Wow

Did the EC card drops (and yes, I comment when a post "speaks" to me) and hit my day's 300 just by going through the cards that have been dropped on me since I signed up.

So now I wonder ... how do other EC participants pick and choose at this point? I suppose I can stop hitting the stock trading, sports and car blogs, since those things don't really interest me. Others, like crafting, diets, and pinoy, I like to browse, but I always feel something like guilt since I have nothing to add and can't much relate to. Same goes for the faith blogs - I'm spiritual but not religious.

How do the rest of you do it? (Those of you who, like me, feel compelled to be told "300 a day" otherwise you've let some blog down by not clicking.)

Hydrodynamics and Psychopomps

This morning on my way in to work the hydrants were having problems, spewing water all over the streets (possibly a planned flush, but I didn't see any Water Dept. trucks or workers around). The one on the next hill up from the office was attracting a lot of sparrows to the flow, which had just started to work its way past the corner as I got off the bus.

I slowed to watch the birds playing, and noticed one of them hadn't been quick enough and had been flattened by a vehicle not long before. Poor thing ... and then I wondered, Will a human spirit guide it to some avian afterlife?

In some cultures, birds (most notably the crow in North America, the raven in Europe, and the sparrow on both sides of the Atlantic) are thought to conduct the spirits of the deceased from one plane of existence to the other (brought to popular media by "The Crow" comic books and movies, and perhaps a lesser extent by Stephen King's The Dark Half). Generally speaking, the dark birds take spirits from the land of the dead to the land of the living; sparrows take them the other way.

And then I saw ... The. Coolest. Thing. EVAH. I was still walking slow, watching the water coursing along the opposite curb. It reached the bottom of the dip between the hilltops, shot past the storm drain, and started flowing uphill.

I had to stop to watch, then cross the street to observe more closely. This determined rill just kept going, getting thinner and shallower but still making its way uphill. Finally it reached another drain and that was that.

So now I have to revise my typical point-of-lecture on water and electricity: they usually take the path of least resistance, and flow in very similar manners, but as with most other things in this Universe, once you think you've got it figured out, it will show you how little you knew.

Headaches and Migraines

Doctors have yet to definitively decide the whys and wherefores of headaches. There are no nerve endings within the brain to create "pain," so why we can have headaches is a mystery. So, too, is a riddle that some people can have headaches and others - blessed that they are - never experience a single one.

Doctors do know some causes for headaches. Trauma - a bump to the head - can cause a headache; also hunger, dehydration, lack of sleep, too much sleep, hangovers (from alcohol, actually a combination of low blood sugar and dehydration), noise, eye strain, and muscle tension in the neck and shoulders (often caused by stress).

Aspirin - in its pure form a preparation of bark from the unassuming willow tree - is a known blood-thinner, and quite effective on most common headaches, which leads some to believe that headaches might be caused in part by increased blood pressure within the skull. (Of course, if your headache is caused by lack of food, water, or sleep, aspirin will not help you.)

More, on migraines:

Migraines are another matter. A migraine is a headache on steroids - bigger, stronger, with a nasty temper. Most come with extra concerns: sensitivity to light, noise, scents, even motion; nausea, dizziness, or light-headedness can occur as well. There are different kinds of migraines, and like their tamer cousins, not much is known about their causes. But unlike regular headaches, some migraines can actually cause tiny bits of damage to the brain as they occur.

I'm so special, I get to have three different kinds of migraines, and possibly a fourth (I'm still debating that with the doctors).

The "classic" or tension migraines are the most common type; they are usually caused by stress and can be treated with many over-the-counter (OTC) or prescription (Rx) painkillers, although there are also a multitude of homeopathic remedies and prevention techniques that involve ingesting nothing at all (like warm compresses on the forehead and|or back of neck, a nap, meditation, etc.). I started getting classic migraines when I was fifteen (about 18 years ago - egad, I've lived more of my life with them than without!). The likelihood of falling prey to them seems to run in families; when I got the first one, my mom knew right away what was going on. (Also, for some reason, if as a child you often got "brain freeze" from icy treats, you're more likely to suffer these kinds of migraines as an adult.)

Then there are "band" migraines (that's what I call them, I don't know if neurologists have a special name for them). A "classic" migraine usually hurts in a vaguely bandlike area of pressure across the forehead and around, like where a hat brim would be. But these others are more like a ladies' headband in placement of the pain, further toward the top of the head and just about following the hairline along the ears and toward the back of the neck. Where a classic migraine tends to be "stabbing" or "throbbing" in nature, a band migraine is, for me, more like a grinding sensation, and always comes with extreme intolerance of bright light (fluorescents are brutal) and sharp noises, and urgent nausea that never resolves into anything.

Then there are the "cluster" migraines. I've had these for a long time too, intermittently; for a long time I called them "Random Sharp Pains" because that's what they were: a sudden sensation similar to what I imagine being stabbed through the skull with an ice pick might feel like, lasting a few seconds, then passing without further effect. But about 12 years ago I learned that they are actually migraines, and when they do their stabbing act, they are actually causing tiny tears in the brain tissue. Contrary to what medical science thought for a long time, brain cells do grow back, so the damage can usually repair itself given time. And as I paid more attention to them, I realized they weren't so random: they only occur (for me) in four places, the parietal and temporal lobes.

I am fortunate to have found a medicine that prevents the cluster migraines, and another that prevents most of the classic and band migraines (and when I can't prevent those, I have another prescription to help, which doesn't get rid of the pain but does make it so I don't care that my head hurts).

But the last one, the one in contention, is the one worrying me the most right now ... it doesn't much feel like a headache, it's more like the feeling after a concussion, a ground-glass-in-the-head sort of sensation, and while I've had concussions in the past, I haven't had one in years ... and a couple of years ago, the first time I was getting these non-aches, I went for a CT-scan and I had a "hypodensate mass in the left posterior temporal lobe" - which is doctorese for "a hole in the language center" of my brain. It was unusual in that such things generally only occur in the elderly; it was downright bizarre that, at the follow-up scan two weeks later, it was gone without any sign of having been there, not even the light scarring that is usually found after such things heal.

On the plus side, with all the migraines, I don't much notice normal headaches anymore - usually one of my unfortunate family members points out (from a safe distance) that I seem a bit grumpy, then I think about it and realize my head hurts a little.

Yeah, It's a Monday ...

Some random bits and pieces ...

My eldest daughter, Rose, really likes Gaia Online (no link for them! They've captured enough people without my help) - I'll be nice and not say she has an addiction. But I think I may be making headway in getting her to gain some self-control. Since I have family that uses Facebook^, the Hubby and I decided to let her get an account too. The upshot is, she's transferring some of her addiction to FB. But I also encouraged her to set up her own blog, and she's warming also to the idea of helping me do some reviews on my other blog.

Saturday the Hubby and I got to go out sans kids for the third time this year. It was the "Annual Summer Party" of some local friends; the husband thereof is a master meat-griller, and since the vegetarians that were invited didn't show, the only green in sight was the guacamole. The Hubby scolds me often for not eating better, but once in a while I get to indulge in a meal of just meat - especially since I was at my doctor on Thursday and have gained four pounds! (Yay, me - just six more to go, and I might have a butt again.)

This morning The Boy was complaining his hands were itchy; I suggested he wash them (which, with a nine year old, is always a safe suggestion). After he did he said his fingers still itched, and showed me some little blisters on the side of his middle finger. I recognized right away he'd gotten into some of the poison ivy that is all over the neighborhood; fortunately we have a bar of Burt's Bees Poison Ivy Soap^ and I told him to wash again using that. And then I discovered an interesting thing: my son didn't know how to wash using a bar of soap.

We've been using liquid soap in pump dispensers forever, it seems; generally we refill the dispensers with a 3:1 water-dish soap solution, since we use the antibacterial dish detergent, and that has been working great. But as I supervised his second washing, I saw he had no idea that holding the bar and both hands under a stream of water was not going to help him get the upper hand, so to speak, on the ivy oil. So I educated him on the "old fashioned" way of washing, the while marveling how the little things can seem like such huge, culturally significant changes.

And this afternoon I decided to take the new Flock^ browser for a test-drive ... it's built on the Mozilla FireFox^ technology, but is designed to work with many different social networking, file sharing, and feed aggregating sites and softwares. So far it works like a browser ... I'm not yet committed to an opinion, but rest assured I'll let you know when I form one.

Note to EC Surfers

Apparently some IE users cannot see the EC widget/current ad card. I don't know why this is, or if EC has plans to fix this issue ... so all I can suggest is a better browser.

Let me know (comment on this post or send a message at EC, my card in the right sidebar links to my EC profile) if you have problems viewing the widget or current ad card.

Thanks!