Minkchocolates

My Week

Friday: Stayed at the Café until closing. My lovely bride got off a Harbour Air flight after a day trip to Victoria to monitor a site for the latest groundbreaking clinical study she’s working on and walked the three blocks from the seaplane terminal to catch a ride home. 

“I technically can’t expense dinner”, sweetie says over Death Cab For Cutie’s Little Bribes cranked to 16 on our new favourite radio station The Peak, “and I don’t feel like cooking”. 

“Pick a persuasion and order in”. I’m nothing if not decisive.  

She scrolls through her Blackberry for one of a handful of trusted meal replacement numbers and orders sushi from Ogenki for delivery. It’s always our standard order, but this time with extra wild salmon sushi for me. I’m looking to top up my Omega 3’s. 

Saturday: Working on a stomachache, but that doesn’t stop a family outing to MacDonald Beach to give the dog some exercise. Twenty minutes to walk the dike and then over the small footbridge across the protected wildlife habitat, and we’re on a beautiful sandy beach that, regardless of whether the tide is high or low, is perfect for little Levi to break out his sand toys and get the dog in the water.

First launch of the Chuck-it and the ball sails too far out for Shayna to be interested in chasing it. I feel like the loser dad who gets the kite tangled in a tree on the first go. “Maybe a touch of food poisoning”, I opine. 

“Lame”, she quips. “You just threw it too hard. Don’t blame it on dinner. I ate what you ate and I’m fine”. 

Sunday: Googled the nearest walk-in clinic, thinking I’ll get some antibiotics for what is obviously a 24 hour stomach virus I picked up from my seemingly healthy 18 month old child, who obviously brought something home from play gym/library/Lara and Brad’s. 

“Your pee has blood in it”, the very nice Russian immigrant doctor says to me as she’s writing a letter to the emergency department at VGH with her findings and conclusion. “Go straight there and good luck”. 

I make a slight detour downtown to check on the store, grab a coffee, and then drive myself to the hospital. It’s busy in triage. I sure feel like a wuss. 

Twenty minutes after presenting with what is now an excruciatingly painful abdomen, I’m on a gurney, giving blood draws to a young guy with highlights. An hour later I’m on an IV drip, in an examination room listening to a mild-mannered doc tell me I’m going to have a CT scan. 

He thinks it’s my appendix. My honey-bunches-of-oats has now made her way down with child, and after the doc leaves, says “I think he’s fishing. Can you trust a middle-aged man with unsightly eyebrows who tucks his scrubs into his corduroys”? 

Later that afternoon the scan proves a perforated appendix. I’m going under the knife immediately. Except that there are three appendectomies ahead of me, so it’s more like as soon as possible. 

Monday: My first meal in 30 hours is a glass of water. The surgeon is on rounds and comes in to check his work. “Will I find my used organ on Craigslist”, I ask, more for the benefit of the interns than him. “No, we sent it to pathology. Stay off your feet the rest of the week, no heavy lifting for two weeks, see me in four weeks”. 

Good surgeon, no sense of humour, lives in seven day increments. Fine with me, I’m thinking. I’m here to tell the story. That’s all the matters. 

Wednesday: Discharged with a script for painkillers, and anxious to get home to a bed that doesn’t have plastic sheets underneath the flannel, grateful to the legion of dedicated professionals who did their jobs so well. 

Friday: Feeling like a million damn dollars. Had a few hours in the Café today. Staff did an admirable job running the joint in my absence. Looking forward to the weekend. Maybe get the dog out to the beach tomorrow for a little exercise. In the meantime, my honey is on deadline for report writing, and doesn’t have time to cook. 

“Are we ordering in or what”? she texts me from the other room. 

 Hey, I’m thinking, what could be better than fish on Friday? 

“Sushi”, I type back. “With extra wild salmon”.

Marc Lieberman

Mink Chocolates Inc.,
Mink A Chocolate Cafe Ltd.

Call the store: 604.633.2451
Call my mobile: 604.376.3464
Call toll free: 1.866.283.5181

Shop: www.minkchocolates.com
Tweet: www.twitter.com/minkchocolates
Join:http://www.facebook.com/mink.chocolates
Read: http://blog.minkchocolates.com
Watch: http://www.youtube.com search mink chocolates
In Person: 863 Hastings Street West, Vancouver, BC V6C 3N9

Nine out of every ten persons say they love chocolate. The tenth lies.
– Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Waiting for my Ship to Come in.

I’m envious of my chocolate counterparts in America. The United States Postal Service has implemented a strategy called Priority Mail Flat Rate Boxes which allows for whatever fits in the box to ship anywhere in the US for one low flat rate.

This is pure genius and a perfect solution for on-line shippers like Mink, if only it was available in Canada. No more zone maps. No more length x width x height x weight, and the myriad number of possible combinations that yields.

Conceivably, someone in Sydney, Nova Scotia could pay the same freight charge as someone in Sidney, BC. That levels the playing field for everybody. The customer in the Maritimes doesn’t feel so geographically undesirable and the Mink online store has a fighting chance of doing electronically what we’re used to doing in bricks and mortar.

If we sold and shipped more products through our website, the carrier would handle more volume, which should theoretically make them more money and keep more people employed. Kind of like a stimulus package without the government actually having to write a cheque. What a concept.

Marc Lieberman

Mink Chocolates Inc.,
Mink A Chocolate Cafe Ltd.
863 Hastings Street West,
Vancouver, BC V6C 3N9

Call the store: 604.633.2451
Call my mobile: 604.376.3464

Call toll free: 1.866.283.5181

Shop: www.minkchocolates.com
Tweet: www.twitter.com/minkchocolates
Join: http://www.facebook.com/mink.chocolates
Read: http://blog.minkchocolates.com
Watch: http://www.youtube.com search mink chocolates
Nine out of every ten persons say they love chocolate. The tenth lies.
– Anthelme Brillat-Savarin