Tag: stress

I want to go home

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Project mid-term review done. The project is seen in a very positive light within EIT circles. Positive initial feedback, good explanations, clear need, desirable, consortium seen as responsive. We will get the full feedback in a couple of weeks. I spent the afternoon walking around La Rambla and areas.

I’m at the airport now, but my 2050 flight has been delayed twice and is now showing for 2300. I’ve had fun, but I want to go home now.

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Some of the talks are a bit bleak 

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A few days before the centennial anniversary of the Armistice, Brad Smith from Microsoft is calling for a digital Geneva convention to protect the civilians in times of cyber war, and that we’re not learning the lessons of the previous world wars.

A few talks before that, Garry Kasparov was saying that AI will widen the wealth gap, as blue collar and white collar jobs will become more and more automated, the education system is broken, there is no plan to address this and there is no leadership to even begin to formulate a plan so, in essence, everyone that is fucked (unless you’re rich).

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It’s not the waiting, it’s the uncertainty

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Katy has been in the hospital for close to 3 weeks now, and we’re still not sure when she’s coming home. Every time she talks with a doctor or nurse,  she gets a different, partially overlapping bit of information. The left graft completely failed. You’ll need to have another operation. We’re not sure when. It’s infected. No, it’s not infected. Oh, it’s partially taken so we’ll keep you in to try and save it. You might not need to have another operation. But you probably will need one. We’ll reassess on Monday. Or maybe Friday.

God damn it, try and give a consistent message. I get that it’s an inexact process, and you do need to wait and see, but don’t jerk us around like this. We need to try and make plans around all of this.

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Annoying end to an otherwise good day

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We all went to visit Gruyere and the Maison Callier in Broc today. We had a good time visiting the Giger museum and Gruyere castle, and then having raclette for lunch.

We had a bit of an unpleasant surprise when we realised that the window of our patio door was cracked, from the inside :-( We have no clue how that happened, but now I’m fretting about getting it fixed.

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Unless we can show it’s a manufacturer defect, it’ll probably go on our civil responsibility insurance. It’s why we have insurance in the first place, but it’s still a worry and a pain.

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Someone to watch over her…

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There was chaos on the roads because of high winds and blowing snow on Monday, resulting in a major pileup on Highway 417 in Eastern Ontario, near North Glengarry.

In total, twenty vehicles were involved in this series of accidents, which occurred shortly before 4pm westbound, between the villages of Saint-Isidore and Vankleek Hill, near Highway 34.

A Voyageur coach, two tankers, a semi-trailer truck carrying a cargo of cars and some cars were involved in the pileup which were likely cause by the poor weather conditions.

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Fifteen people were injured slightly. Two further people had to be transported to the hospital.  Several emergency vehicles were deployed to the scene of the incident, almost halfway between Ottawa and Montreal.

In total, more than 150 accidents were reported during the day, both on Outaouais roads that Eastern Ontario, due to difficult road conditions.

One of the people that went to the hospital was my mom, coming back from seeing my sister in Montreal. The coach got caught in the tail end of a white-out and collided into the back of a car,  itself involved in the multi-vehicle pileup. My mom, sitting in her usual spot in the first row seat, went through the front windshield of the bus and landed on the road. Miraculously, and I don’t use the word lightly, the only injury she suffered was a cut on the top of her head,  requiring a dozen stitches, and a big bruise on her shoulder. She thinks that the glass probably shattered when the bus hit, lessening the impact when she went through it. I can’t really believe I just typed that…

She thinks she might have blacked out for a bit, but not too long, and was lucid the whole time, after realising she was on the road, getting wet from the snowstorm. The paramedics did the whole neck brace backboard thing, but xrays showed there were no fractures, no concussion and they only kept her for observations for one night. She feels a bit stiff,  but less than she expected to. She’s mostly annoyed that she can’t wash the blood out of her hair. Tough (and lucky!) old bird, she is.

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