Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

Visiting Mom in Hospital
When I came back from work Tuesday evening, Erika greeted me with the words "She's okay, but your mother is in the hospital". Turned out she had another "episode", and this time thankfully called 911.

After giving her a call that evening and relieved to hear her sound okay, I resolved to go visit her the next morning.

Taking the long bus ride up to Newmarket I couldn't help but think of the parallels to Dad's numerous trips to the same hospital. The last time I had been there was when my Father died in the place almost 5 years ago.

I arrived at about 10:30am. Mom was clearly happy to see me, though she looked a bit drawn and tired. She had an IV drip in her left arm, and a tube taking oxygen to her nose – neither of which she liked, but she put up with like a trooper. She was in the geriatric ward, and was unfortunately housed with another elderly patient who was a little bit out of her head and kept nattering away about one thing or another all of the time. I looked into getting my Mom another room, but it doesn’t seem like my health insurance covers people outside of my immediate family.

Mom told me about how she was doing, and the current diagnosis: pulmonary fibrosis. From what I can gather, her lungs are not delivering enough oxygen to the rest of her body, and so she may require an oxygen bottle with her from this point on. After sitting down and relaxing without her oxygen feed for a few minutes in the lounge, a nurse tested the dissolved oxygen level in her blood: it read 91. As I discovered later, 88 is the level at which the government will pay for oxygen equipment. Turns out she will be in the hospital until Friday at least, when they expect to finish their battery of tests.

While I was there calls from Edith and John + Wylda came in, which cheered Mom up. I ended up staying until about 4pm, chatting with her, showing her the lounge area (and joining in for a sing-along comprised largely of songs from well before my time), and accompanying her on one of her tests. She had a lung volume test, and unfortunately her maximum "puff" was perhaps a third again as large as her normal, relaxed breath, which isn't much to begin with.

What was interesting was that Mom mentioned that she had had similar pain to what she had experienced before, which happened during long car rides – but it was never as strong a feeling as it was now. I wasn’t aware of this history. In her mind she thinks this is related to her years of smoking, which may indeed have been a contributing factor, even though she hasn’t smoked for almost 30 years.

I left her with my portable MP3 CD-R player, and a couple of CDs filled with British comedies like The Navy Lark and Dad’s Army, which I figured would go down well. I also picked up a gardening magazine and a newspaper for her to read, which was the only thing she had requested from me.

I told her I wouldn’t likely be seeing her again until Friday, or possibly Saturday if we decided to visit en masse. Will keep in touch with her by phone in the meantime.

I am happy in that she is definitely in the best place for her to be right now.

Harry Potter Movie Review
While I'm traveling north by various modes of public transit in order to see Mother at the Newmarket hospital, I figure I might as well jot down my impressions of the Harry Potter movie in order to pass the time (and to keep my mind off things).

I actually saw the movie twice this past weekend. First on Saturday for an early matinee, and again on Sunday with Bill. I had previously arranged to see it with him, but went to the Saturday show when I didn't hear from him. Feeling guilty when he did call late Saturday afternoon, I agreed to see a Sunday show with him.

I was initially worried when I heard that the movie had been directed by the guy who did Home Alone, and wondered whether HP might be overtly slapstick. I'm glad to report that the movie in fact sets the right tone, very much in keeping with the books. In fact, the directing effort was very pedestrian -- there's no surprises in store for anybody who has read the books. This relatively conservative direction is probably the best the director could do, given that the legions of HP fans would accept anything less.

On exiting the theatre, Bill mentioned that he had always thought the first book of the series the weakest story. Initially, I disagreed, though his point is more that Rowling has to lay so much ground-work with the characters that there doesn't seem to be much room for the plot. This element did come through in the movie, as it seemed to consists if a series of vignettes strung together.

The casting choices were excellent. The child actors in particular do a marvelous job. Alan Rickman is as good as Professor Snape as I expected him to be, and I was pleasantly surprised to see Robbie Coltrane effectively playing the gentle giant Hagrid. I also recognized Fiona Shaw as the actress playing Petunia Dursley (she also played Irma Prunesquallor in Gormenghast). My only qualm here had to do with the makeup jobs for the likes of Dumbledore and McGonagall, in that they didn't seem to age at all between the time of delivering the young orphan Harry to the Dursleys, and when he arrived almost a dozen years later at Hogwarts.

Another minor criticism was that some of the CGI work seemed sloppy. Neville's fall from his broom and the flying characteristics of the owls, for example, lacked polish, and hence verisimilitude. I suspect this may have been something of a rush job. The other thing that bugged me was the musical score by John Williams. Bill confirmed my suspicion that the main Harry Potter Theme is a minor hack to one of the main themes from Star Wars – and what isn’t recycled is decidedly lackluster. However, on the whole this is nit-picky stuff -- the movie is a lot of fun, and a good story well told.