Author: Allegra

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

deaths and entrances

My old self dies a little and my new self is born today.  With luck we will have signoff for a Monday opening for the cafe; with a little spinal firmness on my own part I’ll never be on the Beacon Board again.  Everybody loves having me and the worst aspects of corporate governance are not easily addressed. AT LEAST we are treating our staff members better, or more or less we are, and I did have something to do with that.  And the church is okay-off financially, I am sure next year will continue to bring change.  But I’m done, and I will only be going back to church when I am interested in the sermon topic.  Having weekends completely off except the inevitable worrying about the business will be pleasant.

 

Lovely long chat with Tammy this morning.

Back to the living room clean up in preparation for the board meeting tonight.  It will be easier for me to concentrate on the meeting today when I’m done with the living room.

sundry and various part the 95th

I am now communicating with a Swedish man regarding the subtitle file for Real Humans.  We are going to collaborate via the internet, yeah.

Spoke to pOp.  What an entirely loathsome experience he had in hospital.  I need to get him a black turtleneck and get GOS in big white letters on it.

My stress level is rapidly rising as opening day approaches.  However, the last piece of cooking equipment is on board and working so that is good news.

The potholes in the back parking lot are so big I’m posting pics of them on facebook.

Katie is working her ass off.  We are going in for five am this morning, heavy heavy sigh, but such will be our lot for the next little while.

 

at the shop

listening to Gotye’s Your Heart’s a Mess, having delivered biscotti to the gents at Gord-Ron.  I was condoled with at having to clean up the sex trade worker mess left on our doorstep / bleaugh.

 

Peggy’s mum has passed away.  She’s the eldest, so now she gets to sit with the full glare of her own mortality.  I had been saving a very beautiful but somehow sad card… autumn leaves silvered with frost.  Somehow apropos.

Something horrible regarding my church work has been righteously ducked, and I am so relieved I am practically weeping with relief.  I feel really stupid though.  None of us are walking alone even if we think we are.

Back to the shop

I am heading back to the cafe with Katie this morning.

Real Humans, the SVT show from 2012, is the best sf show I’ve seen since BSG came out.  It is filled with beautiful and nuanced performances, amazing photography, whip smart writing EVEN IN TRANSLATION, deft and surprising plotting, great background music, hat tips to all our favourite science fiction movies, a portrayal of family life which through its economy and plotting is realistic and emotionally sound – without making the father look like a moron or a wimp or a drunk or an emotionally abusive jackass or the mother like superwoman or hysterical, or the kids like little cookie cutters, brilliant set pieces which totally rock the ensemble acting, and it asks, all the time and at many levels – what does it mean to be human?  Where do we get our ‘programming’ from?  Is the most important thing about us that we can be kind?

Oh, and naked girl robots, but you knew that without asking.  It is filled with little Swedish touches regarding being open minded about sexuality which play out in a variety of interesting and sometimes cringe inducing and sometimes laugh out loud hilarious ways.

It’s a very UNITARIAN show, in terms of its concerns and writing.  Very, very satisfying.

Katie and I had the same dream

ROFL.

It was opening day.  The layout and the location of the restaurant was completely different; we had kids running around, a lot of extra space, and we had no cash register.  It was a complete zoo.  Katie and I were laughing our asses off as we traded notes.  No, it wasn’t an identical dream, but close enough.

Just over a week now.  I’m hip deep in church stuff and going straight back to it once I hit send.

Churchy stuff

Can’t do anything re the shop today or tomorrow. I have shitpiles of unavoidable work re the AGM.

 

There’s a biscotti batch in the cooler at the shop, and I brought home the lentil soup.  Jeff is tearing a hole through the split pea with ham soup; it really is awfully good.

We found really cheap split green peas at the warehouse place on Kingsway but strangely a 20 kilo bag of lentils is the same cost as what we pay at Galloway’s, so that was weird to find out.  We also found lots of consumables for cheap, including coffee cups, glassine bags, etc.  Snow Cap trading has everything we need in terms of baking supplies in bulk, and then some, and we found a place for plastic containers for muffins for people who want to buy a half dozen at a time.

The website is pretty much done, we’ll be adding menu items slowly and carefully.  We still haven’t settled on a bread supplier but Costco will do for the time being.  I roasted up another hunk of beef.

Katie got up at 4:30 to go pick up Jessica from her midnight shift at SaveOn and they are going to hang out today.  That is true friendship. Spoke briefly to Keith yesterday and told him he must come over and watch Real Humans, the phenomenal Swedish sci fi show.  Cannot recommend it highly enough.

Three days go by like nothin’

Yesterday we were at the shop all day and baked in the pizza ovens.  They make really good muffins and that’s good because we can fill an oven with morning muffins and it will reduce prep and cook time immensely.  Then if there’s going to be a biscotti bake we just leave em on.  Katie’s got other stuff to do and I am at the shop again, REVELLING, REVELLING I tell you, in the abundance of hot water.  Sanitizing powers ON.

Katie and I ripped through all of the crap we will never use in the storage loft and an amazing amount of junk went to Value Village.  That also made it easier for the tradespeople to do their thing (it took a day and a half longer to get the job done, but all I do is phone him and ask him for a revised estimate of his arrival, and he never, ever ducks my calls, so I am very sparse in my “Where the hell you at man” calls.)

The wee man arrived with the new hot water heater and a rather ascetic helper and he took the old one, whose continued functioning was a rather amazing thing on the basis of the pitting and rust and the mess the fittings were in, away (part of me is thinking that the wee man saying NO NO NO lose this one and get a bigger one, you’re not saving money and you’re making trouble – was good damned advice).  They had to use axle grease and shoe horns to get the sumbitch in, but it’s in and making lovely hot water, oo, yes indeed.  Soon he will come back and fix the rest of the walk in cooler compressor (it works but needs cleaning and sound isolation) and then once we have the special order light fittings for the lights, that’s it, we have no more problems to fix for the health inspector and we’re just waiting on fire and building.

Paul and Katie got up on the roof and there’s no obvious leaking but Katie says the tar is too soft.

I took pictures of the potholes to send the landlord.  Wish I had a buck for every time I’ve turned my ankle back there in the ‘parking lot’ which is actually more like a ‘hole farm’.

I have put the previously existing comfy chairs out front, free to a good home, and Katie washed and I put the covers back on our new used chairs,  They are Ikea second hands from a restaurant supply place that we heard about at church on Sunday, if you can credit it, and they turn out to be super nice and having the solution to a major throughput problem we were having.  But soon we will be able to run 350 pieces of toast an hour through a toaster.  With the Bunnomatic being able to make five carafes of coffee in just over half an hour I don’t think we’ll have a problem keeping up with plain coffee, and we have the espresso machine for the fancy schmancy stuff.

 

Lentil soup is on.  I got banking and church stuff to do today, which I am NOT LOOKING FORWARD TO, but haven’t I complained enough already?  Everything is coming together nicely for a 15 APRIL  start.

Iain M. Banks is reported to be dying of gall bladder cancer.  Fuck cancer.  He’s one of the best writers in any genre and he had another twenty years of awesome Culture novels in him and now he’ll be lucky to finish his most recent effort.

pOp has had a rough couple of weeks compressed into one brief hospital stay.  He’s back home, and none of the rest of it is anybody’s business.

 

 

Sundry and various

Yesterday I made the dough for biscotti, got the sign down and out the door on to Signfast’s truck and believe me that thing is AWKWARD to shift around, ran coffee through the Bunnomatic for the first time (it’s okay but we gotta make sure the sprayer is set right and we have to turn the machine on the instant we get in in the morning or we won’t have coffee for about half an hour or more), got the back fridge working with the help of my wee man. a temp sensor (which he says was located in the wrong place which is why the thing was rusted as a car on blocks), watched the amazing amount of foot traffic that goes by the store, learned that there is a coffee shop going in to the Community centre (which obviously made me sad), got a schoolin’ about what to do with the waste heat from the compressor which made me very thoughtful but means that the shop will be cooler in summer and warmer in winter, got proper knobs for the gas ovens, swept the shop, did all the dishes, made myself a sammy with the chicken breast from Grimms (I think we should order from them, their meat is really good), found out from the City of Burnaby that we do NOT in fact need a permit for our sign (I had been concerned), arranged other inspections or got them in train with the City, transferred some money into the biz account, got stuck in the worst…fucking…traffic ever while getting the last items out of Katie’s apartment, talked briefly to her former co-tenant Randy, who dished dirt on a friend’s drunken ass ex in a most entertaining fashion, found out that the Dandy Warhols are playing the Commodore June 22 AND IT’S A PLAY THROUGH OF THIRTEEN TALES FROM URBAN BOHEMIA one of my fave albums ever and I’m STOKED,  had an extremely emotional conversation with Jeff during which he was extremely supportive and calming (thank you, and bless you) and no I’m not going to talk about it on my blog, watched a couple of episodes of Third Watch, and watched Eddie bring in a baby mouse, which after a brief discussion about what to do with him (Izzy living here after all) Jeff put back outside much to Eddie’s disgust.  Candidly I shouldn’t even have suggested it because Izzy is a hand tamed snake and wild critters carry all kinds of interesting diseases. Day before yesterday learned about a Swedish sci fi show called Real Humans which is awesome even with subtitles and which I want to see the rest of soonish. Today I learned that Margot is turning into a dog.  She now circles once (forwards OR backwards, which is beyond words entertaining) before lying down, and she still comes to greet and say goodbye when we go places. Jeff got her to almost fetch the other day, and she chases the floppy flyer (fabric frisbee style thingee).

Today back into the shop to wait for the sign and work on various things that you can’t work on when all the shops are closed. Katie’s at her friends place in New West but I wasn’t expecting her to come home, she was partying with the buddies who have been so supportive to her this past year.

Apart from the church stuff, which I would like to chuck over a back fence, and the lawn, which needs mowing, I’ve never felt better.  I’m even recovered from the move.  And it doesn’t matter that my todo list looks as it does.  Gradatim, baby.

Meat slicer achievement unlocked

Yesterday:

meeting with church auditor

booked locker for Katie to move her stuff into

confirmed reservation for van.  Katie got her dad to volunteer as well, and Jasper from church is also helping.

Grimm’s meat man came by with samples for Katie

I used the meat slicer to slice two roasts and more or less cleaned up afterwards

the wee little man did not show, but I didn’t actually expect him to

Katie made raisin bran muffins which Jeff pronounced good.

Then I swung by the shop to pick Katie up cause she sounded pretty burned, and drove her home because she needed to.  Tomorrow she cleans the old apartment, so I will be at the shop all day to receive tradespersons (signage, refrigeration, hot water heater).

Now that we both know the shop will NOT open on April 1, we are concentrating our efforts on work flow and processes.

 

Lady Miss Banjola explains it all for you

Pharmacy rant part 3  – regarding expiry dates.  Once you land on the site click the link to expand.  IT’S REALLY USEFUL for anybody who takes meds, and that’s all of us.

Managed to get in and out of church without tripping any wires, having fed Kira and picked up the mail, then fed Katie and Jeff brunch at The Heritage, went into the shop and figured out lighting and signage, Jeff figured out that in my tidying efforts I knocked the cable modem off line, but it’s all good.  Then a quick stop at the King Eddy for a baby mouse for Izzy, who once again is starving, then running Katie home for coming up on the last times, since she’s moving in on Wednesday.

Tomorrow is gonna be killer.

Doors again

Hung around the house all day yesterday waiting for callbacks from plumbers, and nothing.  Around two I realized that nothing was going to happen and spent quite a long time in a nice warm tub and completely disconnected from my troubles.  This morning I am reconnecting with them, ie I have to go to church.

 

I don’t know exactly when church got to be such a drag, I mean a way bigger drag than it is joy, but I backspaced over the next two hundred words, and that’s a good thing.

Now I’m going to feed Kira, pick up the church mail,, go to church just long enough to pick up a document that needs signing and to drop off the sign that accidentally got left out last week and then I’m going to come home and commune with my to do list.  I am sure it will be a lovely service, but I am not wanting to take my aggrieved idiocies to church today.

The dishwasher’s running and Margot has been fed some kitty malt and turned outdoors.

Despite how remarkably unfit for real life she is, Margot knows what day it is.  She picked the morning of the vernal equinox to come outside for the first time in 2013. She rolled around and made her cat with laryngitis noise while Katie watched in startlement.