Category: It Happened to Me

I hereby declare today “Muy Muy Rapido Tuesday,”

a day during which I shall start the process of clearing out

the backlog of thing I’ve been meaning to write, responses I owe some

readers and articles I have promised for a long, long time. As the name suggests, expect lots of short, quick posts today.

Hope you enjoy it!

I spent the weekend visiting my fiancee in Boston, where a good two feet or so of snow fell this weekend.

Between the tons of snow and high winds, Logan Airport was shut down

for a full 29 hours. Only one runway was open this morning, resulting

in the cancellation of my 6:10 a.m. flight back to Accordion City.

I’m currently entering this article near the Continental Presidents’ Club located in the walkway joining Logan’s Terminals B and C. While Logan’s official wi-fi is something in the neighbourhood fo $10/day, the Presidents’ Club wi-fi is wide open and free of charge. I’m stickin’ it to The Man!

A quick summary of this weekend:

• Got a quick chance to say hello to Joel “Joel on Software” Spolsky during his lunch at Movenpick Marche before my flight to Boston.
• Experienced a last-minute pull-up on final approach into Logan. A plane was being a little slow in taking off from the runway on which we were about to land.
• Grilled mahi-mahi with mango at the Summer Shack with Wendy
• Meeting face-to-face with internet friends Suw “Chocolate and Vodka” Charman (who came over from the UK) and Chris “crw” Whipple
• Lunch with a Nobel Prize winner! Betsy Devine invited Suw, Chris, Wendy and me to lunch at her place, where we met her husband, Frank Wilczek, winner of a real Nobel Prize (the 2004 Prize for Physics, not that fakety-fake economics prize). Frank, it turns out, is also an accordion player (as most staggeringly intelligent people are). I played a couple of accordion numbers for them — Suw shot video and posted them on her blog.
• My Boston Ritual: a meal at Legal Seafood with Wendy.
• Hung out at Clery’s with local friends, who came in spite of the coming blizzard.
• Headed home from Clery’s during the start of said blizzard. It was fun watching Suw’s reactions to it all as Wendy drove through the storm — Brits don’t see snow like this! I volunteered my honed-in-Canada blizzard driving skills, but Wendy, tough New Englander that she is, didn’t need it.
• Walked Suw and Chris to the bus stop the next afternoon through the aftermath of the storm. The storm seemed to have brought out the friendliness in everyone; everyone we passed said “hello” with a smile, in spite of all the shovelling or trudging they were doing.
• A quiet Sunday night with Wendy, in which we made dinner and I finally watched Better Off Dead, a movie I’ve been meaning to see for decades.
• Lunch at the Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse, a “Canadian-themed” restaurant that’s about as Canadian as the Outback Steakhouse is Australian. Still, the decor does remind me of my friend Liz’ parents’ lodge up north, or the Drake Hotel restaurant in Canmore, Alberta. The audio-animatronic bison could use a couple of lessons to sound a more like a rural Canadian. Not once did it say “give ‘er!”

Just yesterday alone, 2,251 people (or, more accurately, 2,251 computers at

unique internet addresses) went directly to the permalink for my entry,

Sexy Beast,

which features an 80’s-era Bill Gates striking poses reminiscent of

LavaLife personal ads on his desk. (I still have my doubts as to whether the

photos are genuine).

Dan Dickinson came up with the caption

for the second photo, “640K of this action should be good enough for

anybody”. If you have any other caption ideas, please post them in the

comments!

James Taranto, in his Best of the Web Today column in The Wall Street Journal‘s OpinionJournal took notice of my blogging the 1959 Superman comic story that makes use of the word “blog” (see the end of the section titled Wag the Blog).

Thank you, Mr. Taranto!

In case you haven’t seen the Superman comic, click the comic panel above to read the entry.

I’ve been busy, but my regular blogging resumes now.

After Dad gave us a scare by first landing in the hospital with a lung infection and then checking out of the hospital only to have to be rushed back in a few hours later,

he’s doing fine. He’s been well enough to do all the usual Christmas

things including going to Christmas mass, visiting my sister’s house on

Christmas morning to see his grandkids open their presents and hold

court at Christmas dinner. Once again, thank you all for you prayers

and good thoughts.

Wendy, upon hearing that

Dad was very badly ill, managed to fly in a week earlier than she had

intended to. As a result, this visit marked the longest consecutive

number of days we’ve been together — a whopping sixteen! It may seem a

little odd that I’m marrying someone with whom I’ve spent more time

apart than together, but if you know us personally, you know how well

matched we are. Besides, proximity doesn’t guarantee a good

relationship — I’ve had one or two perfectly rotten girlfriends who’ve

lived a few blocks away. I’ll be extremely happy once Wendy’s here full-time.

If you know me personally, you’d probably think that I’d fit as well in a wedding registry department as Kunta Kinte at a Merle Haggard concert (to borrow a line from the Bloodhound Gang). However, I spent the holdiays registering at not one, but two places: The Hudson Bay Company (a Canadian department store chain) and William Ashley

(a Canadian foo-foo place where you’re supposed to register for china

patterns). The Bay had a little plastic wheel calculator that tells you

the dollar value of the wedding gifts you should receive given then

number of guests; apparently Wendy and I should expect the equivalent

of a reasonably-equipped BMW 3-series.

Ashley gives any couple who registers there a set of champagne flutes

and a handful of chocolate truffles filled with champagne truffle

cream. I never truly understood the motivation behind Jennifer Aniston’s character, “Rachel” in the first episode of Friends (she called off her marriage after she realized that she was more in love with the wedding gifts than her fiance) until now.

Another way I’ve been keeping busy was with the PlayStation 2

that Wendy bought me for Christmas. Videogame consoles are often a

point of contention for couples, typically with the cooler half being

into gaming and the lamer half into lame-o stuff like (you have to

imagine me making “finger quotes” and speaking a deep, saracstic tone)

“snuggling” and “talking about the relationship” (I kid, I kid). I

decided to take the high road and get some games that Wendy would like.

As a result, she’s now into the completly awesome and quirky Katamari Damacy. I tried to get into her into the “realistic” world of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas,

but while I was marvelling at the fact that I could beat up crack

dealers, club cops with their own truncheons and soften up rival gang

members by running over them with a stolen ambulance and then finish them off with the

submachine gun, she was wowed by the fact the she got the character to

buy some pop from a machine in the game. If any of you can suggest some

games along the lines of Katamari Damacy that both Wendy and I would enjoy, please let me know in the comments.

(Maybe I can get her hooked on No One Can Stop Mr. Domino if I can dig up a copy…)

11:00 a.m. Wendy (yup, she flew in on Friday!) and I show up at the hospital to help Dad check out.

12:30 p.m. Lunch at Mom and Dad’s. Me, Wendy, Mom, Dad, sister Eileen, brother-in-law Richard, nephews Aidan and Nico.

At lunch, Aidan says “We’re all together now!” to which Dad says with a smile, “That’s right!”

2:00 p.m. I take Wendy on her

very first Christmas shopping trip. We buy presents for my sister,

brother-in-law, and cousins, who’ll all be gathered at the deVilla

extended family Christmas party on Saturday.

Wendy’s shop-fu is very good.

5:00 p.m. On the expressway bound for home when my cell phone rings. It’s In the Hall of the Mountain King — the family ringtone. I can’t answer because the phone is in my pocket and I’m driving.

“I’ll get it as soon as I get a chance to pull over,” I tell Wendy.

A minute later, the phone rings again. Family ringtone again. This

time, we’re off the highway, so I manage to pick up. It’s Eileen,

telling me that Dad was sweaty, spaced out and weak and that an

ambulance was coming for him.

I swung the car around and made tracks for the hospital for the second time that day.

5:15 p.m. Since we were

close to the hospital, we beat the ambulance to the ER. Minutes after

we arrive, Mom, Dad and the paramedics arrive. Dad’s passed out on a

stretcher, looking very pale with an oxygen mask strapped to his face,

while Mom very calmly reports all the details to the attending

physicians and nurses. All I can do is stand there. Wendy takes my hand

and squeezes it.

Mom tells us to wait in the ER lobby.

6:45 p.m. It turns out that

Dad’s blood sugar dropped to a dangerously low level. An IV helps bring

it back to a normal level, and he’s conscious again.

He tells us that he has no recollection of being taken from his bedroom

or the ambulance trip. “I felt as though I was in space and someone was

performing strange procedures on me. The next thing I remember is being

here.”

“Dad, you sound like an alien abductee,” I say, which makes him smile.

“You should eat,” Mom says. “Can we get you something?”

“I want a roast beef sandwich,” replies Dad.

I take everyone’s orders and Wendy and I go to the nearby Quizno’s.

7:30 p.m. ER picnic! Mom,

Dad, Eileen, Wendy and I are eating in the ER. Quizno’s isn’t fine

dining and the atmosphere of the ER isn’t anything to write home about,

but the stress of the past couple of hours has made us all famished.

I’ve visited Dad in the ER a number of times — he’s sort of like the

Indiana Jones of diabetes — and they always have a knack for putting

him beside a guy who’s pipelining five gallons of phlegm in his lungs.

I really hate that sound.

“Poor Wendy,” jokes Dad, “she’s been in town only two days and she’s been to the hospital three times already.”

9:00 p.m. Dad’s been moved to

the Cardiac Care Unit — the place he left only that morning — for

overnight observation. Mom, Eileen, Wendy and I make sure Dad’s all

right and head home.

Dad left the hospital late Sunday afternoon and had dinner with the family.