I was finally able to get some decent sleep with the time I had left. Hopefully it will carry on like this for the rest of the week.

 

I think my cold is coming to it’s finally stages. I’m in the nose runs like a faucet phase which is kind of ticking me off. I can’t lean forward because that sets off a massive drain flow. And I don’t know if it’s the cold or I have some bad allergies happening, which I’ve never had, but I’ve had some ferocious sneezing attacks and watery eyes to the point where I had trouble seeing. But the way I’m medicating myself, I’m thinking I should be over most of this by this weekend.

 

Bearlee is ... Grateful!

For facial tissue that have lotion in them. Otherwise my nose would have been shredded by now.

 

Bearlee is ... Grateful!

Took Cub2 in to see doctor Tuesday and ear infection is gone (but still water in ear). But the even better news is that he doesn’t need to be on the nebulizer anymore. Guess I wasn’t paying attention when they said he only had to be on it for 10 days. Doctor said his lungs sound clear and should be okay to stop. But keep the machine and medicine in case his coughs come back.

[Emma]

Not being able to sleep when there's something needs to be done, even when I have set aside the time for it during the day...I'm the exact same way. It's miserable.

[The Most Loathed]

On 5/16/2018 at 4:30 AM, Bearlee said:

Idiot Out Wandering Around

Nope. Never.

 

what new podcasts?

[Bearlee]

On 5/17/2018 at 6:11 PM, Emma said:

Not being able to sleep when there's something needs to be done, even when I have set aside the time for it during the day...I'm the exact same way. It's miserable.

 

Didn’t mow again this Sunday due to weather. Wonder how my brain will treat me this week?

 

On 5/19/2018 at 8:01 AM, The Most Loathed said:

Nope. Never.

 

what new podcasts?

 

Then have you heard the one “What’s the best thing to come out of Iowa?”. Think Sloth could relate to the answer. If I knew how to do hidden content with html codes (or whichever this site uses) I would hide the answer there, but I guess we’ll wait until a later post.

 

Spoiler

I-35

Thanks to White Ghost for the hidden content lesson.

 

 

The new podcasts I added to my playlist are:

Felicitations! By Felicia Day (nerd queen and creator of The Guild web series)

Geek Fitness Matters with Ryon Day and Jeff Mueller

Growing a Greener World

The Joe Gardner Show both by Joe Lamp’l (creator of the TV show Growing a Greener World)

 

I love Felicia Day for her quirkiness and follow her on social media, so she posted she started a new podcast. Took a few weeks for it to get to the Apple podcast site. If you like Felicia Day you would probably like it, if you don’t know who she is you probably wouldn’t like it (very scattered and random like her). During her second podcast she interviewed her brother Ryon and he happened to mention he had a podcast called Fitness Matters and thought I would give it a listen. Turns out the name is Geek Fitness Matters and it actually turned out to be a decent fitness show. Very basic and entry level stuff but I’m thinking about going through and listening again and taking notes this time because they actually said some meaningful things. Though they talk about Brazilian Jiu Jitsu waaaay to much, but that’s what they are both into so it’s still interesting to hear things people are passionate about. And they both really dislike Tim Ferris which on some level I agree with them, he seems to have gone so far extreme that most of his advice doesn’t apply to regular people.

 

Growing a Greener World and The Joe Gardner Show I think I came to through the Growing a Greener World website. I love the show but they seem to keep repeating the same episodes on PBS so I was looking for more episodes which they have all of them on their website (which is surprising for a TV show) and happened to see that the show also has a podcast. The Growing A Greener World podcast is the older one having 37 episodes running from 2008-12. The Joe Gardner Show seems to be his new project and is updated regularly. I was surprised to see Joe Lamp’l on an episode of Garden Smart which is normally hosted by someone else which lead me into digging into Joe’s history and seeing that Growing a Greener World is an older show. Now why I like gardening shows I couldn’t say, but something about a garden appeals to me even though I only have a few containers in the back yard. Though when I was at the garden store buying plants for a butterfly garden, I was tempted to dig up my whole back yard to plant a full on garden with berry bushes, veggies, and ornamental flowers good for the local critters. Someday maybe.

 

So those were the 4 new shows I added to my already existing 27 podcasts I listen to. That’s a lot of listening to get done. But gives me an excuse to walk around.

[Bearlee]

Got over the worst of whatever I had on Friday. Thought I was cured for good but the cough came back Saturday and got really bad Sunday to the point where I was having trouble breathing a few times. But thankfully the nose thing is mostly cleared up.

 

Weekends are still lazy for me. Barely moved at all Saturday and Sunday only moved when the whole family went shopping. Had to go buy a new sofa because the one we are currently using is broken.

 

Bearlee is ... a Yogi!

My gosh I haven’t said that for a long while. Eight weeks to be exact. Finally got fed up with not doing yoga and made it a priority to get done. I reverted back to the Beginner 2.0 schedule and I’m on week 8 of that schedule. So completed Energy2.0 which was a nice intro back into yoga. Was glad to see I didn’t need to do any modifications and haven’t seemed to have lost much, but also have gained any either.

 

Bearlee is ... a Fisherman!

Friday after dropping the Cubs at school I went fishing. Tried a new place which looked promising since it’s a stocked lake and it had a dozen or so other fisherman there (with about 4 or 5 boats on the lake) so thought this must be where the fishermen come. Didn’t even get a single nibble. At one time I actually had a fish swim up to the surface look at me and shake it’s head. I knew that was when it was time to go home.

 

Bearlee is ... an Amateur Astronomer!

So finally got to see some stars tonight and I think I found the Leo constellation. And when I was driving to work and I got up on the hill above most of trees and such I’m pretty sure I saw Venus and Mars. If not Venus then that was a damn bright star and Mars due to the fact of it’s brightness and reddish appearance.

 

I also realized that the local observatory opened up this month and will be open on Saturdays through October. I will have to convince Cub1 to go with me again. But before I go I really want to hit the books and get the basics of some of the astronomical terms, which I should have been doing all along. But this gives me a kick in the butt to get going again.

 

Bearlee is ... Gratefel!

That I don’t have asthma. This past week of having breathing problems has sucked (I suppose literally) and I’m glad it’s not a permanent state.

[WhiteGhost]

16 minutes ago, Bearlee said:

If I knew how to do hidden content with html codes (or whichever this site uses) I would hide the answer there

Just highlight the text you want to hide and then click on the eyeball at the right side of the formatting stuff at the top of your response text box

[WhiteGhost]

I was looking out the window tonight and realized I could see a couple of stars so I used that Skyview App to see what I was looking at.  Apparently the one to the east was one of the stars in the big dipper and the one to the south was Jupiter.   It was my first time to see Jupiter and recognize it  

 

I have to say, that app is super cool.  I can't wait to try it out when I can see more than 2 or 3 stars

[Bearlee]

On 5/28/2018 at 9:25 AM, WhiteGhost said:

I was looking out the window tonight and realized I could see a couple of stars so I used that Skyview App to see what I was looking at.  Apparently the one to the east was one of the stars in the big dipper and the one to the south was Jupiter.   It was my first time to see Jupiter and recognize it  

 

I have to say, that app is super cool.  I can't wait to try it out when I can see more than 2 or 3 stars

 

That’s great that it worked for you. I don’t know what it is but seeing another planet in the sky really gives me a sense of awe. Thing is it’s been there my whole life and I’ve never bothered to look up and wonder what it is. There might be a metaphor for my life in there somewhere.

[Bearlee]

I’ve been struggling lately with food and exercise. Not so much struggle as not even attempting to do anything about them. Thought I was going to get back on the exercise kick when I started yoga up last week, but then work turned off the A/C and I really didn’t feel like doing yoga in 85F room. Plus I had to open all the doors and have fans running just to get it down to that temperature, so the workplace was unsecure. Haven’t done it at home either because one I didn’t want to and two my schedule was mostly messed up with little things throwing my sleep off. And with the air off I didn’t even walk. The air is back on tonight and hopefully moving forward. Already did some walking tonight which is an improvement, but skipped yoga to hang out here.

 

Don’t know what happened with the food. Think I tried to go too strict and my brain blew a flat and I’ve gone back to my old horrible ways. I can say one thing, Bearlee is not ... a Vegetarian! After reading several vegetarian cookbooks and watching several TV shows I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s way to hard to be a vegetarian or not very useful. Most of the food they want to eat mimics “normal” food, so why go through the trouble of having the lesser item when I don’t have any ethical hang ups and can get the tastier version. Or of the recipes I did find tolerable there was more sugar/honey/maple syrup/agave/chocolate/some other crap that would make the food not beneficial anyways. Plus most things had wheat or soy in it which has been planted in my brain as bad. So no wheat, soy, fat, or meat and my brain just blew and said give me sugar and I’ve been there for most of the month. Now that I’ve written this perhaps I can get back to middle of the road like I was eating before and stop this over thinking.

 

Bearlee is ... an Amateur Astronomer!

Had an awesome night last week. The power at my work blew out and the neighborhood went dark. While I still couldn’t make out that many stars I did see a red “star” in the sky and after checking my app found out it was Mars. And the “star” just to the West of that was Saturn. Plus Jupiter was out. So going from East to West I had Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter all lined up in a nice straight line. I thought it was pretty awesome.

 

And being frustrated by not being able to see much up in the sky lately I thought to myself what else can I be doing. Then luckily I listened to a podcast where they had a guy on that processes pictures from space. After listening to that episode I went onto Planetary.org and took their online course on how to process pictures from space. I haven’t done much yet but I have developed pictures of one of Saturn’s moons, Saturn itself (from Cassinni), surface of Mars (from Curiosity rover), surface of Mars in 3D (that is kind of trippy), and the Mar’s Sun Dial (that NASA uses for color reference). In some of the photos you just mess with the contrast and brightness but in others you take 3 pictures taken with different color filters and compile them into one color photo. Or in the case of the Curiosity rover you can use a picture from two different cameras to get the 3D picture (now where did I put my 3D specs?). So even if I can’t see stars it’s nice to know that I can still do things space related. And I’ve only done 1 and a half lessons so far so I’m sure there is more to learn. Plus the course is 9 years old so there is probably updated information to how to do more but for now I’m having fun learning the basics.

[WhiteGhost]

7 minutes ago, Bearlee said:

Bearlee is not ... a Vegetarian! After reading several vegetarian cookbooks and watching several TV shows I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s way to hard to be a vegetarian or not very useful. Most of the food they want to eat mimics “normal” food, so why go through the trouble of having the lesser item when I don’t have any ethical hang ups and can get the tastier version.

Sounds like we have the same philosophy  

 

8 minutes ago, Bearlee said:

So going from East to West I had Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter all lined up in a nice straight line. I thought it was pretty awesome.

Yeah, that must have been really cool

[The Most Loathed]

10 hours ago, Bearlee said:

I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s way to hard to be a vegetarian or not very useful. Most of the food they want to eat mimics “normal” food, so why go through the trouble of having the lesser item when I don’t have any ethical hang ups and can get the tastier version.

As far as I can tell, you've nailed vegetarianism. I feel the same about paleo or keto or whatever, if you're going to do that thing, just do it, don't fake eating like a "normal" person. If you're going to do a special diet, do all the work and live that life. 

 

[Bearlee]

On 5/30/2018 at 5:13 AM, WhiteGhost said:

Sounds like we have the same philosophy  

 

Yeah, that must have been really cool

 

Great minds think alike. That’s why we’re all here on Nerd Fitness!

It was cool to think think both how big and small our galaxy is. The planets are millions of miles away but still we can see them. I think it’s been this sense of scale that has calmed me this past year.

 

On 5/30/2018 at 3:49 PM, The Most Loathed said:

As far as I can tell, you've nailed vegetarianism. I feel the same about paleo or keto or whatever, if you're going to do that thing, just do it, don't fake eating like a "normal" person. If you're going to do a special diet, do all the work and live that life. 

 

 

I always love your thoughts. A rational and reasoned response, why can’t more people be like this?

[Bearlee]

Okay, so I’ve done it, I’ve done the thing I most loathe, I’ve joined a weight loss challenge. The guys here at work just finished up a weight loss challenge and are ready to jump right into the next one. Which is why I loathe weight loss challenges, if the challenge actually worked you wouldn’t need to do another challenge. And the guy that won was the lightest guy that went from 171 to 149. Plus the guys at times get really competitive and do stupid things to lose weight only to gain it all back! So I keep thinking why are you guys doing this? But I’ve been in such a slump that if I even get to the point where I break my sugar habit I’ll consider it a victory.

 

Day one and the challenge is helping me. I went to the grocery store and for the first time in a month or more I didn’t buy anything with sugar in it other than fruit. And I bought plenty of fruit since both Cubs like fruit and the store had peaches which my wife has been craving for the past month. I even bought some veggies, now I just need to actually eat them.

 

Wednesday night I was frustrated because I was trying to go to a fast food place to get food before work but every place had lines (very long lines) of customers that would have taken too long for me to get through. And I thought how sad that all these people are eating this slop and then I realized I’m the person that frustrated that I can’t be the person getting this slop. Even after I got to work I went several miles to get food only to find more long lines and after actually sitting in one for about 10 minutes I gave up and went to the local gas station to get a turkey sandwich, yogurt, and sweet tea. So that is also part of the reason that I joined the weight loss challenge because this is how far I’ve sunk.

 

And to actually be in the running, since one person usually actually loses weight, I’m going to have to lose approximately 34 pounds over the next three months. That’s a little over 2.5 pounds per week. It might be doable since I’ve packed on 13 pounds this past month, so I should be able to lose that easily. The thing I need to concentrate on is to stop drinking my calories. Then actually get some veggies in me. I’ll figure out step three after I can get these established.

 

So $50 to have some skin in the game and there are 7 of us for a total of $350. Hopefully enough to keep me focused for the next three months.