The trip, part six: Omak to Kamloops to Vancouver

We left Omak fairly early in the morning. It was quite cloudy and we thought it would be a bad day's drive, but it wasn't; it cleared up pretty quickly. We didn't stop all that often because there wasn't anything in particular to see... there were fields and hills in the distance, but that was it. It was quite relaxing, really.

We reached the border crossing at Osoyoos sooner than we thought we would. This crossing is so tiny compared to the Ontario ones. :) It wasn't even busy. Goodbye, Washington state and hello, Canada!

The change between the US Okanogan and the Canadian Okanagan was immediate and clear: the Canadian side was all built up and commercialized. There were billboards as far as the eye could see on both sides of the road and businesses everywhere. Where the US side was all about growing, the Canadian side from Osoyoos all the way to Kelowna was all about commercialism and tourism.

I was shocked and appalled. There are virtually no national or provincial parks in the area, and where there are parks, people have built right up to the border of them. I'd seen that around San Francisco and I didn't like it there... I don't much like it in BC, either. We even saw signs protesting the formation of a new national park!

We stopped for lunch in Kelowna and wandered around at the beach downtown for a while. Later on we went to another park/beach in the city (Gyro Beach Park) where I'd spent a few weeks the summer I was 15. I had a lot of memories there and I wanted to "see" them again, if that makes sense. It's hard to believe that my niece and nephew are going to be 15 this year - the same age as I was that summer.

Between seeing the parks, we decided to go for a little hike in Okanagon Mountain Provincial Park. It's next to a very, very nice area in Kelowna; there are houses for sale there that are in the $3M and up range. We knew it was an expensive area because there were lots of waterfront properties and other properties overlooking the water... but we were surprised at just how much those properties are going for. Several properties are up for sale right now, if you're interested in a summer cottage in BC.

The park we were in was where the fire of 2003 started; lightning struck a tree and the fire was on. There is still a lot of evidence of the fire with lots of burnt trees and new underbrush growing. You may not be surprised to find out that the hike turned out to be a bit longer and harder than we'd thought it would be. We didn't actually finish our hike but we did enjoy it. We saw a few other people in the area - one fellow was carrying an altimeter and clearly hiked the area a lot. :)

When we finished our hike and visiting the aforementioned beach in Kelowna, we hit the road again. We had thought about staying in Kelowna but it was too .... not right for us. So we drove up to Kamloops and stayed there. That drive was beautiful because we were driving in the evening amongst the fields with the hills in the distance - much like our drive in the morning.

After checking the maps, we discovered that we could actually drive pretty easily to Whistler from Kamloops along highway 99. So we did that. This is a beautiful, windy drive through the mountains. We saw a number of cyclists riding up the mountains as well; when we stopped, we saw their pit crew. Apparently they're driving up from Texas to Alaska to raise money for some cancer-related thing. It looked like they were working very hard.

The place we stopped (ok, it was a pit stop for us, too; there aren't many in the mountains) turned out to be a lovely lake... with a lot of mosquitos. We got some photos before we were driven away by the insects.

From there, we continued to Lillooet, where I looked up and saw a cloud attached to a mountain?... no... no... that was definitely smoke. And then I saw a plane dumping red stuff onto the fire causing the smoke. Once we found a place we could stop, we did, so that we could get some pictures. Many other people stopped as well - we hadn't realized that so many people were behind us. They were fighting the fire as we watched, with three or four helicopters pulling water out of the lake and dumping it onto the fire and also a plane dumping the red stuff. It seemed like every time I blinked, there was smoke in a new spot. It was kind of scary to watch but also cool. I don't think that this was last week's big fire that evacuated part of the town, but it was still pretty big.

We'd sort of thought we could park in Whistler and then find a place to eat. Ha! There's no parking there. Of course it was Saturday, and all the parking lots are under construction, and there are only five parking spots in the visitor's center. So we drove around, got annoyed at all the people and the lack of parking, and left. We ate in Squamish instead and then drove back to Burnaby.

We didn't take that many pictures on this leg of the trip, but what we did take are here. We also added a couple of new small animal pictures here.

Next up: the Vancouver-area sites we saw.

Movie night!

I did mean to work on photos today but somehow I ran out of time, so the next trip update has to wait until tomorrow. I've had a bad headache for the last few days and I slept all afternoon hoping it would go away. The headache is better but it's not gone and I very much hope that it leaves soon.

This evening we rented The Haunting in Connecticut. Although the movie didn't get great reviews, it is actually a pretty good psychological thriller. The movie tells the story of a family whose eldest son has cancer that rents a former funeral home on the cheap so that they can be close to the son's treatments. The son sees lots of things - seances, people, and that sort of thing - because he is so sick with his cancer and treatment, and soon the rest of the family sees things too. Eventually it turns out that the undertaker was involved in Dark Arts and stole some dead bodies to make his medium stronger during the seances. It's these dead bodies, and the spirit of the medium, that are causing the problems in the house.

As I say, the story is good; it's compelling and scary without relying too heavily on startling people. There are some startling moments, of course, but not all of the scary bits rely on it. The story also comes across as believable, requiring very little suspension of disbelief.

The movie is loosely based on a supposedly true story. There really was a son who had cancer, and the family really did rent a house (although not as nice as the house in the movie, which is gorgeous)... well, they rented part of a house; the former funeral home had been split into two apartments, and the family rented the lower half. Like others, I am skeptical of the original story; I don't know that it actually happened, that it wasn't just an opportunity for that family to make money and gain notoriety. For example, no one in the upper half of the house experienced anything unusual while the family was there. Fortunately, the story doesn't have to be true to enjoy the movie.

There are some interesting special features on the DVD or Blu-Ray. There's one about the original story (which highlights how odd these people were) and there's one on photographs of the dead which is interesting and informative. And creepy.

We highly recommend this movie if you like a good thriller. It's well worth the hour and a half or so.

Driving adventures

I should have edited photos for you today but things got away from me. I had a regular follow-up appointment with my surgeon late this morning in Oakville and did a little shopping afterward. I bought this pair of cute shoes for only $11 at StyleSense. I like them not just because they're cute, but because they have a little bit of arch support. I've found that I can wear completely flat shoes for a short period of time but that shoes with some arch support are more comfortable.

Sadly, that pair of shoes was all I bought. There were lots and lots and lots of beautiful shoes there... Sigh. I almost missed working, for a minute, because that would have been a place that I could wear shoes like that. I know that even if I were to return to work I wouldn't wear anything but flat shoes or shoes with a short and sturdy heel... but I can dream about wearing awesome shoes.

As I was turning onto our street on my drive home, I noticed that the front passenger tire felt sort of funny... sort of soft, I guess, and sort of rumbly. So I slowed down more than normal to make the second turn into the driveway in case there really was something wrong with the tire. If I hadn't been that close to home I would have pulled over to the side of the road but I was very close to home.

As you might have guessed, the tire was flat. I'm not exactly sure what happened but at least I wasn't driving on the flat for long or at any high speed. After the tire was changed I noticed something that looked like a puncture; if I'm right, that'll be the cause of the flat, even if I don't know the exact moment it happened.

Notice I said, "after the tire was changed?" That's because I wasn't the one who changed the tire. We have 24hr roadside assistance and I called them to do it. Lame, I know. But I've never changed a tire before and I didn't know how to do it - not to mention that I'm the clumsiest person I know and could easily hurt myself changing a tire on my own. So I called the professional - which was free for me, anyways, so why not?

I'm not quite sure what we'll have to do next. Obviously we'll need to get the tire patched or replaced so that we can drive on the highway as the spare can't be driven there. We've never had this happen before so dealing with it is all new to us. I guess we'll call the service people and see if they can help us tomorrow so that we have the car in good shape for the whole weekend.

The trip, part five: North Cascades Scenic Drive

Once we left the hotel we stayed at in Everett, we headed towards the North Cascades Scenic Drive. We could have taken a more major route but it would've been boring so elected to take the shorter, scenic route. That's what this vacation was all about, right?

The drive basically goes along road 2 in Washington state through forests and dams and mountains. There are a number of scenic stopping points with information about the area. It's quite a lovely drive, and would have been nicer if it was sunny - but for the first time we got the more normal Washington weather: cloudy with a chance of rain. We'd been spoiled by all of the sun. :)

So we stopped at some dams and mountains and took some photos. The lakes are beautiful.... that gorgeous greenish-turquoise colour, next to trees and and rock and sky. We actually were leading a storm the whole time; it reached Omak, our stopping point, within an hour after we did. It was beautiful.

It was funny, because at each of the stops we saw the same people. There was one fellow who was going to pick up his son. We saw him over and over and over and at the last stop, he was running very late and taking pictures without even looking at what he was photographing. I hope he made it.

Omak was like Yakima, in that it had a small airfield, railroads, and lots of fruit crates. Clearly both towns are distribution points for the fruit growing in the region. We shared our hotel with a family reunion and ended up chatting with some people from William's Lake while we washed a few clothes.

This day did turn out to be very relaxing; it was exactly what I needed at that point.

There are a few pictures of this drive here.

Saw my family doctor yesterday

Apparently to leave comments on our photos, you need to be logged into Picasaweb. I signed in using my gmail account and everything seemed to just work... hopefully that'll work for you, too.

I'm still going through photos so the next trip installment will be tomorrow.

I saw my family doctor yesterday for my annual physical. I think I was supposed to have seen him a few months ago but if you don't book the next appointment at the current one, then you have to wait months to see him for the physical.

It was a good visit: he didn't nag me about my weight. In fact, he said that he'd rather I was fit than thin, and that if I started to lose weight all of a sudden, warning bells would be going off. So that I can get more fit, he's given me a referral to a physiotherapist so that I can learn what I can and cannot do. I very much want to do physical activities other than walking but I'm scared to do things because I don't know how to not hurt myself. So I'm supposed to get some "back education" and learn how to take care of it with the understanding that the back problems will never go away.

I asked for and got approval for a handicapped parking permit thingy. I have to fill in the form and take it in to the ministry of transportation to get my pass. Part of me didn't want to have to get one of these but when my back is very bad, it's very hard for me to walk any distance to an entrance. So getting one of these things will definitely help.

He also agreed to a slightly different pain patch routine. Currently I change both patches every two or three days, which can result in moderate to severe withdrawl symptoms in the hours before the patches are changed. Someone recommended to me that I alternate changing them to keep the level of painkiller in my system more even, and my family doctor has agreed to this idea. Hopefully this method will work .

The trip, part four: Seattle

When planning our visit to the city of Seattle, we decided that we didn't want to drive into the city because driving into a downtown area of any city tends to be stressful. After some investigation, we figured we'd take the Central Link (light-rail transit) from the Tukwila parking lot to downtown Seattle. Here again, we were lucky: this link had opened on Monday, and this was Wednesday: we were riding on the third day of operation. It was great! They had very friendly people there helping everyone get tickets.

One thing I especially liked about this ride was that there was a lot of art along the whole line. In the Tukwila station there was a hanging milk drop splashing into water and molecular-type structure with short phrases about what people liked about the area. Apparently there were 33 or 35 pieces of art along the whole line. It was cool.

We'd done quite a lot over the last two days and wanted to take it easier this day. So our plan was to take the Underground Tour, then wander through Pike's Market, and finally go to the Science Fiction Museum including the Experience Music Project.

We highly recommend the Underground Tour: it only costs $15, leaves every hour on the hour, and takes about 90 minutes. We very much enjoyed it and thought it was well worth the time and money. That part of the city was originally built on tidal mudflats with additional buildings atop a huge cliff. A huge fire cleared out the area so they elected to rebuild, but this time, they wanted to have better sanitation with a better grade, and to not have problems with the tide and mudflats. So what they wanted to do was take the dirt from the big cliff and make a lovely graded hill.

The business people didn't want to wait for them to do that, so they went ahead and built buildings knowing full well that the first floor (at least) would be hidden after the grading was complete. Those first floors are what make up the Underground. Some businesses use their Underground spaces but not all of them, and some had been rediscovered. The tour includes some history about the kinds of business that there were as well as construction techniques and whatnot. It was awesome.

Once the tour was over, we had a bite and then walked down to Pike's Place Market. Apparently one of the "things to see" there are fish being flung, but we didn't see that. It was very busy and kind of interesting, like any market. We saw the original Starbucks there and a bunch of vendors and stuff but we didn't buy anything.

From there, we wandered down to the Science Fiction museum next to the Space Needle. We didn't see the needle because we have the CN Tower in Toronto and we've both been up that. Anyways, the Science Fiction museum building was designed by Frank Gehry; personally, I loved the way the building looks but apparently many people think that it's ugly.

The museum was awesome. The museum is divided up into different sections according to idea, or subject, I guess, so there's a "what if?" section, an "armor" section, a "weapons" section, and so on. In each section are books, comics, posters, and movie and television artifacts like scripts. There were also interactive exhibits and stuff.

The very best part of the museum was the Jim Henson exhibit. It was awesome! There were walls covered with muppet fur, and sketches, and storyboards, and even some of the commercials that he'd done in his early career. So you could see the actual storyboards or sketches for the different commercials, and that was really neat. There was one sketch that showed what Jim Henson wanted for Bert and Ernie - it was one page with some scribbles. So you could see that the puppet-makers had as much to do with the final product as Jim Henson's ideas.

There was also an Experience Music Project at the museum which looked interesting, but unfortunately we were exhausted by that point so we didn't go through there. So we went back to the car and went out to eat. After that, I had a little ... breakdown? temper tantrum? I don't know the right name for it. I was exhausted and just wanted to stop moving but we weren't able to stop just then. You see, we knew that we'd be better off the next day if we drove that night, even if it meant me pushing myself even further that night.

So we did that, but I kind of wish we hadn't because I was already so exhausted and pushing myself further didn't help that. I'd been having a hard time getting to a new place late each night and then getting up and going, going, going all the next day. I felt like I wasn't getting enough chances to relax and regroup making me feel emotionally overwhelmed. And I was in pain. I'd way, way, way overdone it the two days before and that day so my hips, back, and knees were in agony.

Don't get me wrong: I was having a great time and I enjoyed seeing what I did (and I wanted to see more!), but I'd definitely pushed myself too far. I think I might have been better off if we had had a "home base" for more than one night at a time, as had been my original plan, or if we'd done less each day. Of course it's hard to do less because when you're on vacation somewhere you want to experience as much as you possibly can. So I think I should have planned to see fewer sites in the first place. Live and learn.

Fortunately, a big cry, a hot bath, and a good night's sleep did me a world of good that night and I was ok for the next day... which I'll talk about in my next trip post. I don't have pictures of that stuff ready yet. :)

We did take a number of pictures while we were in Seattle, and they're available here for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy

Finally - a movie!

We see our family doctor tomorrow so we're in Mississauga tonight. We have our annual physicals tomorrow.....ick. I know that he's going to tell me to lose weight, which I know I need to do. It's hard to lose weight when you're not sure what exercises are okay. Hopefully we'll talk about that tomorrow.

My point in telling you this is that I don't have the trip photos with me so you'll have to wait until tomorrow for further updates. In the meantime, we saw the new Harry Potter movie this weekend.

The movie is ok. It doesn't follow the book as closely as the other movies because the book is so long. That's not entirey bad, except that the movie doesn't make as much sense as the book. One other thing I noticed about the movie was that there were a lot of continuity errors. Moreover, they looked like amateur errors, like the person checking was new or didn't care. I mean, Dumbledore had only one burnt hand, and it was only the one hand - yet in the movie, the burnt hand went from right to left to gloved and back. I ended up feeling like they didn't do a good job and maybe they felt that they didn't have to becauae people loved Harry Potter so much.

And the plot.... well, since some things were cut, there was a whole subplot that made no sense.

So the movie is ok but I don't think that it's worth the money to see it in a movie theater. Wait to rent it.

The trip, part three: Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier

Our plan after leaving my family had been to stay in one place and drive to our various destinations and back until it was time to head out of the state of Washington. After seeing how much traffic there was on a weekend, we decided that it would be better to check out each day, drive to whatever we were seeing, and then drive close to the next day's adventure.

After seeing my family, we drove to Olympia, at the bottom of Lake Washington, to spend the night since we were going to Mount St. Helens the next day. Downtown Olympia is strange - there are about five or six tattoo parlors in just a few square blocks. The people hanging out in the park reminded me very much of grunge-type people. This wasn't a bad thing, but it was a little unexpected since I thought grunge was sort of over.

The next morning we headed out to Mount St. Helens. I wanted to go there because I remembered the 1980 eruption; I was living in Edmonton at the time and I remember seeing ash drops left after it rained. And of course I watched coverage on tv then and afterward. Fortunately, it's not that far from Olympia.

There are several access points to Mount St. Helens and we'd heard that it was worthwhile to go to the main Johnson Ridge Observatory. It has a direct view of the crater, so we drove there first. We stopped in one or two lookouts on the way there. There's a huge area around the crater itself that has been designated a volcanic monument and that is being allowed to regenerate naturally. This area still hasn't completely grown back; there are hardly any trees or plants or anything. Some plants are starting to grow and there are elk in the area, so eventually some of the area will grow back.

Seeing the Mount St Helens crater was awe-inspiring. Even now, ash is drifting up from the crater. It sort of looks like the crater is cloudy all the time but when you get a good look at it, it's clearly ash. The devastation from the 1980 eruption is still evident everywhere there. The whole area looks like a post-apocalyptic wasteland... and it's beautiful in its own way, as only barren rock can be beautiful.

Once we saw what we could see from the Johnson Ridge Observatory, we decided that we'd like to see another viewpoint. We decided on Windy Ridge, which looked pretty close - there's a hiking trail connecting the two points, so how far apart could they be?

Really far apart, as it turns out. There's only one road in or out of the Johnson Ridge Observatory, so to get anywhere else you have to backtrack along that road. It's about a 1 1/2 hour drive along that road, and then we needed to get to the next view point. So what we thought was going to be a short trip turned out to be a rather majour detour.

We had some very lucky moments during this trip; the first one came during our drive to Windy Ridge. We took the shortest route there (the other route was much, much longer) and it turned out that this route had only been open for about a month. The road washed away at one point over a year ago and the one-lane bridge has only been open for a month or so. The area that had been washed away was obvious but we didn't know that the road had only recently been opened. Good thing luck was on our side.

Even though it took forever to get to Windy Ridge, it was well worth it. This viewpoint overlooks Spirit Lake, has a side view of the crater and good views of Mount Adams and Mount Hood when it's clear... which it was. The day had started out cloudy but ended up almost perfectly, unusually clear. The only downside to Windy Ridge is that you have to climb 368 steps to get to the top, and the steps are not all the same size. Even so, it's well worth the trip.

Once we finished looking around at Mount St. Helens, it was pretty late. We knew we were going to see Mount Rainier the next day so we checked our maps and decided to stay in Yakima. I'd never heard of it before, but it's in the southern part of the US okanagan. The town has a railroad, a small airport, and lots and lots of warehouse with crates. Of course Yakima is on the other side of the Cascade mountain range, so we had to cross the range. I didn't say that we were taking the shortest route overall, did I? :)

Mount Rainier has several viewpoints. After some thinking, we decided to go to Sunrise, which has good views of the mountain and has a sub-alpine mountain meadow. Sunrise is also the viewpoint at the highest elevation that can be reached by car at about 6400 ft.

We stopped at Tipsoo Lake, just inside the park boundary, for a short lunch. This was one of the most beautiful, serene places I've ever seen. There's a lake surrounded by meadow-covered hills. And snow - the snow hadn't yet melted when we got there. Oh, it was so beautiful there.

At Sunrise we decided to go on (what we thought was) a short hike through mountain meadow to Frozen Lake and back. The trail was mostly easy and I had no problem with it, except for the part that went across the snow. The snow was slippery and crusty as it had been melted and re-froze a number of times. I fell while covering that part, but I wasn't hurt or anything. I felt pretty silly, though. :)

We were very lucky to get a clear, blue sky there; apparently Mount Rainier is normally covered in clouds. We actually got a sunburn while we were walking! We could see Mount Rainier from every angle as well as other ridges and hills. There were many, many, many flowers and interesting bugs and stuff and hardly any people on the trails. there were enough so that you knew you weren't alone, but not so many that you felt totally surrounded. The only thing that surrounded us were the mosquitoes and the flies. Once they found us, they wouldn't leave us alone. This was easily the worst part of the two days - mosquito bites over a sunburn aren't fun at all.

We did misjudge our trail, though.. we'd thought that it was a couple of kilometers and it turned out to be about 3.5 or so. And we'd chosen a detour that was even longer. By the time we stumbled back to the car, we were some kind of tired and our feets were sore. You could say that we overdid it... especially since the day before we'd walked around at Mount St. Helens and then driven to Yakima.

That was quite enough of a day for us so we decided to head back. We'd planned to spend the next day in Seattle so of course we wanted to stay somewhere where we could easily get there. Any guesses as to what that meant? If you'd guessed "driving back across the Cascades" you'd be right. We'd thought to stay in Kent but after driving around for what seemed like forever, we ended up staying in Seatac, the town that encompasses the airport.

I loved these two days. The mountains are so very beautiful and being able to see them and experience an area that is so different from anything else I'd seen was an unforgettable experience. I'm so glad that we were able to see these mountains, even though we did overdo the hiking and driving these days. We could've spent days and days and days there, if we'd had the time.

I loved that these mountains were so different from other mountains I've seen. Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier tower over the rest of the Cascades... it's like the Cascades define a new ground level and these mountains are cones coming out of the "ground". These mountains look exactly like the mountains that kids draw and that are shown in kids books - they're cone-shaped with snow/glaciers at the top and rock and trees below. I remember when I saw the Rockies for the first time; they almost didn't seem like mountains to me because they didn't have that "classic" cone shape.

Another difference is that the mountains we visited have different rocks. I know that sounds sort of silly. :) But they're sort of hexagonal and three-dimensional, if that makes sense, whereas the rocks in the Rockies are more rectangular with striations. Even the rocks in the Canadian Shield have some striations and aren't hexagonal like the ones we saw.

I know that in the past, we've taken pictures but haven't had time to go through and edit them for you. Lucky for you, this time, we took lots of pictures and I've been able to go through and pull some out for your viewing pleasure.

There are pictures from Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier, of course, but there are some other ones, too. Seeing mountains isn't just about seeing the majestic snow-capped mountains; it's also about seeing the little things that make up the big picture. Things like the flowers, and the rocks, and the insects. Ian took a lot of these kinds of pictures so you can look at some lovely pictures of plants and animals, too. :)

The trip, part two: The family mini-reunion

I'm feeing less sleepy today, although I'm still quite tired. This is no surprise to me, really, because the trip was quite tiring in places. Today I'll talk about the mini family reunion we had. When I knew that we were going to be in the Vancouver/Seattle/Washington state area, I contacted my aunt - my mom's oldest sister - to see if she could meet us. From there, we decided to get together with her daughters and their families plus her other sister and her daughters. I hadn't seen most of this family since my grandmother died - and honestly, I wasn't really there then because I was drinking all the time - and the others I hadn't seen for many years.

Having cancer and seeing so many people die has strengthened my need to connect with my family and everyone else that I love. Life is so short; it feels even doubly shorter to me because I wasted so much time being out of it. So since there was this opportunity to get some family together, I took it.

The day after the wedding, we went to a brunch with the wedding party and then had a long afternoon nap. We'd planned to leave a bit earlier in the afternoon, but the wedding preparations and stuff were tiring and we wanted to have a rest before the next part of the trip. We woke to my cousin's call - thank goodness she called, or I don't know when we would have got up - and were on our way.

We got to my cousin's house and everyone was there! My one aunt and her three daughters plus their partners and all of their kids but one - including the "kid" that is about 19 and was with his girlfriend - and my other aunt and one of her daughters plus her husband were there. It was so exciting!!! I didn't recognize everyone right away because in my head, everyone looked like they did from before. Which you'll remember was at least 15 years ago... so it's no surprise that everyone looked different. :)

That night, we talked and laughed and caught up and had a great time. When it got late, everyone else left and we stayed at that cousin's house.

It turns out that all three of my one aunt's daughters lived within a 5min drive of each other (the other aunt plus her daughter and her husband live further away and traveled to the get together). So we went over to one of their places for a very tasty brunch. There was soooo much yummy, yummy, yummy food and coffee and juice. And more talking and laughing and catching up.

It was wonderful. Ian got to meet everyone and they got to know him and I got to know them all a bit better. I am so glad that we were able to be there with this side of my family and to re-connect with them as I feel that I'm getting to know my whole family. I hope that these family reunions happen more often. In the meantime, there's email and all that... but email isn't the same as seeing people in person, or giving them hugs.

Sleep, sleep, and more sleep

I'm very, very tired. I slept until 5:30pm today (when Ian woke me up) and I've been sitting here trying to keep my eyes open. I'm not surprised at all because I had Pamidronate yesterday and I was tired from the trip.

So this is it for today; tomorrow I'll continue talking about our vacation.

The trip, part one: The wedding

I'm pretty tired so I'm not going to describe the whole trip today. I'll leave the bulk of the sightseeing description until tomorrow or the next day, when I'm more up for it. But I do want to talk about the wedding.

It was catered by and held at the Hart House, a restaurant in Burnaby's Deer Lake park. There's a field between the restaurant and the lake where they have a permanent tent set up to one side for weddings (it's a great location) and the reception was there. The wedding was held outdoors beside the tent.

The ceremony was fairly short but lovely and meaningful. A significant part of the ceremony was the reading of the marriage section of The Prophet, which talks about how couples can keep and maintain a healthy relationship. The passage was very poetic and inspiring; it's definitely an appropriate passage for a wedding.

The couple wanted to save money on the wedding - a wedding is expensive, after all - and so they did everything possible themselves. The bride did a great job at the planning; so great, that almost nothing went wrong. Sure, there were a few little things here and there that might not have been perfect, but no one noticed.

I know you're all wondering whether I wore my dress, and yes, I did, and yes, we got some pictures between the ceremony and the reception. Here you go:

I felt that it fit well and I felt attractive in it. I wish I was smaller (and I could do without the extra chin), but the dress looked as good on me as it could. And of course I love the fabric :)

I ended up not staying the whole night at the dance because I was tired. The wedding was definitely something I enjoyed seeing.

ps - this is post #1001. I never thought, when I started this blog, that I'd end up with this many posts. Thanks for sticking with me this far. Here's to the next thousand!

One more thing...

I need to talk about one thing tonight, even though I'm tired. I've been holding this in for a whil.

This past Sunday a friend of mine died of breast cancer. My friend just turned 40 and had two young kids. She had liver mets and found out just before I met her again in Philly that she had a single lesion on her brain. One single brain met, three months ago. And now she's dead.

I don't know how she could have died so quickly. She had radiation for the lesion and then... nothing. All that time, my friend didn't know that she was sick... she thought she was going to be getting treatment - her oncologist never told her anything different! She was in terrible pain as well. But while we knew things weren't perfect, we thought it was ok, that she was going to be better.

It wasn't until she talked to someone a couple of weeks ago and was totally incoherent - indicating that the single brain met had spread - that we knew that there was a problem. A mutual friend got hospice involved to get some pain relief going and some help for my friend's husband (who was trying to deal with his wife and two young daughters with no support or help). On Saturday, my friend moved into a hospice facility and died the next day.

It was hard to hear about my friend while we were away... here we were in this beautiful place, seeing these more amazing things, and my friend is dead way more quickly than anyone had a right to think was even possible.

I hate cancer and I want it to stop killing my friends.

LisaG, I miss you... you were so funny, irreverent, and smart. I wish you'd had more time with us. I love you so much and I hope you're at peace now, watching over the rest of us.

Home at last

We are finally home after two weeks away on vacation. I'm exhausted and have to be up early tomorrow for Pamidronate, so for now I'll just sum up the trip by giving an overview of the trip. I'll have more details on what we did in the coming days.

First was Ian's brother's wedding which was well-organized and gorgeous. The bride was radiant and beautiful from the inside out. As was the groom. :) They made a very happy couple.

Then we got to see family members that I haven't seen in many, many years. I loved seeing and connecting with everyone and was sad to have to leave. I very much want to see everyone again.

Following that was the big road trip that was the heart of our vacation. We started in Washington state, driving back and forth over the Cascade mountains with visits to Mt St. Helens and Mt Rainier and stops at Olympia, Yakima, Seatac, Seattle, and Omak. From there we drove up through Kelowna to Kamloops and then down to Whistler and back to the Vancouver area. We saw the most beautiful, amazing places and things on this part of the vacation... we were lucky to be in some of the most beautiful areas ever with the best weather possible.

Over the last few days, we visited some parks and areas in the Vancouver area. They were also beautiful, but not quite as serene as some of the earlier places we visited.

And now we're home! Home, with all of our stuff and our setup and our life. I loved the vacation (and wish I could have spent more time at some places) but I'm really happy to be home.

Over the next few posts, I'll describe the trip in more detail. We have around 1000 pictures that we need to sort through, and I hope to have at least a few for you to enjoy.

Leaving on a jet plane

You'd think I was on vacation already because I haven't posted in two days! Sorry about that - I was exhausted after the retreat on Sunday and last night I was busy hand-sewing the dress hem until bedtime. The dress is completely done and packed and ready to go - yay!!!! You'll have to wait for pictures until at least Friday, when I'll be wearing it at the wedding.

The retreat on Sunday was ok. I don't feel that it was a waste of time, thank goodness. There was a labyrinth there where the paths were bounded by different flowers and plants. Some of the flowers looked like they might be orchids; they were very pretty. Walking the labyrinth was very relaxing. I took it slowly while meditated to clear my mind.

I ended up realizing that I was very tense (no surprise) because of the number of friends I have that are not doing well. Two close friends and a third I know less well are not well at all... hospice in involved in two cases and should be there in the third. It's so heartbreaking to hear and read that they're going downhill. They're all beautiful, compassionate, awesome women and the world will be a lesser place without them. This time - the one leading up to when they die - is hard, because we know it's coming, but not when.

Anyways, I ended up thinking about them while looking at the flowers and I realized that death is a natural part of life and that it's ok for people to die. And it's ok to be sad about it, and to miss them, and to want for them to be happy and comfortable while they're here (and to want them back). These women will live on through everyone who knows them, and that's how things should be, too - new things come out of the ones who came before. I knew all of this before but I found the reminder comforting.

The retreat took place at a ginseng farm which had fields in different growth stages. The ginseng is planted in raised straw mounds and then semi-transparent tarps are placed about six or eight feet above the mounds in the summer to protect the plants from the sun. The tarps are removed for winter. It takes several years to fully grow the ginseng.

I tell you this because I spent the afternoon wandering around the perimeters of the fields. It was a beautiful afternoon, sunny but not too hot with a lovely breeze, and it was fun to just wander around where there were no people and go exploring, with nothing in particular to do and nowhere to be. Almost everyone else took part in the drumming circle. I decided not to do the drumming thing and fortunately I wasn't the only one.

Doing all of that - walking around and just enjoying the day - was awesome. There were parts of the retreat which were not quite so awesome. Like when we did the opening meditation and the guy leading it said over and over and over that we could heal ourselves and make ourselves perfect just by imagining and believing it. I don't hold with that theory - if it worked, don't you think my three dying friends would do it? And saying that we have the power to cure ourselves like that implies that we cause our own disease. I don't take responsibility for my disease.

There were weird things as well... one of the drummers apparently heals water. She said that a person can send out healing words to the water and that it would work to heal it. Hmmm. If that worked, our oceans and lakes wouldn't be the mess they are, would they? Maybe we're just not believing hard enough.

While I enjoyed myself, I don't think I'll go back to one of these retreats. I did volunteer to help sew for the centre because they need someone to do it, and I can sew. Plus some say that doing some kind of volunteer work can help to make those of us who aren't working feel more like we contribute to society. We'll see how it goes.

Anyways, after being out in the sun all day - even though I didn't get a sunburn due to liberal and repeated use of the free, non-smelly sunscreen - and after sitting on a bus for three hours (one and a half each way), I was really, really tired and cranky when I got home. I ended up having a temper tantrum in the early part of the evening. Stomping around, yelling incoherently, not wanting to do things... I might as well have been a three-year-old, because I certainly acted like one. Sigh. Ian bore the brunt of this terrible behaviour quite well, telling me to go to sleep. Which I did.

Yesterday and today I ran around doing errands and getting ready for the trip. We leave early tomorrow morning and I think we've got everything. I hope we do, anyway, because there won't be time to pack anything but toiletries tomorrow. I'm excited about the trip because we're going to a wedding and then seeing my extended family and then we're going to explore parts of Washington state through the Okanaga/Okanogan and back to Vancouver.

So close to finishing.... plus some shopping

All I have left to do is hem the dress; I'm leaving it to hang overnight so that it can relax. Strictly speaking, something less than a circle or larger skirt doesn't necessarily need to relax (and anything that's a circle or larger skirt should hang for a few days), but it's better if it does. I guess I have some handwork to do, tacking down the  facings, but that'll take next to no time at all.

I decided I needed shorts because I only really have one decent pair so I went shopping today. It's the first time that I've really been shopping for quite a while; lately I've been buying things on the internet and I don't buy clothes there. There are so many styles out there... most of them aren't right for me, of course, but that's ok. I tried on quite a few things and came out with two pairs of shorts and one top that needs hemming. I have to pick up a package this week so I might poke around and see what I see then.

Tomorrow I'm going on an all-day retreat with the cancer support centre. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed because we leave Wednesday morning for vacation. I thought about that when I signed up, but I realized then that having a day of relaxation and meditation might do me a world of good. Especially since Meditation has been cancelled for the summer - I haven't had my weekly dose of it, so I'm tenser an more irritable than normal.

So even though I'm tense, I'm going to the retreat tomorrow. I hope I'm making the right decision.

Almost finished...

The dress is almost done. All I've got left is to sew the seam below the invisible zipper, apply the facings to the neck and armholes, and hem the skirt.The last thing I did today was to put the zipper in, after which I tried this final product on for the first time.

It looks amazing! It fits like a glove and the colour is spectacular - better than I thought it would be! I'd made a few changes to the pattern before sewing the final product so I was nervous about how it would fit, but I'm no longer nervous. It looks soooo good - I can't wait to finish it so that I can show you pictures.

Putting the dress together hasn't been too bad. Because I'm layering the fabric I had to figure out how I wanted to put the two layers together. I decided on something that acts as an internlining (the top and under fabrics are sewn together) in the yoke and gusset and as a lining (the top and under fabrics are sewn separately) below. The only tricky part with that was putting the gusset in under the arm. The gusset itself has the top and under fabrics together, but the side seam in which the gusset is inserted has separate top and under layers. After a bit of fiddling I got it sorted out.

One strange thing happened while I was inserting the invisible zipper: I forgot how to do it. I developed a method for inserting it that perfectly aligns cross-seams. I knew the first step: baste the seam closed. But I didn't remember any steps after that. I tried to do it but I got it wrong, and then I muddled through and managed to insert the zipper... but I still don't know whether I used the method I'd used before.

This was a little scary. True, I haven't inserted an invisible zipper for maybe six months or so, and I've only had this method... for ... some amount of time (I don't remember when I came up with the method, but I know that it was after I left work, so sometime in the last three years). But to have totally lost the memory is a little freaky. My hands didn't even remember how to do it... sometimes, even if I can't think of the steps, my hands "know" what to do. They didn't this time.

Hopefully this is an isolated incident and it doesn't happen again.

Surfing the internet

You know how I surf the internet sometimes? I spent some time doing that today. It all started with one of those Disasters of the Century show which had a segment on the Hinton train collision (which I remember, sort of). So I looked that up on Wikipedia, and then I browsed some railway disaster pages... and then I started looking at other disasters.

I ended up reading about the Iroquois Theatre fire, of course about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and others.... in many cases, there were inadequate or hidden exits, or the doors opened the wrong way. Things like this don't happen too often here now, but they still happen in other countries. For example, there are many, many examples of theatre fires in China.

From there (thinking about fire creeps me out a bit, so I went on to other topics), I looked the sinking of the SS Eastland. The boat was of top-heavy design and when people boarded it for a company picnic, it just turned on its side while still tied to the dock. That doesn't happen often these days because ship design has changed. But really, who thought a top-heavy boat would be a good thing in the first place? Seriously - I sometimes wonder if sometimes these things happen because no one asked the obvious questions - like, "will a top-heavy boat be stable?"

As an aside, my manager (back when I was working) was of the type to not ask those questions. I never did understand that.... but having done all this reading, I'm very happy that he doesn't do anything that could end up killing people.

From that, I moved onto building collapses. Like the Sampoong department store building collapse. It collapsed because the building was designed to be an office, not a shopping centre, and some of the changes to the building's purpose resulted in removing support columns, weakening the structure. And then, later on, they added an extra floor... plus heavy airconditioners, that the original structure had never been designed to support. Plus substandard building materials were used. What were they thinking???? Any one of those poor decisions would have been bad... but compounded, they're horrific.

Moving on.... to a variety of collapsed buildings in Egypt. They happen all the time. Seriously. Buildings are condemned but never taken down, and worse, extra stories are added on top of foundations never designed to take the weight... even if they were designed for it, the right materials might not have been used in construction, and public officials are paid to look the other way. It's bad enough when these are residential buildings... but it happens with commercial buildings and factories, too.

It's just so hard to believe that in this day and age, people are dying because of very poor construction methods and materials. Just because that doesn't happen often here - although it does happen occasionally - doesn't mean that it's ok for it to happen anywhere else. Too often, shortcuts are taken to save money for one reason or another, without anyone thinking of the consequences.

Note that Egypt isn't the only place with building problems; in China, there have been many, many theatre fires. In parts of Bangladesh, factories often collapse. In India and other places, bad things like fires happen on overcrowded trains. So many of these disasters have come from too many people using woefully inadequate services in addition to inadequate construction methods.

Many of these disasters have give rise to better design, engineering, and construction practices being implemented. Sometimes it takes a big disaster to make people realize that what worked before doesn't work anymore... If only that lesson would find its way to countries where money trumps human life.

I hope you don't think I'm being especially morbid, here. There is something compelling about reading about them, kind of the same way that train wrecks or car accidents are compelling. And of course I wanted to give you an example of the kinds of internet surfing that I do - I talk about surfing the interweb a lot, but that's not the same as talking about the kind of surfing that I'm doing.

One day I'll finish what I've started

I had such great intentions today... that I'd get work done on the pattern and cut out the fabric and everything. Instead, I had a wonderful lunch with a friend followed by a nap. I didn't sleep well last night; between the problems on the message board and my hip, I couldn't sleep. The nap today helped quite a bit.

My hip has been hurting differently... I call it my hip, but it's really my lower back. There are two disks that are degenerating there. When the vertebrae shift, they pinch different nerves. The one currently being pinched is along my left inner thigh. Sigh. I haven't lost feeling there or anything but it's really hard to walk. I very much hope that my back resets itself and I can walk more easily again.

This evening we watched Shakespeare in Love. I wasn't sure that I'd like the movie, even though it is a costume drama. I don't usually like romantic comedy... or any type of romance-type movies, because you sort of know how it's going to end. But I kept finding my gaze drawn to the screen and watching closely, completely caught up in the story. This is a rare thing for me.

This is a great movie - it's funny, it's compelling, and the acting is superb (I especially liked the Queen... she was everything I thought a queen should be, and more). The costumes were definitely amazing - intricate and beautiful. If you haven't seen it, I think you should.

Support... or lack thereof

I took another look at the dress and I discovered that it didn't properly fit. It was too big at the sides by far. I've made some adjustments and taken it up by about half an inch. I do have to make a change to the gusset under the arm to raise the underarm, but I've figured out what to do there.

The dress looks so much prettier now and I feel so much better about it. I also took another look at the fabric (there are two layers) and I'm very happy with it, too.

That was the best stuff that happened today.

The worse stuff involves the young survival board. There was a message thread on not posting links to people's private blogs without their permission. Someone had posted such a link and I'd asked her privately and nicely to remove. The person who's blog was exposed isn't doing well and has been feeling stalked by people who have been reading that blog. The person who posted the link didn't think there was any reason to remove it... and didn't seem to understand why the issue mattered in the first place.

I was completely floored by this, but after some thought and talk with others, I'd decided to drop it.

But then the general thread exploded today. A friend of this other woman's started posting, and the whole thing blew up. I'm ashamed to say that I got angry in that thread and I swore, which is something I rarely do in messages. In my justification, I was called a liar by someone who hadn't read what I'd written. Not that this made anything better.

This isn't the first time a thread has blown up like that, but it's happening more often lately. Things have changed there recently... where before people would argue but not really take sides, now there is an out-and-gang of bullies there. When posting, they paraphrase what people say and twist the words that were written - in post after post after post - until you look like a fool trying to defend yourself. But the allegations are so preposterous that you can't not defend yourself, you know?

This was an awful experience. At several points today I was so tense I was shaking and had a terrible headache, just from the stress on that board. And mixed in with all the anger was my inability to understand why it was even an issue... why people think it's ok to post a link to a private blog, and then justify by saying people had thanked them, and that other information about that person could be found on google. I don't get it.

The only way out of that mess would have been to not get involved, which I didn't do. The thread has now been closed by moderators (in an unprecedented move), prompting other threads by the bullies. I'm staying away from that gang. Life's too short. And besides, I have a dress to make.

Finally, some sewing

Believe it or not, I'm finally finished doing test garments for the dress I'm making. The dress fits me pretty well and I'm happy with it, but the jacket is not going to work. It's basically a short box that goes to just above my waist and there's absolutely no way that that silhouette is going to work for me. Well, when I'm thinner it might work but at the moment I seem to have misplaced my hourglass figure, so anything that doesn't help to define a waist makes me look like a balloon.

I think I'll like the dress when it's done although I do have some niggling reservations. I'm not sure exactly why I have reservations - the dress shape is lovely, and the style is flattering. The fabric I'm using is a green burnout over a green lining, and it's lovely, too. So what don't I like? I don't know. Maybe when it's done I'll like it better.

So tired

Pamidronate can be counted on to leave me extremely sleepy the next day. I had Pamidronate yesterday and slept today until 2... and I'm still exhausted. I'll be going to sleep at a reasonable hour tonight for sure.

I get my next Pamidronate the day after we get back from our vacation at the end of this month. For some silly reason I went and scheduled a doctor's appointment for the very next day. Even if the trip doesn't exhaust me, the Pamidronate will, and I just don't see how I'll be wanting to drive to Oakville for a 10 minute doctor's appointment. I think, to save myself unnecessary exhaustion, I'll change that appointment.

I very much hope that I'll sleep well tonight and be able to sew tomorrow. I really, really need to get this dress and jacket done.

Movie

It was busy at the hospital today because yesterday was a holiday and so it took longer than usual to get my Pamidronate. That's ok; it's not like I was going to work afterwards or anything, unlike a woman I spoke with. She's on treatment "forever" and is now receiving it weekly instead of bi-weekly and is finding that her work isn't happily accommodating her anymore. She said she didn't qualify for short-term disability but I talked to her about long-term disability and I think she might try and get that instead. I'm glad that I don't have problems at work. :)

This evening I watched Vinyan. It's the story of a couple who's son was taken by a tusnami; the mother believes that she saw her son alive on a video and so the couple pay a guy - a human trafficker or pirate - to take them up the Burma coast to find him. What follows is a journey up the river into a world where there are only boys or the elderly; where nothing is quite real or imaginary, and where the couple are reduced, finally, to who they really are. In this way, it's much like Heart of Darkness (which I've still never read) or Apocalypse Now. Intertwined with the journey is a lot of sexuality and cruelty that feel sort of offhand or incidental, as though they're just part of life. Maybe they are.

The move is billed as a horror movie but it isn't one; I'm not sure it is so easily classified. It's a psychological thriller, sort of, except that it's fairly slow-moving and gorgeous, like any journey up a river, and not like a horror film. The movie's pace is balanced by the awesome cinematography (done by Benoit Debie, the same fellow who did the cinematography for Irreversible, another favourite of mine - and a movie that is most definitely not for everyone); I particularly loved the floating lights and the jungle.

There's a lot to this film: the relationship between people, the role of the mother, children, the true self, the difference between Western and Eastern coping methods, grief, ritual, and the cost of the search. I very much enjoyed Vinyan even though (or because?) it's not the right movie for everyone.

Vinyan and other movies I've watched and really enjoyed were shown at some point at the Toronto International Film Festival. I think one of these years I'd like to actually go to the festival and see these fantastic movies there.

Happy Canada Day!

This is the first year, I think, where we haven't gone and participated in the Canada Day celebrations held by the University. We're also not going to go and watch tonight's fireworks.

The reason? It's been raining off and on for a few days now so the ground is soggy. My hip has been bothering me and I don't feel like walking or sitting on soggy ground. I also didn't feel like getting rained on while looking at stuff. We haven't had bad weather for the holiday so today is weird; Ian's been home almost all day with me so it feels like a Saturday.

I did make good use of my time to get some sewing-related things done today. I didn't do as much as I maybe could have, but I was able to cut out the pieces and mark them. I lay and cut the fabric on the floor and that was harder than usual today because my hip was hurting. Damn hip.

Even though tomorrow is Pamidronate day; I hope to get a bit more sewing done. It could happen. :)s

That went well

We met with a financial advisor today. We were pleased to find out that that we can afford the amount of house that we thought we could afford. The advisor thinks that we should hold off on buying a house until the new year because she expects house prices to go down some more. We'll see.

We hope to meet with a realtor when we're back from our vacation at the end of July so that we can start looking at houses. The idea will be to get a sense of what we can get for the money. We have some ideas of what we'd like to buy but we could always change our minds after we see examples. And of course we don't want to rush into buying a house - it's a big commitment, and we want to be sure that we're buying the right house.

Between all of that and the rain and everything, it's been a very long day. I'm soooo tired; even though tomorrow is Canada Day, there's a good chance that I won't be doing much of anything to celebrate the day.

I guess it's time to grow up

I think I've mentioned to some of you in passing that we're thinking of buying a house one of these days, after which we'll get a dog. We finally took the first step in getting a house: we have an appointment on Tuesday with Ian's financial advisor.

In preparation for the appointment, we've each sat down and figured out what money has come in... and what goes out. I put this exercise off for as long as possible because I *knew* I spent too much money... and it's true, I do. Over the last 15 months, I'm rather ashamed to say that I've spent 13% of my income on beads, patterns, and fabrics, most from eBay. I knew I spent a lot on these hobbies... but I didn't know I spent quite that much. Eeep. Even worse, I spent almost as much in untracked cash. Gulp. That money would have been better put into savings or something instead of being spent.

If I were to be making a budget - which I guess I will be... buying a house is no small task and requires financial responsibility - I'd say that I need to set a reasonable amount to spend and stick with that. Right now, each win is a separate transaction and it's really easy to just buy and buy and buy. That's going to have to change.

Sigh... this growing up thing is hard. I liked to think of myself as a free-wheeling, happy-go-lucky gypsy girl who could move at the drop of a hat... who could go anywhere, anytime. I know that I haven't been that person for quite a while, but I still sort of think of myself that way (or wish I was like that, maybe). Having a house is scary, not just because of the financial commitment, but because it'll keep me firmly rooted to one place. I guess I'll have to let my inner free-spirit out through travel and hopefully that'll be enough.

As scary and life-changing as the prospect of home ownership is, it's also exciting. I'm looking forward to it (although not the crazy looking for houses part - things sell fast here). And the idea of getting a dog - a pet - is one that I like. I'd like the company during the day, you know? Especially because I won't be able to shop online all day long like I do now.

Some of my favourite places

As you know, when I'm not watching movies or tv, I spend a lot of time surfing the internet. I spend time on cancer-support boards and a variety of blogs. I thought I'd share two blogs that I recently discovered that I love.

The first is Clothed Minds. Have you ever noticed that sewing pattern art can be..... strange? Yes, the picture illustrates the clothes you can make with the pattern, but sometimes there's so much more to the picture. For example, the expressions on the faces on the cover might be weird weird, or maybe the expressions don't match the clothes. Or the women look like men (or vice versa), or the hands look like lobster claws, or limbs are missing.

In fact, you can make up a whole story based on the picture you see on the envelope... or at the very least, you can make up funny one-line descriptions. That's exactly what you'll find at Clothed Minds: funny one-line descriptions (and the occasional very short story) based on the pattern envelope. The contributors are internet vintage pattern sellers and the patterns usually come from their personal collection.

The second is No Pattern Required. The author is a fan of all things mid-century modern - atomic, I guess you'd say. I love love love atomic stuff from the fifties and this blog has great examples of houses and items from that era.

But that's not why I love that blog. I love it because every Tuesday night, the author picks the craziest recipe from one of her mid-century cookbooks, makes it, photographs the process, and the blogs about it on Wednesday. Some of the recipes work out, and others don't have a hope of working. These entries are hilarious and not just because the recipes can be odd (like a spam, peach, and clove dish, for example). It's the descriptions of how (in)edible the results are that makes those entries laugh-out-loud funny.

I like these blogs because they're not that well-known but they're funny. We can all use some more funny in our lives; there's so much bad stuff around that finding funny things and laughing are even more important. Enjoy.

What's up with all the people dying?

What a week! Not for me, so much - although I did get some stuff done - but for so many other people. Both Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson died today.

Farrah Fawcett died of stage IV anal cancer and recently did a TV special about life with her stage IV cancer. I didn't see it; I don't even know if it was on here in Canada. By all accounts it was an honest and forthright account of what it means to live with a stage IV cancer.

Michael Jackson died of apparent heart failure while preparing for an upcoming tour in the UK. He was a ground-breaking artist and performer before he went nuts. I was reading that all of his kids' names include "Michael Jackson" in them. Creepy.

It's not even only that Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson are dead... so are Ed McMahon and Dr. Jerry Nielsen.

I expect you know who Ed McMahon is; he introduced Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show and he was a big entertainment guy. He supposedly did the Publishers Clearing House winner's visits. He died a couple of days ago.

Dr. Jerry Nielsen was the woman who found a lump in her breast while in Antarctica and no one could be brought in or out to do the biopsy so she did it herself. She found out that she did have breast cancer - a particularly aggressive and fast-growing type - and received chemo with the help of non-medical personnel while in Antarctica. Her cancer metastasized in 2005 and she died yesterday.

Dr. Nielsen's death is a bit more difficult for me to deal with because she died of breast cancer... I always have a hard time when I hear of someone dying of it because that'll almost certainly be my cause of death also. When I read or hear about someone else, it feels like something is walking around my grave, showing me where it will be.

The other deaths have hit me, too. One thing that's really brought home the fact that these people are dead is that their Wikipedia pages say that the article is about someone who has recently died. It's weird when people die that you knew when growing up. I guess I sort of expect people that formed part of my experiences to be around forever, you know? It's just more things circling, reminding me that it's going to happen to me, too.

Lazy, lazy me

Oh am I ever sleepy! I made myself get up around 2pm but I think I could've slept until much later this afternoon. I slept really badly the other night and I might have been catching up on sleep. And it's been really hot and humid here over the last few days.

So how much sewing do you think I've been doing? If you said "none" you'd be right. I've done nothing. I feel like I should be doing so much but at the same time, when I'm tired and hot, it's hard to get stuff done. You know?

I do wonder, though, if the more I did, the more I'd want to do. Or, to put it another way, the lazier I am, the lazier I get. Does that make sense? But getting started just seems so *hard*. I know that if I go anywhere near the sewing room, I might actually get something done... but I just haven't been able to do that. I am going to run out of time to sew if I don't get started right away.

Hopefully I'll be able to make myself actually do something tomorrow.

Taste of Japanese culture

We found out that until July 5, we're getting the Documentary Channel for free. I do love free stuff! And the Documentary Channel is awesome, because they showing movies that happen to be true :)

Tonight they showed a documentary on male hosts in clubs in Japan called The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief. The film interviews both the hosts and their customers to show what the life is like and what it costs. When women go to the club the first time, they pick a guy to spend time with and he becomes their host or companion for the evening. They drink (ridiculous amounts) and talk and spend time in the club. Of course drinks are very expensive and the women can spend thousands of dollars per night ... each... on a guy.

The guys make phenomenal money, but at a cost. It's clear that while the women love them - whatever that means - it's hard on the hosts themselves. All their relationships are superficial because they are all things to all women and they lie so much that they find themselves unable to trust anyone.

And what the women do to have these "relationships" and spend all of this money? It's not much different for them, but their pay is much less.

It's an interesting documentary about a part of life I didn't know existed anywhere, let alone Japan, and it's definitely worth watching.

Speaking of things Japanese, I just finished reading Battle Royale. It's a book set in a near-future socialist pan-Asia where every year, a set number of junior high classes with about 40 students each are chosen to participate in the Program. The Program puts the students in a confined space, preferably an island, give them weapons varying from forks to Uzis, and tell them that they have to kill each other until one person remains.

The book is awesome. Of course I read the English translation as my Japanese is non-existent but I think that the English version is fairly close to the Japanese text. It's sort of slow to read at first because there's a fair bit of character introduction at the beginning. The story and the words are compelling, though and the ending is amazing. Seriously.

The subject matter of the book is not an easy read - 15-year-olds killing each other? with descriptive accounts of the deaths? - but it's a good, thought-provoking read. It's not hard to imagine such a thing taking place, or the characters behaving the way they do.

They made a movie of the book, and a second movie has been made, and there are mangas out there, too. I very much want to get a hold of the two movies, neither of which are widely distributed in the US. I think I should be able to find the movies somewhere - there's a guy on eBay who's got them; if I can confirm that they'll play in Canada (ie they're Region 1), then I'll probably buy those. I very much want to see the book in a visual medium.

And I think I might try and find the mangas as well; I think it would be interested to see this story told in yet a different visual medium. Yes, I find this story *that* compelling.

I think that book could only have come from Japan, though. It's a culture that is so different from ours... such a book might have a hard time being published here due to its content.

Only a little fabric

Believe it or not, I bought hardly any fabric today. Instead of buying each and every fabric that I loved - and there were many - I bought only three fabrics. Many fabrics were on sale, and there were many others that I wanted to buy just because they were so pretty or so soft or so gorgeous... but that I'm not likely to sew anytime in the next year. Or two. Maybe even three.

Does this mean that I've grown up? Become less impulsive?

I doubt that. :) It's more that... I have a ton of fabric already. And I've spent tons of money on patterns - my eBay watch list is long, and my recently bought list is also long. And we are going on vacation (and I should actually try and pay for some part of that, yes?).

I did have a good time couple of hours not buying too much fabric today. I am definitely feeling better today.

Restless me

Happy Father's Day to all of you who are or have dads!

I've been feeling out of sorts today; I just haven't wanted to do much of anything but sit and play with the computer or surf the internet. I haven't wanted to go out, or watch tv, or talk to anyone, or anything like that. I'm finding that little things irritate me today when they normally wouldn't.

I figure that part of the problem is that it is Father's Day, and I don't have a dad... which leaves me feeling sad and cranky. That'll pass, I'm sure.

I'm wondering if the bigger problem is more that I haven't done much to leave the house (aside from last night's dinner and show) for a while. So tomorrow I'm taking the car and I'm going to go looking at more fabric and maybe do some other shopping. Mostly I want to look at fabric because I like fabric.

Hopefully just getting out of the house tomorrow will lift me out of this restless, out-of-sorts feeling.

A date!

We went out - actually left the house - for dinner and a show tonight! We do eat out from time to time but we don't often go out to see shows.

Dinner was at The Raintree Cafe, courtesy of Ian's brother and fiance who gave us a gift certificate for the restaurant. The food is very good there, with a unique fusion of ingredients giving lots of flavour. Just about everything is made on the premises from scratch and their food is both vegetarian- and gluten-free-friendly. It's a very comfortable restaurant with good food and reasonable prices. If you're in Waterloo and looking for a place to eat, the Raintree is a good choice.

The show was the last of three comedy shows we'd signed up for. This show was part of the Yuk Yuks road show and had three comedians. They were ok; there was a lot of relationship-type humour that didn't totally apply to us so that was so funny, but the rest of the show was good. I'd see it again. :)

My eyes are ok!

I'm pleased to say that there's nothing wrong with my eyes. The flashes of light are just flashes of light. Yay! Even though all of this turned out to be nothing, it's important to get flashes of light checked out because the cause could be very serious.

My optometrist sent me to an opthamologist this afternoon. My eyes were frozen, dilated, and then frozen again. The opthamologist took a good long look at my retinas and at the very end, he had my forehead and chin stay stable and then he put a magnifying thingy on my eyeball, settling it under my eyelids. He'd use that thingy to take a look at part of the retina and then would turn the thingy (while applying pressure) to get a look at another part.

The pressure of the thing on my eyeball creeped me out soooo much that I pulled away halfway through the procedure. I just couldn't bear to have that thing touch my eye; even though I couldn't really feel it except as pressure and coldness, it still bothered me. I'm squeamish that way. If I'd known what was going to happy I'd have brought Ativan with me as I was quite anxious; if there is a next time for this, I'll remember to do that.

I think the guy thought I was a big baby because when I first recoiled from it (before he'd even put it against my eye) he said, "but you wear contacts, right? How can this bother you?" Ummm, yeah. And then after I pulled away he had to guide me back to where my head was supposed to be: "bring your head down... down.... down... forward... forward... down.... forward". Sigh.

I hope I never have to do this - or any kind of eye surgery - again. At least it's over and I can go on to enjoy the weekend.

Apparently eyes aren't supposed to that

I called my optometrist about the flashes of light and she asked me to come in right away. Apparently arcs of light at the periphery of one's vision can be a posterior vitreous detachment which could lead to retinal detachment, which is a very serious condition.

Fortunately, my optometrist didn't see anything wrong with my retina, but she's still concerned. The arcs I see are on the bottom of my eye which indicates that the problem is at the top.... which means that if the retina starts to detach, it could finish detaching quite quickly. I guess that's due to gravity.

I did ask if there was anything else - like an infection, sinus problem, or a tumour - that could cause the flashes I see. She said no, that the type of flashes I'm seeing could only be caused by a particular chemical reaction between the vitreous solution and the retina or something like that. She did say that it's possible that I might end up with a small tear that stabilizes as a permanent floater. I don't know how that's possible - maybe I misunderstood her.

The best news here is that the flashes aren't continuous and I haven't seen as many today as I did yesterday. I'm going in to see my optometrist again tomorrow, and she might send me to an opthamologist. I think that seeing an opthamologist is the right thing to do here so hopefully that'll happen. 

I think I'm getting old

It's been a sleepy sort of day. The last couple of nights have been late and I'm not really used to them anymore. The days of staying out until well after midnight most days of the week are long past... although if I remember rightly, I used to sleep for three or four hours between getting home and going out again, so maybe I haven't changed so much.

For the last little while I've had some white flashes in a semi-circle at the lower part of my vision in my right eye. I've been seeing them off and on for a while but for some reason, I've had a lot of them today. The area around the eye also feels sort of weird (kind of numb and sort of swollen from the inside), so I wonder if it's  some kind of migraine or something. I have had migraine headaches before but I've never seen an aura with them. Then again, this is the side that got hurt when I fell last summer, so maybe things have changed.

Also, when I look a small, bright lights without my glasses on (so that the lights are very blurry and huge), in my left eye, I see a consistent oval of darkness going from the center to the one o'clock position. I assume that this is the tiny cataract that's in that eye because I don't see that when I've got my glasses on. Then again, I don't actually know what this thing is, and it's a new thing.

I guess I should actually try and see my optometrist soonish. I don't think that there's anything seriously wrong with my eyes, but these effects are new and should be looked at.

This getting old thing sucks. I wish I was young again and didn't have to go to the doctor because new stuff kept happening. Sigh.

Games and movies and fun

Late last night we got together with some of the people that Ian works with and watched Primer. This is a very strange, interesting movie. It's about the dissolution of a friendship, and it's very technical and engineer-like. Time travel is involved which makes the story more difficult to follow... but that definitely make the movie something to talk about. This is a movie that should be seen without knowing too much about it, that needs to be seen more than once, and that should be researched in between viewings. If you like this sort of thing, you'll love love love this movie. Ian and I both loved it, as do the people he works with. In fact, they're viewing it again tonight.

We didn't watch join them because we went over to our friend's house to play games instead. There were 14 - aka tons!!! - of people there! We ended up splitting up into different game-playing groups, and I played Taboo and Bohnanza, which I've played before. Many of the people there were more casual board-game players who prefer to play games like Taboo and Cranium. Those are fun games, all right, but we also like to play more complex, less casual boardgames. It's hard to get so many people wanting to play those games, though. Maybe another time.

Local woman exercises today

Waterloo, ON -- A local woman spent an unusual amount of time exercising today. Chantelle James went for two 40min walks around the neighbourhood and then spent 45mins dancing gently around her living room while listening to the self-titled 2006 album by Telescope.

Ms. James usually spends most of her days sitting on the couch or sleeping. While she has been known to walk once around the neighbourhood, a second walk in the same day is definitely an aberration for Ms. James. Ms. James has also not danced around her living room for many years.

When asked what prompted this increased level of activity, Ms. James said that it was nice weather for walking both this morning and this evening, and that Telescope is a pretty good band to dance gently to. Ms. James also reported that she was feeling pretty good, if a bit tired, after all that activity. We expect she will sleep well tonight!

What will this burst of energy mean for Ms. James? Will it continue? Stay tuned and watch this space for updates.

More movies!

Today was another movie day! We watched RocknRolla, a Guy Ritchie film about a bunch of gangsters and a painting. It's quite good; in many ways, it's like a heist movie. Well, it is a movie that contains heists and gangsters from different countries and has lots of funny lines. One thing I especially liked about this movie is that the storylines and characters are played out in parallel and then intersect at the end. The acting was perfect for this movie as well. If you get a chance, it's worth a watch.

This evening we watched Wolf Creek, a movie about three people who are driving through the Australian Outback who, when their car stops working, find themselves in the company of a bushman. Horrors ensue. I think I actually saw this movie in Edmonton a few years ago with a friend of mine. Back then, the fact that this movie was allegedly based on a true story threw me off because I couldn't see how anyone could have known what happened, based on what the movie showed.

If I ignore that little thing, then this is actually a pretty good horror film; it has lots of tension and realistic gore. It *feels* scary in places, and that's something that I haven't always been comfortable feeling.... which may also account for the reasons I didn't love the movie before. Clearly my tastes have become more refined, or else I've seen so many bad horror movies that I've grown to appreciate what a good one has to offer.

Saturday movie night

I know a lot of you might have been concerned when we didn't see a movie last Saturday, so I'm sure you'll all be relieved to hear that we're back to Saturday movies. At least for this week :)

We watched Timecrimes, a very good Spanish movie about a guy who ends up in a time machine and travels backwards an hour... after which he tries to change the events that happened. I don't want to give too much away as it's much better to find out what happens for yourself. The movie might feel a bit slow for the first bit but it's worth sticking with; it definitely speeds up and gets more interesting (and more head-spinning) as it goes on. There's hardly any gore in this movie.

We watched this as a dubbed movie with subtitles for signs and stuff only. The dubbing was fine (although a bit stilted, like almost all dubbing) and didn't detract from the movie at all, and the subtitles we saw weren't intrusive. This movie is definitely watchable when it's dubbed and should be easy to watched sub-titled.

The DVD for this movie includes the sub-titled short film/music video 7:35 de la manana, directed by the same fellow as the movie. In this short film, a woman walks into a cafe and strangely, no one talks to her. Then a guy breaks out into song and, with the forced help of the people in the cafe, sings and dances about how he's wanted to approach her. The film is funny and tragic all at the same time. Don't let the sub-titles put you off; each phrase is short and easy to follow. I highly recommend this short film - I even found it for you on YouTube and it's only 8 minutes, so have at it :)

This DVD had lots of trailers for other good movies, and so you can expect that we (or I, at least) will be seeing Splinter, Let the Right One In, and Special at some point. The first two are scary-ish and that last one looks hilarious (a guy thinks he's got super-powers? How can that not be funny?).

Sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep

When Ian left this morning, he said something to me about how he expected that when he got home, I'd still be asleep.

That turned out to be true - I didn't get up until Ian got home around 6:30pm, so today was a lost day.

Ian knew I'd sleep the day because I took Ativan last night to calm my extra-woogly back, and Ativan often makes me sleep a lot the next day. At least the Ativan calmed my back... but sleeping the whole day away isn't something that I'd like to do all the time.

You can't make this stuff up.

We'd recorded Dog Day Afternoon a little while ago and we watched it this evening. It's a re-creation of a robbery attempt that turned into a media circus in 1972 with some of the names and other details changed.

The movie is very good - it appears to re-create what actually happened (albeit in a shorter timeframe) and to show how the people developed over the course of the event. It starts out sort of funny just because the situation is so funny, because it's clear that the guys didn't really know what they were doing, robbing a bank, and they definitely had no exit plan when faced with the might of the NY police force.

When the media shows up, Sonny (the guy who "planned" the robbery) manipulates them, and that's funny, too. From then on, the movie is less funny and more sad, and then is just tragic.

The movie isn't just about a bank robbery gone wrong (honestly, if the cops had just waited until they were out of the bank, there would be no movie), but about the media and its power. This is a movie about how media circus and television experience an event, and how much people wanted to be a part of it. This, at a time when 24-hour media didn't exist. It's compelling, and also appalling, and a foreshadow of things to come.

This is definitely a movie worth watching. The story, the lighting, the acting, and the cinematography are all excellent; there's nothing to detract you from this movie. Even the supporting cast are amazing and add to the story.

Oprah is not infallible

A lot of people out there are fans of Oprah. Oprah is an amazing woman, having overcome poverty and abuse to become a leader and spokesperson followed by millions. She has a presence in just about every medium and people follow her there, too. If she recommends a book, that book is a sellout. Same with clothing, jewelry, ideas, and medical theories.

I'm not an Oprah fan. There are people out there who follow what she says without thinking and I didn't want to be someone who did that. I've also felt wary about many of her medical and spiritual claims, but there was nothing that I could really put my finger on that bothered me.

Today I read an article that made sense to me and that clarified for me *why* I don't totally trust Oprah: I don't believe that she is necessarily doing good things for her followers. When she has science on her show that's later proven to be questionable, she doesn't go back and take another look at that science; it's left to stand as is in syndicated re-runs forever.

Even though Oprah says that she expects her followers to think for themselves and to seek medical advice, she doesn't necessarily encourage them to do that by not presenting more than one side equally. People who do things by instinct or tarot cards can't possibly know what's best for everyone... and instinct can be wrong. As can tarot cards.

Oprah isn't all bad; her words and images and the power of her followers can do more for good causes than anything else. But if you do want to follow what she says... think about it and definitely get medical advice.

Games night

For the first time in ages, we actually went out to play boardgames. There were tons of people there; it was great to see and talk and hang out with them.

Most of us played Container, a new game that Ian likes and bought a little while ago. It's an economic-based game where players produce, store, ship, and sell containers. As the game goes on, the players actually end up setting up a fine market-based economy and that shared economy can do the things economies can do, like go into inflation or recession; monopolies are also possible. The game seems complicated at first but it's not hard to play. It is a fairly long game; ours clocked in around two and a half or three hours. It was a lot of fun.

In sad news, a friend of mine isn't doing too well and I'm so sad for her. I knew that things weren't going that well because the cancer seems to be everywhere but now things are worse and she can't eat or walk or anything. I'm afraid that the end is near for her and I've been crying off and on all afternoon. I hope that her condition turns around... but if it doesn't, then I hope she doesn't suffer.

Cube Zero

Cube Zero was on tv tonight and so of course I watched it. If you aren't familiar with the movie, it's about people who are trapped in a 3-D maze of identical cubes (some of which are booby-trapped) and the people who watch them. It's not quite as good as the original Cube but it's still quite good in that we get to see some of the people who watch the people in the cube.

I think it's the idea of the cube that I like - that such a structure could be built. In the movies, this type of cube is definitely used for evil purposes instead of anything good - and realistically, what good could come of putting people in a 3-D maze of cubes? Why would someone do that? I can't imagine a rational reason for building such a structure.... but it's still an interesting idea.

Tomorrow is my last meditation class for the summer. I'm going to miss going to the class as I've learned a lot about how to relax and calm down (even if I'm not always good at doing the things I know to do). Stress is easy to find; peace, not so much. So even half-formed meditation skills are useful.

Finally, some sewing!

I finally got around to sewing the dress today and I'm quite pleased with the results. The waist is a little tight but that's because my waist is big in proportion to my bust and hips - middle-aged spread, I assume :( . Letting the waist of the dress out will be easy because it has four darts, each with 2" taken in at the waist, plus four seams along which I can make changes.

Aside from that one fitting issue, the dress fits perfectly and looks exactly like the picture. Looking at the dress on me, I decided to make two other small style changes: bring the neckline in a bit as I find it wide for me; and bring the skirt in a bit on the sides as I find it sticks out a bit more than I like. After that I have to test the matching jacket, but I'm fairly confident that the jacket will fit as well as the dress.

Once I'm finished the adjustments on the test garment and the paper pattern, I'll go ahead and draft all of the facings. Then I can pick out a fabric (hopefully from my collection of fabrics, but I'm not adverse to buying new fabric :) ) and sew an actual dress and jacket.

I'm very pleased with my work this time. For the first time, the grading is *perfect*. Not only that, but I sewed the test garment without having to rip out and re-sew any seams! These are both firsts for me, and I'm quite proud of myself, if I do say so myself. It's about time that my grading and sewing went right. :) Yay for me!

A very lazy Saturday

This must be a rare occasion: even though it's Saturday, we didn't watch any movies. Amazing, huh? :)

It's not like we did all that much instead; we got groceries, went for a walk, and Ian played video games while I watched. His latest game is Infamous, a game where a bomb has gone off in a city and somehow the protagonist ended up with electric-based power. The city is a mess of warring factions and the protagonist goes around trying to fix things. The game has lots of side quests and things to do as well as the main quest. The visuals are interesting as is the fact that the guy can climb like a monkey.

I like this game; there's lots of stuff to do and that the game can be played as good or evil. I also like that the main character doesn't have any conventional weapons, but only different things he can do with his power. Ian says that it's a fun game to play, and I think it's fun to watch him play. I don't play video games myself; I'm a back-seat video-game player. It's sort of like watching a longer, more interesting, and more interactive movie :)

Sleep, wake, sleep, watch movie

Believe it or not, I managed to not sleep all day. Not that I did much of anything today - I'd thought of going for a walk but I ended up having a nap instead. Which was just as well, I suppose, as a walk would've tired me out even more.

This evening we watched The Others, a fine Nicole Kidman movie about a woman and her two children living in a house where strange things happen. There's a twist at the end that makes the whole movie much more interesting and worth a second viewing. I'd actually seen it before but I'd say that it was even better the second time.

This is a period piece, set in England in 1945 in the most beautiful house ever. I suppose it was a summer home once upon a time; it's huge with lovely furniture and exquisite parquet floors. The clothes are gorgeous - even thought the movie is realistic and each character has a limited number of outfits - and correct for their time. Period movies that do things right are a joy to watch (especially for someone who likes vintage fashions, like me) because a person can really immerse themselves in the time shown.

Even if you don't like vintage fashion or period movies, the acting from everyone is superb. Nicole Kidman really carries this movie when she's on her own - which is much of the time - and the children steal the scenes when they're in them. Overall, this is an understated but very good movie, and well worth watching if you haven't seen it.

Pamidronate day

Getting my Pamidronate today went pretty smoothly, except for not being sent to actually receive my Pamidronate early enough. At the reception, they tell me to wait until I'm called, but in the chemo suite, they  always tell me that I'm supposed to go right back, as long as I'm going to be in the back area. The trouble is, I don't know whether or not I'm going to be in the back area. Today I had the bloodwork in the regular area and the Pamidronate in the back area.

So today I finally learned: when I sign in for either the bloodwork or to receive Pamidronate, ask if I should go right to the back. If I'm not going to be back there, then someone will come and get me.

You'd think that I wouldn't have to figure out a procedure like this... that things would just work there. I'd think that, too, but I know that the hospital attached to the cancer center is one of the worst in Ontario, so I've learned not to expect as much as I would anywhere else.

Aside from that, everything went smoothly. In between doing the bloodwork and getting the Pamidronate, I went for a walk. It was a lovely day and I walked around the area just to the west of the hospital. That area is quite nice with houses set back on well-maintained lawns and beautiful gardens. It was a peaceful place to walk and spend time; much better than sitting around in the hospital or cancer center.

Finally, some work on my dress

I cut out and marked my fabric today for my sample dress. For the sample, I'm using a lovely 1/8" periwinkle gingham fabric; it's actually quite a pretty and flattering fabric for me. I doubt that the dress will be perfect right from the get-go, but I'm hoping that it'll fit well enough.

The picture on the front of the pattern isn't quite right because it shows the dress ending somewhere around the knee, but in fact, the dress ends at the mid-calf. I was looking at the main dress pieces and they looked long but I couldn't figure out *why* they were so long. I'd shortened them by the right amounts. But of course I hadn't shortened the dress from a mid-calf to a knee-length dress, which is a separate alteration.

I have Pamidronate tomorrow but I'm hoping to get the dress basted together to see how it fits. Cross your fingers for it to work out. :)