Tagged: off topic
Meet New Kitty
Yep, this is totally off topic but I just had to show him/her off:
This is him/her meowing rather indignantly at my camera as I took his/her picture. From comparing it to the rest of the litter I think it’s a boy but knowing my luck it’s probably a girl. That, and the litter is only two weeks old so it’s pretty hard to tell.
Anyway, my cat Tommy died at the age of 19 in January and in these past few months I’ve realized just how much I’ve missed having a cat. When a farmer in the area announced he had a new batch of kittens to give away I just couldn’t resist checking them out. And lo and behold, there was a perfect little striped one! I’ve always been rather partial to striped cats.
He’s only two weeks old so I won’t be taking him home until sometime in July but until then I’m going to be busy cat-proofing the place again. It’s going to take a lot of work but it’ll be worth it when I hear the pitter-pattering of tiny clawed feet again.
I am More Than Just a Chronic Pain Statistic
Last year on my birthday I wrote about my experiences with bullying. This year I’m writing about the elephant in the medical profession’s closet: chronic pain.
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I am a human being with hopes, dreams and goals. Some of these have been forever altered or have become impossible because of my chronic pain. You see, I’ve had chronic back pain for three years this fall and have yet to receive even a diagnosis. My pain starts in my lower back and migrates up to encompass my entire back all the way up to between my shoulders after only a few hours of being awake. My knees have an almost arthritic ache and occasionally pain shoots down my right leg, making it impossible to walk normally some days.
Luckily I was born in Canada so I have not become bankrupt because of my illness. I have had X-rays, an MRI and multiple physical exams. I’ve been to chiropractors, massage therapists, orthopaedic surgeons, physiotherapists, back pain specialists at the provincial clinic and multiple GPs. I’ve had orthotics, massages, special exercises and chiropractic treatments and nothing has helped. Some things like the physiotherapy (which I did for nine months) made things worse than ever. Continue reading
Post-Vacation Round Up
Yes, I know I’ve been horribly off-topic lately what with the blog awards and such, but since my photo/vacation posts seem to be popular I’ll stay off-topic for another day. As you may or may not know, I was in Costa Rica for two weeks on the Pacific side of the country. And because Andy begged me, here is a picture of the first excursion I did: ziplining.
Yes, I had an awesome time. 11 lines through a beautiful rainforest…what more could you ask for in an excursion? In addition to that, I met my match when it came to certain female competition: Continue reading
What Book Reviewers do in Their Free Time
What I am holding in this picture is a latch hook. The basic idea is that you have a ‘mat’ that’s a grid. On nearly every little square, you tie yarn on to make a pattern. No, you don’t have to create a pattern yourself (thank goodness). When you buy a latch hook, you’re supplied with the pre-cut yarn and a pattern to work off of, so it’s not that difficult.
Now, ‘not that difficult’ doesn’t mean that doing this was easy or quick. There are 91 columns and 131 rows, meaning that in order to complete this, I stitched in 11, 921 individual pieces of yarn over a period of less than two months. Yes, this is an incredibly big latch hook as you can tell by the size comparison in the picture. No one could accuse me of being tall, but that is one big latch hook.
This has absolutely nothing to do with books or book reviewing, but we book reviewers are people who have different hobbies besides reading. Mine just happens to be doing latch hooks.