Not To Be Trusted With Knives

The core part of my MBA program involves two major projects. The first one is a business simulation using something caled Capsim, which we are partway through, and the second one is to write a business plan.

But before writing a business plan, one needs to have an idea for a business! This is where you come in, gentle reader. We are at the stage where we have to think of a business opportunity. Essentially, we want to find a “need” that isn’t being met by any currently existing business – an unmet need that we can then build a business around. At this point, we are wanting to generate as many ideas as possible – the more creative, the better! We have a few ideas, but I thought I’d check in with you – some “crowdsourcing,” if you will – to expand our thought processes.

So, do you have an unmet need? What really bugs you and makes you think “Why doesn’t someone solve this problem for me?

Tags: business plan, crowdsourcing, ideas, school

I’m home. I’m tired. I’m glad I got in some good aunty time with my niece and nephew! I also got to go to my Grandpa’s 89th birthday party (though his birthday isn’t until March 16, his party was yesterday).

It was only one month ago today that my Dad died. It somehow seems like just yesterday, but also like it’s been 20 years, but also like it didn’t happen at all.

Tags: family

So, yeah, it’s been a while since I have blogged anything. [Insert complaining about how busy I am - and promise that I will blog more - here]. Truthfully, though, I’ve been freaking busy. Last week at work was full of back-to-back-to-back meetings and focus groups and evenings were full of insane amounts of homework. Then I had classes on Friday night until 9:30 pm, all day Saturday, and all day Sunday. And then, because I wasn’t exhausted enough, I hopped on a red eye flight to Ottawa, since I had to be in a meeting there at 9 a.m. on Monday! Usually I can sleep on planes, but I just could. not. fall. asleep. on this one. I mean, I dozed a bit, but I kept waking up and was achy and freezing, despite having brought a blanket with me. I had a stopover in Toronto that was just long enough to change from my yoga pants and T-shirt into my business attire, then hopped on the Toronto-Ottawa leg of the journey. I landed in Ottawa at 8 am and, miraculously, walked into my meeting at 8:50 a.m., just in time to get breakfast and sympathy over having traveled all night.

My Ottawa adventures included two days of meetings with fellowed grantees to talk about our research projects, and two meetings with MPs to talk about my research, and a wonderful dinner at Sarah & Dave’s. After my MP meeting on Tuesday in the late afternoon, I hopped on a Porter Air flight to Toronto, as I’d decided to take the rest of this week off as vacation to spend with my family!

Anyhoo, perhaps this is why I haven’t blogged lately. I’ve been too busy and tired and whatnot to write anything even remotely coherent. This blog posting is pretty much not even worth reading, but I’m posting it anyway. I’m sleepy and it seems like more effort to delete or re-write than to click “publish.”

I have been taking photos of things to blog about, so I’m sure I’ll blog about something more interesting soon, k?

Tags: not even worth reading, random

Because I figured I don’t have enough stressful things going on in my life, I’m moving. Devon and I have found a place in New West and we are moving mid-March. In the long run, it’s actually going to make my life double plus good, but in the short run, I’ve got a lot of packing to do!

Some random points:

• I have already commenced Operation Eat-Everything-In-My-Freezer-So-I-Don’t-Have-To-Move-It.
• Does anyone have any boxes they want to give me?

Tags: awesomeness, I hate moving, moving, rampant narcissism, stress

I’ve had two hockey games since I returned home from Ontario and both times while driving to my hockey game, I started crying. Being that I live so far away from my family, my Dad’s death still seems a little bit unreal to me. I mean, I was there when he went in for surgery, I was there when he didn’t wake up. I was there when he died and I was there for the funeral. But now that I’m back in Vancouver, my day-to-day life isn’t punctuated with his absence the way it would be if I still lived close by, because I didn’t see my Dad every day. But every once it in a while, it hits me. Especially, it seems, when I’m driving to hockey.

This makes sense, though, because not only did my Dad share my love of hockey, but due to my crazy busy schedule, I usually make phone calls while I’m driving¹, so I can feel like driving is less of a waste of time. And often when I drive to hockey, I call my parents house to chat with them. When I talked to my Dad, I would always tell him that I was driving to hockey and we’d talk about how my team was doing, or what he thought was wrong with the decisions the Leafs’ coaches were making, or what happened on the most recent episode of Cash Cab , or what whatshisname at the pigeon club said the other day, or just whatever. And so when I’ve driven to my last two hockey games, it makes me think of my Dad and I know that I can’t call him and have those conversations ever again. I really feel the loss. It makes it more real.

I am really sad that my Dad never got to see me play in person – I didn’t start playing hockey until I moved to Vancouver and he never came out here – but I’m so thankful that he was able to see me play live on the Internet during the Longest Game for CF. He watched every minute of the game that he could and he told me that I skated just like him and my Uncle Harry. It makes me smile to think about how much he liked watching that game and how proud he was of me.

I’m sure that over time I’ll be able to drive to hockey without crying, but I think that I’ll never play a hockey game without thinking about my Dad.

1. Using my bluetooth headset, of course. All good and legal. [↩]

Tags: family, hockey, my dad, sad

Despite my coffee snobbery, I’ve started drinking Tim Horton’s coffees of late. It started when I was in the hospital for my Dad’s surgery. The coffee shop in the hospital¹ was a Timmy’s. And my Dad *loved* his Timmy’s, so drinking it makes me think of him. I had one at the airport on the way home from Ontario. And when Devon texted this past weekend when he was on the way over to my place informing me that it is Roll Up The Rim to Win season and offering to pick up coffee, I said “Yes, please!” And when I rolled up the rim on that coffee, I actually won!

1. As an aside: the hospital also had a Colonel Sanders Wing. Like as in the Kentucky Fried Chicken guy. Apparently he lived in Mississauga at some point and gave a bunch of cash to the hospital and they named a wing after him. It was called something like “The Colonel Sanders Family Care Wing” or some such. I thought it should have been the Cardiac Care Wing, personally, but perhaps that is a bit too obvious. [↩]

Tags: coffee, family, nostalgia, Roll Up The Rim To Win, Tim Horton's

… I’m getting my braces off!

I had an orthodontist appointment last week and after the past few visits where my ortho kept saying things like “We are *so* close!” and “We’ll be talking about getting your braces off really soon!”, she finally said, “I’m done! If only we had enough time, I’d say let’s take them off today!” This, my friends, was music to my ears!

As (bad) luck would have it, the ortho office is closed this week and I’m in Ontario all next week, so the next available appointment was Monday, March 12, first thing in the a.m. and at that appointment, they’ll take these train tracks off my teeth and take some molds to make some retainers.

Then I go back the next day after work to install the retainers and then I’m good to go!

I’m planning to get some restorative dentistry done to pretty up my teeth – especially the three at the front that were root canaled a million years ago and are now a bit discoloured and cracked. I mean, I’ve already done all this work to straighten them, I may as well go all the way. That, however, will have to wait a bit as I need to save up the cash. I’d originally thought that I’d have the braces on until July, which meant I would have had more time for saving and that, combined with some unexpected expenses¹ means that I don’t have the cash on hand for fancy pants teeth right at the moment. But for now, I’ll just be happy to smile without a mouth of of metal and floss my teeth in less than half an hour!

1. i.e., school-related costs like textbooks that aren’t covered by my scholarship, unexpected trip to Ontario for my Dad’s surgery, and something else that I’ll tell you about in an upcoming blog posting [↩]

Tags: braces, rampant narcissism

My classmates and I are working on a marketing project that requires us to do some market research and I just *know* that you want to help me out with this, right? (If you already saw my tweet about this, feel free to ignore!)

All you have to do is fill out a little survey about coffee. It will take you less than 5 minutes, I swear! And you will be filled with joy at helping me out, which really is its own priceless reward.

Go here for the survey goodness: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GFX25PP

Then I recommend you celebrate your generosity at helping me out by buying yourself a nice cup of coffee!

Image Credit: Posted by Javier Benek on Flickr.

Tags: generosity, help a sister out, market research, school

So it feels weird to be writing a regular old blog posting after the last few weeks, but I feel like I need to get back on the blogging horse and sooner is better than later, because I feel like the longer I wait, the weirder it is going to feel. My dad loved reading my blog because it let him keep up with what I’m doing, so it only seems right to get back to writing about the minutiae of my day that my legions of fans have come to expect here at NTBTWK. Of course, it’s late (as I had a study group meeting after work today) and I’m tired and my thoughts are all over the place, so I think that means it’s time for a bulleted list.

• I got some marks back on some of the assignments I handed in and I did surprisingly well, especially given that I submitted them from the hospital when I was in a state where I said, “I have no idea if I’ve even finished these assignments, but I should at least hand in whatever I’ve finished, as there’s no point not getting marks for whatever I’ve done up to this point. I’m just going to submit whatever is in these Word documents and hope for the best.”¹
• When I got to the office today, there was a card from my officemates including a note that they had taken up a collection and made a donation to the Brain Tumour Foundation in my Dad’s honour. I thought that was a lovely gesture. I also got a card and flowers from the management team I work with, which was really sweet. They are on my kitchen table next to the one’s Devon gave me when he picked me up at the airport. I’m spoiled.
• Also waiting in my office were a certificate announcing the two shiny new letters I have after my name² and the peacock feather earrings I’d ordered from the “Feather Fashionista” through one of the Groupon-type sites³:

• Whenever I see peacock feathers, it reminds me that my Dad taught me when I was really little that these are not actually peacock tail feathers, but rather “tail covert feathers.” The peacock’s actual tail is quite short.
• I have an unholy amount of reading to do in the next 10 days (i.e., when my next weekend of classes starts). I need to get caught up on what I missed in classes⁴, do the readings I should have done for those classes but just couldn’t do⁵, and the readings due for my next weekend of classes (March 2-4). Classes that weekend go until 5 pm on March 4 and then I have to be in Ottawa for a meeting starting at 9 am the next day. I am so not looking forward to that! As a reward for making it through that though, I’m taking three vacation days and spending the rest of the week visiting my family⁶.
• I’ve started to get various tax forms in the mail – T4s from employment, charitable donation receipts, pension adjustments and the like. And I’m ridiculously excited about doing my taxes⁷. I think there is something wrong with me.
• I have a massage appointment booked for tomorrow. And thank goodness – I really need a massage!

1. I guess I had finished them, but just not proofread them. I beat the class average on all four assignments for which we’ve received marks so far, so I’m relieved at that. [↩]
2. I’ll post a photo once I get a frame for it and hang it in my office! [↩]
3. I can’t even remember which one [↩]
4. Thankfully, I have wonderful classmates who are willing to get me up to speed. [↩]
5. My brain wasn’t able to retain anything! [↩]
6. I just can’t pass up taking advantage of a free trip to Ontario. Dr. Dan is going to visit me in T.O. and we are going to look for doors that say “Do not enter. Authorized personel only” which we will then enter, in honour of my Dad and his love of disobeying any such sign. [↩]
7. By which I mean taking all these documents to my accountant and having her do my taxes [↩]

Tags: peacock feather earrings, rampant consumerism, random

I’m back home. As I’m sure you can tell from the obituary I posted last week, my dad’s surgery did not go as planned. The first bad news we got was on the day of the surgery itself, when the surgeon came out of the operation and told us that the tumour that we had thought was benign was, in fact, melanoma - skin cancer that had spread to his brain. He was able to remove about 95-98% of of the tumour, but in the process had lost one of the arteries (the right cerebral artery¹) leading to my dad’s brain, as the tumour was all wrapped up in that artery, which was feeding the massive tumour and my dad’s brain. The reason that he couldn’t take out the other 2-5% of the tumour was because it was touching the left cerebral artery and he couldn’t risk it getting damaged, because you only have four arteries feeding your brain, and so it was crucial to keep that left one functioning, or else all there would be no blood going to the front of my dad’s brain. The surgeon’s hope was that the left artery would be able to feed both sides of my dad’s brain in the absence of the right artery. We would need to get a consult with an oncologist to discuss chemo and/or radiation and we would need a full body CT scan to look for other tumours, as the melanoma may have spread elsewhere.

After receiving this sobering news, we went up to the ICU to see my dad, he didn’t wake up. And he didn’t wake up the next day, or the day after that. There were lots of things that happened in these few days, which seemed like an eternity, but I don’t have the energy to type them all out. Suffice it to say that the surgeon came to us with the worst news on Friday, Feb 10 – it turned out that while we were hoping the left artery would feed both sides of my dad’s brains, it was, in fact, doing nothing. The right artery had apparently been feeding both sides of my dad’s brain and so, since that artery tore in the operating room on Wednesday, my dad’s brain hadn’t been getting enough blood to function. On Thursday night when they did a CT scan, they saw massive strokes all over his brain from insufficient blood flow. “He’s in a deep coma and there is zero chance that he will ever wake up,” is what the surgeon told us. Only the ventilator was keeping his body alive – and being kept alive by machines was something that my dad never, ever wanted to happen. We’d talked about it many times over the years and my dad was very clear that being kept alive on machines was, to him, not living. And I’m really glad that we’d had those discussions, because my mom, my sister, and I knew immediately that we had to take him off the ventilator. There was no second guessing, no feeling guilty that maybe we were doing the wrong thing – we knew undoubtedly that we were doing what my dad wanted. We called everyone in my family to give them an opportunity to come and say good-bye if they wished and that night, we took him off the ventilator and then we stayed with him, in shifts, for the next 14 hours. At 11:20 a.m., when he took his final breath and his heart stopped beating, he was surrounded by me, my sister, my mom, and my aunt (my dad’s youngest sister). It was important to us that he was not alone and that we were able to see that he passed peacefully.

We are incredibly sad, of course, because my dad was a good man who didn’t deserve his life to be cut so short and because we miss him and we mourn all the things that he will miss out on – and that we will miss out on him being here for – as we go on with our lives, but we take comfort in knowing that he didn’t suffer. The last conscious thoughts he had were when he walked into the operating room, they gave him the anesthetic and told him to count backwards from 10. He spent his last three weeks – though scared at the prospect of a dangerous surgery and unhappy that he couldn’t drive or do all the things he wanted to do – talking to and receiving support from his family and friends. He knew that he was loved.

We also take some solace in the fact that we were able to donate his eyes and that two people will be able to have sight-saving surgery that otherwise would not be able to see. It comforts me to know this and to think, “I wonder what Dad’s eyes are seeing today?”

We had a funeral for him this past Thursday and the funeral home was packed. We are not a religious family, so we did a family-run service at the funeral home, with speeches by each of his siblings, my sister, myself, and my niece. My seven-year-old niece, who was so close to her Grandpa, decided she wanted to give a speech about all the things she’ll miss about him – it was beautiful and heartbreaking. Truly, all of the speeches were beautiful – there were stories about my Dad that I’d heard many times before and other stories that were new to me.

There was much talk, both in the speeches and when talking to people before and after the service, about how my Dad loved to help people – in fact, pretty much every person I’ve talked to who knew my Dad had a story about how he helped them. There was also a lot of mention from his friends about what a proud family man my Dad was, about how he was always telling anyone who would listen about his daughters and his grandkids.

I really miss my Dad.

1. I think I have the name of that right. The surgeon told us, but there was so much to hear and we were in shock, so I’ve looked up the arteries to the brain and I think that I have the info correct. [↩]

Tags: dad, family, love, sad