Author: Allegra

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

Unca Dave here

He seemed to be his normal jolly self.  It was good to see Paul and Keith for supper as well.

How Peggy got an apple crisp (made with Gravensteins, yummazy!) over here, I have no idea, but Paul asked me to get the container back to her.  I will. Anyway, that was dessert… also home made tapioca.

Supper was two kinds salad (potato and green with freshly made bacon bits and sliced egg and tomato and mushroom), roast beef with roast garlic, potatoes and squash.  Everybody seemed to go back for seconds, so I guess there was enough (no gravy, though, sigh) and I didn’t work too hard at the cooking, so that was okay.  It’s funny, the kitchen looked great at 10 am yesterday morning. It looks like a disaster now.

I didn’t touch my mandolin, but my laundry is all done and put away, so along with all the the other chores and errands of this weekend, I feel quite accomplished.

Trip planning

Well, I found my Air Canada tix, and I found out how to get from Roissy (which is what the locals call Charles Degaulle airport, who knew) to the hotel on rue St Lazare.  It’s only an hour, including walking, but it’s 5 fare zones, so we’ll have to get money in the airport to get there or maybe get walking around change in Euros before we leave.

The day approacheth, I am excited.

In passing

Unca Dave is expected here this afternoon.

Scarlett Johannson got married – in Canada no less – & Paul Newman died.

I light a candle for Cindy, who said, “You amuse me,” on the phone last night in a tone of voice completely free of sarcasm, when I explained something to her about the way my mind works. (I was also being the world’s largest wuss, but she was okay with that too.)  We discussed how she and a bunch of other fans got into Bridge Studios the day Atlantis died and she has pics of herself standing in the gate.  Happy swoon.  I’ve been in Bridge Studios, back in ’05. Given what’s happened since, some of the comments I made in October 05 are pretty funny.   (Like, the comment about how Katie loves to fix hair???)

I also get to think about what I’m going to say at the panel on Friday night.  Yes, I’m going to a con, Vcon to be precise, and I’m going to be on a media filk panel.  Should I tell them that my secret to writing media filk is to go to the internet, download every scripted reference to the character and then find likely rhymes?  Seems kinda mechanical, but that’s how I wrote Clem, full title Just Call me Clem.  (Clem being a demon from Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

For breakfast – BLTs.  I don’t know why, except we had all the ingredaments in the house at one time.  For dinner – roast beast with veg.  Why?  It’s Sunday, and a family elder is coming by.  There’s chicken soup on the stove and I’m thinking of making refrigerator cookies.

Watched Starter for 10.  It’s a very good hearted movie, and if you love 80’s Britpop/late new wave you’ll drool on the soundtrack.  The movie is well shot, well-scripted and laugh out loud funny in spots.  Also, Dominic Cooper is bloody gorgeous.. and he’s in Keira Knightley’s new movie the Duchess, which makes me want to see it more.

My watch working again is making me happy.  Being registered to vote makes me happy (I had completely dropped off the rolls, which is perplexing).  And now, I’m going to practice my mandolin, do some paperwork, pay some bills, laundrify, and get another song written down…. and see if we can get to the end of season five of NCIS.  Yes, we’ve been watching rather a lot of it, and I’m really liking Michael Weatherly’s take on DiNozzo more and more.  He kinda grows on you.

It’s a beautiful day…. Mike was going to take me to the Wreck, as it’s supposed to be beachy today, but Unca Dave is coming. I am in a really good mood.  I assume it’s the weather, nothing else has changed.

Jeff RULES

Jeff, as all who know him know, entirely rocks, but this morning he got major “brother is awesome” points by playing chauffeur.  I got ALL my errands done and as a reward he got homemade calorie reduced potato salad.  For supper it will be ginger sesame tofu with veg stir fry with a side of rice noodles, unless I change my mind and make buffalo Sloppy Joes.  I’m thinking about it, I’m seriously thinking about it.

My errands:  Closing out my TD term deposit; getting a new battery into my watch, mailing a donation to Doctors without Borders, getting more stamps, shopping (Famous Foods and Kin’s Farm Market) and getting myself registered to vote.  Total elapsed time just over two hours.  Jeff stayed in the car and read while I did my running around.

Now I’m making chicken soup and contemplating the world – and my laundry – from my little kitchen nook.  Chicken soup is so yummy…. I’m looking forward to it.

Hymn to Cthulhu

Without its corruption, nothing can rot and be remade.

It is the wisdom of stars and the patience of aeons.

It is the power to return and master us at any time.

Before it science means nothing,

reason is a faithless servant,

and devouring disregard is our puniest allotment of punishment

as time slows to absorb the madness.

None dare approach it in its indifference,

let alone its wrath.

Before it gods go mad and flee;

none but we fear-raddled mites

upon its immense and glistening form

may approach the abyssal boredom of its majesty.

More candles

I light a candle for Carrie, who has left her fiancé of three years and is heading back to Ontario.

I light another candle for Unca Dave, who is coming to see me and Jeff on the weekend.

I light a candle for Mike, who hauled me off to Hastings Steam and Sauna last night and pummelled my right shoulder for a while, and so I feel physically a lot better this morning.  Emotionally (to quote Dunnett) I’m a stunned bird in the reeds.  Maybe a fresh cup of coffee will cheer me up.

I gotta tell ya, Hastings Steam and Sauna is a really nice sauna.  Designed and built by a FInn in the mists of time, each of the suites has a sauna room, a shower room and a front room with a couple of extremely utilitarian bed shelf thingees.  The music that is piped in is wonderful (last night it sounded like Exchange, Eno and Norah Jones) and has been every other time I’ve been there, and the only drawback was that we were in suite 2 when the street cleaner went by on Hastings and both Mike and I went bug-eyed trying to figure out what the hellacious noise was – the whole room was shaking and the tile made for really loud echoes.  The plus side was that the horrid fluorescent light in the front room of the suite had burned out so the room was lit by candles. Instant spa experience, just add paraffin.

There’s a hallway on the back of the suites which allows access to the employees.  You get 90 minutes in the suite but only an hour in the ‘wet’ rooms so the employees can clean after each use.

I light a candle for Hastings Steam and Sauna.  Highly recommended!

Love and loss

I’d like to light a candle for mOm.  She’s lost a lot of relatives, mostly to cancer, in the last little while.  That and the fall will tend to make you thoughtful, and sad.

Here’s another candle for my cousin Marianne.  I never met her, I only met her brother Rawd, but he was a sweetie, and Marianne was less than ten years older than me when she died.  She was also a really good person…. a mensch.  I’m going to ask mOm for permission to repost her obit.

Here’s one last candle to all those whose love has become loss.

“I’m eating bananas and cream” / Kopper and Katie here for dins

What a scoundrel I am.  I bait Kopper by telling her I’ll cook for her, and then switch and order Swiss Chalet.  We swapped notes on how exhausted we are, watched a little Planet Earth, ate dinner, and then I walked her to the bus.  Once she was at the Brentwood end of the 25 bus, now she’s at the Nanaimo end, but she’s still very close.

Then Katie’s cell phone rang and Katie said, “I’m eating bananas and cream.”  There was a pause, and then she said, a little more distinctly “I’m eating bananas and cream.”  There was a pause, and then she said, annoyed, and slightly louder “I’m eating bananas and cream.” There was long pause, and then she said, “I’m eating bananas and cream.” At this point I am no longer able to concentrate on so much of a syllable of what Kopper is saying, so I yell, “*****!  Tell Daxus to clean the ******* wax out of his ears!”  She said it twice after that.  It was all I could do not to roll around on the ground shrieking with laughter.  The inanity of teenage conversations never ceases to astound.

Transphobia

Quoted from today’s tyee.ca:

 

Ten Signs of Transphobia in Our Culture, by Christopher A. Shelley

 

  1. Denial that the problem exists in the first place. 

     

  2. Inability to distinguish between categories such as queer, gay, lesbian, and trans. 

     

  3. Lack of meaningful discussion in educational and workplace settings. 

     

  4. Anxiety over not being able to tell if a person is male or female. 

     

  5. Crude jokes directed towards trans people or with trans-related content. 

     

  6. Refusal to accept trans people as one’s own teacher, doctor, politician, dentist, etc. 

     

  7. Thinking that being trans is OK but also dismissing the idea of ever dating a transperson. 

     

  8. Reducing trans to being merely and solely a psychiatric category. 

     

  9. Trivialization and media spectacles centred on trans-ness as an object of ‘fascination.’ 

     

  10. Refusing the fundamental claims of transpeople as being genuinely mis-sexed.

 

Book launch for Transpeople: Repudiation, Trauma, Healing. Event begins at 7 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 25, at Little Sister’s bookstore, 1238 Davie St., Vancouver. RSVP to awilson@utpress.utoronto.ca.

Photobooth is this incredibly puerile utility on a Mac/food

You just sit there and make goofy faces and take pictures of yourself in a random, blissfully self-centred way, on your MOTHER’S COMPUTER, when you KNOW she blogs!?  Like I never did that.  It’s an unflattering eye, though.

I had a brief and bloody battle with myself, but I owe it to the world to post this picture.  The other five pictures Katie took have seductive beauty and offhand exhaustion, and one of THE WORST CASES of Milton Berle mouth, ever. But you shall never see them, ho ho!

You may perhaps be wondering why the hell I speak in such detail of my meals.  As stated in the raison d’etre of this blog, I write for my mother, and she is continuously wonderstruck and pleased that her abiding distaste, which accompanies her essential competence, for cooking, has not passed to me, and that I actually cook.  Yeah, I get tired every once in a while, but I always climb back on the horse.

This is what I mades for dinner.  Leftover pork roast with sauerkraut.  Oh, life’s hard.  Salad with salt, pepper, half a teaspoon of olive oil, a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar, about a heaping tablespoon of finely chopped red onion, one whole Early Girl tomato, organically grown by Paul’s neighbour, and one whole finely chopped red pepper. Damn, it was fine.  And I made homemade gravy and the first yorkshire pudding I’ve made in many a long year.  Damn, that was fine too! Wrong sized pan but I’ll fix it next time…. or double the recipe.  What you can do with eggs, sir, what you can do with them!

Katie finished her homework and watched some NCIS and then left.

I’m feeding Kopper tomorrow.