The hotel room was colder than the temperature outside when I arrived, which meant the room's temperature was likely somewhere in the 50˚F - 59˚F range. I turned on the heater to 74˚, but the room didn't seem to heat up. The heater running at 80˚ for two hours did the trick. The room was finally at 72˚. I went to bed and to sleep.

This morning, as I was in the shower, there was a knocking on the hotel room door. I didn't answer, I was in the shower. Checkout time was another 30 minutes away. I continued showering.

The knocking became a pounding. The pounding became louder. The pounding sounded like two people were kicking the door. I stayed in the shower, rinsed my hair.

The pounding stopped. The door was unlocked, and opened hard. I was still in the shower.

The door was stopped by the chain. If the person opening the door had wanted to break it, I suspect said person could have. I was in the shower.

After I had finished my shower, dried off, and went into the hotel room, it was empty, my stuff was as I had left it, the chain was still on the door, the door was still closed. I dressed, gathered my things, left the room, checked out of the hotel, met a friend for lunch, and told him about my latest hotel adventure.

He looked at me askew. "You have a lot of weird stuff happen to you."

Yep. This sort of thing happens all the time. Which is why I finish my shower before addressing it. I might as well address it on my time, and be clean with lovely smelling hair when I address someone in a huff for breaking into a hotel room I have paid for until noon.

Andy purchased an infrared camera for his phone, so that he could find where the cold leaks are in his house. It arrived today.

He promptly started measuring everything in the house.

Including me.

I am cracking up at this.

Okay, consider this scenario: You've been living in a house for 15 years. The tub is backed up. The garage utility sink is backed up.

This has happened before. One time, the backup was really bad, so you had a couple pipes replaced. The pipes under the house are an odd collection, with a couple of difficult joints which cause backups more frequently. You know where all the clean-outs are in the house.

Now, you call a plumber to snake the lines. He arrives two days later. You explain what is happening. He seems to understand, says he'll take 10 minutes, and begins to snake the plumbing from tub.

After 20 minutes, he's still going.

So, you walk into the bathroom, and offer, "Hey, so, the lines are kinda tricky in this house. The best clean-out is on the roof. Would you like to see where the other ones are?"

The plumber turns to you and responds, "Are you a plumber?"

You answer, "No."

He asks, "Have you ever been a plumber?"

You answer, "No."

He responds in a condescending, asshole way, "I am, and I can do my job. I know where to clean out. I can do it from the tub."

You bite your tongue and leave, a simmering rage growing.

Of course, you realize later that the correct answer to the first question is, "Irrelevant, I've lived in this house for 15 years, and know its history. I also know how the pipes are configured in the house, and you don't. So, would you like help or not?"

Or maybe, "YES, I WAS! Now, would you like help, or not?"

Or maybe, "Yes, Plumbing Company? I'm calling about the plumber you sent over? He was rude and condescending to me when I offered help. I like your company, and would like to continue doing business with you, but not with this particular individual. When could you send over a different person, say, the one who was here two weeks ago?"

Regardless, the correct response was not to allow that growing rage from allowing someone you are paying to do work for you to talk to you in a condescending, asshole way.

But, here's the thing.

The guy was being an asshole because he was frustrated, he'd already showed up 30 minutes after the 2 hour window of arrival time had passed, the job that was supposed to be an easy clean-out wasn't actually cleaning out, and a woman (OH MY GOD A WOMAN MIGHT KNOW MORE THAN HE DOES) was offering help so she must have been thinking he was incompetent at his job (she wasn't, she just knew more about the situation than he did, and the "she" part is irrelevant, TBH).

Who knows what else was going on?

Maybe he wanted to be home already to hang out with his kid, and he knew he had another job to do after this one, since it was already 4:50pm and he was supposed to be done between 2 and 4pm? Maybe he had already been written up for being an ass, and was frustrated because he is an ass? Maybe this was his first time out by himself, and he was just caught in a situation where, hey, he wasn't doing well? Maybe his rent was jacked up $500 this month and he was stressed about his finances? Maybe this woman reminded him of his mother who never gave him the approval he so desperately craved? Maybe his girlfriend dumped him?

Maybe lots of things completely and totally irrelevant to the situation were happening in this guy's life.

None of that excuses his asshole behaviour, sure, but it goes a long way to explaining it.

We carry a lot of baggage around with us. We react to things through the filter of our experiences. Only 10%* of our reactions are about the situation actually in front of us. 90%* of it is the baggage we carry around.

In the heat of the moment, we don't see this. We don't see the filter in the answer, we just react.

And we 90% react through the baggage that we carry around.

So, given this scenario next time, my plan is to smile, and remind the plumber that my profession is irrelevant, and ask again if he'd like help.

All while reminding myself that his reaction is not about me, it's about his baggage.

Of note, said plumber took two hours to "pop the pipes." Eventually, he called in another guy, who DID climb on the roof and clear the pipes from the roof clean-out.

So, yeah.

* Numbers scientifically proven to be pulled out of someone's ass.

That's what he said to me.

"You eat a lot of sugar."

And I do. Wow, do I eat a lot of sugar.

This is problematic.

There is a link between diabetes and Alzheimer's, and theories that Alzheimer's is the last stage of a lifetime of excess insulin in the body.

"Current research has suggested that the brain in Alzheimer’s disease cannot fully process insulin, similar to what happens in the body of type 2 patients. As Dr. Yarchoan states, “Alzheimer’s disease is actually remarkably similar to type 2 diabetes, but in the brain.”

Or maybe something like this:

"People who have type 2 diabetes produce extra insulin. That insulin can get into the brain, disrupting brain chemistry and leading toxic proteins that poison brain cells to form. The protein that forms in both Alzheimer’s patients and people with type 2 diabetes is the same protein."

Yeah, go goog "alzheimer's diabetes link" and you'll see the rest of the reports of the evidence and the links to the research.

So, other than the general scare of sugar is a really fucked up thing to put into one's body, why would my sugar consumption in particular be problematic?

When I was maybe 15, I read an article that stated persons with siblings with Type 1 diabetes have a 1 in 4 chance of developing diabetes in their lifetimes. I recall thinking, "Wow, that sucks for them," before I thought, "Wait a second... that's me." This was before the epidemic of diabetes that currently exists in the United States.

Now, in the United States, 29.1 million people, 9.3% of the US population, have diabetes. Think about that for a second: 1 in 10 people are diabetic. Of them, a quarter are undiagnosed, walking around (or maybe not) with high blood sugar and no concept of the long term damage occurring.

So, yeah, already predisposed to diabetes. Eating a lot of sugar. Getting older.

With a family history of Alzheimer's.

More than 5 million Americans, about 1.5% of the population, have Alzheimer's, and by 2050, as the U.S. population ages, the number is expected to be 14 million or so. It is a horrible thing, to lose oneself, a bit by bit. Losing the memories, the life built up, even as you keep living.

Yeah, so, a double family whammy on that one.

So, maybe the damage is already done in my head, and not eating sugar isn't going to repair it. Eating more sugar is definitely going to make it worse, so it is safe to say, eating less to no sugar would be a good thing.

Despite my preference for sugar, I'm done. I'll have it on very special occasions, but for my daily consumption, I'm done. It's going to be hard, I expect. I hate having addictions, and this is one of mine.

Going cold turkey.

Or maybe, cold buckeye.