You may recall in my last blog I talked about an encapsulated spider bite on my hand. I can happily report no taxpayer money needs to be spent on an ultrasound, despite my doctor referring me for one, as I performed the operation on the cyst myself. Over time the half-pea sized bump protruding from my skin turned very hard. This brought my friend Compound W, a wart remover to mind. I thought oh what the hell and began painting it onto the area.

After a few days I could see that I could lift this hard white ball and eventually was able to pull the whole thing out. It had those gross, gooey white strings that you see in horror movies when a person is morphing into a house fly. Not nice but quickly disposed of and now my hand is fine. Honest to God, if people would just become more proactive with their health we could save millions.

My friend and neighbour Sylvie invited me to a place called Forbidden Spirits here in Southeast Kelowna. It’s a distillery where they make vodka, gin and brandy, all from their own apples. I had a delicious vodka and passion fruit cocktail and Sylvie had their flight where you can taste each of the liquors with different mixes. A great place to visit.

Another very nice place is the Perch restaurant on the top of the Innovation Centre building downtown. It’s on the 7^th floor so has fantastic views and you sit outside so it feels really great, especially as the Crones and I were there on a sunny, warm day in September. Just perfect. Delicious truffle fries and lovely cocktails.

The other day I went out to the coop to collect the one egg that’s always there, given the six new chickens are too young, so the eggs are from Kate, the big white hen. Imagine my shock to find an egg so big I couldn’t close the lid on the egg carton. I weighed it and it was 96 grams whereas most are around 60 grams That had to be a hard egg to lay.

I now have six reviews for Okay I’ll Bite but need so many more for the algorithm to keep moving it up the pages. The goal of course is to always appear on page 1 of a search. I notice it’s like the stock market. One day I’m #37 in Humour and the next #89 so it’s a tough nut to crack.

Max Dehart mentioned me in her weekly column in the Capital News so that may bring a sale or two. But for now, I’ve moved on and am working on the memoir of the fruitcake business. I sent Chapter One to my editor to see if it’s a complete dog or not, and in the meantime, I’m trying to edit the rest of the chapters.

It’s very reminiscent of my days at university whereby an essay could only be completed hours prior to the deadline. As I don’t have one for this, I have to make artificial ones, or else try the carrot and stick approach. If I write for an hour, I allow myself a few YouTube videos as a reward. Sadly, some days I argue with myself so much about what a stupid waste of time this is and so I just go straight to the videos and skip the writing.

Another way to waste time is to get out favourite memoirs and re-read them and hope I somehow absorb the talent of the writers. Or I sit with my wrists resting on the laptop as I type a word or two stop, stare out the window, re-read what I wrote, delete, sit and become totally catatonic for a long while. It’s quite relaxing actually but not productive.