The past few days spent mostly down and around Hubert, NC was interesting. I jumped off of an “out of control” golf cart and rolled on the ground rather than wait for it to crash into something or go into a deep ditch. I was unhurt, and not sore later, but I had to ask Ray to help me get up. *Oh, they have a large mirror that covers most of the wall in their bathroom and it is usually there that I realize how grossly fat I am, and have been for many years. And, that is even after I’ve lost about 15 pounds in the last year and have been hovering just about the 250 lbs. mark for several months.

Switching to Ozempic has corralled my rising resting blood sugar levels. I had taken Trulicity for several years and then at a point about a year ago, I could no longer get my prescription filled in a timely manner, and eventually after two months unfilled, I considered “couldn’t get it filled at all.” I attributed the lack of this medication to all those persons who are beginning to use it to keep their weight under control. However, I still feel I should have had “first dibbs” on this medication because I had been taking it, as I said, for several years. But now, I wouldn’t want to return to Trulicity. Ozempic appears to be slightly better in controlling my blood sugar. **However, the injection mechanism is slightly less sophisticated that Trulicity. But, you also reuse the Ozempic pen for several injections, replacing the needles several times until all the fluid has been used up. Last week I completed my first rotation of six injections. I started with four, once a week, injections at .25 dosage, followed by two more weeks at .5 dosage. The needle is small and does not hurt going in. You just have to count to six after the dosage counter has reached “0”.

I think I eat reasonably healthily most of the time. I like brussels sprouts (with balsamic vinegar, dijon mustard and agave nectar as a sauce). They prepare and cook quickly and it is an excellent side dish for something like a pork chop. But, I’ve also fixed some delicious chicken gizzards and had them with rice, once, and with mashed potatoes several times.

Oddly for me, I found myself without much food “in the house” Saturday night. At least food that wouldn’t be bad for me. There were hotdogs and some baloney, and potato salad, a loaf of white bread, some peanut butter & nuts chocolate fudge, cinnamon candy and ginger ale (not sugar free). I had one hotdog, and a slice of baloney on one slice of bread, some potato salad, I ate a few olives and one small piece of fudge, and no ginger ale, just ice water. I don’t know what happened to the pork roast, but I didn’t see it in the fridge. I went to Burger King on Sunday morning, the one that stands on the spot where the old Morton Family home stood on the corner of Queens Creek Road and Highway 24. I told the young woman who took my order that I had lived on this spot and that the first day they were opened, a Sunday, I had come in and sat over in one of the booths thinking about where the old kitchen had been located. *I had a Ham, Egg and Cheese Croissandwich, some tater tots, and coffee. I also had one container of honey mustard, catchup and I went out to the car and got a couple of containers of the curry mixture I make that works good on potatoes. It was starting to sprinkle a little. I hadn’t had this breakfast in quite a while, but have had it many times in the past.

Above: Note how clean and straight the lines on the edge of the wooden porch are. This porch probably hadn’t been replaced too long because as the wood ages, and wears, the edges break off and become slightly ragged, but that’s not the case here. Also, the chain is off the bike. We were trying to remove the rear tail of the bike and this loosened the chain. The front of the car is of a Chevy painted beige, which was probably a Marine Base relic. Uncle Bob had a Ford approximately the same age as the Chevy and the same color. The little house off the back of the porch was what Lyde had stayed in because she suffered from Tuberculosis. Because I was around it, I still “show positive” for TB and I guess if I had a weakened condition, TB might become a problem for me. The little house formerly had been a logger’s cabin. No bathroom, just room for a bed and a table and a place for a hot plate or coffee pot. The mule, with his tail to us is just across the ditch, and between him and the tobacco barn past him is Queens Creek Road. The tobacco barn burned down not too many years later, and the mule was sold also.

I did stop briefly on the Swansboro waterfront to read a small portion of “Becoming” the Michelle Obama memoir, and later in Jacksonville at a park by the river, I also read a little more. A page or three at a time and eventually, if I live so long, I will finish this book too. Too, as I have about 30 Michael Connelly novels (mostly Bosch), a memoir of JFK, Jr., and a tribute by friends of Tim Russert during the past year. This reading started after I had snagged the Matthew Perry memoir from a nearby Little Lending Library at the end of last October. The “hinkey” thing about the Perry tome was that I got it, not because I was interested in him, but because I was going to move it to another LLL, but several days later, I saw a picture of Perry on a celebrity tribute web site and said to myself, “I didn’t know he was dead,” and shortly thereafter found that he had actually died about three days after I had got his book. I though this was hinkey and then said to myself, “I guess I’ll have to read this now,” and I did. Three pages into his memoir he makes the statement, “I should be dead by now,” and then he goes on to explain about the “Big Terrible Thing.” The “Thing” being his almost life long drug addition. After reading this book, I would be much more lenient on those persons that provided him with those last illegal drugs. Matthew Perry did this to himself. The others may have overdosed him, but with his inner weakness, he basically committed suicide. **After I finished the Perry memoir, I was in a reading mode and so, because I had a bunch of the Michael Connelly Bosch novels that I had bought to add to various LLLs, I started reading them. I didn’t start reading in order. Connelly started publishing these in 1992 with “The Black Echo.” I probably started with “Echo Park” and then at some point jumped back to the first five or six novels. ***I’ve told a few people that I learned to despise Harry Bosch from reading these novels. I liked the Harry Bosch character that I came to know from the TV series, but by the second novel, “Black Ice,” I came to describe Harry Bosch as, “that lying piece of dog shit, that shouldn’t be trusted and should step to the back of the line, instead of getting special “cut to the front” privileges.

ADDENDUM[09/30/25]: I was in Harris Teeter yesterday getting ready to pay for my lunch salad and I looked at a magazine cover. It had Charlie Sheen on the cover. His big head, similar to Matthew Perry’s on his book cover. But what jostled my memory of the Perry book was that Sheen’s cover said, “I should be dead by now.” Now that’s the statement that Perry said in his memoir about three pages into it. I got the Perry book at a LLL, and about 3 days later he died of a drug overdose. *Read his book and there is no surprise. He couldn’t control his addiction, and finally it did him in. But oh, the suffering he put himself and others through until the final conclusion. I almost said to the checkout clerk, “He’s going to be dead soon,” but I didn’t. [end]

I rode around to different areas in and around Swansboro, Stella, Sneads Ferry, and then quickly down to Wilmington where I was planning to eat at a KFC buffet. However, the KFC I visited on Market Street had no buffet so I just used their bathroom. I thought that the Arby’s I have eaten at many times over many visits to Wilmington would be nearby, and it was. Just a few blocks further down, I turned into the Arby’s parking lot. There is a Miller-Mott Education site in the back. But, there was yellow caution tape across the drive-thru entrance, and then I noted work trucks and an industrial waste dumpster, and then the cuss word as I realized that this Arby’s location was closed for renovations. Damn, what is it with no food?

I decided not to hang around Wilmington, mildly hungry, so I started back for Fayetteville but with the idea of stopping at Elizabethtown to see if they had a KFC buffet. They had a KFC, but no buffet. I didn’t want to eat more Mexican because we had eaten at El Catrin in Swansboro on Friday. Finally made it back home and made some mashed potatoes and warmed up a helping of chicken gizzards. They were good again. *But, for dinner I really didn’t know what I wanted, maybe kielbasa & lentils? I finally just ate some Neuske’s Smoked Liver Pate with some Whole Foods Black Sesame Rice crackers. As I write this, I’m still wrestling with what to either fix for breakfast, or if I should scrounge up enough paper money to go out for breakfast.

The pears I had bought at Pate’s had all gone bad, but the tangerines were still delicious. I have found that I can use my boxcutter tool with the blade just slightly out to slice the peeling of oranges or tangerines. Years ago Tupperware gave away a peel slicer as a promotional gift. I had gotten several of these when I worked at the Hem of His Garment Thrift Store. Using the boxcutter is basically doing what the Tupperware tools did.