Speckles

There's an interesting article on chocolate that I found through Pharyngula. However, I can safely say that I am an exception. Ask anyone who's been around me when I've had chocolate. It has a STRONG chemical effect on me. And I get PHYSICAL withdrawal symptoms when I've gotten addicted, virtually identical to caffeine withdrawal. Mainly headache, but sometimes nausea and chills. I think there's a name for people who are sensitive to minute quantities of things, but I can't think of what it is. That's me, however. Maybe there's a connection with gluten intolerance. *shrugs* Oh, and one more interesting thing: the effects are much MUCH stronger when the chocolate has milk in it.

ADDENDUM: Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. Too little caffeine content to be addictive? I don't THINK so. 20 mg per oz of dark chocolate, the same as a serving of green tea. I'll buy the "too little" argument on milk chocolate, but not dark. Yeesh.

Yesterday I wound up replacing the overhead light in my yellow hallway. Two bulbs went into the old one when I painted. One went out last week. That light isn't on often enough for it to have worn out. At the time I replaced the bulbs, they were both original house equipment. One was dead (in the same socket) the other wasn't, but I can't stand the so-called long life incandescent bulbs. The light quality is horrid. Anyway, I concluded that the light fixture had a short in it and went hunting for a replacement. Lowe's had a nice one with leaf accents, but the one that I liked was a 3-light fixture and too big for a 4' x 5' hallway. The two-light version I didn't like as well; it would have looked best in a room with dark paint, not bright. I wound up at Wal-Mart with my mom on Sunday and found one that I did like, and it was a bit cheaper than the ones at Lowe's. It's a nice light, but the instructions needed some work. Right after "attach the support bar to the box" should have been "attach the arms to the main fixture" since I had to take the thing apart after "attaching the fixture to the support bar" to do so. *sighs* I'll post a picture of it if I think of it later.

I also baked pizza crusts yesterday. And bread. Any more, I just use regular GF yeast bread recipes for pizza crust. So I made two mini-loaves and five pie-plate-size pizza crusts, one of which got eaten yesterday. It's been a long time since I did that. For a while, cow's milk products were messing my asthma up and I was avoiding them. Now I find that I can handle them on an occasional basis, and it's nice to have the pizza crusts frozen for later use. Which reminds me, avoid Namasté's GF pizza crust mix. Non-yeast crusts are rarely good, but this one was worse than usual. Eck.

Other than that, I've been trying to find a configuration for the living room that I will keep clean. THe meditation room stays clean. Now the hallway does, too. If I can find the right mix of placement and organization, maybe I can get the living room to stay clean as well.