This morning I was hosting a teleconference on Personal Ancestral File 5.2 with 60 participants. The starting time was 11:00 AM. I was able to get on the Oracle server with no problem at 10:30, but the connection was slow, so I decided to by-pass the router by connecting the computer directly to the modem. Then I discovered that I had lost my internet connection. By the time I had my connection re-established it was 10:55. I barely got into the session on time. Things went well until 11:27 when the lights went out, the computer shut down, and the cordless speakerphone went dead. A power failure! At the worst possible time! I found a corded phone and dialed into the phone bridge for the conference. People were still on, so I continued my session without its video componenent. Thanks to the wonderful participants. Then after Judy's doctor appointment, we went to visit our niece Nicole at the Univerity of Alberta Hospital. She is doing well. She had an acute attack of athsma, then was in a medically-induced coma for 11 days. She has been awake for four days and she wants to go home. She was glad of our visit. This evening I was finally able to upload the current version of my Buchanan family database to the server at clawz.com What a relief! I have been trying since October 11th and the FTP software kept stopping before the job was finished. Maybe by-passing the router solved the problem. In any case it was a relief to have that job completed. So not withstanding a few obstacles, it was a very good day.

This is Canadian Thanksgiving Day. The turkey is in the oven, and we are waiting for the arrival of our family. Evelyn and Ed and family are here. We expected everyone but Blaine to arrive but Blaine and his family came too. Like last year, the grandchildren enjoyed playing in the leaves. My niece, Nicole Tetreau has been in intensive care at the University of Alberta Hospital for over a week now. It started on the night of Saturday September 29th, when Bernie answered the telephone. It was Taryn, saying that her mother couldn't breathe. Bernie asked to speak to Nicole, and Taryn started crying. "She can't talk, she can't breathe." Bernie dashed to Nicole's apartment. Seeing Nicole in an intense athsma attack, he gave Nicole a few puffs on his inhaler, and they called an ambuance. At the UofA Hospital the doctors told Bernie, "If it was 10 minutes later, you would have lost your daughter." They put her on a respirator in a medically-induced coma, to keep her breathing. The athsma is now under control. She initiates each breath, but panics when taken off sedation. Recently she has developed pneumonia, which is now the big concern. Tomorrow the doctors hope to be able to take her off the respirator.