‘Young Mr. Lincoln’, Michigan trip, Tour-De-Retirement-Homes, Brainiversity
(posted from home)
(This post covers June 8 - 25, 2009)

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Thursday, 25 June-

In Michigan I had read about a brain-training program called ‘Brainiversity’ and had ordered it. I’ve long been interested in ‘Brain Age’ but didn’t want to spend $150 on the Nintendo DS Lite and the game just to find I didn’t like it. The Brainiversity version runs on the PC and costs $20… low enough to take a chance on it.
Today it arrived. After the ultra-simple installation, Labashi and I gave it a run and we both enjoyed it. We’ll see whether this holds up.
I do like the way it works. You have practice sessions in Language, Memory, Math, and Analysis to prepare for a ‘daily exam’. The exam then presents four tests (one each from those categories) and posts your results. The results are tracked from day to day.
I’m hoping to add this to my morning routine of weighing myself, taking my blood pressure, and then recording the results of those as well as what I’ve eaten and what activities I did yesterday in FitDay.
Status on the diet: The original 30-day program ended last week. I dropped 12 pounds but perhaps more importantly my blood pressure dropped from the ‘should begin blood-pressure medication’ to well inside the ‘normal’ range. We are going to re-cycle through the 30-day diet for now, then get off it during our upcoming Fall trip.
That afternoon I jogged the 5K course at Rudy Park in the full heat of the 88-degree day. I had a slight breeze to help out but did have problems cooling down that evening after going to bed. We may have to bring the air conditioner up from the basement soon. Last year we only ran it twice but then again we left about this time for our trip to Alaska.

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Wednesday, 24 June-

My primary chore today was to get the lawn mowed. With temperatures in the mid-Eighties, I chose to mow in mid-afternoon; I need to work on my heat-tolerance. Fortunately, the humidity wasn’t as high here as it had been in Michigan and I had a light breeze so my 2- ½ hours outdoors was actually pretty comfortable.
That evening we watched five episodes of ‘The $100 Taxi Ride’. This is a television series jointly produced by Canada and the UK in which a guy flies into a city and gives a taxi driver $100 to show him the sights. I love the idea but initially found the execution wanting. The guy tries to cram way too much into the tour (and there are two different cities in each half-hour show). But as we watched more episodes, they seemed to improve and we’re looking forward to more.

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Tuesday, 23 June-

Labashi and I once again made the 500-mile drive between Detroit and home today. We had a beautiful day for it and enjoyed listening to four ‘This American Life’ episodes on the iPod.
As we neared home, we celebrated our successful tour-de-retirement-homes with a meal at the Hillside Restaurant.
That evening we watched a documentary about Howard Zinn, a favorite of the Progressive community.

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Monday, 22 June-

Today we did some more chores around the house. I removed the winter cover from the air-conditioning condenser and we enjoyed having a nice, cool afternoon on this very hot and sticky day.
I also spent a few hours attempting to cut down on the number of unwanted phone calls coming in to the answering machine. The new DSL/telephone installation gave us caller-ID so I started making calls to attempt to stop the unwanted calls. I was successful in some cases but there were also cases where the number is hidden or the callers are playing games by not having an opt-out capability. Of eight numbers, I believe I got three of them cut off. The new system also has call-screening and that’s supposed to block up to ten numbers. I could only get one number into the system, however, and had to put in a trouble ticket with AT&T to determine why I can’t add the other nine.

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Sunday, 21 June-

Today I bought and installed two antennas for Labashi’s parents’ DTV conversion. The rabbit-ears just aren’t cutting it. I’m surprised that we are within five miles of the PBS transmitter but have problems getting the signal. I first installed an RCA flat antenna in the kitchen and found the signal only marginally improved until I strung the antenna to a location which looks out the window. That gave a much stronger signal and ended the problems for that one. This also allowed me to eliminate the unsightly rabbit-ears antenna.
The living-room TV was another matter. I considered buying another flat antenna but while checking out the setup, I saw the disconnected cable from an earlier satellite-receiver installation. The satellite dish was still in place on a five-foot mast in the yard. When Mom and Dad ended their subscription, the company merely took the LNB down-converter and the in-home receiver and left the cabling and bare dish in place.
I bought an exterior antenna which looks like a small (about 30”) UFO at the local Radio Shack. While discussing my plan, the Radio Shack guy said I might have a problem if there’s a splitter between the antenna and television since the satellite splitters pass a different frequency. Sure enough, after installation my channel scan only found one channel (while the other tv had found 14 channels). I traced the cable from the mast to its entry into the crawl-space under the house and there found the splitter. After a quick trip to Radio Shack, I replaced the splitter and soon had 15 ultra-clear channels.

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Saturday, 20 June-

Today we made the 500-mile drive back to the Detroit area to take Labashi’s parents home. Our trip went very smoothly, particularly so in Dad’s full-size Buick. It rides smoother than our car and I was amazed to see it get 28 mpg coming east earlier this week, then 25 mpg going west against a fairly strong headwind today.
We didn’t make it to our destination until 1900 so we were all pretty well tired out by the journey.

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Friday, 19 June-

Today we finished up at Bethany Village and drove to the Normandie Ridge retirement community on the west side of York. We toured the common areas and two apartments and had supper in the dining hall—(EXCELLENT crabcakes!)
That afternoon, Labashi’s Dad had expressed an interest in seeing a Catholic retirement village which Labashi had mentioned. Originally we thought it wasn’t of great interest so hadn’t made arrangements to visit. But Labashi got on the phone and just caught the marketing person before she was taking off for the weekend. She very graciously arranged for someone to give us a tour that evening.
We drove to St. Anne’s retirement community in Columbia and had a quick but very thorough tour that evening.


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Thursday, 18 June-

Today we toured Bethany Village East retirement community. We had been introduced to apartments there yesterday but hadn’t seen the common areas.
I split off from the group and drove home to mow the lawn while they toured the Assisted Living and Nursing Care areas (I had seen them on a previous visit with Labashi). I had foolishly gone for a jog the day before we left home, never thinking I should be using my exercise time to mow instead of jog. And as we left I realized I was going to have to take care of the mowing or make arrangements with the lawn-pro guy we use when we’re travelling.
As I arrived home and changed clothes to mow, a rain shower came through and thoroughly soaked the lawn, making the grass a clumpy mess to mow. But I persevered and finished in time to get back to take the group to supper.
We once again dined well in the Bethany West restaurant and then spent an hour or two relaxing in the reading room. Back at the guest house, I spent the evening catching up the blog.

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Wednesday, 17 June-

This morning we briefly toured the nearby Penn Hall retirement facility. My mom lived there for five years so we’re familiar with it and didn’t need the grand tour to give Labashi’s parents a good intro and let them see a few apartments.
We then drove to Mechanicsburg and spent two hours touring the Bethany Village West retirement facility’s independent living apartments.
That evening we dined well in the Bethany Village restaurant and then spent the evening in the guest house.

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Tuesday, 16 June-

We spent several hours touring the Northgate retirement center today. We were very impressed with this facility—it’s really, really nice. The building is only a year old and it super clean, super-modern, and seems more like an upscale hotel but with better rooms than a hotel.
That evening we dined in the restaurant and found it to be one of the best restaurant’s in Chambersburg. We were so impressed we asked if we can dine there even if we aren’t residents. We can, so long as we call ahead for reservations.
After supper I met my brother Maypo for a drink at the Norland Pub. We had a few then returned to the Northgate so I could give Maypo a brief tour and have him meet Labashi’s parents. What a great evening.

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Monday, 15 June-

We travelled from Michigan to Pennsylvania today. ‘We’ in this case is Labashi and I and her parents. We’re traveling in their older Buick and it did really well. It’s more comfortable than our Honda van and gets about the same gas mileage.
We had a later start so supper time found us around Bedford exit. I’ve long wanted to try the Jean Bonnet Tavern which is only five minutes off that exit. That turned out to be a great decision. We had perfect weather to dine on the porch and the food was very good. We also enjoyed a tour of the bed-and-breakfast rooms upstairs and a chat with the restaurant manager. The tavern has been there since 1762 and it has a great feel though it does sit close to the turnpike and to Routes 30 and 31.
After our leisurely meal we took old 30 to Chambersburg and checked in to our rooms at Menno Haven’s Northgate community by 2000.

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Sunday, 14 June-

I spent most of today working on an email problem left over in the DSL installation begun by my sister-in-law. After working with an AT&T technician who finally had to give up and refer me to Microsoft to address an Outlook issue, I thought to update the product to the latest releases and that did it. What a pain. I could receive mail but could not send. And the error simply said there’s something wrong with the To: field yet it was clearly correct.
Late in the afternoon I celebrated the fix by walking to the nearby Starbucks for an iced tea.

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Saturday, 13 June-

Today we drove the nine hours to Michigan. The trip was an easy one and we made it there in time for supper.

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Friday, 12 June-

Today we finished up prep for our Michigan trip and then I spent an hour or two combing the web for some shotgun accessories.
In the afternoon I rode the motorcycle to Rudy park and warmed up on the LifeTrail exercise equipment, then slow-jogged 5K on this very hot day.
That evening we watched Bill Moyers as he and Robert Reich talked about the impact lobbyists have on our government.

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Thursday, 11 June-

Today we prepared for our upcoming trip to Michigan. We’re going to pick up Labashi’s parents out there and drive them back to PA to look at several retirement homes in the area.
Late in the day I received a call from my sister-in-law who was installing a DSL line for her parents. I believe she has most of the problems solved.

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Wednesday, 10 June-

Today I drove to Biglerville to pick up Labashi’s new 14-foot orchard ladder. After much research on the alternatives, we decided an orchard ladder would be the best way for Labashi to trim her Canadian hemlocks and white pines. For the price of the ladder we could have nearly paid for a professional tree trimmer but then again it wouldn’t get done the way she wants it. And she’ll be able to keep the trees trimmed just the way she wants them in the future.
On the way home, I had lunch at Sidney Restaurant in East Berlin. Now there’s a find. It’s a upscale tavern and restaurant and the food was excellent (I had a super quiche). It’s wonderful to find a good restaurant on our rural drive route between home and Chambersburg.
That afternoon I jogged 5K at Rudy Park. I was caught in a light rain storm but that just felt good and by the time I reached the parking lot, the rain was over for my motorcycle ride home.

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Tuesday, 9 June-

Labashi is having sleeping problems we believe are related to the low-carb diet. I spent an hour checking through posts about insomnia on ProteinPower.com and it appears melatonin may help. I have some left over from trying it years ago so she can give it a try. As I remember it from the last time, the melatonin worked well for a day or two, then didn’t really help.
In the afternoon I drove up to a local junkyard that advertises taking junk cars. Good old Cherry Larry is done, I believe. In any case, I’m tired of dealing with problems. The latest is a failed power steering pump. I could get that fixed for about $125 but Larry’s right-side rocker panel is completely rusted out and we use him so little that I think I’m ready to junk him. The going rate is $3 per hundred pounds if I drive it in and $2 a hundred if they have to come pick it up. Hopefully a refill on the power steering pump will allow me to drive it in sometime in the next few weeks. Larry served us well. He has 156,000 miles now and I paid $10K for him in 1997 or so (he’s a ’93) with 38K. I remember feeling lucky to find a van at the time.
That evening we watched ‘Young Mr Lincoln’ with Henry Fonda. This one is a John Ford film about Lincoln’s early years, mostly in Springfield, IL. Very good flick!
We also watched the finale to ‘Out of the Wild’, the series about nine people left in the Alaskan wilderness with no idea how long it would take them to get out. This series was much better than last year’s attempt at this idea (I can’t remember the title). We were particularly impressed with how well these folks did in holding up in the cold weather.

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Monday, 8 June-

I spent the morning updating and posting to my blog. I continue to struggle with time passing so quickly that I forget to keep notes on what I was doing and then have trouble catching up on the blog.
In the afternoon I walked at Pinchot State Park. Today I walked from the east mooring area along the lake to the east parking area, then up to the Ridge Trail and then across the very muddy link trail to the campground office. The latter was horribly muddy and turned into a slough-slog. After circling back past the east parking area, I was passed by a bus-load of joggers and after they passed I began jogging too. I caught up with a couple of stragglers and learned they’re from the Dover Junior High School cross-country club. I was just happy to be able to jog at all, even if it was only for ten minutes or so.
That evening we finished Corner Gas Season 3, disk 1.

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‘The Tracker’, ‘La Bete Humaine’, ‘The Boys of Baraka’, ‘Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired’, groundhog adventures, ‘Seducing Doctor Lewis’, FitDay, ‘Doubt’, preparations for pruning.

(posted from home)
(This post covers 23 May to 7 June, 2009)

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Sunday, 7 June-

I of course started off the day with a FitDay update and checked the ProteinPower site to see what’s going on there.
After lunch I rode the Concours down to Tollgate for my tea-and-Sunday-Times and stopped at Lowe’s on the way home to look at other pruner alternatives since the power-pruner we have is pretty heavy when extended out. I’m thinking the power-pruner, which is really just a small chain saw, may not prove all the friendly to use for lopping anything but the larger branches and a manual pruner would be more controllable. When your feet are ten feet off the ground and you’re on a narrow orchard ladder, a heavy, corded chain-saw may not be the right tool to lop a wall of small branches.
I spent the latter part of the day on the web and doing my blog update.

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Saturday, 6 June –

This morning I did a blog update, a FitDay update, and posted a message on the ProteinPower forum describing our experiences thus far, on the 20th day of our 30-day diet.
The rains have finally subsided so I cleaned up the groundhog trap and re-deployed it with new bait. But I think the groundhogs are wary of it now so we’ll just have to try various baits. The one good-news item here is the groundhog family moved out from under the barn and back to the groundhog holes in the woods. That’s where I’ve now moved the trap. Hopefully the groundhogs don’t now decided they need to move back under the barn.
I also helped Labashi research orchard ladders. We’ve been looking at them on the web for the last few days. We need a solution for trimming the Canadian Hemlocks and white pines on our property. They’re threatening to get out of control. They’re about 16-18 feet high and it’s time to top them. They form ‘walls’ of trees (like giant hedges) which define visual boundaries of our property.
After lunch we drove to Boyer’s Nursery in Biglerville to get a first-hand look at a 14-foot orchard ladder. We were able to get up on a twelve-footer (the 14-footer was still packed up). We had thought we’d need a sixteen-footer but it would be expensive to get one shipped in here and I believe the 14-footer would be enough given that we have a long electric pole-pruner. We were at first wary of the orchard ladder because it’s a tripod, i.e., the back side of the ladder is nothing but an aluminum pole. But once we climbed up to the top of the 12-footer, we can see it’s stable and will work much better than a standard stepladder for working among the tree lines. But we still want to do some more testing back home to decide whether to go ahead and buy the orchard ladder.
Late in the day I mowed the lawn and it seemed like a lot of work this time. The grass wasn’t really dry enough and clogged up the mowers. My old early-80’s mower did ok but I like to also run our newer one to give it some exercise and it was a pain today. I had to stop every ten minutes or so and clean out the discharge chute. What a silly design!
That evening we watched the introductory episode of ‘The Expedition’, the re-creation of Stanley and Livingstone’s treks across Africa. Our early impression is it’s a bit too much like ‘Survivor’ in that the producers (under Mark Burnett) seem to have selected people for their potential for interpersonal conflict. These folks are supposed to be professional explorers (whatever that is these days) yet they don’t seem to understand co-operation. But it’s still early in the adventure…

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Friday, 5 June-

Again I spent a long time on FitDay getting food data entered but it’s going to get easier. As I save the info to the ‘Custom Foods’ area, I can now simply click on the item to add it to my food log.
Again we have a rainy day today but fortunately it’s a light rain. I wanted to get out of the house by mid-afternoon so made a run to the Giant for Labashi.
That evening we watched two Corner Gas-3 episodes and then a good Bill Moyers Journal about contracting-out the wars and news being very inadequately done by ‘the punditocracy’ (and learned about a good web source called ‘PressThink’). After that, the ‘Now’ episode was about the dramatic changes in our food production and a new documentary about it called “Food, Inc”.

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Thursday, 4 June-

I spent a few hours on my FitDay update this morning. Getting all the food information entered is a bit of a pain when you have to take a recipe and look up the nutrient info for each ingredient then figure how much one serving is and enter the details in a standard nutrition label.
I had lunch with a buddy from the past, Rabbit. He sent me an email out of the blue a couple of days ago and we ended up meeting for lunch today. We had a good time catching up motorcycling and sailing stuff.
After lunch I hit the Camp Hill Starbucks for a tea-and-Times and then walked five miles at Pinchot in a very light rain.
That evening we watched ‘Doubt’ with Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman. GOOD movie and highly recommended!

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Wednesday, 3 June-

We caught our first groundhog this morning. We actually saw it happen. We noticed the groundhogs out from under the barn and feeding in the general area of the trap. They didn’t seem interested in the trap but then the little one stood up on its hind legs and started sniffing around the trap door. Within a minute it entered and went right for the bait, tripping the door as it reached the goodies.
We took the trap and groundhog to a nearby powerline area well out in the boonies and let the little fella go. Hopefully we can relocate the rest of the family here too.
Back home I spent a few hours setting up a diet tracking program called FitDay. This one is recommended on the Protein Power forum (at www.proteinpower.com) and I at first only looked at it casually. But as I played with the features, I decided I like it quite a lot. We’ll see.
I also worked today on finding another electricity supplier but it appears I don’t really have any choice. Despite the state government’s efforts to ensure competition, there is none in my area. Over the last few days I’ve exchanged emails with the Consumer Advocate’s office and called the Med-Ed Retail Choice Center. But the bottom line remains the same—no choice for me.
That afternoon I walked four miles and used the new LifeTrail stations at Rudy Park. LifeTrail stations are exercise stations for us nearing-60-and-over folks.
That evening we watched ‘Seducing Doctor Lewis’, a Quebecois comedy about the efforts of a remote fishing community to attract a doctor to their village. Not bad!
The film was shot in Harrington Harbor, Quebec and now I want to go there in person. It’s on an island in the far reaches of the St Lawrence, not far from the Quebec-Labrador line.

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Tuesday, 2 June-

Today I drove in to Home Depot and Lowe’s to buy a groundhog trap. I bought a Havahart trap and brought it home and set it up next to the barn in the area we’ve been seeing the groundhogs.
I spent the rest of the day working on the spreadsheet I’m using to compare the Ivy Portfolio to another investing strategy we like. I think we’re going to stick with the other one. The Ivy Portfolio would require a lot of discipline to stay with when it underperforms in a string of bull-market years and I’m not sure we’re willing to do that—even for its benefits of limiting losses in the bad years.
That evening I walked four miles at Pinchot Park (from the east-side mooring area to the campground and back).

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Monday, 1 June –

In our meeting with the financial guy last week we learned he favors an investing strategy based on principles laid out in a book called ‘The Ivy Portfolio’. It sounded interesting enough to check out so I ordered the book last week and spent today going through it and starting a spreadsheet to help me decide whether I’d want to do something like this.
I also spent an hour or so researching groundhog pest control methods. Our local groundhog had up to this point been staying down in the woods and only seemed to have a passing interest in our barn. But over the weekend we saw four groundhogs come out from under the barn. The little ones are very cute but we can’t let this stand.
That evening we watched three Corner Gas- Season 3 episodes.

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Sunday, 31 May-

Sunday! I’ve recently taken to driving or riding to the Tollgate Starbucks on Sundays to sip an iced tea and read the Sunday Times.
That evening we watched the extras from the Polanski documentary.

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Saturday, 30 May-

After some research on the web this morning I decided I should have bought the 500GB portable drive I saw on clearance at Office Max yesterday. My search for zip disks turned up a few disks but they were expensive-- $10 each. And when the drive dies, it will be tough to find a drive and if I do, it won’t be cheap. Time to move on!
The drive is a SimpleTech and it was normally $150 but on clearance for $109. I’ve had good luck with the SimpleTech 120GB drive I use with my laptop so this one should work out well for Labashi to keep her many photos and there will still be space left over to back up her computer.
That evening we watched ‘Roman Polanski, Wanted and Desired’, a good documentary detailing Polanski’s background, his films, and the controversy around his having sex with a 13-year old girl, his 43 days in county jail and his leaving the US to avoid sentencing. I was unaware of the issues around his trial and sentencing and it’s clear the system worked against him and drove him to leave. I’d have no problem with his now being permitted back into the US.

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Friday, 29 May-

Our meeting with the financial specialist went well yesterday but was only the first of three meetings. The specialist gathered info from us and now will prepare his report and recommendations. We’ll then have time to review them in detail, then go back for yet another session to (hopefully) reach a conclusion about where we stand and what changes we should consider for the future.
I had my hands full this morning with office work. The IRS notice turned out to be a missing form problem for which my tax prep specialist apologized. She missed informing me that I needed to send along a court form from the estate with the return.
After lunch Labashi sent me on a mission for some zip disks and some ingredients for our diet from the Farmer’s Market in East York. I continue to love the diet, by the way, so am more than happy to go on such missions.
That evening we watched our regular Friday night PBS shows.

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Thursday, 28 May-

I spent the morning finalizing info for a meeting with a financial planner tomorrow. Our tax-prep service offers a free financial ‘checkup’. These are generally aimed at trying to answer the question ‘Are you on track for retirement?’ but in our case we’re trying to answer the question ‘Are we on track for STAYING retired?’
Maypo called me last night to say a notice from the IRS had arrived in regard to mom’s estate so I buzzed on over to Cburg to pick it up and make sure I understand what’s missing.
I made it back home by 1830 and we watched a documentary called ‘The Boys of Baraka’. It follows at-risk boys from a blighted area of Baltimore as they are selected for and attend a boys’ school in Kenya. The film does a great job of digging into the lives of the boys and their families and giving us a thorough understanding of why the families would consider sending their sons 10,000 miles for an education and how it would make a difference to them. Recommended!

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Wednesday, 27 May-

Today we received a notice from a debt collector saying we owed $10 for a Cycle World subscription. I had had a subscription expire in January so I called Cycle World directly to figure out what’s going on. The explanation was that ‘someone’ had submitted a subscription request but it was later ‘cancelled by the computer’. Apparently the record went to the collection company before the cancellation. The call-center person says he dashed off an electronic notice to the collector and that should be the end of it. But I lost several hours going through the process of determining what the issue was and sending off a claim dispute.
I spent the greater part of the day preparing for tomorrow’s financial meeting.

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Tuesday, 26 May-

I spent the morning working in my office, updating the blog and taking care of some financial tasks—paying bills, organizing records, and handling a credit card problem generated by a compromised VISA database. The latter led to the discovery that the only way to update your credit card on Skype is to buy at least $10 of minutes. Does that seem right? I exchanged emails with their call center but it’s clear that they simply say ‘my way or the highway’ (in a nice way). This is actually a very minor issue for me, though. I’ll just wait until I need additional minutes to provide the updated numbers. It just shouldn’t work that way.


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Monday, 25 May –

We spent much of today shopping for food for the diet. We drove in to the East York Wal-mart instead of our local Giant because we knew we could get some hard-to-find items there. But it still took forever because of the searches for items we don’t normally get.
We returned home late for lunch and then afterward Labashi decided to make a run to the Giant for a few items we never did find at Wal-mart. But we’re not complaining (much!). The recipes from the book have been very, very good. We’re eating excellent food, losing weight, and having no cravings. I’m not sure that lasts long-term but we’re certainly happy with the results thus far.
I also spent a frustrating hour dealing with credit card updates. I’m amazed at how poor some online systems are at this. Verizon’s is particularly bad. I ended up just deciding to wait until tomorrow and do it by phone.

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Sunday, 24 May –

We still had some research to do today for the new diet—just small things, like figuring out portion sizes, total protein requirements, alternatives for pre-packaged protein drinks, etc. I spent an hour or so on proteinpower.com, reading through the postings to get a feel for who the experts are and what questions people have about the diet.
I then buzzed down to the Tollgate Starbucks south of York for a ride and to read the Sunday Times. This Starbucks is a little nicer than the others and always seems to have a free paper to read in the rack. The York one took out the comfortable reading chairs to place more tables (I guess I can’t blame them but it’s not as nice for me).
I of course can’t have any of my favorite Starbucks drinks because they have far too many carbs. But I can have an Americano if I want the caffeine or the unsweetened tea is very nice on a warm day like today.
Late in the day I took a walk for a couple of hours — this one behind the mower. Rains are supposed to be coming so I’d better get ‘er done today.
That evening we watched ‘La Bete Humaine’ (“The Human Beast”), a 1938 French film directed by Jean Renoir and based on an Emile Zola novel. This is a classic tale of deceit. Jean Gabin plays a locomotive engineer who lusts for the stationmaster’s wife. Circumstances drive her into his arms but she tries to get him to kill her husband, making him realize what a mistake he has made. The extras include an introduction by Jean Renoir in later life and we also see him as a younger man as one of the characters. The footage of late-1930’s France and trains is worth the price of admission alone. Recommended!

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Saturday, 23 May-

I spent most of the morning catching up the blog and patrolling my news sites. In the afternoon I continued researching the diet, mostly in comparing the original Protein Power book to the 30-day plan we’re using now (both are by the same authors). The methodologies for figuring things out have changed and they now say you need not limit your protein to the daily recommendation and goes so far as to say you can eat all the protein-only meats (and protein shakes) you desire.
That evening we watched ‘The Tracker’, an Australian film about an aboriginal tracker who is forced to help three white men hunt down an aboriginal man accused of killing a white woman. As the sadistic leader of the group commits heinous acts against others encountered along the way, the hunters find themselves in ever-more perilous conditions. The actor portraying the tracker is David Gulpilil, a name you may not know but a face you’re probably familiar with from ‘Rabbit-Proof Fence’ and ‘Walkabout’. Very good movie! And the extra feature about David’s remarkable life is very worth your time.

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