Briefly on Dietary Experimentation

So, I've got kind of a weird confluence of ideas in my life that has led me to messing with my diet a bit. 
After hearing about some bad stuff that gluten can do to people in general, I heard about the paleo diet, which is naturally free of gluten.  I have no plans to go full paleo, but it is an intriguing diet, partly in that much of what it contains is, or at least can be, tasty. 
I probably already consume plenty of meat, so I'm not changing that quantity, but I will be increasing my fruit & veggie intake, which is something that's often recommended, anyway. 
I don't expect to go gluten-free any time soon, but it's interesting to see how much gluten is in so much of what we eat, anyway.  For reference, the grains that naturally contain gluten are wheat, rye, triticale, and barley; all remaining grains are naturally gluten-free.  The caveat there is that, apparently, oats are frequently contaminated by wheat, but, since I'm not allergic or anything, I won't be picky about that. 
I'm working on what will probably be my easiest and broadest substitution that I'll end up making:  substituting peanut butter with an actual nut butter.  I suspect that I'll find cashew butter quite delicious, but also quite expensive.  For hard-to-find nut butters, I may resort to grinding the nuts myself, just to try them. 

It's also interesting to see what's so hard to find because of the way that the economy self-reinforces:  Nobody sells something because not enough people want it, but most people don't want it because they see it as niche (i.e., only for "health nuts" or whatever), but it's only that way because it's not already on every store shelf, anyway!  

Pokémon X Mini-Update

Some Pokémon X spoilers follow. 





I thought that I should mention a few things about my Pokémon X progress: 
1.  I beat the 8th gym! 
With that out of the way, I think that I know who's on my team, though many of these decisions have made themselves.  They are: 

• Meowstic (female):  special attacker
• Gogoat:  physical attacker
• Barbaracle:  tank
• Hawlucha:  beat stick (and conveniently flying-type)
• Doublade:  Ghost/Steel type fast physical attacker that's a Ghost/Steel type
• Greninja:  high-speed mixed attacker w/ double-team

The Honedge line is pretty awesome:  One of Steel's weaknesses, Fighting, is negated by the fact that it's a Ghost type, and, as a Steel type, it's immune to Poison-type damaging attacks and to being poisoned at all. 
Barbaracle is actually a pretty good tank once it evolves out of its Binacle stage. 
I don't have any status-inflictors on the team, but I think that I'll be OK with the team as it is.  Each pokémon knows a variety of damaging attacks, so type coverage shouldn't be an issue.  3 of my pokémon are weak to Electric attacks, but Gogoat knows Bulldoze, so I don't foresee problems from Electric-type pokémon - though I've already fought an Electric-type gym leader, so I don't expect any of the Elite 4 to use them, since that's pretty normal. 

2.  Barbaracle can't learn Waterfall.  :-\
Given that the 8th badge is required to use it, I'm presuming that I'll need to use Waterfall to reach the Pokémon League.  I've got a Clauncher, so I'll probably use that just enough to get there.  Still, I'd have gladly taught the move to Barbaracle, were it allowed.  :-\

The Great Webcomic Catch-Up: February Update

So, the great webcomic catch-up isn't going so great. 
I've gotten super-busy and super-sidetracked with ALL THE THINGS. 
That said, I think that my strategy is still viable.  For each comic, I'll read until I'm caught up, then move on to the next one.  However long it takes, by the end I shouldn't be more than, say, 2 months behind on any one, so I'll repeat the process.  That should get me down to under a week, at which point I can do my previous accidental standard catch-up method, and then be caught up.  Once I'm caught up with everything, I can go back to checking webcomics every day after school work, which I think isn't a bad way to end the day. 

Pokémon X Progress

I haven't made much progress through Pokémon X, it seems. 
I've caught Xerneas, so there's that.  I've been preparing a team to fight the Ice-type gym leader coming up, but I arrived in Couriway town only to be ambushed by a Professor and discover that there was no gym in that town.  So, now I have to slog my way through the next route to get to the next town, which almost certainly has the gym. 
I think that part of my delay is because I'm trying to catch 'em all.  For instance, I spent significant amounts of time in the tunnel north of Couriway once I found that Rock Smash sometimes led to Shuckle.  (I didn't catch it the 1st time.  :-\)
I did catch a Noibat, though it's male, so I'd have to Ditto-breed it. 
Also, Diggersby has been getting more use again, since Dig can be used to escape caves.  Come to think of it, I should probably swap out Diggersby for Talonflame, since there seem to be a lot of Grass-types out there, given that I'm on the route again.