Category: Cute

halos on Mars

isn’t it stunning? This is actually a computer graphic, but apparently that’s what they’d look like. Researchers sought them but haven’t found them yet.

 

I have a month to get ready for Orycon. I have to admit that I’m jealous of all of Shad’s wonderful patches she’s sewn onto her guitar case, so now I’m going to announce my probably useless plan to sew patches on MY guitar case (Smokey’s going to the con, I don’t know if both ukes and the mando are going. I really want to take the dulcimer but then I keep thinking I’ll borrow Jeff C’s but I’m not 100% sure he’s going. Anyway, I have to figure all of that out. ANYWAY while tearing my craft boxes apart for patches I found Granny’s little Hummel girl on mesh, so SHE’S going on my guitar case and then I can carry Granny around with me every time I sing and play. I’m going to try to find some of the crochet work Grandma Zoos made and tack that on too, mebbe make a mesh pocket of it.

I need to select, assemble and print/PDF a filk-büche, practice until my fingies hurt, sew some patches, select and pack clothing,

Brief break for crafty Black woman! I freaking love the hat.

SHAD’S HAT THAT SHE CROCHETED AS PART OF HER CARPAL TUNNEL THERAPY. (SHAD IS CINDY, CINDY IS SHAD.)

is it not of surpassing excellence and tremendous beauty???? SAY IT ALOUD

So I’m ripping stuff apart in the craft area of my room (which I have to compress down into JUST ONE BOX lol AND I FOUND THE PERFECT PURPLE SPARKLY EMBROIDERY FLOSS TO MEND MY PURPLE TIE DYE TSHIRT WITH. SO I guess this morning has been a success so far.

I’m going to the Con!

 

 

Early one morn on a unicorn, well, I launched a rocket ship!
and I wore my silks and tie dyes and gave mundane life the slip
It cost me more than I could afford but I had to take the trip
for I have you all to thank that I’m a filker!
We sing the sweetest music and we laugh the loudest laughs
The robots sell their spares to hear, the wizards pawn their staffs
the circle calls in the function halls for a chorus fine and free
You can keep your wretched autotune –

it’s a filker’s life for me!

I don’t want to talk or think about my life right now

I got a bracing email from Ruth which set me on the right path.

64 words yesterday, at least I’ve cracked open Part III.

Drove over to Peggy’s to drop off the pie plates and didn’t realize it was Sunday so walked into the middle of the aftermath of a church service at her house. One person greeted me, I dropped the pie plates off and booked it.

Visit with Alex had hiccups – so GGma call for example – but was otherwise very pleasant. Quite hot yesterday, air not great but at least I could walk to Timmy Ho’s with Alex and Jeff. Jeff continues to be a pillar of strength.

I hope everyone has a good day. I’m a sad remnant of myself, or at least that’s how it feels. On Wednesday the sun comes out and the air gets better.

Just for Yuks I Funko Popped myself:

Allegra Sloman as a Funko Pop. I'm holding a succulent in a plant pot and a very small guitar.

I’m holding a succulent and a very small guitar, if anyone cares.

533 words yesterday

Very hot yesterday, but it’s supposed to not go over 30 for the rest of the week.

Very apprehensive about Ryker care. I do be like that tho. It will be fine, same as last time.

I’m reading about 50 year olds becoming unhoused and asking where they sign up for free housing. As far as I can tell an entire cohort of Canadians paid no more attention to politics than was required to sort of take in the promises and denunciations at election time. When it comes to the instantiations of politics, they’re living in a spun sugar world which is abrumptly getting the ol’ firehose of climate driven events. But I thought welfare bums get errything for free they will cry. What chumps oh well.

However, I’m going to stay cheerful as long as we’re all together on this side and the ac works.

Oh Jaysus I just thought of the title of the next one in the series thank you Dave. Also you said it could all be converted quite nicely to a screenplay and you’re right. That means I have to go back into the completed project and chop it into 13 minute segments with stingers teasers and very high stakes. So to write that new title down I slipped away from writing this, wrote 244 words on the Guy d’Angelique fanfic and forgot to write the new title down. Leaving briefly to fix that, okay I wrote it down but I’m now up to a thousand words on the fanfic. Honestly I’m just going to drag the characters to a hotel room and get them sweaty, I haven’t got all day for conversation!! I have to get back to TB and get the next instalment out to my emotional support editors.

Heavy sigh. It’s a good thing I’ve got Scrivener to keep all this shit straight. Scrivener is what took me from being a writer to being someone who can complete long form multiarc fiction. It is THE BOMB. It is simple to use on the daily with a depth of features that’s abyssal.

Ha ha I EYEBALLED IT Jensen Ackles IS the same size, almost exactly, as Errol Flynn. Same height, weight and shoe size. This is important to the fanfic. This is the level of research I do. I don’t want you to be impressed, I just think it’s hilarious that I PULLED AN ARCHETYPAL HERO ACTOR out of the pile and went yup he’s the same size and shape as Jensen Ackles and THEN I DID THE RESEARCH. Because I wouldn’t want to put it in the fucking fanfic if it wasn’t true. Because facts make light and light makes atmosphere, & suppositions make assholes like me make easily avoided mistakes.

Damn the coffee was good this morning. Must …. have …. more. So I did and now I just deleted the toilet joke I was about to make, so I’ll tell Jeff instead.

Do I sound giddy? I’m in writing mode.

I just found a cartoon that completely describes Brad and Omar and I was going to send it to mOm but here it is. From Foxes in Love on Tumblr

Foxes in Love

there are MANY versions of this joke

A housewife takes a lover during the day, while her husband is at work. Not aware that 9 year old son was hiding in the closet. Her husband came home unexpectedly, so she hid her lover in the closet. The boy now has company.

Boy: “Dark in here.”
Man: “Yes it is.”
Boy: “I have a baseball.”
Man: “That’s nice.”
Boy: “Want to buy it?”
Man: “No, thanks.”
Boy: “That’s my dad outside.”
Man: “How much did you say the baseball was again?”
Boy: “$250.”

In the next few weeks, it happens again that the boy and the mom’s lover are in the closet together.

Boy: “Dark in here.”
Man: “Yes, it is..”
Boy: “I have a baseball glove.”
Man: “That’s nice.”
Boy: “Want to buy it?”
Man: “No, thanks.”
Boy: “I think I just remembered something I needed to tell my dad.”
Man: “How much did you say the glove was again?”
Boy: “$750.”
Man: “Fine.”

A few days later, the father says to the boy, “Grab your glove. Let’s go outside and toss the baseball!”
The boy says, “I can’t. I sold them.”
The father asks, “How much did you sell them for?”
The son says, “$1,000.”
The father says, “It’s terrible to over-charge your friends like that. That is way more than those two things cost. I’m going to take you to church and make you confess.”

They go to church and the father alerts the priest and makes the little boy sit in the confession booth and closes the door.

The boy says, “Dark in here.”
The priest says, “Do not start that shit again.”

CONFIDENTIAL TO MOM I THINK THIS KID IS RICHIE

pleasant times

Lovely indoor walk with Paul yesterday at Lougheed. He seems very beaten down and oppressed by his illness but cheered up for the walk. It always cheers folks up to eat, so we got some lo mai gai, which was particularly fine in comparison with previous outings, and there was a lone har gaw in there because they were out of enough lo mai gai to fulfil my order, and the hot and sour soup was as good as I ever remember it being there. We went to Cobb’s but I didn’t buy treats, just spongy crusty white bread which is my kryptonite for stuff I’m s’posed to lay off for my liver.

Continue reading pleasant times

The return of the catfather

Buster was waiting on the back stairs for Jeff upon his return, which made for a pleasant moment. Jeff has recovered from the grab bag of indignities that ferry travel subjects him to. Before his arrival I managed to get all the food containers and compostable trash dealt with so the kitchen wasn’t armpit high in trash.

Continue reading The return of the catfather

Do you believe it?

  1. Ivana Trump dying alone in her house from a fall down the stairs. When her kids and ex are about to be deposed. Go ahead and believe, I’ll be over here thinking that’s one way of avoiding being deposed.
  2. medieval marginalia of snail attacking man responding with a broad axe
  3. That’s for pOp, in honour of his consulting animal, the snail.
  4. An entire generation of young Democrats in the US is going to watch the Republicans flat out steal the midterms and the next presidential election and decide that since they’re all fucking broke and have no health insurance it’s time to try revolution.
  5. G20 Finance ministers depart from their most recent confab with a ‘strong’ consensus on global food security and not a sausage of agreement about Russia invading Ukraine (twice in this century, but apparently only the most recent invasion counts).
  6.  Simone Ashley’s Monot Dress is capturing the fancy of the world but all I could think when I saw her was God, those shoes don’t really…. okay fine she’s beautiful but I wish she was wearing nicer shoes.
  7. Dr. Jen Gunter, a true phenom OBGYN who speaks fire and truth about reproductive systems and justice, has received her OWN FLUEVOG SHOE DESIGN
  8. So maybe I’m not the best person to have OPINIONS on SHOES.
  9. I should probably leave the house today.
  10. Pork collops and salad and tea for breakfast.
  11. Wow to continue the snail-ish trend Helmet in the shape of a sea conch shell, Japan 1618, Worcester Museum
  12. what more snails? This lil one lives on hydrothermal vents and has steely toesies. Okay so it’s a scaly footed gastropod but it does have steely toesies.

tired arms

Well I got to hold Ryker A LOT yesterday and given that he’s six months old he’s a heavy little cuss and he has distinct preferences about how he wants to be held and that is UP and BOUNCING. Definitely feeling it. No pictures; I made memories.

When he smiles at Alex I am so happy I want to invent words. You hear people talking about how a baby is the light of a house, but Ryker just is. He makes people happy just by existing.

However I didn’t just fawn over the little one. I asked Alex if he would like an almost endless supply of free games and he asked if there would be ads and I said, well, no, because our taxes already paid for the website. Then he went entirely nuts on the cbc.ca/kids game site (there are dozens upon dozens of games) and he had a fantastic time checking through them. I gave him useful information. I also found out that he wants a Playtime Poppy poster. (Warning this is a really scary horror game which is not 100 percent age appropriate, but I’m going to get him a poster anyway.)

Keith was in fine form and fed me vegetarian bean stew for lunch and half a Stella. Katie continues to dote on her two boys and that’s lovely.

All in all a lovely visit. Paul’s in Seattle of course.

My tinnitus is MUCH MUCH WORSE. First in my right ear, and now in my left ear, day and night I have ticking noises. It started right before the camping trip.

Lovely long talk with Sue last night; she’s auditioning for a lead role in a film AND I’M SO EXCITED FOR HER. (She’s also my canonical casting for the human form of Grandmother Zosime in UPSUN)

New do

 

B-Bombshell took good care of me. The gal who sheared me was an absolutely lovely person and we cracked each other up, it was a jolly time. (I went to Big Star for lunch first, got the number 27 small, shoved half in my bag to take home for Jeff, I do believe Jeff enjoyed the crispy onions. Nearly died when JJ Cale’s ‘Travelling Light’ came on the sound system, I haven’t heard that song in 30 years if it’s a day (bugeyes))

They have a reading area that is NOTHING BUT CONTEMPORARY LARGE FORMAT COMICS and I read an entire Groot special while I was waiting because I was early. B-Bombshell specialize in loud hair but I am only going to get my hair dyed if I’m nommed for an SF award. I’m sitting in bed under a fluorescent light and I still manage to look okay, so I’m happy.

Still laughing to myself about how the precut looked like several dead tribbles on the floor….

Not too much about Ukraine

It’s terrible. The Russians are being indiscriminate with the bombings, but so are the Saudis and the Americans right now. The hypocrisy is thick as jam, and as sticky.

I think the next stage in my psychosocial development with respect to politics is to really examine how I am untrue both to my grandfather’s approach to other human beings, which should, since he was gentle and helpful, be a guide to me, and to my sparse and weedy ethics, infested as they are with my own version(s) of gender essentialism, ableism and libertarianism, not necessarily in that order on any particular day, and I’m sure in almost 20 years of doing this I’ve revealed enough of my other bigotries to hang myself twice, were such things possible.

I mean if I’m going to bust it back to first principles. Is it a material universe – the commonality of detectible ‘reality’ – or is it an imagined and engineered projection, taking place in real-time, or is it a natural phenomenon which one can interrogate without ever knowing the full truth of, or is it God’s Creation, or (all the Creation gods’ names)’s Creation or something else entirely? I mean, I know which way I play it, every time, but is it a material universe? Should it make a difference? Should I be ashamed that the best argument I’ve seen for it NOT making a difference was from Buddy, in Free Guy? Anyway, can’t have a philosophy without taking that one one.

Sorry about the late post, I had yet another disturbed night of sleep and when I went back to sleep I slept late, it’s now almost 10 am.

2249 words on story thus far. I think I’ll try and go back to finishing the landslide one.

Yesterday was wonderful.

We went to breakfast at IHOP (it was deserted), came back here for some TV. Paul called and we went for a walk in Fraser Foreshore (I masked, he didn’t, I drove) and I took my camera, secure in the knowledge and belief that I WOULD GET PICS for my mOm, and I sat in the appointed place at close to the regular hour, and Paul and I couldn’t even hear the tweety birds, let alone see them.

Much abashed, I trudged back to the car, grousing in a desultory way at Paul, and then I saw one of the other unofficial feeding stations and put down a handful of non salted raw Styrian sunflowers and next thing I know, there’s a chickadee in the bush on the other side of the trail making the excited food song, which is the same as their regular song but buzzier, louder and with an extra DEE in there. I had put away the camera.

So I got my disney princess moment, but didn’t get a picture. BIRDS YOU ARE ANNOYING. But cute.

CW Picture of Tom Lunderville; Paul and I went to Peggy’s after that, to pick up the hat that I gave Tom after wearing it for a while. Now I’m getting it back again. He ruint the crown but I’ll reblock it. We got tea and soup. We chatted for a long time. She’s in relatively good shape all things considered and coping as best she can with how different her life is now. We talked about Ukraine a bit.

We left to go pick up my library book from the main branch of New West Library (‘this is how you lose the time war’) and then came back to Geekhaus to eat – soup Peggy gave us and borscht and lentil soup. I also showed Paul some of the stuff online that I’ve been telling him about Ukraine.

Then I ran a couple of loads of laundry and napped and cleaned out the microwave. It was a lovely sunny day, and I’m glad I wrote about it, because I was happy yesterday and I needed a reminder.

 

Elders are so precious

OMG my ontie Mary just sent me $25 in the mail to help defray my costs for sending her letters. SHE DEMANDS AT THE OUTSET THAT I AM TO ISSUE NEITHER COMPLAINT NOR DEMURRAL LA!

Someone should tell that rare and precious woman that she’s basically too good for me as a rellie and having said that I will top up the envelope supply; I’m fixed for stamps at the moment.

as reported by CNN today

Hurricane Ida has slowed to 10 mph, remains a cat 4, and is currently putting the shove to the entire flow of the Mississippi river, which is apparently flowing backwards. Normally it’s 2 feet per second and it was temporarily at -.5. Deep sections of the river could still have been flowing normally, this all depends on where the gauges are.

The river temporarily flowed backward during Katrina. Given climate change’s known exacerbation of wind speeds and duration of storms this looks to be a harbinger of the new normal.

If my pOp wants me to buy this for him he’ll let me know.

Yesterday and today

First, have a bear from the Capilano neighbourhood of North Van, as of about last week.

AND we don’t deserve dogs. Nor cats. (Buster when he see WOMBAT he CRAZY). NOR ORANGS.

Yesterday Paul and I walked in Fraser Foreshore. I had a dizzy spell coming out of the house so I didn’t drive, and thus nagged Paul freely the entire way back and forth.

Virtually no birds singing, none of our usual animal companions, not very well attended, nobody but us and an Asian couple bothering to wear masks. I told Paul the Delta variant is like cigarette smoke and even outdoors on pathways where we have to pass close by to people you can can get a whiff…. also I’m getting REALLY MIXED PRESS on how good Astra Zeneca is on suppressing Delta. Apparently, the word is now that it’ll keep me out of hospital if I get a breakthrough infection but I’ll be more likely to be contagious to other people if I’m asymptomatic. Not exactly the shit ya wanna hear when you’re going to visit your parents, who while not frail are elderly (sorry guys but you are over 80 after all.)

We bailed on pho as soon as I mentioned Schnitzel, by gar, and I got three takeout schnitzel dinners from Balkan House so Jeff could enjoy our celebratory meal too. Paul took exactly the same amount of time to get beer from the Oliver Twist, which faces Balkan House (I suspect he actually used the crosswalk, since jaywalking across Edmonds is something only silly young people do) as it took for the food to arrive. It was fantastic… much better than the last time, although the food portions on the rice and potatoes were smaller than I’m used to. The breading though… always a classic.

That plus beer (Red Racer Vanilla Stout, a total rip off of Granville Island Winter Ale) and a blueberry turnover for dessert, and we had a lovely meal.

Finished Swan Song and loved it. I think it’s a one-watch but it was a lovely, heartfelt movie with lots of great bit performances, the young gay bartender being a standout. Wish I had his name but imdb is oooooosssssssslessssss.

We’re really feeling the Lack of ‘Wanted’. They made three seasons and stopped, like sensible people, but we are not sensible people and want more. As always, we are salved by Elementary and the inhuman perfection that is Lucy Liu in that show.

Danny DeVito’s been locked out of his Twitter account for supporting the Nabisco strike. LOL