Author: Allegra

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

One thing and another

Keith and Paul were in the shop today, which was delightful and brief.  I owe Keith money for the beer he picked up last night.  I suppose it being a long weekend and me going to a party tonight (first one in AGESSSS) I should purchase more.  Ziva died – vacuum leaks, more of them, rad problems, sensor and indication problems.  No can get fixed until Tuesday and candidly I am doubting even then.  Sue is going to give me the name of her auto broker.  Ziva has broken my heart and my wallet long enough, I could have bought two decent cars for what I’ve spent on repairs.  Wayne picked up the 50 biscotti I baked for the Hyack Swim Meet volunteers.  I included promo!  This is an improvement.  Also, we are in the flyer for the event, in two places, so instead of spending a hundred bucks on promo I made cookies.  I like dat.  Katie is going on a date tonight and if I say so much as ONE MORE WORD on the subject she’s gonna jam that broomstick up my nose.  Still haven’t mailed pOp’s biscotti, but Katie is leaving early today so I am going to ask her if I can escape to the Post Office to get it mailed off before she goes.  All the fridges are behaving well.  Katie spilled salt two days running and was yelling v. bad swearz, you know, pin a nun to a wall shit. Split pea with ham soup today.  I need to print more business cards. Started watching The Hour with Ben Whishaw (rowr!), Dominic West (McNulty from the Wire) and the exquisite Romola Garai as Bel Rowley.  It’s a Beeb miniseries set in 1956 Britain and everything about it is wonderful.  Abi Morgan wrote the script, which is uniformly excellent and doesn’t make the assumption that viewers are fecking idiots.  We’re up to episode 8 in Band of Brothers.  Also started watching Aaron McGruder’s Boondocks, which is SO TRANSGRESSIVE.  Jeff and I were killing ourselves laughing.  It is a trip to watch black people commenting about white people (and each other) without having to make concessions to hurting anybody’s feelings.  The grandfather is hilarious.  McGruder is a righteous rude boy and anybody who can call Condoleeza Rice a mass murderer to her face is my kinda guy (John is giving me the spectral thumbs up, I can feel it). My news feed informs me that Rob Ford (Mayor of TO) smokes crack.  Now many times in my life I have wanted to accuse any number of political figures of smoking crack, but jeezly hell my darlings, I wasn’t expecting there to be VIDEO.  The roast beef sandwiches have two new fans.  One of them is a climate change denialist and the other is a very entertaining semi-retired gent who put me onto the idea of starting up a cooperative retirement/nursing home.  I think it’s a fan-fucking-tastic idea.

not a lot of money, but a really good day anyway

Katie is increasingly stoked about her camping trip.  Wish I could say where but we don’t want uninvited guests now do we…

The shop SMELLS OF BACON.

We experimented with a new soup recipe and it’s so simple and so tasty Katie and I are both doing the Snoopy happy dance.  We can haz cheezy broccoli soup!

It’s raining, and we don’t mind.  Only one more hour to go, and then I pick up Ziva (again) and we go to Costco (our home away from home) and then… ep 4 Band of Brothers with Jeff, since we are rewatching it.  SUCH A GOOD SHOW.

Gotye’s Heart’s a  Mess is playing on the shop sound system.

Yeah, so not so much revenue, but a good day anyway.  Regulars came by, newbies came by, I got my CRA letter off to the post box, all the fridges are behaving, I organized a bunch of receipts, wrote down the new recipe… and Katie’s crush forked over his phone number.  I can now let my breath out after a month.

I light a candle for a close family friend who just lost a baby.  I sucked in my breath when I heard she was expecting… she’s multi-risk.  And now she knows why women don’t announce pregnancies until they quicken.  It’s horrible, it’s sad, it’s completely messed up, and it is life in it’s glorypain.  She and her husband are going to lie low for a couple of days.  Hell of a thing to happen on Mother’s Day, god help us all.

 

 

news roundup

The ISS space walk was successful!  Go team Space!

Just for the headline (SFW)

This is a candle for Katie’s bestie, who is having serious problems with her first pregnancy.  Katie will hang with her later today at a birthday barbecue.

Katie is going to go camping for May two-four weekend, first time since she was a kid.  She is squee-level five looking forward to it.

I am going to go back to cleaning my room and doing laundry now.

 

 

A great start to the day

Jeff is too tender hearted to deal with the wasp nest at the front door, so I dealt with it as the sun was coming up. I kinda had to as the pizza delivery guy was Freaking Out.

It was another quiet week at the shop. We are starting to get regulars, we are wasting much less food, and we need to start focussing on catering.

All the treasurer stuff is handed over and I need to finish up some secretary stuff.  Relief is unbelievable.

Ziva goes back into the shop. Perform-x got her through Aircare but now the idle is around 500 rpm and she just keeps stalling in intersections which is frickin dangerous.  If I put an additional load on like a fan it’s manageable but I can’t sell her like this.

Katie’s taking the day off

I am alone in the shop, sitting up front and wondering where the heck the sun went to.

Some ratfucker called and said that the woman who used to own this place ran a brothel out of here. Uh, no, she didn’t.  She had customers drop by late to pick up arepas.  I suppose it’s POSSIBLE that a devout Jehovah’s Witness could sell poon on the side, but given my interactions with her, I would say that possibility is what you might call out by Neptune remote.  I so wanted to tell the guy that unless he paid for it himself he should shut up.  Instead I left my dreadful Moral Qualms aside and ran through the menu and invited him to be a customer.  Go me.

Scammer came in yesterday and I sent him on his way with a “You let me know when you come up with $34 dollars to get that shipment of maple syrup out of hock!  I just want you to know that I can’t give you money for something I can’t see or taste.”  He seemed very downcast, and I’m sorry, but I would at least shave, shower, change my clothes and pare my nails before I tried something like that.  The hell is wrong with people, I dunno….

Bought insurance for Ziva and promptly lost the tags.  Go me.  Now to file a police report.

I put up a sign advertising Maple Bacon Muffins and just as fast took it down, as one of our regulars cleaned us out of the day-olds.  He said, “I love you guys’ muffins and soups!”  This is especially gratifying because he used to be a hotel chef (he fixes bikes now, talk about yer right livelihood) and he sure knows from food.

Hey pOp everytime I try to get your biscotti off to you something else screws up in my car or I can’t find an appropriate box.  Promise I’ll get it out before the end of the week.

And in other news Jeff and I are almost through Third Watch.  My fave character is still Sully, but Bosco and Yokas are running neck and neck for second.  Jeff and Katie and I have started a rewatch of the Wire when we’re in the same place at the same time.

 

 

 

 

Ziva still be in the shop

So I’m riding my bike everywhere, including to and from work. I’m actually enjoying it and most of the riding is in subdivisions so there isn’t much traffic to deal with.  I even did a shop at SaveOn with the bike!

Today I have an extremely long list and NO energy to deal with it.  Also Beacon stuff keeps nibbling at me.  “Nibbled to death, nibbled to death by mice” thank you Nate Bucklin.

Delightful

It was very wonderful to see Jerome for his bday yesterday (my visit was brief due to… reasons) and also Mike and Rozo, Trent and his girlfriend (why can I never remember her name??), a neighbour and his little boy, Brian C and Chari, Shannon and the two boys Braden and Lucas (Lucas exploded into an amazing smile when I first laid eyes on him, I nearly burst into grateful tears) and the food was nommy home rotisseried chicken, salad and THE MOST SPECTACULAR raspberry chocolate cake imaginable. Whipped cream icing, om nom nom.

Today, the AGM and a soup lunch. So I hafta run into the store and get everything together for that. Then Audrey comes back here and I stuff everything into boxes and hand it to her. I don’t know what she did to deserve this suffering, but at least I suffer no longer, effective about 5 hours from now….

Café continues slow but the word is getting out and the rec centre isn’t open yet, so there’s some upside, definitely.