Category: Church

Ziva, you heartless tyrant

So, she’s in the shop again for two days while they address the fact that she went from being very well behaved to sounding like an emphysema riddled old drunkard and blowing through 25 percent extra gas overnight.  As always if it isn’t one thing it’s two things.  Paul’s been at me for the valve noise for ages; she needs a new timing kit, and there’s other assorted shit in there.

To misquote the Catalonian Catalunyan poet, “I want no pity for this pain I would trade with no other man”.

Work itself is okay but there are circumstances at work that are very tiresome and disillusioning and when Jeff picked me up yesterday (thank you!) we had a lively discussion of management techniques on the way home in the car, and calmed ourselves down with some more Stargate SG1, which continues to be excellent although I imagine eventually the show will get tired.  It just hasn’t happened yet.

And I hit – or will make an uncontrolled descent into – a milestone today.  I’ve never ever ever been to a Beacon choir practice.  I’m going to one tonight because I’ll be rehearsing drums for a single performance.  When I get asked why I won’t join the choir – and I know I will be asked – when I have one of the better singing voices in the congregation – and that is merely a statement of fact, not me getting uppity – I am going to look at them all and say, “I don’t have to say why, and I’m not joining.”  It’s the material.  Dirges, with a few exceptions.

 

Board meeting and other stuff

So I’ll be having lunch or dinner with Carol and Sue sometime after mid February regarding the transition to becoming Secretary for the church.  I think Carol is very relieved to be going off the board – Karen is too.  Everybody is so busy and tired but the meetings are very cheerful and energizing and sometimes quite passionate without ever becoming disrespectful or heated.  It’s at  the Board Meetings I really feel like I’m living my U*U values…. the whole “Step up instead of back” and “Respect for oneself, respect for others” stuff that’s very hard to learn unless you have ongoing, important and committed EXAMPLES in front of you.

 

The weather continues glorious.  As does my mood.  Even if – one of my star performers at work is probably going to find another position within the company which will be insane making for me especially if, as I see likely, they will tell me that there won’t be a replacement.

The cats have decided to only come near me if I’m feeding them or on the can.  Eddie always looks at me like “Why can’t you use a cat box like a normal person”.

I want to slap everybody in Finance, with about three exceptions, until they cry.  Shows you that my U*U principles can’t stand the strain of crossing the threshold at Doc Oc’s Lab here.  But we must bring our light out into the world, until somebody steals the damned thing.  And when my light gets stolen, I get PISSED.

Any day I don’t have to scrape or defog the car is a good one / Resolution list

Katie’s coworkers reacted to her new boots (she WORE THEM AT WORK for the last half of the shift, they is that comfy) with a gratifying display of jealousy, appreciation and WTF that her mOm would spend that much money on her.

Wednesday, probably, I go have dins with my old beau from the bike shop.  Looking forward to catching up with him.  It didn’t work out between us (he has a sweetie in Seattle, where have I heard THAT before) but I still appreciate him for his complete and blithe disregard for whatever is fashionable in favour of what he likes.

Check this out.  Laughed my ass off.  http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/horoscoped/  It is a wordcloud of all the words in 22000 horoscopes, with A COMPLETELY GENERIC horoscope at the end.  So much for augury…..

Per the tarot reading which said I have so many, I have prepared my new years resolutions. Being ten in number, as recommended.

Remember to bring cans, rice and pasta for the food bank at least 3 out of 4 Food Bank Sundays.  I keep forgetting and it really feels bad.

Prep for taking on the duties of a Secretary at Beacon (I expect to be acclaimed, and still no Treasurer, bah).  Since this involves a lovely long lunch with Carol and Sue on my dime, I can’t imagine this one taking too long to tick off.

Lose 20 pounds by this time next year.  Awk, oh well.

Attend at least one Humanist meeting, even though there are two regular attendees whose smooth and seemingly impenetrable pomposity I would like to test a laser on.  Oh Allegra you are really doing them a favour aren’t you.

Attend at least one Lunch Bunch meeting.  It means I have to be on vacation or take a day off, but I have an evol plan for that.  It means connecting with some of the church elders, whom we do not have with us forever.  Their wisdom and humour is the reason I keep going back to church and yet I never socialize with them.  Wrongo me bucko, as they say.

Go to one open mic per month, except in January.  I plan to map out the ones closest to the house thanks to http://www.openmicvancouver.com/

Gather up all my homilies for publication.  Yeah, I know.  I will self-publish but it’s easy to do for cheap and I’m enjoying the notion of my mother having something to send her strict Christian relatives.

Monetize the web site.  Yes, start selling shit or advertising.  Seeing as how I will have to stop linking all over the web thanks to SOPA, I might as well start covering costs, cheap as they are.

Track the amount of time I spend watching TV (this, not the weight loss, is the real asskicker).

Get good or at least fun at making hats for cats and steampunk jewelry.  Cindy says she will tutah me.  Might even be a revenue stream, who knows.  It won’t be until I’ve recovered the $100 I’ve spent on supplies – I am keeping track.

And there you have it.  2012 will be all about connecting and creativity.  And hopefully some relief for my poor tubby knees.

Happy Sigh

Patricia just showed me a lovely Art Deco platinum and diamond engagement ring.  Yup, her wild Australian laddie has made it official; they’re getting married later this year.

 

I wore my cloak to work.

 

I paid Katie $50 to call me when she’s gone from the house for 24 hours.  I was not worried (seriously, I wasn’t), but I prefer my housemates to not make me wonder at what point I’m obliged to call the police.

 

I will be singing “Dandelions Dreaming” at the Christmas Eve service at church.   Sue is worship leader.

One think and another

I just messaged one of my coworkers and instead of a cute little caffeine deficient owl I sent him a photoshopped bodybuilder which is candidly a very disturbing pic.

Yesterday’s homily went great – it was sparsely attended but I must not have been doing a good job of making it a worshipful experience because there was applause at the end (this is NOT a good thing in homiletics – respectful and silent attentiveness is de rigueur.) It’s posted on this site now.  Ralph came up to me, twinkling, afterwards and said, “I was going to tell you what a nice homily that was but I figured you’d kill me”.  I heart Ralph and Ivy so much.

Katie K, Lard be praised, came along (she may have attended one other, I can’t remember, but my friends never come so it was a red letter day!) and since I didn’t have the car we jumped on the Skytrain and went to International Village for lunch.  We wound up at Kentizen, which for $16 tax in provides a lunch buffet reminiscent of the lamentably fallen off but still extant Grand Buffet. There was loads of nice sushi and acceptably acceptable Chinese food, although the reviewer who says you can get Chinese food like that in a small town in rural BC is a moonbat.  I love the decor and ambiance for a Chinese restaurant and it was a welcome respite from the wall to wall noise in the Village concourse.  We shot the breeze in a most delightful fashion and she toddled off to Metrotown to hang with her daughter.  What a GLORIOUS day it was yesterday, the weather couldn’t have been improved on.

Then to Imaginarius Fantasticus, from whence, 300 dollars poorer, I emerged.  I bought two pieces of steampunk jewellery, an additional cambric top, a pink and black confection of a corset for daugher Katie (I had taken her measurements so her absence wasn’t an issue, and it did fit her – and corsets were $60 on special, so ya can’t beat that with a stick and I was so happy that my evil plan to pick her up a nice and relatively inexpensive corset worked), a BEAUTIFUL dark blue half circle Regency style cloak with ribbon closure and the most AWESOME hood (it is so flattering it’s amazing), a bunch of ceramic nametags (hey, they had Allegra, Tish, Terry, Hank and Katie so I bought them) and I came THIS CLOSE to buying Paul the Spock costume from The Voyage Home, which he would have looked f*cking awesome in.  Man, so so tempted.

There were carnivorous plants, and Viking (no, really, antique) belt buckles, and medieval armor demos and evil female pirates and kids dressed up like fairy princesses.  And aura readers.  I would have preferred a steampunk tarot reading, but ya can’t have everything….

Keith and Paul ran into Mike and Rozo at the Quay about the same time I was releasing the last of my money into the wild, so we all had quite the nice day…and then Lost Girl, which was okay, and now work….

In Victoria

Jesus iced Christ on a pogo stick, it’s snowing.  Or trying to. We’re here, we’re going to go to Value Village and then Radjuli.  Then tonight we’re off to Brannigan’s for dinner and the trip up Island has been cancelled for reasons of harrumph won’t get into that now.  Katie has interesting friends.

I got into the wrong lineup at the ferry this morning and the car wrangler cheerfully said, ‘I don’t care, please get on the ferry.’

So much for reserved sailings.

MUMMY I love my mother, she found me a copy of Mother’s Day, so it’s on the site now.  Oldest Homily have got.

Happy Birthday to me!

Interfaith Service for Homelessness Week.

The Baha’is brought food and readings.  Also, a lot of people from different ethnic groups.  The United Church people brought dance and music and prayers and guitars and beautiful wise children.  The Catholics brought a reading from Jack Layton and beautiful wise elders.  The Unitarians brought a reading from Edward Everett Hale.  The Anglicans brought a paraphrase of a Psalm.  The Sikhs brought tablas, harmonium, devotional prayers that just about pulled the heart of my body, and AWESOME FOOD. Rev Neil Fernyhough presided, and I cannot thank him enough for that brief little conversation we had at New West Pride that brought me to the most beautiful sacred space I’ve shared in a very long time.

Got lost in the hymnal again

Looked up Edward Everett Hale (NOT HORTON- thanks mOm), once chaplain to the US Senate and a noted theologian, writer and speaker (Unitarian, ‘fcourse).

Throughout his lifetime Edward Hale made a number of statements that reveal his wise and stately character and now serve to mark his distinguished literary career.  Here are some quotes, lifted from Wikipedia

  • ‘Do you pray for the senators, Dr. Hale?’ No, I look at the senators and I pray for the country.
  • I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do. <—- this is not the quote in the hymnal, interestingly enough.
  • If you have accomplished all that you have planned for yourself, you have not planned enough.
  • In the name of Hippocrates, doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.
  • Make it your habit not to be critical about small things.
  • Never bear more than one kind of trouble at a time. Some people bear three kinds of trouble – the ones they’ve had, the ones they have, and the ones they expect to have.
  • The making of friends who are real friends, is the best token we have of a man’s success in life.
  • To look forward and not back, To look out and not in, and To lend a hand.
  • War – hard apprenticeship of freedom.
  • Wise anger is like fire from a flint: there is great ado to get it out; and when it does come, it is out again immediately

VCon roundup

VCon vignettes: Getting asked by a new to filk fan if we “Had any Star Trek songs?” causing Creede and Shaddyr and I to look at each other wildly and flip the book open to Banned From Argo. Great concert by Creede and Shaddyr and I ran through our OVFF song list which was also well received. Songwriting panel I was on was attended by two very shy teenaged girls. Larry Niven was EVERYWHERE; saw him in the hall, the filkroom, the art show, the dealer’s room. The very model of an affable and approachable GOH. Dropped ludicrous amounts of money on clothing, including a sick confection of a steampunk hat, two corsets, skirt, buffalo belted purse, froofy blouse and bi-coloured leather wrist band with steampunk details and an alien glass eye on the top. Outfit is supposed to cross filk, steampunk and Browncoat fandoms. Shout out to foxipher – can’t wait for Conflikt ! Shout out to Casey Wolf. Saw the Best Assassin’s Creed costume EVAR; anytime the wearer passed somebody in period costume he’d go into the ‘blend’ posture which caused me to howl with laughter. There were half a dozen excellent Dr. Whos, the best Stormtrooper costume I’ve been up close to, and there was one poor chica who was the living model for Venus and Mars and had to change her costume every two hours as a walking billboard. Which she very much resembled as she was wearing the tallest platforms imaginable outside a KISS concert. Ran into various former coworkers and friends and friends of friends and had some lovely conversations and some long overdue catching up. Also, given that VCon is a smallish Gencon with about 1000 members, the art room was nothing short of spectacular. There were at least 10 items I wanted to buy and even the stuff I didn’t like was well done. And my costume was so cool (I changed into it as I was buying it, to the amusement of the dealers) I had requests for pictures. No VCon for me today as I am opening church and have life maintenance. But even so I call it an unqualified success.

There are a number of possibilities

I am either a) no longer crazy b) seeing an incompetent psychologist or c) broke. My folks gave me money to go see a counsellor, and providentially I ran out of cake about the time the psychologist pronounced me in markedly better shape than when I showed up in February.  I’d like to thank LTGW for getting me the referral, Peggy and the krewe at church for being the soul of lovingkindness, Jeff, folks and kinder for being supportive, sometimes rather more pointedly than I’d like, but whatever.   I’ve got Tony’s number and I will definitely go see him if I start going off the skids again.  In the meantime, nothing can touch me, for yea, though I walk through the valley of piles of paperwork, I shall fear no angry customers, for the Buzz is with me, and He Fucking Shreds.

Why I think Jeff is a genius

Jeff’s tenancy with me has consisted in part of him going away and thinking for a spell when I say things like “Why can’t we have the internet on the big screen?” and “We have to many fucking remotes; when you go out of town I can’t even reliably turn the TV on; can you fix that?” mostly to prevent himself from saying something mean to me about how I’m too dumb to understand the two page instruction set he laboriously wrote, AND updated at least twice.  Jeff produces good documentation and I am dumb as a brick; these two facts are incontrovertable.  With respect to the “Why can’t we have the internet on the big screen?” question he had to do a ton of stuff and set up another computer to make it happen.  SO I get to go skipping through life asking why things don’t happen to my liking and he gets to spend hours of challenging labour AND money making it happen.  I don’t know which is worse, that I keep thinking I can get away with it, or that he just quietly goes away and does it without presenting me with an itemized bill.  On the other hand, I do cook around here.

His latest act of genius has been to bow to the inevitable.  I am indeed TOO STUPID to handle more than one remote, but universal remotes almost universally suck.  After lengthy study of the problem, he purchased a universal remote and then spent a goodly number of hours programming it to withstand the depredations not only of myself but of my son, who can be a complete ass when borrowing media.  Sorry son, it’s true.  Of course if you get hit by a car I’m going to regret this, just like I regretted my daily description of cleaning John’s apartment when he moved out immediately after he got killed in an accident, but I don’t go back and oubliette that shit because that’s just lame.  I would rather be complicated, messy and inconsistent, because, er, that’s how I am….  But the truth keeps on being the truth even when you could have picked a better moment for the reveal.

Jeff has not only programmed the remote so I can do whatever I want to do with the tv and the Xbox and the monitor, he’s SET THE AVERAGE AUDIO LEVELS.  So if you’re going back and forth between media you don’t get blown out of your seat if you land in the middle of a tv commercial.  That, friends, is true genius.  And he’s always finding new ways to tweak the remote.  Go tech!

Today is Mother’s Day.  I’m opening at church (and if I’m not, I’ll help….) and then assisting with a Mother’s Day tea.  I decided I couldn’t deal with making soup so I baked a whole salmon and made cinnamon buns.  Jeff doesn’t know I plan on making more, but I do; it’s mean to fill the house with the supercharged smell of home baking and then say oops, you can’t have any.  (Actually I let him eat a couple: “I have good news and bad news.  These are the best cinnamon buns I ever made, and the rest are going to church.”)

Yesterday I did laundry and played Buzz ALL DAY.  I do not play Buzz every day, but I had four separate guitar playing sessions yesterday and I LOVE HOW THAT GUITAR SOUNDS OMG OMNOMNOM.  Also yesterday watched chunks of Canucks game and laughed at Margot for watching Nascar again.  She really likes Darlington, and why not.  My shopping trip yesterday consisted of propane and guitar strings, because the g string ALWAYS breaks on a 12 string; I bought two whole sets and spares.  I talked to Neil Douglas about effects pedals and he laughed and asked me why I’d bother.  I s’pose.

I managed to cut the grass last weekend but I have no fucking clue when I’ll get to do it again because the sky continues to dump precip at an unholy and quite soggy-making rate.

After church, the Horde will descend and I am hoping to barbecue some MORE salmon.

Did I mention that I think my brother is a genius?

Hey hey my my Ai Wei Wei

One of the most brilliant and humane artists of this or any century is Ai Wei Wei.  I recently saw a documentary segment on Frontline about him and both Jeff and I were blown away at how amazing he is.  He’s being set up for a long jail sentence.

The church spring potluck was last night.  It went very well and in the end, as always, there was enuff fud.  I contributed two entrées, set up, clean up, butter, a starch dish and the Tapioca Song and I was exhausted when I got home.  Paul turned up for as much as he could stay for and contributed his best ever quinoa salad and home made bread.