December 2004 Archives

When I went to my parents and shovelled them out today, after the blizzard, my father wanted me to come in for coffee but he said my mother was mad at me. While her memory is failing, and while she is becoming delusional (she has advancing vascular dementia) she recalls that I told her, 3 weeks ago, that her memory was failing. This has been translated into a false attack on her, and she does not want to see me. My father agrees that she is demented and paranoid, and he tells me he has to humour her.

Steve and I had planned to ski on Thursday December 30 but there were weather warnings. There was sleet by 1:00 PM and a strong winter storm was blowing by 3:00 PM. If we had gone, the road back would have been treacherous.

Basically this is a book review published at Blogcritics which I have modified a little since publishing it there.

This is another dish I made for my family's pot-luck Christmas dinner. I had also made it for company in October. It's basically green beans, but with a nice spicy bite. The spice may not please some guests. This recipe made enough to serve a good helping to most of about 25 guests.

This is tasty. I made it for my family's pot luck Christmas dinner. Leeks are a popular ingredient in many Dutch and Dutch-Indonesian dishes and apparently in some Scots dishes, but they don't seem to be called for in too many recipes. The name also provides endless amusement for plumbers and beer drinkers.

Cooking leeks means a trip to a store with a big produce section, because the local Safeway may not have them. I have also noticed that the size of leeks varies. I found some monsters when I was cooking for company in October. I think the typical recipe assumes a more modest leek.

This is a crockpot recipe, adapted from a recipe for Mongolian mixed meat stew. I made it a few weeks ago. It's tasty, meaty, but not greasy. Once again, Claire suggested the title. She asked me if Mongolian stew had camel. I'm not sure what makes this recipe Mongolian.

Christmas morning, 2004. My first time on skis since March. The temperature was -20 C when I started but it actually got cooler. It was -22 when I got home. Special green wax (I have used Swix waxes since I started skiing and I know their system from the polar up through special green, green, the blues, and freezing point waxes) worked fine. I drove out to Beaudry Park on the faith of Manitoba Parks reporting that there was a set trail. On the half hour drive out, I noticed that the conditions in the fields were not good. Sunshine, warm temperature, and freezing rain, followed by a freeze-up have left everything icy. The field by the parking lot was like that too, but the trails themselves were fine. The snow within the shelter of the trees was powder and it was deep enough, barely, to provide a passable set track. I settled for about 5 and half K in about 45 minutes. I had spent time finding all my clothes, waxes, accessories and it was 10:30 before I left home. I had things to do for Christmas dinner. Step one - pour wine.

I read a few mysteries and reviewed them at Blogcritics. "Bad Business" by Robert B. Parker - the latest Spenser, and "The Last Good Day" by Gail Bowen, the latest in the Joanne Kilbourn series. I enjoyed them. "Poisoned Cherries" by Quentin Jardine was trashy. I wrote some music and movie reviews too. Canadian folk singer David Francey, the DVD release of the movie "Coming Home".

It has been a month since my last bike ride of the fall. I have skated a few times in public arenas. Last week, the outdoor rink at the local community center seemed to be ready, but we had temperatures above freezing this past weekend, followed by several days of very cold weather with high wind chills. It was -31 this morning. I haven't sallied forth to skate outdoors or to ski. The forecast is for better weather on the weekend with sunny skies and daytime temperatures in the range of -8 to -15. I should be able to ski and skate several times over the Christmas break, to fight off the holiday food and the eggnog.

On December 8, 2004 a young man named Nathan Gale, armed with a 9 mm semi-automatic pistol, walked on to the stage at a club in Columbus, Ohio during a performance by the heavy metal band Damageplan. He shot and killed the lead guitarist, Dimebag Darrell Abbott, and then began shooting into the audience, killing three more people before he was shot dead by an armed policeman. While the news was sketchy at first, it now appears that Gale was a schizophrenic with paranoid delusions. His illness was diagnosed after he had joined the Marines. He had been discharged in November 2003 on medical grounds.

Dave went to the youth shelter on Mayfair after the Broken Glass episode, Monday evening, December 6. When a worker at the shelter called me, I asked if he had contacted his mother yet. My question was based on my belief that Dave stil thought his mother would help him if she thought I was being mean to him. The worker said he had been on the phone to her.

With orange having been his campaign colour in the Ukranian presidential election, and the emblem of resistance to the fraudulent election results, creative voices in the world media have tried to find an ironic symmetry in the news that medical tests confirm that Victor Yushchensko ingested dioxin. The Daily Express claimed that he had been poisoned with Agent Orange. The news that high levels of dioxin were found in tissue samples tends to cut through some of the confusion and speculation in the media and the scientific community.

Dave came home at 9:30 PM. He wanted to come in. He admitted to skipping classes again but he said, once again, that he had to do it to be sure that Danielle was all right. He said he had seen her in the morning, at school. He admitted that he had been planning to cut his classes to see her and that he had lied to me to get bus tickets. He said that Danielle had told him not to cut classes again, and he promised he would not cut classes again. He wasn't wearing his jacket. He said he had lent it to a buddy, which tells me how he spent the rest of his day. He said I did not understand his feelings, how badly he needed to see Danielle. I said that he had broken more rules, blown off school, and lied to me. I gave him another jacket and a bus ticket. I said he had to go to the shelter and stay in CFS care for at least a few days, and to keep going to the TRY program. He said he would be too upset and stressed to continue in the TRY program.

Dave and I know each other pretty well. I can generally tell when he has been taking drugs and when he is lying. The drugs show up in his attitude and speech. The lying is more subtle. It begins with a vague tension. I find myself uneasy with his attitude, with some detail in his story, and I ask a few questions. He sticks to his story. He tries to change the subject or walks away to take a shower, to prepare food in the kitchen, to disappear in his room and demand privacy. He becomes aggressive and displays genuine anger. When cannot have what he wants, or thinks he needs, when he cannot win the game by getting what he wants from me, he gets angry. But more than that, my suspicion alone insults and angers him.

When we last saw Dave in this Web log, last Wednesday (Dec. 1/04) he had his foot in the door. He went out that night, and came back last night. He went to his classes on Thursday, and he kept his first appointment with a psychiatrist on Thursday and an appointment with his mom and Mediation Services on Friday. He showed up at the TRY program to get paid on Friday, but cut his Friday class.

With icy roads, short days, cold temperatures and wind chill, I have hung up my bikes and stripped the electronics and given up on cycling for this year. Last week I became restless, realizing that we may not have good snow for cross-country skiing until Christmas or later. I started to walk to the local community club and watched the man making ice on the outdoor skating rinks. He has only been making ice for the last week or 10 days, and the rinks probably won't be ready for another week or two, if the temperature stays consistently below -5 C. Then I received and browsed through City Parks Recreation Guide and discovered that all of the City's indoor arenas have a few hours a week dedicated to public skating, around the time devoted to skating classes and hockey and ringette leagues. They have been open since the beginning of October.

Several years ago Phillie Marcowicz, one of the hosts of one of CBC Radio's folk, roots and world programs was on the Main Stage at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. She asked the audience if anyone had experienced a musical epiphany that weekend.

This is a book review that I wrote for the Blogcritics site. The book is the 2003 revised edition of The Dignity of Difference by Jonathan Sacks. The Blogcritics version of the review is nearly identical to this. The ISBN for this book is 0826468500. There is a copy of the 2002 first edition in the Winnipeg Public Library system.

This is a book review that I wrote for the Blogcritics site. The book is "Seeking Enlightenment, Hat by Hat, A Skeptic's Path to Religion" by Nevada Barr. The Blogcritics version of the review is nearly identical to this. The ISBN for this book is 0425196038.

Dave has been spending most of his nights here, showering, doing his laundry, taking a few meals, since Monday November 22. I have had several discussions with him. He has seemed to be more empathic, more considerate, more helpful, more willing to accomodate my feelings, more candid, but he is still not managing his life. He says that he can only address his problems if let him live at home, and I have been feeling a lot of pressure and manipulation to provide him with more things, and not to worry about his problems with drugs, anger and "teen spirit". He has talked about his drug use more openly. He describes himself as having gotten over drug use and talks about addiction in the past tense. I think he is trying to fool me again.