Month: December 2017

Theo is making lovely pictures for Varisha.

I am writing, but it’s glacially slow.

I have received the blessed news that a dear friend, who has requested anonymity, is recuperating well from an operation. She is very dear to me and the brief message I got from her has ‘revived me considerable’.

Still having a blast with the Fringe rewatch. It’s a miracle of casting for the five central characters, really.

Parenting once your kids are grown is really amazing. I feel like I did okay, and I’m so grateful Paul and I were able to do it together.

 

I have been told by many people, for serious and humourous effect, that no good deed goes unpunished.

I am living with the downline consequences of that, but a number of other things are also true, so I will repeat them because just me grousing, unless I’m in full bore rant mode, is not entertaining.

My brother is a fucking saint.

Katie is one of the shrewdest and least bullshit people I know.

Paul is a really wonderful family patriarch.

Keith is a kind, helpful and thoughtful person.

I love Alex even if he’s so anxious he makes me anxious sometimes.

My mother is my continual reminder that I can improve, but I was already magic.

My father is my continual reminder that showing up on a daily basis is how family do.

I have some very wonderful friends and the best part about them is that it’s me deciding that they’re my friends, every day.

Social media is the very devil.

 

I’ve made up my mind. I’m not going to Conflikt 11, but Paul and I are planning on practicing more, so that should be fun.

Finally some progress!

It is my vocation to prognosticate, and poorly, and so it was, as it has often been, in my life.

I have nothing but the present. I turned the heat off in the room when I left this morning, and so instead of a benign warmth I have come to sleep in a pile of chilly bedclothes.

Tammy and I reviewed various portions of festive Vancouver, had one spectacular meal in the middle (and thank you Tammy, it was wonderful to eat Exactly the Same Food as You – that being my preference and it was a lovely lovely Christmas gift.) (Thanks also for my entrance fee. I found another ten in my pocket after you paid my way in and I felt fretful about it. Then I thought about the manuscript I owe you.) It was fun watching you drink a flight of beer.           I think we walked about as much as we wanted to.

Tammy’s mother’s condo is beautiful and her mother’s boyfriend’s condo would have made Philip of blessed memory chortle as being the perfect little pied à terre, a cheerful airy bachelor apartment with a lot of art and a few cool books and not overstuffed. Eclectic. Representations of the nude female form were interesting and tasteful, although of course I’d pardon an original Vargas were man of seventy to hang one on his wall. Frezetta too okay whatevs, shut up, I can hear the male gaze lashcrack e’en now.

I do like wandering around Granville Island. I nearly bought a sugar skull lamp but was dissuaded by its flimsiness. I’m glad I didn’t.

Modern Christian Christmas music (ie FELONIOUS PAP) at the goddamned Winter Market. I assume they were performing in a tower to prevent Vancouverites in attendance from returning the auditory assault with a physical one.

I have slowly learned something. It’s enough to be able to walk around and look, with a friend, and not have a plan. I want to think I might enjoy wanting things. At the same time, I want fewer and fewer material things and more and more the troubling unquantifiables, whose existence in life stretches and contracts and reforms during crisis events (deaths, and other terminations) and longer term realizations that sneak up frequently but look different every time, like how you come to understand how old friends and siblings can be so important to your sense of self, your sense of interpersonal propriety, of who you are. Then you are completely forgetting that and going hunh! well holy shit, when you come across it from another angle.

I feel like Penelope but the loom is my brain and what’s woven is memory.

There’s something thoughtful and protoplasmic about family relationships in settler subcultures and first nations families percolating in my brain.

no waords tidday no dulcimer

Oh John Scalzi thank you for the blog post idea. A CLIP SHOW brOJeff says NO COURTROOM SCENES because unless it was the Good Wife all courtroom scenes officially suck and I will never write a courtroom scene unless I GET ALL THE MONEYS YOLANDI.

 

Essentially sometime between now and New Year I’ll do a post of my best posts from 2017. That should be like three items but damn it’ll be fun researching it and running my fingers over a truncated rosary of happy memories. FOR SCIENCE and LAZINESS and may they have many fat children.

I see Tammy tomorrow! yay! we’re going to wander around Granville Island on the second worst shopping day of the year but secretly we’re going there so I can find out if there’s a toy that would please darling Alex. After, we’re going to some queer cinema if I can arrange it and I guess sushi if not.

Today I should do something, but I have the feeling my gumption machine is needing service.

Many thanks to Katie, Paul and Keith (& Alex) for noms and hosting last night. It was a traditional Caspell dins with a fresh turkey (wonderful sausage stuffing), mashed potatoes, mashed turnips and carrots, cranberry sauce and brussels sprouts. BrOJeff and Rob Warner also joined us, who was wearing a very festive hat and suspenders and brought tales of Solstice cheer. It was a happy and lowkey meal and I have to thank Katie for making a spectacular bird, which is now resting comfortably in the souppot here. It was so beautiful I took a picture of it, but that was also to commemorate that it was in Granny’s roasting pan which is still chugging along, having seen many roasts come and go over the last 75 years.

How could I forget the gravy?

Job interview isn’t happening this morning. I’m almost glad, I still feel stuffed from last night.

Jeff and I are invited to feast at Planet Bachelor (I decided not to change the name) for the solstice / xmas tonight. I shall contact Katie later to get my instructions about what to bring.

Paul dropped by last night to give Katie some space and ended up crashing here until about 2:30.

Passport filling out crap today.

 

23665 word count

So, as any poor sap that follows me knows, I am writing science fiction novels. One of the central tenets of writing is that you have a plot before you start. I don’t have a plot, I have a life arc. George is an earth born alien who wants to be in space and can’t get there without human help – or so he thinks. Upsun novels will follow his attempts and failures to get to space while all kinds of other shit happens.

One of the kinds of other shit is the ongoing difficulty the scientists are having figuring out how sixers, who have soft bodies, can be so dreadfully hard and durable. What are they made of?   Yay science. This can be part of the handwavey bits.

Learned that the same production team that did Orphan Black is going to do the Fionavar Tapestry. That should be really fun.

No writing yesterday, I’m a lazy swine. I did get my passport pics. I have printed out the application.

Katie GOT A JOB a decent paying job. She starts in the new year.

I’m thrilled for her.

 

Goijng into New Westminster to see if somebody who answered my craigslist ad will make music with me. Pretty much expecting to get stood up, but after last night’s amazing filk at Cindy’s place I don’t feel sad; I had more praise for my songwriting talent in 2 hours than I normally get in a year. And people who know my songs were looking smug, that was fucking hilarious on its own.

Cindy was in glorious voice and she forced me to sing Lady of Komarr the bad gal when I had no frickin lyrics.

I have decided to name one of the chapters in Honey on the Moon “swerving cars taking heavy fire” just so I can make myself another awesome action scene – done the way I like it. I think …. I think Michel and Kulwant should be in that scene, dunno why. Maybe coming back from the port? mmmm

Wrote about 500 words so far today but I haven’t typed them in so I didn’t add them to the total yet.

Ate fresh bean curd for the first time last night at Queen Café, it was superb, and the stone bowl rice and seafood was NOM.

Had the tolerably yucky experience of accompanying Katie and Alex to the custody handoff with Daxus and got the finger from him, so I guess he read my blog post bwa ha ha.

Mike is hanging on. There’s nothing like nearly getting yourself fired a year ago for how vehement you were about a problem and then being forced to go fix it the week before Christmas, as may happen to the lad. Damn those fucking managers, they are so goddamned incompetent.

Keith had an accident and may be concussed. His dad’s gonna look after him and I don’t know what that means about me getting to the housefilk at Shad’s tonight.