Author: Allegra

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

From the road trip

Lady Miss B, hubster ‘Seph and baby Bean are traversing the Black Hills of Dakota (I’d be stopping in Deadwood, but meh, that’s me).  Anyway the highway they are on is lined with ‘creepy’ pro life billboards, one of which was, “Your mother was Pro Life” at which point the entire family yells, “NO SHE WASN’T” which you have to admit is pretty funny and there’s an extra frisson of joy from knowing the principals.  I added the bit “But she does wear army boots.”

Mike made it through second interview.  I CAN’T DESCRIBE how tense I am about this.  If he doesn’t get it I’ll be reduced to a quivering mass of jelly.

I have not mentioned the newbie but I haz one.  He alphabetized a bunch of stuff for me yesterday and you’d think it was trivial, but it was huge.  Part of being promoted means telling people to do shit.  ‘svery hard.  Anyway, I won’t refer to him by name, but I will call him Luke Deskwalker, because his most strenuous accomplishment this week is making the x-wing fighter out of office supplies, as per reddit.  Some things about being a stupervisor are not at all hard – especially if you have a sense of humour.  Oh and he’s devving auto hotkey scripts but I told him to stay the fuck out of the live database.

Castle season closing show SUCKED A LIBYAN JAIL MOP.  fuck the writer; fuck the director.  The actors did what they could.  If the next season opener is this lame I’m giving up on the show.

 

Many o many a weary mile

I wrote an ingathering song for church what feels like a couple of weeks ago and when I looked in Songwriter to see what the date was it was 2006.

Many o many a weary mile/To be with you, to be with you/Many o many a weary mile/I’ve journeyed to be with you/From the mountains strong/from the valleys green/I bring all the love/and the change I’ve been/many o many a weary mile/I’ve journeyed to be with you.

Just feels weird to have written it five years ago. The songs I write are a kind of diary as well.

Anyway, I have a letter of reference to write so while I’m up and conscious I might as well do that.

Mike’s at second interview stage.  Fingees crossed.

 

 

I’ll be the only one who thinks it’s funny

Most of you reading this don’t have facebook, which is where I hang out much more than this blog these days.  Paul just put up that he’s In a Relationship with Janice Murray, and it’s complicated.  Oh yes.  My poor response to his relationship with Janice Murray is why our 24 year relationship went into the ground.  I’m not blaming Paul, he did what he had to at the time to maintain his autonomy, and that’s neither funny nor worth mocking.

No, what’s funny is that I immediately posted lol as a one word response, and that the minister immediately posted that she wanted to meet her.  THAT is going to make me chuckle every time I think of it for the next few weeks.  Somehow I can’t see Janice going for that, (I haven’t spoken civilly to Janice in four years or so…. and her marriage to Alan has also tracked its way into an oubliette …. point being I can’t know her mind, but I just can’t see her sitting still for meeting Paul’s minister no matter how I construe it) and she probably won’t have to as the minister is outtahere after the last weekend in June.  Then Rev Katie has to go through a year long period of non communication with her former parishioners, as per the unbelievably arcane and inhumane (but grounded in harsh experience) rules for ministry in the CUC/UUA.  There is even one more reason to find this post of Paul’s amusing, but since it involves conversations that are DNQ, I’ll have to keep my “It Gets Better” speech to myself.

Alash, it ish too bad.  Deer eats bird.

There are a number of possibilities

I am either a) no longer crazy b) seeing an incompetent psychologist or c) broke. My folks gave me money to go see a counsellor, and providentially I ran out of cake about the time the psychologist pronounced me in markedly better shape than when I showed up in February.  I’d like to thank LTGW for getting me the referral, Peggy and the krewe at church for being the soul of lovingkindness, Jeff, folks and kinder for being supportive, sometimes rather more pointedly than I’d like, but whatever.   I’ve got Tony’s number and I will definitely go see him if I start going off the skids again.  In the meantime, nothing can touch me, for yea, though I walk through the valley of piles of paperwork, I shall fear no angry customers, for the Buzz is with me, and He Fucking Shreds.

My Mother’s Day

Pack cinnamon buns and a whole baked salmon for church.  Open and set up.  Guest minister; really scrambled service.  Dave T the sound tech, may the rich blessings of his hard work attend him, ripped me a copy of Freedom from last week’s service. Got asked for the music.

Helped a tiny bit with cleanup for the mother’s day tea (which was mostly soup and coffee – I had the nine bean plus smokies soup and it was awesome.)  Got all pouty over taking dirty dishes home to wash and Peggy released me from that duty.  John / Joy S took Carol home which was very kind of them.  Talked to Frances Deverell for a bit.  Why does everybody think I should go to leadership school? It’s a poser.  Food I brought went over well.

Dinner, for which I had help, consisted of Paul and Keith and Kate coming over for dinner, Paul barbecuing salmon, me boiling up a head of cauliflower, Paul committing corn to a watery boil, and me making salad.  All the food was fabulous and there’s one tiny bit of leftovers.

After dinner called me mOm and everybody got to talk to her on the phone and that was HER mother’s day present and she has neither to unwrap it nor store it.  She mentioned that she’s getting Rawd’s 12 archive boxes of family history stuff.  Yikes.

I also played Buzz a lot.  My callouses are thick and I’m really enjoying it.

Why I think Jeff is a genius

Jeff’s tenancy with me has consisted in part of him going away and thinking for a spell when I say things like “Why can’t we have the internet on the big screen?” and “We have to many fucking remotes; when you go out of town I can’t even reliably turn the TV on; can you fix that?” mostly to prevent himself from saying something mean to me about how I’m too dumb to understand the two page instruction set he laboriously wrote, AND updated at least twice.  Jeff produces good documentation and I am dumb as a brick; these two facts are incontrovertable.  With respect to the “Why can’t we have the internet on the big screen?” question he had to do a ton of stuff and set up another computer to make it happen.  SO I get to go skipping through life asking why things don’t happen to my liking and he gets to spend hours of challenging labour AND money making it happen.  I don’t know which is worse, that I keep thinking I can get away with it, or that he just quietly goes away and does it without presenting me with an itemized bill.  On the other hand, I do cook around here.

His latest act of genius has been to bow to the inevitable.  I am indeed TOO STUPID to handle more than one remote, but universal remotes almost universally suck.  After lengthy study of the problem, he purchased a universal remote and then spent a goodly number of hours programming it to withstand the depredations not only of myself but of my son, who can be a complete ass when borrowing media.  Sorry son, it’s true.  Of course if you get hit by a car I’m going to regret this, just like I regretted my daily description of cleaning John’s apartment when he moved out immediately after he got killed in an accident, but I don’t go back and oubliette that shit because that’s just lame.  I would rather be complicated, messy and inconsistent, because, er, that’s how I am….  But the truth keeps on being the truth even when you could have picked a better moment for the reveal.

Jeff has not only programmed the remote so I can do whatever I want to do with the tv and the Xbox and the monitor, he’s SET THE AVERAGE AUDIO LEVELS.  So if you’re going back and forth between media you don’t get blown out of your seat if you land in the middle of a tv commercial.  That, friends, is true genius.  And he’s always finding new ways to tweak the remote.  Go tech!

Today is Mother’s Day.  I’m opening at church (and if I’m not, I’ll help….) and then assisting with a Mother’s Day tea.  I decided I couldn’t deal with making soup so I baked a whole salmon and made cinnamon buns.  Jeff doesn’t know I plan on making more, but I do; it’s mean to fill the house with the supercharged smell of home baking and then say oops, you can’t have any.  (Actually I let him eat a couple: “I have good news and bad news.  These are the best cinnamon buns I ever made, and the rest are going to church.”)

Yesterday I did laundry and played Buzz ALL DAY.  I do not play Buzz every day, but I had four separate guitar playing sessions yesterday and I LOVE HOW THAT GUITAR SOUNDS OMG OMNOMNOM.  Also yesterday watched chunks of Canucks game and laughed at Margot for watching Nascar again.  She really likes Darlington, and why not.  My shopping trip yesterday consisted of propane and guitar strings, because the g string ALWAYS breaks on a 12 string; I bought two whole sets and spares.  I talked to Neil Douglas about effects pedals and he laughed and asked me why I’d bother.  I s’pose.

I managed to cut the grass last weekend but I have no fucking clue when I’ll get to do it again because the sky continues to dump precip at an unholy and quite soggy-making rate.

After church, the Horde will descend and I am hoping to barbecue some MORE salmon.

Did I mention that I think my brother is a genius?