Basement Floor

We installed most of the flooring in the basement today. It went together nicely.
We have to wait for Jack to install the heating before we can put on the molding. But I should be able to start using the room anyway once the floor is done. I can't wait.

Raquette River Paddle

We got back to camp Friday after a nice visit to the Vermont Quilt Festival and then went to Larry and Nancy's for dinner that evening. I got some chores done Saturday then today went with 6 others on the 12 mile round-trip paddle to Raquette Falls from Axton Landing.Our group is definitely a good advertisement for Placid Boatworks. That is my new boat in the foreground.

Where Am I?

I realized I'm going to look back at my blog and wonder what I've been up to. I drove us to NJ Sunday to see family and so W could go to his orthopedists's appointment today. His back is healing nicely, but it will be weeks before he is free of his brace.

Tomorrow we head north again, via Burlington, VT and the Vermont Quilt Festival. More to come on that, I'm sure.

Interesting Information On Women's Health

I just read a fascinating article first published in The New Yorker in March 2000 and reproduced in Malcolm Gladwell's latest book titled "What the Dog Saw". The article is called "John Rock's Error" and the discussion begins with the birth control pill, of which John Rock was the inventor. His error was that he thought the Catholic church would see it as a "natural" means of birth control since it mimics the body's natural chemistry and they would therefore condone it - Whoops.

Interesting, but not what really caught my attention. Did you know that "Up until the beginning of the nineteenth century, women of childbearing age rarely menstruated"? It makes sense, but I guess I never thought about it. Women were either pregnant or lactating - and I always felt glad I didn't have to live that life. But I never considered that might be what our bodies were designed for. What we think of as normal - frequent menses - is in evolutionary terms abnormal. And we are at a much greater risk of certain kinds of cancer because our lifestyles have changed away from that earlier "normal".

Cancer occurs when certain types of errors are introduced as cells divide. This means that any change promoting frequent cell division has the potential to increase cancer risk. And that includes ovulation, where an egg literally bursts through the ovary wall, causing the cells of the ovary to divide to heal the wound. It has been shown that each time a woman bears a child, her lifetime risk of ovarian cancer drops by 10 percent. Could this be because she stops ovulating during the pregnancy and even longer if she is breast-feeding, saving her ovaries from that excessive cell division for a year or more? And this goes for endometrial cancer as well. When a woman is ovulating, the uterine lining grows in a flurry of cell division, only to be sloughed off during menstruation if she doesn't become pregnant. "Ovarian and endometrial cancer are characteristically modern diseases, consequences, in part, of a century in which women have come to menstruate four hundred times in a lifetime." As opposed to the approximately 100 times for a healthy woman in earlier times.

The article goes on to discuss ongoing work on new birth-control measures that would reduce the number of times a women would ovulate and menstruate in a year. Sounds like a good plan.

Next Step Complete

In the basement that is. I just finished laying the subflooring. W helped by standing on it to keep it from sliding while I was pounding the tongue-and-groove panels together.It worked amazingly well. I'd gladly do a product testimonial for Dricore subflooring. We found it at both Home Depot and Lowes. It is meant for basement floors and has a plastic base with ridges that allow air to circulate under the floor, hopefully reducing the chance of mildew. The pieces went together very nicely and were easy to cut where necessary. Of course it helped to have a square-cornered, level room, something S wouldn't know anything about.

Maiden Voyage

My new boat and I joined the wayfarers for a paddle from Floodwood, down Fish Creek, around to Follensby Clear and a short portage to Polliwog where we took out onto Floodwood Road where a car had been spotted. The weather was good and there were essentially no bugs. But they are not entirely gone. There were quite a few black flies around camp when I got back. The water is quite low, especially for this early in the season. So there will be quite a few paddles that will be too rocky to interest me this year. W picked a good year to be off the water.

We passed this stump that looks so much like a dog that someone put a bandana on it.The lady slipper orchids were blooming on the island in Follensby Clear where we stopped for lunch.

New Boat

I picked up my new Spitfire from Placid Boatworks today.The maiden voyage will be Monday with the Wayfarers. I sure hope I can get the boat off the car - and back on again. Joe put it up for me and got it all adjusted. And I'm leaving it there until I get to the put-in on Floodwood.

Done

My part of the roof project, that is. S still has some caulking to do, but she should be done before long. With that out of the way, we plan to drive to camp on Friday. More accurately, I'll drive and W will ride. Good thing I have books on tape to keep me awake. We'll be back for a visit in a couple of weeks for W's next doctor's appointment.