Hungry

I have to have fasted since midnight for the medical study I'm participating in today, so I'm hungry this morning! I think I may go check out the local Indian lunch buffet after I get the testing done. I've been looking for a good excuse to try it.

Then, home and more work. Or a nap, after being up 'till 1:30 watching my partner play Hearthstone while working on my lit review. One or the other....

Body Analysis

I provided blood and urine samples, told a nice, if somewhat officious, penguin all about what I ate yesterday, and now have accelerometers attached to my waist and thigh. I also got to sit in a "bod pod" that uses air displacement to measure body fat; that was nifty! (here's a link to the device's maker: http://www.bodpod.com/en/products/body-composition/adult-children-bod-pod-gs/bod-pod)

My scale at home says my body fat percentage is about 21%. The scale at the human performance lab today said that it's around 15%, and the bod pod returned a result of just under 6%. The investigator says that the pod is not as accurate with very lean people (which I guess I am these days). After reading more about the device, I think that the velvet tights and my hair (which was hard to get entirely into the swim cap) might have caused mismeasurement too.

Anyway, I have questionnaires to fill out, and then I go back in a week for some exercise testing. For now, back to work.

"man-" as a prefix

I have a feeling that, much like a "manpurse" vs. a purse, the only difference between a "manbun" and a bun (in the context of hairstyle) is the perceived gender of the person who is wearing it. Am I wrong?

I get a little annoyed at the use of the prefix man- applied to "feminine" things that a masculine man is doing or wearing. Not only does it feel like an excuse, but it's a completely irrational one. As though somehow proactively calling attention to the fact that something you're doing might be a trapping of femininity magically removes the taint. It's part of why I refer to my shoulder bag as a purse, not a satchel or a (and I shudder to write it) "manpurse". It has the same functionality, and the potential of being perceived as somehow feminine is *not that scary,* folks.

Literature Review

Once in a rare while, I have something to say that I feel like Twitter would be good for. I imagine live-tweeting writing a paper for instance, and making the odd note about how strange it is to be citing an article about urban theory and affective relationships with the built environment written by Jane Jacobs, but not *that* Jane Jacobs. I wonder if that's annoying for her. It's a short little obscure blurb that doesn't quite fit here, but I don't use Twitter enough to have anyone following me who'd care. *grins*

I also think the title is kind of fun. "A Geography of Big Things."

Hearing Loss

The techno that's playing on SomaFM right now has a recurring high-pitched sound that must be up in the 17-18khz range. While it's slightly annoying, it also pleases me because it may mean that my hearing might be recovering a bit. I think I semi-permanently lost high-range hearing last month after a bike inner tube I was inflating exploded at 70psi or so a few feet from my ear. It was a novel experience; a tremendous bang followed by a ringing noise that lasted for ten or fifteen seconds. It was just like a simulated flash-bang grenade in Half-Life! Well, without the flash. I can tell things are different because the Xlerator hand dryers in men's rooms no longer hurt my ears. (I try them once in a while to see if they do and am a little sad when they don't. I guess that's part of getting older.)