Archive for the 'Life' Category

I remember spending a couple of summers on my Uncle George and Aunt Yvonne’s farm when I was about eight or ten years old. Two of my Uncles, George and Charlie Gillies, and my Grandma lived near Big Beaver, Saskatchewan. The family farm, split between the two brothers, had grown to several thousand acres from Grandpa’s original homestead. It sat on the American boarder…as I recall, the big “excitement” was going across the border to Scobey, Montana, to use their swimming pool or shop in the American stores.

For me, though, the best part of spending those weeks on the farm was seeing a different way of life from what I was used to in the city. I was too young to appreciate it properly, I suppose, but the time spent with my cousins Mark, Greg, and Karen formed all sorts of good memories. I recall breakfasts in the big kitchen, riding in George’s new four wheel drive tractor, and following Mark and Greg around as they did chores and generally did things young boys do like play with the old farm equipment or shoot gophers.

One memory sticks in my mind of a “round up”, where the local farmers were moving some cattle from their own pastures to the community or shared pasture. Greg and Mark had an old grey horse, and I recall they put me up on it and we did a bit of “cowboying”. I’m sure they thought I was a bit of a pain in the neck, sort of useless baggage that they got stuck with entertaining. But for me the memories have that hazy “wonderful summer” feel to them, like something from a movie.

The last time I recall seeing Mark and Greg was probably when my Grandfather passed away: I guess I would have been around 13 or 14 then. I barely recognized them at the time, and in all the years since I haven’t really thought much about them. I heard the news from Mom now and then: Mark and Greg leaving the farm, becoming welders or various things, Greg getting into body-building and then professional wrestling. But it was more or less all somewhat fantastical: I had a cousin who was a pro wrestler, with a stage name (Doby Gillis, or “Mr. Gillis” later) and everything- kind of neat, but hard to imagine being “real”.

I found out earlier this week, on December 23rd, that my cousin Greg had died of a sudden heart attack earlier that morning. He had been at home in Coquitlam from his work as a heavy welder, which often took him to places like Fort McMurray, Alberta. His girlfriend was holding him as he died. He was born three years before me, in 1961, and died only a few miles away, without me even knowing he was there.

Thank you, Greg, for being a temporary brother to me all those summers ago.

Update: The wrestling community is responding to Greg’s sudden death- this article by Dan Denton seems to be the most complete.

Irene and I opened our gifts a couple of hours ago. We both received lots of wonderful things, but most of all we got the best gift of all: each other.

Each year at Christmas time I like to take a moment to reflect upon everyone who is not so fortunate, or who as I often do lacks the will to see their good fortune for what it is. I’m so very lucky. I’m basically healthy, as is everyone in my immediate circle of friends and family. We have enough for essentials plus a great deal of non-essentials.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

It is thanksgiving in the U.S., and so there the usual news items regarding how many things we have to give thanks for abound. I’m Canadian, so our thanksgiving was a few weeks ago…but our friendly neighbors to the south generate the majority of our news, so we sort of get the benefits of two holidays through a sort of osmosis. Unfortunately, I’m feeling under the weather today, and any time I have a cold or flu I end up feeling a bit sorry for myself- I wasn’t feeling any particular “thankful” vibe today.

That changed with one news item that passed through my radar , something which I had read about before but not really paid a lot of attention to. A well-liked computing science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, Randy Pausch, gave a lecture in September. The theme of the lecture series he was presenting for: what would you want to pass on to the students if this were your last lecture?

In Randy’s case, it really was his last lecture. He had been diagnosed with cancer a couple of months earlier, and was given less than six months to live. The video of his lecture is, in my opinion, worth spending a couple of hours to watch. He is an energetic speaker, and I can see why he is well liked by his students.

I am sitting here in the gathering dark as our short winter day comes to an end. We had a serious wind storm here during the night and into the morning, and around 9:30 am or so our power failed. It is a bit past 4:00 pm now.

According to the BC Hydro outage phone system message, 180,000 people in the Lower Mainland are without power. I guess falling branches and swaying wires caused over a thousand separate power “incidents”, one of which was ours.

The power has flickered on for a second or two twice now: once at around 2:00 PM, and again just now. I am made increasingly aware of my dependence on electricity as the light gradually fades. I’ve gathered some candles and an oil lamp, but I’m saving those for when it becomes fully dark: another hour or so now.

But this lack of electricity is doing more than just making it dark. I have food in the fridge, but the left over pizza needs to be heated before I would want to eat it. The food is still okay in the fridge- but another four or five hours and I’m not so sure if I would trust much of it. We have a gas stove, but it is a modern thing that uses electricity to start rather than a pilot light…so there won’t be any cooking there, either. Of course I can’t watch TV, but the other things I usually do like read are becoming problematic as it gets darker. I spent the afternoon reading a book or two, but that is no longer possible: books don’t emit light, and my eyes can no longer make out the words on the page without straining. Thankfully our gas fireplaces both use old-style pilot lights, so I have those for heat.

So, I’m writing this on my laptop. It still has a couple of hours of battery power, and emits light so I can still read it. But of course, I can’t actually post this: no internet connection.

In less then ten hours, the loss of the trappings of our modern technical civilization has rendered me hungry and bored. If this were to last 24 hours, I’m not sure what my condition would be. I guess I would make do…

Power came back on at about 7:00 PM

November 11, 1918: the signing of Armistice, the end of the War to End All Wars…only it wasn’t. Millions have died in wars since, and millions will undoubtedly die in future conflicts.

Remembrance Day is the the time we take each year to contemplate the men and women who went to war and still do today so that you and I can live in prosperity. Those who came back broken in body and spirit, those who came home changed in ways I can only begin to imagine, and those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

Take a minute or two to stand in silence…if not at the 11th hour, then any time during the day. It really isn’t much…

I came across this on DeviantART, and it felt so…like me

Nephew by *kris-wilson on deviantART

Okay, I might not be *that* bad, but I know nothing about babies or what to do with them.  Folks should know to keep their kids out of the hands of incompetents like me

My Mom’s 85th birthday was yesterday.  My sister Judy pulled together a surprise party, and as many of us kids as could make it were there. 

You can see the rest of the pictures by clicking on the above image.

We had a blast: I think Mom was at least somewhat surprised :)  It was great to have everyone together, Shane spoke Spanish, there was a great chat with Bryan towards the end, and food was (as always when Judy puts on a spread) delicious.  Thanks, everyone!  And Happy 85th, Mom!

Once in a very long while I’ll do something that isn’t really “me”.  Today, I went to an NHL pre-season hockey game at GM Place.

It is worth while to note that I am not a sports person.  There isn’t a single sport that I watch: not football, not baseball, not hockey, not basketball…none of them interest me.  I don’t play them either.  Basically, I never really figured out the appeal.  The only sports that I ever got involved in even to a minor extent were things like track and field: sports without teams.  I think a significant part of it was that I hated being yelled at or teased as a kid, and team sports is all about being yelled at and teased.  When I ran the 100 yard dash and came in 13th out of 19 competitors, no one yelled at me.  I just had myself to blame, and that was okay.

So, back to the hockey.  Why, given my lack of sports interest, was I sitting in a stadium with 15,000 people, sitting in a seat that cost $120?  Well, firstly, it was a treat or reward given by my employer, so I didn’t pay for that seat.  Several of us had passed through a security review relatively unscathed, which saved our entire site from various negative outcomes.  Security reviews are time consuming and stressful, and the folks I work for recognized this.  Taking a few of us out for dinner, beers, and a hockey game was a nice thing for the managers to do, and I felt good to accept the thanks.

The hockey game wasn’t too bad.  It was a pre-season exhibition game between the Vancouver Canucks and the Edmonton Oilers.  Seven seconds before the end of period three (the end of the game) it was tied 4-4.  With 2.7 seconds left to play, the Canucks scored and won the game.  Now that was worth seeing, and even I, who doesn’t have much interest in the game, could get involved in the excitement.

The game having ended, it was now time to go back to my car and make my way home.  I parked in a lot right next to GM Place, and paid “event” parking rates- $25, which I subsequently learned was high- most “event” lots charge about $20, and some nearby spots go for as little as $6.  But live and learn- I didn’t know the area, and for a once-in-a-blue-moon trip to downtown Vancouver I can spring for convenient parking. 

I have one complaint regarding the parking, though.  You’d think, having charged $25 a car for 400-500 cars to park for a total of perhaps 3 hours, that the parking lot could have sprung $50 to have a couple of guys direct traffic exiting the lot.  But no: what happened instead was  that those 500 cars tried to merge randomly into a space wide enough to let two cars pass.  That’s right, there was one exit from this lot.  It didn’t work very well….  And guess who manages the parking?  You guessed it, Imperial Parking, the masters of craptastic parking management Canada-wide.  There was, however, a homeless guy standing in amongst the exiting cars trying to get handouts…that made me feel really comfy about the security of my car when a homeless guy is watching over the lot instead of someone from Impark.

Oh, yeah…Go Canucks!

I have a stainless steel coffee mug that Irene bought me a while back that I really like.  I use it several times a day.  It is an extremely well made Oxo mug, highly polished inside, so it took a long time to build up a stain.  But eventually, even a really good coffee mug needs more than just plain soap and water to make it sparkle.

So, I did a bit of research: how do you clean coffee stains from stainless steel coffee mugs?  The two suggestions I found that sounded easiest were baking soda or powdered dishwasher detergent.  In either case, you mix a tablespoon or so of powder with a full cup of water, shake or stir, and let it sit for a while.  Sounds easy enough.

I couldn’t find any baking soda, and Irene was already asleep for the night.  So dishwasher detergent it is.  We have those little tablets instead of granules, but I’m a handy guy: take the tablet still sealed in plastic, pound on the counter top- voila, powder.  I wasn’t sure exactly how much to use, but the entire tablet had been powdered, so I poured the whole thing in.  I added water from our “instant boiling water” dispenser, closed the cup, shook, and set it on the counter.  I then wandered back to my computer to continue my usual wanderings around the Internet.

A few minutes later, there was a BANG! and some rattling sounds from the direction of the kitchen.  I knew the kitten had been playing around a bit, so I went to see what kind of trouble she’d gotten into.  What I saw when I arrived took a few minutes to process.

On the floor was a strange black object.  On the counter was an odd looking stainless steel thing, and lots of water lying about.  After about 5 seconds I figured out what had happened: my coffee mug had exploded.

To be more precise, the dishwasher detergent had produced a lot of gas, and the sealed coffee mug was so air-tight (the Oxo mug is extremely well sealed) that it had no where to go.  It blew the top (plastic) part of the mug cleanly off.  I picked up the odd looking black bit, and realized it was the lid plus the ring that attaches the lid to the stainless steel.  I noticed it was designed to snap back into place, so snap it back in I did.  A few moments later, I found a rubber seal ring several feet away that was probably supposed to go on the mug before the plastic part snapped back on- unfortunately, it took a lot of force to put back together…and it’s a lot easier to apply compression force than expansion force with my bare hands.

I calmly shook the (slightly reduced) dishwasher detergent + water mixture in the mug again, cleaned up the mess, left the mug unsealed this time, then went back to the computer.  

The end of the story is that the mug is beautifully clean- the dishwasher detergent removed the coffee staining without any scrubbing whatsoever, and did so in under an hour.  I have a spare rubber seal in case I ever somehow get the mug apart again.  Interestingly, the mug still seems to be totally water-tight, but I’m sure that rubber seal had *some* purpose.

And yes, I’m letting the mug soak in plain water to clean out any residual dishwashing chemicals.  I knew the stuff was nasty, but the explosive power of the expanding gasses produced by simple dishwasher detergent is pretty impressive. 

My visit to the endodontist yesterday (Tuesday) could be described as a success.  He confirmed based on my description of the pain and a neat diagnostic trick involving a piece of ice that a root canal was in order.  And the endodontist was able to immediately proceed…so long as I paid the deposit and signed my life away.

For a mere $1,450, am now the possessor of a gutted tooth.  Although I’m sore, the process itself wasn’t unduly painful or distressing.  The use of power grinders/drills was actually rather limited, and most of the process seemed to involve manual work with small needle-like files. I elected to spend most of my time during the process with my eyes closed, so I didn’t attempt to closely watch what was going on. 

Looking at the root canal entry on Wikipedia, which includes a picture or two of the files used, I can see the broach file more or less matches what I imagined he was using.  A tiny, pin like thing for going down inside the tooth core: it was all done by hand, and he kept asking for different sizes of files, all of which seemed tiny to me.  Tiny or not, the endodontist still had to put some elbow grease into the process- my jaw is sore and tired, and my entire face feels worn out.

I guess it will be a week or so before I feel confident that the pain is gone for good.  If it is, then the last few days will have been worth it.  I have another couple of “ordinary” dental appointments before I’m done, though- how much do you want to bet that another nerve or something will become involved?  I hope not…