I called my sister about 4 a.m., her time.
She was patient enough.
Hubby answered the phone and said, Doug, it’s 4 a.m.
I apologized.
A few hours later I called my partner, thinking it was evening; it was 5:30a.m.
She was not pleased.
We only get up that early for hockey.
Through the infrastucture of Brisbane (that’s in Queensland, Australia) I know I have people lined up to care for me.
Still, a brain is a terrible thing to lose. And I watched it in my grandfather and grandmother 40 years ago.
My eldest, 1-of-4 Canadian daughters (she’s 32 and has a 5-year-old son) was honest with me and said I shouldn’t travel to Ontario, even if there’s people I want to see (yes that’s her in this 1988 pic I took for my science column; I even remember developing film in the darkroom, and had sex there too along with the electron microcopy room.)
I have brain problems and cannot travel by myself.
My wife, who has power of attorney over my finances and death, says I can’t travel alone.
Yeah, looks like I’m fading fast
My best friend from high school has pancreatic cancer, so our friends are waging who will go first.
My brain hurts because I fall a lot, and Amy is going to break up with me.
But my life has been full of wonder, and I will keep being curious and keep writing.
It’s the best medicine.
50 years of pucks to the head, 4 years as a linebacker in football (gridiron) the car crash, the bike falls and so many others.
First I started falling on my hockey skates and the was the end of my 50-year hockey career.
Then I fell off my bike a couple of times and that was the end of cyclying.
Then I started falling while walking.
My wife thinks I’m a drunk, I think I’ve taken too many pucks to the head as a goaltender in ice hockey since 1967 (the last time the Leafs won the cup), 4 years as a linebacker in North American football, the car crash and everything else.
Amy took me to emergency yesterday a.m. because she’s solid like that.
Three stiches in the ear, a couple in my forehead.
Yes, it fucking hurt.
FML.
Check out my new web site,dougsdeadflowers.com.
The first time I got an MRI was about four years ago in Tokyo after I passed out in a bowl of soup.
They didn’t find much.
Now that I randomly fall, my Australian doctor said go get a MRI.
So I just finished.
Some say it’s the booze, others say it’s CTE (chronic traumatic encephalapthy from too many pucks to the head, too many years playing linebacker where the coach said go kill the dude with the ball, the car crash, and too many falls as age advances.)
I don’t know what to expect, but remain optimistic for my partner and family.
Peace and love.
I’ve always referred to The Odds song, Eat My Brain, as the CJD song.
Eating brains is not a good idea.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission confiscated deer brains and other deer parts from a Lititz restaurant earlier this month, according to state inspectors.
The brains, heads, muscle meat and other parts were taken after New China House’s operator couldn’t provide documentation the game meat was from an approved source, according to a Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture inspection report.
The game commission is investigating, according to PennLive.
A confidential tip led to the investigation, a commission spokesman told PennLive. Travis Lau said game animals for consumption must be farm-raised and game shot by hunters cannot be sold.
New China’s owner told PennLive that he doesn’t sell deer meat and that deer bones confiscated were for soup for him and his wife.
The deer parts violation was one of 18 violations documented on a Dec. 16 inspection, according to the agriculture department’s report. A follow-up inspection Dec. 17 documented 14 violations, including an unidentifiable pig organ, which the operator’s wife said was her lunch. It was discarded.
My friend in France sent me this story from Process Alimentaire and my best friend translated it.
Stephane Desaulty, a PhD student at CLLE-LTC University of Toulouse 2 is undertaking a thesis in cognitive psychology to increase the efficiency 
of good hygiene training in catering. It is reinforced by scientific expertise in food safety from the School of Industrial Biology (EBI).
Silliker is funding the research. For the consulting, auditing and analysis firm, part of Mérieux Nutrisciences this thesis is an opportunity "to identify new avenues for training."
The base for this research is in "fuzzy trace” theory. According to its inventors, experiences are simultaneously stored in our memory in two forms: first traces representing the details of events and also traces representing their general meaning. As such, this theory demonstrates that as expertise increases, the mental representation of risk does not become more complex. Quite the contrary, when making a decision the trained people would not rely on details, as would the novices, but rather on simple mental representations.
The thesis will focus on analyzing the memory representations in reasoning and decision making in a professional context as well as on analyzing possible differences between "experts" and novices. The goal? To identify the strengths and weaknesses of training programs. In the short term, this research should measure the suitability of proposed training and develop new learning tools.