Hey! I was nominated for ‘Best regularly featured column’ at the 62nd Canadian Business Media Awards for my work at The Medical Post!

Anastasia sometimes likes to change inside the locker at swimming. In other good news, our kids may pass their swimming lessons (Whale & Level 7). W00T!

I fist-punched the air. Until I got this, I didn’t consciously realize that my non-fiction was the one kind of writing I did consistently that wasn’t recognized by awards. The Most Unfeeling Doctor in the World did get named to the Ultimate Reading List for Nurses, and it sold a lot of copies, but awards? Awards for me? Yaaaaaaay!

Also slightly unreal, since I feel like everyone else is talking Very Seriously About Life And Death in their columns, and I’m like, Whut.

I didn’t even know this was a thing, but I looked it up, and the Medical Post is killing the shortlist. Professional Magazine the Year, Best News Coverage, Best One-of-a-Kind Article (two out of seven articles, and I contributed to one of them, “Medical misconceptions”—I wrote a quick piece called “I’m not an old, white man”), Best Professional Article, and Best Regularly Featured Department or Column. The last one’s my baby, and competition is stiff. Not only are there nine different contenders (including Richard Ouzounian, whom I used to listen to on CBC Radio’s “Say It With Music”), but again, two of us are from the Medical Post.

I considered going to the awards ceremony tonight, but I’m the hospitalist at the Glengarry, starting today, so it would be hard to get coverage as I drive to Toronto and back.

So good luck to all the nominees! I’ll be thinking of you tonight.

Also, I must thank our phenomenal friends who are crowdfunding Rico Anderson’s reading of “Humans ‘n’ Hot Dogs,” my Roswell Award finalist short story. The net tally so far is $255.04 U.S. and $148 Canadian. We love you! Thank you for the support from Canada, the U.S., England, and Switzerland. Rico’s jonesing for us to meet our stretch goal of $500-$600, so if anyone wants to throw a bit more money in, maybe he’ll do a Snoopy Dance for you.

Either way, much gratitude today. xoxoxoxoxo