Author: Allegra

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

Disturbed night of sleep

I woke at 2:30 and stayed awake for a couple of hours, then slept again.  I woke up and thought “I know what time it is – it’s 9:30!”  Then I checked my computer and it was 9:25.

Jeff has YAY made more coffee, so I think I’ll stagger out into the kitchen and review my to do list.

I had a lovely long chat with Keith last night.  He had a wonderful time in Toronto and had many stories to tell of old friends and family.  He very much enjoyed hanging out with Peter and Sarah, and said that getting Kaileagh and Sophie into the same room was pretty funny (they are both high energy wirey blondes with attitude).  Grandma Phyllis is about the same as always, only a little less mobile, but she must have been very happy to have so many of her family and family friends about her, given that she’s had two dreadful losses in the last few years.

My new song on Otto is NOMMING ME BRAYNZ!  It uses 7, count ’em, 7 chords, all in rapid fire succession, and also requires finger picking, so it’s at the outside edge of my ability to play.  Oh Muse darling you are a cruel and uncaring personage.

I continue to await with interest the comments of the minister on the new toon.

 

WEEEIRD

So I go outside with Otto to work on what is rapidly shaping up to be Theo’s Theme (for the evol villein of Midnite Moving Co).  Within four bars, there is a robin FLYING TOWARD ME AND CALLING MADLY.  Robin then perches in a tree, never removing gaze.  Robin attempts to keep up with me in the music generation department, getting louder but eventually quitting in disgust.  Then it moves to the dogwood, and then the top of the tree stump.  I felt uncomfortable and went indoors.  Despite everything the tune is sounding great and my finger picking is coming along nicely.  I think I’m kinda the Meg White of mandolin players, althought that’s definitely a slap to Meg.

Keith and Paul should show up shortly with corn and tales of Paul’s mom’s successful nth birthday (I can’t remember exactly and I don’t know if she’d thank me to…) I hear another family turned up en masse, which should have rendered things much more festive and apparently were awesome in that Keith got to see Peter, his oldest friend.  And the vampire family!  woot.

Also, this morning Margot tried to get into the dryer  Man, how HAS she lived this long?

Productive day of errands including two overdue ones.

more toonage

I wrote a very tongue in cheek song about drugs nearly two decades ago and woke up with two more verses in my head this morning.  I take no pride in finishing that which I should not have started.  I’d put it on youtube but it’s so darned catchy that I just do NOT want to be explaining in my nineties how it is that I’m the little old lady who wrote ‘that drug song’.

Church, food, music.

Took a chicken soup to church today for the soup lunch, and despite there being 7 SOUPS (A new record) every drop and smidge of it was consumed.  Thanks to Shane for his peppery beef soup, it kicked ass.

The homily this morning was amazing, about how readily various faith traditions coexist inside Unitarianism.  I have a copy of the homily, and intend to carefully re-read it.

I have two commissions for church; one to write a song about compost, and one for Beacon’s birthday celebration (church is 30 years old in February).  La la!  Also I took Otto to church today and lightly exercised him.

RIP Herbert Lom

Died in bed at 95 in London.  May his memory be blessed with laughter and tears.

Stupid bill re recriminalizing abortion did not pass; the Minister responsible for the Status of Women should be escorted from the Commons in the electoral equivalent of chains.

Although the title and the illo are THOUGHTLESSLY hyperbolic, this is a good article about privilege. 2020 says Hugo Schwyzer turned out to be rillllly problematic, but I’m leaving this here as evidence of progress, and it’s amazing given the drubbing he took that this writing is still available

I have a very heavy day of appointments and church related work in front of me.

VCon starts, I’m not going.  All I will do is spend stupid amounts of money on clothes.  Hilariously, RobW called me last night to complain about the Vcon website; this does not bode well for how good the con will be.

Paul and Katie and I had a lovely walk in Deer Lake Park on Wednesday; we saw a dozen frogs, a juvenile eagle, a Douglas squirrel and possibly a baby bunny, who did not linger to make our acquaintance.  I got some video of the frogs but it’s basically a streak heading for the rushes.  I also got a pic of the Douglas squirrel but not at very high resolution, even though the little guy POSED in TWO SEPARATE POSES for me.  We also picked up a hawk feather, which I stuck in Margot’s fur when I got home and resulted in a couple of charming pictures, one of which I posted to twitter. 2020 says that was a flicker feather, not a hawk feather, no kidding.

I’m going to ask Jeff to help me figure out how to post pics directly to my blog through WordPress, although possibly not today.

After many months of being okay, my temperature regulation at night has gone off the rails.  I have acceptably ordinary physiological reasons for this but waking up poaching in my own bed a couple of times a night is harshing my mellow.  This too shall pass.

Yet another sports figure is being accused of sexual and physical abuse of youngsters in his care.  The way it’s being reported in the press is quite bizarre.  I guess we’ll let the courts sort it out; the reporter had more than half a dozen affidavits detailing misconduct in hand before writing the story, and while we all know that there are false abuse allegations, it’s not the way to bet, especially since we’re talking about a Catholic residential school for falsely imprisoned young aboriginals.

Raincoaster just tweeted that an alarm went off close to her and a stern voice is speaking in German.  Helluva way to get woken up, unless of course she was already awake.  She and I trade tweets in the middle of the night fairly often.

What’s up on facebook:  18 billion reposts from reddit, mine among them, and people commenting about the things that make them upset – relatives dying abruptly in car accidents leaving young children, angst about how this is the first time her only child is out with the non-custodial parent on a football game day, the fact that 27 million people globally live in slavery, and me attempting to get a copy of (this poster). 2020 says it was something cool by Matt Danger but now it’s gone.

The RCMP have nothing better to do?

Here’s the item.  (RCMP attempt to ticket woman in Nanaimo for leaving her windows down).

http://www.bclaws.ca/EPLibraries/bclaws_new/document/LOC/freeside/–%20M%20–/45_Motor%20Vehicle%20Act%20RSBC%201996%20c.%20318/00_Act/96318_05.xml#section191

And my response….

I left my car running in Toronto back in the day while I dropped the kids off at daycare. (It was 25 below among other mitigating bs – I make no excuses, it was a dumbassed thing to do and it’s one of the *many* stupid things I did while feeling time pressured as a parent.) Came out to find a cop writing a ticket for the same offence (me wah wah I’m already late for work bitter tears). Took the kids to the court date to show them how justice was done and the judge was so anxious to get them out of there (they were noisily inquiring if I was gonna go to jail) I got off with the frowning of a lifetime. The cop was CHOKED. I wished her a pleasant good evening and showed her most of my teeth.