Toys in the mail

I received two items in the mail today that I can play with. One is a toy in the traditional sense whereas the other is more a metabolic toy.

The metabolic toy is a test package of Align that an ad agency sent me. I'm supposed to use it and review what I think of it on my blog here. The package consists of a bottle of 28 capsules of Align, which are taken once a day, and contain 4 milligrams of Bifidobacterium infantis 35624 each and a manual and diary for its use.

The odd thing is that according to the cover letter from Bridge Worldwide there's supposed to be a 2 month supply of tablets but there's only 28 pills. To the best of my mathmatical ability I can't figure how 28 once-a-day tablets will last for 8 weeks. Maybe this is where Jesus comes in with the fish and loaf of bread.

I've had IBS symptoms since I was in my early 20s so it'd be great if Align would diminish them somewhat. I'm not overly optimistic since my IBS seems to occur almost as often in response to non-dietary elements of life (stress, headaches, bad smells) as it does to the diet. My assumption is that the Align would only be effective against the dietary triggers--but perhaps once you take care of those, then the rest of the causes will go away too. I sure do hope that I'm proven wrong and that Align works wonders.

I think I'll start taking the Align on Thursday, July 5th since I've been suffering unrelenting sinus headaches the past few days and that's triggered belly spasms. I want to give the Align a better window to start in than my current situation!

My pretty toy is a new digital camera. I still love my Panasonic FZ7 but while its 12X optical zoom is great--it's also quite bulky. The Olympus Stylus 750, on the other hand, is quite small, which you can see in the following two pictures. Hell, the Stylus isn't all that much bigger than the lens cap for my Panasonic, as you can see in that pic to the left.

The picture lower down shows the camera in my hand to give you a different measure of its size. Or perhaps to give you a gauge for the size of my hand. The camera is small enough to fit into a pants pocket so I can take it anywhere. Soon I'll be like Carmi and take pictures of everything!

There's a replacement model out for the Stylus 750 so the remaining stock is going on clearance. I picked this one up for $160 from Amazon. I played with it a little today but didn't feel well enough to actually travel anywhere and get some nice pictures. Maybe after I get up in the morning...

I like the idea of having a good resolution digicam (7.1 MP) that I can carry around easily--plus it's water resistant which will be great for kayaking--and it's got a macro setting that gets down to one inch! And even as small as the camera is, it's still got a 5X optical zoom. Amazing.