Month: January 2012

As I mentioned to Chipper this am…

I have a delightful 1st world problem – I have sung 15 tunes (and there are more floating around I haven’t recorded) into my phone just so I don’t lose the melody.  Now I have to transcribe them.  This pushes my number of tunes way past 200, but only about 100 are written down or recorded.  Most of the songs I’m doing for Conflikt have never been recorded.  In fact, I’m thinking none of them have.  Since I now have an album’s worth of filk material. …… Nope, no more projects this year, I’m full up.

 

Any day I don’t have to scrape or defog the car is a good one / Resolution list

Katie’s coworkers reacted to her new boots (she WORE THEM AT WORK for the last half of the shift, they is that comfy) with a gratifying display of jealousy, appreciation and WTF that her mOm would spend that much money on her.

Wednesday, probably, I go have dins with my old beau from the bike shop.  Looking forward to catching up with him.  It didn’t work out between us (he has a sweetie in Seattle, where have I heard THAT before) but I still appreciate him for his complete and blithe disregard for whatever is fashionable in favour of what he likes.

Check this out.  Laughed my ass off.  http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/horoscoped/  It is a wordcloud of all the words in 22000 horoscopes, with A COMPLETELY GENERIC horoscope at the end.  So much for augury…..

Per the tarot reading which said I have so many, I have prepared my new years resolutions. Being ten in number, as recommended.

Remember to bring cans, rice and pasta for the food bank at least 3 out of 4 Food Bank Sundays.  I keep forgetting and it really feels bad.

Prep for taking on the duties of a Secretary at Beacon (I expect to be acclaimed, and still no Treasurer, bah).  Since this involves a lovely long lunch with Carol and Sue on my dime, I can’t imagine this one taking too long to tick off.

Lose 20 pounds by this time next year.  Awk, oh well.

Attend at least one Humanist meeting, even though there are two regular attendees whose smooth and seemingly impenetrable pomposity I would like to test a laser on.  Oh Allegra you are really doing them a favour aren’t you.

Attend at least one Lunch Bunch meeting.  It means I have to be on vacation or take a day off, but I have an evol plan for that.  It means connecting with some of the church elders, whom we do not have with us forever.  Their wisdom and humour is the reason I keep going back to church and yet I never socialize with them.  Wrongo me bucko, as they say.

Go to one open mic per month, except in January.  I plan to map out the ones closest to the house thanks to http://www.openmicvancouver.com/

Gather up all my homilies for publication.  Yeah, I know.  I will self-publish but it’s easy to do for cheap and I’m enjoying the notion of my mother having something to send her strict Christian relatives.

Monetize the web site.  Yes, start selling shit or advertising.  Seeing as how I will have to stop linking all over the web thanks to SOPA, I might as well start covering costs, cheap as they are.

Track the amount of time I spend watching TV (this, not the weight loss, is the real asskicker).

Get good or at least fun at making hats for cats and steampunk jewelry.  Cindy says she will tutah me.  Might even be a revenue stream, who knows.  It won’t be until I’ve recovered the $100 I’ve spent on supplies – I am keeping track.

And there you have it.  2012 will be all about connecting and creativity.  And hopefully some relief for my poor tubby knees.

committing consumerism

Drove Keith to the Main Station for work and then mounted a dawn assault (well, 10 am on a Saturday) on the Fluevog flagship store.  (Did you know John Fluevog is a Burnaby Boy?) Scored parking right outside and then bought Katie a stunning pair of black heeled boots and I got two more pairs of ‘vogs, one being a buckle up number in sage green (which was just over 100 dollars because I pointed out to the salesman that the toe caps seemed to be from two different dye lots) and t’other being flat black boots made of unbelievably soft leather.  The salesman was petting the leather and making happy noises which cracked me up.  Thanks Wesley!  Katie had trouble believing that heels could be so comfy, and I had trouble with the price tag, but I told her I’d buy her anything in the store that she liked and fit her, so I’m happy to be doing that.  I am tired of her always wearing trashy shoes and frankly so is she.

We also poked our heads into Nood and JUST LIKE IS TYPICAL OF MY FAMILY Katie made straight for the most expensive item in the store (a $1700 fiberglass 3/4 circle chair in white and royal red – think Austin Powers).  I read her the price tag and she leaped up like her ass was on fire.  I fell in love with a very beautiful dresser that was actually a good deal for $800 (beautifully made and designed with MANY different shapes and depths of drawers!) but stuck to the mission of shoeness.

The rest of the day I’m going to do laundry and let my debit card cool off. Possibly, I will make HATS for CATS.

I have come up with the name of my steampunk band, Mission Dirigible.  It’s imaginary, but awesome.

 

Woke up at 1, back to sleep at 2:30

Up again at 6:30, after a dream during which a cop with a hot dog stand style radar gun pulled me over and I said to him in annoyance “My car is supposed to go fast”. And then I woke up.

Weather is pleasant today, with many many crows.

Katie and Jeff and I had a very pleasant evening.

There’s going to be a Housefilk at Casa Libra!  I loves me those folks, the last housefilk over there was stunningly awesome.  And resulted in Jeff and I getting Al Jazeera in the house, so it’s amazing how the tentacles of filk affect all of my daily life.

The Bean is walking! Also climbing, chortling and being a very mobile Beanpie.  I am looking forward to my next chance to chase after him.

Poor Tanya, my coworker.  She’s got a pinched nerve in her back and is feeling dreadful.  All I can say is thank god it’s slow on the phone or it would be insane around here.  Hope she’s back on Monday but if not I hope she feels better soon.

Katie gave me a new top that wasn’t fitting her properly and I’m wearing it to work today.  She’s going to go look at another apartment tonight.  She has started to take my advice about dressing up to go look at apartments.  Yeah, kid, your mother ain’t a total frikkin’ moron, but whatever.

I leave you with cute video… http://icanhascheezburger.com/2012/01/05/funny-pictures-videos-cat-and-deer-snuggle/

Good news, bad news.

http://imgur.com/nYl6h  Guess who wrote that….

The single most incompetent and lazy employee who ever worked here (who was released into the wild years ago by the precursor firm, at which news I danced at my desk for it was glorious in my eyes) is in the building for an interview.  This is what lies on your LinkedIn profile will do, sweetcakes.  I need to be self-employed, this is bullshit.

I have had a very restful and yet sociable weekend.

This is a lovely combinertation in my view.

 

(Excerpt from The Warlord’s Cook)

I had this story from my mother.  She said it was from a book that was burned, but she read the book many times before she was fifteen and swears this is how it went.

Once upon a time, there was a man seeking employment speaking gibberish.  He could have gone into guild politics, and it would have been easier yet to go into religion.  He was an honest speaker of gibberish, nothing more, and he asked only that he be given an opportunity to practice his trade.

It was his job to hang around a certain rich man (actually, it was a group of rich guys who took him on as a kind of time share court jester but that only becomes relevant in a different story)- and while he was hanging around a certain rich guy, he was brought into the company of those who, for whatever reason, the rich guy wanted to mock and bewilder and otherwise mentally mess about with.

In those days – which weren’t that long ago, truth be told, although how far away it seems now for those of us too young to have been there – the rich man would have business meetings and the man who spoke gibberish would sit in a corner of the room, out of the way, and occasionally say something quietly but clearly in gibberish, and the rich man would pause, and say, “I will definitely have to consider that.”  The negotiations, of whatever form, would stagger along for a few moments and then there would be another outburst from the corner.  The rich man would pause, and say something soothing again. The fourth time this happened the rich man looked at him and paused long enough to eat a whole nut, and then said,

“Now Blib, you’re disturbing the work we’re doing. You’ve given me enough advice for tonight.”

Glaring (he had a ghost white face and big googly eyes) Blib would leave the room, looking like he was ready to kill someone.

“I hope he doesn’t mean to come back,” the rich man would say and then only the strongest minded individual would be able to continue along the path he had set for himself prior to the meeting.

Blib had similar sorts of jobs with other rich men, and he would sometimes pretend to be a soup-spilling waiter who also spoke gibberish, which caused no end of hijinks.

Abruptly one day the rich men all decided they wanted to spend the same amount of money for different things.  Blib had no work. One by one each of them turned to paying someone else to amuse them.  One preferred sex with men, one sex with women, one took up exotic drugs, one consumed more alcohol, and the last became depraved in the company of sheep. The moral of this story is very simple.

Depending on rich people is like building on sand.

 

If I think the warlord is being an ass I tell him one of my mother’s Blib stories.  She had a lot of them and they all ended the same way, hell for Blib.  He always managed to get another job though; Blib had a facility for survival that I always admired.

 

If I ran a grocery store…..

Customer service rules for Allegra’s grocery store

1.  We’re here to sell you items and services you need at a sufficient profit that we can pay ourselves, our suppliers and our taxes, and do it at competitive prices.  When prices are higher than at competitors, we want to believe that this store, as a shopping and working environment, is worth the extra money.  If you think it isn’t, we believe you have the right to shop elsewhere.

2.  Everybody who walks into this store is assumed to be a decent human being.  If you act as if this isn’t true, you will be directed to this code of conduct and you may be asked to leave.

3.  The washrooms and a glassed-in soundproof box (The Silent Zone) are close to the front of the store.  The washrooms are there because the older the managers get the more they appreciate a clean handy washroom.  The glassed in soundproof box is for those times when children and persons with developmental or psychological disabilities just decide to scream for a while or need to be in a less stimulating environment.  It has reasonably comfortable plastic chairs, there’s nothing in there that can be broken (easily) and no piped in music.  It is not a place to park unsupervised children.  It is a place you can go sit down if you feel dizzy or tired.

4.  The staff in this store are trained and expected to be clean, courteous, accurate and professional.  Let us know if they aren’t.  Complaints about piercings and tattoos will be cheerfully ignored.

5.  The staff is encouraged to make decisions concerning their own safety and the safety of patrons in accordance with their training and their best judgment.  If you are stealing, hitting children, or doing anything that will make you famous on the internet, please don’t pull that “The Customer is Always Right” nonsense.

6.  The music in the store is chosen by agreement among the staff, as they have to put up with it for long shifts.  You only have to put up with it for an hour.  There are studies that show that canned music makes patrons spend more money, but our goal is to have happy repeat customers, not shave every dime we can from every person who comes through the door.  If the music is particularly bothersome please ask a cashier to reduce the volume.

7.  Studies have shown that you make more money if you put the highest markup items at eye level.  This store is set up so that the most commonly purchased items are between eye and waist level on an average adult.  We face up the goods so you can read them easily and will do our best to accommodate shoppers with special requirements.

8.  Persons caught consuming non-prescription drugs, tobacco or alcohol on the premises will be fired or banned.

9.  Please have your money or payment method ready when you come to the till.  As far as we’re concerned you can take your time, but the customer behind you will want to kill you.

10.  To the maximum extent possible, this is a no drama zone.  We all want to get in and out of here as fast as possible.  Feuds and domestic disagreements will be asked to move into the Silent Zone, and from there, right out of the store.

11.  Every staff member who deals with the public gets one free “Go F*ck Yourself” every year.  This means that if you are particularly threatening, physically dirty or notably unhygienic, creepy, homo-, xeno- or transphobic, sexist, trying to convert anybody to any religion, racist or otherwise persistently obnoxious, they may tell you in colourful language to leave the store.  If you get two free “Go F*ck Yourself” moments from two different staffers, you will be photographed and permabanned.

12.  Yes, there are security cameras.  They are kept in good repair, and they overlook the parking lot as well as the store.  They are reviewed after every incident and we keep copies off site for three years.

13.  Serving public employees in uniform and staff members get free coffee.  Everyone else will be asked to purchase their coffee or tea.

14.  Tampering with or damaging goods, whether you do it or someone in your care does it, means you have purchased them.  Repeat offenders will be banned.

15.  Persons who are arrested for theft from this store, or pass bad checks, will have their pictures posted and be asked politely to leave if they are foolish enough to come back.

16.  Patrons must wear footwear and keep what goes under a bikini covered while in public areas of the store.  Two seconds of nipple while nursing an infant gets a hall pass; anybody who complains about women nursing their infants will be cheerfully ignored.

17.  Consensual sex in the store or the parking lot which makes it onto the security cameras will be viewed and mocked by a select group of employees. Participants will be banned. Non-consensual sex will be immediately reported to the authorities.

18.  There are two ways of framing the golden rule.  Do not treat other people how you don’t want to be treated yourself, and behave to others as you want them to behave to you.  We want this environment to be safe, clean, welcoming, honest and, dare we say it, fun.  We will take health and safety seriously, and pledge to do our best to be honest and kind.  So, no firearms.  Please.  Except as carried by on duty professionals.

If you don’t feel obliged to hold up your end of this, Go F*ck Yourself…. and have a nice day!

Lovely New Years

Katie dropped by briefly at Mike’s place before partying elsewhere; Paul and Keith and Jeff and I hung out for a while.  We basically laughed, ate, talked and drank.  Just before midnight Keith and Jeff headed out on foot; just after midnight Paul gave me a lift home.  It was all very convivial and relaxed.  Tom U was there!  it was so nice to see him.  I took bubbly and coconut curry chicken with onions and taters in a crock pot as well as two six packs of beer. Other folks provided fresh cooked salmon with tons o garlic, awesome corn bread, lasagna, meatballs etc.  Trent thanked me for cooking something with no added salt as he isn’t supposed to have any.  He also gave me underwear (but I forgot it at Mike’s).  (He gave some to all the women – it’s folded and packaged to look like a rose.  Katie pounced on hers and pronounced it awesome.)

Today there’s the New Years drop in at Cindy’s place which will involve music and singing and playing and yummy cookies.  Also lots of boring laundry and cleaning before I go.

I consulted the tarot about which vice to attack this year and the result was an extremely annoying “Whichever is the most burdensome, and you have a few to choose from, have fun, and quit whinging.”  Sometimes I wonder about that deck.  Anyway, it’s clear to me what it was trying to tell me and I’m just pouty.