June/July 2008 posts

July 24 More Ranting on Pet Peeves I think I have an entry somewhere about how brown eggs are no better for your than white eggs, that they simply come from black hens, and that's why they're brown, whereas the white eggs come from white hens. Well, here are 2 more pet peeves of mine. The first one is about shaving and hair growth. I recently read in a magazine I subscribe to a variety of ways women can remove hair from their legs. Shaving was the first method they spoke about and said that shaving causes the hair to grow back coarser and thicker. This is not true. At my dermatologist's office, they have a book that dispells a bunch of these myths. They rightly pointed out that hair cannot come back thicker because you cannot create more hair follicles in your body than what you're born with through shaving or any other method. It seems so obvious, but I never thought about that until I read it in the dermatologist's office. The other point about hair being coarser is also false. The reason given in this book at the dermatologist's is that the hair only appears to be coarser at first because when you shave, you cut off the hair at its thick part, whereas hair naturally comes to a pointy end. When the hair grows out again, that part that was cut off is what grows out, and it appears to be coarse but really isn't any coarser than it already was. If you let the hair grow long enough, it will eventually taper as would be its original state. So for the record, shaving doesn't make your hair coarser and thicker. The second one is from a commercial I saw on TV yesterday. Of course, TV ads are deceptive anyways, but this one quote something I hear a lot of people say and believe to be true. This is that REM sleep is the deepest sleep phase. This is in fact completely the opposite. I remembered learning during my psychology degree that REM is the lightest sleep phase. This is when you dream, and your brain waves on a graph appear to be almost exactly the same as when you are awake and alert. It is the delta-wave sleep that is the deepest and what causes you to feel rested. I started to doubt my memory having heard the opposite of what I believed to be true for so many years, so I dug out my psych textbooks and confirmed that my memory was not incorrect. So for the record on this one, REM sleep is almost like being awake; D-wave sleep is the deepest sleep. OK, rant is over for the day 10:26 AM | Permalink July 12 Drink Your Fluids! Never let yourselves get dehydrated, folks. It's a terrible experience. And by dehydrated, I don't just mean allowing yourself to feel extra thirsty. I mean, don't get so dehydrated that you develop heat exhaustion. I went out cycling with a friend on Canada Day, thinking I was replenishing my fluids well enough, but apparently I didn't. I woke up the next morning feel nauseus, sore in all my joints, tired, and with a headache. I went to work as normal, and as it was my last day of work and with only having to fulfill 4 more hours to complete my contract, I at least got to come home early. I came home, and I went to sleep for 2 hours more. I had some prior dinner and lunch engagements as well as a job interview that week, but outside of that, I basically stayed at home and slept and rested as much as I could. I saw a doctor in the meantime, but basically, my symptoms remained the same for over a week, and I began to vomit as well. I finally went and saw my own family doctor, who figured that my heat-related illess may have disappeared a while ago and that while my system was down, I developed some kind of viral infection. But he gave me hope that within 48 hours I would see some changes. I don't know how he knew, but sure enough, within 48 hours, there were definite changes. I think part of the greatest help was that my doctor told me I could take Gravol for my nausea, and that helped me to be able to eat. As a foodie, I realise that nausea or stomach-related illness of any sort is the worst illness I can have. When you have a cold or flu, you can eat a little soup or have some comfort food, and it makes you feel better. In this case, nothing you eat makes you feel better, and it fact, it makes you feel worse! But you have to eat. Being able to eat is what helped me gain some strength back, and although I still feel weak and tired, it's nothing like what I was going through just a few days ago. But it's all taking its sweet time to get out of my system! 10:15 AM | Permalink June 30 Meyers Briggs Results It's amazing my profile hasn't changed over the last 15 or 16 years!

You Are An INTJ

The Scientist You have a head for ideas - and you are good at improving systems. Logical and strategic, you prefer for everything in your life to be organized. You tend to be a bit skeptical. You're both critical of yourself and of others. Independent and stubborn, you tend to only befriend those who are a lot like you. In love, you are always striving to improve your relationship. You have strong ideas of what love should be like. At work, you excel in figuring out difficult tasks. People think of you as "the brain." You would make an excellent scientist, engineer, or programmer. How you see yourself: Reasonable, knowledgeable, and competent When other people don't get you, they see you as: Aloof, controlling, and insensitive

What's Your Personality Type? 4:51 PM | Permalink June 19 Rona MS Bike Tour So just some quick news from the bike tour. My pics are up now, and you can see me on my bike actually crossing finish lines. Day 1 was ok; we had tail winds a lot of the way. I was sore, mostly from my seat sliding down and then ending up being too low, which I got fixed the next day. In the evening, they had a dance after the dinner in Camrose, and I don't understand how people had the energy to dance a lot. I could have been out cold at 9. As it was, we went to sleep at about 9:30, but then we couldn't fall asleep right away because suddenly, the dark clouds outside produced some fairly large hailstones, about quarter-sized. It was quite a sight! Anyways, with lunch and rest stops and what not, I managed to do the 90km in about 5.5 hours, which I thought was pretty good. Day 2 was different, though. We had about 30km/hr headwinds pretty much the whole way. It was exhausting, and I had no idea if I would stay alive. It ended up taking me 8.5 hours to do 76km, but I made it. My goal was to just finish on my own and not have to be driven back. I wasn't able to go up all the hills; I did have to walk up them, but it'll give me something to shoot for for next year, and in the meantime, I did do the whole race on my own and didn't get driven in at all. The BBQ lunch they had, which by the time I got there was supper, tasted really, really, good! In any case, they really raise a lot of money for this event, and it's a great way to support a charity while doing great exercise. You get to see birds really nicely, too. You don't get to see birds that close up when you're whizzing by in your car on the highway. I hope to do it again next year, but I just hope there isn't the same wind factor. 8:01 PM | Permalink June 15 Cuba Stories I haven't got to writing my entries here as fast as I was hoping. This is mostly due to the fact that my brother and sister-in-law are in town and staying with me for a little while, so blog writing is not really a priority at the moment. However I have a couple of spare moments, so I thought I would take some time to write a little. Cuba was amazing, what I saw of it, anyways. Unfortunately, I didn't get to go outside the resort as much as I would have liked, so to make up for that, I tried to make friends with the locals that worked at the hotel. Amazing, just amazing people that I fell in love with. And they felt I should be one of them. As one guy said to me: "You look like us, you talk like us, you dance like us, you must be Cuban in your blood." I would have thought that was a pick-up line, except girls were also telling me the same thing. And I felt like I belonged there, even more than in Mexico. It was beautiful. I also managed to get 2 actual marriage proposals and one almost proposal that, had I stayed longer to talk to the guy, probably would have turned into one. One of the guys is still pursuing me through email, so maybe we'll get married one day. Right. But he's very sweet, so who knows. In any case, one of the things that really broke my heart, though, was the sheer poverty there. I mean, people still seem to have enough to have 3 meals and day and stuff, but they just don't make any money. Doctors make the equivalent of about USD20 per month, and an average Cuban makes about USD1 per month, just by comparison. OK, so they get free health care and education, but even still, it would be hard to afford a lot of other things. I learned that gas is 65 cents a leader, and I was thinking at first that it was so cheap, and then later thinking about how little money people make, how could they afford gas? The reality is that most Cuban people can't even afford cards, so I guess gas is not usually an issue, but it is all connected in interesting ways. And despite all this, the people are so generous and warm that I couldn't help but love them. I hope to go back there, and if any of you readers know how I can find work there or how to volunteer for a period of time, please let me know! I can't wait to go back there. 8:59 PM | Permalink | Travel June 04 Couple of New Albums Will write some Cuba stories later, but for now, will post an album for it as well as one of some flowers around Corbett Hall over the next few days. 9:15 PM | Permalink