Dragon-asp

Unless something unexpected happens, there will not be an East of Paris segment dropping tomorrow morning.

Life happened.

Physical conditioning

I hurt. Nothing debilitating, but my muscles hurt. My joints hurt. I am tired. God willing, it will be temporary.

The last time I ran on the treadmill I was tearing it up. Pride goeth before fall.

Twenty minutes into the session, I noticed that I had not dialed in elevation. It has been my practice to run with a 1% grade (one foot of elevation with every 100 feet of horizontal, or at 6.0mph, one foot of elevation every 9 seconds). In theory, it is to account for things like wind-resistance, sandy surfaces that absorb energy and so on. In practice, it means that when I actually run on real ground, I might actually out-perform expectations, which is a huge emotional boost.

I decided to compensate for the "easy" first 1/3 by adding 10 seconds to my running period and subtracting 10 seconds from my recovery. So I added the 1% grade and did that for the remaining 40 minutes.

Maybe not my brightest move.

New livestock

Two meat-breed rabbit (does) were added to the ERJ menagerie. The plan is to "gift" them to the Handsome Hombre/Southern Belle household as pets. If things go into the septic tank, they will have the foundation stock to turn forage into meat.

These young does are not particularly socialized, but the fellow selling them to me said that domestic rabbits are social animals and if a human always brings something edible...even if it is a single dandelion leaf, they will be very accepting of humans.

Another reason to select "meat rabbits" is because they aren't pets. That means that they come from a gene pool where the breeding stock was ruthlessly culled for any congenital issues. Consequently, they should be relatively trouble-free. In the livestock biz, they are very likely to be "easy keepers".

Scion wood

My plan is to start cutting scion tomorrow. My high-runners will be Liberty apple, Harrow Sweet and Korean Giant pears. They are sort of like the girl next door. If you can't decide which high-maintenance bombshell to take out (or you cannot decide what kind of aggravation you can tolerate) on Friday night, then that sweet, freckle-faced girl next door is mighty attractive.

Auto-immune diseases

EBL mentioned Celiac Disease in the comments of an earlier post.

Celiac is usually considered an auto-immune disease (or syndrome).

As a group, auto-immune diseases exhibit one of the very largest gender disparities of all "groups" of diseases. That is, of course, outside of cervical cancer and prostate cancer.

Some auto-immune diseases impact women SEVEN times more than men. The average for auto-immune diseases is probably about FOUR times more likely. Not only do auto-immune diseases hammer women more frequently, they tend to manifest much earlier in life for women and degrade their quality-of-life for longer periods than they do for men.

"Celiac/gluten intolerance" is weird because some people diagnosed with "Celiac" can eat wheat products made from wheat grown in Italy.

The knee-jerk assumption is that US and Canadian grown wheat MUST be Genetically Modified (Franken-food). To the best of my knowledge, no genetically engineered wheat is cleared for food in the United States or Canada. Unlike corn and soybeans, controlling the pollination in populations of wheat is difficult.

A more likely culprit is that some regions of the US that grow wheat are more humid than in Italy. Also, we tend to fertilize more heavily and have denser stands which dry-down more slowly than in Italy. That means US grown wheat has more mold and fungi issues AND we are more likely to spray wheat with fungicides.

If we were REALLY concerned about "women's health", then more resources would be directed at Celiac, Lupus, Fibromyalgia, IBS, MS, RA, Psoriasis and Connective Tissue Diseases. It is my perception that far more resources have been directed toward HIV/AIDS and reproductive issues than addressing auto-immune issues.

Evangelism

A friend recently reached out and shared that he was feeling "pressured" to knock on doors and "push" Christianity by his church.

He attends a small, Bible-based church and "pushing" is contrary to how he is wired.

I suggested that he read 1 Corinthians Chapter 12 and Romans Chapter 12.

We have different gifts. Some of us are extroverts and are energized by "selling".

Some of us are planners.

Some of us don't feel called to touch the lives of stadiums filled with people. Some of us don't "friend" wide, but we "friend" deeply.

Some of us "sell" Christianity by being supremely at ease and comfortable within our skin. People look at those Christians and instinctively know "I want what she has".

I think Paul was trying to tell us in Corinthians and Romans that there is not one-right-way to follow Christ. It is almost like God anticipated that this conflict would come up.