I have a golden sealed (not real gold) certificate in a blue folder that certifies I’ve passed what it takes to write a novel. Whether I can complete one is my own problem!
And now I’m finishing off a novel over the next few months, hoping I remember not to send my monthly works to my tutor (I guess ex-tutor now, though she – and her alternative she (stand in) for marking) because that’d be as bad as, I dunno Russell Brand saying he slept with someone’s granddaughter (which let me say, got a little too overblown by the media).
I’m doing alright though. I had a little ‘episode’ today where I wanted to just end it all (the project that is). Story-wise I’m slap bang in the middle, so it would be bad to stop now. I suppose this is mid-novel crisis and my first taste of it. It got me down. I have to remember that for the time being the story is for me and not worry about what people would think and how to sell it. That’s another day’s problem. Maybe I just got anxious because I am on my own now with this. I can do it but I liked the stabilisers on my bike (I even had stabilisers on my bike as a kid), so will just have to learn to solider on.
A good book to read though at the moment is Matthew Quick’s ‘The Silver Linings Playbook’. It’s not even out yet, but I read an advance copy. It’s a fun read.
A food to avoid though is the McDonald’s M burger. I was in the mood for greasing my body this month so I gave this ‘healthy’ looking burger a go. It’s not uneatable but it’s not worth £5.29 for a large meal. All I was able to taste was meat and bun. The tomatoes had no taste, the Emmental cheese was too thin to notice and the lettuce had a strange texture. It was filling, but it doesn’t beat a Quarter Pounder with Cheese for classic junk satisfaction.
My guitarist/in-key yeller friend Dave had an ‘episode’ similar to me just last week, where he ended up really frustrated with the music we were making. It made me groan a bit but this week I can feel his frustration from a different angle. Luckily he found a hook again, so all going well we hope to record a demo in early 2009. There is no way we’ll complete one in December as I originally thought. We’re not even known and we’ve already created ourselves a similar mystique to the new Guns N’ Roses album – which incidentally is coming out now! (*Not that I’ll buy it)
Lastly, I’m on a little break from vitamin D yapping – at least ’til for a month or so. I’ve been taking 10k per day (as 50k every 5 days) and still no Mr. Hyde taking me over. If anything I feel slightly better off on this drawn out dosing, but I can’t explain how. Must be all in my head.
But if you’ve been searching for vitamin D news (I actually do it daily), you’ll see there’s no let up in the potential benefits and investigations done involving it.
I am however incensed that there is local consideration to to try and put virtually all the local population on a statin because ‘Crestor’ seems to ‘prevent coronary incidences in people with both high, low and normal cholesterol’. So how does a cholesterol lowering drug work on people with normal cholesterol then? The same article shows those on the trial had high levels of C-reactive protein.
C-reactive thingy is a marker of inflammation. Vitamin D as you may have heard me rave about, activates and optimises the immune system – which enables you to deal with inflammation. Statins, may modestly raise vitamin D (we know Lipitor does from a Spanish study), but for a high fee per pill. They also have side effects.
So what we’ve learned from the second last link alone is that there is a drug (with side effects that range from mild to unacceptable) which is supposed to lower cholesterol, but works on people with normal cholesterol, being offered to a population as a whole, because it works in response to an inflammation marker. A simple way to see this is as follows:
A statin works on inflammation. Vitamin D3 works on inflammation. The first is expensive, the second is free or cheap. The first one is a drug, the second one is natural. The first one masquerdades it’s benefits on cholesterol lowering but works in ways it’s manufacturer(s) doesn’t know, inc. by working on those with high levels of C-reactive protein. Vitamin D assumes coronorary disease is due to inflammation, with cholesterol only being a factor in that unconvered skin cholesterol likely equals vitamin D deficency via lack of UVB light.
Anyway, that’s it from me for now. Do note though that mo79onlinedotcodotuk now points to a personal site, which also links to this blog. There’s not much there yet.
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