EdTwins – Almost 4 Weeks

Allan holding the twins.

This expression on my brother's face just cracks me up. He won't be able to hold them this way for much longer -- soon they'll be squirming too much and they won't be sleeping at the same time. He'd better enjoy the peace while he can!



Twins, Week 4.

Sometimes It's Best Not to Look

There are times when it's best not to play the What If? game. I'll give you an example:

Sometimes, on a lark, I'll go to Ryanair or Easyjet's sites to see what fares are for flights I've already booked. I do this all the time, and it is a nasty habit I should just stop! I had a look at the Dinard-London segment on Ryanair, and it's now -- get this -- 1.99 EUR! It's not that bad, I mean, I paid 19.99 EUR base fare for that flight, but oh my, I could've had it for 1.99 EUR!!

You'd think I'd know better than to check my Easyjet flights, too, but curiosity got the better of me, and I just had a look... whew! The prices are currently the same as what I'd paid. It's all another form of gambling, and I'm a terrible gambler, I'll admit it. I suppose I am paying for peace of mind; booking ahead is a form of insurance because I don't have any flexibility with my Vancouver-London flights or with the wedding in the middle of the trip. I simply can't afford to gamble with not being able to get the flights that I want just to say I got the bargain of the century.

Catch-Up on This Week

I realize I slipped under the radar for most of this week. After being sick last week, I hit the ground running on Monday, pulling an all-nighter Sunday on a writing assignment. Also, sending out two office reports and getting some rather tragic news made for a rather hellish Monday. Pulled another all-nighter on Monday night to finish the assignment, and dragged my sorry carcass to the office on Tuesday afternoon in the co-op car I booked over the weekend: a lime green Volkswagen Beetle, my nth? co-op car.

The previous week I was in a Honda Civic hatchback, the week before that I was in a silver Mazda truck -- a beast of a vehicle, but all I could get at the last minute. So far, my favourite car is still the Toyota Prius hybrid, of which the co-op has only one, but I'm sure they'll look into getting more. The Volkswagen Beetle is a pretty zippy little car -- I did a lot of speeding in it over two days -- but I like the noiselessness and handling of the Prius in the city. That said, I love being able to drive a variety of vehicles. I don't know if I could just buy a car one day and stick with that after having this much variety.

Returned from two days in Sechelt, a bit more rested, on Wednesday night, but still with loads to do. But I needed a time-out from work, so I'd made arrangements with Claire and May to go out again on Thursday, before Claire leaves Vancouver next week and May moves to Switzerland at the end of March.

Last night I cooked up this rather complicated plan for a restaurant/photo op/night tour of Vancouver, as both Claire and I like taking pictures, but food turned into the priority for the evening as everyone was pretty hungry. I chose Guu, a Japanese tapas restaurant at the west end of Robson St., near Denman. I love Japanese tapas, and much prefer eating communally from small dishes rather than chowing down on a big main plate all to myself. We even ate outside, under the heat lamps, while tables of Japanese people sat inside and pointed to us as if to say, "Are you out of your minds?" It wasn't particularly cold, though, especially under the lamps, and when you eat you warm up, anyway.

Cardero's

From Guu we moseyed on over to Cardero's, a restaurant a few blocks away on a pier in tony Coal Harbour. The place was hopping (and loud), but we stayed until it closed. Obviously, Guu wasn't enough for us, because we ordered their pizza of the day, red wine, desserts, and coffee! Gluttony is great! Actually, the plan was for some drinks at Cardero's, then more drinks at the top of the Landmark Hotel in the revolving restaurant/lounge, but we didn't make that far. We got so caught up in the discussions we were having that we lost all track of time. I'm planning to meet Claire in Paris in May -- if she doesn't head to Mexico early -- and May, who will be in Switzerland, will probably be in hermit, work-mode, so getting her out to play in Spain or France will probably be impossible.

Coal Harbour

Claire

Family Pics

Maddy at Crescent Beach

Maddy, Granny, Michael

By the way, thanks to all those who asked about my mum and passed along kind words for her speedy recovery. This photo was taken weeks ago: as you can see, she's wheelchair bound but at least out of the hospital. Rehabiliation can be pretty slow, but she's a feisty woman and might surprise the physiotherapist by walking sooner rather than later. Right now it's all she can do to keep the kids from taking over her wheelchair.

The EdTwins, Week 3

Twins, 3 Weeks

I've uploaded some photos of the twins, who have been moved from BC Women's Hospital in Vancouver to Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster, which is a lot closer to where Allan and Cheryl live. They didn't have the space at Surrey Memorial Hospital, and they had to release some space at BC Women's to make room for babies with more acute needs.

This is actually good news, because the babies have been growing and gaining more weight every day, and are a step closer to going home. Cheryl has been going in and trying to get them to breastfeed, but since the babies are premature, it hasn't been easy. Now both twins are out of isolation, and placed together. I can only imagine how stressful it must be for a baby to be squashed for months and months with her sibling in the womb, then suddenly whipped out and put into a plexiglass machine hooked up to tubes and monitors, then left all alone. It's no wonder their heartrates vary so much. I'm sure it must be comforting for the babies to be next to each other after 3 weeks apart.

Ofoto Photo Album - The EdTwins at 3 Weeks Old

An Early Spring?

early spring!

Outside my office/bedroom window this morning, I noticed blossoms on the trees along Beach Avenue. It's still February... bring it on!

Melissa in her new dress.

On an unrelated note, the oldest of the five Ms returns tomorrow from her sibling-less sabbatical in Maine. Her grandmommy and the rest of the Maine family were diligent in sending us electronic updates. In this pic, Melissa models a dress she had the good fortune to acquire from Auntie Allison's co-worker, outgrown by her girls but in remarkably fine shape.

She looks very grown up, for 4.

Social Networking Services

Aptly said, by Melanie McBride, Canadian freelance writer.

c h a n d r a s u t r a: Explaining social networking services to your real friends

I'm Not Paranoid Enough

Got this from Briana Doyle's blog. It's a 16-factor personality test, with 85 questions. I should take it again another day and see what my score is then.

For more personality tests, check out the Similar Minds website. A list of them here.

Cattell's 16 Factor Test Results Warmth |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 82% Intellect ||||||||||||||||||||| 70% Emotional Stability ||||||||||||||||||||| 66% Aggressiveness |||||||||||||||||||||||| 78% Liveliness |||||||||||||||||| 58% Dutifulness |||||||||||||||||| 54% Social Assertiveness |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 90% Artistic Interests |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 82% Paranoia ||||||||| 30% Abstractness |||||||||||||||||||||||| 74% Introversion ||||||||| 22% Anxiety ||||||||||||||| 42% Openmindedness |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 90% Independence |||||||||||||||||||||||| 74% Perfectionism ||||||||||||||||||||| 70% Tension |||||||||||||||||| 54%

Take Free 16pf based Personality Test

Medicated, Zoned Out, and... Working!

I'm all of the above. In fact, I'm blogging to keep from keeling over on top of my keyboard. I'm in Sechelt for a couple of days, working on our big monthly report. Drove in this morning in a last-minute CAN co-op car, which I had to fetch all the way from near Hastings and Nanaimo in the middle of the night, because it's the only car that was available for two days. Thanking the powers-that-be for 24-hour pharmacies, I stopped by Shoppers Drug Mart on the way home to see if I could something extra potent for this cough that seems to be worsening.

2:00am
Me [coughing up a lung in aisle 8], holding up a bottle of Benylin: "Is this the strongest stuff ya got?"
Pharmacist: "I've got something stronger... but it's got codeine in it."
Me, quite ignorant about medication in general, as am accustomed to having a tough immunity system: "What happens with codeine?"
Pharmacist: "It can make you drowsy and constipated."
Me, trying to weigh up the benefits of a decent night's sleep versus constipation:"How drowsy are we talking about?"
Pharmacist:"Depends on the person."
Me, quite unconvinced about my ability to beat drowsiness or constipation, holding up the Benylin bottle:"Is this my next strongest option...??"

The pharmacist nodded, so I bought that instead. I had visions of myself falling asleep at the wheel and driving off the road on the way to the ferry this morning, the ambulance report listing me as "patient in stable condition, very constipated."

*VOMIT SPOILER*

It was no exaggeration what I said earlier about having a great immunity system. I've never had a headache. I got the flu maybe once every three years, and went for over a year at a time without so much as a sniffle, let alone a full-blown cold. In the last couple of years, since I've been attending uni, I've fallen prey to every virus that enters my airspace. Last November I had such a bad case of the flu I bought my first bottle of aspirin ever.

For the past week and a half I've been unable to shake what seems to be a chest cold. I should've just gone to the doctor and obtained antibiotics, but on Sunday I thought it was pretty much over. Then a couple of days later, I started coughing so hard I thought I'd give myself an aneurysm. It was brutal. I finished off a bottle of herbal cough syrup I got in Ireland last spring (the last time I was coughing this much), two boxes of Ricola cough drops, two packets of other cough drops, and even -- *gag* -- a bottle and a half of Buckleys. (A true Canadian poison.) This morning, when I was driving the onramp to the ferry, I coughed so hard I threw up on myself... errrrr, lovely.... Thankfully, I hadn't eaten breakfast. Then the same thing happened in the parking lot after I got to the office.

Finally, Melanie could stand it no longer, and sent me off to the clinic here in Sechelt. She told the nurse it was an emergency so I could get in, so when I got there, the nurse looked at me skeptically, especially when she saw my Vancouver address. "Emergency?"-- she said dubiously. I nodded, saying I couldn't even eat anything. I'd been coughing so much that by the time the doctor showed up in his office, I'm sure he'd already written the prescription for me in his head.

"The lady in my office fears I have whooping cough," I said to the doc. He shook his head, saying whooping cough has a very specific sound, and I just had a viral infection. Great. Just. I told him about the pharmacist offering me codeine, and he said, "This stuff doesn't have codeine, but it's codeine-related."

Codeine-related?

Anyway, I took the prescription and took off to have it filled, desperate to get rid of this death-cough. When I picked it up, I was a bit shocked at the cost:

$37.82 for a 100ml bottle.
Hmmm... I thought, this stuff better be strong.

Holy smokes! When I got back to the office, I took a swig, and within minutes my speech began to feel laboured. The pharmacist had told me to cut the dosage in half and take it twice as often, because she said I'd find it strong. I felt so bizarre, like I'd gone drinking the night before and was completely dehydrated and still a bit drunk.

The Corporation

Everyone should see this documentary. You may not agree with its premise, its execution, the opinions expressed, or the people chosen to speak in it, but you have to admit that it does make you think twice about what you see in the media and what you purchase as a consumer of goods and services. As consumers, we can't absolve ourselves of all responsibility for what's happening around us -- to the planet, in the Third World, or in our own communities. We can blame government for poor leadership or lack of regulation enforcement, companies for their bottom-line thinking, or each other for looking the other way and letting things get out of hand. But, ultimately, every time we buy something and don't read the label -- for warnings or ingredients or for where it is made -- we are contributing to a collective ignorance about what it takes to get a product out in the market, from its raw materials to its packaged end. Consumer un/consciousness is a powerful thing.

I saw The Corporation last night and am still thinking about it. For me, that's the mark of a good film.

The Movie Review Query Engine has a listing of reviews for this (and any other) film.