Monday, January 8, 2007

Epoxy won't solve all my problems

So, no luck with the epoxy holding the housing for the lid switch assembly on my washing machine together. When I tried to put the screws in tonight, the parts separated and I'm back to the same problem I had before. Ebay to the rescue. Hopefully by Friday, a whole new lid switch assembly will have arrived in my mailbox and I'll be able to put my washer back together. I did check to make sure that I won't have any problems taking the old part off and installing the new one. Not an issue.

One thing I did run into was realizing it was probably a good idea to finish packing my lunch before trying to do anything on the washer tonight. Ya see, I've started eating carrots as an afternoon snack at work. Something to calm my rumbling tummy and keep me going long enough to get to the gym. But carrots alone weren't working. Thirty minutes after eating them I was hungry again (and possibly more hungry than before I ate them). Robin, one of the friendly ladies who works at the gym, said this was probably due to the high glycemic index of carrots. Basically, they're all veggie carbs with not a lot of protein or fat. So, eaten alone, they make your blood sugar spike and then, a bit later you have a bit of a crash. Apparently most people don't notice it (Robin was surprised that I was hungry again so quickly). Robin liked the idea of me eating carrots as a snack (instead of a granola bar, which had been my normal afternoon snack for a while) and suggested that I have something with protein and maybe a bit of fat with the carrots. She suggested cheese, peanut butter or nuts as possible options. I tried carrots and cheese and found that while convenient (I've always got cheese sticks, since they're a staple of my lunch) they combination is not great. Peanut butter is a bit more difficult to do (requiring another container in my already crowded lunch box) and while it's better than cheese, it's still not great. I think peanut butter goes better with celery. But since I don't like celery (not fond of the taste and the stringiness bothers me), that wasn't a great option. So, I bought some walnuts and pecans at Kroger over the weekend. They're still in the shell and were on clearance. But the issue is, I have to shell them. Since I don't own a nut cracker, I use plyers, which normall works quite well. Except when I'm doing home repair and improvement and need my plyers for that task. (Yes, I at least rinse them off before cracking nuts.) So, I had to finish cracking my nuts before attempting the washer fix. I did manage to get one pecan out completely whole (didn't even separate the halves) this time. It's quite challenging. Perhaps it would be easier if I used smaller, more delicate plyers. Needle nose might help. I'll have to dig those out of my toolbox for tomorrow.

In other news, due to my Tuesday evening group meeting at work being moved from 3-4ish to 4-5ish, I'm moving my Tuesday afternoon workout to Tuesday morning. That's going to be interesting. Except when on travel, I always work out in the evenings. That's my transition/decompression from work to life outside of work time. While in the morning, I enjoy at least a solid hour of cubeville being basically empty, so that I can start my day calmly and at my own pace and then, just when I'm starting to get tired and unproductive, it's time to head out to the gym. It will be interesting to see how the new Tuesday schedule works.

Some things that I've learned in the past day or so:
- Guitars have octaves. I guess I never thought about that before. It makes sense really, when you think about it.
- Walnuts are a great sourch of Omega-3 fatty acids which are benficial in lowering bad cholesterol and increasing good cholesterol.
- Eating cupcakes with little plastic "Baby Jesus"s on them is a little weird for people.
- Epiphany is not a common term to many people. Wikipedia provides a good description: Ephipany on Wikipedia
- How to embed a link into this blog.

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