New phone, new frustrations

I have a new phone! YAY!

Folks tend to get really excited for me when I say that. It is the first time I have said that. I on the other hand have little interest in fancy phones. I still maintain that a telephone should remain just that, a telephone. I started to lament on facebook and realised that my friends are all fancy phone fans. And so here I am in my space, whining.

Hubby loves his technology so he quickly unpacked the phone and did all the work that was needed to switch me over to the new one. I didn't have a chance to say good-bye to the old phone. Just like that the old one was made redundant. I was a bit upset about that. I wanted to figure this one out for myself and have only the basics installed. But it has a dozen or so apps.

I have now had it for almost two days and I have added most of my contacts. It is not a long list, but this phone is some Google based thingy and I can access all my contacts on gmail through the phone. How crazy creepy is that?

Anyhow I started to add contacts and then wanted to delete/edit and kept dialing their numbers instead. So I decided to be all tech savvy and do an internet search for a user manual and imagine my frustration when I find page after page of how cool the apps are and all that you could do with the phone EXCEPT make a fucking phone call! Now don't get me wrong, I have warmed up to the texting and I find it useful to be able to be in touch on my terms. I am not (at least not yet) compelled to respond right away and most of the time it is 24 hours before I respond. And the folks I am in touch with understand that and will call me if it is a matter of life and death, because that is what you do when something is a matter of life and death - call the person and bloody speak to them!

Today as I sit here with my coffee at eight o'clock on a Saturday morning trying to register my kid for swimming lessons (and the website won't load and the phone lines are jammed) I just want to go back in time to rotary phones. No missed calls, no voice mail, no face on the other end, just a voice. You either spoke to them when they called or never knew they did. There is something to be said for those times. Communication was precious.

Now here's hoping I don't disappear again until the next phone I will have to buy. I have to don't I? These phones, as fancy as they are aren't as hardy.

Happy weekend folks. 

Exciting

I have been obsessed with the malaria parasite for nearly a decade now. Not like a scientist in a laboratory would be, but it my own way. I kept up with the research, kept thinking it through, drawing my own diagrams and often wondering what I would do if I were the parasite. I have lots of respect for this bug. It is very clever. I say that for lack of a better word.

Now scientists are getting closer to finding a vaccine. It is very exciting that they have identified the receptors involved.  After reading this I went looking for one of my first papers on malaria, written nearly eleven years ago (nerd, I know, I keep them all). I also kept it because I enjoyed writing it so much. The good thing about keeping old papers is that I get to revisit questions I was not able to answer back then, questions that come up when you do your literature reviews. Sometimes the papers are down right embarrassing.

What I had learned back then was that the four different types of malaria parasites seem to be attracted to red blood cells in various stages of development. P.falciparum, the most virulent of them all, invades red cells of all ages where as P.vivax and P.ovale prefer younger red cells and P.malariae seeks mature cells. So my question was to do with the difference in molecular structure of the red blood cells in its various stages of development. This article kind of gets at that. I am sure it is a matter of time before we learn enough to confer protection for those most at risk.

Sometimes it is just as exciting to be a spectator of science. I love it!

My Summer love

I met this beauty a few years ago. She was behind a house we were inspecting to buy. I really didn't like the house, but Hubby was sold. I knew there was no convincing him otherwise.

This Tree, she drew me in the way only a few other trees have in my lifetime. She's a Pear Tree. I didn't know that at the time. She was just standing there with beautiful drooping branches; a light dusting of snow on her elegant body; she looked simply ravishing.  I figured even if I never grew to like the house I could at least look out the large windows and drift away with this tree. I also resolved to sketch her when we'd moved in (sadly it is something I have not found the time to do yet).

I have to admit she has never disappointed me. As the snow melted and the rain came, her dark branches stood out against the more feeble shrubs and trees. She stood there, majestic and filled the promise of green. But what a pleasant surprise it was when she burst into blossoms, all white with a touch of pink, so subtle you had to feel it. And when the breeze kissed her branches she would laugh her petals all over me. I was falling in love.                                                                                                            

 

Soon bright green leaves took the place of the blossoms. The colour of peace, serenity and warm weather that holds you in an embrace so gentle and firm. I was in love!

Yet again she surprised me with all the fruit she bore. Pears galore! Her beautiful branches were now garlands of fruit. All the pictures in the world cannot do justice to what you feel at her sight. I was not surprised that she was never without visitors.

The Oriole would stop by often for a meal or a snack.
Mrs Racoon was there with her young ones.
The squirrels are almost always there.
And then there were the cardinals, the jays, the sparrows and chickadees and finches and blackbirds...She was never alone. The rare moments I had her all to myself were something special.

And as the warm weather began to recede and the cold Autumn winds set in her leaves turned to gold. She didn't look all that pretty with bare patches and bits of dying leave. It pained me to see her go. But she was there in spirit to remind me of warm weather to come and our secret Summer trysts.

She's back now looking like a young bride ready to walk down the aisle. So I may not spend as much time here as I will with my dear Pear Tree, my Summer love!

Mrs MD

You might remember the post about the mourning dove that picked the tree in our front yard to nest this year. She had two chicks and then she was gone. Or so I was told. I was away for a month and couldn't stalk her like I had been doing since she showed up.

Mrs MD with her chicks, they look rather scary

When I returned my neighbour mentioned she was back and calling for her chicks. I knew she was not that stupid. And guess what? She is nesting again!! The best part about it that our toddler is learning to quietly watch her every day and says, "hi biddie." 

I hope "biddie" gets her chicks out of the eggs and is off in good time. It is getting a bit chilly now.

Yay for Mrs Mourning Dove!

Why they are called mourning doves beats me. I love these quiet birds. It is always nice to see them in the yard. They are not pesky like the red-winged black birds or the grackle for that matter. Anyways, my neighbour pointed out a nest Mrs MD had built right in front of our house. She was nesting in a really low branch and seemed quite content when I saw her two days ago and took this picture.

Since then I have checked on her everyday to make sure she was there and hadn't abandoned her babies-to-be. Yesterday I was really concerned for her when the weather guys forecast gale force winds and tornadoes. We had also experienced a teeny bit of seismic activity earlier in the day. So naturally, me being me, was super concerned. When heavy rain woke me up at 4:00 am I actually though of her before I thought of my son sleeping in his room.

Well, she seems to be doing fine and sit sitting pretty. Keep your fingers and toes and whatever else crossed for my Mrs MD.

Its 2010!!

I know we are well into the new year, but the last couple of weeks I have sort of been living in the past. I have stalked all my old friends on Facebook, listened to music from the nineties and thought of what might have been if I had done one thing over another.

Anyways...I just got home and was making myself a cup of coffee when I heard Des'ree on the radio. That song takes me to the mid nineties. So I was going about my business getting my coffee, thinking of dinner when it hit me that we are way past the mid-two thousand(?). We are into the second decade of the new millennium??!! And I had to Google the word to make sure I was saying the right thing.

2010 was supposed to be when robots ruled the world and we were flying around in space cars. But instead we are still walking, driving crappy cars and making our own coffee...where is my robot?!!

Sweet Surprise

You sometimes put something away and forget all about it, like a few dollars in the secret compartment of your wallet/purse or whatever you call it. Sometimes you wonder if the bulbs that come out of the pots that you are clearing away for the winter will come up the following year and put them away. 

So, while I was looking for something the other day I found some dahlia bulbs that I left in a pot over the winter. I brought it into the house and left it by the back door where all my houseplants reside for the winter, and while giving my babies a drink I just gave the dahlia pot a touch of water too. Well, what do you know, I walk over to say good morning to my flora this morning and lo and behold, my dahlias are coming up! I so love these little surprises, so much better than diamonds or pearls.

Mammary Glands

Mammary glands, more commonly known as breasts or boobs, are specialised sweat glands. Although the secretion is not quite the same as sweat, it nevertheless is a sweat gland. And hence I wonder what the obsession with it is? It is a mass of adipose tissue (fancy way of saying fat) with a lot of ducts that allow milk production and secretion during pregnancy and lactation, that being the purpose of those glands. But some would argue that is serves more than that just the purpose of satiating a howling infant. I won't get into that.

I got to thinking a lot about it over the weekend because I went shopping for support apparatus for the glands. As I paid the hefty bill, I wondered why men are turned on by big breasts, is it a sign of heightened fertility in women or something? And it must be because men are attracted to larger glands that women strive to increase their size, some of them, at any cost. There are however women that have had to battle the constant attention their glands have attracted due to their size, and the battle goes up one level when these women get pregnant - one can easily go up two sizes, and in some cases the growing fetus does not overshadow the growing bossoms. So much so that people notice the breasts before the belly.

So perhaps the easy solution for women with smaller breasts is to get pregnant? And if a man's only complaint about a woman he likes is that she has smaller breasts, then he should get her pregnant and watch it grow? And it will grow by the day! And I hear from the veterans that the size never goes back to the pre-pregnancy size. So...hope for the teeny ladies and not so much hope for the buxom ones.

(picture courtesy funny-potato.com)

Sink or swim

You eat a meal and it takes around two to three hours to clear most of the gastrointestinal tract before settling in the colon for further absorption and breakdown. A lot of people empty their bowels once or twice a day, at least they should. When they do, I wonder how often people take a look at their poo poo? I certainly do! You poo poo can tell a lot about you.

What should it look like? This question came up in a class discussion on recycling hemoglobin (I say this, in case you are wondering if I sit around thinking crappy thoughts).

So what should it look like? According to most literature on defaecation, it should appear brown, not too soft or pebbly as far as the consistency goes, and it should sink, and of course as Oprah's handsome doc Oz would say, dive in smoothly without a splash!

Think about this the next time you take a dump, and take a peek.