Month: May 2018

Just got about five hours of sleep, so I guess that’s me done for the day. I’m gonna check my itinerary to see when the forced heartiness of the welcome to the tour is going to be thrust upon me.

All the electronic bits and bobbles work – charging etc accomplished with difficulty or heating up too much; unfortunately those world-class ratfondlers at Bell Mobility TURNED MY ROAMING ON THE INSTANT I MADE LANDFALL.

In Iceland.

I’ve tried everything to get it turned off, but each time I turn the phone back on it’s automatically locked in place at the top of my screen. So unless I want hundreds of dollars on my next bill I have to take the ****** sim card out – and manage not to lose the SOB.

NO SOAP IN THE HOTEL ROOM. Past Allegra, possibly low key remembering something from a travel site, brought bar soap. YEAH ME. I likely could buy some, but if there’s one thing I learned from a $280 taxi ride, it’s that everything in Iceland is so expensive that it’s pointless being angry about it  — it was worth it, candidly, just to not have to drag my bags any farther — KEF is a nightmarish little airport AND THEIR FUCKING INFO SIGNS DO NOT SHOW THE EXIT OR WHERE YOU GET TAXIS since the place is designed to run you past every excuse to strip your bank account. The blonde woman taxi driver spoke better English than most Canadian politicians, which, now that I ponder it, is likely not the highest praise. ONE error in usage in a 45 minute ride? Which I have heard native speakers make?  Cazart. However since my Quaker, Mennonite and atheist forebears would rise up in a body unless I got the cheapest way back to the airport, that’s what I’m planning for the return ride; the bus system in Iceland is pretty damned good.

Although tourists will pay a set fee (thousands of dollars) to get DRIVEN AROUND ICELAND on the ring road. The driver loves those – you just go home for the day afterward, you’ve made as much as you’re going to.

At the end of the ride – tips don’t happen in Iceland – I was desperate for some token to show her how much fun I had talking to her – I took the little button from the Daagerad brewery in Burnaby which I’ve had on my bumpack since Paul and I went there last and told her, it’s advertising but it doesn’t have any words on it and she said IT’S A MOON!!! and put it on her lapel. If you go to the bottom of this page you’ll see the moon and star design – the button was in black and copper.

I didn’t get her name. Bad me. But she said, just as I was getting out of the taxi, that as I had lumbered up to the taxi stand (thank you JESUS I’m out of KEFLAVIK airport) one of the *other* woman taxi drivers said to my driver “That looks like a very interesting person,” which you know, from a taxi driver isn’t necessarily praise.

Anyway, I send up a beautiful prayer for her because tomorrow she’s cleaning up the lingering mess from having her storage locker burn down, including trying to recover baby pictures. I was so tired and emotional I nearly burst into tears when I heard that.

I hope they give the housekeepers ear protection, I need it for the vacuum noise which I honest to god thought was a pressure washer being used indoors, but is just the vacuum being thrashed about upstairs.

Man, I feel better for having had a shower. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna dress and wander over to the Saga Museum and possibly get something to nosh on the way back, since I haven’t had anything substantial since 5 pm Vancouver time yesterday. After I check the itinerary, of course. Can’t miss the mixer that inevitably starts these dos.

safe at the Kea Storm in Reykjavik although god knows when I’ll get into my room and my body thinks it’s 1 in the morning so at this point it’s likely I’ll kick into midnight mode and just keep going.

Uneventful flight.

You can really see the sediment from the flooding Fraser right now contrasted against the normal colour of the Strait.

I’m at the gate waiting for the folks to let us onto the airplane. I get into Reyjkjavik at 6 am tomorrow. I suppose I should figure out how to get to the hotel while I’m still conscious.

preboarding has started

Whether or not it finds a new home, since the people at Syfy who run programming appear to have up and all suffered from necrosis of the brain.

1. Intelligent scripts.
2. Perfect casting.
3. Almost fucking perfect space action.
4. season 1 episode 3 ‘CQB’ REMAINS the best 44 minutes of TV set in space although there are episodes in all three seasons so far that can compete.
5. a little side note re representation; my buddy Mike said he watched the show and the first person you see is a Chinese woman. He says to himself, How Nice For Them, they ticked the box with a woman of colour. Then a couple of episodes on the Captain of the Donnager proves to be ANOTHER CHINESE WOMAN and Mike starts thinking that it is possible somebody got representation right. RIP TERESA YAO YOU WERE AN AWESOME CAPTAIN
6. Amos always says what’s on his mind, but he lets somebody else be his conscience.
7. Calling Martian Marines Mickies is one of the funniest things evar
8. Some of the most chilling – and understandable – villains evar. I mean, if you’re going to take as given that evil needs to be one or both of two things, rich and zealous.
9. Thomas Jane as the investigator. That haircut was his idea.
10. There are books which allow you to go where the series can’t, although I have to say I prefer the series because it’s easier to share.

250 hits and 17 kudos already.  Much more banter and less hardcore fooling around.

So excited! This time tomorrow I’ll be staggering off an airplane and trying to find the way to the hotel.

I’ve written 5K words on the fanfic.  I was very happy when I woke up this morning feeling more like working on HOTM;;;;;;

let’s see if the feeling lasts.

Totally loving where I am with the kids and grandkid this morning. Alex is aware that I’m going to Iceland to look at waterfalls and volcanos.

It’s official!!! I’m freaking out about my overseas trip.

I have made the last purchase – a wall adapter – and I should now have everything I need to travel to Iceland.

The packing starts today.

I am going to be making lists.

Got to snuggle with Alex again last night. Poppa and I took him to Eastburn Park and he wouldn’t climb something and I said you can climb that and I showed him a secret way how and that probably burned two hundred calories offa him right there.

Going shopping with Keith this morning. He’s working but his employment torments are his to relate.

I gave myself a proper manicure and it’s pointless so I’m chopping off my fingernails this morning to be super short again.

Saw Mike with excessive briefness yesterday – he left me a copy of Lost Connections by Johann Hari and he seemed quite excited about it.

I shall do childcare tonight. I don’t imagine it will be as easy as the last time but who knows.

Realized that I wrote some magic and then used it the wrong way. The music I’ve been writing calls my ancestors, and I’m not keen on that, (cause it worked out so well the last time it happened – I was messed for days!) so I’ve stopped singing and playing it and as soon as I made the decision to do that I immediately felt much better. My sleep is better too.

The dishwasher’s running, I’ve had breakfast, and my new fic is up to 4000 words.

Tammy is encouraging me to edit. I’m deleting the next sentence and the sentence after that because I’m fucking pissed off at another friend of mine for the ‘writing advice’ I got but it would be ill-advised to make that opinion public. Or I could take the advice in the worst possible way.

A MIRACLE HAPPENED TO ME YESTERDAY. My parents know about it. ANYWAY I’M IN A GOOD MOOD NOW THANKS.

 

Phidippus borealis

Clouds in the sky

But where is Alex?

 

I’ll give you more news about the lad when I have it.

wrote 1420 words yesterday as an experiment regarding volume – not novel related

I cracked a tooth on a pancake (not eating that brand anymore) two weeks ago and Jeff just had root canal plus, so we’re kind of ouchy. I’m wondering if I should see the dentist before I go but it doesn’t seem to be getting worse.

To take your mind off my troubles, have some figures from the top of Renaissance German heraldry.

Finally saw Black Panther. Yup, fave character Shuri.

Alex was amazing. He broke down twice; once I said, too bad, I’m turning the light off. The other time he wanted chocolate cereal for supper and his Poppa and I just looked at each other and laughed quite heartily. Other than that, he was his usual flailing butterfly self, and fell asleep when he was supposed to.

Tonight, I was at Tom and Peggy’s with all of my fam and Tom and Peggy had their son and daughterinlaw and *their* three kids under four and you’d think it would have been a zoo but I found it entertaining in the extreme to have six month old twin boys around, especially when they thought I was the frickin’ pied piper every time I sang and played (took Otto and Rowena). ANYWAY I told Peggy on Thursday I’m showing up with food and the rest of it all kinda happened and Jeff against his best nature et some of the macncheese and now nature done put a plug in him.

I hope the blueberry minitarts buy back some enteric happiness.

We sang and played and Peggy was at the standup bass and her son even played for a while (he backed me up on Clem’s Walk, if you can credit it….)

Anyway it was fun, and everyone cleared out and left me and Peggy to talk and Tom and Paul to talk, and you know how it is when you haven’t spoken to a friend you know well and it all just comes pouring out but really you should be getting going…..

Three kids under four, Christ wept. I know it’s nothing by Victorian standards but even so.

for a couple of hours.

It’s everything else.

I bounce upward for a while but then there is too much down. Pretense is okay, but inadequate. Shit hurts. I think about Iceland and get a little gleeful. I review the list for stuff I have to pack and think about how to travel as light as possible.

and in a few minutes, Alex.

Ate both lunch and dinner with Keith and Paul yesterday. (Lentil soup for lunch, Desi Turka for dins – during which a person came in, shot up in the women’s washroom, puked (in the toilet)  and scraped herself together when the manager told her the police were inbound and then she staggered out in much the same state of distress as when she staggered in. To say that watching the washroom door for the entire meal put a pall on things is not overdoing it, and somehow I ended up subsidizing everyone else’s drinking, but o well.

Keith spent the intervening period interviewing a business owner for the possibility of acquiring it, and I’ll let him tell that story, but we certainly had a lively discussion about it afterward.

Paul and I are hanging with Alex at his place tonight while Katie is off at some appointment.

Due to an event that I’m not supposed to publicly discuss but which is known to the Burnaby fam, Katie’s childcare options are reduced somewhat.

Those two statements are connected. Paul and I are hoping to keep him entertained and then we’re going to haul him off to bed and stick him between us until Paul’s furnace-like corpus roasts him to sleep.