I'm concerned

Last August, my doctor had me go for an ultrasound because, given my age and weight, she wanted to check for a fatty liver. There appeared to be a cyst attached to one of the kidneys, so she arranged for some more tests (a CT scan and an MRI) packed me off to an appointment with a urologist. Those tests showed that it was not on the kidney, but attached to the outside of the adrenal gland.

I was packed off to a surgeon. This surgeon (I saw him just before Christmas) had me do some tests. To prepare for the test, I had to give up caffeine (including chocolate, of course), pain killers (including my arthritis medicine), and fruit -- for three days! Strangely enough, it was the fruit that was the most difficult for me. When I get up in the morning, I immediately have a glass of juice. Breakfast is usually an apple. My favourite bagels have raisins in them. You are probably seeing a pattern here. If I could live on fruit, I would. After two failed attempts, I finally managed the test.

When the results of that test came in, I was informed that I would have an appointment with an endocrinologist.  Turns out, it's not a cyst. It's a tumour. I have a condition called pheochromocytoma. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001380/

Tumours of this type are fairly rare and almost never outside the gland. Mine is. They are rarely malignant. Given that I'm bucking the odds on this, I'm a little scared right now. I'm the same age my mother was when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. I know that ovarian cancer is not hereditary, but the parallels have me spooked.

Anyway, among other questions, the doctor asked if I had experienced high blood pressure recently. I told him yes. He put the cuff on me and checked. Normal reading. I had to explain to him that it's only in the last few years that I could get up without feeling dizzy. I've always had a problem with low blood pressure. High is a relative term. Then he asked if I'd had hand tremors or a racing pulse. I replied yes, but only when reading a letter from my ex's lawyer. He ducked his head to hide the smile, but I could see his shoulders shaking. Maybe, at our next appointment, he'll realise that I am using humour to cope with the stress.

One of the problems with removing this tumour is that, when it is removed from the adrenal gland, the gland sometimes goes into overdrive. This can boost the blood pressure off the charts. So, on top of having it removed, I will probably be in the hospital for a few days. I'm so glad I live in Canada.

To be absolutely certain that he knows as much as possible before arranging for the surgery, I have to do the  same tests again to verify the results from the first test. Bummer. I'll have to prepare for it over the weekend and do it on Monday because my birthday is next Thursday. I'm having meals with several friends towards the end of the week and don't want to limit what I can eat.

The good news is ... my liver is just fine.

National Job Fair

The National Job Fair, in Toronto, wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

After I got the insert from The Sunday Sun, I found the list of companies that would be attending, along with the floor plan. I put a tick mark next to the names of all the companies I was interested in -- including the ones I'd never heard of.

Then, I spent the better part of Monday googling them. I whittled the initial list of 43 companies down to 8. This included 5 high tech companies and 3 placement agencies.

I spent the whole of the next day updating my résumé, printing out enough copies, and developing a covering flyer. Yes, a covering flyer -- not a covering letter. I would write a covering letter if I were applying for a specific job but, with this situation, I thought I needed something more generic. After all, I wasn't even sure that they needed technical writers or editors. I ended up with:

*

Hi,

I am a writer and editor with over twenty years’ experience, including:

· computer manuals (especially for novice users)

· software changes

· telecommunications

· user manuals for manufacturing equipment

· ISO 9000 documents

· newsletters

· publicity

My specialty is helping small to medium sized companies with documentation problems. I work at your site or mine, for anywhere from a few weeks to a few months – depending on the project.

I’ve attached my résumé so, even if you don’t need a writer or editor now, you’ll have it if you need one in the future. Should that day come, I hope you’ll think of me.

*

Wednesday morning was cool, windy, and sunny. I parked my car at the TTC lot and took the subway downtown to Union Station on Front Street. I decided to take the indoor route because of the wind tunnel effect of all the office towers. What a mistake! I think I walked to Mississauga and back by the time I found the right place. Fortunately, I had worn comfortable shoes.

When I finally got into the right building, I had a view of the show from the level above. It was a seething mass of humanity, and I nearly turned around and went home right then. I hate crowds. I truly do. But having spent almost 3 days getting ready, plus the gas to drive in to Toronto, I thought I'd better give it a try.

I was daunted by the line up just to pay to get in to the show, but it moved fairly quickly. At $4.95, the advertised cost of entry to the show included tax -- a pleasant change. Inside the Job Fair itself, it didn't seem so bad. People bumped, of course, but everyone was very polite and civilised.

I went to all eight booths, and talked to people at each one. A couple of them have no need for technical writers or editors, which was fine. I just kept going.

In less than an hour, I was done.

The covering flyer had worked, too. I had two companies show an interest in me -- one of them quite keen on the fact that I had worked with the ISO 9000 standard.

Now to see if this effort translates into a job offer.

I bought a copy of the Toronto Sun

Normally, I don't read The Toronto Sun. In fact, I can't stand its fascist diatribes. But I don't mind other people reading The Sun at work. In fact, I think it's rather amusing that the guys I work with seem to think I'm bothered by something as tame as the Sunshine Girl.

But when I was working on Saturday night / Sunday morning, I ended up with nothing to read ... except The Sun from the previous Wednesday. I flipped through it quickly, trying not to let my fingers touch too much of it, only to discover that the National Job Fair will be held in Toronto this Wednesday and Thursday. The advertisement also mentioned that there would be a 20 page insert about the Fair in the Sunday Sun.

Oh, great. Just great. I hadn't seen any advertisements about the Job Fair in either the Globe and Mail or the Toronto Star. Now, in all fairness, I didn't read both papers every day last week, so I might have missed something. But neither paper mentioned it in the Saturday editions, either, that I saw.

So, I went into the convenience store Sunday morning on my way home from work. I approached the newspaper rack and, automatically, my hand reached out for the Globe and Mail ... but the Globe doesn't publish on Sundays and I'd already read the Saturday edition! My stomach churned with embarrassment as I reached down for a copy of The Toronto Sun -- on which I had (years before) bestowed the cognomen The Toronto Stunned. I felt like I was betraying literate people everywhere.

I grabbed it and went to the cash ... better to get out of here quickly before someone I knew saw me with this rag in my hand. Why, oh why didn't I think to go out of town to buy this?

Gritting my teeth, I got to the cash.

"Pearl," piped up the cashier, accepting my money, "why aren't you getting the Star or the Globe?" (Just my luck that I get the one clerk who knows my buying habits.) Then I flipped through the pages, grabbed the insert about the Job Fair, and asked the cashier to throw the rest in the garbage.

The paper had, finally, been marginally useful.

Last course

I've finally signed up for my last course at UofT. Well, the last one for my Certificate in Creative Writing. There will be others if I can afford them.

The thing is, I've tweaked the first hundred pages so much, that I'm not sure what it says anymore! I need to settle down and review those pages one more time before sending them off to my faculty advisor.

Story

I am currently working through comments on my novel from my proofreader. There are a number of things to be dealt with.

And I thought I was doing so well!

It's allergy season

Yes, it's allergy season for me. As a result, I'm struggling to stay awake for more than 12 hours a day ... and struggling, during those few hours, to think coherently. It also seems to affect my ability to spell. While I was typing out the last sentence, I spelled 'during' as 'juring'. Hey, that's how it's pronounced, right? Then I stared at it. I knew it was wrong, but couldn't think of the correct spelling for a minute.

Sure, I could use the online spellchecker, but I think you'll agree with me that it has -- at best -- a limited vocabulary. The online spellchecker doesn't correct words that are words, but not the word that's wanted for that particular space, grammatically speaking (or, in this case, writing). No, my beef with spellcheckers lies in the fact that they inform me that I should be using some other word -- completely unsuited to the context -- because it does not recognise the word I've chosen.

Anyway, I'm off to sleep some more so that -- with luck -- I'll stay awake at work later.

I thought I was the last ...

For those of you who have never heard of him, Rick Mercer is a Canadian comedian and pundit with a television show. He has a quintessentially Canadian view of politics (if we don't laugh about it, we'll cry). But more than that, he interviews people from all over Canada about all sorts of things, from their interesting jobs, to their unusual celebrations or hobbies, to the teams taking part in various sports. His website, with selected pieces archived from his show, is here:

http://rickmercer.com/

I just found this skit about the last person to start a blog in North America:

http://www.youtube.com/mercerreport#p/c/20D68A4847393FEF/24/5p7K0LvK_fk

(Darn - I thought I was the last!)

Polite Cat

The strangest thing about reading my novel aloud is, Alexander the Great (my cat) hears me talking, walks into the room and sees that I'm alone, and starts talking to me. He seems to be under the impression that I'm talking to him.

Well, there's no one else there, right?

Alex waits for me to pause -- usually when I'm marking up the manuscript -- and then starts meowing. He doesn't interrupt at all. Such a polite cat.

The oddest thing about this is, he doesn't do it when I'm on the phone.

The End of an Era - Death of A. Trevor Hodge

A. Trevor Hodge was a renowned scholar, a brilliant teacher, and a fun person. His classes were full to overflowing and, sometimes, they were students who weren't even registered. They just wanted to hear what he had to say.

When I was in my third year at Carleton, I managed to get into his class on Ancient Science and Technology. There were 108 people in the course, because it was a popular with engineering and science students as their arts elective. Of that number, there were four of us who were Classical Civilisation majors.

It was a full year course and we had the option of doing two essays or an essay and a hands-on project demonstrating the technology of the ancient Mediterranean world. It was an evening course and, as I entered the theatre, I could tell where most of the students had had dinner -- The Pub. The place reeked of beer.

A couple of weeks in, Professor Hodge was demonstrating a replica of an early drill. He had a piece of scrap wood and was demonstrating how the drill worked on the floor of the theatre, which was concrete. 108 students couldn't all see, so he moved it up to the (wooden) desk. He got talking, and the drill kept drilling, and it was a rhythmic movement and before he realised it, Professor Hodge had drilled a hole into the desk!

The following week, one of the engineers showed up with a tube of plastic wood and filled the hole. Hodge thanked him, and we were off on another class -- how the Egyptians used screws in cases to irrigate fields with Nile water. I suppose we should have been grateful that no previous students had built that as a project.

Hodge had gone to Europe to measure aquaducts. (I'm not sure exactly when it was, but I heard this story in the mid-1980's.) Toward the end of his trip, his rental car was stolen along with his briefcase, which contained all his notes, that had been in the back seat. He had to recreate the entire thing from memory, and managed to do it.

Yet, when he arrived home from another trip, he walked right past his wife who was there to meet him at the airport. Apparently, he didn't recognise her -- which doesn't really surprise me, after all. She wasn't a Roman arch made of stone!

I remember reading a few years ago, among the Letters to the Editor of the Globe and Mail, a note that appeared a couple of days after one of Trevor's witty insights. It went something like this:

Dear Sir, Why do you insist on calling him A Trevor Hodge,

when he is clearly The Trevor Hodge?

*

Here is what Carleton University had to say about him:

http://www2.carleton.ca/chum/2012/dr-a-trevor-hodge-1930-2012

Addendum:

I just found out that he had a blog! http://www.trevorscolumn.com/?page_id=2

It turns out that, in his retirement, he had started giving lectures on cruise ships ... I can see him now, banging the drum to help keep the rowers in time.

He was also writing a mystery novel.
http://brendachapman.blogspot.com/2012/02/puttering-away-my-saturday.html

Living History vs Introversion

It has been over two years since I last attended a living history event.

I used to belong to two different groups: one that was inclusive (Mediaeval / Renaissance) and one that was more focused (Viking Age). When I moved to southern Ontario, I tried to continue my level of activity with them, but found that I wasn't enjoying it as much.

Then last year I realised that, for the first time in my life, I am happy. I don't spend my time on the road every weekend. I don't have to socialise with people I really don't care for -- in order to see the people I do like. And, best of all, it's quiet, low stress, peaceful ... well, you get the idea.

I have always had limited tolerance for noise, and bright lights, and too many people -- especially too many people. I used to come home from a stressful day at work and I would close the drapes and the door, and sit, cross legged in the middle of my bed. Sometimes, I would pet one of the cats. This was how I dealt with stress.

Yes, I am an introvert.

Now, introversion is not the same as shyness. That is, an introvert can be shy, but it doesn't necessarily follow. According to Myers Briggs, the difference between an introvert and an extravert is where they get their energy. Introverts get it from being alone or with one or two close friends. Extraverts get it from being surrounded by people.

As I'm growing older, I find myself getting more and more introverted. So, maybe it's time to get rid of all the clothes for different periods of history. I've been complaining about my lack of space anyway ...