Month: August 2009

Sundry and various

Laundry all done.  Much practicing on mando yesterday, at least 90 minutes and my fingers are all callous-y again.

Family barbecue with lamb, chicken and steak (mmmm) and garlic bread and pan fried enoki mushrooms and couscous and greek salad and beer and green tea ice cream.

Katie got her documentation from the Hair Design School – she passed all exams with flying colours and got her certificate.  Yeah!  Should make job hunting a bit easier. We celebrated her success but she skated out right after True Blood to go keep an eye on a friend of hers (long story, likely tinged with fiction).  But it was great to have the fambly including Mike to dins.

MANY WASPS…. the funniest incident was when I was done with my steak and an extremely determined wasp tried to fly off with a hunk of meat still attached to the steak by a tiny thread of connective tissue.  He kept trying to lift off and then whizzed around like a tiny tethered helicopter, setting down, trying to chew through….. I finally took pity and took the knife to the meat and he took off, flying low but triumphant.  Keith had an interview yesterday, it didn’t go as well as the previous one but he is still looking and still hopeful.

Margot was batting at Gizmo’s tail the other day.  He just lay there, looking long suffering.  Gizmo and Eddie are both, very suddenly, much more affectionate with me.  Eddie has gotten up into my lap a couple of times (he’s not a lap cat).  Margot sticks to Giz like glue when they are outside at night.  Hopefully he will teach her not to be an idiot around cars.  She already runs away if you come up to her outside, always a good sign.

Swithering turns into action.

Yesterday I decided I’d had quite enough of lying around feeling sorry for myself, especially after I realized that my last week of angsty angstiness was hormonally triggered.  So I got up and reorganized the hell hole that is the plastic container cupboard, cleaned the kitchen, washed the dishes, ran two loads of laundry and tidied my room.

Paul called around noon and said he would come over to sing and play for a while and then take me to Jericho.  This was an extremely welcome idea – he turned up around 4.   Paul put some very tasty ornamentation and frills of the guitar variety overtop Home on Derange and Lifeline on John’s old six string Guild; then he made a face and said, “These strings are dead!”  Yes, I made the natural joke, in exceeding bad taste, that follows on to this.  We examined our cases for replacement strings (my mando sounded like shite) and had a socially mandated “Not only do we tune because we care, we occasionally change the strings, too!” session.  Zow.  My mando, never quiet, now sounds quite brassy.  I am about to inspect it for how well it stayed in tune.  Funny side note…. I tried tightening the strings without putting the bridge back.  Bwa ha ha.  Fortunately Paul didn’t laugh; just advised me to loosen a bit and then see if I could slide the bridge in, which didn’t take too much effort.  I may have to adjust it a trifle as I never seem to get the octave to line back up when I change the strings.  The colour difference between the old and the new strings made me laugh.  Paul said, Recycle them, and I said, nope, they aren’t recyclable.  The chart on the fridge settled the argument, and he said, quite reasonably, that if the metal recyclers take them it’s odd that the city doesn’t.  So they went in the trash, but we tried.

I was having such a good time singing and playing I wanted to drag my feet and not go to Jericho; Paul was firm.  “After 4 days in the hangar I want to be out doing something” – so we went.

AS ALWAYS I was glad we went; there were (just in the opening acts): miniature bagpipe.  Banjo. Steel drum; tight three part a capella harmony; penny whistle; lovely folksongs, newly minted and strictly trad.  Although, how you do Barbara Allen on the steel drum might be one of those things ya can’t picture until you see it.  (Answer, very well, thanks, it was very well done.)  For once I didn’t play myself – didn’t feel the need.

Crashed at Planet Bachelor; woke in the morning to the sounds of Keith puttering and the divine scent of coffee.  Got up – no Keith; from the back door being unlocked and the dearth of cream I assumed he’d gone off to fetch breakfasty stuff.  He came back and was just so irrepressibly cheerful and productive as he made himself a yummy brekky (I had cherry strudel and coffee with floods of cream for brekky, bad me – Keith had eggs).

He has an interview Thursday.  I have a good feeling about it.  He’s off to Ted’s optical joint to volunteer and keep his customer skills up while he looks for work.

Sometime in the next few minutes birthingway should show up and drop off the clipping bag for the lawn mower, and if she forgets again, I will just smile and expect her next week instead.  I don’t feel unplugged from time – that’s hard to do when I talked to Unca Dave on the phone this morning – but I don’t feel the whirling urgent torrent of it the way I did when the kids were smaller and there was always something emergent.

While I was at Jericho last night LTGW called.  Things aren’t great at the old stomping grounds, but he has his parachute packed.  It was great to hear his voice; I don’t miss work at all but I sure miss the smiling faces of the folks, as was brought serenely home to me at Brian’s birthday bash.

Today, I jump on the cycle and do a shop, and then a family feast on the q, the whole fam damily plus Mike, and a huge couple of salads, and something sweet and cold for dessert.  And I should likely get more beer.  Later, Katie will come over.  And then True Blood again, cause that just never gets old.

Oh, and I got a Lone Wolf and Cub movie out of the library – maybe we’ll watch it, Mike and Keith are ENORMOUS fans of the series.  Mike even gave Keith his Lone Wolf and Cub t-shirt, which he prizes.

So I’m feeling better, but singing and playing with people always does that for me.

Crabby at the craigslist again

Everything in italics is quoted from Anonymous Dude’s ad.  This is what I wanted to email him but I decided to mock him on my blog instead.  He is in search of A Muse.

I am absolutely astounded by your craigslist advertisement.

Good day. I am a writer in need of a woman who would like to assist me in typing and editing several works of prose and poetry. I am a fun loving and easy going man with a great deal of interests.

Uh, that would be a great many interests, or a large number of interests.

I could be described as accentric,

No, you couldn’t, because that isn’t a word.

but I will except that as an artists perogitive.

And perogitive isn’t a word either.  Except should be accept. Artists should read artist’s.

I am also a true romantic and adventurer who is world savy and passionate.

You mean savvy, which looks less and less likely.

If you would like to be involved in the creative process send me a reply and I will send you a link to the stories I am working on presently.

You don’t need a muse, you need spell-check.  Good luck with your search.  If you were trying to be funny with all the typos and problems with usage, it didn’t work; a woman with any sensitivity or smarts regarding the English language would be as taken aback as I was.  If, on the other hand, English isn’t your native language, congratulations; you have achieved success in appearing to be a native speaker with a learning disability.

I had insomnia

Now I feel rather spooky and fragile.

Katie is coming over today regarding job hunt.

I finished “Redden the water”.

I uploaded a few more things onto the Portfolio portion of my site.

Jeff and I did a small shop; he made a Value Village run and we made a couple of stops at various computer stores.

Visit from Jenise

Jenise from church came by yesterday and I fed her dinner and she brought the china I got for Katie’s trousseau.  Yeah, I know I am insane, but I’d never seen Royal Doulton with a platinum pattern before and Katie likes silver and dislikes gold.  Jenise pronounced my split pea soup with ham good to eat.  I am so happy she came by.

Then Keith came by and we watched True Blood.  Woo hoo!  It was a good one… the Eric centric episodes normally are.

Brian C’s 50th.

The Charbaums very kindly put up their land for a party; the usual gang of well loved friends was there, as was a proper portable Finnish sauna.  Yay is for Jarmo.  Mike and I slipped away at midnight; he had to go look after his Spuddy-buddy.  I could have spent the night, but I didn’t want Mike driving back by himself.  No, he wasn’t impaired; he’d quit drinking around 8:30; I wanted him to have the company on the long drive back.

The downside is that somehow, probably because I was sitting in Very Bad Chairs, I have put my hip out very badly.  I suspect this is actually referred back pain.  I am stumping round like an old lady.  Jeff will be back with pain killers and milk shortly, and then I’ll make brekky and start laundry and all that domestic style stuff.

I got to meet Braden, Jerome and Shannon’s baby. Never in my life have I seen a 15 day old child with that much blonde hair.  We’re not talking that flossy blonde hair you get on babies, this is like Spike’s do in Buffy, and there is SO much.  I got to see Sarah and Ian’s young pjokk, and had a boo at Vijay’s two gorgeous boys (oldest is 8 already… and I can remember Vijay going through hell trying to get Lakshmi into the country… how long ago it seems) and then there was Elise and Arden (Elise is heartbreakingly gorgeous at almost three) and there were Sigrin and Lobo and Max the dogs, and Ariel, Megan’s daughter, in pre med at UBC while her parents explode with pride. Jenn and Rob, Kyi and May were there… Wally …. Tom U… Otto… Mike of course and Jim E., all the good folks.  Jarmo and Susana, without the boys.  Remember when the boys locked me in the outhouse?  How long ago that was.  Brian said friends and relatives he hadn’t seen in years were there; he was a little overwhelmed.

Next Friday is Sarah’s last at Xantrex.  I’m going to the golf course to see her off.

We didn’t have a campfire…. we respected the fire ban and used a portable campstove on ‘simmer’ for a fire. A beautiful, happy, mellow time was had by all.  Yes, I went in the sauna; yes, I let Jarmo beat me with hot wet birch branches.  It felt UNBELIEVABLY GOOD.  Especially on my back. It was so funny sitting outside the tent and listening to other folks get whacked… the noises!  People might have gotten the wrong idea…..

Storm Brewing Keg.  Jarmo fries.  Nuff said.

Spot the error!!!

This really cheeses me off.  The article says that the Pew Survey identifies under two percent each for Americans identifying as atheist or agnostic.  But if you look at the survey the total percentage of atheist, agnostic and nothing in particular is over 16%, much more in line with my own anecdotal observation that about 20% of the population is unchurched and lovin’ it.  This survey is the kind of thing that could cause theists to believe that atheists should shut up as they are less than three percent of the population.

I would LOVE to see a properly constructed survey for Canada.