Author: Allegra

Born when atmospheric carbon was 316 PPM. Settled on MST country since 1997. Parent, grandparent.

still no eeg results

I’ll call the clinic again next Monday. Many things slow down over the festive season so even though it was supposed to be ready it probably isn’t, yet.

You know Hudson & Rex is a terrible advertisement for St. John’s, right? One percent of the population is Black and that’s not how the show demographics works…. also…. you know that they have like a murder a year and so in the first episode they blow through the murder rate like theysa going backwards.

Georgia turned blue, but it was the rest of us holding our breath. FUCK MITCH MCCONNELL.

While I’m in the mood, FUCK AIR CANADA.

If that link disappears, it’s to a story claiming that Air Canada is sending influencers on holiday to sunny places to pad their advertising budgets during A GODDAMNED PANDEMIC ….I mean I knew they were slimy bastids but that’s low.

Buns dough is in the bread-maker. I really am fine with never eating white bread again if I can have yummy brown bread buns fresh out of the oven within 2 hours of conceiving the notion.

In 774 AD the biggest coronal mass ejection in 10k years hit the earth. (Per Phil Plait the Bad Astronomer.) If the same thing hit the earth today satellites would plummet, the grid would fail, the internet would fly up its own asshole and choke and it would be weeks in many places and years in others before the power came back on. So thank your lucky stars you only live in an earthquake zone, lol

I’ll be wandering over to Planet Bachelor later today.

Letters to two Daves in the mail today. pOp’s getting a very big sketch of Baby Yoda.

No progress on UPSUN.

Inaugural Wandering Wednesday

 

Not going too far from home for this first pic.

Here’s Keith, up at Pemberton, about to get into this total stranger’s car (actually he was a buddy of the guy who ran the soaring club, Rudy, now sadly passed in a midair collision in 2013) but I love his posture… he is GOING PLACES, and I love his hair, and the scenery is quite something.

Paul and the kids used to spend weekends up at Pemberton camping just off the runway.  He’d bring water back from the spring at Nairn Falls, which is really wonderful tasting water.

and all the way up there is still MST country.

Windy day and beet soup recipe

We didn’t get the wind in Burnaby that was forecast yet; I’m assuming the coast got it.

It’s the kind of day when you feel good about grating beets and finely slicing cabbage for borscht.

It’s a dead simple recipe: boil six cups of water (less if you want it SOLID, more if you’re liking more broth), peel and grate three medium sized beets, finely slice a quarter of a head of cabbage, (adjust balance of veg for preferences) & throw them into the water, add a heaping teaspoon of Better than Bouillon vegetarian salt paste, a quarter teaspoon pepper, a quarter teaspoon garlic powder, a little hand ground basil, and it’s food in half an hour of a steady low boil and ambrosia nuked the next day. I chopped some scallions, parsley and yellow pepper to throw on top, and there’s greek yogurt in the fridge.

brO and I were dreading the season opener of the Rookie but it kicked ass. We heard lines of dialogue we never expected to hear from the show. Very welcome change from the overwrought magical bad guy shit at the end of the last season.

I knew I’d have lunchbag letdown from yesterday so I’ve been babying myself today (CBD gummy early in the day – I don’t take them every day) and it’s worked well. I’m halfway through a letter to Dave, finished all my Trotsky Tuesdays for January, am making song lists for stuff I can record and post in two seconds when I’m behind the eight-ball for deadlines, and contemplating the fifty stamps I just bought, uncoiling like two misshapen tentacles over the dishwasher, with a lazy smile.

I can hear Jeff getting borscht, I’ll join him.

 

Inaugural Trotsky Tuesday

I used to think that I wanted to make a baseball card art collection of anarchists and revolutionaries, but I’ll do this instead. Each week I’ll present an agitator new to me — or an old friend. I don’t know if I would have liked Emma Goldman in real life… she’d have a lot to say about how lazy I am, although I’m working on it.

Emma Goldman on Wikipedia.

A review of her autobiography on C4SS

She lived in Toronto for a while. Every time I walked or took transit past Dundas and Spadina, I would think of her. I wrote a story about her and Kropotkin when I was living in Montréal; if I find it I’ll append it although I will probably need to retype the damned thing if I do find it.

recording sesh

Recorded ten songs – archival quality, if I was doing it nicey nice it would be 4 – with Anthony at 12th St Sound this morning. I’ve preposted some already.

Had a fantastic time, will definitely go back.

Katie’s going great guns on getting the rental into shape. She’s a force of nature, that woman.

560 new words today on UPSUN

Honestly I feel really happy right now.

Inaugural Maudlin Monday

Well hello folks! To be maudlin, that is, tearfully sentimental, is not at all hard for me. I cry readily, although with irritation because if go longer than 30 seconds or start sobbing, it messes with my head and makes my eyes feel scoured.

Today I want to be maudlin about me auld mither. She is loved and respected and honoured because she’s lovable and respectable and honourable. She’s a fan of science so she does change her mind from time to time about quite important things. This makes her unusual.  Her kindness, quick thinking and competence are a wonder to experience.

 

Continue reading Inaugural Maudlin Monday

Song of the Day – Bruise

There’s a bruise on my heart where the words went through
Green and purple and black and blue
and it doesn’t really matter if they were true
Green and purple and black and blue
The world will turn, my heart still yearn
and fire burn — I’ll never learn
just what it was this love was for
I don’t think that I’ll need it any more

Just a primate sittin’ in the rain
Not imagining that I’m still sane
Hunting for a hit of novocaine
but there’s no monopoly on pain

Buddies tell me keep your chin up, dear
Tears keep swan-diving into my beer
opportunists whisper in my ear
thanks, I’m drunk enough, I’m outta here

I’d invent a thousand words just to see your face
sit at your feet again and share your space
it was all a golden coin time cannot debase
though it SINKS IN THE WELL OF LIFE WITHOUT A TRACE

There’s a bruise on my heart where the words went through
Green and purple and black and blue
and it doesn’t really matter if they were true
Green and purple and black and blue

AKA THE REJECTION SENSITIVITY DYSPHORIA song

What’s the best advice you ever got

In this inaugural Sunday Survey…

What’s the best advice you ever received? If that’s too big, how about

for your health?

for your relationships?

for your career?

regarding your creativity?

re your pets?

re your schooling?

re money?

re gift ideas?

from a dream?

from a book?

Now think about the person who gave you that advice, and think about how it was given, and if that had anything to do with why you wanted to take it.

Send a brief thanks out into the world in that person’s honour, and resolve to be that kind of person.

Song of the Day – Crazymaking Boy

So this is for Paul, and Mike, and Tom, and Katie’s singing in the background, and it’s off my album Mama’s Got Skills (Katie named it), engineered by Gord Breckenridge. I think that’s possibly the drummer from Fleetwood Mac on the prerecorded drumtrack.

This song comes very close to being commercial. Most of my songs do not even skirt around being commercial, being out in that big ol’ left field.

You are the one I’m plotting crime with
The one I’m spending time with
The one my senses rhyme with
my crazymaking boy

You are my hero from a fable
My supper on the table
My ready willing able

my crazymaking boy

Everything you do just comes out fine
I don’t know how you do it
I’m just glad I’m living through it
Everything you say just comes out fine
I’m in some new dimension
I guess I’d better pay attention

You are the pin that burst my bubble
My vision going double
Another word for Trouble
My crazymaking boy

You are the one who brought me fire
The one who pulled the wire
Personified desire
My crazymaking boy

Crazymaking boy…. X 8

 

wonderful outing, terrible weather

The weather is heinous, unconscionable, loathsome and ghastly, but it is Vancouver in January, so….

Finished the biscotti around 11:30, borrowed the car just before noon, and delivered biscotti to Cindy (also returned her Christmas themed cookie tin, you always hope they come back but they don’t necessarily) and then drove to Tom and Peggy’s- their car was gone so I left it with the Globe and Mail on their front porch – then went to Planet Bachelor and gave the biscotti to Paul and met Katie on her way out the door (no Alex, he’s at his pop’s) to clean the new place on 15th which will need a new sobriquet, I’m thinking Generations. It is big. I mean this is a big, big four bedroom apartment. Open plan, perfect for a family. I joined her and cleaned two things and loaded toilet paper into all the johns and toured the joint and tried not to make work for Katie.

Then Mike showed up (the one she’s sweet on, not the one I hang out with and who gave us an Oculus for Christmas) and you’re not supposed to jump up and down and howl like a mofo when people lose weight so I said what I always say when people lose a lot of weight I pretend I’m sad and say, “But there’s so much less of you to love,” and his eyes kinda bugged out for a second and he said is it that noticeable and I said, “Oh yeah.”

So there’s me being dashed far from appropriate, and then the next thing outta my mouth is the classic, “You’re timing’s perfect, I just put biffy paper in all the johns,” BECAUSE THERE ARE THREE FUCKING JOHNS four if you count the one next to the laundry room downstairs but that one’s shared – and I guess I realized it was time to go. Did I mention the Jacuzzi? The square dance hall sized covered rear deck? the CHANDE FUCKING LIER? I’m leaving shit out, mOm, so I can ambush you with it later.

He went to her place – Katie cracked up as she thought of him scaring the shit out of the boys using her key. But he was going to help her move some stuff into the house, so that’s the kind of lad he is, immediately helpful and undemanding. And I thought I do not want to be here when he gets back.  I thought I’d pick up sushi but I just didn’t want to, so I went to buy stamps and went to choices and got salad and chocklit and chicken on skewers and made a late lunch and we watched the Saxon Hoard special on Time Team.

Now I’m thinking I’m going to nap and be happy in my sleep for a while, because I can’t tell you how happy I am for being wide awake at the moment. If I can sleep at all for the noise the wind is making, it’s quite unreal. Aw damn, I have to put the food away first….

Reasonably productive day

Shopping; didn’t get to Al P.’s New Years Walk in Trout Lake, le sigh, made pizza, wrote and mailed a letter to my mOm, made biscotti dough, three loads of laundry washed and dried and sort of staged for being put away, recorded Bob Dylan’s New Years Day.

This morning I shall bake biscotti and then deliver it to the deserving and the undeserving alike. Then I’ll probably make another batch because otherwise it’s too much room in the fridge as it chills.

Continue reading Reasonably productive day