Category: News

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My whole adult life I’ve suffered from SAD (seasonal affective disorder). Years ago I got a light-therapy light, and found that I used it quite reflexively: It would pretty much stay off all summer and early fall, then one day in mid-October or so I’d turn it on without even thinking about it. Only later would I realize, “Oh, yeah. I needed that.”

This year I didn’t have the urge to turn the light on until yesterday, which is several weeks later than typical in recent years.

This morning, while out walking the dog, I realized why it was so much later: I’m out walking the dog close to sunrise nearly ever day.

And, as everyone knows (if they think about it), the best light-therapy light is the sun.

Sun on the horizon across First Street

Highly recommended: Get outdoors while the sun is still low in the sky. Get yourself some light, along with some vitamin N (nature), and some outdorphins.,\

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Back at the end of September I came down with West Nile Fever, which made me pretty sick for a long time. The only time in my life before I was that sick for that long was when I had Mononucleosis when I was a freshman in college. That time I was sick for most of the term, and it took several weeks of the Christmas vacation to fully recover.

With West Nile it took about three weeks to recover from the acute phase of the illness. That is, I had a fever constantly for three weeks. Then it took another three weeks to get my energy levels back. For that period I could walk the dog, fix breakfast, and then do one thing, after which I needed to go back to bed and take a nap.

Temperature data from my Oura ring: I first showed a fever on September 25th. My temperature spiked up to a high of 5.3℉ above baseline on October 6th, and didn’t really settle back in to normal until November 6th.

As of a couple of days ago, I think I’m back to full health. I’ve been doing workouts—not as frequently as I’d like, but often enough that I’ve been able to start pushing the weights up again, although not up to what I doing before I was sick. I’ve been for a couple of runs, both of which were harder and slower than I’d like, but were okay—I didn’t feel like I was sick, just like I hadn’t been running enough the past few weeks.

On Sunday I got a Covid booster, so I felt slightly less energetic Monday, but that has already passed.

After too many weeks, I finally feel back to normal!

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An entire article on this, with no indication that the writer understands that students staying away from school are exactly the same as workers staying away from the office.

“The challenges have been compounded by an epidemic of absenteeism, as students who grew accustomed to missing school during the pandemic continue to do so after the resumption of in-person classes. Millions of young people have joined the ranks of the chronically absent….”

Source: Opinion | The Startling Evidence on Learning Loss Is In – NYT

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Whiskey club: Cody Road Rye

Cody Road makes a very fine rye. It’s got a nice rye spiciness, without being harsh at all, and a bit of bourbon sweetness as well (even though the grain bill is 95% rye, 5% barley, according to the label.

Today I served in neat in one of my whiskey peaks glasses. There are several versions of these glasses, with different mountains in the base of the glass. Mine have Mt. Fuji. The shape works great for aerating the whiskey when you swirl it in the glass.

A bottle of Cody Road Rye in front of a pour of the whiskey in a whiskey peaks glass