Another Quick Update

Another quick update since I haven't blogged for an age and it is still pretty quiet around here...

• First of all, it is way too early to be planning for Halloween IMHO.  But try telling that to retail stores that always need some holiday to drive sales...
• We just got word that our agency is fully funded for the next biennium which is great news!
• I dropped my blood pressure from 178/96 to 119/79 in a week and a half!  I had a dental crown that fell out so I went to the dentist to get it put back in.  Since my regular dentist retired and closed up shop a while back, I needed to find a new dentist and, not wanting to drive all the way to Los Algodones through the roasting hot desert, I did a little research and found a highly-reviewed dentist close to where I live.  It turns out that dentists now check their patient's blood pressure (something I didn't know) as a standard of care, so when they went to take my blood pressure I told them I would come back in a week since I get panicky every time I see a blood pressure cuff (yeah menopause and medical anxiety).  I immediately went Daniel Diet/Nutritarian diet and after that first astronomical reading (note, if you get a reading like that you should seek medical attention immediately), I watched my blood pressure drop by double digits each day.  A week later I went back to the dentist and got the crown put back in and now all is well.  What I learned from this, after a bit of experimentation, is #1 caffeine jacks my blood pressure up super high so no more caffeine for me :(  #2 restaurants can't seem to serve anything that doesn't have massive quantities of salt, fat, and sugar (so I order differently now, like get a plain baked potato and add some lemon juice to it instead of butter), and #3 I need to pay more attention to my health metrics, after all I am nearly 60!
• Here are some online courses you can attend for free at Harvard.
• And finally, here is an example of how AI will take over the world. Scary!