It was six in the morning, as dark as night, being so close to the winter solstice. I was driving, one of the very rare times I drive to my office – oil change day. I backed down the driveway, and as I turned onto our road, looking through the rear view mirror, I saw a white shape in the distance glide by.

I looked, then peered intently. It wasn’t gliding, it was walking, and sometimes crouching down. It moved back and forth at the end of our street. It looked like it was following a black fuzz, or small black haze.

The apparition appeared to be wearing a white dress, and had shoulder length hair. I could not make out any detail on the black fuzz. The white apparition seemed preoccupied with the black fuzz, sometimes walking behind it, sometimes crouching when the black fuzz was close, then the black fuzz would quickly move away, and the white apparition would follow.

What was it? The safest assumption is that our neighbours have a new puppy, a black one, who was brought out for an early morning piddle trip. Since my eyes lack a tapetum lucidum, as all humans lack, any light colours she was wearing would have appeared white, and a black or dark coloured dog would have appeared as a black fuzz.

Mystery solved.

“I’d like to say a few words, if nobody minds. This would be easier if I texted you all, because that is how I communicated when Noreen was in hospital, but here goes.

I have known Noreen for a long time. Not as long as you, Terry. We didn’t share a womb together. But Noreen wasn’t just my cousin, she was my friend. We were always close as kids. Our families would visit each other. I would protect her against her brother. But as Terry got bigger and stronger and tougher, he and I had to get along.

I remember at our cousin Cathy’s wedding, it had been a few years since Noreen and I had seen each other. I was nervous. Would she remember me? What would it be like. We said hello, and then later we spoke in the kitchen, and it clicked, and it was like old times again.

Over two summers when I worked in Nanaimo I would visit her and her family in Comox. Noreen was a groupie for a band she was involved in. So I was a groupie too.

Then as we got older and were heading off to university, we had to decide which of us would move into our grandmother’s house. Well, I won, and Noreen moved into our grandmother’s house.

We didn’t keep in touch much after that; would see each other every so often, or get updates through our families.

After her terrible tragedy, when she lost her two children in that fire, I didn’t know how to react. I felt so sad for her. My own daughter Jessica was the same age as her children. How could I tell her how Jessica was doing as she grew up, realizing that if Noreen’s children would have been the same age as Jessica. How could I stay in touch with her? What could I say? We had little contact after that.

Unfortunately Noreen kept it all inside her, and started to take comfort in the bottle – that was her therapy. Then Noreen had more tragedy. Her mother and very close friend died suddenly, and Noreen drank more to cope with that. Then her father developed ALS and ended up in hospital, and Noreen would go every day to look after him. And to cope, she drank.

After he died, which was a year ago, she drank more. She carried so much guilt. She didn’t know if anyone appreciated what she did for him, or if anyone cared. I was able to tell her that we knew, and the extended family really appreciated all that she did.

She drank more and more. It seems, looking at her calendar book that she always had with her, that her life ended in early September. She only has one entry, then nothing. Even her former fiancee, John, said that near the end he would go weeks without seeing her, and he would hardly recognize her.

In the end, I think she wanted to die all alone. But because of her medical condition, finding it hard to walk, and being unable to get up the stairs to her apartment, she went to a motel where she knew the people who ran it.

But I don’t think they wanted her to die there, bad for business, so after a few days, on a Wednesday after she fell, they called an ambulance and she was taken to hospital in Comox. They couldn’t help her, so on Thursday they sent her to Victoria. The hospital contacted Michial, who contacted Terry, who called me on Friday, and I went to see her.

Throughout the next week I would go see her every day. And I thank our cousin Jeannie who also visited her often. We would talk with her, comfort her. I always tried to be there when her doctor was there.

On Thursday I think she was ready to die. In hindsight, what she said to me, and what she said to Jeannie, she said goodbye.

I know she didn’t wait for you, Michial and Terry, but I don’t think she wanted you to see her in that condition, to see how bad she looked, how much she had changed.

In hindsight, there are so many ‘what ifs’ and ‘if onlys’. We’ve been talking a lot these last couple of weeks. It is like the movie Butterfly Effect and we don’t know what we could have done. Was it
losing her children, or something even earlier. We just don’t know, and we can’t feel guilty or feel bad trying to figure it out. We just don’t know.

I think that, after seventeen years of torment and struggling, Noreen is finally at peace.”

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This morning I woke up an hour before I had planned to, yet at the same time as I usually wake up. Does this how, anecdotally, that my internal clock takes time to adjust, even though I told myself how many hours to sleep and when to wake up?

I would much prefer that we did not change our clocks twice a year, and stayed on either Daylight Savings or Standard Time.

The article I draw from is on runbare.com entitled New Study by Dr. Daniel Lieberman on Barefoot Running Makes Cover Story in Nature Journal. The study itself can be found at the Skeletal Biology Lab at Harvard University. in Nature 463: 531-5 and Nature 432: 345-352, both in .pdf.

In this study, Dr. Lierberman and his team looked at the difference between barefoot runners and shod runners. They studied and compared those who always wear shoes while running, testing with and without shoes, and those who do not wear shoes while running. The key points from the summary on runbare.com are:

Higher Impact and Lower Efficiency When Heel Striking: “…running on the heel increases impact (up to three times the impact force of forefoot landing, and up to 7 times the impact loading of running barefoot) and decreases efficiency (causing a braking effect with each stride) while running on the forefoot decreases impact and increases efficiency, by translating stored kinetic energy in the muscles into rotational or forward propulsion.”

Barefoot Runners Lower Center of Gravity to Reduce Impact. “…barefoot runners suffered no greater impact when landing on hard surfaces than soft surfaces… dispels the myth that we could once run barefoot on the Savanna, but cannot do so on harder ‘modern’ surfaces such as asphalt and pavement…”

We Evolved to Run on Our Forefoot. “Natural selection suggests that if endurance running was important to our survival, then forefoot running came about to protect the foot and reduce the chance of injury. While barefoot runners or those who wear minimalist shoes avoid rear foot landings and the associated impacts, in contrast, most shod runners today land almost exclusively on their heels.”

Modern running shoes may be dangerous. “…they promote a heel foot strike, which…produces far greater impact than landing on the forefoot… barefoot running may help reduce the chance of injury…”

The authors and researchers do conclude that more study is needed.

When I used to run, with prescription Brooks Beast, I ran with a heel strike. If I do take up running again, it will be barefoot running with a forefoot strike. To read the articles and educate yourself, follow the links above.

New Direction for any war: Send Service Vets over 60!

I am over 60 and the Armed Forces thinks I’m too old to track down terrorists. You can’t be older than 42 to join the military. They’ve got the whole thing ass-backwards. Instead of sending 18-year old’s off to fight, they ought to take us old guys. You shouldn’t be able to join a military unit until you’re at least 50.

For starters: Researchers say 18-year-old’s think about sex every 10 seconds. Old guys only think about sex a couple of times a day, leaving us more than 28,000 additional seconds per day to concentrate on the enemy.

Young guys haven’t lived long enough to be cranky, and a cranky soldier is a dangerous soldier. ‘My back hurts! I can’t sleep, I’m tired and hungry’ We are impatient and maybe letting us kill some asshole that desperately deserves it will make us feel better and shut us up for awhile.

An 18-year-old doesn’t even like to get up before10 a.m. Old guys always get up early to pee so what the hell. Besides, like I said, ‘I’m tired and can’t sleep and since I’m already up, I may as well be up killing some fanatical SOB….

If captured we couldn’t spill the beans because we’d forget where we put them. In fact, name, rank, and serial number would be a real stretch.

Boot camp would be easier for old guys. We’re used to getting screamed and yelled at and we’re used to soft food. We’ve also developed an appreciation for guns. We’ve been using them for years as an excuse to get out of the house, away from the screaming and yelling.

They could lighten up on the obstacle course however. I’ve been in combat and didn’t see a single 20-foot wall with rope hanging over the side, nor did I ever do any push-ups after completing basic training.

Actually, the running part is kind of a waste of energy, too. I’ve never seen anyone outrun a bullet.

An 18-year-old has the whole world ahead of him..He’s still learning to shave, to start up a conversation with a pretty girl. He still hasn’t figured out that a baseball cap has a brim to shade his eyes, not the back of his head.

These are all great reasons to keep our kids at home to learn a little more about life before sending them off into harm’s way.

Let us old guys track down those dirty rotten coward terrorists. The last thing an enemy would want to see is a couple of million pissed off old farts with attitudes and automatic weapons who know that their best years are already behind them.

***How about recruiting Women over 50 …..with PMS !!! You think Men have attitudes!!! Ohhhhhhhhhhhh my Lord!!! If nothing else, put them on border patrol…..we will have it secured the first night!

• Real-life Jedi: Pushing the limits of mind control by Katia Moskvitch, Technology reporter, BBC News.
• Mind-control computers for disabled people

The flat and transparent larva of the eel which grows about 60-300 mm. They are so hard to spot and rarely sighted.