Author: Allegra

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

Paste that smile on lucky bastard

Maybe I’m the luckiest person on earth, but I don’t feel that way now.

Katie took me to the reptile house at the King Eddy pet store Saturday and I FELL IN LOVE.  I mean head over heels, you are mine forever, with a Senegal chameleon.  One critter made straight for me and attempted to mate through the glass with my big ol’ hat.  The ferrets made me ill though, their scent has always been too much for me.  Mr. Man at the store said that Senegal chameleons are for experienced reptile fanciers; I should stick with a twenty dollar anole for starters.  Four hundred bones will get me into a chameleon; whatever sex it was it was an extremely personable reptile.

Talked to Dowker yesterday; I’d been going crazy (yeah, yeah, I know) trying to figure out what the name of a song on a mix tape he made for me in 1990 was.  After a lot of backing and forthing it was the written as a Joy Division song BUT released as a New Order song called “In a Lonely Place” which has the best opening drum roll OF ALL TIME.  Anyway, now I can listen to it any time I want, and oh oh oh those cymbal crashes.  Also big time heaping good.

Also found Big Hard Sun by Indio and am learning the song.

Watched Meryl Streep in Dark Matter.  Bloody sad movie.

I’m getting a migraine.  I’m fine until I look at a screen, and then half my visual field gets sucked up into a rainbow and static hole.

Church was okay.  Not a big fan of intergenerationals, but I had to do set up and count, so there I was.  No church on Boxing Day so I suppose I could go to the folks that day.  The kids are making noises about going earlier than that.

There’s loads of yummy leftovers in the fridge.

Keith and Paul and I sang and played last night.  Keith is getting quite feisty on the bass.

That’s about right.

Indeed.

Yesterday my mother celebrated her 75th birthday.  Now if we’d been from the other side of the family we’d have piled in cars and gone to see her and had a damned big party but this is what we did instead. Not a single one of us bought her a present.  Not a single one of us sent her flowers.  Nope, nor a card.

I wrote my mother a poem (picking up from where an earlier one left off) and made all her descendents call her on the phone.  You can call me chintzy, but all I can do is thank my ancestors that they conveyed to our family a very sturdy notion of what is important and what is not in family life.

My mother taught me a lot of things.  In most of these matters she had help from my dad, but not always.

Civility costs nothing.

Get a good education and then worry about what you’re going to do to earn your bread.

Be kindly towards the religious expressions of others.  Atheism will always be a minority opinion so don’t be rude about it.  Bob your head for grace; sing the carols; kneel and stand when you’re s’posed to.  Absolutely nothing about being an atheist gives you a hall pass to be rude about the religious expressions of your relatives; may as well generalize and extend the civility requirement to anybody who isn’t actively trying to kill you.

Given a choice between spending the time and spending the money, spend the time.

Stay busy.

Housework sucks, but the requirement for it doesn’t go away, so learn to do it efficiently and without whining.

Be authentic about what you love even if it looks silly to other people.

Human beings need to touch each other and baby human beings need lots of touching.

Budget the luxuries first.  This entirely counterintuitive take on personal finances has assisted in keeping me happy.

Better two good friends and true than 50 dubious acquaintances.

There’s no excuse for being a shitty driver.

Alcohol and recreational drugs are not necessary for any aspect of life.  Painkillers on the other hand are a must.

Let the medical students experiment.  It isn’t fun but it’s soon over.

Beauty, truth and goodness are everywhere.  So are evil, waste and want.  If you adjust your vision to see the former more than you see the latter, you may not have a more accurate view of the world but you will have a happier one.

Music is important.

Privacy is important.

Don’t fight in front of the children.

There are only a few criteria for determining whether you have been a successful parent.  1. Child survives to breeding age.  2.  Child does not go to jail.  3.  Child stays pretty much continuously and voluntarily employed at job or household tasks and arranges personal life so as not to be dependent on the state.  4.  Child stays out of mental hospital.  5.  Child comes to visit you voluntarily.

If your child meets these criteria, you have been a successful parent and lying around moaning about any aspect of child’s life, from choice of spouse to wacky UFOlogy paradigms, just makes you look like an ass. Bonus points for grandchildren, but you don’t have any control over that.

Your family can never be too big.

If you look hopelessly square and do not attract attention by odd behaviour, people will leave you the hell alone.

Getting old is not for sissies.

Whining is something other people do.

The Warlord’s Cook

I have a self-entertainment story that I’m always working on in the back of my mind called the Warlord’s Cook.  The Warlord is about 70 at the time of the story and the cook is about 50.  The story is set two generations into the future, post collapse. (Fertility tanks, diseases break out of the antibiotic jail, global depression triggered by fraud and currency speculation, banditry, shooting nukes between India and Pakistan leaving large swathes of both countries and downwind uninhabitable, and as the final wretched maraschino on top, collapse of the rubber industry when the long predicted blight attacks the monocropped rubber in Malaysia and SE Asia.)

Anyway, in my version of the future The Clipper is still in use.

good morning

Katie was here last night and we had a bit oF a wirefest. Keith turned up too. Watching the first season again is astonishing. I know everything that’s going to happen, so I can really pay attention to more of the mechanics and the relationships.

I made homestyle Thai soup yesterday and Keith and Kate and Paul (just passing through on the way to work) devoured it. Then I got really ambitious and made a sort of texmex beef and bean thing. I may further transform it into a casserole.

I was in bed when Jeff & his friends got back from the Canucks game so I don’t know how that went. I am waiting for signs of stirring so I can go have a shower and make coffee.

Things to be happy about

I am happy because I get to drive Jeff’s car for two days so he can ferry his friends to and from the ferry.  Cause my car has you know like four seats. My car, except for the verklimmt idle racing once in a while (up and down between 800 and 1200 rpm) is running tip top, and so smooth and quiet you’d never guess she’s coming up on her 15th birthday.

I am happy because I have a good job with awesome coworkers.

I am happy because Katie has painted a new painting and I gave her all my acrylic paint so she can do even more!

I am happy because when Jeff came home yesterday he gave me a big hug.

I am happy because I have a comfy cozy bed to sleep in, and when it’s raining like this that is a very good thing.

I am happy because I spoke to my mother on the phone for 40 minutes last night.  Not one instant of it was complaining about health problems, and so roll out the double happiness sigil.

I am happy because I thought of a title for something “The Chapel of Extremity” based on something by Brion Gysin and I wonder what it will end up attached too.  That’s the weird thing about creativity.  It’s holographic and you never know what the slice will reveal.

I am happy because when I went to get my computer fixed he said, “Three hundred dolla for fix, sixty dolla for new drive from London Drugs.  Why you no go London Drugs?” Which struck me as eminently sensible, and I will definitely go and spend money there some other time.

I am happy because even if I’m not sleeping more than six hours, it’s a solid six hours.

I am happy because Julian Assange is going to have a publicity field day while he sits in jail in England and wait for the extradition.

I am happy because now I have seen most of The Wire, I’m finding The Wire references everywhere in popular culture and I kill myself laughing every time I find one.

I am happy because Cate Blanchett is going to reprise her role as Galadriel.  And there is going to be a second Sherlock Holmes.

I am happy that Paul bought a new bed.  I wanted to make a silly joke about it, but I won’t.

I am happy that Keith is having good job interviews and hopes to be working full time soon.

I am happy that I am alive, and world is still singing in me.

Oh kittycat

Please do not use mah food storage area for a restroom. Thank you.

At least I found it and cleaned it before the boys show up tomorrow.  Jeff’s having friends over from Victoria; I hooked him up with a coworker who works at the Garage on game days so they should get a special tour afterwards.

And he genuinely cares about women in Science

One of the many reasons I love PZ Myers.

Ps, I could only come up with one of my former coworkers’ wives, Carolyn Porco, Rita Levy Montalcini, Natalie Angier and Jane Goodall, and technically Natalie ain’t a scientist, oh, and Carolyn Herschel.

So I suck at the game too, and that gives me pause.

Leftovers

The roast beest leftovers were if anything even better the second day.  The words ‘enough gravy’ really helped.  It was a tad lumpy, but oh so good.

My mental state is pretty leftover too – there’s a couple of days after a migraine where I just don’t work, brain-wise, normally, although the argument could be made that having a migraine has little to do with that.

Migraine

I’m still a little light sensitive but I have no real excuse not to go to work, so I will go.  I completely lost yesterday.  Around 7:55 I put the roast into the slow cooker. Around 8 am I got ‘the flashies’ and by 8:30 I had stabbing pain behind my eye and then poof the center of my visual field disappeared.  I drank a cup of coffee and went back to bed.  Around 11:15 I woke up again and moved like arthritic crow through the house trying to determine if there was anything useful I could do, but moving made me nauseated so I lay back down.  Around 2 I ran a hot bath and around 4 I managed to get mobile enough to put the veggies on to roast (braised beast with oven roasted potatoes, yams and squash).  Keith and Paul ate dinner with me (my appetite returned when my visual field did) and Jeff was kept late at work but he pronounced my efforts awesome, which was good enough for me.  I hadn’t fed him a proper meal in ages so it’s quite funny that the one day I was really in no shape to do it I could – but it was literally the only thing I did yesterday.

What the ????

It’s raining, it’s dark, I’m a pedestrian, I think I’ll jump in front of Allegra’s car.

I don’t mind pedestrians being suicidal, but puhlease, not during my commute when I’m already running late.

Yesterday Paul and Keith and I went down to Suzanne’s (where stayeth Katie) and had pierogies and chicken for dinner.  Suzanne was in fine form and Katie cooked dinner.  Then I took Keith back to Geekhaus and we watched the last two eps of season 4 The Wire (oh, Dukie, oh Bodie) and all in all it was a very pleasant evening.

I woke up super early and cooked up some oatmeal.  As soon as it clicks over 7 am I’m going to put a roast in the crockpot; Jeff’s been getting stiffed on hot meals and I’m thinking meat and two veg for tonight.

I have started working on another long poem – first in almost ten years – called The Drunkard’s Walk, which is going to be a long meditation about the mystery of human existence as framed by our limited cognition.  And alcohol.

Katie is cocooning.  More I cannot say on that subject.

I had an hour long conversation with a customer last night.  Mostly we stuck to business but at one point he pointed out that he is a Canadian born into an American body, and I owned that in almost 13 years of abusing customers in the service of the alternative energy business I had never heard an American say that.  I was so moved I offered him shelter in Vancouver come the revolution.  He was grateful, and we returned to business.

I am transcribing dreffle Victorian poetry, and there’s this one poem so vilely racist that the backs of my eyes get scratchy just looking at the damned thing.  And in 150 years, if anybody survives, people will be looking at my ravings and know me for a bigoted lunatic.  Sigh.

If everyone needs a goal, here’s mine; I’m training hard to be bedridden.  Because, you know, getting out of bed sucks so bad.

Either I’m too sensitive or else I’m getting soft – B Dylan

Yesterday something that happened at the budget meeting after church horrified and disgusted me.  I exercised my democratic franchise and voted – alone of the congregation – against it.

A church is bigger than its minister.  After all the f-cking scandals – and guh knows Unitardians have theirs – this is the lesson.  The people stay, the minister moves on.  Even if everything is right and tight, the minister still moves on. It’s a career, after all, not an ossuary.

Unitarian scandals?  Co-ministering spouses get a divorce in the middle of their service.  Ministers date church presidents.  Ministers get up in the grill of the worship services committee and go down in flames.  Ministers try to get a particular church to adopt a particular theology in the teeth of heavy resistance and are removed.  Unitarian scandals are usually ’bout sex and power. I imagine there have been scandals about ministers and money, but not that I ever heard in 15 years of Unitarianism.

An ongoing scandal in Unitarianism is how poly relationships are where gay relationships were in the 80’s.  Those in the know, know, and those who aren’t don’t get told because it’s ‘Too extreme for where the flock is right now’.  So I know a bunch of stuff about polyamory and Unitarians (Canadian and Yank) and I have to keep my mouth shut, or horses will be frightened.

You know what it’s like to march in Pride parades and know this shit?  It feels human.  It don’t feel pretty, but there it is.

Anyway, when you commit to a church family, it’s warts and all.  It’s knowing that the minister, or lack of one, will change in the future; people will join and people will quit and it’s all part of life’s rich pageant.  I quit Beacon and realized that what I was running away from was myself, so I came back.  All the problems I had are still there but I’m motivated to work on at least some of them.  Including my reaction.  I am not going to just blithely suck it all up.

This paragraph deleted on the insistence of my lawyer.

And to cleanse my palate of all this, Paul and I, joined by Keith, evangelized for Unitarianism yesterday.  After church we put door hangers in the neighbourhood around the church, and glad we are that we did, too; it’s a gorgeous little neighbourhood and the views are awesome.  Hint, hint.  Stop, look, listen, and think.  And go back to the work, because it don’t stop.