Day 1 into 2

We’ve been on a flying metal tube for longer than I care to be. You know it's a bad sign when you arrive at an airport and you see a lot of people sleeping on the bare floor and on the benches.  They arrive the nigh before and for whatever reason, there was no way from them to continue. 

The airport at Keflavik was gross, someone took a shit all over the front of one of the toilets, and it was all over the floor. Eeeeewwwww!!!

Icelandair planes suck the worst of long haul, and are Spirit Style narrow, hard seating with no leg

room. KEF airport, or at least Icelandair didn’t know how to board planes; it was a total cattle call. All rows at a time. It took forever! MSP is far more organized  To add to the joy, they were 3 hours late.  Icelanders still have no idea on how to do customer service or people moving.

We made it to Glasgow. Holy Moly! Restaurants are pricey in the city center! We went walking after

check in, and found a local pub: Lord Nelson’s. I got to have my first Strongbow Dark Fruit. Total

yummo. One of the locals bought us a haggis from the fish and chip shop across the street, just to be a

nice guy. Boo loves haggis.

Hey! giant butt plugs!

We’re totally zotzed, had little to no sleep.

Diane took all the pictures this day.

Met the nice man who bought us a haggis.

Obesagenic environments

One of the things that has popped up in the media lately is the concept of the obesagenic environments  (OE) that, obviously, make and keep many of us obese.  Some folk I have spoken with have decided that OE are simply an excuse for overweight and bad behavior, some feel it is the cast in stone truth, and that overweight is out of our control, and the individual is not responsible for their weight status.

I stand directly between the two.  While I feel very strongly that we are responsible for our own health and well-being, I also feel that our environments play an incredible role in how we deal with our health status.  Fighting the OE is going strongly against the current of our society, pressure from peers, influences of the GOONS, and the natural tendency to become zombies.  However, I feel it can be done, and has been done by people who have successfully become and stayed healthy and at a healthy body composition.

Lets take the OE apart for a bit, so you can form your own opinion on what it is, and how it might effect you.  The components involve:

-easy access to heavily processed foods

-overabundance of drug therapies for inflammation-based health issues

-overabundance of ‘screen time’ in youths and adults

-lack of education about proper nutrition and eating

-conditioning of the taste buds to heavily processed foods early on in childhood

-peer pressure amongst youth to dislike fruits and vegetables

-light pollution at night

-reduction of sleeping and rest time

-reduction in stress management techniques and outlets

-de-emphasis on physical activity

-reliance on BigAg and BigPharma for health status

-reduction in recess and physical education in schools

 

Overall, OE is the invisible cage of obesity and poor health that is prevalent in our society.  Breaking free of the OE takes strength of character, perseverance, desire, and an ability to SEE the cage our modern society has built so enthusiastically and silently around us.  We have truly become complacent to a system that is making us dependent on it, making us it’s slaves, and it is quietly killing us.  Escaping OE is like staging a jail break, and is often just as complex and painful a process, but the self-awareness is quite rewarding.

Should you wish to break free from the OE, expect that you may see some substantial changes in your life, from initial feelings of exhaustion, to a bit of media isolation, to a changeover in many of your friends (fat friends like to have fat friends around, and if you change your habits and stop being a fat friend, there will very likely be push back), a change in interests and activities.  Overall, life is going to suck, change and get better again, but will be different forever after.

The first step in breaking free is getting a notebook, and start to write down what you are willing to change, give up, or exchange for your OE.  And make a list of what you wish to gain from making this change and staging your prison break.

Your second step is to look at the list above, you may be able to add to it, as we all have different lives, and start a schedule of small changes to make each week: small goals to overcome, small changes to make, that will be the steps to get to your ultimate goal.  Journal your journey, from data you create for yourself to feelings of what you are going through as you move through your journey.

The third, truly, is to follow your goals, praise yourself for your accomplishments, reward yourself with non-food rewards.  Be able to look back with pride, and use that as a base to move forward with your future.  Know that you can alter and change your obesigenic environment, and once you do, you can change yourself for the better.

No One is Getting Too Old for This

(warning, possible rant ahead)
I guess the next "big thing" for fitness is body weight training.  yee haa.  whatev.  I read comments on articles about fitness, and how "us older people can't do these things" or how "Senior Stretch" is the perfect class for them.

I'm going to tell you something kind of harsh, kids: it ain't the years, it's the lack of miles!!!  As soon as you tell yourself you can't do something, guess what? you won't be able to do it!  Many seniors (and normal middle aged folk, too for that matter!) tell themselves they can't lift heavy things, that they can't so a squat, that they can't function on a healthier level.

Bullshit.

Don't take it all at once, start small, but push yourself at regular intervals!  Make yourself grow, or you won't grow.  The opposite of growth is stagnation, and stagnation leads to failure and failing health.  What did you do today? did you challenge yourself?  or did you simply get by?  Are you letting life walk on you, or are you walking with life, and guiding it?

When I work with people, I need to be gentler with my seniors on these subjects, as they are a different generation, but that's only an excuse for a very small slice of our population pie chart. 

Everyone else?  Are you going to let the GOONS tell you how to live? Are you going to sit back and let life happen to you?  Do something, even if today it is very little, tomorrow can be more, and likely will be.  It's the difference between surviving and living.  An incredibly wise man I know once said, do something, even if it may be the wrong thing, because it's better than doing nothing.  If you're doing it wrong, get help, ask questions, learn how to get it right.

I'm probably one of the most broken trainers on the face of the planet, and I get told that maybe I'm too old for some of this stuff.  I know what happens when people stop.  I've seen it.  So I'll take my rickety knees and hips, rotten feet and shoulders like glass and take them to go move.  Maybe I'll do some body weight training, it's part of my routine already, there's a challenge today, and I think I'm up for it.

Corned Beef in Winter Cold

It seemed a quite natural thing to utilize the recent cold snap to make a huge fridge, so we could make a big batch of corned beef without killing our pathetic secondary (beverage) fridge.  The last time we made corned beef, the weight of the meat and the brine almost crushed the shelves, so another solution had to be found, and this seemed too good to pass up.

So, here's the plan for corned beef, as we make it here:

First, get yourself about #12 of lean beef, not ground.  We buy a beef knuckle from the local Asian food store for a little less than $3.00/#.  The first time we did this, we bought a beef brisket, and paid quite a bit more for it, and weren't any happier with the results with that than we were with the beef knuckle.  I am thinking about using "beef muscle meat" next time, as the price is comparable, and it's much leaner.

Once you have your beef, trim all the visible fat off, and remove what you can of connective tissue.  Prick all over with a knife or meat fork.  Set this aside, or, if you're working with a partner (S.D.), your partner can do one job while you do another.

In a large stock pot, heat up:
2 quarts water
2c non-iodized salt
2 heads garlic (crushed, if you can)
1 bottle hard cider or beer
1.5c brown sugar

in a saute pan, roast up:
12 bay leaves
3 somewhat crushed cinnamon sticks
6TBS coriander seed, crushed
3TBS peppercorns, cracked
18 juniper berries, cracked
18 cloves
1.5 TBS mustard seed, cracked

roast until fragrant, and the round spices are just starting to pop.  Add to stock pot and bring to boil.  Boil gently until all salt and sugar is dissolved.  Remove from heat and cool.  To help with cooling, add 1 quart cool water.

Submerge beef in cooled brine, cover and refrigerate for 7-14 days at temps below 40 and above freezing (we put it on a bench in the coldest part of our cellar), turning and manipulating the beef daily to make sure there are no air pockets, and that all the beef is swimming nicely in the brine.

Drain, discard brine and rinse.  Cut into jar sized pieces, you can add hot water, or you can just let the meat make it's own juice.  Process #10 for 75 minutes for pints.

Instead of using a bin or dish to put the beef in this time, we put it equally into heavy weight freezer bags, and that worked like a charm!  We'll be doing that again!  The corned beef will not have the texture of what you might get in the deli, it will have more of a consistency of a beef roast, but we haven't found that to be a problem or an issue at all.

If we get another cold spell, we'll be doubling down for the year on this yummy treat!

We Just Decided to Walk Away

For quite some time, S.D. and I were lazily fond of grocery shopping at our local Cub foods store, as it was convenient.  Sure, we had other places where we would buy many of our other groceries, but recently, our normal plan and strategy of multiple grocery stops at our other favorite shopping places.  Why? We got lazy.

As some or all of you know, S.D. makes fruit wine, and often a 5 gallon batch needs about #20 of fruit.  Cub had a coupon on pears, at a price (about half price) that made it worthwhile to buy enough to make a batch of pear wine.  It took 4 bags of pears, as Cub maintains a consistent standard of sub-standard bags for their produce, and when we went to check out, the coupon only covered the first bag.  If we couldn't get the discount on all of them, we wanted none of them.  The happiness that ensued at the check out was in a word, terrific.  The upshot is that we are no longer using the retail giant for our grocery needs.

So, as we walked out, and drove away, the discussion happened, centering around where and how to get our groceries that did not involve anything that even rhymes with Cub.

We looked about, and found a small. local grocer that's not really farther from us than the mega-store is, and there are some ethnic grocers nearby, and a discount food place that's also local.  The set up will be a program of shopping once a week with a grocery buddy, on a circuit that fulfills a list.  The best part is that the money all stays in the community, as the food places are all local, and not chain operations.  This will merely take a bit more planning on our parts, and a bit less laziness.

The mega-store was losing ground with us for over a year now, and one of the nails in the coffin was when I looked up, and saw a refrigerated case, an entire aisle, over 2/3 dedicated to frozen pizzas and frozen, prepared entrees.  Less than 1/4th of one side had frozen vegetables and fruits.  At what point is it right to pay for that kind of retail space to items that we do not now, nor will we ever use?  When we looked at the considerably smaller, local option, there were fewer choices on packaged, prepared foods, and it brought the whole concept home, how many different types of chocolate cake mixes does one really need to choose from?  How many variations on frozen pizza?  The small local place is perhaps 10% more expensive than the mega-store, but I know my money is going towards wages of people in my community, keeping it local.

Now, I must be honest, that the produce at small-local store leaves something to be desired, but that ought not be an issue in summer, and with planning, I can make up for it at the Asian grocer and farmer's markets.  Maybe we as Americans need to know that we don't really need oranges in the middle of summer (out of season), or strawberries in the middle of winter.  Maybe we need to know we can't have everything we want, when we want it, even if it is entirely unreasonable to ask for it.

It takes a bit more planning, but we'll get along.  I think happiness should be the specialness of getting an orange in season, in winter, and enjoying a strawberry from our own garden in the summer.

I Think We Wanted Something to Happen

An observation: our power actually did go out for several hours in the wee time of the morning, and it got me thinking of the stuff I still have left to do.  I wasn't upset, because I feel pretty basically prepared for quite a bit of nonsense. 

However, I think there is a pretty big contingency that actually rather wants a cleansing apocalyptic experience to happen.  Hang tight, I'll explain (if you haven't figured our where I'm coming from already):

The GOONS are ruled by corporate bastards and the large scale monopolistic companies who bought them, it is completely corrupt and untrustworthy.  The GOONS would like to "take care" of us, but are entirely incapable of doing so, as taking care of us would make the American public dependent on the GOONS, thereby creating a slave nation.

Got it so far?  Not just a rant, it has a point.

Our society walks on eggshells, and if an individual or corporation doesn't, or won't, it is ostracized, boycotted and shunned for not catering to the weak or stupid.  If a person builds something through hard work, determination, smarts, and frequently dumb luck, that person is told they "didn't do it on their own", that no one ever built anything, it was society that built it, or at least the infrastructure that grossly assisted the building of said endeavor.

I call bullshit on the field.  People have been building large and wonderful things since there has been commerce, and I will dare to say, that commerce did a lot of heavy lifting to get those roads and infrastructure built.  To take away individual ambition is a furtherance of creating a slave nation.

This is why I think the populace wants a sweeping end of days.  The folks that want it figure that the cleansing won't get them, and will rid us of all the other flotsam in the system.  I think people are full up on corruption of governing bodies, are full up on being told to embrace all things different from themselves, while feeling guilt about the very precious and wonderful things they are in their hearts and culture.  I think folks want to go back to building a healthy society that has been sickened by catering to the weak.

There isn't an easy fix to the GOONS as they stand today, there isn't an easy fix to Big Ag, Big Pharma, and privacy hacking social media, there just isn't.  Perhaps that 's why, on some level, just want an apocalypse.

On a saner note, it won't be this winter, zombies are very slow and easily stopped in the dead of winter.  Wait until spring, (she says with a wink)

The Next 30 Years

I was driving about today on a mission for wine fodder, when on the radio came a wonderful country song about “the next 30 years”, and how they were going to be his best 30 years, and all the things the artist was going to do to make his future something he could look back on with pride and happiness.  Such songs, however catchy, make me reflective on my own life and what I could do better, or if I have regrets about my life, anything I would want to get done, or was not proud of, or wanted to do before I pass on.  I would say, for the most part that I have lived a life worth living.

I would encourage others to embrace their own sense of eudaimonia, or a life well lived.  I would encourage you do to so starting now.  No, not tomorrow, NOW.

Folks forget how to be true to themselves, true to their very souls, and that doesn’t really mean being mean or greedy, but knowing oneself, and doing what needs to be done.  It means not waiting until the holiday season grabs you by the throat and makes you be ‘good for goodness sake’, but to be the person you want to deal with, and be the person others would want to have dealings with.  This doesn’t mean being a doormat, but for the most part, doing the honorable thing whenever possible.

It has been said that our family has its own sense of honor, and I will agree with that.  Honor is not always about following laws and rules, but doing what is right for yourself, family and neighbors.  It’s well known that I have no time for the GOONS, and their cohorts, but the GOONS have no honor. 

The next 30 years? My best time is now, and I can’t change the past, and the future hasn’t happened yet.  Make today, make now, your best time ever, and while you’re at it, help someone else realize their own best time ever.