Oiling My Ears

Each year usually by the time November rolls around, I take out my SAD light box and sit in front of it regularly each morning. Otherwise I'll feel lethargic and uninspired and my brain goes foggy. If October is grey and rainy, though, I usually start using my SAD light box that month. This year was crazy in the way that I had to use this lamp already in July as this year's summer was so grey and rainy. We're now down to 6 hours of daylight and it's getting rapidly less and less as we're approaching Christmas. I noticed that a few people have already turned on their Christmas lamps when we drove around the other week LOL!!!

Ever since we got back from Malta, I had been dealing with sinus problems. The nurse prescribed me a stronger type of antihistamine and the doc prescribed me four bottles of nose spray that I could use long-term (though I prefer not to!). I only bought one bottle first and I'm now down to 4/5th of it and I had been trying to figure out a way to stop using it. You see, when I had my days off, I could get by without using it, but for work, I needed an optimal mental capacity so I could focus on work and communicating in Finnish, so I had been using the spray for work. I had also tried other means: Neti Pot, nose oil, steaming my face. The pressure between my eyebrows and along my upper teeth kept coming back. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR...

In the end I tried something else: oiling my ears. I took a Q-tip and oiled each end with baby oil and then just shoved it into my ears. The weird thing is that it has worked pretty well so far! I've been doing it for a week and I haven't had to resort to using the nose spray at all and the pressure is 90% gone. Strange but true, eh? :-D

It's been snowing again for the past few days. Yesterday was the first time I had to shovel the yard and today I'll have to do it again. It's good to be forced to get out and do something physical in winter. It was kinda heavy to shovel the snow as the temperature was 0'C and the snow was very wet. A thick pile of dry snow will be less heavy than a thin pile of wet snow.

Here are some Winter Wonderland photos I took when I walked back from work:

Here's also a video clip of downtown Sodankylä taken by Samuli Korvanen: