Author: Allegra

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

I just walked 3.5 kilometres doing errands

I paid for Katie’s storage (and it’s great I won’t have to do that much longer), I mailed my application to be a busker at the post office, and I turned in my plates for my car insurance refund.  It isn’t much, but the last two days represent the first time money has come into the house that my fOlks didn’t give me in many moons. I did take the bus for 2.4 k up the hill from the insurance co to the storage co., but given how my feet are singing and how that is about a 300 foot elevation gain I am not really beating myself up over it.

I am now pleasantly weary and thinking about the next thing on my to do list.

And hoping it doesn’t actually involve, you know, standing up.

 

This is a very rude and funny commentary website on how top heavy webdesign is these days.

Ziva’s gone

Well, the experiment is over.  I am not any less broke, but I imagine I’ll smile when I get my refund later today.

As I sold her I said, “This is probably the last car I’ll ever own.”  It’s also the only car I’ll ever own; the Toyota my folks gave me in the lat eighties Paul put in his own name (and did I screech about that, as I recollect).

Church was rather thin gruel yesterday.  I know that the Oneness people have views compatible with some UU’s but I find their theology to be … well… mushy.  My theology starts with science and ends with all the stuff we don’t know.  God can go live in that part of the human world.  All the stuff we know exists that we can’t prove, like goodness and love. We are all connected and blessings are nice but I want to do something about the disconnects and fight racism.

And in selling Ziva, become a better environmentalist, since she’s going to get her oil leaks fixed, finally.  They’ll have to pull the engine.

I have an unpleasant series of phone calls in front of me today, but you can’t have everything.

Fist bumps for health!

Apparently fist bumps are better epidemiologically.

Ziva is still unsold.  I will light a candle in church today.

Oh noes!  New show we’re watching is Burn Notice.  It’s like The Finder met MacGyver met a star who actually does have two black belts!  Bruce Campbell as the awesome buddy!  Gabrielle Anwar as the awesome crazy IRA chica! Jeffrey Donovan as a guy who can have crazy eyes and puppy dog eyes in a split second!  And they tell you how to make BOMBS IN EVERY EPISODE.  Happy.  Best of all they’ve aired the last episode, so we can watch the whole thing.

I didn’t go for a walk yesterday but I exercised HARD. My shoulder is still sore this morning.

 

 

 

walking every day

My healthy habits attempts continue, much assisted by the weather.  It is fricking gorgeous.  I am walking every day.  It’s going to hurt no matter what I do, so I may as well stay mobile.  I’m also ramping up my weight bearing exercises.  I can pretty much move my right arm where it’s supposed to go, with assistance, but the strength is lacking and so I’m spending a lot more time doing the physio exercises.

I stood in line for a long time today at a government agency, where I was served by a very nice young man after the tedious wait, and took a bus back from Metrotown.  In my continuing efforts to spoil Jeff rotten I picked up some croissants.  And cookies.

Dishwasher’s burbling away.

Katie is employed! She starts work today.  I am pleased. Now hopefully her brother will stop grinding her about looking for work; I don’t think he has a clue how hard it is out there right now.  I heard from an employment agency today, but I don’t expect much to come of it.

The $500 question

The responses I’ve gotten to the ads for Ziva are a panoply of:

  • people who don’t understand that a GT is a standard vehicle (yes, I changed the ad)
  • people who think that when I’m asking $500, they can show up with $180 cash, which is less than the government of BC will give me for it, and I’ll think they are doing me a favour
  • men using their girlfriends’ email addresses
  • people who think that I both know AND care exactly ‘what’s wrong’ with the car and how MUCH it will cost to fix and WHO GET UPSET when I do not share this info
  • people who do not know how to assemble anything resembling a coherent sentence or question
  • people who mock me for trying to sell a standard vehicle (yes, I know)
  • cheapskates, assholes, dingbats and users.

Honestly.  NOT IMPRESSED.

On the cafe front, some guy with a heavy accent keeps calling and asking detailed questions about the shop WHICH I CAN’T ANSWER BECAUSE I AM NOT THE LANDLORD.  I keep telling him to call Francis, and dood keeps calling me WHILE HE IS ON THE SKYTRAIN WITH THE LINE CUTTING OUT AND BACKGROUND NOISE LIKE CRAZY.  He keeps calling back STILL ON THE SKYTRAIN asking CAN I HEAR HIM NOW?  I hung up on him the last time because the line went all wibbly and I couldn’t hear a ****ING thing.

It’s not all bad. Katie has another interview today and she walked down with me to get my copy of the registration for the car, which I had mislaid.  And I’ll get a big whack of money back from ICBC for the refund on the insurance, which I am looking forward to.

Still loving Foyle’s War, mOm and pOp you should definitely watch it.

Now I have to go fill out some forms while I’m waiting for some guy to show up and buy the car.

Beautiful but windy

Katie’s all perky because various job interviews are going well. I am very happy about this and hope she finds work remunerative and suitable to her one goal right now, which is to be back in her own apartment.  I must say, it will be a cold day in hell before she supports another man.  Or so she says, I hope she carries through.

Foyle’s War on Netflix is a wonderful show, Jeff and I are very much enjoying it. No swearing, decorous violence, great dialogue, sweet vehicles, and history all wrapped up nicely with the superlative Michael Kitchen at the helm.  He is GORGEOUS but in a very low key Oh So English way.

Streptococcus salivarus, I salute you!  It is the probiotic that turned my bad into glad, digestion wise.

Mouse traps have yielded nothing; we are moving on to sticky traps today, damnit.

Practiced 45 minutes today.

Yesterday was gorgeous but WINDY.  As I contemplate the lawn, which has now grown tall and fallen over, I keep hoping the Goat Man will pass by.  But he never does.

Ziva’s in Craigslist, priced for quick sale.

The wit and wisdom of imaginary creatures

 

In this case, Raylan Givens.

I don’t feel very well so I’ll be sticking close to home today. Yesterday I went to physio and walked back with what felt like (and fell onto the ground.. twice..) 30 pounds of groceries.  But it was good to have fresh veggies and oddly nothing got broken or smashed.

I have learned my memory is crappy and I’m glad, I tell you.  But even people with good memories make stuff up.

A satisfactory day so far

Jeff helped me set mousetraps at the shop.  Sigh.  But he got breakfast, so that was good!

Dishwasher is running, Jeff is downstairs catching up on feetsball on the PVR.

I’m posting my resume every place I can think of.

Later on we’ll watch some more Foyle’s War, maybe I’ll go protest something, and I will definitely eat steak.  So a satisfactory day in prospect.

16 things I wish for my birthday

  1. World Peace, I know, it’s a no brainer
  2. Brownies to assist with housework
  3. Somebody please buy the shop
  4. Forty pounds of ugly fat depart my body safely and slowly
  5. Okay fifty, but forty just sounds more reasonable and I did lose and keep off ten after I broke my shoulder
  6. I finally reduce the number of clothes I own to something manageable.
  7. and stop getting so attached to my clothes that I can’t recycle them.
  8. That fixing things was consistently cheaper than replacing them
  9. That fireworks could read your intentions and wouldn’t explode outside a house with timorous pets
  10. That my friends would take me to the Keg for dinner… never mind, they will on Saturday
  11. That Archie Panjabi gets her own show, as she is AWESOME. But only after The Good Wife arcs out
  12. Somebody please buy my car.  The shop says it is no longer repairable, so Ziva’s to the boneyard
  13. That I find a paying job soon.
  14. That somebody redo a hd version of Minds’ Eye
  15. That Katie find a good job soon
  16. That Iain M Banks hadn’t died so berloody young

A somewhat likely story

following is fictional…

 

Dad staggered away from the kitchen in an exaggeration of his normal walk.  He had grimly supported Mom through the whole ghastly process of getting the equipment through customs, and grimly supported her in the sequelae, which included about four dozen eggs on the outside of the house and a number of unpleasant encounters with the more tender hearted of their neighbours, including the one neighbour they were always having fencing discussions with, and whom they suspected of allowing access for youthful depredations.

Now the damned machine was here, and it was as if every item which had been eviscerated from his diet was now coming at him as extruded by this knitting machine of the damned.

She’d seen it in a catalog, and ever since had wanted it so.

Dad couldn’t watch.  He knew he would not be able to resist, even knowing where the meat had come from.

________

So, today there was news about knittable meat.  There was also meat you could wear and meat you could form in rainbow layers and other kinds of Modern Foods kinda meat.

I DON’T  want to know what the meat was. In the story, that is. Sometimes the depths of one’s subconscious are a small but entertaining tidal pool.

 

Mattress today!

As part of the I need to be sleeping better plan (4 hours with cpap last night…) I have purchased a name brand properly sprung mattress which will be delivered today between 3 and 6 pm.

I have a tremendous craving for fish for lunch.  I think I will go get some… something like haddock or cod.

Katie slept over last night.

2020 says I need to replace this freaking mattress.

 

Allowed to be proud

The day before yesterday I bought dowelling, a pulley, stout cordage and a massive plant hook.

Today I sawed two four inch chunks off the dowelling, drilled a transverse hole through both in the centre, sanded the ends and screw holes, fed the stout cordage through the holes and tied it off, ran it through the pulley and VOILA.  I have a shoulder exercise machine with two handles!  It ain’t purty but it works.  And I cleaned up after myself except for the door lintel, which I should probably do before Miss Moppet drags her way through the debris.  She is VERY FLUFFY and staticky right now, and she’s getting matted just looking at me.

Jeff wants the device to be more securely set into the door lintel, and he’s cheerfully fixing that for me now, but I visualized it, bought it, and DID IT. I think I should make a safety cover for it when not in use, some of the men who come through the house on occasion are dashed tall.

Ripped a whole bunch of CDs today, mostly filk, blues and rockabilly.  I do like Dr. Crowell; hardly anybody in filk is a music perfesser, so we get a trained voice and unbelievable skill on keys.  Sadly, CD Woodbury’s special CD which includes his fine version of My Old School, doesn’t want to be ripped; the drive made a noise that usually presages catastrophic failure in any device emitting it, but I ejected it after an eternity of hideous grinding, and the drive seemed okay.

It’s Remembrance Day.  The family tradition is to rewatch Saving Private Ryan, A Bridge Too Far, a Night to Remember or Sink the Bismarck!

Katie has been staying overnight; mostly she’s out hanging with her girlfriends.  We all went out to breakfast this morning.

This article goes to a Popular Science link about what happens when you put lego in a washing machine, for science.