Author: Allegra

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

Victoria

Jeff come and collected me and then kidnapped me for an ninety minutes’ worth of Robot Chicken.  Scarlett Johannson as a crazy girlfriend style GPS?  Yowza.

My mom cooked us dinner.  It was tasty and nourishing too. 

 

This morning I found out about the existence of bacon brittle.

 

I’ve been told that this should be served as a side for  the next Mars Bar Cthtulhuthon… Mmmm bacon brittle.  (added later, per Kopper’s warning do not use this recipe) 

What next, haggis?  Let us preserve decorum.  Mind you I was actually thinking of renting a bagpiper for the last time, but I thought that was over the top even for me.   

Enough of that!  The meal was turkey breast and home made stuffing and yams and salad and bread and cranberry dressing and a cauliflower cheese.  AND pie.  And ice cream.  So I have to say I am very impressed with just how much slaving over a hot stove my ma did for me today, and that maybe next Christmas I should think about getting here earlier and cooking more….

I got Hep A and Hep B shots this morning and I feel weird – oh shut up, weirder than normal.  Mind you my consciousness has been a variable and vinegary brew this past few weeks, with a couple of very nice breaks….  Pause to smile and look off into the middle distance with my head tilted to one side. I did manage to make some very nice memories in the last week.

Keith is still here.  It is so good to see him.

Now know snow – must go

I am contemplating the precipitation and thinking I wish I did some form of winter sport that involved snow rather than ice.  Because, dear friends, there’s rather a lot of it.  To quote the Caleban in the Frank Herbert Jorj X McKie books, “Low temperature and much moisture”.

Unfortunately I must now pack and get out of here to go to the ferry, and first I have an appointment right downtown at 9:30.  Must… drink… coffee. And I will hope that when I get off this blessed hill, the precip is rain rather than snow, so the Vancouver drivers are just regular, rather than supercharged, idiots.

I am looking forward to seeing the folks, though, and Jeff and Granny.

pinned

I got entirely pinned by a co-worker today.  He’s known me for 10 years.  We’ve had our ups and downs, but I have a lot of respect for him.

I said to the cafeteria gal (as I owed about $80 and it’s their year end) “It’s time for me to pay my debt to society,” which was overheard by colleague.  His immediate response, “Allegra, is that possible in a single transaction?”

 

OW OW OW

Merry ho ho

There is now enough chocolate at the office to paper my wall with.  Mmm… edible walls.

I am so looking forward to five days off I can’t tell you.  Except that I’m getting all scratchy and coughy and thinking I’m about to get sick.

Goldman Sachs shorted their bad mortgage loan paper.  I love how that works.  Let’s take a debt instrument that nobody understands and make book on how far it can fall? The whole house of cards is about to come riffling down at high speed… just like I’ve been warning about for years; it’s just that it’s closer than it was in 2004.

I can’t talk about work.  I’ll talk about underwear instead….. my daughter gave me really cute underwear for Christmas.  Or if I talk about work, how about peripherally?

Dave DeR gave me the Onion Atlas for Xmas.  It’s very funny.  Yes, I opened it early! I open every Christmas present I get when I get it.  This crap about waiting just means that the garbage gets loaded into one week, I prefer to spread the Christmas debris over a couple of garbage cycles.

Bitter?  Not at all.  I’ve just gone back to my normal state, which is grumpy.

Fight fair and come out swinging

Man sells 15 year old boy’s Christmas present – A Guitar Hero – on Ebay – to make a point about his pot smoking.

First, let me be the blue sky girl and say that in a perfect world, parents would own their f*cking children, and there’d be none of this goddamned tripe about how kids have rights, except the right to have such comforts as their parents can afford, like a sumptuously appointed privy, 7 hours of meaningful work a day to do, and more after you graduate from public school, and as many character building beatings as any adult within earshot with both energy and inclination may feel like doling out.  What the hell was this kid thinking?  That his wretched habit would not have consequences?  That his taste in friends would win him his father’s praise and a buss on both cheeks?  The son we may dismiss for the bone deep stupidity of youth which is his daily portion, hardly enhanced by a good lacing of BC Bud.
As for the dad, what a simp!  Advertising that he’d parked his cojones squarely over Satan’s beartrap of commercialism and me-too-ism?   No; he should have put the Guitar Hero quietly in the Christmas family hamper at work so they could fence the horrid piece of earsplitting devilishness for crack, and beaten the shit out of his kid.  Why make a public spectacle of himself in this shameful and moronic fashion?  This is not a day in which I am proud to be a Canuckistani parent, I’m telling you.

I think the dad should go RIGHT OUT and buy that kid a Bible, and clean out his room except for a night table and a drawer to put the Bible in.  I think the dad should ground that 15 year old parasite until he leaves home, which given the storm of freakish publicity (the father is not named, but you can bet your ass 10 minutes on myspace would turn the cowardly, short sighted bastard up) should be long about spring thaw.

In short, these two have broken the two cardinal rules of the Canadian father-son dyad!  The son GOT CAUGHT.  The father ADVERTISED IT.  May they both find a Chick-pamphlet corner of hell to scream at each other in for the rest of eternity.

Allegra has spoken.

Cross post from LJ

Spent the evening with Kopper and was in such an exalted state upon my return to my apartment that I couldn’t sleep.  Do you suppose the exercise helped?  Maybe it was the second dinner?

I composed a six minute comedy routine, recited it thrice through and spoke it into my digital recorder. All hail Lady Miss Banjola for reminding me I had one.  Then I woke up with two bizarre things going on simultaneously in my cranium; I woke up dreaming that Mike was crossing from dream life into real life with me as I awoke (I was in full combat gear, and he was in civvies, carrying a package). I was point and as I came around I was going to let him have it with this extremely fine weapon I was carrying and he just grinned and said, “You won’t need that.”

At the same time a really pretty chorus was ringing in my head.  In four part harmony.  I mean ringing.  I couldn’t get out of bed until I’d memorized it, and now I’m going to sing it into Garage Band, much to the disgust of my neighbours as I imagine.

That was a hell of a talk, girl.

Later…. This helped too.

I had no idea

… that Lady Miss Banjola took this picture. There are two awesome things and two awful things about the pic. The first two are that I am very happy I followed Janice’s example and quit dying my hair. I’m even happier I’ve let it grow out. The first awful thing is I LEFT THOSE JARS OF BLACKBERRY JELLY on the table. They were for me (the ones for Loki being already here) and they did not make it home with me. Arg of Argness! The second awful thing is that this picture makes my nose, already a decent size, look ENORMOUS. But at least I’m pictured working on the second verse of the song, which is now entitled “YOU try being Buffy’s Mom.” Considering I haven’t done anything creative in what feels like eons, that’s something.