What's Been Going On

Last Saturday night my husband and I went to the PNE (Pacific National Exhibition) which is the big annual fair. They always have a summer concert series and last night, the fabulous Melissa Etheridge was playing. I've loved her for a long, long time and years when my husband and I were first married, we got tickets to see her at the Orpheum. He didn't know who she was, but he was so impressed by her, he fell in love with her too.

The beauty of the concert space at the PNE is that the view is so spectacular. You can see the north shore mountains, as well as several of the big attractions at the fair all lit up. Add to that a world class artist who knows how to throw a party and it's magic.

At one point in the concert, Melissa brought out a gorgeous electric guitar in vintage aqua, the same colour as my studio. I have no idea why, but this made me insanely happy and I sat there with this big stupid grin on my face the whole time she was playing it. I WANTED that guitar. The crazy thing is, I don't play but I seriously wanted that guitar. If I had that aqua guitar, I would learn to play, even with numb hands.

At one point in the evening, she talked about being cancer free for 9 years and not just being a survivor, but a thriver and then she sang "I Run for Life", her breast cancer awareness song. Saturday night she added lyrics to include male cancer survivors too. Listening, I was trying hard not to cry. It's become so personal for me, especially right at this moment when we're almost at the 1 year anniversary of my husband's diagnosis of kidney cancer. My heart's a little tender about that right now. This year has been one of the hardest of our lives on so many levels. It's our deepest hope that at some point we'll be able to say he's 9 years cancer free too.

It was a fabulous concert and it cheered my up greatly. The only downside was the yahoos sitting around us. There were three separate couples who decided to have loud arguments while Melissa was playing. Who does that?!? They were so obnoxious I was having trouble hearing the music. (And if you know anything about Melissa Etheridge, it's that she rocks the h*ll out of her concerts, so that tells you how disruptive they were being.) One couple was actually arguing about how many strings were on the guitar she was playing, if you can believe it. I'd have liked to El Kabong them with it just to shut them up!

I know things have been kind of quiet here lately. I've been struggling with my health again. I've spent alot of time in bed and it feels like my left leg is going to stop working any second now. My immune system just refuses to stand down, so they've upped my immuno supressants again and we'll see how it goes. At this point, I am just tired of the whole thing. Nothing seems to work.

Yesterday I finally met with the hand surgeon about my broken wrist. After a very painful exam which left me dizzy and about to toss my cookies, he did two diagnostic injections of steroids and freezing into the two parts of my wrist that are the problem. Let's just say when a needle hits bone over and over, it's torture. The pain from that is excruciating and it's going to be days till it settles down. In the meantime, am gobbling pain pills and icing it as much as possible. I was extremely grateful my best friend was there to hold my good hand while all this was done and to make sure I got home safely. She was a huge help and comfort to me. 

I see the surgeon again in six weeks and then we decide which of two surgeries is going to happen. One involves removing a bone and the other involves shortening a bone. I'm pretty freaked out about the whole thing, especially the bone shortening prospect. That's got to be painful. Clearly something has to be done and I am hoping it will be taken care of before 2013 is over. This is dragged on for almost 6 month now as it is and I'd really like to have my right hand functional and pain free again.

When I got home from the hospital yesterday, there was a message from my husband saying he'd been injured on the job and he was at the ER. He tripped over a metal bar that the carpenters left sitting on the deck at his job site and fell between some columns, landing on the shoulder on the same side he had his arm surgery on a few months ago. He is okay, thankfully-nothing broken or torn-he's just understandably sore. Yesterday was about all the trauma I could handle in a single day.

On a positive note, I was asked to be a guest speaker at the 2nd annual NMO Information Day. I will be presenting on the Interprofessional Health Mentors Program that I've been involved with. I am so pleased to have this opportunity and look forward to sharing with other NMO patients how our stories matter to the medical community. My friend Nancy will also be presenting on the first ever (anywhere in the world!) NMO walk/run that she organized this past May.

If you are local and are interested in attending NMO Information Day, you can register here. If you're coming, be sure to find me and say hello!

Also in the good news department, my friend Andrea informed me the other day that it looks like two of the photographs I took for the Para XC Ski Program, Skiing is Believing are going to be published in a magazine! It won't be official till we see it in print, (with magazines, things are always subject to change) but we're pretty confident this is going to happen. Andrea's going to make sure I get some copies, so I'll share them with you when I have them in hand. I'm really excited about the prospect of having my photography appear in a sports magazine-that will be a first for me! If you're interested in seeing all the photos from that day, the entire set is here on my Flickr. It was such an amazing day and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Last, but not least, today is A&W's Crusin' For A Cause Annual MS fundraiser. If you're Canadian, please try and stop by any A&W location and purchase a teen burger-$1 from every burger goes to MS. If hamburgers are not your thing, but you still want to help, all locations are happy to receive donations to the Canadian MS Society. You can also use the hashtag #crusinforacause on Twitter on any of your tweets today and $1 for each tweet will also be donated. It's a very simple way to help fund the important research and support programs the MS Society provides to both people living with MS and also those of us rare birds living with NMO. (The CDN MS Society has very generously taken Canadians with NMO under their wing and are offering us the same services as those with MS.)

100 Years of PNE

The PNE (Pacific National Exhibition), which is our fair turned 100 years old this year. As a result, they had some fabulous entertainment come play the fair, one of which was The Little River Band, one of my husband's all time favourite bands.

A couple weeks before the fair opened, we got a flyer in the mail detailing what acts would be playing. We were sitting in our living room and I was reading them off to him. When I got to Little River Band, he said "Oh year right!" implying that I was shining him on. So I said "WHY would I make something like that up?! If you don't believe me, see for yourself." I handed him the flyer so he could see it was true. He had to admit he was wrong. *grins*

The concert was fabulous-we managed to get great seats and LRB sounded fantastic. They put on a good show and I've fallen in love with "A Cool Change" all over again. I really must go download it from iTunes!

Aside from attending the concert, we got to wander around the fair and take in some other show. I always enjoy seeing all the art. The sandcastles are always impressive.

How meticulous is this?!

I loved this one. The soft sand gently brushed on the shapely behind of this mermaid was perfection. I have great admiration for people who can sculpt like this with sand. It's impressive.


This is a water fountain that I found amusing. What a great way to repurpose old broken instruments!


This crow was cool. It's too bad they all but buried this exhibit in the back of the home improvement building. I am sure most people missed it.



If I am quiet the next couple of days it's because my wrist is cracked (again) and causing me grief. I've ignored it as long as I could but tomorrow I have to go and have a new splint brace custom made. I have an old one which was made a year ago when I fractured the bone the first time but it's no longer comfortable. I don't know which hurts worse- cracking my wrist or being forced to spend $100 on a brace to heal it. When I think of all the art supplies $100 would buy...*sniff*



Anyway, I'll be back soon! In the meantime, check out Zaac Pick and then head over to iTunes and download his album Fierce Wind. (There's a link on his sidebar.) He's lovely and if you need another reason to like him, he's also Canadian!

PNE Sand Sculptures

Here, as promised are the sand sculptures from the PNE. This year, for some reason, they hid them way down on the back side of the fair where almost no one goes-it's not a very high traffic area and I think it's kind of a shame because the artists who worked on these did an incredible job and I don't think most people realized where they were.

This first pic is of a detail of one of the sculptures. I just really liked the octopus peeking out from the bottom. It reminded me of Artfest.

Here's a pirate, which my son referred to as "The Johnny Depp one". *laughs* Apparently, pirates=Johnny Depp- there were no pirates before Jack Sparrow in his mind. Too funny!

Mermaid sisters...

A guy in a row boat. The face on this one was just creepy.

Not too sure what this one was...sort of a Tiki/Poseidon theme, I think.

The details on the face of this one is incredible. You'd think they were carving clay the way they got the folds in the skin and the teeth done.

This one is ocean themed and the one that has the octopus on the far side of it. (You can't see it from this angle.)


I think this one is either Mayan or Inca. Either way, it's really something.

THis one reminded me of Alice in Wonderland. I don't think it was, but the girl looks like Alice.

This one was HUGE. Look at the size of the hands!



I love sand sculptures. They are to BC what snow sculptures are to Manitoba, where I grew up. It's really great to see so much art at the fair and I liked that there was a diversity in what was shown-there was something for everyone!

*Did anyone other than me happen to notice that today is 09/09/09?!

Art at the PNE

The Pacific National Exhibition (PNE) was on for the last two weeks here. It's the annual fair everyone goes to. This year they seemed to have alot of great art exhibits.

This is "Container Art" which was an installation inside these giant shipping containers. With Vancouver being a port city, we see alot of these around and it's kind of cool that someone thought to turn them into art galleries.

This is the entryway into the gallery area. There were 8 individual containers that were either open so you could walk right in and look at the art or had the art inside and were like a giant shadow box, so you stood outside looking in.

This is one where you could walk right in. On all sides of the container, were paintings that were similar to this one. Around the edges there was sand and driftwood, creating a beach-like feel to the container.

This is one where you just stood outside and looked in. I loved all the neon, it was really cool.

It had a sort of "Mad Max" feel to it-lots of car parts.


This was one of the walls. The neon light is reflected in the metal of the sun image.


This was on the opposite wall-more car parts. If you look closely, you can see it's the make and model pieces off a variety of cars all assembled together. Amazing!

Another section of the PNE has a competition where people make 3D sculptures from cans of donated food. This is to raise awareness and donations for the local food bank. I liked the earth sculpture. It's made from tuna tins.


Then there was Wall-E...

And a dinosaur hatching from an egg...


And Marvin the Martian....

And then a house which was made by and large from tins of chicken broth and tomato sauce. You just never know what you are going to see at the PNE.

Tomorrow I will post pics of the sand sculptures because there are so many that it needs its own post. The artistry is incredible-I was amazed with what they can do with sand. Wait till you see!