Gluten free store south of Houston

I did an elimination diet after suffering from severe gut pain, and the OB and GI doctors ruled out many things after doing bloodwork, ultrasound, and a CT. I found out that eating wheat products is what’s triggering the gut pain, so it seems I probably have Celiac disease. The CT was done after I went to the ER because I thought I might have had blocked intestines (I’ve had a few patients with that in the past, and it seemed I had all the symptoms except for stuff coming up green, but the massive amounts of disgusting belches had me thinking it might happen soon).

Once I realized that wheat equals pain, it was easy to avoid wheat products the first few weeks. But after a while, I started craving baked foods like bread and muffins, and also pasta. So I had to find a store that sold gluten-free food.

 

SciGuy: Houston’s Hurricane Hero

Houston Chronicle’s SciGuy’s blog, by Eric Berger, is who I trust the most when it comes to reporting (and educating us) about hurricanes in the Gulf. In almost every hurricane related post, he teaches us something else about how hurricanes are formed, or how they’re tracked by advanced technology.

Here’s a recent article about Hurricane Umberto, which almost popped up out of the blue after forming in less than one day somewhat close to shore: “No tropical cyclone in the historical record has ever reached this intensity at a faster rate near landfall.”

SciGuy: The remarkable and rapid strengthening of Humberto. Why?

PS: It was nice that the TV media didn’t totally freak out over Humberto, and was still able to provide good coverage. NBC’s Frank Billingsley did a great job, even with his voice all froggy.

 

TV shows I watch

We don’t have cable or a Tivo setup, so we watch TV the old fashioned way most of the time. I don’t know if it’s because I’m picky, or if it’s that I’m not willing to pay to watch shows that I think aren’t very good. Whichever it is, I only watch a few shows regularly:

 

Testriffic | IQ Test Results

Sigh, I never got those “what’s next in a series” questions. Apparently I can guess halfway decent; here’s the results categoreis:

Far Below AverageBelow AverageAround AverageVery SmartExtremely BrilliantBright Masterminda Regional Geniusa Universal Genius

 

Internet search for missing pilot using Google Earth and Amazon

I received an email from Amazon giving a link for mTurkers to volunteer their time to look through Google Earth images for Steve Fossett’s plane, or parts of the plane. I’m very impressed at this combined technology that allows mTurkers anywhere to look for downed planes.

After the image is a form with two radio buttons: Yes, this image contains foreign objects that should be looked at more closely — OR — No, this image contains nothing of interest; then there’s a text box for clarifying comments if we answered yes. Each image is reviewed by many mTurkers to make sure we don’t miss something individually. Wow, way to speed up looking through images! I’ve looked through about twenty so far.