Month: September 2007

two more things

  1. We talked genealogy last night! Rob is a genealogist with some wonderful family stories.
  2. I received one piece of mail yesterday, and it looked so ominous I didn’t want to open it.  I did though; it turned out to be a thank you note from the producer of the ten minute documentary about Elly.

Happy sigh.

Is nothing sacred????

Click here for a dreadful, nay, almost sacreligious book cover.

Ha ha, fooled you, it’s just another way for me to sneak a moose into my blog.

Last night Janet, Tammy’s mum, and Janet’s charming spouse Rob who is alas on strike at the moment and gets to picket at City Hall – ick – for $50 a week strike pay – double ick – fed me a beautiful, wholesome dinner. In their perfect back garden. I brought along a bottle of California organic chardonnay.

Yesterday was a day crammed with incident. I could have spent the afternoon with Tammy, but Katie requested assistance with financial stuff. When I got to New West I was less than charmed to find out she’d already locked her payout from the house into a GIC (I bought a GIC too, while I was there), but it turned out she needed to order cheques. So we did that, and then she turned into a wobbly 8 year old girl in front of my eyes, and, practically in tears, asked me if I could walk her over to her old work and help her collect her last cheque. THAT’S how terrified she was of her old boss, that she was almost nineteen and needed a wingman. So OF COURSE I went in with her, but there was no problem; her cheque was ready, she thanked her two former coworkers and her screechy and abusive (like Katie needs more abusive people in her life, deary me) boss wasn’t there, so all her premonitory butterflies were for naught.

Then we went to Lougheed Mall and checked addresses for previous jobs and got her application to Village de Valeur filled out and I went to Tammy’s mum’s place on the transit, and I composed a song, which, when I woke up this morning and lined it out again turns out be somebody else’s song, drat, so I will have to either chuck the whole thing or sit on the lyrics until something else comes to me.

The house is on Manitoba Street, one of the Manitoba Cottages, it has a plaque and everything. To say that it has been lovingly restored would be an understatement = Janet does not do things by halves. Every single detail about the house, now that it’s for sale (Rob and Janet hope to move to Tsawassen for the sun) is so gorgeous and perfect that my little apartment looks like a barren desert occupied by a paper junkie by comparison. Oh, and I met the wife of a local celebrity while I was there (arts and entertainment variety). This completed the “You Don’t Move in These Circles” feeling. Aside to Lexi – this is a feeling I don’t get when I hang around with you, but this might have something to do with your steadfast refusal to take yourself too seriously, except at exam time.

My contribution to the dinner consisted of moving stuff up and downstairs to the garden (Tammy was taking the stairs mighty slow and I wasn’t much faster as the stairs had been polished to the point of hazard) setting the table and peeling peaches (I detests me some peach fuzz) and trying not to throttle Janet when she was teasing Tammy, who needed very desperately NOT to be teased, given that she had an eye infection.  MY mom would be fussing over me in a nice way; Janet’s response to being told that Tammy was setting her alarm for 45 minutes before the departure time (Tammy flew out to Toronto this morning, sigh) was “What on earth do you need all that time for?” and then she launched into how little time it would take HER.  At which point my angel tripped my demon and piped up, “Well I’m not sure that’s a fair comparison, given the jet lag and the eye infection.”  If my demon had spiked my angel I would have  – well, enough about that.  I would have degenerated into name calling pretty fast, and I was a guest.  Tammy is normally more than capable of looking after herself, but I think she was grateful I said something.

To Janet’s credit, she had a blue glass eyecup (an astonishing thing!) which matched all of her decor, but allowed Tammy to use eyebright tea, which I had been bugging her about since I heard about the infection.  Paul – if you’re reading this – ’nuff said!  We picked the eyebright up at Finlandia, which I had been wanting to go to since I moved to town (they have a new store and it’s gorgeous).  It’s the Nordstrom’s of herbal pharmacies, especially if you’re used to the little holes in wall for Chinese herbal medicine stores. The eyebright provided immediate relief and the swelling went down visibly over the course of the evening.

Then Rob gave me a lift to the Main Station, and so home, except I stopped off to buy cut flowers to perk up my lonely bachelorette pad.

Katie K has returned to Vancouver and we had a rather one sided earflapping last night because she really needed to download about her week and a bit of visiting sick and elderly relatives, cleaning out houses of same, having her accommodation arrangements kicked out from under her with virtually no notice, etc. etc.  My week has been a picnic on Wreck Beach by comparison.

One last bit of family gossip – I dunno how long Maggie and daughter Katie were talking last night after Maggie gave her a ride home (she ended up at Paul’s for dinner, thank goodness, so she had a family day) but I told Katie to call me back if it was before midnight and she didn’t, and that was at 10 after 10…. so I suspect that YET another female family member (Tammy being extended family) was giving her an earful / moral support about her current situation.  Man, I’m so glad there’s other people willing to do the heavy lifting!

Off for coffee…

My brain is 50% boy and 50% girl

I have taken a number of on line tests in the past but today’s was the most detailed… from the bbc website.

As I’ve noted from previous tests, my brain is exactly half boy and half girl.  This will come as no surprise to my lunch time companions, who are as startled by my interest in things no other woman they know gives a toss about as they are by me berating them whenever they make with the sexist cheese.

Off to New West to help Katie with financial stuff.

Sundry and various

I met a man with the largest collection of musicals in BC, possibly Canada.  To give you some idea of the scale of his collection, he moved sometime in the last few years and put the stuff that he could bear to part with on ebay and cleared enough money to buy a house in rural Saskatchewan.  I am going to email him today and ask him if he has a copy of Zou Zou, one of Josephine Baker’s movies.

Tammy had a wonderful time on Gabriola and has promised pix.  I’m going over to her mom’s today to see her before she leaves tomorrow morning.

I am very happy about signing up for the CAN car, and the illiterate SUV drivers who keep parking in that spot are going to think I’m a evil evil hag, because I’m going to start calling for towtrucks on people.  Seriously, why are the people who take that spot almost always SUV drivers?  Was that a rhetorical question?  Is this?
The young man downstairs from me gets one more gimme before I rat him out to the landlord. I have now addressed him personally twice; I will give him three times.  I don’t enjoy being woken up like that and his apologies are wearing thin.

After a decade of living in this town I finally poked my head into Sikora Music down on Hastings.  I picked up a couple of CD’s which will go in the Christmas present pile.  I tried to go into Long and McQuade but they weren’t welcoming enough.  I also emailed L&M a few days back and started my email with “Your website sucks a Greyhound bus station men’s room mop.”  And the webguy emailed me back to acknowledge that I was funny, but didn’t actually address my question.  I know it’s not an e-commerce site, but a list of what snares you carry when I search on “snare” would be useful!!  And why am I suddenly interested in snares?  Well, I’m thinking of some portable and classy percussion, and a snare head with brushes, which I had recently seen used to great effect, got me thinking.  My percussive friends are smiling and nodding.
Katie K is back from Maine and visiting rellies.  She said “The theme for this trip is cognitive dissonance.”  My father is nodding and saying to himself, “That’s just a fancy way of saying, “Can I go home now?””

Dinner with Keith, Kate and Tammy went wonderfully, and I completely kept out of the conversation Tammy had with Katie, since it was everything I’ve been telling her for aeons, except Tammy is both more forceful and more tactful, tact being something I should really work on, except nobody would recognize me.  Keith bitched me out for not inviting Paul, and I phoned Paul to try and get his side of the story (and also to alert him about a possible change of address for Katie), but he appeared unconcerned and hadn’t really expected to be invited.  A whole paragraph detailing why he should be happy he wasn’t invited has been deleted, thank god.
Re the change of address for Katie…. stay tuned.  She’s having her troubles, and now she’s working on graceful exit strategies.

Keith’s first two days of Dispensing Optician school appear to have gone well.  He loves the new campus, says “The air here is better than it was in high school” (not hard) and seems to be thriving on being so busy, although he’s kinda sharper and more brittle than I remember him.  He went on at length, as he tends to do, about writing projects he never actually does anything about (I keep saying, find a comic book artist, there’s less writing) and various media things, like TV Tropes which I forwarded him a link to yonks ago and which is still causing him fits of hysterical laughter.  Keith also recited a William Blake poem, which he recently memorized.  I will now pause while my mother recovers from her swoon of happiness.

I also bought a Moleskine.  I am a little fashionable sheep, but it sure is a pleasure to write on.

Now, since my apartment is tidy and all my clothes are clean, I guess I’ll have to actually do some work before I phone Tammy at nine….  The major projects are:

  • Getting all the pictures in albums and labelling them to the extent I can.
  • Entering my songs into Songwriter (now that after four berloody months I found my list again!!).
  • Purging as many of my books as I can.
  • Re-establishing a filing system.
  • Working on a budget.
  • Practicing on my guitar and mando.

But hark, what scent from yonder café breaks??  I think I’ll go downstairs to the Renaissance and fuel up.

Yippee! My site’s up again

I’ll probably never find out what happened, but 30 hours of downtime was a bit much, and I’ll be looking for a local host. I’ve been posting to my secret free blog instead. I’ve been having a jam-packed vacation; this is the best time off I’ve had since my flying visit to Toronto in February, and DEFinitely more productive. Now if I could just get going on my projects… ;).

I am surfing less internet and watching more movies. I think this is an improvement. I have now seen Zou Zou and Red Shoes in the last 24 hours; next up is King of Jazz.

More walking around and standing still.

Tammy and I walked to Horizons from my apartment this morning.  She’s in better shape than I am, as far as I can tell.  I became more acquainted with the trails around here as well as getting some exercise.  I didn’t exactly stick a gun in her ribs when we got there (ambling around rose gardens and taking pictures of roses was more my speed) but we hung about until the doors opened on the restaurant and I warmly encouraged her to feed me, which she did. Consider the meal rhapsodized about.  Then we walked home.  This time I chose, much to our satisfaction, a more level route.

She’s gone off to a family dinner and now I’m going to go back to an exciting evening of staring off into space, giggling vacantly, and folding laundry.  (Doesn’t that sound bizarre?  none of it’s true except the laundry.)

Standing still

Tonight I did something I very rarely do.  I watched a movie, by myself, all the way through.

I watched Just Like Heaven, with Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo, and I have to say I enjoyed it.  I told a friend on the phone, “If you’re a straight guy, you should only watch this movie if you think it will give you better odds of getting laid.  Otherwise, you should dodge this movie like a bad karate chop.”

My god, I watched a date movie all the way through and liked it.  I’ll be wearing a tinfoil hat before this phase of my life is through, she opined gloomily.

Walking around

Tammy and I poked around the campus yesterday, in between light showers of rain. Nothing was open, and there were very few people around.

I had no idea the public art up on the campus was so hideous. I’d post pics, but nobody would thank me. Tammy cooked a wonderful dinner.

Mike was over briefly – I gave him his prezzie – and then he left again without taking it with him. Oh well, he’ll have to come back for it.

I am having a lovely vacation.

Bonnie called yesterday and we had a very nice earflapping; she’s seen HORDES of relatives. She wryly commented that this was a good vacation not to take her spouse on; I bet he was happy to be left behind.

Tammy here

Tammy and I had a leisurely meal at the Himalayan Restaurant and then earflapped for about six hours and then crashed.  Now we’re up, caffeinated and ready to go to a service at the new location of Beacon, which is the Gathering Place in Port Coquitlam.  I am very much looking forward to it….

Now I have to give Bonnie a call because she is in town and we probably won’t get to meet because of the last minute nature of the visit, but I definitely want to see her if chance affords.