Proof in Pictures

Last week, I attended the book launch party for Robert Rummel-Hudson’s new book Schuyler’s Monster.

I arrived in the city forty-five minutes before I needed to be at work. There is a Borders right above Penn Station and amazingly enough, it was already open. I decided to check to see if they had a copy of the book. It wasn’t in the biography and memoir section at the front of the store like I suspected, so I searched for it in the database and saw that it was in the Parenting section. I went upstairs and after a few minutes found the Parenting section (it wasn’t clearly labeled in the store so it took a few minutes of wandering). Excited, I snapped a couple of pictures before grabbing my copy.

After I purchased the book, I saw one of the employees (perhaps a manager?) waiting at the end of the counter.

She motioned to me and I stopped to talk to her.

“I saw that you were taking some pictures upstairs,” she said. Uh oh. “Could you tell me a little bit about that?”

“My friend… wrote this book,” I explained, taking Schuyler’s Monster out of the bag. “I’m going to the book party tonight and I wanted to show him a picture of it being at the Penn Station Borders. I’m just really excited.”

“Oh, okay,” she said, hesitantly. “We don’t normally allow photography.”

“I know, I should have asked,” I replied. “I didn’t even think about it.”

“Well, good luck to your friend,” the woman said.

Whew. Dodged that bullet.

After work, I took the subway down to Dip, a trendy bar somewhere down on the Lower East Side. It was incredibly dark and a bit loud, so it wasn’t the most conducive to conversation. There were quite a few people who showed up solo, so it didn’t take long before I was chatting with my fellow Rob fans. Kerri also showed up with a friend. It was great seeing her again.

Rob and I eventually got to talking and he signed by book which I had purchased that morning. The party wound down around 9:30 and Rob, his friend Jennifer and I walked back to his hotel but we all agreed it was time for some food. None of us had eaten anything at the party because we were talking so much and missed all the food. We stumbled upon a 24 hour diner on Lexington Avenue but I think I’ll leave that off my list of NYC restaurants. It’s not really a place I recommend going unless you’re on 39th and Lexington and dying of starvation. Or having a low blood sugar.

Before I left to catch the train back home, Jennifer snapped a quick picture.

On Sunday, I took the train back to NYC to have dinner with Gayle and attend the concert that Lori sent me tickets for. We saw the Magnetic Fields, a band Gayle was a huge fan of but who I had never heard of. Before the show, we snapped some pictures in the ladies lounge.

Edited by Carey’s request: I didn’t have much of an idea what to expect from the concert, but I liked it. They played quite a few songs from their new album, Distortion, except the songs were all acoustic, which Gayle pointed out is very different from how the album sounds (mostly electronic - hence the name “distortion”). The lyrics are quite funny though very cynical about love, although I made the comment to Gayle that it seemed like the music itself didn’t have much variation to it. It was good, but to my ear it didn’t vary as much as I expected between songs. The pianist (a lady) and the lead singer (a guy) also had a great rapport.

Want to see more pictures from the last week? Check out my Diabetes 365 photo gallery.

Slowing Down and Ramping Up.

One more week at Weight Watchers down.

I gained 1.8 lbs.

Honestly, I’m not at all surprised and I’m not really that disappointed either. This past week has been completely out of the ordinary, with me eating out everyday and skipping the gym everyday (though in my defense, I did an awful lot of walking around NYC on Wednesday and Friday and I’ve been going low at work almost everyday… need to work on those basal rates).

This next week looks to be much more typical and I’m hoping that a more normal work schedule will lead to a regular workout schedule. Plus, I have a couple of freelance projects that I either need to finish or start this week in order to meet my deadlines. My goal is to focus more on getting my tasks done instead of being my usual distracted self who seems to have the attention span of a four-year-old at a birthday party.

Which is to say, not very long.

Coming tomorrow: a long awaited Diabetes 365 update which includes photos from the Schuyler’s Monster book party with Robert Rummell-Hudson and the Magnetic Fields concert with reader and new gal-pal Gayle. Plus everything in between.

1,000

Yesterday, a young lady from Argentina commented on my blog. She told me she found it after my blog was apparently in an Argentinian publication about diabetes.

Little did she know, she was the 1,000th comment on my WordPress blog.

Here’s to the next 1,000!

A Wish While Waiting.

I want to be happy right now.

This week has been nearly perfect - not completely perfect because, c’mon, how many weeks are completely perfect? - but it’s been pretty darn good so far.

First, it’s a four day week. That alone makes it a pretty good week, neverminding everything else that’s happened. We have also had two visitors from our other offices in town this week, including one of my team members who I hardly ever see because he lives in silly Chicago (not that I don’t like Chicago or anything…). Then on Wednesday, I worked in New York City and that alone is pretty cool but I also attended the Media Bistro book launch party for Robert Rummel-Hudson’s new book Schuyler’s Monster at a chic club on Third Avenue which was also attended by Kerri and a whole host of other cool people whom I met, which is like ten cool things all in one. Then today, we had an awesome brainstorm about something I can’t tell you about or they’ll have me killed and then a whole bunch of my co-workers went out to a bar and had drinks and appetizers and I didn’t have to pay, so there’s another ten good things.

So there’s a lot of really good things about this week.

But this entire week has been filled with terrible, awful food that I most certainly could have avoided eating but of course, didn’t. On Tuesday, I went out to dinner with aforementioned co-workers and thinking I had the entire week to be good, decided, “Sure I’ll have some fries with my sandwich! Why not?” Then on Wednesday, I thought I would either make it back home in time to make dinner or something else would come up, but the aforementioned Robert (also known as The Rob, or more casually, Rob) and his friend decided to stalk down a diner in NYC. Perfect! After nearly nine hours of no food, I was pretty much ready for anything. Oh, and don’t forget the cocktails at the bar. Then I thought, okay, tomorrow (which is today) will be better. For the most part, it was. I ate a nice healthy full-of-fiber cereal and a glass of fat free milk. But then I went low. So I had some juice. And then I went low again. So I had some Dr. Pepper. When we headed out to the bar, I arrived at 71 mg/dl. So I had some more juice. And then I had some cocktails. Not realizing that appetizers was dinner, I ate some appetizers. Not a lot, but certainly not something I really should have been eating to begin with.Then I thought, “Okay, I am definitely definitely going to the gym tonight.” I had managed to make it to the gym on Tuesday after dinner and did some cardio for 45 minutes, which I thought helped. Didn’t do a darn thing yesterday seeing as how I didn’t arrive home until a quarter to midnight. Tonight was going to be different. Paying my tab and excusing myself from the little shindig, I announced that I had to go the gym tonight and scurried off into the frigid night air. I tested my blood sugar before I got into the car and rang in at 161 mg/dl.

Perfect! I thought. I’m set!

I drove home and changed into my gym clothes, hopped into the car and dashed off to NYSC. As I got onto the elliptical machine to do a quick half hour of cardio, I started to feel a little funny. I trudged along for about five minutes when I thought, Yeah, this really isn’t working so well. I should test.

I got off and went over to the table to test. I could tell immediately when I started walking that I was slow. That slow, cumbersome, woozy walk.

50 mg/dl. And like a snap of the fingers, my nearly perfect week was over.

Of course, since I was in such a rush to go to the gym, I forgot to repack my purse with an extra juice box (I had used the one in my purse earlier at the bar to take care of the 71 mg/dl). So I go into my car and carefully made my way over to the Wendy’s two blocks down the road. I ordered a regular Coke and pulled over into a parking space to sip my soda and wait.

Waiting.

Let me tell you something about waiting. There are certain times in my life when time seems to slow down to a halt. Waiting for an elevator when you’re late, waiting for a plane to take off or land (especially at Newark!), waiting for the next bus or train when you miss yours. With diabetes, time seems to slow down when I’m waiting for my blood sugar to rise after a low. It’s like I’m in a bubble. I’m in a bubble where time takes its sweet, well, time. But everything around me is still moving at the same speed. Sometimes even faster. After a low is over, it’s like I have so much to catch up on. There is so much I could have done if my body hadn’t been deficient in its source of energy.

Then there is the whole “it’s my fault” factor. Whenever I’m low, especially in situations that are out of the ordinary, I always think, if I had just done things the way I normally do things, this wouldn’t have happened. If I had just had a diet coke and a sandwich at the bar, I would be fine. But instead, I had to pretend I was like everyone else and drink alcohol and eat fatty foods that taste incredible. I think, I had to screw up the system and now I’m paying the price.

As I sat in my car in the Wendy’s parking lot, I thought all of these things. I thought about how if I didn’t have diabetes, I would still be at the gym working off all the food I just ate. But instead, I was sitting in the car sipping on yet another high calorie does-nothing-for-me drink except for the fact it had the carbohydrates my body was so desperately seeking.

I felt fat and sad and alone and miserable.

I should be happy right now. But instead, I am wishing that someday the time spent waiting for my blood sugars to rise back to normal or to fall back to normal, or the time I spend counting carbohydrates or filling my reservoir with insulin, or the time I spend checking my blood sugar at the gym, or the time I spend away from work or my friends or my family because I have “go do something really quick”, or the waiting at the doctor’s office or the pharmacy, or simply the time spent waiting for a cure is over.

I want this time back. There is so much I could have done with this time.

Eight in ‘08

8 Things I’m Passionate About.
1. Photography.
2. God.
3. Traveling.
4. Family.
5. Friends.
6. Writing.
7. Diabetes advocacy.
8. Social justice.

8 Things I Want to Do Before I Die.
1. Visit Israel.
2. Become a mother.
3. Become a grandmother.
4. Have a shotglass from every state and every country in the world.
5. Finish at 1,001 Things in 1,001 Days Challenge.
6. Have a wing of a museum named after me (I thought up this when I was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art when I was 15 and I still think it would be pretty cool!).
7. Learn to speak with a proper English accent.
8. Be at my goal weight and maintain it.

8 Things I Say Often.
1. “Good morning!”
2. “Uh… what?” Or sometimes, “Uh… who?” especially when my boss and/or co-workers discuss 80s and early 90s pop culture for which I was either not born and/or not culturally aware.
3. “I’m tired…”
4. “You’re going to Twitter that, aren’t you?”
5. “What’s up?”
6. “Oh my God…”
7. “Awesome.”
8. “See ya.”

8 Books I’ve Read Recently.
1. Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
2. The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous and Broke by Suze Orman
3. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
4. The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith
5. part of How to Date Men by Janis Spindel

Parts of two of books, which I have not continued - not because they were bad but because I just stopped reading them. I have a really hard time with reading these days, mostly because I have fallen out of the habit of reading. I just don’t carve out the time like I used to and when I do, I feel like stopping rather quickly. It took me almost a month to read Eat, Pray, Love when it takes most people just a few days. That’s why I put reading 1,001 books on my Challenge list, but obviously I’m not doing such a hot job with that one.

8 Songs I Could Listen to Over and Over.
1. Porcelain - Moby
2. Almost Lover - A Fine Frenzy
3. pretty much anything by Madonna, especially late 80s/early 90s to mid 90s Madonna, which is what got me hooked on her to begin with.
4. Let Go - Frou Frou
5. Faster Kill, Pussycat - Paul Oakenfold featuring Brittany Murphy (yes, *that* Brittany Murphy)
6. Marcella Behind Liquid Blue Eyes - Dahlia (you owe it to yourself to listen to Dahlia at least once)
7. Clark Gable - The Postal Service (but really anything by The Postal Service)
8. Breathe (2 a.m.) - Anna Nalick

8 Things That Attract Me to My Best Friends.
1. They are completely different from me.
2. They are brilliant and brave.
3. They are hilarious.
4. They don’t pay any attention to the diabetes, unless it’s absolutely necessary.
5. They understand the importance of certain traditions that no one else does (namely, Candy Houses).
6. They challenge me to think outside my box.
7. They know how to have a good time, and they know how to get me to have a good time, too!
8. They listen.

People I Think Should Do Crazy 8s.
1. Everyone reading this, duh.

What You Can’t See

Tonight was another exciting evening at Weight Watchers.

Loss this week: 2.2 lbs.

Loss total: 5.2 lbs.

Our WW leader gave me a Bravo bookmark with a star on it for achieving the 5 pound goal. I am happy that I’ve reached 5 pounds and this also means I’ve left the 190s and I’m now in the 180s, which is definitely progress.

The strange thing is that I don’t really feel 5 pounds lighter. Maybe it’s because 5 pounds just isn’t enough to feel a difference, but I feel exactly the same as when I started. I wonder if that’s why it’s hard for people to stay motivated when losing weight. If you don’t feel like you’re making a difference, even when you are told that you are, do you really feel as motivated as when you make a giant leap.

I started thinking about this in terms of diabetes too. Sometimes it’s hard for me to want to get into really tight control because I don’t feel much of a difference between a 105 mg/dl and a 155 mg/dl, even though I know my blood vessels can tell the difference, over time, with all that added sugar. A blood sugar of 305 mg/dl is definitely noticeable, which is one of the many reasons I try to take care of myself as best as I can, so I can avoid the queasy, dry-mouth reaction I get to a high blood sugar. If my body reacted more poorly to a 155 mg/dl, maybe I would be more inclined to avoid them. I hear that the tighter control you have, the more noticeable highs are. I’ve definitely noticed that since I’ve started Weight Watchers and had a more consistent trend of lower blood sugars, a 250 mg/dl has much different physical reaction than it did six months ago when I wouldn’t have noticed unless I tested.

Anyway, just thinking out loud. Maybe once I lose another 10 or 20 pounds there will be a more noticeable difference, and maybe once my A1C goes into the 6s, I’ll be able to feel high blood sugars even more.

Then again, maybe I won’t.

Valentine’s Day for the Single Girl

As someone who has never had a boyfriend, Valentine’s Day has never been too terribly important to me. I usually am not too depressed during the day, mostly because after so many Valentine’s Day I am rather used to not getting anything from a boyfriend or a secret admirer. In fact, now at the wise age of 22, I have experienced enough Valentine’s Days and have heard enough of my friends and co-workers bemoaning the day to know that even people in relationships don’t particularly like the day simply because it’s forced and extraordinarily commercialized.

This year was no different. I arrived at work, turned on my computer and began the process of weeding through RSS feeds and email.

About an hour into work, I caught a glimpse of one of the office managers, out of the corner of my eye (I actually face away from the entrance to my cubicle). He was holding a vase with a rather large bouquet of various pink flowers.

“Thanks…” I said, rather shell-shocked, as he set down the vase on my desk. Flowers? Pour moi?

Of course, there was a card. I opened it up and slide out a note that simply said:

Yes, my parents rule.

I figured my parents would want to see the bouquet that arrived, so I snapped a few pictures of the flowers.

The bouquet even came with a balloon! After I took the picture, I uploaded them to Flickr, sent a thank-you email to my parents with a promise to call tonight and I went about my day as usual.

Just after lunch, I came back to my desk and noticed the red light on my phone was on indicating I had a message. Assuming it was work-related, I was quite surprised when I heard this voice:

“Hi Allison! It’s Lori…” It was Lori Rode calling to wish me a happy Valentine’s Day and check to see if I had received her Valentine’s Day care package.

You see, last year, Lori started a little tradition of sending me Valentine’s Day presents because despite being single I am, according to her, lovable and also because Lori is the greatest human being on the planet. We have been discussing over the past few weeks what she should send me for Valentine’s Day so this wasn’t exactly a sussy since I definitely knew it was coming and even had some idea of what would be in it.

Unfortunately, the care package still hadn’t arrived by 2pm when I heard her message, so I was a little nervous I wasn’t going to get it before the end of the day. I went about my day knowing that if I was going to get something, it would be delivered to my desk, so I crossed my fingers and got back to work.

Just after 4pm, the same office manager arrived at my desk yet again with a package (I’m sure he was wondering who the heck I was and why I was so important to receive two gifts on Valentine’s Day, but whatever). Of course, I knew exactly who this was from without even looking at the return address.

I ripped open the box and examined the wonderful contents of the box (which was also decorated on the inside with stickers - I tried to take a picture but it was simply a bad angle so you’ll have to take my word for it).

Inside there was a dating book written by a matchmaker (hopefully this will help me end this trend of solo Valentine’s Days… not that I’m complaining!), a knit hat made by Lori, chocolate!, some gum, a pack of bandages and a whole pile of tootsie rolls (which I have, unfortunately, consumed a lot of already…).

I decided it would be fun to flip through this dating book for a few minutes while I chewed on tootsie rolls. As I thumbed through it, I stumbled upon a page that had yet another surprise:

Now, unfortunately, I have never heard of the Magnetic Fields so I googled their name and came across this article in yesterday’s Hartford Courant. They sound pretty interesting! I e-mailed my friend Gayle (the same one from the anniversary dinner) and asked her if she wanted to come with me. Turns out, she’s a huge fan! Whew, what a relief.

So, that was my Valetine’s Day. Pretty sweet, if you ask me.

Thanks Mom & Dad and Lori!

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

The DOC Movie and Book List

For the past hour and a half, I have been working on the list of recommendations for books and movies that quite a few of my fellow bloggers and readers suggested a few weeks ago. Amy asked me to compile it as a full list, so I finally got around to do that tonight. You can view the entire list of movies and books that the OC recommended to me by clicking on the link above.
I listed the movies by category and linked them to their IMDB page so you can get more information. I also listed all the books, but I didn’t do it by category because, well, that would have taken frickin’ forever.  I also linked them to their page on Amazon.

Yes, that’s a lot of links.

Yes, that took a lot of time.

And yes, I better see a hell of a lot of outclicks coming from the page in the next few days, okay?

I also didn’t bother to list who recommended what because I figured that would have just made things more cluttered. Instead, I linked to the two posts where people posted their suggestions, so if you’re wondering who recommended what, well, you know how hyperlinks work.

I’m more than happy to keep updating the page with more suggestions, so shoot me an email or just leave a comment and I’ll keep updating the page. Oh, and I also included a little comment if I have already read or seen the movie as a kind of mini review.

Hope you find them helpful!

Roller Coaster

I’m back down again.

Two pounds.

The exact amount of weight I gained last week.

So in case you haven’t been keeping track at home, I lost 3.4 pounds my first week, then I gained two pounds and now I’ve lost two pounds. So in three weeks, I’ve lost 3.4 pounds.

I suppose that’s better than gaining, although it’s not exactly the kind of progress that I’m hoping to make a habit of.

It was interesting too because Nick (brensdad) commented on last week’s post that women’s weight can fluctuate, especially with hormones and (warning: too much information alert) I was just a few days away from starting my period. So I wonder if my two pound weight gain was due to the PMS-y hormones raging.

We’ll see what next week turns up (or should I say, doesn’t turn up).

Only 95 to go…

I just finished watching the German drama The Lives of Others. Excellent movie with fantastic acting. It’s the second movie in the past month that has been about the events of a foreign country around the time that I was born - the first being Charlie Wilson’s War which takes place in 1988, just 3 years after I was born, and this movie takes place in East Germany in winter and early spring of 1985, just a few months before I was born. Obviously I don’t remember anything about the state of the world during that time, considering I either was not around or simply too young for it to matter. But I also never learned about any of this school because it always seemed like history focused on the Revolutionary War up through the Vietnam War and then just stopped. It’s like the eighties never even happened, which is probably why, despite the fact it was when I was born, I feel the most disconnected from that time.

I also updated my 1,001 movies page with the snapshot reviews of Amelie and The Lives of Others. They are very brief as I don’t really have the time or desire to dissect and review a movie, but I wanted a way to catelogue the movies I saw and whether or not I liked them and would recommend them to others. So go check out my movies so far. Just click on the 101 Things tab at the top of the page, and then scroll down to the Entertainment section. You can also see my updated lists of my 101 books (though I’ve only read one book so far this year - bad, lazy Allison) and my NYC restaurant-a-month challenge.

Amy asked me a few weeks ago to post an updated list of books and movies that were recommended to me, so I should probably do that sometime soon! I’ll add that to my list… So far, I’ve crossed laundry and the dishes off my list this weekend. Hurrah! Progress!

Okay, it’s after one in the morning and I have my meet-up group lunch at 1pm tomorrow so I should hit the sack. Cheers!

Edit (11:00 a.m.): Bernard emailed me this morning and told me that in my sleep-deprived stupor of posting at 1:30 in the morning I did the math wrong on a couple of things in the post, which I’ve fixed (the title and the name of the tab).

Okay, he didn’t say sleep-deprived stupor, but that was the idea. Anyway, all is fixed, except Headlines is going to be off since that doesn’t change after an edit. Oh well…