Tropical Vibes

 The start of the Atlantic hurricane season has always been my favorite time of the year. My love of hurricanes and all tropical weather started when I was 8 years old and Hurricane Gloria affected southeastern New York where I grew up.  I had a hurricane chart and I would studiously plot the storms all season long.  

Even after I started my meteorological career, I was still fascinated by tropical weather. I plotted the storms both at work and at home and poured over satellite and raw tropical data while waiting for storms to form. 

Lately though it seems like there isn’t much waiting around for storms to form. There seem to always be storms. We have already had 3 named systems and we aren’t even a full month into the season. Gone are the days when our first named storm was in August. So why is that?  Is it because of global warming as the news media claims?  I think not!  

As a retired meteorologist, my frustration level is through the roof.  I used to hold a great deal of respect for the National Hurricane Center. I aspired to work there one day. One of my meteorological idols worked at the NHC.  The past few years, my opinion of the NHC has dramatically decreased.  The standards have significantly lowered and I’m not sure why. It seems like they are naming absolutely every tropical system even if it is subtropical and has no tropical characteristics.  This would not have happened 10 years ago.  I’m really not sure why this is happening. I’m not sure if they are pushing a certain political agenda or if they are trying to pad the numbers to make predictions verify. Regardless, what they are doing is not scientific. 

Don’t be fooled!  There are not more tropical systems, they are just naming things that would never have been named years ago. 

I still love tropical weather but I’ll stick to plotting the REAL tropical systems. 

Risk Taking

 I am not a risk taker. I prefer to play it safe. I only go out of my comfort zone when it comes to working out.  I don’t have to wonder why that is. I KNOW. In my life I’ve had many rejections and that has made me very cautious.  You don’t have to deal with being disappointed if you never put yourself out there. 

That was my philosophy for so long.  I didn’t gamble and I stayed exactly where I was.  Nothing ever changed.  But I also didn’t learn or grow.  I knew that something had to change. I couldn’t stay stagnant forever as much as my mind wanted me to.  So, I took a leap of faith and applied to graduate school. It was nerve wracking but I got accepted and I finished my first class with an A.  

Not only that but my professor somehow convinced me to submit my final paper to be published!  I never in a million years thought that would happen. I submitted my paper but I fully expect it to be rejected and then I’ll just keep trying. If my professor thinks it is good enough then I guess I should too. 

So three weeks out from paper submission I’m taking another risk. I just applied for a new job.  I am so torn about this because I love my current job but unfortunately I can’t advance there and this job would be better for furthering my career. So I’m taking the risk. 

I know for some, these things don’t seem huge but for someone like me these are monumental risks. I’m not yet ready to say that I’m a daredevil but at least I’m no longer stagnant. 

Summer Hygge

 I struggled to find something to write about today. We are heading into summer so I don’t have to complain about winter anymore, I’m working on my microbiome health which even I don’t want to hear about, my first class is finished (I nailed it BTW) and I’m still waiting to hear if my paper will be published.  While things are semi uneventful I have taken some time for me using a concept I’ve followed the past couple of years. It is called hygge (pronounced hoo-gah). It is the Danish and Norwegian art of finding comfort and coziness for overall well-being.

Hygge has helped me tremendously during the winter. I have tea time at work and in the evening at home, I light candles and the fireplace, I hang every day lights for those long winter nights and I have lots of soft, snuggly blankets to wrap myself in. Many people think of hygge as a winter only thing or struggle with the concept in the summertime. I love the summer but still incorporate lots of hygge into my summertime routine.  Hygge for me in the summer could look like a walk or reading a book outside while sitting in the sunshine. It could be an evening fire table or sitting outside watching a beautiful sunset, fireflies and the stars.  Hygge could be floating in a pool on a hot day or planting flowers or a garden. 

For me hygge in the summer is less about coziness and more about a feeling of inner peace. It is the way I recharge my batteries and get ready to take on the long winter. 

Remember, everyone’s hygge is different but be it winter or summer find something that makes you happy.  Then you have surely found your hygge!

Against the Crowd

💁 Over the past year I have found myself wondering, why can’t I just be like everyone else?  Why can’t I just believe whatever the media is saying?  Why do I have to research things on my own and find out the real truth?  Why can’t I just be ok with losses of freedom and a totalitarian society because it is for the greater good?  A great majority of people in the country did and are continuing to do so. Even really smart people.  

I went along with the lockdown and the masking and the vaccine because it was what was expected of me by our society. I didn’t agree with any of it. I stated from the very beginning that these things are just putting a bandaid on the problem not actually dealing with the problem and here we are over a year later still doing the same things.  STILL not addressing the problem.

I am not an epidemiologist but basic biology from high school and college tells me that this virus is going to mutate. That’s what they do.  So what happens then?  Does the cycle repeat itself?  We go back into lockdown, masking and quarantining until the pharmaceutical companies come up with yet another vaccine to line their pockets?  

I am very nervous for the future. As a society we have already given the government total control to take away our freedoms whenever they see fit. All they have to say is that it is for the greater good. When is our society going to wise up and seek out the truth and demand that our government take action to actually SOLVE the problem?  

I guess I’m a conspiracy theorist. I prefer to think of myself as a realist. I am an educated person who realizes that politicians and journalists are not the most qualified people to be giving advice on a pandemic.  So I’m going to keep listening to the epidemiologists who are the experts (btw an immunologist is not an expert on pandemics although I would happily take advice from him on my son’s allergies or on an autoimmune disease) in pandemic situations.  Even though very few people seem to be. 

To Weigh or Nay

 For the past 6 weeks I have been pushing myself to the absolute limits in my workout program. I’m lifting heavier and I’m getting stronger. I’m also being very strict on my 80/20 nutrition.  I weigh myself once a week and the scale has steadily been creeping up. About 1/2 pound per week. Today I weighed myself and gained another 1/2 pound. It doesn’t sound like a lot but that’s 3 pounds in 6 weeks. I am now less than a pound away from my never again weight. I lost it. I was sobbing on the bathroom floor for a good 10 minutes.  

There is no way I can push myself any harder. My body is so sore that some days I find it hard to walk. Short of a starvation diet there is nothing more I can do.  The issue is my weight. My clothes fit and my measurements are either down or the same.  So should I just stop weighing myself because it is causing me angst or is it important to know that number for health reasons?  I know it’s just the effect of gravity on your body but since I am already overweight should I continue to monitor it?  Or do I take the philosophy that I’m doing all I can to live a healthy lifestyle so my weight just is, whatever that number is?

My doctor seems to agree with the latter. So why can’t I stop weighing myself?  Why can’t I just throw the scale away?  I think it is because our society places so much value on weight. You should be this weight or you aren’t healthy. Skinnier is better even if it means that you have to be unhealthy to get there.  

I think it is time for these societal norms to change. I am not advocating for obesity because that leads to all kinds of unhealthy issues. I’m advocating for health. Move your body every day, honor your body by eating healthy things most of the time. Get enough sleep. And above all LISTEN to your body. Keep track of when you feel good and when you don’t feel good and try to find the root cause and avoid those things. 

I need to take my own advice. I’m not very good at deciphering what my body is trying to tell me. I’d much rather have someone just tell me what to eat every day or what exercise to do. But everyone is different and your needs change day to day so that isn’t likely to happen.  For now I’m going to try to get off the scale and listen to my body.  Maybe eventually I’ll figure out what it is trying to say. 

Work appropriate?

 Has anyone else noticed that dress in the workplace has gotten more casual lately?  I work at a high school and I’ve seen plenty of staff wearing leggings, really short skirts or dresses or even just a shirt for a dress and even crop tops. Not just on casual Fridays either. I’m not sure when Daisy Dukes became appropriate work attire but I’m sure we’ll be seeing those soon too. 

There is a big movement going on that every body is a bikini body and you should wear what you are comfortable in but should that apply to work too?  I had this conversation with my coworkers this week. One of the things brought up was is it acceptable but only for younger staff members?  I should note that this it isn’t just younger staff members wearing questionable attire. 

For an experiment, I decided that I was going to wear a crop top to work. This is significant for a number of reasons.  Even a year ago I would not have worn a crop top EVER.  Slowly, I started to wear one at home, then for a walk around the neighborhood and eventually for short trips out. I still am nowhere near comfortable in one. So all day at work was going to be a serious challenge.  In all fairness, I wore a zippered up hoodie over it but it was unzipped for a small amount of time. 

I may be old fashioned but I still feel that work place attire should be different than clothing that you would wear hanging out at home or to a club. I know that times are changing but I still want to feel professional at work and as a result I will continue to have separate wardrobes. I’m just not ready to wear a bikini to work. 

Magic Pill

 I know when it comes to losing weight, you have probably all heard that there is no magic pill, you have to put in the work. That is true but that’s not quite the magic pill I’ll be talking about.  I remember when I was growing up one of the things talked about in the future would be a daily scanner to analyze your health and a pill that would provide your meal with everything your body needed. We aren’t there yet but we are getting closer to that “magic pill.”  But why do we need the pill when we can just follow a diet?  There are tons of them out there to chose from.

The main reason is because we are all different so there would need to be as many diets as there are people out there.  This is very simplistic so all of you chemists out there please don’t take offense.  Your chemical makeup is different than your friend, your neighbor, your cousin and even your sibling.  The chemical makeup of the foods you eat are different also.  I think we can all agree that a blueberry has a different chemical makeup than a raspberry.  Given all of this I think it is fair to say that the chemicals in the foods you eat are going to interact with the chemicals in your body differently than in someone else’s body.  That is why one size fits all or even one size fits most diets don’t work. 

I’m not really trying to diet but I am trying to provide my body with the fuel that it needs for optimum performance.  I’ve been doing this through trial and error paying attention to how my body feels when I eat certain things. While that has helped me narrow down the foods that don’t make me feel so good it hasn’t helped me to find the foods that are best for my body. I am trying to eat more organic, whole foods and less processed things.  I’m also trying to eat at least 30 different things that are plant based per week. I feel ok but could I feel better?

I listened to a podcast this week that talked about testing how your body is reacting to the foods that you eat to try to determine the best foods for your chemical makeup. I’m excited by this. Right now it is in the testing phase and you can sign up to participate.  Hopefully this is the wave of the future. While we may not have that magic pill anytime soon, maybe we will have an individual road map to helping us feel and be our best in the not so distant future.