I’m heading back to Edmonton this evening. Usually on Mondays I hold a movie night, a party to watch a movie. Since I am not there I have someone else running it. In other words they will be having a party at my place. I will probably be arriving home at some point in the evening which means I will be crashing the party.
S. thinks that “You can’t crash gatherings at your own house.” which I’m going to have to take as a dare.
In my head, the way to crash a party is to burst in, uninvited, and make yourself at home. That sounds really easy if it is your own home. (Is it my home? I have a squatter there right now.) But is that enough? It does sound like I’m not putting in enough effort. So I have to think of other ways to effectively crash a party.

My father’s health is up and down. Yesterday he was doing better, but today he was worse. I saw him for the first time today, and he did look scary. He looked far worse than anything I’ve seen on TV in a medical show. But the hospital he is in seems to be good. The doctor is quite young. The nurses are extremely helpful. He has a spectacular view of the reservoir from his room, but he is in no condition to enjoy it.
He is in pain. He has a lot of gas in him, and when he hiccups it is clear that it hurts a lot. He ate for the first time since Tuesday today. Just half a bowl of room temperature soup. Unfortunately he also tried some pineapple but the acidity made them a bad idea. He seems to be doing best when he has water. Tomorrow they are doing a routine procedure to check for blood clots.
It seems though that having a lot of people show up, me and my mother, is too much excitement for him. We’ll see how he is doing tomorrow before we decide how many people visit him.
I would like to thank all my friends for their support in this trying time.

My father is sick. Literally.
I’m not completely sure of the details, but I think he has had an allergic reaction to some penicillin that a dentist gave him awhile ago. He has been transferred to two different hospitals in search of a doctor who knows what they are doing. He is probably going to be in the latest hospital for a week.
It has been touch and go, but they are fairly sure he will be okay. It may take him months to recover though. I hear he looks like a monster.
I’m going to go down to Calgary to see him and give my family support. I’ll leave after work tomorrow.
This all started on his birthday.
My father is getting old, and I’m worried. He is a good father, but at the same time, he is rather distant. I suspect this is true of a lot of people; that their father was always busy with work. So I don’t know how well I know him.
One of the things I’m most concerned about is that he may never know his grandchildren. That I consider a personal failing. I would like to have a family of my own, but I have been making terrible progress towards that. And I know my father would make a perfect grandfather. I wish I could give him some grandchildren.

I’m turning into a little girl.
It started innocently enough, as these things are wont to do. I came back from a vacation to find that my housesitter had left me the gift of a small Gund bear. I stuck it on a shelf, nominally calling it Winston.
Then my parents gave me their backup dog, an adorable stuffed husky. I set him next to my Nintendo with a tennis ball that he has guarded faithfully to this day.
On my trip to Disneyworld I grabbed a stuffed Disney character. I’m obviously embarrassed about this one because I’ve hidden him in my closet.
In Los Angeles I attended a Doctor Who convention. Since there is a lot of overlap in science-fiction fans I was able to buy a tribble. Painfully fun to abuse.
I now have four stuffed “animals” living in my place.

I’m not even counting the duck made out of hand towels that I nabbed from the hotel at Disneyworld.

I have now left Los Angeles. I skipped breakfast with the plan to eat at the airport, but LAX thwarted me. Well, actually they thwarted themselves. Instead of helping the local economy, I spent my time waiting in lines to get my ticket, to have someone eyeball my ticket, to get through security, and to get on the plane. Their loss.
Surprisingly, no one offered to sell me food on the plane.
So, now I’m in Vancouver. Thankfully they have food here and aren’t as anal-retentive about security.
Either that or I have oceans of time between my flights.

I was outright lazy today. Since I was up so late, I slept in. Considering that my hostess was still in Vegas, there was no pressing reason to do anything. Which is also a problem. When confronted with too many options, I seem to be incapable of choosing any. Eventually, when I did decide on something, most of the day was already gone. It didn’t help that the weather here is somewhat inclement. My plan to go running in Griffith park didn’t seem like a good idea. So instead I went and did some shopping.
When she finally did return, after a brutal drive, (A storm was hitting from Mexico or Oregon that caused a lot of delays.) I took her out to dinner.
From the top of her building there is a nice view of downtown Los Angeles. I probably should get a picture of that. Or I could just go to bed.

She went off in the early afternoon to Las Vegas to see her concert. I now have the place to myself. She should be back tomorrow.
I spent the afternoon and early evening going on a walking tour of downtown Los Angeles. A co-worker had loaned me a travel book describing a good route. However, it isn’t as exciting as it sounds. I saw a lot of buildings, and that was about it. There weren’t many activities. Actually there was one, and it was one of the first stops; The library was having an exhibition on maps. I wandered through it.
I may have been discovered though. While passing in front of the Walt Disney Hall (a buildiing both beautiful and ugly at the same time) there was a truck with a camera on an extended arm. It was either filming people on the sidewalk or a car. It might have been a car commercial? Either way, I was in a background.
After the tour, I went and had a Japanese dinner, then back home. A short nap followed by getting ready to go out.
The party itself wasn’t great. It was entertaining, and I knew a lot of people, but the venue was too big. There was too much space.
Still, I was there until well past four. Now I need to go to sleep. But it isn’t as bad as it should be. I’m getting jetlag to work for me.

The party I went to tonight was fun. I saw a lot of people I knew. There were good performances. I didn’t drink.
My hostess and I had travelled there separately. We decided to leave at the same time. I followed her car all the way back to her place. But since I wasn’t in her car I didn’t know the drama going on. The people here will constantly text message and phone while they are driving around. I’m surprised there aren’t more accidents, but I guess they are evolving quickly here.
Anyway, she was having a fight with an ex-boyfriend. She stayed in her car for some time, continuing the arguments. I still don’t know the details, but her friends from down the hall were very supportive of her. The gist that I got was that she had been intending to go to a concert tomorrow evening, but he was taking the ticket back from her. From everything I’ve heard about him, he seems to be a leech, but she is so loving that she continues to let him treat her poorly.
She cried.
We took her out to a 24 hour restaurant and she seems to have recovered. It looks like there are plans afoot that should get her into her concert tomorrow.

So the plan for today is to go to a Doctor Who convention. I had no idea one was in town, but my friend really wants to go for a couple of hours.
However, she has someone she is going with who, she thinks, is trying to be her boyfriend. She is not exactly on board with this plan. So I am supposed to show up twenty minutes after them and join them. A “Three’s a crowd” situation. She even gave me signals for use at various times. The I-want-to-get-the-hell-out-of-here. The I’m-having-a-great-time signal. Even a give-me-a-bit-of-time-alone one. This is complicated.
Hope I meet a dalek.

Yup out late. But I went out to dinner and a show. There was very good food, with seared tuna and filet mignon. The show itself was a variety of acts and most were good. One wasn’t as good and I had a hard time staying awake. The event had, unfortunately, started late. I didn’t even start eating dinner until 11:00, so you can understand why I was sleepy.
After it was over though, the fun didn’t stop. Off to an afterparty. It was nicer; It was a whole lot easier to socialize. But of course I have now been up too late.
I should have napped before going out; Los Angeles wasn’t that great with rain and cold. I barely did anything during the day.

I was invited to a house party in southern L.A. for this evening. I went and had a good time. It was a good primer party, but I don’t think I loosened up too much. I’ll need to work on that. I did meet a lot of my old friends from other vacations and it was good to see them. My hostess was unable to come because she had a date to go to.
Driving back was a harrowing experience. I somewhat know the route, but not that well. My printed directions help, but you want to keep your eyes on the road. It really helped that the roads were very much empty. But still, I’m hopped up on adrenaline. How am I supposed to get to sleep now?

Most of my first day in Las Angeles was devoted to food. The woman’s whose place I’m staying at had been out and needed to go grocery shopping. Apparently shopping for food in this town is long and convoluted. We went to one place for really affordable stuff, then to another for regular stuff. And these places were not close. You have to drive everywhere in L.A. and it still took time to get to each one.
My hostess is a vegan, but the fruits and vegetables are so fresh here that it looks like an easy lifestyle to pick up. Hooray for perpetual summer. However I am getting more fibre in my diet than I am used to.
After the shopping I took her to a Mexican restaurant for dinner. I have a co-worker who always complains about the Mexican restaurants in Edmonton. They aren’t authentic enough. The meal here was good, but I filled up on too many tortilla chips and couldn’t finish. Leftovers.
She also has three cats. Not quite a cat lady. They seem to like me. One has climbed on top of me and I think is planning on stealing the keys off my laptop. They all seem to like sleeping on top of my luggage.
Today we went to a park in Malibu for her friend’s birthday. It is a nice area, but not as green as I expected. Actually, it looked like the scenery in M*A*S*H. We got a map and then went for a hike. We started out with two guys, both named the same, and two girls. But when we got to the end point, we swapped one of the guys for four other girls. It was a nice exchange. I.e. I was alone with six girls. This is what dreams are made of.
Oh, and that end point? The actual set for M*A*S*H. It was overgrown so it looked too small, but there were the rusted remains of a jeep and a bus. And if you climbed a hill, you were climbing up the same hill that the actors rush in the opening credits. At the top, the flat area where the helicopters land. Very cool!
We split up after the hike and went back to town. There the birthday girl, my hostess, and myself went to a tattoo parlor. Since they were lifelong friends they had decided to get matching tattoos. What surprised me is that I suggested a design that they both loved, and it is what they got. I am now responsible for two people’s tattoos.
A power symbol

I was just thinking I was lucky that, so far, none of my flights have been delayed. But they just announced that they are overbooked by three people. Hopefully that will sort itself out and I won’t be kept behind with a $200 credit.

Oh yeah. I’m off to Los Angeles. I’m already at the airport. A week of vacation, hopefully in the sun, but the weather report isn’t looking too promising.
See ya!

My body is broken.
Or at least I can’t hear it anymore.
I’ve heard that a lot of people have broken their thirst mechanism. Their body may crave water, but they don’t feel thirsty. i.e. They can’t hear their body anymore. I’ve got a similar problem.
Yesterday, when I should have been handling some of the chores that are needed around here, I started reading a book. A very good book. Nearly nine hours of good book. I stayed up too late. And after six hours of sleep, I work up early. So I went back to reading.
Needless to say, I wasn’t my most productive today. I blamed it on lack of sleep.
That wasn’t it. It was lack of food.
I had gone for a 26km run that morning and had had only two small meals for the rest of the day. I didn’t feel that hungry. And because I’m not a big fan of eating, I didn’t go looking for food. I grabbed a small chicken pot pie and ate that for one meal, completely missing the pile of pasta leftovers I had in the fridge. Today when I was cranky and headachy, I thought I needed sleep. All of that went away when I finally had made a nice ravioli bake for myself.
When I was doing my reading, it was all in bed. That may have been restful enough for me.

Finally I got my email sorted out.
I get my internet through Shaw. I don’t despise Shaw. They have been fairly good as an internet service provider. I get my email and porn… er… uh… web browsing, without too many problems. 🙂 I dislike that if I am not on their network I can’t download email to my computer and have to go through their web interface which I’ve found is flaky at times. I think I’ve gotten past that though; Firefox seems to work better than IE in a work environment.
I’ve been suspicious of Shaw when they decided to take down my internet access. They changed their network without realizing it wouldn’t work with the old cable modem they gave me. They replaced it, but I had trouble with my home network after that. I fixed it by getting a new router, (the last one was rather old) and I blamed them for that. But I realized that if I ever got frustrated and decided to leave them, I would lose all my email. If I instead get my friends used to a new email address that I own completely, then I can switch providers at any time. FREEDOM!
Initially I just had all email forwarded to my shaw account, and I started pretending I was using the new one. But that still didn’t let me get past their webmail interface. A little research and I found that I can have two domains on my hosting site. So I transferred my personal domain to it and, after jumping through some hoops, I was able to get it set up. It was hairy for awhile. I was trying to get an IMAP interface, but I was getting errors with that. Maybe I was aiming too high because I think I prefer the simplicity of a POP interface anyway. I like to own my email and have it on my computer.
The big benefit is that my iPhone now can check and send email. I’m more connected than ever.

Epcot is a nice place but it is hard to spend a whole day there. After awhile you get so sick of other cultures that you just want to go invade another country.

I saw the movie Yes Man yesterday. I’ve been wanting to see it for a long time; I liked the philosophy behind it. I’ve been trying to do it myself for years, but I based it more off being agreeable to dares. There are many dares that I’ve done. It did give me an out that I could ignore dares that were obviously not dares and just people trying to abuse my generosity.
Because that is the biggest problem with a life plan of always saying yes. It loses everything if someone else knows about it and is willing to abuse it. I remember reading a review of the movie that complained that the main character never told his girlfriend about it. I obviously disagree. There is no relationship if the other person knows the answer to any question. Why bother asking the question? You are just a follower and can’t lead anymore.
The only part I disliked about the movie was the motorcycle scene near the end. It was too over-the-top. Everything up to that point had been plausible, but a chase scene on a high-powered motorcycle didn’t fit the rest of the show.
The part I liked the best was the idea of an early morning running and photography class. What a great idea! Go out in good light conditions to take pictures while getting exercise. I’d sign up if I could.

Yesterday, as an almost impulse purchase, I bought a bathroom scale. I’ve never had one before. I look forward to finding out what it is like. I’ve used it already, and according to the BMI included with it, I am overweight.
I’m getting mixed messages here. I frankly think I need to be eating more.

I have quite literally been told I don’t get enough salt. The reason I had a cramp at the end of the marathon was because my body had run out of salt. The doctor (sports massage one) recommended a salt tablet at those times. Which as near as I can tell is all the benefits/disadvantages of salt without any of the taste.

I’m back.
Luggage seems intact with nothing missing. So far.
Going to bed now.

So I have a two and a half hour layover in Toronto. Inconvenient, but lucky because apparently my luggage exploded on the leg from Toronto. (Their words, not mine.) My luggage wasn’t coming down the carousel but I eventually found it in the oversize area; wrapped in a bag with my stuff strewn around inside it. It looked like the zipper had ripped apart. My suitcase wasn’t overstuffed, and the only problem would be that it was rather heavy. The three most important things were still there (my marathon medals). I was feeling stressed, so I packed everything back in and reused the zipper again. It closed, so I’ve decided to trust it for the next leg. I probably should have asked for someone to tape it shut. Or taken out my four most valuable items (the fourth is my camera with my marathon pictures). But I didn’t so now I have something to worry about.
And I have plenty of time to worry because my plane is delayed. Instead of leaving at 7:30, I’ll be leaving at 10:00. According to a WestJet employee there was bad weather in Kelowna that caused this delay. I could live with it, if there wasn’t another WestJet flight leaving at 9:00.
I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning. At 7:30 in the morning.