Flu Survival Kit

 Family, Vancouver  No Responses »
Mar 012007
 

The Moose Fever that befell what seems to be half the North­ern­Voice attendees (although to be fair, lots of oth­er people I know in Van­couver are down with the flu as well, it seems par­tic­u­larly vir­u­lent this year) is slowly loosen­ing its grip. It’s more than a little dis­con­cert­ing when you go through the list of symp­toms in the BC Health Guide and real­ize you have all of them, plus a few more (what’s with the tin­nit­us?). So now, the res­ol­u­tions for next time, aka the flu sur­viv­al kit:

  • get the flu shot; even if it does­n’t always work, it prob­ably does often enough to be worthwhile
  • make sure the medi­cine cup­board always has the basics: ibupro­fen, phlegm loosen­er (pure Guaifen­es­in works best for me), decon­gest­ant (pseudoep­hedrine for when the cough no longer brings up phlegm but the ears are still plugged and I have a sinus head­ache), cough sup­press­ant, acetaminophen/paracetamol (in case the fever responds bet­ter to that than with ibuprofen)
  • herb­al teas help a lot: ginger and lem­on, cam­o­mile, mint
  • get lots of tissues
  • keep a few days worth of easy-to-pre­pare food around. Cook­ing from scratch is nice, but not when you can­’t stand up for very long.

Now all I have to do is remem­ber to read this list before the next flu sea­son starts!

Northern Voice Weekend

 Conference, Vancouver  No Responses »
Feb 212007
 

The week­end is going to be full of North­ern Voice, I can just tell. The must-dos for me are the din­ner on the Thursday even­ing (sorry, sold out), the uncon­fer­ence day on the Fri­day (I’ll be going to the ses­sion on iden­tity and pri­vacy of course, and whatever else takes my fancy once I’m there), and mod­er­at­ing a couple of ses­sions on the Sat­urday after­noon (Nancy White and Alex Water­house-Hay­ward and Dar­ren Bare­foot). Some of the ses­sions I’d like to go to clash with oth­ers as is always the case at any half-way decent con­fer­ence, but unlike lots of con­fer­ences this one should be extens­ively pod­cast. Not quite the same as being in a ses­sion, but a good second.

I hope to have more blog­ging energy after this con­fer­ence. Recently I’ve felt like I’ve spent more time on meta-issues than actu­ally blog­ging; I’ve been trawl­ing for break-ins on my site and sift­ing through access logs most days rather than craft­ing prose. With all the pass­words on my site now changed, and the latest WP installed, all I need to get back to writ­ing is a bit of inspir­a­tion. In past years North­ern Voice has sup­plied that; hope­fully this year it will again. 

Moose Deadlines

 Conference, Vancouver  No Responses »
Nov 292006
 

The regis­tra­tion is open for North­ern Voice 2007 and the speak­er sub­mis­sions will be clos­ing on Fri­day Decem­ber 1st. We exten­ded the dead­line to let people recov­er from the tor­ren­tial down­pours, record snow­falls, high winds, and assor­ted oth­er draw­backs of Novem­ber in the Pacific North-West. 

And if you want a t‑shirt, you can vote on which col­our it should be as well! Just head over to the sur­vey and let us know.

Tea Water

 General, Vancouver  8 Responses »
Nov 202006
 

The advis­ory to boil water remains in Van­couver even though there was a lot less rain at the week­end than was fore­cast. The scenes of pan­ic repor­ted on in the paper on Sat­urday are, it is to be hoped, a thing of the past as people real­ise that boil­ing water isn’t all that hard, and then fil­ter­ing it after­wards does get rid of most of the silt. I was amused at the note sent home from my son’s school which poin­ted out “detailed inform­a­tion on how to boil water has been pub­lished in all major news­pa­pers and is avail­able on line” — do they not teach you how to boil water in school these days? If any­one needs the info, here’s the Wiki­How page — just remem­ber you have to boil it for at least a minute to kill any bac­teria. Mind you, read­ing the cur­rent advis­ory makes it clear that there isn’t actu­ally any proven prob­lem with the water here oth­er than the look and taste of it, the author­it­ies are just being care­ful (and no doubt mind­ful of the Walker­ton dis­aster, although they dis­pute any connection).

The biggest con­sequence for most of Van­couver was that vari­ous cof­fee joints were shut (those that could­n’t guar­an­tee boil­ing the water for long enough), as was our loc­al tea shop. I found the lat­ter par­tic­u­larly iron­ic giv­en the likely role that tea, and the neces­sity of boil­ing water for it, played in cut­ting down infant mor­tal­ity in the 1700s in Bri­tain — a sum­mary is in this art­icle: Did tea and beer make Bri­tain great?. Oh well, maybe it was shut because the con­tam­in­ants in the water would affect the taste of the tea; I haven’t yet had a chance to ask.

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