Morning

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The sun came blasting at whatever time it chose to rise each morning. But that was fine. Hospital activity was concentrated in the morning. Residents would come by and check on me before their surgery or whatever they did all day. The physical therapist would make me take a walk. I would just be happy to have made it through the night.

Dawn

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I spent the better part of the weekend after Feb 12th 2010 unconscious. Valentine’s Day involved me in a recovery room and Carrie showing up in red. (This year it involved special valentine’s tacos with pineapple salsa, but like idiots we figured Whole Foods wouldn’t be crowded and we could just stop by after work). By the 17th I was getting my wits about me.

This is the first thing I’d see every morning upon waking up and I don’t have the exact date on the photo, but this is the view out of my room, taken by me probably around 6am. The Montreal General is not a pretty hospital. To the contrary, it’s in need of some serious infrastructure. But the real estate is prime and the view from my room was simply astounding, as was the view from the lounges.

I would ask that as these pictures appear to please separate in your mind the quality of care from the condition of the room. I do think Quebec ought to put a little more into the quality of spaces patients and their families inhabit, but as I wrote last year, we quickly got used to the room, just as I once got used to living in dorms.

Also, I’m a WordPress idiot

I keep somehow accidentally turning off comments (the “user must be registered and logged in to comment” box keeps getting checked). Maybe this is a default reset every time I update WordPress? Anyway, comments are back on and I’ll try and keep them on.

Montrealia?

Okay, it’s not in French and it’s not Quebec-specific. And yet, scenes from the new show Portlandia do remind me of Montreal.

–You can go to clown school. Check.
–Where young people go to retire. Check.
–Obsession with where food came from. Check.
–High hipster quotient. Check.

We spent just over 24 hours in Portland last week and it does seem like a great place in that Pacific-northwesty-way. The disparities of wealth are definitely on display, as the nice independent record store (and Powell’s!) is very close to a youth center and lots of homeless people are around. Also, very Montrealish.

Shhh!

It turns out that sabbatical is not all that conducive to blogging. I’d left Montreal assuming I’d get so much done with all this time on my hands, and I’d be recounting all sorts of exciting things that have been happening in California, finishing the book in no time flat, undertaking several music projects and traveling up and down the coast every weekend. It may have been a little unrealistic. (I need to do a better job of imagining myself as a person with limits.)

Instead, I’m just having all sorts of stuff happen in California. I’m currently making a Very Big Push to get a revised mp3 manuscript out the door and hope to have a fully revised version by the time my mom visits in mid-Feburary. It’ll require logging some extra hours above my no-more-than-40-a-week rule, but my last big conceptual challenge is close to being dealt with (though I am currently crowdsourcing a coinage which is a bigger-than-anticipated hurdle) and then it’s just a matter of doing what I’m told and cleaning up prose. Or so I think. It’ll still take tons of time, I’m sure.

I am feeling better than I was in the fall, and it’s amazing how productive I can be when I’m not hypothyroid. More than once this term, I’ve worked all day, gone swimming, come home and made dinner, and then got inspired to make music for an hour or two before watching TV and cashing in for the night. That would have been physically impossible for me in the fall. Now, it’s possible my thyroid medication is in fact overcompensated, but that is an issue I’ll deal with after the next blood test. I wouldn’t want it to be fixed too much the other way.

I also would love to tell you about the Center, which is a truly amazing place, and some of our adventures in California thus far, and get into some serious US-Canada comparison. For now, let me just say that mail order is SO MUCH BETTER here. It’s kind of dangerously easy to order stuff for not much money. The entire US appears to work like the app store. All that may happen in due time. But this weekend we are gone to Oregon, where I give two talk and then we spend a day in Portland.