enough sleep
2005-06-14— Posted by: allegra
Cousin Gerald sent me this picture, culled from Elsewhere. Looks like Oklahoma to me! I was walking with the kids when I lived in Etobicoke – they would have been four and six respectively – and the sky went like this. When the sky goes green, it’s time to make tracks to the storm cellar. That same day a tornado came right through the complex within metres of my building and then went out onto the water and turned into a water spout as tall as a six story building. I didn’t see it because I was cowering in my bed with the kids, but the noise was as advertised in the movies, deafening.
Lovely anecdote from a cow irker yesterday. I mentioned that I had seen Training Day, and he said, “So did I. At work.”
So I said, say what?
Yeah, when he was working someplace else he got a meeting request to ‘review a training video’. So he and a bunch of his cow irkers all herded into a room and after about two seconds, everybody in the meeting room sat up and went, hey THIS isn’t a training video! To which the meeting organizer calmly replied, sure it is. And they sat an’ watched it. How come cool stuff like this never happens at MY work??? Although there has been a persistent rumour that we’re going to do that with another cinematic high point, (had to cut this work reference).
(Had to cut this work reference but it led perfectly into the next sentence). I missed my calling, it’s like I’m some extremely perverse form of dominatrix, a specialist’s specialist. If you want a torrent of genteel abuse in the form of literate emails, I’m your girl. Woman, whatever. (Okay, had to delete this work reference as well.)
Nana’s wisdom
2005-06-14— Posted by: allegra
If you are female and over the age of 15, you will like this link, and if you are my mother you will laugh out loud at least once. The rest of you…. Oi, mess off!
http://www.killingthebuddha.com/scripture/nana.htm
Killing the Buddha is a site for people that aren’t raaaahhlly cool with the notion of organized religion. Found this site following links on nmazca.com which is STILL one of the best blogs around even if Mr. Damon doesn’t post very often. I dunno, new gf or what?
Spoke to Paul earlier. He sounds wonderful.
Fraser Institute on Teen Unemployment
2005-06-14— Posted by: allegra
”
At a macro-level, the best means to reducing youth unemployment include a strong macroeconomic climate — which improves employment prospects for everyone — and a flexible labour market, which opens the doors to more employment opportunities. Since young workers are the hardest hit by the adverse effects of a rigid labour market, it is only by the elimination of provincial minimum wage laws, the repeal of closed shop union privileges, and cuts to payroll taxes that employment prospects for young workers will improve, according to the report. ”
Allegra sez:
Gracious. The employment prospects for young workers will only improve if we boot organized labour in the ass, hand money back to the owners of the business and kill the minimum wage law. I don’t have a problem with door number two, but the rest of the raping and pillaging can’t count me in as a fangirl. The problem with killing the minimum wage law is what it does to the societal perception of what (and when it is appropriate) to steal. If I don’t get what I think is minimal, I will steal. Then you will put me in jail and pay for me twice, once in the loss of my productive labour for the culture, and once to keep my sorry ass fed and free of HIV. Ha Ha. So once again the problem with the Fraser Institute recommendations is that you can feel calm and correct about them until you have to deal with the fallout from being on the receiving end of their implementation. These guys just don’t know a damned thing about lube, you know what I mean? And if you work with materials, as well as people, you KNOW that cost reduction is not the answer to every problem.
Reducing the size of government, depending on the goals to be achieved, is not always intelligent either, and I’m a goddamned anarchist and would prefer we were smart enough and distributed enough that we (us, the people who live here) could deal with most circumstances locally and leave governance of furrin parts to the people who live THERE, while avoiding having any level of government sprawl on us like we were throw cushions. I know, aren’t I a simplistic moron to so conceive of the future? My mamma, she slappa me upSIDEa da head if I say dat.
Sigh.
Anyway, if you find your way to the Fraser Institute on line you can look marvelling upon their works. Tastes like self-reliance pimping for the dreams of the rich. But I don’t owe anybody anything, do I? If my ancestors were blithely unaware that their tea and rubber and sugar were being pulled from the flesh and bone of indigenous peoples across the planet, I can do that too. It’s my traditional way of life, what do you mean I can’t pursue it? And too bad, because my ancestors handed money to somebody, so anybody with a grievance about this should just pipe down. Money fixes everything. Strip it of its sarcasm and it just seems uncomfortably close to the truth, with those happy folks at the Fraser Institute.
Yuck. Anyway, earlier in the article they talk about how there is a youth unemployment problem, but only among the kids who are too stupid to get an education, so who cares, and that’s the school system’s fault anyway. That’s another rant. And nowhere whispered …more money for education… what we need is STANDARDS, and that’s yet another other rant. And the youth unemployment rate hasn’t increased over time, so they say, now I’m going to have to look. So on one hand they say there’s no problem, except with stupid kids, and who cares, and on the other all the youth employment issues would go away if we loop back to paragraph 2? With a boot boot here, and a boot boot there? I wish John were here. He’s so much better at eviscerating thinktankspeak than I’ll ever be, it’s like watching the master at work.
enough sleep
2005-06-14— Posted by: allegra
this absolutely GHASTLY POEM HAS BEEN DELETED AND THANK CHRISTOS REDENTOR YOU LUCKY SWINE
enough sleep
2005-06-13— Posted by: allegra
Training Day and part of the Incredibles.
All in all, a fabulous weekend, an uneventful trip home, and here’s Katie wearing the blue hoodie G’ma knit for her. Briefly saw Mary, Shauna (Katherine stayed home, ha ha, our darling daughters!), Lexi, Lexi’s Rob (who HELIjetted over to Victoria from Vancouver, are you pea green with envy?), my folks and my darling grandmother who BAKED ME MY FAVOURITE CAKE, which is dark chocolate with vanilla butter icing. And vanished. And my parents gave me Amaretto Cheesecake to take home. So my first words upon entering my domicile were Katie, you awake? There’s cheesecake! which is one of those things that helps a teenager achieve consciousness with a minimum of fuss. And the house! All the dishes were done, the cat litter changed, the counters wiped, the floors all vacuumed. It was recognizably my house, and recognizably cleaner and tidier than when I left. Then an assemblage of brilliant people composing a part of Peggy’s household appeared and Pokey treated Tom like furniture… unabashedly and repeatedly. At one point – Ben and I saw – Tom and Peggy were sitting side by side on the stairs. Pokey placed his right paw on Tom’s shoulder and his left paw on Peggy’s shoulder and then heaved himself over them, leaving them with startled and amused expressions on their faces.
Pokey has avoided the attentions of cars and coyotes now that he is being let free to go and is a much happier cat than he used to be. (We’ve seen coyotes less than two blocks from the house, again.)
Keith said something very wise last night. When told not to be too honest in interviews, he soberly replied “Being honest will get me hired by the right people”. This in response to news that Katie may be working as early as next week at a fast food joint. Keith is feeling like his job search isn’t doing very well, but I reminded him that she was taken into a place that was hiring by a friend of hers who already works there, which kind of got her a leg up. And Keith refuses to work fast food, so far.
MORE MEDIA
2005-06-12— Posted by: allegra
Lessee now. Cooked dinner last night, pork chomps, salad and cauliflower with cheese sauce. Other than that had a very nice day of doing absobloodynothing. Movies viewed included Van Helsing, which I enjoyed rather more than I should have, and I just adored the guy who played Dracula, and Huge AAAK!man wasn’t uglified either, can that man wear a hat, and did anybody notice that Van Helsing couldn’t have been made without the Rocky Horror Picture Show first? and the day of viewing also included a repeat of Hero, a repeat of Prisoner of Azkaban (that is a very entertaining move, and the next movie will have Emma/Hermione in a ball gown, hubba hubba), and Down by Law (which I thoroughly enjoyed), Garden State (which is a weird weird movie but Natalie Portman is amazing in it), the 2004 Dawn of the Dead which I actually enjoyed and was in response to Jeff pleading with me, just ONE zombie movie, one eentsy meentsy zombie movie, and some weird crap on tv including athletic young men permanently damaging their organs of generation while disporting themselves on dirt bikes with dirty great jumping ramps. Oh, and I forgot to mention Girl with a Pearl Earring. Scarlett Johannson rocks.
I managed to avoid beer after 8 pm yesterday and so had a fairly good night of sleep.
I am publicly going on record as saying that I think Alan Rickman as Snape is hotter than a two dollar pistol. Anyone who knows me already knows I’m crazy and the rest of you can start sharpening your knives and assembling the war canoes.
I am also reading a bio of James Cook, just in case that last reference escaped relevence.
Today I have to bathe, as I am expecting to see my parents, and being primates of the first order, they would be horrified if I am not shiny clean. So I’m off the shower….. you can all thank God now. I like being a guy. I need to do this more often.
Being a guy
2005-06-11— Posted by: allegra
Wish i had a pic of my brother’s coffee table. Andrew, Jeff’s roommate, surveyed it and said, “He used to have seven.”
Remotes, that is.”
Now he only has five.
Above his work desk there’s a small whiteboard. I ignore all the small stuff – even though it’s all apparently in English I can’t understand word one – in favour of a beegass sidebar in black.
DON’T MULTITASK
DVD PROCESSING!!!!
Words to live by, indeed.
For who among us has not multitasked beyond the capacity of our systems, personal and social and mechanical, to bear.
There are two sets of family calendars up in Jeff’s house. The paternal one is in the computer room, the maternal one is in the kitchen. In the computer room is a big metal folder holder. It is jammed, but not disastrous. I can see maps to real and imaginary places. I can see early versions of Daffy Duck and Porky Pig. I can see the CD insert for Total Air War. Are you getting excited yet? There are 30 countem at least 30 movies sitting on big screen DVD heaven out in the living room that I haven’t seen and want to. Daunting, isn’t it. Yesterday’s festive blowout consisted of Lost in Translation, followed by Radiohead’s Amnesiac followed by ALL of the Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis, followed by Vanilla Sky. I was mought near dying at that point and Andrew fetched me a glass of water, thank you, and then I nagged Keith into going to sleep (he was going to pull a war gaming all nighter) and we all crashed about 12:30. Now let’s see if I can get the boys to put on something I want to see. And now the best part of posting at a strange computer… finding a pic off the hard drive, cropping whatever, and posting.
Aha. Mossman? Great name for a superhero. Pic is of Mossman. I believe this is a character from City of Heroes, but nobody has specifically told me so.
I’ll be back from the multiverse in a while and post again once I find out where my bro stashes his pix.
enough sleep
2005-06-10— Posted by: allegra
I have to move along as I am expected in Victoria at 12:30 this afternoon. Katie bailed on the trip to Victoria but she promised to do cat care.
I’m mildly annoyed, but only mildly. Now I have to figure out how to shlep all this stuff without the car.
There was a Serenity preview and I missed getting tickets, calice. Pic is another of Katie’s from her trip down to the railway tracks.
Adorable food
2005-06-10— Posted by: allegra
Um. Cousin Gerald sent this. This is a cake. You could eat this, if it wasn’t pixellated. He sent about ten cakes, but this is what screechedpost ME post ME loudest. The reason I like it is because it is eXACtly, and I mean eXACtly like the kind of a purse that would be carried by a Nick Park heroine. Wendolene!! you forgot your purse!
Rob of Nine tells me I missed something funny at the all staff meeting today. Let us meditate, children, on the utter lack of conviction with which I report this.
I have been having a customer interaction for the last week which is very funny and very bizarre. It’s so compelling that I am picking up my work email – I don’t want to miss any of this delicious saga. Because of my company’s privacy policy, which oddly enough I respect, I can’t cross post it, but gosh darn, I’d give my eyeteeth and my left ovary to do so. A conversation this bizarre should be shared with the world. Anyway, I’m sure he’s a very nice man in person, and if he called me a name in his first response to my attempt to help him, I’m sure it was because he was having a bad day.
I just want to help him. He’s sure helped me. I tell the story, and people say: Jumping Jimmy CHRIS’mas, I’m glad I don’t have your job; so he’s made a lot of people happy, by being rude. Isn’t it weird how a sense of humor can turn crap into diamonds? That or a really tight sphincter. Anyway, Brother James, I’m thinking of you. You know man, I can’t forward it to you. Dude, I so want to. You would whiz yourself. Days later you would giggle involuntarily and then have to stifle it.
Shazbat! Look at the time. I have to heave myself into my maternal role and look fondly on my son while he tries to hit his classmates. Er, that is, watch the last 15 minutes of karate class at the Nikkei. Just so.
enough sleep
2005-06-10— Posted by: allegra
How can I type when my head just caved in? Anyway, here’s some Shrek trivia.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0126029/trivia
Benedict the 16th speaks about Jewry
2005-06-10— Posted by: allegra
In the years following the Council, – sez Benedict XVI -my predecessors Pope Paul VI and, in a particular way, Pope John Paul II, took significant steps towards improving relations with the Jewish people. It is my intention to continue on this path. The history of relations between our two communities has been complex and often painful, yet I am convinced that the spiritual patrimony treasured by Christian and Jews… will lead to a future of hope.
Benedict added that it was important for both sides not to forget the past, stressing the need for a *continued reflection on the profound historical, moral and theological questions* raised by the Holocaust.
Nicely said, although how you’d get the Israel and the Diaspora to “forget” about the Holocaust under any circumstances – you know “quit bringing up that old tired Holocaust stuff, have a drink, live a little” – I have no idea.
Pic is of his name predecessor, Pope Benny 15. He was a neo modernist who herded all the canon law between two covers around the time of WWI.
enough sleep
2005-06-09— Posted by: allegra
Ah yes. When I’m on holiday, this is very funny
It’s 5 in the morning, and I’ve been up for an hour. The cough sirop wore off and Paul was making fussy noises, so I decided to go look at what had happened to the world while I was asleep. I discovered that if you’re an American citizen and you carry a bloody chainsaw into the country from Canada, they won’t even check to see if you have any outstanding warrants. But if this guy had had, say, a tan…. Not that I’m impugning the competence or work ethic of US Border guards. I’m not going to post a link to the picture of the guy, now accused of cutting somebody’s head off. It is the single most disturbing head shot I have ever seen in my life. You know how people say stupid things like “He had eyes like marbles?” Brrr.
My favourite overheard in the office comes to me from Toronto, by way of the Gman…. “Has anybody seen my copy of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People? I think I left it in the photocopier…”
cute kitties
2005-06-09— Posted by: allegra
These fishing cats were born in the Minnesota Zoo early last month. Their furbears hailed from SE Asia and they do like to fish out of streams. They are endangered, so the zoo is pretty happy about successfully breeding them. They look like they have interesting personalities.
more pigs
2005-06-09— Posted by: allegra
And this is what you get when you have four pigs. Aren’t they adorable? These pix are for my mother, who very much likes pigs.
Pigs and more pigs
2005-06-09— Posted by: allegra
These are from richsoil.com.
Hm…
2005-06-08— Posted by: allegra
Pic is from Courtenay, by way of my double first cousin in common law, once removed, Carly. That means that I live with her double first cousin once removed. A double first cousin is what happens when a man marries a woman, whose brother marries her husband’s sister, and both couples have children. The children are double first cousins. This concludes my efforts to educate anybody about genealogy today.
Keith graduates on June 17th. Paul and I and Keith are going. Katie is looking hard for a job and experiencing unhappiness in the process. I really appreciate that.
Went into the office for a meeting and actually had a good time. I am obviously markedly insane and you should speak softly to me if you meet me.
I screamed so loud this morning that Paul assumed I had hacked off a limb. What actually happened was that I reached for the wooden cutting board and an insect crawled out from underneath it onto my hand. It turned out to be some sort of pyramid moth (gray until it starts flying and then you get brilliant orange underwings) which crawled onto the stove top looking pensive and then went, o dear o dear as it realized it was sitting next to a red hot stove element. It flew someplace cooler and obligingly crawled onto the inside of a glass – with no coaxing, it was like it was reading my mind – and stayed stuck there until I got it outside, at which point it flew at about 20kph into the walnut tree in the back yard. Moths have furry little feet and I wasn’t expecting it so I screamed like Jill St. John in some forgettable 70’s movie.
It’s raining again. Katie thinks it’s going to be a hot summer, but I think it’s going to rain a lot this summer, and I’m happy about that, because every year I think to myself “Is THIS the year a homeless person sets fire to Stanley Park?” and other such cheerful thoughts.
Alan Greenspan says that the bond market appears to be signalling a downturn. Say whut, Alan? The debt load of the United States is enough to scare you, finally? Your predecessor is predicting doom and gloom?
Tam-Tam sent me an interesting article about using compressed C02 to drive oil to wellheads that are otherwise dry. It’s a promising technology and it’s being developed in Canada. I wonder if the Saudis are going to try it; right now they are using water, and that’s actually making things worse.
Of course, if we could figure out how to get methane out of klathrates in the bottoms of the oceans, we’d have enough energy for another 500 years even at current rates of consumption; I imagine that’s one of the things the Japanese are working on. And we’ll always have coal. On the basis of current research, it’s beginning to look as if without human intervention we’d actually be in an ice age right now, so coal is not a bad thing… if you don’t mind asthma and lung cancer along with your industrial civilization. We’ve certainly got enough coal in BC to last us a long long time. Everything will be fine… who needs salmon?
A Japanese research consortium is going to try to dig a hole more than six miles into the crust. It’s gotta be about oil, but it didn’t get mentioned in the article. Or maybe it’s about geothermal. Anyway, I remember reading the article and thinking, at this rate, press agents will outnumber human beings at a factor of two to one within a scant few years; you have to read between the lines for everything.
Anyway, I’m not scared about the end of oil anymore. It’s a childish nightmare. Makes a lot more sense to be worried about a nuclear war. That’s actually a lot more likely, and there are still 10 ‘enemy nukes’ out there for every major city in North America. So, for the next few months I will research everything I can about nuclear war (which really really scared me when I was a kid) until I get bored with that. Then I think I’ll work on communicable diseases. And of course, oil or no oil, nukes or no nukes, the economy IS going to collapse. Don’t see much to stop that. Happy Wednesday, everyone!
tags
2005-06-08— Posted by: allegra
Katie took 70 pictures of tags down by the tracks today. Here’s one of them.
enough sleep
2005-06-07— Posted by: allegra
I don’t imagine even my mother cares about my physical state at the moment, so I’ll skip that part and go on to something cheerful, like why climbing a tree to get away from a bear is a bad idea, why Bolivian peasants don’t like their president, why the obesity epidemic is going to be short lived (if it really exists) and why the sea is boiling hot. The pigs having wings bit I am still struggling with.
The sea is only boiling hot in a few places by the way. It’s not boiling hot all the way through.
I have to go to a meeting at work today. Everybody who hears about it thinks that I am crazy, which makes me irritable. I should have thought the evidence for this was heretofore overwhelming, and there is nothing one can add to the pile of evidence to make this ‘more true’.
In fact, everything right now makes me irritable. Maybe I’ll just write it off to hormones.
More moss patrol yesterday. Paul cleaned it up thank goodness. I really didn’t want to convey it to the compost.
An unidentified dead bird appeared under the back stairs yesterday morning. I think it was a member of the thrush family, but unless it’s something really dramatic like a curlew, all dead birds pretty much look the same to me. I don’t think the cats got it as it was intact. I suspect it ran into something. Or maybe it died of West Nile and we should have run off to the public health types with it. In my current fragile condition if I caught West Nile I’d likely croak; my insurance will pay for quite a party so the prospect is cheering rather than otherwise. Which reminds me, I should try to finish my list of funeral music.
Walked with Katie over to Peggy’s last night to drop off Brooke’s copy of the first season of Angel. Desperately needed the exercise and it was a pleasant visit and a pleasant evening, although a bit chilly on the way back. There are a number of things in the neighbourhood I want pictures of; I may get round to taking pictures today.
Katie definitely wants to take some pix of the graffitti in the tunnel by Edmonds Station and there’s also some really cool graffitti up by Canada Way and Edmonds close to the Steel Temple Tattoo parlor.
Some graffittista in New York put a copyright on his tag. How brilliant! As the graffitti from many years ago in Toronto put it, “Our City, Our Walls!” My personal favourite remains the note under the bridge on the way out of town in Montreal, that you could only see from the train, headed west, “Visualize Industrial Collapse.” My second favourite, from the Post Office wall on Spadina, “My love is like heroin, she cannot miss a vein.” Have a Velvet Underground kind of day!!!!
enough sleep
2005-06-06— Posted by: allegra
CNN.com has a whole bunch of tornado pix posted to their site right now. There is one in particular of a white twister with a rainbow that I recommend but the whole gallery is so cool… check it out if you can.
enough sleep
2005-06-06— Posted by: allegra
Drivable fuel cell car – road test
Well, it’s 4 am or thereabouts. I did some research on Sigrid Undset, the gal what wrote Kristin Lavransdatter, and she wrote more than 20 books and lots of articles, went to work full time at 16 (and hated it) to support her mother; her archaeologist dad died of some lingering disease of the central nervous system when she was 11; she met her future husband in Rome (and might have been born there) and once the divorce was final took him and his two kids on – one of whom was developmentally delayed – and had three more, one of whom was developmentally delayed. She fled Norway ahead of the Nazis (her work was banned by the Nazis) with one son, another son having died in the defence of Norway, and ended up in the US and died in 1949.
She never supported votes for women. Her works have been criticized by toeliner feminists since then because she believed and wrote that motherhood is the highest calling of women. Methinks that anybody whose books are still selling, who is disdained by feminists and loathed by Nazis can’t be all bad. My only objection to her works is her harsh depiction of Catholicism. I mean, it’s nice to have a notion of right and wrong, but you don’t make God look better by mashing people into the ground.
Her depictions of the emotions around childrearing are the best I’ve ever seen – although the net effect is that I am anxious to lay my hands on a more recent translation, which exists if Amazon isn’t giving me a bum steer. Reading Kristin Lavransdatter in this translation is a lot like wading through the thickest parts of Tolkien’s prose, and UNLIKE Dunnett, there’s no frikkin genealogy, so the aunt’s cousin’s whatsits pile up pretty fast.
I think she was a proto fan, though! She had a house built that was like a medieval Norwegian house, wore wadmoll – probably that she made herself – and knew everything there was to know about plants.
Danged if I can find instructions to make wadmoll easily though. I’m looking for one that starts, “First you catch a sheep…”
Wadmoll is going to make a comeback! Betcha it’s scratchy, though.
Beer Glorious Beer
2005-06-06— Posted by: allegra
I just went to pick up my current fave beers (St. Ambroise Blonde and Robson Street Hefeweizen) at the Liquor Store that’s open on Sunday, how civilized (only goddamned thing the Liberals did in their last stint in office that I can wholeheartedly concur with) and when the guy in the line up ahead of me refused his receipt the checkout staffer said, “Well it ain’t tax deductible.”
I looked at her, smirking, and then said, “And then I woke up.” We both had a good laugh.
I just exchanged an email with Rob of Nine; he recently sampled a WA state microbrew called “Moose Drool”. As I said, I am turning artistic shades of green, but that might be the coughing.
My lungs
2005-06-05— Posted by: allegra
Here is a very interesting microphotograph of my bronchial tubes. Actually I wish I knew where this pic was taken; it isn’t every day you watch a lava flow eat a parking lot. Both of these photos cadged from Fark, and why not. David Jordan of AP took the original photo, of which this is a portion.
Finished Kristin Lavransdatter bucketing tears. Her estranged husband is killed in front of her, a bunch of her boys die, she goes off to a nunnery, catches plague and dies. Man, they just don’t write books like they used to.
Nice Kitty
2005-06-05— Posted by: allegra
This is Gidget. She is training guide dogs not to run after every cat they see. She lives in Australia, where Cane Toads are a nuisance.
Nice Kitty
2005-06-05— Posted by: allegra
This is Gidget. She is training guide dogs not to run after every cat they see. She lives in Australia, where Cane Toads are a nuisance.
enough sleep
2005-06-04— Posted by: allegra
Must post b8st8rding fast as Katie is anxious to get out of here and buy conditioner. (as well as do the rest of the usual Sat’day shop.) Halfway through Kristin Lavransdatter. I’m OBviously really enjoying it. It’s interesting how the story doesn’t just focus on Kristin but also on her parents’ passing strange relationship and various other people, including the religious types. A week of vacation, including hanging out at my brother’s house and having a media overload. Yeah yeah yeah.
Cousin Lexi says that Herons are Noisy. This is not the kind of thing you’d notice unless you were living next to a heron rookery, but they make lots of noise in the nesting season. You’ll hardly ever hear the noise a heron makes the rest of the time (a harsh, guttural croak – we call it a ‘gark’ around here). But living next to them is cool and Lexi says she’s never actually seen herons fly while looking DOWN on them (she’s up on the 15455th floor of some building in the west end). They are big beasties.
Keith is off at Mando lessons.
I’m still coughing and coughing, but I don’t actually feel too bad….more fighting with vegetation today…. but later.
Grrrr and vroom.
2005-06-04— Posted by: allegra
I’m choked. Katie did a fabulous job of cutting three inches off my untidy mop o’ hair last night and NOT A SINGLE PERSON AT WORK NOTICED OR COMMENTED. Personally I think it’s the best haircut I’ve had in years – I told her what to do and she did it.
Got Kristin Lavransdatter parts 1 2 and 3 and so I know what I’ll be up to tonight!
The boys at work had a show and shine of their bikes today. I will forebear comment except to say, tsk tsk, riding around the company parking lot with no helmets. The liability! The liability!
Oh what am I saying, they all looked hot! Okay, except for one of them, and I’m not saying which. Anyway, hopefully the weather will clear as they meet up with their counterparts across the line. Good evening all!
enough sleep
2005-06-03— Posted by: allegra
I am coughing up blood! Haven’t done that for years. Anyway, in keeping with my Calvinist forebears’ wishes I am going to go to work ANYWAY. I kind of have to, because calling in sick on a gorgeous Friday before a weeks’ vacation is usually considered suspicious. The stupid thing is I feel fine when I am not coughing, and I think I’m actually on the mend. I slept okay last night, but that might because I doubled up on 5-HTP and Benylin. Man, I lay down and started playing solitaire on my Palm Pilot and the next thing I knew the crows were squawking outside my window and it was morning again.
Not much to report. Kids are fine, I’ve dodged moss patrol two days running, and although my day today will be jam packed with meetings and incident, I’ve got a week off, although I volunteered to come in for a meeting on Tuesday. Never seen a meeting invite quite like the one I saw for this one. The meeting invite included a directive to turn off your Blackberries when you came into the meeting room. I was thinking, hey, they didn’t mention the three kneelings and the three knockings. (That’s for when you go see the Tsar… you have to kneel three times and knock your forehead on the ground three times. A Dunnett reference, sorry.)
Anyway I really shouldn’t talk about work. Jobs growth in the US is weak and everybody is in debt up to their eyeballs. I know I keep poking at this subject, but I’m more and more convinced that it’s the level of US personal and government debt that’s going to pull the first deuce out of the house of cards. Whenever things get icky the “gold and silver is the best” dudes start lecturing us about the intrinsic value of gold and silver, and I think, hm. But I don’t believe it. Social organization around food production doesn’t require gold.
Zow.
2005-06-02— Posted by: allegra
Make sure you aren’t drinking anything.
http://www.alivewithlove.com/cyclists.html
walk the dog
2005-06-02— Posted by: allegra
I’m glad my married life isn’t this exciting.
What I don’t understand was why the cops kept making her put her clothes back on. Drunken young woman drives boyfriend’s truck into pond because he doesn’t want her to go to the casino…. sigh.
My cold is now bad enough that my husband is saying things like “You’re not going to work like that?” making me sound like I’m dripping with syphilitic sores or something. I’ll be fine once I have a cup of tea. I don’t really feel that bad.
I am on vacation next week, although some might say it’s hard to tell the difference. Paul is making noises about going off to see buddies in Ontario, and I have no objection.
My mother is happy I’m posting links now. I’m unhappy that now I have to go through and check for broken links, and get emails from people telling me to take links out, which is what happened the last time. Sigh.
Writer’s group last night was aMAZing. Lots and lots of discussions about mental health and social isolation. Picked up Katie from New West (her non bf lives in front of what used to be St. Mary’s Hospital) so she could involve herself in this strange condition called ‘sleep’. Didn’t see Keith at all yesterday except briefly at breakfast; he was asleep when we got home, like a sensible individual.
No moss patrol last night. Darn.
Pic is of a Poodle named Pluto who decided to become bipedal and can keep it up for over half a kilometer. Credit Mainichi Shimbun. I have to admit snapping a pic at a crosswalk was a deft touch0.
enough sleep
2005-06-01— Posted by: allegra
Milagros Cerron is intellectually normal, so her parents will get to ask their little mermaid someday, was it worth it. And being intellectually normal, she will probably say yes.
Last night I dreamed a toddler was mauled to death by a pit bull in my front yard and I didn’t help because I was too frightened. The owner messed off and so did the dog, dragging its leash. I could hear screaming down the block. I was pretty disturbed. That was around 5:30 am; I got up and did dishes to try to calm down.
More moss patrol and fig trimming last night. Three wheelbarrows of moss. Good Lord, when will it end? And the worst thing is that even if it rains all day, it clears up enough in the evening that I don’t have any excuse not to work on it, so I am finding the weather unusually trying.
Mama has declared she can’t follow my links, so here’s a couple, one funny and one decidedly not. It’s Heifer so Windy
Above noted being a pic of a very well behaved British Tornado.
First step in the book burning… I am SO inclined to go out and purchase these books, just because a bunch of academic no talents – look at the list of judges! – says they are harmful. Nobody is frikkin going to tell me what I can read, calice. (Oh, and by the way, calice in Brazilian Portuguese means exactly what it does in French, the chalice of mass, BUT it’s also a homonym for SHUT UP Cali se. So when I use calice in future, it will be with that in mind as well). Let the book burnings begin
As you read through the list, did you notice that it’s mostly dead white guys? Sheesh.
