Author: Allegra

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

Homily all done

Now all that remains is for me to:

Take down the quilted hanging mOm made for Katie (it was either that or the labyrinth, which in some respects works better but colour wise works worse) to put on the podium.

Print out children’s story and homily,

Practice the song through a couple more times with Tom and Peggy once we get to church; Rowan already knows about the sound requirements as I remembered just before I lost consciousness last night to email him.  He has already emailed me back letting me know he’s hep.  Which he has to be, being a professional accordion player and all, not just Beacon’s sound guy.

Kill a few more trees and print out the music for anybody who wants it.

Get myself ritually clean (ha ha jk)

Pick out my Sabbath garment (something of suitable size and robustness for an occasion of this nature)

Get there about an hour early to do a nice leisurely shop for yummy treats and flowers for the service as I kinda want to splash out a bit.  After all there’s a good chance Mike and Rozo are coming (let’s just say that my enjoyment of the occasion will not be destroyed if they don’t come.)

After it’s all over I’m going to go visit some Beacon elders, or possibly just one elder, in hospital.  She fell and broke some ribs, poor doll; I phoned her spouse last night and commiserated with him briefly and found out that her loss is my gain; since she’s in the hospital right across the street from the church and her hubby, who would not otherwise have come to church if she’d been released already, will be at church tomorrow.  And I really shouldn’t have put it that way, but I enjoy preaching when they are there since they do appreciate my work.  Healing thoughts and energy your way, folks.  The other elder is waiting for transfer to a care facility, and is apparently a very hard case to go visit because she’s claiming to be imprisoned against her will, part of the whole ‘being unclear on your current role in life’s rich pageant’ gig that is part of being frail and demented elderly.  Dunno if I’m going to have the chops for that, but I can at least plan.

I didn’t visit her.

After that’s all done, come home for the very last SG1 (barring the movies) and hopefully something yummy for Easter Dinner.  I’ll be checking out what Thrifty’s has on offer for that score. I’m thinking roast beast, maybe something over the top like prime rib.  Or maybe one of those stuffed turkey breasts suitable for a small number of diners.  Or maybe I’ll just say screw it and take Jeff out for dinner.  He has fallen host to the Skyrim virus.

Speaking of which… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALbQQzePzt4&list=UUXoIFuHdVHm-Zp9umA2seRQ&index=1&feature=plcp

One of the best fan videos EVER and it’s mercifully short with great production values.

___________

Katie was here briefly last night and went out again (to see a movie with friends).  I didn’t enquire and she did not volunteer.

 

 

Wrasslin’ with Homiletics.

I will have been kicking homiletics ASS!  BOOYAH!  Boy Howdy!  Awright!  Right on! Good one! I’ll say!  Yeehaw! Yoicks! Tally-Ho!  Andale! By Your Command! Hip Hip Hooray! Good Show! Commendable!  Most Impressive! Indeed! Life, Health, Strength!  Blessed Be! Jesus, Mary and Joseph!

Oh, yeah, I haven’t finished it yet.  Children’s story is done and thumbs up from the irrepressable Sally and her happy making aesthetics.

Clean cheap hydrogen?

All right!  http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/self-sustaining-solar-reactor-creates-clean-hydrogen-fuel-2012044/

Life at Geekhaus continues along its merry way.  We’re halfway through the last season of SG1 and although there are those who believe that it just wasn’t the same program without Rick Anderson and Don Davis, I continue to enjoy it and am sad that it’s all going to end soon.  Which just means we have to view SGA and SGU again, plus any tv movies we can actually get copies of.

I move at work today.  By my count I sat at one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, oooo !  I JUST REALIZED.  This is lucky 13!  Thirteen desks since I started with the company.  Yeah, I thought it had averaged out to once a year.  We’re moving one floor down and to the other side, which means I lose the view of the Old School Cylons and the Lions out the front of the building, and now get to glower at the EA logo all day, when I feel like turning around and doing that, that is.

Anyway, I have to get my poop in a group and get out of here.  We have to pack and the day’s work must still be done, and I owe 1.5 hours for my running around yesterday re the passports.

Called mOm on the phone yestreen and Katie waltzed in while I was talking to her and she had a nice long chinwag.  Keith is heading to the Island this weekend so hopefully mOm will get her grandbaby fix.  Katie is inching closer to having her own apartment, but that isn’t because she isn’t looking, it’s because she’s extremely fussy about where she lives and if the front hallway smells like crap she just spins around and steps back out again.  Like Keith said when he was four, you don’t want to live where it smells like people are cooking their dinner in a garbage can.

Various and continuing shifts at work made me realize that I am a very small person in a very large enterprise.  I don’t have what it takes to run my own business (unless somebody wants to pay me to dream up tunes all the time) and so if I want to stay employed I have to execute according to plan.  I just wish I knew what the plan is.  I know this makes me sound stupid, and it’s not meant to be a crack at my bosses/supervisors, whom I respect greatly.  I am not convinced that anybody in particular knows what’s going on and can relate it to a larger plan, and past experience leads me to believe that we are (in the words of the inimitable Dorothy Dunnett) being ‘ground between magnates”.

A repeat from September 2004

Quoted from Mr. Damon, who has since moved away from the internet.

 

Now let me be clear about something. I am not a Christian, but I am neither anti-Christian nor anti-church. I recognize and support modes of thought and faith and communion that provide people with solace, strength and a sense of vibrancy and blessing. I DO NOT have a high regard for fundamentalist, literalist philosophies and the oppressive, narrow and, in some cases, violent behaviors that they promote. That has little to do with religion and Spirit, in my opinion, and a whole lot do with fear, control and ambitions toward dominion.

To bring harm, hardship, anxiety and death to your enemies — who are in fact your human + natural relations — in the name of a deity, or with a notion of divine guidance + supremacy, is an act of utmost ignorance and an affront to all of that which is our true nature and purpose.

Yes, ANOTHER SG1 song

Told from a somewhat different point of view.  Not canonical, but it sorta gets an important point across.

 

Get off my world!  Get off my world!
High water or hell come,
You are just not welcome
Get off my world, get off my world!
You do not belong here, you are just plain wrong here
and that is why I say get off my world!

We were simple farm folk with our fields and trees
when you poltroons swooped down from the sky
You stole from our temple, you did not say please
and it did not take long to reckon why
you waved around your weapons, killed two of our boys
You do this on a hundred worlds and treat them all like toys
But injuring the innocent no healthy man enjoys
it may take a hundred years
and cost a lake of tears
but we won’t rest til you Get off our world!

Get off my world!  Get off my world!
High water or hell come,
You are just not welcome
Get off my world, get off my world!
You do not belong here, you are just plain wrong here
and that is why I say get off my world!

You stole our singing birds for pets and blew holes in the ground
looking for some metal that you prize
You bewitched our children, now their souls are bound
And every word a parcel full of lies
All of your technology is costly and accursed
of all the demons in our tales you surely are the worst
In theft and pride and carelessness you are quite well versed
it may take a hundred years
and cost a lake of tears
but we won’t rest til you Get off our world!

Get off my world!  Get off my world!
High water or hell come,
You are just not welcome
Get off my world, get off my world!
You do not belong here, you are just plain wrong here
and that is why I say get off my world!

You brought medicine to heal and we watched cripples rise
It was gratitude that filled our hearts
But we know your motives now and know to damn your eyes
this is the dependency you start
Give us just enough to break the bonds of hearth and kin
How can you with poisoned lies expect our hearts to win
I will choose to fight your presence til my heart gives in
it may take a hundred years
and cost a lake of tears
but we won’t rest til you Get off our world!

Scorpion-Ra

As constant readers will be aware, both my children have tattoos.  Keith was long considered; he thought about a wasp for years but eventually got an eye of Ra on the back of his neck.  Katie’s first tattoo (and she now has a squadron of ink) was a blue scorpion on the non hairy side of the forearm..

So I am hoping to match both of them, except the two tats will be much smaller.  That is in the future still.

Photos for passports acquired

Now to get them signed off and away we go.

Work was VERY interesting yesterday.  And of course I can’t say more but it nets positive, except that now everybody is using a new buzzword, which immediately makes me want to scream and sigh.

Fuck pertussis man.

Having Katie around = the happy.

Having Keith drop by = the ditto.

Fresh coffee and cream makes me the happy too.

I bought a cat toy for Margot last night and although she promptly lost interest in it, the ten minutes she enjoyed it were quite hilarious.

The People and Things That Make Me Happy

Katie

Jeff

Keith

Peggy

and bunches of other people, including raincoaster, vixy, greatdismal, simonpegg &  mOm and pOp

finding two new lines for a song, that when I put it all together, make a rhyme across the two verses, and which made me yell ALLEGRA YOU ARE A FUCKING GENIUS in the shower this morning, sorry Jeff

Blue Heron coffee from Saltspring OMG it is SO GOOD OM NOM NOM

Bacon and eggs for breakfast

Roads to drive on and a car to do it in (Ziva needed better gas and now she runs fine and the gas consumption has gone back to normal)

HOLIDAY PLANNING for April – I’m outta town from the 14th to the 23rd roughly.

Ditto for the end of August, when I go camping in the US with Katie

Passport renewals finally happening because Katie has been like a baby bird, “when we gonna when we gonna when we gonna MOMMMMM!?”

Me coming up with “Derp and the world derps with you.  Fap and you fap alone.” and putting it on facebook, haw.

 

 

Tarot poem

She sits with her knees apart, the II of Swords
her eyes bound, her mouth seeming both stern and sad
She is the querent; she is myself caught in the act
being torn between equal things
swords crossed on her shoulder, crescent moon in a mocking pose
the beach and rocks poking through a tranquil sea behind her.
She is of two hemispheres and thus two minds
Her garment may be white, and may be gray

and I lay upon her breast the V of Wands
contention, disagreement, a donnybrook of all against all
with no driver but youthful exuberance, perhaps stupidity

Above, the VII of Swords
the very picture of a man making a retreat he finds most opportune
He abandons a campfire and the tents of his friends
what is he, why flee, and what is there of him in me?

Comes Temperance, to pour consciousness into unconsciousness and back again
for Temperance is what must be lived to make the work happen
that work of being awake, truly aware.

The Knight of Cups offers once again allegiance, wise counsel.

And the Tower blasts me back into the present
The shock, the bitter fall, the almost-had-it.

The II of Pentacles strolls up, juggling on a clear day
full of high seas adventure and what looks like
a child’s rendering of a tsunami.

And seated in honour next his knight, the King of Cups appears
and puts his bold chin in my view, saying
listen to Temperance! Govern yourself or be governed
by the debt you need not pay to regret.

The Knight of Pentacles, so solemn, his horse so placid
bits of greenery stuck in his helm and his horse’s harness –
offers me what?  Money? Nothing but an expanse of yellow sky.

The Magician, to point out the obvious
Infinity, the secret names of things inherent

in their common atoms
the binding up of secrets and knowledge

in the faintly whispered text.

 

author’s note

I did a reading without asking a question, and look what happened.