After lunch today, I was full! I think my body has resigned itself to the new diet.

Ugh, work today sucked. Actually, several days this week have sucked, and this was just the one that drained what I had out of me. I got nothing done at all. The issue that I mentioned earlier is starting to affect me, insofar as it's making my officemate upset, it's making the general atmosphere tense, and it's putting more work on my shoulders that I am not interested in doing. On the other hand, I appreciate the goodness of my supervisors more, and I see how well-organized our projects are in comparison. Bleh.

I feel like I should take things home, since I didn't do tons of stuff I wanted to today. But I just want to get out of here and not think about work. Actually, I think I will leave, and not take anything with me.

Perhaps my late-afternoon blues was really just exhaustion. Hard to say whether I was bummed because I was tired, or whether I was tired because I was bummed, but anyway, after dinner I crashed for an hour or so. Never did get to the gym... that's been like the theme of the month. I need to make March better, or figure out something else to do. I have procured a small piece of exercise equipment from our friends at eBay, so we'll see if that's good. I saw it in an infomercial at the hospital last weekend, and it looked fun and good, so I bought it for much cheaper online. Woo eBay.

I also need arm weights. And for it to be warm so I can just go run around outside.

Work has been interesting lately. I'm glad to be well outside of the interesting and just watching it. It got me thinking that Holly and I have really been getting along and working well together for the past while, and this is really a great thing. And, of course, Jeff is just the nicest person ever. So, I'm very lucky to be in the joint group.

I think my body has calmed down today. It's after lunch and I feel a bit fuller than yesterday. This will work out.

I wasn't even noticably hungry this afternoon (though maybe coffee helped). This is good!

I was thinking this morning that I really need to procure a tray to transport the variety of foods items I am given at each meal. This evening as I was preparing dinner at work, I noticed a bunch of tray-like objects shoved way up on the top shelf. I found a perfect mini green plastic one! This baby is going home with me.

Class tonight was so dreadfully boring. At least I was in the same discussion group as my coworker... so we could both grumble and roll our eyes at how stupid the other folks were. It looks like when we get to the study critique assignment, my paper is going to rock the world.

Speaking of paper, looks like I'm going to be writing one about our hospital survey! A paper by me! Possibly in a journal!

After class was DDR in the Band Room. It's probably good this game wasn't in there when I was in school, or I would have got even less done than I already did. Then I took a cab home, because I didn't feel like taking a bus, and I haven't taken a cab in a while. Occasionally I remind myself that if I had a car, it would cost me tons of money, so it's not the end of the world if I fork over $7-10 for a cab ride once in a while.

I know what I really want for my birthday: someone to do my fucking laundry. It's out of control.

Happy birthday Jenn!

Day one of diet: sat around the hosp, got poked, didn't feel so bad. Body thinks, eh, just a slow eating day, no biggie. Day two of diet: worked, felt a little dizzy if I stood up too fast, didn't feel very full after lunch. Body starts to complain slightly about lack of food. Day three of diet: try to work, feel dead tired all day, still hungry after lunch, done with entire day's food by 6:30. Body all, what the fuck? You were supposed to catch up from Monday and YOU HAVEN'T YET! Dear body, I'm sorry, but you'll just have to get used to it.

Uh, until then, I think it's naptime.

Woo! I got a raise, retroactive to last October! Okay, it's not really a raise for being awesome (though I am), but because they bumped up the base salary for research assistants, and so the new folks were getting paid more than us old folks. So they've balanced it out, meaning I'll get a big old retroactive check next week. Kickass!

Today's lunch was funny... yesterday I didn't feel too hungry, but by then of lunch today, I just didn't feel quite full. I mean, they stuffed me full of lunch on the control diet, and now they feed me not nearly as much. It was tasty and a great variety, and it looked like plenty, but the comparison is just obvious.

Also, today I stood up real fast a couple of times, and woo head rush! My body is missing that pint of blood. No wonder people have a tough time with the first week of the diet... first they suck out a fifth of your blood, and then they feed you nothing.

Ha, it was funny, Elena asked me on the phone today if I felt okay, because she said I looked a little pale at our meeting yesterday... "are they feeding you enough?"

Uh, so I did not get a lot of work done today. But I did get to visit the clinic, and I feel like I have a much better handle of how recruitment can work for the pilot studies. I also got to hang out with Jeff while he saw two patients, which was really cool. I even got to look at some x-rays and MRIs, and he pointed out some things on them to me. Cool!

Ha, Pro was commenting that he estimates that he "flat-out won't eat 85% of the foods in the world," hence amazement that there are folks out there who could turn over their menu to someone else's discretion. This is amusing to me, because I seriously will eat almost anything, maybe not a lot, maybe not fully enjoying it, but not refusing certainly. Ah, the diversity of human tastes.

Let the weight loss begin!

So, I got randomized to the diet I wanted, the one with a higher protein-to-carbs ratio. It's great because I may be able to retain muscle mass better, and the diet is mostly protein-filled things like meat, and lots of fruits and vegetables. The funny thing is that one of the journals I had with me this weekend was a supplement of the AJM all about diets, and so now I can scrutinize each part of my diet and know something about why it's in there.

Can I say how great it is to be able to go to the bathroom and not have to put it in a jug? It's wonderful. I only gave them one "big present" this weekend, and that was so fucking awful that I decided they were getting no more. Then again, it wasn't so much poop as butt sludge.

Man, I just can't stop putting major TMI on this webpage.

One problem I have had in the past few weeks that I had in full force this weekend was feeling the need to justify my fatness to everyone, especially the nurses. Okay, granted, I am probably the closest to normal weight range of anyone in the study... I mean, I'm less than 10 pounds above the BMI cutoff for my height. But, as my mom pointed out, I am short, and five pounds on me is a huge difference. That, and I really feel like I'm almost 23, and if I can't be at a good weight now, I never ever will be. It only gets harder to lose weight, and now is the time to get down as far as I reasonably can so that I can gain weight at a normal rate as I age and still stay close to the normal range.

I'm sure someone is going to misread all this as me wanting to be anorexic or having body image problems... that's not it at all. It's the opposite, really. I want my body to remain intact and healthy for as long as possible. I've spent nine months working in public health, and the biggest thing I have learned is that maintaining a good body weight is the best way to reduce your risk for practically every chronic non-communicable disease. And the best way to maintain a good body weight is to not eat too much, and to incorporate physical activity, even if it's a few days a week at the gym and not running marathons or bench pressing elephants. Being a sedentary overeater is as bad as smoking, and it's worse as an aggregate health issue. And now is the best time for me personally to develop better eating and exercise habits, as I develop many other habits of adult life.

Ah... but I am thrilled with the new diet. It's so nice to eat something new! And with fruit! I have missed fruit a lot on the control diet. And low-fat mayo instead of full-fat mayo... it tastes so much better to me! Although I did have one mystery pat of butter today with lunch... there just wasn't anything to put it on, except a couple little pieces of broccoli. I wasn't going to put it in my ice cream (ice cream! Though I think with sugar substitue, if my tastebuds lead me correctly). Ugh, except tomorrow's breakfast is pumpernickel bread with peanut butter (though there was some pumpernickel bread tonight, and I found it tasty... it also remind me of the time I visited Harvard as a pre-frosh and me and J and Ben went to Store 24 -- I was wearing pajamas and sandals with my coat on -- and bought pumpernickel bread, olive loaf [I think? Something awful like that], and perhaps mustard, and we made these dreadful but tasty sandwiches... to me it was the embodiment of the way college should be), and cottage cheese. I'm not the biggest fan of cottage cheese. Though I need to buy some Splenda... I have a feeling a little sweetness could improve things on the cottage cheese front.

Um, yeah, so remember what I said a while back about this page being all about food for a while? That, it seems. Though Lisa told me her housemates are fascinated by this entire study, so maybe I'm not putting the masses to sleep.

Shit, my birthday is in a week! Fucking February is always so damn short! Man, I have negative plans for the old b-day. Maybe a wild night out at Tealuxe is in order. Or maybe really crazy plans in Davis Square. Ooh, exotic locales!

I also learned this weekend that I have fairly low blood pressure. Like, pretty much right above the cutoff where they start thinking you have abnormally low blood pressure. The discharge note says 101/66, but I was definitely getting even lower readings at times (that's just the last reading). Thanks to my mom for that physiological gift. Though maybe that explains why I wake up with my leg feeling funny sometimes... it's not unlikely that I really am cutting off some circulation to my leg when I lay on my side. Maybe I need to eat more salt.

Also, why am I still awake? They woke me up at 5:45 this morning, and it's almost 11:30 now. Granted, I sat on my ass most of the day, but still.

Happy birthday, Storey!

Cool people think I'm great!

I hate debt. A lot. I'm a fastidious payer of credit card bills, and despite my love for shopping, I manage to save a great deal of money. So I've decided I'm paying off Ma Harvard, thereby getting rid of about half my loans, really more since they were the high-interest ones. This makes me feel quite happy.

It snowed a lot! Official reports are 27.5 inches, but I really don't think there is that much in my neighborhood, though I'm not far from Logan where the official reading would be. But anyway, it's hard to tell with the big piles made by plows and snowblowers. That and I don't have a car, so I didn't get the joy of digging one out. But the sidewalk in front of my house was uncleared until the evening, and on my way to the gym I noted nearly-knee-deepness, so I guess it was no small thing. So now, with a ton of snow, it was tropical today and will only be warmer the next couple days, with rain to follow. But fear not, cold temps and more snow will come turn the flooding into an ice rink, and then an ice rink covered with more snow.

I did get the day off yesterday. My proj manager called Monday to say not to come in. I guess one of the other proj managers was all pissy that our team wasn't in... it's not like we're not going to use vacation days for it. Besides, why do people get worked up over what other people are doing anyway. It's not like we're doing work for her.

In other news, I've been dealing with assholes online. But I'm pretty sure most folks are more in agreement with me, at any rate, making it tolerable. And, I mean really, I don't get insulted by children.

My room is always 800 degrees. I wake up this morning and it's freezing. Actually, it was pleasant while I was in bed, but COLD once I left bed. I've patched up my leaky window a bit, and turned up the heater.

I hate breakfast. I hate having to choke it down every morning. It's not so bad on toast-and-cereal day. But bagel day is horrible. First off, I have to eat two packets of orange marmelade, which is just sick, and then I have to use an entire little tub of cream cheese. And I don't really like bagels! I've been staring at half a bagel for fifteen minutes now, and I can't get inspired to eat it.

Sundays on three-day weekends are great. Just like another Saturday!

Though the weather is uninspiring. As of 11am, it's 7 F, feels like -4. Though that's probably better than last night when I was coming home. And then at Davis there was this man basically bothering people and talking all in their faces in the part of the T station that is a warm place to wait for the bus. I stayed in there as long as possible and managed to avoid him mostly, but I finally just went outside and waited. And called the MBTA police on his ass, because he was making people uncomfortable enough to wait outside in the brutal cold. I dunno if they ever came and made him go away, but I was just glad to have a cell phone then.

Sucralose! Also known as Splenda. After consulting with the dietician, who said it was a-okay, I decided to try some in my coffee this morning. It's fab. Tastes pretty much just like sugar. I might have to buy a big box.

I had a Valentine's Day present, and I didn't even know it... tax refund! Wooo! It's a whopper thanks to the Lifetime Learning Credit.

BARF!

Yesterday was one of the better V-days I've had, namely because in the Longwood area no one cares about it and there are no decorations in your face all the time. This was great. I thought about going to sulk with Bandies last night, but I didn't. I think this was a good idea.

More afternoon zonk. But I am more alert after walking to get the mail from the other building. But I still don't want to do any of the work I should do.

I'm actually really glad to be on a diet today. Usually I would have no willpower and eat way too much candy and feel awful and bloated and nasty. I can't eat any candy, so it's not a problem.

So, last night after class I went to H's for her pre-V-day party. It was pretty fun, though I still hate social situations where I don't really know much of anyone. I could have used a beer, but so it goes, oh diet. There was a cool med student who chatted with me for most of the time I was there, so that made things much more tolerable than they might have been.

I think tonight I'm just going to go to the gym. I need to go to the gym. I haven't been in like 10 days. I'm afraid I will get home and not want to go back out into the brutal cold. Rar. That's the sucky thing about the diet; I have to go home and put the food in the fridge. It was much better for me to go straight to the gym, because while I can convince myself walking home from it won't be bad, it's harder to convince myself to walk to and from it once I am warm in my house.

Next week, I need to really make an effort to get out of bed at 7. I have decided this. I've been getting in to work too late. No one notices or cares, but it makes me feel like a slacker, and I end up being the only one here at the end of the day.

I am so zonked. Afternoon is like bleh this week. I'm having a hugely unproductive day.

Man, after not eating all that much for a few days, having to eat all that lunch (same stupid meal I couldn't finish due to illness on Saturday... fucken meatloaf) has made me feel wicked nasty. I just want to take a nap and sleep off this terrible food coma and stomach fullness.

Oh, so as you might guess, I'm back doing the study, on the control diet, with a new hospital date of weekend after this one. At least I get the long weekend free, though maybe I'll come in on Monday. I dunno. I have plenty of benefit time to spare, so it's not like I have to. And I really do plan to get a lot of work done during the hospital stay if I can just be healthy.

I was reading an archived web journal, and I came across "ITYS!" I couldn't for the life of me figure out what that meant. I think you suck? But then some poking around told me that I meant, I told you so! Which is funny because I was thinking about the conversation that lead to that outburst just this morning.

I hate being sort of sick. I guess it's better than being really sick, but it stinks in its own novel way. Namely, I feel bleh, too bleh to really do much of anything. But it's not that far off from just feeling lazy, so I keep telling myself, you should do things. But, I'm sick. I did manage to eat, and I called Harvard payroll to get them to send my W2 (which fortunately got returned to them) (oh, by the way, Ma, the thing you forwarded wasn't a W2, just a 1098-T with no useful info on it). Maybe I will get to editing this grant soon. Bleh.

I wouldn't mind getting some things done in the Square, but I don't feel up to travel. That's the big obstacle for everything at the moment: how to get there. Work just seems like a millions miles away.

I did actually get the grant edited, and then I went to work for a few hours. The worst thing I felt was just tired once I got there and got settle, but Elena got me some tea, which perked me up. So, all told, I got in a half day. Oh, also sucky was that I left my bus pass in another bag. I hate waiting for the CT2 after work.

I somehow need to get myself scheduled in. Everyone else is fucking scheduled in, and I always get leftovers, and I always have to work for them. Rather, I always have to do *all* the work for everything. It's tiring.

Have you ever lost an entire dress? I was reading through an old journal, and I mentioned buying this black velvet dress in the summer of 1999, for wicked cheap. My mother hemmed it up and everything, and I wore it for the Valentine's Day party (Casino Party 2000). Uh, so where the fuck is it now? When is the last time I saw it? I don't know! Did I take it home and leave it there? I don't think so. Did I lend it to someone? I'm baffled.

So, I was reading some journal stuff from three to three-and-a-half years ago. That's definitely a good amount of time to make things more amusing and less painful. Except, no matter how old the journal, it seems I'm reading it going, "Girlfriend, you gotta get away from that skank! He don't treat you right!"

Man, that sucked. Yesterday before lunch I started getting a headache. Not completely unusual: they woke us up at 6 am, I hadn't had any coffee, no biggie. Then, lunch came, and I realized that my stomach wasn't feeling so hot either. I thought maybe I was just hungry and started eating, and soon realized that bigger problems were going on. Everything goes vastly downhill from there. They took my temp, I had a fever, they gave me Tylenol. The dietician on the floor gave me crap for not eating all my lunch as if I had willfully made my stomach hurt or something (maybe I should mention that to the study coordinator). But the fever remained and evern got a little worse as dinner came and went, so I talked to the doctor whose the Primary Investigator on the study, and he talked to the other PI, and they decided to send me home and reschedule everything. Yes, I know, kinda funny that they send me home from the hospital when I'm sick. So, Matt came and picked me up, thank goodness. Last night sucked a whole lot and had weird boring dreams and was achey and couldn't get comfortable. I got up at 6 with a fever of 100.8, plopped in some ibuprofen, and now it's 1 and my temp is back to normal and I just feel bleh. But bleh is better than deathly. SO, maybe I'll even be able to go to work tomorrow.

At least it happened on the first day and not today. Or tomorrow. That would have really sucked.

I did very little at work today, but that is because I was having a new computer put in by the slowest tech guy in the whole world. Like, I mean stuff it used to take me at most an hour to do, took him all afternoon. But now I have a shiny new computer, and it's fast and they keyboard is lovely and I can type fast and I can actually see all the colors on my new monitor, woo!

Mmmm hospital tomorrow. I better pack tonight.

Today I had my body composition x-ray done... it's a good thing I don't spend much time with my butt squiched flat against something, because it makes it look huge. Like, wow, huge butt! But my skeleton is cute and little and short. At the end of the study, they will do the same scan, and I will get the read-outs from both so I can see if I lost muscle or fat and where (they split me into pieces).

I had to get up too early to eat breakfast so my stomach would be empty for this thing. I am sleepy. Coffee didn't help.

My tax return works on my work computer! Which is good, because it's the only place I can print from anyway.

Ugh, I have nothing to do today that I feel like doing. Actually, I feel like sleeping... I hate Mondays.

I'm an idiot. I got this thing from massdor about filing my taxes online for free, but I didn't look at it close enough to note that it said I could do both federal and state together for free. So I blindly go file my federal taxes through someone else for free, but I think this pretty much negates my doing the other thing for the state, because it's going to want to file both for me, and I would assume I can't just be all, no I filed fed already, just give me state. Rar. Furthermore, I can't view my federal return at all because of their shitty java crap that won't launch Acrobat. In every browser on my computer. This pisses me off. I really wish I could retract my return completely and start over with the other service.

It's possible my idiocy is limited. After some poking around, I think I probably can't file my state return electronically no matter what because of the nonres/part-year issue. I have to file an additional form which I don't think can be filed electronically. At least, that's what the service I used for my federal return told me. So, I feel free of idiocy, and still full of annoyance that I can't view my federal return, but these things can be fixed.

I'm also hoping that it won't be a problem that I filed my federal return having basically dedeuced the info on my non-existant Harvard W2. But really, how hard is the W2 to figure out from my last paystub. Not hard. But I guess if I'm going to be filing my state form by paper, I better get ahold of those. I will be storming the Holyoke Center next week!

I also realize that I am the only person ever who is such a geek about such limited finances. Oh, but it looks like my federal return will be huge, thanks to the Lifetime Learning Credit! It, like, doubled my return, according to the H&R Block output. Never mind that someday I hope to be reimbursed for that expense... it didn't ask me about that, and I couldn't find anything about such a thing in the little brochure I got from Harvard on it. Take money. Run.

I really wish the gym were open later on Sundays. 4pm just isn't late enough for me to get my butt over there and finished. And it's snowy and gross outside, so I can't even just go for a walk or something. Maybe I'll run around my room.

I think I have figured something out about the control diet. It seems to involve a lot of butter and mayo and high-calorie, low-volume additives. My hypothesis is that they are trying to keep the actual volume of food roughly equivalent between the control and treatment diets, but they just get rid of all this awful butter and mayo when they switch me to treatment. That way the calories go way down, but I have already adjusted a little bit to the food volume. I expect the food volume will still decrease, based on what the dietician said, but it won't be so drastic. I can't wait to stop eating so much damn butter! And whole milk in breakfast this morning! I don't like whole milk in my coffee anymore, because I'm so used to 1%.

With all the vastly more sad and important news going on in the world, Groundhog Day hasn't really been mentioned anywhere. But Punxsutawney Phil was working anyway. Little fucking rat said 6 more weeks of winter. Looking outside at the snow today, I give a resounding, "No shit."

Besides being very sad, the news about the space shuttle is just sort of gruesome. I started to read some stuff, and got to the part about recovering the astronauts remains, and I'd had enough of that for today. Some little kid found a scorched leg... and now he needs to find a good therapist.

Whoa. My parents told me they heard the sonic boom in Albuquerque.

I had this dream last night that I woke up, and while I was still groggy, I ate breakfast without remembering I was in the study, so I had just eaten whatever. Oh no! I remembered this dream when someone emailed over hubba about going to McDonald's for the Big Mac special, and I started to think about it and then remembered, oh, no I can't go.

I think this web page will probably be all about food for the next three months. But it's the only really interesting thing going on right now.

Breakfast didn't have milk in it this morning. Coffee is much less appealing without milk. I don't even care so much about sugar, but milk just takes the edge off of it. I did discover, however, that I can get about 2 8oz cups out of my coffee maker, and not the 2 12oz cups I feared. My coffee normally goes closer to the top of the 12 oz mug because of the things I add, not because it's really that substantial. This is good because it gives me another 8 oz to drink later! Or to save for tea! Though in my research I discovered that my favorite tea is actually decaffeinated, so I can drink as much as I want. Which is good, because the decaf green tea I had last night made my stomach unhappy, but the ginger tea I like will definitely not do that.

So far, the nicest thing about the study has been the hot meal (dinner on the weekends, lunch during the week). It's far better and more varied than anything I ever cook for myself. Tonight was meatloaf, baked potato, and green beans. The hardest part after the study will be trying to figure out how one goes about cooking things in the sizes that food comes in and yet keeps the portion size reasonable at the same time. I need a family of 20 RIGHT NOW.