A weekend for the Brain!
July 8th 2007 23:16
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It all started out with a couple of good intentions, some attention to duties, plans for reading a couple of good books acquired recently from the Library, with my super quick, grab it off the shelves, move off as fast as you can go and hope that at least some of your choices will be good ones, approach, and the others will serve some purpose in allowing scope for a quick flick through to learn, at least, a little something. Did your brain stay with me?
Top priority in my plans were two small walks in the mornings and two longer walks in the afternoon. And with that I would be content. [thereby ensuring my brain good health by maintaining the volume of my brain within my scalp and bony skull].
It was breakfast as usual and without going into all the specifics, [after all this post is not about breakfast] I should mention that I included juice with added folate and vegemite on toast.
Extra folate, as one ages has been demonstrated to help in the prevention of brain deterioration and the vegemite is dense in the B vitamins also necessary for good brain health.
Then it was off to do the shopping which required home delivery.
With my brain in mind, apart from general well health, I included wholegrain with seeds bread, almonds, dark chocolate, tea and some green tea to try, as I usually only drink green tea in a good Chinese restaurant. Plenty of fruit and vegetables were purchased and double the amount of juice I usually buy, and there was a good thick cut of Atlantic salmon cutlet.
That's just to give you an idea but my fruit included strawberries, especially good for the brain as are blueberries.
This all involved about two hours of walking and I decided that would do me for my morning walk as by the time I got home it was after mid-day.
While I waited for my delivery I couldn't go for a walk, could I?
It was then time to start my reading.
I opened the first book, I was unimpressed.
I opened the second book, it was interesting and there was a certain special quality in its expression. Written by an academic one had to acknowledge its reliable syntax but the theme of the book was taking rather a long time to unravel.
Half wanting to read it, half not, I decided to persevere as a brain exercise. It was hard to concentrate although nothing in the writing was in any way threatening, it was well within the range of my intelligence to grasp but I found it extemely difficult to maintain any focus.
In most circumstances I would have abandoned it but I considered it good brain exercise as I was finding it hard, mainly because I needed to perservere with what I perceived as well expressed waffle.
Over and over again I had to force my attention until gradually I gleaned its author's gist and
began to appreciate what I was reading, the ebb and flow, the character descriptions and the interchanges between its characters. Physical descriptions of the characters were rather scant so they became a matter of conjecture although there were certain indicators which directed my mind to the conclusions it was drawing.
It was a book from another era but one which included France, very dear to my heart, Switzerland, an intellectual interest and a pre 1940's war Germany with implications for the personae of German officers. The social mores of the time interested me.
At the end of the weekend, it remained half read. I guess it was half good for my brain or else good for half my brain, neither of which statements should be taken too literally.
Such an exercise, not flowing easily,initially, is good for the brain.
It was a weekend of telephone calls at inappropriate times and from unexpected sources, so there was some good socialisation and some good flexibility training in getting to the phone in time, leaping off the couch and negotiating a passage without tripping over the hopeful vacuum cleaner, which finally achieved its purpose Sunday afternoon by inducing me to use it and then put it away in the cupboard leaving me with a very pious view of the Sabbath.
Of course, Saturday afternoon's walk had to be cancelled because of the telephone as did Sunday morning's for the same reason.
And guess what happened Sunday afternoon? It was raining with sufficient force to induce me to stay indoors.
I have so much more to tell you about my brain activity this weekend but as the length of this post is logarithmic I think I'll defer the rest to the next post.
Do you have any comments you would like to make?
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