Seismic Twitch

I gots me a new phone. Just in time apparently since my phone has decided to freeze up on boot-up. I don’t know what the deal is. It’s got a charge, it just won’t get past the “Naomi’s Phone” greeting. Maybe it knew that it was being replaced and decided to beat me to the punch. It does make moving my contacts over to the new phone more difficult since I can’t get to the contacts to do so. Mush, I’ll need your cell number again so I can text you once in a while. In a few hours I’ll transfer the sim card over so that I keep my number.

Anyway, here’s a photo:

I’m still technically sick. I’m coughing a lot and I wheeze, though less than I did on the weekend. Work was a good thing in that I moved around a whole lot and that helped me clear out a lot of gunk.

I got the weekly reports done by 2 pm today. This meant I had time to feed the animals. Tomorrow I’ll prep to do the month end and quarterly reports for the reporting program and I’ll clean out the chinchillas’ and hedgehogs’ cages. Then on Wednesday I’ll finish the reports and my week will be 1/2 over.

Life is pretty good. New toys are always a good thing.

Today was a very busy day. There were a few presentations this morning about stuff that was interesting, but somewhat mind numbing. This afternoon, however, rocked the Casbah! We went out to Willow Cree Healing Lodge on the Beardy’s First Nation Reserve. It’s a federal facility that houses up to 40 male offenders, they call relatives in Cree. I can’t remember the word but they’re not inmates or residents, they’re relatives.

I was totally blown away by the dedication of the staff from the guy who runs security (it’s a minimum security facility with no fences at all) to the Elder to the other facilitators. There are actually 4 Elders, two women and two men. It’s an amazing place that leaves me with some hope for the future of the people who live there. Though the men who live there aren’t requried to do programmng, the point of going there is to reconnect with their culture, heritage and spirituality. There was a group of men who were out with an Elder doing a sweat. Another group were preparing the feast for after the sweat.

Sadly most of the program staff were away at CSC functions. The parole officers from Saskatoon were also at that. Any, I was totally amazed and impressed. I wish that we had been able to do the entire day there like had been originally planned and I”m totally pissed off that the guy who was supposed to have arranged that was a dick, did nothing and then quit leaving things in the lurch.

If you want to learn about Canadians, go here. You’ll learn everything there is to know. Yes, I’m being sarcastic, but it is funny.’

Did I say I was still sick? Well, I am.

I have a nasty cold. Since I started working full time I’ve been healthy 1 (one) day. I’m not really a happy camper.

One of the residents gave me a small piece of rat root to help. It taste awful! I mean, really gross, at least to me. I chew a small piece and then swallow a pile of water to try and get it down before I taste it. I’ve not managed that well yet. It took care of my sore throat but hasn’t had much effect on the sneezing and snot production. I’m not sure anything would work on that. Despite the copious amounts of tissues I’m going through and how tired I feel, I actually don’t feel horrid. I sound dreadful.

Right now the Prairie Region Half-Way House thingie is having its AGM. This means that I’m pulling a bit of double duty. Mostly because I want to. Today I attended an interesting presentation about “Continuum of Care” and other things that I can’t remember. Basically it’s Corrections Canada making a show of trying to get the high proportion of Aboriginal offenders lowered. I had to skip the second presentation because I had to be at work for 4.

Tomorrow I don’t have to show up for work per se. I attend a few presentations in the morning, get fed lunch (hopefully something not totally meat based), and then we go out to Willow Cree Men’s Healing Lodge for a tour, dance show and presentations. Then we’re home for about 6 or 7 pm.

Friday I’m up for 9 am and another presentation and lunch. Then I do a short 4 hour shift and then I can have the weekend to just sleep and try to get better.

I’m definitely getting some flannelette this weekend to make hankies with. Even the Puffs plus lotion are making my poor nose sore and unhappy.

So there you go. I’m sick. Still.

Dooce is one of my daily reads. I don’t know how long I’ve been reading her blog, I think her daughter was 2 years old or so, maybe a little younger. I think she was still in diapers…anyway, that’s not my point. My point is that I enjoy reading Dooce.

She’s a fun read for me. She says things in a way that strikes me as hilarious. She was fired from her job because she talked about work on her blog. That’s fair. I mean, not every employer wants to read about their employee’s opinions of the work place (though I’ve not any idea what Dooce said because I never read that far back into her archive). She now makes a living from the advertising on her blog. She’s also written a book about her experiences with postpartum depression after the birth of her first daughter. That has garnered her much interest and she’s made appearances on Oprah, Dr. Phil and some other shows that I don’t watch.

She’s always gotten hate comments and emails. There are always people who feel that they have some sort of deity given right to tell her how stupid she is, how she should write to cater to them, how they’re not going to read her anymore, or more recently because of her twittering about her abysmal experiences with a Maytag washer she purchased and that didn’t work, ceased following her because she had the audacity to bully a multinational corporation into standing up to their advertisements and making her new, very expensive machine actually work.

Now, onto the point of my entry. Dooce was talking to a friend and this friend suggested that she make money off all the hate. So that’s what she did. She (or more probably her husband Jon) created Monetizing the Hate.

Quite the entrepreneurs they are. And the people, my Goddess!! The things they say! It’s like they expect their dripping vitriol is supposed to somehow make Heather somehow…I don’t know… I mean, one gets the hate on because she hasn’t changed the mast head of her blog. Damn!

I gotta tell you, some people have way too much time on their hands. And I don’t mean Dooce and her husband.

Today was probably the fastest shift I’ve ever worked. I was busy from the time I got there until the time I left. I had to organize and begin writing the weekly reports. I had to review the weekend stuff. Shoot, reading the log book alone took an hour.

The day was a zip line ride. There were people coming and going with nauseating frequency. The fact that there was a rain storm (cloud burst, actually) that prevented several people from going places. This meant that it doubled the comings and goings which also doubled the amount of writing I had to do in a very short span of time.

Oy!

Michelle came over today and saved me a whole lot of work. I was going to get onto the kitchen, get the dishes done and clean the room so that Bran would have a clean slate to start from and keep up with it. Things had accumulated a whole lot. She saved my feet, my back and my temper. I shall be grateful for a long time. Boy will be worshipping at her feet in appropriate manners.

My ears are still plugged. My right ear is nearly clear. My left ear is still at about 1/2 it’s normal power. Every once in a while I get an indication that there is normal hearing (normal for me, at any rate) but it’s just beyond my reach.

In the nonce, between the last paragraph and now, Bran and I took Boy to work and picked up a cordless TrackMan optical mouse. The old TrackMan, is wearing out and the left button doesn’t always work. I’m continually having to haul out the ball for some reason. I don’t know why that works, but it’s old and I’m not surprised it’s wearing out. Now it’s time to install things so I’ll end here.

I saw it in the theatre. I’ve never swum in an ocean (living on the prairies of Canada and not getting to either coast kind of puts the kibosh on that), but it took me years to think about the possibility of swimming in the ocean.

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Since Thursday, when I had some KFC hot wings I wasn’t feeling up to par. Last night was the pinnacle of that with much pain and stuff. It was either time to have a major attack of IBS or the root cause was spicy, greasy meat. I’m going with the latter. Anyway, I’m feeling better now. Whatever it was that started things seems to have gone, at least for now.

I leave you with how I feel after each shift at work:

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That’s what I’m doing right now. I just finished a building check and am just on the mode of making sure that people aren’t up to naughty things, especially the new people who are inundated with rules and regulations and things to remember. So far they’re a good bunch though.

Things have improved since my twitter about having strep (it can’t have been anything else) that spread to my ears. I’m still somewhat deaf in my left ear which is making work interesting. I have to ask people to repeat themselves. Sadly, it’s the ear that I put the phone to so I have to listen extra carefully. If I use my other ear then I’m nigh on totally shut out of the world. This is a place where sensory multitasking is necessary.

It’s going to be a short week. I’m glad of that. I don’t much enjoy evenings. There’s always so much more to do and I lack administrative support for 4 hours. One would think that I was used to that having worked all those weekend shifts. However, I do have company for parts of my shift so I”ll live with it.

My wages have been confirmed so now I can call up the student loans people and let them know. That way I don’t get over paid for things. I probably will already have an overpayment, because of having gotten the federal payment. They may want part of that back. I hope not.

I have to go into the school tomorrow and pay for Bran’s health insurance coverage. Considering what his meds cost, it’s a very necessary thing. We were going to do it today, but I wimped out and stayed in bed instead of doing what I should’ve.

That’s really about all that’s been going on in my life. I’ve been doing nothing. Well, I did some note-taking yesterday. I should bee doing more, but I’m wasting my time instead. Oy! If I keep doing this I’m going to end up adding another year to my degree. That’s it. Tomorrow I’ll start doing actual research and get working on my proposal. I’ll do daily blogs reminding myself that wasting time is not in my best interests. (Which won’t waste any time at all, right?)

Two comments got lost in my spam bin. Why does WordPress do that? I mean, they were just plain comments. There was no links or stuff in them. There was no “get sex now” or “extend your penis length” or even “got bad credit?” Anyway, it finally let me know that they were there (they didn’t show up earlier) and I approved them, so Christine and Janice, your comments are where they should be.

I think it’s time for a snack.

I finished my first week of full-time work since 2004. Since that time I’ve either been part-time or just doing the student thing. I thought I would be a whole lot more tired than I am. Considering I spent this past week sick, that’s not too bad.

I went to see a doctor (the walk-in service at the same clinic my own physician works) to get my throat looked at. It’s been sore since Tuesday. I think 4 days is sufficient time for a sore throat to either settle in and become a cold or go away.

It’s a good thing I went. Late this afternoon I blew out my left ear. I’m deaf as a post, well, not quite but close enough, in that ear. You know the feeling when you get water in your ear, that muffled hearing, that pressure? That’s the feeling my left ear has. Sadly, that’s normally my good ear.

I have an infection in that ear and some redness in the other ear. She took a swab of my throat though she said it didn’t look “streppy”. I can’t think of any other reason I’d have a sore throat for 4 days and then the ear infection. Either way, I’m now on antibiotics (bloody horse capsules!). I’m also sucking on zinc lozenges hoping that helps the healing.

Otherwise the week went well. We got two new residents, a woman and man. I managed to get their paperwork and such all set up correctly and not screw up. The program got a new person and I did the orientation with him as well as the support worker stuff I have to do. I also did the necessary other things as my job description requires.

I just looked at my array of night time pills (ranitadine, antihistamine, tylenol, garlic, glucosamine and condroitin, calcium, acidophalus and now the antibiotic. Oy!

I took these photos this past summer. click on the image to make it larger, but don’t bother with the bison, for some reason it shrinks rather than gets larger. Go figure.

This sculpture is a block or so from where I work. The neighbourhood has a very high proportion of Aboriginal people so the art work tends to reflect that.

Here’s Bran doing one of the things he loves to do.

Here is the clematis that is climbing up the east side of the house. As you can see, there are two different colours. Actually, they look blue and white in the photo but they’re actually purple and light mauve.

If you look carefully you can see a second rainbow to the left of the more obvious one. The neat thing about this photo is that the end of the bows reach into a bank.

This wagon was at the entrance of an acreage south of town.

This is a sepia version of the wagon. It adds to the aged look, don’t you think?

It’s weird. Firefox speller said that wagon was spelt wrong. Go figure.