noDday

How About No Bear

Social Media and Medicine

Today, October 1, 2012 is “No D Day.” Today is the annual day to take a step away from diabetes, to do something different, to share something new, and to not mention the “D” word that so many of us live with every single minute of every single day. For me, it’s even more special, because this is the first time that I’ve visited my blog to share with the world in over two months.

You can find all of the “No D Day” posts on Twitter by searching for the hashtag #noDday, or you can visit Ninjabetic.com for a list with links. I hope you enjoy this and all of the “No D-Day” posts today. As always, we will continue to work, and share, and push for a future where every day is a…

No D Day 2012

I’m a joker. No, not like the Steve Miller Band song (although, that is a great song…”I’m a joker, I’m a smok…” Nevermind.). What I mean is, I love a good laugh. Lately, I feel like I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had time to laugh as much. I haven’t had time to stop and appreciate the humor in things. I haven’t had time to stop and sniff the chihuahua eating venus fly traps. (What? Those TOTALLY exist.)

Most of my time lately has been spent working and traveling for work. In the past three weeks I have been up and down the state of Florida three times teaching physicians and medical students all about how social media and medicine collide. Basically, this is what happens during the Social Media and Medicine workshop.

First, my colleague and I get a bunch of physicians and lock them in a classroom. Then we start to mention social media, Facebook, Twitter, and the fact that people are sharing information online, and they go all…

How About No Bear

Then they spend two hours being exposed to all the various social media vehicles, why social media is important, how patients and physicians are actually using social media for good, and they start to get all…

Finally, by the end of the workshop, we reach the point of…

Dammit Jim LOLcat

That’s when we know that our work is done, and we move on to the next workshop in another city. Nothing makes me happier than a health professional embracing LOLcats. Okay, LOLcats and social media. I love being a medical librarian! And soon, I hope to slow down enough to share more of my world with everyone again.

(Also, this was my very first blog post using a MacBook Air that a friend let me test drive for a week. TOTALLY different than the PC that I’m most familiar with and accustomed to, but I have to say…I kind of love it. Dear Santa Claus, I’ve been really good (mostly) this year…)

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

The Joy of Reading

Sometimes we all need a vacation from diabetes. I’m not burnt out, and I’m not pitching an “I don’t wanna do this anymore!” fit, I’m just tired. Another post on that later this week. For now, here is a post that is NOT about diabetes, because any day can be No D-Day if you need it to be.

One of my goals for this year, among others, has been to find time to do more leisure reading. I am guilty of getting so consumed with the billion things that take moments from my day that I never stop to take a few moments of just quiet time to be still and read.

And I’m a librarian. Shameful, I know.

I wouldn’t trade many of the things that consume my time, but I believe that there is some peace in losing yourself in a good book.

The bit of reading that I’ve been doing over the past year or so has been work related, such as library journals, medical journals, business, political and technology news articles. There is no escape from reality when reading that kind of material.

So here are some things that are helping me get back on the joy of reading wagon:

  1. Be in bed by midnight (or whatever your bedtime may be). Not necessarily asleep, but just in bed and settled. Great time to turn a few pages.
  2. Visit your local public library. My local public library allows you up to six weeks with a book before you have to turn it back in, and it affords you the liberty to try a book that you may know nothing about. If it’s terrible, you’re only out the time it took to go to the library and get it.
  3. Take your book to work with you. I know that not every job allows for the opportunity to crack a book, but I’ve found sometimes when my brain is full and I need a quick mental break, I can open a book and read a couple pages and it helps. Plus, if you use public transit to get to and from work, reading is a much more entertaining way to pass the time than awkwardly trading stares with strangers. Well, most of the time. Sometimes making people in public feel uncomfortable is fun too.
  4. Read when traveling. I have to go out of town and teach every so often, and I try to drag along a book that isn’t work related to read while I’m at my hotel. I like to orbit near the hotel lobby coffee and a big comfy chair where I can alternate between reading and people watching, but that’s me.
  5. Get a bookmark that represents your personality. As crazy as it sounds, I think if you save a place in a book with a bookmark that matches you, it marks that place as YOUR place, and you are more likely to revisit it and continue reading sooner than later. (Sidenote: E-readers and apps need to get on this concept. You read it here first.)

Now I’m going to go continue reading “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,” because it has absolutely nothing to do with work, diabetes, or anything else.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Lake Ella at Dusk

No D-Day: Hit the Ground Running

Today, October 7, 2010 is “No D-Day”. The Diabetes Online Community is taking one single day away from diabetes. We will still be checking our BG’s, counting our carbs, dosing our insulin, and managing our diabetes, but we will not tweet about diabetes, we will not blog about diabetes, and we will not update Facebook about diabetes…for just one day. There is so much more to all of us than just diabetes. You can find all of the “No D-Day” posts on Twitter by searching for the the hashtag #noDday, or you can visit Ninjabetic.com for a list with links. I hope you enjoy this and all of the “No D-Day” posts today, and perhaps one day we can make every day a…

No D Day

Running and I are not friends. Running is hurtful, vindictive, and immature, and even tries to make me jealous by playing so well with others. Running is a complete bully towards me. It hurts my left ankle that I cracked when I was a kid. It hurts my knees, which get sore from time to time, especially when I’m really training hard for cycling. Being honest, it really hurts all of my leg muscles. But last Friday, something changed with mine and running’s long term tepid relationship.

As I was spending all of my energy on chores last Friday, taking clothes to the laundromat, sweeping floors, washing dishes, putting clean (and warm!) sheets on my bed, I got the notion to stop working so hard and go do something I enjoy: Exercise.

The Fall season is just arriving here in north Florida, the humidity levels are down, and the temperatures are dropping (not to my liking, I might add!), so it was a good evening to get outside of the house. I dawned my workout clothes, grabbed the iPod, and went a couple blocks away to Lake Ella, which has a nice paved sidewalk all the way around it that totals 6/10 of a mile per lap.

Lake Ella at Dusk

I started out with an easy walk. Although I’m an avid cyclist, I haven’t deliberately gone for a run in years, so I didn’t want to just take off running right out of the gate and injure myself. That might result in me not being able to go on a bike ride, and that simply cannot happen. I need my bike rides. Got to have priorities in this world people, even when it comes to exercise.

So I started walking. The cool thing about Lake Ella is that there are always a lot of people there to ogle. That makes walking around and around the lake a lot less monotonous. Pretty soon I got good and warmed up, iPod playing in my ears, and I started to become aware of people passing me.

Now, perhaps I was a race horse in a former life, but the competitive nature in me was starting to get antsy. I’m a cyclist. I can pedal 33 miles in less than two hours on the St. Marks Trail. I’ve completed the Five Boro Bike Tour in New York City. I’ve done the MS150 from Miami to Key Largo and back three times. Surely I can pick it up enough to keep up with everyone else, right?

Wrong.

For the record, running is not cycling. It uses a completely different set of muscles, many of which I’ve learned that I’ve been neglecting for too long. Now, I’m no Calvin Klein underwear model or a perfect 10 on the “OMG he’s dead sexy!” meter (I’m a humble 9.5), but some of the folks that were passing me as I was jogging like a pirate with two peg legs looked to be much heavier and not in near as good of shape as I am in. This ties back to the start of this post, about how running makes me jealous by playing so well with others. How do they do it, keep up the pace, and make it look so easy?

I still don’t have an answer to that multifaceted question. But I do know that I had a fantastic time dragging my limping carcass around Lake Ella for 5K last Friday evening. So much so that I did it again on Monday. And I vow to continue to push through the pain of running, and find that common ground where running and I can coexist without arguing so much, and hopefully one day the two of us will inspire enough jealousy in others for them to want to push through the pain too.