a very painful night

I’ve been using spotify for quite a while and I think it’s fair to say I’m addicted to it for music and podcasts. I been doing playlists and I started naming some of them things like Avpn042023 because for a time I was in too much pain too sleep much, so I would stay up most of the night creating playlists of music I’ve heard on shows and movies that I watch and others that i just stumbled across. Here are a few of them:

Got this from the show Resident Alien. It’s a bit adult so skip if you don’t want hear or see spicy.

Ok, one more that’s somewhat adult, so may want to skip if you’re offended by such styles. And no I’m not a pitbull fan, but this song was on a new device that i bought many years ago, so it reminds of a cool portable video game unit i bought forever ago.

That’s all for now. Hope this music finds you in good health and spirits.

some work/study music and maybe a plunge into the abyss

I don’t think I’m being too harsh by calling paying for a music subscription plunging into an abyss, but I finally gone and done it. I subscribed to Spotify. In my best Jack Black voice, I’m saying “OH, YEAH!” and nodding my head right now. I’ve always been an early adopter of music platforms including the ones that tanked, yes, I’m talking to you yahoo and M$. Luckily, by early adopter I’ve tried new services in the past without going all in, so I didn’t loose too much when said services happily shut down their music servers. Also, thankfully they allowed you to download the mp3s (I think), so no real loss. That’s how I got those 3 MP3 songs I bought from yahoo and Microsoft. Anyway, I’ve used Spotify’s free service for a long time, and since I’m just now going to premium, it still feels like a big step for me.

I’ve tried several of the legit music services, like eMusic, Apple, Pandora and Amazon Prime Music too. At one point I was buying digital albums when on sale, but now it seems to me at least it’s not extremely painful to go with a subscription. And so far I enjoy Spotify more than Pandora or any of the other services. It seems like even when Spotify’s service picks new music for me, it usually gets it right. I’m assuming they spend a lot of effort in fine tuning their algorithms like Netflix does.

Lately, I’ve been listening to almost all my music on Spotify and occasionally watching music videos on youtube. I’ve been getting more into creating my own playlists for exercise, work, or studying. Here is one I’ve been working on for working which i have to keep as mostly instrumentals because I work as a computer programmer, so vocals would distract me when I’m doing deep work and have to stay in the zone.

If you’re into instrumental and Celtic then maybe you’ll enjoy some of these. Some have limited vocals, or aren’t too distracting at least.

I hope no sand people were hurt in the making of this video, and if they were I hope Boba Fett was promptly informed. I will add the 92 Keys cover of the song a little later in this list which seems to have a little more umph, but I like both versions – just thought starting out with the lighter slower one may be best for a work/study song playlist to give one time to catch up to the speeding train.

This song will always remind me of me and my wife taking our daughter to see Brave at the theater.

When Lindsey Stirling’s tour came to North FL many years ago, we were lucky enough to catch it which also had Amy Lee in the concert with a full orchestra. My daughter who wasn’t very old at the time came home and learned some of the songs like this one on piano. She’s learned a lot more songs now on piano and guitar (acoustic, electric and bass). Each Christmas I usually buy her a new instrument or two to learn – some recent being violin, melodica, kazoo, shinobue, and ocarina. I usually start out cheap, and upgrade it later if she is interested in advancing. Also, gives me a chance to trye them out too. LOL.

I hear so much in this cover that it’s a bit mind boggling. But it’s nice, yes. LOL.

I kind of get this Tristram vibe from the original Diablo video game.

This is the fiery cover version by 92 Keys. It is teh awesome.

Many of these songs I’ve only heard on Spotify, so just seeing the videos for the first time on youtube. Interesting. 🙂

A lot of pain and suffering from sickness and war, but as long as hope remains maybe the world can be wonderful again.

learn you a chess for great good

I remember seeing an odd book title many years ago while looking through the technical section of a bookstore. It took me a moment to remember that it was for the computer programming language called Haskell. It’s not simply weird English that makes the phrase stand out, but at the same time I can’t quite put my finger on it. At any rate, I thought the title was most fitting for those who wanted to learn chess or wanted to learn different ways to play chess and reap the benefits of such an endeavor.

I normally walk a certain number of miles each day, but due to two surgeries back in January that both went bad, I haven’t been able to walk my normal routine. Therefore, I decided to focus on exercising my tiny little brain. I ramped up my reading first and I’m nearly at 50 books out of my goal of 101 books for the year – when i get to 50 within the next week or two, I plan to write about it. I can’t emphasize enough how important voracious reading is for your mind in regard to cognition and memory. However, I decided to branch out a little bit and thought chess would work wonders. If you have someone nearby that you could play with that would work well, but today I wanted to focus on online chess because it’s so convenient any time day or night. You can play against a computer if you’d like, but there is something different and rewarding about playing with another human being even if done remotely and even if you lose more than you win.

Most people have computers, tablets, and/or mobile phones and if you’re reading this than I think that is a safe bet. After playing many different online chess games, I realized the challenge wasn’t finding a free chess game, but finding a free chess game that didn’t bombard you with annoying commercials and ads which made the game miserable. I finally found two games that were not that intrusive with ads and other distractions for your ultimate chess game experience.

Before I get to the two applications, I want to mention something about psychology that I noticed about myself. There was a certain procrastination I had against playing against people because I didn’t want to lose – it translated to a real presence of anxiety. I realized after getting some practice playing against the computer (AI), I had to get rid of that negative behavior and move forward anyway to play against real people. The applications generally make it easy to focus on the game rather than chatting and most of the time I played and lost to humans and didn’t say a word – additionally, most of them didn’t speak English I suspect. The other type of procrastination besides playing against people, was a resistance to playing timed games from the extreme 60 second bullet mode to the 5 to 10 minute blitz games. Training yourself to lose the procrastination and eventually anxiety, will make learning and playing such games much more enjoyable and you’ll wind up getting that nice intellectual exercise boost in the process. Finally, the game engines themselves through ranked games will eventually start finding opponents for you who are more similarly matched in skill level. By this time, you will start enjoying the game even more.

Now to the two games. I created accounts for these games because it’s free and it’s a better user experience in my opinion than playing as guest each time. The websites/applications are found at http://www.chess.com and https://lichess.org/, I believe both can be played with web or mobile app and possibly even desktop app although I mostly play using the mobile app. Like I mentioned there are a ton of free chess apps and sites, but most are unbearable due to the constant barrage of ads. Remember the goal if you’re like me is to not only get the intellectual workout, but also conquer a fear and weakness in playing and at least for me almost always losing to other people. But with each game, I get better and I can’t help but think one day I’ll get to leave the 700 rank behind. 🙂 If chess isn’t your cup of tea, remember there are many other games such as checkers, scrabble, sudoku, cross word puzzles, and many many more with most being free if you can find a version with a tolerable level of ads or you might can throw a few bucks at it and unlock the premium ad-free version if you know it’s a game you like and will play often. Good luck and remember to have fun. 🙂

finished a couple of books by Andy Weir

You may or may not have heard of Andy Weir’s titles, Project Hail Mary and Artemis, but maybe you’ve heard of The Martian since Matt Damon played in the movie version of the book. I have a bust of Artemis sporting an evil sneer at another bust of Apollo unlike the random set below which has a playful gaze. My set is a cheap knock-off of… well probably another cheap knock off, but I have to say I like mine better because it more closely matches my cynical nature. I mention Artemis because the main protagonist in the book is Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara, who has a quite lively personality and just happens to live on the moon, and thus aligns neatly with the Greek goddess refs from which the title is obviously derived. I’m not sure why, but while enjoying the book I got some Heinlein – The Moon is a Harsh Mistress vibes minus the polyandry of course. I can’t put my finger on it, but it has to be more than just because of the moon setting and concepts.

I posted links to the audiobook versions which is normally how I read/listen to a book. I immediately recognized the narrator, Rosario Dawson of Unstoppable (film) fame, and I’ve seen her on a lot of other shows/movies – most recently in the Star Wars universe as the jedi Ahsoka Tano on The Mandolorian and The Book of Boba Fett. While it is the first time I’ve heard her narrate an audio book, she absolutely nailed it with Artemis.

Next up is the better book in my opinion and apparently others as well since the rating is higher for PHM on the sites that I frequent. Story line and execution were quite stellar and it was quite the page turner or should I say play button tapper since I listened to the audiobook. This page isn’t meant to be a review, and I don’t want to risk any spoilers or such, so I’ll leave off most details. Maybe this one is better served fresh, undoubtedly like the unique meals (eek) the author introduced at the end of the story and I guess throughout the story for that matter – coma juice or pulp or whatever – yuck.

Finally, I’ll wrap it up by saying I finally graduated to listening to audiobooks at 2x speed. I’ve been at 1.5x and 1.7x for a while and some audiobooks especially those based on deep physics I have to stick with 1x. It’s easy to parse the right audiobooks at 2x, but harder to deeply interpret and retain the story in memory; thankfully, I finally achieved both, however, so I can blast through even more books.

i’m still alive

I hesitated to start a blog post with such a title. I mean when the universe hates you, and is obviously out to get you, do you really want to taunt the universe? And will the universe ever change its mind about you, and stop trying to find new and creative ways to make it game-over for you. Don’t look at me because I certainly don’t have the answer. With me, the verdict is still out since I’m very much not out of the woods yet, but for now I’m still alive so yay. I also couldn’t help but think of final destination, and hope I don’t end up as one of those all to realistic plot twists. I couldn’t help but think every single one of those scenarios and gimmicks probably came from real life. I’m sure Phineas Gage would agree with me on that one – well if he was still alive today.

Anyway, enough about that. When I get well enough to really laugh about my bad luck, I’ll probably list details of my recent terrible personal experience, and if not I should have plenty of new descriptive ways of adding them to my fiction writing. Hope everyone who finds themself in this little corner of the web is doing well. I have many ideas and more recipes queued up, and I hope to increase my blog entries. Ok, so I know it’s not the first time I said that and didn’t follow through in the past, but I mean it for really real, real this time. Take care.

the public library

I was thinking recently about how there are people who read books and then there are people who really read books.  Of course, I realize by saying that, that there are English professors out there who would like nothing more than to club me to death for using the word “really” and probably using two “that’s” back to back and I’m not even sure if that comma belongs there.  Then I went completely off the rails and thought, “clubbed to death,” now there is a good song.  But that’s how my crazy brain works sometimes.  It’s gotten so bad that I’ve come up with a name for it – obnoxious extreme totally uncalled for not your grandpa’s type and more like Niagara Falls level really real gone way too far stream of consciousness.  No longer simply a writing device or narrative mode but now a weapon to drive people absolutely insane.  Ok, now with that out of the way let me reel it in with a topic that is sometimes elusive, recluse, and yet so undeniably cool and useful, the public library.  And how sometimes only the most OCD level readers remember to think of using it, people, well, people just like me.  No, really!  What follows is my recent experience of renewing my long expired public library card even though I have purchased a gazillion books that probably adds up to at least 100 lifetimes of reading material and with only 1 lifetime for reading.    

I started this journey by downloading the mobile app Libby which is a new and improved mobile application that is a sort-of replacement for their old mobile app called Overdrive which will still work to access your library membership – you can even use both at the same time with same account. That is if your card unlike mine is still active. I had 3 library cards and all were ancient. None of them worked because they had long expired. I live about a mile from the closest public library so I made the trip and signed up for a new library card which only took about 5 minutes to fill out the little membership card and for the librarian to key it in. I browsed their selection of books briefly before thanking the nice librarian and driving home to try logging into Libby again. It was quick and painless to enter my number and gain access to a huge selection of e-books and e-audiobooks. Some libraries have videos and magazines available digitally but mine only had e-books and audiobooks which was all I was after. My card allowed for 5 checkouts up to 21 days each and 5 holds. The holds are in case a book you want is already checked out. You can place a hold on it which puts you in the queue to get it. It’s a very nice feature and I used it quite a bit – at times i had 5 checkouts and 5 holds so was maxed out. Of course if you’re in a hurry, you can set the filter option to browse only what’s available and immediately check those out and begin reading or listening to them immediately. I use the kindle app for reading so when i read an e-book it sends it to my kindle account and read with kindle app. For audio books i listened to them directly in the Libby app. The process worked flawlessly for me.

I’ve been consuming e-books and e-audiobooks for about 2 months now and have read and listened to almost 30 books with 95% of them being audiobooks and I use Text-To-Speech (TTS) to listen to e-books usually. I occasionally read visually but I’m usually multi-tasking so i prefer to listen to books. Anyway, as you can imagine if I bought over 25 audiobooks and a few e-books you can see how much that would have cost as audiobooks retail for upwards of $30 sometimes although I get most of mine through Audible.com for $10 on average.

I’ll also mention a few other benefits the library may have over purchasing your own content. It’ll give you a chance to try out or complete a book that you may have not otherwise wanted to purchase. A good example for me was my first checkout which was the audio book Rage by Bob Woodward. I don’t read a lot of political books and I often don’t want to purchase them. Another benefit is the concept of scarcity which with checkouts is in the form of time. You create an arbitrary time-line, up to 21 days in my case, to consume a book or audiobook so that itself can help motivate you to read the book over one that you may own. Of course, you can checkout the book again if you don’t read it within the allowed time. That is if no one has it on hold then you’d have to wait on them to finish it. I’ve did that with two books that I didn’t quite finish on time.

Well there you go, if you’re an avid reader don’t forget about your local public library which is likely free, and as we all know it’s hard to beat free. While it doesn’t save me a boatload of money because I tend to buy a boatload of books all the time anyway, it makes me feel like I could save money one day if I’d quit buying so many books no matter how unrealistic that really is. Good luck. I’m going to git before i get clubbed to death by an English professor.

an update

I was trying to think of a good title and then i thought of the many minimalist books I have queued up but haven’t read. Then i arrived at “that’s a bingo.” Of course then i realized I’ll never be as cool as Christoph Waltz – so then i felt a tinge sad and depressed. But it was short lived because i never expected to be cool and i’m quite ok with that. As i get older, I feel like my chances only decline. lol. Before I move on and I really should move on, let me tidy that up a bit with a quick disclaimer in case someone catches the reference or looks it up. I mean cool as Christoph Waltz is as an actor not the character that quote was from.

If you noticed my previous music posts you probably noticed, i’m kind of a fan of Imagine Dragons, so i feel a little guilty of posting a cover of this song. Anyway, good song, to me at least, and i couldn’t help but think of all the incredible warriors and heroes in the medical field helping fight this pandemic. My hat goes off to them; umm if i was wearing a hat that is. But seriously, great job – i have no idea how they do it day in and day out.

I’ve been struggling over the past few months (longer really) as many, many others have to get back on the wagon. By wagon in this case, i simply mean getting back to some normalcy and trying to live and survive day to day – it shouldn’t be this difficult but some days it just is. So I hope to begin writing more blog posts and doing more of the projects I had on my list and writing about them. I have been making progress in my book reading goal, and I’m currently at 91 books out of 100 for the year so looks like I just might make it.

I’m currently reading and enjoying Calypso by David Sedaris. It’s one of my favorite books by him so far. He has a very comedic style of writing though it’s not for everyone. Especially those who are easily offended.

I just finished an audio presentation based on Grapes of Wrath (Steinback) by Frank Galati which was actually the audio from a play. I’ll have to give the same disclaimer as Sedaris’s book as it’s certainly not for everyone – the ending of GoW was probably the most original and wild of anything I’ve read, watched, or listened to lately. LOL. Anyway, listen to it rather than read the screen play as the audio presentation was superb. But do so only if you don’t mind R rated content and even then aren’t easily offended.

Also, read Nomadland by Jessica Bruder. Technically, I listened to the TTS (Text-to-speech) from the eBook. The only way i can consume so many books is multi-tasking while cooking, cleaning and other household chores which means I listen to a lot of audiobooks and ebooks read via TTS. There is a documentary on Nomadland also and it outlines the plight of seasonal workers including a lot of older Americans some of which work for Amazon on a temporary basis while living out of a van or RV. Very interesting yet sad.

a good night for a few tunes

I was recently listening to Radio Paradise which is a pretty cool app for iPhone, Android, and web for listening to commercial free music especially oldies. They even have a feature to download blocks of music to listen offline which works well if you use a phone only over wifi to save money from activating service. I decided to post some of that music here and some other random recent songs I discovered on youtube. Warning this is a very wide spectrum of music. I used to hate some of the old songs but I occasionally listen to them now.

The song may be tired but the video still cracks me up.

This video causes me anxiety – I just want to scream move outta the way.

This is the car version of the video above. This song is etched into my brain b/c of my life experiences when it came out.

I kept waiting for him to run into people.

Yuck but nice song.

As far as most repeated songs I listened to many years ago, this one is in the top 3. Luckily, it was one of my early CD’s so it didn’t wear out the disc.

Continuing with the marathon walkers/runners in videos theme.

The End.

my experience and thoughts on drinking lemon water and eating lemons

mmm, iced lemon water in a mason jar

I have been considering writing this post on the benefits of lemons for a long while. Lately, I’ve been fighting with health issues, ok, for a long time but lately it just seems worse. I had stopped drinking lemon water and started back up again after this recent spike in health issues. Some of the usual suspects that I fight with are diabetes, weight, IBS, acid reflux, kidney stones, metabolic syndrome and others that I’ll leave off for now. After a couple of weeks of getting back on lemon water, I realized that over the many years of trying different strategies that I’ve kind of found my lemon happy place. That is I felt like I’ve optimized or tweaked how I use lemons and thought maybe I have something worth sharing now.

First, I’ve been reading up on lemons and trying different ideas for five to ten years. Some benefits of lemons I found by accident and some were those I sought after. So here are the lemon strategies and health benefits that seem to work for me and are listed here only as my personal opinion. I should first give my disclaimer that none of this post should be used as medical advice or to replace any medical advice that you’ve been given by professionals. If you have serious medical conditions always speak with your doctor or health care provider before making drastic changes to your diet or life style.

My preferred way of drinking lemon water is to slice the lemon into quarter inch thick (or thinner or thicker) and then cut those slices in half so it looks like a halfmoon as in the photo above. I usually throw the ends of the lemon and the rind into the compost pile. I try make chicken feed or compost (in the case of citrus scraps) out of all of our kitchen food scraps so none go into the recycle bin. In the future I plan to write an article on composting and cutting down food waste. At any rate cutting the lemon into slices seem to make it easier to remove the seeds and it makes it easier to eat the lemon slices – it fits right in your mouth and you can bit the lemon from the rind in one bite usually. I’ve tried wedges but that makes it harder to eat the lemon and if I’m at my cube at work I wind up squirting lemon juice in different directions and it just seems more messy. I usually drink the water and eat the lemon slices as I go but eating lemons is an acquired taste that took me a while to achieve. I’ll give further details of the benefits of eating lemons below. Just remember to remove the tiny sticker if there is one on the lemon and then wash the lemon very well before slicing and using it.

Here are my thoughts on the advantages of drinking lemon water and eating lemons. I will follow the advantages with a few disadvantages that I’ve read about but not experienced. For lemon water in a 16 oz mason jar, I usually add two thin lemon slices (four halves) that are deseeded. I don’t add sweetener in the form of sugar or artificial sweeteners. If you had to you could do that and make it more of a traditional lemonade or lemon juice drink but I prefer to avoid both sugar and artificial sweeteners when possible. Also, my personal opinion is that drinking only fresh water with lemons in lemon water is healthier and enhances some of the benefits that I list below.

Advantages of drinking lemon water and eating lemons

1. Weight benefits – drinking lemon water and eating the lemon slices helps drastically curb my hunger over drinking plain water alone. I can’t explain why this is the case but it’s something I notice very consistently. Just drinking the lemon water alone has the same positive affect but seems to be increased further when I also eat the lemons slices (not the rind). This is a very big deal for me because I occasionally fast or consume only two meals a day which seems to help control my blood sugar but I’m constantly having to deal with hunger. Side note, in the past I got used to overeating and my weight skyrocketed, I’m now at my lowest weight level in decades. I’ve lost over 50 lbs but have more weight to lose. I never had an issue with weight until I started office work (after leaving factory and farm work) in my late 20s. Basically now I had to relearn how to control my eating and hunger. It’s as psychological as it is physical because when I was used to overeating I got used to feeling full or engorged. I had to completely overcome that and be able to allow myself to get hungry and stay hungry for longer periods. Eventually, that extreme hunger pang dwindles and it becomes something easier to deal with over many weeks or months of eating more appropriate portion sizes. When I look at the quantity and portion sizes I eat now compared to what I used to eat, it blows my mind.
2. Health benefits – based on what I’ve read lemons have very important vitamins and nutrients such as Vitamin C and Magnesium and if you eat the lemon you are also eating the fiber (as nature intended some might say). <Click here> for an article goes into more detail on the health benefits as it relates to diabetes and contains a lot of good info. For an article on more general health benefits <click here>. You can find a lot of other good information on the net by googling it (lemon health benefits, etc). I’m only listing the top benefits I’ve noticed in this post but there are many more than what I list you can find in other articles. Another note on health benefits is you would think lemons being acidic would make a condition like acid reflux worse. However, I’ve noticed that drinking lemon water seems to do the opposite for me – it helps me feel better and seems to reduce my acid levels. I’ve read contradictory notes on this from other websites so maybe it’s different for different people. Some articles I’ve read said that lemon water actually help stabilize peoples natural ph balance. I don’t have strong evidence for or against this one so I don’t think I would use lemons for the sole purpose of fighting acid reflux but just keep in mind that the actual effects may be counterintuitive or the opposite of what you’d expect – often in a good way.
3. Diabetic benefits – before the COVID-19 pandemic I played USTA league tennis religiously. I was getting a lot of exercise and going through various diets and fasts to try to control my blood sugar without insulin (I’ve never been on insulin only diabetic RX pills). Occasionally my body would still throw me a curve ball whopping me in the head, and my blood sugar levels would go through the roof seemingly without reason. Since the pandemic I haven’t played tennis or got the same level of physical exercise so I tried to balance it with a more strict diet and fasting. This helped me loose more weight and get to a lower overall weight level. However, I’m going through one of those diabetic curve ball phases now where my blood sugar levels are way out of control. I’ve recently received my second dose of the Moderna vaccine so I plan to restart tennis and hopefully get back on track with my exercise routine including going to the gym. I’m not blaming the virus on me falling off the exercise wagon as it’s totally my fault for not getting exercise any way I could find – and there are always ways to get exercise. Eventually the tennis courts reopened after the pandemic and the league eventually started back up – I just chose not to join until I could get vaccinated. I only list this here to say, that drinking lemon water and eating lemon slices seem to help me lower my blood sugar levels regardless of whether it spiked due to diet or exercise choices or for no apparent reason. The articles on the Internet including the link I include above support that idea. Lastly, some articles suggest that eating lemons or drinking lemon juice with a meal that contains some carbohydrates may actually slow the digestion of those carbs improving the diabetic impact of the meal. I’ve only read this in a few places so I’m not sure how accurate it is but at least from observation, I think I have noticed something similiar.
4. Kidney stone benefits – so I have some very funny after-the-fact stories regarding my nightmarish bad luck with kidney stones. My first extreme encounter was 18 years ago and my second was a few weeks ago. Both involve funny bad luck ironies with surgeries and “you can’t make this type stuff up” details. I may write a post on them one day. I list it here because after my first surgery 18 years ago they told me I’d be back in five years because when you have one kidney stone then you’ll likely have another, but it took 18 years before I needed a second surgery. I’ve been eating citrus in the form of oranges and lemons for quite a while so that is one thing some doctors believe can cut down on kidney stones or at least certain types of kidney stones of which there are several. My urologist reminded me of this after my surgery a couple of weeks ago.
5. Natural food preservative benefits – I think i recall that lemons and other citrus have natural antibacterial properties. This may came in handy for cleaning and such but the way I find myself possibly using this is squeezing the juice over fresh strawberries or fresh apple wedges I pack in my lunch. Vitamin C or citric acid keeps apples from turning brown as quickly. When packing apples in my lunch I prefer to cut them that morning into wedges with an apple cutter/corer and put them in a reusable container in my cooler. If you don’t apply some type of Vitamin C/Citric Acid to the apples they’ll usually be quite brown by noon even if chilled. I don’t think this hurts much but I just like the extra step for my apple wedges. If I’m already packing lemon water for the day, it’s not usually a problem squeezing a little bit of lemon juice over apples or strawberries but a cheaper option is to buy Fruit Fresh from a grocery store which is powdered Vitamin C/citric acid then you have the option of sprinkling the powder over your apple wedges and/or strawberries or my preferred method put a little bit of the powder in fresh water and mix it then just dunk the strawberries and/or apples in the liquid. This keeps them fresher during the day. Lastly, another option is to use a trick that some food caterers use is to use Sprite soda to dunk strawberries and/or apple wedges in. Apparently, it will keep the fruit looking fresh throughout a catered event although I haven’t personally tried that one. It may provide a slightly sweeter taste to the fruit although i never taste the fruit fresh or fresh lemon juice when i prepare fresh fruit for the day.
6. Cooking benefits – it took me many years of cooking to learn that orange or lemon zest is just a little bit of grated peel from a lemon but several recipes call for it. Some Chinese dishes such as orange chicken call for orange zest and I’ve seen more than a couple of recipes call for lemon zest. Also, when broiling or grilling fresh fish fillets many can be enhanced with a fresh squeeze of lemon juice over the fish.
7. Restaurant dining benefits – since the pandemic I don’t go to dine-in restaurants much at all but before the pandemic I had started ordering water with lemon instead of a drink. Over time this can really add up and save you a boat load of money since drinks can cost anywhere from $2 to $4 (more or less) per person per meal and most restaurants include water with lemon for free.

Some potential disadvantages of drinking lemon water and eating lemons:

1. Eating a lot of lemons every day without diluting the citric acid could cause dental issues. I’ve read about this potential issue and I’ve talked to people who have claimed to eat lemons every day and not had any problems. Personally, I don’t eat lemons every day but in peak times I probably consumed them 5 days out of the week. I’ve never had problems with them. The lemon water I drink is always diluted and I consume the thin lemon slices that have been soaked in the water so I’m probably only ever exposed to diluted lemon juice. At any rate if you consume high quantities of lemons the acid could attack your tooth enamel.
2. Suddenly consuming a lot of lemons in your diet could lead to digestive issues. I’ve read about this one but never experienced it. Also somewhat contradictory, evidence suggests consuming reasonable amounts of lemons and drinking lemon juice is reportedly very beneficial to digestive processes.
3. Lemons can be expensive. I normally pay around 50 cents per lemon but buying them by the bag can save more money and sometimes you can find places that sell lemons in bulk for dirt-cheap. Also, depending on what climate you live in you may know someone with a large lemon tree. I’ve been lucky enough to know a few and when their tree produces they generally give a lot of it away. I live in FL so that may just be a benefit of where I live.

Well there you have it. The list isn’t meant to be complete as there are many, many more benefits but those are a few of the top observations or ideas that I’ve noticed. I know lemons can be expensive but they are quite beneficial. I also thought of getting a miniature or dwarf lemon tree possibly to keep in a pot to have a few extras grown at home. They are sensitive to cold and frost so you have to protect them in cold climates. I’ve known of people building a greenhouse around them and keeping them alive but I think I would prefer the dwarf trees in pots so I could move them inside the house during the coldest parts of winter. But for now, I’ll just get them from the grocery store.

Thanks for visiting my blog. Hope you have a wonderful day.

halfway point on book reading challenge and ideas that I use to increase the number of books I read

“There is no friend as loyal as a book.” — Ernest Hemmingway

I read that Stephen King reads around 80 books a year and in one of my favorite books by him (On Writing), he states, “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write.”

As I get older, I notice when I don’t read as much that my memory and cognitive skills decline. I thought I would post this update in part to somehow encourage myself to continue on to the finish line by reading 100 books for the year, my highest pledge/goal yet, and so I could mention a few pointers that help increase the number of books I read.

I’ll start with mentioning that my top 3 reasons for voracious reading are 1) exercise for my brain, 2) to become better at writing and 3) because books are fun, entertaining and educational.

Because I do include comics and cookbooks in my list, I try to limit those to roughly one per month. This is just a personal decision and if I wanted to read more comics, I would just increase my overall goal to compensate. I like reading cookbooks because I cook quite often and cookbooks help me find new recipes, ideas, and techniques but the internet and youtube are giving cookbooks a real challenge. I also add in occasional classics with a goal of at least one or two per year – think Frankenstein, The Jungle, The Illiad, and/or Thomas Jefferson. While a majority of the books I read are non-fiction, I include several in the genre that I’m interested in writing, Science Fiction. I also try to read genres and areas that I don’t know as much about and on topics where I may disagree with what I think the book is promoting especially in the area of politics.

Regarding formats, I read the lowest number of physical copies of books but I try to read at least a few of those per year. The number of ebooks versus audiobooks that I read are more evenly split but with ebooks I use TTS (Text To Speech) for many of those so it’s still similar to audiobooks.

I think reading a varied number of formats helps one in different ways. For instance listening to audiobooks or ebooks read via TTS, I believe helps with active listening skills. One thing I do continuously while listening to books being read is quiz myself on what I just heard. If I don’t know because I was distracted or wasn’t properly tuned in then I’ll sometimes stop and go back to an earlier part of the book. Otherwise, I’m reinforcing an unwanted skill and that’s one of tuning out that which I’m trying to hear. A similiar thing can happen with visual reading, but it doesn’t seem to be as common.

Using goodreads.com is a good way to keep up with what you’ve read and possibly, if you have a lot of friends on there, may encourage you to read more. It’s taken me many years to get to the reading level I’m at now so I usually don’t need the motivation from others but I do find keeping track of what I’ve read helps out a lot.

Here are the top five ideas that I used to increase my reading goals:

1. Leverage technology and devices. I use a kindle fire HD 10 for reading ebooks visually, audiobooks, and listening to ebooks via text to speech. In my opinion, it has one of the best voice engines for text to speech – it doesn’t sound as robotic as other devices. I’ve used apple iPhones, IPOD touch, and IPOD Nano and these work fairly well for audiobooks but you may run out of memory if you stuff a lot of audiobooks on it. I recently bought a Samsung A51 phone for $200 and I added a 512 GB card to it so it’s my new favorite phone/mobile device. With the large borderless screen, I can even read the occasional ebook chapter visually. I use it with Straight Talk but if you didn’t activate the services on it, it would probably be better than most mp3 players you could buy. I still use the Apple devices so I have access to the apple ecosystem but not as much as before and for my two older iPhones, I don’t activate service on them and primarily use them on wifi. If you want to mix things up and you like to spend time outside during the day, the Kindle Paperwhite is a good cheap option. I bought one for around $100 that uses the e-ink technology so there is almost no glare if you’re in direct sunlight or if it’s bright out. They also have backlights for night or indoor reading. A couple of other nice things about the paper white are long battery life (possibly in weeks) and they are very thin and light and comfortable to hold. Additionally, with a high contrast sharp screen it should cut down on eye strain. Just keep in mind that e-ink technology is still mostly b&w for cheap devices but this is ok for high-contrast visual reading. You can also pair a bluetooth headset with the newer kindle paperwhites for audiobooks or text to speech but it doesn’t have a headphone jack since it is water resistant. It also has a good TTS engine that is better than Apple and Samsung to me. Note, newer devices like the Kindle paper white, iPhone, and Samsung phones typically use it’s Accessibility features for vision impaired users to activate text to speech. This takes some getting used and the touch screen gestures vary among devices. I’ve been able to learn them all but it wasn’t easy. You’ll also want to activate a feature called “continuous reading” on those devices so the visual screen reader doesn’t stop at the end of each page while reading a book. And last but not least don’t forget about your laptop or PC. It can handle any of the book formats and can be a convenient option for some people.
2. Keep it interesting by reading various formats even physical paperback and hardback editions. Find a book that you’ve always wanted to read and start it. Some people like the tangible feel of a book while reading it and if that works for you go for it. If you’re on the go a lot and need more convenient options use your existing phone to read visually or listen to audiobooks or even text to speech. Or pickup some of the cheap devices depending on you want to read.
3. Use audiobooks or Text To Speech applications to listen to books while doing other activities. I’ll listen to audiobooks or text to speech while cooking and washing dishes. It sometimes takes some practice and if you’re doing a new complicated recipe or listening to a book on Physics then you may not be able to multitask very effectively. I’ll usually have 10 or 20 books that I’m rotating around so I choose the right book for the task I’m doing. Listening while exercising, or doing yard-work is another option. Of course if you have a long commute then that could be a great time to listen to audiobooks as long as you’re not distracted from driving.
4. In addition to item 3, find new and creative ways to multitask. I’ve actually read print books while on the treadmill and elliptical but you have to make sure you keep it safe. In other words, if you’re just starting to use a treadmill, it may not be a good idea to multitask by reading visually. Make sure you are very familiar with the treadmill before trying to read on it. Also, reading on the treadmill works best at lower speeds such as a brisk walk or slower. If you’re running you probably won’t be able to read visually. However, audiobooks or text to speech may be an option even at higher running speeds as long as your able to do it comfortably and retain what you’ve heard. When you have a spare minute set up audiobooks or ebooks on your existing phone. Then later while you’re waiting in a Dr’s office lobby read or listen to books. I often find that I’ll do a combination of reading visually and listening to a book before I finish it.
5. Set monthly and annual reading goals. Use something like goodreads annual reading challenge if interested. Initially don’t be over-ambitious with your goals. Keep them reasonable where you can comfortably meet the goal and then increase it over time. It’s also ok to surpass your goals by reading extra and then you can start pushing yourself a little more to increase your reading.

I’ll likely do another post on finding good deals on books, audiobooks and devices. But until then here are a few pointers to saving money. Keep an eye out when you’re at a flea market, yard sale or second hand store. They’ll usually have used books for pocket change. If there is a specific book or genre you want sometimes Amazon or other online retailers are a good option. Don’t overlook the used books on those sites. On more than one occasion, a somewhat hard-to-find book I was looking for was over $20 for the digital and print version, but I found a used copy for 99 cents plus $4 to $5 shipping. I rarely pay over $10 for books, ebooks, or audiobooks. Most ebooks and print books I buy are around $2. Audiobooks tend to be more but even then there are good deals to be found and most I buy are around 5 to 6 bucks. Older classic ebooks and audiobooks can often be found for free with the latter being read by volunteers. But if you don’t have time to stop and read and need to multitask then letting a device read an ebook to you is a good option. Even if the voice quality isn’t great, you may still be able to adapt to it.

One last thing to note is that I notice many people who don’t like to read and gripe about reading is they find excuses why they don’t read. For instance, they’re too busy or it’s a big waste of time. I would hope that these same people wouldn’t say that physical exercise is a waste of time. At any rate, keep an open mind on reading and what you read – occasionally veer outside of your comfort zone and read something you wouldn’t normally agree with or like. Reading is a mental exercise for your brain and if you do it enough to make it a habit and give it a chance you just might enjoy it – the same phenomenon is true with walking or working out nearly everyday – at some point it gets easier and seems normal and when you don’t do it something feels missing. And like physical exercise, reading can be a good stress relief and as I mentioned earlier you can even multitask and do both at the same time. It’s educational in many ways whether you read fiction or non-fiction. For me, reading increases my memory, vocabulary, and cognitive skills. I’m almost 50 now and the more I read the better I feel and the easier it is to think through complex problems on my job even though most books I read aren’t directly related to my day job of computer programming.

Whatever path your take whether it’s reading more or not, I wish you the best of luck. Here are the books I’ve read this year.

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