Who needs workout videos?

I’ve discovered a new form of exercise that incorporates both weight lifting and aerobic exercise. It’s called “attempting to get air out of the radiator by draining water from it” and it lets you feel like you are actually doing something important as you work out. There are ten bars on the radiator in my bedroom, and the bottom 2/3rds of five of them have gone cold. A student told me that if I drained out several bucket fulls of water (or is it buckets full?) that the problem would be solved because the air that is stuck in there would be released. If only! So, three days in a row I tried this. The beauty of it is that I’m always warm afterwards, and my bedroom ends up about one degree warmer for the next hour. Plus, running a relay with yourself, hauling buckets of water to the bathroom to dump out builds both arm muscle and endurance. They are supposed to send a repairman today, who hopefully will fix the problem once and for all, but I’ve taken such a liking to my new exercise that I may just keep doing it…

Three things learned at Thanksgiving:

1. There are cows with windows (or portholes, if you prefer) in their sides. Really. The rumor is that they are for veterinary students—not only can they see the insides of the cow, but they can also reach in a touch them. Just imagine if they did the same thing for medical students!



2. “Women are the downfall of men,” stated one of our adolescent friends who was out for the weekend. By way of further clarifying the issue, he added, “Seriously!” So young, and already he’s got it all figured out.

3. Is it tryptophan or tryptopan? When you gather people for Thanksgiving that come from different families, backgrounds, and parts of the country, you are bound to have this discussion. We formed a truce by renaming it: Tryptofizzle (or tryptophizzle, if you prefer). It’s kind of catchy, and it describes exactly what you do after eating turkey—fizzle out and take a nap. (For those of you who really want to know—it’s tryptophan)