I am now able to confidently go in and make a completely whole wheat improvised bread with whatever without any recipes from scratch. And, more importantly eat the results without cringing or wishing I hadn't made the colossal mess. I know I said this already zillion moons back here: (e:tinypliny,53247) But that was banana bread. This is THE staple everyday bread bread.

I think that is progress.

Only, it's progress in the words of a frog in that arithmetic problem, you know, the one that lives in a slimy well and jumps up 4 steps to fall back 3.

I am sorely tempted to include one in my thesis:

You know your tea addiction has gone a bit far when:

1. You put the kettle on and when it boils, you immediately refill and put it on again because you know you will finish the current cup before it finishes brewing the next one
2. You distinctly remember having asked your archenemy in a nightmare if they would like a cup of oolong (poisoned) or a cup of cardamom tea (also poisoned, what did you think?)
3. You bid on auctions for green tea from ebay.com's authentic chinese sellers because the blurry pixelated pic looked like that one tea you had once upon a time that you could never find in stores later.
4. You lose the bid because someone sniped it at 4:00AM and you are bitter all day.
5. You drink coffee and think, ugh this is vile. Only the whipped cream redeems this mess.
6. You drink close to 27 16 oz cups of tea a day.
7. You don't drink any regular water anymore, only tea
8. You alternate between 7-8 different kinds of tea and have teas to match the hour and mood of the day.
9. The promise of tea is enough to enable you to weather minuscule work storms
10. You are known as the office tea pusher and have induced at least 5 other officemates to drink more tea than they ever did their entire lives.
11. You buy a kettle exclusively for the office and it is used so much, it develops scales within a month.
12. Your desktop is tea-themed
13. Your recycling is 10% or more teabag wrappers.

SCOOOOOOORRRREEEEESSSS!
Any 5 and you are one.
Any 7? have you taken the teaddiction test lately?
Any 10? Hmm.. and how does that make you feel?
Any 12? Have you put the kettle on yet?

Any 13? Welcome to my world.

Finally, a balanced meal that took 1/2 hour after weeks of eating 3-4 minute meals.

I used to hate that actress who is all teeth.. but not anymore. Tarsem has done it again. Made me want to actually see this movie.

Seriously, what?!

I keep hearing about how NSAIDs are projected as the next big thing for preventing cancer in combination with other drugs/supplements. I find it odd that it conflicts so directly with my background information from medicine and actual medical practice.

It's fine and all that we are desperate to find cures for cancer but it's also time to stop and think about what we know from the clinics. Do I think that people should start taking low dose aspirins (an NSAID) willy nilly because it might, at some vague point in the future, reduce their chances of cancer? In all good faith, I cannot support this view.

NSAIDs are no friends of your gastric lining. Doctors have known this for ages. They have the potential to induce gastric lining damage. Late last year, a study threw some light on the prospective dangers of chronic NSAID use (yes, not even abuse. I said, regular use.)

See ::READ PDF::

The study has been running for several years and women in the study fill out questionnaires and mail it back at regular intervals. The researchers looked at spans of use and followed up on these women, including who ended up with cancer and who didn't. They found that women who reported taking more NSAIDs in their daily life over several years were more likely to be diagnosed with renal cancer.

Why doesn't this surprise me? All that we know about the "good effects" of NSAIDS come from cross-sectional studies that take a snapshot of a section of population at any given time, ask them what they are eating and what disease they have. They are poor representations of what happens to our bodies over a long time. NSAIDs, among several other drugs are metabolized through our livers and kidneys - two main excretory organ networks in vertebrate living systems. Thus, long term use are more likely to impact these organs.

So short term or acute doses could damage your gastric lining. Long term use impacts your kidneys and livers. Do we still want to push this "golden drug" beyond the very rare as-and-only-when-really-really-needed basis? I think it's short-sighted at best. Sometimes, it's important to make reality-checks with medicine. In this particular situation, I don't see any of that essential precautionary measure.

The constantly dragging workload and grey skies are getting to me. What I need is this happy song from Boney M to pick me up and accelerate on my work so I can clear some more hurdles (read: chapters).


Lay your problems on the floor, clap your hands and sing once more.

For a LOOOOONG boot-up time. Seriously, I could put the kettle on and have it reach a boil, or be halfway on my way to my office by the time the login screen comes up.

systemd-analyze blame
61002ms sm-client.service
60146ms sendmail.service
24223ms iscsi.service
17281ms udev-settle.service
4148ms fedora-loadmodules.service
4050ms systemd-vconsole-setup.service
2578ms fedora-readonly.service
2556ms media.mount
2513ms dev-mqueue.mount
2492ms dev-hugepages.mount
2472ms sys-kernel-security.mount
2471ms udev-trigger.service
2452ms sys-kernel-debug.mount
1426ms systemd-remount-api-vfs.service
1419ms remount-rootfs.service
1163ms systemd-readahead-replay.service
992ms udev.service
975ms fedora-storage-init.service
820ms fedora-storage-init-late.service
775ms systemd-sysctl.service
709ms NetworkManager.service
555ms avahi-daemon.service
535ms rsyslog.service
531ms chronyd.service
531ms sys-kernel-config.mount
412ms systemd-logind.service
390ms ip6tables.service
386ms mcelog.service
384ms console-kit-log-system-start.service
381ms sshd-keygen.service
374ms iptables.service
374ms abrt-vmcore.service
364ms auditd.service
363ms irqbalance.service
326ms dbus.service
325ms abrt-ccpp.service
324ms boot.mount
296ms livesys.service
295ms home.mount
281ms netfs.service
266ms iscsid.service
234ms systemd-readahead-collect.service
172ms mdmonitor-takeover.service
154ms systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service
81ms lvm2-monitor.service
76ms fcoe.service
47ms fedora-wait-storage.service
44ms sandbox.service
39ms systemd-user-sessions.service
31ms console-kit-daemon.service
29ms livesys-late.service
6ms accounts-daemon.service
2ms rtkit-daemon.service
0ms sys-fs-fuse-connections.mount

Why on earth does the sendmail service need to run? I don't even run a mail server.

And in the category of weird business names, I got this email today:

"Price Protector is now Eyeona"

Eyeona?
Eyeeeeeeyyoooooonnnaaaa?

Like in a wild hyena laugh? What does bargain-hunting have in common with hyenas? Is that supposed to be a riddle? I know I can follow the links on that email and read the back-story and all that in the time it has taken me to write this out here. But really, first impressions are the worst and the most fun.