Is that a bird or a fish?

Yesterday my spouse and I were going around Stanley Park on the Seawall when we saw things jumping out of the water just to the east of the Lions Gate Bridge. It looked a bit like white birds fishing, but after looking closely for a couple of minutes... it looked like fish! Yes! It's fish jumping out of the water!

We've never seen fish jumping out of the water! So a googling was called for.

I think those exuberantly jumping fish were Coho Salmon! From the scientific sites my googling found, it seems they are spawning right now, and the Burrard Inlet is one of the places where they do that!

I've seen films of salmon jumping out of the water to get up rocky streams, but the Burrard Inlet is a deep body of water. A cruise ship on its way up to Alaska went out of the inlet shortly after we saw the fish jumping in the same place. So there are no rocks for them to jump over out there. Are they just so jazzed to be going upstream that they are jumping happy? Are they trying to get rid of parasites that started letting go once the fresh water started hitting them? I've heard this is one of the reasons why whales breach (jump out of the water) - to get rid of unwanted parasites clinging to them.

It was a really cool thing to witness, fish jumping out of the water so close to where we live in a big city!

Ever had to sneeze whilst yawning?

I didn't think it was possible. Last night, after finishing a very long book, I was settling down to sleep. Without really knowing it, I was yawning a big yawn... and then I sneezed!

I didn't know that it was possible to sneeze whilst yawning.

It was very, very loud. My spouse was worried something had exploded. And the giggling afterwards while I got up to get a kleenex was confusing for him.

Surprise attack sneezes seem to be plaguing me!

Are those self-flushing toilets or sea monsters?

I pondered the sanity of self-flushing toilets on boats before now... see this blog post. I'm now wondering if this is more than just an awkward situation.

I think there is at least one child who thinks there are sea monsters in the washrooms on BC Ferries boats.

Whenever you step into a washroom stall, the auto-flush goes off, and you are lucky if it goes off only another 2 times before you are done in the stall. The sucking and popping noises of these toilets are extremely loud. At the beginning of the sailing the washrooms are very busy and many of these toilets go off at once, making it even louder. You can hear the sucking and popping noises from well outside the washrooms.

I was unfortunately in the stall next to a woman and a child. They were not speaking English, but it was clear that the woman kept crying out "it's automatic" and trying to calm the child. Since the toilets go off when they sense movement, it was a non-stop popping festival.

I'm afraid that child will have bad dreams for years! The sea monsters aboard the ship may turn her off boats for life. And being terrified of toilets is not a good thing for a child's normal development!

I really hope the BC Ferries people re-think the self-flushing toilets decision.

Did I really want to see actors' faces that close up?

Star Trek on an IMAX screen! Sounds fabulous, and it was, but did I really want to see pores the size of my head?

We were in Victoria last weekend. The museum was showing a display of things from the British Museum (what they acquired and aren't going to give back) from all over the world. It was a sparse, but interesting display of everything from replica rocks from the Olduvai Gorge to modern pieces made within the last couple of years specifically for the museum. But as we were buying tickets to get into the museum, they mentioned that they were showing Star Trek on the IMAX screen... well, that's a goer, so we got tickets for that for a couple of days later.

The movie was sold out, so it was good I had my loaner wheelchair - they reserved a seat for my spouse right beside the spot for me - it was close to the screen, but isn't everything in an IMAX theatre?

The screen in an IMAX theatre is 6 storeys tall. In most movies there are some very close close-ups on many of the actors. They all appear to have lovely skin from afar, but it's not nearly as complimentary when their noses are 2 storeys tall.

I would not enjoy the pressure that a makeup artist must face if they realize how close everyone will be to their art.

It actually produced some interesting dreams that night! I dreamt that I was growing the black hair from the villain's eyebrows on my knuckles. I don't have hair on my knuckles, so I also wondered who had pasted the hair onto my hands... and when questions of reality hit a dream, it wakes you up, but it's easy to remember those dreams afterwards!

I think I can get over it... but I think I could have lived a full, happy life without ever seeing actors' faces that close up.

Is that a really big bug?

A high pitched whine starts up outside our apartment.

It goes on and on.

It goes on and on during the day. For many days.

It does stop at about 4pm each day. But it's been happening for a couple of weeks now.

So is there a nest of really big bugs out there? Are we facing an invasion of giant wasps? Is one of these apartment buildings really a giant wasps' nest? Or is it a bunch of 2-storey tall hummingbirds at a really big bird feeder? Where do they find enough food? Do we have monster flowers growing out there too?

Investigations into this bug invasion have resulted in a discovery of... wait for it... construction. Yes, more construction. After 3 years of construction workers going up and down the outside of our apartment building... they've now started on our neighbours' building. It's a plague of construction, and the next building over has caught the disease. It too is a 30+ storey apartment building, a bit older than this one, with a lot of windows. They are removing and replacing the bits around the outsides of the windows. All of the windows.

It's not nearly as bad as having our own building vibrating with the grinding, or as noisy as having the construction workers just on the other side of a pane of glass, so this is not as bad as the last 3 years of construction that we had to live through.

But we were just beginning to enjoy the relative quiet of just a bit of car and pedestrian traffic outside.

It really is a nice place to live, when it's not a construction site. Maybe I'll just think of it as big bugs. I could actually get a picture of a humming bird with my camera if the humming bird was 2 storeys tall...

Do I want to tilt?

Continuing on my journey to configure a wheelchair - make that 2 wheelchairs, one motorized for getting around, one manual for getting exercise - I need to make even more decisions.

I've already decided on the basic chair items for the motorized wheelchair I am configuring for purchase. I want the swing out leg supports, the TDX SP super-duper wheel motion that can go over all the bumps in the sidewalk pavement (there are many, many bumps in the pavement in Vancouver's West End), the ROHO seat cushion that has a couple dozen little individually inflated pockets in it, and a backrest that can be individually contoured to my back with additions of bits of foam in the right places.

Oh and, I've decided on the chair arm-rests... that's a new item I was introduced to only last week, I hadn't realized there was so many choices.

But now I have the ultimately expensive decision: To tilt or not to tilt, that is the burning question. 

I can still walk short distances, so I'm not in dire need of a chair to get around indoors. Right now I really don't see the point of the tilt. But the ever cheerful saleswoman says that if I don't spend about $4000 now to get the tilt, to retrofit in the future will cost at least $6000. 

Um, yeah, but I still don't see why I would need the tilt.

Some hints from my occupational therapist: if I want to sit in a restaurant in the chair, the tilt would let me reach the table better. I get up and use a normal chair in restaurants, there is usually a place to stow the chair for a while, I've never enjoyed being in packed restaurants that wouldn't have room for that, so that's not something worth $4000 to me.

Some suggestions from a previous wheelchair saleswoman I was tormented by: if you are in the chair for a long time - like all day - it's nice to tilt back and rebalance your weight for a while. She was pregnant, and enjoying this aspect of the chair while taking it away from me so I couldn't try it out for myself. (She gave up my case to the other saleswoman when I asked my occupational therapist if there was another sales company we could deal with.) Again, I'm not planning to be in the chair for hours upon hours.

So what about in 4 or 5 years from now? Yes, exactly. What will happen in 4 or 5 years -> no one on the planet knows what will happen to me in 4 or 5 years. MS is so specific to the individual human that is afflicted with it, no one knows where the disease will take me. I may be running and jogging in 4 or 5 years. I may be paralyzed in 4 or 5 years. Or anything in between those 2 extremes.

I have finally, after much googling, found information on why tilt is a good thing. It's to relieve pressure points from sitting in one position for too long! See http://www.wheelchairjunkie.com/tiltandrecline.html 

I'm not planning to spend hours sitting in a wheelchair day after day, but maybe my desk chair that I use every day needs a tilt stick and motor. Or maybe I need to get up at least every 2 hours for a stretch, like I already do on a regular basis. 

I'm thinking I will forego the tilt option on the wheelchair.

What's wrong with my screen?

On Saturday my husband and I went to a movie to get out of the heat for a while. We saw Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs in 3D. 

I love the 3D movies. We took my trial motorized wheelchair, and the area for wheelchairs is off to the side in the theatre, so the 3D didn't work as well, but it was fun anyway. The movie was about as scientifically accurate as The Flintstones, an old TV program from my youth, so you had to leave any ideas of reality at the door, but it was meant to be a kid's movie.

My trial wheelchair has a screen with a display of the chosen speed on it. It's a grey and black screen. I kept the wheelchair on while waiting for my husband to arrive with the popcorn, so I could do some final maneuvering after he sat down. Some of the previews were for 3D movies, so they said put your 3D glasses on, and I did. The previews were fun too!

When my husband sat down, I looked down at the screen of my wheelchair to check it was on and do my final maneuver, the screen looked way out of focus! I was worried... for a second or so.

Tee Hee, the screen on motorized wheelchairs can't be read while you're wearing 3D glasses!

The things you learn when you try something new!