Month: February 2010

Not a productive day

Yesterday turned into DOWN TIME. I hung out with Katie and Keith; Katie did some very much needed body work on me; I avoided cooking anything (I’ve gone off cooking, which is kinda odd), did a little desultory cleaning and vacuuming, but mostly I loafed and lazed and watched BSG.

I also looked at stamps from 1888.  I looked at part of Granny’s collection, and wow, the aviation themed stamps alone are wild.  But the American postage due stamp from 1888 immediately made me go to the Story Place.

I have swithered over the decision not to go downtown for the afternoon, and I think that I want to be consistent about it.  I have avoided personally taking part in any of the real time Olympic stuff, or going downtown for the duration, and I can’t see changing that.  I could have watched the torch go by at work, and I was a real pill in telling people why I didn’t want to go.  It isn’t just laziness.  It’s a personal distaste for large drunken crowds hemmed in by the largest police presence in Vancouver since the riot at the Hyatt.  So I guess I’ll miss all of the Olympic spark and I guess I may live to regret it, but I doubt it.

I light a candle for all sufferers of depression.

I’m not even going to make a list for today.  I’m just going to be very happy to be alive, do some singing, watch a trifling, unimportant hockey game and get to church.   I laughed like a drain when I saw the minister mention that since church starts at the ungodly hour of 9:30, nobody has the excuse not to come to church because of the gold medal hockey game.  Finland got the bronze.

Slovakia 2, Canada 3

Yes, we watched the game last night; ScaryClown came over and we drank beer and ate pizza and nearly bounced off the couch with the tension during the incredible last 10 minutes of the game.

I light a candle for the victims of the quake in Chile.  It’s a geologically active time.

Talking to Chipper on the phone; using my brand new used vacuum cleaner from Granny on the filthy upstairs floors, bathing kitty, digging a couple of holes in the back yard for dirt to go in, putting John’s songs on an mp3 player, getting my camera repaired…. church tomorrow.  Lots of stuff on this weekend, lots of work, lots of laundry.

Whinging

I feel really antsy these days.  I’ve tried really hard to quit whining on the blog, because there’s simply nothing so illuminating and disheartening than going back three years and seeing that the events which exercised me so aren’t even memorable three years later.  Not always, and of course the really memorable stuff doesn’t necessarily make it to the blog if I think it might cause me legal hassles later.  So, a sampling of suitably comstocked whining: Continue reading Whinging

You will note that the blog is having issues

I lost my post from Sunday, and the comments added themselves to the next post.  Jeff and I are monitoring it, but we had a talk this morning and we think it’s a user error (that would be, uh, me) combined with wireless issues, possibly.

I’m really trying to commit to making church a better experience for everybody, so I loaned my Kaossilator to one of the youngsters on Sunday.  He stopped being bored, instantly, and I helped solidify Beacon’s reputation for musicality…

Work yesterday was excellent; managed to straighten some things out and resolve an outstanding customer issue to his satisfaction and mine.  Also closed some cases, always a good thing.  My open case load is approximately 70 right now, but in real terms it’s less than twenty actionable cases.  I have to leave a lot open or they disappear from my consciousness as requiring action.

I think the worst of the software issues is resolved, but the phone system still drops out when I go on break or work offline.  The really weird part is that it can do this IN THE MIDDLE OF A CALL.  The screen goes dark and I’m still talking to the customer… say wha?

Singing didn’t happen on Sunday – too many people cancelled out on the jam.

Now, coffee and a shower, not necessarily in that order.  Hope everybody has a glorious day and gets out in the sunshine.

I need to make a new list.

Jeff is a genius.  The bicycle pump I thought I broke just needed adjustment, the vacuum cleaner from Granny works perfectly (the missing bit was hiding in plain sight) and he helped me with my blog AND picking up the freezer order.  Happy sigh.

Paul and I walked in Deer Lake Park on Sunday and I saw my first turtle of the season.  Yay!

(Repost) It is with amusement and pride that I announce

(Update: Found the missing post, restored it and reposted this one which was wiped out when I restored the previously missing one. This won’t be on the final exam. — Jeff)

That the Celebration of Life will be called:

I’m Not Dead Yet

A celebration of the very much alive Denis Probst

I have lots of reasons to be pleased about this, but no explanations.

That which does not kill you makes you stronger

Did you ever hear such BS?  It amazes me that expressions like this can exist.

Yesterday was a simply glorious day – I policed up the patio area, swept the back stairs which had accumulated a lot of debris, ran a couple of loads of laundry, got to the place where I buy floral essences so I could make my perfume (I was almost out…), ordered frozen meat because the freezer is empty, and then went in and paid for it and picked up a couple of other items, picked up some treats so they’d be ready when Jeff and Paul got back, bought laundry supplies, dropped by Katie’s place and tossed some of said laundry supplies onto her deck (o look it’s raining soap!), practiced guitar for the housefilk which I ended up not going to because I reacted to something Paul did by going into sniper mode but I’ll cheerfully take the responsibility for it all because I got to talk to uh, someone, about it who put it all in perspective with a few well chosen words, put Margot out in the back yard so she could play with the squirrels, brushed her half a dozen times and still got masses of fur from her, helped Paul and Jeff move boxes and furniture into the house, cleaned the kitchen, cashed all the cheques I had lying around (I had four hundred dollars in cheques lying around, some dating to November for cry eye), ran the dishwasher and unloaded it, bought & replaced the battery in the kitchen timer, got rid of all the previous tenants’ mail by marking it return to sender and putting back in the mail, gave money to the BCCLA, wrote out my next installment of my church pledge AND put it in my purse, encouraged Katie to message her dad to ensure that the furniture she wanted got offloaded directly into her house, changed the sheets in the guest room and prepped it for the influx of new boxes, bought bus tickets AND put them in my purse, emptied the ashtray on the back deck, greeted the season’s first fly as it zoomed through the back door, aired out the house, paid bills, got the date set for Denis’ Celebration of Life (which I am thinking of entitling “I’m not dead yet and I’m not THAT nice” in keeping with his express wishes) and in the middle of the day I got out of the house yet again so I could sit on Shay’s deck with her and Suzanne and Rita and just chill while watching the incredible view for an hour. Shay got a gig with Comedy Courage, so she’s going to be helping mentally ill people learn standup, a GREAT idea.  The day wouldn’t have gone so smoothly if I hadn’t borrowed Paul’s car, for which I thank him.

Now I’m going to drive Jeff to Budget to drop off the truck and then go to church.  With luck I’ll remember to hand over my pledge check.  Before I drive Jeff over, chocolate chip waffles, coffee and deli smoked bacon.  There is nothing bacon can’t fix.  I wonder how soon I will be eating transgenic bacon… apparently the first transgenic pig has been approved for market in Canada.  Strange days we be living in.  Oh, and singing tonight with Orange You Glad.

Miss Crankypants sits in her corner

I have lots and lots to complain about.  Like, lots.  But I’ve decided to save my best and purest bile for real live people instead of the intarboobs, and the saddest and teariest of complaints for other real live people, and the horrid consequences of brutal self-examination strictly to myself. Continue reading Miss Crankypants sits in her corner

various

  1. I learned that Margot fur is unbelievably flammable.  On a suggestion from Paul, I took some of her combed out fur and fired it up on the deck.  I expected it to self extinguish and it went up like an Olympic torch.  Just to prove how gloriously overbred and candidly fireplug stupid she is, Margot nosed the dying embers.  GAAA!  As you can imagine, I watched the lighting of the chalice candle for the growth meeting last night with some small anxiety.
  2. It was a very good meeting last night, and I’m glad I could host even if my house was a mess.  As I remarked to the folks, I started a full time job the same day my Granny died, so the place was clean enough to hold a meeting in but not up to spec for tidiness.
  3. Jeff and Paul will be renting a truck to fetch the last of Granny’s things on Friday.
  4. Keith interviewed for and got a part time job starting March 1st.  He will continue to work with Ted on weekends.
  5. Katie is still not working, but if I responded to boredom by getting facial piercings, however attractive, I might be making myself harder to employ as well.
  6. We’re working our way through BSG again.
  7. Work is good, except for some software bobbles.vv

I’m still wiping away tears

Greg and Tracey and Garry and Diane just sent me flowers for the ‘job well done’ for Granny’s memorial.  Words cannot adequately express what it means to me, so I’ll just say a) the flowers are gorgeous and b) that on top of the emotion of Canada scoring 6 zip on Norway is almost too much.

And I just pulled choc chip cookies from the oven, so I have lots to celebrate.

Tuesday WTF roundup

There is no gravity; the Earth sucks. Gravity does not exist as a separate property of matter, it’s a byproduct of entropy.  Go go gadget string theory!  Oh, and this is a neener neener to Jeff; I have supported string theory since the instant I first heard about it, and he pooh poohs the notion.

This is not gonna end well. DNA REV 2.0

Olympics, so no Castle.  Wah.

Italian hillside heads for the rhubarb.

Free trade (in quotes) and massive local corruption and crappy infrastructure make for African starvation.

All five of us (me, Paul, Keith, Kate and Jeff) were here last night eating, not drinking, and watching TV.  That’s right, Jeff let the beer run out.  Secretly I am pleased, but you wouldn’t have been able to tell from my undeviating stream of complaint last night.

Do you suppose Canada can actually learn from the mistakes of others?

Greece is hosed and the Euro dooooomed. Doomed I tell you.