Fifty…

HBTM!

Mars out.

Nature

is never finished.

Robert Smithson

Adventures and changes…

In the past thirty days:

Reduced principal on mortgage 6%;

Refinanced mortgage with 30% reduction in P&I;

Applied for admission Spring 2010 University of Oklahoma;

Received promotion to Department Supervisor;

Part-time to full-time with increase in wages (two digits %).

I travel down the various rabbit trails which wind through the web. I read blogs and come away with the feeling that too much energy is applied to contrived, affected, self-important and self-absorbed postioning of opinions and thoughts (and I’m not talking about the tin foil hat wingnuts and haters).

So, when I mentioned becoming more transparent in a previous post it does not mean I will “bear all” in this blog. That will never happen.

It means dealing with the discomfort of change in habits and routine=challenges and growth.

There.

Thanks for checking in.

Mars out.

Blog changes…

I have changed the title of the blog to my name.

The reference to Jean-Paul Sartre will remain.  Google it.

The run-together abbreviated title was partly due to matching the domain name of my active site (marshansen.com) after losing my eponymous site when I was not well a fews years ago and partly a way of hiding. Well, it’s not a very clever disguise considering I have blogged enough information for the average seventh grader to pinpoint my home on Google Earth. The blog address is the same – http://marshansen.wordpress.com/

This may affect someone’s search on Google but I think it will be okay. Anyway, more transparency will result in more accountability.

There are more revisions coming with appearance, contents organized, tags simplified, Art and home projects more detailed, etc.

Any thoughts?

Marshall

More sadness. Peppers and Nightshade poison…

20090928 images added

I blogged recently about nightshade poisons and my attraction to pepper tastes and burns. Over the past 48 hours I conducted a subjective experiment to see if my sensitivity to the nightshade poisons was greater, the same or less than it would be if the peppers were cooked or raw.

The conclusion was reached at about 3:00 pm today when my elbows then hands and knees began the joint pain after eating a large quantity of the One Pepper Beans over basmati rice with a dollop of Philly cream cheese at about Noon.

All of this is subjective – the pain is not a pain in the compound-greenstick-fracture sense, it is not even a pin prick. It is similar to Tennis Elbow. It is an awareness of a change of physicality (if that can be a word applied to pain).  Like the way you become aware of the swelling in a sprained joint. The sensation of the swelling is not the pain of the sprain. It is still uncomfortable and since it is systemic it is not a pain like Tennis Elbow where it is in one location. Imagine it in every joint, including fingers.

Another analogy would be drinking alcohol. I know I feel the threshold has been crossed after the third Ketel One martini. Two tumblers, each with one ice cube, sipped slowly is nice and the third makes me feel intoxicated and uncomfortable. The analogy is made more perfect by the simple fact ingesting peppers is eating a poison and drinking alcohol is drinking a poison. A person does not have an “allergy” to alcohol in any clinical sense (though many claim it). A person is not “allergic” to peppers or tomatoes. Your body reacts to the poison a certain way at a certain level. Joint pain is typical with nightshades.

If I do not eat nightshades I will not have this joint pain.

There it is.

Mars out.

20090928 images added

Hot Banana Peppers, orange 6 1/2", red and new greenish-yellow below orange

another Hot Banana pepper plant w/ red, orange, yellow stages

Red and green jalapenos and serranos

Habanero peppers - orange to green

Habaneros - if only these were candy...

enjoy!

FWIW, You might have noticed the low/lack of insect damage. I plant a marigold in between every plant in the garden and I think this arrangement is more effective than the typical row of a few marigolds at one end.

Mars out.