Category: Family

Fireflies in the woods

I really like this pic.

So last night I’m watching live TV (which we never do, or hardly ever do) and there’s a tv show from 2008 about the swapping of the poles.  Yes, the poles are swapping.  It’ll take 40,000 years, maybe less ’cause we’re all in such a hurry these days.  So the partial collapse of the magnetosphere is connected to the weakening of the magnetic field of the earth, and it’s borne out by looking at ships’ logs from the 1590’s on.  Up until 1840 or thereabouts the field strength was about the same – it’s been dropping steadily ever since.  For more details, most of which are incomprehensible but at least the article links are understandable, check out Wikipedia for Magnetosphere, South Atlantic Anomaly and Earth’s Magnetic Field.

mOm is always telling me about relatives and my relation to them, and here’s a handy map. With level of genetic kinship.

Cool runnings

Yesterday I made a run for Wal-Mart (first time in 8 years) to get coolant for Lady Miss T at work.  She said she’d overheated on that bloody great Gaglardi hill so I said, “let us go to your car and check your coolant!” and like, there wasn’t any.  Her brother, who is, like, the anti-Jeff, had told her he’d checked the coolant and he dinnnnt.  Lie or mistake, it was pretty typical.   I looked at her and said, “You are not moving this car.  Let us go talk to beautiful Bossie and see if I can’t get a hall pass.”  You may infer from the fact that it took me 40 minutes from door to door that my observation of the speed limit during this excursion was notional and inconsistent.  SFU to Lougheed Mall and back, including a purchase….yeah.

Day before yesterday, I had a brief and hormonally truncated visit to Paul and Keith’s (Paul said something innocuous and I burst into tears and ran away, aren’t I special, but at least Paul and Keith had the decency to shrug it off) and while I, tears still drying on my face and clutching my mandolin, was escaping to my car, Paul’s brand new neighbour said something that stopped me in my tracks.  She said, “I like your purple car”, and her male companion (actually her daughter’s agent) said, “Yeah, that’s a 94 Ford Probe GT and I think that’s the version with the special paint. I’ve owned four Probes, they are my favourite car.”  AN HOUR LATER I pried myself away.  Much restored, I went on my way home.

My family can never be too big.

That’s what Gramma Zooss always used to say.  Here’s a couple of Brazilian men who really live it.

The Vikings had a saying.  Better a good foster son than a bad son.

It’s really difficult to describe just how amazing Jeff’s birthday bash was, but it had the following going for it:

1.  The weather which was nothing short of spectacular.

2. The awning – what a lifesaver that turned out to be.

3. HEADWATER.  A simply stunning performance by three extremely talented and loveable young men.  I mean it, to have the pleasure of these guys as working guests was great.  We bought their albums, we laughed our asses off at their between song patter, we listened in rapt silence to their originals and their covers, we loved every minute of it.

4. Wonderful friends and fabulous conversation.

5.  Rob and Kathy showed up with their two kids (6 and 3) and I had to yell at them like an ogress to get them off my neighbours’ lawn, but they forgave me.  Little girl and I danced and drew pictures and played with the thunder tube.

6. Walking into the games room and finding Jeff pogoing to the Dandy Warhols with a small child. My personal high point of the festivities.

7. Jeff excusing me from kitchen duty so I just got a bunch of pre prepped food, which worked out fine.

8. A cooler full of brewskis.

9.  Did I mention Headwater?

10.  Just about everybody who confirmed attendance came, and all the important people – the kids and Paul, Mike and Rozo, Tom and Peggy, Kevin and Rebecca, and Rob and his family, came, and they enjoyed themselves muchly as well.

I crashed out early – I started drinking at noon and between that and the sun I made it to about seven pm before I faded.  Now I have to go have a substantial breakfast and get myself to the staging area for the Pride Parade, as I’m marching with the BCCLA today.  Thank the water cycle it’s overcast, I don’t think I could stand to get fried again.

LOTS and nothing

Yesterday I cleaned up under the deck – mostly pulling weeds and garbage removal – with Margot carefully supervising.  She madly loves to supervise humans working, I think, besides chasing flies, it’s her fave thing to do.

Pulled the first pea pod out of the garden for Jeff.

My mint got so sunburned it almost died; I have to find a better place for it  out of the direct sun.  I watered the cedar hedge at the back of the yard as I promised the landpeer I’d do.  She laboured mightily to put them in and the first year she planted them she was coming by every week to water them during the dry of the summer.

Margot has taken to sitting under my car before I fire it up in the morning.  I could wish she wouldn’t do that.

Had a lovely time at Mike’s birthday party last night.  It was good to see Heather and Margaret and Rozo and Tom U., and Jerome briefly dropped by as well. Paul and Keith and Jeff rounded out the gathering.

The quinoa is getting big.  I don’t imagine the corn will actually get tall enough to set ears and ripen, but they are fine looking plants.  The rest of the yard is looking very brown, but we don’t water the lawn, and the roots on this lawn are very very deep, so it always greens up nicely after a rain.  The pine trees I got from work are still doing fine, but I’m going to have to consider where to plant them.  I’m almost inclined to transplant them into a park – but in the meantime all I have to do is keep them alive.

Friday night falldown goes mobile

Last night me and Jeff and Paul and Keith and ScaryClown went to the Peak for dinner and then to Inception at the Dolphin afterwards.  We could have gone to see the Blue Meenies at the John B Pub afterwards but it was 9:30 when we got out of the theatre and I was ready to go home.  I dropped ScaryClown off at Brentwood and headed home in the lovely cool dusk.

Inception is not a classic movie – by me – but it sure is visually stunning and challenging, and I enjoyed it immensely.

Elementary, my dear particle

Oh, great. Now we have to rewrite physics AGAIN.

From the same site… Here, have an electric blue worm.

When palaeontologists drink….

Added Book of Eli to the list of movies watched.  Visually awesome, flawed in plot.  Every time I see one of these movies I think… where’s the goddamned food coming from?

Took off work early yesterday to get a massage…. since nobody I actually see on a regular basis is providing one.  Depressing, but there’s divorced life for you.  It’s either pay for it or go without.  Woke up this morning with tingling and numbness in my left hand as a direct consequence of the massage, but everything else feels better.   Massage dude gave me some stretches and reminded me to breathe.  I was testy with him, I admit it.

Memorial service en masse tomorrow.  I’m leaving for the 7 o’clock ferry, we’ll see what everybody else does. I messaged everybody else to either be here at 6 am or find another ride.  I’ll be bringing musical instruments.

I am off to work early to make up for lost time yesterday.

20 parrot tricks in 2 minutes. Just like it sounds.

It’s bloody hot here now.  We go from having the heat on to the air conditioning, it’s truly remarkable.

Train wreck

1.  I didn’t want to be at church this am.  My mOm’s in town.

2.  Nobody else volunteered to open after two appeals by the board member who got a competing (good reason, though) event and so could not open.  So I did.  My training consisted of being told what to do, nothing in writing, and being handed two keys.

3.  I got to the church and discovered that the set up person and both greeters hadn’t turned up in a timely way.  So there I am slinging hymnals and folding orders of service, but the GREAT THING ABOUT BEACON is that if somebody sees you doing something they come and HELP.  So after about ten minutes I was no longer crabby.  I wasn’t there by myself and it was all good.

4.  The service I will not complain about although I could.  There is a reason why intergenerational services aren’t as well attended as other services once you get past the notion that all the kids are there so their parents are too.  Any time I see the little-littles I get all goofy in the smile department.

5.  If you’re closing as well as opening, you have to be the last person to leave.  I put the key in the front door and it didn’t flipping work.  I breathed a silent prayer of thanksgiving that the caretaker was on site, conveyed my sad intelligence that I couldn’t lock the flipping front door, and went home and poured myself a very well deserved beer.  Thus concludes the train wreck portion of the morning, with one final comment.  If we don’t do something about the fucking sound system, I’m going to go all Doukhobor at the next church service and either strip naked or torch something or both.

6.  Then conveyed mOm to Katie’s place and exposed her to the many animals there.

7.  Then conveyed mOm to Paul’s place for Tea and Macadamia nut cookies.

8.  Now the smell of roast pork is filling the house.  Aiming to get the roast out about 4:15, 4:30.

9.  Then, I will convey mOm to the ferry.  Then, TRUE BLOOD and TREME.  Life is good.

Briefly

Ziva is running on six but hesitating.  Fuel filter?  Spark plugs?  Check engine light comes on within about a two block stretch of 10th Ave and goes off about halfway up Gaglardi hill.

I had a lovely long talk with my mum last night.

Jeff sent me flowers at work, by which one might infer what a joy to be around I’ve been over the last little while.  I don’t care, and my coworkers sure appreciated it, and Jeff is defending his title of World’s Most Awesome Roommate with considerable aplomb.

Tom M at work photoshopped his two tortie cats into Borg costumes.  Unbelievably cute and I’ll post the link to his flickr stream if I can find it.

Betelgeuse ISN’T going to blow up.  Sad face.

I’ve been playing “Mama Got Skills”, my 6 song EP, in the car, and I’m enjoying it past the point that makes sense.  Oh, to have such a very loud sound system!

Yesterday

Yesterday we went for a drive in the open-air chaise (ie the Camaro – pOp was wearing his pimp hat, a broad brimmed leopard velour creation, which added to the carnival atmosphere) and we drove in the country, saw THE biggest patch of skunk cabbage I’ve ever seen (it went on for literally city blocks in depth and width) and went to Dan’s Market, where we ingested treats and coffee and where I picked up treats to bring back to Vancouver, then outside where we fed ducks and chickens and goats (and I petted a duckling, goodness but they are soft, and admired the glossy plumage on the chickens, who looked magnificent), then went to an apiary and picked up lovely beeswax candles, including two I intend to inaugurate the next time I attend small group ministry, and then through the beautiful green and undulating countryside to a greenhouse which specializes in lovely smelling and odd-times blooming plants and thence back home.

After some uninteresting bits we went downtown in Ziva to Village de Valeurs, where I got the outfit I’m currently wearing (brown cords and a very nice top for work) and one other pair of pants for myself (stretch cotton with a vibrant black and floral pattern).  Katie got a purse for job hunting (she says it’s not professional to be carting about a skull and cross bones pack), two pairs of jeans and a pinstripe wool blazer so she can have a suit.  I smirk when I think she’ll look like Al Swearengen when she dresses up for an event.

Katie cooked supper – chicken Caesar wraps. I never taught her to cook; somehow she managed to teach herself. She apparently does much of the cooking in her household.  And further to the comestibles, they had yet more Lion Winter Ale at the Hillside Liquor store the day we came into town, woot.

Generally we are hanging out and being mellow.  I have been relieved of doing anything at all for transcription of family books, but will have to work on it back in Vancouver, which is good as I definitely type faster on a keyboard I’m used to.

As you can see it’s excitement central around here, and that is as it should be….  to give you an idea of the parents’ priorities, the pictures on the walls are of grandchildren and pinball machines.

Saturday round up, occasionally unsafe for work

Religious persecution quiz, scanged from a facebook/filking buddy.  Who himself was reposting it.

Statins have much worse potential side effects than was previously believed.

Wretched excess meets explosive cuteness.

I’m not posting a link, but one of the church women posted a youtube link to her toddler doing the Hokey Pokey with her, and I just wanted to mention that that’s what it’s all about.

We live in a culture which has little use for our basic instincts, and is thus breeding / punishing their existence out of us as fast as it can.  One can only wonder what the hell will take its place.  These days I wonder how some people manage to feed themselves.  As long as we are where our instincts don’t serve us, many of us will feel alienated.  I think church is a kind of hamfisted way of addressing that alienation. I can’t help thinking that we’re a step away from ‘customized religious experiences’ and I’m not just talking about going to rural Peru to have a drunken shaman pour ayahuasca down your throat and then count his money while you trip endlessly into a brightly painted bucket of existential horror.  I’m talking about thinking, “I want a religious experience that includes singing and labyrinth walking and drums this Sunday,” and if you live in a big town, actually being able to get it.  Virtually, perhaps.                  but if we do not breathe together…. if we do not conspire….. what are we?  That’s why we live from con to con, from dance to dance, from concert to concert, from gig to gig, from (please do NOT CLICK ON THIS LINK AT WORK or IF YOU THINK Lesbian or BDSM sexuality is icky) hookpull to hookpull, from Sunday to Sunday (or whatever your religiously mandated gathering day is).  Re hookpulls, I personally know two people who have attended and participated in these events, and I like ’em fine, so if you want to remonstrate with me about how sick it is I’m just gonna make a sad face and change the subject. You wouldn’t catch me dead at one of them though, I ain’t going anywhere like that just to be a voyeur and I don’t need any additional pain in my body at the moment, thanks.  My complete incomprehension does not include disgust.

Extra solar planets for the win. Every time I look at it, there’s more.  Everything is on fast forward.

Of course, if I fail to mention the artificial life, people will wonder if I dropped off to sleep.

As I type this I am looking at the handwriting of my ancestor Henry Thomas Wake, and wishing I could have handwriting like that.  Copperplate. He actually made money from designing lettering.  mOm says he would be a blogger if he was alive today.  He records in his diary, March 1859, that we went to Euston Square Station to determine the cheapest way to go visit Carlisle, and also that a friend has kindly lent him a book on double entry bookkeeping.  (He was demoniac about self-improvement).

I’m going to take my chalky and somewhat premigraineous brain out for a drive now.  I want a drum.

Just in case I neglected to mention…

Jeff is a genius.  He re-edited (for personal consumption, ONLY) the film Memento so that it was in chronological order.  I liked the movie the first time, even though it weirded me out, but the real outcome of the edit is that it proved what an amazing film it was to begin with.  And Jeff handled a lot of very interesting technical problems, mostly to do with audio sync, in the process, and I have to say I am impressed as hell.