January 2011 wrap up

January opened somewhat poorly, I'm afraid, with the new year's migraine from the previous day following us to the airport, leaving me in abject misery, and Eden as my lonely keeper during the 8 hour wait at the St. Paul airport. I spent most of the time in a bit of a drugged stupor, thanks to some emergency medicine that Dad had thought to pack, more or less just chowing through ginger candies endlessly. Not the best way to travel, let me assure you.

Given that Eden has had to put up with me more than anyone over the last several months, she reached something of a breaking point in early January, and finally insisted that I try acupuncture at the local center, Working Class acupuncture. In retrospect, I think it was more a coincidence of timing between trying that and a "normal" break in my cycle, especially in that my migraine seemed worse after the first session, and later sessions gave no relief, but at the time, it seemed like something of a miracle, as my constant migraine broke for almost a week straight shortly after the second session. Unfortunately, even with their vastly cheap sliding scale, it was not a habit that we could afford to continue, and I had a few unpleasant experiences along the way with funky nerve reactions left over for a few days after later sessions. Ah well, learning experiences, right?

Our friend Vash finally got a chance to play again at Biddy McGraw's on the 10th with a few new friends, the first time we've been able to see him play in months, pretty much ever since Circled by Hounds broke up. While the sound was a bit different than the previous wonderful Celtic jams, it was still a great show, and I hope that he continues to find venues to play with them.


On the 12th, we got just a bit of snow in the air and on the ground in Vancouver, which caused no end of delight for the girls, and even inspired Eden to borrow the video camera and shoot a quick segment to show the world.


The school side of things perked up a bit as the new term started; I recently began recording and sharing class and lab sessions with other students, and it's caused rather more people than I'm used to to notice me. I've even got some pretty cool lab partners out of it!

Eden had yet another crafty swap on the 18th, and I just couldn't resist playing with the cactus stuffy she made - it was just too neat, with a small collection of different mustaches and beards to send along with it. Somehow, somewhere in there, she was prompted to make a log as well. A captain's log. Specifically Jean Luc Picard's. Don't ask me, I just don't know.


Towards the end of the month, on the 25th, we took a break from the city and headed off to Manzanita and Cannon Beach, just to get away from it all for a little while. As it happens, the weather was miserable in Portland, but quite nice at the coast, prompting Eden to grab another short segment to introduce Manzanita to the world.


We went down to Lake Oswego the following day to visit with Vivian, and to allow Eden to help her out around the house, since she's not quite as spry as she used to be. Even though I love to visit down there, more often than not, there's nothing specific that I can do to help (or am allowed to - I'm a bit of a lummox), so I took advantage of her deck and feeders to play with the local wildlife for a bit.

The month ended nicely with a visit from my brother Tim and his friend Timmy Straw. While I'm afraid that I was prevented from joining the group in partaking of dinner thanks to heavy migraine induced nausea, it was still awfully nice to visit with him - we just don't get enough time hanging out together anymore.