My Brush With Death (x2)

It's been an eventful week. Full of events.

First I get rear-ended while driving to get my wife a cookie. She has this thing for Portofino cookies that they sell at the Red Barn Market. Mocha almond or something. So, on my way home from work I take a detour to pick one up for her. The sleek black Mercedes in front of me stops to take a left, I stop to allow it to take a left and the little Honda behind me failed to see us stopping. Crap. Nothing too bad, I'm fine minus some shaking up, some scratches and dings and a trunk that doesn't like to close. She was a real nice gal and called ICBC first and claimed responsibility and it's another thing to add to the to-do list before we move: take car in to get fixed.

Then I had my own real, live brush with the famous Swine Flu. No jokes. Okay, it kinda seems like a joke when you hear about it. Supposedly a school in Victoria had a dozen or so kids come down with swine flu. Just so happens that the mother of one of said kids was working next door in the office I had been in and out of a handful of times the past 2 days. She gets sent home, we all get put on Neon Purple alert (it's the new alert color for flus), she gets tested.... and she doesn't have it. Whoooooosh. Exhale. And then this makes the CBC news. The kids didn't really have it either. Talk about being close to near death!

But I am okay, despite the many mishaps. Busy busy but not too busy to head out to a local pub with a friend and taste the coolest named beer to ever come out of BC (Crannog's Backhand of God Stout). And to possibly cheer for the Canucks to lose. Just can't bear to see the enemy triumph. I know it makes me a smaller man but I've come to grips with that. Go Blackhawks!

Of Pearly Whites and Swine

The WHO, for 2004, summarized that in Africa:

405,000 died from TB
182,000 died from measles
69,000 died from tetanus
1,417,000 died from respiratory infections
27,000 died from iron-deficiency

And yet, somehow, we are in a state of emergency over a flu that has killed no one in Canada yet. The lesson is learned: all you have to do is threaten a white, affluent North American and every precaution will be taken. Threaten to kill thousands of Africans and the world sits on their hands.