Slice of Chaotic Life

The daily life of a celibate middle-aged man.

Broke a tooth

Posted by Itlandm on February 15, 2015

I was eating some supposedly seedless dates, and one of them was slightly less seedless than the rest. There was a disturbingly crunchy feeling. Some hours later it turned out that one of my teeth was indeed broken (the canine tooth in the left upper jaw). But it was broken under the surface, inside the gums, so it did not fall out. It was definitely broken though, and a bit loose. Luckily it was already dead and the root canal filled many years ago, otherwise it would not have taken hours to make sure!

Will visit dentist tomorrow.

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Bedbugs!

Posted by Itlandm on October 5, 2014

Lately I have seen a bunch of small insect bites again, and the other day there were a number of blood smears on my bed sheet. I changed it, but yesterday morning I woke up from something in my ear. I scratched it and caught a flattish insect which matched the Wikipedia picture of a bedbug. I put it in a pill bottle for later study, if necessary. Turning on bright light, I saw another of them scurrying away, and followed its direction to the nest. There was a small hole in the ceiling in one corner, and about two dozen bedbugs were hiding nearby.  I killed those I could find. I moved my bed to the other end of the room and changed my bedclothes again.

This morning there was one adult and one juvenile bedbug in my bed. I am not sure whether they managed to hitch a ride with the bed or crossed the room. Well, it is better than having dozens of them feasting on me.

The normal response would be to throw away most of my stuff and live in a hotel while the place got disinfected. But that would be a monumental waste of money as long as I share an old, leaky house with a bunch of people from a low-hygiene culture. I shall have to throw away my stuff if I live to move to a house without asylum seekers one day. Not buying any new bedroom furniture in the meantime, let’s say.

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Disturbing dream

Posted by Itlandm on September 6, 2014

This morning I woke from one of my weirdest dreams. I have had stranger dreams, of flying and teleporting and time traveling and various other unlikely things. But this was … disturbing. And not in a sexy way.

In my dream, I was with friends in the Faith. I am not sure what faith it was, and I can’t remember my friends there after I woke up; they may have been local to the dream. We were by the seashore. From where the dream started there was a short walk down to the actual shore, where there was a small beach in a narrow bay. I was at two minds about going there. The thing was, there was a pretty solid rumor that from there you could go directly to Heaven.

Well, more exactly, you would get a light-body. That is to say, your body would be transformed into a body of pure light and pass on to the other world. While no one had come back from there, many had seen others of the Faith transform into light-bodies and then fade out of this world.

I rather liked living in this world and would prefer to do so for some decades yet. On the other hand, I was not entirely sure of my afterlife if I died, and sooner or later that was going to happen anyway. If I got a light-body, then it was pretty obvious what direction I was headed. And if my friends got one and I did not, well, then it was obviously time for some serious repentance. So I reasoned that overall it was probably best to go with them, but not be the first in line.

And indeed, a while after we arrived at the shore, the first who waded into the water began to glow. We all watched their bodies changing into pure transparent light, rising from the sea and fading from this world. The rest of us began to follow them, and one by one became changed.

But before it was quite my turn, I found it difficult to breathe, and woke up. I cleared my throat and turned over on the side, but immediately returned to the same dream. Except … for a brief heartbeat or two as I descended back into the dreamworld, I saw something else than I had seen while I was there. I saw bodies in the water. The bodies of my friends who had gone first, the ones I had seen changing into a new form while still alive. For a moment I saw them lifeless in the sea. And it occurred to me that what I was seeing was not what was really happening, but what I expected and believed and hoped. Trapped in a narrative we were dying in an illusion, and we did not know any more than we ever had done what would happen after our death.

Then I was back in the dream fully, seeing my friend being transformed into light. I waded deeper into the water. How deep was it really? It was getting harder to breathe again. And once again I woke up, gasping for breath, and once again I returned to the dream. But by now I was aware that I was dreaming, that I was trapped in an illusion, and it occurred to me that if I passed over in the dream, I would also do so in real life. Being in no hurry to test the afterlife for real, I withdrew from the sea, and once that decision was made I woke up.  I stayed half awake until the portal to that particular dream closed, then went back to sleep for a while.

 

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Slow and steadily slower

Posted by Itlandm on July 12, 2014

I have experimented with the dosage of the beta blocker I received after I was briefly hospitalized earlier this summer with a fairly severe arrhythmia. I was asked to start with 1 tablet of 25 mg metoprolol (depot) per day, which is well below the usual therapeutic dosage of 4 up to 8 tablets. Then again almost everything in my life is a counter-indicator for betablockers, except only for the occasional arrhythmia (imagine the skip-a-beat part of drinking ungodly amounts of coffee, then multiply the chaos with 20)  and also occasional tachycardia (racing heart). Blood pressure is nice, blood vessels are wide open and relaxed, and resting heart rate is … slow. Slooooow.

I started reacting three years ago when I found resting heart rate was below 60, which is considered abnormal if you are not exercising. Not necessarily dangerous, but definitely weird. And I have not been exercising since I was in grade school, and finally got into my thick head that I was born with exercise asthma and running or jumping caused me to gasp for breath for a long time.  Unsurprisingly, most of the asthmatics I know tend to be on the chubby side (and up) and are prone to high blood pressure and high heart rates. After all, even people who don’t exercise will have spent their younger years horsing around, but people like me could never do that.  So if my heart rate had been above 80, I would have reluctantly accepted it. This was just weird.

Over the next year, it continued to slide to 55, where it stayed for a good while. Then further down to 50. Which was creepy, but I survived. Now?  Just over 40. I am not sure if my body is ridiculously slow in flushing metoprolol out of my system (I reduced the dose to half and then waited 24 hours, no difference) or whether this is my new permanent resting heart rate after the arrhythmia episode. In fact, I am not even sure if it came after that episode or before it (and maybe even caused it).  What I know is that it is patently absurd that I should have the resting pulse of a national level athlete when all I do is walk. (Admittedly I do walk typically 2-3 hours a day during work days, a little less on weekends, but it is still walking.)

So if I keep living, will my pulse be 35? 30? 25? I am pretty sure there are limits to how slowly a heart can beat and still do its job. But for now, it works fine when I don’t get one of my rare attacks. Weeks go by and I am not weak or dizzy or easily tired. It seems perfectly natural. But it is not. I am not 100% sure something is wrong, but I am 100% sure something is weird.

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Heart rate gears

Posted by Itlandm on June 29, 2014

In today’s exciting (physical) heart adventures: Took a walk and as usual lately, my pulse was about 15 beats lower than it used to be. So I decided to give it a boost by walking up the stairs to Uranienborg, the vantage point atop a cliff in the middle of town. The climb is about 60 meters up, with stairs and plenty of platforms, and I walked slowly. By my calculations a pulse of 120 would be safe – 135 is what I used to get to without getting winded. I may have miscalculated, because at 117 it started to climb on its own, even if I stopped and started walking slowly downward again. My pulse continued up to 175 and stuck there a little while.

I am at home now (at 18:00), and heart rate is close to 90 while sitting, a bit of a change from just above 50 the last few days. It certainly justifies my claim that my heart has only two gears: Too Slow, and Too Fast.

I m feeling weak and drained, as if I have been working hard and long. But my heartbeat is quite regular, as far as I can sense, and I can to some degree influence it by meditation-like mind states. For the time being, I am letting it run its course. Yesterday after walking till my legs were tired, my heart returned to resting rate as soon as my skinny butt hit the chair. At least the way it is now, there should be plenty of blood flowing through my body, which my muscles and other tissues can use to recharge.

Edit to add: At 23 (11 in the night) my heart rate is below 60 again. It seems to have slowed down most quickly at first and then more and more gradually. Well, that is to be expected. It is as if my heart rate broke through some barrier that kept it down, and then gradually returned.

I wonder if the “long tail” of the event was partly because the episode still had some power to scare me. I know my heart rate is high for several hours after a credible threat to my health, like the time that guy threatened to break my kneecaps. Mind and body are not really separate, at least not while we are alive. That is also why I could calm my heart once it came within a range where I recognize the feeling of its speed. I could not do that when it was racing full speed, and not during the fairly long episode of random flapping on the 11th. I actually tried repeatedly to control my body using the normal techniques, but could not get a grasp of it.

If there was a safe environment for me to trigger the faster ranges of heart level, I might become able to yoke them to my mind and control them. But as it is now, once the heart range passes beyond my level of normal experience, it goes off on its own, like a half-tame bird fleeing its cage and not returning until it feels like it.

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Insect bites and Cola Zero

Posted by Itlandm on June 20, 2014

7:15 PM: I probably have some body-wide infection: I am feeling weak as if I have worked too hard for too long (I haven’t at all) and my heart rate is 90-100 instead of 50-60 when sitting. Temperature is only slightly elevated though, 37.6 instead of 37.

This is not at all a similar feeling to the racing heart episodes, which are local to the heart and more sudden and intense.

There are no respiratory symptoms and no extraordinary digestive disturbances. I have what seems to be a few infected insect bites on my lower right leg though. But I have those often, insects like to bite through my socks.

I also drank perhaps half a glass of Cola Zero today, something I have not done before. That was around 4 PM, the non-local symptoms started around 5 and peaked around 7. So if I believed in the fantasies about aspartame, I would totally blame that. But science. Well, I suppose if I get better, I can do my own science by drinking it again and see if I get sick again. Infections are a lot less controllable.

Come to think of it, I also drank a cup of warm broth around the same time as the Cola Zero. But it is not years since I’ve been drinking that, just months.

10:30 PM: Heart rate down to around 80, and each beat is much more quiet. So it seems the acute response is waning.

00:30 : Heart rate under 70, so not far from normal. Taking another half tablet of Metoprolol, took one half when I came home from work and my heart was beating hard and fast. Did not really notice much difference then. Temperature is also down to normal. So my body seems to have gone back to normal, except for a slight headache and the tickling feeling on my leg in the general vicinity of the insect bites (some inches around them).

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Ingress journal: Blue invasion

Posted by Itlandm on January 11, 2014

Walked 28 km today according to my smartwatch. (29 km according to my smartphone, but I think it exaggerates.) My body is not amused, but I am, so that’s something.

It started last night, with a Resistance agent that seems to have recently moved to Birkeland or Lillesand, somewhere around that. He is level 8, a bit higher than the usual suspects, who are level 7 and 6, judging from their portals. In the evening, he came to Kristiansand and started destroying indiscriminately. Judging from the speed and extent of the destruction, he seemed to have loaded his inventory entirely with bursters and power cubes. I recharged the high-level portals from a distance, but the game is balanced such that point-blanc damage will always win out in an equal contest (or in practice even if the attacker is a level or two lower). There is also a slight delay in reporting the damage, so the defender is at a disadvantage. Still, I had (and still have) lots of level 7 power cubes, so it took him time and power cubes of his own to tear down the portals. For some reason he did not even try to claim them for himself.

Naturally, during the night my new Enlightened allies rebuilt the town. I won’t say that they are vampires and werewolves, but it is a fact that they are usually active in the middle of the night, and there was a bright moon this weekend…

Then the next day, the usual three agents came over together and went on a rampage as well. I suspect this is because Haaland took down their home portals in Birkeland, but it may be just some internal wave of fervor among the Resistance, I see there has also been hectic Blue activity west and north of here. This time, however, I happened to be in the city when they arrived. These actually built portals of their own and even started linking. I followed them and blasted the portals off the map, as is good and proper. Can’t let them get the idea that they can have blue portals in our towns! Now there were already Green agents in the town, I was in contact with them, but they stayed indoors until it was dark before coming out to take over the portals. Vampires? Who knows. I know I have never seen any of them in daylight…

I went home at 20:15, leaving half the town still gray, but two more Enlightened agents arrived around midnight to rebuild the portals and link them up. This is the good part, where you can get thousands of AP quickly, especially from making control fields. Since I no longer need AP, I try to not build portals or link them if there is any hope that my lower-level allies will do so. From what I gathered, everyone went up one level except for one, who was already level 6 and only came close to level 7.  All in all, the local Enlightened group made a lot of progress thanks to the reckless destruction by our Resistance neighbors. Now that one of them is level 6 (well, two of them after I left) and I am level 8, it is easy for us to make L6 portals. We made a string of those in town now, to replace the L5 and L7 which were taken down. L6 is just the right size for the locals, so I don’t mind.

We had the same thing recently when the self-declared genius attacked, although his damage was more limited. This is why I no longer go and tear down Grimstad after I am level 8. I won’t become L9 no matter what I do, since 8 is the highest in the game. But the Blue agents would level up from rebuilding the portals. Unless I have a deal with the local Enlightened so they can take over the portals immediately, I am going to let sleeping smurfs lie.

If the Resistance were hoping to break our spirit or something, they messed up badly. My midnight allies have been absolutely feasting on the AP and are already making plans to expand eastward with their newfound power. But if they were aiming to make an old man’s feet and back hurt, they hit the bullseye. I need a good night’s sleep before I go out to replenish my inventory – it is down from 2000 to 1700 virtual items. ^_^

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Ingress journal: Unnecessary

Posted by Itlandm on January 5, 2014

Yesterday, a self-named genius Agent from the Resistance came to visit Kristiansand. I have my doubts about his or her genius (well, probably his, as most Ingress Agents are male). He was already level 8, the maximum level, but still captured about a dozen portals in downtown Kristiansand.

Why is that not a sign of genius? Well, Kristiansand is a bit of a Green (Enlightened) stronghold lately, with no active Resistance agents and 3-5 Enlightened. There is me, who am also level 8, then two fairly local at level 5 and 4 probably, although that may have changed now. Then there are two from further west, probably, or at least that is where they took their first portals. They are also level 5. I don’t link up my portals anymore, as I don’t need the Action Points. It is not like I will be level 9 no matter what, it stops at 8. They, on the other hand, get a truckload of AP from linking, so they have linked all of Kristiansand, Mandal, and the smaller towns of Vennesla, Nodeland and Vigeland.

Because Kristiansand is surrounded by Enlightened fields, making Resistance portals in the middle of the city does not let you link to anywhere else. That is one of the less than genius things about it. The other is that the up and coming Enlightened players now got to take over the portals and link them again, getting truckloads of AP again, which they would otherwise have to drive for half an hour to get.  So only the Enlightened benefited from this invasion. Minutes after he was gone today, the city was all Green again. Everything he did was unnecessary and worse than unnecessary.

I am almost unnecessary myself now, in the game. Now that the locals are able to take down the portals alone, I am just depriving them of AP by taking them myself. I should really restrict myself to upgrading their portals. As I am the only one who can add L6, L7 and L8 resonators, I am still useful for that at least.

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Ingress journal: Feet and portals

Posted by Itlandm on November 3, 2013

After I got a “smartwatch”, it keeps me informed of how much I walk each day, among other things. It turns out that I need to walk upward of 15 kilometers a day from portal to portal in order to keep my green empire from decaying. The lowest amount of walking is when I am in Kristiansand, where there are a lot of portals in the Wergeland park, around the cathedral and the town plaza. If I traverse this cluster systematically, I get a truckload of XM, enough to recharge a good number of resonators. Unfortunately there are no other clusters nearby, although there is one in another part of downtown, so the optimal harvesting route includes visiting these two alternately. However, I must usually visit a number of other portals to redeploy, since I simply don’t have enough XM to recharge more than the highest level resonators. Otherwise I would have to walk something like 25 kilometers a day.

I did in fact walk 25 kilometers one day. The next day one of my toes was hurting. I don’t think that is a coincidence. It kept getting worse for a couple days. The first day I walked 10 km, the next 5, and then 15 as it started to improve. Today I’ve walked 18 km, and started feeling the pain after around 15. So I can probably not keep walking 25 km a day, fun as that might be. I am simply not that young anymore.

Make no mistake, the reason I preside over dozens and dozens of portals is not that I am high level – it actually gets harder to maintain portals the higher level they are, because higher level resonators take more XM to recharge – but rather, I can do this because of my dedication. You can get to some portals by car, sure, but most aren’t in a place where you can conveniently stop. So unless you’re dedicated enough to walk the distance, you’ll always be short on XM, and there’s not much you can do about it.

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Unexpected weight loss

Posted by Itlandm on October 20, 2013

Already early in the past week I found that my morning weight was down to 82 kg. That is not sensational – it amounts to a BMI of 23, which is near the middle of the recommended or “normal” range. (Normal in the 1970, when the average person was smoking.) Of course, now that I am there, Real Life has been patched so the lowest mortality is actually in the overweight range, from 25 to 30. But I am sure my doctor would be enthusiastic if he learned of this. I was 89 kg when he started worrying about me and diabetes (seeing how I had two diabetes 2 parents) and I was diagnosed with “pre-diabetes”, an asymptomatic diagnosis. (One may wonder whether the word diagnosis even applies to a condition that does not harm, but only has a potential for developing into a harmful condition later. But unlike some of these “pre” diagnoses, this one at least is not currently peddling some pharmacological product, but is treated with exercise and moderation in eating. This gives it some more credibility, I’d say.

My doctor was happy when I was down to 84 (or was it 85?) kg, I think he was mostly worried that I would gain weight, as humans tend to do at my age. Well, at almost any age lately. I was also quite happy to stop there, because I was down to 82 kg at the end of 2005, after the great illness of that year, and I did not like it. I was hungry all the time. I would wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to sleep until I had eaten something. After stuffing my stomach full, my brain was still hungry. But this time it is the other way around. My brain is sated even as my stomach gnaws and knots itself with hunger. I assume the brain’s contentedness comes from the blood sugar, while some other mechanism based on the fat reserves is steering my stomach. There are at least two separate mechanisms in the brain, but I am still not sure why they have reversed effects since 2005.

At the end of the week, I was down to 81.7, which is the lowest I have seen since I bought the bathroom scales back in the 1980es. And the thing is, I didn’t mean to do this. I meant to stop at 84, but somehow I am still losing weight. I eat as much as I want (and enough that I am bothered by acid reflux when I go to bed unless I take care) but I still have to tighten my belt now and again. I don’t really think this is a sign of some horrible hidden disease, although you never know. I more suspect excessive Ingress playing. My new mobile phone counts my steps, and on a normal weekday that’s about 16000. Given that I have an office job, that’s rather a lot, isn’t it? And most of it is spent Ingressing. So until I see anything else, I suspect that’s where my fat is evaporating.

And of course, having big sores in my mouth does not encourage eating just for fun. But I am hungry enough often enough that I stuff myself with something liquid instead, like yogurt or Pepsi. I have not heard that Pepsi (with cane sugar) is a weight loss drug, exactly. So probably Ingress.

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