NOSE CUTS AND OTHER BIZARRE SHAVING SNAFUS

I have always hating shaving. And now I hate it even more.

See the cut on the tip of my nose? I cut myself there not by trying to shave THERE, but by shaving the left side of my face and then bringing my hand, with razor in it, over my nose to shave the right side.

What hairy follicle-filled tales of close shaving disasters do you have to share?

My STUFF (Part 2)

Because there were so many pix of items I couldn't include in the last post, I'm throwing them out today only because I'd feel badly if I excluded them.

And I'm still excluding some stuff. Like the art my mom has given me over the years -- a wooden picture carving, for example, of jazz musicians; a metal ship; a painting of a house on a mountain.

As I explained in the previous post, this stuff is all part of me, things I will never part with, things I always want around to remind me of different times and stages and experiences.

The painting that's shaped like a pipe is called Pipe Dreams 1984 by a Winnipeg artist named Jerry Bone. It was New Year's Eve 1983, a year after I got married, we were at a New Year's bash at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

It was of course all about George Orwell's 1984, cruise missile testing over Canada, the Cold War, acid rain, the brain and all kinds of other stuff. I dropped $1,000 on it in a bit of an alcohol-induced spending spree.

I love it.

BAH HUMBUG! I had a picture on here I inadvertently deleted of a cup shaped like a breast with a nipple on it. It was given to me by my sister, who had it given to her after she had a radical mastectomy (removal of both breasts due to cancer).

The pic of the shapely bottle opener lady on the left was a gift to me from Homo Escapeons, my dearest friend, when I split with my wife.

The weird stuff in the middle (if it comes out in the middle on Blogger) includes two decorative metal face thingies I picked up from India, along with an old 1903 British tour guide of India, which is sitting on top of a little music box I picked up in Syria.

The picture of the sunset over a lake on the right is a picture of Wallace Lake in northeastern Manitoba that I took in the 1980s. The cottage my ex's parents owned there is a place we often went to, but which I never go to now.

And it's a place I miss.



The wall hanging on the left is an obviously sexually graphic, really cool Kama Sutra-like image I also picked up in India.

And the sculpture on the right was done by my son when I enrolled him in an art class a few years ago...

Again, I'd love to see any such stuff from others, if they care to share their personal stuff...

My STUFF...

IT'S NOT EVEN DECEMBER YET, AND I HAVE CABIN FEVER ALREADY.

A snow-storm and windchill temperatures of around -30C (while it's +17C a mere province away) can do that to you. I feel shut in, a bit shut down, knowing winter has grabbed us.

And won't likely let go until March at the earliest. For you Aussies, South Africans, Floridians, Mississippians and others living in southern climes, this means many things.

It means I have now started plugging my car in at night to keep the engine block from freezing so I can start my car in the morning.

It means shovelling snow and skin freezing in less than a minute.

And it means staying inside a lot and unavoidably becoming more introspective. That means thinking about me.

And what I have within these walls that I spend most of my time in, things that make me feel warm and secure and comfortable.

Here are a few of them:

This is my Marvin the Martian coffee cup. M the M is one of my favourite Bugs Bunny characters of all time. I don't drink coffee out of him, I use him to store things, as you can see, and to be just be there.

This is a cheap picture my son bought me for a birthday from a dollar store when he was about 8. It's the first present he ever gave me that he paid for. It's a brutal picture, but I hang it anyway so he can see that I value it, which I do.

For the same reason, but also because of the words on it, I hang the scroll thing labelled "Dad" (on the right) on the wall above my computer screen. It's a gift from my daughter.

The C's are my initials, given to me by a woman I was involved in a relationship with who had also bought herself her own initials. The MYO 244 is a vehicle licence plate I found in Bangalore and brought home from India in 1979.

The mask on the left is something I bought in Spain in 1992, I just love all the colours in it.

The huge snake-charmer painting on the right I bought in India, also in 1979, for my mom.

She knew how much I loved it; she gave it back to me several years later.

These things will hang on whatever walls protect me, forever.

And to the left here is a treasure trove of stuff that never leaves the top of my TV/sound system wall unit.

The clock my mom gave me; the "Beary Special Dad" teddy bear from my daughter; the bottle of Quebec maple syrup from my son.

Other items are there from different people, including an Alaskan bear, a vase, a black puppy dog from women past and present.

And this is only a small sample of the knicks and knacks of my life and my travels and "my stuff" that I keep not in a closet but there for me to see, all the time.

Blogger wouldn't let me download any more pix, so I might have to follow this up with a Part 2 unless I've put all of Blogworld (or at least the few visitors to my little part of the planet) to sleep by now.

And if I haven't done that, I'll say this: I've opened up a bit of my life to you...now what are some of the things you hold dear, knick-knacks, gifts you've received, keepsakes, etc., that adorn your home?

Things you want to have around you to remind you of this thought or that person or that time or that relationship...or whatever?

Are you a candidate for Blogger's Back?

Canadian and Scottish health researchers with nothing else to do have discovered the latest craze to help whiny Web Wackos avoid a condition I am calling Blogger's Back.

Basically, it amounts to doing this while you're keyboarding...

Essentially, yes...you need to take up meditative Yoga or become a professional contortionist.

And, contrary to the long-held belief by your mother and other such medical experts, the old "sit up straight at 90 degrees or you'll become the Hunchback of Notre Dame" warning is not valid.

No, what these back specialists are recommending now is that while blogging (or while doing anything else that requires sitting), that your back actually be at 135 degrees, which I believe could tear some of my stomach muscles.

This is of particular interest to me (and probably only to me) because among my many surgeries, I have had a disc removed from my lower back, a sports injury that was the result of another sports injury.

I became familiar with such terms as lordosis (the kind of curve you have in your back) and other fancy names I can't remember. So I can vouch that you shouldn't slouch.

Here's an edited version of today's story...

By using a new form of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), Scottish and Canadian researchers have been able to show that sitting in an upright position places unnecessary strain on the back.

Sitting in this posture for hours at a time can lead to chronic back pain, say the researchers.

Lead author Dr. Waseem Amir Bashir, of the Department of Radiology and Diagnostic Imaging at the University of Alberta Hospital in Canada, says "sitting in a sound anatomic position is essential, since the strain put on the spine and its associated ligaments over time can lead to pain, deformity and chronic illness".

The researchers say the best position in which to sit at your desk is leaning slightly back, at about 135 degrees, as opposed to a 90-degree posture, which most people consider normal.

Back pain is the most common cause of work-related disability in much of the developed world and is a leading cause of job-related absenteeism.

Dr. Bashir says man was not created to sit down for long hours, but somehow modern life requires the vast majority of the global population to do so and the search for the best sitting position was all the more important. (Hello, Blogworld!!!)

The patients were asked to adopt three different sitting positions: a slouching position, in which the body is hunched forward (e.g., hunched over a desk or slouched over in front of a video game console); an upright 90-degree sitting position; and a "relaxed" position where the patient reclines backward 135 degrees while the feet remain on the floor.

Measurements were taken of spinal angles and spinal disc height and movement across the different positions. Spinal disc movement occurs when weight-bearing strain is placed on the spine, causing the internal disk material to misalign.

The team saw that disc movement was most pronounced with a 90-degree upright sitting posture and was least pronounced with the 135-degree posture. The "slouch" position revealed a reduction in spinal disc height, signifying a high rate of wear and tear.

They advise patients to ward off future back problems by correcting their sitting posture and finding a chair that allows them to sit in an optimal position of 135 degrees.

And here, if only to wake you up with visual images, are a bunch of left-over neat illustrations I pulled off the Web...