Month: March 2009

Katie cut my hair

It looks great, and by a special act of my own brain and conscience, I am not posting a pic.

When last I was in Victoria we visited with Granny, and ate lunch in the family room at the Cedars, and then went back to her place where we visited some more and were given pieces of MY FAVORITE CHOCOLATE CAKE and I took a third of it home and had LITERALLY A WAFER THIN SLICE and I am now recollecting in tranquillity what made me nearly MURDER MY BROTHER AS HE SLEPT because he ate the rest of it no doubt thinking I’d already pigged out on it.

Of course I don’t want to murder him now, that’s why I’m being so calm about it.  Once I realized that all I had had to do was put a label on it saying half for you and half for me there was no way I could still be angry.  And besides, I’d just come through years of teenagers and their houseguests, what made me think any treats were sacrosanct?  I’d have had to hide it under my bed, and then I’D have eaten it all.

Eniwess, Katie cut Granny’s hair while we were there.  It looked great (as it berloody well should, the money we’ve spent on it, like her insane amounts of effort have meant nothing) and triggered many compliments.  And every time she got a compliment she could beam proudly and announce that her great granddaughter had cut her hair.  I know that this is not exactly what most people think of when they think of the benefits of old age, but I’m sure Granny wouldn’t trade her haircut for a gold ring right now.

I just had a funny idea for a corner of this site.  Make a link called “Naked pictures of me” and each week change what the words that were on the page would say.  For example.  “Be careful who you complain to about this.” “They were here last week.” “You have now been here long enough for me to check your IP address.”  “Fancy meeting you here.”  “My coworkers never cease to amaze me.” “Due to technical difficulties, we are unable to bring you the previously scheduled programming.” “Some people will believe anything.”  “Sorry, you’re going to have to follow me home if you want to see me naked.” “Sorry.” “See you at Wreck Beach.”  “I didn’t know you cared.” “Now you don’t know which is worse, that you clicked on the link in the first place, or that you’re disappointed there’s nothing here.”

Moosekiss and weather

I had yet another wretched night of insomnia on Saturday night and was so messed up it rather upset my plans for the day.  I suspect that even if I’d been compos enough to go to work I would have thought twice given what the weather did yesterday, which was everything including blow really hard.  Instead I cooked a couple of meals and stayed in bed and slept for a good chunk of the day.

I’m feeling a lot better today.  Better enough to post this moose picture forwarded from Leo, provenance unknown. There’s another moose in there for good measure.

busy morning

Off to the clinic for an early appointment, (Jeff gave me a lift) and then I went completely berserk.  Wandered into a cooking supply place, got a bunch of kitchen gadgets I actually needed, and a bunch I don’t but had to have.  Bought a new handbag (basically a black shopping bag with zippers, just barely big enough to hold my laptop).  Bought two stems of white freesia.  Walked from Cambie and Broadway to Kingsway and Broadway.  On the way poked my head into the Luddite’s place of work and got off the perfect line… the Luddite’s boss said, “For me?” when he saw the flowers and I just grinned and said, “No, for him!”  which amused the Luddite no end. He’s much the same as always, except more so.  Of course he wouldn’t take the flowers from me so I got to be a smart ass to his boss AND keep the flowers.  Then I wandered into a mattress store and after telling the guy to wake me in an hour after finding the perfect mattress, purchased two single mattresses with covers, to be delivered next Saturday. That’s so Keith has a proper bed when he sleeps over.  Also, as much as I like the Fjord Queen bed it’s too damned big for my little bedroom, so I’m going to go back to sleeping on the floor.  I have a week to reorganize things so when the mattresses show up I have places to put them.  With that done I walked to the next bus stop and went home, many hundreds of dollars poorer.   But I can julienne things, and I have proper garlic technology, and I found out where to buy a cast iron grill for the oven, and I got two cute little egg poachers and promptly used them to make our lunch (Jeff declared himself contented), and I can now properly clean tea and coffeepots, and I got to listen to the chef in the back (there are cooking classes at the back of the store) shriek and giggle in a most entertaining way. I also got to listen to an openly gay man tell the gal at the counter that the store was worse than crack, and I was in no position to debate the point….

Now:

I assault the bathroom and remove scum and squick;

I do some on line banking to backstop my purchases;

I run some laundry;

I do some mending;

I fix my little green hat so it sits on my head properly;

I review the list of things to do that I made while waiting for the very sweet woman who saw me at a clinic (never get two perimenopausal women in the same room discussing the joys thereof, it’s wonderful for us but murder on the appointment schedule).

It has to be spring.  I got my mo back.

From Bloomberg today

more China stuff…  Good luck with that!

China, the U.S. government’s largest creditor, is asking “the U.S. to maintain its good credit, to honor its promises and to guarantee the safety of China’s assets,” Wen said today in Beijing at a press briefing after the annual meeting of the legislature.

“China should be concerned, in that they hold roughly a third of their almost $2 trillion in FX reserves in U.S. Treasuries,” said Michael Pond, an interest-rate strategist in New York at Barclays Capital Inc. one of 16 primary dealers that trade with the Federal Reserve, in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “As a Chinese official put it a couple weeks ago, and I’ll paraphrase, he said, where else will we go?”

China held $696 billion of U.S. government securities at the end of last year, 46 percent more than 12 months earlier.

Money-market rates show short-term borrowing costs are still increasing as banks hoard cash after almost $1.2 trillion of writedowns and losses since the start of 2007.

Self-checkout fun at Crappy Tire

The new local CT has a bunch of those newfangled self-checkout things. I generally use those when available as they seem faster than the alternative.

Yesterday I was there picking up a bread maker. When I started the checkout process, the attendant for the self-checkout stalls was patiently trying to explain something to the woman at the stall next to mine. Whatever. I scanned the breadmaker box and obediently placed it on the platform at the side of the self-checkout machine. So far so good. Keep in mind that I’ve had problems with these machines before, but usually the reason is obvious. Once a machine gagged on an item I was buying because it was flagged as a hazardous chemical. Thanks to 9/11 no doubt.

Anyway, things were chugging along and then the machine suddenly stopped and said “WAIT FOR ATTENDANT”. No indication of what the problem was. At this point I looked over at the attendant, but she was still wrangling with the woman in the next stall. Clearly she wouldn’t be able to help me until she finished with this person. So I started to pay attention to the conversation. Apparently, the woman couldn’t understand what was happening with her transaction when she tried to use her Canadian Tire money. Here’s how it works, and believe me it ain’t rocket science: you scan your items, the machine totals it all up, then asks if you have any CT money. If you do, you enter the amount. The amount you enter reduces your total. This was what the attendant kept repeating to the woman in the next stall, but she started getting mad and flailing around as if someone was trying to put one over on her. I lowered my head to my cart and started gently banging my head. People in the next line noticed too and I watched one woman start to form helpful words; but presumably she figured out that there was no getting through to this woman and didn’t bother.

Suddenly my machine woke up and my checkout process continued. Yay! So I carried on and was almost finished when just as suddenly it stopped again: WAIT FOR ATTENDANT. Argh! I glanced over at the attendant, who shot me a sympathetic look and continued to try to reassure the clueless woman that she was not being ripped off. I resumed my head-banging. Ms. Clueless finally threw up her hands, declared that “it doesn’t make any sense” and decided to ignore her doubts and move on. At that point my machine once again revived and I completed my transaction. Phew!

On my way past the attendant, I asked if she knew why my machine had stopped twice yet recovered each time apparently on its own. She told me, quietly, that she knew exactly why this had happened: because The Clueless Wonder’s rather large rear end, in all her flailing, had impinged upon the machine I was using and caused its scale to register weights not in alignment with the items I had purchased. So THAT’S why they make you put your items on the little platform!

I do not enjoy making fun of people with physical issues, especially not in public. That’s just not how I roll. But believe me, if I had known that this ignorant, enormously overweight woman was holding up my progress both because she was incredibly stupid AND because her fat behind was interfering with the machine, I would have politely invited her to move her fat, ignorant ass out of the way.

Fresh water

We watched the Planet Earth episode on Fresh Water.  I can’t recommend this series highly enough, especially in HD.

I had a couple of good days last week, but I’m all wobbly again.  Spring – work – the weather change.

Egg fried rice for dinner.

My new friend is off in Winnipeg visiting rellies.  We will get together upon his return.

I looked up the words liturgy and worship yesterday to see if they could be used in an atheist context, and guess what, they can!  An atheist liturgy is not only possible, it might even be desirable.

House buying

I have been watching the news, and paying attention to the details of my own life, and I am arriving at the sad conclusion that buying a house in Vancouver is looking increasingly like a stupid idea.  In fact, until the Olympics are paid off – and just as I predicted when we won the fool  things … how can you call it winning when it means grabbing your ankles first to be sexually toyed with and then to give your masters a convenient way of hanging you upsidedown to shake your pockets out – it’s turning into a black hole of corruption and price increases while Gordon’s chosen siphon off the goodies.

So local taxes will skyrocket – in the middle of a depression – and anybody left standing when the second and third waves of layoffs and downsizings will get to pay – and at the same time the government will use it as an excuse to avoid increasing services or even paying for them at all, and why not, everybody who belongs to a union is a socialist anyway, right?

I am going to buy something someplace else. I just haven’t figured out exactly where yet, or when, and there’s lots else I don’t yet know.