I Felt the Earth Move Under My Feet

Though the sky did not tumble down, my heart did start trembling right along with everything else around me.

Halloween party, October 27^th, 2012 at Alegria.  With me were a few good friends all decked out in their Halloween finest.  Conversation was lively.  The food was good, the drinks were flowing and music was rockin’.

Suddenly, at a few minutes after eight o'clock, so was everything else.

Several thoughts ran through my head.  Something is in my chair.  My chair is about to collapse.    I’m about to go ass over tea kettle when it does.  I'm having an anxiety attack.  Breathe. 

I kept turning and looking in utter disbelief at the chair that seemed, at that moment, to be alive.  Between the very real thought that I should be filming the poltergeist activity I was sitting on and the gripping fear that I was about to have the granddaddy of all anxiety attacks, I was quite paralysed.  Frozen to the spot while I waited for something catastrophic to ensue.

The rocking eventually stopped.  I'm guessing that it lasted no more than half a minute, but it seemed much longer.  When we realized that we had just experienced an earthquake – an extremely rare event in Houston – we all reached for our phones and iPods and the laptop to confirm our diagnosis.  Within seconds Facebook was all a-Twitter with the news.   People started posting links to earthquake sites and we started following them.

A rather large 7.7 magnitude quake hit Masset on Haida Gwaii and was felt all across the north.  People I know as far away as Quesnel felt the shaking and reported their experiences.  Today, aftershocks continue to shake the earth.  Tsunami warnings have been issued and residents in low-lying areas on the islands are being evacuated. 

The large red dot represents the earthquake that happened last night
near Masset on Haida Gwaii.  

I remember as a kid in Chilliwack feeling earthquakes from time to time.  The world would shake for a few seconds and then stop.  It never seemed to me to be a big deal.  Then again, I was a kid and had no real concept of what an earth quake was capable of.  The last time I felt an earthquake was in 1987.  I was sitting on my sofa reading a book when the mobile home I lived in started to shake.  Still holding the book, I automatically got up and walked down the hall thinking that I had to add fabric softener to my washing.  Then I remembered that I wasn't doing laundry.  Again, it took a few seconds for realization to take hold.  Earthquakes are not a common occurrence in Houston, but it was then that I also learned that we are a mere 10 miles away from a fault line that dissects British Columbia diagonally from south-west to north-east through the bottom corner of the Yukon and into Alaska.  Wow!

The reality is that Earth is in constant flux, an ever-changing and dynamic entity that offers the life it sustains no guarantees.  We are all at the mercy of a constantly evolving world that has no concern for our concerns.  Earth does what Earth does, affecting us without malice or spite as its driving force (unlike us?).  Yet we continue to be offended when disaster strikes. 

Last night as I cleaned up my house and prepared for bed, I kept thinking about how precious and precarious life is.  The brief time we have on this planet is so wasted with greed and hate and revenge and fear.  It’s also delightfully peppered with joy and love and kindness.   I felt a whole new appreciation for the blessings in my life as I crawled into my warm bed in my awesome home with my two adorable cats snuggling in next to me.  I thought about my friends and family, my job, my skills…  and I prayed to be a better person than I am; to care for and use these things lovingly, compassionately and kindly.

This morning with the snow so fresh on the ground and the soft sounds of music filling my home, the coffee tastes just a little better, the cats’ fur is just a little softer and my old couch is just a little more comfy than it was yesterday.   And I sit here pondering the wonder of being alive, of experiencing.  I speculate and deliberate once again on what it all means.  The world didn't just shift last night; I did, too.  To where and to what, I'm not yet sure…

It Doesn't Get Better Than That

Every now and then I get this weird sensation of… bigness.  I don’t know how else to describe it. 

It’s like my whole life momentarily inflates and I become acutely aware of the things, the people, the responsibility and the obligation in my life.  In essence, it’s like being in a dream state for a few seconds where everything around me feels both centred and expanded at the same time.   I am overwhelmed by what I do, what I am accountable for and who I am answerable to.  It’s like a thrilling and terrifying dream.  Only I’m awake and it doesn’t last very long.

A part of me asks myself, “What have I done? What was I thinking?  What possessed me to take all this on by myself?  Who the hell do I think I am to buy a house, manage a library, own a car, look after pets, renovate rooms, landscape a yard, buy power tools and build shit…?”

Then a little voice answers back, “Who are you not to?”

And the bigness isn’t so big anymore. 

I find myself able to breathe again and I see how absolutely wonderful my life is – with renewed appreciation!  The happiness and contentment I normally feel returns and my only wish is that my bank account would overwhelm me with bigness someday.  It will.

Yesterday, my staff and I met for our once-monthly get-together away from the distractions of regular library life to talk about issues, brainstorm new ideas and generally spend an hour and a half bonding as the team we are.  As I was about to start talking about the first item on our agenda, one of the girls approached me with a card and a gift.  I had no idea what they could be for or why I would be getting them.

I looked at my grinning assistants and was struck by the happiness and pleasure that I saw on their faces.  Even before I opened the card, I was touched by the gesture.  I still had no idea what it was all about.

The card was in honour of Boss’s Day, which was actually held on October 16^th.  I happened not to be in the library that day, so the staff decided that the staff meeting would be the perfect substitute. 

The moment of realization was mixed with pride and humble pleasure to be recognized this way by these amazing women, who, quite frankly, make my job so much easier than it could be.  They are the front line workers who deal with the patrons, solve so many problems, ensure that the day-to-day stuff is kept up with, look after programs and displays, keep the library looking neat and tidy among myriad other things that come up quite out of the blue.  All I could think was:  I should be honouring you guys! 

If I do make the world a better place, it's because of the
wonderful people in my life that help me do it.  

And then the bigness happened.  But this time it was not so much overwhelming as it was comforting.  It was affirming.  I knew then, with absolute certainty, that I am in the right place and that everything really is okay. 

The card now sits in pride of place on my book shelf at home.  A reminder that, as big as life can seem sometimes, I am quite capable of handling it. 

I just hope that my wonderful, incredible, talented, creative, amazing staff know how much I have learned from them; how much better they make my life and how great an honour it is to work with each of them. 

So what was the gift that went with the card, you ask?

Triple chocolate cheesecake!  

Busy, Busy, Busy

Busy, busy, busy!  That’s my life lately.  It’s been hair straight back for the past couple of months and there’s no end in sight. 

With the fabulous weather we've been having, I should be making more progress on the yard.  Alas, that isn't happening.  I have moved onto – or rather, back to – the spare bedroom.  I am determined to get it done before Yule. 

But home improvement projects are not the only things on my plate.  Work is keeping me hopping, too.  Cross training my assistant is a huge priority.  Then there are the policy and procedure manual updates that are long overdue.  I've developed a needs assessment survey for our patrons so we can further develop a proper strategic work plan and getting that rolled out has taken far longer than it should have. 

I'm not complaining!  It’s great to have plans and projects to focus on.  But it does cut into my knitting and writing time considerably and I sometimes wish I had a clone who could take over now and then so that I could do ALL the things that I want to do as well as the stuff that I have to do. 

Prioritizing is easy.  Unfortunately, it’s highly subjective in the moment and prone to falling prey to my fickle desires.  Sitting at my desk at work, it’s one thing to say this comes before that.  At home, though, primacy is assigned with arbitrary whim in the dominant position.  My saving grace is that once I get started, I tend to see it through.  Mostly.  The real threat to any project is another idea popping into my head, exciting me and challenging me to find a way to make it happen.

My desk is now littered with schematics for a writing desk, a shelving project for the spare room, storage shelves in the basement and shed, a work bench, coffee and end tables, a TV stand and a bed frame.  What I lack is both time and tools to make it all happen.   Oh, and money!  Money can be a factor in where any particular project falls on the priority list.  But it will come when it is needed and so I don’t concern myself with that all too much.

I was a bit bummed out yesterday, though.  After saving up for a new mitre saw, I decided to order it only to discover that it is sold out.  Crap.  So a new circular saw it will be instead.  Bosch.  Construction site blue.  Great ratings.  (But it isn't the pretty green Hitachi 10” mitre saw I've had my heart set on.  Sigh…)  I guess the mitre saw will have to wait a bit. 

So, today, as I sit here with coffee in hand, the plan looks something like this:

• ·         Second coat of paint on my coffee table legs
• ·         Sand and prime the walls in the spare room
• ·         Rake and mulch leaves. 
• ·         Pick up apples
• ·         Laundry
• ·         Clean house
• ·         Water plants
• ·         Bake cookies for the awesome guys at KalTire, who changed my tires over for free!  Again! 
• ·         Make soup

Will it all happen?

Not as long as I'm sitting here in my PJs with the Angry Birds theme music rolling around in my head and beckoning me to try to beat my kid in this week’s tournament, knowing that I won’t, because she is just an Angry Birds wizard.  And I'm so not! 

Okay, this is it.  Time to start knocking things off the old to-do list. 

(Maybe just one more attempt to take the gold crown in Angry Birds…)

Building Fences

They say that good fences make good neighbours.  I don’t know about that.  What if the fence is of shoddy quality?

When I bought Alegria, I quickly became overwhelmed by the landscaping that needs to be done.  I have no idea how to landscape a yard!  None.   All I knew then was that I didn’t like what was here and I wanted to change it.  But every time I looked at the yard and tried to imagine it as I would like it to be, I was overcome and baffled.  Where does one start?  How does one proceed? 

The first six feet (of about 172) of fence

It occurred to me that a fence would help.  My thinking was this:  A fence would define the yard.  A defined yard would not be so daunting.  There would be a specific and delineated limit to what had to be done.

So I decided to build a fence. 

I’ve never built a fence before.  I had no idea how to build a fence.  I knew only that posts were required to anchor whatever ended up between them.  After that… Well, anything can happen!

Skill and finances were, of course, a consideration.  After researching different kinds of fences, I settled on an electrical conduit fence.  It was lovely and relatively easy to make.  Then I priced it out.  The conduit alone was nearly $4000.00.  Just a bit out of my league!  Sheesh.  I quickly reverted back to the KISS system and decided to keep it simple.  A plain old slat fence it is.

Okay, so that required tools I didn’t have last year.  So I contented myself with moving gravel out of the way so that I could, someday, when I had the tools, build the fence.

Shoveling gravel is not fun.  It’s hard and tedious work.  It’s one of those tasks that, when you reach the point of exhaustion and look back at what you’ve accomplished, you wither in depressed defeat, because it doesn’t look like you’ve done a damn thing.  Still, it has to be done.  (Really, it still has to be done!)

Tools started to show up.  As did free fence posts!  (My bestie and her partner just happened to have some spares kicking around.)  So did spring.  It was time to get at her and get her done.

Okay, so I have to factor the weather into this project.  Rain is not fun to work in.  Neither is extreme heat.  If I had to choose, though, I’d rather work in the rain.  But spring weather offered an excuse to put the project off and summer heat provided a reason.  Here and there, with the help of my daughter, I picked away at the fence.  Progress was slow.  The fence, like the gravel shoveling, was not making much headway.

Until last weekend!

Making progress!

I gave myself the proverbial kick in the ass that I needed and decided to make this thing happen.  I dug holes for 15 of the 22 posts that I needed for phase 1 and 2.  (The other seven were the result of the afore-mentioned picking away.)  That was fun!  When I wasn’t sawing through roots, I was hitting buried tires.  One hole took me an hour and a half to dig and saw through.  Most only took about 20 minutes.  Then there were the tires.  Needless to say, the fence line isn’t exactly perfectly straight.  (But I’m still within my property line!)  Tired, sore and satisfied, I finally got the posts in and was ready to make a fence out of them.

Clearly, this was a job for Super Bizz!  I called on my daughter to get me started.  She really should have been an engineer.  Having inherited her father’s uncanny ability to fathom spatial relationships and see the end product where most people see only a pile of parts, Bizz was instrumental in getting the actual fencing underway.   Within a very short time a fence began to emerge from that pile of parts. 

I’m happy to report that I have completed about 20 feet of fence!  There is about 44’ more to go on the south side and 108’ across the back.  (I haven’t measured the north side yet.  172 feet at a time is good for me.)  

I feel good about what I’ve done.  Not unlike my bookshelves, the fence would very likely not pass a fence inspection if one were to be required.  It’s a bit flimsy, but not as flimsy as some of the fences in town that I have shaken over the past couple of weeks.  It’s funny how acutely aware one becomes of existing things when one is working on a project like this.  I notice fences now.  And I shake them as I’m walking by to see how sturdy they are.   I just tell myself I’ve built in wind-resistance.  It sounds good.  And if someone were to crash through it, they would sustain less damage than say… a brick wall, for example.  In my 50 years on this planet, I’ve learned how to rationalize a lot of things.  It’s practically an art!

Anyway, tomorrow is another fencing day.  I get to use my cute little saw some more.  I’m actually getting quite good with it.  By the time I get around to cutting the new sub-floor for the spare room, I should be able to make fairly straight cuts.  (It’s a working theory.  And I’m sticking to it!)

Tool Time Wish List

My wish list is growing.  By leaps and bounds!  Or, perhaps more accurately, by volts and amps!  I’m developing a great love of power tools – not to mention a great love of using them.

My 3" circular saw.  It's not just cute;
it's amazing!

Rolling around in my head are plans for several things:  a bed frame, a writing desk, a TV stand, shelves and – most important! – a work bench!  But I need more tools.  My little collection consists of three hammers (not sure how that happened), a cordless drill, a 3” circular saw (bloody marvel, it is, too!), a palm sander and a smattering of pliers, screw drivers, ratchets and wrenches and sundry other bits and pieces.  I also have a level and a couple of tape measures.  And I adore all of them. 

I’m not terribly proficient with them.  Or maybe I am exactly that:  “terribly” proficient.  The joke around my house is that our construction company would be called Good Enough Contracting!  (My daughter’s etymology at work.)  Still I manage somehow to make things that function as they are intended – at least passably.  And it’s fun. 

Some months ago, my daughter convinced me to join Pinterest.  At first I thought it was a complete waste of time.  Now I’m somewhat addicted to it, pinning things like tools to my Tool Time Wish List whenever I come across some funky gizmo that I might employ creatively for the enhancement and embellishment of Alegria.   Whenever I find a tool that I want/need, I add it to Pinterest.

The fence by
Good Enough Construction!

I cannot enter the hardware store without taking a stroll down the tool aisle and making note of the cool implements of construction that are on display.  I shop for tools the same way I shop for cars:  by colour!  That pretty red circular saw would look great in my collection! (Might even come in handy, too.) 

Price is a secondary factor and when I find something that I might like, I check Amazon.ca to see if it’s available there.  Amazon has amazing prices and free shipping.   So far, most of the tools that I want are Pinned from Amazon.

As my collection grows, so do the imaginary projects that they can be applied to.  I’m now just trying to figure out how I can make all the things I have in mind, knit all the things I want to knit, make my sand candles, write and take that herbology course I’ve been wanting to take.  Pretty sure that I won’t be able to do it all.  Sigh…

But, I can dream.  I can pick away at things.  There’s no rush for any of it. 

In the meantime, I will keep Pinning and collecting and learning and having fun.  

24 Hours of Laughter and Learning

For the past eight years my girlfriend and I have been planning a trip.  One would think that after all that time the planning would be elaborate and the destination would be some exotic locale.  Nope.  In fact we basically threw some stuff into the back of my van and drove for 3 hours to a little mill town just north of Vanderhoof to spend the night camping at the Ft. St. James National Historic Park.   

Every spring we say that we are going to go even for a day trip.  It’s almost become a ritual harbinger of summer to discuss this short journey that never happened.  Until last weekend.

Murray House - part museum, part B&B
And it's haunted!  Anyone up for an
over-night stay? 

The catalyst for this epic voyage was actually the recent spectacular auroras that were caused by sun spots on July 13^th.  I missed them.  And, of course, I whined about it on Facebook, which lead to another friend mentioning that there was going to be a Star Party held at Ft. St. James.  I’d missed the eclipse on May 20^th and Venus transecting the sun on June 6^th as well.  I was determined to have some kind of cosmic interaction this year and decided that the Star Party was going to be it.

Thus it was that my friend, my daughter, my daughter’s friend and I finally finalized the plan to go to.  And went.

For a mere $30, we got admission to the park,  two camp sites, admission to the Star Party and a pancake breakfast served outside next to the spectacular view of Stewart Lake.  It was, to say the least, great value for the money!  And we killed several birds with one stone.

This grand willow tree is at least
120 years old.  

I haven’t actually gone camping for over 30 years.  I used to love to camp.  Pitching a tent, roasting wieners over a fire, flash-light illuminated trips to the outhouse in the middle of the night, skinny dipping in whatever lake was nearby, the occasional canoe rental, often opting to sleep outside under the stars…  this was fun.  This was what I embraced as a vacation – a few nights at a time!  I’ve missed it.  I’m now adding camping equipment to my wish list!

The last time I visited a museum was five years ago in Prince Rupert when another daughter and I went to the cannery at Port Edward.  Poking about in the past was something else I’ve always enjoyed, so the opportunity to experience the Hudson’s Bay Company post (very nearly) exactly how it was in 1896 would have been worth the trip even without the Star Party as a lure.

And the Star Party!?  Well, it was just the coolest thing I’ve done in a long time. 

Several members of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada from Prince George kindly set up their amazing telescopes and shared their knowledge of the cosmos with us (and about 40 or 50 other people).

Two of the telescoped we got to
gaze at the stars through

Another amazing gazing instrument!

We gazed at star clusters and double stars and the Andromeda galaxy.  We watched a few satellites drift by and a few people even saw some shooting starts – residual meteors from the Perseids meteor shower that peaked on August 12^th.  One of the amateur astrologists brought a home-made star-gazing chair that swivelled a full 360 degrees.  It was equipped with binoculars attached to a fully adjustable bar.  It was too dark to get pictures of it, unfortunately.

Clouds prevented us from seeing the International Space Station as it passed overhead, but we were quite content to sit in on an impromptu lesson in basic astronomy on the Big and Little Dippers as well as a few of their neighbouring constellations (none of which I can recall at the moment). 

This beast tried to attack us.
(Maybe)

Astronomy has long been on my list of things to learn.  I love looking up at the sky, day or night.  But the stars, the planets and especially the moon have always held me in thrall.  When, as a kid, I learned how long it takes the light to get to us from some of the stars, I was amazed.  Looking up at the night sky is literally seeing the past.  I often wonder how many of the stars are even really still there.  I guess we won’t know unless we see their dying light – and then work backward. 

Gorgeous sunset over Stewart Lake

As I sit here, recalling the weekend’s events, I am surprised at how many activities we took part in besides the Star Party, camping and museum exhibits.  We went geocaching.  (My companions even found a night cache while I opted to get a head start on sleeping in the tent.)  We danced on an outdoor stage.  (An improvised and not well executed rendition of the Can-Can!)  We tried our hands (well feet actually) at stilt walking.  And we got chased by goats that were really sheep.  (Essentially, we thought we were being chased, but , to be honest, our imaginations did all the chasing!)  All this was packed into a less-than-24-hour mini-vacation.  We even had a picnic!  Now that’s something that I haven’t done in a long time either.

But the best part of this whole weekend was, without contest, the three beautiful women who shared it with me.   L, B & M are pretty amazing people and it’s such an honour to have them in my life. 

My best friend

My baby girl!
Is that a bottle of whiskey!?

One of the kindest, sweetest people
you could ever hope to meet!

 Thank you, ladies, for a wonderful weekend and for all the fantastic memories I now hold in my heart.

Everybody wave your hands... uh, feet... up in the air!

Criminently!

Criminently! 

Growing up, that was my mother’s way of not swearing in front of us kids, a practice my father didn’t always cotton on to.  When I heard her say it, I knew that something had gone terribly wrong.  I never adopted the phrase for my own use and I admit that I do take after my father in the use of profane language more so than I do my mother with her conservative constraint.  Other than the relatively rare “damn” and – when I was a bit older – “shit,” Mom expressed her annoyance and frustration with these four syllables.

This morning I heard those same four syllables escape my lips.  I must have been in shock or something, because there are so many four-letter words that are so much more apt for the circumstances that I found myself in.  It was bizzare and frightening and puzzling and appalling and when I actually shouted aloud, “Criminently!  Someone’s hacking my computer,” I don’t really know what surprised me more.

I’ve been using computers, both personally and professionally, for over 20 years.  At one time, I was the go-to person among my friends, colleagues and acquaintences when computer issues arose.  That was the days of DOS, when computers were stupid expensive AND easy to understand.   Well, easier than they are today.  I’m afraid that the technology has far exceeded my capacity to fathom and I now happily leave the inner workings to experts.  I can still turn a computer on and efficiently utilize lots of different software, but  other than a few basic tricks, I’m as helpless as a baby when things go wrong.

Thankfully, things don’t often go wrong on my home computer.  Generally speaking, I’ve had enormous amounts of good fortune when it comes to them over the last 2+ decades.  In all that time only two hardrives have crashed on me, the latest being last week when my laptop, Alistair, gave up the ghost.  It was my fault.  He had been giving me signs for several weeks.  I guess I just got complacent and let myself believe that he would pull through – trooper that he was!  I did, however, manage to save all of my files and photos onto a flash drive before he finally collapsed into computer oblivion.

Alistair is scheduled to see the IT guy for a diagnoses next week.  Depending on what he finds, I’ll make a decision as to how to proceed:  repair or replace?  That will be another blog, maybe.

In the interim, I have been using the library’s laptop.  It’s a bit frustrating because I can’t save anything on it permanently, it doesn’t have all of my programs on it and not all of my passwords are saved on it.  At the moment, that is something else that I am extremely grateful for.   There were a few, but the biggies are being pulled from my memory banks on an as-needed basis.

This morning, coffee resting close at hand, I was editing a blog (See A Mid-summer Night Dream, posted earlier) preparing it for posting.  When I went to save it temporarily to the hard drive, I noticed two documents that I know I did not save in the folder.  Curious.  I hadn’t noticed them last night, but that doesn’t mean anything; I didn’t notice Willow in the hallway on my way to bed either and nearly stepped on him.  It occurred to me that one of the staff members may have been doing something the other day when they were using the laptop and forgot to delete them. 

I opened the first document up and it was about a half a page of this:  slkemjrepoibu0b9833j4’qj boub09u344….  Weird.   The second document was about a quarter of a page of the same thing.  When I went to delete them, I noticed that they had both been modified this morning  while I had been editing my blog.  I was alarmed.  But weird things do happen with computers and so I simply deleted them and carried on.

I resaved my blog  and then went into Facebook to play a turn in a Scrabble game I have going on with a friend.   I intended to post the blog right after.  Of course I got distracted.   I needed to warm up my coffee and that led to puttering in the kitchen.  While was  puttering, I heard an alert on my phone indicating that I had just received a new e-mail.  I glanced at the clock and surmized that it was probably a work e-mail – either the over due notices or the back up – and made a mental note to delete them when I was finished in the kitchen. 

With the kitchen tidied, I returned to the computer to post my blog.  The flashing light on my phone reminded me that I had an e-mail and so I picked it up.  Yes, there was the over due notices and the back up summary.  There was also another notice on my hotmail account.  “Your ______@iname.com account has just been updated.”  My what?

I logged into my hotmail account and re-read the message.  Searching the nether-regions of my memory, I tried to recall having set up this account.  I tried logging into it, but of course I could not access it without the password.  I was about to give up when I decided to try a recent password that I have been using and, to my surprise and subsequent horror, it worked. 

There were no messages in the in-box, the trash or the junk folders.  But when I clicked on the account tab, my personal information was all complete and correct.  I was suddenly overtaken by a paralyzing knot of anxiety.  I don’t know how long I stared at the screen before…

“Criminently!  Someone’s hacking my computer!”

I was shaking so badly, I could hardly type. But I managed to cancel the account.  I immediately started logging into and changing passwords on a dozen on-line accounts that I maintain.  I felt sick to my stomach.  My brain was racing through all the things that the hacker might have done and the information he/she might have accessed.  I was horrified, stupified and completely jiggered.  (Whatever that means; its another of my mother’s expressions, but at the moment that’s exactly how I felt.)

Why would anyone hack into my computer and use my information to set up an e-mail account?  That just doesn’t make a lick of sense. 

I felt  - and still do feel – utterly violated.  And angry.  And, quite frankly, terrified.  I can’t imagine what it must feel like to have someone break into my home, but this must be at least similar.  This was an assault on my life.   My privacy had been invaded.  I wanted to rip the modem from the wall and cancell my Internet service right then and there.

I tried to calm down.  I was crying, though I’m not really sure why.  I paced the floor, sipped at my coffee, which I held in two hands to keep from spilling it all over the place, and tried to figure out…  How?  Why?  When?  What the hell for?

I finally cooled off enough to take some action.  I forced myself to go back and post my blog.  When I finished sharing it on Facebook, I noticed two apps on my home page that I didn’t put there.  The knot of nausea tightened even more.  I deleted them from my list.  Then I checked my security settings to see if there was another connection.  There wasn’t. 

I Googled Computer Hacking and started reading articles about how to be sure and what to do and how to check.  One link (https://shouldichangemypassword.com/) led me to a site that shows you if your e-mail has been hacked.  My hotmail account was.  I found it profoundly ironic that I was using the the very tools my virtual assailant did to try to stop him.  Fight fire with fire?  Not quite the same, but it’s all I had.  The Internet – both friend and foe!

The advice I found was somewhat sketchy.  Reset your IP address – didn’t work, will try again.  Change your passwords - done.  Back-up your files - done.  Scan your computer for spyware – done, only one threat found, now cleaned. 

I didn’t know who to turn to. It was still fairly early on a Saturday morning; I didn’t want to wake anyone up and I don’t know any local IT guys that I could call.  My guy is in Smithers.  Still in a bit of a panic state, I dashed off an e-mail to a friend who I think might have some advice for me, explaining what had happened.  I had to get it out of me.  Somehow.  Any how.  I was literally bursting from the pressure of fear and uncertainty. 

It’s been a few hours now since discovering the invasion.  I don’t know if I’ve solved any of the problems and I’m just a little bit afraid to log into any of my accounts.  I hope this passes.  I hope I’ve done the right things.  I hope the bastard drops a radio into the bath with himself. 

Seven years ago I witnessed a violent assault on someone that I care about very much.  The memory of that incident is forever etched on my mind.  The fear.  The abject terror.  It was such an ugly and horrifying thing to see, to experience.  This feels so similar.  My physcial being may not be threatened, but my mental, emotional and even my spiritual states are going through exactly the same things now as they did then.  I don’t feel safe.   

Then, I locked the door to my house and retreated as much as could from the world.  It took years before I started to feel safe again.  There’s no door here to lock.  I could turn off my computer and cancell my Internet service.  I could run and hide from this invisible monster.  But I don’t know how that will do any good.  I’m still going to have to go to work on Monday, where almost everything I do depends on the Internet.

I can’t figure out what this person wanted to accomplish.  Why me?  What right does this person feel he/she has to break into my accounts and use my personal information that way?  What did he/she do with that e-mail account?  Are there more violations yet to be discovered?  Has anyone else – my friends, my family - been affected by this creep’s actions?   It’s sick.

 

The adrenalin has stopped flowing.  I’m not so much on high-alert as I am tired.  I’m tired of the shitty things that people do to each other.  I’m tired of shitty people, period.   I still hope that something good can come of this.  It has to, because my faith in humanity has been shaken to its core – again.  I don’t know if I have the energy to build it back up – again. 

I'm documenting this now, while it's still fresh; before the emotional scars start to fog the memory and dull the sharp edge of disgust.  I'm hoping that the righteous indignation I feel right now at least alerts anyone who may read this, not just to take precautions, but to speak up and out and against this sort of crime.  We need to take a stand, take back our freedoms and turn society back into civilization!

Criminently, people.  May we all stay safely connected.