Author: Allegra

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

My head it is reeling

I just wrote two hundred and fifty words about the coffee date I went on tonight.  I backspaced over the whole thing.  I have no idea what to write that doesn’t sound like I’ve gone completely insane.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy at how things went.

He’s paralyzingly cute, without being an ass.  How did that happen?  Yeah, you read that right.  Paralyzingly.

Holy cow and other comments.

I didn’t realize it until I went to the translink.ca site this morning, but I am now One Bus Ride from church.  I walk out to the Kingsway, get on the 112, and it takes me straight to church.

This makes me very, very happy, and probably means I’ll be doing a lot more church stuff.  I mean, it’s right there!  No more not going to church because I want a lift!

Later on today I am going to go off to a Tim Horton’s and – yet again – see if a guy I’ve talked to on the phone a couple of times is going to actually show.  I don’t think Timmy Ho’s has wireless, though.  I may bring a small mending project just to keep myself out of trouble.

Lady Miss Banjola was robbed at gunpoint the other day – at work I hasten to add.  She’s fine; she is one of these people who does not get upset about the normal things people get upset about.  Exciting times we live in.

My unca Dave is not eating very much, but he talked to mOm on the phone for a while the other day, and it’s little things like that that keep us going.

Keith and Paul are off to see Lois at some point.  I imagine somebody will tell me eventually exactly when I am supposed to feed the Kira critter.

Margot has abrumptly (sorry, this was a word emitted by one of the Xantrex overlords some years ago, and I liked it so much I kept it) decided to quit washing her rear end.  I will give her a day or so to smarten up and then it’s off to the groomer to get all her butt hair shaved off.  I tried shaving it but my clippers are anaemic to the point of mollescence and I’m terrified to cut her fur with scissors.

Update

My meeting with Serge the composer went great but he wants me to refine what the hell it is I really want to accomplish while he’s teaching me music, so I am going to think about that and get back to him.  We both like Hans Zimmer and James Horner, no surprise.  He was amazingly generous and collaborative in the hour and a half I spent with him, and he taught me two important things about scoring for films which I had not really understood before.

Serge is on the 144 bus line, which also goes to SFU, and then I had lunch at the old office and said hi to folks.  Then I went to Surrey and got stood up by my date.  I didn’t mind, I had wireless and drank a latte.  And some guy chatted me up on the way out, can you believe it?  Anyway, I hope dude is okay, and that it was just a communication snag… there’s no sense complaining about somebody’s behaviour until you have an explanation, and for all I know his neighbour’s dogs savaged him.

Speaking of which, I was walking back to the house (my bike has two flat tires) with $50 of meat yesterday and I ran into a loose pitbull.  Man, for one brief second I was terrified, and then I realized from the animal’s body language that it had no intention of coming near me whether I had ten pounds of pork chops, stew beef and bratwurst on me, or not.

All of my bus connections today were zippity.  Very nice.

Jeff reminded me that I was supposed to get the cats dry food today, and I forgot.

Busy day

Today I am going to go and see a music teacher who lives close by to see if I can take lessons; then I’m going up to my old workplace for lunch; then I’m going to Surrey for a while, and then I should be home for supper.  This is the most I’ve been on transit since the fireworks last summer.

Last night Tom and Peggy and Paul and Keith came over for broiled pork chop, cauliflower and home made cheese sauce, salad, cole slaw, corn and garlic bread.  Dessert was fresh fruit and pecan torte. It was all nommers.  Then we sang and played for a while.

I light a candle for everybody killed and injured at Fort Hood yesterday.   I am sure there will be an uptick in attacks on furrin brown people as a consequence.  I light a candle for the man who thought he could made a contribution to world peace by slaughtering his fellow soldiers.  It’s just so grisly, and so wrong.

My favourite poem about death, by the great atheist Lucretius

On the Nature of Things…

No single thing abides; but all things flow.
Fragment to fragment clings-the things thus grow
Until we know and name them. By degrees
They melt, and are no more the things we know.

Globed from the atoms falling slow or swift
I see the suns, I see the systems lift
Their forms; and even the systems and the suns
Shall go back slowly to the eternal drift.

You too, oh earth-your empires, lands, and seas –
Least with your stars, of all the galaxies,
Globed from the drift like these, like these you too
Shalt go. You are going, hour by hour, like these.

Nothing abides. The seas in delicate haze
Go off; those mooned sands forsake their place;
And where they are, shall other seas in turn
Mow with their scythes of whiteness other bays.

The seeds that once were we take flight and fly,
Winnowed to earth, or whirled along the sky,
Not lost but disunited. Life lives on.
It is the lives, the lives, the lives, that die.

They go beyond recapture and recall,
Lost in the all-indissoluble All:-
Gone like the rainbow from the fountain’s foam,
Gone like the spindrift shuddering down the squall.

Flakes of the water, on the waters cease!
Soul of the body, melt and sleep like these.
Atoms to atoms-weariness to rest –
Ashes to ashes-hopes and fears to peace!

O Science, lift aloud your voice that stills
The pulse of fear, and through the conscience thrills –
Thrills through the conscience with the news of peace –
How beautiful your feet are on the hills!

This is the poem that my church’s Care and Concern Committee sent to me after my grandmother died a few years back.  A beautiful sentiment…..