Author: Allegra

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

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.