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Megan loves her Contigo mugs for drinking coffee in the car every day. I’ve been hand-cleaning them for a while and the insides kept getting more and more brown despite scrubbing. An abrasive pad and a lot of elbow grease worked well enough but I wasn’t keen on doing that again. So I tried soaking the mug in Oxi Clean for an hour and it worked super duper great! The inside of the mug got to sparkling silver clean! Actually, it worked too great, the little bits of Oxi-Clean that spilled over to the outside made the paint bubble off the mug! As a last ditch effort, I used Oxi Clean to remove the paint completely and it actually looks pretty cool.

The best part is something I just read from Contigo…

Contigo travel mug lids and any unpainted stainless steel bodies are top-rack dishwasher safe for a quick, easy clean. Painted stainless steel bodies are hand wash only.

The mug is now fully dishwasher safe! Woot!
In the image, notice the last remnants of the purple paint embedded in the word “Contigo” on the one on the right.

Today I tried to install an EPUB reader to read my friend TJIC’s new books. After more than an hour of trying this has stopped being fun. I just want to read a book and I’ve wasted a few hours pushing buttons. This is why paper is not dead yet. Or maybe this is why single-purpose Kindle readers are a good idea.

I have an Amazon Fire HD 8 (5th Generation) and it continues to be a a pain in the ass. Every time I try to do something that isn’t akin to watching television on it, I get sucked into this vortex of things that don’t work. Here was today’s adventure:

I went to the Amazon Appstore and installed eLibrary Manager, which is billed as being “actually free” from Amazon. It worked OK but the default font is a horribly bland san serif font and the option to change the font didn’t work! Not happening.

I tried Overdrive, which has lots of tie-ins with public and university libraries. That seemed like a safe bet. But I couldn’t figure out how to get the book into into the app! How it’s supposed to work is that I install Adobe Digital Editions on my computer, link my account to my computer, and move it over to my Kindle. I spent 15 minutes wrangling with Adobe and some insane user registration system. Then I couldn’t get Adobe Digital Editions to see my Kindle when I plugged it into USB. I gave up.

Calibre Companion (demo version). After 15 minutes I figured out that it isn’t an ebook reader, just a way to move ebooks around. It works great, it just doesn’t do anything. Ugh.

Aldiko seemed like a really good bet. Super pretty. But I can’t create an account with the app. This is likely because the Amazon Appstore gave me a version of the software that is 3 years old and I’m not able to update it. I wrote to customer support.

Blah!

I hear that avocado toast is why I can’t afford a mortgage. To that I say “Yum!”

Studying for my occupational therapy board exam at Philz Coffee, drinking high-test and eating like a millennial!

Megan and I went to Oakland Art Murmur First Friday Art Walk, it was great! It was so refreshing to get out!

We saw great art, ate street food… lots of it, and felt the buzz of ten thousand Oaklanders having a good time in the street

Yeah, we ate well! Had a shimp po-boy, an allspice ice cream sandwich, and grilled cheese from the world famous Grilled Cheese Guy! We went to the uptown area. The best art (and grilled cheese!) was found on 25th where Jon Sarriugarte parked his beloved Golden Mean art snail :-).

Local Language looks like an exciting art fabrication space.

Thea Schrack’s Seaglass 8 was amazing to see. An image of it is to the right but it is far more entrancing in person! When I saw it in person, I found myself saying “I could build a house around that image.” I became so wonderfully lost in it!

There was lots more great art at Art Murmur! Jeanne Jabbour’s work (see on the left) at Oakopolis had “great lines”. We had a fun discussion about how her work would be great in a psychologist’s office.

Hurray for art!

I’ve been using a CPAP for mild obstructive sleep apnea since January 2015. It definitely helps me get a good night’s rest and keeps me from snoring which helps Megan sleep. I still take it off in my sleep most nights. Megan prods me and I put it back on. Here is a list of hints, most of which I’ve tried, to keep my mask on. Do you have any tips to add? Email or comment!

– keep a log of good and bad nights and what I’m doing about it
– Set an alarm in the middle of the night to put it on
– cough syrup (helpful when I have a cold!)
– antihistamine pills (when I have a runny nose or cough)
– nasal allergy spray… Flonase, saline
– turn the temperature up to 80 degrees (didn’t help me)
– use distilled water in the humidifier (I don’t usually use the humidifier but it’ll last longer with distilled water)
– higher pressure… ramp pressure from medium to higher (waiting for the doctor to change the settings is for chumps. I fiddled with the settings a little and it helped. Just 1 small change every 2 nights and a log book helped dial it in for me!)
– Set a timer when going to bed so I don’t forget (I wait til I’m almost asleep to put it on. I sometimes fall asleep forgetting. So I set a 10 min timer when getting into bed for a while)
– Chin strap (didn’t help)
– shave before bed for a smooth face (seems to help)
– wash the facemask weekly (if I don’t, I have to keep pulling it tighter to keep it from leaking… wash every 1-2 weeks. My masks have lasted 3-12 months)
– rinse my nostrils with water and blow my nose before bed for clear nose.

August 2014-May 2016: four semesters of a very intense master’s program with a 5 hr/day, 4 days/week commute (see commuting footnote).

June 2016-May 2017: Two completed internships, got only half way through another one due to a medical problem.

Married June 2014, two months before school started, just two years after we met.

New baby born a week before second semester started.

Two ongoing family conflicts that I won’t discuss here. Both began around 2014. Well, the roots of each conflict probably go back way further but that’s how conflicts go.

Megan told me, almost demanded that I take some time off! So I’ve spend the last couple weeks NOT studying for the boards exam in occupational therapy. Thanks honey!

At the end of May, my master’s degree posted. It’s now “Lee Sonko, M.S.”.

Looking forward, I just started studying for my board certification, hoping to be done in early August.

Footnote about my school commute:

Yes it was a 5 hour/day commute, Kensington to San Jose State.  Driving would have cut an hour a day but was far more stressful. When I drove, it usually took an hour for me to recover. And I couldn’t study while driving. Here was my commute: 15 minute drive down the hill, 55 minute BART from El Cerrito Plaza to Fremont Station, 45 minute bus ride to downtown San Jose, 15 minute walk to school. 2 1/2 hrs door to door. On a good day, I could study for about 45 minutes on the train and 25 on the bus. I got car sick on the bus every time I tried to study, and I needed/chose to study most of the time. It completely sucked.