The month-long holidays for July are: National Grilling Month, National Hot Dog Month, National Ice Cream Month, National Honey Month. Some are for important causes, some are to make you appreciate things you may take for granted, and some are just for fun.
For the Jewish calendar, there are a couple of pairs of Torah finials. Ones from around the 1920s, and the other's from the late 19th century. The older one still looks somewhat new. Must have been well taken care of. The elements calendar features iodine this month. The main pic's of it being gently heated to slightly melt. It gives off a purplish liquid as it's melted. They mentioned a few of it's uses.
Recently started taking a non-gendered gummy vitamin. My previous one was Women's One-A-Day Vitacraves. I got tired of misgendering myself everyday. I like the gummy version of vitamins. They're kind of fun and I don't have to swallow another pill. The gummy versions of their multivitamins are for men, women, and adults. Like many brands. I find it funny that it seems to imply that men and women aren't adults...Or, that adult is a gender. Anyways, their 'adult' version is much more expensive than the others. So, I looked at another brand's. Plus, I was tired of their flavors. Got VitaFusion's adult version. All 3 (men, women, and adult) are the same price. Seemed more balanced with the vitamins than my previous one, too. I'm glad I now have vitamins that aren't gendered. I know it's a small thing, but it does feel a little better.
I've been using Selsun Blue, and I'm surprised at how well it's working. I don't have as many flakes and they're drier/much smaller now. The scalp oil stuff arrived in the mail on the 1st. It's aka Derma-Smoothe Scalp/FS or Fluocinolone Acetonide. Scalp oil just sounds funnier and darker to me. It's an oil-based steroid that helps with seborrheic dermatitis and other skin conditions. It's supposed to help with the 'scale', redness, itchiness, possibly with hair loss, etc.
Tried it that night. It comes with 2 clear plastic shower caps. (Pretty flimsy looking ones.) There are 2 options of caps for the bottle, too. You're supposed to wet your hair, apply a 'thin film' on the scalp, massage it in well, put a shower cap over it/your hair, sleep with it on, and wash it out with shampoo in the morning. It says it should be every night until it clears up or a certain amount of time. I was going to take a shower anyway, so instead of covering it up with my regular shower cap I went in without it and let the water soak in. I normally wash my hair once every 3 days in the morning, and shower every other night. My hair gets in the way while taking showers, and I normally can't do my hair that often. I coudn't really do a thin film of it. I poured some into my hand, took some in the other, and rubbed it in. Tried to cover as much of it as I could. Hard when I still have such long hair. It did feel a little greasy, but not bad. The shower cap seemed way too loose. Luckily, I managed to get most of my hair to stay in. It stung a little in some patches for a short time. Wasn't too bad with that. I can't tell if it did anything more yet. I've decided to not do it every night. Only the night before I wash my hair. That way I'll already be washing it the next day, and I won't dry my hair out too much. I think she mentioned that it'd be best to not do it every night, yet her instructions for it are different...
I've managed to keep up with doing one of my 2-mile walks a day, and 5 sit-ups twice a day this week. Yay! Hopefully, I can keep it up. With the sit-ups, my plan is like it was when I did them regularly: adding 5 to both times each week. So, next week it'll be 10 twice a day, in 2 weeks: 15 twice a day, and so on. If I don't do it for a day, I'll either start at the beginning with the 5s or go back to however many I was doing the previous week. Just like before, I'm also doing them when I wake up and when I go to bed. It's a good way to remember. 5 of them both times feels more like a little warm up for the 'real' ones. If I keep up that walk every day for a month, I'll add another one in. I think that'll be a wise way to do it. Have to get used to it again first before that. If I skip a day, I'll start that month over. It seems strict, but it might be a way to motivate me, too.
I've also been walking with my iPhone, which I didn't do last time I did this on a regular basis. Interesting to see how many steps it takes me. Also, I've been trying to have it on me during the rest of the day just to see how many steps I've taken in general. I think I've actually been doing that more this past month. I normally just leave it charging most of the day or sometimes forget. Anyways, it was interesting how many steps and flights of stairs I got in yesterday according to it. That was just over 9,000 steps and 6 floors. On Monday, I did 13 floors, but 6,318 steps. I'm not trying to shoot for a number of steps, like some try for 10,000 a day. Some medical professionals say for some people that might be too much. A better one is 5,000 a day at the very least to start with. Everyone's different. 9,000 steps was one of the highest it's recorded for me. I didn't have it track me well during trips and such where I most likely walked more. (Like Montana.) I go up a lot of flights on Mondays and almost as much on Fridays. It's mainly because those are my laundry days. I'm going down and up a flight of stairs constantly those days. (I use them a lot regularly, too.) I think the most it had for flights on there was actually 16.
I've been trying protein bars. Just recently finished a box of Special K chocolate chip protein bars. Felt like I was eating a candy bar every time. I noticed it had a little too much sugar for me, so I wanted to try something else once I finished it. Started eating Power Crunch French vanilla protein bars last night. One bar is humongous! It's coated with what looks like white icing and that easily melts. There are wafers with a vanilla cream in between the layers. It feels like a giant iced cookie. It only has 5g of sugar, which was really surprising. There isn't any nut products in it, either. The protein mostly comes from whey. The other bars had nut powders. That's ok, but I do have to stay away from whole or pieces of nuts. That can make it difficult when looking at protein bars in general. Most of them rely on nut protein. I'm glad this new one doesn't have any. The only downsides I see are the messiness with it melting easily and how big they are. It has 14g of protein, while the other had 12g. Another plus.
Yesterday, I got breakfast chicken sausages from Costco. The same ones I used to get a long time ago. They're handy and add another boost of protein. I don't normally get much protein with my breakfast. They're not bad in calories, too. They're a savory maple flavor. I think the only reason I stopped getting them was because I was tired of them. With this and the protein bars, I should be pretty set with getting enough protein. At least, closer to what the average healthy person's supposed to have. Having 2 conditions that make me need more than that makes it difficult. I don't think I can stomach more, and this is a very big step in the right direction. I still get it from my normal stuff like lunch meat, meat and/or pasta meals, a little from cheese, a little from certain breads, some from beans, etc. Another one I might need to focus on more is potassium. I'm usually very low on that.
Went to World Market yesterday, too. Found more cool things to try. My parent and I will share a pack of Indonesian stir-fry noodles called Mi Goreng. I think there are 4 or 5 single serving packages inside it. It sounds good. They have another one that's labeled hot and spicy. I'm glad they give an option. Despite eating quite a bit of sodium normally, I'm usually low in it with blood test results. (Still within normal range, but very close to the minimum every time.) I've heard many people have a hard time with eating too much of it, but I never have. So, things full of sodium aren't that bad for me. A lot of instant Asian food is like that. The noodles don't seem too high in sodium, though. I also got a type of instant udon that has bonito and sardines. It sounded great. The sodium is a little higher, but not too bad. I have to remember that it doesn't really matter for me personally. Although, I should still not go too overboard with it. It looks like the container has a huge amount. I expected a serving to be half of it. It's actually the whole thing and it's pretty good with the amount calories, too.
I plan to try one of Central Market's quiches for a small dinner before the local trans meeting. It's a single serving mini goat cheese and onion quiche. Sounds amazing! I think there's one other flavor I can try there: spinach and cheese. The others have pork products and/or mushrooms. I don't usually think about things like quiches. They're another way to have some protein, since it's egg and some of them cheese based.
Finished the Imperative, Demonstr., and Geo units in Duolingo's Dutch course yesterday. I'm breezing through it. The Geo unit was the most interesting to me. A lot of the terms were similar to what they are in English. Rivier is river, kanaal is canal, zee (actually pronounced as zay) is sea, etc. I made it to the top 15 of the Ruby League.
Edited more of Alliance yesterday. With the ebook, there are only 8 pages left. With the print version, 10 pages. Not much. I might still go over the beginning stuff again after that. Then, I'll start editing Alliance: Dawn. I want to put out both revised versions at the same time. Smashwords has a 'new' thing with highlighting a series of books that I want to try. Amazon will also have the revised versions. I can't decide if I want to edit what I have of the 3rd book (I don't think it has a title yet) in the series then continue writing it, or edit/go through Sweet Endless Terror after that.
I'm going to draw a full body of Junko next. Decided to plan and get ideas first. She's the 2nd character introduced in the series. I could go in order of appearances for the others, too. She's a cat demon, so there will be cat elements. With Shadow being human, there wasn't much 'extra' to figure. Plus, I'd like to draw what her previous (non-humanoid) cat form was next to her. The demon-type characters sound like they might be more fun/detailed to do.
Finished watching High Seas on Netflix. The cinematography was stunning and definitely gave off that 40's feel. It seemed that they really tried to be true to the time period with lots of things right down to hairstyles. I didn't expect the World War 2 angle, although it makes sense. It was overacted at times, but that seemed more like a Spanish cultural thing. I liked it for the most part. The ending left it on a huge cliffhanger. It didn't seem like there would be a possibility of a 2nd season until the last few minutes. I suppose they could continue it until the boat makes it to Brazil. I'll start the 2nd season of Dark next. It's a pretty complex German show.
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