| For all you brewers: |
[Mar. 4th, 2009|08:20 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | work | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  happy | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Hans Zimmer | ] |
I expect to see this show up at a show this season, after hours, of course! Courtesy of my favorite niece... http://brewery.org/brewery/cm3/recs/13_23.html
Cock Ale
Classification: cock ale, historical, 1500s, chicken, meat Source: Chris Sutherland (Christopher.Sutherland@cl.cam.ac.uk), 6/20/93
The recipe for authentic Cock Ale has finally arrived. Boy it sure is scary: COCK ALE (circa the 1500's) A real recipe from some obscure text found in the Scottish Highlands... Enjoy.... Procedure:"Take 10 gallons of ale and a large cock, the older the better; parboil the cock, flay him, and stamp him in a stone mortar until his bones are broken (you must gut him when you flaw him). Then, put the cock into two quarts of sack, and put to it five pounds of raisins of the sun - stoned; some blades of mace, and a few cloves. Put all these into a canvas bag, and a little before you find the ale has been working, put the bag and ale together in vessel. In a week or nine days bottle it up, fill the bottle just above the neck and give it the same time to ripen as other ale." Alternate recipe:Brutal, eh? I was also given a modern recipe written by some guy named C.J.J. Berry.... Here goes this one... "Take a few pieces of _cooked_ chicken and a few chicken bones (approx one tenth of the edible portion of the bird) well crushed or minced. Also take half of pound of raisins, a very little mace, and one or maybe two cloves. Add all these ingrediants to half a bottle of string country white wine. Soak for 24 hrs. Then make on gallon of beer as follows: 1 lb Malt extract
1 Oz Hops
1/2 lb demerarra sugar
1 gallon water
Yeast and nutrient
Add the whole of the chicken mixture to the beer at the end of the second day. Fermentation will last six or seven days longer than usual and the ale should be matured at least one month in the bottle. This cock ale is of the barley wine type.
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| Girlfriends rock! |
[Feb. 26th, 2009|09:25 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | work | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  good | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Fugue in D Minor | ] |
From my friend Kerigwen - and we already knew this, right girls?
A landmark UCLA study suggests friendships between women are special. They shape who we are and who we are yet to be. They soothe our tumultuous inner world, fill the emotional gaps in our marriage, and help us remember who we really are. By the way, they may do even more.
Scientists now suspect that hanging out with our friends can actually counteract the kind of stomach-quivering stress most of us experience on a daily basis. A landmark UCLA study suggests that women respond to
stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women. It's a stunning find that has turned five decades of stress research --- most of it on men --- upside down.
"Until this study was published, scientists generally believed that when people experience stress, they trigger a hormonal cascade that revs the body to either stand and fight or flee as fast as possible," explains Laura Cousino Klein, Ph.D., now an Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health at Penn State University and one of the study's
authors. "It's an ancient survival mechanism left over from the time we were chased across the planet by saber-toothed tigers.
Now the researchers suspect that women have a larger behavioral repertoire than just "fight or flight." "In fact," says Dr. Klein, "it seems that when the hormone oxytocin is released as part of the stress responses in a woman, it buffers t he "fight or flight" response and encourages her to tend children and gather with other women instead.
When she actually engages in this tending or befriending, studies suggest that more oxytocin is released, which further counters stress and produces a calming effect. "This calming response does not occur in men," says Dr. Klein, "because testosterone --- which men produce in high levels when they're under stress --- seems to reduce the effects of oxytocin. Estrogen," she adds, "seems to enhance it."
The discovery that women respond to stress differently than men was made in a classic "aha!" moment shared by two women scientists who were talking one day in a lab at UCLA. "There was this joke that when the women who worked in the lab were stressed, they came in, cleaned the lab, had coffee, and bonded", says Dr. Klein. "When the men were stressed, they holed up somewhere on their own. I commented one day to fellow researcher Shelley Taylor that nearly 90% of the stress research is on males. I showed her the data from my lab, and the two of us knew instantly that we were onto something."
The women cleared their schedules and started meeting with one scientist after another from various research specialties. Very quickly, Drs. Klein and Taylor discovered that by not including women in stress
research, scientists had made a huge mistake: The fact that women respond to stress differently than men has significant implications for our health.
It may take some time for new studies to reveal all the ways that oxytocin encourages us to care for children and hang out with other women, but the "tend and befriend" notion developed by Drs. Klein and Taylor may explain why women consistently outlive men. Study after study has found that social ties reduce our risk of disease by lowering blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol. "There's no doubt," says Dr. Klein, "that friends are helping us live."
In one study, for example, researchers found that people who had no friends increased their risk of death over a 6-month period. In another study, those who had the most friends over a 9-year period cut their risk of death by more than 60%.
Friends are also helping us live better. The famed Nurses' Health Study from Harvard Medical School found that the more friends women had, the less likely they were to develop physical impairments as they aged, and
the more likely they were to be leading a joyful life. In fact, the results were so significant, the researchers concluded, that not having close friends or confidantes was as detrimental to your health as smoking or carrying extra weight! And that's not all!
When the researchers looked at how well the women functioned after the death of their spouse, they found that even in the face of this biggest stressor of all, those women who had a close friend confidante were more likely
to survive the experience without any new physical impairments or permanent loss of vitality. Those without friends were not always so fortunate.
Yet if friends counter the stress that seems to swallow up so much of our life these days, if they keep us healthy and even add years to our life, why is it so hard to find time to be with them? That's a question that also troubles researcher Ruthellen Josselson, Ph.D., co-author of "Best Friends: The Pleasures and Perils of Girls' and Women's Friendships (Three Rivers Press, 1998).
"Every time we get overly busy with work and family, the first thing we do is let go of friendships with other women," explains Dr. Josselson. "We push them right to the back burner. That's really a mistake because women are such a source of strength to each other. We nurture one another. And we need to have unpressured space in which we can do the special kind of talk that women do when they're with other women. It's a very healing experience."
Taylor, S. E., Klein, L.C., Lewis, B. P., Gruenewald, T. L., Gurung, R. A. R., & Updegraff, J. A.
Female Responses to Stress: Tend and Befriend, Not Fight or Flight. |
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| The good news is... |
[Nov. 21st, 2008|01:51 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Home | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | happy | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Ambrose purring | ] |
No new varices and I don't to go back for a year. That's 12 months. 365 days. I'm a very happy camper. I have no restrictions (other than I can't take nsaids) and I'm not suopposed to lose weight fast - I just need to lose it.
The (semi) bad news is that my beta-blockers are getting upped so my energy level will go down - at least for a bit. He wants to keep my pulse below 60, and I've been riding about 60 and a little above. It seems that I've developed (if I remember it correctly - drugs are fun!) portal hypertension gastrophy - a slow seepage of blood from the stomach. Much less dangerous than the varices, but still present, so I'll be chronically anemic - not that that's much change. Everything else fell within the normal range, so that's a good thing too.
The worst news, and this from a different doctor - in less than 10 years, I'll need a new knee, but with BigSis setting such a shinig example of recovery, I'm not too worried!
All in all, a pretty successful day - and I slept until after 8 AM today... Still feel kinda crappy - they always manage to bang up my left tonsil which makes it hard to eat - but that's better than rubber bands and superglue!
Count your blessings! |
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| 37 years ago today |
[Nov. 7th, 2008|05:26 pm] |
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| | home | ] |
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| |  sad | ] |
| [ | music |
| | none | ] |
I got the call that my mom died.
If you smoke, quit. Get your yearly checkups. Get your mammograms. (Men get breast cancer too.)
Tell whomever that you love that you love them. It may be too late tomorrow. |
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| By way of my friend Kerigwen |
[Nov. 4th, 2008|06:42 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  mischievous | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Tenous, by Sleep Thief | ] |
Dear Red States:
If you manage to steal this election too, we've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren't aware, that includes California , Hawaii , Oregon , Washington , Minnesota , Wisconsin , Michigan , Illinois , and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the country of New California .
To sum up briefly: You get Texas , Oklahoma , and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get the Statue of Liberty . You get Dollywood.
We get Intel and Microsoft. You get World Com.
We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss.
We get 85% of America 's venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama .
We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share.
Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22% lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single parents.
Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids
they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq , and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush's Quagmire.
With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80% of the country's fresh water, more than 90% of the pineapple and lettuce, 92% of the nation's fresh fruit, 95% of America 's quality wines, 90% of all cheese, 90% of the high tech industry, 95% of the corn and soybeans (thanks Iowa !), most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus Stanford , Cal Tech, UCLA, Berkeley and MIT.
With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88% of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92% of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100% of the tornadoes, 90% of the hurricanes, 99% of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100% of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University , Clemson and the University of Georgia .
We get Yosemite , thank you.
Additionally, 38% of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62% believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the war, the death penalty or gun laws, 53% that think
Saddam was involved in 9/11, and 61% of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals than we lefties..
Finally, we're taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico .
Peace out,
--Blue
P.S. Just ignore the environment. It'll go away. |
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| My friend Janine |
[Oct. 15th, 2008|08:18 am] |
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Almost all of you have heard me refer at least once to my friend Janine. She is a most important person to me for many reasons - not the least that she's the one who came in and found me lying in a pool of blood in my bathroom and didn't freak. Well, her little sister is critically ill. They don't have all of the details yet, but it's kind of sounding like pancreatic tumors and spots on the liver. This is Not Good. Please send your prayers and wishes to Janine, her family, and most of all, her sister Janelle. Thank you. |
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| Hippo Birdies to ewe! |
[Oct. 6th, 2008|08:40 pm] |
Happy birfday to my biggest sister!
From her baby sister...
I'm ready for some home mede ice cream!!!! |
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| Help! |
[Sep. 16th, 2008|02:04 pm] |
I''ve got a of pics posted onmy Facebook account, but I'm not sure how to get them here. Anyone give me a hint?
Thanks! |
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| In Iceland |
[Sep. 7th, 2008|12:28 pm] |
We made it to Iceland just fine - saw the sun set and the sun rie all in abou 5 hours. Traveling east is so much fun! After a cuppa and a nap, we caught the taxi into town, wandered about, fought the wind and he on-and-off-again rain, and are now back in the B&B. Dan is reading and I'm doing this! I want a nap, but we need to be up by 4:30 AM tomorrow to catch the shuttle to the airport where we fly to Heathrow and then to Glasgow. All day tomorrow will bw spent in airports or aiplans - oh joy oh rapture...
But the honeymoon has begun! |
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| Book list |
[Jul. 10th, 2008|08:24 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | work | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Indina Menzel - Pandora again! | ] |
Ok - here is my list - and I've read more of them than I thought!
Bold is I have read
Italics is started but not finished
Underlined is read and loved
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh -A. A. Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 9th, 2008|07:33 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | work | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  cheerful | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Mannanan - off of Pandora | ] |
It was cool enough to sleep last night, no hot flashes when I was trying to fall asleep, got up in enough time to have breakfast and read a part of the morning's paper, and then on my way to the car after untangling Ambrose, ate a handful of ripe raspberries.
Yummm...
PS - Mikey - I have your shirt... |
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| Stolen from Haddyr |
[Jun. 27th, 2008|07:31 am] |
* Post 3 things you've done that you don't think anybody else on your friends list has done.
* See if anybody responds with "I've done that." If they have- add another!(2.b., 2.c., etc...)
* Encourage your friends paste this into their own journal to see what unique things they've done.
1. Given a talk on parasomnias to an audience in Cairns, AU
2. Been invited to give a talk at the European Sleep Research Society in Glasgow on edcuation (and yes, I'm going - made the flight reservations yesterday...)
3. Went to 5 different 2nd grades in 3 different states |
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| Good news! |
[May. 15th, 2008|07:41 am] |
I'm starting in February...
Hi Mary
We have just received your application to enroll in the Masters course. You look well qualified to enrol in this course so we will by recommending you are accepted. When would you like to start the course. We have 2 intakes a year – Feb and July. The Postgrad Office have suggested you would like to start in July 2009. Is that correct, or do you want to start earlier? We look forward to hearing further and welcoming you to the course in the future. Kind Regards
Sally Middleton
Coordinator
Postgraduate Courses in Sleep Medicine
David Read Laboratory
University of Sydney |
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| Input requested |
[Sep. 5th, 2007|11:39 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | work | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  contemplative | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Blues Power | ] |
So - I finally got it somewhat together and wrote my personal statement for grad school. Keep in mind that I'm applying for a Psy.D. in forensic psych, to start next fall (2008). I'm asking for input - I already know that I need to move a few paragraphs around, but overall - wold you admit me to your program?
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| Pleasant day |
[May. 29th, 2007|05:59 pm] |
Went in, worked a few hours, had b-day cake for my boss, (yummm - a good lemon,) met my sweetie at the doctor's since the BP meds he was put on didn't do anything (mine, they work overnight!) she she's running a few more tests and he gets to go back next week. We went to Black Bear Crossing at Como lake for lunch, and then rode the carosel. It was fun! |
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| How I Spent My Spring Break |
[Apr. 22nd, 2007|07:03 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Home | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | contemplative | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Bird songs - it's spring! | ] |
Long and somewhat gory, and possible TMI. |
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