no shabat shalom

Where to begin? The peace has been shattered once again, making all our mundane, life-sucks type problems look insignificant ... for a few hours. About an hour and a half ago, another suicide bomber struck, this time just off the Tel Aviv beach front, in front of a club packed with twenty-somethings. Three of them were killed immediately, scores wounded. "And still we find a reason to believe..."

It's the culmination of a long, lousy week for me. Tired of work, coming up to two months now. Just very, very tired of rising early every morning to rush off to the traffic and nine-and-a-half bloody hours of sitting and staring at boring user guides for boring technology. Still thankful to be employed, though; it does beat the current alternative.

I had an "evalutation" this week. Ony because February is when they do them. So mine was "forward-thinking" as opposed to an actual evaluation. However, my boss did say I'd received several compliments on my contributions, which makes her look good, she says, having deliberately hired a not-very-technical writer for her tiny technical/marketing dept. -- since she has no budget for a technical writer AND a marketing writer, she decided to go with emphasis on the marketing. She says it's much easier to turn a marketing (i.e. more creative type) writer into a technical writer than vice versa. I agree. I asked her if I would be causing a problem if I didn't quite work all the hours I was supposed to (since I wouldn't be paid for them anyway -- it's all computerized) and she quickly assured me it WOULD be a problem, that the HR VP would come to her and question the situation. We wouldn't want that. I'm going to have to make up a few hours next week. Don't know where they're going to come from; guess I'll be pulling them out of my *ss.

Also went to a highly recommended naturopath (who is also an MD) to pursue a solution to my migraines. Long (expensive) story short: There are 3 serious issues to deal with, any or all of which together could be causing my body to react with migraines: 1) constipation -- he will be satisfied with nothing less than "one good bowel movement per day" -- the toxins that are reabsorbed by a body not eliminating frequently are very bad news; 2) my obvious sensitivity to caffeine means I need to lower caffeine consumption to the absolute minimum, starting with diminishing my first-thing-in-the-morning double espresso; and 3) my sensitivity to sugar spikes means I need to avoid bread and other flour products, and potatoes -- absolute staples to my diet! Pasta, strangely, is relatively okay. But otherwise, I must stick to low GI (glucose index) foods: those which raise blood sugar gently, not in a spikey manner.

Did you ever notice that bread and other flour-based products seem to fly at you like metal objects in an MRI room, exactly when you're not supposed to be consuming them? They're everywhere! What am I supposed to eat for breakfast? Answer: oatmeal. And oat bran. And crushed psyllium. With prunes.

Excused me while I take a geriatric moment.