What’s the Skinny on Indoor Saline Pools and Vitamin D?

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!

When Do We Get Out of the Woods?

We were out walking the Terry Trueblood Trail the other day. It’s always good to get out of the hotel where we’re staying until our house is built. I get this cooped up feeling and it feels great to escape.

While we were on the trail, we saw this huge field of giant, golden prairie plants that looked familiar. It lined both sides of the walking trail. It was giant mullein. We saw it for the first time a couple of years ago while walking the trail.

Anyway, when you got perspective on it, it gave a sense of coming out of the dark, coming out of the woods.

It reminded me of that scene in Wizard of Oz when Dorothy and the guys emerge from the dark woods into the light. There’s this great little song in the scene that I finally discovered is called “Optimistic Voices.” I found this blog post about it posted back in 2015 by a writer named Marti Wukelic. The blog is called Is There Life After Retirement?

It captured how I felt that day, surrounded by giant mullein. I know that sounds ironic because we were in a sense in the woods of a field of giant prairie plants.

But giant mullein is a sunny color. On both sides of the trail, it rose high above our heads. It was like a giant, golden hallway to heaven and we were stepping into the sun.

Hotel Kitchen Notes

I need to make a note about the kitchenette in our hotel room. It’s big enough for Sena to cook a meal in, but small enough for me to knock the meal on the floor.

The kitchen has a fridge with freezer, yet lettuce freezes in the fridge. We have really crunchy salads. It has a microwave. It doesn’t have a stove but you can get a portable induction cooktop, believe it or not.

Sena cooked fantastic chili on that cooktop, which reminded us of the induction cooktop in the house we moved out of.

There’s no oven. But Sena cooked a frozen pizza in our Presto deep dish fry pan. That was a neat trick.

The only thing I did in the kitchen at our house was heat up frozen pizza. Now I don’t even do that. Every time I stick my head in the fridge, I bump my head on the bottom of the freezer door. In fact, I have not done anything in the kitchenette so far but make trouble.

I lost a cooking challenge once for not completing a dish. I ran out of thyme.




Workout at the Hotel!

We’re camping out in a hotel while our new house is being built. We tried out the exercise equipment. It has been tough to exercise what with all the chores of showing and selling the house, moving all our stuff into storage, and now adjusting to living in a hotel (which will be for a couple of months).

The hotel has a Peloton bicycle. We tried it. One of the foot straps was missing, and we didn’t try the free workout offer.

As some of you know, I wrote a blog post about the Peloton machine a while back, comparing it to my anti-Peloton bike. The title is “The Anti-Peloton Exercise Bicycle.” As part of the moving process, we donated the old bike to charity.

We’re not planning to invest in a Peloton any time soon.

Hotel Iowa

Well, we’re in the next stage of relocation, which is the Hotel California-excuse me, I mean the Hotel Iowa, so to speak. We’re camping out a hotel while our house is under construction.

We were up well after midnight moving before we got to the hotel. We had a Casey’s pizza for dinner.

The movers got all our stuff into storage-right up to the door. They’re magicians.

The hotel has a really nice complimentary breakfast.

Boxes Are Everything!

As if you haven’t already guessed long before now, we’re moving. I don’t need to tell any of you what a happy, thrilling, fulfilling experience this is. Right.

The added wrinkle this time is that we’re camping out in a hotel while our house is being built. The only reason you’ve seen any blog posts from me lately is that I’ve been posting ahead of my usual schedule until I figure out if the hotel wifi works.

This could go on for a couple of months.

The Svengoolie Movie the Leech Woman and What About the Pineal Gland?

OK, so I watched the Svengoolie movie, “The Leech Woman” a couple of weeks ago and I think I missed the part where the June Talbot was told that the potion containing the pineal gland secretion and powdered flower parts entailed the requirement that the pineal gland secretion should come from a man. You can read the Wikipedia plot summary for background and watch the movie for free on the internet archive.

Leave aside for the moment that the film tries to make you think you can have easy access to the pineal gland through the back of the neck using a sharp point on a ring. Of course it’s deep inside the brain.

What I don’t remember is whether or not June was ever told that the pineal gland secretion has to come from a man in order to reverse aging. It won’t work if it comes from a woman. Aside from devaluing women in general, it was never clear to me that June was ever told that by Malla, the African woman who is over 150 years old but looks like she’s 20 when she gets her shot of pineal and petal.

I’ve looked on the internet for reviews which mention the mistake June makes when she murders her lawyer’s fiancée who is unhappy that June managed to easily seduce him. She’s so unhappy she threatens June with a pistol in a confrontation that gets rather comically violent, resulting a in struggle leading to June stabbing the fiancée in the back of the neck, obviously in an effort to get the priceless pineal juice.

What’s weird about this (other than the obviously ridiculous premise that pineal glands have anything to do with aging or rejuvenation) is that June apparently either forgets or never realized that the pineal stuff has to come from a male to be effective.

What’s even more puzzling is that, before assaulting a woman for the pineal fluid, June had adopted a predatory strategy to pop the pineals of several men, leading you to believe she knew the source had to be a man.

So, is this an example of dementia or stupidity?