Nepalese food, a change in venue, a beautiful sunset

I got off the plane and went straight to Jan and Soon’s.  Jan blinked at me and said, “Weren’t you supposed to phone me?”

uh.

I had forgotten how beautiful the underlit sunsets are in this town.

Anyway, life in her household was sufficient for a cuppa, but not really for crash space, as she had hella work to do (I still hung out and we flapped our ears for a couple of hours and she had lots of news, good bad and odd).

So I called Catherine, and we had a very pleasant evening catching up (oooo, gossip about exes, I loves me some of that!) and eating at the Mt. Everest which has berloody awesome food and I had my first Kingfisher in ages.  Then we came back here and shot some more s*(t and then I crashed.  The wireless here works very nicely.  At some point I’m going to ask Catherine for another drum solo.  She has a really intense Chinese cymbal that sounds like part of the soundtrack for The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires.

While ScaryClown was sending me a link to This I was showing Colin a picture of him stretched out on HP Lovecraft’s cenotaph.

Ain’t the internet grand?

Travel news…

Jeff dropped me off before 7 for an 8 am flight.  The full moon lurked low and red on the horizon.  I remember thinking on the way out the door that if I croak during my voyage some poor bastard, probably Katie, will have to muck out my room.  I’m thinking of buying another piece of luggage to bring home a whole bunch of lovely yummy malt bread, which you can’t get in Vancouver.  Also the shoes I intend to buy, because it’s obvious that not a single pair of my shoes is fitting me properly or good for my legs and back.

Yes, I took my computer.  Can’t help it.

Who knew???

My Unitarian hymn “Not Afraid to Believe” is in 12/8 time. It took me the better part of five years to figure that out. Now I can write it down (actually I just took a break from writing it down to blog about it, as I am doing the Snoopy dance).

Me exceptionally happy rightus nowus.

Very poopy day

My day was not all that great.  Paul came over and intuited that, the weather being so grisly (or drismal, as Donna H has remarked) it was a pho day.  So lunch was good and it was good to see a friendly face, but after he dropped me off back home …

My tummy has been upset, undoubtedly over the prospect of travelling, and when I sat down to do an itinerary the horrible thought occurred that I had Bitten Off More Than I can Chew.  Especially in ten days, with two days of air travel and who knows how much driving.  I am really not looking forward to it.  I thought about airports, and how aesthetic they are; sitting on the tarmac in the pouring rain for two hours while they find the luggage of somebody who didn’t show up for the flight; sitting on the tarmac in the dark while somebody removes thumb a from orifice b; getting stranded by global events; running out of money; and the whole doom spiral of horror.

So I am not leaving tomorrow morning.  I should visualize the fun I’m going to have, but all I can think about are the horrors of travelling and all the shit which may befall me.  And, candidly, some of my visits are duty visits and I’m not looking forward to them; fortunately the hardest visit is one to somebody who never, ever reads my blog, yay.

Emotional pointillism

Yesterday’s practical job interview was a disaster, but a low key one.  I’m not displeased with the haircut Katie gave me in the course of the interview, but I’d like to take the woman who supervised her and fire her at high velocity from the deck of the Iron Workers’ Memorial Bridge… in effigy, of course, I do not advocate violence except when in an excited and irrational frame of mind, which advocacy, when it occurs, I am obliged to immediately retract as being contrary to both my core self interest and my belief system, spindrift as it is.  Katie was philosophical about it, which helps.

I googled Glenn Beck to find out what church he goes to, subsequent to learning that he blames atheism for the end of the American dream.  Personally I blame their judicial system, which, skipping hand in hand with television over the last 60 years, has f|cked the Americans to the point where recovery into a society where self-governance and personal responsibility are considered virtues seems very unlikely.  Anyway, Glenn Beck, a Mormon, blames atheism.  It’s a lot like blaming Canada in its charming looniness … and it sure as f8ck is easier than looking in a mirror.  Of course me blaming the judicial system without pointing to the interconnected power structures which have allowed Glenn Beck to make fabulous amounts of money by being emotional, uncommitted to the facts and verbally abusive to people who haven’t ever done anything to him personally, would be very remiss, but the courts could have done more in the last 60 years and they haven’t, so they are the notional cat I kick this morning.

Marc Emery was taken into custody on Monday.  He’s a manic self-publicist with a libertarian messianic complex and a smoking hot wife.  I still don’t think he should have been extradited.  I hope he isn’t injured or murdered in custody; I hope he comes out of it sane, or at least as sane as he is now.  I am very angry at the Canadian government, but as long as we have Harper, it’ll be like this.  I knew Marc when I weighed 132 pounds and wore aviator frames so I guess I am biased.

After the interview disaster in the late afternoon (softened by the Seabus ride somewhat) I took the girls (Cassie, Kashka and Katie) for a drink at drink.  Yes, the department of redundancy department has made adjustments, and there is a new drinking hole for adults who wish to have a conversation and properly constructed drinks.  This new establishment does not use drink mixes.  The music is not turned up full blast; the wait staff are attentive, professional and fun.  I am booking Katie’s 21st bday party now!  609 Columbia for anybody who is interested.

Today is a day of packing and worrying.  I f|cking hate travelling, but if you want to get someplace you have to travel, alas and oy vey iz mir.  Jeff says, mimicking piteous kitten for comic effect, “But what will I eat?”  He’ll be fine of course.  He got the Margot grooming course; she bitched at him exactly the same way she bitches at me, so that will be fine too.

I closed all the windows permanently in preparation for winter.  The air conditioner needs to get put away, except I’m damned if I can figure out where.

I’ve decided not to take my computer on my trip; but that’s only because the notion of backing it up before I leave makes me all exhausted.  I’ll take pot luck on internet access; I don’t imagine it will be much of an issue, as everybody I’ll be visiting has some.

Currently, it is raining.

I made mini-cinnamon crunchies yesterday and gave some to Landpeer Kim with the rent cheques for the next three months.  I had to do something after she gave me all those home grown tomatoes.  Yum!  Also, I invented the recipe while I was making it.  The two people I thank most for my current ability to cook are Catherine and Paul.  Catherine because of her very inspiring adventurousness, Paul because I got kinda competitive with him in the ‘not using a recipe’ department.  Now I feel like I’m a good cook almost without thinking about it.  I can’t remember the last time I cooked something inedible; the worst thing I cooked in the last year were those dreadful muffins; they induced heartburn of world class immensity.

My back is really bothering me, which is another reason why I do not want to fly.  Or rent a car.  Silly me.

I light a candle for those killed and homeless in consequence of the earthquakes and flooding in the Philippines and Indonesia.

People keep sending me links I’ve already posted to my blog, in one case two years earlier.  It is to smirk.

I had a lovely conversation with Patricia the other day and look forward to catching up with her live upon my return.

I am a cool hunter.  One hundred thousand years ago I would have been finding tasty things to eat for my kids and grandkids.  It’s the same, but only different, as an ex-coworker of mine used to remark.

MilkDrop is a superlative visualization plug in.  Highly recommended; trippy as all get out. I occasionally have to look at the ground when the presets go into migraine-inducing territory but that’s my only complaint.

I am emotionally sensitive to certain wavelengths of light.  The more I consider this, the more I think, what?

I can hardly wait for the first snowfall so I can take video of Miss Margot.

She is very rotund.  We will have to start meal feeding the cats, which is harsh.

I have decided never to take her to my parents’.  Given her unaccountable urge to tangle herself up in people’s legs as they are going up the stairs, the prospect that she would either trip and kill one of my folks or get crushed by accident is too much to bear.

last Jericho of the 15th season

The season closer, which I attended with Paul, Paul’s boon companion Mike J, Keith and Mike, was a barnburnin’, kickass, upsidethehead HOWL of an evening.  Three professional musicians on tour (two of them being the Undesirables, a very amazing Canadian duo who TRANSFIXED the audience and the other being David Ross MacDonald, an Aussie who blinked at us when we wouldn’t sing the chorus of his rubato version of Waltzing Matilda because he wasn’t singing) joined the open stage, and the Galley stayed open long enough to serve beer at the break, may it be blessed among restaurants, and apart from it being ass freezing cold it was a splendid evening.  Banjo! Mandola! Social Justice songs! a song by Stompin’ Tom Connors about the Iron Workers’ Memorial Bridge collapse! Ashokan Farewell played during the jam session by four fiddles (one of whom played with polish and precision by a ten year old boy), one bodhran, one pennywhistle, two guitars and two mandolins! No fewer than two Bob Dylan songs (nobody plays Dylan at Jericho, it’s odd)!

When Fraser Union, the ‘headliner’, finally made it to the stage, one of them remarked that the headliners had already come and gone.  But you don’t go to Jericho thinking you’ll never be upstaged; on any given evening the quality of the musicianship is enough to give you severe pause.

Thanks to Mike J for giving me the musical term rubato and explaining it (he’s a second tenor with Chor Leoni and knows his shizz); thanks to Mike for the lift home; thanks to Paul for lining up for beers for us and loaning me the entrance money because as usual I forgot to get cash.

Bright blessings for the gift of being in that room, where sixty voices, in three and four part harmony, lifted the beams and raised the dust.  I didn’t want to perform that night, and I’m glad I didn’t try!

Going to Ontario… but WHEN?

I know that I’m heading for Ontario and I definitely have to be there for Thanksgiving weekend.  However, I am stuck in town until Thursday at the earliest as I have to be a model for Katie for the practical part of her job interview.  So, woo hoo, I’m getting a hair cut and a streak of purple put in my hair.  Or maybe green.

May I recommend for your viewing pleasure The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires?  It’s a Run Run Shaw / Hammer films coproduction from 1974.  It is one of the most hilariously awful films ever made.  It has Peter Cushing as Van Helsing.  Watch it and laugh your ass off.