Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
My wife and I were talking about a study about coffee-drinking. The headline hook: “Limit coffee-drinking to this time window to lower early death risk, study suggests“
What prompted me to mention it to her was this line: “The researchers identified two patterns of timing of consumption: morning and all day.”
I’m a morning and early afternoon drinker, for the record. But she told me that she mentioned it to her coffee group yesterday. All her age or older, they’re intelligent people with good recall skills. As a group, they came up with all the other things we’ve been warned about over the years, only to have them roll over and say, “Wait, our bad. New data is in.”
So, you know, we take this study and its revelation with a little reservation. And maybe a cuppa coffee.
One of many bloggers I follow, and one I’ve written of before, is Jill Dennison at Filosofa’s Word. Writing about news and politics, she also gives us daily music posts and doses of humor and snark. She also reminds us of stories about people being good, kind, nice, helping one another in the way that most of us hope a good society does. I’m sharing one of Jill’s post about “Good People Doing Good Things” today. As news inundates us with stories of death, hate, and bigotry, Jill’s recap of some feelgood stories are a satisfying antidote to the darkness and negativity which threatens to take over. Hope you find as much comfort, satisfaction, and hope in these as I did. Cheers
Mood: Sobersunnyreflectin’
Welcome to Thursday, Jan 9, 2025. We started out with the weather duplicating yesterday’s Ashlandia presentation. Sunshine lit up the bare trees, highlighting some frost, conveying a late fall scene. Walking through the house, I was thinking about how nice it was to experience early morning sunshine again. Temperature was 43 F, etc. But within an hour, fog was stealing the sun away from us and hiding out the blue sky. I thought, man, what kind of game is nature playing with us?
That thought triggered The Neurons. Within a few sips of java, The Neurons had Queen performing “Play the Game” in the morning mental music stream (Trademark late). Released in 1980, I remember listening to this song for the first time with two cousins in San Antonio. Both younger than me, both are deceased. One, a slender blonde guy, from a heart attack without warning at 43. The other, a slender dark-hair person who sparkled with wit and kindness, from cancer at 64. Sobering morning thoughts.
On the heels of those sobering thoughts were worries about the folks of southern California. Being in the Pacific Northwest, many who live in this town have California connections. Friends and family live down there. They work down there as musicians, nurses, doctors, teachers, and professors. So worry over the California fire scene is rampant up here.
The fog has lifted again up here. It still swirls around down in the lower elevations. It’s always interesting to go a mile into, traveling down a thousand feet in elevation to see how different the weather is.
I forgot to mention that I received the Christmas cards my parents had mailed me from San Antonio, Texas, and Pittsburgh, PA. The cards came in the Jan. 6 mail delivery. That DeJoy has really done wonders for the US Postal Service.
Coffee and I have struck a bargaining agreement. On my end, I’ll heat the water and put the ingredients together. On their part, the coffee will navigate my body and boost my energy. Here we go, on into 2025. Enjoy the music. Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 