Month: October 2014

Laundry list

Spoke to Sandy, and how good to hear from her.  She has a strapping German lad as a volunteer now.

Spoke to Lois; she and Paul will visit folks in these here parts for a while and then Friday we’ll have a get together here which will feature MUSIC.  Lovely home made music, yippee!  Jeff please copy.  Don’t know if Katie, Daxus and the GLD will be here, but I will invite them formally and see.

Did laundry, which is good because I was plumb out of towels.

The sun came out! it was most delightful while it lasted.

I think I’m going to nuke a bowl of that beef stew.

An annoying day

Cleaning shit off the cat.  Other jangly annoyances.  Then Sue appeared out of nowhere and performed marvellousy in assisting in logistics for returning the rental car.  Honestly, it was like she dropped out of the sky. All she was doing was returning the cloak I loaned her (came back as I lent it, I’ll add.)

I got some lovely foodstuffs at the Costco and there was a beef stew in the crockpot as of 5:30 this am so there should be food in about an hour. It really hurts my hands to peel vegetables.  I am feeling a bit weird about that.  Dishes are washed and put away, the laundry is on, life proceeds.

Mike called the other night.  He has a rather bleak three weeks in front of him, travelling on business.  I don’t know how good a job I did of cheering him up, describing Alex’ tremendous gas (I am not exaggerating by much to say that he rattled the windows in the fOlks’ sunroom) and otherwise burbling; he described Rhonda’s memorial service in such a fashion that I had many reasons to have wanted to go and one really big showstopper reason not to.  Apparently Konrad was there too; I haven’t seen him since that MEGA AWESOME EPIC miniature camping trip some 7 or 8 years ago.

I should go move the laundry; the wretched clothes don’t wash themselves.  Although if I take the long view, someday they will.

 

 

Jian Ghomeshi

Whatever publicity accrues to Mr. Ghomeshi’s departure from the CBC, there is a strong likelihood that his employment contract contained a morals clause.

He was expensive. He was not beloved of the Harper Government. There will be people willing to testify in court that he doesn’t toe the BDSM party line about ongoing consent. (Under oath or no…)

He should quit this pre-emptive rehabilitation he’s paying fountains of cash for. He’ll make more money than Croesus as an impresario – after he recovers from his father’s death. He’ll definitely have better phone security.

My two coppers.

 

By the way I’m really pissed off about this because my CBC interviewer in the novel is based on him (genderswapped). PISS ME OFF.  Grr.

 

Here’s a chaser.  A technically and emotionally superior guitarist.  

No pictures

I have memories, but no pictures of Alexander meeting his great-grandparents, his great great auntie, his cousins and various other family members.

He was a complete trooper, but at 4 pm he pretty much lost it and cried continuously.  Poor Katie; he had never cried that much before.  All he wants is his mom.

Anyway, I think this is pretty much how Alex viewed his late afternoon yesterday.  NOT SAFE FOR WORK.

The first section is in the mail to the editor today.

Madeleine Albright HOSES Conan O’Brien.

Mercury in retrograde

Has absolutely no effect on my life.  I understand that.  In the last three days, two famous (in my circle) cats have died, including the one I wrote Kittens at Midnight for (RIP Fand, cross that Rainbow Bridge knowing you were much loved, however briefly) and George, the 23 year old therapy cat Catherine inherited from her mother (who didn’t learn he was a therapy cat until he was over 20 and learned a completely new routine, including being transported by transit in a box to and from, getting out and saying hi to all the dying cancer patients, getting back in and going home and then eating practically anything Catherine cooked, which list grew to be so long and so humorous it could be its own children’s book). Tom S. lost his car keys so he couldn’t go to OVFF. Alexander has a cold so bad he can’t travel and be the secret guest at Auntie Mary’s Eightieth Birthday Bash. The awning blew itself to ratshit, Ottawa was locked down while Harper cowered in a closet (as would I, candidly and without prejudice), a switch in the network verklemmt itself, my shoulder has been aching worse than at any point since I broke it and I feel like I’m limping along though life on the mitochondrial equivalent of impulse power. The only good thing about the last 4 days has been the Harry Potter 8 movie rewatch.

All of which has precisely nothing to do with mythical beings or actual planets.

But if I ever see that bastard Mercury, I’m gonna give him one sharp punch in the snoot.

And the wind blew it away

I woke Jeff up about quarter to two to ask him to help me take the awning down before it blew away.  We were both pretty wired after that so we watched some TV and went back to bed around three.  The wind and noise here last night were terrifying.  I don’t think I’d deal well with a hurricane or tornado… this only topped out at gusts of 110 kph.

Sigh.  A hundred and forty bucks up the spout.  The last one lasted 4 years and this barely survived one season.  I’m really disappointed.

Would you believe that close

Oh, man, Jeff would have laughed his ass off if he’d seen me doing the trash yesterday.  The garbage truck comes down the alley one way and then back up t’other, so I had some warning, but I ran around like a hopped up honey badger throwing the garbage and recycling together.  I spent so much time cleaning out the fridge in the early hours of yesterday morning (and by Toutatis, it needed it) that I didn’t actually have things ready to go when the truck rumbled by.  Fortunately everything was in order when they came back up the hill.  And even more fortunately, the lingering smell of DEATH, CORRUPTION AND HORROR in the kitchen should be entirely gone as everything narsty is gone as well.

Yesterday I went to the single most bizarre job interview EVAR.  It was a masterpiece, a confection of weird, a symphony of surreal.  JUST IN CASE I get the job, I shall not describe it further. I was already in New Westminster, so I phoned Katie and she said c’mon by, so I did.

Alexander farts a lot.  He also blew his first raspberry yesterday. (We howled.) He is already lifting his head; he’s average size but holy crap he’s strong.

Then I walked over to the beer store and went home.

I have printed off the first section of the novel and will be mailing it the the editor today.  Heaving sighs.

I am also going to be sending something to Sandra, but she doesn’t read this blog any more so it will still come as a surprise to her.  I still have some t’s to cross.

Ain't he cute???
Ain’t he cute???

 

Margot sad

She isn’t wandering around the house crying, but she’s obviously sad.  She doesn’t even try to resist when I pick her up. Jeff’s on the island.

Church was great yesterday.  Sue gave me a lift to and fro so I helped her set up tables.  Rev Debra’s sermon about Our House (our rental house, but she mentioned that..) was very inspiring, and apart from silent meditation being too short it was a good service.  I cried during Sue’s testimonial.  I never met her equal for being funny and pulling my heartstrings in the same sentence.  I got to talk to Karen, Renée, Glenn, Jean about Jenise’s passing (I bailed or more accurately, quailed, at going to the service but Jean very kindly emailed me to let me know how it was; it was well done and to Jenise’s taste, although I still would have been toast for going), sang my new call to worship for Tom, put tablecloths down (and took them up again) for the coffee hour downstairs.

And watched Dennis make his way to the men’s room.  I didn’t need to help him. He’s 92 and pretty much blind, but one of the great things about Beacon is that it isn’t too badly set up for people with various physical challenges, and he’s just so…. Dennis.  Me Loves Him.  I watched him go along the wall, his white cane tucked into his back pants pocket, because he didn’t need it.  Because it’s His House.  A more beautiful and mundane example of just what the preacher person had been talking about would be hard to conjure.

I know, it’s silly and small, but it just made me feel like the universe was a really good place for about 30 seconds, before I got distracted again.

After I got home I called Rob W to find out how he’s recovering from his knee surgery last week; he’s laid up at his auntie’s place downtown.

Spent most of the afternoon working on Come and Worship on the keyboard, to the point where my SHOULDER started to hurt.  Now I must reset the height of the keyboard so I am in a more relaxed pose at the keys.  I can actually play it in chord mode (there’s only three chords, haw haw) and I am almost to the point where I’m totally keeping the rhythm too.  This will make it much easier to score, too, since there’s a tiny little display on the keyboard which tells you which note on the clef you’re pressing.

Jeff reminded me that it’s garbage day, so I’m off to collect some trash.

Ah, me

Some dudebro posting under a social justice moniker on twitter just told me that douchebag is not a gendered slur.  Do you know what it feels like, protecting Stephen Harper from gendered slurs?  I feel…. fucking weirded out, 0 humans!

Of course douchebag is a gendered slur.  Men don’t douche.  (Women shouldn’t either, but that is a bottle of cultural worms I’m not prepared to uncork at the moment cause then we get into the whole stinky hoo-ha thing… just, no.)

Anyway, Stephen Harper is a REAL man.  Where REAL stands for Reliably Evangelistic Authoritarian Leader.

So after he (obliviously he) tells me that douchebag is not a gendered slur, I answered thusly,

Are you implying (along with coconuts migrating) that men douche?  Cause, damn, dog, that’s some scary shit.

I think it’s time to turn off the social justice firehose for today.

Manuel Noriega – Ol’ Pineapple Face himself  – is suing a gaming company for unauthorized use of his image.

In the words of John Caspell:

bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha aaaa!

Casino night

Last night I went to the Hard Rock Casino and learned first hand how very odd casinos are.  I, Amanda, Mike, Stuart, Ian, Sarah and Otto got together for a simply lovely meal / some drinks.  Catching up with the old Statpower folks was really wonderful, and I’m in a really good mood this morning.  I thought I was going to gamble going in, and after quite the lecture on statistics from Meester Mike, I no want do that.  So I didn’t.  The food at Asylum was standard pub grub, perhaps 10 percent more expensive that was reasonable, so pretty ordinary for Vancouver.

Jeff is off fixing things and making the world a better place.

I’ve already done my homework for my first piano lesson.

Today I’m going to clean things, write things, sing things, dance things, ingest things, and excrete things.  Isn’t it wonderful that the word things even exists.

Always wanted to try it, this just makes it more interesting. Ayahuasca, that is.

Party at our place in December, details later!