Category: General

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Oh, wow! Here we go again.

It seems my ongoing surgery merry-go-round just doesn’t want to end. What we originally thought were two fluid pockets on the December incision appears to be an incisional hernia. I’ve been referred to the surgeon and, as my doctor said, “Back to the body shop for you.”

For those unfamiliar, a hernia is a weakness in the abdominal wall. In my case, the weakness doesn’t run in the normal direction up-and-down because muscle tissue separated. Instead, mine developed because of the repair work and the cutting of tissue along the incision from my last surgery. What causes this? There are lots of reasons, although the chief suspect is the fall I had right before Christmas on an icy sidewalk (see a previous post). Also, infection can contribute and, of course, my incision got rather infected as well. Then, any abdominal incision can develop a hernia. And, as my family doctor states, “Oh, you’ve just let go completely, haven’t you?” I really needed that amount of detail. Anyway, the bottom line is that my abdominal wall has a weak spot and my small intestine is trying to escape through it.

So, I presently wait for the appointment with the surgeon to get some idea of when it’s going to be repaired. They sew everything together and then sew a plastic mesh over the top to keep it that way. Think of it as getting a new front grill.

I’m back to my current line of thinking. I’m hoping that, if all else fails, I’m using up someone else’s bad luck for them and they’ll be spared something of their own. Maybe, if there is such a thing, karma may kick in, preferably in conjunction with a lottery ticket…

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Time (or tempus fidgets)

With two projects on the go, I have rediscovered how much I like having spare time. Getting ready for St. Patrick’s, not having played a lot in the last 6 months and finalizing the play script for the Homegrown Festival have kept me hopping. In my defense, the script changes are to the part I’m doing and the changes to Heather’s part only involve the adding of a single word so there won’t be huge differences between the script I gave her and the final one.

Don’t forget to add that to work, finalizing the focus of a new column in What’s Up Yukon and looking after a wounded wife, who fortunately doesn’t need that much looking after, with the additional factor that I may need more minor surgery to think of on top of this.

Someone asked me why I don’t do any contract work anymore. I’m reminded at how much more I’d rather have the time than the money.

So, I am remembering how much I like having some spare time. That being said, I’ll probably do a better job of rediscovering it when I actually have some…

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If it weren’t for bad luck…

I’ve come to the conclusion that the old expression is particularly true. Actually, Ginsberg’s Law may be more so. “You can’t win, you can’t break even and you can’t get out of the game.”

Clara was volunteering for the Arctic Winter Games and went to her shift at the Games Centre yesterday morning. Since our luck has been generally awful lately, she slipped near the entrance to the Games Centre and broke her arm. Apparently, several other people fell and complained that the parking lot was rather icy; however, Public Works hadn’t come up to sand the lot by that point so, down she went.

She called me to tell me what happened and, since I was taking Katrina to the airport first, I said I’d meet her at the hospital. A little while later, she called to say I had to pick her up at the Games Centre. Since it wasn’t a life or death situation, the ambulances on site for the Games are for athletes, not volunteers. In other words, she fell about 7 am and didn’t even get to the hospital until about 8:30.

The good news is that she broke her right arm and is left handed. It was a clean break and still in alignment so she only needs a sling and not a cast or surgery. She goes off for more X-rays and sees the doctor again next week.

You would think, at this point, we would be tired of visiting the hospital…

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St. Patrick’s Day

All the ducks seem to be in a row for a great time on St. Patrick’s Day. I’m playing at our new neighbourhood pub which Clara and I have grown quite fond of. It’s got quite nice atmosphere and good food. I’ll throw in the additional benefit of the prices being quite reasonable.

If you’re in town and looking for a bit of a time, drop in. Musicians for the open stage are always welcome.

poster

It starts at 8 and ends… whatever. The place closes at 12 normally, but their license is good until 2 AM so if things are still hopping, they’ll hop for a bit more time…

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I’ve been busy

Needless to say, I’ve been a bit remiss on blog posting for the last little while. I’ll concede that I’ve been a bit busy working on a few projects and have also been laid low with a cold for a bit. Therefore, I should try to explain what I’ve been doing in lieu of posting.

The Nakai Theatre Homegrown Festival is coming up in early May and I have entered the play into it. It’s a festival for introducing local work and is a great venue for introducing new works or works in progress. I’m entering the play, although we’re only doing one scene from it. This will introduce two of the three characters and provide a bit of background to the material. I’m playing one of the two characters, as well as directing and producing. Yes, this has kept me a bit busy.  I’ve also been doing a bit of rewriting since we don’t start rehearsing until next month. Here, by the way, is the latest draft of the poster for the play.

Play poster

The other thing taking some time is another type of rehearsal. I’m playing for St. Patrick’s Day at Bailey’s Pub in Porter Creek, March 17th. It’s been a while since I sat down and played the equivalent of four sets of tunes as I really haven’t been playing that much since surgery so I’ve been working on that as well.

On top of that, I’m going to be writing a new column for What’s Up Yukon. It’s a look at computer security for the non-technical. I’m trying to provide some basic steps people can do to prevent problems. It’s sort of an electronic self-defence course. The first article came out yesterday. We’re still working on the full focus of the column and trying to come up with a snazzy title. More to come on that, I guess.

Throw in work and life in general… and in particular… I haven’t been posting that much in the last little while. I will try to be more dedicated. I promise…

 

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Requiem for a squirrel

Well, it’s been more than one month since we saw Grumpy Squirrel.  He has not been dining at the squirrel/bird feeder and there were no tracks around his nest. If the weather had been cold for a length of time, I could understand his reticence to go outside. However, a good bit of the stretch of time in question was quite mild and other squirrels have been noisy around the neighbourhood. I have come to the conclusion that Grumpy may no longer be with us.

Grumpy has been around for quite a time as this was his fourth or fifth winter living in and around the back yard. A squirrel that lives past the age of one has an average life span of 2.3 years, but can live to a maximum of 8. As squirrels go, he had a pretty good life span. It wasn’t that hard, I’m sure. After all, my neighbour, Gordon, and I had been feeding him and for the last four years, he has been living in our shed. I was going to evict him, but never got around to it the summer before last and this summer, I wasn’t up to doing some general squirrel-proofing in the shed. I didn’t want to evict him after that, since a squirrel without a nest and store before winter won’t survive very long.

Grumpy was a good squirrel. OK, he was a bit on the psychotic side, but I liked to think of that as being a character trait rather than a failing. Some of his foibles were rather entertaining. For example, I think he figured out who filled the feeder and I could come rather close to him. On the other hand, he seemed to have a particular dislike for Clara and would quickly climb a tree if she came into the back yard. Also, you didn’t have to be too fluently bilingual to understand that some of the calls he made at her probably weren’t complimentary. And she sassed him right back. They did come to like each other enough to share the space on reading days but raking days were entertaining.

Despite his tolerance of us, he did have one bizarre practice. He wouldn’t eat while looking at us. There was a little stub branch above the feeder that he would often eat on. If we were in the yard or on the deck, he would eat on the branch with his back turned to us. If we moved to the other side of the yard, he would switch around. Maybe, we gave him indigestion. I don’t know. This happened numerous times so I assume there was something in it. Also, he was only so tolerant. The feeder was his and I learned early in the game that taking it down to fill it when he was in the yard was not a good idea. Squirrels are a bit territorial, it seems. After having a squirrel threaten you a few times, you take the hint and wait until he wasn’t around to refill it.

I wasn’t the only one he would defend his feeder against. Many a scrap ensued in the yard when another squirrel expressed an interest in the feeder. I’m not sure how he knew there was another one around, as he would often come out of nowhere chirping and yelling and chasing the squirrel down the yard and out of his territory. He would also defend it against birds. He would often chase the chickadees but they would often only fly to the next tree. This obviously wasn’t far enough, so he would climb up and jump to the next tree and scare them out of it. They’d fly to the third tree, which also wasn’t far enough away for Grumpy. He’d go to the next tree and scare them out of it. This, however, was far enough away for the chickadees and they’d often fly from there back to the feeder. Grumpy seemed to take a particular dislike for this and the process would repeat itself.

I’ve only seen his defence process fail twice. Once, he tried to evict a large flock of sparrows. Sparrows are a bit on the aggressive side and since there were several hundred of them, they weren’t backing down from a mere squirrel, regardless of how much attitude he had. He quickly backed off after being continuously dive bombed. The other time I’ve seen him fail to defend something involved the next tree. That’s where the suet block hangs. I have never seen him eat the suet; however, when a hairy woodpecker tries to eat from it, Grumpy chases him away. One day, Grumpy was at the feeder when a three-toed woodpecker (about 2 ½ times the size of the hairy woodpecker) decided to eat at the suet block. Grumpy moved a little further up the tree and sat quietly until he left. Discretion may be an important aspect of squirrel valour, as well.

What happened to him? There are foxes in the yard commonly and owls as well. Dean Marten, the pine marten, has also been around this winter and many cats run loose in the neighbourhood. And, since I have to bust the lock off the shed, I haven’t had a chance to determine if he’s still in there, passed away from a little squirrel coronary after eating all of the oily sunflower seeds I’ve fed him. That’s a project for the next few days. As for what comes next, Grumpy is really Grumpy II. Grumpy I was preceded by a squirrel that used to antagonize the neighbourhood cats and Gordon, our former neighbour (who, according to Clara, moved on up to Heaven to feed the squirrels there) and I simultaneously christened him Cat Food one morning. Some other squirrel will take over his territory sometime this spring and I’ll be feeding a new one soon enough. We’ll see what name the next one earns.

I’ve been lucky enough that I’ve never had to write an obituary before. Who knew the first one would be for a squirrel…

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One of those “What?” moments

After work, I headed downtown to do a few errands and had one of those moments I’m reluctant to describe. This occurred in the parking lot of the car wash on Industrial Road.

When I arrived, I was the only one in line to get in. All of the bays were in use so I would get in reasonably quickly. Another vehicle pulled in behind me shortly after. It was a City of Whitehorse truck. Now, since it was a nice day, I was standing outside waiting my turn. Right after pulling behind me, he starts to try to get around. I figured he wasn’t willing to wait and wanted to pull out around the building and leave. The passenger asked if I would pull ahead a bit, so I got back into the truck and moved it forward so he could get around me.

Imagine my surprise when he doesn’t leave. Instead, he jumps ahead of me in line. I guess he was in even more of a hurry than I thought. I was so flabbergasted that I didn’t think of getting the license number until it was too late. After a few minutes, and just as I was walking up to say something, they pull out, around the building and leave. I figure that waiting is something only us mere mortals are expected to do.

I did send an e-mail to council to complain. I’m not sure what will come out of the e-mail, so I guess I’ll just have to wait and see…

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I’m now allergic to Fridays

I had to do some interesting math this week. According to the union agreement, there is a cap on the number of vacation hours you can carry over at the end of the fiscal year. If you have hours over the cap after June 30th, you lose those hours. No, you don’t get paid out for them. I presume it’s to prevent you saving up hours and then taking a huge amount of vacation at once, making you unavailable when you’re needed.

There’s a double issue for me as well. Instructors are not supposed to take vacation in between September and the end of April. This is reasonably sensible, since you really can’t go anywhere during the terms when you’re supposed to be teaching. I say, “reasonably sensible” because it’s been reasonably applied here as well. If, for example, there are days of the week when you don’t teach, there has been quite a bit of leniency on behalf of the college to ignore the rule when you apply for vacation that would only include those days. And, when your courses are online and there isn’t a huge requirement for your presence in a specific location, instructors have been permitted to take vacation during the term so long as they have access to the internet to deliver lessons while away.

Having spent most of the last six months on sick leave, I’m facing being substantially over the cap come the end of the fiscal year. The alternative is to basically force the end of the term and being gone after the last exam date. This isn’t a good choice as, sometimes, students have issues that make writing the final during the exam period impossible. Please note here that I do differentiate between the concept of “reason” and “excuse” and that not all of the cirucmstances are as pressing as they could be. But, often, there are really good reasons why a student needs to write a final or submit assignments late. Therefore, I was officially “in a pickle.”

After a chat with the department chair, the pickle has ended. I don’t have classes on Fridays. Therefore, starting this week, I have every second Friday, at least, off. This makes it easier to manage vacation time in the spring without losing vacation.

Now, there is another option. Another clause in the CBA does allow for reinstate of hours over the cap if you took time off for sick, bereavement, or special leave. This is not a given and requires approval of both the college and the employee. My chair and I both decided not to go this route. After all, who wants to do the paperwork when every second weekend is a long weekend….

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Another year older

As 2011 fades into the distance, as it already has in parts of the world, I sit back and think of what the year brought. No, I do not cheer the passing of each year. Every year brings the bad as well as the good and I like to think that I would rather look fondly on the good things that happened in the year than focus on the negative. This is probably one reason why I don’t go out and celebrate New Year’s Eve.

I suppose our biggest news of the past year involved multiple trips to the hospital and surgery on several occasions. Considering that all came out well, and the problem left untreated could well have had somewhat final consequences, I think it was all to the good. Heck, I even lost a few pounds that I really should have shed years ago, albeit using a somewhat less drastic method. I’m healthy again and lighter. Double bonus! I also get to remind my siblings that my issues are hereditary and each of them has a 50% chance of going through the same thing so, getting checked out now is a good thing. I’d like to be selfish with my health problems, please and thank you.

We met new people and had good times. We did get camping a few times, and the little camping we did will only make camping in the New Year more appreciated. OK, I didn’t get fishing at all. Yes, that’s bad. However, we have a new boat and a new outboard and it will make fishing a lot easier to achieve since the camper can pull this boat and trailer and we don’t have to take two vehicles to the campground. Two trips out and back each way does take some of the fun out of it and this is now a thing of the past. And, the fish won’t recognize the new boat and hide in fear when they know I’m coming.

So, we’ll end this year on a few high points. I’m healing quite nicely. Clara is getting a new cell phone. We’re buying a friend’s treadmill. The family is healthy. What more could I ask for, other than something involving the lottery…