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Month: November 2009

Last Day of NaBloPoMo

Chris Stocker

Well, this has been the hardest month of my life, but damn does it sure feel good.  It always feels great when you set a goal and you accomplish it. Think about how many times you set goals and never accomplish them.  For me, at least, I know it happens all the time where I don’t meet them.  Especially when it comes to losing weight.  Those are the goals that I set most often and the ones that I most often don’t meet.  I will continue to try and post every single day, but the weekends is when it is the most difficult, but I can schedule posts for then.  Also, I will be going back to work this week, so I won’t have as much time during the day to post and have fun on Twitter all day like I was.

But that is not an excuse because there is still plenty of time that I can get things done.  I wrote a post earlier in the month about how NaBloPoMo was kinda like managing your diabetes.  I still feel that way, and I feel that I accomplished this, I can continue to accomplish managing my diabetes.  If posting once a day is all it takes, than managing my diabetes one day at a time will lower my A1C.  I can set a goal to lower my A1C to a manageable level, then I can win.  My goal is to lower my A1C one tenth (at least) every 3 months.  It does me no good to go from a 7.1 now to a 5.5 in 3 months and back up to 7.2 three months after that.  It will do me good however to go from 7.1, 6.9, 6.7, 6.6, and continue this path every 3 months until I am consistently under 6.0, which is what my ultimate goal for 2010 is.

I have taken about a week off in being on Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn, sort of what you may call slacking.  I haven’t answered many e-mails in the past few days, so I am taking today to catch up on all of that.  So if you are one of the ones I haven’t answered back to, sorry.  I am also going to work on my Contour USB review.  I went through all 25 strips, but haven’t hooked it up to the computer yet.  It sucks that I am out of strips already, and I still have like 20 boxes of Freestyle Lite, so I’m not going to buy more Contour’s until my Freestyle’s are used up.

Have a great Monday everybody.

Time to Rest Up and Watch Football

Chris Stocker

Ahhh, finally it is finally Sunday.  I can finally sit down, actually lay down, relax and watch football.  I won’t really be able to relax until after the Eagles game because we all know how I react during Eagles games. They are playing a divisional team as well, so it will not be an easy victory, as it never is.  But after that I am going to lay down, watch the Vikings game and probably fall asleep.

I have not really slept much at all this holiday weekend, as my last few posts have talked about.  A lot of shopping and hanging out and no sleep involved in that situation anywhere.  I have not talked about my diabetes a lot lately in my blog, and there is a reason for that.  I am trying to go as long as possible not talking about my diabetes.  I just want to see how little it can be discussed.  I am not trying to hide it any way, it is simply just a little experiment if you will.

On Thanksgiving a few of the in-laws were talking to me about it and I love talking to them when they are asking intelligent questions.  Some of the older ones had some funny questions about not eating sugar at all and not being able to eat the ham because it had brown sugar on it.  Oh well, it tasted good.  It gave me the opportunity to talk about what an insulin pump is and how it works and how the insulin will break down the brown sugar in the ham.  It turned into about a 30 minute diabetes education 101 class, I should have charged.

Well, tomorrow is the last day of NaBloPoMo, the hardest month of my life.

Sugar-Free Saturday

Chris Stocker

Today I am starting something new.  Every Saturday I am going to try and go sugar-free, or as close to it as possible.  That means not allow myself to have any sweets that day.  No desserts, nothing with a lot of sugar or carbs in it.  This is going to be a day where I relax with the food on the weekends.  Saturday and Sunday is when my diet always goes straight down the toilet, so if I just dedicate this day to not allowing myself to eat this stuff, then I think it may be a little better.

I don’t know how long it will last, or how well it work, but it is always worth the shot.

Well it is off to start my first sugar free Saturday.

Black Friday = No Sleep

Chris Stocker

Well, it is about 8 a.m. on the Friday after Thanksgiving.  I am typing this blog post on my iPhone, so it will be short because I can’t type a long post on my phone, but I am not at home so I must do this.  I have not yet slept from the day before.  I went to the Sawgrass Mills at midnight to attack the stores.  Then at 5 Target was opening so I needed to get there.  I really wanted to get a Flip cam, but there weren’t any on sale, so I decided not to buy one.

My sugars were a little higher throughout the night because of the no sleep thing, and a lot of caffeine, so far 2 coffees and an energy drink, so quite honestly, I feel like crap, no other way to describe it.

I am going to end this blog before I start to ramble because of not sleeping for the last 24 hours.

Have a great Fight It Friday everybody.

Happy Turkey Day – I Mean Extreme Bolus Day

Chris Stocker

Well it’s Thanksgiving morning, so Happy Thanksgiving ya’ll.  This post is going to be short and sweet, but not too sweet, so you won’t have to bolus for it.

Today I am going to consume a lot of insulin.  There is no way around it.  I will try to eat healthy, but it won’t work, I already know this.  So today I give thanks to insulin, insulin pumps, and infusion sets.

Without all these today, this day would suck.

So, it’s off to the in-laws for some good ole’ food.

Take care ya’ll.

Rainy Day on My Beach Day

Chris Stocker

I have had planned for almost a week to go to the beach today.  Today is the first day that Amanda is completely done with her student teaching, so to celebrate a day off together we were going to go to the beach.  Well at about 5 a.m. this morning we were awoken by the loudest thunder I have ever heard.  And about 30 minutes later I heard it again and could have sworn it sounded like it struck our building unit.

Then for the rest of the day it was pretty much ugly and nasty and raining.  When it finally stopped raining, there was no point in going to the beach because it was just so soggy and wet outside.  So that really sucks, so now here I am stuck inside all day.  Good news however is that tonight I am sitting in the box seats at the Panthers game with free buffet style food.  Not sure how good of an idea that is the night before Thanksgiving.

Since I am moving soon, I am going to take today to start the packing process.  I don’t have many boxes right now, but I just want to get everything organized and then just throw it in a box.  I’ll clear out a corner in my room and dust everything off and then put it into groups, so then when I get a box it’s all good to go.  I am going to count how many random used strips I find laying around the house when I move, I have been here for a little over a year, so my guess is going to be around 100 strips I find.

Any takers, high / low?

Well, you all have a wonderful day.

You’re Hired – Time to Refresh My Skills

Chris Stocker 2 Comments

Yesterday I received a Contour USB in the mail (Disclosure).  I haven’t had enough time to play around with it yet.  So, I will give a full review of it as soon as I go through all 25 samples strips, as of right now, I love it, but I will go into more depth at that time.  Today is going to be a long day.  I will begin working 40 hours a week in an office setting again, hopefully starting on Monday.  I haven’t been hired as a full time employee, but rather CSI Marketing Solutions, LLC has been hired as a consultant agency.  This is good because I enjoy the work I will be doing and my company is finally picking up.  The bad news is that there is no insurance offered through this, so I will have to pick up Cobra at the end of the month.

I haven’t received my paperwork for Cobra yet, but I should be receiving it soon in order to get it all started.  I have a lot of work to do today, a lot of refreshing on some things I will need to do on my new job.  Remember those classes you took in college where you sat there and said, “this is so stupid, I will never need to know this stuff in real life” so then you just faded away and started thinking about how awesome this weekend’s homecoming party was going to be?  Fast forward 4 years – “Hey Chris, you need to know this stuff in order to get paid!”

I’m going to spend majority of the day at Barnes and Noble, it’s crazy how much work I actually get done there.

So until tomorrow, talk to you soon.

A New Week, A Lot of Work

Chris Stocker 2 Comments

A new week, a lot of work.  I decided to take kind of a 3 day weekend from working on things.  I turned my laptop on for about 30 minutes since Friday and that was to just write blog posts of Saturday and Sunday.  So now I have a lot to catch up on.  I have created a new exercise plan as well and I am going to stick to it.  If I can dedicate 30 minutes a day to write a blog post every day, I can dedicate 30 minutes a day to exercising as well.  I’ve put on too much weight over the last 3 weeks.  I just need to get back down to a manageable level of weight, basically so I can fit into all of the clothes that I don’t fit into anymore.

Last night’s game with the Bears and Eagles was a great game.  We won and that was awesome, but it was also great to see Cutler throw a touchdown for Diabetes as well.  The best part of the game last night was when it was over.  McNabb went over to Cutler and pulled him away from the cameras and talked him for several minutes.  This gave me the chills.  Cutler isn’t playing that great right now, but neither are his teammates (as a former QB myself, I could tell a lot of receivers were running wrong patterns and it’s not always his fault).  And the city is going to start turning their back on Cutler and McNabb of all people know how that feels.  I think that was a stand up classy thing for McNabb to do.

Moving on, my niece will be 3 weeks old tomorrow, I can’t believe that.  Tomorrow is also the birthday of the twins.  When I refer to “the 11.13.09 002twins” this is what I mean.  My aunt, who was more like a sister to me, has 4 little girls, and they have called me Uncle Chris since day 1 and I have called them my nieces, so I still call them my nieces even though they are really cousins.  Confusing?  I know.  Here is a most recent photo I have my new niece.

Well, now it’s time to get back to work.  Have a great, short week.

Cutler, McNabb – Two Diabetes Advocates

Chris Stocker

Anybody who has read this blog before has probably noticed a few things about me.  I’m diabetic, I’m originally from Philadelphia, and I love the Eagles more than just about anything.  Tonight they play Jay Cutler and Da Bears.  As you all know Cutler is diabetic.  A little less known fact is that Donovan McNabb is a huge diabetes advocate as well.  He runs a large diabetes children’s camp in Pennsylvania every year and puts a lot of money towards research.  So tonight’s game is meaningful in a lot of different ways.  McNabb and Cutler are good friends because of the diabetes link, plus they are both quarterbacks.  Obviously, I want the Eagles to win every game and would never cheer against them.  Cutler however, has the Touchdowns for Diabetes campaign going on with Eli Lilly.

Basically, every touchdown he throws money goes towards diabetes.  That sounds like a good idea to me, except that the way Jay has played this year, there may be a cure already if they gave money for every interception he’s thrown (he’s thrown the most in the NFL).  So, in tonight’s game I would love to see the Eagles shut the Bear’s out.  However, if they don’t, then I would want every touchdown to be a Cutler touchdown pass, no other forms of touchdowns.

I have called out Cutler before in my blog and I will again right now, but on a different level.  Relax and calm down Jay, play like you know how to play and get us some money for diabetes.

Big Day of Shopping Today

Chris Stocker

Today I am going to the Sawgrass Mills, in about 20 minutes, so I don’t have much time to type this post, but I want to get it in as fast as I can, so sorry if there is any grammar or spelling errors.  I need to go so I can get some new “dress” clothes.  At my previous job there was not really a dress code, I went to work in beach shorts, a tee and usually flip-flops, and a backwards hat.  I had some stuff that I wore to conferences or meeting  days or whenever I had to dress up, but not enough.  And since I’ve been unemployed I have put a lot of weight on, even though I have so much more time for exercising, but that’s a different story for a different day.

I hate going shopping.  For one, I hate spending money, I wish I didn’t have to spend money ever, like I’m sure we all do.  I hate trying clothes on because of my pump.  You have to connect / disconnect, make sure it doesn’t fall out of your pocket.  Then clothes don’t fit because I just ate at the food court about 10 minutes before that.  I just hate it.  Now, take me to look at new shoes and you can’t get me out of the place.

Well, Amanda is ready to go now, so that ends this post.  Have a great weekend all.