Helmut Giesbrecht 1943 - 2020

 I just heard tonight that our old friend and political ally Helmut Giesbrecht, former high school math teacher, Terrace, BC Mayor and Skeena, BC NDP MLA passed away on Friday after a long illness. He was one of the good guys and will be missed!

Here is a typical Helmut story! When Helmut was running for mayor of Terrace, BC I wandered into his campaign / Teachers Union office and asked if there was anything I could do. Knowing I was Jim Fulton's (the NDP Member of Parliament) campaign finance guy he quickly handed me a list of about 100 names and phone numbers (most of them teachers), gave me an office and told me to get busy on the phone and get $100 from each of them! I came close!

Helmut was one of the beneficiaries of Norma's "Skeena Machine"! When Norma wanted someone elected, they got elected!  

Catching Up

Friday Night! Doing nothing, watching "How The Universe Works" explain dark matter and black holes. I should have been an astronomer. I got a robocall from some company wanting to do a political survey but I couldn't be bothered and hung up.

I am tired. I whipper snipped and mowed both lawns and chased a deer around the yard for a while. I should just let the deer in as there are no flowers left for them to dine on. Norma always said they rip the bulbs out of the ground if there are no flowers so I guess I still worry about that.

My periodic houseguest Kelly is around for a few days but is staying at a relatives house for a couple of nights. She has an appointment of some kind on Wednesday so we should plan on dinner out at some point. She provides me with the opportunity to get out of the house once in a while and I really appreciate that. She has been a really good friend! She wants to spend a few hours cleaning out Norma's flower beds. We keep talking about cleaning them out permanently and allowing the lawn to spread out to the fences all around the yard. It would sure be a lot less work. I don't mind doing the lawns but I just have no idea what I am doing around Norma's flower beds. Thank goodness Kelly spent all that time working with her and learned enough to look after them.

It is Brooks' 50th birthday today! I can't believe I have a 50 year old son. He was planning to celebrate it with a scuba diving trip to Egypt but COVID put an end to that. So they are tearing up the living room carpet and laying laminate floor instead. I have to get down there for a visit soon but seem to have a badly timed doctor's appointment (nothing serious) keeping me around.

If this damn COVID thing ever ends I will fly down to Mexico and visit my friends Chris and Juan. I have been putting that off for a long time.

Well, back to my "How The Universe Works" marathon. Now they are explaining how stars are dying at a much faster rate than they are being born and that eventually it will be lights out. Nothing for us to worry about though, it won't be for a few billion years.

NOTE: My Facebook friends were quick to point out that I got the day of the week wrong. It was my pill dispenser that told me it was Friday so I am either a day ahead or six days behind! LOL! Nothing in there that will kill me. Right away at least!

Latest Eye Surgery

I had the left eye surgery yesterday morning to clean off the film that had grown over the new lens. The two minute laser surgery went smoothly. Results as far as my eyesight? Maybe "marginally better". I still have the high contrast vision and cannot see anywhere near clearly.

I will talk to them tomorrow and tell them I want a lengthy, clear explanation of what is or went wrong and tell them I want a second opinion on both eyes, even if I have to travel to get it. 

And On It Goes!

 When you get bored hearing about my eyes, let me know!

As you know, I had cataract surgery on my left eye but had vision complications following it because a film had grown over the new lens. The process to repair this is called a Nd:YAG laser posterior capsulotomy'

In the meantime I was referred to a glaucoma surgeon who did glaucoma surgery on both eyes about two weeks ago. She wants me back for a post-op exam on November 2. My cataract surgeon called today to say they had a cancellation on this coming Thursday and did I want to take it. I called the glaucoma doctor to get her OK (because of the post-op that still had to be done and she said I was good to go, the new laser surgery would not interfere with her at all. So at 9:00 AM on Thursday I get zapped again in my left eye!

Hopefully this will be the end of the dealings with my left eye and they can then do the cataract surgery on my right eye. My rush is that my drivers license expires in April of 2021 and I don't want to go in there with any vision problems!

My friend Brian is going to drive me down to Comox Hospital early Thursday morning. I am going to owe him a meal and a tank of gas!

A Cheque In The Mail!

A good day! I received an Income Tax refund cheque for Norma in the amount of $670! Bonus! I didn't think she had paid any taxes in 2019 so I didn't see how my notary figured she would get a refund but after a complicated process of pro-rated income splitting with me, she did! I ran down and deposited it before they could change their mind! My notary earned his pay! He did not finagle a refund for me but he did substantially reduce the amount I thought I owed by shifting as much of my income to Norma as he could.

Random Acts Of Kindness

 We have all experienced them. Complete strangers taking the time to help us when we needed it. A Blog post by a fellow RV'er reminded me of some of the many times a stranger has come to our rescue.

We always remember these random acts of kindness! We were once in Guadalajara, Mexico. The RV park was a ways out of town and we ventured downtown in the Honda. In the city centre there was a huge underground parking lot with many exits. We knew the street we were on would lead us back to the RV park and checked out the exit from the parking lot that we needed to use to get back onto it. Well, when it came time to leave an attendant directed us to another exit and before we knew it we were hopelessly lost in the second largest city in Mexico! I was driving slowly in very heavy traffic while we both desperately looked for street signs and tried to find ourselves on the map when a young man with a child in an SUV pulled alongside and asked if we were lost. We told him we were and he asked where we wanted to go. We gave him the name of the RV park and the highway it was on, he thought for a couple of seconds, turned on his flashers and said, "You are going the wrong way, follow me"!

He pulled in front of us and led us through heavy traffic from one side of Guadalajara to the other, a trip that took at least thirty minutes. He finally pulled over at the highway that the RV park was on. I got out, thanked him very much and told him I now knew where I was. I reached for some money to give him but he refused saying his mother lives nearby and it was time they visited her. We shook hands and he was on his way. 

This was not the first time this has happened to us in Mexico. Another time a city bus driver in Villahermosa went about six blocks off his route to lead us and the motorhome to a highway entrance after we simply could not understand his rapid instructions in Spanish and he was concerned we were heading for some very narrow, busy streets. He took us to where we needed to be and left before we could thank him or tip him. His bus was full of university students and they were all snapping photos and yelling at us, "I speak English", "We love Canada", "Come ride with us". They were the highlight of our day and we of theirs!  Random, unexpected acts of kindness!

My Latest Eye Surgery

The eye procedure went OK. There was no pain but it was very uncomfortable. They numbed both eyes and attached a large glass/plastic lens to the eyeball with grease and then fired 40 laser blasts into each eye. The purpose was to create bubbles in the fluid that, when they went out through the drain gland, would stretch it open. That is the theory anyway. I go back in about 8 weeks to see if it worked and if I can stop the glaucoma drops (2 per eye per day. She says she can do the process again if required. I will do it again but will not look forward to it.

I am feeling good today. It knocked the heck out of me yesterday and I slept most of the afternoon/evening. I am back to 99% today!

I have to add that I have never experienced a headache like that. They warned me and suggested I bring some Tylenol's but I forgot. The throbber lasted several hours and was the main reason I went to sleep.

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A Long Weekend - What To Do

My first thought was to drive down to Shawnigan to visit my son but I have eye surgery Tuesday morning and want to be rested up so this is probably not that great an idea. Hockey is over, for me anyway as I am a Canucks fan rather than a hockey fan and they are now out of it.

I have been putting off cleaning out and organizing the workshop for months - no, scratch that - years - and this is a good time. It requires dry weather so I can stack "stuff" outside while I organize inside. Right now I can't even find the workbench let alone work on it and the floor area is taken mostly up by the pads for the outdoor furniture that would better be stored under the porch. My two table saws have been shoved right up against the wall and are unusable there. I have a few hours work ahead of me. And the house needs vacuuming. It is 1:30 and there is a Blue Jays game at 4:00 so maybe vacuum today and do the workshop tomorrow! A man with a plan!

The Easy Way!

So do I do this the smart, safe, hard way or the dumb, dangerous, easy way?

The motorhome has been parked for almost a year. I have full hookups but the sewer connection is about 25 feet away and my hose does not reach. The motorhome has been used as a spare bedroom a couple of times over the year. The safe way to empty the holding tank is to disconnect the power and water and back the rig off the leveling boards ten or fifteen feet, run the hose and dump. Then I have to move forward, re-level and reconnect the water and power. This is also the hard way.

The dumb, dangerous, easy way is to shove a five gallon bucket under the sewer drain, pull the lever and hope for the best. Well you don't even have to ask. I did it the dumb, dangerous, easy way! There was about four gallons of crap in the tank (the gray water drains onto the driveway) so it didn't even fill the bucket! I carried it to the dump, flushed the tank with a few gallons of bleachy water and went in to wash my hands and watch the Blue Jays. Job Done!

My Eyes

How are my eyes doing? Well that is a long story. The cataract operation left debris in my eyeball that has to be repaired by being zapped with a laser. There is also a film that has grown over the new lens (not unusual following a lens replacement) that also has to be removed by laser. He also noticed that my glaucoma has worsened despite my faithfully using drops for many years so he referred me to a glaucoma specialist whom I teleconferenced with this morning and whom I am meeting at the Comox hospital on September 8th when she is doing a different laser procedure to open the fluid drain duct in my eye. All of this is on my left eye, the right is yet to come but I am not letting them touch it until I and everyone else is happy with the left eye!

What I am having is a Selective Laser Trabeculoplasty (SLT), which she described as: "Your eyeball is like a sink, full of fluid which enters by a tap and leaves via a drain. It the tap and drain get out of sync then the eye can overfill and pressure builds up. The drops you have been taking are designed to slow the tap but what I am going to be doing with my laser is opening the drain and if the first process does not open it enough I will do it again. You may or may not continue to require the drops after". She is only doing the left eye even though I have glaucoma in both eyes. It is a "wait and see what happens before we guess about what will happen next. She reminded me that everything is at no cost to me, it is all covered by Canada's medical system.

So now you know as much as I know.