Month: March 2010

Today at work

Mike McG said, “And that will be when there’s a third iteration of a snowball fight in hell,” with respect to a request I made.  Okay, it was unreasonable, but did you have to come back with such a quotable quote?

The IT guys continue to rock.  I won’t say why, cause you know, but they do.

Ham scone for breakfast.  And to think I didn’t like ham, once upon a time.

The two things I had to do today are already done.

Back to work.

Denis’ Celebration

Things I learned.

Food first, talk second.  You would think this was obvious, but it bears repeating.

The Beacon food volunteers ought to be running the world as nobody does anything better with the budget they have.

Denis’ grandchildren rock.  Sean’s anecdote was perfectly tuned to the mood of the room.

Denis got his wish, and got a couple of scoldings from various people.  So no, he isn’t perfect.  The scoldings were also perfect….

If you ask a crowd of Beaconites for a drum roll, please, you WILL get one.

I really HATE it when I get people’s names wrong, and it happened twice.  I am not sure who besides the principals noticed, but oh how I go all squeaky chalk when that happens.

My refusal to have a set speech worked perfectly.  When people weren’t coming up, I vamped from his little book of reminiscences (I brought copies for the family and the Lay Chaplaincy Committee, under whose aegis the celebrations took place), and that worked really well.

Denis should have been miked for his poem but the darned cable didn’t go that far.  Grr.  Next time, guest of honour closer to Mike Rofone.

When everybody keeps their remarks brief, heartfelt and to the point, MC’s job is MUCH easier.

As you can see I’m much more able to talk about yesterday now I’ve had seven WHOLE hours of sleep.  As for my performance as the service coordinator yesterday, I would have imploded if Rev. Katie hadn’t helped me out so much.  *Note to self, get the music up to the podium, ya ditz.* Although I heard that my rendition of the children’s story was very good.  I said, “Never saw the story before today,” and folks were startled, so I guess all the weirdness and confusion going on in my brain were not communicated to the littles.  Phew.

Last thing I dreamed before I woke

I was having a dispute with a neighbour (I was living by myself again in a walkup apartment, like THAT would ever happen) and she chose to respond to it by drowning three kittens in my ornamental fountain, which was in the entranceway to the apartment.  They were still warm when I picked them up.  I guess bathing Margot so frequently (she had a poopy bum again so she got bathed this weekend) is making me used to the feel of wet cat fur, because I could feel their warm little bodies as I picked them up.  I thought, who could do such a thing? And then I remembered.  My subconscious could.  Thanks, subconscious, you suck.

Church was good, Denis’ Pre-Memorial was great.

I survived it!  It was all good!  Now all I can think about is sleep. I haven’t really recovered from Thursday night yet.

Tortillas for dinner, leftover porkchop in orange sauce for lunch.  The boys spent a good chunk of the day killing zombies; I actually got out of the house for a walk when Paul dropped by and encouraged me to stir my stumps.  I went down to Langley Farm Market with him and picked up fruit, veg and Pocky.  Happy sigh.  I loves me some Pocky.  This is a really weird article I found on Wikipedia after I looked up Pocky.

Jeff sent me a link

Unbelievable. You can run your own ad.  Margot will be our spokescat for when we have our own little business.

And in other news:

I have an exceedingly busy weekend planned.  I don’t want to talk about it, I’ll review it all when it’s over.

I saw UP last night.  Yes yes yes you MUST watch it; it’s the best animated movie ever made.  Okay, maybe not, but it’s definitely in the top ten.

I called Mike yesterday…. he and Rozo were at the beach.  Wreck Beach, that is, but he was wearing pants coz it wuz cold.

Just had a terrible / okay experience with Bell Mobility.  The guy who answered the phone originally was an idiot who told me stuff that wasn’t true, and the girl who answered in tech support actually helped me.  Yes I can delete applications off my phone but I need to download some software onto a PC and then hook my phone up to the PC.

Now to do some of the work I don’t want to do for later this weekend.  Heavy sigh.  I undercommit for so long that when I overcompensate and overcommit I’m full of irritation.  Must think happy thoughts full of jello and butterflies.

This chick, that chick, the other chick

This chick opened. She was AMAZING.  Stupendous, ethereal, gorgeous, lush and otherworldly.

This chick was not so good. Fluffed lines, muddy sound, stereotyped stage movements, and really uninspired guitar playing.

The other chick is the woman formerly known as Vilma.  She is Rozo now.  It’s a long story, and it makes perfect sense, and I am a very ardent believer in calling people what they want to be called, so she will be Rozo to me in future.  Candidly, I never liked her name as it always sounded like Boris and Natasha collided with the Flintstones.

We had a lovely time and talked our little faces off.  And, OF COURSE, somebody came up to her and drooled on her hair… it’s inevitable, as her hair is so incredible it stops traffic.

Worried mind

I don’t know why I worry so much about things I can’t control.  I just read a facebook post that somebody I went to Wreck Beach with last summer (Liz, a buddy of Kashka and Katie’s) was taken unconscious to hospital after some kind of event at a pub.

Yesterday was a good day, I was in training for the products I’m helping support and it was interesting and not exactly fun, cause I was paying attention very hard, but definitely worthwhile.

Jeff picked up Swiss Chalet on the way home, yay.

Margot is shedding so much it’s frankly scary.  She can be brushed ten times a day and the brush still fills up. She and Eddie spent a good part of the evening chasing each other.  It’s a good thing – she needs the exercise.  Gizmo campaigned so hard for chicken (Swiss Chalet is his paws down fave) Jeff broke down and gave him some.  He won’t eat anything else when he can smell the chicken.  I typed children… maybe my migraine is still hanging around.

Ah, Jeff is making coffee, the saint.

A Happy Culturally Legitimized Drunkfest to you!

Woke up abruptly

I was just having one of my regular dreams – completely boring and uneventful, like being awake during the day putzing around – when all of a sudden I got a phone call telling me a loved one was dead.  In the dream I’m hugging whoever’s closest to me and crying.  Then I woke up.  Maybe I’m sadder than I give myself credit for.

I broke down yesterday and gave somebody a neckrub at work. I was wanting to pummel things.  Today and for the next two days after I’m in training.  Do you suppose Jarmo – for such is my trainer, can you credit it? – will be able to pound anything into my tired middle aged skull?

And every word of it is true

I am Allegra Sloman, and I subscribe to this management decision.

An extremely rare kitty photo for Jeff.

Glenn Close has her genome mapped.

Snails are gonna eat Florida.  Here’s a pic of and article about the critter in question.

When is a species extinct?  You’d think it’s a dopey question, but apparently it is not.

Aggressively massaging its books. Great expression for part of what preceded the collapse of Lehman.  And since there’s been no meaningful regulatory reform, it could all happen again, how very cyclical.

Yes, that Nascar crash was no accident.  To keep ratings high, the Nascar management is encouraging it.  Hope nobody dies.

Yesterday I made spare ribs, and that, candidly is about it.  I hope to have a marginally more productive day today.

I thought today was Pi Day, but apparently there’s some dispute about that.

Allegra the human ATM bonds with her son

I offered to buy Keith a leather jacket, so we went to Metrotown last night to pick it up. It looks awesome on him, even if it is brown, and it has a zip out lining so it is actually a three season jacket. After we went to the Bell store and I picked up a Blackberry, which I have now set up except the damned password for the phone doesn’t actually work and they don’t have any customer service over the phone until Monday, how lovely. Sigh. Anyway, it’s not like hundreds of people are calling me and I need to access the voicemail immediately. Apart from that little glitch, set up was quick and easy, and I can now type with somewhat more ease.

After the phone, we went to a Japanese restaurant in Metrotown and DAMN the food was good. We sat next to an Asian couple with two little kids. The little girl stared at both of us, but after half an hour she started fussing. Most of the time she was solemn as all get out, but when I started imitating her she grinned so adorably that Keith and I just melted.  Keith always gets stared at by little kids.  He’s attracted that kind of attention since he was tiny.

On the way home Keith started riffing about how he would love to make a movie starring Meat Loaf and Jack Black as father-son rock and rollers.  About the time we decided we wanted Jack White to be mistaken for Johnny Depp at the Rock and Roll hall of fame, we realized we were banging against the cage bars of fanficmeta perhaps a little too hard, but then I decided that Mila Kunis should be Jack Black’s girlfriend, and that the movie should start with a funeral.  And it all started again.  Keith and I can be a little nuts together when we hang out, but gosh, I had a good time last night.

His new job is working out okay.  It appears he brings out the motherly instinct in his boss, she keeps feeding him small treats.  I know exactly how she feels.

Then we came home and Jeff said, “Dere’s Pocky!” and we watched the Mentalist (I had to see the episode where Lisbon clobbers Jane in the head, and yes, he richly deserved it).  Then I messed around with my phone.  Then I slept…. and dang, after I cooked breakfast and poked around on the inertnets a while, and communed with Eddie who came to sleep on my bed, by cracky it’s almost noon.