Category Archives: Experiences

OLT play – The Ladies Foursome

The PolyBlog
October 8 2019

My wife and I have invested heavily in shows for the coming 2019-20 show across multiple venues. For Ottawa Little Theatre, they have nine shows planned for the season, and if we hadn’t went with lots of shows elsewhere, I’d probably have signed up for 5 or 6 of them. Instead, we held ourselves to just two. The first was from Norm Foster, a sequel to a previous golf one called The Foursome which we saw back in ’07. 

Generally, we love Norm Foster comedies. Some funny, some farcical, almost always enjoyable, and most of the castings and shows have worked. He’s probably my second favorite playwright after Dan Needles who created The Letter from Wingfield Farm and six sequels, and my favorite general playwright. I was just looking at his website and he has 52 plays listed. Holy doodle, I had no idea there were that many.

We saw the original show, The Foursome, about four college buddies coming home for a reunion and a round of golf. It was an interesting setup, as the show takes place in front of a backdrop of 18 holes on a golf course as they talk while getting ready to tee off. In effect, it means 18+ scenes. It was funny, I quite enjoyed it, and when it was over, I promptly forgot most of the details. I remember generally that there were old grudges and jealousies about current levels of success, or apparent success, but not the details. But it was positive overall, and when the Ladies Foursome came up as a sequel, it seemed like a no-brainer to get it. We have also liked The Long Weekend (two couples together, 2011), Maggie’s Getting Married (older sister meets groom, only to realize she knows him biblically, 2005), Ned Durango Comes to Big Oak (aging cowboy star in small town, 2004), and Here on the Flight Path (a man gets to know 3 consecutive neighbours on an adjoining balcony, 2003). 

So we like OLT. We like Norm Foster. We like the original Foursome. Should be a no-brainer that we’ll like The Ladies Foursome so it made my list immediately to see. And it crashed.

The quick summary of the show is that every week for 15ish years, four women have played a round of golf together. Except one has died, and the play takes place the day after the funeral. The three surviving members have invited a woman they met at the funeral to join them in her place. And like the Foursome, the Ladies Foursome talks about anything and everything except golf, which is the draw for people who don’t play golf. Golf is just the plot device to get them together. 

The opening bit is two of the women showing up, and starting to talk. Tate is feeling her mortality, and wondering what she’s accomplished in her life. Her friend reassures her that her life isn’t a failure, including mentioning that she has two beautiful children. To which she replies, “I have three children”. She did say “beautiful” children though. The other surviving member shows up, joins the conversation and tells her that she has two beautiful children. Repetition for the laugh. And while it doesn’t ring funny as I’ve explained it here, it is a standard playwright technique that Foster uses well, with callbacks to earlier lines, and it works. For now.

But afterwards, when we didn’t really enjoy the show, I started to wonder what went wrong? What was different?

Well, first of all, there are 20 scenes — 18 holes, plus the 19th hole, plus a little goodbye in the parking lot. That makes for a LOT of transitions and interruptions to the flow. It worked fine for The Foursome, but it was dragging for The Ladies Foursome.

The callbacks also started to grate. There was constant refs to her 2 beautiful children plus her son with the lazy eye as being not beautiful. Separate from just being non-PC or mean, the joke started to wear thin about the fourth call back. It was funny for two lines at the start, and then they flogged it to death. Similarly, there is a revelation that the guest who joins the trio is a gambling addict, and while her trying to make bets with them added some tension, it ultimately went nowhere, it ended up not being much of anything. In or out of the story, it made no difference to the outcome. Which then grated when they referred to it repeatedly long after the realization it wasn’t going to be relevant.

So these were technical, story problems, as the writing wasn’t up to normal standards. But I have to say, I think the cast failed the play too. We saw the second last performance, and by that point, most casts have the show down cold. While lots of people love the excitement of opening night, seeing it near the end of a short run means that timings are better, the cast will rarely miss a line, and if anything wasn’t working, it’s been tweaked. Even though it’s amateur theatre, they are usually nailing it near the end. In a long run, they might get tired, but on three weeks, they’re usually able to pull it off.

In this case, three of the characters flubbed multiple lines. I suspect some of that was technical — there is no real scene change for them from scene to scene, plus they’re really short, with no flow between them (i.e. some could be told out of order with no change in outcome). In other cases, they talked over each other’s lines. 

Yet they also seemed to put emphases in areas where they shouldn’t have been. When they note that Dory, the guest, didn’t know that the deceased had won the lottery a few years before and thus didn’t know EVERYTHING about the dearly departed, the others had a sinister hook to it wondering what she’s up to, and when the gambling is introduced, BADLY as a throw-away line with no meat to it, you’re made to think THAT’s the link. Nope. There isn’t one. But more importantly, two of the characters delay leaving the scene so they can talk privately, and one asks the other, “What does she know? Do you think our friend told her everything? Does she know what we DID?”. Dun dun dun. There’s a hidden secret, a plot development to come that adds some tension. Except it isn’t. The hook is supposed to be what she knows and how deeply about them. But because the cast member emphasized “DID” over “everything”, we all were waiting for the big secret. Did they kill somebody? Rig a lottery? What did they DO? Nothing. They did nothing. And I heard other audience members asking the same head-scratcher as they left, “Wait, what about…”.

I may be a bit biased, as the fourth member of the cast is someone we know, but I felt she did the best job with what she had. I felt a couple of the scenes could have been better, but more better written than better delivered. And as Dory, she has the role of Fifth Business — important information to reveal at the end. Which she does.

Leaving most people in the audience scratching their heads. It is 2019, and spoiler alert, a character being gay isn’t enough to get fired from her teaching job. If they had added a wrinkle of it being the ’80s or if it was a Catholic School Board, SOMETHING, or that Dory herself had been a distant Brokeback Mountain-style lover undercover, there would have been SOMETHING. Or add an estranged husband that was basically a beard. Instead, the revelation just fell flat. And honestly, considering everything else that was shared between the four, it’s hard to believe that the big supportive emotionally available departed friend never shared ANYTHING with any of the other three. She even had a partner she was seeing. Really? Everything you learn about the woman who died does NOT equate to her keeping her sexuality a secret. It just doesn’t seem to fit.

So we were disappointed overall. I think there’s a good story buried in there somewhere, but it drastically needs an editor and a better cast to deliver.

Sometimes the universe shouts, I just don’t know what it’s saying

The PolyBlog
May 9 2019

Today is a shitty day for me, and I’m going to blog anyway. Because sometimes I hide the darkness and I just don’t care enough today to do that. The trigger that you’ll see for this is annoying. Maybe semi-significant, maybe not. But it has started a cascade and a spiral, one that I will not survive unscathed.

Ostensibly, this is only about my astronomy hobby, but it’s really not. I have struggled mightily with my hobby and the universe keeps kicking me in the teeth. I keep fighting my way through, hoping to break through to the other side of the veil that has been holding me back. But the universe keeps responding, telling me no.

When I was a kid, I was interested in the stars, and my parents got me a telescope. That was the mid-70s, and like most parents who don’t know about these things, they got me a simple one, handheld, from Sears or Canadian Tire. I’m sure they thought it was a good one. But anyone in astronomy knows that these things killed more interest than they sparked. They were telescopes designed for basic land use, almost impossible to steady for kids, and even if you did steady it, you wouldn’t see much other than the moon. If you were lucky. Tons of people got these things and tons of people lost interest. I did.

Fast-forward a number of years. Still interested, but not doing much about it. A friend took me out for a night to see a conjunction, but he has a complicated setup, and I just about gave up again. Too hard, too slow, too complicated.

Then when my mother died, and I got some inheritance money, I decided I would look into it a bit more, see if there were “easier” scopes. There were. A computerized GOTO scope that would allow me to set up, point at any three stars, and the computer would handle the rest. Great idea. I invested in the scope, the right scope for me, and thought I was making progress.

The universe pushed back. While 90% of the scopes in this model work great out of the box, I struggled with mine. One night, doing a sky tour, it went to zenith position (straight up) and the back of the scope hit the mount and ground the gears. I’d had it working for less than 3 months, and it was then gone for 2 months for repair.

Even after that, it took me five years of struggles, giving up here and there, trying again, giving up, trying again, and finally getting advanced help to figure out that it was an alignment issue. It wasn’t my eyes, it wasn’t my scope quality, it was the process I was doing combined with a computer problem. Fixed it, all excited leaving the guy’s house, pulled out on the road, and my tablet reminded me I had left it on the roof by flying off and tumbling along the road. $400 to fix. I destroyed it again 2 weeks later, paying $400 again. Again, the universe speaking to me, perhaps.

I thought maybe I could get a bit of momentum last year using my smartphone to take some basic astrophotography shots. I am not interested in the big long exposures with DSLRs, tons of processing time, high-end equipment, etc. Just some basics. Baby steps. Maybe someday I’ll do something more, I thought. But let me start with basic stuff.

I bought a simple adapter for my smartphone, gave it a go, no real luck. Upgraded the software, tried again. Struggled, again. Upgraded to a great adapter, practically foolproof. Found out that my phone was too old, too limited for what I was trying to do. Most people have iPhones that were outpacing everything, but I had an old Samsung. I borrowed Andrea’s iPhone 6 Plus and actually managed to get SOMETHING, although not awesome. But it was also her phone, and not a viable solution.

Took a break, figured at some point I would upgrade my phone and get the iPhone. Went back to visual observing only. And had a series of crappy nights for weather and struggled with maintaining my alignment. Not as bad as it had been, partly as I knew more about what I was doing, but still not inspiring. More like slogwork than an enjoyable hobby.

At New Year’s, I upgraded my phone and got a great iPhone XS Max. Should work great with the tools I have. Night Cap software, check. Best adapter on the market, check. Large light bucket telescope, check. There’s a guy out in Stittsville with the same setup doing amazing things; a guy on FB that I interact with who has basic setup doing amazing things. I gave it a go two weeks ago and couldn’t even get a single decent shot. This was my “momentum” builder idea. Get some shots, blog about stuff, learn as I write, stay interested. Hell, I volunteer with the local organization just so I have a reason not to flake out on the hobby.

So, yes, I’ve been struggling to keep interested. Keep working at it. Then, a seeming breakthrough. I went out on Sunday night and everything worked. I did a full star tour for the night sky, 100+ objects, alignment held well enough to see everything. I saw Mars. I saw Jupiter. I saw the Great Red Spot on Jupiter for the first time. Best night of viewing ever.

Then I screwed up. I forgot that the universe doesn’t seem to want me doing this hobby. I got happy and the universe apparently doesn’t like me happy. I got cocky and shared the news, partly to offset the less positive stories I have shared in the past about my astronomy hobby. Worse than that, I got hopeful, and that never ends well.

Last night, the sky was clear, and I was still feeling cocky, so I decided to set up in the back yard and see if I could image the moon or a couple of stars. Figure out the workflow. Went to the garage, got my scope and a portable grocery bin that I keep some basic stuff in (filters, etc.). Went back and got my full scope box. And I was there. Two trips, seemed like I finally had this “down” for my process for setting up even. Great work, Paul, I thought. Okay, let’s do a quick look at the moon, let Jacob see it too, and then he could have his bath, I’d go pick up Andrea, hopefully, the clouds would hold off, and I’d spend an hour on the imaging workflow. And the moon was a small crescent, an interesting target.

Let’s see, where did I put my eye-pieces? Huh. I didn’t bring them out. No wonder it only took me two trips. I forgot a box. Wait. How did I forget them? I just took the last box out of my astronomy cupboard with my scope in it, and the EP case wasn’t there. That’s weird. Maybe it’s on the floor.

Raced back to the garage. Not in the cupboard. Not on the floor. Not on the shelves by the cupboard. Not in the secondary cupboard. Not anywhere in the garage. Not by the front door. Not in the car still. Not anywhere.

Gone.

About $2K worth of eyepieces. Although it isn’t really about the cost. We have insurance, with a deductible of some sort, don’t remember right now.

And I don’t know if I somehow left them at the observing site (I checked, not there, and emailed a few people who could have seen them with no luck) or they were stolen from my garage (the door was open on the garage for a while on Monday or Tuesday night). It doesn’t really matter.

What matters is that the universe has spoken again. I keep struggling to get some momentum going, and it constantly feels like two steps forward and three steps back.

And if this was limited to just my astronomy hobby, I would find a way to roll with it. But it doesn’t feel like just astronomy.

Those who know me, know that I am huge on goal-setting, trying to make progress on lots of things. Like my 50by50 project for my 50th birthday. Not too many “bucket list” items on there, more small things. Baby steps. Things I can realistically achieve, to be honest.

One of my goal themes is health, fitness and cooking.

I cannot get momentum on my weight loss. I’m yoyoing on my weight, creeping slowly back to where I started, having gained 10 pounds back. The mental energy to keep focused is wearing me down like crazy. I took a break when I was overwhelmed, and I am struggling to muster any interest or energy to embrace anything else.

I bought a fitness gym, great idea, except it requires me to completely reorganize the basement. Dominoes that have to fall to get to the domino I want, and it’s just slogwork. And no guarantees of any success when I’m done. Maybe I’ll just flake out on it, maybe I’ll find it too hard. Or I’ll hurt myself and be unable to do it. The universe has many voices.

On the cooking front, I thought perhaps doing HelloFresh would help with stuff. Pre-organized meals. But mostly it has just meant a lot more work. Andrea is doing about the same, maybe more, and our prep time is way longer, even if we are doing more things together. Yet it still feels overwhelming, but without much in the way of “wow” improvements. Not sure it is worth it.

For the family / home / reading front, it’s a mixed bag of outcomes, partly because “outcome” doesn’t really apply to relationships. With Jacob, I keep trying to find things we can do together other than video games. Something that will spark a mutual interest. I was so excited for him to start the new school this year with the extra clubs — chess, math, coding. And none of those have worked out for him really. He did the math contests, throwaway days, nothing sustainable in his eyes. And one of his friends is being bullied, without much in the way of success to do anything about it. I’ve even spoken to the principal about it. J is hating school these days and about all we have to offer is that the summer is coming. Last year, we got him a remote control car, and I thought that would be awesome for him. A drone for me kind of fizzled, I need a much larger open space to find a way to control it easily, but I thought the car would be great. Got it going in Peterborough, worked well for about 20 minutes, and then it crashed and broke. I’ve got all the new parts but haven’t had the energy to hope it will work well for him after the first crushing failure. It was fun, and then just a disappointment for him. The universe is a sick fuck sometimes. I can deal when it kicks me, but when it kicks him, it is soul-crushing.

For the home side, there’s tons of stuff we should be doing, none of it ends well for me with home projects doing it myself. I’m good at writing cheques. That’s about it.

For the reading front, I started a Reading Challenge this year, and while there was initial interest from people, not many seem to be doing it, which is fine. I’m still doing it for myself, which was the original goal. And I wanted to use it as a prompt to purge some books too. Except after boxing up a bunch of boxes, I realized that there were two other dominoes that needed to fall before I could purge them, one of which has taken some time to figure out, and so they sit in the living room. Mocking me daily.

On the third theme, Finances / Organize / Activities, I was really hoping to do some retirement planning stuff. Except we need our benefits statements from the government, and all that stuff is screwed up by Phoenix. Hard to do planning without the data. Part of my interest is that I got excited last year about retirement, but then the universe nudged me on a couple of financial things, and I realized that my excitement is probably premature. There’s a small glimmer that I’ll be able to go in 7 years, but I suspect it is probably more like 12. On the organizational front, there are a ton of dominoes, and I have no interest in any of them. Just on my list. Too many other energy-sucking projects. Similarly for some of my activities, like trying to knit something, or going for axe-throwing. I just don’t have the energy to work on it.

Learning / Photography / Astronomy is my fourth theme, and we all know how well the astronomy stuff is going. On the Learning front, I forced myself to do some work on a course called Metaliteracy. Interesting, but in order to finish it, other people have to mark your assignments — it’s kind of like a group learning experience. Except if there aren’t enough people doing it, your assignment doesn’t get marked, and you kind of sit there stalled, waiting for someone to review your stuff. Which finally happened, but after I did weeks 1-4, out of ten in total, I kind of lost interest while waiting for the other inputs. It’s like the worst part of group assignments in regular school, added to a MOOC. I hate it, even if I want to finish the class.

On the photography front, I did a course at Henry’s, learned a lot, and a month after it was over, I’d forgotten just about all of it. I just can’t retain the process and workflow techniques. I understand the concepts, but the mechanics of applying the technique to a situation is lost to me as soon as the class is over. I’m doing an online video one now, and it’s the third time I’m trying to learn it. Maybe it will stick this time, but I’m not hopeful. Maybe this is just another hobby the universe doesn’t want me dabbling in. I’ve had similar experiences with origami. I love it, but I can’t remember the folds as soon as the diagram goes away.

I am not sure what to even say about my website. I write, I post, the abyss beckons. I wish I knew how to better engage people for comments. My hit count is up, but mostly it is dine-and-dash viewers. Whatever, it is still mainly for me. But the universe hasn’t fucked with me on it for a while, so I’m probably due.

I was hoping to finish my HR guide, and then found out that I’m going to have to have it reviewed by the Conflict of Interest people, with the likely outcome that I can maybe, possibly, give it away, but I likely, definitely can’t sell it as a book if I’m ever going to run a competition again. At least not while working for the government. Kind of kills any desire to keep writing.

On the work front, I had a great job, a good work-life balance, and I wanted a change after nine years. So I took one, ended up with a terrible management situation. Then I moved to what looked like an ideal outcome, everything I wanted, only for the project to accomplish almost nothing, and the subsequent work arrangement moved from working with three people I wanted to work with to instead one of them leaving, one of them retiring, and the job changing drastically to something I have done before and hoped not to do again. It’s not horrible, it’s just not great.

And yet I can’t help wondering if that is what the universe is trying to tell me. That “okay” should be the benchmark I aim for. I sure as hell can’t shoot for the stars, literally or figuratively.

The universe is trying to tell me something, shouting as loud as it can, and I am apparently too deaf or too stupid to know what it is telling me. And the frustration leads to anger, the anger to the dark side of the Force. Which right now feels about right. I want to grip the universe’s throat and choke the living shit out of it, just to see it squirm in fear. I just don’t have the energy to bother to think it would change anything.

♫ I’ve got radioactive blood ♫

The PolyBlog
March 7 2019

Two weeks ago, I was on my way to work after a quick appointment in the morning, nothing special, mostly administrative. I got to work, parked the car in the lower underground lot, grabbed my bag from the trunk, and started off up the stairs. Four half-flights up the stairs, I’m on the lowest level of the building and I notice as I’m getting close to the elevator that my chest is hurting a bit. 

I hesitated to call it chest pain, because it was more like indigestion, centred right on my sternum and unusual. I don’t normally have anything like that. Hmm…got up to my desk, sat down, did some stuff, it went away. I had been having some challenges with my back the previous few weeks, and I knew I had at least a rib or two out, so maybe it was just positional I thought. No big deal, I guess, it went away. And it wasn’t like it was really painful, maybe a 2 on a scale of 1-10. More than simply “there”, but not causing me great discomfort. And, like I said, it went away.

About 45 minutes later, I needed to talk to a few people, so I started wandering around the building. Ten minutes later, the pain was back. Steady. As long as I was moving, it was there. WTF?

My heart SHOULD have been fine

If you’ve read my blog in recent months, you know I tried to do a treadmill stress test back in September (#50by50ish #36 – A stress test with a side of manscaping) without much initial success, partly as I’m a slug, and partly because they didn’t tell me to stop my amlodipine (calcium-based drugs are bad apparently). I did a follow up test, an ultrasound stress test (aka a stress-echocardiogram) where they give you a drug to jack your heart rate while they take an ultrasound at rest and then again while you’re feeling like a jackrabbit.

Here’s the way it worked. I arrived at the hospital, got registered, wandered down to the unit, got settled in a bed, and they gave me an IV. To ensure they got good pics, they used a contrasting agent called Definity. This is a WEIRD feeling drug. I felt it go up through my arm, enter at the base of my skull and then in a one- to two-second timeline, cascade up the back of my head, over the top and around to the front. Picture putting a tight-fitting hoodie on, and have it lightly tickle your neck, back of your head, top of your head and then front lobes as it goes over top. It’s weird. Then they gave me a drug called dobutamine to make me heart beat faster and see if anything isn’t working somewhere (blockages, etc.). In addition to the imaging, they hooked me up to a monitor and measured heart rates all over my body (check, arms, ankles, etc.). When the dobutamine got going, my heart went up to something like 175 bpm. I felt like I was both vibrating and my entire body was twitching. Not the best of feelings, but it was okay. I couldn’t quite get to the desired level, so they added something like atropine to get me the rest of the way. I lay on my side, the ultrasound paparazzi did their thing, and then they killed the drug to bring me back to normal.

I was doing the test as a preventative to make sure everything was great before starting an active exercise routine, part of a long overdue physical and movement toward addressing my weight and diabetes. The result of the test? My heart was fine. No issues, go do whatever I wanted.

That was in November, this was only February. So why was I getting chest pains from basic exertion? Grrr…

Emergency room 101

After about 90 minutes from the first symptoms down in the parking lot, I decided I would head over to the emergency room at the hospital. Like the ads say, every second counts for protecting deteriorating heart muscle, and while the pain wasn’t acute, it was steady. Plus I have a family history, weight, recent diabetes diagnosis, sleep apnea, and blood pressure issues (albeit corrected to normal with medicine). A heart attack is not out of the realm of possibilities.

Did I mention I thought I might be having a heart attack once before? Yep, about 10 years back. My brother had one, which he initially thought was heartburn and then discovered the next morning that no, it was a heart attack. A few weeks later, I got really bad heartburn one night, unlike anything I had had before, and was thinking, “Wow, that’s a bit painful in my chest…hey, wait a minute”. Turned out mine was indeed just reflux, solved with meds.

Anyway, this didn’t feel the same so off I went to the hospital to be sure. I’d rather be safe than a cliché where people later say, “He thought it was just heartburn, so he didn’t go to the hospital…stupid twit, may he rest in peace.” I work in the same building with my wife, so I went to tell her I was going, and she came with me. Probably overkill but I was glad to have her along. I didn’t feel it was serious enough to call an ambulance. As I sat in the car on the way there, the feeling seemed to go away. 

Arrived at the hospital, and chest pains opened the door to the Magic Kingdom pretty readily. One EKG later, plus some blood work, and I was all clear. No signs of a heart attack. They referred me to the Ottawa Heart Institute, the gold standard locally, and gave me a prescription for a baby aspirin a day. I picked up the prescription and started taking it.

I also squeezed in a chiro appointment the next day. Like I said, my back was out of alignment and separate from neck adjustments, he managed to do five full separate adjustments of my ribs and spine. Later that day,  the pain was down to about a 1/10. Did the adjustment help? No idea, but it obviously didn’t hurt (no pun intended).

Time for a PET scan

So I’d had a CAT scan five years ago, and lots of LAB work, why not something with PETs? 🙂

The real name of the scan is Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Myocardial Perfusion Imaging. It is another form of picture taking of my heart, both at rest and with heart rate elevated, but a different imaging technique than the ultrasound. 

The previous test was done while lying on a table with someone working a little hand held ultrasound over my heart. This one was a little more formal and elaborate.

First, you lie on a table with your hands above your head. I thought from one of the pictures they showed that there would be some sort of strap there to hold on to, but no, you just hold them there. They give you some blankets and pillows to help prop them in position, but you need to basically hold them there for 30-45 minutes. 

Second, they raise the table and run it into a little tube about two feet deep. This is the camera, and unlike CAT scans or MRIs, it is only wide enough to basically take a picture of your upper torso. Your head and arms stick out the one side, your lower body out the other.

Third, they give you a “radioactive tracer” i.e. a drug that makes your blood radioactive so the camera can detect the radiation being released. In effect, it works like the contrast agent in the first test. Except the previous contrast agent made me feel wonky with the drug-induced hoody, this drug did nothing noticeable to me.

Fourth, after finishing the “at rest” images, they give me a drug to boost my heart. I assumed it was like the first time, the dobutamine, but no, this one is much less aggressive. Instead of taking my heart rate into the stratosphere, they gave me something called persantine / dipyridamole to take my heart rate up 20-30 bpm above normal. Hardly noticeable.

To be clear, the increased heart rate wasn’t noticeable; the drug certainly was though. They warned me, when it was going in, that it would need to be in my blood for about 4-6 minutes, and then they would give me the “antidote”. The fact that it required an antidote was a good indicator it wouldn’t be pleasant. You know that lovely medicine taste you sometimes get in your mouth with anesthetic? This was similar except I could taste it ALL THROUGH MY BODY and it made every square inch feel like it was nauseated. Like my toes were debating whether they should throw up. It is a CRAPPY, CRAPPY feeling. That lasts, as I said, about 4-6 minutes, then they give you the antidote called aminophylline to counteract it, and the nausea goes away. Not completely, you still feel as if you had been sick, and now you’re not sure you are completely done yet.

Fifth, once you’re back to resting heart rate, they take a few more pics, and you’re done.

Near the end, my right bicep was SCREAMING to MOVE, but, of course, you have to stay still. Then when we were done, they moved the bed back out of the scanner, I could put my shirt back on, and wait in the waiting room until my IV wound stopped bleeding. I’m not joking, the instructions for everyone were, “Sit over there until you stop bleeding.” 

I stopped bleeding, but I didn’t leave immediately. I had been a bit slow to get up off the bed initially, a little light-headed, and I was still feeling a bit off while waiting for the IV wound to close. I was probably still looking a little pale as the tech wandering by stopped to see if I was okay. I was wondering about some food and how my body would react, partly as you can’t eat before the scan, so I hadn’t eaten anything in 14 hours or so, and partly because I was nauseated a bit. He told me to start with something with caffeine as it counteracts the drug really well (and the reason you can’t have anything with caffeine in the 24h before the scan too). One chocolate milk and about five minutes later, and I was right as rain. 

Getting the results

The tech told me the results would be sent to my family doctor, kind of like a “see ya later” kiss-off. I had assumed I would see someone in the Heart Institute for follow up but apparently not, I was to follow up with my family doctor. I did a dance with the office nurse on the phone, he was trying to get permission from the doctor to tell me the results over the phone or to see if the doctor wanted to see me in person. In the meantime, the Heart Institute called. They DID want to see me (and the nurse said she wished the techs would stop telling people to just follow-up with the family doctor). Right, back to the Heart Institute.

I had the chest pains 14 days ago, did the test 10 days ago, and saw the cardiologist this morning, a Dr. H. They re-ran the EKG, no change, and the bottom-line was that my PET scan is normal. Or as he put it, “Why are you here?”.

I ran him through the incident that put me in emergency, and like all good heart specialists or GPs or anyone with an ounce of medical sense, he congratulated me for taking it seriously and going to emergency rather than sitting there thinking it is probably nothing. We also ran through other medical history, family history, blah blah blah, and bottom-line, it’s not my heart. My heart is working great.

His metaphor for the test is that of a faucet. Turn the faucet on half-way, that’s normal heart; turn it on full, that was the heart after exercising. Full blood flow pumping through all the openings. And my heart works the way it is supposed to, it pumps where it is supposed to, no signs of blockages, etc. Like the previous ultrasound test, all clear. 

He asked me about how I had felt since that day. I mentioned the pain was intermittent, sometimes positional, different times of day, etc. I mentioned though that the day before I felt pretty good, and even that morning, I was running a bit late for the appointment (they like you there 15 minutes early, I was only going to be 10 minutes after a parking delay), so I had walked fairly briskly from the garage to the Heart Institute. No pain, it actually felt like a nice little jaunt in the cold morning air.

He said that was practically the definition of proof that it wasn’t the heart. If it had been exercise related heart problems, he said it would ALWAYS do it whenever I exercised. Replicability would be 100%, no exceptions. Of course, he already knew that the test had shown nothing, so easier to say too.

I then asked him about how the test linked to other things like circulation…what if I had a blocked artery somewhere? To go back to his metaphor, he pointed out that if there was a blocked pipe, the heart test would have shown that. If it was seriously narrowed, it likely would have shown too. But general narrowing? No. And he said he would guarantee there was SOME narrowing based on weight, diet, family history, etc.

A few other things were on my mind to see if there was any link, but there wasn’t. None of it heart or circulatory. So he doesn’t need to see me again, unless something happens, in which case I should go back to emergency.

Next steps

In the meantime, I am to go back to my family doctor with three elements:

  1. He recommends I keep taking the baby aspirin, given the other variables at play, so long as my stomach tolerates it;
  2. He wants my doctor and I to keep a focused eye on my cholesterol levels just in case (I’ve never had issues); and,
  3. Explore the likelihood that it is “gut-related”, since it definitely isn’t heart.

This is good news, of course, as dropping from CARDIAC to GASTRO takes a lot of the scariness out of the equation for immediacy and overall risk. Not nothing, and I have to keep taking it seriously, but not OMG HE’S GOING TO DIE TOMORROW!

And the gastro side isn’t news. I take my Prevacid given a long time problem with reflux, plus I’m on Metformin which is notoriously hard on stomachs. I did take Gaviscon a couple of nights when I had recent pain but it didn’t seem to clear it.

In the end, I don’t know what is wrong with me, but I know one more thing that it isn’t.

On the positive side, the test did give me radioactive blood (I even have a letter to give to airport security officials in case I set off any detectors!). I haven’t seen any signs of super powers yet though. I do have the Spider-Man song in my head:

Is he strong? Listen, bud,
He’s got radioactive blood.

Can he swing from a thread?
Take a look overhead

Hey, there
There goes the Spider-Man.

I figure I’m one lightning strike from turning into the Flash, Hulk or Spider-Man. I don’t know if a Hulk tadpole is that great though. I can’t see anyone worrying about me turning into an enraged frog, saying “Poly angry, Poly smash” and then hopping up and down on things. Maybe a baby Avenger movie.

Physically, it’s not as serious as a heart attack. Which was originally the other name for this post — “not as serious as…”. But that is a bit dark even for me, particularly the number of heart attack events just in my immediate family history. Mentally, it’s kind of just throwing another log on the fire.

♫ Is he strong? Listen, bud…♫

Reviewing “An Inspector Calls” (as seen at OLT)

The PolyBlog
April 17 2018

Back in January, as part of our subscription series for the Ottawa Little Theatre, we went to see “An Inspector Calls”, written by J.B. Priestly. I didn’t get around to reviewing it at the time, partly as it didn’t contribute to my “#50by50” series since I’d already counted a play for that, but I kept the playbill lingering around my desk. The play was first performed back in 1946, and set just prior to the First World War.

Much of the play revolves around noblesse oblige of the wealthy and the fate of the working class, and the gap between the two. The cast is made up generally of a family of five people plus an inspector who calls on them while conducting an enquiry into the death of a young woman by the name of Eva Smith. She appears in shadows as a ghost, but has no lines.

It’s near impossible to review the play without spoilers, and so I won’t try. Essentially, as the night unfolds and the family members individually answer the Inspector’s questions, it moves through Eva’s life (although she was known by different names). All of the events were interconnected by happenstance, not design, and no one was aware of it all, even the girl herself. Over the course of the interrogation, you realize the man of the house, a businessman, used to employ her; the daughter ran into her in a shop; the fiancé of the daughter and the son both interacted with her romantically; and the wife/mother met her through charitable work. In essence, they all treated her badly, partly because they could, and when the girl had nothing left, she committed suicide.

While the plot sounds fantastical, it is the Inspector who sells the story. He is imperious when dealing with them all, insisting on treating them as potential criminals to be interrogated, not aristocrats to be handled nicely. The daughter has lots of angst-filled scenes where she debates the role of women, their collective conscience as a society, the plight of the working class, the out-of-touch nature of her parents, the shame of her fiancé having cheated on her. And ultimately her own guilt. Each member of the family initially denies any responsibility, until in the end, the Inspector verbally leads them to indict themselves. It was very well done.

Then there is a twist, where for a short time, all the guilt appears for nought. They are returning to their regular lives and views of the world, until they get one last shock at the end of the night that’s a bit spooky for them. Twilight Zone almost.

The father, Arthur Birling, was played by Roy Van Hooydonk, and he affected an old English-gentlemen-style of pontification that was mildly endearing and easy to watch, although a trifle slow in the delivery. His wife, Sheila, was played by Katherine Williams and the character was difficult to watch. It was hard to tell if it was the actress or the character, but they were both heavily repressed, and there was little emotional resonance in the performance. There was an okay performance for the fiancé Gerald Croft (played by Guy Newsham), with a bit of a sheepish “boys will be boys” vibe, if only the women would understand. He did a decent job of trying to act/feel like a victim in some places. The character of Eric Birling (played by Jamie Hegland) was relatively minor, and consisted mainly of being surly, drunk and/or childish. Nothing much to watch. I found the role of Sybil Birling, the daughter played by Janet Rice, was a bit too much over-the-top for her angst. Emotionally, she was all over the map as both a character and the actress…it was hard to get a read on her, and some of the dialogue for her went on and on as over-moralizing. Subtlety was not part of the script, apparently.

So you might think I didn’t like the play. Instead, it is all made up for because the role of Inspector Goole (ghoul, get it?) was filled expertly by John Collins. Admittedly he flubbed a line or two in the first half, but considering the number he has, that’s not too surprising. But he had awesome presence. Brutal, foreboding, lurking, dark, imperious, harsh. He’d start off soft in some parts, and then rip the individual to shreds in the interrogation. Digging and digging, poking and prodding until they broke and told him everything, which he already seemed to know anyway (but not in a Columbo sort of way, more like supernaturally). He was fantastic to watch.

I checked out the Internet Movie Database to see if there is a movie version, and there are multiple ones over the years. Including an all-Chinese one a few years ago. Same plot, just different names, and a few small tweaks to the setting, but otherwise the same movie.

In the end, the play was enjoyable, if a little bit heavy-handed on the moralizing in some places, but that is more a reflection of the style of dramas written in the mid-century, and particularly so when set at the turn of the century. The “we know better now” can work quite well by making even one character seem more forward-thinking than the time, but that is not the way the play was designed. Goole plays that role to some extent, but is far too dark to be inspiring. Now, if I can only find it in book form…

Two star parties back to back

The PolyBlog
October 24 2017

This past weekend, skies were looking promising and so I planned to do two star parties back to back. Friday night was the first one in Carp, the last RASC star party of the year. I’m not only a member, but I’m also actually serving as the acting star party coordinator. We have marshals though to cover if I’m not actually there, so mainly my job is to send out the notification emails in advance as reminders, and then make the call for the day before or day of the event.

I was a bit later arriving there than I had hoped, not getting there until about 6:30 p.m., so had to set up in the dusk. Long past the sun dropping below the horizon and taking the moon and three or four planets with it. I was wondering if I would be able to see Mars, Jupiter or Venus if I was using my solar filter as they are really close to the sun, but I wasn’t overly hopeful. I never got to try though.

Saturn was still up, so that was good. Turnout was about average, maybe 20+ scopes with the big 25″ from one of the members down at the end. I wandered down around 9:00 p.m. and the line-up was about 25 people long, and apparently was even longer at times.

I had this great idea to use a special list I organized on my tablet as my viewing targets, and it went out the window pretty fast as I didn’t have it set up early enough to avoid blinding people with white light while I got it going. So I did my basic alignment and some star tour stuff, before heading for seeing Saturn. Shortly after I got going, someone wandered over to say they had a new 8SE, same scope as mine, and would I mind coming over and helping him get going as he was having trouble with the red dot finder. Don’t we all?

I felt like it was time to repay some of the help I’ve received from others. Lots of people are reading my blog entries about my alignment problems, often looking for tips and tricks to see what might help them. But within RASC, I’m more often the one asking for help than giving it. It was nice to be able to explain some of the setup steps, how to make it work well the first time, etc. And more importantly, to get the dang red dot finder to align on a red light above the Diefenbunker. One alignment on Mizar and one alignment on Altair later, and he was aligned. First target was Saturn, and it was awesome to hear his excitement in seeing it in HIS scope and to then immediately call over his son who had passed the initial patience point several minutes before (I’ve been there, I recognize it!). They looked at a bunch of stuff for the rest of the night and it sounds like it went well.

Then I lost my scope. Not really. It was just that I wandered back, and of course, it’s VERY dark, and I couldn’t even FIND where I had set up. I had to wander back the opposite way twice to just to figure out where I was. Mostly as there were people looking through it at Saturn still. 🙂

I looked at a few things, and then I heard someone say in passing that the only planet available was Saturn. And I thought, “Wait a minute. I know I looked at Uranus and Neptune a week or two ago, they should still be up now.” So I went looking. Until I found Uranus. So then some visitors wandered over, and we all agreed yes it was disc-like and yes we thought it was Uranus. Hard to see it in a simple 25mm eyepiece or even my 17.3mm. But one of the other RASC members came over and confirmed it was indeed Uranus. So we tried for Neptune. That one we were far less certain of, but we did find something disc-like, just without the tell-tale blue. But again, the member confirmed it was indeed Neptune, which made one of our guests quite happy — he had now seen all 7 visible planets in a scope. Beats me — I haven’t seen Mercury yet.

Two more guys wandered by and we started looking at nebulae. The nearby member also lent me an Oxygen III filter to pull out some details from the Veil Nebula which was cool, albeit quite dark with the filter on. We looked at a bunch of objects for about 90 minutes. Mostly as the one guy is thinking of buying a scope like mine, and wanted to experience it. Around 11:00, I think, I happened to notice that Orion was up, and someone mentioned the Orion Nebula. I hadn’t seen it in almost two years, so I was in. But the guy loaned me an UltraBlock filter. Which made the nebula just “pop”. Eloquent as always, I think my official comment was “Holy crap!”.

After the two guys left, a couple came along where it was obvious the guy was super interested and his girlfriend was playing a supportive partner. She was interested, but she clearly had passed her interest point. Nevertheless, she was game to keep going, so we split some stars, looked at Uranus, etc. Just before the end of the night, I wandered down to the 25″ scope to see M15 and then looked at it afterwards on my own much more pitiful 8″ scope. It was almost laughable the difference. On the other hand, mine fits in the back of my car; the 25″ travels in a horse trailer. I love to see through it, but man, it’s HUGE.

And that was it for the night. And for the season. Sad to see it go, particularly as I have everything working now!

On Saturday, I ran by the telescope store to talk about filters and a specific EP that I have, checked a few things out for their “used” items, and then I headed out to Luskville for the AstroPontiac evening. I’m on the Board, although that mainly means I try to go to their star parties, I do the website, and I sign some docs from time to time. My friend is the main driving force, and he has some good results to show for it.

My son had asked to go on Friday night to the Star Party in Carp, but with my marshal duties, I wasn’t planning on leaving until after midnight, too late for him. So I planned around him coming to Luskville, along with my wife, and we got there just between 5:00 and 5:30 p.m. Not that there was any rush. The skies were REALLY overcast.

Fortunately, it’s right next to the Luskville Falls hiking trail, so we went and looked at the waterfalls and then had a little picnic dinner while watching leaves fall in the dusk light and listened to the falls themselves crashing in the distance.

Just after 7:00, I said, “Why not?” and I tried setting up out of pure force of will. The skies weren’t cooperating, but perhaps if I set up, they’d open up. They were supposed to clear at 8:00 p.m., but it wasn’t certain. We crossed our fingers.

I did manage to catch Saturn not long after 7:00 through a small opening in the clouds. I wasn’t aligned, but I could manually spot it. The clarity/seeing was pretty low quality, but we saw it. Then the hole closed and we waited. Just after 8:00, it did look like it was going to clear…some of the clouds started to drift away, I managed to do an alignment, and then they clouded back in again.

My friend managed to keep a bunch of people engaged for about 45 minutes explaining the sky, even if he couldn’t show it to them. And I passed the time giving an interview to the local press about the Initiative. That was a first for me.

Not too long after 9:00, we called it a night and started packing up. Most of the night, Jacob was in the car playing on his tablet, which is the reason I brought it. Sitting around in the dark talking about skies we’ve seen in the past isn’t that exciting for him. I managed to show off some of my old photos of what is possible to see even with a basic scope, but that’s a pale imitation of the real thing.

However, although it wasn’t the BEST NIGHT EVER or anything, it was still fun. We can’t always have great nights, but we can make whatever night we have as great as possible. And any night I can see Saturn, I call a win.