Month: November 2021

very brief walk, a few loads of laundry

I have roused myself from yesterday’s stupor, which could have been caused by anything between a small stroke and the marthambles (possibly hollow heels, see thrumps) or just plain being flattened by the pandemic and Kyle Rittenhouse BEING ACQUITTED like holy shit, and the RCMP officers whose pensions are tied up in tar sands are beating the shit of out the Wet’suwet’en defenders, and the BC government took days to declare an emergency when the Coquihalla is broken like a Lego set, and we’ve got yet a new Delta variant, and I still haven’t practiced anything for Tom’s service and so I’m kind of overwhelmed. There was a baby in there too, I could swear I remember that part.

Anyway, I’ve had breakfast and made tea and started brown buns and filled the dishwasher and emptied the sink and finished a fanfic and it’s only 7:30

Paul and I went for a short walk yesterday – he rode over here on his bicycle and then DIDN’T SEE my bike (which is clearly visible) in the carport so he scared the shit out of me tell me that it had been stolen. I mean, Paul could have majored in ‘looking right at something without seeing it’ the entire time we was merrit but seriously that was not fun. I told him about his flying canoe (it tried to fly during the wind storm).

Spoke to Mike and Dave yesterday on the phone. They both could be doing better but are getting by.

I bet I just go back to bed now.

 

aphasic episode

I had a lengthy aphasic episode in the Saveon this morning. “Aphasia?” Jeff said helpfully which was actually helpful. I can force a word or two out but it takes all the brain I have to manage it. This was preceded by a lengthy and weird dizzy spell. As long as I was hanging on to a counter I wasn’t dizzy but the second I let go, whoopsy!

As far as I can tell I’m fine now.

Baby Ryker

after 39 weeks of hellish pregnancy, it has all been resolved in the form of the 51 cm long Ryker Lee, who appeared in the way of nature at 3:16 this morning. Katie is choosing to keep the ‘pre name name’ and personally I’m thrilled off my ass that one of the grandsons has a fannish name.

He is eating well and was heading off to his birth sleep when Jeff (thank you) drove by and picked me up. Now we’re heading back downstairs to watch Time Team do something Roman and mosaic-y.

I’ll post pics eventually.

pOp

Pop at the London Ont house

There were a pair of chairs that we brought to London from Ottawa. They were nasty red velvet upholstery and quite beat up, but the fOlks liked them so they were reupholstered, as seen. pOp is sitting under a lithograph of a woman ‘petit maman’ who looks like she might be a retired sex worker, and facing her is a brass rubbing of a grand lady that our friend Elizabeth made during a trip to the UK. That’s the door to Jeff’s room (aka the games room) behind him.

the Barrowtown pumping station is about to fail

it’s apparently the second biggest pumping station in North America

and if it fails

surrounded as it is with 150 volunteers packing sandbags as fast as they can

Sumas Lake will reappear after 97 years

50% of the eggs and dairy for BC will be gone, possibly never to return

and collectively we will have lost one of the most critical pieces of farmland in BC history

 

you need a million calories a year and 5000 litres of water

LATER

anyway the mayor and chief of police in Abby have reported that the pumping station is holding but it was a near thing

 

what’s closed

  • Hwy 1 between Hope and Lytton
  • Hwy 1 between Lytton and Spences Bridge
  • Hwy 3 between Hope and Manning Park
  • Hwy 3 between Princeton and Keremeos
  • Hwy 3 near Fernie
  • Hwy 5 between Hope and Merritt
  • Hwy 7 on both sides of Agassiz
  • Hwy 7 between Maple Ridge and Mission
  • Hwy 11 between Mission and Abbotsford
  • Hwy 93 between Radium Hot Springs and the BC-Alberta border
  • Hwy 99 between Pemberton and Lillooet

from Kelownanow News

Two free birthday songs

Jeff asked me to write a copyright free b-day song, so have TWO. One’s the chorus of the Tapioca song (which see) and the other was purpose built.

PS happy birthday to me. My apologies if I’m not actually alive, and gosh I guess I died young.

(I posted this in March and it finally went ‘live’ today, as did I when I awoke at 2 am.)

They’re evacuating about 7 blocks of Merritt BC right now

Those fuckers in the provincial government, who passed on the cell phone alert system for weather that the rest of Canada has, have been bald-faced saying that they haven’t heard of any deaths and that weather alerts ‘are for local governments to handle as per their local requirements’. YEAH THANKS A PANTLOAD Mike.

No deaths have been reported in the MSM but I have seen pics that make it impossible to believe we got through this unscathed in terms of loss of life, and farm animals and wildlife have almost for sure been victims.

The storm has dumped up to 250 mm of rain on an enormous swathe of Solh Temexw. The average yearly rainfall is 2351 mm, so that’s one tenth of the annual precip in 48 hours.

I know that this is the wet coast, but I’d like you to picture how we get 2351 mm of precip annually in Vancouver and got ~250 mm in 48 hours (probably closer to 180 here, but BIBLICAL). To put it another way we normally get the same amount of rain in the entire month of November. Locally *as at the Burnaby South collection station* 100 mm in the last 24 hours.

MY EVIDENCE

The wind picked up and rolled Paul’s red canoe.

On its Twitter page, the City of Burnaby says the following roads are closed until further notice:

  • Still Creek Drive from Eastbrook to Douglas
  • Douglas from Norland to Goring
  • Westminster Avenue from Still Creek to Regent Street
  • Limited access to Regent Street from Douglass Road

Image

from twitter. East Abbotsford overlooking Matsqui. On a normal day there are no fucking lakes there. Name of photographer will be added if learned. From @justmehereM

I’m now getting pics from reddit about condo building parking structures flooding in Langley. People are joking shut up now they’ll charge an extra 200 per month for pool maintenance….

Tulameen and Princeton are also as of noon today subject to evac orders.

walking at Lougheed

We went to Lougheed Mall for a mall walk, and I bought Purdy’s chocolates (Sweet Georgia Browns) and choc croissants for Jeff (okay I had one). Paul finally collected the bouncy exercise ball for Katie.

The rain, which has been unceasing, has caused landslides and flooding all around Abbotsford and Agassiz. Power’s out in loads of places and there’s a evac centre that’s been opened. Hundreds of cars are stuck on the highway between landslide points.

For the middle aged woman sitting on the roof of her car waiting for rescue just this minute, I’m thinking of you and hope you make it.

that’s bigoted speech

LOL someone said something enbyphobic and (essentially) transphobic at lunch yesterday. I said, as loudly as polite, “That’s bigoted speech,” but no one heard me. At least I didn’t say nothing.  I won’t repeat what she said but it’s the standard VARIANT on ‘please make up your mind about your pronouns’ and when I think how hard I’ve mentally fought to have a genuinely gender fluid character in my stories without all my icky cis assumptions on them maybe I should have been more gritty… but what good would it do? I mean when do you get a white woman to change her mind.

The meal was delightful (jerkwad comments aside) and I admired Ingrid’s amazing wine coloured hand knitted alpaca dress (she let me fondle the hem, thank goodness, because it was like an enormous red cloud of patterned softness) and listened to Jan burble (she is a burbler, and a damned good one) and do you know what, she took my sf recommendations AND SHE’S READ ALL OF MARTHA WELLS’ MURDERBOT STORIES and we all talked about how much we love the  Expanse (book and show)

and instead of going to bookstores afterwards like a realio trulio Dunnetteer I headed to the weed store to buy CBD gummies, because pain management is real, you know.

I did consume one glass of Glenfiddich in Dunnett’s honour. AND I have pain behind my right eye today in consequence, it’s my standard response to alcohol consumption.

I love how the background TV was formula 1 so I got to watch Lewis Hamilton get interviewed with the sound off.

Everyone in the restaurant was an old, like me. Like, without exception. Made me wonder about the local demographics.

Took a taxi there, came home via transit, curled up, watched TV, remembered to completely dry my laundry, put the split pea soup away.

Saw one of my all time fave “Vancouver interactions” –

accomplishments … are they?

went to Timmy Ho’s this morning. We shouldn’t have but there you have it. I should have gone to the library but I was too lazy to leave the house a second time. However I did chop up the ginger chicken for sammiches and I did sew elastics onto my orthotic slippers so they fit more snugly and I did add more pieces to the puzzle with the balls of wool and the white kitty cat and I did practice my new song (in the style of Billie Eilish) and Buster prefers that because I’m wearing headphones while I’m doing it so he’s not inconvenienced. Wrote 530 words on the story about the restaurant and 510 words on the story about the artist who makes monumental homoerotic art. Ran the dishwasher. Remembered to take all my drugs. Made poached eggs over diced tomatoes with cumin and garlic for supper and Jeff et it too. Fed the corbies. Tomorrow is Dunnett Day.

We’re going to have an atmospheric river again.

eviction notice

Katie has (allegedly) issued an eviction notice to the downstairs tenant. He unfortunately shows no signs of leaving yet (as far as I know she’s not in labour) and is unresponsive to his mother’s pleas. Still want to call him Riker. That is his nickname. Paul and I picked out names for Keith but when he came out he was a Keith so that’s what we named him.

Today I’m making some more split pea soup.

I’ve been writing 500-1000 words a day, but it’s all fanfic.

 

 

Suzanne is here

She has done the kitchen floor god bless her.

Peggy and I went shopping for a funeral garment for Tom’s service on the 27th and while we were at the Annacis Island Value Village she said, “You know, I thought I didn’t have anything to wear when I was at home but now I think I do.” So she’s going to wear things that were already in her closet and happy I was to go with her.

Paul and I will go for a walk later this afternoon.

I saw a Neptune flying as we were pulling into the Value Village, I assume for a Remembrance Day flyby.

Think I’ll have some mac and cheese.

l a t e r

That didn’t make me happy enough so I put new potatoes, a sweet potato, and a very small acorn squash in the oven and now we wait.