Iffy-ness

A short list of some iffy things:

• drinking milk five days after its best before date;
• the Canadian Government's decision to procure the F-35 Strike Fighter;
• Sidney Crosby;
• "Watch me put this hankie in my left nostril and pull it out my right one!"
• Gas prices;
• Being convinced to switch gas companies by some guy that showed up at your door with a clipboard;
• Frying eggs on a George Foreman Grill;
• Car salesmen;
• Insurance companies;
• Your doctor telling you this procedure will just feel like a mosquitoe bite;
• "Do these pants make my butt look big?"
• Texting while driving;
• "My wife/husband and I are seperated."
• "This will hurt me more than it will hurt you."

Ear Infections

At 43 I'm a bit old to be getting ear infections, but that's exactly what I ended up with last week.  Again.  I don't remember ever having one as a child, but then in my 20s, I was suddenly getting several every year.  Eventually I got referred to an ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialist who placed some tubes in my ears to ensure pressure between my ears was equalized and to provide drainage for fluids that would have otherwise accumulated behind my ear drum.  This helped, though I still suffer from the occasional ear infection, or just simple fluid build-up.

So, last Wednesday I awoke with the familiar pressure in my left ear, and it hurt.  My wife, Kate, had a couple of appointments at the hospital that day, so I couldn't go to a clinic until later that afternoon.  I was prescribed some anti-biotic pills and drops, but alas, they came too late.  Later that evening I felt the pain of my eardrum bursting along with the tell-tale bleeding from the ear.  Good thing I'm married, because I doubt the look would be very attractive to the opposite sex.  My left eardrum has "perforated" several time, with a concomitant decline in my hearing each time.  I'll probably be deaf in that ear by the time I'm 60.

So, for several days afterwards I was oozing some gelatinous goop.  I told my nine year-old that it looked like custard but that it sure didn't taste like custard.  That's one uptight little kid we have.  She found it no funnier later in the day when she asked if she could have a snack and I suggested a spot of ear custard.

Well, post-A-Z Challenge has left me scurrying about for topics.  I've read that when faced with writer's block, the best approach is to just write about any old thing at all.  Hopefully this will knock some more substantive topics loose for my next post.

A-Z Challenge Wrap-Up

This was indeed a challenge in many ways.  I planned and wrote many of my posts well in advance of April and I would recommend this approach to anyone thinking of signing up next year.  The last week and a bit was the hardest for me.  I began the week not having written any of the posts, largely because I struggled to come up with topics for "w", "x", "y" amd "z", and on the whole, I would say they were my weakest posts.  I'm also finding that the challenge has used up my store of ideas for posts and now I am scrambling around for something to write.  So, what can I do now?

Overall, though, the experience was positive.  Aside from some statistical benefits like getting more followers and a ton of page hits from A-Zers, I got to meet a lot of interesting people who left comments and I similarly visited many other interesting blogs of those who participated.

I cannot say enough about the people who co-hosted the challengs this year.  I appreciate all the hard work they did, with a special shout-out to Jenny of the Pearson Report, who visited several times and left encouraging words.

Will I do it again next year?  I'll have to see where I'm at when the time comes, but I think I would.  The challenge was, on the whole, fun.

Zebras not Getting Ulcers

This is a simple book recommendation for people who are interested in the physiological effects of stress.  Robert M. Sapolsky wrote the highly readable and accessible Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers in 1994, which is the edition I read, but Sapolsky has apparently issued two more updated versions, the latest in 2004.

The central argument of the book is that wild animals do not generally suffer chronic stress (except due to illness or famine) in the way humans do.  Rather, animals suffer stress only when faced with an immediate danger to life and limb, as in when a predator is near.  Then, the fight or flight instinct cuts in with all that entails physiologically - all bodily systems not directly involved in fighting or fleeing largely shut down and all energy is pumped into those parts of the body needed for survival.

Where animals experience the effects in the narrow area of threats from predators, humans experience stress in a much wider range of situations.  Blessed, or burdened, with an intellect, humans can trick the body into thinking that non-physically threatening situations - paying the bills, demanding jobs, school exams - are in fact the same as being faced with a fight-or-flight situation.  Only instead of being over once the physical threat has passed, humans can turn the endless stream of worry into chronic stress on the body.  Physiologically, the body can be in near constant fight-or-flight mode.  Sapolsky then describes the impacts of this chronic stress on each system of the body, concluding with a chapter on managing stress.

A wonderful read aimed at the layman.  Alarming, but Sapolsky also manages to weave humour throughout the book.  I can highly recommend this book.

Y-Chromosome

I don't really understand genetics very well, but I know that among the key genetic building blocks for humans are the chromosomes contributed by our parents and that they determine the sex of the child.  Two X chromosomes and you're a female, one Y chromosome and one X chromosome and you are a male.  So, Y chromosomes only get passed from father to son.

My wife, Kate, has got me interested in genealogy.  A growing aspect of the field is genetic genealogy.  Companies will sell you a kit containing a swab that you run around the inside of your mouth that you then return to the company for analysis.  I find it all mind boggling, but essentially you can determine your maternal lineage with mitochondrial DNA and paternal lineage through your Y chromosome.  So, any male or female can determine their maternal lineage, but because only men carry the Y chromosome, a female wanting to determine their paternal lineage would need a male member of a close male relative (e.g. father or brother) to contribute a sample.

This type of testing will allow you to determine your ethnic lineage, which I find quite interesting.  More importantly, though, many companies and groups have databases of DNA results that allow you to match up with others who have contributed their results to the database, giving you potential leads for growing your family tree.

How cool is that?  This another item I look forward to pursuing in the not-to-distant future.

(I will close with my apologies to biologists and geneticists everywhere for any botching I may have done in my explanations of this topic.)

X Marks the Spot

My wife, Kate, is an avid genealogist (see her family history blog, which has been dormant for a while since she took up her fight against cancer, about which she is also blogging).  A great resource for Canadians interested in tracing their family history is the Library and Archives of Canada (LAC).  Late last week Kate brought me there to show me around.  LAC's resources are vast, as one may hope from a national archive.  One of the most fundamental and cool references they have, though, are city directories dating back to the turn of the 20th century and even earlier for the larger cities.  The earlier volumes contain some basic yet wonderful information on any city's residents:  name, occupation and address.

Kate and I didn't have a long time to spend at LAC this time around, but she suggested I look up my maternal grandfather in the 1933 Montreal city directory - the year my mother was born.  So I did.  And I found him:

N. Kazurka (Sic), Labourer, 207 6th Avenue, Lachine, Quebec.

Mis-spellings are, apparently pretty common in these directories, so you may have to be a little creative in looking for your ancestors.  At the time, I believe my mother's family was going by the name Kaziuka and somewhere along the line some branches of the family went by Kazuke.  So, now I know what house my mother lived in when she was born.  My family and I travel fairly often to Montreal, so now I am keen to visit the house.

While I had the directory out, I thought I would look up my paternal grandfather.  I know when he first emigrated to Canada from Great Britain, he settled in rural Quebec and worked as a farm labourer, but I was fairly sure that by the 1930's he was on the Island of Montreal and sure enough:

Alfred Burrows, Milk Driver, 67 Rolland Avenue, Ville St. Pierre, Quebec.

So, now I have another house to try to find.  Working forwards and backwards from 1933 I can track where my maternal and paternal ancestors lived and what they did for a living, at least if they stayed in Montreal or some other city large enough to have a city directory.  Hopefully, I will have many X's marking many spots.

I look forward to visiting all these places, but until I manage to get there, I am going to try to see them on Google Street View.

Where You Are.

This isn't so much a blog post as it is an invitation to you to leave a little comment telling me a little bit where you all live.  I have noticed in my blog stats that there are people visiting my site from all over the world.  Whenever I meet someone new, I like to hear about their lives and where they come from.  If they are from somewhere outside Ottawa or Canada, I will often do a little research on their homeland. It's an excuse to learn a little about the world outside my areas of familiarity.

Hope you take the time to leave something in my comment section.