Olympics

Gotta love that Wild Wonderful Woman's Wednesday a few days ago!! I managed to actually watch the Canada-Russia hockey game. Normally I find those things extremely stressful, vacillating between hope and despair as the two sides trade goals. But this was such an amazing game... with great plays by the Canadians... So it was great! And icing on the cake was the women's bobsleigh, gold and silver... and the women's short-track relay, silver... and the 5000 m women's speed skating, bronze... What a day! Now, this is getting posted on Feb 28... and is being written on Feb 25... so who knows what may come in between those two dates... Women's hockey... men's semi-final hockey... curling... all sorts of possibilities for medals... and more medal ceremonies too... As I was driving to the airport today, I just had this thought that a whole country is bursting with pride today... But, here at the airport, there is the typical subdued Canada spirit... everybody burstng on the inside... but not really showing it on the outside... We can be proud, but not too proud... That's Canada for you... We beat the Russians at the Olympics for the first time in 50 years and.... well... we take it in our stride!

Yoga

I went to my first "official" yoga session the other day... It wasn't quite what I expected! I have been doing some of the yoga moves and it seemed, to me, like a lot of stretching and movement stuff. But what I got from the class was, there's a lot of focus on breath and breathing as well! I know for myself, that my breath is quite shallow and quick... I just think that's normal... at least for me... But maybe there's another way to breathe? What does it mean if my breath is always shallow?? Do I have stagnant air in my lungs? What would it be like if I altered my breathing to take deeper, slower breaths? I'm not sure! Part of me thinks I might hyperventilate or something! But it was definitely interesting to do these stretches and exercises while focusing on my breath... I also thought I'd feel tired afterwards, but that wasn't the case... just peaceful! Which is a nice after-effect, especially at the end of a long, hectic weekend... We talk a lot in the Church about meditation and contemplation, and how important that is... but really... how much do we practice that? I know, for me, quiet time is one the first things to go off of my schedule when I have things to do... I'd much rather be doing than being... much rather be accomplishing things than just sitting in silence which seems kind of... a waste of time! But everything I'm reading says that meditation or quiet time is THE most important thing you can do/be for yourself... Time to just be... and not think...

Deepak Chopra

Last week, we went and saw Deepak Chopra, who was speaking on Reinventing the Body and Resurrecting the Soul, his new book. It was a fascinating talk, and brillian to see how he weaves his medical knowledge together with quantum physics to really challenge our understanding of the body and the world around us. One thing really stuck with me... he was speaking of Wilder Penfield, a scientist in Canada who, while doing brain surgery, noticed a few things. This was under local anaesthetic, so the pateints were awake and could respond. He would stimulate the area that controlled say, arm movement. He would use an electric probe, touch the area, and the patient's arm would move upwards. The patient noticed this but said he wasn't causing the arm to move... the electrical stimulation was creating that. After several times of this, Dr. Penfield asked the patient to override the arm movement, and to move his arm across his chest. The brain area that raised the arm was stimualted, but the arm moved across the patient's chest. The big question... we think our consciousness, or our mind, is in our brain. But this experiment seems to indicate that consciousness, mind, is external to the brain... That something outside of our brain can override what the brain says... Make sense??? Quite a fascinating idea... with all sorts of implications for all sorts of things... We're reading the book right now... so more insights as they come!

Time or Energy

I read somewhere that the real shortage isn't time... but energy! That we have all the time we require... but the question is... do we have the energy that we need? There are many things in our lives that deplete our energy... and teh real question is, how do we recharge our batteries? Back a few years ago, we talked about battery memory. How you needed to run a battery until it was dead before putting it on the recharger. If you didn't drain it completely, but put it on the charger prematurely, it wouldn't recharge fully... And the next time, would recharge less and so on... Until you had a cordless phone that needed to be put on the charger every hour or something! Sometimes it seems like we treat ourselve that way as well... we run and run and go and go until we collapse, and only then do we recharge ourselves... Luckily, we are not like those older batteries... we can go for a bit and then recharge... go for a bit and recharge and we won't develop a battery memory! That takes a bit of doing though... to stop whatever is going on, to get off the hamster wheel, and recharge... "Oh, but I've still got time before I "need" to recharge, so I'll just keep doing a bit more... and a bit more"... Sound familiar?? Please say "yes", otherwise I'll think this is only me!!! How do you recharge?? And how often??

Receiving Change

I have a minor pet peeve... Back after I finished high school, I spent a summer working in a corner store and learned how to give change to people. You know... the cost is $11.37 and they give you a $20. So how to make change? I started off by trying to work backwards... so $11.37... means there would be 100-37 = 63 cents... and then trying to figure it out. This was before the till machine told you how much change to give! One of my co-workers quickly taught me the correct way... $11.37... so + 3 pennies = $11.40 and then + a dime = $11.50 and then + 2 quarters = $12.00 and then + a loonie and a toonie = $15 and then + a $5 = $20!! So start with the smallest and work up the biggest. Simpler and way less prone to error. When we handed back the change, we counted it back the same way: give them the small change and say "$12" and then the toonie & loonie and say "$15" and then the five dollar bill and say "$20". A purist would actually count the pennies and dimes and quareters back into the hand of the customer. So they would have a pile of coins in their hand and then dollar bills placed on top.

Nowadays... the till tells you how much to give back and cashiers count it out of the drawer from the biggest to the smallest. So the machine says $8.33 as change... and they get a $5 and a $2 and a $1 and then 2 quarters, 1 dime and 3 pennies. And they plop it all into your hand... bills first and coins on top... Have you experienced a problem with that? The coins don't land on the bills very well and inevitably slide off... so you either have to catch them quickly or chase them down on the floor, etc. I don't have a problem with cashiers making change however it works for them... But please... put the coins in the hand first and then the bills!!! Everybody would be so much happier and there would be a lot fewer spilled coins out there... Perhaps we could start a revolution?? Suggest the coin first option to cashiers and see where it goes??

Pacific Garbage Island

Did you know that the Pacific Ocean has a bit garbage pile in the middle of it??? I had heard about the Pacific Gyre, a circulation pattern in the Pacific in which things tend to accumulate. I had heard that there was garbage that collects there, but I had no idea of the size of it... or the ramifications. Plastic is the primary component... but plastic lasts forever, right? So what harm can it do?? Well... plastic does last forever, but through the process of photo-degradation it breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces... and leaches toxins... So big critters (like albatross) eat the big pieces... and little critters (like krill) eat the small pieces... and it gets passed up the food chain... eventually ending up in things that we eat. Most of this garbase (80%) comes from garbage from land, not from passing ships, etc. Every once in a while, this gyre will spew garbage out towards Hawaii... so that whole beaches are covered with garbage, several feet deep. Can we clean this garbage pile up?? Apparently it's not feasible to send ships out to scoop up garbage spread over an area twice the size of Texas and floating to a depth of 100 feet. But what we can do is make sure that we don't send more plastic to compound the problem... So, the next time you see a plastic bottle floating down a creek or river... or see a plastic bag blowing around the streets... why not do our planet a service and clean it up? (See below for some links)
http://www.vbs.tv/newsroom

http://science.howstuffworks.com/great-pacific-garbage-patch.htm

http://www.unep.org/regionalseas/marinelitter/publications/docs/plastic_ocean_report.pdf

Northern Lights

Well, I did get to see the northern lights in Yellowknife! They weren't scintillating colours, more a white or pale green, but they were still impressive. We were viewing them from the edge of the retreat centre we were staying at... and they were nice there. But then someone took us out, through Yellowknife, and onto the ice road across the big lake. We got a fair distance from the lights of Yellowknife, and there they were, a huge curtain of northern lights hanging across the sky, shifting and dancing! Very cool.... You actually feel very small and insignificant standing there beneath them, beneath the most impressive live painting experience in the world. Apparently they are also there during the day, but it's too light for us to see them... To think that this is happening all the time... and most times we can't see it. In the city, even at night, it's hard to see them, because of all the city lights. Reminds me that we clutter up our lives with all sorts of things, and we can't see the things that are out there all the time... The glory of God that is all around us... The beauty of other people... We are blind to those things, blinded by our own stuff... interesting....