Author: Allegra

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

lovely visit

Lexi had me, Jeff, Darci, Jasmine, and Paul over for chicken dinner last night and it was excellent in all ways.  After dinner I suggested we go for a walk – it was a lot cooler by the seawall – and Jasmine and Darwin and I kicked around a soccer ball on the beach.  Lexi gave me a frowning after I let Darwin walk through a bunch of puddles, upon which I learned that all of his shoes were now wet (give your head a shake Allegra, your kids never had more than two pairs of shoes when they were little).  Anyway, I gave up on that when I made the mistake of trying to use Mr. Darwin as a croquet mallet (head first).

Lexi got complimented on Darwin’s hat (again) – it happens every time I see her, it seems.  Chill Monkeys is doing awesome.  I have added it to the blogroll.

It was lovely to see Darci and Jasmine, who is the most preternaturally polite, well spoken, intelligent and compassionate 4.5 year old I ever met, bar none, and cute as the dickens, besides, in her pig tails.  If my dad doesn’t turn into a gibbering ball of mush upon interacting with her I’ll be surprised.

No meteors, too much skyglow.

ps Katie and Keith did not attend.  Keith had a date and Katie wasn’t up for a family gathering.  I’ll leave my own feelings out of it.

Ants

We has ’em.

Thursday, off to Lexi’s to meet up with my cousin Darcy and her charming offspring; Saturday, off to the church Board retreat.  (Yes, knowing that was coming up got me off my ass to get sussed out by the RCMP).

Went and harrassed Tom, one of my all time fave activities, to do something about Ziva’s subwoofer.  Ziva is suddenly getting better gas mileage; the only thing I can think of which would account for such a thing is that I’ve finally burned off all the sludge that was sitting in the bottom of the gas tank, because I’m getting 30 more kilometres out of a tank and believe me I have not changed my lead footed driving style.  Anyway, Ziva’s subwoofer has a crack. Jeff wants me to make the subwoofer removable so he can get his bike in the car (the bike would only fit with bungees last Friday when we met up at Swiss Chalet).

Tom gave me celery.  If I find a good place to grow it I’ll grow it next year.  I am already planning a hosta bed under the dogwood in the back corner.  Right now that part of the yard is just a cluster of bluebells and weeds, mostly nightshade, so something to improve it’s appearance and remove grass would be nice.

The quit-by-pictures girl was a fake.  O well.

I tried contacting the JetBlue attendant’s public defender to offer support but nobody is answering the phone there.

Got to get to work…. don’t want to move, although I’ll be fine when I get there.

Watched a simply marvellous movie called The Straight Story last night.  If you want a clean, sad but uplifting story that is full of kindness to strangers, check it out.  At one point Jeff and I said to each other that Richard Farnsworth’s wattles have more acting talent than Keanu Reeves’ whole body, not that we hate Keanu Reeves or anything, we do like him even if woodpeckers do land on his head.

I wish I’d taken a picture of Miss Margot guarding the rat Eddie killed.

[EDIT by Jeff] Ask and you shall receive:

Margot guarding the rat

Fireflies in the woods

I really like this pic.

So last night I’m watching live TV (which we never do, or hardly ever do) and there’s a tv show from 2008 about the swapping of the poles.  Yes, the poles are swapping.  It’ll take 40,000 years, maybe less ’cause we’re all in such a hurry these days.  So the partial collapse of the magnetosphere is connected to the weakening of the magnetic field of the earth, and it’s borne out by looking at ships’ logs from the 1590’s on.  Up until 1840 or thereabouts the field strength was about the same – it’s been dropping steadily ever since.  For more details, most of which are incomprehensible but at least the article links are understandable, check out Wikipedia for Magnetosphere, South Atlantic Anomaly and Earth’s Magnetic Field.

mOm is always telling me about relatives and my relation to them, and here’s a handy map. With level of genetic kinship.

Safe congregation policy

As part of our safe congregation policy, everybody in a voluntary or paid position with my church has to be inspected for felonious behaviour by the RCMP.  I had been putting it off (and why not, yecch) but this morning I assembled the letter which allows me to be inspected at no charge, my i.d. and my amour-propre and hied myself off to the Deer Lake RCMP Detachment.

It took 10 minutes.  I was the only person there.  Honestly, I thought it was going to be quite a production, but it was trivial.

Next, I hied myself off to Village de Valeurs, where I purchased a dress, a blouse, and something to replace my bathroom which does not actually have enough fabric to be a modest garment, given my current girth.  I am sure Jeff will be relieve to see less of me as I stagger out of my room in the morning in my zombie like quest for caffeine.

I’m back home and waiting for my new purchases to get out of the washer.

It’s pouring rain; the garden is very happy.

Cool runnings

Yesterday I made a run for Wal-Mart (first time in 8 years) to get coolant for Lady Miss T at work.  She said she’d overheated on that bloody great Gaglardi hill so I said, “let us go to your car and check your coolant!” and like, there wasn’t any.  Her brother, who is, like, the anti-Jeff, had told her he’d checked the coolant and he dinnnnt.  Lie or mistake, it was pretty typical.   I looked at her and said, “You are not moving this car.  Let us go talk to beautiful Bossie and see if I can’t get a hall pass.”  You may infer from the fact that it took me 40 minutes from door to door that my observation of the speed limit during this excursion was notional and inconsistent.  SFU to Lougheed Mall and back, including a purchase….yeah.

Day before yesterday, I had a brief and hormonally truncated visit to Paul and Keith’s (Paul said something innocuous and I burst into tears and ran away, aren’t I special, but at least Paul and Keith had the decency to shrug it off) and while I, tears still drying on my face and clutching my mandolin, was escaping to my car, Paul’s brand new neighbour said something that stopped me in my tracks.  She said, “I like your purple car”, and her male companion (actually her daughter’s agent) said, “Yeah, that’s a 94 Ford Probe GT and I think that’s the version with the special paint. I’ve owned four Probes, they are my favourite car.”  AN HOUR LATER I pried myself away.  Much restored, I went on my way home.

Grr

I checked out the video I took of Headwater, and while it is quite nice, all you can freakin’ hear is me HUMMING along with  them.  Note to self.  When recording gods, don’t make like a boob.  GRRRRR