Saturday night was my birthday dinner — 30 y-o, eeek! We (brother, sister, bff, assorted significant others & me) went to Kyomi, a cool Asian restaurant.

We stuffed ourselves on gorgeous, delicious food, in a charming setting (fountains/huge koi fishes, comfy banquettes, changing lighting) and private enough (drapes separated neighbor tables).

Conversations (and time) flowed like water and, three hours later — when we had to leave the place to let other clients in — we ended the night with a cup of coffee before we all parted ways to drive back home.

(With my BFF Amélie!)

Thank you, thank you, family and friends! I loved my evening. It was really to my liking, and I’ll remember it for a long long while!

This morning, for a change, the kids and I walked the few kilometers to the South, all the way to the river.

On the way home, we stopped at the bakery for lunch: soup, beans, grilled cheese, and yummy apple turnovers — that the kids frowned upon (the nerve!)… I was forced to eat both (want can you do…).

Fun. Exhaustion… see you soon!

Just to manage some change, while I’m stepping from my twenties to my thirties, my hair got a little home coloration. So I went from this:

To this:

Thanks François for the help! (through appropriate male grumbling, of course).

Note to those who’d like to try the colour: a little too orangy/copper… tough to find matching clothes in my wardrobe (pink? no. purple? nah…), but it’s still a nice little change!

It occurs to me that some people might not have had, in their life, the occasion to experience both anesthesia and fainting. Although one might hope to avoid both of these states, one might still be curious about the sensations involved. That’s where I come in today.

Anesthesia
(If you are curious about occasions where I required anesthesia, they are two surgeries: first, a curettage for a pregnancy that didn’t come full term, and more recently an appendectomy.)

Anesthesia is a blink.
It’s starting to count backwards and, halfway in, blinking to another room and other sounds. There is no feeling of time lost. No subconscious thoughts lingering of what happened.
Even when sleeping, there is a consciousness that feels the passage of time. Not so with anesthesia. There is just going in, and waking up.

Fainting
(For curious minds, again: this was once, right after the appendectomy, when the nurse insisted I make the trip to the bathroom. I made it there, but kissed the floor on my way back.)

Fainting is zapping.
One moment you’re walking around, and very suddenly you are in a vivid dream about something else entirely. Like your mind forgets it’s supposed to be doing something else. Then, after a couple of moments, there is a fade in.

A fade in.
Exactly, perfectly like the movie transition, where a black screen dissolve to an image.
In my case, it was the image of three nurses’ faces bent over mine (exactly like in comedy movies… I was quite amused by the whole event) and the feeling of cold tiles growing under my neck and back. Gravity comes back gradually. The mind has to transition from vertical to horizontal, because it didn’t register the change.

Both sensations are eerie.
I can’t recommend them (health threats and all), but they surely were interesting to experience.

Feel free to note down variations from your own experiences in the comments; I am not pretending this is the same for all!

I’m brewing thoughts on a couple of things that are different and blending together at the same time, and I’m soliciting opinions.

A couple of catalysts:
- I’m turning 30 this year (in about two weeks, in fact).
- I want to start supporting something. A charity, an organization, a cause… I want to do some right for the world (if that makes sense…). We’re blessed and I want to give back a little.

One or two months ago, I thought a small birthday-fundraiser would start me off well. The way these works, is requesting that people give donations instead of gifts/stuff. Charity:Water has a great goal and looks like it’s doing great things, so I would have gone with them. Their website is setup nicely, too.

A couple of things changed my plans:

First, cynics (that I love and trust…!) brought to my attention that not all charities are well managed. That’s likely. I browsed for reviews/ratings on Charity:Water and didn’t find anything worthwhile, so I’m now looking at various charities, trying to find well-rated charities/organizations that support good causes.

I like environment/sustainable world organizations, but I’m having trouble figuring out tangible actions they are taking (I registered on WWF.ca, but I still don’t know what they are doing, exactly, except marketing and attending summits). I also looked into sponsoring a child; it feels like something I would like to do. I’m not a religious person, so Christian sponsoring (such as World Vision and Compassion) is not a good fit for me, but I found “Plan“, which offers child sponsoring — I didn’t find many reviews of them, but what I saw was good enough. “Water for People“, which has objectives similar to Charity:Water, seems like a good one, too.

If you have opinions and sources on good charities/organizations — and validating websites (ex. charitynavigator.org) — I would love to read them. Thank you.

Now, for the other thing: I’m turning 30 in two weeks, I want to make it special (ie. drown out nostalgia and general grumpiness about piling on a new decade). I’m not really a party animal, although I like to hang out with friends; I enjoy explorations and visits/activities. Ideas?