Markus’ Blog

Just learned from my dad that apparently my mom’s sister, Hermi, suffered pretty very wind damage to her house. Looks like parts of the roof truss were ripped away. My aunt was at work as it happened. Neighbours called Fire Rescue and they secured the site and had the roof patched up again with a makeshift fix by the time she got home. So that was good. And that nobody got hurt.

The house of my dad’s sister and brother-in-law lost a few roof tiles during the storm, but nothing too serious happened. My grandma’s house, very close by, sustained no damage.

This is the first time that actually somebody I know or am related with suffered severe damage during a windstorm. The hurricane hit Thursday and Friday of last week.

It must have been really bad. Probably not the last storm of this intensity, though.

Yesterday’s dinner was indeed a very lovely, memorable experience. This is us before getting on the plane:

And here’s an aerial shot of our lovely city:

There are more pictures in my photo gallery.

I didn’t take a picture of the food, but it was quite yummy. I had a big bowl of clam chowder followed by BBQed ribs and chicken. I had a baked potato with sour cream, bacon and cheese and some yummy salad on the side. For dessert we were served my all-time favorite: cheese cake. Unfortunately, I was getting too full to finish it. — And that’s despite my 2^nd stomach that’s reserved just for desserts. lololol I found it all quite tasty.

Brigette had the same appetizer and the same dessert. However, she opted for salmon — prepared in the kitchen, as opposed to my meal from the out-door grill. We both found her salmon to be a little bland.

After the meal we enjoyed some nice conversation with two British couples who were doing the same float plane + dinner + ferry + limo package that we had signed up for. Apparently, both couples travel quite a bit.

The trip back on the ferry was short, and the limo ride a classy ending to a lovely evening.

Originally we had planned to go to The Fish House in Stanley Park for my birthday dinner tonight. However, my lovely wife thought of something way more special. She is going to take us — or rather have us taken — to Doc Morgan’s Seaside Restaurant on Bowen Island. And we’re not just going there by some “ordinary means” like a boat, no, we’re going to fly there by float plane. We’ll have a lovely dinner and then we’ll go back by ferry and limo.

How nice and lovely does that sound? Thanks so much, schveetie.

As has been implied here, I agreed to attend another Josh Groban concert in Seattle on August 18. This is in addition to the previous concert on March 28 in San Jose. But not only that, Josh will be performing in Vancouver on August 17 (the day before the Seattle concert). Of course we’ll be there, too.

What am I doing?! Accompanying my wife three times, so she can see and listen to her future husband perform?

I must be crazy.

Apparently it is already paying off that my Dad now has access to the Internet. He surprised me this morning with these two pictures which were waiting for me in my inbox. Thanks for the photos, Dad. Now you just gotta learn how to scan pictures without help from a former co-worker.

That’s me in the kitchen sink.

And that’s all three of us in the living room a few years later.

Lovely carpet and wall-paper, eh? Gotta love the seventies.

I learned on Friday, from my Dad, that my Grandma’s leukemia apparently took a rapid turn for the worse. She had been first diagnosed last summer, but it turned out quite quickly that her illness was quite stable and not progressing. Also, it didn’t cause her any symptoms or discomfort, except in rare instances.

I phoned her Saturday morning (Saturday evening her time) to find out how she’s doing, first hand. This is what she told me.

As her symptoms worsened, it was found that her platelet count hat dropped to 65,000, which is not good at all. One should at least have 100,000. Normal would be 120,00-130,000. (Just checked Wikipedia, and there they say a healthy person has between 150,000 and 400,000 platelets per mm³.) Now she has to go in and get several transfusions which take 7.5 hours each (because they have to drip very slowly) in an attempt to get her platelet count up to 100,000. I also found out that one such transfusion costs EUR 6,000.00. That’s CAD 9,230.49 according to XE.com. Yay for a good health care system that takes care of that kind of stuff. Once that works, it’s on to chemotherapy for her. Not much fun, for sure, but better than the alternative. If her platelet count doesn’t go up, it looks like there isn’t much that can be done.

Her routine checkup had been scheduled for this week three months ago. As it turns out, three months may have been a little long of a wait, since it got to the point where her symptoms worsened considerably the week before she was scheduled to go in.

Her physician suggested she may have been suffering from this blood disease for longer than just 8 or 9 months. It’s just, she didn’t have any symptoms, so nobody looked for a blood disease before then. It has also been found that her heart and her spleen are enlarged, which makes her abdomen hard to the touch.

I am holding my thumbs and crossing my fingers that the treatment works. She sounded calm and confident when I talked to her. She’s a tough girl.

Way to go, Grandma. — Zeig’s ihnen, Omi.

Since I had never done it before, I decided to give YouTube a try and see how it works.

It so happens that, a few days ago, Queen Calli Boo the Kitty decided to go into our linen closet to try and get comfy on our bath mats. So I got the camera out and shot a little video of her adventures. That’s the one I uploaded to YouTube today.

First, a picture of how it looked in the end:

And now the video (provided YouTube is done converting it yet):

Live commentary by Brigette ;-).

Update: Yes, the video is quite dark, but the original is not that dark. You can still see what’s going on there. Not so much on the YouTube version.

This time it’s my mom’s turn.

Alles Gute zum Geburtstag, Mutti!!!

Hope the birthday card made it in time.

It’s not the easiest of times right now. It seems like one thing piles on top of another. First there was wedding stress, then there was condo and moving stress. Now it’s grieving stress topped off by Air Canada being utterly stupid and inhumane.

I am really starting to feel the need for some vacation time, some time to just relax and enjoy life.

Oh, and BTW:

A good friend of Brigette’s mom passed away today. She was only 57. Thursday night she had a stroke, out of the blue. Apparently she suffered from multiple more strokes after she got to the hospital and passed away early Sunday morning. How scary and sad is that?

I met her only twice. Last Christmas and at our wedding, which she attended only two months ago. A very happy and good person. She was involved in community work and helped other people. Never got a chance to take it easy, retire and just enjoy life, always concerned about the well being of others. She will be missed by her family and friends as well as the people she took care of.

This tragedy also raises two points (and it’s surely not the first time they have been made):

• Why do bad things like that happen to good people?
• Life’s too freaking short.

Rest in peace, Heather. My condolences to her family and friends.