(The book infected my dreams more than once, a good/bad sign.)

(BTW, this cover is terrible and looks like a romance novel!)

DAY 1: This was the only day I really felt hungry. It was more a mental thing. I kept getting up to "grab a snack" and then sitting back down. While I was teaching I started thinking about what i was going to have for dinner. And then realizing...Nope! The mix itself of lemon juice (2 tbsp) and maple syrup (grade b, 2 tbsp) with water (about 1-1/4 liquid cups) and 1/10 tsp of cayenne pepper wasn't bad. And you do get to have a cup of tea at night: Yogi brand herbal laxative tea.

DAY 3: People say Day 3 is the worst, the one where you really break down and people start looking like powdered donuts. But this didn't happen. I usually drink 1-2 cups of coffee a day. I never felt a craving. I also drink alcohol. No craving. I thought about food, but only in an abstract sense. When my friend Nik stopped by on his way up north I gave him an unopened bag of Trader Joe's nacho cheese tortilla chips. Get them out of my sight! I joked. But I could have made it with them on the counter.

DAY 4: Now, I started to feel shitty. I woke up in the morning with flu like symptoms, I was pretty delusional and my legs ached. What toxins were coming out of my body now? The salt water flush was effective, but for a lot of the rest of the morning I felt like I still had some in me and couldn't get it out. I had a bath in epsom salts and that felt great.

BTW, ever since Day 2 I haven't felt 'right'. I found it hard to concentrate on my writing. I felt tired and napped often. I didn't have a routine set around food breaks, so I often felt lost and bewildered. And the salt flushes were so gutbusting in the morning that I never went to 10 a.m. yoga, worried about what might shoot out during a down dog. Sometimes I'd feel depressed for no reason too. And I hardly went out. It felt more like having an illness than a detox.

Of course, this heavily contrasted with what R usually experiences and what other online descriptions say. I was supposed to have all this free time (because no breaks needed for food) and feel elated (as I detoxed). So I felt like a failure!

DAY 5: Over the hump, I thought, as I originally planned to go for 7 days. Then I realized R was planning to go for 10. Yikes. Apart from the draggy mornings, I felt I could go for 10. I wasn't really hungry. Maybe I'd finally feel some benefits?

DAY 6: Now I started to develop cold-like symptoms. I had a scratchy throat. Awwww, fuck. I know I was weakening myself. However, I had been getting a lot of writing done now, and that meant more free time, and that meant more reading and movie watching. THAT was a benefit.

I also didn't feel like I was getting out enough poop. R was already flushed. Mine was still a problem, still, you know, brown. Hence my decision to go for some Magnesium Citrate. This finally seemed to get every single thing out of me. Ka-Blammo!

DAY 7: More sore throat, but I did a lot of saline nasal cleansing, and that seemed to be keeping my sinuses at bay. I also developed a little cough. Was this detox? Or was this just a cold? I could have made this my last day. My decision: I'd see how I do the next day. If I felt awful I would start to come off it. If I felt ok, for once, I would continue to day 10. I had a lovely long bath, got some reading in, and went to bed early. I felt pretty good! The sore throat was mostly gone and the cough was nothing much.

DAY 8: So I decided to come off it. Why? Because I woke up with a fever, a running nose, and just felt like complete arse. However, I did manage to read an entire book while lolling about in bed. But I have not had such a debilitating flu/cold, the kind that sends you to bed, in *years*. I topped out at 100.7F (38 C) and finally got back to normal by the evening.

Coming off the cleanse means a day of diluted orange juice and lots of water (sounds like what you'd also have for a cold/flu).

DAY 9: The next day, more OJ as well. My sinuses were so blocked that I lost my sense of smell for a day. So a trip to Whole Foods, and their tantalizing deli, meant nothing to me. Again, I got depressed for a bit.

DAY 10: I finally got my smell back, and I finally felt normal again. The cold went away pretty fast, leaving me with some mucus, but oh well. Vegetable broth for lunch. Then dinner was some lightly stir fried veggies. Boy, did they taste good! It felt weird to chew stuff.

Okay, so that's where I'm leaving it. Benefits? I lost 12 lbs. (mostly out my ass), and I hope that once I go back to yoga and an exercise routine I can keep some off. And it made me really appreciate the taste of food. Everything seems new! What is this stuff called "carrots" etc. etc. Suddenly the spectrum of tastes from a single object is reintroduced. Bad stuff: I didn't have a typical cleanse, and got sick and depressed. I'm not usually either of those two things. Toxins?

One twist I put in, based on past digestive experiences, was in starting a short course of acidophilus to reintroduce good bacteria back in the digestive tract. I don't know if the cleanse does anything to the current bacteria (or if mine is 'healthy' or not) but since the cleanse "reboots" your system, I thought this would be helpful. We'll see.

Would I recommend this to you? I don't think you'd have the misfortune I did. On the other hand, depending on your diet, you may have more toxins to deal with, and they in turn may effect you differently. Also, I think some days, I didn't have as much of the lemon/maple juice as I should have, and I could have drank more water, period. I think next time I'll premake each day's amounts (juices and just plain water) in one big batch, so i have a visual reminder of how much I have left during the day.

Wait, did I just say "next time"? Oh noes....!

A hot woman from Finland, yesterday.
According to some researchers

FOR the female half of the population, it may bring a satisfied smile. Scientists have found that evolution is driving women to become ever more beautiful, while men remain as aesthetically unappealing as their caveman ancestors.

The researchers have found beautiful women have more children than their plainer counterparts and that a higher proportion of those children are female. Those daughters, once adult, also tend to be attractive and so repeat the pattern.

Over generations, the scientists argue, this has led to women becoming steadily more aesthetically pleasing, a "beauty race" that is still on. The findings have emerged from a series of studies of physical attractiveness and its links to reproductive success in humans.

Chremastistophilia -- Excitement at being robbed or held up
One British gentleman proudly displayed the scar he received from a knife wound in the course of a mugging -- an event which he said led to a spontaneous ejaculation, the most powerful and substantial he'd ever experienced. (While the sight of the knife wound continues to unhinge me.)

There are two strongly distinctive aspects of health care. One is that you don't know when or whether you'll need care -- but if you do, the care can be extremely expensive. The big bucks are in triple coronary bypass surgery, not routine visits to the doctor's office; and very, very few people can afford to pay major medical costs out of pocket.
This tells you right away that health care can't be sold like bread. It must be largely paid for by some kind of insurance. And this in turn means that someone other than the patient ends up making decisions about what to buy. Consumer choice is nonsense when it comes to health care. And you can't just trust insurance companies either -- they're not in business for their health, or yours.

Interestingly, what is less obscured in TV coverage is Federer's intelligence, since this intelligence often manifests as angle. Federer is able to see, or create, gaps and angles for winners that no one else can envision, and television's perspective is perfect for viewing and reviewing these Federer Moments. What's harder to appreciate on TV is that these spectacular-looking angles and winners are not coming from nowhere -- they're often set up several shots ahead, and depend as much on Federer's manipulation of opponents' positions as they do on the pace or placement of the coup de grâce. And understanding how and why Federer is able to move other world-class athletes around this way requires, in turn, a better technical understanding of the modern power-baseline game than TV -- again -- is set up to provide.