Happy New Year's Everyone!

We had a great trip home, and got to see most of the people we wanted to. Not all, but most. The driving was fine, except for the last leg from Syracuse to home where we had snow the entire way. So we just took it easy and didn't worry about it. Had a quiet weekend (with gaming, of course...) and today I'm back at work. While we were home I managed to lock up my back and neck, but I've seen the doctor about it already today (so there Becky!) and Brian's off to the pharmacy with some new prescriptions for me. Here's hoping they work! I'll post more about our trip home soon.

I'm not big on New Year's Resolutions, but I thought if I actually typed some of them out, it might help encourage me.

Plans for the New Year:
Finish the Phoenix cross-stitch (and don't buy any more projects for myself until I finish 4 more from my stash!)
Lose 30 more pounds (or more if I'm doing really well!)
Have Elizabeth and Morley choose their cross-stitch and make a good start on it.
Walk atleast 365 miles, with no cheating and using bike miles to inflate it if I get behind! That's only 2 hours/week at the Y on my favourite cross-country program.
Help kick Brian's butt into gear for coming to work out with me.
Be able to do a full half hour on the rowing machine with tension!
Take atleast two small, relaxing mini-vacations.
Get our Permanent Residency.
Get a new job.
Be happy in my life, and satisfied with the choices we have made together.

Some vendors suck

Rant Mode On:
I won't name names yet since I still want the gift to be a surprise, even if it isn't going to make it in time. I ordered Brian's main Christmas gift (and a little present for me) from a fairly well known (in their circles) online vendor. It was a very specific specialty item, and one I was thrilled to find for him. I'm really excited about it. Placed my order on Dec. 12th, and chose the free regular shipping option (5-7 days). It hadn't yet arrived today, so I called the company. Turns out the little thing for me is on back order. And won't be coming in for several months. So they weren't shipping the order yet. When I asked why I hadn't been contacted given that it is the holiday season, I was informed that they would have contacted me next week. NEXT WEEK!! So I go ahead and cancel the item that won't come in for several months. Then I ask about getting the present item shipped out at a faster service as I'm leaving for the Holidays on Friday. They said they'd send it if I paid for the expedited shipping, with no delivery guarantee, and it was going to cost me 3x the cost of the item to get it here (hopefully) by Friday. The sales guy was absolutely not helpful, refused to reduce the shipping charges, and never once apologized for the problems. At the end of the phone call, I reiterated what I wanted done (cancel item X, send item Y regular) and told him that we will never deal with them again, specialists or not. I'll post a link once Brian's opened his "gift" for Christmas. Guess I'll have to just print out a picture and wrap that, and I can't even do that at work as the site sets off our internet filters! I am SO not a happy camper. I actually had something really cool for Brian for once. Do you realize how impossible that is to pull off? And now he's not going to be getting it until sometime in the New Year.
MURP!!!!
Rant Mode Off
I now return you to your regularly scheduled blog entries...
I have lots of little news type items to post, but I can't do most until after Christmas.

Random photos..

Why I have such a hard time losing weight. Brian was bored and poking around in the kitchen. I left him to it, and this is the result. Yum!


This one just goes to show Bonnie that her totally helpless/clueless hairstyle challenged sister can in fact (and VERY occasionally does) use hotrollers...



Afer the rollers come out, ready for my company Christmas party. It's a totally horrible photo, I'm hoping the "official" photographer got at least one good one of me, he certainly seemed to be always catching me in the eye with a flash!



Noah's Sub update photos again, this one after Saturday's stitching...



And after Sunday's...




I probably won't post any further as I'm this close to actually finishing it in time for Christmas so I want the "final look" to be a surprise!
{fingers crossed}

Cross-stitch photos

Photos of previously completed cross-stitches, since it was nice and bright this morning to take photos without flashes! They're not great, and I'll try to take better in the future, but they'll do for a first run.

This one is Catch the Wind



And this is Celtic Christmas, adapted by me to be done in purples.

Now hiding...

I think my friends here are going to kill me. I said (more than once) that all I wanted for my birthday was snow. Even just a little snow. It can't be my birthday until I've had snow. And that little pretend wink-and-you'll-miss-it bit last week didn't count. So Sunday morning we got snow. Not much, but almost an inch, which is enough to seriously screw up traffic here. We weren't actually here for it, being in Conneticut for the weekend at Anonycon (more on that later), but it counted. I got to see snow where we were too, and the drive back Sunday night was a breeze. We were home in under an hour and a half. I was happy. But here's the part they're going to kill me for. There's another storm coming, this one expected to drop somewhere in the neighbourhood of 7 inches (or more) on us in the next 24 hours, starting tonight. Just in time for my birthday. Whoopee! Now if we could only get the heat working properly in our apartment. We're not freezing, or anything like that, but it does have to get fixed. And we recieved our notice of what our rent increases will be for next year (yeouch) in the mail on Saturday, including the fact that if we're leaving, we have to notify them by not later than Monday. I plan to give them written notice that we plan to stay pending resolution of the heating situation. We'll see. I might have to move into protective custody anyways once my friends dig themselves out of the snow!
Gotta run!

Amazing what a four day weekend can accomplish...

That's a LOT of stitching accomplished in one weekend, four days or no! I might actually have a chance at finishing this in time for Christmas after all. We're heading away next weekend for three days (I can't wait), but I don't think I want to bring it and risk having something happen this close to finished!

SNOWWWWWWW!!!!

We had snow this morning. Nothing I'd even call a dusting, and it certainly melted as soon as it touched anything, but we had snow!
{giggles maniacally}

And I get out of work for 3pm today!

Stitching Update

I've gotten a lot of stitching done on Noah's Sub the past few weeks and wanted to actually post a photo of it to this blog. I'll be updating it to the xvart website in the near future too... I'm on the LAST PAGE! Wohoo! I've gotten most of the yellow for the sub done, and the periscope. I did one colour of the sky across the top just to make sure it would meet up, and it did. I was very happy about that!


Other than that, not a lot to tell. We hosted gaming on Saturday, as usual and on Sunday went out to see the new Harry Potter movie with Jen, Joe and John. It was fun. Brian's in the middle of trying to organize an insane amount of gaming over the upcoming 4 day Thanksgiving weekend. We have players coming from two different states, and one from England. Hi Hayden! We miss you! The Y is going well, I'm branching out into more different types of exercise, and the results are really starting to show. I'm down almost 20lbs since the middle of August! Wohoo!

Gotta run since I'm at work. The image upload to the blogs doesn't work from my mac (atleast not that I've figured out, I haven't tried too hard) so I post the photos from work which is all PC's.

Can you see the difference?

Wednesday November 16th, 2005


I can't see the difference...
Thursday November 17th, 2005


Yep, Percy's been shaved again! I'd feel bad, but if he's willing to lie there for the groomer, for all intents and purposes saying "Go for it!", my allergies will thank him!
(Note: Both photos were taken from about the same distance away, and with the same lack of zoom. He really is that much smaller without his fur!)

Reasons why I love him

Because my husband will run me a hot bath after my workout at the Y, then spend the time I'm soaking in the tub playing my character in a video game so I can have some money...(less than 500,000 to go for invincibility!) And being the dyslexic videogamer I am, I *need* the invincibility. I wonder how I managed to inherit that from Neil?

Things I love about

Living close to work...

Going home for lunch, having lunch ready when I walk in the door and getting a break and a rest.

Oh, and playing Lego Star Wars. That game should be banned for the addictive crack it is! We only picked it up yesterday, and Brian's through the first movie already.
Thanks Joe!

At last!

Finally, today, November 14th, I have harvested the first edible tomato from my garden. Did I mention my tomatos sucked this year? There are a couple of others ripening now, but we're getting really close to a frost at night, so I don't know if they'll make it. Next year I'm going back to cherry tomatos!
Have a great day!

Oh, and I forgot...

I finally got the photos from our vacation posted. Click on the title to get there. They are currently unsorted, unlabelled and unculled, but they're finally up!

Another Update!

I'm going to try to do more spurr of the moment shorter blog posts for a while and see how it works out. I keep thinking of/coming across things to put up here, but never seem to have the time to type out everything I want to say. So, I give you the less edited, less coherent, more frequent blog!
Well, we're in immigration paperwork hell right now, but it'll all come out in the wash. We have to get a ton of paperwork completed, need several documents from Canada, and need to find a "Civil Surgeon" to do our medical checks. Then we submit and wait for our interview, where we get interviewed (duh!), photographed and fingerprinted. Then we're allowed to stay! Until we find the surgeon, we won't know how much the testing will cost, but it shouldn't be too bad (fingers crossed).
We're in medical billing hell right now too. Brian had to go for some (expensive) tests. We checked with the lab that they take our insurance. They do. The lab gets a preapproval from our insurance to do the testing. No problem. He has the tests. No problems (on the tests either, so that's good news!). Now, weeks later, our insurance company is trying to claim that the lab is out of network (doesn't accept the insurance) and saying we're going to have to pay $675 of the bill. This sucks. It doesn't help that the only lady in the billing department doesn't seem to speak clearly understandable english. Fluent spanish, but that doesn't help me! I'm about ready to read them both the riot act. But it'll get sorted out.
Gaming is busy as always. We ended up hosting over 20 hours of gaming last weekend though, so Brian's in a bit of trouble over that. I really don't mind one day a week (Saturday), and enjoy when I get to actually play. But two long days is beyond pushing it. Sundays are supposed to be NO GAMING days. {shrug} But what's done is done, and the players had a fun, if overly challenging time.
Since I didn't get to do much else last weekend, I got lots of stitching done. There's an update at www.xvart.com/xsprojects.html And I got more done last night (the five smallest birds), so I'm getting really close to being on the last page. I can't wait to work on something for me for a change. I was bad and bought Dracolair's Phoenix (as I think I mentioned before). I've been good and not worked on it since the day I bought it though as I'm trying very hard to get Noah's Sub finished by Christmas. The chart for the Phoenix sucks (since you asked Joanna) because the 1/4 stitches are done by showing 4 reduced symbols in each stitch box and are hard to read. They're also so small that if I try to blow it up with a photocopier, all I get are vaguely symbol like smears. So I keep having to refer back to the original. Defeating the purpose of having a photocopy! The backstiting isn't shown on the main chart, but instead on the back of the chart page over a very light copy of the pattern. There are parts where it's really hard to tell where the stiches actually go. And the print on the chart itself isn't clearly printed, so it's all slightly smudgy.
That's all for now, I should get back to work. There's lots more news, but it'll have to wait.

Too Hyper for Words

I just had a call from our HR department, who are truly clueless about the importance of immigration documents. I royally reamed her out in fact after the last time I had to deal with her and she actually said "But what's the big deal?". But all might now be forgiven.

Next week we file for Permanent Residency!
WOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Finally! After almost 6 years of hassles etc., the end is in sight.
I'm too hyper to work right now. But I'll be here for atleast another 6 hours. But I don't care!

Heather
Off to do kartwheels in her mind

Continuing the update

In the rest of August we mostly stayed home and worked on the apartment and my garden. The peas this year were glorious, but the tomatoes were a complete bust. Or so we thought. Brian tells me there are several baby tomatoes growing right now, so we might get one or two before frost kills them. Brian is the one to check them as the rest of my plants have completely taken over the deck, and I love it. My impatients are over 2 feet tall and a glorious riot of colour. I just can’t reach to step over them in their planters into the tiny walkway he left to get to the tomatoes. I tried a new flower this year called 4 O’Clocks, and they’re really just starting to get to their full glory. Lots of small flowers on trailing vines that open in the afternoon. I’ve got to plant more of them next year. When Derick stepped onto the deck for a smoke the other Saturday, he asked “When did you move to a jungle? And where am I supposed to stand?” To which I cheekily replied “Just quit smoking and it won’t be a problem!” There is actually some space for the BBQ, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to use it every week.
Over Labour Day weekend we didn’t do much special, just relaxed with friends (and gamed of course). Harry lent us the Firefly DVD’s, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. I finally got a bunch more stitching done on Noah’s Sub and will try to post an updated photo. I’m well into the animals on the top of the Sub right now, and it’s going quicker than I expected. If work doesn’t keep crashing in on “me time”, I could (at a stretch) possibly have it done in time for Christmas. Wohoo!
Later in September we went to Jersey for the day to go to a Ren Faire that we go to every year, and this time we took Jen and Joe with us. We made a stop on the way there at my old LNS (Local Needlework Store) since there aren’t any on the island/in NYC so Jen hasn’t ever seen one. I think she might have been a little overwhealmed. I gave in and bought Dracolair’s Phoenix, which has been calling me for months. I might have to make a deal with myself that for every 5 hrs I work on Noah’s Sub I can have one hour on Phoenix. I’m doing it on a different fabric (a mottled yellow) and am loving it. I don’t know why this design calls to me so strongly, it just does. But because of the fabric, it’s not washable, so I’ll have to be careful with it. And the chart sucks. Massively. And it’s all blended threads. But I love the design. I just don’t think I’d ever do another one by the same designer.
We also got to see Janel at the Faire, so that was awesome. I owe her a phone call ... And the jousting was as fantastic as always. It’s the real reason we go to this faire. The faire itself is very small, it’s an annual fundraiser for the local Lions club, but they have acutal competitive Jousting. Not staged, not scripted, not planned, actual try-to-knock-each-other-off-the-horse jousting! And the main team is from Guelph. Who knew? But we do make it a point to go see them every year. And this year it was the only Faire we made it to. We went to dinner at Mastori’s afterwards, so Brian was thrilled. I was fairly good with what I ordered/ate there. For once. For those of you reading who haven’t been to Mastori’s, it's a diner where the menu has over 300 choices, and you get enough food to feed an army. Of starving soldiers after a 2 week forced march on no food. With leftovers. And it’s sooo good. And the desserts! Oh my the desserts! I ordered one (Chocolate Mousse Cake, heavenly!), had some with dinner that night, and the next, and the next, and Brian had a serving too. I wouldn’t pay the tolls to go to Jersey just to go to Mastori’s, but if we're in Jersey, we’re going to Mastori’s. Brian wouldn’t let us not!
My weight loss plan is coming, I’m down to only 54 lbs to go. As you can tell, this is a long term plan. Very long term. But I’m down 10 lbs since the middle of August, so it is working. It’s just hard. And knowing that I was going to start a proper program after we came back from vacation meant I sabotaged myself while we were away. I won’t be doing that again. So now it’s lots of being very picky on what I eat, and going to the Y as often as I can. I’ve really found that if I can plan my workout times around there being something of interest on the TV (we have individual TV’s at the treadmills/bikes/stairmasters), I do work out much longer. So now I’m trying to pick times when there are hour-long shows on to go workout. I’m loving the cross-country mode on the treadmill as it changes things up every couple of minutes. But 10% incline is steep! I use my iPod on the rowing machine (no TV), and it works well for that, since I’m nowhere near getting up to an hour on it. But I have made it to 20 minutes! I just have to make sure I do it first, and that I have really upbeat music on the iPod. I love just getting into the rhythm with it and just zoning out. My torso on the other hand...
We went and saw Serenity on Friday night with a bunch of the guys and had a lot of fun. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, but won't post spoilers here for those who read who haven't seen it. All I will say is: River+Reavers=Dervish Dance. Good thing Summer Glau is a classically trained Ballerina.
We still haven’t heard from the family members mentioned in the last post, so no big announcement here. I’m starting to get a little hurt that they haven’t tried to get in touch with us to tell us, but it’s their lives and their choice. We got burned pretty badly once by calling to congratulate them on news that had been shared with us by another family member, and have no intention of that happening again. C’est la vie.
No big plans for October (so far). There was a Con in Toronto that we considered going to, but it just isn't worth the money. It would have been a lot of fun though! Mostly I just want to try to take time to relax and spend time with Brian. My work life is so hectic right now that I'm not much use or company by the time I get home. And night-owl me is now starting at 7am. Ugh! Then Saturdays are gamedays, which I love, but are not exactly just relaxing doing nothing and spending time together. So Sundays have become "Us Days". Just the two of us, relaxing and doing what we want. And I'm liking that. I'm still working on the apartment, but I finally got those horrid shelves out of the living room, so I'm feeling much better about it. Next up is painting!

So now we're all caught up.
Leave me comments so I know who's actually reading this!
Heather

I don't think I like this....

You scored as The Operative. You are dedicated to your job and very good at what you do. You've done some very bad things, but they had to be done. You don't expect to go to heaven, but that is a sacrifice you've made for a better future for all. The Operative 100% Zoe Alleyne Washburne 81% Capt. Mal Reynolds 81% Kaylee Frye 75% Hoban 'Wash' Washburne 75% River Tam 75% Simon Tam 63% Inara Serra 56% Jayne Cobb 56% Shepherd Derrial Book 44% Which Serenity character are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Learning and Culture...

I know I promised to finish updating the last few weeks, and that post is coming. I just wanted to do a quick post on something I overheard last night that just about broke my heart. We were wandering in Costco last night through the book section. A little boy (maybe 8-9 years old) runs past me to get at a book.

Kid: “Daddy, daddy, can we buy this?
We just finished the first one at school and it was really good”
Dad: {with a total lack of comprehension in his tone of voice}
“*Why* would I buy you a book?”

I was just floored.
And astounded.
And heartbroken for this little boy, who so obviously wants to read, whose parent doesn’t see the worth in it.
And saddened that to both Brian and I, it was an example of what’s going wrong with American culture today. They can complain all they want about the foreigners coming in to steal all the good jobs, but if they don’t encourage their own children to pursue knowledge, they reap what they sow.

Look out!

Okay, okay, okay. I haven’t written in a while and I know people out there are getting anxious ;)
So, what have we been up to? Lots, and at the same time nothing.

Lots of gaming in July, as is normal for us. Finally got the wall beside the table painted, and in a weird twist of fate, the paint matched the existing paint in the apartment. I wanted to go with something bold, but Brian wouldn’t agree, so I settled on an offwhite with slight bright yellow undertones. And it matches perfectly. I didn’t even have to tape in the corner where the walls meet. Strange... Lots of fun BBQ’ing with the guys, hanging out and chatting. And Pin finally made 11th level. Five shots/round, wohoo! And if you don’t have a clue what that means, that’s okay, we can ‘convert’ you too... We went to Conneticut for a weekend con and had a blast (mostly). The con was the inaugural event for the new convention center, which is kind of cool. Except they weren’t quite finished with all the construction. Or the construction dust and debris. My allergies took a pounding for it and made breathing just nasty. But the games made up for it. It’s kind of neat to get to go play in another region and see how things differ there. I had a great time playing “That’s Rhombstaff” with Jay running it. It’s usually super-cool to get to play a mod when the author is running it, and this was an absolute blast. And Jay’s a great DM.

We went to dinner at a friend’s place and got to play with their little daughter Kirsten, who was wonderful. She’s been a wonderfully unusual baby though, not really fussing, hardly ever crying, and sleeping through the night from the second week on. Heaven help them when they want a second child!

We went on vacation in early August for the first time in 10 years. Yes, you read that right, it was the first time we’ve taken a relaxing trip since our honeymoon. No schedule, no rush, nowhere we had to be. It was awesome! I *won’t* let it be ten more years before we do that again. We got together with Becky and rented a cottage just outside Lake Placid for the week. We did a lot of hiking, some sightseeing, climbed a mountain, and took a fantastic gondola ride. Well, I thought it was fantastic, Becky and Brian would disagree… Thanks for the tip mom! We didn’t end up doing any canoeing, but it was a joint decision not to. We certainly didn’t lack for things to do. We played board games or cards in the evenings, and had a campfire most nights. Turns out I’m not the only pyro in our little family. Brian *LOVES* to build/manage a campfire. I’ll be posting some photos from our trip here when I get a chance. I can’t do them from work, so the link won’t work until I actually get them posted from home... Look for the “Revenge of the Marshmallow Man” ones especially, they were fun! We had gorgeous weather, hot, but not “Ugh, I’m dying” hot. It was hazy a lot of the time, so a lot of the photos we took from the mountains don’t show how stunning the views actually were. And I want to play around with photoshop to ‘stitch together’ a bunch of overlapping panorama ones. With all my spare time that is . I didn’t get any stitching done, but that’s okay with me. When our week was up, we decided we weren’t done yet. I tried to convince Becky to come visit the island for a few days, but she didn’t want to have to handle driving in NYC, and I don’t blame her. It IS an adjustment from Sudbury traffic :). There was a stitching store not far from Syracuse that supposedly had over 15,000 leaflets that sounded really tempting and had been our ‘rainy day plan’. Since we had gorgeous weather all week, we hadn’t gone yet. So we pulled out the map and had a good look. We decided to head from Lake Placid to the store to Syracuse for the night, and head home our separate ways from there. Lunch was a blast with Becky wanting a Triple Chocolate Meltdown, but refusing to order it. On the way there, we passed a sign reading “Canada ”, and it was all I could do not to turn in that direction. But we didn’t have our passports, so c’est la vie. The store itself was an absolute bust. It was in the lady’s basement, horribly moldy/damp, and so cluttered and unorganized with everything in piles on the floor you couldn’t find a thing. Even some of the charts were starting to ‘grow’. I’ll NEVER go back there again. It gave both Becky and I asthma attacks. So we left and made it to Syracuse in the early afternoon. We relaxed, did a little shopping at the gigantic Carosel Center mall, had a great meal at a restaurant there (the name of which I’ve forgotten, darn it!). We’ll deffinately be eating there again when we stay in Syracuse. In the morning we finally had to split up and go our separate ways. Becky surprised us further (and herself too) by making it all the way back to Sudbury in one go. She must have made great time! I could go on and on about the vacation, but I’ll stop here. I’m depressing myself at work.

On to Madison news, since several people have been asking. Things are really up in the air there right now. As of the last I heard, the final test to confirm the CF diagnosis came back negative. So... now they’re trying to figure out what’s going on. Or what she actually has if it isn’t CF. And how to make this wonderful little girl feel better and be healthier! Keep the good thoughts coming folk!

We also have more wonderful family news, but I don’t want to post it here as we don’t officially know it. The couple involved haven’t told us yet, and I don’t want to say anything in a public forum until I know they’re going public. It’s killing me not to call and congratulate them, but this news really needs to come from them. But we’re both thrilled, we just want to get the news ‘officially’ so we can congratulate them and cheer in public! How’s that for cryptic, but not cryptic?

I’d better end this for now as it’s getting to novella length, but I’ll try to update the rest of Aug/Sept. soon. I promise soon!

Live life with joy and abandon.

Time for another update

Well, for those that didn’t click the title link in the previous post, yes, we bought a new car. The blue XVART is gone. (Although the plates are still on the new car…) We’d had so many problems with the Saturn and the extended warranty was just about up, so it was a good time to trade it in when all the old 2005’s were going on sale as the 2006 cars come in. We bought a black Hyundai Elantra hatchback and so far are really happy with it. No problems to date, and I drove it today in pounding rain for the first time, and it handled just fine. We got a good deal on the new car, and are happy with it. Now for the fun part. We’ve got to name it! Leave any suggestions in the comments, please! I really wanted a blue car so I could keep the XVART plates, but it wasn’t meant to be if we wanted the Elantra (and we did). Our choices were black, black or black. Or cranberry if we were willing to pay for over $3000 in options we didn’t want/need… So, black it was. Still fairly basic, the only options we got were the CD player and Cruise Control. With the amount of highway driving we do, CC is a very useful thing. Our old car had 45000 miles in 27 months… and my drive to work for most of that was only 10 miles. It’s all that driving to Canada, I tell ya!

We leave for vacation in just under a month, and I can’t wait. It’ll be the first actual trip we’ve taken since we got married 10 years ago. We’ve done little weekend runs away,but they’re not the same as a real vacation. I talked to the KOA a little while ago, and our “basic cottage with kitchenette” is a little more than that! It’s got a fridge, stove, microwave, toaster and coffee maker. Camping in luxury, this is going to be. Apparently my parents stayed at the same campground last week as part of their trip to Montreal and say it was really nice. I’ll have to get more details soon from them. We’re planning to do a little hiking, a little canoeing, and a whole lot of nothing important! We’ve each got a couple of card games/small board games picked out, and lots of reading material. There’s a nice beach nearby, and evening free concerts in town so it doesn’t seem like we’ll lack for anything to do.

Now for some much more serious news. My sister’s little girl Madison has been diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis. I don’t have much more info than that right now, but if anyone wants to send any good thoughts that way, I would really appreciate it. Bonnie REALLY doesn’t want anyone calling her, even to offer condolences right now, so PLEASE, respect her request for privacy. I just wanted to send all the good thoughts her way I could right now, even if she doesn’t know. She and Shawn are still determining how they’re going to handle things, and Bonnie’s in a really rough spot right now. If you want to learn more about CF, something I've been trying to do lately, I've included a link in the title of this post to the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Please, please, please, respect Bonnie's wishes for privacy, but send all the good thoughts you can.