As I stated in my 2024 Resolutions post, I’m doing a dry January. I’ll be updating this post throughout the month.
2/5/2024
Well it’s done! And I’ve been drinking every night of February. That will probably break tonight.
I think I slept better but I slept longer. I definitely gained weight but it could also be because I’ve been exercising more (that happens to me). It could also be that instead of drinking, I will eat more when we go out for dinner.
It got a lot easier at the end of the month. And I haven’t gone crazy in February. With Brian gone for two weeks I’m responsible for the pets so there’s reason to not go crazy.
The first sip of beer after January felt like diving into a cool pool on a hot day. Simply refreshing. It was tough when others were drinking and I wasn’t. It kind of changed my relationship with alcohol in a way. I don’t feel the need to go crazy and drink everything. I’m more moderation now… however, that could just be because I have responsibilities until Bri gets back. Or maybe I’m just fooling myself and I’m not being responsible… I don’t know.
I may do dry January again… maybe not.
1/19/2024
More than half way through! It is getting easier. The real challenge has been not cheersing people when we go for a happy hour. I’m ordering orange juice. I’m glad I have friends doing this with me. I’m really proud of my friend, Mark, for hanging in there with me. We met up last night and everyone was not drinking.
I haven’t lost any weight and this morning I woke up and it felt like I had a hangover. It’s also harder to get to sleep. Yesterday wasn’t a good day for my brain. My Portuguese was poor and I’m having a very difficult time in class understanding how to give directions. It’s different than in English.
It’s strange but everything feels fine. I feel normal for the most part… just lower energy and not sleeping. But when I am sleeping, I’m sleeping well. I don’t wake up during the night. I dream more, I think. This has been easy for me but I still want to continue drinking after this month.
1/11/2024
It’s been a tough, slow month so far. I’ve had some challenging days where alcohol would have helped. It’s been 11 days since I last drank alcohol. I know I’ve done longer sprints like this in the past (like when we didn’t have plans for a weekend) so I know I can get through it. In Portugal I drink a lot more than in the states (besides during covid when the only thing to do after work was to drink).
So far I feel okay during the day. However, I feel like they lie when they say you are going to have more energy, sleep less, lose weight, etc by stopping drinking. I’ve had the opposite effects. I’m sleeping 8-9 hours a night (vs when I drank I would get 7-8 hours of sleep). I feel like I’ve gained weight and feel bloated. I also eat a lot more which sucks. I feel like when I drank I wouldn’t eat as much. I feel like I have a lot less energy now. Often I feel like I need to take a nap or feel tired during the day. It sucks.
Alcohol also helps with my portuguese and my overall anxiety. Yesterday I played poker with some people and I felt so nervous and I was shaking. Alcohol helps calm down my nerves and relaxes me but I couldn’t have that.
I’m glad I’m doing this with a friend. Brian is also doing it too. The support from him and my friend helps. I know I’m not the only one going through this hell.
I hope it gets better. Will update again soon.
- I DO NOT have covid. I doubt that I’ve ever had it.
- I REALLY want AOC to force a vote on Medicare For All so then we will know who supports giving people healthcare during a pandemic.
- I say fuck too much.
- My friends are awesome. I miss my friends.
- My dogs are awesome. I don’t miss my dogs since they’re always here with me.
- I’ve been downloading (actually buying) a lot of music.
- I’m really into Chernobyl, Mount Everest, abandoned places, ship wrecks, etc. I would like more recommendations for YouTube but since all I subscribe to and most of what I play is political in nature, I don’t see much.
- I have a weird crush on Jared Harris right now. I just finished binging Fringe and just watched Chernobyl on HBO for the third time. I just love his voice. It’s sexy to me.
- It does not feel like Christmas to me.
- I’m kind of a little addicted to work right now which is not a good thing. I think about it a lot. I’m having fun and (dare I say it) look forward to the work days.
- I’m learning Spanish and actually getting good at it. Speaking and hearing, not so much but I can read it.
- I REALLY wish the Democrats didn’t suck. I REALLY wish we had Bernie in there. I REALLY wish more people realized that the Democrats suck and demand more from them. All I do on Twitter is bash the Democrats because they deserve it. They are beyond pathetic and the next four years are going to be a cluster fuck. Sorry (not sorry) but Joe Biden sucks ass. He’s going to make things worse (and NO that doesn’t mean he’s worse than Trump).
- I wish I had more time for this blog. I wish I could write debunking posts like I used to. I would research the shit out of something and write about it with sources and stuff. It was fun and awesome.
Yes, I’m drunk writing this. (Thank God for spell check!)
I’m in Ocean City, Maryland right now. I’ve been looking forward to this time for many many weeks. It’s wonderful.
Am I COVID positive? I don’t know. But I couldn’t tell you that before I came here either.
I’m quarantining for at least two weeks when we get back. I’m wearing a mask always (DUH!) even on the boardwalk. I’m very slow to type but I feel safe at the moment. I want to always be safe.
Being in Ocean City, it’s great but it’s also worrisome. I love hearing the ocean but I worry about COVID.
Just now. Tranquil. It’s necessary. Different change in scenery. I need this. Thank you. I’m grateful I can do this.
We recently explored the possibility of moving to another house (long story). So, naturally, we started interviewing realtors to sell our current house. Every one of them said rip up the carpet (which is only five years old) and expose the hardwood.
I wasn’t sure what kind of impact that would have on our home as the different levels have been built up for carpet. Not to mention, the title I had put in on the side door. That would have to go.
I also wasn’t sure what kind of shape the hardwood floors were in as I hadn’t seen them before. What if they were crap and needed to be sanded? Ugh. I know what that does to a house (all the dust, disgust from cleaning and sanding hardwood from my dad’s house).
Ripping up the carpet was a non-starter with us. We dismissed it and saying we wouldn’t do it. Apparently, hardwood “shows better.”
I had hardwood when growing up and it was gross. Getting a glass of water in the middle of the night, or going to the bathroom? I’d have to wipe my feet off before I went to bed. Dust, dirt, black on my feet. It was not cool.
My husband and I are big into carpet. I love the feel and the ease of cleaning. It’s just a vacuum. With hardwood floors it’s like swiffering, vacuuming, and cleaning. It’s a pain. Not to mention the dust and hair that settles down on it and get’s blown around. Then you have these areas close to the walls where there’s hair and dust. Ugh.
So, this post was pretty pointless. Just letting people know I’m a carpet person and hardwood sucks!
There’s a song I like, Pompeii by Bastille. It tells a story of a city like Pompeii (or it probably is Pompeii). A city that’s so full of sin and then it’s destroyed.
I have used a few lyrics from it before in my own life. In response to why I was leaving a job, I replied, “I was left to my own devices. Many days fell away with nothing to show.” I was bored; my PM just had left so I wasn’t growing. That was one of the reasons why I left.
But I’m not blogging about that aspect of the song this time.
I’ve gotten into debates with friends about another lyric in the song; “Oh, where do we begin? The rubble or our sins?”
This lyric is powerful to me because I often think about my mother and how much she is and has struggled. I also think about those who want to change their life around or, perhaps, myself if I were to fall into a bad action or a difficult time of my own making.
I feel that you should start with your sins.
If you fall in trouble and lose what you have, if you gain what you have back, you have not learned a lesson and could repeat the same mistake again. If you get to where you’re comfortable again, what’s stopping you from falling back to the mistake? However, if you start with trying to better yourself (i.e. start with your sins), then you will have learned and can then build back from the rubble.
I probably suck at explaining that but that’s how I feel. Start with the sins then rebuild.
I remember protesting in Philadelphia during the Democratic National Convention. I protested at the wall(s) they set up to keep us out. I remember yelling and screaming at the top of my lungs to Hillary delegates, “YOU JUST ELECTED TRUMP!”
I didn’t want to be right. I thought for the longest time Hillary was going to win. I’m still in disbelief.
The United Nations put a price on solving our global food crisis (world hunger). The price is around $34 billion a year (in 2008 it was $30 billion a year).
Put that number in prospective… in 2015 the military budget was $598.5 billion which is almost 20x more than it would cost to provide food for all the food insecure people on the planet.
Even if we weren’t to cut anything from our military or any other budget, we could still cure this problem and be a hero to all the world. (Just imagine how much respect we’d get if WE helped that many people.)
The population of the United States was 318.9 million in 2014. Assuming about half the population pays taxes that’s 159,450,000 who pay taxes. If we were to raise taxes to fund the necessary $34 billion a year to cure world hunger, we’re looking at a tax increase of $213.24 a year. That’s roughly $0.59 a day!
I think solving food insecurity in the world is worth another 59 cents a day I have to pay in taxes.
I never claimed to be a good writer but here it goes…
For the past week I have been flyering around one of the Montgomery County Maryland early voting centers. I did the one at the Silver Spring Civic Center. I was there all this week after work while early voting was happening.
The first day I did it, Monday, I met a really cool older woman who was flyering for Jamie Raskin. She was a very pro Bernie person as well. In fact, she had flyered for him earlier that day. After I was done flyering, I ran home to get my car (I had scootered to work that day). I then went to the Bernie Rockville office to pick up some swag and any materials they had since we were running low. That was a long day. I left for work around 7:30 AM and I didn’t get home until 8:30 PM.
David Throne, Jamie Raskin, Chris van Hollen always had a presence the days I was there. There was even a Trump guy on Wednesday but he didn’t stay very long and he said he was a Democrat. There was always a Hillary supporter there, too except for a few hours on Wednesday when there wasn’t.
Will Jawando’s wife was always there and she was always breaking the rules. They set up lines which us canvassers cannot cross. She was always crossing the line to talk to voters and no one called her out on it. She struck me as very disingenuous. I had met Will Jawando before at one of our MoCo for Bernie meetups. One of our members did his homework and it turned out Will Jawando is a huge Hillary supporter having even gotten money from Hillary. Our member called him out on it but he said he returned the money or some crap which turned out to be false. Anyway, the Jawando’s were bad. They were breaking the rules. His wife kept saying hi to me which was nice and she tried to sway me to vote for him but then I saw the Hillary sticker on her bag. I can’t vote in that election anyway since I’m in district 6.
Yesterday (Thursday) I tried to look up a phone number to call since a lot of the canvassers (including Jawando’s wife) was crossing the line big time but I couldn’t find a number to report it.
The worst day was Tuesday. The DNC guy that was there was very like toolish, if that makes sense. He was all calling me buddy one minute then asking me to do stuff the next minute. He was very pro Hillary. When a few supporters approached, I asked them if they needed any Bernie literature and they said they were very pro Hillary and started to yell at me their reasoning. I couldn’t rebut because the DNC guy was saying “that’s right, I agree, blah blah blah.” So I just had to walk away before I could say my rebuttle which was, “Bernie won’t sacrifice what we want and he won’t start out a compromise with a compromise like Obama does and Hillary will.” The DNC dude even made me take a picture with him, Jamie Raskin, a few other people and the Hillary supporter. Not cool. He was also there yesterday campaigning for Jamie Raskin. I tried to avoid him the best I could.
All week I ran into a good amount of Bernie supporters. I gave them buttons and bumper stickers. They loved them and I loved talking Bernie to the supporters who stopped to talk with me. There were even two people who wanted to volunteer. I gave them a flyer with volunteer information.
Probably my highlight was talking to a woman who told me to give me one good reason why she should vote for Bernie and I said, “he’s anti war, anti TPP, anti free trade, anti Keystone pipeline…” She stopped me there and said, “you had me at anti war.”
The whole week the people flyering around me were heavily Bernie supporters. It was really nice to know I was among like minded individuals.
I was quite nervous the first two days but then New York happened. I had contemplated not going anymore but I know Bernie still needs me and as long as he has a small chance, I’ll be there. On Wednesday and Thursday I got more aggressive and stepped up my game. I approached a lot more people and always smiled and always handed out Bernie info. I wish I was more like the one guy for Jamie Raskin on Tuesday. He would walk up to people, shake their hand, ask them how they were and launch into a whole speech about Jamie Raskin. He was also a Bernie supporter.
Yesterday (Thursday) I had a lot of help. There were like 5 other Bernie supporters there who were flyering with me. They even set up a table. It was very productive. There were a few at the Silver Spring metro, one on the corner, and three of us just walking around.
My favorite part of the day was swapping stories with Brian after we got home. He flyered around two early voting places this week as well.
After working all week doing my full time job and handing out flyers for 2-3 hours each day I’m exhausted. I honestly don’t know how people can have two jobs. But it’s so sad that people have to have two or three jobs just to survive. Another reason why I’m Bernie all the way.
When I was in college my husband (then boyfriend) and I worked this minimum wage job up in western Maryland just so we could be together. We worked 30-40 hours a week so pretty much full time. We earned the minimum wage of $5.15 an hour.
I remember getting my paycheck and it instantly going to food and rent and that was it. I didn’t have any left over. In fact I may have owed money.
Maryland is awesome and liberal so since then the minimum wage in our state has risen to $8.00 an hour (soon to be $8.25 July 1st 2015, $8.75 July 1st 2016, $9.25 July 1st 2017, and $10.10 July 1st 2018). I wrote my congressmen a lot of letters regarding the minimum wage in our state.
Using an inflation calculator, if I were a college student working minimum wage now, I’d be earning around $7 an hour in circa 2005 dollars. That could have afforded me a lot better life. I might have actually gotten by without borrowing money that summer.
Well that’s this blog post’s story. Vote Bernie Sanders and vote for a higher minimum wage!
As we prepare to enter or affect yet another region in the middle east, it’s nice to know that after 150+ people died at the hands of an evil dictator the US will be there… Never mind that when thousands upon thousands were being killed by genocide in Darfur we didn’t go in or try to help them but whatever.
I guess we never crossed some “red line” with the number of deaths via gun violence in this country to warrant something to actually be done.
The right likes to use that argument for gun violence “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. How about for chemical weapons… “chemical weapons don’t kill people, people kill people”?
Maybe is it that chemical weapons don’t give us more freedom but guns do?
Or how about “the only way to stop a bad guy with a chemical weapon is with a good guy with a chemical weapon”?
I’m confounded.
I wanted to start out with something to say… well nothing really to say. I guess I’ll just talk about the weather. It’s been good. I’ve been scootering to work. I’m thinking about taking the Prius though since it seems almost every day I have a near death experience. Crazy people on the road.
Football is gearing up. I’ll be posting my picks of who will go to the playoffs in a few weeks. I can’t wait. However it’ll be sad to see Sundays go to nothing but football… Same every year. I say this sucks since that’s one of two free days we get a week… Then football ends and we’re like “What will we do with our Sundays?”. It’s kinda crappy that football will be on Thursday nights as well. We’ll have to get our fantasy line up for the next week in two days.
Bill Maher is also coming back. Just in time too for the craziness that is the 2012 elections.
Anyway since this blog post is lame, I’ll gear up for a new one soon.
- This one probably deserves a post in and of itself. Bri and I are looking to expand our family. We want to adopt another dog but we’re running into a lot of difficulties. We can’t adopt a puppy from a shelter because one of us needs to be stay at home. You’d think with the economy being bad and a lot of unwanted animals, they’d be lenient.
- Bill Maher blogged if Democrats really wanted to pass health care, they should be against it. Makes sense and I agree. Republicans are the party of no and the opposite of everything the Democrats are for.
- I’m almost done three of my 2010 Resolutions.
- Re Big Love: If Bill would embrace the Progressive idea of Universal Health Care, he wouldn’t have to worry about his wives/children being dropped from his family coverage. But he’s running as a Republican (and Right Wing Christian) and we know their views.
- I think the iPad is a joke and will fail regardless of Apple’s following. It doesn’t do anything new.
- I REALLY hope the economy rebounds soon. I’m tired of it day after day and it’s really hurting me, even though I have a job, believe it or not.
- I have a few money making ideas. I’m waiting for a few things in order to get started.
- I’m REALLY scared for our country if we can’t get the recent Supreme Court decision undone. Alan Grayson is leading the charge in introducing two new bills to try to stop it, and an online petition. This issue should be bipartisan and Obama was correct in bashing the Justices in his State Of The Union.
- Also, it’s a relief that Scott Roeder was convicted. It had me REALLY scared that in our country we might be crazy enough to let off a murderer.
- Barack Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize today after announcing the escalation of the war in Afghanistan… At least he’s donating the $1.4 million to charity.
- Dennis Kucinich is trying to pull through a House Resolution to withdraw our troops from Pakistan and Afghanistan. I already wrote to my Congresswoman, Donna Edwards, asking her to support it.
- Kucinich also made a great speech on the House floor how these wars are costing jobs stating “War is a weapon of mass destruction“.
- On Hardball last night Alan Grayson would tell Dick Cheney to STFU. That was priceless.
- Uganda is trying to push through an anti gay bill banning homosexuality. If suspected of homosexuality, people can face jail time and even death. Why isn’t this getting more traction on the news networks? The only person who seems to want to talk about it is Rachel Maddow. And our Republican leaders refuse to denounce it. Makes me sick.
- I concluded that I’m no longer going to buy anything else that promises flight. I recently bought these UFO things off of Woot. They’re hard to control and need AA batteries to charge. This thing marks the third time I bought something that says it can fly. Maybe I’ll try it again when they come out with something that can plug into a WALL and not use AA batteries to charge.
- As some know, I’ve changed my view on illegal immigration. I’m now more liberal. I still don’t think the people should come here illegally but we need to do something for the people who are here and DO pay taxes. I think we should harshly punish businesses for employing them, that may drive some of them away when they can’t find work.
- I’m also for illegals having health insurance. Of course, after all our citizens have health care. Universal single payer health care has always been my view. Once we have that, anyone in this country should be entitled to it. I just don’t know how to debate it other than saying it’s the right thing to do and it should be considered a human right. I realize there are A LOT of problems with this stance. I don’t know what to say other than that’s how my heart feels.
- Our company holiday party is this weekend. We didn’t have one last year. Should be a good time.
- I don’t think the Ravens are going to make it to the playoffs this year. Sucks.
- GTA IV’s graphics rock. The targeting isn’t good. The driving isn’t good. What’s up with the hand brake? The controls are way different than San Andreas. A lot has changed as far as determining the health, etc of your character. So far I like San Andreas better.
- WordPress is bugging me for another update. Updating this thing is a bitch.
- I’m actually not going to Annapolis this weekend! Can we say party?
- O’s won last night! Let’s keep it up!
- Robin Williams rocked on SVU last night, though it wasn’t like the best episode of SVU yet like some are saying. I wonder if that episode was trying to make a political statement. If so, it certainly didn’t come out and say it.
- Facebook is getting lame. That’s all I have to say about that.
- Charger needs to be sold. If not $30k for a basically brand new car, then what? I guess I’ll start at a bottom like $24k or something no reserve.
- The mind is funny. I like the fact that I worried all weekend on whether or not my one friend enjoyed it over my place rather than all the stress I’m currently going through.
- I don’t like how WordPress seems to get PMS. It won’t let me add categories so I have to do it manually through MySQL.
- I’m glad I’m not paying attention to this stupid election. Obama seems to be making mistakes or something.
- I’d rather get paid less and enjoy some times at work than be paid more and it feel like I’m dead. It’s a morgue in here.
- Can’t I just play GTA all day? What awesome graphics in GTA 4. Can’t wait!
- My ING account which earns 3% interest is still 3 times the national average. Still, should have gone with ETrade.
- I need to shop and get a business card holder for all these cards I’m accumulating.
- Idiotic headlines, “Global Warming Blamed For Earlier Spring, Studies Find”. Duh!
- I look forward to weekends again! Thanks boring ass job!
- Some side projects to come.
