Lei

Health and Fitness

I turned on the tv and on the learning channel was a documentary about a three way liver transplant. A man was donating half his liver to another guy whose heart was weak. This second guy was donating his complete sub-functioning liver to a woman. Not exactly what I wanted to see. This afternoon I received a call from the doctors office asking me to make an appointment. At first this worried me but I remembered from before that its just standard procedure. With all the government crack down on healthcare spending, many doctors have stopped reporting test results over the phone. Instead, patients are forced to come in just so they can say "its negative" or "your results are good" and "there's nothing to worry about". That way they can officially bill that time to the government. I called back and made an appointment for this coming saturday. Then I scheduled a new ultrasound exam for wednesday so that the results would be sent to the doctors office before my appointment.

We got a brief taste of snow today. I'm not sure what I'll do if I have to keep driving the TL since I found out that my friend wants to borrow my truck for a few more weeks. It snowed lightly on the way to downtown. I trained at the kick boxing club after work even though I was really tired. It's been a long time and just the two women were still there. The dancer and the PhysEd student/horse jockey apprentice. They've been with the club for a few years. The other two people were newbies and made to train separately. I'm finding that the Muay Thai classes aren't able to keep their students while the ground fighting classes enjoy a relatively good steady attendance. I had been contemplating quiting the school though. The instructor asked me to kick the bag on my own after class since I hadn't been there for a while. It felt good.

Basic Poached Eggs

I didn't have all the proper poaching tools so I just improvised and made some poached eggs today. It's a nice change from frying or boiling eggs. The instructions are as follows.

If you don't have one of those poaching racks, use a deep dessert dish or a small shallow bowl which is what I used. Put the dish or bowl in a saucepan with simmering water inside. Crack one or two eggs and put directly into the dessert dish. Cover the saucepan. After a couple of minutes the eggs can be removed and put on a serving dish.

Season with salt, pepper and cumin. Sprinkle lots of finely chopped green onions and shredded cheese of your choice. Fini!

Lunch No. 2 at Ikea

Even though it was almost 3 pm, I passed on the pasta special. At this time everyday, Ikea serves their plain ol pasta dish for a buck a plate. So naturally I saw a few people with two plates each.

Instead, I had the meat pie with salad. Woohoo! Hooray! Okay. It's not that exciting for most of you but I guess that's about as exciting as my life is right now. And when you eat their as frequently as I do for lunch and see the same dishes all the time, any new dish is a welcome sight. As long as its decent enough. Anyhow, it's a new item on their menu and wasn't too bad. The crust was especially good as it was just light enough and flaky. The type of crust I would have preferred on the blueberry pie I bought a few days ago. Quite a bit of that pie is still sitting in my fridge waiting to be consumed.

And if you wanted to get even cheaper than that, I found out that the hotdogs are just 75 cents each. Can't beat that for a super cheap 'snack'. Bring the kids there. Bring the whole family. There's no reason to go hungry if you can't get yourself to an Ikea store at these prices.

As for breakfast, one dollar gets you the full breakfast plate.

This has been a free plug for Ikea Restaurant.

Plans for the Weekend

My head and my chest feel strange and deranged. It's like there's a bunch of tiny pin pricks all over my liver and kidneys and right beneath my sternum, it feels like its trying to expand but someone is pressing down on it.

It's a little past one in the afternoon and I've already finished my lunch. I brought some steamed broccoli with butter and roasted chicken breast. A bit on the dry side though. I didn't pack much but I think I erred in judgement and need more. I wonder what todays soup special is at Ikea. They've got the cheap 99 cent hot dogs too I think.

On the phone all I get is the busy signal at the doctors office. Please let me through and give me an excuse to leave the office early. It's a Friday!!!

My tasks for the weekend.

1. Shop for one $10-$15 gift exchange for friends
2. Shop for one $15 gift exchange for office
3. Buy a duvet cover.
4. Shop for a new pair of hockey gloves.
5. Shop for a new pair of hockey pants.
6. Order one group sized serving of spaghetti from Loui Garden for the saturday birthday dinner.
7. Order a couple of crabs with cream sauce from Loui Garden for the saturday birthday dinner.
8. Help friend setup new automotive garage if he needs the help. Currently, I'm fine with lending him my truck and driving his Acura TL around all day.
9. If I get my truck back this weekend, then try to clean the engine compartment.
10. Spend a couple of hours at the nursing home.
11. Donate my vcr to the nursing home.
12. Try to see the doctor and get blood work.
13. Squeeze in a hair cut, maybe.
14. Get healthier by doing as little physical stuff as possible.

The Patient II

I've switched to drinking orange juice because I got sick of all the apple juice. The nausea is in the middle of my back and in my head. Every morning when I get into the office, I spend about an hour or two just sitting there with this horrible feeling inside. It comes and goes throughout the day like the tide.

Last night I lay in bed not completely able to sleep with all the discomfort in me. Just breathing seemed like a strain as with every exhale, I was losing a piece of me.

My brother came by today after work. He just sold his old 4Runner and is in the process of buying a new one. And at the same time, he finally proposed to work on selling his old Chevette which has been sitting in the garage for years. Maybe I will finally have a safe place to store a motorcycle. Maybe one day I will buy one.

Yesterday my mother bought me one of those contoured foam pillows and coincidentally enough, my neck has been bothering me for the past couple of weeks from not sleeping right. Everyone's reading my mind.

On Dying

This topic has always been on my mind for as long as I can remember. Ever since my father died I have always wondered if I would follow him in his footsteps. I've had temporary bouts of nausea for the past week and I rarely get the flu or a even the common cold. Chatting over the net with Gambit this afternoon, I found it interesting that he was ok with dying young. Back in first year university, I remember telling someone that I didn't expect to live a really long life. Maybe until forty at the time and now, I would have to agree with Gambit. I would be complacent with dying young as well.

The liver is the largest organ in the body and because so, one could live normally with just twenty percent of it functioning and not detect any signs of failure. I found an excellent reference book called The First Principles of Gastroenterology. It looks like some sort of standard first year medical text book. The language is more easily understandable compared to your standard medical literature. Chapter 14 was my first section of interest. The associated symptoms of known liver diseases and methods of cure. And what I find interesting is the connecting functions of the neighboring organs down the GI tract. Everything needs to work in harmony together or the balance is lost. Gambit's current problems appears to be associated with the lower gastrointestinal bleeding. Completely curable in my opinion but don't quote me on it. I'm not a doctor.

I think I'm almost at the same age that my father died when he succumbed to liver disease. I was only six at the time and while standing at the foot of the hospital bed, the doctor had asked me if I wanted my father to live. My brother was standing beside me gave me a knudge to say no. I remembered this for a long time and resented my brother for it. Maybe my memory was just a really bad distorted fantasy in my head. I told this story to the wholistic doctor before and she told me that it was an angel asking me the question. The reason being that sometimes children have not yet developed their protective psychological walls imposed on them by society and fear. The other reason I thought this didn't make sense is why would a doctor even ask such a question to a family or children. Who knows? All I do know is that I still feel a bit sick.

The Simple Day

I went to the market today.
I bought a pie.
A blueberry pie.
I went back home.
I warmed it up.
I ate it.

My Weekend

Health has been a bit sketchy all week. The body tired but there was lots of work to do still. Then on Friday I carried on and subbed in again for my friends hockey team. I did not get any goals and the rest of the team felt about as good. We were barely able to keep our first period lead and ended up in a tie. I had as much energy as an old man as ironically enough, the team we were playing against had an average age which was about five years older. On the way home, I could feel that my lower left back was sore, inside that is.

Next day I got up really late after getting about eight hours of much needed sleep. I immediately started work on the truck. The valve cover seal needed replacing. The other day we had my truck up on a hoist in my friends garage installing some new snow tires. I saw fresh oil from the recent oil change all over the top of the transmission and it was leaking from near the top of the engine. The inside of the aluminum valve cover was covered in a thick dark sludgelike layer of worn oil. With some paint thinner, I cleaned off as much as I could before putting everything back together. The other day, one of the headlamps broke so I had to remove half the front end just to replace both lights.

It was already dark outside before I had the hood closed and the back all loaded up with the supplies. I was late so I drove out really fast. Down the hill, across the low lying roads towards the river before crossing over the bridge. After crossing the bridge, I began to wonder what my driving would have looked like to the other vehicles on the road. They must have thought I was a mad man. I had about thirty minutes to stock everything at the home before continuing onward to a greek restaurant for a friends birthday. I was stuffed. I had the Greek Lamb Village which consisted of a huge portion of marinated meat. Following that, we went to a small theatre to watch a live play called "The Back Kitchen". It had received rave reviews from the recent Fringe Festival so someone suggested that birthday girl would have liked it. I started feeling sick towards the end of the play. I don't think it was because of the play.

Next day I got up early to go riding with an old university friend at 9am. Starting at the bottom, we rode all the way around to the back side of SFU or Burnaby mountain. The sky was grey and small pockets of fog were scattered in the lower levels below, extending out to Deep Cove and then Burrard Inlet. The view was refreshing from about three quarters of the way up. We had ridden about an hour and a half before getting to this spot with just another fifteen minutes to the top. Once at the top, we took a quick breather before making our way across campus to the top of Nicole. A slightly treacherous downhill trail covered in rocks, mud and littered with obstructions. At the top, three other mountain bikers decked out in downhill bikes and protective gear were practicing some small jumps on a grassy slope. My friend and I started down the trails quickly going much faster than I had the first time with the other group. We took a different route and soon found ourselves riding up to the three guys we saw earlier at the beginning of the trail. They pulled over to the side to let us through but no sooner than I had passed the first person of the group did I hear him crash behind me. I yelled out to see if he was alright and received a reply saying that he was okay as I kept riding on. My friend began telling me about our second ride up the mountain but the thought of the exercise was more than I needed. luckily, fate was in my favour and with just ten minutes left to the bottom of the trail, my back tire went flat. The ride now turned into my first ever cyclocross event as I ran my bike down the rest of the way.

Incidentally, during our ride up, we had received a phone call. One of my friends cycling buddy had broken his femur on Grouse mountain the day before.

The Eleventh Annual Grand Ball

Even though I was feeling really tired, I went anyways. Sunday evening I was at Grand Ball Room in Richmond to watch their annual dance competition. Many of the club members competed in the gold level including the current senior canadian champion. For approximately five hours or so, I watched heat after heat of fox trot, waltz and slow quick step. The whole event kind of reminded me of the japanese movie Shall We Dance except with out all the antics. Although there was the occasional collision between pairs as room on the floor was sometimes limited.

For the most part, the ballroom dancing was fairly ho hum but not the amateur open latin dancing category. From sexy skimpy outfits to bodies twirling all over the place, it certainly was an interesting display. Below are some of the pics of various dancing couples. Here we have a shot of the winning pair from San Francisco.

See the passion. Feel the intensity. He calls for her. They are together.

This event is one of the largest in western Canada so couples came from all over. Nova Scotia, San Francisco, Seattle, Quebec, etc.

Below is a local couple from our own Richmond, B.C.

Strike a pose! Where's John Travolta?

The Patient II

I sat there looking at the screen with all the air canada flights as the minutes ticked by. It might have been just in time for the last day of an art gallery showing for someone I met before. In the end, I decided not to afraid to end up seeing the reality of the situation. Uselessly hanging on to opportunities already lost, I need to stop being so impulsive.

I also passed up on the trip to whistler this weekend having free accomodations at a hotel which might have been nice. There was an event up there called Whistler Cornucopia Food and Wine festival. Many of the events were quit expensive to get into and as much as I'd like to get into the whole wine tasting thing, it probably would not have been very smart on my part.

I did a bit of early Christmas baking supply shopping at the local supermarket and while there, ran into a young east indian woman and her son. She looked as though she had been following me as she asked if I was chinese first. She then showed me a package of dried chow mein and asked me if I could verify that it was authentic chinese noodles. I looked at the package and noticed that it was made by an indian company. Then I asked her if they were planning on eating it within a day or if she was planning on storing it for a longer period of time. She responded by saying that it was for her friend who had asked her to pick it up for dinner that evening. I then recommended a brand in the refrigerated section where they had some freshly made noodles. I bid her good luck and as I left, her little son just stood there staring at me.

Afterwards I went to the auto supplies section and I found something which looked like it could clean out the engine. It was described as a tune up in a can. I bought it plus a three pack of extra concentrated fuel injector cleaner. The results were pretty good within ten minutes of adding the two liquids into my truck. The engine ran a tad smoother, there was less noise and the power also seemed to improve. A couple more doses of this should do the trick. The additives were supposed to dissolve and remove carbon deposits and gum. So on sunday, I decided to try one of those quick lube places to get rid of all the dirt in my oil. I didn't have a dry place to do the oil change myself and nothing else was open. It wasn't bad as when I got there, they told me to drive into one of the service bays right away. At first I hesitated asking for the price of the service and what was included before doing ahead. No other vehicles were there except for mine at the time. In the ground beneath my truck was a large opening where a person could work on you from below. I was instructed to remain in my truck and was given free coffee or water and a copy of the Province newspaper. I asked for water declining the latter and proceeded to flip through the paper. Meanwhile the truck moved from the serviceman's tool and people ran around in front and below.

On the front page there's a story about Dominic Mobilio the young soccer star dying of a sudden heart attack at the age of 35. I didn't bother to read the actual story and continued through when I came across another story of a man who died of heart failure. It was his second artificial heart. His original heart had been damaged from a viral infection.

The oil change was surprisingly fast. Although I suspect that they had started working on it as soon as my truck was in position while the crew manager kept me occupied by continuously trying to goad me into buying every other service package they had available. I'll try the oil change this time but nothing else. These quick lube places don't have professionally trained technicians and a review of my bill showed that they didn't know which make and model of vehicle I was driving.

In a parallel or symbolic way, it was revealed that the internal damage has been greater than I expected. No more wind in my sails for now as a part of the engine inside me needs repair. Come on body. Don't fail me now.

PreStep

The dilemma continues to occupy my mind while I sit here listening to the Stevie Nicks song over and over. After work, I raced over to the nursing home to install the new control board for the central vacuum system before heading across town to the Coliseum. I was going with some people whom I don't normally hang out with to watch a Vancouver Giants hockey game. The NHL is on strike so the only other game in town are the bantam or major juniors. I'm not too clear on the different levels but they're one below the ranksof the draftees I believe. The game was horrible. The home town Giants lost five to zero and the seats we had were really cramped. Some of the people in the group are rather big and/or tall and the our legs were squished against the seats in front of us. Luckily, those seats were never sold so we just rested our legs on top of them.

After the game, we went to Oscars for some drinks. That would be ok except that I shouldn't or can't really drink. The place was packed so it took us a while to get a table with enough seats. It was ten cent wings night so we ordered about four dozen in total. I had twelve hot wings and man, they were really hot. No one else ate much of the hot ones except for one other person. He had two dozen. By the time I got through my seventh one, the nerves in my mouth had probably been singed to the point that the heat didn't bother me any more. Eating the rest of my dozen became easy in the end. As the group sat there at the table and looked around, we all noticed an older group of people who looked pretty sad. Sad as in if we looked and did what they were doing by the time we were forty, we would want someone to shoot us. They were totally out of shape, a bit drunk, dressed awful. There's something to be said about trying dressing somewhat descent in a bar without your flesh hanging out. On that note, we got up and called it a night. No one wanted to stay up much later even though it was a holiday the next day.

I think I might go into work tomorrow regardless. I only have one and a half vacation days to use for the next six months so finding a suitable long weekend to use maximize it on will be tough. This weekend would have been good since the holiday plus my vacation day would have given me a four day opening. Either that or I just create the vacation time.

So what is it exactly that I want to do with my time? Hold on while I click the play button on the Stevie Nicks song again.

Greetings!

Happy Birthday Liferaft! =)

Fishin

A side affect of this procedure is not so much insomnia but the lack of a need to sleep. In fact, last night I only slept four hours. Got up early for once and went to work. I had packed some bottles of vegetable and fruit juices to take to work. During the middle of the day I started getting cravings for real food like nuts or chips or anything for that matter. I decided to skip the Muay Thai class in favour of resting.

Did I tell you how wonderful solid food is? All the talk of fresh tuna and the taiwanese fishing boat has worked up my appetite. I once worked as a labourer on a fishing dock and my boss let me take home one whole fish. It was still firm and had no odor meaning it was really fresh and because it wasn't salmon, which is what we were sorting, they didn't want it. I think it was mackeral or maybe a small tuna but still just over a foot long.

I've been watching a lot of Iron Chef. The next trip to the sushi garden is already being planned.

Stand Back

I listen to one of Stevie Knicks songs on her solo album. What a great song. And there's a small story behind it.

Stevie was driving down the coast of California at the time. On her way to the recording studio in LA I think. And while cruising along, she was listening to Prince's "Red Corvette". This is what gave her the idea for her song as she began coming up with the lyrics which sort of followed Prince's song as well. Upon reaching her destination (no cell phones at that time), she got on the phone and called Prince leaving a message. Prince returned the call within the hour.

Stevie told Prince about how the song inspired her with her own and so shortly after, Prince made the journey to Stevie Knicks recording studio. He came, sat down in front of the keyboard and quickly came up with the "de-de-de-de" fast low synthesizer base line of the song. Then he got up and walked out of the studio never to see her again.

Stand back. I will stand back.

The Doctor

He slept for eleven hours straight. Then woke up and got himself all cleaned up. His hair was pressed flat on his head as if he had worn a toque the whole time. During the course of the afternoon, he read some more of the investment trading book before falling back to sleep for another three or four hours. The night before, he read the latest edition of American Photo magazine.

We didn't see as much as we wanted so we'll have to continue the procedure again. That means a complete liquid diet for another day and to satisfy his cravings, he can watch Food tv. Eating can be psychological.

Prepare the extra virgin olive oil and lemon juice for tonight and make sure he goes to sleep early again.

The Patient I

I felt good enough to play hockey last night subbing in for a friend who is in Hawaii attending a wedding. In fact, I think my one goal was the winning goal but we couldn't quit figure it out after the game as it was overshadowed by a couple of players on the other team complaining over some penalties and semi questionable incidents on the ice. And while the one guy on the opposing team tried to put up a small fight, two of the women on their team were also busy trying to argue over the same things over in the womens locker room.

Afterwards they went and complained to the league officials. We went up to the sports bar for food and drinks instead. Leave the garbage on the ice.

Yet at one point in the game sitting on the bench, my head started to hurt again. Either my head has gotten bigger or something is still wrong. I've already changed to a slightly roomier helmet so thats ruled out...

I don't feel good. All week I could feel the slight pain and discomforts around my liver again. It's like the some sort of blockage in one of the pathways of the liver. Or at least that is what I believe it is. With all the eating from travelling for the past six to eight weeks, it's probably caught up to me. The leftover halloween candy is almost all gone with just the small bag of chips left. I think I'll leave the bag of jelly beans for my coworkers.

My efforts to gain weight recently has paid off appearancewise as some have told me that I don't look as thin as I used to but unfortunately I haven't seen it on the scale.

There's a slight bit of nausea right now. Time to go sleep early for once. Time for another flush. I'm due.

A River Runs Through It - Sort of.

In the garbage there are five torn wrappings of Reeses peanut butter cups, three empty bags of Lay's potato chips and a tiny empty Smarties box. I feel like I will eventually become overdosed with halloween treats. And there's still much more to go. I don't know what happened this year. All the children disappeared leaving me with enough candy and junk food for a whole elementary school. I could try to eat it all but that doesn't sound like a very good idea.

I stayed home alone last night waiting to hand out all the treats but at the same time, I tried to watch a chinese horror movie called 'The Eye'.

To begin, last monday I went to the Orpheum to watch the VSO. It was the first time in ages and Anne Meyers was the guest violinist. Her performance compelled me to pick up my violin and try playing again. I began by listening to a couple of my old violin records with recordings done by Itzhak Perlman. Then I went through my music to look for various songs which I had liked before but found that I had lost them. Paganini and Zigerweissen to name two. If I have time, I think I'd like to pick up a copy of Carmen's Fantasy. Perlman's rendition of it is simply perfection.

At one point while playing or tyring to play (its been almost fourteen years), I stopped thinking that I heard the sound of children knocking at the front door. I passed by the television and on the screen was a blind woman in the movie playing a violin. She was playing in an orchestra for the blind. I also noticed that this weekend the movie Ray was playing in the theatres. Ray Charles that is. Notice the theme? Blind people of music? Maybe I'm blind too - figuratively.

I finally got all the pictures of the San Francisco road trip scanned and uploaded. The collection has been whittled down to 167 pictures from the sixteen rolls of film. Have a look if you are interested. Click on the 'show all' at the top right corner to have all the pictures displayed at once instead of just twelve or so at a time. Then you can pick and choose which ever one that you might find interesting. Below are a few of the pics.

The camp did have a river which ran through it and like I said before, it was cold and the temperature dropped to minus seven celsius over night. Some of us would seek shelter in the public washrooms because they were pretty clean and really really warm! I went to university with the guy in the front flossing his teeth. Engineers...

Not even the freezing cold wilderness could keep us from having freshly made cake. It went well with the authentic Wisconsin Bratwurst sausages which we had brought with us. Our water froze during the night.

Again, it was good to see Mr. and Mrs. LifeRaft in the cold and sometimes foggy city.

We really lucked out with the weather the whole trip. Otherwise, I would not have been able to get some of the photos. Click on the link above or go to the DPG page to view some of the photos.

Yeah I know, I shouldn't slouch so much. But I'm working on it. Did I tell you that I'm also the part time pool boy for the spring?

What would San Fran be without a trip to Alcatraz island? Notice the attempt to conceal my identity by wearing the dark sunglasses. There are two pigs in this picture if you haven't noticed.

My friends 22 month old daughter happy as can be.

Uh oh! Save the car!

A number of us went mountain biking the other weekend up in Whistler. I managed to one or two good shots. Everything else was too much for my camera to handle. The trail which we rode on is called "A River Runs Through It". It is mostly sheltered by trees and is probably getting very close to being buried in snow now. We managed to get in there just in time again just like the Yosemite park which is now closed to vehicles and rode the bike trail twice. The first time was very slow as the women came along and we experimented with the various obstacles. On the second loop, it was just the guys so we covered the whole trail in just forty minutes as opposed to an hour and a half.

Here my friend carefully crosses a bridge but cheats. He grabs onto the safety rope!

This is the bridge which Doug fell on. Next is a shot of me on the teeter-totter. Its been years since I've been on one. Now I'm riding one on my bike instead.