While visiting Pointless Drivel earlier today, I came across a link to Laurianne’s Hope.

What is Laurianne’s Hope? Lynda, Laurianne’s sister, describes the blog’s mandate as:

…to share my sister’s story with the world and help raise her son to be the person she wanted him to be. Laurianne died of non-smoking related lung cancer on October 22, 2005. She was only 25 years old, and I miss her every day.

This blog is written by Laurianne’s father, hankon, and Laurianne’s sister, Lynda. We hope to educate people about this disease by sharing our feelings about our loss and information about lung cancer.

How can you help?

People who find Laurianne’s Hope read about my sister, Laurianne. There are a lot of other stories out there, and I think the voices of those we have lost need to be heard as well. Lung cancer can spread so quick, that we as the loved ones need to help share their story.

You can share your own story with Lynda by sending an email to laurianneshope [at] gmail.com (replace the [at] with @).

Technorati Tags: cancer, Laurianne, lung cancer, share a story

I’ve had a few comments and questions (mostly via email) about the design for my blog and my header graphics. Today I thought I’d take a few minutes to plug the wonderful women who make me look so polished and ensure that my blog is always well dressed.

Luna from LunaStoneDesigns created the WordPress template I use for my blog. With her permission, I’ve played around with it a bit and made some minor tweaks to her code, but without her, I’d be nekkid – or at least still wearing a generic WP template. She’s also designed some great headers that I’ll be using when I’m in India and the Philippines later this month. No sneak peaks, you’ll just have to come back and visit to see them.

Zoe from Bubbles in my Head presented me with a great Christmas header as a reading prize in her winter read-a-ton contest. She has created the beautiful winter themed header graphic that’s keeping my blog nice and cosy this season and is also working on a spring, summer and fall theme to match.

Both of these designers do awesome work and I highly recommend them to anyone interested in a new look and feel for their blog. Their rates are also very reasonable for the work they do – making it very easy to become a repeat customer. Luna creates both Blogger and WordPress templates while Zoe sticks to Blogger (old) templates at the moment. Both also do piece work, as evidenced by my beautiful new headers.

If you like their work or are considering a new look for your own blog, please do take a minute to drop by their sites and say hello.

Disclaimer: I get nothing out of posting this other than the satisfaction of advertising a positive experience with two great designers. We often hear about people’s bad experiences with companies, but rarely hear about the good ones. It’s far easier to complain than to take a few minutes out to offer praise.

Technorati Tags: blog, graphics, headers, designs, templates

When my dad was dying, the mantra around my parents house was that most people were never told he was ill because “dad was a very private man”. Sure, I knew my dad didn’t often talk about himself and hated to have people poke through his possessions, but I never realized how strongly I shared this attitude until recently.

It may seem that I’ll write about anything when I’m blogging, but that’s not 100% accurate. I self-edit before I ever hit the publish button. There are a number of things I just don’t write about. As therapeutic as blogging can be I still have limits to the degree of self-confession that appears on these pages. Amazingly enough, despite the limits I’ve imposed on myself, I’ve still managed to pour a large chunk of my guts out over the blog-o-sphere.

A few months ago I’d learned that our pet sitters had pawed through our family photo albums while we were on vacation. The hubby couldn’t understand why I found this so offensive considering the albums were left on a shelf in the den only a few feet from the television.

Tonight, I have been watching my mom paw through other family albums and boxes of momentos and the longer it continues, the more my skin crawls. I’m offended that she doesn’t see anything wrong with going through my things without first asking for permission. I’m annoyed that she’s pulling photos and certificates out and demanding answers or details surrounding them – information I’d be lucky to pull out of my head after a good 15-30 minutes of hard thought…

Mostly, I’m angry with myself for sitting here quietly, typing out my feelings rather than just coming out and saying something about it. So why don’t I? Mom just doesn’t see anything wrong with her behaviour. I’ve tried asking her not to do things in the past and explain my point of view. She sees the world differently than I and just can’t imagine a world view that doesn’t match her own. I learned decades ago it’s better to sit down, shut up, and just let her do what she wishes rather than trying to get her to respect my wishes, opinions, or personal space.

Maybe someday I’ll grow a backbone again.

Technorati Tags: privacy, pet peeve, annoyances

I know it’s only a few days into the new year, but I already know it’s going to be one of those months. I spent most of last week working odd shifts that just seemed to get earlier and earlier in the morning. When I arrived at work at 4am on Friday, I should have known that I wouldn’t be able to recover from my lack of sleep over the weekend.

Mom has taken to karaoke so after a quick nap on Friday, we headed out to party. Granted, I don’t know how much partying you can really do with your mom in tow. Perhaps others can get wild and jiggy – but a wild night out with my mom usually consists of ensuring everyone is included in the conversation, proper introductions are made, and alcohol is consumed in very limited qualities. After lots of singing and embarrassing myself later, it was off to let the dogs out. We arrived back home at about 3:30 am only to be up for shopping at 9am.

While Sunday was pretty laid back it was marred by the fact that I was awake instead of curled up under warm blankets in my comfy bed.

Another 5am wake up call today, followed by a 4am trip to the airport tomorrow – mom goes home – and an upcoming storm on Wednesday has me wishing for the weekend already. I’m beginning to believe that it’s just not possible to ever make up the sleep debt I’ve racked up since before Christmas.

Lack of sleep means that I’m saying, thinking and typing crazy things this week. I’ve been beating dead horses in the comments at a blog I often visit – most likely not making my point well at all and coming across as some sort of deranged idiot. Then again, deranged idiot might be a step up from some of my past rants. Maybe I should just shut up when I’m ahead.

The old saying “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” is beginning to sound as if it’s the only way to get a good night’s rest.

Technorati Tags: tired, crazed ranting, sleep deprived

Waking up this morning, we had a brief glimpse of snow. I didn’t have a chance to get too excited about it as it stopped snowing after dropping a very light dusting on the ground.

Mom heads back to New Brunswick next week and we’ve only a few more days to spend together before we all return to our “normal” lives.

My business visa application has been submitted to the consulate and now I wait for the return of my passport. I head to India on the 24th of the month and am looking forward to seeing a different section of the country than I had visited in 2003. This most recent trip to India includes stops in Gurgaon, Pune, Mumbai, and Bangalore.

I do intend to blog from India while I’m there, but it may be a bit more sporadic than when I’m blogging from Manila. Thanks to Luna over at LunaStone Designs, you’ll be able to keep track of where I am in the world during my travels. She’s created new India and Philippines themed headers for my blog that will appear once the travel has begun.

Technorati Tags: snow, travel, India, Philippines