odiousgambit's Blog

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Edible Wild PlantsApril 7th, 2015 at 6:59:05 am
I have a book on edible wild plants, and it comes in handy. Although I agree in general with anyone who says you really need to know someone familiar with harvesting any particular item*, sometimes the book suffices. A particularly nice feature of this book [a Peterson guide] is that it warns you about poisonous lookalikes.

Take dandelions: an unmistakable edible [not that I am a fan]. However, if you knew nothing about them prior to picking up the book, the book is not that much help, even with photos. Once you know a dandelion when you see it, though, you never mistake it again for anything else.

On the other hand, the book was helpful with wild onions, which I have nearby in abundance. The book clearly indicates that that there is really no mistake to make. It's a "looks, walks, quacks like a duck" thing. You know when you've got an onion out of common sense, and you can't accidentally pick a poisonous one.

Here are some just picked. I can't tell the difference in taste from what you'd buy in the store, they are no stronger. The only tender part, though, is the white part, once you get to the green I notice it is very tough typically compared to what you buy.


I might blog on edible wilds, and my garden ... we'll see.

*don't even think of harvesting mushrooms without help, except maybe the Morel

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Comments
Fleastiff
April 8th, 2015 at 2:19:47 am
In the PNW mushroom hunters are told to leave a little aside for the coroner to identify.

Remember that SuperTramp in Into the Wild... died from a mis identified edible plant.

At many herb gardens some items are mislabled by accident, others by intention.

One former sailor girl is now taking a masters in botany and seems to love every minute of it.

Knowing a bit about Medieval poetry might help. Keeps you remembering the times of the year when stinging nettles are safe and how to seek solace from the nearby dock plant if you've handled a stinging nettle carelessly.
Fleastiff
April 8th, 2015 at 2:26:33 am
The Dock
Come here, son: look! that leaf is dock,
Beside the dandelion clock.

Wherever stinging nettle grows
There, too, the healing dock leaf blows

As if to show some grand Design
Of Mother Nature, all benign,

Who suffers with her children's pain
And longs to make them well again:

Who cannot but provide relief
As in this sting-­removing leaf.

………………………..

Or are there flowers that can abate
The pain when people love, or hate?

No: men and towns to dust return:
The fires drink up the clouds, and burn.

Oh no, relief is never there.
Come, we must go: and son, beware,

For where the balmy dock leaves stand
Are stinging nettles close at hand.
odiousgambit
April 8th, 2015 at 3:50:08 am
>In the PNW mushroom hunters are told to leave a little aside for the coroner to identify.

ha ha. The scariest thing about mushrooms is to eat poisonous ones and "feel fine" - so you eat a whole bunch. You might die weeks later.

No experience with stinging nettles myself

DyssomniaFebruary 12th, 2015 at 8:04:49 am
good ol' google, I was going to see if I could coin a word: dysomnia

I put it into google and as it goes with that wonderful function it has, google tossed up the correct spelling. I guess it's not too surprising it's been around, Dyssomnia

I had been thinking about it, my minor sleep disorder is not insomnia, in fact it's instead a problem how fast I go out and start snoring. It seemed wrong to call it insomnia.

I typically get no more than 5 hours of solid restful sleep; that does cover the critical REM period etc., and is basically enough to stay healthy I think. I may or may not go back to some light sleep for an hour or so after the 5.

Failing that coining attempt, I think I can coin an acronym, PESS, borrowing from PTSD which we all know. I hereby declare PESS to be Post Employment Stress Syndrome. This is the sleep-killing appearance in a retired person's dreams of all the problems and cares of his working days - in my case often ending sleep at the 5 hour mark ! And a syndrome, something less than a disorder.

This whole coining claim is kind of tongue in cheek, but I really would like to get rid of my PESS!

I also declare the below PESS acronyms inconsequential LOL

http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/PESS

Comments
Face
February 12th, 2015 at 9:12:54 am
"Post Enucleation Socket Syndrome" sounds terrible. Had to Google. It could be worse.

No disrespect intended, but isn't this common with all *ahem* people of distinguished age? I know my grandpa is 81 and dude is up at 4:30a every day. My Pops ain't up that early, but I don't think he's seen even seven hours sleep since, I dunno, probably before I was born. And he still works 6 days a week.

Sleep is a bitch for me, too. Right now, and for the past several months, I cannot fall sleep until between 3a and 5a, cannot get up before noon. And that's with me trying. If I just surrendered to it, I could sleep to 4p, easy. What's odd is that even after months of this, my first day in BVI, and every day after, found me getting up at 8a at the latest and bedding by 10p. 2 days after I returned, right back to 3a - 12p.

When forced into "normal" sleep, I can usually manage. When in Surv I could get up at 5a and bed at 9p. And it felt "good" to do so. But I get almost like an addiction withdrawal. I get anxious, like I need to stay up and spend a waking period in the dark. It's been like this ever since the age of 15 or 16, and it's a righteous pain in the ass.
Fleastiff
February 12th, 2015 at 9:24:12 am
Borrow an overnight recording pulse oximeter... its free, they deliver it, demonstrate it and pick it up the next day. Home health care companies make a fortune so they want your business and will let you test yourself for free. I borrowed a recorder from a hospital with solely the promise to return it before 0800 the next day. No ID, no deposit, no charge, no nothing. Brought it back to them early and joked about not having been able to hock it. I was shocked I could just lug it out the door with no problem.

Turn the alarm function off and print out the next mornings results.

See how many times you stop breathing, how low your oxygen saturation goes, how many times it reverses.

End the jokes about snoring being a disease that only the sufferer's spouse has.

This is serious.

Is your shirt size 17 or greater?

If your free printout is bad you can get a doctor to order an over night sleep study in a lab or in your home. Usually covered by insurance.
odiousgambit
February 12th, 2015 at 9:33:00 am
>No disrespect intended, but

none intended but plenty received! LOL

>Sleep is a bitch for me, too

I predict it changes for you some day. Well, as you put it, sooner or later you become a person of 'distinguished age', and there are in-between phases. I can certainly remember wanting to sleep 12 hrs as a teenager, and always going to bed past midnight as a young adult

>See how many times you stop breathing, how low your oxygen saturation goes, how many times it reverses

My wife says the snoring may be awful but I don't seem to do the apnea thing, so I take that to heart
Fleastiff
February 12th, 2015 at 8:42:24 pm
NOTE: spouses are not really good judges of apnea episodes. Get the electronic testing. Its free.
Face
February 12th, 2015 at 10:55:39 pm
Flea makes a good point. Sleep disorders are nothing to mess with. To say they could ruin your life is so severe an understatement it makes me blush to say it. Get a sleep test. It's the easiest test ever.

Also remember our talks about dreams. Sometimes dreams are fluff. Often they are communication from the subconscious. Pay attention to them.
odiousgambit
February 13th, 2015 at 2:59:07 am
my dentists and doctors can tell you what it's like to try to get me to come in for exams

>Also remember our talks about dreams

I think you may find yourself doing some of your super evalutaion on some of my PESS dreams LOL

Face
February 13th, 2015 at 11:23:38 am
As I have wrote about some of my own issues, you know I'm the same way about doctors. But, man... I'm telling you, sleep can ruin your life on levels you cannot even conceive of. The fact that you're even here talking tells me it has not become "serious". Yet. But watch yourself, take inventory, be self aware. Weight gain, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart attack, stroke, these are all possibilities for those with sleep issues. And these are the issues I would rate as "minor". How can risk of death be "minor"? Lose your mind. Then you will know things worse than death.

On dreams, I still think you give me too much credit. But I'd help if I could =)
Fleastiff
February 15th, 2015 at 2:40:42 pm
Come in for exams????? Its done in your own home, they deliver the equipment, give you a five minute demonstration and pick the equipment up the next day. And its FREE, you print out your own results the next morning. No fee, no blood, no urine... but alas no pretty nurse either.

Sleep Apnea equals 15 fold increase in risk of Motor Vehicle Accident.
Fleastiff
March 7th, 2015 at 4:14:42 am
Regarding Sleep: Its really a brain regulated vote-pooling of various low level sleep-inducing signal systems and wakefulness-inducing signaling systems. Primary pathways are Ca++ channels, neurons, astroglia, Adenosine. Does anyone know of a mathematical model which given input values of some of these factors will correctly present the values of the unsupplied factors that would be needed to sustain sleep homeostasis?
Fleastiff
March 17th, 2015 at 5:17:54 am
>Does anyone know of a model .....

Multi-timescale Modeling of Activity-Dependent Metabolic Coupling in the Neuron-Glia-Vasculature Ensemble
Renaud Jolivet. Jay S. Coggan, Igor Allaman, Pierre J. Magistretti. February 26, 2015 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004036

Close but no cigar!

The brain has remarkable information processing capacity, yet is also very energy efficient. How this metabolic efficiency is achieved given the spatial and metabolic constraints inherent to the designs and energy requirements of brain cells is a fundamental question in neurobiology. The major cell classes in mammalian nervous systems include neurons, glia and the microvasculature that supplies the molecular substrates of energy and metabolism. Together, this neuron-glia-vasculature (NGV) ensemble constitutes the functional unit that underlies the cost infrastructure of computation.

The Frankenstein ThingOctober 4th, 2014 at 10:34:55 am
To explain a post,

http://diversitytomorrow.com/thread/401/14/#post19107

The Frankenstein Thing
-or-
How I Learned to Quit Worrying and Love the Bomb Torch

Maybe because of the Frankenstein movie where the villagers have a bunch of torches as they search for Dr. Frankenstein and his monster, or some other forgotten reason, always wanted to make a torch. Never had much real reason to do so, though.

Well, I was notified by way of a painful sting that I had a yellow jacket nest in my yard; a steady stream of the insects in and out of a 4 inch wide oval hole in the ground had been approached too closely to suit.

Well, I read up on it and was able to get products for wasps seemingly similar to what was recommended. After dark [this is when it started to feel Frankenstein-ish] I shot a whole can into the hole; next morning at first light dusted the hole with insect dust, all as recommended. Well, it didn't get rid of all the activity, some was still nearby, different area slightly. So, after dark again I tried to find what must have been some other alternate hole but could only identify a general area. I was a little miffed that any were still alive anyway, but the stuff recommended was supposed to be heavier than air, and I had been able only to get something with different ingredients.

Knowing the 'country' way of getting rid of these things, it was on. Kerosene dumped all over the general area after dark, then set aflame. And I wanted that flame to get going quick by tossing something burning into it. A rolled up newspaper dunked in kerosene works, but now was my chance to make that torch! I also had a bunch of wood ready and built a bonfire and kept feeding the fire for nearly 24 hours.

My torch:



It worked.

The damn sting spot never raised a lump, but kept itching. The pain soon came in the form of bruise-like pain. After that finally left, on and off itching continued for a total of about 10 days after the initial sting. Live and let live was out of the question.

BTW, if you ever use flammables for any similar reason, you should always use kerosene, not gasoline. Not only is gasoline way too explosive, it also is unsatisfactory for starting fires in that it may use itself up too quickly. Kerosene at normal temperatures does not give off an explosive vapor; you'll sometimes notice it is reluctant to catch fire using a match. But it burns steadily once it starts, lasting a good long while and will get even somewhat wet wood burning. Yet it is also true that both substances come with warnings not to use them for making fires. That is reasonable since there is one circumstance that makes kerosene potentially disastrous, besides the obviously risky business of splashing it around a fire that is already going. Know what this other thing is? If you don't, you are at risk using it.

never pour kerosene on hot coals, as this does make it exposive. People have blown up their stoves doing this

Comments
Face
October 4th, 2014 at 3:39:39 pm
Lol nice =)

I don't often have kero lying around, only using it for the torpedo heater. And since I have it so rarely, I suppose I consider it "more valuable", despite any price difference. When I need a "thicker" fire that kero or diesel provides, I use a gas/oil mix. I always keep a gallon of used motor oil handy for many reasons, and mixing a few ounces of gas with the oil accomplishes the same feat. Plus when it burns, the smell reminds me of all the old beaters I've owned and drove into the ground ;)

I've been wanting to try something even cheaper - explosives. I used to rid ant hills by putting a little Black Cat firecracker in the hole. Usually one to loosen and make the hole bigger, then another to get it in there deep. Seemed to work pretty well. Since much of a hive is vulnerable, squishy little larvae, I have high hopes that it'll work.

Of course, if it doesn't... let's just say I hope I'm there. Preferably with a video camera XD
odiousgambit
October 5th, 2014 at 3:37:08 am
>mixing a few ounces of gas with the oil accomplishes the same feat

interesting. A few ounces with how much oil, roughly?
Face
October 6th, 2014 at 9:52:07 am
Just depends on conditions, but the short answer is "not much at all".

My oil is usually already pretty watery. I only use 5w-30 for everything, I tow a lot, and I don't even think of changing until after 7,000mi. On a dry June day, I don't mix at all.

The worst is probably early spring when everything's been soaked for 6 months and anything piled is still holding liquid water. Even in this worst-case condition, we're only talking 100ml (down with imperial units!) to a litre of oil. So just a 3 or 4 ounces per gallon.

I dunno how it'd work in an enclosed space like a hole. All my oil fires start best lighting the bottom and letting it crawl up (obviously). Perhaps you'd need a more stout gas mix, but it'd still be cheaper than kero. Of course, the more gas you add the more volatile it will become, so you might get into "whoomp" territory as the fumes gather during pouring. Wear long pants ;)

HealingJuly 9th, 2014 at 6:09:10 am
My range of motion with my right arm is returning slowly. It's still painful to lift it into certain positions, but there is no spot that absolutely can't be reached without too much pain to continue, as was the case a week ago. I hid this completely from my wife; once I had to say I 'slept on it wrong' to explain away a grimace. Fortunately it was nearly normal for carrying bags etc right from the get-go.

I returned to fishing with a spinning reel. That had a few moments but went pretty well. I love to just get into the river if nothing else; but caught some pumkinseeds and a small smallmouth.

Comments
Face
July 10th, 2014 at 6:29:07 am
It occurs to me that you might keep an awful lot from your wife. I'm not judging, just amusingly observing one who's still in the game ;)

Sounds like a rotator. Hard to diagnose just off of "arm hurts", but what you describe fits. Good news is that it won't hurt forever. Bad news is that it will re injure constantly for the rest of your life, and over the stupidest things. Best thing about bad news - it could always be worse.
odiousgambit
July 10th, 2014 at 8:46:32 am
>It occurs to me that you might keep an awful lot from your wife.

Oh, absolutely, I don't deny it. In this case ... hell, in all matters ... I feel I have to guard against overreaction and also adverse reaction. The prospect of injury exists unless you want to live inside a cocoon; does a guy really want to hear about it every time he ventures outside the door? Well, I would be hearing about it.

>Sounds like a rotator. Hard to diagnose just off of "arm hurts", but what you describe fits.

ya know, it really seemed like it was the arm and not the joint. I swear. Even just now, checking it out, a bit of pain in the arm when the critical position is reached. Could that still be rotator cuff?
Face
July 10th, 2014 at 9:47:38 am
You don't have to explain. I was married. Once ;)

Hmm. Probably not. Rotator doesn't really radiate. If it's real bad it will, but you'll know exactly where ground zero is. It might hurt up high near the clavicle, or in the back, or on the "ball", or in your armpit, but it always hurts in the shoulder.

I dunno about arm pain. Of course, "arm" contains a lot of parts and pieces lol. If the "arm" you can't lift is your forearm, that's controlled by the bicep. You likely bruised the hell out of it. If the "arm" you can't lift is the whole arm, well, the shoulder lifts the arm...
odiousgambit
July 11th, 2014 at 3:44:01 am
looked into rotator cuff; doesn't seem to be a sure thing that the pain would come from the shoulder, although some of the persistent pain is now in the shoulder. When it happened, it sure seemed like the arm only, but a rotator cuff is not exactly a joint. Could be.

For my TombstoneJune 27th, 2014 at 10:23:09 am
Just carve on there, "the slippery stick finally got him"

Because I think that's what will get me one day.

Yesterday, I was exploring a route to a new fishing hole on my "private" stretch of river. I was quite please to find a section with somewhat of a gradual grade to it rather than the cliff that the half mile or so generally presents. Well, there is one section that is a little steeper, I had a rope with me to make it quite safe to scoot down [and get back up] but didn't deploy it because it was the first time I had explored the spot and didn't know if I would need it further down. On the way back up, I was missing having it set up, tied to a tree, pretty bad, the terrain was wet and slippery. But just as I was about to declare myself safe, I stepped on my old nemesis. It was a worst-case scenario, the wet and slippery stick was pointed down the hill. My foot slid down the stick about 4 feet, and next I was scrambling desperately to avoid tumbling down the grade. Somehow I recovered successfully, but my right arm that I landed on was hurting like hell. Thought I might have broken it even, I was nauseous and everything. Figuring later that I would be in more pain than I was actually in if it was broken, I decided to just see what develops. I took an excess of aspirin and did sleep OK, a good sign; today I am better too, except I am still unable to lift my arm over my head without a lot of pain. I'm not sure what condition that would describe, but I am quite sure nobody can do anything for me, and I can sleep.

This puts an end to fly fishing for a while for sure, or probably any rope-assisted descents to fishing holes [in case you were wondering, this is one important ingredient for a 'private' fishing hole in a public river]. Generally, my experience with these sorts of injuries is that they take forever to get over. Well, if still alive don't complain I guess.

I'd say I've slipped on such sticks nearly a dozen times as an outdoorsman. In steep places I keep telling myself to watch where I put each step; easier said than done. I have successfully avoided mossy stones etc pretty well, something that has gotten other guys I know for sure. Sometimes the sticks are under leaves, this one probably was. It's bad enough if they just roll on you!

Anyway, you can get my tombstone ready.

Comments
Fleastiff
June 28th, 2014 at 12:58:40 am
Too dumb to look where he was going.
Didn't carry a walking stick.
Descended a steep grade without deploying a rope assist because no one told him he would need it coming back up.
odiousgambit
June 28th, 2014 at 3:17:06 am
Quote:
Too dumb to look where he was going.
Didn't carry a walking stick.
Descended a steep grade without deploying a rope assist because no one told him he would need it coming back up.


Ouch! Something tells me Fleastiff would enjoy tombstone-making.
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