11 October 2015
Island Life: 11 October 2015
11/10/15 07:41
The week got off to a good start. Monday I woke up and glanced at the clock and realized that I was fifteen minutes late, I’d overslept. In a panic I jumped up and ran for the bath. I skipped working out, I just took a shower, hurried through taking care of the cats and then ran upstairs to grab a quick bite before I set off for work. A few minutes later I was making breakfast when I glanced at the clock. It didn’t make any sense. I checked the one on my computer as well. It matched the one on the stove. I suddenly realized that I didn’t get up fifteen minutes late. I got up forty five minutes early.
Happy Monday.
Monday was also Margaret’s last day here on the island. That evening some friends took us all out to dinner. One last fling before Margaret left. It was a fun interlude, I did notice that one of our friends had a bit of a cold. I commented on this and this was the exchange that followed.
ME: You need to get some rest.
Friend With A Cold: Yeah I think I’ll go home, curl up with a blanket and a big cup of hot iced tea.
ME: …
ME: What?
FWAC: Yeah, when I’m sick I like a nice cup of hot iced tea.
ME: You mean…tea.
FWAC: Yeah, but it’s hot.
There are some times I really don’t know what to say.
On Tuesday, I was looking up the definition of mollify on the web. When it came up it said “Mollify: To make (someone) less angry; to calm (someone) down. Improve your SCRABBLE game with our Word Finder App.” Oddly enough, the fact that Merrium-Webster put an ad in the definition of mollify really pissed me off. THAT’S irony. Margaret flew home. First leg was a flight from Nanaimo Harbour to Vancouver on a seaplane.
Wednesday I got a note from ECHO Players. Their fall production, Calendar Girls, has opened. For those that aren’t familiar, Calendar Girls is the story of a group of elderly British women who raise money for charity. Their other programs have been getting less successful. In desperation this bunch of blue haired old ladies land on the the idea of producing a pin-up calendar. Ticket sales for the play have been good. They went on to mention that they have produced an actual calendar for sale in the lobby to go with the Calendar Girls production.
Uh…thanks but no.
Thursday I had a call from my oncologist, to review the CT scan from a couple of weeks ago. It’s routine now but I still stress out each time they come around. So Thursday morning, shortly after I got to work, I realized that my phone was dead. Oh the WiFi applications were working fine, web, mail, BBC iPlayer, and such. The phone part however was dead. No signal bars, incoming messages went directly to voicemail. I could not call out. I fiddled with it in a panic, with no luck. Cellular service was totally dead. At this point I was freaking out, because I didn’t want to miss the call from the Doctor. I contacted Marsha, via FaceTime on the WiFi network. She hopped into her car and drove in the rain and wind all the way to my office to bring me her phone. In a pinch I could use that. She arrived and handed the phone to me.
ME: “Whew, thank you thank you, thank you…”
Marsha: “I just had a thought. Did you try turning it off and then back on again?”
Me: D’oh!
I rebooted the phone and everything worked normally again. I couldn’t believe it. “Have you tried turning it off and back on again”. The most basic thing you try whenever there’s a computer problem. The thing I told people to do a thousand times when I was doing IT work. And I forgot it. I’m going to chalk it up to being stressed about the call from my oncologist.
The actual call from my Oncologist lasted about one minute. The scans looked clear. There is one spot he’s “keeping an eye on”, but I chalk that up to him being “Dr. Mary Sunshine”, so he has to find something to fret over. If it was really worrisome I’d be in for more tests this month. He’s scheduled the next CT scan for three months down the road, the normal interval. We’ll see what everything looks like then. Overall I was very happy with the results.
Then, Thursday afternoon I picked up my new contact lenses. They were actually ready on Wednesday, but as I mentioned before my phone was dead so I didn’t get the message. Anyway I was really happy to get the new lenses. The left one did need to be replaced. It’s nice to see well out of that eye again. Better yet the right eye is doing well enough to get a contact lens in there as well so now I’m seeing sharply out of both eyes. For the first time in nearly two and a half years I have something most people take for granted: Binocular Vision. It’s good to get that sorted out. There’s a couple of minor things they want to do to the right eye still but overall it’s a huge step forward.
Friday was the day we exhaled. All the weekly weirdness was behind us. Even better, this weekend we’re getting hit by a hurricane. OK, it’s the remnants of a hurricane. Well, actually any more it’s little more than a bunch of rain squalls. But still at one time it was a hurricane. Hurricane Oho formed near Hawaii, and has been dribbling northward, weakening as it got over colder water. We’re getting lots of rain. Normally we’d get wind too, but the hills just to the west, shelter us so it has been mostly calm here. We can see whitecaps and crashing surf on the islands in the sound. But here is’s just been rainy. It’ll be a relaxing three days off, (Monday is our Thanksgiving).
Doug & Marsha.
PIX: Muggs taking off from Nanaimo Harbour, Beautiful sunrise from our deck. Beautiful spider on the deck.
Happy Monday.
Monday was also Margaret’s last day here on the island. That evening some friends took us all out to dinner. One last fling before Margaret left. It was a fun interlude, I did notice that one of our friends had a bit of a cold. I commented on this and this was the exchange that followed.
ME: You need to get some rest.
Friend With A Cold: Yeah I think I’ll go home, curl up with a blanket and a big cup of hot iced tea.
ME: …
ME: What?
FWAC: Yeah, when I’m sick I like a nice cup of hot iced tea.
ME: You mean…tea.
FWAC: Yeah, but it’s hot.
There are some times I really don’t know what to say.
On Tuesday, I was looking up the definition of mollify on the web. When it came up it said “Mollify: To make (someone) less angry; to calm (someone) down. Improve your SCRABBLE game with our Word Finder App.” Oddly enough, the fact that Merrium-Webster put an ad in the definition of mollify really pissed me off. THAT’S irony. Margaret flew home. First leg was a flight from Nanaimo Harbour to Vancouver on a seaplane.
Wednesday I got a note from ECHO Players. Their fall production, Calendar Girls, has opened. For those that aren’t familiar, Calendar Girls is the story of a group of elderly British women who raise money for charity. Their other programs have been getting less successful. In desperation this bunch of blue haired old ladies land on the the idea of producing a pin-up calendar. Ticket sales for the play have been good. They went on to mention that they have produced an actual calendar for sale in the lobby to go with the Calendar Girls production.
Uh…thanks but no.
Thursday I had a call from my oncologist, to review the CT scan from a couple of weeks ago. It’s routine now but I still stress out each time they come around. So Thursday morning, shortly after I got to work, I realized that my phone was dead. Oh the WiFi applications were working fine, web, mail, BBC iPlayer, and such. The phone part however was dead. No signal bars, incoming messages went directly to voicemail. I could not call out. I fiddled with it in a panic, with no luck. Cellular service was totally dead. At this point I was freaking out, because I didn’t want to miss the call from the Doctor. I contacted Marsha, via FaceTime on the WiFi network. She hopped into her car and drove in the rain and wind all the way to my office to bring me her phone. In a pinch I could use that. She arrived and handed the phone to me.
ME: “Whew, thank you thank you, thank you…”
Marsha: “I just had a thought. Did you try turning it off and then back on again?”
Me:
I rebooted the phone and everything worked normally again. I couldn’t believe it. “Have you tried turning it off and back on again”. The most basic thing you try whenever there’s a computer problem. The thing I told people to do a thousand times when I was doing IT work. And I forgot it. I’m going to chalk it up to being stressed about the call from my oncologist.
The actual call from my Oncologist lasted about one minute. The scans looked clear. There is one spot he’s “keeping an eye on”, but I chalk that up to him being “Dr. Mary Sunshine”, so he has to find something to fret over. If it was really worrisome I’d be in for more tests this month. He’s scheduled the next CT scan for three months down the road, the normal interval. We’ll see what everything looks like then. Overall I was very happy with the results.
Then, Thursday afternoon I picked up my new contact lenses. They were actually ready on Wednesday, but as I mentioned before my phone was dead so I didn’t get the message. Anyway I was really happy to get the new lenses. The left one did need to be replaced. It’s nice to see well out of that eye again. Better yet the right eye is doing well enough to get a contact lens in there as well so now I’m seeing sharply out of both eyes. For the first time in nearly two and a half years I have something most people take for granted: Binocular Vision. It’s good to get that sorted out. There’s a couple of minor things they want to do to the right eye still but overall it’s a huge step forward.
Friday was the day we exhaled. All the weekly weirdness was behind us. Even better, this weekend we’re getting hit by a hurricane. OK, it’s the remnants of a hurricane. Well, actually any more it’s little more than a bunch of rain squalls. But still at one time it was a hurricane. Hurricane Oho formed near Hawaii, and has been dribbling northward, weakening as it got over colder water. We’re getting lots of rain. Normally we’d get wind too, but the hills just to the west, shelter us so it has been mostly calm here. We can see whitecaps and crashing surf on the islands in the sound. But here is’s just been rainy. It’ll be a relaxing three days off, (Monday is our Thanksgiving).
Doug & Marsha.
PIX: Muggs taking off from Nanaimo Harbour, Beautiful sunrise from our deck. Beautiful spider on the deck.