Jan. 27, 2014

I set the PVR to record the men’s final of the Australian Open on Saturday night.  As I woke early on Sunday morning, I watched it while I ate breakfast and waited for Miriam to pick me up to go skiing.  The finalists were Stan Wawrinka and Raphael Nadal.  Wawrinka is 28 and, as usual, he was the underdog.  He’s never been able to break through the top three and win a Masters.  I was hoping for him, partly because of that and also because although he’s rather unfortunate looking, he has sparkling eyes and I usually like his comments about the games.   He had beaten Novak Djokovic to get to the final, so it seemed that this might be his moment.  I have noticed that he has quite a bit of writing tattooed on his forearm but never been able to read it.  Because I was watching the game on the PVR this time I could stop the frame at a moment early in the play when they focused on that arm.  Now I know what it says.  It’s a quotation from a work by the Irish writer, Samuel Beckett, one of his later prose works, Worstward Ho, that I read at university and found baffling.  I only picked up bits of it and didn’t remember this quotation, but it seems an for Wawrinka:

Ever tried.  Ever failed.  No matter.

Try again.  Fail again.  Fail better.

And this time he won.

I don’t know if I passed or failed the stress test.  The doctor seemed unclear himself.  He kept saying as I trudged on and the treadmill sped up, “Would you keep going now?” And I would say, “Yes.”  Finally, he stopped it and said, “ You don’t complain, do you.”  He had seen something strange on the graph, but nothing was clear, so he decided I would need another type of two-day test, which I will have on Feb. 12 and 13^th.   In the mean time I have slowed my exercise routine.  I now snowshoe with the University Women’s Club rather than the ‘grinders’ in the VOC, and I ski with either Miriam or John, Mo’s husband.  The former is very athletic but in the early stages of Parkinson’s, and the latter is a gentleman who keeps to my pace.  Miriam and I sometimes joke that we’re getting to the stage where we’re only good for parts; together we make one good skier with her heart and my left leg and arm. 

I’ve just had a good chat with Barbara Clegg about her heart problems and know that whatever I’m going through is early stages and very manageable.  She had a more serious situation years ago and by looking into it and getting the necessary work done, she has carried on very well.  And I talked with Bert and Peg today about the miracles that have been worked on Jules’ heart.  Medicine has made great advances in that area.

Hoar frost on a tree at the side of the snow shoe track

Bobcat tracks beside the cross country trail at Silver Star.  The set of four closest to the trail clearly showed how it pulled up its back paws before bounding across the groomed track

Still playing and ranting

The best part of last week was getting out from under the inversions, which have shrouded Vernon for quite a while.  Every morning, I rose above the grey, through the lace curtain of hoar frost and into the sun.  I was sometimes only up for 3 or 4 hours and there were light clouds at times even there, but it was bright and exhilarating compared to down in the town where even though there’s hardly any snow and it’s quite warm, between -2c. and 7c., it’s dull and damp. 

I tried snow shoeing for the first time on Tuesday and really liked it.  I borrowed Jane’s snowshoes and joined her and the VOC crowd.  It was fun to see the people I hadn’t seen since hiking stopped in Nov.  The trails for snowshoeing are very narrow and bordered by great blobs of snow that bend the young firs and spruce trees way over.  It’s beautiful and would be peaceful if the gang didn’t keep up its usual patter.  But even we shut up sometimes to appreciate the silence. 

I’m still playing with the i-Phone.  I really love it and am not afraid to try new taps and swipes.  This technology is terrific.  “The times they are a changin’”, but not always for the better.  I remember when the following Q and A was considered funny:

Question: What are the 3 fastest ways to send a message?

Answer: Telephone, telegraph and tell a woman.

Woman’s Lib., political correctness and advances in communications technology have made that joke both dated and ‘inappropriate’.  Many people would have ‘issues’ with it.  I have difficulty keeping up with the ever-lengthening list of things, words, comments and behaviors that are now considered to be ‘inappropriate’ and that cause people ‘to have issues’.  In fact it seems to me that 2 overused contemporary killjoy words are ‘issues’ and ‘inappropriate’.  That’s enough of that.

This afternoon at 2, I’m going to the Vernon Hospital for a stress test.  I’m glad I got that off my chest beforehand.  Now my results will be much better.  I found out last week that I have high BAD cholesterol as well as high GOOD cholesterol.  I’m going to take the test but no matter what I will beg the doctor to let me try to lower the bad without medication because I think that by altering my diet I can do so.  I get plenty of exercise but since I’ve been living alone I have indulged in too many eggs, too much cheese and more crispy chicken skin than is good for any body.  No more of that.  

The Vernon Outdoors Club goes snow shoeing

A view of the inversion below from a cross country trail, TJ's Corkscrew, at Silver Star.

Kay Donna on the snow shoe trail

i-Phone 4s

I’m slowly learning how to use the i-Phone 4s that Hay sent me for Christmas.  On Tuesday, I drove o Kelowna to pick it up from the guys who had ‘unlocked’ it .  O n Thursday I went to Telus on 27^th St. to get the Sim card and the cheapest plan on the planet because I won’t be doing much phoning or texting with it.  I hope to successfully download Kakao Talk so that I can text with Hay, but so far my efforts have not been successful.  I’m downloading Skype for i-Phone as I type this blog.  I’ve taken some pictures and e-mailed them to people, including myself.  It’s the only way I can think of to get them into my i-Photo.  It works, and the pictures are good, that is they are now good.  The first ones were all shaky.  I wish I had had it when I took the picture of the bench on the cross country ski trail at Silver Star because I entered that picture in a contest and it was accepted, but they asked if I could send an enlargement, which I wasn’t able to do because my camera had been set at a smaller setting when I took the original.  With this i-Phone, I can specify as I transfer or e-mail the photos whether I want them in any of five different sizes, from quite small to VERY BIG.  Skype is now loaded and Kakao Talk appears to be loading.  This is fun, but I still hope I get enrolled for seniors’ tutorials in the i-Phone at the library. Twice last week, I called the number that I had copied from the local paper;  I left my number but was never called back.  Oh well, I’m retired, and retired people are like guerilla warriors; they may not have the guns and money by they have all the time in the world and they know the territory.  I must be feeling threatened by technology in spite of my bravado because I see that war analogies have come to mind a few times lately.  As the young man at Telus was setting up my Sim card, etc., he commented that I had the same iPhone as he did.  My instant response was, “Just because I’ve got the gun doesn’t mean I can shoot it.”  He thought that was funny, but I was dead serious.  At least I’ve advanced to the point where I don’t shake when I point it to take a picture.  And my tapping, sliding and pinching techniques are improving.  I no longer hit the setters as if it were a 1940s typewriter.

Aside from the i-Phone, the week has been almost uneventful, except that in a moment of exuberance after swimming on Wednesday, I decided to do a handstand in the shallow end of the pool.  When my right hand hit the bottom, I felt the shoulder bone slip.  As soon as I broke the surface, I looked and saw a wee bump where a bone was protruding into my armpit, nothing like the other 3 dislocations, but painful.  I walked to the edge of the pool, placed the forearm flat on the side and pushed up hard with my left fist.  POP!  It went back in.  By then, the lifeguard had approached.  She laughed and asked me how many times that had happened before.  I told her twice on the right arm.  She just smiled and said that it gets easier to reset each time, but it pops out more easily too.  Well, now I know another thing I can’t do, but I’m sure there are more discoveries in store for me in the future.  The pain was nothing compared to the other times, but neither did I have any wonder drugs, so it actually hurt a bit for a couple of days, but it’s fine now. 

The view from Alder Point

The inversion as seen from Silver Star.  Vernon has been shrouded under this for over a week, but the sun is bright above.

New Tech. in 2014

Today is a brilliant day in Vernon, blue sky and bright sun.  The temperature is -4c., but it felt warmer as I walked to the Black Rock and back around noon.  I have just learned that in a list of Canadian cities with the least sun in winter, Vernon ranks sixth, so I appreciate the fact that today and tomorrow are forecast to be cloudless.  The person who made me aware of the above fact has moved here from Wakefield for the winter and perhaps to stay.  He studied weather conditions all across Canada before settling on Vernon, much as my dad did before they decided to retire to Victoria.  He was undeterred by the dull statistics because he had read Mo’s blog, which sings the praises of the area and heard other accounts of the ski conditions at Sovereign and Silver Star.  I met him with Mo and John the other day and discovered that I didn’t know him but had skied with his wife when Jim and I took downhill racing classes from Jay’s coach years ago.

One down side to life in Vernon is that it’s very difficult to get CBC Radio 2 on my radios, and I’m sick for the moment of all the talking on Radio1.  So in an effort to change and expand my outlook, I have figured out how to get Radio 2 on my laptop and am presently listening to “Deep Roots”, a program featuring new Canadian roots music and some international roots music.  The best part is that I can choose which region to pull the music in from; I’m presently listening to Central Canada.  Not bad, eh.  By the way, someone recently told me that ‘eh’ is dying.  Young Canadians aren’t saying it.  I hadn’t noticed, but I’ve been hanging out with old Canadians lately.

Another way in which I’m slowly entering the 21^st century is thanks to Jay who sent me his old i-Phone in the Christmas parcel.  I had to drive to Kelowna this week to the see the only person in the Okanagan who can unlock it, whatever that means.  Jay had made sure that it wouldn’t be ‘blocked’ by his provider, but unlocking is another thing apparently.  I should have it next week sometime and then I’ll sign on with a server and get help learning how to use it.  I have two friends who use i-Phones and will help me and the library offers seniors courses in using such devices. 

The sun is setting a deep gold light on “Jim’s eccentricity”, turning that old garage into a delightful sight.  I’m going to finish making kim bap for Mo and John who will join me for a beer and snack before we go to a movie at 7:00pm.  

Talking of technology, my good old camera finally snapped its last shot.  The shutter won't fully open any more.  I guess the next pictures in the blog will be taken by my new i-Phone or a friend.  Here are the last 2 shots from the old Nikon.

A wind surfer at sunset off the shore near mom and dad's

The same sunset with the shutter already partly shut.