Month: February 2008

Waiting

Boy, it didn’t take long for my mood to change to something more sombre! I waited at the airport until 10 after 10, and Tammy phoned to say she was stuck in SF. She sounded like she’d been through the old wringer washer. The plane she was booked on ‘went mechanical’ as they say. On a whim I phoned Paul and found out he was almost done work and hadn’t brought the car, so I bought a magazine and sat in the parking lot and drove him home. I poked my head in to say hey to Keith – who just got 40 out of 40 on a practical test, how a mother’s heart sings – found out that somebody had phoned in a ‘creditable threat’ whatevah the hell that means to David Lam campus so he had no school today – and got home around midnight.

Tammy offered to pay for the CAN car booking, I couldn’t believe it. After what she’d been through my troubles seemed pretty minor.

Happy

Despite everything I’m happy.  Things are clicking along very well in my personal life.  It’s Facebook style complicated but loads of fun.  The Luddite has sent me a number of Muppet Show links, including Shirley Bassey singing Goldfinger.  With Turkish subtitles.  All Hail the Inertnests!

Also the last line of his last email he made me laugh so hard I had a five minute coughing spasm afterwards. I am however getting better and I figured out which cough medicine to buy so I’m getting less coughing and fewer side effects from the cough medicine, all a good thing.  Also in the email was a querulous “Why would your daughter want to meet me? If she wants to inspect me she can come on down to the shop and I won’t even know who she is.”  Men, o my god.  The answer to that question is “Because I never shut up about you, how’s that?”
My apartment is somewhat cleaner, but with all the boxes, quite cluttered.  I am trying, in the midst of the chaos, to keep all my tax receipts in one place…..

Two more days and Jeff is here!!!! For good.  Katie says, “It’ll be weird having him here,” and I said, “Like you swapped uncles.”  For Dr. Filk is in Victoria, and Jeff is here.  “I’m used to him being far away.”  For me it will be weird getting through the “Meet my crazy friends stage.”  I know he’ll like Kung Fu Mike and vice versa – the rest of them who the hell knows.  It’s not like ALL of my friends are crazy (I can HARDLY WAIT until he meets ScaryClown, he’ll either like him or loathe him, and versy vice) but they are certainly pegged out against the smarter end of the spectrum and they have that delightful Fun Loving, Common Decency, Brutally Practical combination that makes me melt. Melt Melt Melt.  I heart my friends.

My Buffy Valentines are all over the office.  Te hee.

I’m thinking of giving cooking lessons once I’m in the new place.  Everybody tells me I can cook.  Then they wish they could do it.  Oh, I guess this is not the time to start fantasizing about lesson plans. I learned how to cook an omelette in the nuker from Keith the other day…. he fed me last weekend, I guess I forgot to mention it.  Did I mention that I was happy?  Stressed, but happy.

I light a candle for my grannie.  Without going into details, she was in and out of hospital on a pre-existing condition and everything is managed and she slept in her own bed last night.  I am very grateful that she’s living in the same town as relatives who adore her and help her every chance they get. I light a candle for all the grannies who face old age without much help or sympathy.

jammed up but wanting further punishment (tech report)

Between Jeff moving to town, work, packing, Tammy visiting and the state of my apartment (somewhere between DIRE and GRIM)  I am feeling a trifle blank.  Loki has remarked that he enjoyed the biscotti I mailed him, or plans to if he can get close enough to them to consume them; myself, I am just amazed that I got to the post office while it was open with his address, sufficient cash and the biscotti in hand.

I will mention that instead of using paper or styrofoam peanuts I used puffed wheat as packing material.  A stroke of genius; perhaps my definition of genius is more pliable than yours.

Anyway, here’s the drill:

I will mail you biscotti by the end of April if you are a tonstant weader and you send me your snail mail address (or if I already have your snail mail address and you ask for them).  After all, I talk about the damned things all the time.  I am thinking of doing an instructional video on biscotti making and putting it on Youtube, as well, which you have to admit would be odd, especially if I just used the mike and cam built into my MacBook (I think I will use the camera instead and have Katie help me with it).  Twice in the last week I’ve had people tell me I should do it commercially, but that would be like charging money for sex, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but you know what I mean.  (The rest of this paragraph deleted).

I hear Take Two Interactive won’t take 2 billion from Electronic Arts.  In six weeks they are going to wish they had.  I cheerfully predict it.  They will be called Didn’t Take Two in the future, and are they gonna look dumb. (Take Two makes the Grand Theft Auto series and EA is a local game powerhouse, although their UI’s for various games use restroom mops for floss at least according to some gamers I know).
I hear bars are pulling people in by having Guitar Hero and Rock Band nights.  Kung Fu Mike tells me that Rock Band is so ridiculously fun that it’s amazing it’s legal.  I prefer to play live music for real people, but that’s just my Mennonite roots showing.

The new MacBooks have gesture support. I always buy too early and get out too late….

aiyeee 

indeed 

Paranoia for breakfast. 

I can think of a couple of people I’d fill this out for…. 

ROFL 

I suppose worse things could fly into your hand as you’re coming in to work in the morning. 

DJ kitty scratch. 

I had some dreams they were clouds in my coffee. 

I am so easily amused. 

That’s all for now.  So much for getting up at 3:45 in the morning……

The week in prospect

Tammy is coming to visit this weekend and my brother is moving to Vancouver this weekend.  I am hopping from one foot to the other excited.

A lot of people think I am quite odd for wanting to live with my brother (many comments about how “I could never live with MY brother in a million years”) but I think this is the wave of the future for a lot of baby boomers.  Tammy being here means I can’t help with the move proper but after I drop her off at the airport I’ll be over to the new place helping kick stuff into corners.  As Jeff has more stuff it’s good I’ll be moving in second as it will be a serious inducement to get rid of stuff.  I’ve already gotten rid of one box of boox and more to come (I joined bookcrossing.com).  It’s a wrench giving away books.  In fact, it’s virtually impossible, but I will have little room in the new place – essentially about one third of the floor space I have now – so goodbye sofa of Morpheus (does anybody want a REALLY AMAZING SOFA?) and the ditzy Ikea furniture I bought when I moved in.  Goodbye stupid desk.  Some of the good furniture is going into storage, but most of it, I freely admit, is trash, including all the bookshelves.
The cold continues apace.   I got more cough syrup last night but was able to sleep without it. A detailed enumeration of my symptoms can be collapsed down to the heartfelt, “Eew, gross,” so we’ll just leave it at that.

I have one last family bit of news.  As far as I can determine, Katie has actually quit smoking.  I’ve been coming and going on it myself but I haven’t had a cigarette in about two weeks, and Katie’s been off for a week.  Given the temptation – she’s currently living with smokers – I’m sure it’s a hard thing, but she’s also broke, and that helps.

An open letter to the Defence Minister

February 24, 2008

The Honourable Peter Gordon MacKay
Minister of National Defence
National Defence Headquarters
Major-General George R. Pearkes Building
101 Colonel By Drive
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
K1A 0K2

Dear Sir:

I was alarmed to learn via the National Post that Canada is currently
negotiating an agreement with the United States to allow American
troops on Canadian soil and vice versa for the purposes of mutual
assistance during civil emergencies.

There is no question that the US and Canada as part of NATO must
rehearse and communicate coordinated military maneuvres and strategy.
American troops on Canadian soil, even in the event of an emergency,
is an entirely different — and to me, horrifying – prospect and unless
the locality affected by the disaster (ie province, municipality)
specifically asked for the assistance and expertise of the US military
and coordinated the request with the federal government, not to be
borne.

Why do we want US troops on Canadian soil when they mismanaged the
Katrina response so badly that the US became the shame of the
developed world?  Civilian Canadian responders were on the ground in
the lower lying parishes faster than the US military anyway.

As a citizen of Canada and resident of BC, the first thing I thought
when I read that is that we’re going to have US troops walking up and
down the streets of Whistler in full combat gear during the Olympics
in 2010.  I can think of other, equally gloomy and distasteful
scenarios.

Unless the full text of the agreement is publicized prior to
government approval (I am assuming that this will be passed by an
order in council rather than being exposed to the harsh light of
parliamentary democracy) this proposed coziness with the American
military is a looming disaster for Canadian civil rights and
sovereignty.

Please publicize the details of the agreement.  Perhaps I’m upset over
nothing — but at this point I can hardly be sure.

Yours very truly,

Allegra Sloman