Monthly Archives: June 2003

My day ahead

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OMG! I just loaded my SharpReader and darn! You stop reading blogs for a couple of days and you totally lose track on people’s lives. And this is only with the RSS feeds, I don’t want to imagine the blogroll. So funny! Anyway, I think I’m going to amuse myself with what fellow bloggers have to say. That is, after I have breakfast because my stomach is growling.

And, I have “About Schmidt” and “Frida” here (Patrice rented them for me last night, isn’t that sweet?), so I guess I’ll be at the movies today and then I have to go to the optometrist to get an “Yes, she can drive” certification. Since I’m Diabetic, the SAAQ asks for reports from en eye doctor and my GP whom I’m seeing next week for my usual check up and to have the papers signed.

With this beautiful day I’m also going for a walk, drop my uncle’s letter in the mail (yes, I’m done!) and enjoy the sunshine. Hey, maybe I should invite my neighbour for that walk and bond a little bit more… Getting psychologically ready to overcome this stupid cultural shyness once again.

Did you know a tornado hit a sector of Laval (where I live, although I say it’s Montreal because they are next to each other) last night? I’m watching the news! Weather is crazy… Today is a perfect summerish day and last night violent winds destroyed a lot of stuff in the Industrial Park. The good thing is, like the mayor said, “Thank God no lives were lost and material things can be repaired”. And I add… Thank God the darn thing didn’t touch my area or I would’ve had a heart attack!

So busy, it hurts!

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I couldn’t have any fun on the web yesterday. I didn’t read any blogs, I couldn’t answer any mails or chat with my friends — It was a weird day! No, my internet was not down, I was even online… just working, working, working! I had mentioned about the office website going down, remember?

Well, things took a little longer than expected, the DNS propagation wasn’t as fast as we thought, people were going nuts about their mail, I got calls from Vancouver and San Diego… I felt important! Ha ha — C’mon, I do web design for fun, but well, these people trust me and I couldn’t let them down. We lost all the mailboxes, and then I found myself sorting I don’t know how many e-mails that came to the default mailbox so they could do business as usual.

There was a big confusion with the Network Solutions account and even a third part involved in it that we had no idea about! Frustrating, let me tell you, to have a lot of people doing something different when you’re in charge of a website. My friend Fab told me “Welcome to club!”, because that’s what he does: website support. I was in a new place, with only a little knowledge, but they are satisfied with my work and that’s all that matters.

Want to know at what time I went to bed? 6:24 p.m. yesterday after sleeping only a little the day before. I was absolutely pooped and then I woke up really early this morning (around 6). Except for a few mail accounts settings, I plan to do NOTHING about this mess today; all the pages are in the new webhost and I think things are going smoothly. Mission accomplished!

I need a long shower, to wash my hair and pamper myself. Have a great day everyone!

Confused Quebec

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I have a couple of questions for Quebec’s residents. It seems there is some confusion in this province and I thought of asking to see what you have to say. There was a program in CBC last night (that I didn’t actually see because I was busy getting a new car, he he!) about the meaning of Quebec’s “Je me souviens“. What does it exactly mean? I’m asking because in the program they were going to discuss that the views are divided.

And the other question is: For the acronyms of the province we have PQ or QC. Which one is the good one? Or are both accepted? I know the question is silly and probably not relevant, but I like to know simple facts like this. It makes part of my OC personality because I always want to do things the right way, that means, the way it’s been officially established. Freaky, huh?

More on Anxiety

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Regarding my previous entry about the Panic Attack. I just called the Clinique des Troubles Anxieux to get an appointment, and now I’m waiting for the secretary to come back so we can set a date. This is nothing new for me, I had years of therapy in Colombia with a very good psychiatrist, but when I moved to Canada everything changed.

You see, I’ve been evaluated at the Psychiatry pavilion of the Sacred Heart Hospital here in Montreal and they sent me to the external clinic for therapy, but they wanted to put me in a research project where they were going to record my sessions and asked me to give it a thought, so I said no. I don’t want to be part of a study, I want my own therapist.

But well, I’m going to call again now. Wish me luck!

Night of Heck

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What time is it? 1:15 p.m., and I just woke up. No, I’m not a lazy person, but I had a night of heck. I went to bed around 1 a.m. (which is normal for me) and around 4 I woke up with one of the worst panic attacks I’ve had in my life… horrible! The sad part is that I’ve gotten used to them, but this time it scared the bejesus out of me; it was a combination of nausea, not being able to breathe, not being able to TALK and extreme body shaking — Not nice AT ALL!

My anguish was so strong I had the bottle of Xanax right in front of my eyes and I couldn’t see it. Patrice finally got it, I took a pill and went to bed. The attack lasted for at least 20 minutes and then I calmed down and slept until now. God! Panic attacks, I don’t wish to anyone. It’s been 7 years of having them as my friend and there are periods of time when they don’t come to “visit” me, but during the last couple of months they have been somewhat frequent.

My panic attacks usually come after something exciting happens (bad or good), or at least that’s the pattern I’ve noticed. Yesterday for example was a stressful day because Patrice’s office website went down since Friday and we hadn’t been able to contact Tech Support even by phone because there is no answer. The manager was panicking because most of the office communication relies on e-mail. So he called me around 1 p.m., crying for help, asking what we should do (since I’m their webmaster) and I tried again to talk to Tech Support, but it wasn’t possible, so my suggestion was to change webhosts, since they have people in the organization who have webhosting companies.

Most of the people who work in the office belong to a group, religious-based, and they have from business men to cleaners, so I spent great part of the afternoon talking to the programmer, who is in New York and who knew one of the guys in their center did webhosting. Then we had to call Vancouver to find the guy who had the info for the registrar to have the DNS changed. Usually changing hosts is a piece of cake, but we were lacking a lot of basic information because I didn’t register the domain name or anything like that when I started creating the website. I was talking on the phone with two super-geeks who were asking a lot of questions and seriously? I do web design for fun, there are a lot of things I don’t know about!

And between expecting answers and calls, we went out for groceries and ended up at Ford making a deal for the new car, but that’s another story. Still, another exciting moment — at least for me. So I guess the basic soup was there for getting anxious. But this time was so bad I’m thinking of getting at appointment at the Anxiety Clinic and see if I can start having therapy, because I really need to take care of this, if I want my life to be normal, especially when I have to go under some kind of pressure.