It's nine a.m., and I finished a five-hour walk about half an hour ago. I never walk for five hours straight; usually I do three hours in the morning and more later in the day. I have in my legs that wonderful ache that comes after a workout that is good but not overwhelming. I'm used to feeling it only in my upper body, after a weightlifting session. "Ache" is not the right word because it doesn't hurt. It feels good.

I've got another homemade pizza in the toaster oven, I finished my overdue Mandarin flashcards yesterday, and I'm gonna relax and watch G.J. Lee Ukelele Channel. I feel fortunate because I've found a vlogger who

1. is male
2. speaks Mandarin
3. adds subtitles
4. is on Odysee
5. doesn't have one of those grating, circus-like adhd channels full of music, sudden video cuts, and random memes.

That pizza was very satisfying. At least I live some place where the government doesn't allow people to starve.

It's ba-aack. I switched from instant coffee to black tea a couple of days ago. I was afraid the tea wouldn't work, didn't have as much caffeine as the coffee, because green tea is rather weak. But one black tea bag seems to contain more caffeine than one of the cups of coffee I was making. Not much more, just enough to make me feel awake enough to enjoy my morning walk.

Once again an Internet search led me to Reddit, and, to my surprise and dismay, I found that there's an Ozempic sub-reddit. On one hand, I shouldn't be surprised because there is a sub-reddit for damn near everything (except anything that's womyn-only); on the other hand, I am surprised that Ozempic has because mainstream enough for this to even exist. When I first heard about people using Ozempic specifically for weightloss, I had the impression that it was a niche thing that a few celebrities managed to do via, presumably, private doctors because, Ozempic was originally for diabetes or something. But that doesn't look like a diabetes sub-reddit. It looks like a weightloss sub-reddit.

Drugs are almost never the answer to obesity. I don't know much about Ozempic but I do know that injecting foreign substances into the body is something that should be avoided. Even tested and approved drugs can have unforeseen side effects. Eating fewer calories/moving more is all that's required. The morbidly obese don't even have to go hungry; mere dietary changes would suffice because there's no goddamned way they are getting up to 300+ pounds on a wholesome diet. It's sick that modern medicine has come to this. It's sick that it's come to weightloss surgery. It's as if doctors have given up on patients having any kind of personal responsibility. Then again, obesity and diabetes supposedly go hand-in-hand so often that maybe these people were prescribed Ozempic for their diabetes and just so happen to be discussing the weightloss on the first couple of pages.

So I'm trying to use the vlog I mentioned as study material. The guy is way easier to listen to than my podcasts, which are all hosted by womyn. Voice pitch in the stratosphere plus sloppy pronunciation is what I get from the podcasts. Male vloggers are almost always easier and more pleasant to listen to because they don't alter their pitch or intonation as much, also they don't usually have histrionics in their videos. However, they are the main ones with choppy, circusy videos full of back-to-back memes.

The problem is that the subtitles are hardcoded. I need a way to extract them. I had to find some software that's available for linux, but it's not in my repo, so I have to install it from pypi, along with all the dependencies, but one of the dependencies requires another dependency, and to install the second dependency I had to fix a previous installation that was broken, and now I'm waiting for a twenty-minute update to finish before I can install. In between most of those steps was an internet search for figuring out the next step. It's simply amazing how long some computer things take. But I'm hellbent on processing this vlog because I need to start branching out to material for native speakers and because such material is more interesting than the textbooks.

I got a written response to my complaint to the county public transportation agency. I procrastinated, didn't open the letter for days because I didn't want to be reminded of the event that motivated the complaint nor disappointed in the response. Finally I read it yesterday on my way into town; I'd decided that would be a good time because, if something in the letter angered me, the grocery shopping could serve as a distraction. The department had reviewed the videorecording on the bus and agreed that the driver had acted unprofessionally. He supposedly got a talking to, and that's enough for me. The department agreed that they could do more to deter passengers from being noisy on the bus, but I'm not confident that much will be done. The letter also said that, although drivers should enforce the rules on the bus, they are not to do so in a way that will compromise safety. Practically, I guess that means that, while the drivers are driving, they won't try to stop any noise unless it's super loud. I don't think they can even usually hear any music or shows playing on the bus. So I'm mostly on my own.

I've confronted people on the bus about playing smartphones out loud, but I typically don't have the mental energy to deal with this. If I had the money, I'd buy a bike and a little bike trailer and brave the roar of the highway on the trail into town. But I cannot earn the money I need to accommodate the disability because the disability prevents me from working. The social worker who, I assume, is supposed to help me with the VA work program has left one message, and I've not been able to get in contact with her. No one ever answers her phone and my two messages haven't been returned. I hope she hasn't called while my phone wasn't working. The goddamned phone cord keeps getting disconnected from my voip adaptor. I hate having to rely on voip.

These blog posts get ridiculously long. I need to find a way transition to doing better things with my time than typing out some of the unnecessary details.

Looking back through the journal, I find myself saying on some days that I can eat less and saying on other days that I have to keep eating more than I want to. I wondered about the discrepancy, and now I think I've got it figured out: the days on which I exercise the most are also the days on which I can eat the least without feeling ill. So I'm going to try to exercise more.

I'm in a fantastic mood because I just had a sandwich. Almost any sandwich could put me in a good mood because I love sandwiches, but this was a particularly nice sandwich. I have to toast the rye bread twice on the toaster's highest setting to get it crispy, but it is quite good when crispy. Baked tofu, red onions, green bell pepper (which I haven't had in a long time because I was on the low fodmap diet for IBS, plus it's expensive), shredded carrots, zucchini, iceberg lettuce, roma tomato, salt and pepper. Simple but delicious.

And! Trader Joe's is a paradise. I was scouring the chip aisle for something made without oil this morning. Nothing goes with sandwiches as well as chips, but chips are almost always non-filling calorie bombs. I usually cannot find the right kind of chip in any store and was about to give up as I came to the end of the aisle. Then I saw them: rice crackers. The kind that are in the Asian section at larger grocery stores (where they cost a fortune). With a mixture of eagerness and dread, I grabbed a bag, flipped it over, and read the ingredients. No oil! Zero grams of fat, in fact.

The flavors are not the best complement for the standard sandwich, but the chips are crispy and not gross, and that's what really matters. When I got home, I found that the crispiness of the toasted bread was pretty much good enough that I didn't need any kind of chip, but I had some of the crackers anyhow. The satisfyingly crispy bread is an added bonus that will allow me to avoid bingeing the chips. I bought only three bags because they aren't cheap and because I cannot justify to myself spending too much on junk food. Trader joe's always has cool items.

This month is going to be focused on skin hydration. I'm going to try to run the humidifier regularly without giving myself a mold problem. I need to create a more humid environment. My research indicates that distilled water is less likely to lead to mold, so I'll need to buy a shitload of that. Probably I won't even be able to afford to run the humidifier daily. It's weird that I get mold given how dry this air is. I thought mold was a humidity problem, but I had no mold when I was living in the much more humid Sacramento even though my room was never aired out and there was no window in the bathroom.