Author: vargocity

Recently I went to Utah for a week to go hiking with Dave and Matt. The trip was a great experieince, with time left over to spend in Salt Lake City with Liza upon our return. It deserves more attention than I am giving it here but, as you can see, this is true of the blog as a whole right now. Enjoy the photos.

On Wednesday I had to go into an oral surgeon to have my last wisdom tooth taken out. Please spare me the pain of explaining why one was left in there all this time. Let me only say that it had always been easier to leave it be until now; some dentists thought a cyst may be developing near it and wanted it removed once and for all. My dental history is a long and storied affair with several lengthy and numbing procedures. Receiving Novocaine injections for local anesthetic is fairly routine for me. But this time it was surgery and involved general anesthesia; being put to sleep – completely unconscious.

With Lauren gone, I asked Brennan to accompany me to the surgeon’s office and to drive me home afterward. I was expecting something fairly simple. Having already been through the extraction of the 3 other teeth during two separate procedures with only local anesthetic I was surprised when the appointment was only scheduled for 30 min and almost happy not to have to suffer through all the prodding and prying. Nonetheless, going under should always make you a bit nervous and it did on Wednesday. When I came to I was sitting in a small room where I apparently picked up and held Nemo for a bit.

Brennan and I headed to Publix to get some food and he did all he could to keep me awake. I think he thought I was going to fall over walking. I drank a fruit drink and a yogurt drink and proceeded to get sick on the way home. We had decided to go back to Brennan’s house where he could be there for me rather than me being at home all alone. Good thing, because the nausea and vomiting continued for the entire day.

Now, two days later, I am feeling better and have my appetite back but my jaw and wound are still sore. I go back on Wednesday for a follow-up appointment, but I would say that I have discovered that my body does not agree with general anesthesia.

One morning last week something weird happened to us. At the peak of the storm around 6AM we heard a loud scratching at our door. When I looked out the glass I saw a big black animal clawing at the door and butting its head into the door, pushing it. It was a freaked out dog trying to break into our house. We stood inside for awhile trying to figure out what to do. The dog continued to claw and butt at the door and even tried to chew his way in. Maybe he heard how we adopted another local misfit pup. I finally ventured out on the porch thinking that I could not stand to lose this dog (with a collar) and find out where it actually belonged.

It was friendly but scared and would not take treats. I looked at the collar but only found a 2010 rabies tag, no ID. The tag had Dekalb Animal Service number on it and a registration number. Lauren had tried to call 911 but hung up after being tranfered for the third time and having to repeat our address several times. The animal services said they would come by at 8:30 to get the dog and we put him on a leash and went to work with him contianed on the porch. The picture of the damage is above.

We left a note for the animal services people and went to work. They called Lauren and told her that the dog belonged to some folks who live one street over and they returned him to his house. The owners were out of town and the dog freaks out in the lightning (obviously). The owners were given our name and were grateful that we found him and could get him back to them. They’ve said they want to help us with replacing the damage to the door.

Deepwater Horizon Spill

Eyjafjallajokull Volcano, Iceland

Digital Globe

If you wait ’til the last minute, it only takes a minute.

(compliments of Dana)

Today is World Health Day 2010. The theme for this year’s World Health Day is ‘Urban Health Matters’ (focused on urbanization and health). As part of the efforts to raise awareness about the day, the WHO is recruiting cities from all over the world to be part of its 1000 Cities, 1000 Lives campaign. Atlanta is represented among 1000 cities because it is opening its streets to the public as part of an event in May called Atlanta Streets Alive. If you’re in town please be sure to check out the event. If yo’re not in the area, chances are you live in an urban area. Visit the WHO site to find out something new about urban health, what’s going on in your city and how you can make your city healthier.

A couple months ago a listing of county health rankings was released. It was funding by the Robert-Wood Johnson Foundation and housed at the University of Wisconsin. It offers rankings for all the counties of a state based on one of two composite metrics: health outcomes and health factors. Outcomes focus on morbidity and mortality while factors consider social, environmental, and access components (see diagram). You can look at the data on any of the inputs for a single county.

The rankings compare only counties in a single state. So we can look at the counties that are relatively healthy in Georgia but they are not directly comparable to counties in the next state. They are based on America’s Health Rankings which does similar things to rank states. They factors included are meant to represent those which, if improved, will make that place healthier. You can use them to look at distributions within a state and begin to draw conclusions that way. Then you can compare those trends to other states. For example in Georgia you can see that the counties around the urban center (Atlanta) have relatively high health rankings compared to the rest of the state (Fulton and Dekalb are 24 and 17 of 157). However, for Michigan you can see that the urban counties are relatively unhealthy compared to the rest of the state (Wayne is 81 of 82). A comparison of the 50 healthiest and unhealthiest(?) counties in the country examined this question a bit more closely. They found:
healthier counties are urban/suburban, whereas least health counties are mostly rural. About half (48%) of the 50 healthiest counties are urban or suburban counties, whereas most (84%) of the 50 least healthy counties are rural. In order to take advantage of the data and compare counties in different states I decided to take a limited sample of counties (ones where I have spent a fair amount of time) and look at them more closely and with respect to some easily obtained demographic data from the 2000 Census. The results are shown below. I need to do a little more digging in the data, but I hope to use this as a pilot study and to try and get the stats for a larger percentage of counties all over the country to look at this data.

This week on GPB they aired a program call Alone in the Wilderness. It follows, or rather presents, the life of Dick Proenneke, or rather his later life. After retiring at 50 he went to Twin Lakes in Alaska where he built his own cabin in the wilderness. The film follows that first year building the cabin and then braving his first winter. Dick filmed it all himself and kept detailed diaries. He lived there for over 20 years.

The footage of the animals and and the landscapes are nice but seeing him work the wood and construct his foundation, frame, roof, door, fireplace, sled, and more is really interesting. The man can saw and work with an axe. An excerpt is included below, and the whole thing can be seen on a few Chinese sites through Google.