flyangler

Recycled my TU calendar pages! It was fun, easy and beautiful. One problem: I want to keep them all! I just took an envelope apart and used it as a template to cut around, then folded the flaps with both the template and calendar page together and finished the envelope using a glue stick to close three flaps. I'll either use a sticker to close the envelope, glue stick or double sided tape.

Taking matters in to my own hands for the sake of us girls:

You don't have to believe in acupuncture for it to work or to work well. The majority of new acupuncture patients are skeptical, mainly because they've been through the wringer with their medical treatments, medicines, advice from friends and so forth. Quite a few of them are at the end of their rope and willing to try anything. One benefit of a positive attitude is that other people enjoy being around you more and may be better inclined to help if you ask them, but I don't have any science on that. That's where I was after three rounds of antibiotics and countless visits to doctors about a chronic cough. Terrified of needles but exhausted from countless sleepless nights, I got acupuncture because I'd read somewhere that it helped asthma. I didn't think what I had was nearly as serious as asthma but had no preconceptions about it helping me. Hell, I didn't even know if I'd be able to go through with it, what with all the needles. I stopped coughing after two treatments. An old Chinese acupuncturist put me at ease with his respectful touch and thorough questions. He told me at one point that I had 28 needles in me. None of them approached the sensation of the average flu shot, but something did the trick. To illustrate my previous point on animals and acupuncture here is a study on rats which showed, by virtue of chemical analysis after acupuncture, that the rats' arthritis improved after acupuncture: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?D...Pubmed_RVDocSum (sorry about the long URL) Someone mentioned that acupuncture worked for a specified number of people. I don't know what that one number is, it would depend on the technique, the patient and the condition being treated. There are 622 pages of abstracts on PubMed and they certainly show different levels of efficacy for acupuncture. Here's one on a comparison of real acupuncture, sham acupuncture and conventional treatment (physical therapy, drugs and exercises) for back pain. 47% got better in the acupuncture group, even sham acupuncture helped 44% in that group, but only 27% in the conventional treament group improved. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?D...Pubmed_RVDocSum Lastly, someone asked about laser acupuncture (I think) for smoking cessation. I have no experience with that, but the financial and physical costs of continuing to smoke make LA worth a try by comparison. Auricular acupuncture (teensy tiny needles in the outer surface of the ear) works best combined with smoking cessation counseling. Though I'm sure this is educational, you are welcome to pm me or google for answers to questions, too. There have to be millions of pages on "acupuncture for (name the condition)". As for getting better looking, there's actually a specialty in cosmetic acupuncture. I know I'd try it before going under the knife! Seriously, even acupuncture for your toe pain will help your general health. If you digest better, sleep better and are more relaxed, heck yeah you'll look better!

The placebo effect of acupuncture is wholly disproven by the fact that animals, who have no expectation of getting better due to human intervention, show positive responses to acupuncture. You don't have to believe in it for it to work. Electro-acupuncture is used as anesthesia for surgery on humans, not only in China but in the US. I am an acupuncturist, trained in a 3.5 year master's degree program. One of my professors supplied acupuncture anesthesia for a patient having a mastectomy. That would be pretty powerful mind-over-matter on the patient's part, I think. Some people do experience immediate and lasting pain reduction after only one acupuncture treatment, but this is rather unusual. Acupuncture treatment is a process, it doesn't flip a switch for most people between "pain on" and "pain off". As used in China, acupuncture treatment takes place daily in acute health conditions and less frequently, if at all, for health maintenance. Herbal medicine is used more in China than in the west, where acupunture seems to be preferred over herbs. In the US, if patients have acupuncture once a week for an acute condition, it is considered a more normal schedule. I feel that the beneficial affects are cumulative and that daily treatment would be more effective. Needling can be supplemented with tuina (Chinese medical massage), herbal medicine, cupping, moxa, or gua sha. If your pain does not respond favorably to acupuncture after several treatments, you should a) ask to have more frequent treatment, or a different treatment adding tuina, herbs, different points or e-stim or see a different acupuncturist rather than writing off acupuncture as a whole. I plan to add more to this post, including scientific studies, but I have a patient to see right now!

I'm thankful that the last snow didn't have to be shoveled, that the cat is doing her job and warming my ankles, and that Glenbow posted some more vacation pics. Now, if he could only find some beefy ozzie hunks to photograph for us girls, life would be even better. Just don't get caught.

Congratulations! I bet you'll have a Cheshire cat grin for quite some time!

If you're going to carry women's sizes I need a small hoodie. Unless rickr's 47 y.o. law goes into effect. Then I'll have to start lying. He would probably ban my Hello Kitty clothes, too. Prob'ly nobody makes men's extra small or I might be able to wear that. It's my observation that men don't like to be considered small. Even if it means that they look like they're drowning in excess fabric, they'll buy nothing less than medium. Also, two tooks.

It's for the Kiap-TU-Wish chapter, which usually meets in Hudson, Wisconsin. Our banquet is at Tartan Park, 3M's golf club in Woodbury, MN on Thursday night. It has drawn around a hundred people and raised about $4000 in past years, which I think is pretty good for a little group. The auction is part garage sale, new art raffle, bake sale, and part retailer donation. We do habitat improvement, stream temperature monitoring, electro-surveys, and generally keep an eye out for threats to cold, clean water, partnering with the DNR and other stake-holders. Kiap is a big source of manpower and support for my annual river clean up, sending half of my volunteers. PM me if you want a goddess for your local chapter.

We've got a small TU chapter (maybe a couple of hundred members with 40 very active in stream improvement and other projects). Our annual banquet brings out the best/crazy-est in me. I've tied butterflies and realistic mayflies and crafted a ton for this in the past. No flies for this year. Below is a Fishing Goddess I crafted, inspired in part by the book "Simply Soldered". The text says "Sometimes I pray to the fishing goddess to get my fly out of trees. It works better than yanking the rod tip." I'll tell you the story of the broken rod later. Or maybe I don't have to . *the fish scale piece is the reverse of the script piece and spins by virtue of a snap swivel

You don't have to land a lot of them to convey the excitement and mystery of fishing. Thanks for the great reports and photos and taking us along vicariously.

Big birthday greetings from this corner of the world, too. Many fishy returns!

I will say this about one of the professional basket ball players though, he discouraged me from trying to work out that "knot" in his upper back. "Thas a bullet, girl. It don go nowhere."

I've worked on professional athletes in baseball, football, hockey, figure skating and soccer as well as actors, actresses and politicians. They were all guaranteed confidentiality.

Christmas always brought on the Seefood diet. But one most fond memory is that "Santa" could sneak into my room and put my stocking on the end of my bed on Christmas morning without waking me. Until I was 36! There were bunches of little wrapped gifts inside and the toe was filled with an orange, a tangerine, an apple, some nuts and a box of raisins. We learned that this was all a ploy to give "Santa" a chance to sleep in after a late night without 4 little brats jumping on the bed at the crack of dawn demanding to open presents. Decorations go up maybe in mid December. If the weather is dark and dismal, maybe sooner. We live on a street where outdoor light displays are big. We leave that to our neighbors with more dollars than sense. Eggnog is for making french toast with. I've been asking "Santa" for a chainsaw for years so I can be more help on stream improvement projects. Santa mumbles about liability and health insurance. The Skeena trip emphasized my need for a more waterproof wading jacket. Santa has a hard time finding my size in the catalogs, few of which have a decent women's selection, but he'll probably come up with something when he starts shopping on the 24th.

Ya know, Hawgstoppah, that must have been what that Dean fella was talking about! That was pretty much the sound I made when I watched it! Dropping into rivers could be interesting. You'd need a shuttle service, I think.

Absolutely awe inspiring. I HAVE dreamed of flying. And being able to breathe under water, but that's a different story. When I was a wee-er tiny-er lass, there was a red jumper that I called my magic jumper. For a long time I would tell my little friends that when no one was looking, I could fly. Wearing my magic jumper I could spin at the top of the big hardwood staircase, the jumper would fill with air and I would float to the bottom of the steps without touching even one. Then you get older and stop believing in magic and realize that with all that spinning you're just too dizzy to KNOW how you got to the bottom of the steps. I gotta get me one of them flyin' suits. Holee smokes!

Just read an article in TU magazine called "Scandal on the Skeena" that said "Returns for the early run of summer steelhead were the worst on record: by July 23, just 642 steelhead had returned, compared to the average of 4,368." I'm gonna say that's why my luck was so poor. That and I stink.

Thanks for the diagram, dryfly, now I won't need the condominium.

We'll be thinking of you. Meanwhile, who decides who needs a spanking around here?

Thumbs up! Those are excellent fishies.

Boots for studs: http://www.boot-star.com/ Just messin with ya.

That's the spirit! Keep it up friends!

I'd gotten so discouraged that my attitude was beastly. After a weekend of fruitless steelheading before Halloween, my husband forbade me to go with him the first weekend in November. I had to go by myself last Friday. All's well now, though the season ends this week and I don't have time for a return trip. Good way to close it out. Thanks all for your encouragement.

Thanks to all for their service. Of special meaning to me: my late father who served in the Pacific in WWII (a five foot two inch drill sergeant with a ten foot voice), my niece, an Air Force Captain who served in the Middle East, her husband, still serving in the AF, my husband's nephew in the US Army who just left Iraq and that young man's father, who just returned to Iraq. Blessings on you all.

My first steelhead since last April and the first of two in one hour: Both were caught in Wisconsin on the Crystal Meth that Pacres showed me.