You'll love this one...!! A book club & more discussion
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Watcha Doin' - 2017.1 edition
I swear lately that the psychiatrists would be having a field day analyzing my dreams. I don't know what is up.theyre just the most random obscure things. Usually nothing I can think of reading or hearing should have influenced them. Except last night being a terrorist attack. 19 of the bombs from super Mario Bros 3 for Nintendo had been fired at my pasture we saw them all come in and when they got a foot from the ground they stopped and started chasing my cows around trying to group them then they would dive in the middle and explode
I am sorry to hear about your friend's daughter Janice.
How is your friend's daughter coming along Janice?There was one story of a girl who at least as of yesterday had a bullet too close to her spine to be able to remove it. I don't know that it means forever or if a specialist was going to have to do it. It sound like with the distances involved a lot of the bullets stayed in people instead of exiting. But I haven't seen the caliber used to see if that makes sense to me or not. 3-400 yards is not especially long depending on the caliber. On the other hand he could have chosen ammunition that had a better chance of lodging in the person.
Oh Janice, that is horrible. I hope she is okay. I was weirded out as I bought wine from the servo next to where the concert was held, and peeked over the fence when I was there last year. But nothing like knowing people involved.Lol your dream sounds like one of mine, Travis. Your poor (dream) cows.
Oh Janice that's awful. I hope you get good news.We also got some shocking news yesterday. A good friend of my son killed herself last weekend. She was a beautiful, smart 21 year old. She was in my sons class in school and lived on the same road as us. They were chatting just last week for gods sake!
This is the 3rd suicide of a young girl that was in Colm's class in school. One at 15 and one at 16. This 21 year old is the only one that was in his clique and he is in bits. Wasn't even able to go to college today and I don't what I do for him. Nothing.
Sad news all over. I hope your friend's daughter will be okay Janice.
That's shocking Margo. And very sad. Also shocking that so many girls from his class have committed suicide.
Peggy wrote: "Sad news all over. I hope your friend's daughter will be okay Janice.
That's shocking Margo. And very sad. Also shocking that so many girls from his class have committed suicide."
I know - it's like the idea is contagious. It's really scary.
Margo wrote: "Oh Janice that's awful. I hope you get good news.We also got some shocking news yesterday. A good friend of my son killed herself last weekend. She was a beautiful, smart 21 year old. She was in ..."
Oh, Margo! That is awful!
That's awful, Margo! So sorry for your son, as well as the girl's family. How sad and shocking that so many in his class committed suicide.
So sorry to hear that Margo.I think everyone could do with some good news.
There has been no further news about Tara. She's in a bed, in the hallway, awaiting surgery. Apparently, the hospitals are so full, beds are wherever there is space for them. My friend is there with her. I did hear this morning that another Albertan died. This 31 year old woman was from Jasper which is where my dad and I were this weekend. Another Albertan woman is missing! She was separated from her husband during the attack.
Margo, I'm really sorry to hear about your son's friend. Suicide is so traumatic and I really feel for your son.
I am heading out today to get two crowns on my teeth. I called the dentist yesterday due to having some occasional pain in one spot when chewing. They got me right in to look at it. I have a couple of old fillings from when I was a kid and they have caused little cracks in my teeth. The dentist suggested we crown both of the teeth since the second tooth will need to be done eventually and, lucky me, they had a cancellation for today. So off I go for my torture.
So sorry to hear about your friend, Janice. I think this horrible event may strike close to home for quite a few of us. Over 22,000 people were in attendance at the time the gunman started firing. At least one person that was killed was from Tennessee, only a couple of hours away from where I live and where some people I know live at. I saw a report that said he had 23 guns inside the hotel room. I just can't fathom what would make a person do this!
@Margo, I'm so sorry for your son and his friend's family. There are some great support groups online to help with those left behind after suicide. I can't remember what they are right now, but I'm sure you can find them by googling. Maybe you can find some help in supporting your son in this tragic time on one of these sites.
@Kristie, hopefully your dental work isn't too tortuous today!
Kristie wrote: "I am heading out today to get two crowns on my teeth. I called the dentist yesterday due to having some occasional pain in one spot when chewing. They got me right in to look at it. I have a couple..."Kristie I have 3 crowns now - they're not so bad! My teeth are awful, they just crumble away.
KimeyDiann wrote: "So sorry to hear about your friend, Janice. I think this horrible event may strike close to home for quite a few of us. Over 22,000 people were in attendance at the time the gunman started firing. ..."The entire class got some group counseling after the first 2, but he's not in school anymore and I doubt that he'd go for it voluntarily. I'm giving him lots of comfort food at the moment but that's the limit of my powers.
Nah crowns are nothing. Got one a couple months ago
Crowns are done. I had one previously and it wasn't too bad. It was getting two at once that was my concern. Had an issue with with the numbing med wearing off halfway through, which they had to re-inject a couple of times, which was pretty bad. I'm just glad it's done.
Glad that you've been crowned, Kristie. I think they should put purple coloured bibs on you when you go for crowns - give you the royal treatment.Margo, the best thing you can do is what you are doing.
Oh Margo. That's horrible for you all. Sounds like you are looking after your son wonderfully, but make sure you look after you too. That's very sad. Not sure if this website would be useful for your son at all, but it looks like Headspace which we have here, where you can chat to people online. https://turn2me.org/ Glad the dentistry went well, Kristie.
And I'm glad your friend's daughter is okay, Janice. Even if she's in the corridor. It's sort of a good sign she is in the corridor though, but uncomfortable for all.
She was Medevac'd to Calgary yesterday, so is "home" in a regular hospital bed where her children (and family) can come and visit her. The doctors are assessing whether it will cause more damage to remove the bullet from behind her knee or leave it.
Rusalka wrote: "Oh Margo. That's horrible for you all. Sounds like you are looking after your son wonderfully, but make sure you look after you too. That's very sad. Not sure if this website would be useful for yo..."@Rusalka thanks, I'll check it out
@Janice - at least she's back with (or near) her family. That's so important when you're in hospital.
Medevaced. There's probably about $20k. Not that anyone worries about the dollars at this time but I know from both my grandfather and his brother how expensive it's been for medical transportation for them. It's ridiculous Everytime. Same thing though we never worry about it at that time there's more important things than the bills involved until it's over
If you don't mind me asking, Margo, is there much where you live for suicide prevention. It's everywhere around here. There's 800 numbers to call for help. There are walks and various other fundraisers to raise awareness. You can't really go a whole day without hearing something on suicide prevention unless you completely unplug from the world around here. I think it's something that's a big problem all over the globe anymore.
Radio DJ just cracked me up. Says I got into a tussle with the wife last night. I read to my kids before bed every night and she bought a pile of Bernstein bears books. She asked why I'm not reading them. Because I hate them and I refuse to read them. They're man bashing books . Look at them. Every one. It's always papa bear making the mistakes and being a buffoon and mama bear who's the sensible one who saves the day. And then I threw the whole pile out. And then my wife laughed and said I never thought about it but you're right they do kind of man bash. Lol. Never knew anyone could feel so passionate over the berenstein bears
If you have travel or health insurance (health insurance is not a choice here, travel is optional) such costs would be covered. I don't know what that's like for Canadians. Glad to hear she's back home!
We don't have fundraisers or stuff like that, but whenever anything related to suicide is in the media (tv, print, radio, internet) there's a message with a phone number to call if you have such thoughts. I have no idea if it has decreased suicide rates, I hope so.
I think every where has better health insurance than us
Same here Peggy. Also in prominent places there are Samaritans signs up - bridges, train stations etc. Last year I was on a train that hit someone who had walked out in front of the train. And on the same stretch of track this week another person did the same thing. As they aren't train stations, there are not signs but I don't know whether the signs help or not. Mental Health services here in the UK are shocking as much of the funding has been cut. I'm guessing this has meant that suicide rates have gone up due to the lack of support.
Sarah wrote: "Thanks guys. My nan passed away this afternoon. We were all there with her. She was 97. I lived with her for the first 22 years of my life. She's been a second mum to me. My heart is broken. She ha..."I'm sorry to hear about your nan, Sarah. It sounds like she had a really productive life. At least everyone was able to be with her at the end.
The whole Las Vegas shooting is still unbelievable. The idea that public events can be so dangerous is too horrible to consider, and yet it's become a reality. A woman from Charleston was killed, she was there with her husband. And my neighbor has friends who were there, who are fine. This shooting really impacted a large part of the country personally. Janice, I hope your friend's daughter recuperates fully.
I never noticed those signs here. Suicide by jumping in front of a train happens quite often here. In 2015 there were 223 suicides that way, and 20 attempted suicides. Those numbers are so high :( There is prevention, probably signs but also higher fencing, especially near mental health institutions.
Margo wrote: "We also got some shocking news yesterday. A good friend of my son killed herself last weekend. She was a beautiful, smart 21 year old. She was in my sons class in school and lived on the same road as us. They were chatting just last week for gods sake! This is the 3rd suicide of a young girl that was in Colm's class in school. One at 15 and one at 16. This 21 year old is the only one that was in his clique and he is in bits. Wasn't even able to go to college today and I don't what I do for him. Nothing."
Margo, that's so sad. I hope your son finds a way to deal with his friend's death. Maybe he'll be ready to talk to someone eventually.
Travis sivarT wrote: "If you don't mind me asking, Margo, is there much where you live for suicide prevention. It's everywhere around here. There's 800 numbers to call for help. There are walks and various other fundrai..."
The main place is the Suicide Prevention Hotline. The one time I called it I never got through to a person, just recordings. It was a good thing I wasn't really desperate because I couldn't find any other resource at the time. Most local areas don't have the funding for any kind of 24 hour service.
I've been laughing at myself. I lost my kindle (left it at McDonald's), ordered a new one, and found the old one. It was in a box of Halloween things that was on my dining room table. No idea how it got there, and the only reason I can think of why I didn't see it is because the kindle was open so I didn't see the pattern of the case and the dark screen blended in with the boxed stuff. The next morning I was reading in bed and saw something flash by. It was a bird. My bedroom is the furthest room from any door or downstairs. The only thing open that I can think of is the dog door in the garage. That's a lot of travel for a wren. It took forever for me to *herd* it down the hallway and near a door which I opened, and I know I looked ridiculous. Monday I found my camera, which had been lost for months (I thought I left it somewhere I wanted to take a picture). My chair ate it - it eats napkins and tissues (stealing Jingo's treats), magazines, notebooks, and remotes. The thing is, while I've been rescuing those other items I should have seen or felt the camera. Maybe some missing socks will turn up there.
Yeah a recording isn't going to help anyone and that's sad
It's been a while since I noticed the group Emma Watson started. 205,000+ members. Impressive. I wonder if the active members is anymore than this group which has a pretty high number of active members as these things go. I also wonder if they were all on Goodreads prior or did her group draw in a lot of people to join Goodreads to join her group.
That's awful, j'mom. A recording is not helpful at all. I was laughing at your other antics though. I can picture you trying to herd the wren outdoors! Travis, I'm guessing a lot of people joined just because she's famous. She does (or at least did) post on her group's page, so I'm sure some people feel like they "know" her by being part of her group.
Peggy wrote: "We don't have fundraisers or stuff like that, but whenever anything related to suicide is in the media (tv, print, radio, internet) there's a message with a phone number to call if you have such th..."We have the same here, Peggy. And a huge amount of suicide prevention advertising, and support networks advertising. And like Travis said, free helpline numbers you can call. The biggest one runs the biggest book fairs too ;)
J'mom... herding birds is probably a lot like herding cats. I'd vote for a ghostie from your Hallowe'en box playing tricks with your Kindle.Travis... she likely had out-of-country medical/travel insurance which would cover the medevac. A few years back, a friend and her husband were on a cruise in Italy. He had a stroke onboard. He was moved to a hospital in Italy. Their insurance flew a doctor to Italy to accompany him back to Canada.
Jmom, your and my bird adventures are in sync! I hope the Wren and your house came off relatively unscathed.We put the chooks to bed last night, and I got startled by a shadow above their house which I assumed was a rat, but it then appeared to have wings, a beak and a tail. A magpie had got stuck in the coop, and then instead of going back out the door, had tried to squeeze out through the chicken wire roof, which has holes the size of you middle finger touching your thumb. It got it's head out, half of it's two wings (and was pretty bloody and lost feathers) and then got stuck. It must have been there for at least 4-5 hours.
We ended up at 11pm trying to extract it from above and below, then having to cut the wire to get it out (to which it shot out and flopped around the roof where I couldn't get it and up a tree. I had to shine a torch on it to get it high up the tree to be safe as couldn't reach it, but as he was exhausted and hurt and probably dehydrated and birds don't fly at night, it was horrible to watch) and then patch back up the wire so foxes couldn't get into the chooks. We got back inside at 1am.
We couldn't see him this morning (we got up a couple of hours after sunrise), but he wasn't in our yard or the neighbours. And he didn't come back this arvo. I hope he's okay :(
Travis sivarT wrote: "It's been a while since I noticed the group Emma Watson started. 205,000+ members. Impressive. I wonder if the active members is anymore than this group which has a pretty high number of active mem..."I reckon a lot of them are not active, Travis. Also, I think it's a good bet that a number of them were not on Goodreads before she created the group, and they joined simply because she drew them in. I think her group is both a good thing and a bad thing. It's good because it has made more people aware of Goodreads and some of them could be genuine book lovers who simply had not heard of the site before, but I also think it's bad as some of the members probably have no real interest in books at all and joined simply because they are fans of Emma. Whilst that means more members for Goodreads, I think it's a shame to join if you have no interest in books. Part of the fun for me is interacting with other book lovers and discovering new things to read.
Rusalka wrote: "Jmom, your and my bird adventures are in sync! I hope the Wren and your house came off relatively unscathed.We put the chooks to bed last night, and I got startled by a shadow above their house w..."
That's sad, Rusalka. Poor little thing :( I hope he is okay. Keep us posted.
Will do. I'm hoping he's just embarrassed and hiding away for a while. I think he was the super friendly young un, so I hope he comes back.In other news, Kazuo Ishiguro just won the Nobel Prize for Lit. One day, Murakami, one day.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
Ah the poor little bird. No bird issues here but we are having a lack of water issue. Our boat hasn't been floating at all this week. There is a leak in one of the water pump pipes which helps regulate the water levels. Apparently it's been fixed so hopefully we'll be floating again soon.
Seriously... how stupid do students think their teachers are?Do you really think I won't notice if you copy text straight from the article, throw it into google translate, and paste the grammatically incorrect sentence in your assignment? Over and over again?
Or that I don't notice you have handed in the exact same assignment as one of your fellow students, spelling mistakes and all?
And it's fresh 1st year students, I expect them to behave better. Unless they don't know those things are not allowed, but I can't imagine they got away with stuff like that in high school..
Travis sivarT wrote: "If you don't mind me asking, Margo, is there much where you live for suicide prevention. It's everywhere around here. There's 800 numbers to call for help. There are walks and various other fundrai..."There is lot of talk about mental health health awareness in Ireland Travis, but very little to back it up. In rural communities, like where I live, suicide is a very real problem. Families that have been affected are making great strides in the community but there is a real lack of professional backup.
I'm not sure how our rates compare to other countries but it more common in young males than than females. Here are some stats http://www.nsrf.ie/statistics/suicide/.
Ironically in my town, over the last 6 years it has been mostly girls. In my experience these clusters, usually among a group of friends. The last cluster, about 20 years ago, was a group of male cousins. It's scary stuff.
For a long time here there has been a sense of shame around mental health problems and councilling has been a dirty word. I think that is starting to change, but it takes a long time to change a culture.
Our government pays great lip service to the issue but considering the mess our entire health service is in ...
A very long rambling answer to your question Travis but I'm a bit emotional after dropping my son off at the funeral and seeing all his former classmates crying on each others shoulders :,(
Sarah wrote: "Ah the poor little bird. No bird issues here but we are having a lack of water issue. Our boat hasn't been floating at all this week. There is a leak in one of the water pump pipes which helps regu..."That's annoying, and I would find being stranded a little off putting if I lived like you guys do. I mean, you come and go as you please! Not at someone else's (or a pipe's) whim!
Peggy wrote: "Seriously... how stupid do students think their teachers are?Do you really think I won't notice if you copy text straight from the article, throw it into google translate, and paste the grammatic..."
I thought of you the other day, when my office was dealing with an essay that wasn't even a document, it was multiple images. The images were screenshots of another student's essay, and submitted as their own. They were a 2nd year student.
I am constantly amazed at students' stupidity, and sometimes with others their creativity, when it comes to plagiarism.
Margo wrote: "A very long rambling answer to your question Travis but I'm a bit emotional after dropping my son off at the funeral and seeing all his former classmates crying on each others shoulders :,( "I'm sorry, Margo. Do you have someone to hang out with or have a cup of tea with? Or a wonderful book to read in the sunshine (is it sunny?) or under blankets? Hugs from over here.
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You'll love this one...!! A book club & more
Books mentioned in this topic
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The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles (other topics)
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The Little Prince (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Michael J. Sullivan (other topics)Joe Hill (other topics)
Kazuo Ishiguro (other topics)
Kazuo Ishiguro (other topics)
Kazuo Ishiguro (other topics)
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That's so horrible, Janice.