Month: July 2018

I wrote, but not on proper projects (I’m even working on a quarter century old romance novel, what the hell).

SO HOT. hot as lava.

We’re going to a morning matinee today and then I’m taking Jeff to lunch.

Alex’s tweet yesterday had me drooling

Picnic spread: potato salad, momofuku eggs, balsamic tomato basil salad, corn chips, salsa, guacamole, veggies and dip, cured meats, cheeses, baguette, crackers, and a selection of fresh fruit. Now to carry it all to the beach!

So it was me, Darwin, Alex, Katie, Keith, Paul and Jeff.

We ate and talked and I noodled on Otto and Rowena.

Weather was fricking outstanding, hot and clear with a breeze, and Alex found us a nice shady tree to sit beneath.

THAT TOMATO BASIL SALAD gave me LIFE.

Jeff and I are seriously thinking of making a little movie about our trip downtown because JESUS CHRIST EVERY MORON WITH A DRIVER’S LICENCE AND AN EXPENSIVE VEHICLE BLOCKED OUR WAY sometimes repeatedly.

There was a pole in front of the sign as we were driving home from the family picnic yesterday evening, so brO sounded it out as Cheese Evangelical Church instead of Chinese Evangelical Church and candidly we all know Cheese Evangelists.

I so love it when Katie calls me up for brekkie on Saturday. We laugh, we talk, and almost inevitably, we cry.

Then we went up the mountain and looked west over the city and talked some more.

I LOVE MY FAM

Then Jeff and I tried to go to a matinee. What a clusterf that was.

Still having a good day. Back to editing.

Practiced yesterday O GOD our fingerends looked like railroad tracks. If you can believe it Paul said that he’d never heard Indio’s Hard Sun. I played it for him on youtube

and then figured out how to play Cadd9 and Am7 on Otto and we played our way through (no singing) about a hunnert times.

So yesterday I learned two new chords and got Paul to actually practice guitar, yay me.

Slept a lot yesterday. I obviously needed it. I feel absolutely clearheaded and well rested now although I had the salmon of wisdom and steeped tea for brekkie so maybe that has something to do with it as well.

I have had the MOST INTENSE CRAVING for beer in the last couple of days. I have had beer since November a couple of times and always felt like shit afterwards so I’ve managed to hold off but it’s a lousy feeling, let me tell you.

ANARCHISM FOR THE PEOPLE.

 

so I made gazpacho to take to the musical evening and we visited and we played and ate cold salmon and cole slaw and potatoes and rice and obvs the gazpacho, and it was RILLY NICE to eat cold food (although Tom nuked the gazpacho, what a card).

Last song of the night was Mike playing In The Early Morning Rain – he does a great version of it and

anyway now I can’t sleep because I’m so buzzed and happy.

Katie and Alex didn’t come but Keith attended, and how good to see him.

Tom and Peggy floated the idea of a memorial filk for the 10th anniversary of John’s death next summer. I support this notion.

FUCK how can he have been gone ten years? Sometimes I want him back so bad

nobody else could interpret the world as he could

 

So I walked to Timmy Ho’s yesterday at 6 am (the crows were talking to me almost the entire way, it was quite funny) and then Paul wanted to walk midmorning so we went to Oakalla. We paused to talk to some dog walkers and heard a funny anecdote about the bear that’s been in the park for the last little.

Enormous, glossy, well-fed and utterly unconcerned with the doings of humans, it crossed the boardwalk in front of our interlocutor, jumped into the lily pad end of Deer Lake (what I’d fucking give for a video of that!), and swam away with the air of a gentleman pleased to drop the temp a little. Apparently it was so calm it didn’t even make the guard dog he was holding the leash on bark, which is amazing in my view.

so that was 4k yesterday on the new orthotics and even now shit’s yelping down in the dogs, although I must admit I slept great

 

Tonight, off to the Ville-ah for a dinner and some music if it’s not too too grisly hot. So looking forward to seeing Peggy and Tom.

That was a relief, finding that out. Spoke to Dave; it’s been unconscionably warm in TO, but it’s been about average for July here, clear and hot and airless.

Tammy is recovering well from her knee replacement, yay mobility.

Had a most cheering twitter conversation with my biggest fan yesterday, that was pleasant.

Haven’t heard from or seen Keith in a while… wondering how he’s doing.

I’m thinking of walking over to Tim Horton’s. Woke up with my knees hurting like crazy (I have no idea why) but I suspect they’ll feel better if I go walkies.

 

Mike CAME OVER YESTERDAY and brought wings, bless him, crunchy Thai wings, which we devoured while we watched the season finale of Expanse (again, like we mind).

Also yesterday, brief visit to Value Village with Katie, and then ALEX CAME in the afternoon and played with water in the backyard and DEMANDED TO SEE A PINBALL in the flesh after playing Star Trek and then I assumed he still didn’t have the coordination to play a kazoo AND I WAS WRONG and we marched up and down the basement blowing on our kazoos.

completely backed away from being done editing SOTW FOUND TWO TYPOS ON THE FIRST PAGE

wtf man

ANYWAY

Katie’s coming to get me soon and we’re going to drown our emotional sorrows by shopping at Village de Valeur

Jeff took me to brekkie this morning fank you

 

 

SO CLOSE to being done with the editing for SOFW

Here’s a twitter explosion about Queen Elizabeth that I hope you all enjoy. The references to Canada vis a vis trumpty justabout make mah heart perslode.

Lovely walk with Paul yesterday at the Quay (I was sweating like an atheist in church at the end of it) and he kept going on and fucking on about gazpacho so I fixed him with my basilisk stare and we bought veggies and I made gazpacho for him when he drove me home. It’s DAMN GOOD GAZPACHO. It had one whole beefsteak tomato with the fibrous bits and seeds out of it, one whole red pepper, one whole English cuke, three scallions and most of a V8 bottle, plus salt, pepper and cilantro.

It’s a blessing in this heat, seriously.

Tammy has successfully gotten a new knee; now for the physio, poor lamb. Sounds like she’s on the start of an excellent recovery.

Heard from Mike. He’s alive but just barely.

Jeff and I attempted to unblah ourselves with fudgsicles, results are mixed.

Hot as balls here again today.

I am down a quart of Alex, must see the boy.

Editing at a furious pace, encouraged by my biggest fan on twitter.

Sneaking stuff in to make Slider and Jesse’s later relationship look like it didn’t fall outta the sky.

Seeing harassment? What to do.

lovely mini walk yesterday with the kids and Paul. Mostly we hung out in the Hilda Park.

I am continuing the ‘try to do one nice thing a day for the fam’ so I made chocolate syrup for Alex.

Editing continues – I’ve calmed down somewhat. I mean if Dunnett can move a battle ten years in the wrong direction and suck it up so can I have meshugas with timeline.

Dan Rather on twitter this am:

I cherish taking leisurely strolls with my wife Jean at twilight. My steps are getting slower and increasingly I have another journey on my mind–the one into eternity. But the joy–the sheer, unadulterated joy–of a hand-in-hand , slow walk as evening shadows fall never ceases.

 

This is my fOlks and the drives in the Camaro.

happy sigh.

 

I did two nice things for Katie; I made her a lunch and I am assembling some TV shows for her to watch at her request. I’m thinking of making chocolate syrup for Alex to speed matters when he’s demanding choc milk.

Beautiful walk in Oakalla (Deer Lake Park) yesterday. Paul’s still a quart low from the last blood donation so he was actually having trouble keeping up to me and that my friends has not happened in a damned long while.

I’ve adjusted my medication and there’s always a couple of days of wobbliness…. actually what I did was I halved my vitamin d intake and will keep it that way until after the solstice, and I’m definitely perkier. I’m experiencing a bit more pain, still adjusting to the new orthotics but I was expecting this and it’s just meh, not alert the media.

damn that was  a nice sunrise.

Just spoke to pOp on the phone. He is a veritable factory of productive activity these days, so we started talking probiotics. Also talked about the kids including Keith’s bday celebration and a long description of WHY there was cake. POP YOU TELL GGMA

 

So I’m of the opinion that you should punch Nazis while they’re little and weak, because once they’ve completely got the legal monopoly on the use of force sewn up with bad judges and no civil rights – like has already happened in the states, sorry, it’s happened – they become a lot harder to punch.

I had a brief and unpleasant contact on twitter. At one point, angered by my insistence that a boy teen in a MAGA hat deserves a slap if he’s going to be an asshole, my interlocutor asked me what I’d say to a black man in a MAGA hat.

Here’s my response.

 

Nothing. My remit is talking to stupid white people. (ED NOTE I’M VERY PROUD OF THAT RESPONSE)  You have pretty spelling, so maybe you aren’t a bot. (THIS IS ACTUALLY AN ISSUE ON TWITTER)  The man behind MAGA enables racism in the service of the wealthy and power-mad, and in so doing, mein freund, he does not stray far from the road to OÅ›wiÄ™cim.

drop that mike

 

ANYWAY a horde of racists promptly came in to my mentions and dropped shit on me, but they all cleared out my this morning.

 

Keith’s partay at the Bombay Bistro was very nice, and we hung out at Planet Bachelor for a while afterward.

 

this morning:

thanks Jeff for telling me the sky was purty