An Eventful Trip: Countryside

This should be a winner: photos taken from cars speeding along the highway. I'm putting that right out front to explain the blurriness of some of the photos, not to mention the occasional reflection of the side mirror in the window through which these photos were taken. I think I still managed to take some photos that will show what I want to talk about.

The first striking thing is the damage that was done to the countryside just north of Kamloops by forest fires in 2003. At the time, the highway and even the railway were closed for some time, as the fires raged and crisscrossed the valley. My parents, who live about an hour's drive north of the furthest extent of the fires, were affected by losing their telephone and electricity for close to two weeks, which had all of the rest of us quite scared as they barbecued breakfast, lunch and dinner. They remained cut off from the City of Kamloops, which is where the larger hospital and shops and such are located.

Below are three shots of hillsides with the burned skeletons of the trees that used to cover them until four and a half years ago.

The other big impact of the fires was that they were interface fires, meaning that they encroached on the towns dotted through the valley. Many homes were burned and, perhaps more devastatingly, businesses, including a couple of sawmills that have not since been rebuilt, meaning that those jobs are lost and the towns even further devastated. Below is what is left of one of these sawmills. The scene used to include a number of buildings housing machinery for cutting and planning lumber as well as stacks of lumber and of logs over that vast expanse that is now a large empty field.

The next striking thing is the other great destroyer of the forests in the area: the pine beetle (pictured below).

These things are very tiny and have been killing trees in BC for quite a long time. With warmer winters, they are not being killed off by sudden and long periods of cold as they once were, so they are spreading uncontrollably. (Apparently, when the cold arrives slowly, they are able to adapt by producing a kind of anti-freeze that protects them from the cold; a quick cold snap that lasts long enough might actually halt their spread, but this hasn't been happening very much lately. The other scary thing about them is their mode of travel. A cloud of them blew into Kamloops in a storm a couple of years ago and now almost every pine tree in town has been infested and killed.

Here are a couple of pictures of beetle-killed trees (they are the red ones). The other aspect of this is a proliferation of woodpeckers, which love to eat the beetles. The woodpecker action on trees that have already been killed also serves to strip the bark from the trees, as you can see a bit in the second picture.

My Dad and my little sister, who know much more about these things than I do, have told me a little about the various insects attacking the forests. Pine beetles are not the only ones: there are spruce and fir beetles, too, but the difference is that those two kinds can often be 'trapped' by setting up a deck of fallen trees, which can then be taken away and destroyed. The pine beetles only invade upright, living trees.

To end on a more humorous note, let me include this picture of a broken-down looking shed in the Cariboo region. My family has a game we always played when we drove anywhere, looking for falling-down buildings and rusting cars and attributing them to our parents and siblings. In that spirit, here is my sister Brandy's house:

Ha Ha!

An Eventful Trip: Exploding Appendix!

This was the scary part of the Christmas visit. And here I thought scary was supposed to be limited to Hallowe'en!

On Sunday, 23 December, we had a lovely breakfast of pancakes, bacon and sausage patties. Everyone pretty much ate the same things, so we were all a bit surprised when my little sister (for the youth out there, my little sister is 45 years old) began to feel sick. She felt like she needed to throw up and finally had to make it happen, but that didn't really help how she was feeling.

The next day, she woke up even more sore, and thought that it might have been the violence of the throwing up that had pulled some muscles, which were then extremely sore. This continued through Christmas, and included a serious loss of appetite.

On Boxing Day (26 December for the uninitiated), we left for her house, about three to four hours away, with my sister behind the wheel. (She has a bad habit of driving long distances in pain, but that, too, is another story.) We arrived, we opened presents with Tracy, we prepared dinner and Tracy and I ate ours, by Syd was unable to.

Tracy then insisted that we go to the Emergency at the local hospital and it's a darned good thing we did.

The surgeon on call diagnosed a problem with her appendix, which, when he operated very shortly later, proved to have exploded and spread infection, abscesses and gangrene throughout her abdomen. She was probably only hours away from some serious and lasting consequences (not wanting to say the D word). What is interesting is that a small city like Williams Lake B.C. has a surgeon who is as talented as this guy apparently is — they offer him unlimited OR time and he gets to do a huge variety of surgeries. I, for one, am very glad that this guy is there and was the one on call that night.

The surgery took a little over an hour and he cleaned everything out that needed to be. It took her several days of recovery to get to the point of actually passing gas (the stomach and intestines had shut down and needed time to restart). Tracy and I did our best to help and to keep her spirits up (flowers, happy face balloons, a little bee hand puppet and a bunch of games of cribbage).

I am relieved to have heard that she got out today — I even got to talk to her at her house on the phone — and that she is back eating, if carefully for a while.

I might recommend NOT spending your holidays this way, along with NOT avoiding going to the doctor for a real diagnosis of what's going on.

I'm just glad I still have my little sister!

(I have some pictures, but I decided to let her decide who to share them with, as they are a bit personal…)

An Eventful Trip: Traveling

I got back from my trip to British Columbia to see my family just this past Saturday, and took a day to relax before writing this account. I am sure that this will take several entries, too, so as not to end up with a giant posting that will scare any readers away.

It didn't begin well. My plane leaving Montréal was late, so the connection in Toronto was very short — 15 minutes to be exact. I knew that there would be problems because of that, and my travelling mood was not helped by the 'helpfulness' of the airline staff. Knowing that my connection would be closer than it ought to have been, I asked even before landing if they could find out what gate my next flight would leave from. The 'helpful' response? "Look at the screen when you get into the terminal." I should have known that the subsequent problems were coming.

I had a rather lovely visit with my friend Colin in the Calgary airport, and dutifully delivered his coveted pepperoni (an amusing story on its own, but that will have to wait for another time).

Back to my next flight, to Kamloops, B.C. Before we got on the plane, they announced that there was a possibility that our flight would not land in Kamloops because of weather, and that we would be forced to return to Calgary. (Aaargh! This is why I haven't flown to B.C. in the winter for years!) Luckily, that was not the case, and we landed as we were supposed to.

My luggage, however, did not arrive. Reporting the missing luggage was the easy part, and, unlike experiences from the past, I got a certain amount of reassurance from the airline's having a web site to follow the tracing of my lost bag. (This proved to be a diversionary tactic, as they really didn't update the site!)

Two days later, I got a call at my sister's house in Kamloops to say that my bag had been found. The call was from Winnipeg (notice how that wasn't a part of my itinerary!), and the person told me that he was suspicious, as it was tagged to go to Thunder Bay next. Needless to say, that one helpful person saw to it that my bag was sent where it should be. It arrived on the morning of my third day without luggage and then the airport people took several hours to arrange delivery, almost 3 days after my own arrival.

The trip back was less eventful, and my bag and the box I also checked arrived on the same flight as I did.

I believe I might return to my previous practice of travelling there only in the summer months.

Early *iversary

Yeah, I did mean to do that.

I have two *iversaries to mark in the coming week, and since I will be out of town and, unthinkably, in a place where I will have NO internet access (not to mention NO cell phone signal!) when the *iversaries happen, I thought I would write about them now.

The first one to arrive is my AIDSiversary on 22 December. It will have been ten years ago on that day when I presented myself first at my doctor's office and then, with his direction, at the emergency room up the hill with case of what would turn out to be PCP (pneumocystis carinii pneumonia), an AIDS-defining illness. Who knew that I would still be alive and relatively healthy ten years later? I certainly doubted it, despite the reassurance of my doctor and the (then) fresh new medications which would serve to restore my health.

In a little "what good luck, what bad luck" twist, that is also my friend Lois' birthday. I no longer forget her birthday, but I do have a sort of tragic association with it….

The next to arrive is my Blogiversary on 24 December. A whole year that I have been spouting off into the ether, sometimes creatively (at least in my own mind) and sometimes less so. I feel quite pleased that I have kept this up and I feel confident that I have more inanities to share in the months to come.

Happy *iversaries to me!

Ah, cooking

Here's a quick little one: before and after shots of my cranberry sauce-making activity.

I must say that my very best cookbook — and I do have quite a few of them — is my old, falling-apart cookbook from the Five Roses Flour Company. The most reliable recipes, recipes for virtually everything. And from a company whose illuminated sign is a landmark in Montréal.

Friday en français : préparation

Premièrement (et brièvement, comme ce n'est pas l'objet principal du jour), les chiffres les plus récentes, du 13 novembre :

• Charge virale : indétectable (moins de 50)
• CD4+ absolu : 225
• CD4+ pourcentage : 15%

Sensiblement inchangés depuis la dernière fois.

Mardi prochain je quitte ma belle ville pour une visite chez ma famille en Colombie-britannique. C'est la première fois depuis des années que je vais passer les fêtes avec ma famille et il y a plusieurs habitudes que je dois reprendre pour le faire. Et non, ce n'est pas parce que je n'aime pas ma famille — bien au contraire! Mais j'ai acquis des habitudes de quelqu'un qui passe les fêtes tout seul.

Premier changement : les cadeaux. Ça fait des années que je n'achète pas de cadeaux de noël. Loin de ma famille, non-croyant et seul, il n'y avait pas de raison d'ajouter aux excès de possessions de mes parents, frère, sœurs. J'ai essayé de substituer des « cadeaux » comestibles — des truffes au chocolat de plusieurs sortes que j'ai fait moi-même et parfois ma propre recette de biscuits sablés. J'ai même essayé de décourager ma famille de m'envoyer des cadeaux (mes parents ne m'écoutent pas nécessairement sur ce point). Cette année, je serais directement devant eux le matin du 25. On va voir si mes chocolats font l'affaire en personne.

Deuxième changement : voyager en hiver. La dernière fois que j'ai voyagé de Montréal à Kamloops en hiver, c'était assez difficile. Un peu de neige à Kamloops et l'avion est incapable d'atterrir. J'ai passé toute la journée à l'aéroport de Vancouver avec un mal de tête qui augmentait avec chaque annulation de vol vers Kamloops. De plus, j'aurais à craindre que mes voisins vont profiter de mon absence de onze jours pour créer de la glace sur notre escalier commun. (Leur réponse à la neige est de marcher dessus et non pas de pelleter; ça tombe uniquement à moi, la personne malade et plus âgée, d'enlever la neige et la glace.)

Troisième des choses : une longue liste de tâches à accomplir avant d'y aller. Et très peu de temps, donc… au travail!

Updated Lab Porn!

With a wink to Brian and a nod to Paul, here's a little update of my viral load results,plotted as they should be on a logarithmic scale:It makes the blips look a little scarier, but they do quickly return to undetectable. The difference in the plateau levels is all about when Québec stopped using the viral load test sensitive to 500 copies per ml and started using one sensitive to 50 copies per ml. I record my 'undetectable' results on my spreadsheet (and therefore on my graph) as 499 and 49 copies respectively (by test sensitivity), which helps to remind me that there is still some virus there.