health, wellbeing

Everybody wants to talk about their health. And here’s where it all happens.

a week without coffee

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No coffee for one week now.  The last coffee I had was 1/3 Folgers, 1/3 Starbucks house blend, and 1/3 nothing but empty space.  The second-to-last was one spoon of Folgers and the rest Starbucks house blend.  Before that, nothing but straight high-test espresso beans steamed in a mocha pot.  But all that’s history now.

I had a couple of days where I ate enough Tylenols and ibuprofens to kill a good sized horse, but I’m pretty much in the clear now.  Only 2 ibuprofens.  So what are the side effects of quitting almost cold-turkey?  Headaches, a couple of backaches, sleepiness, and, believe it or not, sore hips.  Yes, three nights in a row I woke up during the night with sore hips.  I never would have imagined.  Yes, it could be from something else, but I don’t believe so.

So – will I ever drink coffee again?  Hmm.  I once went 346 days without coffee overseas.  I walked by a Starbucks on Jungang Ro (Street) and had a triple Americano.  I remember the euphoric rush of caffeine wash over me as I sat at my little round table with a copy of the IHT.  Utter and complete bliss.

All that is a distant memory now.

heart scare

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I woke up at 3:30am to a fire alarm.

Okay, so it wasn’t a fire alarm but, rather, an alarm clock.  It was F‘s.  He’d had it for several years but no longer wanted it.  It’s one of those folding travel clocks, wind-up, of course.  Because I collect old pre-antique things (vintage, you might say), it was a nice addition to my collection of clocks and other such devices.  I had no idea I had set it for 3:30am.

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N95 explanation

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In working with wood, I bought N95 masks several years ago.  They were, after all, the best ones one could buy.  So shopping at Rona a week ago, they only had regular dust masks.  I asked why they didn’t have N95 masks on the shelves yet.  It’s been a year since the newest coronavirus had been discovered.  Couldn’t the supply chain have ramped up supply for the demand by now?

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cytokine … for better or worse

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My sister called me today – at work.  She wanted to know how Mum was doing.  Paramedics had come by the house yesterday to test Mum for the COVID-19 virus.  The test wasn’t carried out because she was, according to other diagnostics, not infected.  Had she been, she’d cease to be, already weakened by cancer.

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the slow blink

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I have noticed this with almost all cats – certainly all my cats.

Why Cats Do the “Slow Blink” at Their Owners

I’ve used the slow blink thing as a way of communicating with them.  It seemed to show a message of trust, and, with strange cats, their tails usually stop twitching back and forth.  It’s nice to see this level of understanding with cats.  …  There are dog people, bird people, even reptile people – but I’ve always had cats – or, rather, they’ve always had me.

COVID-19 / Coronavirus

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By now, everyone on the planet knows about the spread of COVID-19 / Coronavirus.  Every news agency in the world is reporting on this daily, and daily it gets worse.  Our neighbour to the south, the USA, is said to be the worst of the industrialized nations.  Their testing was and is inadequate, which let it spread without much check.  Remember Ebola?  They weren’t prepared then, either.  Here to the north, we’ve closed our border with the US (the longest free border in the world), except for essential services, in hopes of stemming it.

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