Rainy weekend

It is a very windy, rainy Sunday morning but I am consoling myself with a cup of Lady Hannah tea and the fact that I can get online again. As I said to the Aliant tech (Lisa from Newfoundland) that I formed a close relationship with last night after over an hour on two calls with her to re-establish my dialup connection – it’s bad enough I only have dialup, now that isn’t even working! I had first accused the shore captain of laptop sabotage but it hadn’t even been out of the case in my absence. In fact he said “I thought you took it with you”. The final possible diagnosis (after resetting winsock and going to a C: prompt – haven’t seen one of those for a while) was some sort of malicious spyware, which rearranges files. I run an antiviral program and when I was online Tuesday p.m. there was an alert which popped up saying that Norton had intercepted a suspicious file. Apparently that must’ve been enough to corrupt some files and affect the dialup.

The man of the house called home to tell me that CBC radio had a piece broadcasting on antibiotic resistant organisms. After several calls back and forth where I finally decided I can’t get the signal for CBC Radio 2 on Sirius or the regular station here he instructs that “you can go out and listen to it in the car” Now as I plainly told him “I spend my entire work week dealing with this issue as people either ignore or attack me on the subject and you think I should sit in a rainstorm hearing it?” before I hung up. When he arrived home he had the gist of the story (except for the microbiological names) correct it seems and (after checking out the radio and deciding that I WAS right about the reception) he proceeded to enlighten me on the topic and was purely amazed at my knowledge of the subject. After 35 years in healthcare and hand washing, I might have learned a thing or two I guess.

Attended an infection control conference on Thursday and Friday and in response to the question “did you have a good time?” the only response is “consider the topic, now what do you think?” It was a good session, I won a door prize – a nice Christmas candle (LED so I can actually use it here with the cats); one of the sales reps took us out for supper at The Fireside and I had a nice visit with daughter # 2 so not a complete loss. But enough shop talk.

Yesterday a friend and I finally got together to have a great lunch at Charlotte Lane Café and as well it was the Annual Christmas Crawl in town so we made it a full afternoon and made the rounds. Found a few cute things – for me – including a Brie baker, I mean if you’re going to indulge yourself it may as well be in style, a nice pair of fleece mittens and a candleholder. As well, picked up a nice pewter kitty tag for Stanley’s collar (as he’s the least likely to lose it) and some cute holiday clothespins to hang Christmas cards on. We stuffed all the nibbles into ourselves (as we had appetizers, soup/salad, and desserts for lunch) and sampled all the punch, cider, and cranberry sparklers as we went along. So good to get caught up while enjoying ourselves.

Had a chat with daughter # 1 who was dealing with her boyfriend’s cold (no he wasn’t terminal just felt he was) which we decided is not a fun way to spend the weekend. The follow up call was that he had overmedicated himself with cold remedies – no - taking double amount does not make the cold go away in half the time. She wasn’t impressed with his theory and had invoked the ‘nurse mother call’ to settle the argument.

Well off this afternoon to see my sister’s new addition to her house, visit with my great niece who is staying for the weekend and pick up some groceries before heading to a community potluck supper, which has been scheduled before lobstering, as all mixed gender gatherings will be missing the male component after next Monday.