Things I did today

Today was more difficult for Invisalign - I was a bit more sore and eating was getting tiring. For lunch, I had a biscuit, some bacon and two eggs. I tried eating two pieces of pizza for dinner, but eventually gave up after one piece and got a protein shake instead. It was annoying having to eat even slower than I normally eat, and continually pinching my cheek between two attachments. I also can't have a full beer because I'm a slow drinker as well! I guess I'll have to decrease my alcohol and coffee intake. At least it doesn't hurt to have the braces in! I'm so glad I didn't try to do the no added sugar challenge along with this. There was no way I'd be able to eat enough without protein shakes, at least for these first few days. I'm hoping I get used to eating this way soon. I'll be having lunch with some coworkers tomorrow. We're going to a Mexican restaurant. Hopefully I can just get a bowl of rice, cheese and chicken. Spicy foods seem to be

Eating with Invisalign sucks a lot more than I remembered, but this time, they've started with 20 attachments - sharp little nubbly things they attach to your teeth. There are so many, and in ridiculous spots that I can't bite down properly, and often pinch my cheek when I chew. Granted, I was stupid with my lunch choice today. I made corned beef hash in a skillet to make it extra crispy, and then baked a few pieces of garlic bread. Part of the pain is because I chose poorly with my lunch option and part was due to the attachments stuck to my teeth and was awkward and difficult. It's not pleasant to have the trays out due to the attachments, so after I eat, I'm looking forward to cleaning my teeth and putting them back in. The last time I had Invisalign - ten years ago - they put four attachments on the canine teeth. I had 27 trays, and each were to be worn two weeks at a time. Eating was slightly uncomfortable the first time, but not bad after the first day. This

Working from home has allowed for a lot of temptations to snack since all my food is about 20 feet away from me. Luckily, I'll have my Invisalign braces tomorrow, so I'll be effectively putting myself on a time restrictive diet. The braces are to be worn 20 -22 hours a day, and I can only drink cold or cool plain water with them in. I'll ask the orthodontist if there are any things I could do, like add lemon or mint. I don't really like plain water. I'll miss my all-day tea. Hopefully I don't unintentionally drinks less and cause any kidney stones! Chapter 6, Reimagine the Internal Trigger This chapter focuses on internal distraction cues. Don't want to start a project because you don't feel like you know enough? You might start fidgeting or going to the kitchen to find something to eat or go find a coworker to talk to instead of facing your uncomfortable feeling. What happens when you start feeling distracted? What actions do you do? How exactly do

My apartment neighbors are noisy during the day. Quite a few have some rather noisy cars. One fellow has a car that sounds like he paired a lawnmower engine with an amplifier. Work was fine - caught up with small admin tasks as there were no tickets assigned to me except for deployments. I made sure I took a lunch - I went to the gym and did my arm and chest routine, then went to Food Lion for coffee - it was on sale - and came home for a stir-fry while I queued more tickets to deploy. I also got the laundry done and unloaded the dishwasher. I tidied up my desk and cleaned my kitchen and made dinner. I'm about to cut up nearly 20 lbs of meat up into 1 lb segments to freeze for carnitas later in the year. Chapter 5, Deal with Distraction from Within This chapter deals with how mental abstinence doesn't work. It focused on smoking cessation and understanding that while nicotine is an addictive substance, the habits created and thoughts about smoking add to the desire and ad

I had another rather successful day today. I helped coworkers figure out how numbers work, updated 4 reports, deployed code, added to some analysis work, and now I'm heading to dinner with one of my friends. Chapter 3, What Motivates Us, Really? Eyal shares a story about Zoe Chance, who became obsessed with her fitness tracker. The program would constantly egg her on with small tasks to earn virtual rewards. The first few rewards were fun when she started her program, but she found herself climbing the stairs in her basement at 2am, attempting to triple her points for the day. She doesn't want to stop, as the loss of these points would feel awful.  He then discusses how humans are motivated more toward removing a desire instead of actually seeking pleasure. Chapter summary: Understand the root cause of distraction. Separate proximate causes from the root cause. All motivation is a desire to escape discomfort. If a behavior is previously effective at providing relief

I'm working from home this week. Another business is using our facilities, so we've all been kicked out. I don't mind working from home once in a great while, in cases of poor weather or contagious illness, but I'm usually not pleased working from home after a couple of days. Today was alright - I managed to get three things finished. Like any usual day, none of the three were the tasks I expected to complete today. As long as people continue to be responsive via IM and not just walk away from their computers, hopefully things will go smoothly. We'll see how it goes. I've been enjoying the first few chapters of Indistractable. Here are a few chapter summaries that the book offers: Chapter 1, What is your superpower? The chapter introduces the issue of not being able to focus, and that smartphones and tablets certainly don't help, but they aren't all of the problem. We need to learn to learn how to avoid distraction. Living the lives we want req

Not really. I ate some cereal with oatmilk. It was very tasty and sweet. But I didn't want more than one bowl. I went to Bittersweet downtown. I expected it to feel like a bakery with a bar attached for cocktails. It was more like a bar that happened to also have some desserts and NO sound dampening AT ALL. Every sound the bartenders made seemed to be as specifically offensively loud as possible, even though they were just making normal cocktails with normal bar implements. The conversations were very loud, even though there were only three tables in use. In short, I'm not going back. But, at least I don't have to wonder if I've missed anything. Deafness, I guess. I'll miss slowly going deaf in a place like that. Oh no. I ordered a piece of cheesecake with a rummy sliced banana and some decaf coffee. The cheesecake was very tasty and not overpoweringly sweet. After dinner, I tried one of those fun sized Snickers bars, and it tasted VERY sweet and, well, not terr