Saturday, January 11, 2014

If you don't like the weather, just wait 24 hours...

...which is a common saying here in Eastern North Carolina. Last week, we were visited by the 'Polar Vortex,' and we set records for low temperatures and low high temperatures. Getting cold in the winter isn't unusual. Neither is an occasional dip into the high teens at night. But getting into the low teens at night and not getting out of the mid-20's during the day is highly usual. In the stretch of 7 days, we went from opening the windows in the house, to running the gas logs continuously, to opening the windows in the house. Four days ago, I was dressed in four layers of clothes in order to be outside. Right now, it is 0900 and the temp is 66 degrees, and I'm sitting in shorts and a t-shirt. Unfortunately, it has been raining off and on, and there is a potential for a severe thunderstorm this afternoon.

If you don't like the weather here, just wait 24 hours...

Sunday, January 05, 2014

My "new" addiction

When I was about five or six, my dad bought me a Daisy BB gun. I don't remember the model (not a Red Ryder), but it was a small rifle with a cocking handle that cocked like a lever action, but the cocking arm was contoured into the pistol grip of the rifle. BB's were fed into a side port towards the front of the barrel. Thinking back, it probably launched BB's at around 250 feet per second. It had fixed sights and was quiet. I remember spending hours in the back yard of our house in base housing at Richards Gebaur Air Force Base, shooting a target my mother made by packing brown grocery bags into a large grocery bag and drawing circles on it. I would shoot for hours, standing about 10-15 feet away. I can remember that the only way that I could cock it was to hook the stock on my thigh and then pull the cocking handle. Great memories....

When I was 13, my parents bought me a Crosman 2100 pneumatic (pump) rifle for Christmas. The following summer was the '84 Olympics, and I remember watching a story about 10-meter air rifle that lit a fire under me. I measured out 33 feet in my back yard, and I would spend hours shooting at a target attached to hay bales. A year or two later, girls, cars, and school took priority over everything...

In 2003, I saw an ad for Chinese air rifles, and I bought this crappy looking underlever spring-piston air rifle that I really didn't do much with. I would shoot a few pellets out of it from time to time, but that was it. In 2008, I bought a nice looking Crosman air rifle that came with a scope, but I could never get it zeroed in so that it would hold it shots. Out of frustration, the threw the Crosman rifle in a closet and forgot about it.

About a year ago, I saw an ad for something called a Nitro Piston, and I had some extra cash, so I bought a gas piston air rifle, only this time I did a lot of on-line research. The new rifle was great! I also learned why that Crosman rifle from 2008 wasn't working. From that point, I became addicted to air guns. I have a nice collection of them, now. I have spring piston guns, gas piston guns, CO2 guns, multi-pump guns, and single-stroke pneumatic guns. Men and their toys....

I'm baaack!

It has been a long, long time since my last post. Life seems to always get in the way of things, and I'm not going to lie: Blogger took a back seat to Facebook over the last few years (and will continue to do so!). So, let's catch up:

In 2012, I weighed 247 pounds, and one day I woke up and decided that I was tired of being fat. I started to pay more attention to what I was eating, and I began to increase my activity. As I got into the summer, I started to walk on the treadmill, and the foot pains that I have lived with for the last 20 years got worse. The pain nagged me enough that my wife made me an appointment with a podiatrist. While at the podiatrist, they checked my blood pressure. Not good! So I went to see a regular doc.

The regular doc checked my BP and nearly sent me to the emergency room! My BP at the time was 190/118! I could have had a stroke at any time! So I was immediately put on meds. Oh, how awful I felt for the next couple of days. My body was so used to having such a high pressure that it was trying to adjust to a lowered pressure. I returned a week later, and my pressure was going down. A month later, I returned and also had a fasting blood test done. Not only was my BP high, but so was my cholesterol (280!) and I was a borderline diabetic. Started meds for cholesterol. At this time, I weighed about 238. I then began quarterly check-ups.

At subsequent check-ups, we found that my BP was being difficult, and since that first day, I've encountered 4 different changes in BP medicine. Want to know what else happened? I quit getting headaches! All this time, I figured it was the job and the building I was in that gave me headaches, and it wasn't; it was my BP. So, even now, my BP is being closely monitored because it doesn't want to get to the magical 110/70.

Anyway, my sugar levels weren't going down, either, so the doc decided to put me on Metformin. Oh, man! The abdominal pains I endured for two days! Horrible!! That first month, I dropped a pound every three days. At my most recent full check-up just before Thanksgiving, I have recovered from being a borderline diabetic, my cholesterol is 160, and I weighed in at 216 pounds. I'm still a work in progress, but I'm getting there. Oh, and the benefits? I need new pants, I don't wake up gasping for air due to apnea, and I don't have reflux anymore. Plus, headaches are rare...