The number of pills I ingest each morning has shrunk over the years

(NOTE: This morning I had my first physical in a couple of years with a new primary care provider, whom I really liked. She added a fifth pill to my regimen, which is Lisinopril, kind of an "entry-level" blood pressure med given my family history of that condition and the fact that I came in at a not-terrible-but-not-ideal 140/72 today. Just to update what you'll see below, which was written a couple of weeks ago...)

About a decade ago, I blogged about my morning pill regimen. Back then, I was taking seven pills each day. Now that number is down to four.

The ones that have dropped off the list are the two fish oil capsules I used to pop seven days a week, and the generic Claritin tablet to help with my chronic congestion.

I got rid of the fish oil because I'm not aware of any studies that have shown a benefit to ingesting fish oil via capsule. The idea, as a person with a family history of heart disease, was to derive some sort of cardiovascular benefit. But from what I gather, it's more likely that benefit will come from regularly ingesting actual fish, rather than their extracted oils.

I don't eat a whole lot of fish. I like fish, mind you, but it's not a common dish in our house. Not sure how to get around that one.

As for the Claritin pill, I still get congested, but I find that I can rely on my longtime addiction to nasal mist to take care of it. It's not ideal, but it works, so I figured I didn't need to buy the pills anymore.

So what DO I take every day? Here's the rundown:

• A men's multivitamin: I chop it in two and take half in the morning and half in the afternoon/evening to aid with absorption. But here's the thing...I'm not sure there's any more proof of efficacy for a multivitamin than there is for fish oil. But my now-retired primary care physician always encouraged me to continue taking it, so I do. Today I have my first appointment with my new PC provider, so I'll have to ask her about this. (NOTE: She said to keep taking it. It's one of those it-can't-hurt-and-it-probably-helps kinds of things the scientific community is still working through.)
  
  
• A Vitamix D3 pill: Again, not sure what the clinical evidence suggests here, but I take a 2000 IU pill every day. This is what I said in my 2012 post on this subject: "Those of us who live in northern climates tend not to get enough sunlight, which means we don't get enough Vitamin D, which is apparently important for heart health. You'll notice 'heart health' is a recurring theme here. I had a father and sister both die from heart disease. Can't be too careful here." (NOTE: Amber, my primary care nurse practitioner referred to previously, said to definitely keep this one.)
  
  
• Two baby aspirin: Once again, do I know for sure this helps me in terms of cardiovascular health? I do not (I really should do a literature search on these things). But my doc never discouraged me from doing it, so every morning I happily take two orange-flavored chewable baby aspirin. Even if they don't ultimately help, they taste awesome, so there's that. (NOTE: Amber's take? See the multivitamin comment above.)

Sometimes I wonder whether I should just give up the pills/supplements altogether and rely instead on a relatively healthy diet. And I do eat relatively healthy.

But if I did that, what would become of my trusty plastic pill case, which is segmented by days of the week and which I refill every Saturday morning? It would sit there empty and lonely. And I would hate for that to happen.

Recent encounters with wildlife

 

(1) The little guy pictured above was somewhere in the house when our cat Ginny caught him. This was unusual in that, when we’ve had mice a few times over the years, it has always been Charlie who tracked them down. But this time, Ginny was the one credited with the capture. Terry noticed the little fuzz ball hanging out of Ginny’s mouth and called me into the room. Ginny, acting on instinct, was very possessive of her catch and ran away when I tried to take the mouse from her. We eventually got her to drop it and I scooped him up and took him outside, where I presume he is now living more in fear of hawks and owls than house cats.

(2) I see a lot of deer on my early-morning walks, but recently I’ve had multiple encounters with a big old skunk. He hangs out in a wide patch of grass that I pass twice on my usual route. The way he moves suggests he is older, though that probably only means he is 3 or 4, given skunk life spans in the wild. Half the time he doesn’t even notice me, but when he does, he instantly becomes alert and raises his tail. I give him a very, very wide berth, and after a few tense seconds we both go on our way. I like to think we have a wary mutual respect, but I’m sure he knows he’s the one in control of the situation.

(3) Speaking of deer, we get them in our yard all the time, to the point that I usually don’t pay them much mind. But we had a huge buck walk across our property recently and I couldn’t help but marvel at the sheer size of him. I don’t recall any of our local deer population ever getting that big. In my mind, the other deer call him “Moose,” though I suppose “Buck” is just as likely.

I now view the cold months here in Northeast Ohio as a personal challenge

Fall began earlier this week, but I've always felt it really coincides with the start of the school year.

By that definition, it has been fall in our city for more than a month. The deeper we get into September and October, the crisper the mornings become. Since May or so, almost all of my morning walks have been done in a t-shirt and shorts. Now the long-sleeve pullovers come out.

It would be one thing if it ended there, and if in a few months we were again enjoying warm mornings and even warmer afternoons.

But that pleasantly brisk 5:30am walk is just the beginning. For those of us on the shores of Lake Erie, there is a long period ahead of falling temperatures that won't bottom out until January/February, perpetually gray skies, and yes, snow and ice.

I never used to think much of the September-through-March slog. It just came and went and you got through it.

But man, I swear the older I get, the longer it seems. Those first signs of warmth in mid- to late March are always welcome, and they always feel like an ordeal we've come through together. But enduring the cold months gets just a bit tougher each year.

Of course, no matter where you live, there are climatic challenges. If it's not hurricanes it's tropical humidity (or both). Or much worse cold than we get here. Or unending rain.

Our weather issues probably aren't any more difficult to deal with than anyone else's. It's just...boy, I don't know how a six-month period can suddenly feel like it's years long, but it does.

Oh well, we'll live. Terry and I have talked about becoming snowbirds eventually, but for now, we grin and bear it.

OK, admittedly, I'm not grinning.

Microsoft OneNote is the tool that keeps my life from devolving into a puddle of chaos

If you work in any kind of office setting, you probably use or have used some of the Microsoft Office programs: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, etc. Those are the most widely utilized.

A level down in terms of popularity are Publisher, Visio, SharePoint, and maybe Lync. I imagine Bill Gates and Co. rake in billions just from these apps alone.

Also among that second tier (and teetering on the third tier for many) is a program I use every day, both professionally and personally: OneNote.

I have trouble describing to people unfamiliar with it just what OneNote is. I guess the easiest way to sum it up is that it's a place where I put lots and lots and lots of information and organize it in a way that makes it easy to find and easy to act upon.

Does that make sense? It probably doesn't do it justice.

Maybe it's easier if I give some practical examples:

• I have a system of notebooks, sections and pages within OneNote that cover every aspect of my job. I take notes in every meeting I have and store those in the appropriate areas. I can easily search all of OneNote later for keywords if I can't find a piece or data or a note I took.
  
  
• But it's not just words I put into the program. I also take photos of things people write on whiteboards or other visuals that will come in handy later, and then I store them in OneNote. And if I'm in a setting where it's easier for me to take handwritten notes than to type notes directly into my laptop, I'll snap a picture of those notes and, yes, store them in OneNote.
  
  
• I can draw my own graphics, notes, figures, highlights, etc. on the screen over my typed notes for emphasis, easier information finding, etc.
  
  
• I keep my weekly to-do lists, both for work and for home, within OneNote, which provides handy little checkboxes I can use as I complete tasks.

• If I think of a blog post idea on the fly, I either quickly type it into a page I have reserved for blog post ideas within OneNote, or I record a quick note to myself also to store on that page.
  
  
• I also put sound files and videos into all of my notebooks as needed.
  
  
• I share whole pages, meeting notes, etc. with coworkers.
  
  
• All of the stuff I cram into OneNote is synced across all of my devices, so I can easily pull up the most current versions on my laptop, phone, or tablet.
  

The barrier to OneNote entry for many people is the time they assume is needed to learn the program and set up their notebook structure. And to that I'm happy to say this program is truly really easy to use. You'll pick it up right away with only a little bit of online training and personal experimentation.

The thing to consider, though, is that when it comes to programs like OneNote and Evernote, I feel like you're either all in or all out. It's not an app you really dabble in if you want to benefit from it.

I'm all in when it comes to OneNote. The mental effort required to do that is not nearly as big as you think it is.

It's all a far cry from WordPerfect, which I used to use to print out weekly to-do lists on a dot-matrix printer via my old, green-screen IBM XT computer.

We've come quite a way since the late 1980s.

What I like and don't like about my new pair of reading glasses

I don't mean to keep harping on this, but with my eyes having recently made the decision that they're no longer going to work especially hard to read small print, I had to make a trip to CVS to get my first pair of readers.

This, mind you, happened in the same week I saw a gastroenterologist in preparation for my first colonoscopy. We in Team Scott (that is to say, me) are reeling a little when it comes to the age-related milestones.

Anyway, I bought these glasses and they do their job, which is great. A quick rundown:

WHAT I LIKE

• They look good. At first I only saw colorful "fashion" readers on the rack, and I thought I was either going to have to buy a pair of leopard skin frames or walk away empty-handed. Thankfully, I turned around and saw another display of readers, many of which were made for middle-of-the-road suburban dads like me.
• They were easy to get used to. I figured it would take some period of adjustment before I really made full use of these glasses, but I had no problems from the outset. I mostly need them for reading actual print material, and even then only occasionally. So far they're doing exactly what they're supposed to.

WHAT I DON'T LIKE

• The price. I got hornswoggled here. These are Foster Grant glasses, so I didn't really blink when I saw the $31 price tag. Only later when I got home and asked Terry how much she pays for her reading glasses did I find out that hers are usually $5 or $10 from Marc's. I should have checked into it before venturing out. On the plus side, they look really nice. Did I mention that?
• The fact that I need them at all. Allow me some period of whining during which I will complain about having to buy a pair of readers in the first place. I'll get over it in time. (In the interim, when did Apple decide to start using blurry text on the iPhone? Feels it just happened recently. I'm calling someone to register a protest...assuming I can see the numbers on my phone.)

I catch myself making this old guy face all the time

Increasingly I'll be in the middle of doing something, particularly something that requires me to concentrate, and I'll suddenly realize I'm making this less-than-flattering face.

It happens unconsciously. I have no idea I look this way for whole minutes at a time.

I always used to associate this face with old guys, particularly those who were baffled by some sort of new technology or an instruction manual written in badly translated English.

(This is assuming the guy is reading the instruction manual in the first place, which I know is a big leap.)

It horrifies me that I make this face, but I don't know how to keep myself from doing it. And really, when it comes to something like this, it's likely to happen more and more often as time goes on rather than just going away on its own.

The inevitable next step in my decline will be me offering everyone I meet a Werther's hard candy as they stare fascinated at my pants, which will be pulled up to my nipples.

As long as I'm not making The Face while I'm doing it, I think I can live with this scenario.

The Starbucks mobile ordering system does what it says it will do, and I think that's admirable

Every two weeks I visit my sister Deb's salon for a haircut and conversation.

I really don't need the haircut every two weeks, but I do look forward to the conversation, so the haircut is just an excuse.

I'm there every other Saturday morning, and invariably once she finishes shaping up what hair is left on my head, I walk over to the nearby Starbucks to grab a coffee.

Before I walk over, I fire up the Starbucks app on my phone and place my order online: Small blonde roast with a splash of heavy cream.

And it's there waiting for me every time. Every time, without fail. And not that it's a complicated order or anything, but they get also get the coffee/cream ratio right every time.

Now, before I talk about how impressive that system is to me, I realize you may have your own opinions about Starbucks, whether it's the quality of their coffee, the price of said coffee, or their corporate politics. And to that I would say:

• QUALITY: You may be right, but I have no standards when it comes to coffee, so I'll drink almost anything.
• PRICE: You are undoubtedly right there. Even if you're paying for "ambience" and "experience," it's still too much. Yet I continue to make regular purchases there because, well, because I don't really care.
• POLITICS: Speaking of don't care, it would be difficult for me to care less about what Starbucks advocates for when it comes to social and political issues. I'm just there for the coffee.

Now, you could argue that we should expect brands to deliver on their promises to us, and that when they do so it is no more than the price of gaining you and me as customers. And you're right.

Still, having spent part of my career in consumer goods, I can tell you that marketing and distribution for most products is way, way more complex than you think it is. And any company that, on a mass scale, can promise you a positive experience and consistently come through is to be commended.

Because many don't, you know. And here I'm thinking of cable companies. God bless them they try, but the number of technical issues they experience and customer complaints they absorb suggests to me that most operate their networks on essentially a wing and a prayer. They promise a positive experience and deliver it a shockingly low percentage of the time.

But not my friends at Starbucks. They make it easy to use their app, easy to place my order, and easy to pick it up. Maybe I shouldn't be blown away by this, but I am.