almost nine hours of sleep
with no alcohol consumed.

this is the hardest time of they year right now.
you can plainly see that the angle of the sun is
changing, no longer hanging so low in the southern
sky. more daylight = more melatonin being secreted
upstairs in yer coconut, more restless and horny.

last night i fell deeply asleep with no strong beer,
no nothing. i slept well for 4.5 hours and then got
stuck. sometimes i can fall back asleep, but i de-
cided to drink 200 ml at 3:10 a.m.

then slept deeply and peacefully for another three hours.
dozing in and out with my elderly senile cat after that.

when i can sleep three consecutive nights with no alcohol,
i will consider the victory over the zopiclone distortion
to be complete.

This morning I heard on the radio that a small local
airport had a reading of -41C for a brief period. That
is the coldest that I have heard of so far. It does not
matter really if you say -40C or -40F. Same difference.
We have set a new record for electricity consumption for
the province today. And quite likely we will do so again
this evening as people come back home from work, cook
supper, do laundry, etc.

We have bright, intense sunshine and continuous strong
breezes. At noon, we suddenly lost power. Yikes Almighty!
I made a cave for my cat, Buster, using a milk crate,
and wrapped it up with duvet and warm blankets, so that
he could keep himself warm with just his own body warmth.
I started to get dressed for an excursion outdoors, thinking
that I would just go ride the bus back & forth for a while
until the power came back on.

I was just about to put my big warm boots on, and the
power suddenly came back on. Less than 25 minutes total
time.That is a big relief! Lordymama!

And as is quite predictible, the idiot guitar god who
lives next door decided to show us how well his battery-
powered amplifier works. He does this frequently when we
lose power in the summer due to lightning strikes, etc.

Stupid little shit of a man! Did you know that many of
the people you see in glamour television and celebrity
culture are needy, insecure little shits?

He has no respect for the acoustic space of other people.
He is a dangerous little psychotic, so needy and so
useless.

Like I said before, I caught a nasty cold virus
just before Xmas, and tried to work my way through
it, doing heavy chores at the street mission where
I volunteer. After going to see my herbalist in
Chinatown, I was able to jump right back into my
regular workouts. The delay did not seem to affect
my ability with the pushups routines at all. I was
glad of that.

Now, here is the thing: This pushup workout, going
to exhaustion on the last set each time is a great
method, but i have been with it for only four years.
It is not native to my training. I did not ever push
myself to exhaustion in running, or calisthenics. I
always felt that i had more gas in the tank.

I have been as high as 320 pushups in a 22 minute
workout, and up as high as 89 pushups in the
exhaustion set. Currently, 84 is the highest count
in the stand alone test without any warm-up reps.

Anyway, I am sick with another respiratory virus again.
Just climbing out of the pit right now. The past four
days have been sheer hell. This is not the same virus.
This one zoomed in so fast and went straight into my
deep sinuses. The kind of sinus head pain that can
bring you to yer knees. And it also has had a GI factor.
I just finished a good breakfast, but have had very
little appetite during the sickness. Lots of deep
coughing and hacking.

What would have been more sensible would have been
to gradually rebuild strength with the yang tonic
herbs, but not jump right back into the exhaustion
sets. Spend a couple weeks doing just maybe 150
pushups each time.

The other factor is the beer consumption over the
past year. As I said before, I was sometimes drinking
close to 2 litres of 10.5% beer, spread out over one
night, in order to get enough deep sleep. Getting
drunk with the funky monk was my method of dealing with
the sleeping pill dependence.

Obviously now, I can see that the beer consumption has
weakened me a bit. Lately, I can fall asleep after just
150 ml strong beer, and have slept successfully at least
two nights without any beer at all.

During the worst part of this latest attack, I did not
sleep at all. Too much coughing and hacking all night.

Anyway, I do feel a lot better today. The sun is shining,
and it is about -17C at present. I am soon going to go
over to shovel snow for the old ladies.

I always learn best the hard way.

i have been making a huge big pot of lentil stew:
celery, carrots, corn, orange bell pepper, onions,
garlic,fennel seed, cumin powder, bay leaf, tomato
paste. starting to smell good.

last night i drank 200 ml of 8.6% beer at bedtime,
and did not drink any more all night long. i slept
8.5 hours, with some very good deep, deep sleep.
all together, the acupuncture in the summer, the
herbs from my herbalist and the ability to keep
my oxygen metabolism strong that comes from those
herb combinations, are the reason i am able to
penetrate the insomnia blockage and find repose.

I do love the synergy of the ling zhi mushroom and
good red chinese ginseng at this time of year, way
much.

i have slept very well the past two nights,
each time drinking just 200 ml of 10.5% beer
and then following up 3-4 hours later with
just 150 ml. total 350 ml.

one part of the story that is really becoming
apparent now is the acupuncture that i received
in the summer. i was able to afford 14 visits to
see my acupuncturist. it took a long time to get
out there to see her on the bus, but well worth it.

she said that the acupuncture she was doing was
for the long term, and that the accumulated results
would be slow in showing up. i understood that.

so, now with the ling zhi mushroom and very good
ginseng, i am almost to the point of being able to
sleep sans alcool.

that will be a big threshold to cross, man, oh, man.

a few months ago i was drinking almost 2 litres a night.

the ultimate goal is to fall asleep with no
alcohol at all. i can still choose to drink,
as i please. but i want to have the choice.

when i nap in the afternoon i can fall asleep
easily, no problem.

last night i drank 225 ml of 10.5% beer at
bedtime and then drank 160 ml three hours
later. total 385 ml. that feels pretty good.

the idiot guitar neighbour has been concertizing
for us today. he sounds quite disturbed and angry.
stupid little shit of a man.

i fell asleep quite well last night with just
225 ml of 10.5% beer. then drank another 200 ml
in the middle of the night. keep whittling down
the measurement of first beer. victory over the
zopiclone distortion is within sight.

lordymama! i fell asleep last night with just 240 ml
of 10.5% beer. onward and upward. sometimes i do just
enjoy drinking without any measurement, but right now
i am really committed to getting to the point where
i can CHoose to not drink at all.

i slept for nearly three hours and then woke to pee,
and drank another 175 ml. it was a very cold night
and i wanted to make sure that i could get back to
sleep easily. that makes a total of 415 ml. so there
was still 85 ml left in the can, which i transferred
into a jar to drink tonight.

i think that the windchill factor was down around
-32C last night. my cat came under the covers with
me to stay warm. he hardly ever does that.