At the end of the appointment, the doctor told me she suspected I might have something called “narrow angles”, and sent me to an ophthamologist. It took nearly two months to get into see him. That was an awkward appointment, and ended up with the news that I needed surgery. Which I got, today, on my birthday. Laser surgery. In my eye.

Ow.

Okay, truth be told, it wasn’t that bad. The procedure is called “yag laser iridotomy“. “Yag” refers to the type of laser used, which is a Yttrium Aluminium Garnet (basically, a fake ruby). It’s highly controlled, and tuned exactly to burn a tiny hole in the iris. This allows the fluid that flows between iris and the lens to drain properly without causing pressure build-up, which can lead to glaucoma.

And for the record, it’s not Lasik. Lasik surgery is about reshaping the lens to correct vision problems. The iridotomy is a preventative measure. And I don’t have the same recovery issues — unlike Lasik, I have no drops, no drugs, no major vision issues, and no protective covers. Basically, I’m no different than I was this morning.

Well, except for the slight swelling feeling, which I take to be normal, given that part of my frickin’ eye was burned out by a frickin’ laser.

After dropping the Monkey off at daycare (she’s a handful when both of us are free to keep an eye on her, and a weapon of mass destruction pretty much the rest of the time), Alex trucked me over to the Rockyview Hospital, so I could visit the Eye Clinic.

Dr. Latka runs the iridotomy clinic once a month — that indicates how often these actually happen. It’s pretty much an assembly line thing: arrive, check-in, nurse checks your blood pressure (mine was a little higher than normal, showing that despite my relative calm, I was a little nervous), gives you some drops in the eye (including a contracting agent and a freezing agent), then you wait to see the doctor.

The “surgery room” looks little different than a regular eye exam room. There’s the typical bracket you place your head in, and the seats. Aside from a largish irregularly-shaped black box, there’s no indication that this is, really, where you have frickin’ lasers shot into your frickin’ eye.

A couple of more drops, and Dr. Latka slid the massive magnifying lens on top of my eyeball.

Have I mentioned how much I truly hate, loathe, and despite anything coming near my eye, let alone touching it directly?

There was a little dim green light just off to my left that he wanted me to look at. Then the clicking started. The clicking was the sound of the yag laser firing. And yes, I could feel it. Ever been in a strong wind, and have sand hit you in the face? That sudden small, sharp sting? It’s like that. At the back of your eye. (Or at least, that’s where I felt it.) In reality, it’s burning away a hole in your iris, but I can only assume that the feeling was because of where my optic nerves are.

I could barely register the laser light because of where I was looking. Twice, the doctor had to reposition me because I was instinctively trying to get away from frickin’ lasers being shot into my frickin’ eye. After about a dozen shots, I was done. The only instruction was to return in about an hour for a quick follow-up.

An hour later, I went back to the clinic, where the nurse immediately (I had just literally be called) into an exam room. More drops, and then she placed a probe on my frickin’ eye (did I mention how much I hate that stuff?) to test for any change in pressure. She said “fantastic”, and I was off.

I still feel a little funky, and I imagine a lot of that is psychosomatic from, well, things touching my eyeball. Oh, and because of frickin’ lasers being shot into my frickin’ eye. I mean, wouldn’t you feel a tad queasy after all of that?

What does it all look like? Well, how about a before/after picture!

The top shot is the before, the lower is the after. I didn’t ask Dr. Latka (but I will), but I think the part circled in red is where the new hole is. The white glare is the bathroom counter.

It’s one eye down, and one to go. The next won’t be until the first Friday of August.

As for the rest of my birthday, it was quiet. I owe a million people “thanks” for all the birthday wishes (especially on Facebook), but it’s been too busy a day for me to get on there. But there was, of course, time for cake.

The last four days have been a lot of fun. Maybe even too much fun. Both of us are pretty pooped. You went to bed and for the first time in a long while, there wasn’t hours of chatter from your room. I think you pretty much passed out. I won’t be too far behind you, I think, but I do wish to describe the fun that we’ve shared.

‘Cuz, frankly, I’m not sure how the heck I survived it all…

First off was Canada Day. This year, Mommy and I decided to try a visit at Heritage Park. If you got there early enough, you got a free pancake breakfast. It seemed like a fun thing to do. And it probably would have been more fun if it had been a few degrees warmer — it was rather chilly for the first day of July.

Still, you had a lot of fun. Once we’d gobbled down the pancakes, we went and got ride tickets. You swung on a vintage ship-styled swing, rode the big steam train around the park, went on the paddlewheeler out in Glenmore Reservoir (although you barely stopped moving the entire time, necessitating me following you around the entire time), and went on the merry-go-round (you demanded to ride the white horse).

You ate a pretzel, and drank some frozen lemonade with me. We saw the farm animals (you mooed at the cows, and nearly had your bright red Crocs eaten by a misguided horse). Then we went through Gasoline Alley. By this point, you were tired and got fairly cranky, so we all opted to go home.

Mommy wanted to go visit with Grandpa for a week, and had to take Choo Choo with her. (Choo Choo’s still nursing, so she goes wherever Mommy goes.) But … well, Monkey, all me to be rather honest for a moment — travelling with you lately requires a lot of high-test drugs to keep people calm. Either you or us, it doesn’t matter. But Mommy travelling with you and Choo Choo wasn’t even discussed as an option, and Mommy really wanted to go without all of us in tow. (You’ll understand this years from now, when you have a near-3 year old.)

Of course, what all that means is, it was just you and me, kid. And we got off to it before Mommy and Choo Choo’s plane had taken off.

Our first stop was the Galaxie Diner on 11th St., not far from Grandma’s house. There we enjoyed a filling breakfast, because we had a long day of chasing trains ahead of you. I hadn’t chased a train since before you were born, and I was itching to go out and take pictures. I figured you might like to see a big train in motion, and when my friend Graham told me CP 2816 was going out to Banff on 2 July, I couldn’t resist.

After breakfast, we went home just long enough to get a few things together (like my camera), and then we went searching for our first place to wait. I originally thought of a place known as Keith, which is roughly where Stoney Trail crosses the Bow River. But as we came down Sarcee Trail towards the highway, I spied an even better location: where the train tracks cross 32nd Ave NW. It would give me an easy access for photography, a decent backdrop, and not far from the highway to get back out again.

We ended up having to wait longer than I would have liked. One thing you’ll learn, kiddo, is that when you chase trains, you have to be patient and wait. A lot. Even though Graham was sending me text messages on the train’s status, it didn’t come quickly. We saw a freight train have to wait for CP 2816, too. But eventually, we got the note that she was heading west. Before long, we could hear its whistle echo through the valley. It came towards us, barrelling along as fast as it could, belching out black smoke.

For a moment, I saw myself in you. When I was your age (maybe a little older), your granddad (my daddy) used to take my family (Nana, Auntie Cathy, and me) to the train tracks near our house, to watch another steam locomotive — CN 6060 — come racing by, huge clouds of black smoke filling up the sky. It used to scare the hell out of me. Of course, I look back at that now and I feel really glad that I did see that — it’s a fond memory. I hope maybe one day, it is for you, too.

We hit the road and headed out to a place out towards the mountains called Ozada. You were asleep before we were outside city limits, and slept all the way there. Ozada is on the Stoney Indian reserve, and is one of Canadian Pacific’s old stations for servicing steam locomotives. (The concrete pylons for the coaling and water towers are still visible.) Today, it’s little more than a siding in the middle of nowhere, just off the highway. And we waited there because Graham had told me CP 2816 would be stopping there for servicing as well.

We were not disappointed. We saw the train come in slowly, pass by, and stop in the siding. After it had passed, we drove to the other end of the siding, and watched it race westward. (The train was about two hours late, so they had a reason to move quickly.) We drove out to the highway, and saw the train’s smoke as we drove by it on the highway. We saw some other people we’d seen back in Calgary stop at the side of the highway to take more pictures.

Finally, we stopped in Banff, and waited about halfway between the station and Bankhead. We had to wait a long, long time before we saw CP 2816′s lights. As CP 2816 was going on show at the station, the train stopped again not far from us for one last servicing before going in. This gave us a fantastic view, although the whistles did give you a bit of a scare — they were quite loud.

After meeting up with Graham at the station (it seemed only fair to thank him in person for the information), we had lunch at Bruno’s, and then headed back to Calgary. You slept from Canmore all the way home.

On Saturday, you and I went to the Calgary Farmer’s Market, mostly so you could go to the jumping castle — probably your most favourite thing in town (after me, of course). You ate your mixed berry crepe almost as fast as I could eat my ham and cheese crepe. I swear it’s the only thing you eat quickly — everything else requires a pry bar and a shovel…

When I asked what you wanted to do next, you said: “I want [to see the] giraffes!” So off we went to the zoo. We went though the dinosaurs, then over to the giraffes, zipped by the gorillas, and spent a lot of time at the playground (you love the playground, there). Then it was into the Australian pavilion (I was devastated to find that the nocturnal animal area is permanently closed), through the monkey house, and then over to the elephants (where we had hot dogs), zipped over to the carousel (just opened), before going through the Canadian Wilds (where you were completely obsessed with the prairie dogs).

For dinner, I took you to a Japanese restaurant. I found that your chopstick skills had degraded quite a lot — we’ll have to work on that. But you ate half of the edamame, a couple of avocado rolls, and even a piece of hamachi sashimi (well, it was nigiri sushi, but it was just plain easier to give you just the fish). You wouldn’t touch the miso soup (I’ll work on that, too). For your first shot, I was very proud of you.

The next morning, we walked over to the #2 bus stop. You were ecstatic about riding the bus. I’m sure it’s from singing The Wheels On The Bus so much.  We went to the Silver Dragon restaurant, where we met up with my friend Tamara and her husband, Dan. There we ate dim sum (Mommy was rather annoyed that we went without her). It was so good. You ate buns, and pork dumplings, and quite a lot of deep fried squid. Yes, you ate squid. I kid you not. Mind you, as I’ve said to others, the squid tastes a lot like scrambled eggs. So I told you it was scrambled eggs. You couldn’t get enough.

Following dim sum, you and I walked along the river over to Eau Claire Market (which really isn’t a market anymore — it’s mostly businesses and empty store space — nothing like it used to be), where you and I saw Toy Story 3. I cried a bit. You seemed to like it a lot, though. Especially anything with Woody.

In fact, you like Woody and Jesse (the Yodelling Cowgirl) so much, and because the Calgary Stampede is just around the corner, we walked over to Stephen Avenue afterwards to try and get you a cowgirl outfit. You’ve got the boots and jeans, but you need a hat and a shirt. Sadly, we were less than successful — no-one seemed to have a cowgirl shirt in your size.

On the way home, much to our luck, we ran into Grandma on the bus (she was coming to our house, anyway — we just had really good timing). You had some fun with Grandma while I went off to get something for us to eat for dinner.

In fact, I’m so tired from all of this excitement that it’s taken me a while to write all of this. But I hope you had fun, Monkey. I know I did.

And now, I need to go to bed. ‘Cuz I’m really, really, really tired.

Nana was my last living grandparent. She was the special grandparent when I was young — she lived hours away by plane, so she was spoken of in near-legendary terms. She wasn’t just my Nana, she was Nana The Mysterious, Nana The Wise, Nana The Great Gift-Giver. She was the embodiment of never acting your age — truthfully, I didn’t even know how old she was until just a few years ago. She was a model of long-life, and happiness.

For those, and a million other reasons, I cannot say goodbye to you, Nana. I can only say: Thank you.

A few weeks ago, Nana had a bit of a tumble, and had hit her head. For this, she had to go to the hospital, where she had to be kept under watch. (Head injuries aren’t good for us most of the time, anyway — add in long life to the mix, and things can get rather complicated.) Reports were few, but the general sound was that she was doing well — which is pretty good, when you think about it.

I visited Nana two weeks ago in the hospital, dropping by to make sure she was comfortable. It was, unfortunately, also the last time I saw her. For the first time, Nana looked her age. I talked to her, helped her drink some water, asked if she needed anything. I was a ghost in her vision, a voice she probably recognised only in the distant mists of a dream. I received little response; the nurses not much more. She was tired.

When it came time for her to rest, I kissed her, laid my hand on hers and said: “I love you, Nana.” It wasn’t “goodbye”, though as I walked back to the elevators, that very thought was in my head. I choked back the tears as I left.

But this is not how I will remember you, Nana. No, my memory of you will be of the woman who knit, who baked cookies, who took us out on the golf cart at Waskesiu and gave me my first ice cream sandwich. I remember you as the one who denied the years, and believed that you always had that little more in you.

Thank you, Nana.

But today … today was a new echelon in fear. Today Mommy and I joined the ranks of millions of other parents who have had that moment where they doubt all the confidence and belief they have built up over years of careful watch and control over their child’s life. They see it crash down in a single moment, utterly ruined when they come to the horrific realisation that they don’t know where their child is.

Today, Monkey, you disappeared.

I had the day off. The company gave me the day off, following two months of near non-stop work to get our project delivered. After your Animal Class, we decided to check out the “new” mall in Calgary, CrossIron Mills, just north of the city. Mommy wanted to pick up a couple of things for you and Choo Choo, but otherwise it was just a random adventure.

We got to the mall just after 11:00, and walked in near the hockey store (as I would comment to Mommy later, an all-year hockey store just seems natural in Canada), and headed down towards the Toys ‘R Us. Mommy and Choo Choo made a stop at the nursing room (Choo Choo was getting hungry), while you and I went hunting for the mall’s play area.

CrossIron Mills’ play area seems to be patterned after the one at Market Mall — you have to reserve a space in one of the 30-minute blocks, and wait your turn. As it happened, the next block started not long after we got to the play area. I couldn’t come in with you — the play area has a strict socks-only policy, and I was wearing sandals. That didn’t stop you from climbing the faux-volcano and sliding down over and over, running around, and jumping on the soft dinosaurs. You even played well with the other children.

Mommy and Choo Choo finally arrived, then went to Toys ‘R Us. We followed when the play time was up, finding them looking at rain covers for the stroller. We wandered around the store, looking at play sets, dolls, little plush chairs (that you’re now too big for), and you even found a Ya-Yas (Backyardigans) book. You carried the book all over the store while we were following Mommy on her quest for a few more things.

Mommy was looking at stickers, and I — carrying Choo Choo — was distracted by some LEGO sets. We both thought you were still sitting on the floor, reading the book. We both thought when we turned around, you’d still be there.

But you were gone.

Our first instinct was that you’d walked off into one of the aisles of toys, or was hiding in a corner, something you love doing. But you weren’t coming when we called your name. There was no giggle, your normal response when you tell you to come back and you’re walking away. There was nothing. You’d vanished.

I gave Choo Choo to Mommy, and she stood where we’d seen you last. I was no longer walking. I was running. Up and down every aisle, calling your name. I ran into every corner, ran outside, looking up and down the hallways outside the store, and along the walls outside in the parking lot.

Thoughts were already going through my head, and I struggled to dismiss them. You weren’t kidnapped. You weren’t taken by some strange person. You weren’t going to be one of those children you see on TV, sold into slavery. Basically, all the worst-case scenarios. These are the things you think about as a parent with an over-active imagination. I was trying not to panic. I focused instead on being frustrated that you hadn’t answered when called — something you do a lot at home.

The Toys ‘R Us had effectively locked down with a “Code Geoffrey” — an alert to all staff of a lost child. After a couple of minutes, it was clear you weren’t in the store (or if you were, you were very well-hidden), and we extended the alert to the mall security. All the while, Mommy clutched Choo Choo, trying not to panic.

I had run over to the play area, not far from the store. I had thought that, maybe, you’d gone there. But you hadn’t. You can run about as fast as I can walk quickly, but I figured you hadn’t run. When you walk — you don’t move quickly. You hadn’t gone far. But I didn’t know where. I thought, maybe, someone at the store had found you, so I went back. A mall security guard was there, and quickly took your description. They were watching the cameras. Within a moment, he’d reported that they’d found you.

One day, you will probably hear something derogatory about mall security staff, “mall cops”. They’re “fake” or “wannabes”. Make no mistake, once you see past the uniforms and peach fuzz, there are people who are dedicated to their tasks, and very understanding of situations. Today, I have a much better appreciation for their value.

The man who met me at the store took me to the security office. He explained that you were either there already, or “en route”. Barely a minute after I got there, his colleague — a man I could scarcely believe out of high school — brought you in tow. You followed him diligently, without complaint or concern, not looking at all worried or scared, still carrying the Ya-Yas book. (One day, we’ll have to make sure you understand the need to pay for things before you take them out of a store.) The man who’d brought you to the security office explained that he’d found you following an elderly couple. I can only assume you must have thought they were Grandpa and Granny.

After giving you a big hug, I let you know that walking away wasn’t good. On the way back, you seemed to understand just how scared Mommy and I were that you’d walked away. Mommy looked so relieved when she saw you, and gave you a big hug.

Then we buckled you in tight into the stroller. You weren’t wandering away again.

But we can’t keep you from wandering off, not unless we tie a rope to you. (Which, coincidentally, I happen have about 30 feet of 1/2 inch nylon rope in the shed I’m starting to seriously consider putting to use.) You will do this again, if we allow it. And that’s the lesson we learned today, I guess. We have to watch you, always. At least until such time as you’re able to understand that when you can’t find us, it’s not a good thing.

You’re fearless. Being fearless is good, at least to an extent. I don’t want to make you fearful, either, though. I don’t want you to go through life, constantly looking over your shoulder. There’s a middle ground, we just have to figure out what it is.

Sleep well, Monkey. And don’t worry if you wake up and see me watching you from the corner. You might be fearless, but I’m not.

A few years ago, this probably would have put me into a panic. And a few years ago, it would have been just me to worry about. Now I have a wife and two kids (well, one at the time, and one on the way) to support. Really, that should have put me off the deep end. Having lived through a significant amount of adversity over the last couple of years, though, I found myself not even concerned about the prospect of unemployment.

I attribute that to having kept contact with just the right people.

And so it came to pass that on 5 January, I walked into a meeting room on the 2nd floor of 805 10th Ave SW, and sat at a table with nine other people. Nine people I already knew. Nine people I’d already worked with before at another company. I couldn’t help but smile.

I was working — and still work — for the Evans Hunt Group, a small interactive marketing agency made up, largely, of former employees of Critical Mass. The principals of the company, Dan Evans and Bill Hunt, were both my managers at Critical Mass at one point or another, and Bill had been the one who started up the Costa Rica operation. My long-time mentor and also former Critical Mass manager, Allard Losier, is the technical lead, and the one who really convinced me to come in.

That conversation had occurred at the Cabin Cafe on Bow Trail and 45th St. SW, on 22 December. He and I had sat down over a coffee (two, in my case), and had a long conversation about events of the last 18 months, and potential events for the future. I hadn’t made any decisions at that point, although there had been heavy hinting at coming in to work for Evans Hunt, and I was rather enjoying the not-working aspect of my life.

The conversation had really shown me the things that I had really missed over the previous 18 months: mentorship and trust. I had lost my mentor when Allard had left Critical Mass shortly before I went to Costa Rica. And I had felt since about that time that there hadn’t been much trust in me, and always felt on the defensive. Going anywhere else was … well, it needed to be the right place.

My project — the reason I was brought in — was to help Tourism Calgary with their website. The project, at least at a high level, was pretty simple: site overhaul. (Yes, at the high level, that’s all it is. Once you start going down in the levels, you really find out what kind of trouble you’re creating for yourself.) My job? Lead the tech team, work with the PM, and help deliver the final product. Time was originally pegged at about three months, and we’d see where things would go from there.

I didn’t get a consulting agreement for three weeks. Normally, that would probably freak most people out entirely, my Mom being one of them. From her perspective, which I totally understood, I was working without any legal backup, and was likely to get screwed somewhere along the line. From my perspective, I wasn’t working for a company — I was working with friends. Friends I trusted, and who trusted me. People I knew wouldn’t pull anything shifty, so long as I didn’t do the same.

That level of trust has permeated my now five-month tenure here at Evans Hunt. Knowing that the right people are there, that the right things will happen when they need to. All of that led us to the launch of our newest little baby, VisitCalgary.com. Today, I supported Jim at a presentation by Tourism Calgary to the tourism industry at the Glenbow Museum (chosen because of Calgary’s recent bout of inclement weather — originally, it was supposed to be outside), and got to see the reaction first-hand of the very people we’re trying to support.

And that’s when it really hit me. I’m not working for some massive multi-national conglomerate. I’m working for a group who’s trying to bring in tourists to the city I live in, to bring in money to the businesses that exist in the city I live in, to support the families of the people who work for the companies in the city I live in. I had disconnective issues working with American and European vendors for a very long time, partly because they never really affected me in any way. But this? This, I can get behind.

It’s been a long project, and a little harder than I’d thought it be. The site, for the record, runs on Drupal. (For those of you unfamiliar, I suggest checking it out. Very powerful tool, Drupal.) I approached the project with a lot of confidence, believing that we’d be cruising along in no time. That’s when reality hit me.

Drupal wasn’t at all like any content management system I’d ever worked with. And as a result, I was giving bad directions. It wasn’t until we started to engage Brian, one of Evans Hunt’s developers, that I began my Drupal education. A content management system, it is not. As Brian put it, it’s a content management framework. Yeah, I know, I know — splitting hairs, right? Not really.

In every other CMS I’d spent significant time with, the rule of thumb was to build your templates first, and then embed the CMS functionality into them to build out the site. But with Drupal, you do it the other way around — let Drupal define the structure, and then make it look pretty afterwards. We lost time because of my direction.

Thankfully, we also had some very talented developers. The first up was Lorne of Open House Concept, who was the initial developer, and was the core layout guru. Kalen jumped on not long after to work on templates, and then buzzed back in towards the end of the project in a weird little game of leap-frog. Brian joined the project, which got us pointed in the right direction again (notably, correcting my oversights), and we brought on Boris to help us with the backend data synchronisation.

It sounds like a lot of people, but in truth we only had three developers running at any one time. And considering I can barely code my way out of a paper bag, I am truly amazed at what the four of them did to get this site out the door. Especially considering that the office is just finishing a near two-month renovation, which had us working remotely from our PM-extraordinare January’s house for over a week.

And yes, there were a lot of hours put into this project. They kept us working late, and more than a couple of weekends. This is where, in the past, I would lament the time away from my family. But this is also where that aforementioned trust comes in. Working from home is encouraged (assuming you don’t need to be in the office), and working at hours that suit your schedule is not a problem (provided you get your work done). End result: long hours, but still got be a family man.

So, damn right I’m a happy camper. All told, I would say this has been one of my more favourite projects, and I’ve had a few doozies to compete with, too.

And, really, you can never go wrong working with friends. (And yes — with, not for.)

I’m working with friends, people I’ve known for years — they’re people I also trust implicitly, so I have no reservations about working long hours. The downside, of course, is that I’ve seen less of you two. That’s probably what’s been hardest on me. Especially since Monkey probably feels a little neglected with all the time Mommy needs to spend with Choo Choo. It’s also why, despite the workload, I simply had to take some time to be with you and Mommy, and do something fun.

So went to see dinosaurs in Drumheller.

Okay, Choo Choo, you didn’t really “see” them. You’re only nine weeks old right now, so your observational capacity is limited to something like a metre in front of you. Not to mention that about the only things you do currently are eat, sleep, pee, and poo. (There’s a few moments of alert time thrown in there, too, usually followed by some pretty loud crying when you realise that you’re hungry again.) One day, you’ll find them more interesting, but for now … well, it is what it is.

As for you, Monkey, you were pretty excited about seeing dinosaurs. You were excited about it for days, after the first suggestion. So Sunday morning, we packed up into our loaner Impala (the Jetta’s in the shop, following a nasty transmission failure last Tuesday evening), and headed out for adventure.

Our first stop was breakfast: Cora’s at Northland Mall. We got there around 9:30, by which time the lineup was well out the door, and almost out the mall’s doors. I think I nearly broke Mommy’s heart when I suggested we find somewhere else. I was starving, and I figured we’d be well over an hour before eating, let alone heading towards Drumheller. We settled for what I consider to be pretty darn good breakfast sandwiches at the Second Cup.

Soon, we were out of the city, and heading into the prairie countryside. I always feel reinvigorated when I go into the prairies — there’s something about the endless horizon and the huge blue sky that makes me feel more alive. I don’t know if you two feel this way (you were asleep, Choo Choo, so I suspect you didn’t even notice), but maybe one day you’ll be able to tell me.

We arrived in Drumheller just after noon, and we went right to the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology (or as most people I know call it, “The Tyrrell”), which is one of the best museums I know of for dinosaurs. (Truth be told, though, it’s not just dinosaurs. Although dinosaur fossils are plentiful in parts of Alberta, the museum prefers to cover the entire timeline from the dawn of life all the way up to modern man — there just happens to be a big portion that’s dinosaurs.) We’d all snacked in the car, so we pretty much skipped lunch.

Thankfully, you both are free right now, and will remain so until you’re 7 years old. Mommy had to take Choo Choo off for a feeding (Choo Choo is usually very hungry when she wakes up), but Monkey and I dove right into the museum.

Although you’ve played with dinosaur toys and watch Dinosaur Train, Monkey, you’d never seen anything remotely “life size” before. When you first entered the museum, you were met with a small pack of raptors, and a pair of massive theropods (Albertosauruses, I think). Oh, and a herd of humans. I’m not sure which you were more hesitant of — the replica dinosaurs, or the throngs of people. Either way, you needed a little leading.

You wanted to see the “bones”. (I’m not sure where you picked up the need to see bones; Mommy swears it wasn’t her.) We had to round corner, but soon you were looking at arms, and skulls, and legs, and even a half-uncovered skeleton. I’m not sure what you thought of it, and I think you were a little overwhelmed at first. I got a picture of you next to a sauropod leg (you’re under a metre in height right now, and barely were above the leg’s ankle bones).

Walking past the lab where the technicians dig out the bones from the rocks, we found ourselves face-to-face with your first Tyrannosaurus Rex. At first, you gasped, exclaiming “dinosaur!”, and we walked towards it. Then you stopped, shivered a bit, and mumbled “don’t like dinosaurs” and tried to go back the way we came. I managed to calm your fears, and we looked at the skeletons, and even got a picture of you in front of the T. Rex.

From there, we followed the path through the museum: up the ramp through the special exhibits to the “time tunnel”, which leads up to the start of the regular exhibits. You love ramps, and were quite happy to sprint up and down the ramp several times (me having to keep up with you, I might add), pausing at the top to look at the massive wall of purple-lit bubbles. The time spent here wasn’t wasted, having to wait for Mommy and Choo Choo to catch up to us.

Finally managing to move past the ramp and the bubbles, you looked down into the Dinosaur Hall (exclaiming, again, “dinosaur!”, followed with a “rawr!”) and looked directly at the head of a T. Rex. You didn’t seem at all fazed. You raced through the Burgess Shale (I had difficulty catching up), and paused only long enough at the Devonian Reef to declare: “fishies!”, before racing down the stairs into the Terrestrial Palaeozoic exhibit. You spent only long enough here to look almost at Dimetrodon before Mommy and Choo Choo caught up to us.

Already, you were showing signs of being too tired. You didn’t blink at a 21-metre Ichthyosaur, tried to run into the Allosaurus exhibit (thankfully, we caught you before that), and generally wanted only to play with blocks and be carried by Mommy (I was carrying Choo Choo in the Bjorn). We sped along through the rest of the museum and into the gift shop (because, don’t all museums end in gift shops?). There, you decided on a small “baby” T. Rex doll — though you could have easily gone with something much larger. I was impressed.

We headed back into downtown Drumheller, finally stopping at Gus’ Corner Cafe for lunch. It wasn’t much, but it was something. By the time we got to our hotel, it was nearly 16:00, and you were just plain baked. Down you went, like a log, for a short nap. Mommy, Choo Choo, and I went down to the lobby to let you rest.

A little over an hour later, I woke you up so we could go for a swim. It had been a long time since I’d taken you to a pool, and I didn’t want to miss out on an opportunity. There were a lot of people there, so we couldn’t do very much. We spent the time practising how to swim: kicking and pulling. You’re getting a lot better Monkey, and with more practise, you might even be ready to swim on your own (with water wings, mind you) by your birthday!

We went to O’Sheas, an “Irish restaurant” near our Super 8 hotel for dinner. It was … well, it was “okay” at best. Mommy and I have had the luxury of eating in actual Irish restaurants, and … well, let’s say they take a few creative liberties about their food. It wasn’t that it was bad or anything, just that it wasn’t as Irish as I expected. Oh, and you ate spaghetti.

After dinner, you and I went back to the museum on our own. There was barely anyone else there. You wanted to run around on your own, which you pretty much did. In fact, we went through the museum twice, because you just had to see the bubbles again. Afterwards, we stopped at the World’s Largest Dinosaur — I just had to get a picture of you with it in the background. No matter how hard I tried, though, I just couldn’t get you to go “rawr!” again.

Maybe it was all the excitement of the day, maybe it was the short nap, maybe it was that we stayed up too late, or maybe it was that you and I shared a bed — but no matter what the reason, you didn’t sleep well. You woke up a few times, screaming. Deciding that it was probably because you kept kicking me as you rolled around, I moved to the couch. Not that it helped much…

We headed home on Monday, unable to stay any longer. It was a fun trip, Monkey, and I hope we get to do it again before too long. As for you, Choo Choo, I can’t wait until you’re able to express interest in things like this. I’ll make going to museums a lot more fun than they are now.

The results were pretty much what I expected: I need glasses. Well, not need, but should probably get for reading and night time. And even then, it’s only a recommendation and not mandatory — I still see (more or less) fine, though there is a wee bit of blurriness. Dr. Amy (my first eye doctor) told me I’d need glasses when I was 40, and darn it I’m going to wait until I’m 40!

But then there’s the glaucoma…

No, I don’t actually have glaucoma. I’m just at risk for it. The doctor noticed in one of those painfully-bright-light tests that I might have something called “narrow angles” in my eyes. At this point, I’m not in any immediate danger, but this is something that could worsen in time, and the prospect of going blind is enough for me to get over my phobias and see a specialist. Which is what I did this morning.

Dr. Arun Latka at the Calgary Opthamology Center had a couple of preliminary tests run before he saw me (which appear to be standard), and quickly verified that I do, in fact, have narrow angles in the eye. This involved a new test that I’ve never had before, which struck me with absolute terror: he wanted to place a rather LARGE magnifying lens (looking something like the lens from a jeweller’s loupe) right on my eye.

Cringe. Heave. Try not to barf. Yeah, I have an issue with people getting that close to my eye. Ugh.

When he first placed it on my right eye, it felt like someone had kicked me in the gut. I suddenly regretted eating peanut butter for breakfast. I couldn’t open my left eye from the reaction. Although it was only there for at most a minute, it took a few more for me to not technicolour yawn over the equipment. I wasn’t nearly as bad with the left eye, likely because I knew what to expect. But it still gives me the shivers.

The confirmation of narrow angles led to the next step: laser eye surgery. And no, I haven’t had that yet — but I’m now scheduled for it. The surgery isn’t Lasik (I’m likely never to do that), and considerably simpler. It’s to correct the fundamental problem my eyes apparently have…

The eyes, like most parts of the body, have a flow of fluid within them. This regulates general health. The fluid flows from near the lens out to the cornea, circulates, then gets pushed back in through a narrow channel where the cornea and iris nearly meet, at a point referred to as (I think) Schlemm’s canal. Normally, the fluid flows out and all is well. In my case, the canal is so narrow that it could be blocked by the iris contracting too much (such as being in a dark room). This leads to too much pressure in the anterior chamber (between the iris and the cornea), which causes a pressure build-up in the interior chamber, which causes deadening of the optical nerve … and blindness.

The correction seems pretty trivial (and apparently is fairly common-place): bore a teeny hole in the iris to allow the fluid to balance.

So, for my birthday this year, I get to have laser eye surgery. At least on one eye, anyway. The other one won’t come until August (only one eye at a time, and the surgeon only does this one day a month, for some reason).

Sigh. Someone else near my eyes.

Ugh.

The events of the last few weeks have been extremely tiresome to say the least. Far too many people and groups have been prognosticating the future of personal computing, and there’s been far too little in doses of reality. The future is coming, but it’s not coming nearly as quickly as everyone thinks it is, and rushing to meet the future will likely only harm the present. A little rational thought would be appreciated.

Okay, let’s address the elephant in the room, first. Steve Jobs hates Flash. There, I’ve said it. Now let’s move on.

I’m not here to argue about openness or stability, or any of the claims/counter-claims made by anyone. There’s no point, since a large part of it is highly subjective. Apple will do whatever Apple wants to do, regardless of any other company’s desires, intentions, or abilities. And while Apple might be on the right path to the next major shift in personal computing, we’re still quite some time from critical mass.

Right now, in the industry, we have a need for rich, engaging experiences. These experiences are the things that help capture attention and keep people using a website or service long enough for that website or service to deliver its message and achieve its function. It could be easily argued that a much simpler user interface can do the same thing, but I can also easily argue that there is a wide gulf between utility and ubiquity: I love the simpleness that comes with pure utility, but the ubiquity of “fun” is what wins the day.

As a result of Apple, a lot of people are starting to tout the death of Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Flash. It’s doomed because Apple said so, or at least that’s the narrowly simple version of the story. A longer version introduces the up-and-coming HTML5 standards, which start to blur the lines between what Flash does now and what could be done without Flash. That’s what a lot of the major players (Google and Apple being the two most obvious) are moving towards, and there’s no reason why their direction shouldn’t be taken as the final chapter on Flash, right?

Right?

To the best of my knowledge and five minutes on Google, there has never been a technology that has up-and-vanished overnight (even figuratively-speaking) merely because one company said so. While I have a significant amount of respect for Apple and their attention to detail, and I nearly worship at the Altar of Google, I’d be quite the fool to be agreeing to abandon Flash.

Yes, you heard me. Dropping Flash is a foolish idea.

I know, I know. Don’t I hate Flash? Aren’t I the one who railed against it for years and years and years. In a word: no. I’m technology agnostic. I’ve been agnostic for a almost a decade. I learned a long time ago that ignoring a solution merely because you don’t like it immediately cuts you out of possible success, and you end up reinventing wheels. I don’t hate Flash — I hate inappropriate use of a technology.

Flash, as a platform for providing a rich media solution, has a place in our industry. For today, tomorrow, and the foreseeable short-term future (I’m saying at least two years, personally), any company pulling support for Flash is being extremely short-sighted. It’s like ditching your extremely reliable car at the side of the road to climb into an open chassis that has no doors, no roof, the colours and interior are still being decided, the engine periodically doesn’t work properly, and you’d better hope the dang thing has brakes.

Yes, you can do a lot without Flash right now. A number of websites (the site for new Nissan Leaf, the HTML5 presentation, HTML5 video, HTML5 audio funkiness) have proven that you can use these new standards quite effectively, and move away from Flash. And to that end, I say “congratulations, I hope you do well”. You’re going to need a lot of help, and pray that you can get away with it.

Why? Well, guess what folks, the HTML5 “standard” isn’t complete — It’s still a working draft. CSS3? Not finished, and not properly/fully supported by any browser. Video? Well, as much as Apple has tried to say that H.264 is the de facto standard, it’s patented, and the license fees will kick in at the end of 2015. Google’s bought On2, with the widely-held hope that they’ll release the VP8 codec openly. Firefox is only supporting Ogg Theora. And lest we forget the Browser That Just Won’t Die: Internet Explorer 6 will make your life a living hell.

Anyone remember the standards fights from the late 1990s? Does any of this look at all familiar?

Okay, so let’s assume that you can develop to some standards. How many authoring tools are you going to need? How many libraries? There’s no one consistent authoring tool, and your developers are going to need some seriously good (and seriously expensive) skills to make it all blend together smoothly.

Now let’s add in the added complication of rights management. Try find that little detail in the HTML5 specs. Go on, take a look, I’ll wait. Didn’t see anything? That’s because it’s not there. Big Media (read: Dinosaur Media) needs this in their vain attempt to keep their archaic business models creaking forward. They need DRM. They need encryption. They need the stuff built into Flash to keep their delivery systems operating. If for that reason alone, Flash has a long life ahead of it.

I’m not dancing around here with rose-coloured glasses. Flash is dying, of that I have no doubts. As a plug-in solution, its days are numbered. More than likely, it’ll morph into a development system not unlike Microsoft Studio, where it will be a rich media solution system. What it generates as a final product will depend on the need, supporting different outputs is definitely a possibility.

But for now, I’m sticking with Flash. It’s helpful, it’s handy, and it works.

So, here I am, a scant seven years later, probably at the opposite end of the scale. No, I haven’t ballooned out to slovenly proportions, but I’m definitely not where I was by the end of 2003. I’m far, far from it. How do I know this? Because I biked today, for the first time in (what Alex figures) is about three years.

All I gotta say is: Holy crap, I’m outta shape.

I have a whole whack of really lame excuses, most of which start with “I want to spend more time with my family”. That meant a need to get to and from work faster (therefore maximising my time at home), not going out for bike rides or runs, and generally not doing anything to avoid the pudginess forming around my middle. My former four-pack (never quite got the six) waned to a keg…

I honestly tried to make an effort in Costa Rica. But because of our general feel for the area, the heat during the day, Avalon Condominium’s outright lies about a fitness centre (they stopped construction about six months after we arrived, and may not complete for at least another year), and my general distaste (read: hatred) of running, I didn’t really get much further than our weekly walks to the market and back.

Which lead me to where I am now: spectacularly poor stamina, and highly weakened strength. I am not the man I used to be.

Now, I knew I wasn’t particularly well-off before today. Once the weather had moved away from the evil, nasty cold stuff (which I haven’t the equipment or interest to ride through), I hauled out the bike and checked to see if it was still rideable. About the only thing it needed was air in the tires. Finding my tire pump, I had little other excuse. So this morning, I set forth the mission: bike to and from work.

That’s when I realised my pump is actually crap, and couldn’t even inflate Rush Limbaugh (remember, he’s self-inflating). Having no backup, I had to walk 30 minutes to the nearest gas station to get my tires pumped up. Then I hit the road … and the bike paths, and the fields, and the roads, and an elevator at the other end.

Getting to work? Not too bad. Not as fast as I would have liked, but I also intentionally kept it light. Until today, I didn’t even know that there was a shower at the office (I hadn’t actually looked). I felt winded, but not so much that I felt things were in anyway amiss.

Then I went home.

From the office to the Bow Trail/Crowchild interchange, not too bad, but I had a hint that this wasn’t going to be as normal as I had thought. By the time I got to the trail that leads up the side of the bluff to the area I live, I already feared the worst. I geared down. Way down. To the first gear. I never use the first gear.

I chose the paved route over the switchback, thinking that the paved route might be a bit easier on my street tires. It’s also in two stages, giving a bit of a breather as you scoot up the 150-odd metre climb. The lower half rises maybe 15 metres before turning and going to the top of a 90-ish metre climb. Then down a block, turn to the right, and up the remaining 60 metres. Ish.

I think I made it up 50 metres before I stopped. I was so ashamed that I faked a leg cramp for the “benefit” of the mountain biker who tore past me going up like he was on flat ground. I stared down and tried not to think of how high I was still having to go, pedalling as steadily as I could.

I took my time going down the block, waiting for my heart rate to resettle a little. Then came Stage 2. I didn’t make it a third of the way before I finally dismounted and walked the rest. If I could have hung my head in shame without gagging on the heaving breathing, I would have. I had suspected I’d gone a little, but never dreamed I’d lost so much.

What this really means, though, is that I gotta get it back. And without a second car to drive to work and back, I have little other option. If nothing else, this sets a baseline from which I can work my way up to a level of fitness I’m comfortable with. And no, I won’t be posting pictures of my progress — I’m sure that me posting a “before” picture would somehow constitute an attack on the well-minded populous of the world and land me in … well, probably a bootcamp, which really wouldn’t be so bad.

In the meantime, though, it’s the pedal to the pavement, and a lot of wheezing. Hopefully, within a month or so, I might be at a point where I can look like I belong biking up a hill, rather than a wannabe.

One thing that regularly amazed me, however, was how often a client’s internal IT group seemed to have non-trivial input on almost every aspect of an initiative, from the way it was hosted right down to the specific use of a given image. I often found myself watching our best-laid plans being eaten away to the point of delivering something I was less than happy with. The repeat experience led me to focus on one inexorable fact:

IT departments should never have any input on the marketing website. Ever.

Before the IT folks all try to kill me, please understand something — I’m on your side. My background is technical — I have done corporate IT in my previous lives, and am well aware of the implications and consequences of a haphazard platform rollout or a half-baked application install. I know why Sarbanes-Oxley creates havoc every quarter. And yes, I too have denied people hardware upgrades merely for the reason that I didn’t see the need. I know where you’re coming from.

To over-simplify things, it’s the men and women problem: they’re both human, but communication and understanding sometimes comes in very short supply. Hence the book, and the numerous parodies thereof. (Though why women got stuck with the toxic atmosphere planet remains a mystery to me.) In my view, IT and marketing are on equally distant worlds, with the same challenges to understand given needs.

This is not about just mere communication. This goes past communication to perceptions, politics, policies, and also budgets. The resulting confounding confusion ends with uncertainties, namely: who actually is responsible for the website, who owns the website and its operation, and who pays for it. (Yes, IT and marketing work for the same company, but each has their own budgets.) This is where the tug-of-wars start, and why IT tends to get sucked (or shoved) into the website space.

Like I said, IT, I’m on your side. And believe me when I say this: You do not want to handle the trouble of the marketing website.

Simply put, a marketing department’s purpose is to sell a company’s products or services. As the adage goes, you have to spend money to make money. In the world of profit/loss, a marketing department is almost entirely loss — they spend the money to raise awareness and encourage sales of their organisation’s wares.

An IT department’s purpose is to support the organisation’s internal operations through implementing technology standards, ensuring stability and control over technology infrastructure, and assisting when things go awry. Like marketing, internal IT is entirely loss as well — it is the traditional form of a “cost center”, meaning it doesn’t even feed directly into a revenue chain. That also means that it’s a constant focus of cost control.

The two departments also (typically) report up through different executives as well, with marketing going to a marketing-oriented office (such as a Chief Marketing Officer) and IT going through the financial/administrative office (such as a Chief Financial Officer). This means that messages provided to each of them are different, the directions given to them are different, and their are told to focus on different things.

Which means, of course, that when the marketing department asks for something, the IT department will think it means something else.

In my experience, this usually arises when a company’s web presence is the point of discussion. This is the ultimate tug-of-war: marketing needs the freedom to do what they need to do to their job, and IT sees this as something they need to own and support. Almost invariably, it ends up getting messy, and the marketing department ends up subservient to the IT department.

Now, before all you geeks out there cheer for this apparent victory, this is a bad thing. As alluded to above, IT departments do not understand marketing needs. What IT departments see is a need to keep things in line with supported standards, and keep costs to a minimum. This misunderstanding has been lampooned many times in cartoon, often sending those in the industry to nod their heads sadly at the truth.

Consider the following scenario: Marketing has a project that will raise awareness for a new product. Their budget allows for about two weeks of work, and will have a one year lifespan. They want to really reach out to Gen Y as a primary audience. When Marketing and IT see these rough requirements, they’ll each see something different:

There’s two places where IT falls short: understanding the creative aspect of marketing, and the need for flexibility. Marketing campaigns are highly creative, by sheer necessity — remove the creativity, and all you have is a message without hooks. The flexibility allow marketing to react to need, as well as attempt strategies to better broadcast a message. Such flexibility flies in the face of most standards, which strive for stringent consistency.

In other words, marketing is not something an IT department should ever want to understand. I assure you, it can make your head hurt.

So what are we left with? In my view, keep IT doing what IT does best: supporting the internal infrastructure of a company, and staying out of the website game.

As for the website, it should never live with the company (unless the company itself is geared utterly around its website, but that also changes the game entirely). The website should live at an external location with a third-party hosting vendor. There are thousands to choose from in all sizes, shapes, securities, and softwares. You do this because you don’t want to have to deal with the infrastructure of a website that supports your business (either directly or indirectly), and because it allows a marketing department to do things that would scare the bejeebus out of an IT team.

So, dear IT friends, do yourselves a favour: if someone ever tries to suggest you take on the task of managing the company’s website projects, do yourselves a favour: run. And leave behind a note with the five hosting sales reps who cold-called you last month.

(That’s okay, though. It’s not easy to do. Nana’s got a couple of pictures of me doing the “No, it’s MINE!” thing, too.)

So maybe as a last hurrah, or as a first foray into planning bigger and better things, Mommy organised (and mostly handled) the Easter egg hunt this year. Last year, we stayed in Santa Ana as Mommy wasn’t feeling well, and Holy Week in Costa Rica doesn’t involve rabbits hiding chocolate eggs. I think we wanted to make up for that.

Mommy coloured a dozen eggs, and then put some Tinkerbell stickers on them. Last night, after you went to bed, Mommy and I hid them around the yard, along with a few eggs with M&Ms in them. After we gorged ourselves on pancakes this morning, we (the “we” in this case was Grandpa, Granny, Mommy, Choo Choo, you, and myself) went outside to find them all.

We had to show you the first few eggs. You seemed to be a little perplexed — what the heck are coloured eggs with Tinkerbell stickers doing in my sandbox? But after the sixth or seventh egg, you seemed to catch on and started to see them a little more readily. We still had to guide you towards the eggs (mostly because it was still freaking cold out), but you found them all.

And then you started eating them. First, of course, the M&Ms inside the plastic eggs. You chased those with a yolk from one of the coloured (hard-boiled) eggs. Little did we know at the time that you seem to have the same reaction to chocolate that I did when I was younger.

You, my dear, are hyper.

(Choo Choo, you’re pretty dull right now. Actually, you spent probably 80% of today sleeping on Granny. And we can’t really feed you anything “interesting” for a few months.)

At church, you received a little gift bag that had some chocolate in it. Never mind the fact that you love to run up and down the aisles, you were now hopped up on cacao and tearing around the place in fast forward. You wore me down faster than I could have imagined, and sweating up a storm to keep up with you. Naturally, everyone else was utterly amused at the little girl in the red dress who couldn’t seem to stop giggling.

Too bad they couldn’t have seen you when the sugar ran out. You went down, and getting you up again when your nap was over was just shy of impossible. It took a while for you to wake up entirely.

I almost can’t wait until next year. Choo Choo, with luck you’ll be walking, and while you might be taking unsteady steps, we might be able to convince Monkey to help you find an egg or two. And as you both get older, I’m going to have even more fun hiding them in difficult places, with puzzles to boot.

But for now, I got to witness my first egg hunt. And I know it won’t be my last.

But I guess this is also a sign of your maturity. It seems strange to call a 2.5 year old “mature”, but I can’t think of a better word to really describe you. We’ve seen the “Terrible Twos” from you, but no more than I’d think to be average. And, truthfully, I’ve seen far less since Choo Choo arrived.

You’ve grown up, my daughter.

You know it, too. You know this because when I ask you: “Who’s my little Monkey?”, you reply: “I [am a] BIG monkey!” Okay, to be fair, this could be simply because you also notice how much larger you are than Choo Choo. You’re just over 93cm tall now, and you’ve gotta be over 16 kilos, too. That puts you at 4.5 times heavier than Choo Choo, and about twice as tall. You’re not just larger, you’re gargantuan.

But you also treat her very differently. Although Mommy and I do tell you to be careful around Choo Choo, we’ve never had to pull you away, you’ve never tried to hurt her. The day Choo Choo came home, you ran out the front door down the walkway screaming Choo Choo’s name. Every morning you get up and come into Mommy and Daddy’s room, wanting to see your sister. You want to touch her constantly (you actually say: “I need to touch [Choo Choo]!”), and snuggle with her every chance you get. No-one else can kiss her as gently as you do.

You know when Choo Choo’s sad. You know when she needs to be fed. You want to help change her diapers. You try to make her more comfortable in her baby seat, and bring her toys — even your own toys. In fact, well, you kinda seem to love your sister more than you love us. (But don’t worry, we’re not going to hold that against you.)

And maybe, to some degree, you listen to us a bit better, too. I’m not sure if it’s more with age (maturity) or because we’ve figured out how to counter some of the Terrible Twos, but I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and suggest it’s because you’re my Big Monkey.

Since Choo Choo’s arrived, I’ve really had to realise that you are no longer the little girl whose pictures I look at, and wonder how you got so big. You’re not the frail, fragile thing that you were when you were Choo Choo’s age, and that you can run and skip and play … and slip, and bump, and skin, and bruise, and I’m not going to have a heart attack every time. You’re pretty solid, Monkey. You might still cry when you fall — I’d expect no less — but lately it’s more about the surprise of falling more than any actual injury.

Rest assured, my dear, that I don’t love you any less because you’re not my baby anymore. You’re still my little girl. You always have been, and you always will be. When I’m old and grey, I still hope to be tickling you, teasing you, and playing with you … or at least your kids. You’ll always be my Monkey, no matter how old we get. And while one day you’ll be too big for me to pick up, I’m never going to let you go.

This morning started almost like any other, with the family rising from bed around 7:00. Except, of course, that neither Mommy or I had slept during the night (Mommy less so), Mommy was not allowed to eat any breakfast (as she was going in for surgery), and Grandpa was preparing to spend the day with Monkey.

And, of course, we were all looking forward to meeting you.

Mommy and I got to the Foothills Medical Centre just after 9:00. We got to Labour and Delivery (also known as Unit 51) right around 9:15, which was the scheduled arrival time. Joan-Margaret, Mommy’s midwife (a truly awesome person that you will meet a few more times yet) was already there and talking through your birth with the staff, while Mommy and I got shuffled into room 507 — which until that point was debated as even existing.

Your sister, Monkey, was a “natural birth”. I write it that way because that’s how it’s referred to — the way most babies come out. We had originally planned for a similar arrival for you, Choo Choo, but things don’t always go according to plan. In fact, our original plan got steadily hacked away, turning our lovely swan topiary into a rather dumpy-looking nub of a shrub — we’d gone from a midwife-driven home birth to a hospital-organised surgery with a who’s-who of doctor titles. But at least the midwife wasn’t totally out of the picture.

For the last few weeks, Mommy has endured many tests to see if you were okay. When we arrived back in Canada in December, we found that there was a rare antibody that makes people in medical professions say “uh oh”. That led to multiple ultrasounds, a lot of blood tests, and too many surprises than either Mommy or I would have liked to have considered. Those blood tests were to make sure that, during the c-section that was almost guaranteed to happen (it was only a high probability until the previa was discovered, at which point it became an absolute given).

Well, someone “lost” the lastest test, only taken yesterday.

Naturally, this causes more than a little stress. While not a total disaster, it meant a delay until either a) the test results were found, or b) new blood was drawn and tested. The latter would take at least a couple of hours. But thankfully, the clerk who reported it missing would later apologise profusely when she realised that it was simply her mistake. Still, when you’re not an emergency, you sometimes have to wait. Which we did.

Thankfully, Joan-Margaret is perhaps one of the most fascinating people I’ve met in a very long time. Already a grandmother (her experience and appearance utterly undermine her age), she has worked across the globe (and Western Canada) and can tell some pretty interesting (if tall) tales from her medical past. She’s one of those people I would immediately point out as an ideal mentor to others, and someone I would dearly love to have as a friend going forward (if for no other reason than her personality). But I digress…

When we finally got called, I donned by booties, my cap, gown, and face mask, and then took residence in a strange little waiting area right next to the operating room while Mommy got prepped for the surgery. Although a major surgery — for all intents and purposes — she needed only a local anesthetic so she wouldn’t feel the pain of surgery. I was kept out until the prep was done, at which point I was brought in and sat right next to Mommy.

Unlike with Monkey, I didn’t see you entering our world, Choo Choo. A part of me is sad for that. Monkey’s arrival was a bit rushed at the last moment, but yours was completely shielded by a protective cloth in between Mommy and I, and you and the doctors. We could see certain sounds (notably your water breaking), and one of the doctors (it might have been the obstetrician — we couldn’t even tell who it was) giving us a play-by-play: foot, leg, bum, back, arm, and then a note about your other arm wrapped around your neck like a “feather boa”.

Finally you were out, and I was guided over to the warming table, where three people (there were no less than 10 in the room, beyond Mommy, you, and myself) who were focused on your health. They cleaned you off, emptied your lungs, and did the quick check to make sure you were okay. Then they wrapped you up in a blanket, and I placed you by Mommy for the first time.

I hope at some point n the future, I can related to you the feeling of overwhelming joy and relief I felt seeing you for the first time, lying next to Mommy’s head. You were no longer just mimicking an alien trying to burst from Mommy’s belly, at constant risk of blood antibodies. You were out in the world, on your own, breathing and kicking.

And then you were taken away.

This was the part we hadn’t expected, nor had Joan-Margaret or the obstetrician — it was the decision of the NICU to take you away to monitor your health until the test results came back, either clearing you of concern, or keeping you around for treatment. We weren’t sure which it was going to be. Our  nub of a shrub suddenly seemed stumped.

I left Mommy behind and followed you to NICU, and didn’t leave your side until a) we were certain that you were okay, and b) had a band around your leg that said “I Am A Sowrey”. While I do have a lot of faith in our medical system, having you separated from Mommy wasn’t at all what we wanted, and there was no way we would have been able to handle you being lost as a result of a clerical error.

I spent most of the afternoon running back and forth between you and Mommy, before finally Mommy was wheeled over from her recovery, and the two of you spent your first real time together. Although hours delayed, you were immediately happy to be with Mommy, and I hadn’t seen Mommy that relieved in a long time. I think we both cried.

We remained there for almost an hour before we had to leave you behind one more time while Mommy was moved to her room in Post-Partum. I went home to check in on your sister and Grandpa, had my first bite to eat since breakfast (it was now after 18:00, I might add), and get Monkey ready for bed.

Joan-Margaret called, once again revealing the infinite depths of her awesomeness, and had somehow arm-wrestled NICU into releasing you to the Post-Partum ward to be with Mommy. Mommy called me, beyond ecstatic that you would be joining her shortly. When I arrived back at the hospital around 20:30, the two of you were cuddled up on Mommy’s bed.

You were laying face-down on Mommy’s chest, her gown unbuttoned. You had your left hand curled up under your chin, your other arm hidden under the blanket. You were sound asleep, not showing any of the action (or bewilderment) of your sister. I don’t know if that’s because of how you were born, or because of your demeanour. Let’s be honest, I’ve only seen you for a few hours today, and not nearly long enough to yet know how you act or behave.

And yet, I already love you. You are my daughter, and I have been worrying about and for you since you first gave your mother a good solid kick. I have laid awake at nights, worrying about anti-k and how surgery might affect Mommy and you. You are no stranger to this family, even if your face had not been known until now. Even when you were exposed and alone in NICU, probably wondering what had happened to the muted world you’d known all your life, you knew me — the sound of my voice seemed to calm you, ease you. You know who I am.

I wish I could promise you that I’ll never make you sad, or that I’ll never hurt you. Sadly, I will. It happens. But I’ll never leave you. I’ll be there when you take your first steps, when you ride your first horse, when you pet your first sheep, for your birthdays, for your Christmases. As much as I have enjoyed watching your sister learn and grow, I have not tired of it and cannot wait to see what you do next. I promise to give you the same hugs, the same kisses, the same strokes, the same love that Monkey has every day.

Welcome to the world, Choo Choo. I can’t wait to show you its wonders.

We need teachers to help us move past mere instinct towards self-sufficiency, and self-learning. They teach us mathematics, communication, sciences, and art. As intelligence grows, we shift away from teachers, and look more towards peers — people who are similar, but have more experience. They are our mentors, ones who offer their abilities as examples for us to learn from, and models upon which we can hope to improve ourselves.

And anyone who thinks they can survive without a mentor has truly never had one.

Mentorship comes in many forms. As previously mentioned, we have teachers or professors. These are the ones most readily identified, and the ones that we often credit with success. Interestingly enough, they’re also the only “professional” mentors — ones who are trained for that very task. Also consider:

• Your manager, be it the one from your high school days at the local burger joint, or the one sitting in their office across your cubicle at work
• If you work in trades, it could be the one who’s helping you through your journeyman’s ticket
• The clergy of your church, mosque, synagogue, or temple
• Your best friends, who won’t shy away from telling you when you’re wrong
• And lest we forget the most underrated and undervalued mentors of all: our parents

In the industry that I work in — interactive marketing, with a particular focus on technology — there is always the need for mentorship. No business can truly operate without mentorship, at least not without a hope of guidance or improvement. Without mentorship, you might as well be flatlining, in all connotations of the word.

Mentorship, in its simplest form, is guidance. Every human is capable of thought, of decision, of education. But on their own, every human is going to lack the lifeguard that will help them when they start to drown. The mentor is the one who’ll guide them back to shallow water, or offer the hand to pull them to safety.

Note something particular with that analogy, too: mentorship is a two-way street. It only works if there is someone offering, and someone accepting.

Mentorship does not exist if you are looking to someone for help that they’re simply not willing to give, or have enough care to give decently (it can be argued that too little guidance is no guidance at all). Similarly, someone willing to offer guidance has no impact to someone who doesn’t want to listen (there is a blinding effect, usually tied to ego, that can drown out a wise voice). Failed mentorships can lead to breakdown in team structures, loss of confidence in team members’ abilities, and usually poor performance.

A mentor should be someone who offers insights that a person does not have. Since insights can come from virtually anyone, mentors are not bound by age, sex, creed, religion, ethnicity, career direction, relationship, educational background, time zone, or any other possible criteria that could potentially be considered a detriment or block. And there is nothing stopping someone from having more than one mentor — in fact, multiple mentors allow a person to gain multiple insights in different things.

When I moved over to Evans Hunt Group at the beginning of this year, I regained my long-time mentors Dan, Bill, and Allard, as well as one of my more recent mentors, Tori. All of them have been crucial in teaching me not just the hard skills of my job, but also the things that help my day-to-day life: organisation, calmness, focus, direction, caution, daring, courage, and even bravery.

Today, for example, I had particularly good reminder of why I need a mentor. I’m the technical lead for a large project that we’re due to deliver in about a month-and-a-half. As part of my operating procedure, I like to keep Allard in the loop of what’s going on. It’s a good practice for redundancy, but also because it’s good to get a sanity check — if nothing else, make sure that your “solution” is sound, and not going down the wrong road.

Allard (proverbially) whacked me over the nose with a rolled up newspaper and said “bad dog!” for part of an architecture. At the time, naturally, I objected to the accusation, feeling that the direction was sound and would offer the best chance of success. But — and this is where my previous note really applies — I remained open to Allard’s thoughts. It took us a while of discussion (partly because it was Allard’s gut check went off first, and it took a little while for his elocution to catch up), but ultimately I could only see that he was right — I’d made a fundamental flaw in my own logic, and actually introduced risk.

Truly, mentorship need not be a full-time occupation. A competent person will not always need guidance, and not always from the same person. Likewise, a mentor doesn’t always have time to offer. A good relationship will usually balance itself naturally.

And if you don’t have a mentor, or are at least readily able to identify them, don’t worry. Often, all you need to do is merely start talking with someone. Eventually, you’ll talk to the right person, and you’ll find the guidance you need.

Well, add to that a very sick and very pregnant wife, and a sick toddler (which I suspect led to Alex and I becoming ill), and you’ve got a pretty miserable household. This is all part of parenthood and families — one goes down, chances are the rest are going down too. (How my parents managed to never seemed to be ill when I was a kid is beyond me.) But it also tends to cause problems when you’re supposed to go places. Like, say, a baby shower.

No, it wasn’t our baby shower. Baby showers are to bestow things for the expectant mother that she probably doesn’t already have. We’ve got it. Lots of it. Tonnes of it. A room and a half of it. This particular shower was for Jeannie, my cousin-in-law, who is due in late March.

So. A room full of people, one of whom is very pregnant. Walking in there, coughing and sneezing, would probably be regarded as highly inappropriate, bordering on homicidal. Naturally, we weren’t too keen on spreading “the love”, so to speak. But we did want to at least drop the gift off.

Now, for those of you who don’t live in Calgary, you need to understand the rampant confusion common with most Calgary suburbs. City planners here need to be lined up and shot for allowing subdivisions to bear repetitive non-sensical names, with all the roads starting with a portion of the subdivision’s name. It might sound good on paper, but sometimes you need a GPS to figure out where you’re going.

Conveniently, we got a GPS for free back in early 2008 when we bought a new washer and dryer. We never really put it to use, as we never really ventured into those dark recesses of Calgary — we stuck (generally) to the grid (where things make a lot more sense). So it seemed a heck of a waste not to put it to the test, and see if could actually get me to where I was going … considering the map is over three years old, and Calgary grows like a hungry amoeba.

Well, surprise of surprises, it worked. Gift delivered (at arm’s length), and soon I was back on the road … with a devilish plan to totally confound the poor device, going on roads that opened only in the last year, and going every which direction but the one it was telling me to go.

Oh, come on — if you had a GPS, you’d do the same thing!

Anyway, in my attempts to piss off the calm British voice telling me to “keep right”, I found myself in front of the Northlands Best Buy. (Honestly, I hadn’t a specific plan in mind. These things do happen.) Then I found myself inside the Best Buy, looking at new TVs.

You see, we have — or rather, had — an old tube TV sitting in our living room. A 22″ (ish) beast, with a built-in VCR. It’s a reliable thing, but I’m not too fond of CRTs, and have longed to ditch it. (I also long to ditch my uber-reliable Hitachi rear-projection, too, but it’s replacement is currently about $5,000, and although I technically no longer have a biological need for my testicles, I don’t want to give Alex reason to remove them.) And since we’d used LCD TVs in Costa Rica, I really wanted to move to something more recent.

The need? Well, as much as I would love to stand up as the Totally Awesome Parent™ that never uses the TV as a babysitter … well, I’ve come to the realisation that the TV can, in fact, be the Necessary Diversion™ when you need five frakkin’ minutes to have a shower, bowel movement, or other short-term event where you’re utterly occupied and cannot prevent your child from wandering into the iron maiden stashed in the closet. It sucks, but it’s a reality. Now enter the situation where a new mother who must regularly breastfeed must also wrangle a toddler. It adds up.

(That, and we bought an Apple TV, and had no TV that I could actually plug it into. Both our TVs predate HDMI and component video, s-video is now obsolete, and you get laughed at if you say the word “composite”.)

Enter the Samsung LN32B460, a 32″ HD TV. Those of you who’ve already googled the specs are probably already laughing at me. Why would I waste my money on a 60Hz, 720P, with a 6 ms pixel response? Have I officially gone mad?? (Short answer, yes, but that’s another story.)

Let’s be realistic: It’s a milestone better than the old TV, the primary audience is the Monkey, who doesn’t know 720 from 1080, and hasn’t seen anything Blu-Ray as a comparison. So, for now, this is the best TV in a cost-benefit situation. (This is pretty much the way I live my life these days, with few exceptions.) A few bucks later (including an HDMI cable and a wall bracket), and we were watching Pixar’s Up! on our new TV.

All the while, sniffling, blowing noses, and coughing.

One question I also expect them to ask is how I watched TV without having my computer in front of me, firing off notes through Twitter, Facebook, or whatever social media network will be in vogue in 5-8 years from now. I’ll look at their cute, adorable little faces, and tell them as seriously as I can: There was a time when we watched TV on our own. We went to sporting events in small groups, we went shopping without telling everyone what we were doing, and we could vanish for hours on end without anyone knowing where we were.

The idea that we exist solely as individuals is rapidly becoming extinct.

I’ll freely admit that I’m on the leading (okay, okay, obsessive) edge when it comes to Twittering et al. I’ve been broadcasting status updates (in one form or another) for a couple of years, in frequencies varying from every few days to every few seconds — those of you following me during the 2010 Olympic Men’s Ice Hockey gold medal game or during last night’s Oscars know what I mean. That means I’m not only keenly aware of the potential these services offer, but also the potential impact.

Let me rewind a couple of weeks to the start of the Olympics on 12 February. While most of you watching the opening ceremonies might have had a word or two between you, there were a few of us (I’ll estimate at least a few thousand) who were offering up our views as the show proceeded. In real-time. Publicly. You could track the entire thing under hashtags, or even by following a few people.

As the Olympics proceeded, the effect only continued to grow. For me, it was a way of communicating — and to some degree, even participating — with the games through friends who were actually there. (Of particular note is Canada’s unofficial Lucky Charm, my friend Katrina, who was present for no less than two gold medal wins.) It was a real-time feedback, and a way for me to feel that I wasn’t just trapped here in Calgary, unable to witness it for myself.

And lest we forget the Olympic Men’s Ice Hockey gold medal game between the USA and Canada. All epic-ness of the game aside (I stand by my statement that the game is the Summit Series of my generation), the game probably produced the largest amount of Twitter and Facebook traffic from Canada this year (and that includes all events yet-to-come). You almost didn’t have to watch the game on TV (although, really, it was one of the best-ever hockey games) — follow a few people, and you almost got the play-by-play, along with healthy doses of (periodically profane) comments about plays, shots on goal, and so forth. The only thing that would have made it better is if Don Cherry were tweeting it.

Which, interestingly enough, was what happened last night on the Oscars. Except it wasn’t Don Cherry, it was Roger Ebert. Though not nearly as copious with comments as I had expected (he was live-blogging as well, which I didn’t have access to), events were still punctuated with exceptionally-timely thoughts, all backed-up with his decades of experience in the industry.

Okay, so what does this all mean?

I didn’t watch alone. I might have been alone in the room, in front of my TV, but my network of friends and contacts kept me company. For years, people had talked about interactive TV as being a major shift in the industry, but to virtually no fruition. The act of side-conversation might not be the interactive we all had in mind, but imagine the joy of side-discussions (and even trash-talking) with people who have the same interest, without the ugliness of having to pack everyone into a small room at once.

I don’t see this ending soon, either. While I don’t watch a lot of TV (I generally avoid everything except MythBusters and Dirty Jobs), this sort of thing would definitely play out for regular sporting events (hockey, football, basketball, and even — dare I say it? — golf), reality shows like Survivor and Big Brother, soap operas, and similar genres that tend to collect an obsessive and conversational bunch (imagine if Star Trek: The Next Generation or the rebooted Battlestar Galactica came out now).

And, of course, this goes beyond televised events. People in the stands of the game, people following poker tournaments, people watching parades, let alone people broadcasting the latest disaster (follow the #temblor hashtag sometime — the USGS does).

This is the promise of social media, folks. We always thought it was just about bringing people together. In reality, it’s about keeping us from feeling alone.

These two weeks will be both interminably long, and over instantly. There’s just so much to do before you come home with us, and I can’t wait until you’re there. You’ll be welcomed immediately by your sister, The Monkey, by Asia the cat, and your Grandpa, who’s eagerly awaiting his next grandchild. Your second cousin — currently only known as “Baby T” — might be here by then.

Only time will tell.

Like your sister, I have such high hopes for you, and I’ll try not to turn them into expectations. Monkey blazed the path, to some degree, so Mommy and I aren’t walking in totally blind to your needs, but you’ll have to forgive us if we’re sometimes a little slow — it’s been a while since we’ve had to take care of an infant. I’m sure it’ll come back to us quickly, though.

I wonder how much you’ll be like Monkey, and how you’ll be different. Will you cry a lot? Will you sleep? Will you have lots of hair? Will you have trouble teething? How soon will you be crawling or walking? How will you adapt to being in different time zones?

There are times I wish I could predict the months (and years) to come, to try and avoid the pain that comes with growing and learning. But there are also the times that I’m immensely happy that I can’t, making each and every day a discovery. Every day we will see you learn something new, do something different. That keeps me from feeling old, because it reminds me just how much of a joy it is to be a parent. Something I hope you get a chance to experience yourself … many years from now.

So rest up, dear Choo Choo. You’ll need your energy for that first day. It’ll be big, it’ll be loud, it’ll be bright. Once the shock wears off, and you’re cuddled up with Mommy, you’ll realise that you’re safe and the only thing you’ll need to do (at least for a while), is eat, sleep, be utterly adorable, and be adored.

And pee and poo, but that takes some getting used to…

Almost right away, we missed some things, though most of that was due to the roughly 40 degree Celsius shift in temperature. Other things soon made themselves known, each time with the all-too-familiar pang of loss and regret.

But like when we moved down to Costa Rica, this is just something we’ll have to get used to.

Now just to be clear, there are two parts to this: things I miss, and things that I should miss but don’t (at least, not yet). I’m splitting it up this way just to avoid some of the obvious questions that are bound to appear. C’mon, I know you guys a little bit, y’know…

Things I Miss

Fresh fruit

As I’d mentioned a few times before, Costa Rica has fresh fruit. I know that sounds like an utterly silly statement, but unless you’ve been to a tropical country, you have no concept what fresh fruit is really like. None. Even the best organic produce you get at your local hippie market doesn’t hold a sniff to the stuff I got at the farmer’s markets in Costa Rica. The “reject” bananas (the “good” ones are all exported) were sweeter and lusher than any banana I’ve ever had here, the strawberries were worth killing over, and the papayas so good that I might never be able to eat them again (seriously).

Unbelievable greenery

I live in Calgary, where it barely rains. We get a nice green spring, but usually by mid-July everything’s starting to dry out. When fall hits, the primary colour is brown. We get white in the winter, at least when the snow is covering the aforementioned brownness.

In Costa Rica, it’s green. Always. Everywhere. Even on the tops of volcanoes, it’s green. There’s no effort for it to be green — that’s just the way it is. It happens naturally. No additives, no preservatives. It’s overwhelmingly green. There’s no comparison for the green. And now that brown has fully set in up here, I find myself missing it more than ever.

Volcanoes (but not earthquakes)

Speaking of volcanoes, I’ve had a thing for geology since I was a kid, and love seeing volcanoes. Especially at a distance (the active ones, any way). I’ve been fortunate to see a few volcanoes, notably in Hawaii, but also in Costa Rica (and went up Poas just a couple of days before a 6.2 earthquake levelled a nearby town). There aren’t any decent volcanoes in Canada, all of them are either dormant or entirely extinct.

Speaking of earthquakes, I rather like Calgary. It’s extremely stable. Not necessary free of tremors, but far enough to avoid anything nasty. I like that.

Price includes taxes

One pet peeve I always had with the North American pricing system was that the price you see is rarely the price you pay. Taxes are thrown on top, and usually service fees on that, too.

In Costa Rica, IVI (the tax) is rolled into everything, including your restaurant menu prices (divided into two columns). There’s no question what something costs, even if the price is in $USD (which it sometimes is, depending on how deep you’ve dived into tourist areas). I miss that kind of transparency.

Sun in the morning

Although it bugged me at the time, I now officially miss sun in the morning. The sun is still rising here, and when my alarm goes off it’s still dark. It’s something I came to appreciate a lot, as it really made things much nicer. That said, I’m going to be very happy for the late evening sun come June…

Not wearing pants

Costa Rica, duh, is warm. So I rarely ever wore pants — shorts were my mainstay for a year and a half. I hate wearing pants. I hate wearing shoes (instead of sandals). And I really, really, really hate wearing socks.

Monkeys (and wildlife in general)

No, I’m not saying I don’t like seeing deer, or moose, or anything else common in our northern tracts. But I do miss seeing wild parakeets, vibrantly colourful birds, and especially the monkeys roaming the treetops. There’s nothing like monkeys up here, save for zoos.

Driving with the window down … all year

I only realised this last weekend, but man I miss driving with the window down! You can’t do that up here when it’s 20 below! (Well, I suppose you could, but then you’re just asking for trouble.) There’s nothing like being able to go down a street at any time of the day or night, with the window down. That kind of fresh air is just amazing.

Dos Piños (and ice cream)

Dos Piños is the major dairy producer in Costa Rica, and makes pretty much everything that you can make from milk. Of particular note were their ice cream products. I don’t know what it is, but Costa Rican ice cream (Dos Piños and Pops, at least that I found) is fantastic. It’s wonderfully creamy, and not filled with a lot of crap (which seems common in North American ice creams). It got to the point where I was having one a day, on walks with Jason and Ed.

Batidos

A “batido” is (more or less) a blended fruit drink. Not with ice — just fruit, mixed with either water or milk. (Milk was my favourite version.) I know I can make them here with whatever fruit I get my hands on, but as you already know (from my first item), it’s just not the same without fresh Costa Rican fruit. I liked batidos for the fact that it was fruit, it was tasty, and often filling. It was a great alternative to syrupy drinks, or even a coffee if I wasn’t in the mood.

You’re from Canada? So am I!!

This one sounds silly, but it’s true — there’s nothing like finding a fellow Canuck (or insert your own nationality, I’m sure the same is true of other countries) when you’re abroad. I’ve been fortunate to have this happen in a few places, and even made some friends that way. It’s not to say that I can’t make friends with my fellow Canucks up here, but meeting someone abroad and sharing your experiences is very different than striking up a conversation while on a bus.

My friends

Last, but probably most importantly, I miss my friends. The people I knew well, who I worked with, the ones who lived near me, the ones who shared in the experience, the people who asked how I was and were a significant part of my life, and especially the ones so kind as to drive me to and from work every day. I feel exceedingly distant from them now, not just in distance, but because I might never see some of them ever again.

Things I Don’t Miss (Yet)

Now you’re probably wondering why some things didn’t appear in that list. Well, there are a few things that I don’t miss, at least not yet.

The heat

I have never liked the heat, at least not for long periods of time. Once in a while, for a couple of hours, I can hack. Even full days are a bit much for me, and dragging that out into weeks? HA! Not a chance. Strange as it sounds, I’ll take the cold over the heat any day.

Just so long as I can visit the heat once in a while…

The constant temperatures in the valley

The Central Valley in Costa Rica is consistent in the way you can’t even imagine. 27 degrees Celsius is the daily high, and 15 degrees is the daily low. Every day. Every. Single. Day. (It does vary a little bit from time to time, but the mode is pretty much 27/15.)

Now, I know what you’re thinking: that sounds heavenly! You never have to stare at weather forecasts! But you also never get to see seasons like we do up here. I missed fall and spring (and especially winter). You can handle only so much perfection before you start to go a little wonky, lemme tell ya.

The beaches

I know, I know, again you’re thinking I’m totally batty (and maybe I am). But I don’t really miss the beaches. That’s not to say I don’t like beaches — I love ‘em! But going to the beach was never trivial, and involved far more effort than I care to think about. So much so that, well, now I look back and I think that while I’m glad to have gone, I don’t really have any burning desire to visit another one anytime soon.

The beer

Okay, first off, I loved Imperial. Truly. But Costa Rica has a limited selection of beer, and about half of them are pretty darn close to the same thing with a different label. Up here, I can lose hours staring at a beer menu (yes, there is such a thing as a beer menu), or standing in the refrigerated room at any of the billion-or-so liquor stores in Calgary, trying to decide what to try next. That’s a level of selection I missed dearly while I was in Costa Rica, and am very happy to have it back.

The coffee

Before you freak out, there’s a really simple reason why I don’t miss Costa Rica coffee: we brought a lot of it back home with us. When we run out? Well, that’s another blog post…

Or rather, that’s how simple the process should be. But as we’re finding, things rarely seem to go the way we want them to. In fact, as of yesterday, we’re pretty much at the opposite end of the spectrum of “wants”. All of this is because of a “new” finding that almost displaces the anti-K issue as being an issue.

It all started when our newest sonographer, Jennifer (we hadn’t seen her before), happened to ask a question: Has anyone talked to us about a low-lying placenta? The answer, as always, is “no”. Now what exactly had Jennifer move to the next step, I have no real idea. Every other time we were asked, everyone just seemed to move on in life. Jennifer must’ve seen this as a bad thing, ‘cuz next thing we know, she goes for the internal probe to check from the inside.

That simple action may very well have saved Choo Choo’s life.

As we would find out talking with Dr. Pollard (the same doctor we’d seen last week), Jennifer had spotted something amiss. (Yes, folks, those technicians working the ultrasound, x-ray, and/or MRI aren’t just trained monkeys — they know what they’re doing very well, and do know the difference between “good” and “bad”.) It turned out that the internal probe had caught something that every other exam Alex had gone through — from Costa Rica right up to the first two exams in Canada — missed the fact that her placenta is lying overtop of her cervix.

There may be a few of you giving that statement the blank stare, so let me elaborate. The placenta normally grows somewhere away from the cervix, keeping the exit clear of obstruction. When the placenta grows overtop of the cervix, you have a problem: if the placenta comes out first during childbirth, there can be massive bleeding (‘cuz it’s not supposed to come out first), and then the baby’s supply of oxygen is cut off.

Yeah, not good.

The discovery of the placenta’s position comes with a significant amount of irony (if this is, in fact, the right term): if it hadn’t been for the seriousness of the anti-K problem, we’d never have known that the placenta was in the wrong place. It was a bit of a shock to Alex and I, and we are beside ourselves trying to comprehend the chain of discoveries and events that have led us to this point. (There’s a few other things we were told to avoid, which thankfully we’d never done — but could just have easily been doing had we’d followed the same pattern as with Monkey’s gestation.) Needless to say, we already hold Jennifer in the highest of opinions.

Okay, so what does all of this mean? It’s a Go To Surgery card — do not have labour, do not get to deliver at home. Our original plan was a natural home birth, with a midwife (whom we will continue to use until after Choo Choo is born, as she will handle the post-partum issues). Now we’re scheduled for a c-section in the hospital, probably with a who’s-who of medical titles in the room to make sure everything goes well.

We managed to get in to see an obstetrician almost right after the ultrasound appointment (though I had to retrieve Monkey from our friend’s place, and missed most of the obstetrician appointment), and booked the date and time for the c-section. Choo Choo will enter our world on the morning of 18 March, if all goes according to plan. Just over two weeks.

Hopefully, this is the last little shock we’ll face. (Alex commented that the only thing she could think of at this point was that all the sonographers got Choo Choo’s sex wrong.)

I’m running out of fingers to cross, and it’s making typing really, really hard.

I must, in true Canadian form, say “I’m sorry”. I doubted. All I could see was fault, all I could see was mediocrity, all I could see was the world laughing at our attempts to be more than our humble selves. I thought that Vancouver was the wrong place to hold the Winter Olympics (having lived there a couple of years, I know how finicky the weather can be).

And I wasn’t alone. Thanks to media mainstays, such as The Guardian and the Denver Post, and CTV’s frequently slipshod and amateurish approach, there was little reason for me to think otherwise.

I find myself, now at the end, relieved to be wrong, and fiercely proud to be a repatriated Canadian.

The Own The Podium program had me enraged. It was meant to increase the chances of medal wins — to the point where we had the most medals. Not only was it arrogance beyond our Canadian norm, I found that the program sponsored only those who were in medal contention — and abandoned the rest. Considering we’re a socialist country, it seems a very un-Canadian setup. (And can someone tell me, please, why on earth the Men’s Hockey team received Own The Podium funding? It just seems odd to support millionaires who already have significant amounts of training and coaching resources.)

Then came the the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili mere hours before the cauldron was lit. (And no, Tom Clark, CTV did not need to show footage of the fatal run to “tell the full story”. That was utter pandering to sensationalist news coverage. You want to be better than CBC? You’d better act like you are, first.) The pall cast over the opening felt almost suffocating.

The opening ceremonies themselves were filled with a host of flubs: lip syncing (seriously, we are unable to trust our biggest performers to perform in public?), slight delays (starting even with the snowboarder not coming down on cue), and mechanical failures (erectile dysfunction, anyone?). Problems seemed to continue past the hutzpah, with broken ice resurfacing machines, and an ill-timed rampage by ill-tempted and extremely short-sighted rioters. The press ate us alive.

Our lauded best, held on pedestals for months, were put to the test. But the gold we were promised didn’t come. Our speedskaters failed to place, and our former moguls world champion could only garner a silver. And admit it, Canada, for a little while, you doubted, too. Had we put too much pressure on our athletes? Did we expect too much? Maybe where I failed was not to recognise it as a beginning of something bigger.

The next day — less than 24 hours after our first disappointment — things started to change. Someone I’d never heard of, suddenly appeared on top. After almost 34 years of waiting, Alexandre Bilodeau had won Canada’s first gold medal at home. For a moment, the country stood and cheered! We would walk away with something, at least. We would feel like we’ve achieved. Maybe — just maybe — it was enough to take away our collective dread. Or at least mine.

But the medals were still slow to come. It was two days before another gold from Maelle Ricker. Five days into the games, we had a mere five medals. Our hubris was an embarrassment. Our medals, though appreciated, would stand more as an example of an effort not carried to fruition.

And then something happened that we didn’t expect. It caught me by surprise, as I know it caught many others. A word that is rarely used in Canada, because of the imagery of our neighbours to the south that it usually invokes: Patriotism. Not a fevered adherence to dogma, but a feeling of national pride the likes of which have not been since I was barely two months old. We all suddenly noticed that you can’t spell “Canada” without “can”. And we did.

For me, it was the evening of the men’s skeleton finals, 19 February. Canada had already won another gold in speed skating, but it was Jon Montgomery’s victory that seemed to spark something in me. He is not your typical Canadian — he is brasher, bolder, more outspoken, and not afraid to do things in public that the rest of us would feel the urge to poo-poo as “not proper”. His primal scream of victory was the first cry, followed shortly after by a tremendous leap to the top of the podium at the sliding centre; he carried the entire nation with him in that moment. This time, I didn’t look back down. I — like you, Canada — looked forward.

I started to believe.

(And yes, I even started to like that “I Believe” song. Probably because after watching enough coverage, you don’t really have much choice.)

We started the second week with seven medals. Forecasts still placed us well into the 20s. Even with all of our victories in preliminary curling and hockey, it just didn’t seem possible. But funny thing about believing — you worry less about failing, and you don’t want to get left behind.

Our games started with difficult stories: the disappointment of silver, the struggle in speed skating, and seemingly random disqualifications. The stories had changed. The commentators seemed to take on the energy not just of the crowds, but of the athletes themselves. The stories covered the brotherly dedication, the triumphant (and periodically beer-fuelled) victory marches, impromptu parades, double medals, first wins in new sports, and the sweetheart skaters who not only stole the gold but also the hearts of millions.

But no story could exceed that of Joannie Rochette.

I’m no figure skater — I can’t even skate, really. Growing up, though, I watched a lot of figure skating as a result of watching TV with my mom, a former skater herself, and still an adamant lover of the sport. So, in some small way, I am periodically attracted to it. It was with great fortune that I caught her performance, only days after learning her mother had suddenly died.

I couldn’t tell you how well she actually skated — I’m no judge — but I can tell you that on that night, Joannie embodied the strength and courage of an Olympian, producing her best possible performance, allowing herself tears only after she was done, to the sound of a thunderous standing ovation. Her medal may have only been a bronze, but as a local paper emblazoned on its headline: it was as good as gold to us.

Most of us Canadians never made it to the games, though I know more than a few who were there, who witnessed gold first-hand. The closest I ever got was my home in southwest Calgary, where I subjected my family to my growing obsession, cheering on my country in its quest for gold, to the point where Alex and I taught the Monkey to chant: “CA-NA-DA!” as loudly as she could. We all watched, we all cheered, we all hoped, and we all cried.

And we achieved. We achieved records the likes of which exceeded our expectations. Even with Own The Podium’s lofty goals, most of us never expected to set a record for the most number of gold medals won in a Winter Olympics. We might not have owned the entire podium, but we took the step that mattered the most to us: the top.

The top was capped with our national games: curling and hockey. Men’s curling gold, a three-time victory for the women’s hockey team, and a rematch against our oldest nemesis, the United States. It was joked many times by many people that the men’s hockey final would effectively close the entire country for the three hours the game would be played. I suspect the joke was not far off. The game would prove to be something special, especially to those born after the early 1970s — it would become my generation’s Summit Series, the game that we watched with extreme anticipation, desperately wanting that gold back in our hands.

Vancouver did something to Canada that few would have predicted, even with our previous experience with Calgary and Montreal. For a few weeks, Vancouver brought together our country — six timezones and a hugely diverse culture (yes, Canada, we are not just one group; we thrive in our multiculturalism, even if we can’t always recognise it). Not just in representation, but in anticipation and celebration. We broke out of our Canadian mould — we stopped thinking we’d stop short, that we’d choke right at the key moments — and we started to live the dream.

The media has suggested that maybe we’ll break out from our mould permanently, and be more like our cousins to the south. But we won’t. That’s not us. That’s not Canadian. These games are over, and we’ll return to our Canadian ways. But we won’t shrink away, we won’t forget what happened. We’ve gotten stronger; we’ve learned. We’ve learned how to perform, that success isn’t just a dream — it’s a reality. That we can compete head-to-head with the best the world has to show us, and not be just “that nice country”. We’re now that country: a tough competitor, a fierce opponent. The ones everyone else has to beat.

And it would be nice if we could get our legends back. Mr. Orser, are there not Canadians you can train? Can our curling coaches consider teaching our up-and-comers, rather than guide our competitors? And can we please treat all our athletes with some form of equality? If nothing else, these games proved that underdogs can achieve what no-one expects.

We’ll freely admit we had things that didn’t go perfectly. Massive events aren’t perfect — the best you can hope for is to mitigate the troubles. So, yes Mr. Kiszla, we had a few problems — I assure you that your lauded Denver games will have their own headaches that will made you cringe. And Mr. Donegan? I’ve heard better whining from my two-year old when her cereal ends up a bit soggy. Rather than suggesting you return to the golf courses you seem to understand so much better, I suggest you join London’s Olympic Committee and become personally responsible for London’s success. Because we’ll be watching. Closely.

Oh, and one more thing, Mr. Kiszla, about the trash talk? After listening to American bragging for so long, you have no idea how wonderful it is to say: It’s still our game. I believe it will remain that way for a long time to come.