Animal sightings...

When I got home last night, it was dark. We have a light that goes on outside our door, so I was able to get a little light on the walk up. As I was walking up, I saw a ringed tail and knew immediately that I'd just seen a raccoon! I think I'd seen them from a distance before, but there were two raccoons sitting in the tree outside our house, eating a loaf of French bread! They were a bit aggressive. One of them growled at me as I walked by. One of my roommates told me that they can be quite dangerous. Still, it was a pretty cool sighting.

Edited to add- The name for raccoon is Procyon lotor and in Latin, lotor means "one who washes".
There's also a website which tells you how to feed wild raccoons, which is a very stupid idea, as far as I'm concerned.
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This year has been a good year for animal sightings. I saw several moose while I was planting. I'd seen some in the zoo, but never in the wild. From the safety of a car, I saw a bear cub walking along with its momma. The momma was a cinnamon coloured bear, and her cub was honey coloured. They were walking up the side of a mountain.

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At Chapters, we recently received copies of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone" in Latin and ancient Greek. In more surprising news, a woman actually came into the store, asked for and purchased a copy of Harry Potter in Latin.

I think I may have damaged my immune system....

As I mentioned in a private entry, I have a sty. It's getting a bit better, but it looks yucky and it still hurts. Knowing what it is makes me worry about it less.

I did a little research and discovered that a sty can actually be a manifestation of staphyloccocus bacteria. Readers of this website may remember that I had a reoccuring problem with staphyloccocus. I contracted a staph infection before I went to Mongolia. I got a boil on my hip. During my time in Mongolia, I had re-occuring boils, which I did not treat with antibiotics. This was due to my own ignorance, and because health care in Mongolia was abysmal. I did take antibiotics once, but they may even have been fake antibiotics, because there are a lot of fake drugs in Mongolia which look like antibiotics but really do nothing. The boils I got in Mongolia were terrible. At one point, I had a huge boil on my ass which made it difficult to walk. When I got this boil, I was on a cross country trip in a country with no roads. I was bouncing up and down in a jeep, and once, I even saw stars due to the pain from my boil. Upon my return to Canada, my mother figured out what I had, and I started several rounds of antibiotics. During the following year, I contracted 2 urinary tract infections, which I'd never had before. This meant more antibiotics. Now I have a sty. I think that allowing the staph to remain in my body for a year was extremely damaging and now I'm more susceptible to any bacteria that floats around. Moving to a new environment and dealing with the stress of moving has caused me to be susceptible to bacteria again. I guess I'll just have to be extra aware of this, be very aware about exposing myself to bacteria, and avoid developing countries for at least another year. It's sort of a depressing realization, but at the same time, it's very uplifting to have isolated and identified the issue.

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It turns out that [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] was right. My immune system is not damaged. I have just have strains of bad luck when it comes to skin infections etc. I asked my doctor, and I'm fine. I've just been getting frustrated with things.

On to other things...

I interviewed Brian Lam, publisher at Arsenal Pulp today. He's a very nice man. Arsenal is a four person operation, but they publish about 20 titles a year and have gotten a lot of recognition. Brian gave me two free titles! He also told me that there will be a third cookbook by the authors of "How it all vegan". It will be coming out next year. So there you have it, right out of the mouth of the publisher!