"Romanesco" cauliflower
I can't wait for this weekend to be done. It should be a great weekend, but I haven't been able to sleep a whole lot, tossing the whole speech around in my brain. Today, Dana and I will drive down to Santa Barbara, about 90 miles south, to the Fess Parker Resort. We will check into a garden suite for 2 nights, which we get because I was one of the top 3 fundraisers for the SLOHS team. How nice, thank you donors! Check in is around 4:00, get all the race stuff, Inspiration dinner at 6:00, give an inspiring speech at 7:30 or so, and asleep at 10:00. Get up and walk 13.1 miles starting at 8:00, nice cool weather, and the walk is along the beachfront.
It is going to take me about 4 hours, anything less is fine, anything more is fine too. This has been a taper down week, and my hip feels worse than ever. My body is trying all kinds of tricks to get out of this, faking a cold yesterday, ankle aching every day under no strain, body bullshit and I am calling it a liar and a fake.
We get this box of organic vegetables every Thursday from a local farm, filled with good things. This week we had "braising" mixed greens (a bunch of oriental stuff), green colored "Romanesco" cauliflower or broccoli florets, celery, carrots (thick manly tubers), lipstick peppers (to go with the carrots), salad mix, butternut squash, "sierra gold" potatoes, a bag of "Valencia" oranges and a pomegranate.
Every week we struggle to eat all of this, and I end up having to make things I have never tried before. A couple of weeks ago I made apple cobbler and apple pie - the cobbler was good, the pie just ok. Last night Dana braised the braising vegetables in oil and garlic. She ate hers like a bowl of spinach, and I wrapped mine with roast turkey and cheddar in a burrito. I think she had it right.
I started my Literacy Council tutoring this week with a student from Mexico City. He speaks okay English, but needs reading and writing skills. We had some mix-ups on scheduling, and I had to find him parked out fron of the meeting place, in his Lexus. He has been here 7 years and works (worked) in construction, now unemployed and waiting out the economy. Smart of him to upgrade his skills during the lull. We will have a good time getting this done.
I am stepping up and volunteering at the Hearst Cancer Support Center also. I have been going there and meeting with a support group, and started taking Tai Chi Chen. I am the only guy, and the youngest, but it is a lot of fun. Maude from Harold and Maude is in the class. I also went to a laughing class last Monday, and it was a lot of fun practicing laughing.
Saw my Doc yesterday and all is OK. Testosterone level is trashed and I will be supplementing as soon as we get prescription straightened out, so this may be my last week in choir. Steroids are still kicking my butt as far as sleep cycle, but oh well, maybe I should quit all the coffee and Cokes, duh. So, good luck to me, bon chance, buena suerte, I will post the speech with pics when I get back.
Holy Ho-Spiced produce ! ! ! !
ReplyDeleteAlly’all out there in California is just blowin my mind. And, trust me on this one, down here in Bama, any talkin about “thick manly tubers” would not be relatin to a vegetable conversation. Don’t y’all get any okra out there? And lipstick peppers – geez – what is that? I called WalMart - yeah, they’re outa those. What’s a pomegranate? Sounds like somethin we use to make headstones down here.
I don’t know what da hell that thing was you pictured on the site, but my suggestion would be to deep, deep fry that booger before it gets any weirder. Speakinawich, we’re all breaken out our outdoor propane deep fryers down here gettin ready fer Turkey Day. I’m thinkin about taken down oneathem little wild piglets out back and squeeze his fat little butt into the fryer. Gives a whole different meanin to “squeal like a pig” now, dontit?
I guess we just do things a little different down here. It’s so much easier for us to cook. It comes down to just three choices – fry it, grill it or pickle it.
And hey, when did Davey Crockett build a, whatyacallit, “resort” in California. Is that onea those places where you play paintball war games? COOL. I didn’t know y’all were inta that.
Oh yeah, an there’s another good one from your Litter-acy Council update; an unemployed Mexican in a Lexus. Now that’s California! I mean, c’mon, what the hell’s wrong with a rusty old 89 Ford F150? Reminds me of drivin my beamer down to file for unemployment. Had I not had a gunrack in the back a that sucker and a fresh buck tied to the right fender, I woulda been in big trouble. It pays to be sensitive about stuff like that.
Cain’t wait to see/hear your speech.
Mac
eat your beets, harold, and DO try to be a little more...vivacious!
ReplyDeletei probably did it again--neglected to think that not everybody might have memorized that entire movie?
oh well, Mac is right as usual--California is a little different. You're saying people over there actually WANT you to speak? !
take full advantage! back here in toon town people are still yelling shaddup shaddin up
looking forward to seeing it--who knows, maybe I'll even turn the volume on.
Arch Intern Med. 1996 Jun 10;156(11):1173-7.
ReplyDeleteTestosterone therapy in glucocorticoid-treated men.
Reid IR, Wattie DJ, Evans MC, Stapleton JP.
Department of Medicine, University of Auckland (New Zealand).
Comment in:
* Arch Intern Med. 1996 Jun 10;156(11):1133-4.
BACKGROUND: Treatment with glucocorticoid drugs is a valuable therapy, but the use of these drugs is associated with major side effects, including osteoporosis, muscle wasting, and obesity. In men who take glucocorticoids, circulating testosterone concentrations are reduced, and this might contribute to the changes in bone and soft-tissue mass. OBJECTIVE: To asses the effect of testosterone replacement on these above-mentioned parameters in glucocorticoid-treated men. METHODS: Fifteen asthmatic men who were receiving long-term glucocorticoid treatment were randomly allocated to receive therapy with testosterone esters (30 mg of proprionate, 60 mg of phenylprionate, 60 mg of isocaproate, and 100 mg of decanoate [Sustanon]) (250-mg/mo intramuscular depot injection) or to act as control subjects during 12 months. After a washout period for those men who were receiving testosterone, the groups were then crossed over and studied for a further 12 months. Bone density and body composition were assessed by dual-energy, x-ray absorptiometry. Paired or unpaired 2-tailed t tested were calculated. Unless otherwise stated, all values are given as mean +/- SEM. RESULTS: Bone density in the lumbar spine increased 5.0% +/- 1.4% (mean +/- SEM) (P = .005) during testosterone supplementation, but it did not change during the control period (between-groups difference, P = .05). These changes were accompanied by a decrease in the indexes of bone turnover. There was a gain in body fat mass (2.1 +/- 0.06 kg, P = .01) and a loss of lean body mass (1.4 +/- 0.5 kg, P = .02) during the control period, with both changes being reversed by testosterone treatment (P < .03). CONCLUSION: Testosterone treatment reverses the deleterious effects glucocorticoid drugs on skeletal and soft tissues in men.
PMID: 8639011 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Publication Types, MeSH Terms, Substances
Publication Types:
* Clinical Trial
* Randomized Controlled Trial
* Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
MeSH Terms:
* Aged
* Asthma/drug therapy
* Body Composition/drug effects*
* Bone Density/drug effects*
* Calcium/metabolism
* Glucocorticoids/adverse effects*
* Glucocorticoids/antagonists & inhibitors
* Glucocorticoids/therapeutic use
* Humans
* Lipids/blood
* Male
* Middle Aged
* Testosterone/pharmacology
* Testosterone/therapeutic use*
Substances:
* Glucocorticoids
* Lipids
* Testosterone
* Calcium
Lin bill mcniff
Dear Pat,
ReplyDelete“Toon town.” Now why is it called that? From what I read lately, one does not want to toon one’s knee surgery, for fear of cutting the one on the sunset side of a sunrise blown out knee. What the hell are your Docs doing up there??? Have they smoked too much R.I. Seaweed, or are there really bad oysters fogging their memory?
John, if that hip issue keeps troubling you, please reject the autoresponse to flying back to R.I. for surgery. Shit, you could end up with yer neck being down below your knees somewhere.
Just thought I would invite a little smack talk for all that Bama chatter. We're feelin pretty high here about the Tide Rollin.
Mac
Mac I wasn't gonna answer, but the verification word is 'laments' so how can I resist.
ReplyDeleteRI isn't ONLY known for botched surgery and political radio shows hosted from jail. We also have the highest unemployment and the worst drivers.
Since most of the govmint offices are boarded up except for traffic court, which is the highest source of revenue, people have to phone in their claims and then go to the bank to see if anything was direct deposited.
this is a lot of driving since the bank probably changed hands in the past week.
so
obviously, a lot of these medical problems could be solved if more surgeons took the bus to work.
circle what you see and connect the dots:
if you rode around here with our usual laws like don't use directional signals because, wtf, you KNOW which way you're going, and there were 3 times as many as these goofballs on the road because they have to be driving to use their cell phone to call unemployment,
well I bet after a couple of weeks you'd have a tough time knowing right from left or up from down, too.
few years ago at the time of Maurice's surgery, the big story was the guy left patient on the table while he went to the bank to cash his check. (we had banks back then)
So when I took him to get the staples out, Mo being the master craftsman, asked his doc what kind of staples they use.
He said when he was out at the bank he just picked some up at the local office supply warehouse but that if Mo had been a yankees fan they would have used the old rusty ones.
c'mon up! be easy for you--we don't even tie the deer to the car, we just leave them at the side of the road with the drive=through coffee cups thrown out the window because we're too speeded up to stop at a trash can.