I woke up about 15 minutes before the alarm from my phone on the bed with me was set to go off.
I had set it a full hour and a half before the 10:30 AM appointment with Express Professionals to "interview" for work.
I had taken the night off from busking after having had a 46 dollar Saturday night. Sunday Night Baseball was on the cheap little radio, and I had about 30 bucks left; and the Boston Red Sox were one of the teams playing, and plus, I had to be up and at 'em as soon as the alarm sounded. I wound up setting it 8 hours ahead at 1 AM. 8 full hours of sleep feels very "normal" to me. Anything less, and I can feel it in the morning, and after only 5 or less hours, I walk around in a world where the sunlight seems to be radioactive and my eyes feel too dry, and the waking state seems to be less enjoyable than usual.
The sleep deprived decisions that I make are prone to error also. I started back drinking once, after about 3 weeks dry, at a time when I had been up for about 60 hours, and it was in a kind of half dream state that I slithered in to The Unique Grocery and purchased what I thought would be a nutritious brunch, a bottle of hard cider, 5.5% alcohol. It would be months before those hard ciders would stop flowing again.
I'm not messing around with setting alarms one hour before I have to be somewhere, anymore. And proof that that is a good thing is in the fact that, by the time I was out the door, I had 10 minutes to get there, 5 minutes away.
Harold was alternately laying on the bed with me throughout the night, at one point kneading my bare skin with his claws. I usually have a shirt on when I sleep but my lack of one didn't stop him from going to work.
He got out of bed and went to his dish at one point, where he stood and meowed. I got up and fed him then returned to sleep. I was feeling a bit of a headache on the right side of my head along with a slight congestion in the ear on that side. The ear thing is something that has kind of lingered in the past, back when I was just about living on peanut butter, and was drinking a lot of coffee. It feels kind of like when you put hydrogen peroxide in the ear and it bubbles and fizzes and is somewhere between a tingle and a tickle. I blamed both of the symptoms on the healthy dose of peanut butter that I had eaten the night before. It was the kind that has "fully hydrogenated oil (rapeseed, cottonseed and/or soybean)" in it.
My main course had been a soup that I had made out of pinto beans that had simmered crock pot style for a long time, maybe 16 hours, with tomato sauce and oat pulp (from juicing cooked oatmeal) and the crowning touch was a slab of pork that I had boiled in some of the water that I had done the beans in. I had thrown mustard, salt, pepper, cayenne, a splash of vinegar and a couple dashes of garlic powder in after letting it cool down from the boil. I then feasted upon pork and beans, made from scratch. The ingredients are mostly what you would find in "baked beans" that are sold in a variety of flavors like honey mustard, minus the corn syrup that you would also find.
My chef friend from The Quartermaster suggested that I add molasses to the recipe, along with paprika and vinegar, to temper the strength of the molasses flavor.
I have a whole freezer full of oat pulp and my challenge for tonight's meal will be to utilize some in a recipe. I am certainly getting my fiber. The people back in the late 80's (during the fiber craze) would approve heartily. Was that before or after the shark cartilage fad? I can't remember.
But then, having the munchies, I went ahead and dabbled in gluttony by eating spoonful after spoonful of the peanut butter. At least I have discovered a link between the oils and the headache on one side of the head; and the ear.
The second time that I was woken by the sound of Harold meowing, I was too dulled by sleep to have connected the dots between the fact that he had eaten his fill and that there was no litter in the litter box.
When it dawned upon me, I jumped up just in time to see him passing the stool of a well fed cat onto the shag carpet right by the litter box, which was no longer empty (there was urine puddled in it), and there being no justification for my being angry at him since I was the one who had forgotten to pick up litter, I had to become amused at the sight of him raking his claws across the rug, trying to bury the thing. At least now I know what the second meowing in the morning is all about.
The Interview
The interview went very well at the temp place, but I was disconcerted to hear that, in order to forward the application process, I would have to take my drug test "today," or come back in 2 months.
I told Julie, as that was the name of the individual who interviewed me: "This is kind of important to me and so I want to make sure I pass the test. I might have been around some second hand smoke, and there's some gray area as to how long it takes to get out of the system. I'll probably come back in a couple months, that way I can do my own test, with one of those that you can get at CVS, the night before I come in, so I'll have no doubt..."
"That's OK. That's fine," said Julie. She seemed to admire the prudence that I was exercising.
Her bookshelf contained nothing but self help type stuff, like "The 5 Minute Manager," and "The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People." I'm sure that at least one of the publications would commend a course of action that doesn't place in jeopardy a potential source of income, and lay to waste the 3 hours spent filling out the application (I think that was Sr. Mary Theresa -no, wait, she was 2nd grade...).
"Besides, a couple months from now is when things will be starting to pick up," I added.
"Yeah, it's kinda slow now," said Julie.
There are things that I want to buy, like a tub of creatine monohydrate or even creatine "nitro" hydrate, something that I saw for the first time today.
I'm glad that chemists are assiduously striving to concoct new formulas such as that, which, if the name is any indication, brings the blessings of nitrogen into play, that molecule which is so important to plants and which is one of the gases in the earth's atmosphere.
I have equated nitrogen with muscular development ever since I used to consume something called "Nitro Fuel®" (made by Twin Labs) when I was in my 30's. I would stop my car on one of the sandy roads in the State Park in Florida, shut it off, put it and neutral and push it along, the wheels conforming to the ruts and staying on the "road." I had a bottle of Nitro Fuel on the trunk, available to sip; and boy did I push that Corolla through the sand!
They took Nitro Fuel off the market, like they have done to so many other body building products, after linking them to things like abnormal aggression ("I drank one of those things, and I was on my way home from the gym and some guy behind me honked his horn and I just got out and started punching the grill of his car...")* or the discovery that one of the ingredients is technically a steroid and/or is banned by various sports leagues.
*I actually did roll down my window and spit on a car that was rudely passing me after drinking a bottle of Grenade® Pre-Workout Energizer, guaranteed to make your workouts explode (the saliva exploded from my mouth).
The muscle growth will hopefully go hand and hand with the "labor intensive" work that I will hopefully be connected with through the Express place.
Not far from the creatine nitro hydrate on the shelf at Rite Aid was the Herbal Life® Detox formula, which you drink all 32 ounces of, washed down with a copious amount of water, and then, as the bottle advises to do, relax. Relax as you pee into the cup at the drug test lab was unwritten.
I read the ingredients, and they made my mouth water. There is creatine monohydrate in there, and turmeric, something that I listened to a whole infomercial extolling the benefits of, too lazy to get up and change the radio station.
And there were just some ingredients with names cool sounding enough to invest a placebo effect in them. Who wouldn't stride confidently into the drug test place with her head held high, knowing that she had the power of Uva Ursi Leaf behind her?
I just Googled that mouth watering recipe...
Eliminex Plus™ Blend:Fibersol 2® (Maltodextrin), Dandelion Root Extract, Burdock Root Extract, Creatine Monohydrate, Turmeric Root Extract, Rice Protein, Milk Thistle Seed Extract, Echinacea Purpurea Leaf Extract, Juniper Berry Extract, Psyllium Seed Husk, Licorice Root Extract, Uva Ursi Leaf Extract, Ligustrum Berry ...
If I had the $53 bucks, I would get one now....
I had set it a full hour and a half before the 10:30 AM appointment with Express Professionals to "interview" for work.
 |
| Perhaps some light at the end of the tunnel in my job search... |
The sleep deprived decisions that I make are prone to error also. I started back drinking once, after about 3 weeks dry, at a time when I had been up for about 60 hours, and it was in a kind of half dream state that I slithered in to The Unique Grocery and purchased what I thought would be a nutritious brunch, a bottle of hard cider, 5.5% alcohol. It would be months before those hard ciders would stop flowing again.
I'm not messing around with setting alarms one hour before I have to be somewhere, anymore. And proof that that is a good thing is in the fact that, by the time I was out the door, I had 10 minutes to get there, 5 minutes away.
Harold was alternately laying on the bed with me throughout the night, at one point kneading my bare skin with his claws. I usually have a shirt on when I sleep but my lack of one didn't stop him from going to work.
He got out of bed and went to his dish at one point, where he stood and meowed. I got up and fed him then returned to sleep. I was feeling a bit of a headache on the right side of my head along with a slight congestion in the ear on that side. The ear thing is something that has kind of lingered in the past, back when I was just about living on peanut butter, and was drinking a lot of coffee. It feels kind of like when you put hydrogen peroxide in the ear and it bubbles and fizzes and is somewhere between a tingle and a tickle. I blamed both of the symptoms on the healthy dose of peanut butter that I had eaten the night before. It was the kind that has "fully hydrogenated oil (rapeseed, cottonseed and/or soybean)" in it.
My main course had been a soup that I had made out of pinto beans that had simmered crock pot style for a long time, maybe 16 hours, with tomato sauce and oat pulp (from juicing cooked oatmeal) and the crowning touch was a slab of pork that I had boiled in some of the water that I had done the beans in. I had thrown mustard, salt, pepper, cayenne, a splash of vinegar and a couple dashes of garlic powder in after letting it cool down from the boil. I then feasted upon pork and beans, made from scratch. The ingredients are mostly what you would find in "baked beans" that are sold in a variety of flavors like honey mustard, minus the corn syrup that you would also find.
My chef friend from The Quartermaster suggested that I add molasses to the recipe, along with paprika and vinegar, to temper the strength of the molasses flavor.
I have a whole freezer full of oat pulp and my challenge for tonight's meal will be to utilize some in a recipe. I am certainly getting my fiber. The people back in the late 80's (during the fiber craze) would approve heartily. Was that before or after the shark cartilage fad? I can't remember.
The second time that I was woken by the sound of Harold meowing, I was too dulled by sleep to have connected the dots between the fact that he had eaten his fill and that there was no litter in the litter box.
When it dawned upon me, I jumped up just in time to see him passing the stool of a well fed cat onto the shag carpet right by the litter box, which was no longer empty (there was urine puddled in it), and there being no justification for my being angry at him since I was the one who had forgotten to pick up litter, I had to become amused at the sight of him raking his claws across the rug, trying to bury the thing. At least now I know what the second meowing in the morning is all about.
 |
| You get what you get when you Google a generic term... |
The Interview
The interview went very well at the temp place, but I was disconcerted to hear that, in order to forward the application process, I would have to take my drug test "today," or come back in 2 months.
I told Julie, as that was the name of the individual who interviewed me: "This is kind of important to me and so I want to make sure I pass the test. I might have been around some second hand smoke, and there's some gray area as to how long it takes to get out of the system. I'll probably come back in a couple months, that way I can do my own test, with one of those that you can get at CVS, the night before I come in, so I'll have no doubt..."
"That's OK. That's fine," said Julie. She seemed to admire the prudence that I was exercising.
Her bookshelf contained nothing but self help type stuff, like "The 5 Minute Manager," and "The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People." I'm sure that at least one of the publications would commend a course of action that doesn't place in jeopardy a potential source of income, and lay to waste the 3 hours spent filling out the application (I think that was Sr. Mary Theresa -no, wait, she was 2nd grade...).
"Besides, a couple months from now is when things will be starting to pick up," I added.
"Yeah, it's kinda slow now," said Julie.
There are things that I want to buy, like a tub of creatine monohydrate or even creatine "nitro" hydrate, something that I saw for the first time today.
I'm glad that chemists are assiduously striving to concoct new formulas such as that, which, if the name is any indication, brings the blessings of nitrogen into play, that molecule which is so important to plants and which is one of the gases in the earth's atmosphere.
I have equated nitrogen with muscular development ever since I used to consume something called "Nitro Fuel®" (made by Twin Labs) when I was in my 30's. I would stop my car on one of the sandy roads in the State Park in Florida, shut it off, put it and neutral and push it along, the wheels conforming to the ruts and staying on the "road." I had a bottle of Nitro Fuel on the trunk, available to sip; and boy did I push that Corolla through the sand!
They took Nitro Fuel off the market, like they have done to so many other body building products, after linking them to things like abnormal aggression ("I drank one of those things, and I was on my way home from the gym and some guy behind me honked his horn and I just got out and started punching the grill of his car...")* or the discovery that one of the ingredients is technically a steroid and/or is banned by various sports leagues.
*I actually did roll down my window and spit on a car that was rudely passing me after drinking a bottle of Grenade® Pre-Workout Energizer, guaranteed to make your workouts explode (the saliva exploded from my mouth).
The muscle growth will hopefully go hand and hand with the "labor intensive" work that I will hopefully be connected with through the Express place.
I read the ingredients, and they made my mouth water. There is creatine monohydrate in there, and turmeric, something that I listened to a whole infomercial extolling the benefits of, too lazy to get up and change the radio station.
And there were just some ingredients with names cool sounding enough to invest a placebo effect in them. Who wouldn't stride confidently into the drug test place with her head held high, knowing that she had the power of Uva Ursi Leaf behind her?
I just Googled that mouth watering recipe...
Eliminex Plus™ Blend:Fibersol 2® (Maltodextrin), Dandelion Root Extract, Burdock Root Extract, Creatine Monohydrate, Turmeric Root Extract, Rice Protein, Milk Thistle Seed Extract, Echinacea Purpurea Leaf Extract, Juniper Berry Extract, Psyllium Seed Husk, Licorice Root Extract, Uva Ursi Leaf Extract, Ligustrum Berry ...
If I had the $53 bucks, I would get one now....
You probably "felt" the "andro" because it probably had things in it like caffeine that made you more active, and that and the placebo effect can go far. Plus, if you're taking a supplement, you're not doing the "Oh, I don't feel like much, think I'll get a tube of Pringles and some dip and watch TV" evenings. You're exercising and eating better and getting your sleep.
ReplyDeleteThe thing I can't figure out is, if you came to NOLA to busk, how come you're not busking all you can, putting a CD or series of CDs together while it's the slow season, and doing things to enhance your self-employment?
If I ever moved there, it'd not to be to work for someone else, that's for sure.