Month: July 2007

Final details

I am pretty sure Paul and I are 98 per cent of the way there to having a separation agreement hammered out.  I just remembered something I forgot to add in (which doesn’t work out in my favour, but honesty is the best policy when the kids are watching). Other than that we’re super close and reasonably squared away about the results.  I can’t say that either of us is happy about it, but we are in agreement about what needs doing and why, and who owes what to whom, and the lawyers have pretty much stayed out of it, so we are content if not happy.

Oh, and Keith didn’t get on break fast enough to pick me up Harry Potter but it’s the thought that counts.

Enough lobster

Man, I didn’t think I’d ever, ever, write those two words in the same sentence, but Mike M. invited me along to his mother’s 71st birthday bash and …. holy cow.

I ate jellyfish for the first time. I ate abalone for the first time. I ate sharksfin soup for the first time. I ate like an ogre and then some, and still the food kept coming, and coming, and coming. Rock cod, deep fried crab cakes, rice and egg and shrimp, lobster, scallops, cuttlefish, noodles, crispy skin chicken. And cake, and dessert.

That was a totally superlative meal at a 5 star Chinese restaurant downtown and I heartily thank the siblings who sponsored it. And, totally in Chinese tradition Lily told me to make sure I had at least one long noodle at the birthday, as it is a folkway about long life. And, totally in Chinese tradition there were children there and they ate everything with glee and behaved themselves (and considering that the eldest was already 150 pages into the last Harry Potter book, he was extraordinarily patient during a three hour meal!)
I am in a state of repletion which can only be described as blissful!

and I got complimented on my chopstick use.  Life is purty darned good right now.

Mel Brooks opens Young Frankenstein on Broadway

Mel Brooks shrugged off raves at the first run-through of the Broadway version of his “Young Frankenstein” last week. “What do you expect?” he said. “It’s Friday the 13th.” The cast, who do a terrific version of “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” are packing up their tuxes and lab coats for a tryout run in Seattle.  (From the New York Daily News)

What I’ve been up to

I have completed another section of “the difficulties”.  I find Jericho Beach a most inspiring locale – I may go down there for a day sometime and just sit around and write.

I am adjusting rather better to the shift in workload and priorities.  The customers are being kind as I learn, and my predecessor (he went to a different department) kinder yet.  The new hire accepted and agreed to start July 30th o frabjous day.
I will be heading out for a family dinner with Mike M tonight after I go talk to Paul.

I reread Lilith’s Brood, the Oankali stories by Octavia Butler.

I’m taking a little break from Patrick O’Brian.

My back hurts constantly these days, and my foot is very numb.  Walking helps, as does sitting on the posture ball at work.  I’m having a lot of trouble finding a comfortable sleeping position.

I have been sad for the last couple of days, not so much this morning, thanks to KatieK, a friend of mine whom I invited over for dinner and an earflapping last night.  Those of you familiar with my family’s folkways will know that this is a chat, live and in person, usually unattended by males (or they flee, brows furrowed, into quieter and darker corners, while the womenfolk screech and flap and gabble.)  Anyway, she’s been through what I was through, but worse and darker and different, of course, but she doesn’t waste more than a breath on self-pity before she gets up again and starts assessing her life for the possibilities of happiness.  She’s berloody amazing and I intend to see more of her.
I just wrote two paragraphs about my emotional state, and they were so self-pitying and morose that I’ve done my readers a favour and deleted them.  Someday I’ll look back on this time in my life, shake my head and laugh.  But that time is not now, and it’s not a good time to be writing about it.  Had I the pen of Elizabeth Smart, perhaps, perhaps.

And then, of course, the phone rings, and it’s Keith announcing that he’s picked me up the latest Harry Potter book, and despite the rain and fog, the sun has come out again.

I think I’ll call my mother.

Fan boy freakout

It was with a certain resigned annoyance that I had to listen  to Keith’s tirade about everything that was wrong with the fifth Harry Potter movie.  I paid for it, after all.  Finally I told him to go away, thinking that he would have perhaps have calmed down when I see him again tomorrow.  He bumped into me and Katie later and apologized by handing over a can of V8, which I have to admit served better than an apology in many respects.  Katie and I much enjoyed it, thanks.  A lot of the little touches were exactly right.

“It’s a franchise cash cow – some movies are better left unmade – honk, snort, woof.”