BookCrossing meeting

Several BookCrossers met today to exchange books and conversation. We met at Pogue Mahone Irish Pub, near College subway station, which was pretty dead except for us. It was a chance for LotStreetWiz and I to have a late lunch and relax. I brought a couple of almost-new books and came away with a couple of fiction books and one copy of Canadian Copyright Law, which had been on my “to buy” list.

NKwriter was there, and Wendi our organizer, and several other bookish-minded and geeky acquaintances.

What’s more, on the way back from the clinic this morning I stopped in at Book City and bought an Octavia Butler science fiction novel to cheer myself up.

Ouch!

I have shingles–the disease, not the roofing supplies. This week I’ve been troubled by some pain on one side of my torso, accompanying some ugly-looking blisters. I feared that a random scrape had introduced festering bacteria under my skin. I worried that it would spread, which seemed likely when blisters appeared on my front as well as my back.

I’ve been very busy with a short-term technical writing contract, so I didn’t absent myself from the office until Friday night, when I went to my local walk-in clinic. Too many people had the same idea: there was a wait of over two hours, so I went home and returned in the morning.

This morning I finally saw a doctor. He was reassuring, up to a point: I don’t have a nasty, antibiotic-resistant Staphlococcus aureus infection. I have the chickenpox virus, varicella-zoster virus. It follows the path of a single sensory nerve in the body, infecting one dermatome. It won’t spread to other parts of my body. It won’t kill me. However, more than three days have passed since the symptoms started, so it’s too late for anti-viral medicines. I’ll just have to live with it for the next month. After that, the pain will probably go away. (It lingers in some people.)

He said the outbreak was probably caused by stress. Oh, yes, I said, I’m working for the Ontario goverment. And my father died a few weeks ago. “Bingo,” said the doctor.

I might never have another outbreak; but anyone who has had chickenpox or been vaccinated against chickenpox is at risk of getting shingles. The doctor offered me a stronger painkiller, but so far Ibuprofen(TM) has been sufficient. And I’ll stay away from any little children who haven’t had chickenpox yet.

So the good news is that it will go away by itself. The bad news is, it will take its own sweet time doing so.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali at book-signing

Somehow I managed to delete this post. Here’s the gist of it: Tonight [Feb. 28] I went to hear Ayaan Hirsi Ali at one of our local Indigo bookstores. When the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered for producing the film “Submission,” about the Muslim religion from the point of view of women, her name was pinned to his chest with a knife. It was her screenplay. She is now living in the U.S. and there were police at the talk (and book-signing) to guard her.

In her talk, she said that the kind of multiculturalism that enables cultural groups to continue perpetrating injustice against their members is bad. I believe she was referrent to tolerance for Sharia law. She recalled working in women’s shelters in the Netherlands where there were Muslim women whose husbands took the advice of the Koran and beat them.

I bought both her available books (nonfiction), The Caged Virgin and Infidel.