Still sick

 My throat is still sore and I still feel like crap. I called it a night, read more of "Sons And Lovers" (I'm only on page 61) and went to bed. I woke up about halfway through my sleep and my throat felt awful. 

I'd concluded my YouTube watching with a nice lecture by Dr. Robert Lustig, about fatty liver. He showed very convincing proof that fatty liver is a lot more loosely coupled to overweight than people think, and then got down to what really causes it - fructose. Fatty liver is showing up in children, even very young ones, because in the American diet, fructose is in almost everything. Especially in everything most Americans will eat, which means very little in the way of whole foods like fresh veggies, eggs, unprocessed meats, etc. Plus Americans wash everything down with liters of soda pop, or "healthy" fruit juice. The really health-conscious ones, you can tell by their pillowiness, go to places like Jamba Juice for their "healthy" 2000-kcal fruit drinks...

Lustig pointed out that there *is* a small coupling between red meat and heart disease and so on, and it comes down to heme, the iron-carrying molecule. Isolate for that and beef is perfectly fine. And even if you eat it, if you're getting things like vitamin D and choline, you're fine. 

It was an hour and a half long lecture and I even took some notes, but now I have a very clear idea of what to eat. This is good because the liver, which the speech was about, and the kidneys, are pretty closely linked. Hurt one, hurt them both. Help one, help them both. 

This is completely aside from my interest in tianeptine which, with a cold, I can't exactly go hunting around for right now. I can't go coughing and sneezing into vape shops, asking for ZaZa Red and spreading germs around... 

I must feel a bit less bad though, because after deliveries and picking up things on the way back like more packing stuff and lots of huge sheets of high-quality paper I think I can use, and settling down for a bit, I took off again at 8PM for a shopping trip at H Mart. 

First, I'd gone through my food (other than survivalist stuff I've got stashed away which I'll have to go through) and found a good number of things to get rid off because of being too carby or having phosphate salts. Even the package of peanuts I'd just bought last night went into this group, which will go into a Little Free Library or something. 

It was really nice at 8PM, the sun being almost down and it a lot cooler. I looked for the "fab four" of low-carb nuts, those being macadamias, Brazils, pecans and pumpkin seeds. I didn't find pecans but found the other three. I got more dried seaweed, it being a low-carb snack that I like. I got some beef, but pretty fatty stuff and my standard serving size (4 oz.) is close to the recommended one (3 oz.). I got more diet 7-Up, which is kind of a no-no just because it's diet soda, but if I'm not feeling well I'm gonna drink some. 

It only took me an hour to do that quick out-and-back, and that's with my wandering through most of the store, and such distractions as a big spill of some kind of yoghurt drink in the veggie section, and people being real-life Catchers In The Rye, keeping others from stepping in it. I almost did, then in turn warned some other people. I said, "I'll go get someone" and looked at Customer Service; no one. The security guards weren't even around. I went to the first checkout to pay for my stuff and figured that way I'd get a word in with the checker. Good plan but the checker on #1 is a new guy, who's not good with English at all. Spanish, most assuredly, but English ... not really. I told him about the spill and I think he thought I was just making small talk and just nodded and grinned. 

After paying I talked about the spill again and it was "OK (big smile) thank you!" I suppose someone probably did eventually take care of it, but wow. 

It *was* a lot nicer riding home, at night now. I saw a orange-ish light where there's not usually one next to the building that's next to this complex so I rode over by that way to get a look. There was a big biker, as in motorcycles, group having a cookout and the light was all the candles by the little shrine I'd mentioned  a week or so ago. The womenfolk were all gathered around that. They must really miss the guy or more like, he was probably fairly high-ranking. 

I got an email from Rinban saying that the next shakuhachi club meeting is this coming week and that we're working on a new song and he attached a sound file so we can tell what it sounds like. I replied that I had a nasty cold or something and may not show up this month. 

But how this all ties in is, I want to become adept in writing down music in kinko notation and the big sheets of "Konica Imaging" paper I got today should be very good for masters. For instance, there's a piece called Seiya we're supposed to learn and have two printed versions of, both Xeroxes of pencil scribblings or something. I want to do something about that. 

But also, I really don't like the way Rinban is "teaching" us shakuhachi. He's trying to teach us gathas, or songs, that are used in our sect of Buddhism and that's a noble cause, but he's not really teaching the shakuhachi very well. We need something like those band books that high school students use. And it turns out there are some really nice pieces of music that are easy to play, even easier to play than "Hinomaru", the traditional first song. You've got to give the student easy pieces and a lot of success  and take them upward by steps. And it's got to be fun. 

I can't think of any way to do this other than to get good at brush-lettering, to make masters I can run copies off of at Kinko's. 

Besides that, right now I'm excited about two things: Firstly, I want to make a holder for all my Japanese flutes, so two shakuhachi and three shinobue, and see exactly how I can do it using some pretty simple bits and pieces from Lowe's. Secondly, I want to go ahead and get the backpack I plan to use for the move, so I can start a "dry run" of what to pack and how to pack it. 

For this week, I've spent enough that even if I would, with this cold, I can't allow myself to spend $30 on an REI membership and $75 or so on a pair of Olukai slippers or $100+ on a small, carry-all-the-time bag. I can, however, spend a bit at Lowe's especially if I take the stuff from the last time I bought project-stuff from them and give a good sob story about having lost the receipt but all I want is store credit which I'll turn around and spend right away. 

When I got back this 2nd time I had 3 oz, 1 oz each, of the nuts I'd bought. Pumpkin seeds, Brazils, and macadamias. It doesn't sound like much but I feel almost stuffed! 

I'm looking at three problems here: I've probably been pre-diabetic. Plus there are the issues of liver damage which I'm sure I have or had because for a while there I was drinking like a fish, and kidney damage. The need or lack thereof, for tianeptine to take the place, for me, that Kratom would if I wanted to use Kratom, which I don't, is on the mental level rather than the physical.