TGIF!

As you can probably tell from the title, this post was actually posted on Friday, but Blogger messed up!

Let me get you all caught up on what's been happening around here.

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Tuesday, I went back to the dentist for what I thought was the last time. I was almost right about that.

He gave me a shot of Novocaine, removed the temporary front teeth and filled a cavity on a tooth next to the ones he was replacing. The cavity was so small it was almost nonexistent, and now that I know that, I wish he'd skipped the shot.

He then put on the new caps, so I have my permanent caps at last. I can now bite into a sandwich or cookie if I want! I'm planning to get some corn on the cob next time I go to the supermarket.

At this point, the area that the shot affected is not hurting as much, and in a day or two (hopefully) I won't be able to feel the ache anymore.

I have to go back in two weeks just so that they can check out how the new teeth are working with my existing teeth, the alignment, etc. There may be a few minutes of adjustment, but that's all.

Corn on the cob! I've missed it!

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Wednesday was a nightmare of trying to get my computer to work properly again. John was an enormous help, and after reloading the last upgrade to the system, some of the problem seemed to be fixed. My browser still wouldn't open. I tried to use Software Update to update it, but it said I wasn't connected to the internet, and I couldn't do it. Then it asked if I'd like to update my software. I said yes, and it informed me that I had a big problem with my browser and asked me if I'd like to fix it. I clicked yes, and it's fixed. Well, it's still a little slow and glitchy, but at least it works somewhat.

I still have some other programs that I have to repair or replace before I'm back to where I was before it all crashed.

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Thursday I saw the doctor again. She told me that I need to do more walking, and I told her I've been discouraged about doing that because I feel so bad after even a little walking. She looked at me like I was crazy.

So, after thinking about it for a bit, it finally occurred to me that if she thought it was that weird, maybe there is something wrong. She thinks I'm not getting enough vitamin D, and I'll be getting a test for that. I should mention that I'm taking lots of vitamin D supplement, but the gastroenterologist did say that I probably have big problems absorbing certain kinds of nutrition.

I went to JoAnn Fabrics and (finally!) got the yarn for Everett's Christmas present!

Yes, I know how late it is.

Getting to the store involves what is a lot of walking for me, and I felt terrible last night, and still feel like someone beat me up yesterday. I had planned to go to the post office today to return the yarn I bought that looks very different in real life than it does in the photo, but in light of how I feel, I think it's going to happen Monday instead.

I feel bad enough that I don't intend to be on the computer for very long today. I just hurt everywhere!

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There's a new post on the Steve Canyon blog! John recorded a new interview for the next and last of the Steve Canyon DVDs! All the information on it is on the blog. It's very exciting!

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January is Thyroid Awareness Month! I see people all around me almost all the time with very obvious hypothyroid symptoms, and their doctors insist that there's nothing wrong with them and won't even test them, so I feel that this is an issue that people need to know more about because I can promise you that your doctor doesn't know much about it. And if that doctor is an endocrinologist, he probably knows even less about it than a GP, but thinks he knows everything (from my personal experience), and therefore won't listen to anything you have to say.

By the way, there was a study done where they sent out questionnaires to patients with hypothyroidism, and they discovered that, out of patients who had hypothyroidism for two years or more, 95% of them knew more about hypothyroidism and it's treatment than the doctors who were treating them!

The problem with this is compounded by the really bad tests available for it, and most doctors' misinformation on the subject of thyroid testing. Not only are the tests bad (as in not giving accurate results, especially the TSH), but what's considered "normal" is skewed so that it misses all but the worst cases. If the drug companies can keep you sick, they can sell you osteoporosis, cholesterol, and other medicines and make more money from it.

Check out the symptoms here, and if you suffer from many of them, see your doctor! If you actually do see your doctor, print out the list, and check off all your symptoms. He probably won't listen to you unless you do that.

Wow! I just read that list and I have 41 of the symptoms! I knew that I wasn't getting enough natural dessicated thyroid because Armor Thyroid (which is what I'm taking) was reformulated about a year ago, and although the stated amount of hormone is in each pill, the filler that they changed makes it difficult or impossible to absorb the medicine, and everyone who's been taking it has had hypothyroid symptoms. I'll be switching to Naturethroid as soon as the drug store gets it in, and that should solve the problem or at least help the situation. But I didn't realize how bad it really was!

If you have many of the symptoms, check the sidebar for more info.

And don't let your doctor prescribe Synthroid! Ask for Naturethroid or West Throid! Or even Armor Thyroid, once it's available again. They're reformulating it again to make it the same as it was before last year. Doctors keep telling me that some people get along fine on Synthroid, but it's really hard for me to believe because I feel so bad when I take it. Taking Synthroid is like being short on sleep every night. When you fist take it, it's an improvement, but over time, you just feel a little worse every day until it's even worse than not taking anything at all. Switching to Armor Thyroid was like waking up from a nightmare for me!

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Sanctuary has been on SyFy all day today, and there will be a two hour season finale on tonight!

The next-to-the-last episode of Dollhouse is still scheduled to be on Fox tonight according the electronic TV guide on Comcast, but somebody on Twitter was tweeting that it will be bumped to put on a program about the earthquake in Hati. So, at this point, I just don't know.

Other new episodes on tonight include: Ghost Whisperer and Medium.

Tomorrow, BBC in America will be showing the Doctor Who episode The Shakespeare Code, and a new episode of Demons.

Have a fabulous evening, and a wonderful weekend!

Gettysburg: The First Night

I promised Lynn that I would write about my trip to Gettysburg in 1959, but there's just so much information that it would take me a whole day to begin to cover it all, so I'm breaking it down into parts. Probably three parts, but who knows at this point?

We got to the campground at Spanglers Spring late in the afternoon.

This is a current satellite view of Spanglers Spring, where we camped. The green square is where the Andersons pitched their tent, and Jean, Art and I, et al, pitched our tent in the blue square. The aqua circles are where people came along later and pitched tents in a row. The red circle is where we made a campfire.

The area where we pitched our tents was along the line of the high ground of the field. It sloped down to the road at the bottom of the map. That kind of thick, dark, meandering line on the right side of the map is actually Rock Creek.

Anyway, we said hi to the people who were already there, which were mainly the Andersons, and started pitching our tent. While we were doing that, other people started arriving and pitching their tents along the line that we had established. Don Steiner camped next to us, and brought Harry Lamb along, and they camped next to us. When things were unloaded from the cars, they were moved away and parked elsewhere.

Once everybody had set up and changed into their period clothes, they started coming out of their tents and being sociable. We built a campfire near the road, and in front of the line of tents, more-or-less in front of Andersons tent and settled down to making and consuming our dinners. I was wearing cowboy boots, jeans, a shirt, a rust colored, suede fringed jacket, short hair and a blue Kepi.

This was kind of a motley crew because Art and the Andersons were Yankees, in the 150th Pennsylvania Volunteers (the Bucktail Brigade). I don't remember which group Don (a Yankee) was from, but Harry was in Hampton's Legion (Rebels from South Carolina).

As it started to get dark, the campfire got to be more attractive, and most of us gravitated to it and sang Civil War songs. A lot of the adults there had brought along spirits, and were loosening up by drinking them. Huck and (I think) Randy had their fifes, and I had my Melody Flute (from grade school--I eventually got a real fife), and Huck was really annoyed with me because he and Randy had fifes in the key of B flat, and my flute was in the key of C, and he insisted that I couldn't possibly play it with them. I, on the other hand, wanted to try and transpose the songs to play them in B flat, even though I was using the key of C. It got pretty rowdy! At the campfire, I got to meet Jack Davis for the first time.

Somewhere during the night, somebody got sufficiently drunk that they thought it would be a good idea to fire off a canon. I think that they must've told us that we couldn't fire muskets or canons on the campgrounds or something, because somebody thought it would be a wonderful idea to cross Rock Creek to do it.

We had a short stop at Andersons tent while Huck and the boys pulled out a small canon that was a bit longer than a foot, plus powder, etc. We then walked down behind the row of tents and crossed Rock Creek on a rickety two-board bridge.

By "two-board" I mean that there were supports, and between each support were two long boards, one for each foot. They were so long, and they bounced with each step on them. That was bad enough with one person crossing the bridge, but with a whole troop, it was very treacherous. There was a hand rail on one side of the bridge, but it was so far away from the boards that it was almost useless. The bridge was at least 20 feet above the creek, so it was interesting!

Once we got to the other side, we took a very short walk through the trees, set down the cannon, loaded it, and set it off. Huck thought it would be spectacular to add a lot of magnesium to the black powder, and he was right, it was awe inspiring! Looking back on it, I'm surprised that we didn't kill ourselves!

After firing it off, we all trooped back (across the rickety bridge), and caroused around the fire for a while before eventually going to bed/passing out.

The next morning, I woke up, came out of the tent, and found myself looking down the barrels of some very large cannons! Another group had arrived during the night and started a new row of tents on the other side of the campfire, making a company street. They had their cannon parked next to their tent, and pointing right at our tent.

The next part of the Gettysburg saga is expected to be the battle itself.

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ABC Family is having another Harry Potter weekend! If you like the Harry Potter movies (and didn't OD on them over the holidays), check it out!

BBC in America is showing the Doctor Who episode, Smith and Jones (which is partly over as I write this), followed by the first and second episodes of Demons, in case you didn't see the first one last week.

Don't forget Chuck is on tomorrow night, two whole hours of it, followed by more Chuck and Heroes on Monday night, all brand new!

I have a lot to do, and I'm way behind, so have a great weekend!

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Addition:

I just realized that I wanted to tell you about the connection between hormones and losing weight. It's a great article!