best of October 2013

Some of the things we are officially supposed to be aware of in October 2013, because it was blank Awareness Month):
ADHD, Audiology, AIDS, Blindness, Breast Cancer, Bullying Prevention, Celiac Disease, Co-op, Diversity, Domestic Violence, Down Syndrome Awareness, Dyslexia, Emotional Intelligence, Head Start, Critical Illness, Cyber Security, Depression, Disability Employment, Liver, Pregnancy and Infant Loss, Respiratory syncytial virus, Sarcastic, Spina Bifida, SIDS, Rett Syndrome, Squirrel, Workplace Politic

October also contained several awareness weeks, such as Mental Illness, Food & Drug Interactions and Prescription Errors. The really sad things that only had a day for people to be aware of them include Cephalopod, African Penguin, Latino AIDS, Reptile and Stuttering days.

Having read the previous paragraphs, you are now caught up on everything you were supposed to be aware of in October, but missed due to distraction about the government shutdown, which is all anyone was talking about all month.

When we were all just about fedup with hearing about it, a Facebook friend complained about the USDA nutritional database being down. Leave it to a Real Foodie to put things in perspective!

More interesting Real Food things that happened in October...

funky carrots

On Facebook, I belong to a private group that is into food porn (message me on Facebook if you want an invite). It is a lighthearted group that is dedicated to two basic types of posts: food and recipes that are nearly better than sex and food pictures that cause naughty thoughts.

For some reason, carrots reign supreme for growing into bizarre shapes that make you think dirty, and I don't mean gardening.

Pulling up the last of my carrots after a few freezes, I found this guy, not naughty, but pretty funky. So I made a few cartoons to entertain myself...

why I make fresh juice almost every day

derived from Juice of Life by Leon Terra

Fresh juice is one of the habits I retained from GAPS.

I never thought too much about juicing because it's proponents always seem to be sticking entire pineapples in a juicer and going on about juice fasts and as a diabetic, that sort of thing would utterly destroy my bG.

But GAPS convinced me to give it a shot for several reasons...

how Jackie got her groove back

Things have been very up-and-down this past year with my fatigue.

In spring, I was doing great! I was gardening up a storm, plus doing yard work, 4-5 hours a day. I even mowed about a quarter acre one day with a push mower. I started job hunting, thinking I could handle something at least part-time. Meanwhile, I cooked up a storm and got over 100 home-cooked meals in the freezer.

I was doing better than I had since the heart attack. I was so excited as I could barely even consider myself disabled anymore.

And then... it stopped. The fatigue came back.

ubuntu thunderbird on external drive

This ALSO falls into the "anything else that strikes me as interesting to write about" category. I've no intention of this becoming a Linux-oriented blog, but this problem kept me off-line, except for my smart-phone, for over a week. Again, I want people Googling for this problem to find this!

It's about installing an external hard drive for data on a Ubuntu system. I have spent a week thinking mounting was a problem, and/or Thunderbird had a problem, and it was neither, but a problem with the drive itself, which needed a good fscking.