Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
comic strip overdue media

Thursday, December 24, 2015

Well, that's everything, except

exercising and doing the notes, the latter of which I'm about to at least get a start on. As far as the exercise goes, I have walked 8,245 steps today, which works out to 4.37 mi, and 85 minutes of activity, according to my phone, burning 795 calories. That's better than 10-15 minutes on the complex bike, so I'm going to consider that my exercise for the day. Perhaps tomorrow I'll bike. Tomorrow I'm going over to my friends' house, do laundry, and visit with them, maybe work on moving the books YKWIA wants accomplished.

I'm doing much better lately--even today, without the normal routine--of taking my medication and checking my blood sugar when I'm supposed to. Dr. Humphries had asked me to keep track of both on a paper and then snap a picture of it on my phone and e-mail it to her weekly. Next Monday will be the first full week. I'm using three applications on my phone to keep track and encourage myself to do what I'm supposed to do:
  • On Track, which allows me to keep my medication and glucose logs daily.
  • Clock (the basic Android Clock program), to set an alarm for 9:00 pm for taking my nightly Lantus, which is the hardest to remember (I used to have an application called MediSafe, which was good, which could remind me to take my medicine whenever it was supposed to by a shaking pill bottle sound, but it became annoying after awhile. After all, I take my other meds at mealtimes, so there was not always a set 'time' that was good, and I just have to remember, take this when I eat. But the Lantus is hard, because it isn't taken at meals.
  • Habitica (formerly HabitRPG), which is a habit-forming helper that uses an avatar with hit points and experience, all the things you'd see in a role-playing game, and you keep the avatar alive and increase its stats and inventory by accomplishing to-dos, daily tasks, and regular habits. Each one is designated easy, moderate, hard, etc., giving you a different set of points based on that. You can use experience points to get items such as armour, weapons, etc. It's pretty fun. Basically, I set it up so I can either tell it I took my meds or forgot to (which adds or subtracts points, respectively), whether I cleaned house today, or worked on the notes, e-mailed my doctor, those sorts of things, by a certain day. I really like it--I've tried other habit trackers, but given my gaming background, this one really resonates. I'm three experience points away from level 3 just after a few days. You can also use it on the computer by following the link above.
Okay. I never actually ate lunch, but I just had dinner. I guess I was busy working and wasn't all that hungry. Time to move over to the laptop and work on the notes.

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