Mark your calendars!

I'm turning 62 on Saturday. And in my honor I'm holding a zoom party.

Two years ago I didn't think I would see this celebration but barring bus accidents, I will. Those of you who know me well know my story of spending my 50th birthday in the belly of a boat repairing a diesel engine. Best birthday ever! So for me to be this social and plan my own party is a bit of a stretch. But as I started thinking about it, I got more and more excited.

It's been a week.

After firing off my MAID missive late on Friday night, I awoke to ten email responses in my inbox to my pondering.  I rolled into my Zoom morning men's Bible study expecting to talk. MAID is not an easy subject and though I thought it would come up with the men, it didn't. I'm surprised at the people who have engaged with me on the subject. If there is any great revelation that has come out of the subject it is that there is a ton of gray.  

It's complicated.

Zoom has changed so many things in my life. Meetings across the nation. Places I will never go. Meeting people I will never see face to face. Family gatherings around birthdays.

One of the most difficult was a Zoom funeral a couple of weeks. Actually I have been calling it a wake in my communications. But search for a zoom wake on the Internet and you won't find much. That is changing as funeral homes get into the technology but how to create the sense of ritual, of memory, of closure, and celebration of life that modern funerals have become is new.

In one of those moments that I'm totally going to blame on chemo-brain, I realized that though this post was written four weeks ago it was never posted. There is a new one brewing that will come out in the next few days addressing my upcoming scan. In the meantime realize that this was written at the beginning of May after my last Doctor's appointment. My apologies for the confusion.

Virtual conferencing has become important as countries lock down to slow the spread of coronavirus. Virtual Conferencing includes Zoom, Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams as well as a variety of other platforms. Several months ago I spent a few hours experimenting with the new kid on the block - Zoom. I had been doing conference calls for years. Since I was working in the remote wilds of Saskatchewan in the nineties it was very common. Skype calls were a thing for awhile and when my wife and I were apart it was one of the tools we used to connect.

"Vulnerable" is not a word I have ever applied to myself. A stoic Scot, I have always chopped my own wood, carried my own water, and been able to make my own way. Not that I'm superhuman, I don't like to ask for help. If there is one thing I have learned over the last two years, it is to ask for help. Well I thought I had. It turns out though that I still struggle with it. And that it is a lesson that I still need to learn.

    A Place In The Sun

Though it seems like so much of my life the last few weeks has been spent in front of a computer writing or researching, I have enough people asking how things are going that it is time for another update.

Several weeks ago Lung Cancer Canada asked me to make a little video for them. I thought about it, conned my son into helping with taking some video, tried using my web cam on my laptop and just generally had fun with relearning video editing software.

This is the result

:

Bonus points if you can identify the theme music...

I've caught you up on my Christmas travels and my wild trip to Toronto. Let me bring you up to date on the latest craziness to impact my life.

The flight back to Vancouver was uneventful. My seatmate had been one of the last people to board the plane. After exchanging some perfunctory greetings and establishing territory as passengers in economy do, I put my head down a few times and caught a few winks of sleep. It has always been a blessing to be able to sleep pretty much on demand.