Category: Family

Pleasant visit

The visit with the fOlks was very good and we had a SPECTACULAR trip back.  The wind and the sun were in perfect proportion, and we got chocolate soft ice cream for a snack.  Thank you Paul for subsidizing that trip (pOp too….) and mOm for the baby stuffs. It was fun noodling around Victoria looking for baby stuffs.

Why I love Susan Sarandon. She just so effervescently and totally rocks.

Watched Boyhood.  I really enjoyed it, and then immediately read a black critic’s takedown of it and have to now file the movie under guilty pleasures.  Sigh. Jeff bailed partway through since various characters were being jerks.

Sahara Delights is now in the space Kitty Kate’s Cafe was in.

Went singing at Tom and Peggy’s last night.  The alto part for Word of God is wicked hard.

 

Nobody should care about my lunch

But it’s important to me, because Jeff caught the fish I am eating.

I’m having smoked salmon pâté with Natural Pastures brie, sliced purple onion, on a very expensive toasted crostata bun. With a side of raw baby carrots and Assam/Darjeeling blend tea.

Jeff is vacuuming downstairs. I should probably do something about the kitchen floor since he’s being so enterprising.

Just got off the phone with Sandra; she had a reasonably good visit with Paul and she just got buzzed by three pileated woodpeckers, so there’s that.  I hope the rest of his travels are safe and fair.

Today’s decrufting

Mostly today will be clothes and books. Katie needed her toesies dealt with (she don’t bend so good) so I gave her a mini-pedi, and then worried I’d taken too much off and called her. She said, “Aw, have you been worrying about it?” and I thought, well, no, but I was concerned.

Made word count and then some yesterday. I haven’t been practicing, but I’ll get busy today.

Jeff went fishing yesterday with his buddy Rob and caught a coho – we’re gonna barbecue and eat it today. Hm. I suppose I should see if I have to decap and gut it. (Just check, no thank god)

Charles Brackett’s Hollywood diary is about to be big news; he was Billy Wilder’s creative partner for more than a decade. He is alleged to have recorded Groucho Marx describing Victor Mature: “He looks like something the cathouse dragged in.” I suspect I will enjoy it. Anyway, here’s the article which brought the diary to my attention.

Thanks Jeff for brekkie.

Former rellies in law are encouraging me to move to northern BC. I am investigating, and may fly up there in September. There’s work, but sheesh the winters, and it would make getting to see the parents and grandbaby rather epic.

Mike was here

Just after 7 Mike called and said he was walking in the neighbourhood; considering where he lives the only reasonable meeting point is the Oliver Twist. He shouted me a dinner of two beers, the saddest plate of nachos I’ve ever seen (in that it was both burnt AND had unmelted cheese, but of course I ate them anyway, and wings (he had chowder) and lo but how I dread the prospect of the loo tomorrow as I was most immoderate with the jalapeños.

He walked me home; Jeff was still up so we took in an Archer. He just left.

We discussed a Nazi Zombie movie night.

I am a happy woman. It is great to have friends so close.

Nothing much to report

Katie came over yesterday; we went for a short walk and I gave her the last half of the banana bread, not that it would have survived until Jeff got here anyway. I read this article to her. We had a good talk about it.

I tried writing this morning but I’m too distracted and ‘off’. I’m also really feeling my back,

I found out there’s a company that will pick up take out and bring it to you, so maybe the next time Jeff and I have a craving for Switzerland Chicken we can get it that way. They’re also licenced to bring beer. Hey, I will be leaving the house today, don’t worry! I’m thinking of walking down to New Westminster and then taking the bus back to spare myself that hill.

Dara, a filk/fb acquaintance, has rewritten some of Yahoo’s code to make the email groups work properly again. This while making an album and renovating her kitchen. Gumption, SHE HAZ IT.

Tony Stewart ran over (accidentally or not) and killed a 20 year old man named Kevin Ward Jr at a racetrack last night. He’s apparently going to race again today, which I think is the height of cluelessness. This show must go on the sponsors are waiting shit has gotta stop. Unless you’re Weird Al Yankovic continuing to tour after his parents died, that was awesome.

I watched the news, and regular tv, last night. When did all commercials become so sexualized? Why is local news so boring? Then I watched something called 16×9 and just wanted to punch out walls for a while. The story was great but I was so mad it ruined my evening, I just ended up going to bed super early. Syngenta is evil!

Too darned hot

It’s been absolutely sweltering here in Vancouver, but some things are great….

The dogwood is in flower again, astonishingly, all over; it shines in the sun.

Still all happy about Guardians of the Galaxy. It won’t be as much fun the second time but I am looking forward to it.

Saw Zero Theorem, a film by Terry Gilliam, and it’s interesting. I liked the end and thought it made sense, Jeff was kinda meh about it.

Finally finished Europe Central; I’ll be heading back to the library today after my dentist appointment. I’m having a filling replaced. Not looking forward to it.

Paul and I are supposed to get together and do something exercisy today. Maybe we’ll swim in Katie’s pool cause it’s damned hot for a walk unless we’re going up in the hills to hike.

Right now all the doors are open … we’re trying to cool the place down since it’s like an oven in here even with the air conditioner.

Thick cut porkchops for brekkie.

A long time ago in a galaxy much like this one

…. Jeff and I went to the opening day of Star Wars on June 24 1977. It was a glorious day, and from the first moment to the last, we were enmeshed in it. Jeff went on to see it in the theatre at least half a dozen more times – I’m pretty sure I saw it once more on the big screen.

And until today, we haven’t seen a science fiction / fantasy / superhero movie which came even close to grabbing us and taking us someplace cool. We just cleared the door back from Guardians of the Galaxy.

Just go see it. Guardians of the Galaxy has everything your heart longs for in a big summer movie. Characters you can invest in; a plot so full of cheesy holes it’s like a big slab of Swiss; whacky universe destroying technology; dancing; a tongue in cheek soundtrack; talking raccoons; stentorian villains; crash landings and lots and lots of hilarious dialogue. Lots.

Just go see it. Big fun.

more filking

A lovely time filking yestreen at Tom and Peggy’s, Cindy also in attendance. I got to sing soprano for most of the evening, which is fine if I’m not singing loud.

I hope everybody has a happy pride day! or not.

I light a candle for pOp, and he knows why. You have a visit from Jeff to look forward to, and once he’s back I’ll come out and see you.

Got a call back from an employer NOT A FRICKIN AGENCY. I have to wait another week.

Saw, and loved, Edge of Tomorrow (stupid name, good movie though; it’s Starship Troopers meets Groundhog Day.)

Jeff and I have been permanently ruined by A Pervert’s Guide to Ideology. Mr. Nosepuller told us to pay attention to the recreation of the couple, and now it’s in every single thing we watch.

Made wordcount yesterday and practiced.

I very much enjoyed this cartoon. SFW.

Breakfast adventure

We braved the Vancouver morning rush hour to get to the Tomahawk, the lamentably named Vancouver institution which has been serving breakfast since 1926.  It’s also directly upwind from a mosque – how tired they must get of the smell of swineflesh cooking.  It was lovely; we got to eat outside in a lovely arbour, hemmed about with nicely draped weeping sequoias and enlivened with the cheeping presence of a white crowned sparrow.  The food and service were excellent, but since it involves driving across town in rush hour to do breakfast, we won’t be doing that agin except for very special occasions. Like Jeff’s birthday.

On the way we got treated to the excrementally bad signage (go right, no not here you idiot, ignore that previous sign), being forced to stop in the Cassiar tunnel, and you KNOW how I feel about being forced to come to a standstill in a tunnel, and the ludicrously self important driving of many, many miscreants.  We stopped off at one of Jeff’s clients’ place of business on the way back to save him a trip and I got a little work done on the novel.

The Amazing Spiderman 2 is one half of a good movie.  The script made me long for lightning to strike, somebody, somewhere.  Jamie Foxx was entirely wasted and the little nimrod who plays Spidey, whose name escapes, has all the energy of re-wetted papier mâché.  The action sequences had us cheering; the talking sequences had both of us begging for swift unconsciousness.

Jeff enjoyed Dead Snow II – a Nazi zombie movie sequel that was, so I’m given to understand, more inventive, scarier and funnier than the first.  Zombies using a length of intestine to siphon fuel?  Clever people, these Germans.

Sandra informs me that her cat, Shadow, has been stomping around the house calling me, which is funny because all I did was take pictures of her butt and skritch her a few times, also I did the doorwarden cause you have thumbs thing a couple of times.  She is a magnificent beast, and a mighty hunter, which when the cabins get varmints is a good thing.

I made a meatloaf!  It is so garlicky that vampires two counties away suddenly feel ill at ease.

Today I may or may not make coleslaw.

Swimming with Katie

Both Katie and Jeff are really feeling their trip up and down those dashed stairs at trail 6.  Today I’m going to go to Katie’s place and go swimming, after I get in my five hundred words.

Yesterday the three of us saw the Lego Movie….  It’s really loads of fun, and I laughed almost as hard the second time.  Liam Neeson’s Good Cop/Bad Cop is still hilarious; as the Good Cop he sounds like a leprechaun on nitrous, and as the Bad Cop his growls feel like they’ve been torn from the bowels of the earth.

Watched a really good zombie movie the other day called Chrysalis.  I don’t know what I was expecting, but this tender / violent film was not it.  It toyed with a lot of zombie movie tropes without feeling false or taking itself too too seriously, and I just plain enjoyed it.  When I went to IMDB (and I can HEAR JEFF’S EYES ROLLING FROM HERE) the movie gets righteously  panned, with one review praising it.   I, however, will keep the memory of Penelope sleeping with her axe (ekshully a hatchet) for a long time, and it never got so gory I couldn’t watch it.