Tuesday, October 17, 2017

I’ve been receiving emails from Paul, one of my blog readers, about the benefits and use of taking Melatonin.  He recommends a dose of about .1mg to .3mg and I have 3mg tablets so I’d been taking maybe about 10 times the dose that I should.  He recommends taking the .3mg dose about 30-45 minutes before bed and to not view any lighted screens (e.g. TV, cellphone, iPad, Nook) the last hour before bed.

Using my pill cutter and cutting each 3mg pill into eighths I will have approximately a .3mg size taking into consideration the little powder lost with each cut.

One thing I’m not sure about is whether to take the Melatonin with or without my sleeping pills.

Last night I took a .3mg Melatonin at 9:45 but then we got involved in a Robert Redford movie that kept us up.  I DID NOT take any sleeping pills when we went to bed at 11pm.  Still awake at 1am I got up and took 2 sleeping pills.  At some point I heard some strange buzzing noise coming from outside so I got up and closed the window.  The last time I looked at my watch it was 3am.  Yikes!  I fell asleep soon after and woke up at 7:30am and got up at 8am feeling pretty good.

Obviously this is a work in progress; each night for awhile I’ll try different combinations.

Teresa tells me she believes the rainy season is over.  It has been a few days and today is warm but luckily there’s a nice breeze.

I watched the first hour and 45 minutes of the Today show.  I stopped at Bancolombia and made a small withdrawal.  I stopped at a watch repair kiosk that I’ve seen on my way to and from the gym.  I handed him my Timex watch with a note saying that its 4 minutes slow but he doesn’t have to repair it, just advance it by 4 minutes.  As he was struggling with the buttons he told me he can change the month, day, day of the week and hour but he can’t change the minute.  Same problem I had when trying to update it.  Finally he figured it out and I paid him 2,000 pesos.  I stopped at $efecty and after a short line the lady told me I have to go a block away to a different store – Cotrafa – to pay my Une bill.  At that store there was a longer line and only 2 cashiers.  After a 10 minute wait I paid my bill and headed over to Exito where I bought a head of lettuce and 5 tomatoes so Teresa can make a salad for lunch.  I was back at the apt by noon.

I left the apt at 3pm and I saw a taxi outside the corner store.  I asked him if he was free and he said yes.  I asked him if he could take me to El Tesoro mall and he said yes.  I understood he wanted to grab something at the store as he motioned me to get in the car.  When he got in he asked me where I want to go.  I said you don’t remember and I said Santafe mall.  (At least I think I did.)  Twenty minutes later when he turned up the hill by Santafe mall he asked me which entrance.  (And I thought he had found a shortcut to El Tesoro.)  That’s when I realized my mistake, admitted I was wrong as I wanted to go to El Tesoro.  I still arrived at the dentist’s office 15 minutes early.

At 4pm I was taken into his office and over the next hour he completed restorations on 2 of my lower teeth.  I asked him about something that was sticking out of my inside gum and he said that was just bone tissue and nothing to worry about.

I had to wait 40 minutes in line for a taxi back to Envigado.

Teresa told me that she believes the rainy season here is over.

She made arrangements with Jose to continue her private lessons from 6 to 7am.  Wow!

Laura went to the gym, Teresa went to visit with her mother and I watched Season 6 Episodes 9 & 10 of The Walking Dead on Netflix with minimal buffering problems.

At 11pm I took .3 mg of Melatonin and read 2 chapters of a soft cover book my son gave me last Fathers Day.  (The book, about Teddy Roosevelt’s exploration of South America, is The River of Doubt by Candice Millard.)  I finished them at 11:45, took my 2 sleeping pills and went to bed.

Funny grammar errors:

How to write good:

1. Avoid alliteration always.

2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.

3. The passive voice is to be avoided.

4. Avoid cliches like the plague.  They’re old hat.

5. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.

6. Writers should never generalize.

Seven: be consistent.

8. Don’t use more words than necessary.  It’s highly superfluous.

9. Be more or less specific.

10. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.