Category: Commercial plug

Just bizniss

Kenny Gu and the housing blues. I knew the Vancouver market was fucked up, but holy shit.

Dinner with Mike last night.  It was such a spectacular early fall evening we ate on the patio at the Quay. I had the prawn pad thai and Mike had the glass noodles with chicken from Longtail Kitchen, and the meal was so good my eyes couldn’t focus for a while afterward. I drank a Tiger beer.  I should get it for Jeff. It has ABSOLUTELY NO TASTE.

Now I’m hongring for coffee and thinking about Starbucks.  I don’t normally want to have anything from Starbucks, but the alt-right wants to boycott them, and I do fancy their chocolate croissants.

 

Amaze is no longer amazing

I’ve been using the laundry product Amaze for almost a quarter of a century and it’s off the market.  I’ve been to all the places I used to buy it, and I’ve been on line, and I’ve been to the brand website and it’s vanished.

So apparently the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet has shed so much ice to climate change that it’s changed gravity.

So apparently we have ants.

So apparently I hurt my left knee walking yesterday

So apparently Pluto has 5 wobble-orbited moons.

Well then.

No words yesterday but a lovely long walk in the park (Oakalla, aka Deer Lake) with Master Alex, who was completely adorable and said Ma-ma when Katie put him back in the car.  Thanks to Paul for providing car. We saw frogs, great blue herons, towhees and little twittering birds of some description. Katie particularly enjoyed the sound of the wind in the long grass.

 

Some progress

Used CPAP last night.  The Liposic allowed me to open my eyes without creaking this morning (still dreffle dry, but not the :spend twenty minutes thinking sad thoughts to get my tear ducts to work so I can open them: dry of yesterday morning, which was a horrid start to the day). My new routine is Liposic at night since I can’t see a ****ing thing when I put that stuff in, and Systane in the morning since it is much runnier.  I am also going to start supplementing with evening primrose oil again and start monitoring how many hours a day I am at the computer and watching tv, which will probably horrify me into a neurasthenic stupor.  Also I have to drink water or tea instead of coffee, GRRR.

The congregational dinner was absolutely lovely and I sang Tapioca, but my almost new medical problem (self-diagnosed from symptoms, so YMMV, and almost certainly triggered by my slip and fall in the shop although the broken shoulder got all the attention) fixed it so that by the end I was barely able to walk, drive or lift anything, which given that I was on the cleanup crew didn’t halp.  I am good for about 2.5 k of walking before the pain is so bad I start to waddle (which is characteristic) and all the strength goes out of my legs, (ditto). When I got out of bed this morning all the bones in that region of my body grated and popped like a ship’s rigging in bad weather.

As this is almost certainly the consequence of not having proper foot support and wearing the same shoes day in and day out (which Chipper has warned me about many times) I need to drag myself off to the doc and get a scrip (again, I lost the first one) for  foot support and to quit walking barefoot in the house, since anytime I put my foot to the floor without arch support I’m just being an idiot and making it worse.

Last night as I was driving home a passenger jet came so close to the ground as I was driving along 10th between 8th and 6th that I nearly drove off the road, and then it BANKED like it was heading into the ground.  I have no problem with jets flying over my house as long as they are 1000 ft AGL like they are supposed to be, but that close scared the bejabbers outta me.

Chili and buns for today’s meal has been prepared or purchased.  I’ll head over to Planet Bachelor at some point after church.

So tired… all I can think of is coffee, and I shouldn’t.

At last a deadline

I am going to try to complete a couple of songs in Songwriter so I can export them as PDFs and get them into the Conflikt song book.

Much as it pains me to say it, I can’t afford to make trips to the US and otherwise spend the income I have, so I am going to go to $15 worth of church event as opposed to the $500 con.  Yes – I could spend less but I don’t like going to a convention if I have to bunk in with anyone else for the usual reasons, like my privacy requirements now I’m no longer a live in parent are rather absurdly high.

So I’ll be sending the songs along instead.  I’ll send Gateway and Dishing with Joyce, since Fred Pohl’s stuff is going to be commercialized over the next couple of years (I believe it’s going to be a tv show, which would likely work fine, helmed correctly) and Buffy never stops being popular with certain crowds and the Scoobie gang have dozens of songs and Joyce not so much. I find it amusing that I have repurposed a song with was a song about a crush on a coworker into a filk, but one of the great appeals of filk is how it mashes things together into a great media pulp.

Saw Mike yesterday, and he popped by later, after he fed me a light supper at the Oliver Twist, and I will be seeing Sue for brekkie this morning to feast her for her birthday.  She is so wonderful, I am sure we will have a lovely earflapping. For she is the Great She-Elephant, and I am her dear chum.

Okay, enough demonstrating that I left the house yesterday (I did twice, and with all the cat commotion with Buster and his collar Jeff did three times) and I have friends, I gots work to do, coffee to make and songs about Giant Squids (words) (music) to listen to for its inspirational effect on my opus.

Sleepovers and trash

Keith and Paul and Mike dropped by last night for pizza, movies and conversation, and it was wonderful to see them all.

I’ve done a lot of things wrong in my life, but picking my friends hasn’t been one of them.

Keith slept over – I put a bunch of Woly shoe creme on his work shoes, which are so trashed by salt water that the leather is starting to come apart in layers. There must be six bucks worth of it on there… I hadn’t even opened it and I’ve had it three years, so I’m glad to be using a resource.

One of my fave Beaconites, Dina Davidson, local midwife extraordinaire, got some press time on her favourite subject.

Katie cut her dad’s hair yesterday.  Given that she and Paul hadn’t spoken in the best part of a month – immediately after the birth of the first grandchild – I will leave you to parse that as best you may.

I am doing coffee at church tomorrow.  I think I’ll make a cake, but make something else to leave here so Jeff doesn’t come looking all expectant with no treats.  So I have to remember to immediately put on bread dough the instant I get up tomorrow, because if I do it today, it will be gone tomorrow. Treat Logistics.

I am learning to my horror that the second section of the book is in disarray, and the timelines are all squidded up, and I appear to have TWICE written the same scene twice without incorporating the necessary elements from the other draft.  It’s ugly and I’m frustrated.  I think I’m going to need another writing week without the siren song of Agents of SHIELD to fix this mess (although we are close to the end LOL) so I’ll be checking in with the mOmster to see when would or might be convenient.  Won’t be until after my homily January 4 though.

Autumn, who may really be Peaches, loves Agent Coulson.  She sits on the back of the sofa and gazes at him adoringly.

I have laundry.  I’m doing it, I’m not digging it.  I have to ditch a whole bunch of my clothes because they are not meeting my needs, but that in itself makes me sad.  I should just take a picture and move on.

I’m also hoping to walk over to 6th and do a mini shop.

We’ll see what happens when Keith gets up… he may want a late brekkie.  I can definitely help out with the coffee.

There’s been an update to wordpress, the engine that runs this blog, and it allows me to have an empty screen when I’m typing, which is actually kind of cool and gives you a nice electronic typewriter feeling.

Weird clouds this morning

IMAG0711_1Random Hallowe’en notes:

Bought $28 worth of candy, got rid of all of it.  Most of the kids costumes were store-bought, but one made a Mardi Gras like impression.  No pic… but she said she was a peacock fairy, and yes, that is what she was.

NO MUSIC.  But lots of convo with Lois, and I even dragged the coffee maker upstairs from its place of banishment in the basement.

Birds are too shell shocked to sing this morning.

Score!  One of the kids recognized my mask as being from Assassin’s Creed.

Score! Keith came over and he announced that pufferfish are back in stock.  I loves my boy.

Score! Chili was a massive success, and as it proceeds through the colons of my loved ones, it will move from success to success.

Score! Paul brought apple pie from the Mexican bakery in the Quay. And Lion Winter Ale, duh.

Score! Wrote a filk to Robin in the Rain.

Riding in the rain
I don’t mind the weather
I have got a 12 volt heater
underneath my leathers
dodging all the bicycles and trucks and cars
weaving ’round the drunks as they come out of bars
Riding in the rain
I don’t mind the weather
even when it’s getting dark
I am a commuter in a first person shooter
but I have a place to park! (with apologies to Raffi).

Now I must write.  It’s NaNoWriMo, kittens!

Sang froid, hot butt

The sang froid is her – she rocks the uneven bars.

The hot butt is me after Paul’s delayed family Indian dinner at Best Quality Sweets on Main St.  I am suffering today, although I didn’t yesterday.  Yes, it’s Too Much Information.  I told Jeff he should be happy there were no leftovers for him or he’d be suffering too.  I noticed neither of the kids put their hands up for the check, but since neither of them read my blog, they won’t feel the rebuke.  For 60 bucks including tip we ate like ogres.  This is a lacto vegetarian restaurant.  The mango lassi was suPERB, the chai tea kinda whatever with weird spice sludge at the end.  I ate so much I had no room for Indian sweets for dessert, which is FULL.

I am about ready to quit being a Unitarian, having reached my load line on denominational bullshit. I won’t of course, it’s just all part of my engagement with the faith.  Nothing’s perfect, including me, and if people want to nice me to death, I can always back away before that last soft word turns into a killing blow.  Also, I am one moody individual, so I just need the mood to die back and I’ll be fine.  A foolish consistency is what’s asked of us when we believe that organized religion is necessary or even possible.

I am NOT a nice person.  I’m nice to my my mother, but so what?  Even the guy who kept two women as sex slaves was nice to his mother.  It’s not a good test…. What I want more than anything else is to keep all my bad behaviours and still be categorized as nice, and that’s when the crazy train really starts to pick up speed.  Woo woo!

Speaking of train whistles, I ran across this article which made me very happy.   My room is at a sonic collection point for train noise (it hits the neighbour’s house, bounces against the garage and then slams into my window) so even though the whistles are 2.5 kilometres away sometimes I feel like I am right on Columbia St.  If NW Council can make it stop I’ll do handsprings.  Mentally of course, I couldn’t even do that when I was little.

There’s a new species of waterbear, from Antarctica.  How sweet is that?

My symphysis pubis spasmed in sympathy.  Ow ow ow ow ow.

 

 

 

Here I am at the end of another week

It is NOT as if time was crawling when I was unemployed, but now it’s going so fast I’m feeling like every second is a blur of paper.

I am making stupid mistakes and good catches at work.  I hope it averages out to continued employment.  You just don’t get a team like this every day… everybody is so civilized and hardworking (compared to me).  I could whine about the variability of it, but that’s what food is like.  Prices go up and down in the cycle of the seasons and nothing stays the same.

One of my fave coworkers is off in her homeland visiting rellies. I miss her because she is one of the most intelligent and yet sunny tempered individuals I have recently met. (I keep wanting to introduce her to my son, which would be grossly inappropriate in so many ways). I miss her because the most administrative portion of her job fell to me in her absence and it’s fussy and important.  So, nervous.

I am going to work on crochet and forgiveness this weekend; along with some stuff I should have attended to ages ago.  Although I am tired all the time, certain kinds of energy I didn’t have last fall have come back into my life.

I am having better communication with people I am intimate with, and that makes me calmer.  I don’t feel like everybody should be able to read my mind any more.  I know I can be a sore trial as a friend sometimes, when I’m not expansive and entertaining.

Jeff loaned me the vehicle yesterday.  I got home much faster than usual and it made a big difference to my mood all day.  I am very grateful, especially since it did inconvenience him.

Keith is apparently hiking off to Edmonton in mid May.  I will miss him, but he’s at the point in his life when he’s going to take off and adventure, and that’s good.

I learned from Katie that the baby will take her last name.  That was a calming bit of news.  I had lunch with her on Sunday as I was checking out.  It was a blessing to see her.  She’s still not showing; yet the ultrasound shows what looks to be a very robust looking kiddo.

Rob W phoned last night and we talked writing.  I don’t know what makes me an expert, except that I do more of it.  Volume is not necessarily a good aspect of production – think farts and you’ll know what I mean.  And yet it is by writing crap that we open the channels to the good stuff.

Well, off to find clothes and bus tickets and get out the door.  Boss lady is back today and much activity is in store.

Cuppa Joe serves the best hot chocolate in the city.  Srsly.

Today started well

Before 6 am I had 1350 words done on Midnite Moving, and Eddie said FEED ME NAOW in such a loud voice it was as if he’d never been sick.

Later on today we’ll go get some more Chinese takeout.  The Singapore style noodles at Chong Lum Hin are so yummy.

YAY Jeff, he’s set up the wireless printer; we can now print from any computer anywhere in the house, which is very handy.

Watched the first half of Crumb yesterday evening.  A great artist, and a very weird man. His life is full of old records. Following on watching the first 6 episodes of Ken Burns’ Jazz I noted some jazz clips that were in a big subdirectory on the media drive and watched them, including Stephane Grapelli and Django Reinhardt.  Not all of it was watchable, but it was all interesting.  Jazz really is an immense genre.

Now, Lumosity, practicing for church (I’m singing the compost song), and practicing for GAFilk.  Lemming says that you get treated like visiting royalty at GAfilk.  That will be an interesting experience, hunh?

No response from any potential customers.  I’ll be going to the landlord tomorrow and dropping off the keys.  There’s only so much I can do, and I need to walk away and quit spending money on a dream, when I need to move someplace where there’s actually some work.

 

Beautiful but windy

Katie’s all perky because various job interviews are going well. I am very happy about this and hope she finds work remunerative and suitable to her one goal right now, which is to be back in her own apartment.  I must say, it will be a cold day in hell before she supports another man.  Or so she says, I hope she carries through.

Foyle’s War on Netflix is a wonderful show, Jeff and I are very much enjoying it. No swearing, decorous violence, great dialogue, sweet vehicles, and history all wrapped up nicely with the superlative Michael Kitchen at the helm.  He is GORGEOUS but in a very low key Oh So English way.

Streptococcus salivarus, I salute you!  It is the probiotic that turned my bad into glad, digestion wise.

Mouse traps have yielded nothing; we are moving on to sticky traps today, damnit.

Practiced 45 minutes today.

Yesterday was gorgeous but WINDY.  As I contemplate the lawn, which has now grown tall and fallen over, I keep hoping the Goat Man will pass by.  But he never does.

Ziva’s in Craigslist, priced for quick sale.

wotcher

How’s everybody this morning?  Good?  Not so good!? Hm. Let me see what I can do about that.

Just when La Mami Naturaleza seems to have shot her last bolt in the weird department, along comes something like this.  Do please watch the video.

I bought and now have used a bunch of equipment for my rehab.  I am already stronger and more able to extend my arm forwards at 90 degrees.  Jeff rolls his eyes when I do exercises while watching TV, it’s quite distracting.

Jeff’s first impressions of the Mac Mini. There’s something useful in there about the Home/End issue which people transitioning from pc to mac always trip over.

Hey, I don’t mind fashion when it looks like this.  Possibly, erm, not suitable for work.

More evidence, although it didn’t need to be adduced, why Stephen Fry fucking RULES.

The Nepean Redskins will be changing their name and logo at the end of this season.  VERY PLEASED ABOUT THIS.  On the other hand there is this piece of dreck masquerading as a sports common tater.  In a hundred years we will look back and wonder why the hell we did this to ourselves.

And in this Brave New World, homeless people use Bitcoins.

I could do this without breaking a sweat. After all, I’ve already done it, just ask Jeff.

 

 

 

Lists

I have started making lists again vs. the overwhelm.

Wrote some on both projects this morning.

This made me laugh very very hard.  It’s a combination of the clothing and the locomotion.

Slept at least a  couple of hours in the cpap machine last night.  I don’t remember waking up and tearing it off, but I did.

Today, more laundry.  Really what I should do is get rid, mercilessly, of every piece of clothing that is too tight or ugly or stained, but I get super attached to clothing.

I show the shop again today at noon.  Heavy sigh. At least the last time I went in I got rid of the last of the stuff that was going bad (I hadn’t been able to see it, unfortunately, and this last time I crawled around on my hands and knees until I saw it, removed it, bleaugh).  So it will smell a lot more like a restaurant thankfully.  (Added later… another person wants to see it.)

I think in about two weeks I may be able to handle a tray of cookies, so if I don’t sell it, I will be going back to work.

I forgot my physio appointment yesterday – how, I have no idea.  However I get another on Friday. I am getting stronger, but sometimes things ‘catch’ and it hurts A LOT. There’s a huge divot in my shoulder where all the muscle attachments fell away.  Or whatever, I am not one hundred percent sure about what is going on except I sheared off my greater tuberosity.  I have to check on my next doctor appointment, I sure don’t want to miss that.

I am reading Thomas King’s The Inconvenient Indian and it’s making me REALLY REALLY MAD about policy toward native people in Canada (and in the US, because like most First Nations people he considers the border a willful chimera, and so deals with both nations).  I mean foaming at the mouth mad.  His metaphor to deal with the constant refrain of  ‘get over it’ is miraculous, and I will be using it whenever I talk about intersectionality and civil rights in future.  He also makes mincemeat of the whole sad and tired trope I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS RACIST STUFF AND I’M NOT RACIST SO QUIT CALLING ME ONE.  It’s certainly not an academic work, but there’s plenty of followup reading.  I had NO FRICKING IDEA that there were first nations film documentarians (including a woman??!!) in the 20’s in the US, whose work of course is so far out in the margins I’ll be lucky to ever see it.  We get Nanook of the North instead.  Tanks Mr. Flaherty.

I am going to – definitely! – read more Will Rogers.

 

 

 

Sundry and various

Brinicles. I had no idea such things existed.
Katie will be heading off for bloodwork this morning. She is fasting, and thus tired and cranky.
Izzy and I (the grandsnake) bonded nicely last night. He is one of the most hand tame snakes I ever interacted with, although I will never feel about him the way I feel about Speck, a little snake who hung out in my hat for an hour at a party, thus triggering the single funniest triple take I’ve ever seen in my life.
Margot is prowling around my room and quacking. Yesterday she got up in Creamy’s grill (he’s the Samoyed next door) by walking up to him when he was tethered outside, getting him to bark furiously, and then pelting away. What a jerk she can be.
Paul and Keith took me and Katie to supper last night at the Grand Buffet. In a stupefying and gratifying demonstration of customer service, the expensive sunglasses Keith left there a month ago were produced as soon as he appeared. You can bet Keith tipped the living shit out of those servers. The crab was particularly good.
I have found an internet radio station that plays bluegrass gospel, and it has no annoying commercials. That’s what we have on at the store now. It’s bright and bouncy and banjerrific.
Biz still slow and interestingly variable. Paul bought cherry biscotti, my latest creation, and took it to work, and there was much rejoicing. His work is going well. Per parental instructions I will be baking and shipping biscotti out to them by the end of the month.
All my friends from Ontario seem to be living through hellish times. I am not. I am having difficulties with certain aspects of my life, but these things tend to self correct. As mOm remarked, this too shall pass. In the meantime I have a loving family, a good place to live, choice friends, good health (even my back is whining less…) and the best stupid cat in the world. Hey, at least she’s keeping herself clean, although I still have to brush and de-eye-gunk her frequently.
I am now washing my hands forty times a day. It’s like acquiring OCD or something. Thank god for Uremol, and many thanks to LadyMissB for putting me on to it.
Off to work now.