My dear younger brother arrived home into the latter half of the evening yesterday from wherever it was that he had been drinking.
I cannot now recall the time, but it may not have been too much short of 10:00 p.m. Whatever the case, I had no intention of trying to watch any T.V. with him., and so I went directly to bed without either of us laying eyes upon the other ─ I was already here upstairs at my computer.
I had barely managed to shut it down before he was into the house.
When I later rose in the wee a.m. ─ maybe shortly after 2:30 a.m. ─ I had forgotten that I had turned my machine off, and I rose and dressed to put it to use.
Since I cannot dare to start it back up and use it cold, I had to return to bed after logging into my computer to give it some time to load and warm up, else it will freeze.
I don't think I gave it more than 15 minutes, but that was sufficient. And soon I was at work on laying the foundation for the new post I began setting up yesterday at one of my six hosted websites.
I returned to bed just ahead of 5:30 a.m. before the foundation of that post had been fully laid, but what remains will be no problem for tomorrow ─ I can complete the job and also meet that day's content assignment for the post.
I got a little further sleep, and then rose shortly after 8:00 a.m. with the intention of having a bath. However, my younger brother had risen by then and was showering, so I waited him out.
I bathed and shaved; and then waited until 10:00 a.m. before joining my brother in the living room where he was watching an episode of an old T.V. series (Perry Mason).
He doesn't know how to operate our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box, so he has to settle for whatever he can find on our T.V.'s basic cable package that we subscribe to.
I had in mind a documentary that I had set up to play earlier just before I had returned to bed ─ it was all set to go via our Android TV Box's YouTube 'app' that is downloaded into it.
I have to admit that my brother absolutely aggravated me through much of the first part of the programme because he just would not remain seated and watch it ─ when he wasn't exchanging texts with someone on his cellphone, he was in the kitchen or elsewhere mucking about.
It had been for his benefit that I had tuned in the darned documentary, for I am already well-versed it its subject matter. The documentary was Free Speech and the Shutting Down of the Vaccine Debate. In fact, I had already familiarized myself with the documentary as a result of finding it in the following article the day that it was published (April 6):
Mercola.com
My brother is computer ignorant. Even if he knew how to turn one on and did not have to log into it, he would not know how to find a browser even if the computer had several different browser icons available to click on and open up.
And even if he had a browser open, he would then have no idea how to make use of it.
It's alien technology to him.
But he would rather swill beer somewhere all through each day's latter afternoon and well into the evening instead of perhaps learning something like that ─ for instance, I have seen that public libraries sometimes hold free classes to introduce ignorant adults into making use of computers and the Internet, but he cannot do something like that and miss out on his fellowship with other drunkards.
It is the same reason that he is becoming so grossly obese in the stomach instead of making use of a gym like he had claimed he was going to do just before he retired a little over a year ago.
Apparently he worked all of his life just so he could become a pear-shaped, miserable drunkard with no further ambition for anything else.
I have wondered before what his younger self would have done if that version of him knew that this is all he would be doing with his retirement?
Personally, I would hope that if his younger self realized that this was his inevitable future, maybe he would have offed himself. Why slave for decades to enjoy a retirement just to become a drunkard in it?
He was a well-built man for most of his life, too ─ his former wife had told him 26 or 27 years ago when they were still happy together that he had the body of a male stripper. He had proudly told me that back then.
And now he's become so unsightly that as of two Summers ago he quit taking off his shirt when he would sun himself on our backyard sundeck. If he lounges out there at all, it will be in an undershirt because he's probably too ashamed for the other four of us living here to witness his bloated torso.
I wish that it was not so, but he is resolute about this path he has taken. He can hardly wait to get out of here each afternoon so he can start drinking somewhere with whomever he will be doing it with.
Now understand ─ I love my younger brother; but I love not the drunkard that takes possession of him. I speak as I have done above with great pain, as well as the more obvious anger.
Anyway, we watched some further T.V. into the latter half of the noon-hour, and then he sought his bedroom to rest up ere taking off for the afternoon.
The day was so overcast that he had earlier observed that it appeared as if we were in for some rain.
I felt that I could also benefit from some further time in bed, so I soon enough sought mine. And when I napped for a short time and re-emerged from my bedroom, I found that my younger brother had gone.
There was to be no backyard sunning for me today. The first that I saw of any sunshine was around 3:45 p.m. ─ the first of very few brief bursts during the latter afternoon.
And since today's scheduled exercising involves my 43½-pound dumbbell, I would not even be setting foot out into the backyard as I do on those days when I have some exercising scheduled for the tool-shed ─ I am able to do some exercises out there that I cannot do here in the house, such as pull-ups and chin-ups.
Yesterday I wanted to feature an article in that day's post that tied in with some information I had posted about on April 29, but I just didn't have the time to do it yesterday.
On April 29, I had presented some details on serrapeptase and serratiopeptidase, both of which are alternate names for the same enzyme that is derived from silkworms.
This enzyme can dissolve proteins, and is used medically to reduce scars. But there is some research that it is also effective in dissolving "defective" tau proteins that seem to be involved in certain diseases of the nervous system and brain (such as Alzheimer's disease).
The enzyme has also been looked at for other purposes, including that of treating cancer ─ see WebMD.com's section on Serrapeptase: Uses, Side Effects, Interactions, Dosage, and Warning.
Well, the article I wanted to include in yesterday's post did not have to do with that enzyme; but it did involve the silkworm and its preferred food, the leaves of the white mulberry tree (Morus alba).
An alkaloid called 1-deoxymanojirimycin (DNJ) ─ which has been found to inhibit the production and release of glucose into the bloodstream ─ is found in those leaves; but according to the following article, the quantity the leaves produce is vastly increased when silkworms are around and feeding on them:
HSIonline.com
Anyone with impaired glucose metabolism (such as type 2 diabetics) should probably care about 1-deoxynojirimycin (DNJ) ─ or at least check into it.
I will say that when I did an Amazon search for DNJ, some was available ─ but it was horribly expensive.
See one such search here: 1-deoxynojirimycin
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And the product being offered doesn't even have a decent description of just what the buyer will have in hand.
Or is a mere 10-mgs of this stuff going for $140.15 U.S., and 100-mgs for $606.60?
Clearly, the tea made from white mulberry leaves would probably be the way to go. At any rate, you may have likely noticed an Amazon search I did at the top of this post where I just used the term "white mulberry" ─ you could use that as a starting point if you're interested in trying it out.
But I am going to bring this post to a close with the following set of nine photos that were taken on February 25, 2018 when a niece of my wife got married.
I suspect that the photos were probably taken somewhere in the city of Udon Thani.
The beautiful bride and her groom are the only two people I can recognize in the following batch of nine photos, so I shall just present the photos and get this post published:
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