Labor Day weekend

I actually spent most of the Labor Day weekend (Monday was a Holiday here in the US, so 3 days off!) catching up on a few TV series, plowing through a couple of seasons.

Yesterday Sarah and I went to IKEA and we had a really good time, spent too much money as always!

I have also been watching some of the new Wallander movies that are out on DVD now. I saw Hämnden way back in spring, and this weekend I saw the next three movies: Skulden, Kuriren and Tjuven. The fourth should be out on September 16. I love seeing Sweden and just feasting on the scenery, Skåne is beautiful!

Today I really have a lot of work to do, but I have decided to make this a cleaning day instead. Seems like there is a mess anywhere I turn in this house! So I will try to fix that, and then I can work much better when it is tidy again. Tomorrow I will only get half a work day, since Sarah gets off school at 1:15 PM, and on Thursday it is surgery time at 11 AM, so I am not sure how much work I will get done...

The neighbor is really sick with a bad cold (not swine flu at least), and she was coughing all over me last week before she knew she was sick, so I sure hope she didn't get me sick. Right now I am having bad joint pain in my ribs, so it is hard to notice anything else that is wrong... Oddly enough only on my right side!

As you might have read before, I am a big Diet Coke fan. Mostly because I don't drink coffee and that has been my caffeine kick. But I think I have developed some kind of aspartame sensitivity, I don't know. For a few months now I have been having weird headaches that feel "chemical" (hard to describe), and I have been very itchy in the back of my throat, even had some bumps there. There is not anything else I am taking or eating I could think of, I haven't even taken any medication, not even regular Tylenol (Alvedon) for the past few months.

Also, after I started thinking about the aspartame perhaps being the cause, I started to pay attention to when I drank Diet Coke and how I felt. There seem to be a connection there. Within 10 minutes of drinking I definitely get some throat issues, and today I woke up with no headache, and I only had 1 Diet Coke over the weekend, compared to at least 3 a day.

So I am going to stop. I t is not like Diet Coke is anything but bad for me anyway. I love unsweetened ice tea, so I will just have to drink that instead.

And water! I have to drink all the time so I don't get dehydrated now when I don't have a colon (the colon takes up most of the water for our body). Since our tap water taste really bad (nothing wrong with it, just too much chlorine and a bit of Florida sulfur), I have resorted to bottled water. Also because of the convenience, I can take it with me anywhere.

I tried different types of filters for the tap water before, but I did not like the taste, but Ken recently got a new filter system for the office, and they seemed to like it there, so I decided to try it and brought home some of the water. Even after sitting for a few days in a bottle it tasted good! So I have decided to get the same system. I will save almost $5 a week by not having to bring home all that water, not to mention how great it will be for the environment! I am going to get a few aluminum bottles so I can still have the portability of the bottled water. Aluminum is suppose to be great. So we will see.

Maybe I can kick the Diet Coke and the bottled water habit all at once!

If there now was only a miracle that could cure my addiction to chocolate...