Cathie from Canada

Sorry Frank, but I'm glad to see the last of 2016.
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From GQ: The Least Influential People Of 2016 - everyone from Anthony Weiner to Ryan Lochte, from Hillary Clinton to A Rod....

And don't miss DB Wong's chicken wing instructional video at the end.
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And from the oddest Christmas special of all time:

According to co-writer Ian Fraser, Bowie balked at singing "Little Drummer Boy": "I hate this song. Is there something else I could sing?", Fraser recalls Bowie telling him. Fraser, along with songwriter Larry Grossman and the special's scriptwriter, Buz Kohan, then wrote "Peace on Earth" as a counterpoint to "Little Drummer Boy". Crosby performed "Little Drummer Boy", while Bowie sang the new tune "Peace on Earth", which they reportedly performed after less than an hour of rehearsal

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Well, I thought at the end of August that I was recovering but instead I just kept on getting sicker and sicker. Finally I went into hospital the third week of September, followed by immediate surgery to begin to deal with an obstructed bowel, followed by a seven-week hospital recovery. Barely eating for three months resulted in a complete depletion of the protein in my body so following the surgery I could barely stand up, much less walk or do stairs -- and we live in a four-level split. So I needed extensive physio and lots and lots of nutrition before I could come home. I finally managed to get home last week. Provided nothing else goes wrong, I am looking toward likely two more surgeries in the next year, before this trouble is behind me (so to speak!)
All in all, I would sum it up as a miserable experience, mitigated only by the love of my family -- they all faithfully visited almost every day, in spite of the cost of hospital parking!
And they brought me Tim Hortons.
One other silver lining -- I lost 70 pounds! Maybe I could write a book on how to lose weight. It would be a short one: 1. Get seriously ill 2. Don't eat for three months. 3. Lose weight! -- however, somehow I don't think it will be a best seller!
So hopefully, I will be able to get back to blogging now. And given the Trump election (gag!) I have a feeling that there will be lots to blog about over the next while.


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So I got sick in early July, and I am finally just recovering now -- just the flu, originally, but then I couldn't eat anything, then got diverticulosis -- awful -- and I'm finally just coming out of it now.  I'm still not eating normally, but I can see a light at the end of the tunnel.

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Sorry for the lack of posts -- I had too much going on in "real" life, for a change.

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What is the matter with these people? In spite of all the positive talk at the Conservative convention, the Conservatives haven't changed a bit.
Harper isn't at their head anymore, but he's still their leader in their hearts.
Today, the CPC is doing whatever it can to obstruct a dying MP from making a picayune, sensible and long-overdue change to our national anthem:

Time is of the essence for the MP {Mauril  Belanger], who was diagnosed with ALS last fall and whose health has deteriorated over the past few weeks. But his determination to see Bill C-210 pass is inspiring people from inside and outside his party to support him.
After question period Thursday, government whip Andrew Leslie sought the unanimous consent of MPs to allow the bill — which would change the line "in all thy sons command" to "in all of us command," making it gender-neutral — to proceed under the whip's name to take some of the pressure off Bélanger.
Enough Tory MPs shouted their objection to deny unanimous consent for Leslie's motion.

Oooh -- changing "in all thy sons command" to "in all of us command" obviously demands  nation-wide hearings, according to CPC.
Personally, I've always hated that wording in the national anthem, it was a minor but definite insult to every woman in the country.
And there is nothing particularly sacred about the English version of O Canada.  The song was originally written in French in 1880, and it was more than 25 years before several versions of English lyrics were written. The line used to read "thou dost in us command". The "all thy sons command" version was introduced in 1914 -- likely with the idea of supporting the troops in WWI.
But "True patriot love in all of us command" is the way O Canada should always have been translated, so I'm glad Belanger wants to change it. And its the kind of change that would never happen except as someone's dying wish, because in the larger scheme of things, it is just so supremely unimportant that it would never rise to the top of any government agenda.
I'm glad its getting done at last.
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