I haven’t skipped my evening martini in quite some time. My blood pressure is still not that low (135/94 today) and my weight is still too high (226.2). My theory is that when I skip the drink, it’s easier for me to not snack in the evenings. It’s the snacks that keep my weight high, I’m pretty sure. The rest of the day, I tend to eat pretty healthy (unless we go to eat).

If I can make up my mind to do this more often, maybe I can bring my weight down and thus my blood pressure. I’m still minus one drug since having the reaction to a blood pressure medicine last year. I was on two BP meds, but one of them was the culprit that caused my rash (which I still have slight vestiges of).  My doctor dropped the bad drug but didn’t want to add a new one in the middle of  a reaction. When I emailed her my list of high blood pressure readings as per her instructions she didn’t prescribe a new drug.  I will see her in May. I would like it if I could have brought down my blood pressure before then so I don’t have to add another drug to get it back to snuff.

Anyway, no martini or wine tonight. I usually snack instead of have supper, so the up side of this will be that I can have an actual light meal in the evenings. I rummaged through our downstairs freezer today. We want to get rid of the silly thing but it still has food in it. Eileen has been trying to make our carbon footprint smaller.  Part of that is downsizing us to the freezer in our fridge.We have found that having a smaller, more efficient refrigerator/freezer helps us. We tend to keep a bit less stuff on hand and use up more of what we have.

Today I pulled out bags of oat flour, masa harina, spelt flour, and couscous from the downstairs freezer. I cooked up the couscous for our lunch and we had shrimp, veggies, and couscous. Yum.  I will be trying out the old flours to see if they are usable. I think they are.

I walked over and did the treadmill at Evergreen today. I am now exhausted but feeling slightly smug about trying to work on my health a little bit.

I had a brilliant brain storm today. I know of at least one Anthony Burgess novel I  have not read and do not own,  The Worm and  The Ring.

Shortly after it was published, it was withdrawn from sales due to libel concerns. Consequently, it is rare and when you can find a used copy. it’s expensive ($273 on AbeBooks).

My brain storm was to interlibrary loan a copy. I don’t need to own it. I want to read it. It turns out that MelCat (the online catalog of the interlibrary loan services of the Michigan eLibrary ) owns two copies and one of them is on it’s way to me. Yay!

My guess is that this book will eventually be published by the Irwell people who are in the process of doing updated editions. The libel concerns are probably too old at this time to hold it up.