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Liquid Fire, Etc — News from Achewood Manor
🕑 Added 2024-02-26 19:14:58 +0000 UTCGood Monday Morning, Valued Denizen of the Author’s Tier!
Here is some news of my week, which I present to you as valid entertainment.
1. An Exciting Medical Device!
Tonight I am installing a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) onto the side of my arm. I have no reason to do this other than pure curiosity about how my body is working. It was simply mentioned to me that anyone — regardless of diabetic status — can do this, in order to see how their pancreas or whatever is responding to the foods they eat and the various other things they do (step up and down on a step-up-and-down machine, have a mild disagreement about a partner’s visiting sibling, smoke marijuana until they are so horny they are squinting).
I was turned on to these devices by a long-time reader who also happens to be an MD, and who also wears one for the purpose of deeper visibility into a bodily function which we have every capacity to understand and manipulate with almonds.
We’d been talking about how we built our respective gym routines, and I believe this was the exchange which prompted him to mention elective glucose monitoring technology:
HIM: …every 22 year old with a tank top has a Tik Tok explaining why every other 22 year old with a tank top is a moron.
ME: It's unfair that these young bucks — who can build pectorals the size of allergic reactions simply by pulling the Fruit Loops off a high shelf — can also present bodybuilding claims to the world. At this point, I would have to undertake a fitness project worthy of a Ken Burns feature simply to not have tits.
The CGM is about the size of those palmed joy buzzers of yore, and in my case it will be held in place by a bright magenta waterproof patch which looks, ironically, like a mini donut. I could have gotten the generic “medical flesh color” patch, but I worried that would have evoked feelings of pity by the general public. With a bright magenta patch, one is boldly proclaiming that their disquieting cybernetic nodule is a feature, not a bug.
2. C.O.O.P.
I very recently engaged a personal trainer. His name is Coop. I hired him because in the lobby of my gym there is a poster of him competing in a Natural Bodybuilding competition, and he looks like a crucifix to which someone has glued several hundred tanned bananas.
“This guy obviously knows how to get it done,” I thought to myself. (I realize, upon typing this, that I should have just asked him who his personal trainer was.)
I work out at the gym five times a week. I also run an average of twenty-five miles, and eat thirty different plants (later, from the grocery store). I almost never consume sugar or processed hot dog buns. And yet, I continue to look like a regular-ass guy. My wager here is that for just a few hundred dollars, Coop can get me looking like I have a couple tanned bananas of my own. (I do not want to look like some skinned, iodine-spritzed Adonis — I’m happy just to not muffin-top in the Levi’s.)
So far he’s guided me through three different custom-designed workouts, each of which has left me unable to pick things up off the floor for days afterward. My chest feels closer to the inside of my shirt. I swagger down the aisles of the grocery store, batting bags of cookies and cheddar away from my basket with the back of my hand.
3. Liquid Fire
Lauren’s sister is coming to visit from Kenosha, so I have been pouring Liquid Fire (pure sulfuric acid, which you can just buy at Ace Hardware, for some reason) down the permanently clogged sink in the guest bathroom. Tonight, I will capitulate and let Elliott the Plumber come and show me, using a ruler, how much money actually replacing the dead pipe will cost.
I like Elliott alright, but he always assumes I am fluent in: current and historic plumbing code; plumbing hardware slang; fluid mechanics and hydrostatics; high school chemistry. (I stopped taking high school chemistry in 1991 and no longer know about how calcium and galvanized aluminum feel about one another, Elliott.)
For the record, it was his idea I use Liquid Fire in the first place, probably so that there was guaranteed damage for him to fix.
4. Monster Trucks
All the world’s an anthropological field trip, and March 3rd’s monster truck expo at the Moda Center here in Portland promises to be a juicy tour indeed. My son and I are going with a couple friends who have been before, and they promise us that even, “sniveling nerds whose Dickens must be prised from their pallorous claws with unkind tools” will find their jaws ecstatically unhinged at the spectacle. I have it on good authority that GRAVE DIGGER will be competing. (Although I am unsure how victory is calculated.)
Okay, off to return some plumbing pieces and buy more Liquid Fire.
C
Comments
Chris Onstad
I’m not sure where Coop is in his annual reread of Sense and Sensibility, but my suspicion is that if I began a good-natured imitation of these hysterics, the reference would be lost on him and he would just drop plates on my chest until I “cut [that] shit out.”
Chris Onstad
I arrive at this same conclusion every time an electrician flutters his fingers and my account drains another four figures.
Omurice
I take exercise advice from Jane Austen. “Sophia shrieked and fainted on the ground – I screamed and instantly ran mad. We remained thus mutually deprived of our senses, some minutes, and on regaining them were deprived of them again. For an Hour and a Quarter did we continue in this unfortunate situation – Sophia fainting every moment and I running mad as often. At length a groan from the hapless Edward (who alone retained any share of life) restored us to ourselves.” See if Coop can top that.
J Hardy Carroll
I was a ripped and strong dude when I was younger, and managed to do all kinds of crazy shit without permanent injury (boxing, rock climbing, aikido, etc). What I remember most about that is how conscious I was of being fit, and how much I obsessed about it. When I look back now, it was pretty gross. I spend enough time thinking about ME and MY STUFF that I don't need any more. Also, I'm relatively lazy. I still spend 45 minutes a day on an elliptical and lift kettlebells every day, but that's mostly treading water. I'm 58 now, so anything I do is more about not spending my elder days in a wheelchair.
Sean Wolf
Feel you on the drain issue. You’ve opted for the nuclear option, but our old cast iron pipes responded well to Drain Punch, which was also neighborhood plumber recommended. I should’ve gotten a trade instead of studying the humanities.
Chris Onstad
I hope one of the thoughts was PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE
Josh Fireland
A long time ago I went to a monster truck show in Oakland and it was louder than a My Bloody Valentine concert. GRAVE DIGGER was there, as was some kind of motivational Transformer that fired a missile at a big wooden box labeled with various intrusive thoughts.
Matt Mitchell
Ah ok, so I just have to triple my usual dose, then.
Chris Onstad
Apparently you just need to add 100cc of testosterone to your toothpaste (absorbs easily due to bleeding gums)
Chris Onstad
Don’t smell me dogg I ain’t got sugar toes I AINT GOT SUGAR TOES
Chris Onstad
Looking for in-app upgrades now
Chris Onstad
I could never hurt myself the way Coop hurts (myself)
professor husband
i don't know that i could handle a real-time output of any of my body's functions. i finally joined the Apple Watch Crowd last year and even the basic functionality available with that thing is sufficient to freak me out about the various failure states of my body. that being said, retaining the services of a trainer is probably worth it insofar as they are very good at finding muscle groups you didn't even know you had and making them intensely sore. they are better at it than we are.
blair
I got diagnosed with diabetes over the holidays and am firmly on the CGM train. I watch it like a soap opera - or, when a sugar cube reflexively dropped in the morning coffee makes the level goes up so fast you expect the app to make a slide-flute noise, a horror movie.
Julie (HiDeeHoGal)
I am of the type 2 persuasion and used a Freestyle Libre CGM while calibrating my insulin requirements. Our phones become more and more like Star Trek's tricorders. Level 1 diagnostic! *beep* Try to not get obsessed with tracking your numbers though - it drove me to distraction at first.
Nicholas Williams
No ma'am Chris ain't got diabetes. No ma'am he ain't got no diabetes at all. In fact he just came in from his big marathon that he likes to write about. Probably that's why his voice sounds all chunky.
Matt Mitchell
Re the exercise: fuckin tell me about. We were born in the same year so I suspect there are some resultant similarities re delated (inflating) expectations
