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Friday, February 27, 2009

Piles of Fun

Posted by Melanie at 19:11 1 comments

make your own superhero

via Heather

 
Thursday, February 26, 2009

The Trip From Hell

Posted by Melanie at 18:09 3 comments

We arrived back yesterday, in the dark, to snowy, frigid, minus thirty degree Prince George. It was a trip I could have done without.

We stayed in the Sandman Inn Suites, recommended by one of the ICU nurses, on Davie that turned out to be very nice and reasonable and mere steps to St Pauls hospital. We were on the twentieth floor with fabulous east, south, north views. There was a bedroom a kitchen a living room, free WIFI and a washer dryer combo, very useful. I even made scrambled eggs for lunch one day on the stove. Davie St. is such a cool place, tons of restaurants we went to for dinner and a lovely convenient organic grocery shop where we bought breakfast and lunch, yummy food to take back to our cute little suite. We spent the rest of our time at the hospital.

Saint Pauls Hospital

I know more about Saint Pauls hospital than I ever wanted too. Things like, the elevators are really slow and it’s a teaching hospital so every time someone came to talk to my son we played a game, guessing if they were a student, a teacher or a real professional.

I’m very impressed with the nurses in ICU. Both nurses my son had were very competent they made me feel better especially on Friday night when we got there, petrified out of our minds, wondering what to expect.

On Tuesday they let him go home. He had a long list of referrals to see various allergists and drugs. The lifesaver is the epipen. He's had epipens before but because he’s male and 22 he never carried it with him. The epipen is a single shot of epinephrine you inject into your thigh to counteract anaphylaxis. It only gives you ten minutes so you have to get to the hospital.

I’m desperate to think of ways he can carry an epipen with him always. It is really too big to fit into the pocket of his jeans. Right now, in the winter, he can carry it in his coat pocket but in the summer?

We got to see his house. It took me back to my own student days with shared food, stuff everywhere and people coming in at all hours of the day and night. We spent the whole day there yesterday watching a movie, talking to his roommates, admiring the $60 frog, the free garter snake and making lunch.

It was a really close call. Being his mother I fear I’m nagging him too much about what he must do to try and avoid something like this happening again. Probably what he needs is to get back into his life to get his mind off the whole horrible experience

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Sunday, February 22, 2009

Happy Ending

Posted by Melanie at 12:53 2 comments

On Friday afternoon around 4 PM we got a horrible phone call from a social worker at St. Pauls hospital in Vancouver. She said our son had been admitted with a severe anaphylactic reaction to something he ate. The Doctor said he was in the Intensive care unit and they were trying to open his lungs so he could start breathing by himself. Feeling terrified, we flung stuff into a suitcase and rushed to the airport.

When we arrived at the hospital his nurse came out to greet us she said they had just taken him off a big machine that was used to heavily sedate him. She took us over to the bed where he was lying. He had a tube down his throat to open his airway. He was hooked up to a respirator. There was at least a dozen IV bags dripping fluid into his veins and the standard ECG monitor. He looked awful.

Just writing this makes me shudder to think what could have happened to him because he did start breathing on his own. In baby steps, as the nurse said, they took out the airway, unhooked the respirator and started decreasing the steroids in the IV’s. When he eventually came out of the fog and was alert enough to start remembering what happened he said a women at work had given him a cupcake. It was the end off the day so he ate it and went to catch the bus home. By the time he got to the bus stop he knew something was wrong so he turned around to go to the hospital. He said he had one breath left so he used his cell phone to dial 911 He was really upset because after explaining what was wrong with him and where he was to whoever answered they kept talking to him but he couldn’t respond. It annoyed him. He remembers falling and that was it.

We heard from the doctor that the paramedics did CPR on him for two minutes. All the nurses and doctors, his friends and us are happy and relived that he made it, that he is alive, suffering no after affects and pissed off because he is not allowed to leave the hospital yet.

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Thursday, February 19, 2009

What Will It Take ?

Posted by Melanie at 06:44 0 comments

It was almost light yesterday morning when I left for work. As I drove down the highway dropping into the bowl, where the city is, it got smoggier and stinkier, visibility got poorer. The local CBC broadcast was warning about an air quality advisory for the third day in a row.

Bad air quality is common in Prince George. Before we lived here I remember being stuck in a hotel room for most of a day because our connecting flight from Dawson Creek to Vancouver was grounded. Quite often the air doesn’t clear until mid morning. Now I live up the highway north west of town, I’m far enough away from the pulp mills and the city not to be affected by the smog although I can still smell the mill some days.

I’ve signed lots of petitions supposedly to put pressure on the mills to clean themselves up. Hah.

Update: The air quality advisory is in effect again today. That's four days in a row.

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Monday, February 16, 2009

The Age Of Aquarius

Posted by Melanie at 18:44 0 comments

According to astrology, the age of Aquarius, characterized by peace, unity, renewal and change, started on Saturday February 14 2009.

I've never wanted to be a runner. Running on hard concrete pavement, inhaling car exhaust seems silly. Besides, I always thought running wrecked your knees. I’m also adverse to going to the gym. All those sweaty bodies packed together, using machines to contort themselves, under the illusion it is the way to fitness, not to mention exorbitant gym fees, makes me shudder.

Last summer a friend put the idea of trail running into my head. At the time I wasn’t paying a lot of attention because I don't see myself as a runner.

However the idea germinated within my brain into a wish to do the Emperors Challenge. It's a half marathon, 21.098 kilometres, along a trail in the mountains by Tumbler Ridge.

I know nothing about training for a half marathon so I decided joining the YMCA would be a way to find out. Because I'm cheap, I'm going to become a volunteer. It's a commitment of 4 hours a month the reward is a free YMCA membership.

Yesterday I told all this to my daughter as we sat in the car driving somewhere. She couldn't believe it. She thought I was crazy.

But hey, it's the Age of Aquarius, anything could happen

I've started running by myself on the days I don't ski. So far I can do 3.5 killometres no problem.

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Saturday, February 14, 2009

Love

Posted by Melanie at 17:28 0 comments

When I arrived home from school I noticed the fluorescent light had been rigged up on a pulley and suspended over the seed starting table. The table is full of pots I planted with perennials and tomato seeds yesterday.

This morning I was given two boxes the first one held a slope metre, for measuring the angels on slopes I'm thinking of skiing. It’s one piece of information, some say the most essential, used in gauging the potential for an avalanche. The other box was my favourite Rogers chocolates.

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Friday, February 13, 2009

Paraskavedekatriaphobia

Posted by Melanie at 11:58 0 comments

It's the fear of Friday The Thirteenth. Now if only I could figure out how to say it, http://tinyurl.com/c6l4t.

The Aerocivic is a homemade, aerodynamically improved Honda Civic. Mike Turner says, he started tinkering with his car after gas prices skyrocketed in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. It’s truly amazing how much gas mileage improves when the design of the car is changed. I want to do this to my car. http://tinyurl.com/dxhu35.
Via The Sniffer.

Do we really need any other reason than lust to get hot and sweaty between the sheets with someone? After the dismal results of the Durex global sex survey came out, saying North Americans have less sex than people in any other country except Japan, check out this cool interactive map http://tinyurl.com/cxhonx, TreeHugger, in an effort to reverse the findings, came up with 15 reasons why we should make more time for sex, mostly to do with relieving stress and making us feel happier. So, lose any puritanical notions you may have about proper sex protocol and just go too it.
http://tinyurl.com/d6d2nr.
Via TreeHugger

Lego is that foot hurting stuff you step on in the middle of the night on your way to the bathroom. My son took lego building beyond the cool by designing and building his own boats, airplanes and tractors. He also used to design his own games and animated cartoons using Claris Works on our old Macintosh Performa. If he had kept up on his creative bent he may have designed a working Macintosh computer out of lego, a PC and a Mac Mini like this one, http://tinyurl.com/46qadm
or the lego cellphone, http://tinyurl.com/arb2zg.
Via unplggd.

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Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Tuesday already?

Posted by Melanie at 08:13 0 comments

Yesterday was a blur of dragging myself through the day. I got coffee at Starbucks to help me through the afternoon. The tiredness is not because of my skiing weekend more to do with my current physical state. I'm sure.

On Saturday after lunch, we chewed up the Lump in front of Murray Cabin. Sunday at the crack of light we hustled up Greenberry to do the same in the glades. The snow was surprisingly light, a couple inches of powder on a hard deep base. Because of the buried surface hoar we kept to safer terrain.

On the way back down for lunch we met up with Al and Denise on snowshoes, heard all about their trip to Oz and caught up on almost two years of their life. I need to be better at keeping in touch with people.

On the way home in the car we stopped at the Candy Store. I spent way too much money on jelly babies and chalk licorice.

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Friday, February 6, 2009

Shine On You Crazy Diamond

Posted by Melanie at 14:03 0 comments

Its sunny and I have the day off. All that snow and grey weather is for workdays after all, although it wasn’t so bad, because my employer offered me extra time and more money. After my initial confusion I said YES because hey, I’m definitely interested in expanding my part time job into something closer to the full time end of the scale, well sort off.

I finished knitting the back of the Norah Gaughan sweater. I just have sleeves, fronts and a collar to knit, if I can convince myself to sit still that long. All this sunshine is making me long for the slopes. Lucky for me my longings are coinciding with my reality for once. Tomorrow I’m leaving for another overnight ski trip.

Oh and that Master Gardener course I’m taking, it’s OK except I’m learning a lot more about the politics of the burgeoning program, here in Prince George, then I ever want to get involved in. What’s causing me stress is, having to come up with a plan to avoid assertively deal with them.

Everyone likes the Christmas cake I made with pecans, cherries and bourbon, so much so that one of my skiing friends insists I bring it with me on every trip. I’m eating an extra large piece of it, as I tap away on the keyboard, because you know there is not much left and I feel I need to get my share of it now.

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Thursday, February 5, 2009

Read. It's Way Past Cool

Posted by Melanie at 15:10 1 comments books

Ever since I started spending more time, than is good for me, on the internet my book reading has suffered. Whole months went by when I didn’t pick up a book let alone finish one. Me, not reading doesn’t fit into my image of who I am. I started keeping lists of all the books I read. I thought it would be a sort of motivational force.

Thus- In 2007 I read 33 books. In 2008 I read 44 books. So far in 2009 I’ve already read 10 books

Apart from motivation the lists help me remember the names of books I want to read again or authors whom I want to read more of. I get my book reading ideas from the book club I belong too, the CBC, and while browsing the stacks at the library.

Go to my What I'm Reading page to see what I’ve read. I would love for you to send over the names and authors of any books you’ve enjoyed reading, I’m open to all suggestions

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Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Stop I Say Stop

Posted by Melanie at 17:43 0 comments

Winter weather this year has been crazy. Last weekend it was minus thirty this weekend it was plus seven. A certain amount of temperature seesawing up and down is normal throughout an average six month winter even a difference as extreme as 37 degrees. Chinooks, as these mid winter warm ups and accompanied winds are called, are common on the Prairies and in the BC Peace, where I use to live. What's different is they are happening here in Prince George and once or twice a month rather than once or twice a winter.

The other thing is Prince George always gets a lot of snow, more than any place I‘ve ever lived but this year it's nuts.

And the snow banks just keep getting higher

There is a good metre of snow on the ground and more is forecast for tomorrow. I shudder because the snow banks around the house are probably almost ten feet in some places from the additional snow falling off the roof as well as the stuff piled on from the driveway. Soon there is going to be nowhere to put it.

I don't mind snow when its light and powdery and I'm skiing in it but when the temperature rises, the same snow becomes wet and heavy, shoveling it off the deck or the walkways beomes an unwelcome workout. Of course all these warm temperatures would be great if it were April but its only the beginning of February.

I can always tell when its warming up because the wind chimes, hung at the front of my house, start clanging wildly. It's actually a comforting sound reminding me of my old home in the BC Peace, where I brought them fifteen years ago.

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Sunday, February 1, 2009

Given A Chance

Posted by Melanie at 18:37 0 comments

In our culture people rise to the top because they get a lot of luck: they're born in the right year or even the right month, maybe they are lucky to have middle class parents or be born into a rice eating Asian culture. According to Malcolm Gladwell and the thesis he outlines in his latest book, Outliers, don’t blame your lack of success on the fact you weren’t trying, blame it on the fact you have no luck.

Of course he says seizing your chance when it comes your way and working your ass off to maximize the potential is the second half of the equation.

Gladwell’s book is stuffed full of colourful examples, for instance it is no accident most hockey players are born in the first 4 months of the year. They are bigger and stronger than their later born adversaries so when the hockey talent, recruiting scouts come round they get chosen; he argues if the scouts came around twice a year Canada would have twice as many good hockey players than it does now. Asian kids are better at math then their western counterparts. According to Gladwell it is not because of some innate genetic ability it is because Asian numbers are easier to understand, the kids catch on quicker and are solving complex algebraic equations before they are out of diapers well not quite but you get my drift.

In short, having a high IQ is only part of the reason why some people rise to the top like cream and others don’t. Lots of Luck and hard work matter more. It seems we are less in control of our destiny than we think.

I find Malcolm's thesis depressing. The old nurture theory, that we can make a difference in our destiny solely by changing our behavior seems not too be true.

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