Author: Allegra

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

blah

Unbelievably loud and continuous thunderstorm last night starting around seven thirty – four hours at least maybe longer.  You should have seen Margot’s face as she bolted in the door as the first thunder hit.  Eyes like saucers. Then she stayed right next to my bedroom door all night.

Katie’s here; she cut my hair and helped me run some errands.

Can’t settle to anything…. feeling blah.

Sundry and various

I had cold chard salad with two pieces of cut up bacon for brekky this morning, plus coffee.  I am currently in love with chard, it makes my digestion very happy.  Then I read that it’s terrible for my body because it is full of oxalates.  Oh well, guess I’ll drink a gallon of water today to keep my kidneys happy.

Sad face for the Philippines; it’s very wet there and 22 people have already drowned in weather related incidents.  Sad face for New Zealand; one of the bigger volcanoes is about to let go.  Sad face the Canadian Olympic Women’s Soccer Team, the ref was an oversized Foley catheter style moron of an incompetence rarely seen EVEN IN INTERNATIONAL SOCCER, which is ludicrously bad.  Sad face for the kitties.  We had to lock the cat door again, so they may egress but not ingress.

Happy face for Dog Swims With Dolphins.

Just left a message for Chipper to find out how her weekend went – it was supposed to be the best revenue this summer and I am hoping it wasn’t a disaster.

I can hear flickers outside my window.

Marvin Hamlisch has passed away.

Hope everyone has a lovely day.

 

 

 

Curiosity has landed

Jeff and I stayed up, and were pleased when everything came out as planned.  Al Chen should do an audiobook of classic porn, I’d buy the hell out of such a thing.

I made some steampunk bling for Otto yesterday.

Other than that my day consisted of me lying around attempting not to die from 28 degrees at 77 percent humidity yesterday.  The air conditioner ran night and day.  It was hot all through the house, basement included; I felt like a lizard panting on a rock all day.  Miserably sweaty.  Finally I dragged out one of the fans and it actually made a difference.

 

 

 

Sundry and various

Mars landing today.  It will either be an expensive failure or a spectacular success.

I think I’ll head off to Costco once it opens and pick up some serplies.  I definitely want to do it before the sun is up too high.

I have fallen in love with fresh chard salad.  Chop bunch of chard.  Nuke until soft.  Add butter and lemon. Refrigerate.  Nom.  It doesn’t get much simpler than that and my body provides very happy feedback when I ingest it.  (Oh, iron… b vitamins…. you love me, you really love me!)

2020 says THIS SHIT IS TURRIBLE FER YER KIDNEYS

I really wish it wasn’t so hot.  When it’s this hot at 8 in the morning it’s hard to get enthusiastic about any kind of physical labour.

Cleaned up the guest room, which used to be Katie’s dumping ground for all of her clothes (she refused to sleep on the guest room bed, always sleeping on the downstairs sofa).  I have removed the last of the Katie debris, cold medication, her assessment from the fitness club, half an earring set and suchlike, and now I’m contemplating dragging the vacuum cleaner downstairs.

I just want to stay curled up in bed with a Dorothy Dunnett novel, except it’s too hot to even do that.

Shredding

Is done.

Tried to watch Supernatural.  Lousy script, lousy acting, no charisma.  I know the show’s been running for a decade so it obviously has die hard fans, but Jeff and I, thinking of Stargate and ER and the Wire and Deadwood and Breaking Bad and Huff – think that someething has gotta be good before we want to commit.

2020 SAYS JEFF NEVER WATCHED IT BUT I SURE DID. IN 2017 I STARTED WRITING DESTIEL FANFIC AND IF YOU ASK ME NICE I’LL TELL YOU WHERE TO FIND IT 

So instead we’re onto S4 of ER, which is definitely a drama worth watching.  SO many nice touches, the best nice touch being how the writers and actors make silence effective.  The loudest noise is silence.

Jerome told me about a kitchen for rent so I contacted them.  They haven’t written me back.  I have also been applying for jobs, but I am not surprised or hurt that there’s been no response so far.

 

Shredding

Much shredding yesterday.  Jeff said I had centuries old stuff, but nothing I shredded was older than 2009 when we moved in here, so neener to that.  More shredding today.  Then all clothes either sent off to Goodwill or put away, finding a home for the papers that didn’t get shredded, vacuuming again because more shmutz got released, and then off to the accountant.

Last night The Band That Shall Not Be Named had a rehearsal.  Now we have to get canonical exemplars of each of the songs.  And start working on “How do we start it?” and “How do we Stop it?”

I have given up on having somebody in my life volunteer to give me a half hour massage, and started paying for it.  I feel better midback and up but my lower back is telling me to leap off a bridge.

Happy days!!!!

A mad wor(l)d my masters

Snoop Dogg went to JaMAIca and came back a Rasta.  He now goes by Snoop Lion and his next album will be entirely reggae.  Tis fabulous news!  Hope he covers at least one Sublime tune…

OMG  I just spent two hours reading RADFem and Transfem blogs and the hate and bigotry are so tiresome and frightening that I went to a Men’s Rights blog for a while to help me get my bearings.

Unclear on the concept – private company tries to trademark Anonymous.

Paul’s back from Ontario, brown as a walnut and sporting a rather luxurious multicolored beard.  He poked his head in briefly last night and it was good to see him in such good spirits!  Then he had to go to work….

Eddie haz a sad.  He hates it when Jeff is gone for any length of time.

Had brekky with the lovely and everblooming Sue, and how good it was to spend some time with her.

Now, back to work.  I have learned that when you’re writing trombone lines, you need lots of places for players to take breaths, as they need more air than any other brass instrument.

 

 

Up early

… like, really early.  Finally around 5 am Jeff was up too and we did our shopping.  Then I made buckwheat pancakes for breakfast and boiled up a bunch of spuds so I’ve got home fries ready to go from the freezer at a moment’s notice.

I realized I’d double parked some of my songs – same song, different names – AND had some song names in there where I Knew I wrote a Song but didn’t actually memorize it or anything useful like that.  Since I’m never going to write it down, off it comes – list is now at 180 songs.  I have started cleanup so I have a match for each tune – the lyrics, the notation – and I’m trying to delete all the multiple versions of various things, including lyrics, and notations.  It’s really fussy and I’m hating it.

Spoke to Katie, she’s doing fine.  Mike’s bday partay didn’t happen, all hell and then some broke loose in his personal life.

Back to the grind….

Sundry and various

DARWIN’S BEARD!!! Have any of you seen the sheet music for Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody?

A.  It whipsaws back and forth between 4/4 and 5/4 time. Cazart!

B.  It uses guitar chords so hard to play that only somebody with a left hand like the Incredible Hulk and the speed of the Flash could even attempt them, let alone play ’em in close order drill like that. Cue me swearing like a dockside bawd.

C.  Crawling away now with my various inadequacies breaking trail.

Phew, Imagine is much easier, played slower, and still interesting musically.

If anybody’s wondering I’m working my way through MTV’s 100 best pop songs looking to challenge myself with new chord progressions and possibly ‘Songs I may attempt to learn at some point.’

Oh, thank the Zimmermans for Dylan, the worst chord for Tangled Up In Blue is F#m, which is a bar chord so simple even I can play it.

Mike’s 45th bday today at Garry Point Park.  Jeff and I plan to go for a couple of hours.

Jeff and I did the lawn yesterday which improved the appearance of the place markedly.  I had a horrible experience getting the gas for the lawnmower earlier this week but I’m not going to complain about it as I have calmed down somewhat.  Life is full of sad realizations.  Including the sad realization that whoever owns the place across the alley has now spent thousands of dollars on renovations to that house, only to once again rent it to what appears to be the same ilk of person who trashed the place the last time.  IE smokers with big dogs and a relaxed attitude toward garbage in the yard.

Can’t get hold of Katie, she keeps leaving her phone at home.

I should really get back to backing stuff up before my 5 year old hard drive quits.  Jeff has been quite diligent about reminding me and I’ve been a slug.

Jeff came up with a really interesting mapping idea this morning.  I will be messaging Coz Gerald to find out just how hard it would be to for cartographic newbies.

Google and Jeff’s cellular provider have finally fixed their handshaking problems regarding the calendar in Google.  This was a real issue as the push notifications to the phone were broken for like a month, and it’s hard to run a business when your appointments keep disappearing.  The two of us are considering getting new phones, but I’m kind of inclined to keep the Blackberry until the keyboard softsides up.

Dead Can Dance concert in August, so looking forward to it.

Okay, back to work….