Tom's Nineteenth Pile of Stuff
The sewage must flow. The glucose must flow. Something something timely Dune reference.
Sewer Saga
As a Millenial, I’m still amazed I bought a house in the first place. Especially near DC, which is far from cheap. But as much as I’ve longed to own a home, I can’t pretend it’s always wonderful.
On October 2nd, sewage started backing up into a utility sink in our basement. Exactly as gross as it sounds. We got some plumbers out quickly to unclog our sewer line, but they suspected it could be related to damage caused by tree roots. Using a special camera for examining pipes, they confirmed their suspicions. Our sewer line—made of cast iron and probably original to the house, making it 80 years old—had a hard obstruction in it. So we scheduled some folks to come by and rip out the old sewer line and replace it with a nice new PVC pipe.
The new sewer line is great, but I’m out a lot of money and my yard is destroyed. The entire lawn and many other plants are gone.
On the upside, we’re now free to reimagine our front yard however we like. Honestly, I wasn’t a fan of lawn care and would happily have something a little more natural. Maybe even a garden? But as we’re heading into fall, I’m not sure we’ll be able to accomplish much until next year.
Insights from my Continuous Glucose Monitor
Two weeks ago, I started using a continuous glucose monitor to see how different foods and activities impacted my blood sugar. It’s still early in the experiment for lots of insights, but a few things have stood out.
Ice cream is bad for you. My daytime blood sugar was usually 90mg/dL. One cone of ice cream spiked it to over 150mg/dL.
Rice is just as bad as ice cream.
I don’t know if this is normal, but my blood glucose averaged 10 points higher while asleep than during the day. I don’t know what that means.
Moderate exercise after a meal (even just a short walk) had noticeable effects on blunting spikes in blood glucose.
I’ve never had to prick my fingers to measure glucose, but I would definitely prefer a CGM to that if I did need to know. That said, I don’t need to know and it’s a bit weird having this thing attached.
I won’t have any new insights for the next newsletter. The CGM has to be replaced every two weeks, and something went wrong while attaching the latest one and the filament that measures glucose wasn’t actually inserted. Oops.