Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

I moved my planned PTO day from Friday to today and headed up to San Francisco again. As it happens, from where I'm staying across from Karina Station on the VTA light rail system, the scheduled trip time to San Francisco is only one minute longer if I go north from Karina to Mountain View than if I go south to San Jose Diridon. In both cases, I end up catching express train 703 to San Francisco.

I got started slightly earlier than I actually needed to go, and consequently arrived at Mountain View earlier than planned. I figured that I had enough time to go get a coffee. I very nearly botched up my trip, though, by misreading the distance to the nearest place that was open. It was about twice as far as I thought, and consequently I was really worried I was going to miss that train to San Francisco. I made it, but with literally zero minutes to spare. That is, by the time I got back to Mountain View Station, the train was just pulling up to the stop, and that's bad because it meant I had to go around the gate (which you're not supposed to do) as the northbound platform is on the opposite side of the station from which I was coming. I made it, but just barely.

Similarly, when I got to San Francisco, I just barely made it to the Muni platform as the T train was rolling in. When I exited the station (I went the correct direction this time) at Union Square, the 38R was already pulling away. There was a regular 38 bus right behind it, which stops about every two blocks it seems, but I got out to the consulate nearly an hour before they opened.

( Early Bird Gets the Visa )

I did not have to rush to catch the train from Belmont, and the light rail from Mountain View left just as I boarded it. As with my last trip this way, I stopped at Fair Oaks and got some groceries (for what should be the last time on this long trip). I had to run to catch the next light rail train, but otherwise it was routine to change trains at Baypointe and return to the hotel, where I was happy to relax in the air conditioning.

So that was the second of the two things I came to the Bay Area to do. I'd leave tomorrow, but that would cost another day of PTO (which is running a little low), an early-departure fee, and a more expensive flight. I might as well use these final couple of hotel nights to take it relatively easy and relax before I fly home on Sunday morning. And there are IHG bonus points galore accruing to my account. Not enough, unfortunately, to stay at the Crowne Plaza Glasgow during the 2024 Worldcon on points. I have almost 200,000 points in my IHG account, but the Crowne Plaza is showing a staggering 95,000 points/night cost for the dates of the Worldcon. (By comparison, the HIX in which I'm staying would cost only 21K points for tomorrow night, and the Holiday Inn down the street is an even more affordable 18K points.) Oh, well, that's not surprising given that the IHG site currently is quoting US$673/night for that hotel. I hope the convention rate isn't that expensive!

I tried to take it easy on Saturday, sleeping in (relatively speaking) and not rushing around. After lunch, I went over to Shoreline Park in Mountain View and walked about 5 km of their interpretive trails. Alas, it wasn't enough walking (or rather, I had too much lunch), as my blood sugar was up around 250 even with all of that walking. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the walk along the shoreline, and I will probably go do it again sometime.

Lisa's package to me of things I'd left behind, most importantly my diabetes and high blood pressure medications, arrived today. So I only missed a few doses. Blood sugar levels were up, as I expected. Yes, I only need it for three more days, but I figured it would be better to have those meds with me as often as possible since I'm normally supposed to take them daily (or 3x/day in the case of the diabetes medication).

(The quote in the subject line is from the pinball machine Medieval Madness.)

I have the Giants-Nationals playoff game on while I work on something relatively routine but time-consuming that needs doing today, which is helpful.

This morning was my semi-annual diabetes medical check. My lab results are not great: for the first time, my A1c level was at 7.0%, the highest ever. I've been a relatively well-controlled diabetic, but the weight is still too high, and catching up with me.

On the bright side, I somehow managed to lose ten pounds during the UK trip, and my belt needs tightening. If I could drop 10% of my body weight, from my current 303 pounds (137 kg) to about 270 (122 kg), I have a good chance of being able to arrest some of the deterioration. And some of my costumes, particularly my WSFS Captain's uniform, would fit a whole lot better.

In the meantime, we'll try expanding my use of Metaformin to 3x/day instead of 2x/day, before each major meal instead of just breakfast and dinner, and see if we can help my body deal with the carbs better.

As expected, I ran out of diabetes test strips yesterday, and that was even with stretching the supply by testing less often. (The numbers I was getting when I did test were Not Good.) Now, I find that I'm about to run out of metaformin (medication for treating the diabetes) a couple of days before I get home. I must have miscounted badly, because my usual way of handling travel like this is to count the number of doses and give myself at least an extra week beyond that.

I expect to be home Sunday.

[Posted late because I absentmindedly shut down my computer on Wednesday before posting.]

After Lisa's osteopathic appointment on Tuesday, we made our way back to Mountain View. We stopped at the shopping center in Grant Road to pick up some bottled water for Lisa and happened to go into the 99 Ranch Asian market. Lisa needed the walk around anyway, so we made a circuit of the store, although all we actually ended up buying was the water. travelswithkuma was very excited by the live-fish tank. We had to tell him we couldn't buy him fish so fresh it was still wiggling. After that, we walked over to Sweet Tomatoes and had dinner. Bear had to be content with berries — blueberries, in this case.

( Full Bear )

The blueberry muffins might be good for Bear, but they were really bad for my blood sugar, which shot up into the 230s, and even after I went out and walked a couple of km, the readings came down but slowly. Three hours after eating, I was still in the 180s. I like a lot of what they serve at Sweet Tomatoes, but I'm going to have to restrain myself from eating all I can eat.

I went out for my usual post-lunch walk around Campus Drive this afternoon (with a bittersweet air to it because it's my last time doing the 3km lap around Campus on account of the new assignment next year). Shortly after getting back to my desk, I started feeling odd. Shaky. Slightly disoriented. I took a blood sugar reading. 52!

Yeow! Normal readings are 70-120, with 100 being ideal. Above 140 is high. Below 70 is low. Below 60 is edging into danger. I was having a blood sugar crash. That's the lowest blood sugar reading I've ever clocked.

Fortunately, I'm usually prepared for these sort of things. To some extent, it's a cause for minor celebration, because it meant I could have orange juice (I normally avoid it because it spikes blood sugar high), and I ate one of the food bars I keep in my computer bag for times like this. After maybe twenty minutes or so, I started feeling more or less normal again.

Thank goodness I recognized the symptoms before they got worse. It probably wouldn't have been really dangerous (as a Type II diabetic, I have to worry about highs more than lows), but it was still unpleasant.

While driving back to Fremont this evening, I stopped at a couple of stores that have carried Glucerna cereal in the past, but couldn't find it on the shelves. During my trips back and forth to Oregon, I'd been buying it from Fred Meyer stores, where I kept getting discount coupons, but this past week I started on the last box in my supply, and of course I'm not going to be driving to Oregon very often now. When I got back to the apartment, I checked online, and while I couldn't find any explicit statement on the web site, it appears that Abbot Laboratories has discontinued the cereal. That's too bad. Glucerna was a little pricey, but I found that it really did have a good effect on my morning blood sugar levels. Now I'm going to have to start experimenting again to find something I can eat for breakfast that won't send my blood sugar (which is generally above normal in the morning anyway) skyrocketing.

I could have gotten up early and been on the road by 7 AM this morning, but instead, I "slept in" until just after 7 and took my time about getting moving. I got my money's worth out of the suite (upgrade-fu strikes again; I'm going to be sorry when my Platinum status wears off, probably at the end of next year unless Menlo sends me off on another long trip) by using the exercise room after breakfast and then going and sitting in the hot tub after the exercise. Consequently, I didn't get moving until close to 11 AM.

There was a method to my madness. I'd checked the weather radar, and as far as I could see, if I'd left earlier, I would have driven straight into the teeth of the storm that moved across northern California last night and this morning. By lazing around for a few hours, I only caught the trailing edge of it. Coming up over the Cascades, I only had to deal with moderate to heavy rain. Stopping at Redding as I normally do to refuel and to have coffee can check messages at Starbucks, I found that there was a band of no rain stretching from Redding to Vacaville, with rain on both sides of it. I called my mother and said I wouldn't be swinging over to Sutter this trip (having come through on the northbound leg three weeks ago), and instead I set a fairly direct course Fremont-ward.

It's not easy for me to stick to the road, though. I generally have to stop every 60 to 120 minutes. I made a virtue of this by checking Safeway stores along the way for Glucerna cereal. The good news is that I found a couple of places with the stuff on half-price sale. The bad news is that this appears to be because they're discontinuing it and were clearing the stock; other stores didn't even have shelf tags for it. That's too bad. I hope the cereal (which I've found to be effective as part of my diabetes treatment plan) isn't being discontinued entirely and that I can find another store selling it. I'd hate to have to go mail ordering grocery items!

Anyway, I arrived back in Fremont just after 8 PM. Just as I was finishing unloading the van, the rain restarted. I felt pleased with myself. Once I get my room sufficiently aired out to sleep, I'm planning on getting some rest.

Lisa and I took a walk after lunch (as we've been trying to do every day when the weather permits), but my blood sugar was in the 180s, which is uncomfortably high. Rather than going for another walk, we decided to tackle the pile of branches that I'd cut down on my last visit but that we'd not been able to reduce to burnable size on account of I'd broken the chainsaw's oil filler cap when a piece of wood I split bounded away and hit the saw. We've long since repaired the saw, so Lisa and I kitted up and tackled the small wood pile. With me feeding logs and Lisa cutting, this took hardly any time at all, and in less than half an hour we had two hand-cart-loads of logs to haul to the wood shed. We also stowed a load of wood that Lisa had hauled over earlier. There's still mountains of wood that need hauling, but we felt better about clearing away one of the piles.

I felt a little shaky when I went back to the "office," and took another blood sugar reading: 88. That's actually a normal reading, but was a pretty significant fall from the one-hour-after-lunch peak, so I ate a banana to pump things back up a little bit.

Shoe update: Lisa's shoes have arrived, but since we're planning to go to Salem tomorrow evening (it's our wedding anniversary), we've put off the shoe retrieval until then.