Leap Year Day

This post really has nothing to do with leap year day, but I thought that I should write a blog post to commemorate this rare day.

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I think I might have seasonal affective disorder, so today I went for a walk on my coffee break to boost my vitamin D levels.  But instead of noticing the birds singing in the trees and the hot sun warming my jacket and melting the snow I realized that my face was the only surface area of skin that could absorb vitamin D.  And then I spent the rest of the walk optimizing my vitamin D intact.

Here's what I came up with:

Ways to optimize vitamin D absorption while walking

• Use other surface area of skin ie.  my hands.   Its too bad we live in such a cold climate that all our jackets cover up our skin.

• Optimize my walking route to fully maximize sun exposure by trying to face the sun as much as possible.  

• Change the time of day to get the fullest intensity of sunlight.

I have no idea why I just can't go for a walk and notice the birds like everybody else without trying to optimize everything.

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Here's a picture of me that shows my propensity for reading books and learning.  I think I'm trying to figure out my brothers lego, so he'll let me help him put it together.

I think I'm four, thus my Dora styled haircut was not a decision I made.

Happy Leap Year Day

~b~

A long day.

I had a meeting today in Regina today.  I gotta say, 5 am is really early when you usually start work at 9.

I don't know if it was the fact that I had to spend 5 hours of small talk as we travelled between cities, or that I had to be assertive in presenting my ideas to the other board members or participating in a long conference call when I find it a struggle to listen to people talk, but I am exhausted.

We had some time to kill before we returned so two of us walked over to the downtown mall.

I ended up getting some loose leaf tea from Davids Tea which is ironically called forever nuts.

Here are some pics from my iPhone:

One of my favorite parts of today was being able to make a contact that has access to many different networks of people.  I had been asked earlier this year to be a mentor to some students from my diploma program and I'm looking forward to seeing what I can do, or how I can bridge these two contacts together.  

 I also really enjoyed listening to the lab director describe how he is settling into his life here (he moved from Ontario).  He bought an acreage with 80 acres and is working towards living out his dreams of living that type of lifestyle.  As in buying chickens and roosters type of living.  I love listening and watching people living our their dreams.

~b~

What I've Been Reading Lately

I just starting reading The Emperor of all Maladies.  

Ever since reading the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks my interested has been piqued in health related books.  As I've been reading this book, I've found so many different things fascinating.   Learning of how historical care practices from doctors, who with the best of intentions, but lack of knowledge was really horrific and macabre for the patients.  There really is a fine line between human trials and human experiments that was probably crossed with the best intentions.  

I have to confess, I really know nothing about cancer, with so many different types of cancer, I really didn't know what cancer really was.  I'm so ignorant, I didn't even know that oncology was until I started reading this book.  And I guess that makes be lucky  but I'm retiscent to talk about all the things I've been reading, because I've seen how hard it is for families when I family member has cancer.  So I will leave you with one thing I found interesting.

One interesting thing

When the humoral theory was proposed, with the different fluids of the body (black bile, phlegm, yellow bile, and blood), the only disease that was attributed to black bile was cancer and depression.  I wonder if its because the symptoms of either manifest in a variety of different ways, or that people often look fine on the outside, but are well aware of their "condition" on the inside.  Or that those closest to a person with depression and cancer are also affected by the disease.  

 I'm also reading an interesting article that explores the correlation between your gut microbiota and your metabolism.  This kind of article is a little outside my field of knowledge, but its still pretty interesting, and so far I can grasp what it's saying without googling any of the big words.  

The article is talking about how the gut microbial community has more microorganisms that in the body by "two orders of magnitude".  In my mind I have a tiny universe of microorganisms living inside my gut helping my body with biochemical and metabolic stuff.  Kinda like the locker in Men In Black that holds an entire universe:

 

~b~