I have misidentified plenty of plants and the compass flower is one of them. We were walking the Clear Creek trail the other day and saw what I thought was a patch of compass flowers. See what you think, judging from the featured image.
Anyway, I thought the flower itself pointed in a particular direction, but it’s actually the leaves as I rediscovered after looking it up.
As a real expert points out, it’s the edges of the leaves that point North/South.
Ok, the other day, we were out to U-Haul, not to get more boxes, thank goodness, but so I could use the bathroom.
There was this new sign on the door laying down the law about how construction workers should keep it clean-or else.
You should know that the Iowa City U-Haul is building a huge new facility with tons of self-storage. I can’t tell you how much money we’ve spent on boxes, packing wrap, and tape and more. We kept going back for more punishment.
After the moving was done, I couldn’t bring myself to even look at the U-Hall sign whenever we passed it. It just reminded me of the pain. I can’t even avoid it when I look out the hotel window. Yes, there are two U-Haul centers, one in Coralville and the big one going up in Iowa City. I can see the Huge U-Haul sign rising above the Long Horn Steakhouse. I can’t unsee it.
I remember detasseling corn when I was a kid, and some of you may remember that if you grew up in the midwest where people grow corn just to torture kids who need a summer job. At the end of the day of detassling, when I collapsed on my bed, my hands curled into claws from grabbing tassels, I would close my eyes-and not be able to sleep because I would hallucinate with closed eyes miles and miles of corn fields.
The same kind of thing happened after all the packing was done. I closed my eyes and saw nothing but corrugated cardboard boxes. I can’t unsee it.
Where was I? Oh, yeah, the U-Haul lavatory law. How do you ban the construction guys from using the bathroom? They’re the ones building the new U-Haul complex, complete with a zillion self-storage units.
More important, what did the construction guys do to get the book thrown at them like that? Did they try to flush boxes down the toilet? Did they stick packing wrap all over the mirror? Did they tape the flush lever down? It’s impossible to tell now; the bathroom is spotless.
I’m tempted to ask the U-Haul clerks about it. But that means I would have to return to U-Haul. Not that. Can’t do it; won’t do it. You can’t make me. I’ll use another bathroom.
We’ve been in the hotel a couple of weeks now. We’ll probably be here 2 months until our house is built. Making it livable is about keeping it simple.
While we were busy packing and moving out of our old house, we got away from regular habits that helped keep us happier and at least somewhat saner.
We’re working to get back to that.
Have you noticed where the Weather Channel is going lately with its commercials? We’ve been staying in a hotel while our house is being built and the TV defaults to the Weather Channel-no matter which channel it’s on when you turn it off.
OK, what’s up with the Blue Chew commercials? I honestly thought it was about chewing tobacco with food coloring until I noticed (and how could you not notice?) that there were several women with serious cleavage holding up a bag with the name “Blue Chew” on it and repeating the name over and over.
Is the Weather Channel hurting for sponsors that now they have to swing chesty women in front of you to get your attention? It used to be about barometric pressure. Now it’s about boobymongous babes.
This commercial gets heavy rotation. You notice the women more than the weather. Maybe that’s the idea. You don’t notice how bad the weather is because the in-your-face mammaries on parade compete for your attention.
I know this sounds like a guy thing-and it is. On the other hand, the big boob picture, (I mean the big picture), are all the in-your-face commercials you see nowadays: Lume, Artificial Intelligence (how many times do you see the Google Gemini jingle in a minute?), and “Bienvenido la vida mas fina?”
What’s your favorite annoying commercial? When I look back, I think of the old Rice Krispies opera style commercial in 1967.
I’m out of sync with the Big Mo Blues Show and his podcast, mostly because we’re in the middle of this big move and we’re staying in a hotel waiting for this house to be built. I missed his most recent show, but caught the one before that.
The podcast title was “Goodness is a Practice.” Big Mo mentioned that moving (among a lot of other sorrows and hardships) could cause the blues-and he’s right.
But some perspective on it shows that a lot of other troubles take priority over moving (even though boxes are bad, admit it). Troubles that call for a little human decency are just one variety. Practicing goodness would come in handy right about now, in a lot of places.
We’re moving back a little closer to Coralville although technically we’ll still be in Iowa City. We always used to walk the Clear Creek Trail. It’ll be good to be back.
This is one of the latest Rounding@Iowa podcasts and it’s about new treatments for Azheimer’s Disease, with one specific agent called Lecanemab.
I’m an old psychiatrist, and I remember my clinical impresson of the previous medications for Alzheimer’s Disease, one of which was Donepezil. The scientific literature seemed to suggest that patients and families were more impressed with Donepezil than clinicians were.
According to Dr. Shim, one of the participants in the podcast, it’s been 20 years since there has been a new treatment for Alzheimer’s Disease-and the long term effectiveness of Lecanemab is uncertain.
In addition, there are significant risks associated with the agent as well. As you can guess, it’s very expensive, and while Medicare pays for some of the cost, the podcast participants mentioned that it was difficult to get some treatment monitoring imaging studies covered.
Patients and their physicians need to have a full discussion of the risks and benefits of treatments for Alzheimer’s Disease. It’s just as important to avoid the use of certain drugs that are known to worsen cognitive function, such as benzodiazepines and anticholinergics.
When we moved into the hotel we’re camping in to wait for our house to be built, I rediscovered the joy of driving the bellman’s luggage cart. Does anyone besides me find this a major challenge?
I always get the cart with the crazy, wobbly wheel. Worse yet, they are impossible to steer and the rack itself is prone to popping out of the cart! I then get preoccupied with replacing the rack back in the dysfunctional hole while our luggage starts to tip over and the wobbly wheel prevents me from steering the thing into and out of the elevator.
I think all bellman’s luggage carts are haunted. They are possessed by the spirits of bellmen who didn’t get tipped.
That is why you should smudge the carts. I don’t mean you should actually rub dirt on them (they’ve got enough of that already). I mean you should get somebody who knows how to do that ritual to get rid of the bad energy in the cart. I think they usually burn sage (or maybe thyme?).
Our hotel is about a 20 minute walk from the shopping mall. Both ways it’s about a 2.5 mile walk. I’ve been over there a few times and I think I’m becoming a mall walker.
The other day at the mall, an older lady approached me and asked me if I’d help open her water bottle, which I was glad to do. It was too tight for her to twist open. She told me a couple of times how she’d traveled to Iceland recently.
On one of my visits to the mall, I sat down in front of a clothing store. Most mannikins have full heads, but at this one, they had only half a head. The top half was gone. I don’t know what it means for a clothing store to have half-head mannikins.
Maybe they’re trying to say, “Hey, if you have half a brain, you’ll shop at our store.”
We saw a sign in the hotel elevator that made us curious. Part of it said:
“There are also lots of ways to get out and soak up some good ‘ol vitamin D from our saline pool to our grill and patio area.”
Not to quibble or get too sciency (“sciency” turns out to be a real adjective by the way, at least in the Oxford English Dictionary), but the bit about soaking up vitamin D from a saline pool is a little confusing. I suspect that sentence was about an outdoor pool. But at our hotel, the pool is indoors.
Here’s the thing. You can’t soak up Vitamin D through a window. And salt water doesn’t have anything to do with vitamin D absorption. In fact, the way we learned in medical school which vitamins are soluble in water was to memorize the acronym “ADEK.” Vitamins A, D, E, and K are fat soluble, not water soluble. You can’t get Vitamin D from swimming in a saline pool. Saline is still water.
According to the National Institute of Health (NIH) web page for the public about Vitamin D, your skin can’t make it from sunlight through a window.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t health benefits from swimming in a salt water pool. For example, an article on the Healthline web site says it may be better for people with allergies or asthma, or if you can’t stand the smell of chlorine.
On the other hand, you certainly can soak up the sun and Vitamin D from the grill and patio area. Be sure to use sunscreen!
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