Disappointed With My British Friends

You all know who you are!

For a whole month you've all known about it. It must have been on the news. It must have been in the papers. It must have been talked about. And you never, never, never told me!

You all knew that I'd love it. That I would howl with laughter.

Yet you held it back. You kept it from me. No URLs sent. Nothing... sniffles...

You thought you could keep it from me. You selfish, uncharitable, tightfisted meanies!

But I found it! Mwhahahahahaha!

;-)

Thanksgiving

This weekend is that annual harvest celebration in Canada; Thanksgiving. Giving thanks to the good earth for the food and taking stock of what one might be personally thankful for.

This video sums up the occasion perfectly:



(Although I will have some pumpkin pie, yum!)

Otters

A while back, while walking along the water, I saw the otter that I usually see. Then I saw him again and again and again - popping up here and then there and then back over there. WTF?! It wasn't the otter... it was him, his beloved and their sprogs! I was seeing a family of otters; six of the wee weasels!



There's been an otter living here for a few years but this is the first year I've seen a whole family. Sweet, eh?



Sorry about the crap photos. Not the right camera for the job. Here's a crap video of them (same crap camera!). The otters are on the big rocks:

A bit of light entertainment.

I'm not that much into dance and I don't really like the Kenny Loggins song 'Footloose' but together all edited up with clips from various films over the years... the end result is, imo, entertaining:

Hypnopompic Jesus.

That's what I woke up to this morning.

I opened my sleepy eyes and there's Jesus, yeah the Jesus Christ Jesus, propped up with a pillow, beside me, in my bed, reading a book. I immediately kicked out my feet towards his, 'Get your dirty sandals out of my bed, dude!' and then he evapourated.

I fell back to sleep.

For several months, I've been having hypnopompic hallucinations: vivid hallucinations that occur when I'm waking up.

The first one was waking up and seeing my late cat sitting on my bedside table. She was so real looking. I reached out my hand, 'hey there Buzz' but my hand went right through.

Since then, I've woken up many more times to Buzz and to other cats, a big beautiful chocolate lab, a goat, a tray of curries in little silver dishes and other mundane things. I've woken up, cuddled up to a mountain lion, a grizzly bear walking past my bed and a woman with silver hair looking down at me. Most excitingly, I awoke to a bull charging at me causing me to scuttle across my bed to avoid getting pwned!

These hallucinations also take the form of sensations. I've felt a hand on my shoulder, being covered by a blanket but the weirdest so far has been the feeling of my mattress moving as if someone had just sat on the edge of my bed. That one freaked me out a bit!

I can imagine how these hypnopompic hallucinations could be very disturbing to some people, or lead people to believe in ghosts, visitations from other worlds or the afterlife, or other paranormal weirdness and perhaps even convince people they have found God... after all, I woke up with his son in my bed. ;-)

From what I gather, not too much is known about hypnopompic hallucinations, except that about 12% of people have them and that they are more common in people who have sleep disorders (which I don't think I have). I suspect it's just a side effect of the citalopram (antidepressant/ssri) that I'm on.

Whatever the cause, I think this phenomenon is very interesting and I welcome it, ie, I don't suffer from hypnopompic hallucinations, I enjoy them.