H1N1

As Jordon wrote on his blog, we made it through H1N1 this week.  It wasn’t much fun and I don’t remember being this sick.  Apparently I was a lot closer to death when I had Oliver but I don’t remember much about it.

Both Jordon and I got hit hard but some secondary infections and Oliver got pretty sick as well with H1N1, despite being vaccinated (a lot of good that did him).  Mark meanwhile was also vaccinated and feels fine so it worked for him at least.

Jordon is upset over the flu for a pretty simple reason, the Centre was asked to house people with H1N1 and yet the staff were not given the vaccine to protect themselves.  If health region staff (and the Calgary Flames) were all given shots, why not emergency shelter staff?  As I cough up, small chunks of my lung, I can see where he is coming from.

According to my doctor, I am a couple of weeks away from feeling normal and Jordon’s doctor is saying he could feel miserable into the new year despite the antibiotics we are all taking.  I feel like sending the Saskatoon Health Region my bill.

The Annual JordonCooper.com Christmas Gift Guides

As I have written before, Jordon does most of the Christmas shopping at our house.  He also has written some excellent Christmas gift guides that are being uploaded over the last several weeks. 

Here is what has been uploaded so far.

Apparently he still has some more to come and you can find them all listed in his Christmas Gift Ideas category.  Best of luck with your Christmas shopping!

Surviving in the Canadian Arctic (and other places)

Survive! by Les Stroud Okay this is cool, Jordon posted about Survivorman and Les Stroud a couple of weeks ago and he got an email from Les Stroud Productions and an offer of some Survivorman DVDs.  On Friday a signed copy of all three seasons of Survivorman came in the mail.  Of course this is what I was going to get Jordon for Christmas but there is always Les Stroud’s book, Survive! to get Jordon.

Today we are sitting back and watching a couple of episodes of Survivorman as a family.

I really understand why Jordon, Mark, and even Tiger Woods really gets into the show.   Les Stroud is pretty funny with a dry wit and you can’t help but be impressed that not only can he survive with no food and no water but he manages to do a fantastic job at filming it all.

What is also pretty impressive is that by changing up the scenario and location, each episode has a much different feel to it while at the same time he manages to gross me out by what he eats (the above episode has him eating raw seal meat – although so did Canada’s Governor General and later a seal’s eye ball).  The other great part of it is that not everything turns out as planned.  “A crappy igloo” that falls apart, cutting himself while having monkey’s toss things at him in Costa Rico add a lot to the show.

Survivorman Production Meetings

I watched Survivorman: Africa earlier this week on OLN and it was a really good episode.  I am not sure I would have thought to use my crashed balloon as a big flame thrower but the episode did make me ask some questions, mainly about the pre-production meetings.  I imagine it went something like this.

Crew: Okay Les, let’s go to Africa where we will crash you into the African desert.

Les Stroud: Whoa, what do you mean by crash?

Man eating lion Crew: Not only crash, but we will crash you into leopard country and if you look at this map, it’s just on the outskirts of man eating lion country.  I was reading about this one lion in the region that ate 35 humans so we know they love the taste of human meat.

Les Stroud: I can handle that.

Crew: Of course once you make it through there, this plateau we intend to meet you on takes you through the path of the poison king cobras snakes, the wildebeests, and some African buffalo and we all know how dangerous they can be.

Les Stroud: But you guys will close in case of an emergency so things will okay.

Crew: About that… those man eating lions are really, really dangerous and the snakes creep us out.  Joe over there, well we just found out that he is allergic to wild buffalo attacks so we… we, umm, we are going to be at the Hilton.  I know that sounds pretty far away but even there, the bell boys are armed.

Les Stroud: I am not feeling the love…

Leatherman multi-tool Crew: We’ll see you in a week.  If you use the emergency satellite phone and we don’t answer, make sure you call back and try as the lounge has a Sex in the City marathon.  Don’t forget your multi-tool and harmonica.

Well I am sure it wasn’t like that but when you think about it being voluntarily being dropped into leopard, lion, buffalo, and wildebeest territory plus all of the other things that can kill a person and you start to realize why our entire household loves that show.

The Life if an INTP

Well Jordon came out and said that he was an INTJ while I am an INTP.  Here is how us architects are seen.

Here is how similarminds.com sees us INTPs

loner, more interested in intellectual pursuits than relationships or family, wrestles with the meaninglessness of existence, likes esoteric things, disorganized, messy, likes science fiction, can be lonely, observer, private, can’t describe feelings easily, detached, likes solitude, not revealing, unemotional, rule breaker, avoidant, familiar with the darkside, skeptical, acts without consulting others, does not think they are weird but others do, socially uncomfortable, abrupt, fantasy prone, does not like happy people, appreciates strangeness, frequently loses things, acts without planning, guarded, not punctual, more likely to support marijuana legalization, not prone to compromise, hard to persuade, relies on mind more than on others, calm

The Personality Page sees us this way

The INTP has no understanding or value for decisions made on the basis of personal subjectivity or feelings. They strive constantly to achieve logical conclusions to problems, and don’t understand the importance or relevance of applying subjective emotional considerations to decisions. For this reason, INTPs are usually not in-tune with how people are feeling, and are not naturally well-equiped to meet the emotional needs of others.

The INTP may have a problem with self-aggrandizement and social rebellion, which will interfere with their creative potential. Since their Feeling side is their least developed trait, the INTP may have difficulty giving the warmth and support that is sometimes necessary in intimate relationships. If the INTP doesn’t realize the value of attending to other people’s feelings, he or she may become overly critical and sarcastic with others. If the INTP is not able to find a place for themself which supports the use of their strongest abilities, they may become generally negative and cynical. If the INTP has not developed their Sensing side sufficiently, they may become unaware of their environment, and exhibit weakness in performing maintenance-type tasks, such as bill-paying and dressing appropriately

Typelogic can be a little harsh but it’s pretty accurate.

INTPs are pensive, analytical folks. They may venture so deeply into thought as to seem detached, and often actually are oblivious to the world around them.

A major concern for INTPs is the haunting sense of impending failure. They spend considerable time second-guessing themselves. The open-endedness (from Perceiving) conjoined with the need for competence (NT) is expressed in a sense that one’s conclusion may well be met by an equally plausible alternative solution, and that, after all, one may very well have overlooked some critical bit of data. An INTP arguing a point may very well be trying to convince himself as much as his opposition. In this way INTPs are markedly different from INTJs, who are much more confident in their competence and willing to act on their convictions.

INTPs and Logic — One of the tipoffs that a person is an INTP is her obsession with logical correctness. Errors are not often due to poor logic — apparent faux pas in reasoning are usually a result of overlooking details or of incorrect context.

Keirsey points out how unpleasant it is to be around us

Architects are rare – maybe one percent of the population – and show the greatest precision in thought and speech of all the types. They tend to see distinctions and inconsistencies instantaneously, and can detect contradictions no matter when or where they were made. It is difficult for an Architect to listen to nonsense, even in a casual conversation, without pointing out the speaker’s error. And in any serious discussion or debate Architects are devastating, their skill in framing arguments giving them an enormous advantage. Architects regard all discussions as a search for understanding, and believe their function is to eliminate inconsistencies, which can make communication with them an uncomfortable experience for many.

That part probably explains part of the reason why my parents never liked talking to me.

Of course it’s not all their fault as we are fairly difficult to know…

Architects often seem difficult to know. They are inclined to be shy except with close friends, and their reserve is difficult to penetrate. Able to concentrate better than any other type, they prefer to work quietly at their computers or drafting tables, and often alone. Architects also become obsessed with analysis, and this can seem to shut others out. Once caught up in a thought process, Architects close off and persevere until they comprehend the issue in all its complexity. Architects prize intelligence, and with their grand desire to grasp the structure of the universe, they can seem arrogant and may show impatience with others who have less ability, or who are less driven.

You can ask Jordon if this is accurate but I already know he would say it is when talking about me.

Flashback to a better more innocent time

This is so funny.  A friend of mine found her husband’s journal from grade 4.  Instead of keeping it to herself, she did what any good wife would do, she shared it with Jordon and then e-mailed me a PDF of the best parts.

We are getting Mark to keep a journal this year, not so much for us or him but for his future wife, friends, and co-workers to mock.

I miss Marion, my mother-in-law for many reasons, one of them is that she would have no problem at all guest blogging here stories about Jordon that rival this journal entry.

Christmas Gift Ideas for Tween Boys

Jordon has created his first Christmas gift guide for 2009 and it deals with tween boysAccording to his site, he plans to roll one out each week between now and early December.  Since no one can pick out gifts like Jordon, it should be good.   You will be able to keep track of them here.

Survivorman

I was sick yesterday.  Really, really, really sick for a couple of hours.  Late last night I seemed to snap out of it enough to function for a couple of hours and I watched Survivorman for a couple of hours with Jordon.

For those of you who haven’t seen the show:

The title refers to the host of the show, Canadian filmmaker and survival expert Les Stroud, who uses his vast survival skills to survive for up to seven days alone filming his adventures in remote locales where he brings with him little or no food, water, or equipment. The fact Stroud spends his time alone without a production crew is a major focus of the show (differentiating it from the similarly themed Man vs. Wild).  During the filming of each episode, Stroud is alone and operates all the cameras himself. He is equipped with only his clothes, camera equipment, his harmonica, a Leatherman multi-tool, and often "everyday items" relevant to the episode’s particular survival situation or locale.

Jaguar He was in the Amazon rain forest last night, right down the trail from a hostile tribe (that had recently gone on a spearing raid) and was later hunted by a jaguar.  That’s right, I said he was hunted by a jaguar.

On top of that because he was wet and in the rain, he managed to get a bad case of fungus on his feet.

No wonder he decided to stop filming the show after season three, the toll on his body must have been incredible.  

A tale of two brothers

I wasn’t really worried about Mark as an older brother but he has turned out to be better one than I expected.  He does a good job of playing with Oliver, watching out for him, and hanging out with him.

One of his jobs is to put Oliver’s toys away every night.  It was the same job that Jordon had with Lee’s toys growing up and to keep the tradition going, Mark’s job is to tidy up after Oliver.

He does a good job of it but it is slowly driving Oliver insane.  Oliver really enjoys his toys and loves pulling them all out of his toy box, surrounding himself with them and making quite a mess.  Today Mark saw this and decided to tidy them up while Oliver was busy with something else.  Oliver walked over with his hands on his head and was in total disbelief that the same toys he took so much time spreading all over the place, were all put away.  He was quiet for a second and then started telling Mark off in a way that only a 16 month year old kid could do.

This was on top of the the other day when he wanted to hit Mark with a toy golf club.  He took a couple of shots and then Mark took his club away and put it on the ground.  He then looked like he was going to cry, picked up his club, and walked slowly back to Jordon without talking and then sat down and sulked for five minutes.  Obviously he wasn’t expecting to be so easily disarmed from Mark and wasn’t sure how to respond.

Dealing with Toxic Parents

The New York Times has a piece on dealing with toxic parents.

You can divorce an abusive spouse. You can call it quits if your lover mistreats you. But what can you do if the source of your misery is your own parent?

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Who is this?

Wendy Cooper

You have stumbled upon Wendy Cooper's weblog. Like most blogs, it is a place of random hypertext, links, digital alchemy, and thoughts and I have been publishing it almost daily since 2002. If you want to track me down, you can find me at wendycooper@gmail.com.

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