And exceptionally good shave this morning — a three-day stubble and a slant makes for a great shave. The soap is Grooming Dept Laundry II, a Kairos (tallow) formula soap whose fragrance is “Laundry + Fresh air.” The fragrance is indeed reminiscent of clean laundry drying on the clothesline, and in terms of consistency and glide, the lather is first rate (thanks in part to my Rooney Victorian).
The Merkur 37G does a wonderful job — it’s easy to understand why Hoffritz back in the day selected the Merkur 37C to rebrand as Hoffritz’s own offering. Three passes left my face completely smooth, and a splash of Klar Seifen Klassik, which also has a clean, light fragrance, finished the job.
Two interesting side-effects of the pacemaker:
- My fasting blood glucose had been running at 6.2 mmol/L (112 mg/dL); now the readings are significantly better: 5.7 mmol/L (103 mg/dL). No other changes. It may be that when I resume regular walking, the morning reading will be even better — that’s been the case in the past.
- My sleep is much better. My Amazfit Band 5 measures sleep performance — amount of deep sleep, light sleep, REM sleep, and awake time, as well as total duration. I have always been “Low” in all of those, and my deep sleep was chopped up in small segments, plus I always had periods during the night when I was awake. Now I have more deep sleep and it is in a solid block of time (early in the night), and I don’t have periods of wakefulness at all — I pretty much sleep through the night. My sleep “score” has gone from high 60’s and low 70’s to the low 80’s
It’s interesting that I assumed that the Amazfit was wrong in its measures of my heart rate during my walks and in its measure of my sleep, and in both cases it was giving me information that might have been useful had I believed it.
The tea this morning is Murchie’s Royal Grey: “Currants and cream with a twist of bergamot, a modern take on the timeless Earl Grey. It smells of berries and sugar, like sugared fruit. The taste is fruit-forward, juicy black currant hitting first, followed by citrusy bergamot that lingers and grounds the blend; vanilla smooths it out with a comforting creamy note.“