Today, I got a call from the doctor's office, which is... I can't remember having the doctor's office call me any time prior. Not for the gallbladder tests, not for needing a pap smear, nothing. But today they called in regard to the blood sugar test and scheduled an appointment for "as soon a possible" which, given the doctor's schedule, turns out to be Thursday afternoon.

This can't be good.

I did some research and while this is only a guess and I don't want to be a graduate of the University of Google, I suspect that I'm probably pre-diabetic. I could have full on Type II Diabetes, but that doesn't seem as likely to me. Of course, without knowing what was in the blood test, I'm only guessing based on known symptoms and other medical history.

So, it looks like no matter what, I'm going to have to lose some weight, which I've known needed to be done for a while. It's got no vanity element, other than I will say that I'd like to be able to buy clothes at more mainstream shop. Mostly, I don't really care if people think I'm fat or not, and I don't care that much if I'm fat. It's not a big self esteem thing for me (now, anyway). However, I do have some pretty unpleasant joint pain (knees, primarily) and back strain that would undoubtedly be improved by a significant weight loss. And now I have documented blood sugar issues that are certainly going to need to be dealt with.

Looks like I'm going to be going on a Low GI diet, and I'm going to cut back on fat. I'm going to have to give up my beloved Coca Cola (I can't drink Diet Coke because I get a vicious reaction to the aspartame - NutraSweet). I'm also probably going to need to give up or seriously modify my caffeine habit (I think the occasional cup of tea - with Splenda, which I tolerate very well), and give up alcohol (not a big deal, as I don't drink much or often, but I'm wondering what I'm going to do with that bottle of Bailey's in the cupboard). Oh, and certain things like Lindt Chocolate (my favourite) are going to become just a fond memory (believe it or not, I've given up chocolate in the past, as well, and I know I can do that, too).

I can do the low-fat thing. I've done it before, though it's been a while since I actively monitored it. It's painful at first, but once you get used to it, you actually prefer the lower-fat diet. I'm also pretty okay with the Low GI diet, actually. It does mean making some adjustments, but they're not too severe and, well, if you've got to, you've got to.

I can't say I'm thrilled with this development, but it's not as bad as it could be, and if it makes me feel better (particularly if I can kick my persistent fatigue in the butt once and for all!), I'm up for the change. A little incentive is never a bad thing.

I managed to get a sunburn on one arm and shoulder, and I acquired that from inside the car. Note to self: put on sunscreen even if you're going to be in the car. Oww.

At the same time as all this, my computer was acting up. My monitor is at a repair shop at the moment (I miss it! I'm using a somewhat crappy 17" CRT monitor and it's not even a flat screen! Though I am grateful to have a spare monitor to use, I want to add that.), and my primary hard drive has been going weird for some time, so Andrew got me a new one for Christmas (yes, it's fine; I once got a motherboard for Mother's Day, too, by my own request), and a bigger SD card for my phone, so in between the presents and the custards and the trips and the sunburns, I've been mucking with transferring all my data to the new hard drive.

As it turns out, I had to reinstall Windows from the ground up (which, if you're following my Twitter Feed at all, you already know). It's not so bad installing Windows, mind you. It's installing all the other stuff, as well. Happily, I'm pretty good at this and I keep reasonably good backups of my data, so it wasn't too terribly painful, just damned tedious and somewhat soul-draining.

I have most of my stuff reinstalled now. I expect I'll think of other things that need to be reinstalled, but for now I've got the stuff I use all the time, and I've got about ten times the drive space I had before, so I guess it was worth the loss of a small piece of my soul. I've given many pieces of my soul to computers over the years, one more bit shouldn't make too much difference at this point.

So, hey, happy holidays, eh? Still have New Year's Eve to get through, but that shouldn't be too terribly dramatic. At least I won't be baking any custards.

I've also got some photographs that I took on our Boxing Day trip, but I'm not sure any of them are particularly interesting. The trip was fun, but the scenery was pretty ordinary. Pity I didn't get a picture of that decapitated kangaroo on the side of the road, that would have been something you don't see every day. As it is, I have a bunch of pictures of roses and several of the beach. I'll sort through them and see if there are any worth posting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3WOY9SwyOs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJfkYjrbPS4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uIj0YvDBKE

And now, of course, someone has come up with a Flash-based web game where players throw shoes at President Bush.

Ah, the world wide web. You gotta love it.

Anyway, we went in the afternoon, after what should have been the lunchtime rush. Yes, I know it's a couple weeks to Christmas and things are busy busy busy. I get that. I'm not fussed about that, I mean, I get that you go somewhere, you see there's not really any hope of parking, and you go elsewhere. Fine, I do that all the time.

However, what happened to us today was we drove around (painfully slowly) for about twenty minutes and then said, "Well, look, we're not going to find anywhere to park, let's go," and then spent another forty minutes trying to get the hell out of the carpark. Yes, really. For a while, we were so badly gridlocked that we actually turned the engine off for periods of time while waiting to be able to proceed. Furthermore, there were a lot of cars that were parked completely illegally (when I see that, I really want to just get out my keys and walk along scoring the paint on every damned one of them). The illegal parking just contributed to the gridlock, as it turned what should have been a two lane channel into a single lane. Oh, and there was a whole big area of parking that was blocked off from use. Why? Well, there was a non-existent car wash there. Seriously. Reserved for a car wash that did not exist.

So, basically, it was an hour of my life that I'll never get back. Wasted petrol, wasted time, by the time we finally got the hell out of there, my blood sugar was very low (we were planning on having a late lunch... we ended up going elsewhere and having a very late lunch, indeed), and one of the kids was complaining that she needed to go to the toilet.

The thing that really irritates me is the incredibly poor design of the parking garage. The parking aisles all exit to a single lane to get to the exit. I have to wonder if the engineers who created this mess have ever actually parked a car on a busy day? Hey, I bet it looked great on paper and blueprints, but in practical application it SUCKS. Poor design irritates me beyond belief. I mean, this was a $600million remodel, and it took a couple of years to complete, and yet they think that "state of the art parking" means a multi-level rat warren of painfully slow moving traffic and - wait for it - you pay for your parking! (Happily, you only pay after the first two hours. This is good, because it could take you that long just to find a parking place at all, or to decide you won't find one and try to leave.)

Unbelievably bad design. I don't care how much they brag about it, it sucks. I wish I could grab all the design engineers and all of the upper management and stick them in cars and make them drive around that hell hole for an hour or so.

I used to think that the parking situation at Chadstone was really bad, and it kind of is. You can drive around a long time before you find a place to park. But the thing is, you don't sit in a gridlock for the better part of an hour. I have now elevated Westfield Doncaster to the worst parking situation I've experienced in Australia (that's ten years of living here and visiting a lot of parking garages, including in the heart of the city, multiple suburbs, and at very busy times of the year, indeed!). In fact, come to think of it, it may be the worst parking situation I've ever experienced. The only worse one I can think of would be something like leaving a parking lot after some event (concert, for example), when everyone's trying to go at once, but that's about volume, not about incredibly poor design (which the owners are bragging about as if it's great!)

As I said, I won't be back. It's a real shame, because it looks like the internal remodel is pretty cool, but honestly, if you can't get in to see, what's the point? I can't be bothered. I'm sure that after the holidays the traffic will be better, but do I want to risk it? Nup. Plenty of other shopping centres in Melbourne, ones where even if I can't find a place to park, I can at least leave the carpark without being gridlocked for the better part of an hour. Poor design, frustrating experience, I'll take my money somewhere else. (I doubt very much that the management of Westfield will ever read this, much less care what I wrote, but I wanted to write it just in case anyone else felt the same way and wanted to read my rant.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubCISTYeDRE&eurl=http://thesims2.ea.com/&feature=player_embedded

I've had a look around the net, but so far I haven't found a Word of the Day that looks like it will really do much for me, so I thought I'd just ask people. If you know of one that's fairly challenging and for general vocabulary (as opposed to specialty technical vocabularies), please, please drop me a line and let me know. I'm okay with email subscription, though I prefer RSS. If I can find a good WotD that actually lets me learn interesting new words at least once in a while, I'll even accept subscription by carrier pigeon!

Last year, I got a pair of single focal lenses, just for distance. Within a few days of getting them, I rather foolishly left them in the car on a very hot day, and the lenses cracked. There's a very large crack in the lens over my left eye, and a whole rainbow prism of tiny internal cracks (not visible when the glasses are worn, although the large crack certainly is, and it's supremely annoying!) elsewhere.

I had been meaning, for some time, to take the glasses with the cracked lenses and get the lenses replaced with bifocals, since the frames are new and in very good shape, and my old glasses were getting ready to fall apart.

And speaking of my old glasses falling apart, they did last night. They're not repairable. As I can't function without glasses, I had no choice but to wear the single focal cracked lens glasses, which I'm doing right now.

Anyway, I went to my optometrist and they've ordered me in some new lenses and they'll put them in the frames for me there, rather than having to send my frames away. And how much is this costing me? Well, after the insurance paid their part (yes, glasses are included in our private healthcare cover, it's part of why we pay for private healthcare), it was still $335. The insurance paid $250. And it's just the lenses! Mind you, these are better quality multi-focal lenses, with wider focal areas, which should be good, and they've got coating to cut down glare and UV and other stuff, so that's good, but still. Seems like a lot of money to pay for glasses, doesn't it?

Oh, well. It's what I get for getting older, right? At least we have good health insurance that pays for a reasonable portion of the glasses, so I'm thankful for that. And at least the frames I'm going to be wearing now are plastic coated on the arms so the arms don't turn my temples greenish black from the base metal rubbing my acidic skin. (I know, it's gross. I can't wear costume jewellery at all, either, which is a pity. I wonder if you can get sterling silver glasses frames... and how much that would cost....)

So there you go. The strange and boring tale of Bonni's glasses. And the time you spent reading that is some small portion of your life that you'll never get back... Sorry about that.

And then I wandered to the topic of Mass Hysteria and Bandwagon Effect, which are similar but not the same, and explain a great deal about the world, in my opinion.

I love Wikipedia (and yes, I edit Wikipedia fairly regularly, because I am, indeed, white and nerdy).

Last year, though, we had a very, very pleasant day trip shortly after Christmas and it was just so wonderful and I felt so very happy that I decided right then and there that I was going to be happy from that day on. I have been, too, for the most part, though I've had a fair bit of stress this year and I don't handle stress well (it's the trauma background; I am healing, though), but I still learned a great deal about being happy, or at least, being fairly content, which is almost as good as being happy. More to the point, I learned about joy, which surpasses "happy" by an almost infinite amount and comes from the inside. Plus, hey, it's one of the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23), and I believe it's akin to what Paul wrote that he had learned to be content in all circumstances, good and bad (Phillipians 4:11-12). The joy that I can access almost at will is always present, in my heart, waiting for me to just be quiet and let it flow (sometimes I'm still petulant and childish and I decide not to do that because I'd rather be worried and afraid and work myself into a tizzy, but that's just bad habit and an unruly ego; the joy really is always present if I will only allow it).

I'm not happy every moment of every day. But I am happy, and I can find happiness and joy whenever I seek it. I recommend cultivating this particular fruit of the Spirit. It's well worth the investment.

The reason I wrote about this is that I was inspired by Christine Kane's "Word of the Year" idea (good, positive, blog she has, I recommend it highly), and intrigued to note that I had already kind of done this with my "happiness" theme of 2008. So I decided to deliberately choose a word (concept) for 2009.

I've chosen: Abundance.

To me, that includes things like free time, money, health, recreation, love, and so on. Abundance is about having plenty and plenty more, of everything you want, and from that plenty, you share it around, particularly to people who are not consciously able to achieve abundance on their own. Abundance isn't all fun and games, I'm pretty sure. When you have an overflow of something, you really need to be responsible for disposing of the excess appropriately and responsibly. I also include in that the desire to make the world at least a slightly better place because of my actions and decisions.

So, abundance. I'm interested to see how this is going to pan out. In order to learn about happiness and joy (note that happiness is not the same thing as joy; happiness is an emotional response to circumstances or events, but joy is utterly independent of any controlling or triggering factors!), I've had to experience some significant stresses and difficulties, as well as some things that were encouraging and which naturally inspired me to feel happy, content, etc. It's been a productive and stressful year, with lots of highs and lows, and lots of difficulties as well as things that were almost too easy to be believed. And I certainly did learn about happiness and joy, even if I can't claim to have mastered the art of being content in all circumstances yet (now that I "get it", I can continue to develop my happiness muscles, though).

I can think of some possibilities with the abundance concept. I hope I'm wrong on a couple of them. I don't really want to experience crushing poverty - been there, done that - and I don't want to do the financial roller coaster thing - been there, done that, too. I can see how doing that teaches you to expect abundance even in the apparent face of lack, but part of the purpose of my choosing the abundance concept is because I want to actually experience and know true abundance. I'm well and truly familiar with lack and material desperation...

So, my word/intention for 2009 is abundance. It'll be interesting to see how it pans out.

So today, I got an email which informed me that a honey pot I installed successfully identified a previously unknown email harvester. It made my geeky, spam-hating heart very happy, indeed.

Just in case you're as geeky and spam-hating as I am, there's "more information about the new harvester my honeypot identified online if you want to have a squizz (good Aussie slang there, I think).

Isn't it funny, how spammers love honey, buzz, buzz, buzz, I wonder why it does.... (apologies to A.A. Milne.)