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MickinMD

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Everything posted by MickinMD

  1. I find it fascinating that I drop veggie seeds into shallow 1/4" or so holes, they land at random positions, yet after they germinate they all know to push the middle of their stems upward with their leaf end down so they don't rip in an upside-down-U shape. Then after breaking through the soil surface, they unbend so the leaf end is pointed up and the cotyledons, the "dicot" plant's pair of first, simple-shaped, embryonic leaves, then grow large sideways to kick-off photosynthesis. How do they know to do all that in the right directions and order and to push through the soil? So I found an online Quora question: "How do plant seeds know which way is up and which is up and down when they grow? Answer: Gravitropism. Plants have many senses, one of them is the ability to sense gravity. Aerial tissues move away from gravity and ground tissues move towards gravity. Amyloplasts are thought to be involved in this detection.
  2. I did the same thing with The Descendants of World War II Rangers, I finally applied, checked out, and joined a couple years ago.
  3. I had a lockout because of too many login attempts, 3 I think - I forgot I had changed the password - to Broadridge, the company that administers the General Mills Dividend ReInvestment Plan I'm in where I automatically buy $50/month in fractional shares at no fee and check about once a month for the new share total or how many shares my reinvested dividends got. I called them and the phone receptionist took my off lockout and walked me through doing a new password and logging-in.
  4. Pepto Bismol and Chicken Soup cured my upset stomach but, after a previous little-sleep night, I fell asleep early Tues. evening and woke up refreshed a 3:30 am this Wed. morning. So now I'm the opposite of how I ,waking up without an alarm an hour later than normal after DST kicked-in. After a lifetime of beginning work around 7 am, in retirement without an alarm, I still usually wake up 6 to 6:30 am.
  5. There were a lot of shows in the '80's, '90's, and 00's that I watched occasionally just so I could keep a conversation with and seem relevant to the high school students I taught and the varsity athletes I coached. Some of the shows I loved to escape from the trials of life for a while like Married With Children. Some I liked because it reminded me of a time in my life like The Big Bang Theory. When I was in grad school, we used to drink beer and argue for hours about things like "How bright did the supernova of 1054 AD appear on earth?" We also had weird people in the IIT dorms, like "The Phantom" who couldn't stand to have anyone walking behind him and "Weird Willie" who would walk down the halls while he kept moving his index fingers past each other at odd angles to each other, trying to see a 4th physical dimension. Almost nothing on the Big Bang Theory seemed out of the ordinary to me - except the physicists were presented as also being chemistry, biology, etc. science experts.
  6. They're probably telling people to boil water to calm them down even though the treatment of the reservoir water before it's pumped into water towers makes that unnecessary. Here is a picture of people fishing in Loch Raven Reservoir, the biggest reservoir serving Baltimore - and probably me since my Baltimore-adjacent community gets "city water." People surely pee over the side of the boat, some fish die, winds blow dead birds and trash into it, etc. Of course, the water is treated before it's piped to community water towers: you're supposed to let tap water rest alone for two days in an aquarium before you put the fish in.
  7. Thanks, I thought about that but a liitle too much acid reflux made me stop at the pharmacy 1 mile from home and come right back and they didn't have peppermint in their food section. So I'm going to have some tea with honey later today. No peppermint on hand - my dad used to make peppermint tea for me when I was a sick kid. I drove to the pharmacy and picked up Pepto Bismol and took it when I got home - instant relief. Mounjaro is known to cause upset stomachs in some people but I took the starter dose, 2.5 units on Saturday and didn't get the upset stomach until Monday afternoon. More likely it was food. I had a dozen eggs a few months old and had two on Sunday and they were fine then two on Monday, maybe one was bad. I'll toss the rest.
  8. I haven't had an upset stomach for ages, but yesterday and today I got one, fortunately not bad enough to heave, perhaps due to new diabetes meds. I decided to eat something to calm my stomach down, so breakfast was cheerios and banana with almond milk and a mug of 2% milk. My stomach's settled but still sore today and I'm going to run out to get Pepto Bismol, so I thought I'd check on what I should be eating. The two suppers-worth of homemade chicken soup I have in the freezer are on the online lists and I'll pick up some yogurt and have that or more cereal for lunch. From the web: "Chicken soup is a staple for upset stomachs for a reason. It provides vitamins, protein and other nutrients, and it can help keep you hydrated. You don't need to use a lot of different ingredients to get the benefits either." "If your stomach is upset, Mills recommends eating: Warm cereals like Cream of Wheat, Cream of Rice and oatmeal. Cold cereals like Cheerios, Rice Krispies, Rice Chex and Special K. English muffin (halved) with peanut butter. “Constipation almost always goes hand in hand with bloating and gas, which result from all the pressure that builds up,” Dr. Lee explains. “To relieve all three symptoms, stick with foods that help you go.” When you need help going, fiber is your best friend. Soluble fiber breaks down in the digestive tract and acts as a natural stool softener. This helps bowel movements along and eases constipation. Foods high in soluble fiber include: Vegetables, especially green beans, carrots and broccoli. Fruits, such as Bing cherries, berries, apples and pears. Prune or apple juice, which also helps with hydration. Quinoa, which is technically a seed. Whole grains, such as oatmeal, whole-wheat bread and bran cereal. Food also can include insoluble fiber that moves through your digestive tract without breaking down. It is found in foods like leafy greens, dried fruit and nuts. Avoid foods that are overly processed and low in fiber, such as: Fast food. Frozen meals. Packaged snacks.
  9. Watch out not paying attention to a meeting. In 1981, I was one of over 100 community leaders who met at a church to discuss a problem with the Federal Government storing hazardous waste on local land in the recharge area of the underground river important to a lot people on well water. I turn around from the pastor who was running the meeting to talk to some friends sitting behind me I hadn't seen in a while. When I turned back around, I had been elected President of the Maryland Waste Coalition, which became the RCRA Act - funded citizens environmental watchdog group for MAryland.
  10. I hope it's not that dry! I'm making hamburgers tonight. I may do mayo, lettuce and onion or ketchup, mustard and onion. This is a variation of the hamburger made on America's Test Kitchen and uses a "panade" of milk-soaked bread to hold the moisture in while frying/grilling. This makes 5 quarter-pound sized burgers or 4 very large burgers. Ingredients 1 lb ground beef (lean works fine for me) 1 slice of bread, diced into 1/4” square pieces (or equivalent breadcrumbs or crackers) 2 tablespoons of milk (use any %, but real milk) 1 egg 2 tsp dry Italian seasoning (or 1 tsp dry oregano, 1 tsp dry thyme) 2 tsp garlic powder (or 1 tbsp finely minced garlic) 2 tsp onion flakes (or 2 tsp onion powder) 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce (or 1 tbsp ketchup or steak sauce) 1 tsp ground black pepper 1 tsp salt Optional: one recipe uses 2/3 tsp of hoisin sauce Optional: 1 tsp Cajun seasoning Optional: pinch of cayenne pepper Procedure 1. Dice the bread into ¼” squares and place in a mixing bowl large enough to handle all the ingredients. Sprinkle the milk on them to moisten, and mix by hand to coat all the bread with milk. 2. Break up the ground beef into small pieces and add to the mixing bowl along with all the other ingredients, making a depression in the mixture for the egg and scrambling it a little bit by hand before mixing it all together. Mix gently by hand until all materials are roughly evenly distributed, about a minute or two. 3. Form the mixture into four or five round or square patties. The center of each patty should be slightly thinner than the outsides since it will fatten on cooking. Place them in a lightly oiled frying pan and press down on the middle to form the desired depression. 4. Heat on a low or medium-low flame until each side is browned, about 4 minutes each side. Add cheese the last minute if a cheeseburger is desired.
  11. MickinMD

    Apples

    I've been eating Honeycrisp, mostly slices slathered with chunky peanut butter or chopped into bitesize pieces, nuked to semi-soft, and added to steel-cut oatmeal. I also have liked every apple I've tasted that starts with "Jon:" Jonathan, Jonafree, etc. which also comes with a good story. A man asked his groundskeeper to cut down an apple tree. He didn't do a good job, it grew back from the stump, and produced great tasting apples and soon a nursery company was taking cuttings to graft onto roots. The man named the apple after his groundskeeper: Jonathan.
  12. I don't follow college basketball much anymore during the season, but I love March Madness and playing free Prize Bracket Games makes the tournament games more interesting The first round begins Thursday, March 21st at 12:15 pm and you have to enter the games before then to get all possible points. There are four play-in games on March 19th and 20th to determine the 64-teams for the first round, but the games don't require picking winners of the play-in games. Here are the links to the six brackets I play. You can find expert brackets to use for yourself in the games or google "march madness 2024 picks" and you'll find a lot of "expert" picks you can follow. CBS 2024 Men's NCAA Bracket Games: https://picks.cbssports.com/college-basketball/ncaa-tournament/bracket CBS 2024 Women's NCAA Bracket Games: https://picks.cbssports.com/college-basketball/ncaaw-tournament/bracket ESPN Men's Tournament Challenge: https://fantasy.espn.com/games/tournament-challenge-bracket-2024/bracket ESPN Women's Tournament Challenge: https://fantasy.espn.com/games/tournament-challenge-bracket-women-2024/ Yahoo Sports Men's Bracket Madness: https://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/mens-basketball-bracket Yahoo Sports Women's Bracket Madness: https://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/womens-basketball-bracket
  13. @Kirby - thanks for reminding me! I don't follow college basketball much anymore but I do love playing the prize brackets online from CBS, ESPN, and Yahoo. I'll list the links to them in a thread dedicated to March Madness Free Bracket Prize Games.
  14. My Israeli guide, Mende, during my week tour of Israel in '99 had been a tank driver in the '67 war. When we got to the Golan Heights, he drove us past blown-up Syrian bunkers. At each one, he pointed out the Eucalyptus tree growing next to it. The Eucalyptus tree is (or was) the good-luck tree of the Syrian army. So when Israeli planes wanted to attack the Syrians on the Golan Heights, they just looked for Eucalyptus trees!
  15. I hope he was wearing a super-solid cup!
  16. Thanks for getting me moving @Ralphie! I'm clumsy enough to knock my phone off a table or have it fall out of a pocket once a year, so I like a good, padded, two-sided case with a clip to my pocket or belt. So I searched and found this case on Amazon, then ordered the 6.4" Samsung Galaxy A54 5G phone for $317.99 total from Tracfone with which I'll replace my current, faulty 6- year-old 5" Galaxy S7 phone.
  17. It's like Linda Ronstadt's explanation of why she never married. “I have no talent for marriage. Not a shred. I don’t like to compromise. If I want a pink sofa and somebody doesn’t want a pink sofa, I’m not going to go for that. I want the pink sofa.” Similarly, I think I've been pushed into my own way of thinking and doing the couple times I briefly lived with women reinforced the fact that I'm just more comfortable on my own.
  18. I've calculated circular circumference and area stuff from time to time and always use 3.14. "3 point one four one five nine" is in an IIT Cheer but I don't need more than three significant figures. When we'd be losing a basketball game 60 - 25 to some school like East Jesus Community College, we would chant: That's all right! That's ok! You'll be working for us one day! But my favorite cheer was the one below with pi in it twice. Mathematically, the first two lines below are exdydx, exdy and are multivariable and single variable calculus derivatives. You know 3.14159, but do you know what "i" and "2.3" are? e to the x, d y, d x, e to the x, d y! Tangent, secant, cosine, sine! 3 point one four one five nine! i, pi, two point three, Let's have a cheer for IIT! i is the square root of negative 1. Believe it or not, there are some physics and chemistry calculations where you can't make sense of the real world without it (electricity, light, and more). 2.3 is the conversion factor by which you divide natural logarithms to get base-10 logarithms.
  19. My nephew, now the flight attendant, won tickets to an AA Minor League Bowie Baysox game for reciting pi to something like 17 decimal places when he was in elementary school. The modern minor league stadiums have playgrounds for kids, picnic tables for adults McDonald's-size prices for concessions and cheap tickets. Taking a few kids to see the nearby, major league Orioles or Nationals is a financial adventure.
  20. I get flexible waist jeans and they normally last several years until I tear a hole in them somewhere.
  21. I have eight European-born great-grandparents, six of whom emigrated to America in the 1800's and the son of the other two emigrated to America in 1906. Two were Irish (Cashen and McDermott), Four were Polish (Gryskiewicz, Ostapowic, Gadomski, Kypczynski), one was German (Zimmerer - I can trace her ancestors to the 1400's entirely in Germany so there's definitely very high %age German DNA from Great Grandma Wilhelmina), and one, a Hartzer, was Alsatian (part of France or Germany, depending on who won the last war). My Ancestry.com DNA analysis comes real close to what's expected for 7/8 of my DNA: 1/4 Irish (24%), 1/2 Polish (29% Polish, 20% Baltic which includes Polish - my ancestors had a farm near the Lithuanian border where floods of Jewish refugees from Russia settled so that's where my 1% Jewish comes from), 1/8 German (13%), but the other 1/8 is a mix of Vikings and other northwest Europeans that somehow ended up with the Alsatian-German family name of "Hartzer." Those Hartzers must have done a lot of banging of people traveling through Strasbourg. ===================================================================================================
  22. After the house burned down, I decided on a 10" deep, 33" long stainless steel sink sink. All the appliances are stainless,
  23. I've been thinking the same. Two top-notch coaches let Wilson go. Meanwhile, Fields played for a train wreck of an organization in Chicago and might catch fire in Pissburgh - or not.
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