Your Basic Lovely Day

I love days off like today... slept in a little bit, went shopping (5 thrift stores and a few other places), got a few errands run (vacuumed the van, returned bottles, checked for sales of JoeCozies at Solstice Cafe (Zero. Sigh.)), spent most of the day with my Mother In Law (we get along quite well most of the time), then spent a little over half an hour taking photos around Selkirk before picking up kiddo from school. Oh, and the weather was beautiful.

Home for dinner, then out again to the Library (watch for more reviews in coming days at the Medianook) and to get groceries, now it's quiet as kiddo is in bed and hubby is out for coffee.... so I can catch up on blogging, do some writing, and maybe read an actual book (especially since I bought three while thrifting today....)

tags: dayoff, photos, dullstuff

I'm (mostly) healthy.

Went in for my annual checkup today. Overall, things are good. Confirmed the bursitis in my shoulder and confirmed that I'm doing pretty much what he would have told me to do anyway. Get to have an x-ray done of my left hip (which has been a bother for many years....) just to rule out anything like early onset arthritis (oh, goody!) but otherwise my numbers were good. He was especially pleased with my blood cholesterol which was 4.3 with HDL being 1.5.

I had to check what the numbers meant though, and according to the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada:

Normal blood cholesterol should be in the range of:

• Total cholesterol 5.2 mmol/L or less;
• LDL-cholesterol (bad type) less than 4.14 mmol/L;
• HDL-cholesterol (good type) greater than 0.9 mmol/L

So I guess that is good. Yay! And I was thinking, "Well, I must thank hubby for feeding me such good healthy things all the time," because really, he does.

Anyway, you're all stuck with me unless I get hit by that proverbial bus. Not that I'm tempting fate or anything... but I am kindof a pessimist.


tags: cholesterol, personal health

Embracing Creativity...

I am fast approaching the two year mark here on Blogger and I have been reflecting on the sheer volume of words I have spilled onto these pages. I am still struggling with my wish/dream/goal to be a "real" writer (I guess to be paid to write, ideally) and as such I have started doing some writing exercises in amongst my journal entries, the bits of poetry I keep filing away, and the ideas for articles that never seem to materialize. The next step will be to take some of those article ideas and follow through (thus picking at another one of my bugaboos). I also want to write some more frugal articles for FrugalVictoria and some local history articles for my Unofficial Victoria Guide. Of course, I should also write more reviews for Medianook and/or Apolloguide!

What I'm afraid of though, is the actual submission process. Writing the query and following through. I've got so many half-finished writing projects that it's hard to face them...

In the meantime, I keep distracting myself with photography... taking one morning a week to walk through the gardens, documenting the many beautiful flowers....

tags: writing, goals, distractions

Not At All Vegan Lunchbox

This is what I took for lunch today: a can of Chunky Soup, a fruit salad (grapefruit, canned peaches, and strawberries), two Minigo snacks, and a few Jelly Bellies (in the little white cup).

I can do better... I just didn't.

One in Three

May is (among other things) Hepatitis C Awareness Month.

FACT: More than one third of all people living with Hepatitis C (HCV) in Canada live in British Columbia (an estimated 65,000 British Columbians). This is approximately double the national average.

FACT: HCV is 10 times more infective than HIV through blood-to-blood contact. Most common infections are through shared needles/needle sticks from infected needles or through blood transfusions prior to 1992.


More info:
Hepatitis C Council of British Columbia Canada
Centre for Disease Control Hepatitis C Fact Sheet
World Health Organization Hepatitis C Information (includes somewhat outdated (1999) global prevalence)


tags: health information, public service, hepatitis c