jmathieson_fic

Something really cool happened yesterday!

We were at a friend's 70th birthday party, and met up with an old friend T, whom we haven't seen in nearly 10 years. So while we were doing the general catching up and 'What's going on in your life these days?' conversation, I mentioned that I was training for a marathon in the fall. It turns out that T's new house is on the route of the Lachine Bonneville Half-Marathon, and that she was planning to run the 5k with her husband, and the 1k with their 3-year old daughter. T said that she'd love to get a bunch of people together to run the various distances (1k, 2k, 5k, 10k and half-marathon), and then have a party/BBQ at their place after.

Hubs is up for running the half-marathon with me (he runs 8 miles/13k two or three times a week and has a ridiculous 10k time of about 44 minutes), and the date (August 18th) and distance fits perfectly with my marathon training schedule. All the books/websites/other research I've been doing about marathon training say that it's a really good idea to do an organized 10k or half-marathon as part of your training, but I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to find one that fit my training schedule.

It really feels like the universe has aligned to give me a sign (We hadn't seen T in 10 years! She happens to have just bought a house on the half-marathon route! She was already thinking about getting friends to run and having a party! The date and distance are absolutely perfect for my training schedule!) to tell me I'm on the right track...

This week's numbers:

Monday: 2.58mi / 4.15km
Tuesday: 2.58mi / 4.15km
Thursday: 3.82mi / 6.14km
Saturday: 3.83mi / 6.16km

Totals: 12.81mi / 20.6km

questionoftheday asks: Have you ever rehearsed what you are going to say before making a phone call? What was the phone call for?


Rehearsed? Hahahahaha...

My phone anxiety is so bad that I have to write my own name, address, and phone number down on a piece of paper and have it in front of me when I call somewhere to make an appointment, because I have been known to panic on the phone and forget my own name and address...

This is the first new story I've posted in a long while. I wrote it ages ago, but never got around to posting it. I'm home sick today, and feeling miserable with a rotten cold, so this is the perfect time for it:

Chicken Soup and Animal Crackers
Clint has the flu. Phil takes care of him. Feelings ensue.

Enjoy!

I've joined questionoftheday to try to prompt me to post more regularly on this blog. So here goes:


Hot chocolate. I actively dislike regular hot chocolate, and the more 'additives' (extra flavourings like orange or 'Irish Cream', marshmallows of any kind, whipped cream, etc.) just make it worse. The only kind of hot chocolate I can stand is a coffee-flavoured one, because that way I can pretend that it's very bad coffee. I have to be warding off either frostbite or hypothermia (or both) to actually drink the stuff.

I spent the day doing an installation at a customer site, and when I got back the the office, my boss and I had this convo:

Him: Did you talk to J. about [thing]?

Me: Um, no. I think I talked to J. for a couple of minutes, but to be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure which one J. even is... I'm pretty much completely face-blind, and since all the [senior guys at customer company] look similar, with the short dark hair and the Mediterranean complexions, I'm pretty much incapable of telling them apart.

Him: No problem, I'll text J. and tell him to come find you and talk to you about [thing] next time you're on site.

Just got back from the hospital. The retina specialist did a thorough examination and decided not to do the same procedure as last time my retina detached (gas bubble + laser surgery), which meant no surgery for me today. Instead he scheduled me for outpatient surgery tomorrow morning, the details of which are under the cut that follows. Which you definitely do not want to read if you get squicked by eye stuff. You have been warned.

( Gory details: )

tw: illness, Cancer, end-of-life care

One of the things I love most about living out here is how close-knit a community we are. Neighbours become like family. Which means when someone needs help, everyone pitches in to the best of their ability.

My neighbour CJ was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer two years ago, and up until now has been doing pretty well. We found out on Friday that his pancreatic cancer had moved into his liver, which means... well that they're now counting in weeks instead of months. He's at home, with excellent home medical support, but they don't have any family nearby.

So for the next few weeks (or however long) I'm going to be spending a couple of hours at my neighbour's just about every day, helping out in whatever way I can. I went over yesterday and sat with him while his wife A was at a physio appointment, and did some housework while I was there. Today I helped care for (and clean up after) their puppies, and also provided some much-needed emotional support.

Expect a steady supply of cute puppy pictures:








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Last night at Quilt Guild (of which, for my sins, I am President this year and next), we had a guest speaker. Lieutenant-Colonel L was a Canadian Armed Forces Chaplain from 1988 to 2015 and served tours in Kosovo and Afghanistan. She gave an absolutely wonderful talk with lots of great photos of the Canadian Army encampments in Kosovo and Afghanistan, lots of details about what she did as Chaplain, and what her role in the military was like. She explained a "Tactical Landing" (of a troup-transport aircraft), why they repatriate the bodies of dead service-men and -women at night, how bad sandstorms really are, how cumbersome body armour is, "Yes, the food is really that bad," how to sleep when it's 30 degrees C at night, the lengths a war-hardened soldier will to go for an Orange Tang Popsicle, "Those scenes in M*A*S*H where all the bras and underwear are hanging all over the tents to dry - yes."

So my writer's brain had an absolutely wonderful time sopping up every little bit of knowledge and atmosphere, which she did a fantastic job imparting. She also showed us the quilts she had made while she was deployed, and then passed around her medals, and a piece of standard-issue kit called a "Ranger blanket" Oh. My. Gods. I must have one. They're ugly cammo green, but they are so warm and so light it's amazing. As soon as I have $50 I'm getting one from an Army Surplus website, and be sure that they will be showing up in my fic regularly from now on.

After the presentation I asked her whether the Canadian Army had an equivalent to MOS 56M (Chaplain assistant)^[1], but she said they didn't. That her driver would fulfill the role of bodyguard whenever she was "outside the wire" and that the roles of Chaplain were quite different between Canada & the US, so the other "assistant" functions of a Chaplain's Assistant weren't needed. And also, if she ever needed help with anything, she never had trouble finding it. Everyone was always happy to help the Chaplain in a war zone...

^[1] While I did tell her I was a writer to explain why I was asking, I of course didn't mention that my extensive research of US Army MOSs was due to research I'd done for writing gay romance novels. Though she was a United Church of Canada minister, who are about as liberal as you can get while still being Christian, so she probably wouldn't have been offended...