Author: Allegra

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

Friday night & Saturday

Friday night Cindy took me out to dinner and then we came back here and sang and played.  I had given Paul a heads’ up that we were inbound and he was waiting for us.  We sang and played until midnight. Katie poked her head in for part of it and insisted her pop play Ramboing.  Yeah.

Yesterday I did NOTHING except run the dishwasher, watch a couple of episodes of Rome, run Katie in to work and a small amount of shopping.  Oh, and I made tea dyed cotton gloves and got steampunk findings  as part of my hat making plans.  Today, church, feeding Sue some lunch after church, and then an afternoon of real chores, as I’ve already had my day of rest.  Right now I’m going to work on songs.

The guy with whom I had “My worst ever coffee date” attempted to contact me again.  The excuse was that he enjoyed talking to me. (He was fine on the phone and, uh, how shall I put it, how about enthusiastic and inconsiderate, and in legal terms, assaultive, in person.  In public.  I had to lie like a cheap rug to escape from his company.)  I thanked him for the sentiment and said, it wasn’t going to happen.  The response was happy holidays and ‘can’t blame me for trying lol’.  Honestly.   Now that I have a little distance I’m forcing myself to see it as yet more horrifying evidence that dating over 50 is hazardous to your health.  I whined to one of my coworkers afterwards (LTGW) and he fixed me with his unblinking stare and told me that he was sorry to hear I had such a horrific experience but that I need to ask more intelligent questions prior to dates.  After that conversation – which was very helpful – I swore a mighty oath to find more productive uses for my time than trying to date.  After all, I’ve got a concert to practice for.

 

Greetings to my new readers

I understand that a couple of lurkers have joined the smallish throng of fans of this site…. let’s just say that there are many more readers and lurkers than commenters and posters.  And I don’t want it like that, but if people have better things to do than comment on my blog, I’m for being okay with that.

I have my set list for Conflikt V, which will be made of awesome.  Conflikt is the only SF convention I have perfect attendance for.  I just wish that the border experience going through customs at Airports was less disgusting.  I got selected for special treatment the last time and it wasn’t fun.  So I am very glad to be going down in the car.

Ziva is fine, thanks for asking.  She will need a valve job at some point, and I still haven’t put the winter tires on her, but she is running great at the moment. 

Katie cooked dinner last night, wOOt!

And now, I have to face the list of things to do at work.  Everybody have a productive day and don’t miss a chance to be helpful and pleasant, you never know when your behaviour will make the difference between happiness and sadness in another human soul.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Hoban is dead.  The man who wrote Riddley Walker is gone.  Sad, sad.  He once wryly remarked that death for him would be a good career move.

In a Lonely Place

So….. Once upon a long time ago my favourite song was a song I couldn’t identify.  It was on a mix tape DJD made for me back when I was 50 pounds lighter and random menfolks still occasionally mentioned the fertility quotient of my ass rather than its powerful ability to block the sun.   I knew that it was a band called Joy Division.  When the movie about Joy Division. Control came out I got to hear it again in quad sound, which blew my lights out because that drum riff MAKES ME NUTS.  It’s so ominous and amazing. While I was googleriffing the song, which turned out to be called “In a Lonely Place” I read a Criterion Collection review of the movie “In a Lonely Place” and it sounded SO frickin’ awesome I asked Jeff to rent it.

It turned up scant days later and Jeff and I were BLOWN away.  I mean, apart from the soundtrack, which is standard ish 50’s swelling strings and stuff that doesn’t really fit the mood, the movie approaches perfection. Humphrey Bogart is so good in this movie it beggars description; Gloria Grahame is magnificent, and the script is so uniformly excellent…. just rent the damned thing and be amazed.  Oh, it’s Noir.  Very, very noir.

So that’s my In a Lonely Place story.  I’m not in a Lonely Place…. Katie’s here, and in about five minutes I’ll finish making brekkie for the three of us.

One think and another

I just messaged one of my coworkers and instead of a cute little caffeine deficient owl I sent him a photoshopped bodybuilder which is candidly a very disturbing pic.

Yesterday’s homily went great – it was sparsely attended but I must not have been doing a good job of making it a worshipful experience because there was applause at the end (this is NOT a good thing in homiletics – respectful and silent attentiveness is de rigueur.) It’s posted on this site now.  Ralph came up to me, twinkling, afterwards and said, “I was going to tell you what a nice homily that was but I figured you’d kill me”.  I heart Ralph and Ivy so much.

Katie K, Lard be praised, came along (she may have attended one other, I can’t remember, but my friends never come so it was a red letter day!) and since I didn’t have the car we jumped on the Skytrain and went to International Village for lunch.  We wound up at Kentizen, which for $16 tax in provides a lunch buffet reminiscent of the lamentably fallen off but still extant Grand Buffet. There was loads of nice sushi and acceptably acceptable Chinese food, although the reviewer who says you can get Chinese food like that in a small town in rural BC is a moonbat.  I love the decor and ambiance for a Chinese restaurant and it was a welcome respite from the wall to wall noise in the Village concourse.  We shot the breeze in a most delightful fashion and she toddled off to Metrotown to hang with her daughter.  What a GLORIOUS day it was yesterday, the weather couldn’t have been improved on.

Then to Imaginarius Fantasticus, from whence, 300 dollars poorer, I emerged.  I bought two pieces of steampunk jewellery, an additional cambric top, a pink and black confection of a corset for daugher Katie (I had taken her measurements so her absence wasn’t an issue, and it did fit her – and corsets were $60 on special, so ya can’t beat that with a stick and I was so happy that my evil plan to pick her up a nice and relatively inexpensive corset worked), a BEAUTIFUL dark blue half circle Regency style cloak with ribbon closure and the most AWESOME hood (it is so flattering it’s amazing), a bunch of ceramic nametags (hey, they had Allegra, Tish, Terry, Hank and Katie so I bought them) and I came THIS CLOSE to buying Paul the Spock costume from The Voyage Home, which he would have looked f*cking awesome in.  Man, so so tempted.

There were carnivorous plants, and Viking (no, really, antique) belt buckles, and medieval armor demos and evil female pirates and kids dressed up like fairy princesses.  And aura readers.  I would have preferred a steampunk tarot reading, but ya can’t have everything….

Keith and Paul ran into Mike and Rozo at the Quay about the same time I was releasing the last of my money into the wild, so we all had quite the nice day…and then Lost Girl, which was okay, and now work….