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Casey’s Pizza Deja Vu
We had a deja vu thing with our final move out of the hotel and into our new house. Just before we first moved into the hotel two months ago, it was really late at night and we stopped at Casey’s to get a pizza. We were exhausted. Today, we finally moved out of the…
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The Cat is a Witness?
I have watched the Men in Black movies dozens of times, and I still get a little puzzled at the scene in which Agent J ask the deputy medical examiner (Laurel) where the cat Orion is. Orion is carrying a tiny galaxy on its collar. You’ll have to see the movie to get the context…
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Alcohol is Bad for Old Guys
I took a quick peek at the study published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that a few news agencies are reporting on which says alcohol in moderation is bad for older persons. So much for moderation. Actually, the full abstract is: Ortolá R, Sotos-Prieto M, García-Esquinas E, Galán I, Rodríguez-Artalejo F. Alcohol Consumption Patterns…
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Bird Watching Stories Are Like Fishing Tales
We finally got a couple of videos of a goldfinch! It has been years since I’ve been able to catch a brilliant male goldenrod and it happened last week on the Clear Creek Trail. In fact, we saw a few birds with the usual idiosyncratic behavior. Goldfinch are rocket fast and hate getting caught on…
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Practicing the Reverse Cascade Juggling Pattern
I’ve been practicing the reverse cascade lately. It’s slow progress but faster than the shower pattern. You start with the regular cascade pattern and gradually work into making every throw over the top instead of under. I still do a lot of windmilling. I’ll get there-I think.
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Excelsior!
The health benefits of climbing stairs are well known and I’ve talked about them before. However, you haven’t really seen stair climbing in action until you’ve watched Sena ascend the stairs in our hotel. There are 4 flights of 10 steps each. Doing it just once can puff you out. The keyword for this is…
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Thoughts as Train Cars Visualization in Mindfulness Meditation
The Iowa Interstate Railroad train rumbles past our hotel a few times a day and it reminds me of the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course I took 10 years ago. One of the exercises the instructor mentioned was the train visualization mindfulness exercise. I don’t know if I remember what our instructor actually said…
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Dirty Laundromania
Because we’re staying in a hotel waiting for our house to be built, we have to take a different approach with our laundry. There are laundry facilities at the hotel, but there aren’t many machines. Sena usually takes it to a place called Laundromania. The motto is “We Never Clothes.” I went with her the…
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Verbal De-escalation Education Videos
I was looking at the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry (ACLP) and discovered a free online video educational series on verbal de-escalation of agitated patients. It reminded me of my own early attempts to educate trainees about this very important topic (see my post “A Little Too Exuberant”). The Simpson et al presentation includes 5 free…
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Flora and Fauna Under the Hot Iowa Sun
The other day we walked the Terry Trueblood Trail (when do we not do that?) and saw interesting sights. I finally got a video clip of a goldfinch! And a male northern cardinal either sang to us or cussed us out. It was hard to tell. It was a scorcher out there. We started out…
Go Retire Psychiatrist 