The family runs for prostate cancer support, education, and advocacy.

It is early Monday morning, an hour before my alarm will erupt. Lots of streams of (semi-) consciousness running through my head.

It looks like our biennial lab accreditation inspection will be this Friday. Because of COVID the inspection is a scheduled affair this year–not the surprise drop-in it usually is. That relieves some uncertainty, but not the apprehension that inspections always bring–even though we will come through with just a few small bookkeeping type deficiencies (all inspectors find one or two) and no problems with reaccreditation.  And I remember that I need to apply for a Wisconsin license, we may start getting specimens from there.

I am also thinking about our new test to detect the causes of chronic urinary tract infections. We will launch this week, and I have been writing and rewriting the announcement e-mail blast, worrying over every word and image. We first decided we were going to do this a year ago, and if not for COVID it would have been ready for primetime four months ago. But the supply chain hassles, the workarounds, the little trip-ups, have been nonstop. Cheers to the team for finally getting here.

Moving my limbs under the sheets I can feel the achiness and stiffness from running a modified 5K with the kids yesterday. It was for SeaBlue (prostate cancer support, education, advocacy) and we ran in our neighborhood as a replacement for the annual Lincoln Park race, another COVID casualty. It was a treat running with Mike and Laury, even if we weren’t wearing numbers on our chest. I have the satisfaction of knowing I ran, and also raised some dollars for the cause. If you would like to contribute, donations are still accepted at  https://ustoo.rallybound.org/SEABlue2020/LesforProstate.

My arms should loosen up by tonight. My indoor tennis league begins. Lots of social distancing rules, no fist bumps, or high fives. Life, or a form of it, continues.

The fourth quarter of the Bear’s game runs through my head. Not indicative of much, except that the Lion’s are a bad team, but amazing none-the-less. Barb, who has no interest in professional sports, sums it up best. “Just like an episode of Friday Night Lights.” But without the angst of Coach Taylor.

I’ll get out of bed and turn on the television in a few minutes. These days I turn on the news with trepidation. Is the world still there? The weekend has been filled with the fallout of the Trump/Woodward tapes, all presented as if it were a dichotomy–tell the truth and panic the country, or stay mum and doom the country. The obvious choice of honesty with a plan is ignored. I am not sure which is now greater, my fury, or my fear.

And so the week begins…

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Shelby, Joy, Happy and Bessie are four young female mice looking for a loving guardian together.

These four were born on July 4th and at two months old enjoy each other’s company. Someone had an accidental litter and to prevent them from becoming snake food, a friend took them in. But, they didn’t really want to keep them themselves as pets so they are now up for adoption.

These girls are active, enjoy spinning on their wheel, are very handleable and lovable.

They’d love a home with people who will handle them daily, keep them well fed, and keep their cage clean.

If you’re interested in meeting and possibly adopting these mice, please contact [email protected].

They are currently being fostered in Des Plaines, Illinois. Their adoption fee of $50 includes everything you need to care for them including food, cage, water bottle and litter.

ATTOM Data Solutions released their August 2020 Foreclosure Market Report on Thursday in addition to updating their RealtyTrac data. It doesn’t really tell us much because there is still a moratorium on foreclosure filings but in the interest of completeness I provide the historical graph below of Chicago foreclosure activity. You can plainly see that the spigot has essentially been turned off – and it will likely remain turned off through the end of the year.

Chicago foreclosure activity has declined dramatically since the housing crisis. However, the recent plunge is the result of the moratorium placed on foreclosures in light of the Covid-19 crisis.

But, as I pointed out last month, the real story is in the delinquency rate, which has been boosted by the forbearance program. Black Knight tracks this in their Mortgage Monitor Report and it improved slightly in July to 6.91%. However, once the foreclosure moratorium and forbearance program ends we are likely to see foreclosure actions on these delinquent mortgages.

Mortgage delinquencies are trending downward after hitting an ugly peak a couple of months ago

One other side note. The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that the FHA delinquency rate hit a record high of 15.65%. Now think about it. These tend to be lower income folks who are more likely to have lost their jobs because of the nature of their work. So you can see what’s going on here.

Chicago Shadow Inventory

Somehow a few foreclosures are still taking place and the pipeline of homes in foreclosure is still managing to draw down a little bit each month. We saw another decline of 177 units in August to a record low since I’ve been tracking the data.

The number of homes in foreclosure in Chicago continues to decline during the pandemic

#Foreclosures #ChicagoForeclosures

Gary Lucido is the President of Lucid Realty, the Chicago area’s full service real estate brokerage that offers home buyer rebates and discount commissions. If you want to keep up to date on the Chicago real estate market or get an insider’s view of the seamy underbelly of the real estate industry you can Subscribe to Getting Real by Email using the form below. Please be sure to verify your email address when you receive the verification notice.

Since the coronavirus was keeping me from eating out, a few months ago I decided that this might be a good time to act on a longstanding wish to lose 10 to 15 pounds. I diligently logged calories on fitday.com and shed five pounds pretty quickly — and no more in the last eight weeks. The weight-loss plateau is real.

Except for a couple of times when eating with friends, I’ve kept under 1,700 calories a day, a target Fitday calculated based on the goal of losing 12 pounds in 12 weeks. By the Harvard Medical School’s guideline that one should eat about 13 calories per pound of body weight a day, 1,700 calories is the amount to maintain 130 pounds — which I haven’t seen since my 30s and have no intention of seeing again.

The deadline is 11 days away, and according to Fitday, I would need to drop down to 597 calories a day to lose 7 more pounds by then.

So, I’m not going to meet the goal. Restate that more sympathetically: the goal won’t be met. I really don’t feel blameworthy.

According to the Mayo Clinic, the weight-loss plateau happens to every dieter eventually. Metabolism declines with weight loss until you’re burning no more calories than you eat and reach the plateau. At that point, you need to boost your metabolism by exercising more or cutting more calories.

I could do more than a daily half-hour walk. Getting back to 15 minutes of strength work several times a week might help — and I should do it for my bones anyway. I don’t see how to cut more calories without hunger.

But I may need to accept that the scale is stuck. When I think sensibly, I realize that the goal is not pounds but habits. I am learning how to eat mindfully, establishing better habits for the rest of my days. Staying mindful may require continuing to log calories.

The target weight might not have been desirable anyway. There are research findings that senior women are better off being overweight according to the body mass index chart (a subject for another post). I’m healthy; that’s the important thing.

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INTERMITTENT FASTING DIDN’T WORK FOR ME

Before logging calories, I tried intermittent fasting. It’s been promoted in recent years not only as a technique for weight loss but also as a healthy practice for people without excess pounds to shed. The most popular pattern is to fast for 16 hours and eat for only 8, having the first meal around the usual lunchtime.

When I heard of eating only from late morning to early evening, my first thought was about what happened to the advice that breakfast is the most important meal.

Not surprisingly, intermittent fasters dispute that. “Now that research on fasting has been conducted, we know breakfast is not required for most of us, and it may even be better to avoid it all together,” physician Tony Hampton said in an Advocate Aurora Health news email. Hampton contends that intermittent fasting promotes mental clarity, weight loss, glucose control, good cholesterol, and cellular repair and reduces hunger and inflammation.

But a healthy breakfast still has advocates. University of Delaware nutritionist Sharon Collison told Time magazine, “People who consume breakfast regularly often have increased physical activity. They have better dietary profiles and lower intake of snacks. Skipping breakfast is associated with increased disease risk — not only obesity but diabetes, heart disease, and just lower dietary quality.” She said that people who say they aren’t hungry when they wake up might be snacking at night. “If you eliminate that snacking and then wake up hungry and eat a good breakfast, your overall dietary pattern is going to be so much better, and your health status is going to be better.”

The debate turned out to be irrelevant for me, since I couldn’t pull off intermittent fasting. I first tried eating between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. and didn’t lose a pound, probably because hunger spurred overeating during the allowed window. Then I changed to 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and found that schedule lent itself to three meals a day, so I might as well eat breakfast earlier.

In this debate, maybe there is no definitive answer, and what eating pattern works best depends on the person. Consuming the recommended foods is likely what matters.

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ANTI-TRUMP COMMENTS: 129TH IN AN ONGOING SERIES

“Apparently Trump’s campaign believes that since there were riots this summer, it’s only fair that the president be allowed to kill some of his supporters by exposing them to superspreader events.”
— Jonathan Reiner, a professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University and medical analyst for CNN