Diet man speak with forked tongue.

After a discussion with Warren about chromium picolinate (his doctor recommended he take it for a bit to bump up his metabolism while he's low-carb dieting, he mentioned it to me, I did research and had a minor plotz--the stuff is shown to mutate DNA and cause female sterility in rodents), I thought I'd take a look at what the Official Atkins Supplements[tm] have in them. (Answer: a number do have chromium, but in other compounds; so far only chromium + picolinate is Considered Harmful.)

In the course of this endeavor, I noticed in their FAQ a bit about "fat-burning supplements" and could they be used with Atkins? Answer, no, those are Bad, it's all just stimulants, the effect dietwise is "temporary and illusory" and of course too many stimulants are dangerous. Yet, one of the zillions of supplements they sell is "Atkins Accel", which is...a shitpile of herbal stimulants.

Make up your miiiiiiiiiiiind.

The pooky phoned from Buffalo--they did an angiogram on his mom this morning, and decided it would be better not to do an angioplasty at all. So, well, at least it's not postponed again. (Cue "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life".) The deal is, yes her arteries are blocked, but secondary blood vessels are handling the load well enough that they'd rather not do an invasive procedure on her, as she's pretty fragile. They have come to the thought that they could put in her permanent dialysis shunt by using a nerve block on her, instead of a general anaesthetic, which they didn't want to use because they feared lack of blood flow issues. Why that option didn't occur to anyone months ago is left as an exercise for the student.

Every episode in the saga of my mother-in-law's health increases my determination to always keep a reasonable diet and get a modicum of exercise. I think I'm achieving a good baseline of this, but I want the pooky to do so as well, which he just isn't, and his health is ever so much more delicate than mine to begin with. Worry worry worry.

*oof*

Federal and state taxes done, and we're getting refunds, w00t. Now I just have to find out how much ol' Gotham is going to shaft me for this year.

This tax return brought to you by the Beasts of Bourbon, which is for some reason terribly appropriate music for the job at hand.