Month: December 2014

Bring out the festal CHHHHEEEEESE

So the sometimes annual Feste du Fromage was yesterday, at Patricia’s place. It was lovely to see her and Leanne again; I got sleepy for a second but came to eventually to get talkative again; considering I’d been up since 2 am and didn’t leave until 11 I think I did okay.  I brought cheese, which was definitely hauling coal to Newcastle.

SO HAPPY TO HAVE CHEESE in the fridge.  Because cheese makes everything yummy. ALSO I watched a cheesy movie, The Boxtrolls, earlier that day, so it was really really a lot of cheese to take in. Tracy Morgan’s voice acting in this movie, while terse IS HILARITY.  “I think I’ve lost a lot of blood” is his longest line…. it’s worth it.

 

 

 

 

Mist in my vision

The Drop, James Gandolfini’s last performance, was wonderful, a neatly crafted, beautifully shot gangster movie.  Tom Hardy veers between lyrical romance and brute physical menace with such restraint that he can use virtually the same expressions to convey them both.  Noomi Rapace is not quite wasted as the utility grade girlfriend, and my ranting pants are at the dry cleaners so I’ll skip to the next part… it had a good score.

Enjoyed Knights of Badassdom, although the overarching conceit of the movie is that if a woman wants to be a meretricious poser and dump the insanely hot Ryan Kwanten that means she should be transformed into a succubus, tortured and summarily killed while Summer Glau looks fondly on. Boys, take your relationship problems a little further downwind before you next write a script.  Bechdel test oh come on now Allegra you’re being oversensitive.  No, I’m not, and neither do I need to belabour the point.

I LOVED PRIDE.  It was a lovely, cheerful, excruciatingly funny, tear-jerking, heartbreaking YA MY PEOPLE movie, and I wouldn’t change a thing about any of the performances.  The music was so good all I can say is anybody in their twenties when this music was the bee’s knees will think they died and woke up listening to CFNY.

Sue upped and back from church one congregant viz me, plus she brought cookies so bonus hit points for her.  I hope to feast her for her birthday. I love my little church. Marilyn’s been laid low with a cold for two weeks and only just struggled back to civilization, so taking on leading the service was much appreciated given her challenges.

Briefly saw Brooke and her Beancat, whose grasp of rhetorical artifice firms apace, and in whom I see alarming signs of possibly becoming an insanely highpriced lawyer.  Dood be smart.

Back to the grind of a mere 2000 words.  A bagatelle, if you can’t see the anchor tied to my ass!

The title of this post is taken from today’s homily, and is about a beautiful moment, not a sad one.

New song

This is all there is so far.  It’s very bluegrass.

 

Well my pa don’t say much but he don’t like none of my suitors

and my ma never stops like a wasp in a winderpane

My sisters they fume and they tell me it’s my duty

Though I don’t want to wed, suitors come to me again

Crowdin’ round, night and day

crowdin’ round, braggin’ and laughin’

Crowdin’ round, beggin’ kisses sayin’

When you gonna marry me?

I have sent them all off down the road in dusty twilight

and in peace I can pull down and play my mandolin

in the dark by the gatepost I hear a banjo twangin

And he’s far enough away that my pa can’t call it sin

Crowdin’ round, night and day

crowdin’ round, braggin’ and laughin’

Crowdin’ round, beggin’ kisses saying

When you gonna marry me?

All my life I’ve looked after my sisters and my brothers

now they tell me to marry and move out my trousseau

I’m worn out with this fam’ly and now must start another

Ne’er to sail foreign seas now, or hike in mountain snow

Crowdin’ round, night and day

crowdin’ round, braggin’ and laughin’

Crowdin’ round, beggin’ kisses saying

When you gonna marry me?

Some nights after my suitor let the banjo introduce him

He appears and then shyly asks me for my hand

He’d not press me with children, as having the impression

It was something a husband and wife jointly planned

Chorus

Oh you speak to my heart, but what other chains are hiding

Shall I spend all my days by a stove and a sink

Shall I gasp in a fact’ry or wait upon your presence

While you gamble in brothels and spend your health in drink

 

 

 

 

 

 

Into the Woods

Saw the wussified, bowdlerized, defanged and diznified version of Sondheim’s Into the Woods last night with Sue.  I enjoyed it.  Chris Pine ripppppping his shirt off in the Agony song was pretty funny, and Emily Blunt was bloody marvellous, but really all the cast was good, and I enjoyed it.  I’m actually glad I saw it on the big screen as it is quite pretty.

Also I ate poutine and drank beer (except for parties I’m not keeping it in the house anymore).  Now I’m going to get up, make coffee and get stuff done.  Since there is literally no more episodic tv to watch unless we’re rewatching SG1, which is okay too I guess.

All is merry and bright

  1. Paul gave me and Jeff motion detector lights; the upgetting to pee is now a lot easier.  Paul’s approach to Christmas gifts is to buy a bag of useful objects and let you pick which one you like – this year the theme was light, so it was headlamp, motion detector light or keychain flashlight.
  2. I was really resentful about ‘having’ to do Christmas dinner, and then I asked myself what it would take to be less resentful.  I immediately thought “If I don’t have to buy the turkey and lug it home!”  To which Paul happily agreed, and Keith lugged it over here.  Resentment vanished, I went to Granville Island with Tammy for the rest of the veg and happily lugged that home.
  3. I made vegan squash soup – there wasn’t enough for everybody and it was damned good.
  4. so much good beer – pumpkin ale, winter ale, shipwreck IPA! Tammy brought some nice wine.
  5. The turkey was good – the meat delicious, the skin like an advertisement – but what was really amazing was the gravy. I ended up eating it cold as a side for leftover pie, and it was SO GOOD.  It was pan dripping gravy.  I stuck the pan drippings in a blender, added a tablespoon of cake flour and about half a cup of milk, blended the shit out of it and then nuked it for a minute.  From such pedestrian beginnings came a voluptuously smooth gravy with a meaty and almost nutty flavour.
  6. Mike and Tammy and Paul and Katie and Keith and I sang and played afterwards, and Alex grooved along.  He really really likes music, and he is most fabulously strong.  He apparently likes his Christmas present, which was a stuffed T Rex. Paul introduced Tammy to Never Set the Cat on Fire, which was wonderful.
  7. Wine was spilled on Granny’s linen tablecloth… horrors! and it came out again the next morning with some Amaze.  Tablecloth is clean, folded and ready for use.
  8. Earlier this week I got the lobster dinner I have been drooling for, except it was lunch, and it was with Tammy, so it was pretty much perfect.
  9. Although the kitchen is once again the habitation of orcs this morning, I HAD cleaned up and ran a dishwasher and got rid of the empties and straightened out the living room the next morning and returned some sanity to the proceedings.
  10. Today I hope to get cat litter.  With two cats, more shit.  It is the law.
  11. Autumn is a boy.  He is now Buster.  Jeff and I are fine with this, but not fine with not noticing earlier.  He will be snipped in a week or so.
  12. He has been to the vet for suturing because he’s already gotten in fights. Margot was disturbed by him before, but with a cone on his head she is Miss Hissy each time he approaches.
  13. I am really enjoying everybody’s pics of how happy their Christmas has been.  The various traditions from around the world and around the various ethnicities of my friends and flist make me happy in their variety and conviviality.
  14. I am sad to have missed Christmas Eve service because it was the last time a certain church member will ever provide music for us, because he is awesome, but also sick.  As sad as I am about this, I made happy memories in my own home with my loves and kin.
  15. Keith was sober, and he was Mom’s taxi.  He: ferried Tammy to and from Edmonds, drove his sister home, drove Rob to Church and drove Mike and his Dad home.  As happy as I was to see Alex, Keith did a lot to make the evening perfect, and I am now considering (which I can do here, since he never reads my blog, haw haw) how I shall appropriately reward him for his service.
  16. A car was stolen from in front of our house at 3:30 am Christmas morning.  I spoke to a Burnaby RCMP officer about it… Jeff and I were asleep at the time, or in no position to see what was happening.  I thanked her for working Christmas Day and wished for her to stay safe out there.
  17. I made chocolate cake.  I am thinking perhaps cinnamon rolls later. The turkey soup is made and in the freezer.

This concludes my report….

Today’s meal

The bird goes in the oven at 1.  No stuffing this time.  The rest of the day is me counting back from when supper hits the table (’round 5:15), prepping veggies so they have a fighting chance of being ready to go at the appointed time, fetching guests from Skytrain stations and cleaning things.

Watched this PG family adventure movie yesterday and quite liked it: Ragnarok. With bonus Sofia Helin from the Bridge series.

 

 

Laundry list

This is for mOm. Art and cancer.

I said to Paul IF YOU WANT ME TO COOK IT YOU MUST BUY IT. So there’s a fresh turkey in my fridge, and I now have Katie, Alex, Keith, Paul, Rob W, Mike M, possibly one other person from Mike’s work and I hope Tammy for Christmas Eve dinner.  It’s a family plus orphans dinner!!!

Today I have to buy vegetables and hopefully I’ll remember the cranberry sauce. Also I need to lay on at least a couple of bottles of wine and some beer.

I’m seeing Tammy for lunch at Granville Island today.  Hope it’s the Keg, I am dying for lobster.

If you like Downton Abbey, you must see the Christmas Text to Santa special, in which George Clooney appears.  Happy sigh.

Andrew Wakefield, you are POND SCUM. Or, a carelessly formed biofilm of dubious utility.

Family drama is blergh.  But I like watching it sometimes anyway.  My reaction. (Sorta for Jeff, who’s doing a complete TNG rewatch).  I’m talking other people’s families… I am doing okay.

Chocolate cake for breakfast, FOR REASONS.

Heavy sighs for all the dust I’m going to raise getting the living room ready, har har.

 

 

 

 

Katie’s angel wings for real

So there I am more or less on time for church (and I’m up for coffee but I’m hardly alone – Karen and Laura and and Sandra and Arlette and Tom all got up in cheese cutting and dish washing and table bussing and cake baking and cake cutting and various kinds of arranging and fooding).  I take full responsibility for the black tea shortage. I learn from Sandra that Katie has already arrived with Alex and I’m all excited because I’m there to hand out one giant stuffed tyrannosaurus (with a beautiful golden ribbon round his middle cause I’ll be dipped in dogshit before I wrap another present) and also quantity one family heirloom Christmas stocking, made by Alex’s great great grandma Evelyn, which is obviously a much bigger deal that the stuffed animal and made Katie’s eyes light up.

She comes downstairs to nurse Alex who is hongry (he kipped after) and tells me a delightful story about how she’s standing on the Skytrain platform, minding her usual, and a getting on for elderly woman approaches her and says, My vision really sucks and I want to make sure I’m getting the right train (note: the station is a transfer point).  Can you put me on the Millennium train?  That’s where I’m going, says Katie.  I’m actually going to church, the woman says.  Me too says Katie.  I’m going to Beacon, the woman says.  Me too says Katie.

Helen  – the woman in question – says one doesn’t expect Unitarian angels but they are everywhere. I wasn’t expecting my daughter to be one.

Alex was deliciously cute in dress pants and a tailored white cotton shirt.  He didn’t smile at me but he wiggled and grinned at his mother in that orgy of mutual admiration that is a properly functioning kid-mama bond, and I almost feel there was something wrong, he didn’t fart once.

I have to say I’m a very fond grandma right now.

Caution, language

Somebody commented on Miles V’s facebook page yesterday, and a mighty wrath swept over me when somebody played the #NOTALLWHITES race card.

This is how I responded.

 

As long as the cops are selectively targeting people of color upon whom to practice their monopoly on the legal use of force, I’m fucking well going to base my comments on skin color. As long as the cops don’t look like the people they police in the Interior of BC, I’m fucking well going to base my comments on skin color. As long as there are 1200 missing women of First Nations descent in my country and the Prime Minister says finding what happened to them isn’t a priority and besides the local police are handling it fine, I’m fucking well going to base my comments on skin color. As long as clueless white people hope to atomize individual cases in which white cops commit homicide, hoping to grind it up so fine it can’t be connected to the systemic racism dating back to *before* the Civil War, I’m fucking well going to base my comments on skin color.

Sleepovers and trash

Keith and Paul and Mike dropped by last night for pizza, movies and conversation, and it was wonderful to see them all.

I’ve done a lot of things wrong in my life, but picking my friends hasn’t been one of them.

Keith slept over – I put a bunch of Woly shoe creme on his work shoes, which are so trashed by salt water that the leather is starting to come apart in layers. There must be six bucks worth of it on there… I hadn’t even opened it and I’ve had it three years, so I’m glad to be using a resource.

One of my fave Beaconites, Dina Davidson, local midwife extraordinaire, got some press time on her favourite subject.

Katie cut her dad’s hair yesterday.  Given that she and Paul hadn’t spoken in the best part of a month – immediately after the birth of the first grandchild – I will leave you to parse that as best you may.

I am doing coffee at church tomorrow.  I think I’ll make a cake, but make something else to leave here so Jeff doesn’t come looking all expectant with no treats.  So I have to remember to immediately put on bread dough the instant I get up tomorrow, because if I do it today, it will be gone tomorrow. Treat Logistics.

I am learning to my horror that the second section of the book is in disarray, and the timelines are all squidded up, and I appear to have TWICE written the same scene twice without incorporating the necessary elements from the other draft.  It’s ugly and I’m frustrated.  I think I’m going to need another writing week without the siren song of Agents of SHIELD to fix this mess (although we are close to the end LOL) so I’ll be checking in with the mOmster to see when would or might be convenient.  Won’t be until after my homily January 4 though.

Autumn, who may really be Peaches, loves Agent Coulson.  She sits on the back of the sofa and gazes at him adoringly.

I have laundry.  I’m doing it, I’m not digging it.  I have to ditch a whole bunch of my clothes because they are not meeting my needs, but that in itself makes me sad.  I should just take a picture and move on.

I’m also hoping to walk over to 6th and do a mini shop.

We’ll see what happens when Keith gets up… he may want a late brekkie.  I can definitely help out with the coffee.

There’s been an update to wordpress, the engine that runs this blog, and it allows me to have an empty screen when I’m typing, which is actually kind of cool and gives you a nice electronic typewriter feeling.

Alien baby names

Some are traditional.  Some are suggested by that prankster Michel.  Some Kima just likes the sound of.  This is not the complete list, and each of the first few names I’ve written some backstory for.  The number is the number assigned by Kima.  Not all the babies are going to make it; a number of them who would normally get et and reabsorbed by their mom are allowed to develop, with occasionally weird and sad results.  W means watermorph and G, T, O indicates who dad is.

 

1 – Pharos WG aka Beaky.  He’s the biggest

2 – Kima Jr. WT

3 – Lumpy WO

4 – Rivergrass WG

5 – Zosime, later Cutshine WG

6 – Panops WT

7 – Gyorg WO

8 – Lara WG

9 – Peleas WG

10 – Phokas WG

11 – Cauchemar WO

12 – Bellerophon WO

13 – Friday WG – she’s melanistic, which is unprecedented.

14 – Hydra WG

15 – Bonnie WG

16 – 16

17 – TRex

18 – Spectrum

19 – Apex

20 – Star

21 – Polydorus – 0

22 – Nereus – 0

23 – Pudding – 0

24 – Neophytos – 0

25 – Aesklepios – 0 AKA Kleppy

26 – Evangelos 0 – AKA Evan

27 – Glykeria – 0 AKA Sweetie

28 – Spyridion – 0 AKA Spiro

29 – Nicoleta – 0 AKA Nico

30 – Zinovia – 0

31 – Aglaia – 0

32 – Stelian – 0

33 – Luca – 0

34 – Borbala – 0

35 – Pelagia – 0

36 – Elefteria – 0

37 – Temair – WG

38 – Graunch – WG

39 – Seawolf WG

40 – Tide – WG

41 – Orca WG

42 – Thisandthat – WG

43 – S01E01 – WG

44 – Corafae – WG (this is a pun – a coryphee is the lead dancer in a a ballet chorus)

45 – DeltaV WG

46 – Blue

47 – Mireille

Brigitte

Denis

Sparrow

Euclid

Stentor

Leonidas

Harry

Genie

Carita

Plenty

Vaslav

Goodgrief

Halloween

Yaya

Pietro

Paulo

Joe

Vic

Leo

Carlo

Tony

Francesco

Shotgun Bob

Mel

Strowler

Sansabri

Cuir

Spielberg

Benthe

Transversal

Torsion

Tension

Compression

Shear

Bending

Quanta

Tracer

Tomasz

Robin

Mason

Jas

Satraj WG F

Ivy

Menlo

Etazonia

Kojo

Incantare

Tenger̩sz teng gay ress Рmeans Mariner

Vonzó

Avantaj

Straylight

Rejtett pron. Raytett Hidden

Lelkes pron Lelkesh, keen

Hullám pron Hoolam wave

Captain

Kalyptra (veil)

Kiborion Chalice

Ráðgjöf – rowthjyeuf

Doofus

Umpteen

Elif

Just so you know

I don’t appreciate having ads for Kinder Morgan on my site, and am trying to figure out how to get rid of them.

Check it out!  Isn’t it great when men who will have access to date rape drugs make fun about date rape?

A friend is having trouble with a band council administration.  Colonialism has made a proper mess of First Nations life.  This story has alcohol, violence and threats of it, substandard housing, employment being contingent on who your cousins are, more alcohol, treatment centers that drive their their residents in to town to buy cigarettes (fuck you must be kidding), people walking into your house in the middle of the night and not leaving when asked, being fired for no cause when you’re doing your job properly, having to call the RCMP on your in laws, racism and more bullshit than could be shoveled in a month by ten strong men.

If I hadn’t heard from a dear friend today, who is doing fine, I’d be very much on edge.d

Back to my babies.  Literary, squidly babies, with large appetites.

My take on Hitchens

That which can be asserted without evidence should be ignored without distress.  And no, I don’t apologize to dead men.

I’m having a much harder time assembling part II than part I since I don’t seem to have as many connecting links between the pieces.

My friend Catherine was on the telly last night talking about her role in rescuing 60 cats.  Despite her allergies she is fostering two immense, extremely affectionate rescue cats, Riopelle and Smokey. Complaints about their point loading have already been registered.

We are enjoying Agents of Shield while ignoring plot holes, bad acting and the comic book world’s lack of sophistication with respect to air frame physics.