Ah, time to go do something else
2006-11-15— Posted by: allegra
I’m up to 8000 words, and some of it is laugh out loud funny. Okay, I’m being kind to myself, but I cannot WRITE something serious unless I’m mad, and I’m not mad, I’m, uh, what was it Inara said in Serenity? “I’m giddy!”
6200 words
2006-11-15— Posted by: allegra
My novel is chugging away, and I’m up to 6200 words, and I wrote a song yesterday, another mandolin tune, called Miss Manners Has Her Say. I am having a WONDERFUL WEEK OFF.
Lou Dobbs editorial
2006-11-15— Posted by: allegra
When NOBODY ELSE in the MSM was talking about outsourcing, Lou Dobbs printed a list on the internet of American companies which had offshored jobs. Like him or hate him, he’s consistent. Here’s a smoking hot editorial, and I have to say I like it. http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/11/14/Dobbs.Nov15/index.html
Oh, the Huge Manatee!!!
2006-11-14— Posted by: allegra
Happy sigh
2006-11-14— Posted by: allegra
Peggy and I went for a walk yesterday in Burnaby Lake Park. The rain thoughtfully stopped while we were out (wearing our matching DNA scarves, hoho!) and we saw a native squirrel!! They are so pretty! None of the pics on the internet conveyed the glossiness or beauty of the critter we saw – from 2 feet away, and he even posed for a couple of minutes while he chowed down on sunflower seeds – so I’m not even bothering to post a pic. Also, this one had an ORANGE front, and every other picture shows cream. The one we saw was as fat as anything. Winter is coming!
Peggy said, “You know, I see a lot more wildlife when I walk with you!” and I thought, well JEEZ, when they stand in the roadway and let you gawk at them it’s hard to avoid. But I do seem to have good luck that way. And nobody was running dogs while we were there….that was the other piece of luck. Oh, and I saw oyster mushrooms, but they were sticky.
Hello elk
2006-11-13— Posted by: allegra
Katie buys dinner
2006-11-13— Posted by: allegra
And now we have leftovers.
This is not a bad thing.
Keith isn’t even up yet! Katie was here for dinner and then left again to sleep at Suzanne’s.
Unca Dave is beavering away at the mudding and drywalling and generally upfixingness. The big hole Katie kicked in her wall when she was younger and more impulsive is taking the longest to dry, so there’s a fan trained on it.
Still no sign when his ferstunkiner car will be ready.
Now that the downstairs LR is looking so nice, I am going to declare war on those wretched blinds and get nice drapes. I ask the Parking Goddess to provide; please give unto me, when next I visit Village de Valeur, a nice set of drapes, the right size, and not too ‘spensive, and please please, nothing sky blue with bunnies. John says he will ‘wig out’ if forced to live with sky blue curtains with bunnies. Something that matches the bricks in the fireplace is my only care.
It is my hope that my energetic and casual family will quit knocking holes in the walls long enough that we can paint this joint. I hope also to get quotes to get the place painted, hopefully when none of us have to be here… Unca Dave is helping me formulate a Cunning Plan. Ah!
busy…
2006-11-12— Posted by: allegra
Fed Casey and Unca Dave and Dr Filk bbq’d salmon last night, so here’s a pic of a salmon crossing the road. Sample dialogue from last night, “How do you get rid of harpies?” “Plucked if I know.” (Okay, you had to be there.)
I’m up to 4500 words and I’m having a gas with the novel. I’m still in the ‘fun’ part. It will slow down, but right now it’s fun.
The signal only LOOKS like noise
2006-11-11— Posted by: allegra
http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=2683
Very interesting blog plus comments
2006-11-11— Posted by: allegra
http://brahms.phy.vanderbilt.edu/~rknop/blog/?p=116
The most interesting part of the blog is the comments – there are some folks who just don’t “get it”. The blog is about women in science.
St Petes to Helsinki in one go!
2006-11-11— Posted by: allegra
Homemade Russian sub.
How to get Danes to slow down.
2006-11-11— Posted by: allegra
Brother Jerome sent me this link. Unsafe for most workplaces, (contains large, firm, female breasts) although I suspect most adult Canadians would find the nudity amusing and in context.
http://www.autof1.ro/index/Video_limitare_viteza_Danemarca.html
It is to laugh
2006-11-11— Posted by: allegra
I’m leaving the storm on Saturn up for the rest of November, up in the corner of my blog. I just went to the news out of Faux News…. and their movie was way worse quality!!!! excuse me while I laugh when I bring the science vid faster and better than the MSM. All hail the interblogs.
Unca Dave’s car still sucks a bus station restroom mop, by which I mean to specifically say that Unca Dave and Paul drove to Hope and didn’t get ten k with the so-called ‘fixed’ car before it died again. So once again, pay for a tow back to the shop, and we are now into a long weekend, so what are the odds that *I* will have to drive to and from Hope because Paul goes back to work tomorrow… which means driving him to work first. I’m disgusterpated. I can barely deal with 30 minutes in the car picking Katie up from work and bringing her back. Ah! Last night when she got home she had a bone to pick with Paul so I fled the scene and shot the breeze elsewhere in the house with Unca Dave until things got a little less ‘intense’. I could say a lot of really unconstructive and disrespectful things at the moment, but I am feeling far too cheerful, if only because it feels wonderful to have had the first dream that involved ‘skin’ I’ve had in about…. uh….. can I get back to you on that? A while, anyway. The images are still floating through my brain in a most wonderful way. Warmth and light…..
I’m having a party on the 25th. In my party invite, which was memorable in a number of ways, I put in, under “obligatory legal notices”
Not Responsible for Lost or Stolen Consciousness.
I’d like to thank Janice for her wise counsel to Paul with respect to Katie, it did help. The rest of the comments are lost, as they say, in the fog of history, or East Burnaby, whichever comes first.
The menfolk have done a wonderful job of drywalling and mudding, and the front hall will be in much better shape with those dreadful dreadful mirror tiles out and the new mirror in. I am very pleased with the results, and they’ve been working very hard.
For laughter of a sweeter kind, check out www.flickr.com/photos/psu80e/page3/ for an exceptionally cute picture of a newly foaled pony. The photographer has also got some other jim dandy pix in there.
Protect them if you got them
2006-11-10— Posted by: allegra
This is an illustration from a medical article entitled, “Acute Management of the Zipper Entrapped Penis”. This just seems to be a riff on how I feel right now, and yes, I’m identifying with the entrapped organ.
Remembrance
2006-11-10— Posted by: allegra
Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald Day. This is the ship’s bell before the restoration.
Hazards of a writer’s life
2006-11-10— Posted by: allegra
As soon as I have one writing project on the cook, I’m outtza mind with other ideas. Now I want to be writing erotica again. Just don’t remember who to send it to, snerk.
another message from Dr. Carolyn…
2006-11-09— Posted by: allegra
Dear Friends and Colleagues, Cassini has sighted on Saturn a phenomenon that has never before been seen on another planet: a wall of towering clouds that ring the eye of an immense hurricane-like vortex whirling around the planet’s south pole. Go to … The top corner of my blog…. that is THE COOLNESS ladies and gents of the audio radiance!!!
mewsings
2006-11-09— Posted by: allegra
Interesting evening; redoing Katie’s resume cause she’s had it with her job, she wants to apply to the same place Keith is working, and why not? Great to watch the two of them conspiring…. Taking a collect call from Unca Dave to be collected from the roadside in Hope (the car has since been fixed, thank heaven). Paul going to fetch him and coming home faint with weariness. Simplicity meeting which was tons o fun, although only two people showed up. Keith and Kate heading off to see the Minions of Loki; a good time was had by all. Finding out my pOp’s encounter with the medical profession went well, and now we can all hop from one foot to the other waiting for the results. It felt like grand central station, and yet it was really peaceful at the same time…..
Sacred cows make the best hamburger
2006-11-08— Posted by: allegra
My dad says…
2006-11-08— Posted by: allegra
My dad says that a prenuptial agreement is a plan for a divorce. Watching Britney and K-Fed (or Cletus, as some sites refer to him) makes me agree.
I am content with the election results, and Santorum’s disappearance into the glistening streams of, uh, a substance which currently bears his name for once and all time, pleases me most of all.
Katie wants to quit her job because of workplace harassment which the management is doing nothing to stop.
Freedom
2006-11-07— Posted by: allegra
Excellent video, just in time for the midterms.
Fire
2006-11-07— Posted by: allegra
A vehicle caught fire in the underground parking lot of my work today, forcing the evacuation of the building. The top floor, where I work, was apparently ‘safe’ but stank so bad I couldn’t work there, so I went home.
It’s been a pretty bizarre day, and the most bizarre thing is that the sun has come out after a simply miserable couple of days.
One of my favourite virtual bars………
2006-11-06— Posted by: allegra
http://www.moderndrunkardmagazine.com/issues/06_06/06_06_inebriated_in_iran.html
Adult discussions
2006-11-06— Posted by: allegra
I never thought I’d live to see the day, but the kids were discussing moving out together last night. It’s very hard to describe how I feel about that.
The weather is atrocious.
X and A had us over for a V for Vendetta showing and it was wonderful. Andrew liked his mask! Dinner was good too.
Then I took a hazelnut torte over to Tom and Peggy’s and we sang and played a bit. Keith really liked the standup bass, it’s a sweet instrument. Tom, Keith walked off with your copy of The Moon is Harsh Mistress. He will give it back, but honestly, he should have his own.
Book of Job…. redone.
2006-11-05— Posted by: allegra
NaNoWriMo
2006-11-05— Posted by: allegra
As long as I’m working on this novel I’m not going to have much time for a blog. So don’t mind me, I’m a touch busy. With respect to the more unpleasant background noise, I’m going to take my Dad’s advice and suffer in silence.
On a more cheerful note, we have a new family saying. “When the zombies come, it’s time to visit Santa Claus.” This is a Red vs. Blue reference (an internet cartoon), but it’s also an injunction to the imagination. It’s also practical advice because zombies slow down in the cold and then it’s a lot easier to whack their heads off.
Off later to watch a November 5 showing of V for Vendetta. I think my host will be happy to get a V mask, he’s not expecting it. And Keith’s costume is damned scary.
I’m making chocolate chip pecan cookies for Paul to take to his coworkers.
Conte
2006-11-03— Posted by: allegra
This writing is the most hellishly complex thing I’ve ever taken on. I’m asking total strangers about design elements – and they’re giving me good ideas. It’s as if my ten years in Vancouver – ten years snuck by in the last two weeks, oddly enough – are branching like a Mandelbrot set under microscopy (J Coulton “You’re one badass ____ing fractal”) into words. I had somebody ask me, “How will you know when you’ve won?” with respect to the plot, and I was astonished. You don’t win battles like this; the war on stupidity will be over when we’re all dead, and it won’t even be stupidity that won, it will be entropy.
I heart November, it’s the most creative month of the year.
“All things are a flowing, sage Heraclitus says. Yet a tawdry cheapness shall outlast our days.” Ray Pound. Man, he had that right, even if the anti-Semitism and weird monetary theories were a bit much. Even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while.
Katie came home last night, can you credit it?
John Robert Columbo said the one thing that will allow me to finish this book that I’m working on. And it oughtta be over the desk of every single writer. “The notion of originality is vastly overrated in this culture.”
Flying visit
2006-11-03— Posted by: allegra
My son would rather be pulled backwards through a knothole than read my blog, so I am with amusement and fondness going to recount the events of the evening, events which culminate in Keith making loud, enthusiastic and happy noises, even though at the time of posting they have not been emitted from his cakehole. Keith does not know, and will not know until he actually comes through the door in less than half an hour, that the Minions of Loki came through the house tonight and left not one, not two, not three, but FOUR V for Vendetta masks. Oh yeah. Oh yeah baby.
We now pause for drama and clarity. And possibly more beer.
Cthulhu is picking his way through hell these days, trying to get accepted in polite society. Everywhere he goes, the waiters say, “There goes the calimari man, isn’t it just AWful?” And Cthulhu, freshly decorated with the third place ribbon from a Cthulhu look-alike contest (having been so foolhardly as to go up against ILM) will be slinking away thinking, “I used to be able to drive humans into madness by my presence and now precious little waiters are laughing at me behind my back! FTN, I’m outta here.”
Sorry, had to deke off to weirdsville there for a mo’.
Hugh Jackman is in every movie for the next three months. It will be like a plague. A beautiful plague.
Oh, oh oh, and they’ve cast Nicole Kidman as Marisa Coulter. This is perfection verging on the iconic, as casting goes.
More later.
Lighting a candle or two
2006-11-02— Posted by: allegra
I light a candle for Frances, recovering in hospital from surgery to relieve pressure on her brain. I light a candle for Phyllis and her speedy recovery from knee replacement surgery.
The trickster in the code
2006-11-02— Posted by: allegra
Somehow I have dragged myself into writing a techno thriller for National Novel Writing Month. It has a working title and a plot. And that’s all I’m going to say about it.
It’s like some kind of domestic trifecta
2006-11-01— Posted by: allegra
Realizing there’s no camera to take a picture of the amazing dawn, hearing the cat throw up and discovering you have a nosebleed, all at the same time. There’s a song in there somewhere, and someone else can write it.
Halloween
2006-10-31— Posted by: allegra
One of my beloved coworkers turned up at work in a beard and mustache (and otherwise fully accoutred as female, as normal). My response, (tones of well bred enquiry) “I didn’t know merkins migrated?”
