I love sweets. I love candy, cake, cookies, dessert, and treats. I’ve eaten cake for breakfast. I’ve had ice cream for lunch. I’ve snacked on treats all afternoon to the point that I’ve not been hungry for dinner. I love sweets. My family, friends, and coworkers all know my weakness for the sweet stuff.

It’s an amazing thing that I don’t weigh 200, 300, or 400 pounds considering how much sugar I ingest on a daily basis. When I eat a lot of some kind of “pure” sugar, such as cake icing, my friends joke on me about my sugar high. I do tend to talk a lot for an hour after gorging on it and then I crash and want a nap. Fortunately, that situation doesn’t happen often.

I’ve mentioned in this blog about my sugar foods hidden in the house (hidden from the kids): Cap’n Crunch cereal and such. Some of this stuff at the end of a hard day is a pick-me-up for an hour or so, and then I fall asleep.

I’ve often tried to cut back on the sugar. I’ve sworn off this specific item or that particular item, and I held to that decision for a period of time. But eventually I forget and end up eating it again before I remember my decision. That’s the hard thing about quitting something slowly.

I imagine it’s like trying to quit cigarettes by slowing down. Someone who wants to cut back from a pack a day to half a pack a day can fail because they’re still carrying around a pack of cigarettes. They may light one up and get halfway through it before they remember, “Oh, damn, I already had one this hour.”

To quit drinking drinks (sodas, pop, Coke, Mountain Dew), I had to just quit completely. And it worked. So I’ve decided to quit sweets, now. Nothing particular caused me to decide this; it was just a complicated consideration I’ve thought about for a long time. For one thing, I’m curious to see how my body reacts to the lack of sugar. I remember the withdrawals I had when quitting drinks. I wonder if I’ll loose weight from just cutting out the desserts and treats. I already get some exercise (not as much as I should and want), usually each day.

Yesterday, Saturday, was 7 days I’ve gone with no dessert or sweet treat. The first day was Cowgrit’s birthday — and I baked a cake for her. I’ve held to the agreement with myself all week, even when other people were eating sweets in front of me. I’m rather surprised at how easy this first week was. I often found myself standing at a snack machine or looking at the dessert menu before I remembered my decision. I even once bought some candy and had it in my hand before I remembered — I tossed the candy in the trash and walked away.

I’ve even had Cowgrit “get rid of” some Girl Scout cookies that came in from my orders. That situation almost had me frantic:

“Get rid of them. Throw them away, give them away, feed them to the dogs next door, I don’t care. No, don’t say you’ll hide them. I’ll tear the house apart looking for them once everyone is asleep. Just for the love of God, get them out of the house! Then call a priest and have him exorcise their evil from our home! They’re calling me! They’re whispering directly into my head!”

My brain shut down and I went catatonic for nearly half an hour after that. But when I woke up, the cookies were gone and my “diet” was secured.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

Cowgrit and both Calfgrits have the flu. It started Thursday night (February 14) and just got worse last night. Ironically, all three have had the flu shot, but I haven’t (I just forgot — I always get one, every year). Fortunately, even if the innoculation doesn’t prevent someone from getting the flu, it supposedly helps make the suffering less bad.

Since I haven’t had the shot this year, it’ll be a miracle if I don’t get it. And if I get it, I could have it worse than the rest of my family. Seeing them all suffering really puts fear in me thinking that I could get it worse. This has started to become a very nasty weekend, and it has all the potential of becoming downright hellish.

And to think, I had the boys hugging and kissing on me Valentine’s Day. I bought them a bunch of super hero Valentine’s cards (like kids give out at school) and told them they could get one for every hug or kiss they gave me. They showered me with love enough to get all the cards in five minutes. Those might have been the kisses of death for me — or at least the kisses of illness.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

Cowgrit likes to shop. She doesn’t necessarily buy a whole lot; she just likes the shopping activity. She also likes body care and bath stuff. So I wanted to get her a gift card for a nice body care shopping day.

I went to the local mall to find a place I know she likes and get her a gift card. The first place I went in smelled really nice. The music was really loud, and the products were completely beyond my comprehension, but the air smelled good. I told the girl working in the store that I wanted to get a gift card.

“Great,” she said, and led me to the checkout counter. “How much do you want the card for?” she asked.

I told her and she pulled out a card and began ringing it up on the cash register. There was some problem, and she tried swiping the gift card again. Something was wrong, but she tried again. I gave her my debit card, and she tried to complete the sale. My card info went through just fine, but the gift card just wasn’t registering with the system.

I stood there patiently for a couple minutes while she tried to get everything to work properly. She had to get out a notebook titled “Communications Binder” and look up a code the register was asking for. When she couldn’t find it, she called another store for advice. With the help, she got the sale to go through.

I signed the receipt for the sale and put my debit card back in my wallet. Since there had been difficulty, she wanted to swipe the gift card just to make sure it showed the amount. She swiped the card . . . and nothing. The sale had not registered on the gift card.

The clerk explained that she wanted to call another store and have them run the numbers through their computer to see if the problem with the card not showing any amount was just a problem with her computer. She called the other store, told them the gift card numbers, and learned that it didn’t show anything on their computers either. So I told her to just refund the amount back to me and I’ll try again some other time.

That wasn’t going to be easy either. She tried to refund the amount, but the computer wasn’t having any of that. Then she started taking products off the shelf beside her and ringing them up. I thought that was really odd, but I wasn’t in a hurry and I was willing to give her the benefit of accepting that she might know what she was doing. She didn’t seem ditzy or anything, so I didn’t think this whole situation was her fault. I’ve had to deal with insane computers, too.

After ringing up a few items from the shelves around her, she did a return of all those items. That was her way of giving me back my money since the computer wouldn’t register the return of the gift card. The return came to 17 cents over the amount I paid for the gift card. So, in the end, the gift card was trashed and I got my money back (plus 17 cents). She gave me the receipt for the return, and since she couldn’t give me the receipt for the gift card, I had her photocopy it so I had something to show if things turned bad. She also asked for my address so she could send me some gifts to apologize for the wasted time.

The offer of gifts is a nice touch. I wonder what we’ll get, though. So for the 15 minutes I spent trying to purchase a gift card, I got 17 cents, potentially some body care gifts, but no card.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I finally got my human priest to level 60, the old maximum level. Now I just have 10 more levels to go to reach the new maximum level. I’ve been following Jame’s leveling guide to gain levels as quickly as possible so I can catch up with my friends who have been level 70 for months, now.

The leveling guide is great. Because I don’t play very often (just twice a week on average), my priest always has rested bonus for experience points, so I leveled even faster than the guide expected. I reached level 60 while still on level 56 in the guide. But I figured I’d continue the guide till it reached level 60 and then I’d move on to the new high-level Outlands guide.

I took one foray into Outlands while waiting for my friends to show up online one night, and I discovered an interesting little gimmick Blizzard put in the game to entice players to move high-level characters on to Outlands when they reach level 60 in Azeroth. Monsters in Outlands give more xp for their levels than do monsters in Azeroth.

For instance, at character level 60, in the Eastern Plaguelands, level 60 monsters give 690 xp. But in Outlands, level 60 monsters give 1,070 xp. There’s similar differences for monsters level 58 and 59. So it would be a waste to continue in Azeroth at level 60 — much more xp are available in Outlands at that level.

So I gave up on Azeroth adventuring. Fortunately Jame has a leveling guide for levels 60-70 in Outlands, and I started following it. My human priest is now level 61.

It still kind of bugs me that all my friends switched from Horde to Alliance characters. I haven’t played my level 70 orc hunter in some time now.

We had some great horde characters. But the player with a tauren druid and a forsaken priest switched them to another server, following his guild. (He’s now back on our server, but on Alliance side.) The player with an orc rogue deleted his characters and canceled his account. (He’s now back in the game, but on the Alliance side.) The player with a forsaken warrior stopped playing that character and switched to Alliance characters to play with his girlfriend.

So if I wanted to play with my friends, I had to go Alliance, too.