Take that, people who say it’s nothin’ but narcissism.
Also, I have a terrible memory and a blog helps me remember when things happened.
Also, Katie has used my blog to help her remember when distressing and horrific things, as reported by me, happened.
Yesterday Paul and I drove up-island to visit his cousin Ruth in Nanaimo. She’s living on an acre of land and she got it for a steal of a price, and she and her fisherman spouse are living very happily. She has to walk fifteen minutes to get her mail, and another ten to get her eggs, but she’s a five minute drive from a yoga studio and she has her own well, so there.
She made us a fabulously warm welcome, and soon we were deep in talk about cob houses and straw bale houses and the Cuban 5 and the amazing local arts and politics scene, and after Paul re-strung her guitar I said I’m getting my mandolin, and she hauled out her Indian drums (sounds like tablas but they weren’t) and we had a fabulous 90 minutes of jamming. I kept nervously checking the Malahat webcam. Long about 4 we decided to head back.
And it snowed. Paul and I were bemoaning our lack of cameras, because the snow slid down the road signs and just hung there, and some of the visual effects were quite funny. The snow was worse in Victoria than up the Malahat, go figure.
Paul went off to hang with Dr Filk for the evening (more music, somewhere, and a meal in there too) and I grabbed some Mayan Chocolate Haagen Dazs and a small round of Brie (my god, they fell on it like animals…. well behaved, queuing animals) and Darwin had a noisy bath and went to bed and we ate pizza and I started reading The Caryatids by Bruce Sterling and at 7:30 I collapsed. See what a day without coffee can do to me? Also I did all the driving, since Paul has come to the realization that he can tolerate my tailgating and random lane changes way better than vice versa. A couple of hours in the car also allowed us the opportunity for an airing of the grievances (or was more usually the case, the bragging of the amazingness) re the kids. Sometimes it’s good to have a chance to bash away at this stuff so we can present a united front when the next issue comes up….
Woke up at 4, edited the sound files I recorded yesterday of Darwin’s charming vocalizations, finished the Caryatids (three stars but I still want to know where the food of the future will be coming from), showered, and now I’m looking forward to a meal at my Granny’s place of residence and a nice ride home on the ferry, probably late in the afternoon. And I can haz new quilt, which is actually a quilt that my mum made when I was tiny, so I am extremely happy about my ‘haul’. Oh, also my grampa’s memory book (two thick tomes) has been delivered to me in duplicate for Jeff.
So far an AWESOME weekend, and watching Katie motor her way – reading, my god, she’s reading! – through the Sookie Stackhouse books is making me very very happy.
