African Souvenir

I'm staying with my parents this week so I've had time to browse around the house (and my old bedroom) checking out some stuff. It's been a lot of fun looking at yearbooks, pictures and diaries.

Since my family has travelled a lot over the years, we have collected some weird items. Perhaps the weirdest is a coffin that resides in the lower family room. This was brought back from Ghana by my brother a couple of years ago.

In Ghana, caskets are designed to be symbolic of your life. In this case, it is in the shape of a lion so the prospective owner could be a strong hunter or a virile leader. For a while, my brother also had a crab, an airplane, a cow and something that looked like a cougar.

The lion is a little on the small side so either Ghanians are quite short or else they are chopped up into pieces so that they can fit.

Without a dismembered body inside, it is a great piece of art.

The lion comes complete with testicles which were decorated for Christmas.

It is important to be festive.

Last skiing of the summer

I started skiing when I was very young, probably around seven or eight years of age. My father was a big water skier in his day and there were many sunny afternoons when a group of us went riding around on the lake. I started out on regular skis. Then I was taught how to ride on a round wooden table top, surf style. We called it the disc. Then my dad put a chair on top of the disc and I rode on that. When I was feeling daring, I became the boy at the top of a skiing pyramid.

One Christmas, I got a pair of trick skis. They are much smaller than regular skis and don't have a keel, which allows for 360 degree turning. Once I put on those babies, I rarely went back to the regular skiing.

That doesn't mean to say I ever got good at skiing with the trick skis. The above video is proof of that. I can still do a few things but I'm mostly just messing around and swallowing a lot of lake water.

Morning at the cottage

This is what the lake looked like this morning. I had to take a picture of it because we're now at the end of the season. Soon, the skies will grey over, the wind will get cold and the water will no longer be inviting.

The summer up here doesn't last long. Normally, they only get June, July and August to enjoy but this year, there was even less than that. There was a lot of rain and wind. Probably means the cool weather will come sooner too.

It's a beautiful place but I'm not sure how many more years we'll have it. My parents are having a harder time looking after it and the sons now live quite far away. I spent almost every summer here while I was growing up but I didn't appreciate it as much as I do now.

Sometimes you have to disappear for a while, then come back. See it for everything that it is. Sometimes, I feel the same way about Canada.

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On a lighter note, I was able to snap a half decent picture of a Blue Jay today. He kept on stealing the nuts that I put down for the chipmunks.

I tried to get a close-up but he kept on flying away. Damn birds. Why do they have wings?

GO TORONTO BLUE JAYS!

Just thought I'd throw that in.

Trouble the tripod

Trouble, my parent's ten year old Schnauzer, had her leg amputated because of cancer. The procedure was done last Wednesday and everything went quite well.

We picked her up on Friday and were given two types of pain killers and ten days worth of antibiotics. Even though she is a tough little patient, I could tell that the road to recovery was going to have a few pot holes. For the first few days, she was reluctant to walk, seemed withdrawn and most disturbing, she let out loud yelps seemingly out of nowhere. Thankfully, she was eating, drinking and eliminating normally.

We are almost a week out and Trouble has greatly improved. I have taken her off one of the pain medications (which has a tendency to make pets groggy and irritable) and removed the bandage covering the incision. She is walking much better and even going up and down a few short stairs. She sleeps much more comfortably and the loud yelps have disappeared.

I'm confident that she will be back to herself (minus a leg) by next week. Not too bad for a major surgery!

Cold in Canada

It's already getting colder up here. I woke up this morning and Dusty was a popsicle!

Pictured below is my method used to defrost him.

It's also a really good imitation of Kenny from Southpark.



He's doing much better now. At least I think he is. He hasn't moved for the past two hours.

iPOD accident!

I just found out that an ipod can be dropped into a lake and still work!

Just a little FYI.

The Trouble with Trouble

Trouble is my parent's ten year old female Schnauzer. She was rescued in Las Vegas where I was living at the time and my parents took her to her up to Canada. Except for a bladder stone surgery and allergies, she has been healthy.

Up until now.

A month ago she was diagnosed with a liposarcoma on her left front leg. This is a type of cancer that is locally invasive. In other words, the risk of it spreading to other parts of her body was low but she was still in a degree of pain; she hobbled around mostly on three legs despite being on two types of pain medications.

There was considerable debate in our family about what to do. Obviously an amputation was going to be a major surgery but had the chance to be a cure. On the flip side, she is an older dog and perhaps the cancer had spread beyond the leg without us knowing about it. As always, there was the issue of cost. An amputation can run $2000 or so.

In the end, the amputation won out. Everything went well with the surgery and we will be picking her up today for home nursing care. I think she will do fine. She's a Schnauzer, she's not ancient and her uncle is a vet; what more could she have in her favor??