Category: Disaster

all over the world

this is our Health care right now

 

Her twitter handle is ER Shit Magnet

She works as an ER Nurse in a big city in the US

 

Coded a COVID-19 symptoms patient. In his 20’s. We didn’t have enough gear or time to find PPE so 2 nurses were compressing him without masks on while the doc slammed on a PAPR without the fan to intubate. Bloody emesis sprayed on the staff.

Takaya the wolf was shot dead by a hunter

Screen caps of Dr. Josh Lerner’s home page on Facebook, forwarded by Amanda Guinzburg @Guinz on twitter

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Grocery and holy shit

Grocery shopping done. Toilet paper continues to be available in serried rows in New Westminster; frozen vegetable section looks like bears been at it.

have you ever SEEN such wanton nonchalance!!!? imagine not going buck wild over asswipe

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Okay, let’s explain the chart

 

In KOR they test, test, test, in Italy they only test the symptomatic

so in IT they weren’t quarantining the 1/4 of 20-29 year old people who have it but are asymptomatic. See that big tall spike? it’s the same illness, there’s not enough mutation yet not to be…. so four percent of all of the people in Italy aged 20-19 get coronovirus with symptoms bad enough to warrant testing, but a quarter of them are positive…. fuck sticks!!! we should be telling Millennials not to participate in mixed age events……..

plague year

One of the romancelandia writers I follow is Isobel Carr and she has provided us with a Paper Doll to keep us busy.

People on twitter are begging for cute pictures of pets.

Me, I’m just staying still and trying not to worry.

150k people have been infected that we know of for sure, half of those recovered.

It’s a virus so we may get post viral health problems, it hasn’t been around long enough for us to know.

Laura Smith, a great Canadian singer songwriter is dead in Halifax of cancer. She was beautiful like few people I’ve met in person. She grew eight inches in one year when she was a teenager (spent the summer in bed). She performed a version of All of Me at a house party with a jazz duo while high on cocaine (I found that out later…) that was the best version of it I ever heard. We went to see her at the Yellow Door in Montréal.

She will be missed. I just emailed Paul to tell him as he likely doesn’t know.

China’s going to finish by running the world because Russia and the US and the UK and France will whiff the pandemic. Probably already has plans to secure the nukes. They’ll get enormous populations of white people to get on board by exterminating Muslims. It will take 15 years. They’ll allow hundreds of millions of people to migrate into the Muslim-occupied countries and then they’ll start work on exterminating Black Africans and move Chinese there instead.

cancellations

Saw Keith, Paul, Katie and Alex yesterday when I went to pick Alex up from the school. I walked to but Katie gave me a lift back from Planet Bachelor. Alex is doing well and we had a lovely walk. I didn’t bug him or try to talk to him. I let him be. I walked next to him, and at every intersection, his little cold hand slid into mine, and then he let go as soon as we crossed the street.

Keith enjoys living with Alex. He says some days are better than others.

I burst into tears when Paul said he’s staying on this side of the border until things settle down, which, candidly, who can say?

And it all happens again two Wednesdays from now, if we aren’t in lockdown. Seven new cases in BC yesterday.

Started reading the Newsflesh Trilogy yesterday. It’s entertaining as hell; but describing the zombie apocalypse like that and then saying ‘look how much infrastructure survived’ makes me hope that she will at least provide an explanation of how the power grid and cell towers survived well enough to make an instant news economy work, and where all that bleach gets manufactured, is not really explained well enough to keep me happy.

I have a sudden mental image of people driving up to crematoria with loved ones in garbage bags sealed with duct tape and leaving them outside with the phone number of whoever’s got the credit card number to get them cremated.

70 million years ago days were 23.5 hours long. Longer days were God’s answer to critters saying ‘THERE’S JUST NOT ENOUGH HOURS IN THE DAY”.

Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson are in COVID-19 isolation in Australia. Lucky them.

Guess who has diplomatic relations with Cuba, which manufactures the most powerful antiviral in the world right now? Canada. Guess who doesn’t? Trumplandia.

Dinosaur the size of a hummingbird.

email circulated by a world famous scientist

Thanks to me exchanging emails with Carolyn Porco back when I was still stanning for Unitarianism, I got this this am. It is actually from a friend of hers.

Subject: What I am doing for the upcoming COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic

Dear Colleagues, as some of you may recall, when I was a professor of pathology at the University of California San Diego, I was one of the first molecular virologists in the world to work on coronaviruses (the 1970s). I was the first to demonstrate the number of genes the virus contained. Since then, I have kept up with the coronavirus field and its multiple clinical transfers into the human population (e.g., SARS, MERS), from different animal sources. The current projections for its expansion in the US are only probable, due to continued insufficient worldwide data, but it is most likely to be widespread in the US by mid to late March and April.

Here is what I have done and the precautions that I take and will take. These are the same precautions I currently use during our influenza seasons, except for the mask and gloves.:

1) NO HANDSHAKING! Use a fist bump, slight bow, elbow bump, etc.

2) Use ONLY your knuckle to touch light switches. elevator buttons, etc.. Lift the gasoline dispenser with a paper towel or use a disposable glove.

3) Open doors with your closed fist or hip – do not grasp the handle with your hand, unless there is no other way to open the door. Especially important on bathroom and post office/commercial doors.

4) Use disinfectant wipes at the stores when they are available, including wiping the handle and child seat in grocery carts.

5) Wash your hands with soap for 10-20 seconds and/or use a greater than 60% alcohol-based hand sanitizer whenever you return home from ANY activity that involves locations where other people have been.

6) Keep a bottle of sanitizer available at each of your home’s entrances. AND in your car for use after getting gas or touching other contaminated objects when you can’t immediately wash your hands.

7) If possible, cough or sneeze into a disposable tissue and discard. Use your elbow only if you have to. The clothing on your elbow will contain infectious virus that can be passed on for up to a week or more!

What I have stocked in preparation for the pandemic spread to the US:

1) Latex or nitrile latex disposable gloves for use when going shopping, using the gasoline pump, and all other outside activity when you come in contact with contaminated areas.

Note: This virus is spread in large droplets by coughing and sneezing. This means that the air will not infect you! BUT all the surfaces where these droplets land are infectious for about a week on average – everything that is associated with infected people will be contaminated and potentially infectious. The virus is on surfaces and you will not be infected unless your unprotected face is directly coughed or sneezed upon.  This virus only has cell receptors for lung cells (it only infects your lungs) The only way for the virus to infect you is through your nose or mouth via your hands or an infected cough or sneeze onto or into your nose or mouth. >>>>>>> OKAY THIS WAS THE POINT I SAID hunh

Because this disease has cell receptors all over your body, as previously mentioned in this blog. HOWEVER he’s right that it can only infect you by getting into your respiratory system, usually by you transferring live virus to your facial mucosa. Once it gets in you, it can hurt your heart and your circulatory system surfaces as well.

2) Stock up now with disposable surgical masks and use them to prevent you from touching your nose and/or mouth (We touch our nose/mouth 90X/day without knowing it!). This is the only way this virus can infect you – it is lung-specific. The mask will not prevent the virus in a direct sneeze from getting into your nose or mouth – it is only to keep you from touching your nose or mouth.

3) Stock up now with hand sanitizers and latex/nitrile gloves (get the appropriate sizes for your family). The hand sanitizers must be alcohol-based and greater than 60% alcohol to be effective.

4) Stock up now with zinc lozenges. These lozenges have been proven to be effective in blocking coronavirus (and most other viruses) from multiplying in your throat and nasopharynx. Use as directed several times each day when you begin to feel ANY “cold-like” symptoms beginning. It is best to lie down and let the lozenge dissolve in the back of your throat and nasopharynx. Cold-Eeze lozenges is one brand available, but there are other brands available.

I, as many others do, hope that this pandemic will be reasonably contained, BUT I personally do not think it will be. Humans have never seen this snake-associated virus before and have no internal defense against it. Tremendous worldwide efforts are being made to understand the molecular and clinical virology of this virus. Unbelievable molecular knowledge about the genomics, structure, and virulence of this virus has already been achieved. BUT, there will be NO drugs or vaccines available this year to protect us or limit the infection within us. Only symptomatic support is available. I hope these personal thoughts will be helpful during this potentially catastrophic pandemic. You are welcome to share this email.

Good luck to all of us!

James Robb, MD FCAP

The Correction does her thing

So, this morning, Coronavirus. 80k infected and 2.5k dead, approx, as of this date.

Holy shit, the lies and propaganda about COVID-19 on line – I’m doing a skip-dive this am – are horrifying. Once again, there is zero evidence that the Chinese government made the virus. They’d be releasing it in the Uighur camps if that was true, come on dear people think.

Also, apparently abandoned babies are appearing in orphanages because their parents haven’t been paid since January and they’re being evicted – there was a heartwrenching picture with a letter indicating that the parents would be back to collect the kid when they had a home again. ABSOLUTELY no idea if it’s true, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

there are reports of entire families (all over 50 yoa) perishing within a fortnight, also reports that there’s no systematized autopsies of the dead so we’re not getting a clear idea of what aspect of the virus procession through the body is actually killing people which given that it can kill you more than one way, which would affect treatment protocols, is just one more thing that CDCs in the rest of the world are going to have to figure out, because China’s a little busy right now. The ACE2 receptor is the main target in the human body but that means it can attack lungs, organ linings (endothelium), kidneys, blood vessels and the heart. Death by this organism can masquerade as a heart attack or a fatal asthma attack and you won’t know without an autopsy, so current cause of death info is bullshit and we need to poke the Chinese to do better

and to top it all off you’ll be way more susceptible to any lung bug at all for months afterward if you do get it so just imagine the first groups of people who survive COVID-19 only to die from regular flu and how angry their families will be GET YOUR FLU SHOT

A THREAD.

I just watched the spire of Notre Dame fall on twitter

 

I’m crying. Why wouldn’t I be.

This is a fucking tragedy, and it was all triggered by workmen. I’ll bet anything there were safety shortcuts forced onto them by the construction management company.

 

later…. 52 acres of primeval oak forest was taken down for the pillars

 

jesus

the delayment of the inevitablelike

I AM NO QUIT I AM EXTEND SON

I’ll be working until the end of January. The woman I was hired to temporarily replace for medical reasons and to be a casual is now not working for the company, reason unknown. My reasons for not wanting to be there are still in place but I’m getting paid and I don’t have to work weekend days so I don’t care.  Steady middies for me!

It’s amusing that I’m awake now.  The world is white and quiet with snow, and if I was working tonight my shift would be about to start…. I just woke up.

I could use the money, although I’d forgotten the extent to which commuting in the wintertime is such a fricking drag in this burg.

Getting to and from work the last week has chewed through a bus station mop. But… it only took an hour to get home yesterday.

My characters are sad and so am I.  It’s the pathetic fallacy folks.

Also one of them is quitting drinking and I’m walking alongside him for portions of that, which I loathe.

Although I did think of THE MOST DISGUSTING SIXER RELATED GAG I mean I burst out laughing when poor Jeff was trying to watch the Dallas/Tampa game, which was ugly and beautiful and what the hell’s going on with the zebras, and mah God Dak Prescott, but I just had this vision of Sweetie, who is like 3 kilos, being the security guard for the whorehouse, and controlling a patron with the vilest impersonation of Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry one could possibly imagine, and I couldn’t stop laughing because the joke grows organically out of the situation and at this point we could all use a laugh,

because Trump sailed through the Electoral College, and the Republic, tottering after decades of hacking at the Constitution and weak from never dealing with racism and the Civil War, is in full kleptocratic collapse.

What to watch for over 4 years in the US:

Moar racism

Moar war

Higher infant and maternal death rates – this has actually been going on in slow motion over the decade I’ve been keeping track, it’s sickening…

More prison rioting (underreported) as the food in prisons gets worse and worse under Trump’s prison owning buddies

Higher violent death rates, across the board, all kinds – vehicles (road rage), guns, knives, stranglings.

More alcoholism and alcohol related death

More needle drug abuse and higher rates of AIDS HIV infection. More people dying of ODs, pills and otherwise.

Zika running wild in South Florida and the gulf coast and women being forced to carry the fetus to term with no health insurance for a lifetime of need thanks to Republican state legislatures

Hundreds more deaths each year from white people carrying guns, being scared of black people and shooting grandmothers and toddlers but mostly teenage boys who are existing while black

Muslims being burned alive in their mosques. Hasn’t happened yet but it’s going to happen and more than once.

Tripling of deaths in custody. (The statisticians just learned that the number of people who’ve died in custody in the US in the last five years is ACTUALLY DOUBLE what they thought because there’s no reporting mechanism and now the cop unions are trying to prevent any oversight of this statistic at all…)

Diaspora people – Jewish, black and Muslim – who have family and opportunities in Canada, moving here, although they’ll probably need a couple of years of Trump to realize it’s time to get out of town.

Tourism tanks across the US and Trumpites CELEBRATE America for Americans.

Confederates bringing automatic weapons to Pride Days and killing grandmothers and toddlers along with some queers.

Open war on First Nations Land; mass incarcerations and arrests, and Trump’s buddies making money on it.

More legal weed.

Secession talk from more than California.

The Left NEVER calling him President Trump. Just Trump. Or Cheetolini.

Patton Oswalt falling in love again and remarrying.  Because honestly, that man deserves happiness.

Sad family note. Young cousin got a bad (not what he specifically and carefully asked for) haircut… but we have a hairdresser in the family and our relations did not have to have that experience.  I wish it were otherwise but how often does adult convenience drive the nightmares of small children. I speak from sad and memorable experience here, thinking about Katie and the earring back. I still cry when I think about that, tho’ Katie has long since forgiven me.

A friend asked me what my Christmas Day plans were and I said “Reheating takeout and watching Die Hard with my brother” and now we’re eating at Hal and Cassidy’s, go team!

At some point Jeff and I have to leave the house for supplies, but the urban slushy streets are too disgusting….

 

 

I’ve been here since noon

In a couple of minutes they’ll call the flight and I’ll find out if I’ve been sitting here like a fucking idiot for no good reason for the last day. Fort St John is not a fun place to fly to on passes.  PAUL WANTS TO TAKE THE SKYTRAIN HOME.  On April 4.  With no Compass card. My feelings are simple.  He can do what he likes, although with no Compass card he’s not likely to get far, as I laboriously explained to him.  I’m going home in a cab; it’s hours after my normal bedtime and I have hours to go before somebody offers up a bed for me.

later….

Home.  What a fucking waste of a day.  Three flights came and went and I’m not going to FSJ unless somebody pays for my return flight.

Some man was shot dead a few blocks from here.  I don’t think I want to live on this planet any more.

 

 

CARNAGE

Buster brought in 4 RATS yesterday, laying them all out in a row downstairs.  He’s killing them all so Jeff doesn’t have to deal with rats which have died in locales where they are like to rot or little bits’o rat everywhere, just secure tail and trash.

THE HEATER IS NOT BROKE.  It merely has an absurdly sensitive orientation sensor and Buster probably knocked it off its flatness while jumping down from my desk.  Everything a-ok there.

Took a walk down to get cream yesterday morning.  It was a crisp crisp morning so I wore the mitts my mOm knitted for Katie that I somehow ended up with and the cute animé hat Keith got me a couple of years back.

Later I went to the interview.  It’s always interesting seeing myself and all my imperfections as a potential employee reflected through someone else.  The poor little gal who interviewed me.  I hope my pity for her didn’t show.  She’s probably just barely making a living at what she’s doing, but she was wearing a thousand dollars’ worth of clothing and a freaking expensive watch and had the coldest, limpest handshake I’ve shared in probably years. I thought that when she shook my hand it was probably the first time her hand had felt warm since the last interview.  Stupidly big office, in one of the industrial/office complexes on Still Creek. The entire courtyard had so much bird shit in it I felt ill walking through it and you all know me as being somebody who can deal with disgusting with fewer collywobbles than most socialized women. Drove away thinking what an incredible waste of time it was, but I’m still going to send her my references.

Then got beer and various foodicles, why not, it was on my way home.

Then we caught up on the Librarians and Robot Chicken, etc.

I have no idea what will happen to my writing energy if I get a job.  We’ll see. I know I can work and write, but it needs a ‘specially calm kind of job to allow me to think about stuff and write.

Jeff is awesome.  He has been helping me with technology (backups), when he’s not trying to pull info out of third parties and disposing of rats.

Word count over 7000 as of today.

Tomorrow the bday party for Katie. I already got her her present, and I’m not talking about it in a public forum, but most of my friends already know and so my expression of precarious and secretive amusement is thus explained.

Life and art

Yesterday there was a windstorm, of the kind that’s going to happen earlier and later in the year but normally happens in November.  It was violent and destructive and while we did not lose power nearly everybody else did, it seems. Winds gusted to 117 kph, which is over 70 mph, and there are videos all over the internet of the carnage, including the first ten minutes of local CTV news which shows some very tall trees coming down. Trees down everywhere, traffic lights, restaurants closing for lack of power, Katie still doesn’t have power this morning.  Welcome to the future.

Keith came over briefly after walking in the storm. We watched a West Wing.

And containment on the bears at the Zoo was breached.  I wrote a bit yesterday about critters and aliens at the Greater Vancouver Zoo and learn this morning that the bears got out because of a windstorm, not because an alien with mental health issues let them out. I’m relieved I wasn’t at the Zoo when the bears got out.

BAD NEWS about climate.

350 words yesterday, but it was mostly infill, and teasing apart two chapters that got jammed together, and fixing pronouns for my gender non-conformist Slider, who is turning into a lot of fun to write.

RIP Oliver Sachs, may you live forever in the healing you brought, the lives you touched and the words you left us.

I have a job interview Monday.  It’s an admin position at an established restaurant supply company.  I’ll report back after I go.

 

Roxane Gay rules and this post is TMI

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED…..

So my very favourite Bad Feminist Roxane Gay, who has to deal with so much more intersectionality than I do, has participated in a puff piece in stylist.co.uk talking about her hygiene routine.  I told her I would follow her example.

At this point I can hear Jeff saying something, and then when I ask him to repeat it, he says, ‘Oh, nothing, nothing.’

I probably should shower more frequently than I do, being about three times a week, but as I get older I get dryer, and I feel like I’m turning into a desiccated old piece of sod.  I use Belle de Provence Honeysuckle soap because it smells very good, lasts a long time and is the one piece of luxury in my hygiene routine. Hardly anyone carries it and since it’s 6 bucks a pop I tend to buy in bulk when I find it.  I use Head and Shoulders brand shampoo/conditioner and buy it in the large pump size as it’s cheaper.  I use no other soap products.  I wash my hands every time I handle the cat, before I prep food and after I come in from being out in public as well as after I groom myself or go to the toilet.  I didn’t give a shit about washing my hands before I ran a restaurant.  Now I really, really do care about it, and it’s the simplest, fastest and easiest way to prevent illness, so why the hell not.

I hate all deodorants but I stink if I don’t use them.  When I’m feeling radical I wash, dry thoroughly and apply baby powder to my pits, but that’s good for about 12 hours before Jeff’s eyebrows do something improbable (the fan in the basement blows my effluent in his direction when we’re watching tv, so … yeah.)  Otherwise I use whatever kind of bo juice isn’t loathsome, and I’m like a lightning rod for deodorant being discontinued, so I try to be cool, but right now it’s a pretty loathsome vanilla smelly thing.  Gak.   Still better than the alternative.

I use two different kinds of eyedrops, thanks to the amazingly practical and super unjudgey Lady Miss Banjola, one for day, one for night, and I am not consistent in their use but by gar it’s a good thing to have them, because when you need them you’re like ACK MY EYES MY EYES I CAN’T GET MY EYES oh thank goodness I can see!  Also, thanks to her I found out that dryness amidships can be ameliorated by the twice weekly anointing of der ladygel, and she made brand recommendations, and I can get them reasonably cheap on line.  With that one small recommendation she made my life go from a meepy, withered parody of what Beeker sounds like after he’s been mugged, to me being able to contemplate having a boyfriend.  I don’t actually want a boyfriend, and the men in my life who squire me around do not wish to fill this or candidly any other vacancy wheresoever situated, but at least the prospect shifted from being painfully impossible to being ludicrously improbable, and only the Rumi’s Beloved could parse that shift in meaningful terms, but I view it as an improvement.

I pluck my eyebrows every day.  I watched the best eyebrow guy on the planet do a tutorial on youtube, and I thought “Hey, my OCD and some grooming tips wa-ho!” but I tell you my brow game is fierce, and it helps with the performative feminity, although I have not recently been mistaken for a man (it only happened the once, and I think the person was altered.)

This upping of the eyebrow game was subsequent to Keith picking out to extremely flattering and stylish frames for me.  I was looking really hard for a job and I wanted to be ready to interview at a moment’s notice, and now, provided I have a clean dress, I really am.   I pluck my chin hairs, and my (sigh, fuck my life) chest hairs.  I do not shave my legs or pits and anybody who wants me to can shave his or her legs and pits all they want but this lovely, amazing, FEATURE of adult life called BODILY AUTONOMY does not stop being awesome just because you are creeped out by my hairy legs, and the next time somebody calls me on it I’ll just say that sexism is uglier than hairy legs and any sensible person knows that.  Body hair sure makes men who have basic issues with mansplaining and feminism go away right quick, and smell ya later, ya squirrelfondling preverts.

Also, I got really really bad frostbite on my lower legs when I was in public school, so bad that the skin on my lower legs (the shaving zone) is burst-into-tears sensitive, so yeah, no, fuck your leg shaving.  It HURTS.  I bleed, and then all the little hairs growing back in catch in my bedding, so fuck you and go AWAY if you think I should shave my legs for any reason whatsoever.  As for my armpits.  When more than 50 percent of north American men shave their armpits, I’ll sign up for one of those monthly boxes of shaving gear, but until that day (bwa ha ha, coming soon!) yeah, just no.

I used to use Garnier number 60 hair dye and I still have some tucked away, but it really really bothers Jeff and I’m not a fan of doing it, I am a fan of having it done. Fortunately the colour is almost exactly the same as the two remaining stripes of colour I have in the mounting nest of grey that is my hair so even when I let it grow out it looks reasonably okay.  If I get another interview, which will be hard, as I am officially as of this moment no longer looking for work since hey we’re in a recession, and nobody would want to hire me even if I wanted to trade the best part of me for 24K net a year, which I don’t, and which makes me an elitist asshole. Ok.

I make my own perfume, which is called Cyprus, and has a secret blend of floral oil ingredients, and which smells fantastic on me (to the point where other women have demanded I sell them some, which I did) but everybody from my mOm to my brO thinks it smells like I’m hanging truck stop air freshener from my pits AND about 40% of my friends have chemical sensitivities and find it overpowering even when I’m using it gingerly so it’s only for special occasions.

My last pedicure made me limp for THREE FUCKING MONTHS and I am never paying for one again as Hecate may bear witness; now I cut off the parts of the toenail that stick out and abrade down the rest with a number of different kinds of pedicure gear.  I occasionally soak my feet and use footrub on myself or get somebody else like Katie to help out.  I am very very on top of my toenails because I can go from Happy Feet to ballerina outtakes (thankfully not shown here) in less than a week.  My hair, feet and nails grow at a tremendous rate, which is great because I get rid of heavy metals that way, but I must cut, hack, saw and file away with vigour.

I used to be an assclown about dental hygiene but I brush and floss every single day now (occasional lapses, but not many) since I can’t afford to lose the use of any more teeth when toothpaste and floss is so cheap.  I buy firm or super firm brushes and brush whatever way feels right and I pay for getting my teeth cleaned professionally once a year.  I am seriously considering investing in dental picks.

I have incredibly clean ear canals.  I hate the feeling of anything in there except air, but I no longer scrape them out with anything hard because it removes the hair that grows in the canal and I’m so clumsy I might deafen myself.

I wash my face with soap once a week.  Any more and I dry out like something that went with Scott to the Pole.

Once every three months I apply a clay facial mask.  I like how my skin feels afterward.

Once in a very long while I get a massage or a spa half day, but I can get the same results from rolling around on Wreck Beach and probably get exposed to the same amount of coliform in the process.

 

And there you have it.  Nobody asked for it, but that is my hygiene routine.

Success, or an approximation

So I’m off to get a CT scan of my unstable pelvis, and the tooth Dr. Katz fixed is now completely perfect in all respects, plus he ground just a smidge off a cuspid and now my mouth feels normal again.  The scan will be booked and they’ll call me, and then I back to see the bone doc about ten days after the scan to give them a chance to read it.

3.0 hours on the CPAP.  I feel very refreshed and not particularly in pain, which is pleasant.  No words yesterday.

I am ashamed to say I bailed on Paul last night, he wanted to go swimming, but I biked to and from the dentist and had a rather trying day in other respects, sitting in cold rooms waiting for doctors not being one of my oh doodie moments. Went to bed early, went to sleep early. For some reason the mask felt very comfortable last night, although I still took it off.  I think I was contemplating getting up and yelling at Buster since he was making so much frikkin’ noise.

Jeff is home, and Buster is much, much happier.  (With Margot, you can’t tell; her baseline temperament is so incredibly calm.) He is a daddy’s boy.

I did the math; if all the people who live in Vancouver, Victoria, Nanaimo, Kamloops, Kelowna, Abbotsford, White Rock and Chilliwack were homeless, that would still only be half as many as have been rendered homeless by the earthquake in Nepal.

Sometime in the next two hundred years Vancouver will get its own rumble. If it’s a megaquake it’ll be felt across Cascadia.  I’m starting to keep extra water on hand.

This sweet little piece of satire is from a filking buddy.

The worst slave trader.

Continued drug gang related violence (or so one supposes) in  Metro Vancouver.

Chipper sends me this hand flute playing virtuosity.

She also sends me this cute panoply of chordate behaviours.

I will endeavour mightily to get back on track today.  Except I have to do something for church.