Le Blogger

Took a short trip to Hanging Rock Park on Saturday. It's near Winston-Salem, NC. To get there from Durham, we drove I40-W all the way until Greensboro, then switched to the 52N and then 8N. After arriving at the park, we had a tasty sushi lunch homemade and packed by Debby! Yummy! With our tummies full and spirits rejuvenated (especially after the two hour drive), we headed up the trail. It was a good half hour walk up some pretty steep inclines. But getting to the top was worth the sight. What a view. Enjoy the pics.

As it snowed a little last week, today I ate hot pot to warm the belly. Hot pot very warming!

My current leisure reading is "The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-eye view of the world" by Michael Pollan. Pollan is a contributing writer for the NYT Magazine and teaches writing at Berkeley. The book is fascinating. It's not the page turner kind of book that science fiction stories are to me, but still I find myself amazed at what little I knew and still do not know about these four plants: the apple tree, tulip, marijuana, and the potato. Pollan links these four species to some primal human desires---sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control. There are some really convention-shattering things one will learn. For example, we have all heard of the Johnny Appleseed story, where Johnny lives the carefree life and wanders across America, like a bee, planting precious apple trees that eventually bear sweet red fruit. In fact, Johnny's original intention was to plant apple trees not for fruit, but to make hard cider. Alcohol! That's right. The apple tree planted

I went square dancing yesterday. Here's the website with a picture of the log cabin/building we danced in. It was loads of fun and really quite a work-out. Unfortunately no pictures from me as I was too busy dancing!

Here's some useful information: Top ten foods to help you fight high cholesterol . 1. Shitake Mushrooms The active component in shitake mushrooms--eritadenine--has been found to lower cholesterol levels in animal studies. The more eritadenine the animals received, the more their cholesterol levels dropped. 2. Walnuts A study in the April 2004 issue of Circulation found that when walnuts were substituted for about one-third of the calories supplied by olives and other monounsaturated fats in the Mediterranean diet, total cholesterol and LDL (bad) cholesterol were reduced. Walnuts contain the beneficial omega-3 fatty acids, which are known to be excellent for the heart. 3. Uncooked Soy A new study found that eating two servings of soy protein a day can lower cholesterol by up to 9 percent--but it must be uncooked to have benefit. "Soy protein increases the activity of low-density lipoprotein receptors primarily on the liver that clears it from the body. Eating soy protein increa

Psych experiment ! Did an experiment for a friend. Got poked and plugged in the brain!! The experiment was very interesting. I had to look at flashing photos of people's faces or houses, six of them arranged in a hexagon. I wasn't actually looking at the photos, instead focusing my attention on a crosshair set at the center of the hexagon. For the first run, five photos were colored yellow, and the sixth was cyan. The sixth photo would either be clear or blurred. My task was to press a button if the photo was blurred. The second run was the same, except the colors reversed---that is I was looking for a blurred yellow on cyan. The electrodes on my head and face picked up microvolt signals that were amplified and recorded on a computer. It's very sensitive! Simply blinking or grinding my teeth considerably altered the voltage scans. If I started to doze, alpha waves could also be recorded. What was the experiment looking for? Turns out, my friend was delaying the onset of col