Category: Family

Tetris made of people

Quite literally, what it says.

It’s snowing again. 

Daughter Katie’s coming over this afternoon and We Will, We Will Deadwood.  Hopefully the transit system is up to the task of getting her here.

I found a hilarious critique of Libertarianism on line.

Last night I dreamed I was back in the High Park area of Toronto.  I guess I’m sick of looking at stucco houses.  I miss many things about Toronto; I miss seeing the CN Tower and I miss a lot of the friends I have there (Tammy, Catherine, Dave, Jan and others).  I miss Kensington Market the way it was, I miss the colour of Lake Ontario on a windy fall day, I miss being able to ice skate outside in the wintertime.

Sometimes I wish I could live in three places at once, because there are things I miss about Montreal too.  I miss the Dorval circle and the absolutely craziness of the town when the festivals like the Jazz festival and Just For Laughs were on; I miss how people dress with more style and drive with more verve (and frankly, consistently better than the unwashed hordes of incompetents who adorn the roads in Vancouver); I miss being able to hear Inuktitut spoken in the street; I miss skating in La Centre de la Nature in Laval, the best outdoor skating venue in Canada; I miss the wild variety of the weather, even.

Happy New Year

Well, that was a simply glorious evening. Mike and Heather turned up about 9:30 so we had an actual “There are more than two family molecules here” partay. I didn’t know and Jarmo didn’t either that both he and I had invited Mike – and Katie got into the action and got on the phone with him as well.
I got there about seven thirty, all choked because nothing was open so I could pick up more supplies. I watched a family game of Texas Hold’em, which I had never seen before. Kids arrived about half an hour later, and that’s when the trouble really started; we made the discovery that our hosts had Guitar Hero II and Dance Dance Revolution.

If the downstairs neighbour had been in (he’s a bouncer, so one can imagine how he was occupied last night) he’d have pounded every one of our heads in, seriatim. As it was I danced so much my back actually feels better today. Then Mike broke out the Guitar Hero III and the duels/cooperative mode play began! It was amazing watching Keith and Eric thrash out some SOS by the Police, and then he and Mike did Warpigs. THEN THE STANNOMANCY.

o

my

goodness

Below is all five of them – for the three of us. Keith and Katie both got twins! Keith’s were almost perfectly even and symmetrical – except one was a boy and one was a girl which you will note if you look closely at the top two – and Katie got a dragon and a whale – the bottom two. Mine’s the moon curve in the middle…
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Below, Katie’s

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Below mine, held by Katie to give you an idea of the size. It was the largest of the evening by a wide margin, which might or might not have had something to do with going last. Jarmo’s was the only one with ‘money’ in it.
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Below, Keith and Mike play co-op on Warpigs.
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And here’s Katie, wearing my 2008 as a Goth Tiara….

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We took off about 1:30 – I drove the kids home and cleared the door of my apartment just after 2. Then I phoned Katie to say, “yes mom I’m home”.

spending money again

I love the week after Christmas. Picked up a nice jacket to replace the third hand John Deere jacket Keith’s been wearing for the best part of ten years at the Bay yesterday… half price. Picked up a laptop snare and have fallen deeply in love with it, as it produces a starting depth and variety of percussive noise. Picked up a button which says Beer is my comfort food, and a couple of others equally snide, and watched Keith zone out in a comic book store (the height of entertainment). Also picked up the Collectors Serenity. Keith wanted it for the cast commentary… I didn’t find it all that gripping, so I went to bed. We also watched Pan’s Labyrinth and I have to say although it was good and creepy, I am not getting what all the oohs and aahs were about when it came out. I guess watching somebody innocent die at the end wasn’t my idea of a good time.

Today I’m going to wheedle Keith into helping me move more furniture and maybe do an abbreviated shop.

Heading home

I will be heading home this morning.  The break was very restful and I’m feeling a little bit more optimistic than I was when I ventured over here on Saturday.  Work will be very busy, but I’m actually looking forward to it.

I’m hoping Kopper saved me some turducken, she said there was leftovers…

Sun Room

It is so beautiful in the sun room here. There are birds hopping around and the gas fireplace pouring heat out onto my feet.  And pOp said, look, a network connection.

There’s a piece of customized stained glass my parents had made to symbolize their love.  Their initials are intertwined (makes me think of that piece of jewellery in Game of Kings – but EVerything reminds me of Dunnett) and the things they think are important are symbolized in the openings between the Celtic knot.  There’s a Tree and a Mortarboard and a pair of Hummingbirds and a Tesseract.

There are juncoes and flickers.

O it’s a beautiful room.

Gotta run, I have to get Keith to the ferry with mOm.

Victoria II

I am currently reading the Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt.

It’s an excellent book, and it makes me very happy to be a Unitarian.  Not because the author is, but because the ideas expressed in it are so amazingly and repeatedly Unitarian that the whole bloody book comes off as nothing so much as a strikingly amazing Unitarian sermon or group of sermons. 

Also, LTGW at work keeps saying, “You have to read Cialdini‘s Influence, you have to read Cialdini’s Influence” and now that I’m reading the Happiness Hypothesis I guess I’ll have to because Haidt cites it constantly.

The metahypothesis is that science and emotion don’t have to conflict.  This is actually the big scrap between Faith and Reason right now, or as seen by the religious types, Big Satanic Soulless Violent Freedom Hating Science and Poor Put-upon Faith, or by atheists, Rationality vs. Whiny Ass Crybaby Hyperemotional GodWalloping.

Anyway, I’m havin’ a lovely time laying about reading and hanging with the folks.  Jeff just turned up… I’m going to see if I can get him to run me out to the mall.

Victoria

Jeff come and collected me and then kidnapped me for an ninety minutes’ worth of Robot Chicken.  Scarlett Johannson as a crazy girlfriend style GPS?  Yowza.

My mom cooked us dinner.  It was tasty and nourishing too. 

 

This morning I found out about the existence of bacon brittle.

 

I’ve been told that this should be served as a side for  the next Mars Bar Cthtulhuthon… Mmmm bacon brittle.  (added later, per Kopper’s warning do not use this recipe) 

What next, haggis?  Let us preserve decorum.  Mind you I was actually thinking of renting a bagpiper for the last time, but I thought that was over the top even for me.   

Enough of that!  The meal was turkey breast and home made stuffing and yams and salad and bread and cranberry dressing and a cauliflower cheese.  AND pie.  And ice cream.  So I have to say I am very impressed with just how much slaving over a hot stove my ma did for me today, and that maybe next Christmas I should think about getting here earlier and cooking more….

I got Hep A and Hep B shots this morning and I feel weird – oh shut up, weirder than normal.  Mind you my consciousness has been a variable and vinegary brew this past few weeks, with a couple of very nice breaks….  Pause to smile and look off into the middle distance with my head tilted to one side. I did manage to make some very nice memories in the last week.

Keith is still here.  It is so good to see him.

Now know snow – must go

I am contemplating the precipitation and thinking I wish I did some form of winter sport that involved snow rather than ice.  Because, dear friends, there’s rather a lot of it.  To quote the Caleban in the Frank Herbert Jorj X McKie books, “Low temperature and much moisture”.

Unfortunately I must now pack and get out of here to go to the ferry, and first I have an appointment right downtown at 9:30.  Must… drink… coffee. And I will hope that when I get off this blessed hill, the precip is rain rather than snow, so the Vancouver drivers are just regular, rather than supercharged, idiots.

I am looking forward to seeing the folks, though, and Jeff and Granny.

Merry ho ho

There is now enough chocolate at the office to paper my wall with.  Mmm… edible walls.

I am so looking forward to five days off I can’t tell you.  Except that I’m getting all scratchy and coughy and thinking I’m about to get sick.

Goldman Sachs shorted their bad mortgage loan paper.  I love how that works.  Let’s take a debt instrument that nobody understands and make book on how far it can fall? The whole house of cards is about to come riffling down at high speed… just like I’ve been warning about for years; it’s just that it’s closer than it was in 2004.

I can’t talk about work.  I’ll talk about underwear instead….. my daughter gave me really cute underwear for Christmas.  Or if I talk about work, how about peripherally?

Dave DeR gave me the Onion Atlas for Xmas.  It’s very funny.  Yes, I opened it early! I open every Christmas present I get when I get it.  This crap about waiting just means that the garbage gets loaded into one week, I prefer to spread the Christmas debris over a couple of garbage cycles.

Bitter?  Not at all.  I’ve just gone back to my normal state, which is grumpy.

Cthulhu’s own writing contest

My mother, may she be worshipped and adored, has requested that I write and post an expository piece regarding the deep fried Mars Bar fest this Friday, in the style of HP Lovecraft.  This set me to cracking my knuckles and my thesaurus in about equal amounts; I have my first sentence, “It was a dark and stormy cauldron of boiling fat that great scaley Cthulhu tended, in the cavernous stony depths of the Miskatonic University Cafeteria.” Link goes to MU fight song.

Golden Compass

Man, I wish I’d taken Patricia’s advice.  They got precisely two things right; the girl who plays Lyra, who is perfectly cast, and the fight scene between the two armoured bears.  Everything else sucked the business end of a Greyhound bus station men’s restroom mop.  Fifteen minutes into the movie I was ready to challenge to mortal combat the (screamingly politically incorrect adjective herewith deleted) music department. I went to IMDB so I could abuse who wrote the soundtrack but it was written by a committee as best I can tell and all there is a ‘music coordinator’.  The music was so badly timed to the action it’s like, “We’re going to put all the money on the screen and if the music is cheesier than a grindhouse porn soundtrack… nobody will notice.” Well I f*****g well did you morons, and if this movie cost 160 million to make and I have to watch it with the sound off because (while visually good) the script and soundtrack have me clapping my hands over my ears in horrified disbelief, you’ve not exactly got your money’s worth now have you.  I turned to Keith as the credits rolled and said, “I am so happy I didn’t pay for that.”  To which his response was a simple, “Ditto,” which concluded our discussion of the film.
In other news, I am corresponding with somebody from teh Craigslists whose pithy and entertaining posts are enlivening my life greatly.  Usually I send a pic – or forward my blog link – and the guy changes his email address and leaves town.  I can live in hope; this one hasn’t.

Prospects for the week and further out

Tonight, off to a commercial gym for a workout with Kopper – a gym which is also located next to a Safeway so I will sneak in a small shop.  There’s a promotion on so I don’t have to pay for it, and as is obvious I find it murderously hard to exercise if it’s removed from a social context.  Tomorrow night, Zombie Night with Dances with Sheep.  The rest of this week I am keeping open with an eye to either having Kopper over for dinner or having Katie over, as she is actually wanting to spend time with me-someone fetch the smelling salts.

Much is happening which is unbloggable.  I’d blog about it and not give two hoots, but as the years drain away, tact forces itself on me much as age does, that and the occasional threats of a good bang in the nose or wretched social snubbing.   Fortunately I still have a functioning telephone.  I will confine my remarks to this tidbit.  Recently an attractive single man told me I’m too fat.  This hardly constitutes news, but it certainly helped chivvy my ample ass back to the gym
Daughter Katie has removed the first season of Deadwood from these environs, hoping to infect her father and brother… we shall see if the disease takes hold.

My back is somewhat improved but I am not looking forward to making it through a day of work without painkillers, as I cannot function on Robaxicet at work. Vitamin I (ibuprofen) makes me sleepy.  Opiates make me formicate.  Yes, that’s an m and not an n.

I have signed up for a singing course Monday nights starting in January.  I am probably going south with Tammy sometime in February or March.  And Jeff is moving to town!  All in all, I have lots of good things to look forward to!

Happy birthday nautilus3.  I hope your last radiation treatment is your last radiation treatment and that we don’t have to stick a fork in you to ensure you’re ‘done’ on that side.

Last night I dreamed about a magic building.  It was where Harry Potter and all of his buddies put their old school stuff in storage, and where rooms turned into elevators, and people changed appearance with abruptness but their voices stayed the same.  There was also REALLY bad wallpaper.  The funny thing is I’ve dreamed about this building before, but the building is magic, so it looked different the last time.  Does that make any sense?  Also last night I read the Tarot (Celtic Cross layout, as usual).

  1. The Lovers
  2. King Pentacles
  3. Moon
  4. 3 Pentacles
  5. Hanged Man
  6. Queen Pentacles
  7. Knight Swords (again!!)
  8. 4 Pentacles
  9. Hierophant
  10. Devil

I won’t get into a big long dissertation about it, but I thought it would be entertaining to put the first and last cards side by side, so you can get the ‘joke’ of the layout.  (My deck is capable of being very snarky, and very playful, and very, very direct).

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Notice any similarities between the two cards?  The layout is virtually identical. The Lovers represent the struggle between sacred and profane love.  The Devil represents both the ease with which we are ensnared by our passions, and the key to getting free (the chains are not tight… the two figures can ‘check out any time they like’ although one is tied to her physical addictions – the wine – and the other tied to the mental – the fire representing both anger and lust).  The two outcome cards are the Queen of Pentacles and the Devil.  La lutte continue.

Church this am

LOTS OF SINGING.  This is a goooood thing, especially around Christmas.  The vein of gossip at church this morning was solid gold, with hinted deposits of platinum and neodymium.  Let’s just say that if you hear me snickering with nothing in sight worth laughing at, it is because my thoughts, so recently dark and sad, have been transformed into joy, mirth and mild self-derision at my not having faith in my long term prospects for happiness.  I really do carry happiness, sanity, and the ability to assist others in their pursuit of happiness and sanity, around with me. If I am occasionally self-serving in this regard, it’s only because I wasn’t crazy to begin with.  As daughter Katie remarked, I am right more often than I am wrong, but I need more patience in waiting for results.
And I’m working on a new song… the chorus runs

Be wary

Be wary

Be wary of the fury of a patient man…