Things I Have Done While Being Sick

Slept. Doctors always say to get plenty of rest, so that’s what I’ve done. I ventured out of the apartment for about an hour yesterday and was totally beat when I got back.

Produced Mucous. I am the Deepwater Horizon of snot - it’s been coming out of my nose and eyes and I can hear it rattling around in my lungs too. I’ve been collecting it in jars just in case it someday becomes valuable, like my 5000 Iraqi dinars.

Popped Pills. Ibuprofen, vitamins, herbal supplements, omegas, and now antibiotics. Basically whatever we have in our medicine drawer.

Watched Doctor Who. I’m in need of science fiction television shows, since I never got into Lost (and never will), so I downloaded some episodes of the newest run of BBC’s Doctor Who. It’s semi-cheeseball, like Star Trek, but so far doesn’t take itself seriously either. It’s ‘jolly good’ as an old British person might say.

Ate Soup. Lots of soup. I can’t do it anymore. I need some real food.

Played Nintendo DS. My video gaming world has shrunk basically to the portable device. While I have a PS2 with games still waiting to be played, and a Wii that hasn’t been turned on since George W. Bush was in office, I can’t say I’m a game nerd anymore. I’m the dreaded ‘casual gamer’ now.

Worried About Work. We’re a week or so from releasing the project I’ve been on for 14 months to the world, and I’m at home sick. Being a UI artist usually doesn’t mean there’s a ton of urgent things to fix at this point in software development, but I haven’t been at work since the 20th. I’ve been reassured that getting healthy again is more important, but part of me still worries that I’m letting others down by not being there.

Picked Hair out of the Bathtub Drain. Once a year or so the water starts draining very slowly from the tub, so yesterday I picked the drain clear of hair and soap and other nasty stuff. Guess what? Didn’t help. Drain still slow.

Picked Lint out of my Bellybutton. This isn’t an only-when-sick activity. I do this every day.

Made Soda Pop. My ladyfriend gave me a Sodastream machine for my birthday, which lets me make delicious soda pop in my own home. It costs less than a dollar per litre, has between 3 and 30 calories per serving unlike  the 100 or so in store-bought pop (because the flavours you add don’t have high-fructose corn syrup), and best of all, it’s fun. The carbonation thing makes cool ‘pssht’ noises and you get to make pop whenever you want. Yay!

TWIG Notes: Extra Super Shitty Edition

What a week.

On Tuesday last week, my mother said goodbye to her fourth animal friend, Quincy, when his health took a sharp turn for the worse (tongue cancer). He was 13, so it was only natural for things to start going downhill, but he was the last of the ‘old guard’ of pets, and will be missed just as much as the others who have passed.

Thursday my mother went in for day surgery and ended up having to stay hospitalized until Sunday. I won’t go into details, because it’s really no one’s business, but any extra time spent in a hospital is never a good time. I’m happy that the ladyfriend and I had time booked off work already, so we weren’t scrambling to make last-minute plans, and we were able to make sure my mom got home safely. It’ll be a week or so until she’s feeling her best though.

During my stay in Kamloops I also managed to pick up some sorts of illness. I’ve had a very sore and constricted throat since Saturday and yesterday I started oozing mucous out of my eyes (in addition to traditional flu symptoms like fever and sinus congestion). Today I was diagnosed with an eye infection and had some swabbing taken to see if I have strep throat. Needless to say I’m not at work, and while I wanted to stay in Kamloops to make sure things were okay for my mom, judging by how sick I am now it’s probably better that I’m quarantined at home. I’d feel awful if I spread even part of whatever I’ve got to someone else.

And today we received news that my step-father-in-law’s mother entered a coma. She was certainly a fighter, having lived to age 90 and surviving cancer, and she did so with a kind of stubbornness that is admirable.

So in all, This Week In Garrett has been one of the worst in recent memory. The good part is that things can only get better, and I hope they get better damn soon. Somewhere in all of this I was supposed to have a birthday but I think that’ll be celebrated in June instead.

Status Update

There’s been a lot of smoke lately about Facebook’s privacy or lack thereof. The complaints are legitimate: Facebook is constantly changing its privacy settings to, by default, share more and more information to its ‘partners’. And I can’t really blame Facebook, because a) people are voluntarily signing up for Facebook, and placing your private information online and thinking it’s safe is asinine; and b) we live in a world where everything has to be monetized. If it’s a successful idea, it has to make money. I don’t like these facts but that’s just the way things are. As my ladyfriend says, if you’re foolish enough to put private information on a public website, don’t complain that it’s being exposed or exploited.

When I signed up for Facebook three years ago, I did it out of peer pressure. Everyone was signing up, and it seemed like I was missing out on the fun. And it was fun. I got to see photos of people, stalk former high school crushes, and make smartass comments about other peoples’ status updates. Occasionally I’d play a game, and use its events feature to invite people to things like birthday parties or trips to see burlesque.

Now, though, the fun seems to be gone. I spend perhaps two minutes a day on Facebook now, where I basically read status updates and click “Hide” on application or game notifications. Also, as Facebook constantly finds new ways to mine personal information for profit, I’m required to go through all my privacy settings and ensure everything I want kept off Google stays off it (supposedly). It’s coming to the point where I don’t really get anything out of Facebook - and what I do get out of it is essentially Twitter, which I already negatively ranted about.

So I’ve set July 1 as a day to start the 30 Day No Facebook challenge. It’s exactly what you’d think: for a month I try to go without logging into Facebook. If, after that month, I don’t miss it, I delete my profile. It sounds easy, but I don’t know if I can find the will to press the delete button if or when the day comes (ironically, there is no delete button on Facebook). While I have email, a Flickr account, and a blog, my worry is that I’ll miss out on something or on someone trying to contact me for something fun to do. I get the occasional party invite on Facebook, and while I rarely go to such parties, I know that were I to no longer be on Facebook I’d never even get an invite. So maybe the potential loss isn’t that great. We’ll see how it goes, though. Maybe I’ll be a full on hypocrite and quit Facebook to join Twitter.

Wedding Day! (Someone else’s)

Yesterday, as Best Man, I attended a wedding for my friends Nigel and Tracey, who were married at St. Joseph’s (Catholic) Church in Langley. Despite the suggestions that the ceremony would take hours, it only took a little over one hour (which as I understand is quick, by Catholic measures). The reception was held at a golf and country club in Fort Langley. In all, the wedding was great: the weather was sunny and warm without being uncomfortably so; I got to hang out with/introduce my ladyfriend to friends I hadn’t seen in close to a decade; and I managed to get through the Best Man Speech with minimal stuttering and nervous voice. The bride and groom made their grand entrance at the reception driving a ‘monster truck’ style golf cart, which had all the guests hooting with laughter. The wedding marks pretty much the last marriage in our circle of friends and family - until my niece and nephew ’settle down’, which seems unlikely anytime soon. There will be some amusing photos from the event too, which I’ll share here as soon as I can. It was certainly a happy day and we were both glad to see two fine people marry each other.

We Are Not All Canucks

Until Friday I hadn’t been to a Vancouver Canucks game in quite a while. At about $50 a ticket, and without really having any favourite teams in the NHL (I’m a bandwagon Canucks fan at best) the appeal just isn’t there. What happened on Friday? Well, the company I work for treated about 70 people, all of whom have been involved with the upcoming launch of our software, to seats in a luxury corporate box to watch the Canucks take on the Blackhawks in game four of the Western Conference Semifinals.

Going into the game, the Canucks were down 2 games to 1. They hadn’t played particularly well, losing two games in a row, and going down 3 to 1 in a best of seven series is statistically a bad thing to do if the team’s looking to advance. When the Blackhawks scored 14 seconds in, it was a portent of things to come.

Vancouver went on to lose 7-4, in what was one of their worst playoff performances ever, especially given they were one of the top teams in the league this year. I can’t even pinpoint the problems with the Canucks, because they really didn’t do anything right. I can report that the ‘Nucks won game 5 tonight, so while they’re still alive, I don’t think anyone can say with confidence that they can pull off a comeback.

Anyhow, the big treat was being in a luxury box at a hockey game, something I can guarantee I will never get the chance to experience again. Why? Face value of my ticket was $300. That’s almost as much as I spend on an entire season ticket package to watch the BC Lions. Three hundred bones doesn’t even include food or drink, apparently - the company provided that too, but whatever it cost them was on top of the luxury suite. Overall it was a fun experience, it’s just too bad the home team was beaten like a rented mule.

The Bird is the Word

No, it’s not another post about Surfin’ Bird, don’t worry.

Every spring since we moved into our current apartment, there had been a crow nest in one of the cedar hedges a few feet from our window. This meant mornings filled with squawking and, well, crowing noises for a few hours after sunrise. While annoying, it’s one of those noises that you get used to when you’re exposed to it every day (like the train line that runs behind our condo complex - a guest would probably be woken up during the night having to hear it, but the ladyfriend and I are almost immune to its noise).

This spring, though, the crows are nowhere to be found, and instead our mornings are greeted by a finch or some other small nesting bird. I haven’t actually seen the bird, but it’s the same one every morning, and I’m so glad we’ve got a real bird song to hear in the mornings now. I’ve already decided when I retire to become a ‘birder’, spending my days sitting on a bench or log somewhere with seeds and binoculars, talking about birds like I’m some  kind of expert. Maybe I don’t need to retire, since I already like looking at boobies*!

* that’s a play on words. You know, blue footed boobies? Brown boobies? The coastal seabirds? Sigh.