Hello! This is the new chat thread for those who like to check in regularly with other maintainers--but everyone who's interested is welcome to join in! If you have questions, feel free to post them here.

Alice, so glad to hear you have got through your surgery just fine! You have a good attitude!

Dagmar and Bill, I looked into the Beck Solution some time ago. I liked what I read.

JayEll, thanks for starting the new thread! I hope you are doing well

My knee improves a little bit every day. The stretching exercises are painful, but each day I have more flexion and it's easier to straighten my knee completely. My goal is a 90 degree bend by Sunday.

Alice - you go girl!

Thanks for starting the new thread JayEll .

We have just gone back into a partial lock-down. Looks like it's not because the ERs will be overwhelmed but rather that so many people will be off work if we don't lock down now. I guess everyone had their version of the holidays and now we are all going to pay for it. I can keep working and will but I'm sure some of my clients will cancel at least another week of walks due to COVID exposure or illness.

Dagmar

Happy New Year's New Thread

We're also trying to figure out the current COVID life. All businesses around here are understaffed. Store shelves are looking spotty.

I've ordered yet-another N95 mask - one that an online friend says allows one to breath without fogging glasses for a long duration. I'm hopeful. All my favorite cloth masks are now declared unfit. At least I can be grateful that I can afford masks.

Thanks for getting us started with an undated thread, JayEll.

Bill I haven't found a mask yet that works 100% with glasses but I've had the most success with KN95 masks. They are not as good as the N95 but they do offer a tighter fit than cloth and they can be better adjusted along the bridge of the nose as they have a metal band that can be pinched to conform to the bridge. The is a bit of air escape at the bottom (for my face) and that keeps the glasses from fogging for some time.

Dagmar :

So it's single digit out there right now - 9 degrees F. There are two men using a cherry picker truck to trim branches high up in the Elm tree next door to my house.

They look FRIGID. Dagmar is the only person I know who might own the right clothes for that job, LOL.

It's - 18C here today. You're right Bill, I DO own the clothes to be out there. Just leaving to complete my 5th and final dog walk of the day. My hands have been cold on and off (thank goodness for heated steering wheels in cars) but otherwise I've been fairly comfortable. It's snowing now too so I'm taking my goggles along for the -31C wind chill and blowing snow.

Dagmar

We have both been sick. It's probably Covid but we haven't been tested. We're just "acting as if" that's what it is--wearing masks, distancing, using hand sanitizer when in public, but mostly doing self-quarantine at home. Fortunately we are not too sick.

However, I've lost taste and smell! And along with it, my appetite. Hm, a new weight-loss idea?

I hope you both recover completely and soon JayEll.

I will be offline for awhile. We are having some trouble with our home net work and it looks like my PC is the device affected. My laptop is ancient and won't run 3FC.

Hope to be back sometime soon!

Dagmar

And I'm back! Turns out both DH and I have to shut down our browsers during the day and that should keep us under our internet limit each month.

I finally got on the scale and I am about the same weight as I was the last time I got on - 141 lbs. I'm going to try to cut 100 cals per day out of my diet and I hope to lose 1 lb. every 5 weeks or so for the next 6 months. That will put me in my "summer" range of 133 - 135.

I'm rereading one of Michael Pollan's books - "In Defense of Food" - to remind myself of how best to eat. He has a bit of a blind spot about cost (not all of us can afford fresh food for all our meals or have hours of time to prepare it) but a lot of what else he presents again makes sense. I hope to read through or reread all of his books in 2022 to remind myself of the "why" of food.

I'm going to try to cook and eat food as a savory experience, rather than just as fuel to keep going. This will probably only work on the weekends (when I have a bit more time and energy) but it's a start.

Dagmar :

JayEll, sorry to hear that your household is down with Covid or facsimile I hope it goes away soon.

That was a quick internet vacation, Dagmar! Glad you've identified a solution. I struggle with internet limits too. We have an internet connection via microwave tower, which is unlimited but is only up about half the time. It is notoriously unusable in the evening and it can get bad any time of day. If I have a webinar or zoom, I have to rely on my phone hotspot or Verizon modem, each of which are limited to 15 gB per month.

I like Pollan's books but agree that he doesn't have much empathy for those of us who can't devote large amounts of time and money to eating. I get tired easily right now and it's hard to motivate myself to chop up everything for my normal veggie-heavy meals.

Somehow I've lost 5 pounds since my last scale check-in. I'm 126.5 right now. I'm pretty amazed, because I've been VERY inactive, and my tracker devices think I've been overeating. Maybe healing from surgery burns a bunch of calories???

A knee replacement is a big surgery. Maybe your body has to use a lot of resources to start and maintain the healing process from such a large trauma? Interesting.

Dagmar

My bet is that Michael Pollan doesn't personally process the vegetables for his meals every day. And that he never did.

We gave up our phone-line DSL internet because it had become unreliable, and it wasn't because we needed a new router/modem. We now have a gateway provided by T-Mobile. It uses cellphone technology, so it's like having a "big cellphone" that only acts as a hotspot. Unlimited data! We only get 2 bars of reception, but the speed is 10 to 15 times faster than the old DSL! And it is very reliable. It does cost more than the DSL, though not by too much! The point is to have reliable internet access--why pay less for crappy service if we don't have to?

I'm down 6 pounds in the last 2 weeks.

Alice, yes, surgery makes a big demand on the body! I hope you're getting enough protein.

"I'm down 6 pounds in the last 2 weeks." That's impressive, JayEll. Hope it doesn't pass with feeling better.

Spent all day yesterday in single digit F temps. I'm now ready for summer.