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Last month I came down with a terrible flu. I wondered where I could've picked up such a punishing version of the virus. Wherever it came from, it hit me hard, forcing me to spend several days in bed, weak and feverish. With my appetite so affected my usual meal regime was thrown out the window, and my trips to the bathroom were more uncomfortable than usual. I had such a bad cough that I ended up going to a walk-in clinic, getting some heavy duty cough medicine and an inhaler to stave off pneumonia. In those moments of wakefulness, between sips of tea and soup, I found myself turning to old anime. Namely, I watched Hikaru No Go and Great Teacher Onizuka again. Oh, how it does bring me back. The voice acting in both of these series is really quite excellent. And the music! Haha oh man it brought a smile to this old brain. Out of curiosity, I started reading the Hikaru No Go manga, and so far it's been a real treat, seeing the source for the anime. I think I can recommend bo...

I miss sleep. There were maybe one or two nights of uninterrupted sleep in August, but since leaving the hospital I haven't slept more than six hours at a time, and frequently only three or four before I get up in discomfort around my abdomen. I'm not sure if it's the lying down that aggravates things, or the staying still, but sleep, true restorative sleep, escapes me for now. You may think that I had a lot of free time in the hospital but it simply was not so -- I was constantly switching between pain and/or nausea, or had my mind clouded by Morphine or had eyes droopy with Gravol. In such states I could do very little but lay down until that fog would pass. Still, when the colitis symptoms were under control I did manage to watch a few of shows: Sword Art Online: Why do I keep going back to anime? Nostalgia for the halcyon days in university? To avoid having to engage my face-reading skills of real actors? In any case, overall I enjoyed the first season of SAO, with...

The fan for my heat pump stopped working. It's been wonky of late, and when I got home last Tuesday, after a day under the sticky glaring sun, my condo offered little relief. Indeed I ended up resorting to drinking myself to sleep, cursing the humid air. I was at the Evergreen Brickworks, enjoying beer and meat and fruit pies, a foodie event to be sure. Yes, Canada Day, a country I love and cherish but is governed by fools I cannot abide, seemingly populated with people I hold less and less in common with. Well, not truly truly, but certainly I find the divide between us has seemingly deepened. Or perhaps it was always thus, and only as my eyes look broader do I see the chasms of empathy, of understanding, of relating. Let it be said that variety is both humanity's strength and weakness. But the weather, the weather since that day has mellowed, a mild summer with much rain and cool winds. I find it comfortable; surely this is better than the raging waves of heat and humidit...