Off My High Horse

I must have done too much bragging on Monday because Tuesday through Thursday were a bit miserable.  It wasn't anything too serious, but it wasn't really a very fun bout of enteritis either.  I was thankful it made me thankful for "relatively" good health and most of the time great health.  It was serious enough for me to go to the doctor.  Lucky me, it appears to be a virus, so I get to tough it out.

I realized yesterday that I totally missed a critical bullet point in my previous post on my trip to Florida.  I have now added "seeing dolphins at sunset" to the list.

The doctor (actually it was the PA) did a blood test on my white blood cell count to determine if my malady was viral or bacterial.  Apparently a common unit of measure for them is in cells per microliter, and the count is usually in the thousands.  Can you imagine that?  A milliliter is a cc (cubic centimeter) of liquid, so a microliter would be one thousandth of milliliter, which is a very tiny drop of water.  It's amazing to think about thousands of white blood cells being there along with red blood cells, platelets, water, and other viruses and bacteria and stuff.  How does it all fit?  Science and the human body truly are mind-boggling.  When I asked, the PA told me something interesting.  A "normal" person has a white blood cell count below 10,000 (mine was 8,000 yesterday) - of course you don't want it to be zero or anything, because then you don't have an immune system.  He said typically for viral infections the count might be up around 12,000-13,000, but if you have a bacterial infection it can be 15,000-20,000.  I should have asked why they are different for different types of invaders, but I didn't think to at the time.

The PA also told me you can get the chills from being sick without having a fever.  I guess I had never really thought about that before and had usually assumed when you have chills it's because you have a fever.  What is the physical mechanism behinds getting the chills when you're sick?  I didn't think to ask him that at the time either.

I saw the new (and last) Harry Potter movie tonight.  Overall, I would give it a thumbs up.  It didn't stray too far from the book, but of course they had to cut out or take a few liberties with some things.  Now I feel the urge to re-read the books, but I may have to save that for winter because I've still got lots of summer things that need to get done.

MelBMarvis: 9
Chipmunks:  0
Raccoon:  0.5
Gray Squirrel:  1

Yesterday while I was working from home, I saw a chipmunk hanging around again, so I went out and set my trap.  At the end of the day when I emptied the trap, I counted five bodies.  I could hardly believe my eyes, and I'm pretty sure I wasn't counting any previously trapped carcasses.  The gray squirrel gets a point because he ate a big lunch out of the chipmunk trap without getting caught in it.

Lunch for some, death for others.

Guess what I ate right before I brushed my teeth.

 It's all over now.