Thursday ; Sunny, +9° C.
Joanne continues to be ill.
Around 6 PM I took Apollo for his late afternoon walk, then I drove to the nearby fish catching / processing / selling business Finest At Sea, and ordered a halibut and chips take-out dinner for two from their “food truck” in front of their fish processing plant and retail sales shop. We ate our fish and chips dinner while watching all three episodes of the new TV series North Of North on CBC Gem.
All three of us are getting bored with our lack of activity due to illness.
Friday ; Happy 26th birthday to Joanne’s niece Madeleine
Sunny, +8° C.
Joanne’s health was slightly improved today. Azithromycin might finally be doing its job.
She joined me for Apollo’s noon time walk, then we all got in the car and drove a short distance to Emily Carr House which is in our James Bay neighbourhood. I wanted to take a peek at it and assess whether or not it was worth a more thorough visit. <shrug> It doesn’t seem to be, in my opinion. I had initially intended to walk to it in conjunction with a walk to Thrifty Foods, but Joanne was barely able to endure a walk around the block with me and Apollo. After looking at Emily Carr House we drove to Thrifty Foods to buy some milk and vegetables before returning to our suite to have lunch. Upon our return home Joanne plopped down in a comfy living room chair and hardly moved for the next four hours, so … her stamina remains at zero !
Saturday ; Sunny, +6° C.
Chilly this morning. Temperature below zero overnight last night. Frost on grass and windshield this morning. Still … it ain’t Winnipeg / Dugald ! HA HA HA ! NOT 40 below ! No multiple car pile-ups in zero visibility due to blowing snow blizzard conditions ! ! !
Joanne’s health continues to improve, albeit agonizingly slowly. Heading in the right direction at least.
Late this morning we took Apollo for his walk then set off in the car to Oak Bay Shoes & Orthotics to pick up Joanne’s custom made / hand made orthotic insoles. And after wearing them for about eight hours today, they seem to be working to alleviate her ongoing Achilles tendonitis pain. She wore them in her existing shoes and in one of the two pairs of orthopedic shoes she bought today at Oak Bay Shoes & Orthotics.
The pair that she tried the orthotic insoles in tonight are orthopedic walking shoes. The other pair are orthopedic sandals for summer. Custom made hand made orthotic insoles, pair of orthopedic walking shoes, pair of orthopedic sandals, excluding taxes … nine hundred bucks ! Relief from Achilles tendonitis pain … priceless ! ! ! Our hopes are high !
Tonight I made an Udon noodle stir fry dish for supper. I didn’t have some of the ingredients that I use when I make this at home. Nevertheless, it turned out great. As it almost always does. This has become of my specialties. Although … I didn’t really like either the taste or the texture of the Shitake mushrooms that I used in this for the first time tonight.
Sunday ; Sunny, +4° C.
Chilly, but offset by brilliant sunshine.
I slept somewhat poorly last night, being awakened frequently by Joanne’s snoring. WOO-HOO … slow, long, deep breath snores. Seems as if the Azithromycin did indeed do its job of eliminating Joanne’s pneumonia, and allowing her to breathe easier.
She felt better this morning, and since both of us (probably Apollo as well) are bored to tears with our inactivity of the last few weeks, I encouraged and eventually persuaded her to come for a long walk to explore nearby Fishermen’s Wharf. We walked westward along the Inner Harbour walkway all the way to Fishermen’s Wharf, which in hindsight might have been a mistake. The curvy, winding walkway all the way to Fishermen’s Wharf was about twice the distance as our return trip walking down Kingston Street in a straight line from Fishermen’s Wharf back to our hotel.
Joanne’s new orthotic insoles and orthopedic shoes seem to be working well at minimizing her Achilles tendonitis pain.
Monday ; Victoria to Cobble Hill to Duncan & return
Sunny, +6° C. We left our hotel at 2 PM, drove through downtown Victoria and headed west on the Trans-Canada Hwy. 1 through Langford, then north on the Malahat Highway, up and over Malahat Mountain to the Cowichan Valley on the other side. We arrived in Cobble Hill at 3 PM for our appointment to view our upcoming rental apartment at Xanadu Estate. We will be staying there for February and March.
We visited with our “landlady” for awhile in her home, then she took us to view our apartment. IT’S SUPERB ! ! ! Large, fully equipped gourmet kitchen, dining area, large living room with wood burning fireplace, luxurious and comfortable furnishings, small office, large and luxurious bedroom and bathroom. Huge windows everywhere looking out over the beautifully landscaped grounds of the large property in old growth forest. Quite spectacular ! And secluded, which we like. Downtown Victoria has been fine, but we’re now ready for peace and quiet, and restful walks in nature. Xanadu Estate seems much like our Quigley Hill Road home just outside Ottawa was.
We left Xanadu Estate at 5 PM and drove another fifteen or twenty minutes north to the small city of Duncan. Joanne had selected a Vietnamese restaurant, Green Leaf Bistro, for supper. Food was pretty good, service was pretty bad. After supper we drove the remaining very short distance to Cowichan Performing Arts Centre to attend a film screening of a “foreign art” film, Queen Of My Dreams, one of the Cowichan Performing Arts Centre’s regular foreign art film fundraisers for a local hospice.
While we were in the Cowichan Performing Arts Centre to view the film Apollo waited in the car for about two and a half hours. He was a very good dog ! Before leaving Duncan I refilled the minivan with fuel at Superstore’s Mobil fuel bar. The drive back home in the dark, over Malahat Highway, was difficult. It’s a winding, up and down mountain road. My night vision is not very good any more. We arrived back home at Royal Scot Hotel & Suites around 11 PM.
Tuesday ; Sunny, +6° C.
This morning Joanne felt healthy enough … Achilles tendonitis pain reduced by new orthotic insoles and orthopedic shoes, and pneumonia eliminated by antibiotics … to walk to James Bay Thrifty Foods and back. She waited outside the supermarket with Apollo while I went inside to buy some groceries.
BAD NEWS ; She continues to cough heavily, as she has for the last ten months ! ! !
GOOD NEWS ; CT scan and consultation with respirologist both now scheduled for immediately upon our return home in April.
This evening, for the first time in twenty-three days, we felt healthy enough … both of us at the same time … to go to the fitness centre (me), swimming pool (her), hot tub (both of us), and sauna (her … men’s is still out of order).
Wednesday ; Sunny, +6° C.
After Apollo’s noon time walk we drove downtown to Victoria Public Market. It was a disappointment. It’s billed as an indoor food market, suggesting both restaurants and farm market type food vendors. It’s in a huge, old, elegant downtown building. And it is almost deserted !
We drove there and parked in the underground parkade in an adjacent condominium building behind the market building. Apollo waited in the car while we visited the market. There was a food court with about half a dozen or so independent food vendors / take-out restaurants around a communal eating / tables and chairs area. It was nice that all the vendors were independents, there were no chain outlets. And their offerings were varied and eclectic. But that’s all that was there, just the tiny food court !
We bought lunch from Naami’s Mediterranean. The middle aged Lebanese woman who was operating the place was friendly and gave good service and good food. We shared a large bowl of yam and lentil soup, and a large Saffron Chicken salad bowl. Yummy ! The soup, served very hot as I requested, was accompanied by excellent, “home made” pita chips and hummous.
The parkade behind the market, offering two hours of free parking for market customers, was ridiculous. There was no way to re-enter the parkade as pedestrians from outside. The residents of the condominium building above the parkade had fobs to enter from inside the building, but there was no way to enter from the outside as pedestrians leaving the market. HMPH ! Eventually we just walked down the vehicle entrance ramp into the parkade, and around and around until we got to our car !
Then … <sputter> … it was near impossible to drive out of the parkade if one didn’t have the fobs that the condominium’s building had that opened the parkade gates to allow vehicle egress. We got twisted around inside the parkade, and eventually followed another car through a gate that the driver ahead had opened, but that just led us into the section of the parkade that serviced the building next door. HMPH ! Now we were under a different building that we couldn’t exit by car, and we couldn’t enter as pedestrians, facing the prospect of eventually dying of dehydration or malnutrition in our car, trapped within the parkade from hell !
It was frustrating, despite knowing that these kinds of problems / impediments have been created by the need for downtown buildings to “protect” themselves from the vast quantities of homeless people “living” in downtown Victoria. I suppose that it is due to Victoria’s pleasant winter climate that there is a HUGE homeless population.
DSK
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