Author Archives: tbavendam

After a week of daily exercise, sometimes feeling the effect of the drug on my appetite and sometimes feeling starved and one day of really low energy, I face my weigh in today with trepidation. If it was another week of minimal loss I would be very disheartened. Fortunately I lost 4.5# which is justContinue reading “Week 2 Wegovy”

I was on Hold for 3 hours and 33 minutes listening to muzak and messages telling me that most things can be handled on line and that I will be asked to share personal information that they can share. I cleaned out my inbox that had over 3300 items. I found 2 that I wantedContinue reading “What is your guess regarding how long I was on hold with SSA?”

I had intended to wait until I was 70 to start collection Social Security under my own number as I was eligible to collect survivor benefits from my first husband. I had NO idea this was the case until a SSA employee told me in a consultation in 2021 when I initially filed. With allContinue reading “Hard to know”

Craig’s friend Susan (and now mine as well) moved from Prescott AZ to Lafayette IN a few years ago to be near her only remaining cousins. It was a decision that made sense post Covid but it did not work out as planned for a variety of reasons. The winter weather was very isolating andContinue reading “Operation – Getting Susan back to Arizona”

At Nashville Tools for Schools, one of the least favorite tasks is to manually clean the metal that is used to make the metal support for rectangular tables. The metal comes from source coated in oil which must be removed with solvent before it can be welded and/or painted. This requires meticulously wiping down everyContinue reading “My amazing man”

As you may recall, Craig and I built this barrier to keep water running from the adjacent pasture onto our yard and it has been quite effective for that particular spot. Later in the year we added some tree trunks along another fence line using the tractor. With a couple of winter rain storms weContinue reading “Doing what I can to save our soil with tree debris”

This is how spokesperson for Musk’s Starship launch described last Wednesday’s post launch explosion. I registered to the end of a couple of Rachel’s podcasts to find the terminology. When I heard it, I thought I would not forget it, but I did. Great term for what is happening with our federal government. A newContinue reading ““Rapid, unscheduled disassembly””

Due to my cooking, Craig has put on about 15 pounds. Over the past several months I have worked pretty hard to help him not gain more – I think successfully. Today he announced that he was going to lose 5 pounds by next Sunday. My response to him is Good for you!!! I willContinue reading “Oh to be male!!”

At some point in the past 10 years, I realized that this simple drawing was helpful to the understanding of most things in health and perhaps life. When you measure any characteristic in a population, for example weight and then plot it on a graph, it will be a bell-shaped curve. The peak of theContinue reading “The Bell shaped curve”

You may be wondering how happy I am to no longer be working at the NIH. I had intended to work until I was 70. If my position had not gotten so “toxic” for my mental and physical health, I would likely still be there until November of this year when I turn 70 However,Continue reading “I would likely have been purged by DOGE”