Month: September 2014

Milestones and mealtimes

Katie cooked dinner for me, Jeff, Keith and the Birthday Boy Hisself, Paul; it was roast beast, gravy, yorkshire pudding, asparagus, carrots and smashed potatoes.

It was very pleasant.  Poor Paul was late for his own dinner by the best part of an hour.  Planes don’t wait.

We were sitting in the dark in the back yard when a skunk wandered through (this years’).  Ayesha maintained a goodly distance.  She was all over Jeff, it was very cute.

Paul has NO PLANS to retire!  He really doesn’t look his age.

Drew, Tre’s baby brother, has been born, congrats and all well.

 

Oh well some other time maybe

Yesterday it was church, during which I ran around like a fool after a toddler, and then Mike came over in the afternoon and we had a long talk about what’s going on with him, and then I went to Theology Pub.  It was rotating discussion groups.  I enjoyed myself but I don’t think I’ll be going back.  I can’t explain why and keep my UU principles intact, so I’ll just backspace over about three hundred words worth of high pressure whining and put a good spin on it. The turnout was spectacular though, at least twenty people came and the gender balance was much better than normal. There were more people from South Fraser Fellowship.

Tonight Katie is cooking dinner for her dad’s birthday. Paul turns 65 today.  He’s going to work until the last possible moment; he’s not retiring, or so he says, for at least another couple of years.

 

Someone asks George what 5 things he’d change about his life

From his Reddit AMA:

 

What are five things you’d change about your life if you could?

Thank you for your sneakily courteous question, which is actually five questions.  I suspect my list looks much the same as anyone else’s.  I want to achieve my career goal of becoming an astronaut (or taikonaut, or cosmonaut).  I want to be a father, possibly a better one than my own, but we judge these things differently in my culture.  I wish I had better time management skills; I work to a different timescale and speeding up to human tempo is hard work. I’d find out what happened to a woman I introduced to Kima a long time before she was ready, since I would like the chance to apologize.  All my efforts to locate her have been fruitless and I feel very bad about that.  And ….I’d never talk to another lawyer.  I like my lawyer as a person, but the legal system in this country is what happens when you condense stupidity and then fossilize it.

Church and PUB NIGHT

Man, I hope I remember a can for the food bank. I always seem to forget them. The most exciting thing today is that there is going to be a Theology pub night!!  It’s actually someplace easy to get to and from on transit, so that’s what I will do.  From the facebook page:

 

SOMETHING NEW

WHAT: Theology Pub Nights at Central City Brewing Pub and Restaurant, 13450 102 Avenue Surrey, close to the Central City Sky Train Station (see map below).

WHEN: Second Sunday of the month at 7pm, starting September 14th
Sept 14 topic: Where is God in our lives? Anywhere, everywhere, none of the above?

 

The unknown ideal

I think in many respects it would be an ideal position for me, but I’ve been up and down this emotional rollercoaster a few times now.  It’s a privately owned company with a forty year history of success.  The position is not fantastically challenging, but I’m by no means as clever and energetic as I once was, so I am better than okay with it.  And I could bike to work.  Jeff teased me about how much more productive he’d be if I was out of the house.  Fortunately, he knows how to be productive even when I’m around to distract him.

Anyway they have more people to interview.  I let them know I am very interested in the job and called the agency to confirm this.  We shall see.

Meatballs and rotini last night.  I’m glad I cut that arabbiata sauce in half with plain spag sauce or it would have been too speecy to eat.

I’m thinking of going to the Farmer’s Market this morning after I get some more hacking and chopping done on George.

Interview

I have an interview at an agency tomorrow.

The dresses I ordered are now in Cincinnati.  I have some hope that they will get to me early next week.

My church is going to start having pub nights and it’s at a bar that is very easy for me to get to and from.  Yeah!  Except they haven’t actually announced something useful, like a date.

Since I don’t really have any nice dresses for an interview I’m going to wander off to Value Village shortly and go schlepping.  I should likely walk….

Leo and Linda should be here soon (next days to weeks).  I have mowed the lawn and washed the guest bed sheets as well as removing much cruft from the guest room.

morning walk

This morning I had a remarkable experience while walking.  As I stepped out to get a coffee at Starbucks (and strangely, their coffee still sucks) the sun was struggling skyward into a golden haze. One half of the sky was dark and brooding; the other was brilliant gold and white and blue.  I could hear raindrops falling all around me, plinking on leaves and plunking on cars and splatting on sidewalk and asphalt, but nothing fell on me or my phone.  Then of course it started raining heavier but it wasn’t unpleasant to walk.  As I turned onto 6th I was walking almost directly into the sun, and the big juicy raindrops came down like meteors all around me, streaks of white and silver, and none landed on me.  I felt like I was playing a very sophisticated game of dodgeball with the whole universe.

Unsettlement

There are a lot of people suffering from mental illness and I am lighting a candle for comfort, hugs and clarity for all of them.

I am waiting for a package from India.  I have no interview clothes (the last two dresses now have teeny holes in them) so I ordered some.  Had no idea it was going to be shipped from India. I hope nobody was oppressed in the manufacture but I likely the boat’s sailed on that.

Katie is only five weeks away from her due date.  Exciting, eh wot?  We spent the money the fOlks gave me on a really nice convertible stroller for her and Malachi, or whatever moniker the wee baby is given.

Church was delightful.  There were so many new faces that the 25 or so of us (half the active church members) who went to the workshop on Saturday were going GUPPA GUPPA GUPPA and of course as much as I wanted to talk to newcomers that was a day I was assisting with coffee and potluck.

And now one more teeny church item and back to writing.

22 ways rapists hurt men

  1. They reduce the number of women interested in sex.  Then they blame women for not being available.  They drag you along for that ride.
  2. They damage women physically and sometimes give them long term health problems which your taxes help pay to ameliorate.
  3. They spread diseases.
  4. They make men who don’t rape look bad by association.
  5. They use men who don’t rape as camouflage.
  6. They can sometimes leave psychological damage resulting in some women have a hard time being open and honest about their sexuality.  Some women vomit, cry or go limp during consensual sex because they’ve been raped.  If they won’t tell you why, it can leave you devastated about your own sexuality.
  7. They are convinced that women deserve to be raped, and con younger men who look up to them into believing the same thing. That younger man could be you, your brother, your son.
  8. They mess with your reality, your life, your future and your trust by raping women you love and continuing to be your ‘friend’. THIS HAPPENS WAY MORE THAN MEN REALIZE.
  9. They are the men who invented the friendzone, and try to convince you that the way out of the friendzone is rape.
  10. They tell women you love that no-one will believe them as they rape them, with the end result that the women you love will lie to you about what’s happened to them, by omission.
  11. They hurt people and spread the blame across all men.
  12. They expect you to stick up for them if they are caught.
  13. They trick you into agreeing if they say she deserved it, so you can be reduced to their level of selfishness.
  14. They gloss over how much of rape is rape PLUS child abuse PLUS mental cruelty PLUS messing over the reproductive futures of the women they rape, and possibly, as a consequence, you.
  15. They honestly believe that what they are doing is merely ‘having sex’, ‘getting laid’; their inability to feel remorse or consequences mars the relationships between and among men.
  16. They prop up the notion that sex is something women have that men want, rather than sex being a continuum of desire / consent / ability / availability.
  17. They misuse science to prop up their belief systems and turn up the volume when they are repeatedly proven wrong, to the point that any evidence that rape is not a ‘natural state of affairs’ gets shouted down.
  18. They turn men who don’t rape into faceless villains.  It’s hard to be the hero in your own life when you’re the bad guy in literally thousands of other lives.
  19. They kill the ability to be sexually spontaneous in some women, one of whom may end up being your partner.
  20. They rape your sisters, daughters, mothers and friends.
  21. They kill discourse by threatening rape to women who say things that irritate or refute them.
  22. They make it possible for human trafficking for sexual slavery to occur by making rape part of the breaking in process, hurting every close family member of the victim.

Do you have an Alignment?

Take the test.

My results. Weird, huh?

You are 25% Good.
You are 23.1% Lawful.

Alignment: True Neutral

You do whatever seems like a good idea at the time. You don’t feel any strong inclination towards good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Some may say that you lack conviction, while others might admire you for your capability of remaining unbiased. You likely prefer good versus evil in society, since good people tend to make better neighbors and rulers, but you are not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way.
You are the stereotypical “Balancer.” You act in a way that is natural to you without prejudice or compulsion.
Examples of charactersand people who fit into the same alignment as you include Linus Torvalds, Dr. Strangelove, Scott Evil, Mr. Spock, and the nation of Switzerland.

Yay, writing again!

The folks haven’t contacted me about the job I applied for – they wanted my availability for an interview and I guess are too busy to get back to me.  This seems to happen a lot. I hold my breath hoping for good news and don’t get any, and then all of a sudden I realize that I’m supposed to be writing.  Anyway, This Bit is working out well.

King Canute, your agent’s on the other line.

Filking tonight and giving Keith a ride to the ferry in the morning.  Then churchy stuff in the afternoon (another pointless workshop called Focusing on What’s Important, but hey, there will be food), and Water Ceremony on Sunday.  Apparently some money has fallen out of the sky for growth.  I think we should buy a yurt, decorate it loudly, and have church in a different location for a year to go out among the people.  Church in a yurt.  Beautiful. I think I wanna yurt.

Back to Michel and his bad stupid foolish holy crap day (writing).

Why I don’t date, part 49/b.

Guy responds to me liking his profile.  He comes clean about his weight.  I know that it’s a good thing he’s done this and praise his honesty.  I ask him how his feet are and never hear from him again.  All I wanted to do was find out if he can walk half a kilometre on level ground unassisted, and I specifically said I don’t do hills.  I guess that was pushing too hard.

An old buddy

So someone from CDS days (we’re talking 2 decades – Dan) popped up and said hi.  He made the error of asking me about the novel and got about a days’ worth of blort.  Now I must cover up my shame in a nice big wordblanky.

Very much enjoying The Killing on Netflix.  Mireille Enos as Linden just doesn’t do any of that girly shit (and she’s small, freckled, not in the first flush of youth and doesn’t appear to use makeup or do more than brush her hair for work). We finished (heavy sigh) the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes. It was really excellent, all 41 episodes.

Gangs of roving yeshiva students

Well, it’s one way to get a divorce.

Paul and Katie are going to come get me to go …. stroller shopping.  That money the fOlks gave me for just such a purpose will now be used….

I am feeling much better today.  I have apparently been shortlisted for a job, and am just waiting to hear back. Coconut oil is a healing balm.

Also, I made cake!