Category: Health

Forskolin

So I’m poking around my favourite joints on the internet, and run across a Eurekalert reference to erectile dysfunction research.  Everybody knows that nitric oxide is what triggers the onset of an erection, but nobody had nailed down – sorry for the choice of words – what sustains an erection, which is the other half of working on ED.  Turns out that you need a continuous cascade of nitric oxide to keep the jolly happening, some of which happens in the penis itself.  At the very end of the article, there’s an offhand comment about how forskolin assists to keep this nitric oxide cascade flowing.

I’m thinking, Darwin’s Beard, a compound that assists with ED that’s called Forskolin?  I mean, it’s like hiding a foreskin in plain sight.  So I look up forskolin on wikipedia, and it sounds like homeopathy, it’s been offered up as a treatment for so many conditions.  But no, science.  And the molecule looks like Oh Ho Ho with a boner at both ends.  But that’s just me, I can derive amusement from almost anything.

 

 

Bobcats

this spot used to hold a link to pics of bobcats in Calgary HAHA WHO KNEW THAT LESS THAN A DECADE LATER I’D SEE A BOBCAT HIKING DISTANCE FROM MY RENTAL okay back to 2012

Yesterday I saw Katie briefly.  Night before Paul and I went to Jericho after feasting here on pork chomps and green beans and corn and salad.

I was super tired yesterday and napped for a good chunk of the afternoon, with Margot fizzling and burbling and napping with me.  This morning she tried to join me long before sunrise but I thrash around too much so she left and is now guarding my door.

This sentence deleted in 2020 because it makes zero sense.

woe is -aaack- me

So I completely blew the interview yesterday – fell apart during the test.  I solaced myself with beer and lobster afterwards, so thoroughly downcast was I, and my Lumosity score fell like a rock this morning subsequent to me having two beers, so, note to self – alcohol does make you demonstrably dumber, please avoid (yesterday’s score was one of my highest ever, so it seems germane to mention the difference).  No I did no driving yesterday, for the safety minded among you.

The stye has come to its fruition and no longer hurts; it’s just making me look like Margot with the ludicrous amount of eye gunk it is producing (which is actually impacting my ability to see out of my left eye.  Very glad it’s in my left eye, my right eye doesn’t produce enough tears so I’d be in a very sad way.)

Margot fell off some boxes in my closet and trapped herself in my clothes.  I have never heard her make that much noise in that short a space – she really is getting more noisy, which means she’s just barely audible.

Amazing science / health news.

He only posted it yesterday and I’ve already set it to music.  OH GOSH HOW I LOVE THIS POEM. Mind you I wrote the choon two days ago.

I love the show ER so much I want it to be in space. Yes, Trauma 3000, in which our fearless surgeons and internists rotate between a mother hospital on the ground and a microgravity trauma unit in orbit, including tours of duty with trauma units at the front lines of an alien war.  And I want an alien social worker.  I want it to be ER x Babylon 5 x Battlestar Galactica. w00t!~

My fave Hollywood badass does his thang.

A few remarks about migraines

I didn’t have my first migraine until I was expecting Keith; normally migraines start earlier than that.  In that, however, I have been very very consistent; the neurologist says I get atypical migraines.  Like a bucket of memes, I just never know what I’m gonna get!

When I get a flash, or a weird sensation, or a heavy lowering feeling, I never know what to think.  Is it “Ermagerd, I’m having a small stroke?” (link removed for safety)  Is it, “Bloody weather!”.  Is it, “Oh great, now I can’t trust my emotions, since a migraine made me think I needed to end it all when I er, actually had no basis for such a belief!!?”  (Actually, on sober second consideration, when CAN one trust one’s emotions? Apart from the Gift of Fear?)

Then there’s the bizarre range of physical sensations, previously catalogued, and visual disturbances (which in the last five years have occasionally been mesmerizingly beautiful, like the time my entire visual field briefly filled (transparently, I hasten to add, so if I had been driving I still would have been able to see) with coruscating rainbow fishscales about two inches wide at arms length.  SO PRETTY HOW I GET SOME.  EAT UM!

About five years ago my relationship with migraines changed.  I realized that since migraines are brain chemistry foulups, pure and simple, I had the power to change my brain chemistry.  If I think happy thoughts, I can make scintillating scotomas go away.  At first I did not want to believe that I could do that, but I have enough evidence to satisfy myself that, yup, I can do that.  If I sit, breathe, think about the days I gave birth to my children, and saw Hole at Thunderbird Stadium, and went to Hot Springs Cove, and watched mOm and pOp put up the geodesic greenhouse in the back yard in Ottawa, and saw mammatus clouds IRL, and saw a UFO shaped lenticular cloud, and flew to Vancouver in an Otter about 15 meters off the deck the whole way…. I can make that brain chemistry break up like morning fog.

So I dunno, Ms. Migraine, whether you think you’re going to land on me today, but I don’t want you around, so I gotta cheer up.

Roundup

Gotta love the Germans: circumcision declared child abuse/harm to child.

There’s a fine line between narcissism and self esteem.  What facebook is good for.

Don’t even get my brother started on dark matter/energy.

Now that mOm is watching SG1…..

Yes, wish I had some.

Fire up some way cool google search techniques.

Back in school

Man, school is so much easier to take when you’re only doing it one day at a time.

Anyway, today was a seminar on starting your own business.  The level of detail and the pace of delivery were such that I only fell into the grip of boredom (and it was fuelled by lunch of course) the once in the midafternoon.  The rest of the time I played class clown in that highly irritating and ludicrous manner which irks Jeff on the occasions I uncork it around him. My idea of a good time is heckling Brian Eno and Cory Doctorow, although I’ve never gotten to do both in one day.  Anyway it was a great seminar and my brain is boiling like Nyiragongo’s lava pit.

Today is the day I should have mowed the lawn.

My mobility has rather surprisingly gone back to being really bad.  My knees hurt. Walking around downtown hurt.

Two of the people attending the seminar were people I knew.  One of them I hadn’t seen in 10 years; she had not gained a pound despite having childer and had not visibly aged.  Seriously.  I was charmed for her but had to resort to the time honored escape of itemizing to myself the one aspect of my appearance which was marginally better than hers by the standards of this cruel nasty culture.  I like to think I’m superior to other people, but all I am is more skilled.

My to do list just expanded by an unknown number of items.  As soon as I hit the little teal Publish button, I’m off to add the items/projects on the list.  And then, into the arms of George Illes, the rattiest of ratbastards, the meanest kind man or the kindest mean man who ever lived, and who is not alive, and who is not a man.

Lists of lists

Yesterday:

Heaps of Stargate Atlantis, but also talking to the outplacementthingy and the HR gal at Schneider as it turns out I had NOT actually signed everything I was s’posed to, booking appointments, paying bills, getting programs to run properly with the new OS, hanging out with Keith and calling my mother.  Cause you cain’t call yer mother enuf.  I did not actually leave the house yesterday.  But I made cookies.  And cooked chicken and zucchini with black bean sauce over yakisoba noodles (Keith provided the sauce and noodles, I believe to nudge me to make something) and we had leftovers so that’s one less thing to disturb me today.

Today:

Gotta get Buzz set up properly and restrung.  Also buy more instrument stands, hopefully one of those threeway bluegrass ones for three different sized instruments.  Also I am tired of my tuner; I am going to get contact tuners because balancing that black box in my lap while trying to keep fretted instruments from sounding like the wailing of the damned is TOO DAMNED MUCH.  See how low my frustration tolerance is these days?  Ha.

The Grass.  This is exactly the kind of weather that makes grass tall, lush, and impossible to cut.  Lots of overcast and rain off and on with the occasional blinding sunshine.  Very, very occasional.  If it dries out the least bit I gotta do it before it attempts to eat east Burnaby.

Checking with Kathleen that we’ve paid the church rent and figuring out how much it is (it changes from month to month) if we haven’t yet for May. Also getting hold of Lady Miss D for an interview about what it’s like to bake / construct hors d’oevres for a living.  I will probably bake biscotti, it’s such a crappy day, heating up the kitchen with nice smells seems like a plan. I already made Granny’s recipe oatmeal cookies mit chocolate chips this morning for Jeff (I can’t eat them because le migraine keeps whacking me.  I’ve had scintillating scotoma every day for a week now… it’s fraking tiresome although late last week I got visuals I’ve never seen before; imagine rainbow coloured fish scales about two inches across at arms length dancing across your ENTIRE visual field – and it disappeared as fast as it came on thank goodness). I’ve also loaded the dishwasher, taken out the trash and played with Margot, who did not actually come in and cuddle this morning, darn. Her eyes are much less disgusting, the allergies must be lightening up somewhat.

Completely dejunking my head, a la Getting things Done.  I have a program (Thinking Rock) that helps with that.  Considering how many balls I’m going to have in the air for the next little while I need to marshall my time intelligently.

Deal with the exercise issue.  I’m completely on board with Lady Miss Banjola’s recent extremely useful and heartfelt rant about weight loss; what I am not on board with is actually stirring my stumps and getting enough exercise to overcome the fact that my weight is stressing my whole body.  IT AIN’T THE MASS IT’S THE MOTION.  Ahem. As in, the lack of it.

Booking the camping trip in the US in August.  Planning a circuit of the Island.  I have a strong urge to drive onto a ferry and go to Haida Gwaii, and precious little to stop me.

Just last week I was saying how I wasn’t going to go to Jericho any more because it’s so far on a school night.  Now I’m thinking I can do it every week for the whole summer!  Woot! So that may be my evening.

And soon the Dandy Warhols.

I have had precisely four beers since I ‘quit drinking’. What I have learned.  Alcohol makes me happy for about five minutes.  Then it irritates my bladder, fogs my thinking, prevents me from driving or leaving the house, screws up my nights’ sleep, makes my stomach hurt and gives me a mild to moderate feeling of wretched blankness the next morning which coffee can usually shake off.  So for the purposes of keeping tracking June 4 is now my official quit drinking date.  Unless it would be rude not to (a wake, toasting the bride and groom) I’m not going to consume alcohol any more.  Nothing bad has happened in its absence except I’m spending a sizable amount less (like, 200 dollars a month, which is not an inconsiderable amount).

 

Tingling and numbness

Yesterday, 1 pm, worst scotoma in about a decade.  Just barely made it home in time to barf – been two decades since that happened with a migraine.  Long bath.  Bed.  Dragged myself up at Jeff’s return and got the octave mandolin from the post office and then back home to collapse.  Awake at 5 am and now I have a tremendous post migraine headache and an equally tremendous desire to feel sorry for myself.  Right eyelid is drooping…

awake and aware

Heavy sigh.  This is now Day 7 of project quit drinking.  I don’t know what I was expecting…DTs maybe?  Instead, nothing, except I have to remember to drink 20 ounces of water between the time I get home and the time I go to bed or I get dehydrated.  That’s what the beer was for, to give my kidneys something to do when they were bored.

Otherwise, no effect on my life at all.

Time to go shower and get dressed and call in sick to work.  Yeah, I would like to – it’s May Day! – but I think I’ll occupy my work station and serve customers today.

still here

Some good news. Crowd sourced science is here.  https://www.microryza.com/ I WANNA KNOW WHAT’S IN THAT JAR, yes I duz.

Amen.  http://icanhascheezburger.com/2012/04/14/funny-dog-pictures-licking-life-to-the-fullest/

hahahahahaha.  Yes, I know you may not get this but I laughed my ass off http://scifi.icanhascheezburger.com/2012/04/13/sci-fi-fantasy-harry-potter-crew-sent-to-azkaban/

Oh look an open mic walking distance from my house!  (link deleted)

 

Still recovering from Migraineish thing what attacked my brain. Slept most of yesterday.

Jeff had chocolate ice cream for breakfast.  It’s my fault, I bought it.