L'automne

A lovely day! It was grey and drizzly and windy. I went for a walk. A fly was very patient with me as I took photos of it. It was cold enough that I made a pot of mint tea to warm up.

Bancroft

I went rockhounding in Bancroft last month. It's been a few years since I was last there. I went with Kyle and a number of members from the club. We all stayed in cabins on a hill overlooking Elephant Lake.

I love going up north, driving along highways cut through rock, the jagged walls towering over you on either side. Passing by forests of dead trees, looking like bleached skeletons rising out of the murky water. There's less light pollution up there; one can see the entire sky filled with brilliant stars. I always see new and interesting animals on these trips, like snakes! I never see snakes at home. Kyle and I passed by a little snake near our cabin. It couldn't have been more than 30 cm. Whenever we got within a metre of it, it would snap its mouth in our direction. So cute!

I got some nice specimens from the Beryl Pit in Quadville: peristerite and amazonite, as well as a greenish mica book with a purple fluorite stuck in the centre. This was only Kyle's second time rockhounding, and it was here that he discovered quartz is really sharp. He was hammering a big chunk of it and it exploded, showering him with crystal razors. His hands and face got a bunch of little cuts and he bled all over the place. It was quite amusing (he was fine).

I got some nice fluorichterites from a roadcut in Wilberforce, and lots of green apatite from the Bear Lake Diggings. I believe I found a single sphene crystal, too. It rained the last day, but the trees at Bear Lake provided partial cover, so it wasn't so bad. As I was digging in the dirt, a snake kept me company. It was black with yellow lines, and beautiful brown eyes. For about 15-20 minutes, it simply watched me dig, lying a couple feet away, its head raised slightly above the ground. Eventually it slithered away; I touched its tale as it left.

Glue?

I went to the orthodontist yesterday afternoon.

A couple months back, right before I moved (I'll post about moving eventually), some of the glue on one of my permanent retainers broke off. I have wires glued to the backs of my top front and bottom front teeth. The spot of glue on one tooth cracked and half of it fell out.

It has been years since I was last at the orthodontist, and Dr. V-, who I saw, moved away. A new organization, Right Bite Orthodontics, set up in his old office, so I set up an appointment with them.

As the dental hygienist (or whatever the orthodontic equivalent is) was removing the remaining adhesive from my tooth, I got a bit light-headed. It had to be ground off with some noisy spinning device, and I could smell the vapours. After applying new glue and drying it, and $75 later, I was good as new.

My main reason for talking about this is because of it's possible relation to the horrible night I had afterwards.

Around midnight, I started getting sad and anxious. I lay on my bed for 20 minutes, thinking and feeling weird, unable to get up to go do something. My mind was going in circles, trying to decide whether to go to bed or play a video game. I absolutely did not want to take my meds. I was afraid to, for some reason. I was to increase my dosage again that night (I've been doing so every 4 days). When I finally got up, I took my meds, but was unwilling to up the dosage. I didn't take them with food as I normally do.

I went to bed and continued to feel weird and scared. My thoughts didn't always make sense. At one point I had to get up to go to the bathroom. The blankets on my bed still looked like there was a person under them, and I wondered if I was actually dead, that it was my body underneath. I felt them, but there was nothing solid beneath. My stomach was upset and gurgling, which may have just been due to my not taking the med with any food. It also felt like it was being pulled down through the bed, or out other directions.

It was an awful, scary night. I felt like I was going insane.

I wonder if it was the adhesive's vapours that drove me insane, either on its own, or by interacting with my meds.

Sideways

I've always had trouble fantasising. Whenever I try to come up with a story, I can only think up snippets. I'll think up one scene and not be able to progress it to the next. I can come up with a number of disconnected scenes, but there's no flow. I also get stuck on the scenes I do have, going over them again and again. It's like when you have a song stuck in your head, it's just that one line or two, repeated.

I used to be better at it, back when I was doing a lot worse than I am now. Back when I took shelter in my head, I could lie there for hours, thinking, 'til my limbs went cold.

Another thing that gets in the way is the direction I am facing while I think. I'll do my best to describe this...

If I happen to change position while I'm visualizing, the image(s) remain in the same orientation. For example, If I were to be looking straight ahead, then crooked my head to the side, the image from before would appear sideways in my mind; it did not change its position. Just like when you look at a picture, computer screen, etc., if you turn sideways, that image will now appear sideways. You are the one who has moved, not the object.

It's like my mental images are physically removed from me...

Jumble Gym [Update]

I was at Casablanca Books trying to sell Latin textbooks from the 60's the other day. A trio of nerds was there, looking at graphic novels. These weren't the stereotypical uber-nerds one usually thinks upon hearing the word 'nerd', nor the more subtle enthusiast of nerdy things, like myself (think flamboyantly gay compared to simply gay). No, these were the pretentious nerds. They speak in their own manner, a sort of drawl, similar to pretending to be bored. They say things like, "that's alarmism at it's best," and chortle (but not audibly, their faces smug...so, hardly chortling at all) at their brilliance. Great fun.

There was a Canadian antiques road show in town last week. I brought in my WWII RCAF snowshoes, worth $250 (but they're a part of history so I'm keeping them), as well as a mystery box I got at an antiques store.

I had no idea what this box was used for. I can only find one mention of the company online, and it's for a door mail box patent. What was held in place by the swivel? What was the slot and the hole for?

The appraisers did not know, either.

UPDATE: I showed this to a friend of mine who is a jeweller. He immediately told me what it was for: it would have held a beam scale. When in use, the beam would have been stuck into that little hole, using the box as a base. Each of the 2 compartments would have held one of the pans. The beam, weights, and other bits would have been arranged neatly alongside the pans. He suggested the box is from the 1940's.

Portals 3

Today was my last (hopefully) optometrist appointment for a long time. They still don't know what caused the injury in the first place, but the treatment seems to have healed nearly all of the damage. I will continue with the drops, but I no longer have to use the ointment.

I had the same doctor and intern as last time, as well as the intern from the time before that. He just wanted to sit in to see how my case had progressed, as he had never seen my type of problem before. I'm glad I could help him further his education.

Portals 2

I went back to the optometrist for a follow-up. This doctor did not see that I had REC (recurrent corneal erosion). I suggested it was IFCE (infrequent corneal erosion), but he said that the technical term was OIAW (once in a while). I am to continue with the ointment, as well as some more viscous eye drops.
The doctor hopes that the treatment will stop me from having any further attacks. Of course, we won't really be sure for months...I'll believe it once I've been fine for half a year.

Cobalt

Last month, I went rockhounding up in the Cobalt area, 140 km north of North Bay. I went with my Great Uncle and 3 members of my rock club. The 3 other members go there often, looking for silver. Cobalt and the surrounding area was famous for the amount of silver hauled out of the numerous mines. The weather was miserable, so we were collecting in the rain for most of trip.

We stayed at a hunting camp just south of Cobalt, on the shore of Lake Temiskaming. You could see Quebec on the other side. There are mine shafts all over the place, many of which haven't been capped, or even marked off with fencing. You have to watch where you step, lest you fall down a few hundred feet. We collected at old abandoned mine sites here and there, including some of the famous and most successful ones in the area known as Silver Centre.

I was lent a metal detector, set to ignore iron, but still pick up silver and other metals. I found a pop tab on the beach. One foot beneath the surface. Through clay. I did find some samples of silver and other minerals. I found a lot of cobaltite (silver in colour) and bright pink erythrite (which cobaltite decays into). There was also a lot of nickeline (coppery-silver in colour) and annabergite, a bright sea green mineral (the decayed form of nickeline). I found a few good pieces of silver, too.

I explored a bit around the Keeley and Frontier mines, right along the most abundant discovery of silver: the Wood's Vein. The concrete foundation of the old refining plant is sill there, and I found a couple of iron mill balls. There was a lot of really pretty creamy-pink calcite around the Keeley's ore dumps, and some lovely black rock with olive green veins.

Before heading back home, we stopped in at the mining museum in Cobalt. They had many, many high-grade samples of silver, from huge cut slabs, to fine naturally-formed wires. The mayoral chain of office was on display, too. It's made of a number of large (~4"x 2") rough discs (organically shaped) of solid silver!

Portals

For over a year now, I've been having eye problems. On numerous occasions I have woken up in the morning in agony. I have the most excruciating pain in my right eye. I'm not sure how to describe it. I know that the pain is on the front of the eye, under the upper lid. I've never been scratched there, but I assume it feels similar.

All my attempts to alleviate this pain do not help. Rubbing it, trying to hold it open, trying to hold it shut, warm damp cloths, cool damp cloths -nothing works. I'm extremely light sensitive during these attacks, making it unbearable to open my eye more than a slit when a light is on.

The extreme pain lasts about 10-15 minutes, after which time it begins to dull and move to the sides and back of the eye. The aching lasts for a few hours, sometimes for the rest of the day.

One week ago, I experienced the worst one yet. I got in to see the optometrist the day after. They could not find anything wrong. My eye was apparently perfectly healthy. It happened again this morning, and I managed to get in for an emergency appointment. I had hoped that by being checked out while the pain was still present they might find something.

I don't know if it was because I was checked so soon after the attack, but they found something this time. My cornea has an excess of water, and in certain spots one of the layers of my eye is not anchored to the layer beneath. I am to start using eye drops and an ointment to fix these problems. It is uncertain whether or not these are the cause of the attacks.

I return for a follow-up appointment in two weeks.

Doors Open 9

This past weekend was the 9th annual Doors Open event in Waterloo Region. I had planned out all of the sites Mom and I would visit, but of course we did not get to see them all (the sites are only open from 10am-5pm -not enough time to see everything).

We started off at the AirBoss rubber plant, which is just down the street from us (and looks a lot like Midgar). Our group saw hundreds of skids stacked with sheets of rubber to be sent to various companies. The tour guide showed us one of the mixers and passed around a block of natural rubber. The plant ships worldwide.

We next went to the Kitchener-Wilmot Hydro station (also right near our house). Mom went up 60 ft in the air one of their bucket cranes. The displays inside were fairly boring, such as collection of usage meters (including the smart meters introduced by THE TAX MAN! Dalton McGuinty), different types of cables, and the ever popular diorama of the many ways a person can be electrocuted (with the awful grating buzzers).

The Communitech Hub was a huge letdown. The tour consisted of walking past a bunch of closed doors to offices, a giant role of snow fence in the courtyard being passed-off as "art" (they specifically had some international "artist" fly in to do it), and a lounge full of modern furniture where the hip young minds do whatever it is that they do. The only reason I had wanted to go there was to see the HIVE, a virtual immersion room using funky green glasses. Basically, a holodeck. It was temporarily out of operation.

Next was the Ratz-Bechtel Funeral Home. It was nice to get to see more of the building, and without my dead father or grandfather on display. The staircase up to the tower was beautifully-carved oak. There was a lovely little office in the tower on the second floor. We weren't allowed in the top floor of the tower, which is an attic.

Of all the sites open this year, I most wanted to see the newly-opened Sorbara Law, located in the Seagram (and later Bauer) Estate. I had been wanting to see the inside for years, well before Sorbara bought the abandoned building. I even suggested it be added to the list of future sites on the survey handed out at last year's Doors Open. The new owners did a terrific job on the restoration, keeping nearly all of the wood panelling and fireplaces. Every bench opened up for storage space, including one hidden comnpartment going straight to the basement, where they may have hid alcohol during Prohibition. There were all sorts of wonderful window alcoves, too.

From there, we went to Cambridge for the last few sites on our list.

I wanted to see Grandview Public School, soon to be demolished. The interior was like any other school built in the 1920's, cozy, with nice ironwork on the railings. The exterior had a number of relief panels of grotesques doing learning-related activities. The entrance had a rope motif surrounding the jamb, with the provincial emblem at the roof's peak. All of these decorative features will be saved and incorporated into the new school, thankfully.

We next visited the Col. J.A. McIntosh, DSO, ED Armoury, home of the Royal Highland Fusiliers of Canada. The interior is remarkably well-preserved. There were knives, guns, bayonets, and swords (lots of Scottish broadswords) on display. The reserve members there were quite friendly. There was also an empty vending machine, the sign taped to it saying, "CATCHES ON FIRE WHEN PLUGGED IN".

Our last stop was Central Presbyterian Church. The sanctuary had patterned red carpet and a balcony with golden floral facing. The main reason to go was to see inside the bell tower. There was a little door to the side, from which the cupola could be reached via a narrow plank, only the plaster of the ceiling to either side. We only got to go inside the first floor of the tower. The man overseeing the area had to leave before we had a chance to climb the ladder to actually see the bells.

We stopped in a couple little antiques stores afterwards, and I bought a small (non-antique) dagger from Pakistan. Good for a fantasy costume.

BANG!

On the way home from a concert last week, I saw something hanging from a power line in front of the apartment building across from my house. It was a strand of something, glittering as it blew in the wind. I could also hear an electrical buzzing. I showed it to my mother, and she suggested it may have been the magnetic tape from a VHS. There was an intermittent blue-white spark where it touched the power line, accompanied by the buzzing noises (similar to the sound a bug zapper makes).

We weren't entirely sure what to do about it. Do you call the police? Or the Electricians Guild? About five or ten minutes after we went inside, there was a cacophonous BUZZ, the outside flashed blue-white, and we were plunged into darkness. It was quite startling. The entire street was pitch black.

The power came back a couple minutes later.