New Year’s Resolutions

It’s too late. You have to wait til next year for self-improvement

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Speaking of delayed Christmas…my neighbor put out Christmas lights on their house and in the yard this week. No word on how long they plan to keep them out.

Yeah, I bought a LightPhone. It has no internet connectivity. It’s…OK.

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At least it has a headphone jack.

Russians?

“Sometimes the old ways are the best.”

I’ve been curious about those for a long time. Interested to hear how it goes.

so you can now deal meth and accomplish your other goal as well

“Technology is cyclical.” - Dennis Duffy

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I went looking for a good nutrition tracking app to help with my resolutions and settled on Cronometer. I’ve been thrilled with it so far. I sprung for the paid version and it’s been extremely easy for me to use. I’m trying not to go too crazy with it—just focusing on my total intake of calories, protein, and fiber—and it’s been great for that purpose.

I don’t know how long I’ll keep it up, but it’s great to get a baseline. For example, I had no idea how little fiber I was usually getting, so in the future I’ll make more of an effort regardless of whether I consistently track my exact intake.

I’ve also been logging weight and blood pressure measurements every day (overkill, I know) and tracking my workouts through the iOS health and fitness apps. I’m not making any radical changes to my routine but I’m hoping that gathering all this data will make me more conscious of my health in general. At least for a while.

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I used a similar app and found it very useful in tracking how much (or how little) of each class of nutrient I was consuming.

(Hint: it wasn’t too few carbs)

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I went back to the “original” antihypertensive diuretic, purchased online from MX. It just works. When it went off patent many years back, a huge industry of novel and expensive new drugs emerged. None worked for me. Old school rocks.

So how’d that experiment go?

Ari-Gold-Anger-Throws-Phone-Against-Wall-Entourage

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Future generations will have to ponder that “Entourage” was a thing people really watched.

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Your question honors me.

The short answer is: It’s been good, and I don’t ever want to have a smart phone again.

The long answer is: It was a difficult transition. I miss the ease with which I could formerly participate in group text threads. They’re now all but wasted on me. I really loved texting, and the Lightphone interface is not particularly user-friendly. Their talk-to-text function is quite good, and I’ve taken to this in a way I didn’t anticipate. (To keep from taking myself too seriously, I tend to use accents. It amuses me that the recipient can’t know.)

A lot of my contacts were mysteriously truncated of their names, so that’s very annoying, and it’s alarmingly easy to accidentally butt-dial and (much worse) block people.

When I got the Lightphone I just put the Sim card from my iPhone into it and voila. I then lowered my T-Mobile bill to $20 a month. I have kept the old iPhone around as a tiny computer–I can listen to books on Audible in the car with it, put music on everywhere at the house, check the old contacts to see who that was just texted me, listen to a ballgame while doing yardwork, and still use the odd app (the meat thermometer one for when I’m smoking something, the Voice Memos for particularly good ideas, the Square dashboard one to see how my shop is doing, the weather app, etc.).

And, while it was quite frustrating for a while, I’ve become so accustomed to it already that when I saw your post I had to scroll up to remember what you were talking about.

I am not exactly out of the loop socially, but marginalized, and that can smart a little from time to time. But I am more productive in the areas I want to be productive, less distracted and distractable, and generally freer.

ETA: Hilariously, I forgot to mention that it’s also quite awkward to talk on! It’s so small that it’s impossible to cradle in the crook of the neck, so you have to keep alternating from ear to ear lest you lose all sensation in your arm. And I definitely talk on it more than I used to. So there’s that!

Also their customer service department is dynamite. A real guy who is interested in your issue gets back to you and the two of you can hash it out over as many emails as it takes. And boy do I email more than I used to!

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That’s really interesting, thanks for the detail. I’m continually tempted to try one out, but I don’t think I could swing it since I use my phone so much for work. Maybe one day.

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I wanted to go back and look at my list. I didn’t do so well, but I basically lost from January through May for some health issues and rehab. Surprise to me! No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Here was my list:
1. Cook through Robb Walsh’s Tex-Mex Cookbook, and start through Diana Kennedy’s Cuisines of Mexico.

I didn’t get through all of Walsh, but I got enough done to be satisfied. I did nothing with Kennedy except read some of it. I did finally make a decent biscuit, which was a New Year’s resolution from s past year. I still haven’t made a decent pie crust.

2. Catch a fish in 7 more states. That would get me to 44.

Done. Arizona, Utah, South Carolina, North Dakota, Georgia, Michigan, and Ohio. Don’t ever make a New Year’s resolution that involves catching a fish in North Dakota.

3. Catch a decent-sized tarpon on the fly, or a giant trevally.

I caught an ok tarpon In Campeche last January, and a little better one in Ixcalac, Mexico, in November. I missed my chance for giant trevally because I had to cancel the trip. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.

4. Finish adult education Spanish levels 5 and 6 at Rice.

Failed. I’ve signed up for level 5 in January.

5. Get back up to 6-mile runs. It’s too easy to run 3 and quit.

Failed. I couldn’t do anything for a while, but I’ve worked back to 3 miles. I’ve lost a minute on what was already a snail’s pace.

I’m thinking hard about next year’s.

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I was wondering if you made the Kirimati trip.

The only thing worse than a canceled fishing trip is not planning the next one.

Good luck.

I had to cancel the week before we were leaving. From the reports I got back from the people who went, it’s ok but the GTs they caught involved chumming and blind casting, and there are as good of bonefish a lot closer. The trigger fish were a huge hit. I don’t know if anybody will go back, and the group (including me) is supposed to go to the Bahamas in November.

Ixcalac, by the way, was amazing.

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