Author: Allegra

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

food

Damn!  Those were some good tortillas.  I appear to have made the exact right number (they don’t keep) and we even blew through all of the little chopped veggies (because they don’t make great leftovers either).  Jeff has agreed to tortillas going in the dinner time rotation plan.
Anyway, it was an entirely successful evening, and now I am contemplating work and the usual daybreak stuff. Have a grrrrreat day ev’ybody!

Plotting n planning

April 18th, so I learn, will be the date for the Willie P Memorial concert in Victoria.  I will consult with the folks and assemble a tune or two… more details as they firm up.  I am thinking about taking the day off.
This weekend a SPIT.  It’s been bally ages since we did that, and we’re meeting up Saturday in a bookstore, so all is good and beautiful.  Then church again on Sunday to set up chairs.  I will be faster this time as I know the drill.  It’s not particularly onerous, but I did feel it on Monday when I woke up; given that my set up partner is well old enough to be my dad further complaining shall be nixed.

This evening, if the fates are kind and the winds propitious, the Luddite will turn up for supper.  I’m thinking home made tortillas. Which reminds me, I should back away slowly from the computer and do some prep so I don’t have to when I get home.

I’m finding the commute okay.  I’m also thinking of finding alternate routes to shake things up a bit, like walking over to Rupert and taking the bus down to that station, to see if maybe I can’t work a little more exercise into the morning routine at least on mornings when it isn’t pouring rain.  The commute is improved by having an MP3 player.  Current set list is a bit eclectic… it’s everything from me singing Lifeline – (I usually skip over it, because as much as I love PD Wohl’s tasty backing I’m not liking my singing) to Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony, the Who’s Won’t Get Fooled Again, John Hiatt’s Walk On, Aretha Franklin’s Chain of Fools… eclectic, yup.  Oh, and the Bastard Fairies We’re All Going to Hell; it’s impossible to sit on the train and listen to that and not smirk.

Further plotting includes maybe taking a songwriting class with the aforementioned PD Wohl; considering maybe taking a course at BCIT now I’m ten minutes away by bus; and figuring out which of Vancouver’s cultural events of the month of April Jeff and I might want to take in.  Also, planning dinner for Friday, the first inaugural fall down.  Honestly, I’m thinking takeout.  Hopefully this large blank where my cooking thoughts usually get scrawled will fill in between now and then.
I can more or less see the floor in my room.

We appear to have blown a fuse in the kitchen.  Sigh.

Jeff, saintly geek that he is, has run his hands over Suzanne’s laptop and restored it to health. (Don’t anybody else get any funny ideas).  Suzanne and Katie dropped by yesterday to collect it with thanks.  Katie got her stipend for helping me move and get my deposit back which was awesomely swift – I hadn’t expected to see it until mid month, but Ray at Cornerstone is the best of landpeers, and he does what he says.

The landpeers here have not responded to Jeff’s polite enquiries about which of the minor irritants he can attack next, which means that he’s going to ignore their ignoring him, and I’ll have my doors fixed shortly.

Somehow I ended up with an autographed Groo in my belongings.  Happy sigh.  I love Groo.

Yet more Deadwood last night after supper, which was spaghetti.

Time to chop veg.

Quiet evening

leftovers and Beowulf…. 2/3rds of a good movie.  I know the original poem didn’t know its accent from its ass (to quote the charming Bill Burroughs) although I didn’t know, until I read the wikipedia article, that some people think the whole poem’s a fraud and wasn’t even written until the 16th century, as that’s when the manuscript miraculously turned up; the accents in the soundtrack come from everywhere in the northern world at that point, which wouldn’t have been too different from real life, when there was a lot of travelling across the northern sea.  I didn’t find the accents as weirding as some critics did; I guess after reading Dunnett’s King Hereafter I was prepared to hear just about anything.

Loved the monster Grendel.  The script was interesting in spots but mostly so pedestrian that I wanted to slap somebody.

Stephen Harper shows some class

Normally I don’t care much for the gent, but I have a lot of respect for somebody who goes to Auschwitz and then declines to comment to the press afterwards.  He showed up and didn’t use it as an opportunity to grandstand; kudos to the man.  Of course, I guess this just proves that he’s part of the international Zionist banking conspiracy, or may to the “I can has armband” crowd.

Lazy weekend

You know it’s a lazy weekend when the most impressive thing you did was stack and unstack chairs at church. (Good service.) That and go rescue Season 2 disk one Deadwood out of the DVD player in the storage locker (Jeff had other, arcane power supply business in there as well). Both of the kids were here yesterday; Katie insisted that she had to drop off Suzanne’s laptop for TLC from Jeff (note to everyone in Vancouver… Jeff is not some free Geek Squad wannabe) and then leave and then stayed for porkchomps Paulegra and The Scent of Green Papaya.

You must understand… getting Katie to watch a movie with virtually no dialogue and subtitles is like telling ball lightning to pose for paparazzi. She entirely volunteered, but I was gobsmacked.

Keith just hung around (he left just before dinner) and either watched Nascar with his uncle or played non stop computer games. In desperation, Jeff is building him a ‘good enough’ computer out of various scraps to perhaps stem the Sunday tide. Every other day of the week Keith is very busy; Sundays he wants to blow his brains out on computer games. This would be okay but Jeff can barely use his room; I’ll let them sort it out but the parking at the computer combined with Keith leaving about half his coiffure in Jeff’s soap made for interesting times. No, I do NOT want to live in a sitcom; it just keeps happening with grisly regularity.

Back to work, where a group of senior managers has decided to manage by cancelling the one useful meeting we all attend once a week. I could expound at career limiting length on this subject, but we polled the attendees and we’re going to book the damned meeting anyway, and if the managers don’t want to attend for their own reasons, that’s no reason not to meet and exchange information and work our projects, which is what we were doing before. My manager supports the meeting, at any rate, and gave me a thumbs up on rebooking with the relevant attendees, so my precious heinie is safe for the time being. Heavy sigh.

Off to church

our theme this morning…. tattoos and body modification.  I’ve had all the body modification I want from childbirth, thanks.  I do talk up the notion of getting a tattoo from time to time, but I just can’t think that it’s anything except a “I’m really cool for 50” move, and that makes me go skwik.

party

was success….. music, v. little alcohol, and the pleasure of the company of Tom Peggy Barry Keith Dr Filk Rob Mike Heather Patricia & Nicholas.  So all in all a nice blend of friends family and coworkers.
I must say, the biscotti were a success, and I’m glad I deked over to the cheese aisle for some brie….  This morning picked my way round the sleepers to load the dishwasher, then made coffee, then retired to the second volume of Quentin Bell’s bio of his aunty Virginia Woolf, then passed out again until about 10:30 am. Keith’s off home to do a laundry (today is not one of our days) and I just trimmed Dr. Filk’s scalp, something I haven’t done for a year.  He was describing, in amusing terms, his current job situation, which is reasonably secure but quite unhindered by management.
The Willie P Memorial concert is two Fridays hence.  I will try to get over there to sing and play but that means dreadful things like picking tunes and practicing.  Which reminds me, I have to get Dr. Filk’s arrangement of Step Away …. that’s one I’ll do for sure.  Oh god, it sounds like I’m committing myself.

more later….

Biscotti for partti

There will be an assortment of other pleasant things to munch which I won’t enumerate out of respect for my parents, who might be tempted to get on the ferry and join us if I did.  I am feeling very odd still, but I think it’s a migraine.

Jeff says he drifted off to sleep last night to the smell of almonds toasting, and now we are waiting for the first bake to be done so’s I can slice ’em and throw them in the oven. Lost my bank card last night, or at least one of them.  As I’ve had to replace it twice in the last year through no fault of my own I was a bit blasé about the whole thing, but earned a mercifully brief lecture from Jeff about being more organized, and maybe I should just leave it off there while pointing to the small grin distorting my phiz at the moment.  I am also smarting from having packed the season two disk one DVD of Deadwood in the *^%^* DVD player, which is resting comfortably in storage. Hopefully that will conclude my acts of dummheit, and I can fix these problems on the weekend, and hey, maybe even do some important banking that I had been putting off.

Okay! the biscotti, a perfect 10 of goldenbrown-ness, are sliced and back in the oven. If the downstairs neighbours are awake they are probably wondering what’s up – it’ll fill the house for sure.
Patricia’s coming home with me from work tonight and we are going to prep for the party together.  Either that or start partying early, I wouldn’t put it past us.   No.  I wouldn’t.   Turn up ze musique!  Dansez, mes enfants!  I have made the determination that just in case the Luddite shows up I am going to stay reasonably sober (he doesn’t care, but I do) by which I mean having three whole beers, instead of maybe six over the course of the evening.  We shall see.

One last comment.   I watched The Thing, the last 45 minutes, last night.  I had forgotten what an amazing bloody movie that was.  Then I watched Planes, Trains and Automobiles, which was on my lifetime list.  It’s always good to have a conversation starter for the office….