Today is the first day of European Summer Time - we "sprang forward" an hour, although I managed to accidentally spring forward an extra unfortunate hour as well. For some reason my phone doesn't automatically adjust to new time zones - of course it picks up the correct network time but that's not what it actually displays. Slightly bizarre. So last night before I went to sleep I set it forward an hour. I also use it as an alarm clock. When it went off this morning I was really tired but it took me about half an hour to realize that my phone had indeed set itself forward an hour also. So I woke up at 6-something, which was not at all my intention. Even though the time change meant the sun right now rises a little later than it had been rising previously, it's still rising so bloody early that it was completely bright and sunny out so it didn't occur to me that it was so early.
I am pleased that the days here are now longer than they are anywhere in the US, I believe. Dawn began here at 5:38 am, and dusk will end at 8:08. The length of day will increase by approximately six minutes a day for a while. In Berkeley, dawn began at 6:30 and dusk will end at 7:57. The length increases much more slowly, about two or three minutes per day.
One thing I'm disproportionately excited about with moving to Ann Arbor is that since it's on the very edge of the Eastern Time Zone, it stays light until really late in the summer. It's already pretty good right now - dawn doesn't start until 6:52 but dusk ends at 8:28. At the beginning of July it will stay light until nearly 10 pm, compared to New York at the other edge of the time zone where it will only stay light until about 9.
I'm not sure what it is with me and extreme weather/climate/meteorological events. I think it would be safe to say that I don't know anyone else who cares that much about the tiny minutiae of sun path and day length.
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It was the perfect day for the beginning of summer time. It's been beautiful and sunny all day, in a hazy but glaring kind of way, and even though we had our first real snowfall just over a week ago, the temperature was very mild. And fittingly, I had my first trip to the Stockholm archipelago today. P., her friend A. (who is also a doctor), and I went to Sandhamn. The name means "sand harbor." There are 24,000 islands in the Stockholm archipelago and there are extremely different landscapes/topography throughout. Sandhamn, obviously, is sandy. It's also on the outer Eastern edge of the archipelago so a lot of it looks out onto open sea. You can see where it is on the map here.
I'm pleased to say that I got a lingonberry stain on my sneaker. We walked on big boulders and along the sandy beach and along small roads lined with pine trees and through these fields where the entire ground was covered in really thick, squishy moss so your feet would sink in literally almost a foot, and lingonberry patches although there weren't many nice-looking lingonberries left. We ate a picnic lunch sitting on some rocks looking out at the Baltic Sea.
Some things I learned: There is an archipelago doctor, or probably more than one since there's so many islands (and I guess some of the really big islands must have their own doctors if enough people live there year-round), who takes a boat from island to island to see patients. This would be a very cool job. There are elk who live on some of the islands, and reindeer, and foxes, and snakes. Sometimes - rarely, but sometimes! - the elk SWIM from one island to another. P. saw this once. I would do nearly anything in the world to see elk swimming between islands. Somehow we got on the topic of unusual animals and we talked about muskoxen which I guess are starting to pop up again in Sweden, and I told them about manatees, which they had never heard of. Thinking about the manatees swimming in canals and swamps in Florida just kills me. It was surprisingly hard to describe what they're like - I kept trying to describe them as like big, slow, gentle people who look sort of like whales.
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The sad news of the weekend is it looks like our Zurich marathon hopes might be dashed. I battled my recurring shin splints successfully but have managed to develop what I believe is peroneal tendonitis in my left foot. There is terrible pain on the outer part of the arch and it hurts even to walk. I'm going to try to see a sports doctor here this week but the marathon is 3 weeks from today and I have not been able to run at all for the past week, and if it is what I think it is it will take weeks to heal. To say that I'm crushed and devastated would be a huge understatement. The only good thing that might come out of this is more time with Jake in Sweden to take day trips to more islands. At the top of the list, based mostly on P.'s recommendations: Finnhamn, Öland (down south actually, not in the archipelago), Utö...
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Monday, March 24, 2008
I meant to write a little bit about Ireland, also. The beautiful misty cliffs were all in County Clare, on the west coast of Ireland. The really huge spectacular ones are the Cliffs of Moher.
The highlight of the trip for me, as is probably apparent given which pictures I posted, was the pet cemetary at Powerscourt, a beautiful estate & gardens about an hour outside Dublin. It was right up my alley. Some of the inscriptions are so incredible I could barely believe it.
Other highlights of Dublin included the beautiful department store Brown Thomas, the amazing Irish cheese plate we had, the amazingly creamy Guinness, the heavenly food market Fallon & Byrne, a nice long evening run to the outskirts of town along the ocean, and the scones at Keogh's.
The highlight of the trip for me, as is probably apparent given which pictures I posted, was the pet cemetary at Powerscourt, a beautiful estate & gardens about an hour outside Dublin. It was right up my alley. Some of the inscriptions are so incredible I could barely believe it.
Other highlights of Dublin included the beautiful department store Brown Thomas, the amazing Irish cheese plate we had, the amazingly creamy Guinness, the heavenly food market Fallon & Byrne, a nice long evening run to the outskirts of town along the ocean, and the scones at Keogh's.
Annandag Påsk
It's been snowing a lot the past week. This morning there was a beautiful snowstorm. The snow on the sidewalks all melted by the afternoon, although it kept flurrying on and off all day, but there's about 3 inches where it stuck. Not the most fitting Easter weather, but better late than never, for me.
It was a looong holiday weekend, with both Långfredagen (Long Friday, aka Good Friday) and today, Annandag Påsk. The Swedes are excellent at holidays. I don't think they have more holidays overall (and I don't want to even begin to broach the subject of their conceptualizations of the appropriate work/life/vacation balance), but they celebrate them well.
On Långfredagen, I went to hear Bach's Johannespassion at Katarina Kyrka. It was really intensely boring but I'm glad I went. Saturday I had a nice lunch with S. near Stureplan, then we walked around a bit and she showed me some jewelry stores I'll check out next week in my wedding band quest, and we looked at beautiful modern Swedish furniture at Nordiska Galleriet. I also bought a beautiful 2008 daybook and some other things at Bookbinders Design, which rivals only Papier Plus to me. Sunday was a lovely brunch over in Årsta, with the cutest little boys ever going on an Easter egg hunt in the snowy backyard, plus a failed trial of the arch support inserts Jake sent me, which sadly sent searing pains up my shins.
This morning I had brunch (kardemumma lyx and Söderblanding tea!) with P., M., and another of P.'s friends who she went to med school with at Karolinska, at the Hornstull Vurma while it was snowing and snowing outside. P. promised to help me learn how to properly bake some Swedish pastries soon, and I learned that geriatrics is one of the most well-compensated medical specialties in Sweden! This blew my mind, since in many parts of the US geriatrics is disappearing rapidly because nobody wants to do it. It's not that glamorous in Sweden either, but the system really works, with enticing people to the specialty by paying them more! This came up when we were talking about the recent NYT article about the "lifestyle" specialties in the US - it sort of blew their minds that something like dermatology could be so competitive, but (sadly, I think) it makes so much sense given the way healthcare in America is structured right now.
Two of the things I'm going to miss most about Stockholm are the pastries and the eucalyptus steam room at Sturebadet.
It was a looong holiday weekend, with both Långfredagen (Long Friday, aka Good Friday) and today, Annandag Påsk. The Swedes are excellent at holidays. I don't think they have more holidays overall (and I don't want to even begin to broach the subject of their conceptualizations of the appropriate work/life/vacation balance), but they celebrate them well.
On Långfredagen, I went to hear Bach's Johannespassion at Katarina Kyrka. It was really intensely boring but I'm glad I went. Saturday I had a nice lunch with S. near Stureplan, then we walked around a bit and she showed me some jewelry stores I'll check out next week in my wedding band quest, and we looked at beautiful modern Swedish furniture at Nordiska Galleriet. I also bought a beautiful 2008 daybook and some other things at Bookbinders Design, which rivals only Papier Plus to me. Sunday was a lovely brunch over in Årsta, with the cutest little boys ever going on an Easter egg hunt in the snowy backyard, plus a failed trial of the arch support inserts Jake sent me, which sadly sent searing pains up my shins.
This morning I had brunch (kardemumma lyx and Söderblanding tea!) with P., M., and another of P.'s friends who she went to med school with at Karolinska, at the Hornstull Vurma while it was snowing and snowing outside. P. promised to help me learn how to properly bake some Swedish pastries soon, and I learned that geriatrics is one of the most well-compensated medical specialties in Sweden! This blew my mind, since in many parts of the US geriatrics is disappearing rapidly because nobody wants to do it. It's not that glamorous in Sweden either, but the system really works, with enticing people to the specialty by paying them more! This came up when we were talking about the recent NYT article about the "lifestyle" specialties in the US - it sort of blew their minds that something like dermatology could be so competitive, but (sadly, I think) it makes so much sense given the way healthcare in America is structured right now.
Two of the things I'm going to miss most about Stockholm are the pastries and the eucalyptus steam room at Sturebadet.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
luciferase
My new favorite category of enzymes is: luciferases! Lucifer, like Latin for "bear light," like the devil! They're involved in bioluminescence (e.g. fireflies).
Here is a nice picture from Wikipedia of a luciferase in fireflies:
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I also learned on Wikipedia about a town named Ytterby in the Stockholm archipelago on an island called Resarö. For some reason, this tiny town has a lot of really unusual mineral deposits, and is responsible for the discovery and/or naming of a whole slew of chemical elements: yttrium, ytterbium, terbium, erbium, gadolinium, thulmium (Latin term for the Nordic countries), and holmium (Latin for Stockholm).
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Now, on to reading "Histone deacetylase 5 epigenetically controls behavioral adaptations to chronic emotional stimuli" by W Rental et al.
Here is a nice picture from Wikipedia of a luciferase in fireflies:
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I also learned on Wikipedia about a town named Ytterby in the Stockholm archipelago on an island called Resarö. For some reason, this tiny town has a lot of really unusual mineral deposits, and is responsible for the discovery and/or naming of a whole slew of chemical elements: yttrium, ytterbium, terbium, erbium, gadolinium, thulmium (Latin term for the Nordic countries), and holmium (Latin for Stockholm).
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Now, on to reading "Histone deacetylase 5 epigenetically controls behavioral adaptations to chronic emotional stimuli" by W Rental et al.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Liljeholmsbadet sjunker
Oh my god, this picture is crazy. It's from 1950, when the floating bathhouse apparently sank - "Liljeholmsbadet sjunker!"
Igloo School
J sent this to me - Channing Frye, the basketball player, talking about the University of Michigan, from the TrueHoop blog:
Channing Frye wanted his brother Logan to follow in his footsteps to the University of Arizona. But he's going to Michigan. Frye blogs: "This lone wolf has to be different and he took his fat head to the cold, terrible, frozen tundra of Michigan. On the other hand, he is a brainiac so I guess it's sort of a good school for that. Not the best school ever like U of A, but maybe it comes in a close 45th because U of A takes up the top 44 places as the best school ever. So, congrats, on being accepted into igloo school."
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I recently had my first personal encounters with the Swedish medical system. I don't want to get myself all riled up now about the travesties in American healthcare, but suffice it to say, my experience here was pretty excellent. The doctor I saw was so nice and relaxed it was like a joke. I had the feeling that I could have asked her questions for an hour and she would have been polite and attentive the whole time. At dinner the other night with a group of girls who are involved in medicine/science here, I was learning more about the differences in healthcare between the different landstings in Sweden, which are sort of like different counties, and apparently up north there are some real difficulties, but that's obviously a common issue, of the highest quality medical care being centered in major urban/metropolitan areas.
Because the Fulbright commission arranges for us to be here for the year without Swedish personnummer, which are the social security numbers that basically give you access to every single service that exists in Sweden, I did have to pay up front and will look forward to receiving my reimbursement from the U.S. Department of State health insurance plan on a cold day in hell, but going to Apoteket, the state-run pharmacy, to get my two prescriptions, was a simply beautiful experience. Elephant Pharmacy ("the pharmacy that prescribes yoga") in Berkeley was many steps up from good old Rite Aid on 110th Street, a place which provided experiences that are permanently seared into my brain, but Apoteket was like heaven. You walk in, and as always, you take a number from the machine and wait for your number to be called. You don't have to stand in line, shifting your weight from foot to foot, while people breathe down your neck. Then they scan your prescription and just give it to you. You don't have to wait for 5 minutes, or 5 hours, or 24 hours. They just take it off the bloody shelf and give it to you. The shelves and drawers, of course, are beautiful light blond wood, probably from Ikea. One prescription cost 96 kronor - about $14 - and the other cost 41 kronor - about $6.
In America, I have no doubt they would cost approximately $900 and insurance would maybe cover $20. It's not perfect here, it's really not, but all I have to say is - god bless socialized medicine.
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Tomorrow - "American" brunch at Arizona.
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A picture of Hornstull, and the street where I live - with the buildings being built! - and the floating bathhouse, in 1930.
Channing Frye wanted his brother Logan to follow in his footsteps to the University of Arizona. But he's going to Michigan. Frye blogs: "This lone wolf has to be different and he took his fat head to the cold, terrible, frozen tundra of Michigan. On the other hand, he is a brainiac so I guess it's sort of a good school for that. Not the best school ever like U of A, but maybe it comes in a close 45th because U of A takes up the top 44 places as the best school ever. So, congrats, on being accepted into igloo school."
.
I recently had my first personal encounters with the Swedish medical system. I don't want to get myself all riled up now about the travesties in American healthcare, but suffice it to say, my experience here was pretty excellent. The doctor I saw was so nice and relaxed it was like a joke. I had the feeling that I could have asked her questions for an hour and she would have been polite and attentive the whole time. At dinner the other night with a group of girls who are involved in medicine/science here, I was learning more about the differences in healthcare between the different landstings in Sweden, which are sort of like different counties, and apparently up north there are some real difficulties, but that's obviously a common issue, of the highest quality medical care being centered in major urban/metropolitan areas.
Because the Fulbright commission arranges for us to be here for the year without Swedish personnummer, which are the social security numbers that basically give you access to every single service that exists in Sweden, I did have to pay up front and will look forward to receiving my reimbursement from the U.S. Department of State health insurance plan on a cold day in hell, but going to Apoteket, the state-run pharmacy, to get my two prescriptions, was a simply beautiful experience. Elephant Pharmacy ("the pharmacy that prescribes yoga") in Berkeley was many steps up from good old Rite Aid on 110th Street, a place which provided experiences that are permanently seared into my brain, but Apoteket was like heaven. You walk in, and as always, you take a number from the machine and wait for your number to be called. You don't have to stand in line, shifting your weight from foot to foot, while people breathe down your neck. Then they scan your prescription and just give it to you. You don't have to wait for 5 minutes, or 5 hours, or 24 hours. They just take it off the bloody shelf and give it to you. The shelves and drawers, of course, are beautiful light blond wood, probably from Ikea. One prescription cost 96 kronor - about $14 - and the other cost 41 kronor - about $6.
In America, I have no doubt they would cost approximately $900 and insurance would maybe cover $20. It's not perfect here, it's really not, but all I have to say is - god bless socialized medicine.
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Tomorrow - "American" brunch at Arizona.
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A picture of Hornstull, and the street where I live - with the buildings being built! - and the floating bathhouse, in 1930.
eftermiddag
I am very grateful to the organizers of the Zurich marathon, because for some reason they've decided to extend the time limit from 5 hours to 5 hours and 30 minutes. I have a lot to show for my marathon training so far - one completely disgusting black toenail, a strange blood blister on the other foot, really frustrating shin splints that have only finally gone away, and an unparalleled understanding of Stockholm geography and bridges and paths along the water - but that does not include the ability to confidently assert that I will finish the marathon in under 5 hours without severely hurting myself (my shins).
Yesterday I did a really pleasant 6 miles on the treadmill at Sturebadet, plus a lot of strength training that makes it painful to sit down today. This afternoon, I did another really nice 6 mile run, this time across Långholmen and Västerbron (the Western bridge, literally - it connects Södermalm to Kungsholmen, basically). I ran down Norr Mälarstrand and then got to see the gardens/courtyards of Stadshuset, city hall, which was really beautiful. There's some strange gold mummy statue on one side of it. Then, to Gamla Stan briefly and over the bridge back to Södermalm, along Söder Mälarstrand, once around Reimersholme for good measure, and home. It's sort of incredible to me that I went to so many different places yet only covered 6 miles. The geography of Sweden is so expansive, yet Stockholm is really so compact.
Now it's late afternoon and I still haven't done any work. I had a horrendous week last week, for no good reason other than getting really homesick and lonely and fussy, and got nothing done, so this weekend I'm trying to make up for it. The project I'm working on right now is the one I developed on early life factors - specifically, birth weight for gestational age, birth length, maternal parity (how many other children has your mother had), parental social class at birth, maternal age at birth, and I can't think of what else right now - and later risk for suicide. It's a slightly grim subject to be spending so much time on, but I do think it's really interesting and important. I was hoping to focus more on the affective disorders/depression outcome, and hopefully we will still get to that, but suicide ended up being easier to start with because it's a more simple outcome to analyze. The next two articles to read in my queue are called "Medical Illness and the Risk of Suicide in the Elderly," and "Antenatal maternal stress and long-term effects on child neurodevelopment: how and why?"
Yesterday I did a really pleasant 6 miles on the treadmill at Sturebadet, plus a lot of strength training that makes it painful to sit down today. This afternoon, I did another really nice 6 mile run, this time across Långholmen and Västerbron (the Western bridge, literally - it connects Södermalm to Kungsholmen, basically). I ran down Norr Mälarstrand and then got to see the gardens/courtyards of Stadshuset, city hall, which was really beautiful. There's some strange gold mummy statue on one side of it. Then, to Gamla Stan briefly and over the bridge back to Södermalm, along Söder Mälarstrand, once around Reimersholme for good measure, and home. It's sort of incredible to me that I went to so many different places yet only covered 6 miles. The geography of Sweden is so expansive, yet Stockholm is really so compact.
Now it's late afternoon and I still haven't done any work. I had a horrendous week last week, for no good reason other than getting really homesick and lonely and fussy, and got nothing done, so this weekend I'm trying to make up for it. The project I'm working on right now is the one I developed on early life factors - specifically, birth weight for gestational age, birth length, maternal parity (how many other children has your mother had), parental social class at birth, maternal age at birth, and I can't think of what else right now - and later risk for suicide. It's a slightly grim subject to be spending so much time on, but I do think it's really interesting and important. I was hoping to focus more on the affective disorders/depression outcome, and hopefully we will still get to that, but suicide ended up being easier to start with because it's a more simple outcome to analyze. The next two articles to read in my queue are called "Medical Illness and the Risk of Suicide in the Elderly," and "Antenatal maternal stress and long-term effects on child neurodevelopment: how and why?"
Monday, March 3, 2008
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