Author: Allegra

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

Patricia and Damian get married.

My friend Patricia married her sweetie Damian last night on the rooftop of the Loden hotel.  The bride was radiant in a simple cream gown, the groom beaming with happiness, the weather was glorious, the bar was open (I drank two tiny glasses of champagne and three beers over 6 hours; by the time I got to Edmonds Station I was ), the om nom noms were choice (including a blowout of Levnichocolate.com, OMG, as the proprietor Paul Dincer was an attendee), and it was an Australian-Canadian dance-off with the best wedding DJ I’ve ever heard. Dude could sync beats like a shaman.  Folks from Melbourne sure know how to party!  And the dresses!  Damian’s sister was wearing the most brilliantly coloured and celebratory dress evah.  I got to sing the couple “The Happily Married Song” which I have sung for a number of couples now, (they asked me for the lyrics, w00t!) I danced like a fool, and the civil ceremony was so touching, and so mercifully brief, that those raised on Irish Catholic weddings were all “yes, this.”  Two families were blended in what I will recollect as being the most auspicious start to married life I’ve ever witnessed. Mazel tov!

Good news ever-e-body

The thousand sided dice will be on line sometime today or tomorrow. As my brother and I did the data review we removed some prefixes and suffixes and added some.  In the quarter century since the project was inaugurated, the biggest reason words got removed was for reasons of pc.  For example, one of the words that got removed was voodoo.  Voudun is a global religion even if it is centered on the Caribbean, and I can’t hack using religious slurs as part of the project.  That thought ___did not occur___ when I entered the word in the first rounds of data entry.  Other words came out because they were gendered slurs, or because the word use had shifted enough to give both me and Jeff the squick.  Jeff deferred to me in the removals, although we had some DANDY discussions on a variety of subjects. He ran tech and entry, I ran the simulsearch.  I think we took out less than ten on both sides, so I guess out of two thousand I was doing okay.  It stuns me how much English has changed in the last 25 years.  A project like this really brings it home.  http://ksided-dice.com is the link, no it’s not up yet.  ‘citing times!  Big hugs to Jeff for all the coding!  I may have had the idea, but it would be air without him.  PS the original code from the dawn of time with the data files is available, but you don’t want it; as an artefact of processing speed improvements it screeches when you roll the dice.  Like a haruspex.  AiiiEEEE!

Yesterday today tomorrow

Yesterday I bought wedding gifts, tidied, returned and picked up library books, and today I’ll do churchy things and work on the joint project Jeff and I have.  Tomorrow I will get together with Katie.  Keith charmed me yesterday by saying he will attend a meetup for socially awkward people. I have to say that whatever else my kids are they are a constant source of entertainment.

woe is -aaack- me

So I completely blew the interview yesterday – fell apart during the test.  I solaced myself with beer and lobster afterwards, so thoroughly downcast was I, and my Lumosity score fell like a rock this morning subsequent to me having two beers, so, note to self – alcohol does make you demonstrably dumber, please avoid (yesterday’s score was one of my highest ever, so it seems germane to mention the difference).  No I did no driving yesterday, for the safety minded among you.

The stye has come to its fruition and no longer hurts; it’s just making me look like Margot with the ludicrous amount of eye gunk it is producing (which is actually impacting my ability to see out of my left eye.  Very glad it’s in my left eye, my right eye doesn’t produce enough tears so I’d be in a very sad way.)

Margot fell off some boxes in my closet and trapped herself in my clothes.  I have never heard her make that much noise in that short a space – she really is getting more noisy, which means she’s just barely audible.

Amazing science / health news.

He only posted it yesterday and I’ve already set it to music.  OH GOSH HOW I LOVE THIS POEM. Mind you I wrote the choon two days ago.

I love the show ER so much I want it to be in space. Yes, Trauma 3000, in which our fearless surgeons and internists rotate between a mother hospital on the ground and a microgravity trauma unit in orbit, including tours of duty with trauma units at the front lines of an alien war.  And I want an alien social worker.  I want it to be ER x Babylon 5 x Battlestar Galactica. w00t!~

My fave Hollywood badass does his thang.

Eye stye with my painful eye

The folks where I interviewed very kindly called back and I have a second chance to demonstrate my willingness to work.  I have a stye in my left eye that hopefully won’t look too hideous.

Margot is noisily cleaning herself.

I broke the venetian blinds in my room the other day and have been getting along without window coverings.   I am thinking of something steampunk themed for new draperies.

Quote of the day

Social media has turned modern friendship into a pixellated bar that serves kittens, soundbites and RPGs. – A Sloman.

Tony Scott, noted director and producer and brother of Ridley, committed suicide by jumping off a bridge.  He left a note. He was 68.  Depression’s a hell of an illness, and my condolences to his family, friends and associates. …added later – he had inoperalbe brain cancer.

What the hell I don’t even.  Binge drinkers are happier.  Science sez.  I only post this because this was the first weekend I really really really wanted to buy beer, but I managed not to.  Most of the time I don’t even think about alcohol but I came piteously close to purchasing same when I came out of the Heather Dale concert, and no jokes about how she drove me to drink.

Should get a call back about work today.  Guess I need to run some laundry.

Saw the Helen Mirren version of the Tempest.  Loved it.

Margot breathes at 14 -16 breaths per minute, which is apparently low.  She’s very noisy right now… I’m assuming she’s asleep.  Eddie did a phantom barf yesterday morning.  Jeff and I both heard him and we looked everywhere and couldn’t find it.  Speaking of Eddie, he’s scratching at the door, so I’ll get up and let him in.

I find this article really disturbing and can’t articulate why.

 

Note to self

February 7 2010, what was I doing?  Well, apparently, according to my computer I completed the lyrics for and the accompaniment for a song of my composition (circa 2008) called “Mythical”.

I completely lost any recollection of the song until I was reviewing what I had recorded in Garageband many many months later and then I had one of the more classic WTFs of my adult life.

I had NO RECOLLECTION of having recorded it.  Just to screw myself twice over I performed the song in a D open tuning and so could not determine what the chords where which accompanied it.

I tuned Smokey into a open D mode and then just spent an agonizing hour trying to recreate the song.  If I had just had the brains to write out tabs OR ANYTHING I could have saved myself the irritation.

I have recovered the song and am pleased with how amazing Smokey sounds in that tuning (and he really does too) but appalled that this song and many others could have just vanished because I’m so careless of my prodigal song writing output that it just never occurred to me that what I was doing needed additional notation.  However I think I’ve learned my lesson.  I’ve written out a cheat cheet.

 

Bizzy day

I have to go down to the church and pick up the banner and literature for New West Pride.  It’s going to be so Nixonianly hot today I might as well pre melt myself and pour myself in Margot’s water dish.  Then I get to come home, lie down in front of the ac for a couple of hours, and in the evening get up and go (it’s in Burnaby, thankfully) to see Heather Dale and Ben Deschamps.  Morosely hoping there’s ac at the concert site.

And I don’t want to do any of it as the heat is making me wretched. I am also suffering the consequences of having worn pantyhose and heels for the first time in three months yesterday.  What ties a fool to his body?  A promise.  And lest anybody be upset, it’s a Dunnett quote.  It was CRUSHINGLY hot in here last night and the ac ran all night, which is just ludicrous for this part of the world.

This morning Margot came into my room and jumped on my bed, and at one point even sat on my pillow. She hasn’t done that since she was a kitten.  It turns out she was trying to get me to let Eddie in for his breakfast, at which point she joined him.  I wish she’d vocalize, it would make it easier.