Last keto day/ second brick day

Today is the last day of my three weeks of keto. I ran another brick today; just over 15 miles of biking followed by a bit under 3 miles of running. Both were with a friend of mine. The biking went reasonable well, given the condition of my bike versus his. But the run was an exercise in pain. I ran at a pace barely above a brisk walk. I did manage to complete the entire session without fuel of any kind. Given my blood chemistry over the previous days, the evidence is clear; I can run a brick, however slowly, based on burning fat alone as an energy source.

That being said, I'm not sorry that I will be able to consume a wider variety of foods tomorrow. I plan on making bacon, egg, and onion breakfast burritos. I'll go to the grocery store and buy potatoes and probably gelato. I'll enjoy milk chocolate. But I will also keep emptying my fridge and freezer. I'm already seeing large cargo vans coming up for sale for not a lot of money, and the next few months may provide an opportunity to give van life a shot. If I do move into a van more or less full time, I'll almost definitely be selling my current home (a large boat). But I may get a much smaller boat. It could serve very well for short recreational jaunts out into the water, as secondary storage, as a place to sleep when guests come (or for guests to sleep), etc. It would even give me parking rights at my marina, and therefore a place to park my van, if no other place was available. Really, that was one of the biggest obstacles to the whole vandwelling idea; where to park.

Is there too much data?

For one person, and about them, I mean. For example, my phone will happily track every bike ride I take, if I ask it to. But is that really necessary, or even desirable? I don't have it track the rides that are only a block or two. Some people track every bite of food they eat, and when. Surely that takes more energy than it's worth unless you have a serious eating problem. Maybe the ability to collect and store data so easily, so mindlessly, has made us think that more data is essential, or even useful, than really is.

Keto is coming to a close. I'll be able to have most anything I want. I'd like some fruit; apples or strawberries. Pasta and rice both. A Katz bagel. And milk chocolate.

A hiccup of a day

I twisted some muscle or other in my right shoulder during strength training two days ago. It still hurt yesterday, and this morning as well, to the point that I skipped strength training today. I still stretched both mornings, as I will tomorrow, but Friday I will do at least some of my strength routine. Friday should also see the arrival of my RoadId tags, and my 8003 dual-filter respirator.

Tomorrow will be a busy day. Very busy. I need to write a lot of trivia questions before going in to work to (finally) get tested for COVID-19. I doubt I have it, but if I do, the people I donated a triple unti of platelets to today are going to be getting an interesting phone call.

I sometimes get very tired of politics

And I'm sure I'm not the only one. At some point, it feels like time to give up on talking about issues, or causes, or whatever. At what point does it stop being my responsibility to fix problems I didn't cause for people I've never met? How many dollars do I have to give, petitions do I have to sign, votes do I have to cast, before I can in good conscience give up? Is it ever? I'm not sure. Perhaps its the responsibility of everyone to be constantly engaged with society, but I can easily see how and why so many people walk away from that. Because it's constant. It's almost overwhelming. At some point, I'm going to lose the will to explain to people why and how I think the things I think the way I think them. At some point, maybe society should be left to its own devices.

Emptying the refrigerator

Well, paring it down anyway. My interest in vandwelling and living small in general has driven me to question how much refrigerator/freezer space I can comfortably live with. It's made somewhat more difficult by me current attempt at keto (blood ketones at 4.1 today, for what it's worth) because my inexperience with it has driven me to consume a lot of eggs, yogurt, and meat. This is further exacerbated by the current health care crisis, and the consequent reduction of my grocery shopping frequency. If I'm going to continue and also use less fridge space, I'm going to have to transition to more high-protein foods that are shelf-stable. Perhaps it would be best to simply consume more protein powder; it's cheap, shelf-stable, and easy to get down.

Anyway, my fridge is still home to more than a couple things that I don't know what to do with. Two bags of hops from when I used to brew, for example. They're been in there for over a year. At some point, I need to properly purge my fridge. And next week, when I'm off keto, will be an excellent time to purge my freezer; there are two servings of red beans in there, some potato leek soup, and a couple packages of dumpling wrappers. I'll have to make dumplings and freeze some of them. That will take up more freezer space, but I'd rather not waste them. When it's all said and done, I plan on putting cardboard boxes into half of my freezer and at least half of my fridge; that way, I will enforce a limitation on myself. If I find I can live comfortably that way, I can block off more space later.