Kopper, pleading “I’ve heard those jokes so many times I could type them in my sleep, and I’m bagged” did not join me and Daughter Katie. We had a good time despite this sad gap in our complement, and it was good to see that the Laff Riot Girls were in fine form. So I am in a damned fine mood; one episode of Deadwood more and then I’m off ta bed. It made me want to write more comedy, but given how I feel about audiences, I think I’m more inclined to tape something and post it to Youtube.
I light a candle for the women slain in Montreal 18 years ago today, and for all the women engineers I know.
Category: Family
Off to comedy
Katie offspring is coming out to a comedy night with me. My goodness, I can go out with my daughter to a BAR? who’d’a thunk it?
Happy family news
Cousin Gerald, being sufficiently recovered from the exertions of becoming a first time grandparent, has been deemed of suitable fitness, genetic and otherwise, to go for round two. Congratulations to the happy family, and a wonderful Christmas it brings into prospect!
Kid Katie
She was here last night and we had an IMMENSE Deadwood fest. We’re up to episode 11 and if midnight hadn’t come and gone we would have been good for more. Calamity Jane is her fave primary character; her fave secondary character is Charlie Utter. Later….. booked the Prius and now I gotta get her to work.
Xmas Antidotes
Xmas hate – ten reasons to not like it. Yes, the list is familiar, but there’s a sophomoric venom to it which I quite enjoy.
My ten favourite things about Christmas.
- Carols. Singing them. I don’t give a shit if I never HEAR another canned Christmas carol, but singing them is a different story.
- A string of dark blue incandescent lights along the roof line of a bungalow.
- Cooking up the turkey and having everybody go “ah!” when it comes to the table.
- Sitting around the homestead looking at old pictures with the family.
- Watching the Alastair Sims version of “A Christmas Carol”…. and turning on the TV just at the right time to catch the “Sisters” duet from White Christmas without having to watch the whole movie.
- Knowing that I will never again get exactly what I want for Christmas and being fine with that, because the gift part of Christmas really is for little people.
- Not having to beat the kids over the head anymore to write thankyou cards.
- Making biscotti all through the month of December and treating people at work.
- Listening to my father roar with laughter at the weather forecasts elsewhere in Canada.
- I always get cool books from Jeff.
Snow and fog part III
Holy mackerel.
My family just got bigger!!!! a cousin has announced incoming offspring but since she didn’t say it was for public consumption I am not forwarding her massively cute ultrasound pic or naming names. All I can say is me happy happy.
Saw Glen today – he’s doing famously, except for the bronchitis, and all the fambly and animals are well.
Sundry images
This is a quilt one of my coworkers, Yvonne, made. All the women in CS got one. I am an extremely sentimental person, in a gruff, cheesy kind of way, and it makes me sniff when I think about how wonderful my coworkers are.
This is a picture of the house where I grew up in Ottawa. There is now a coster blue spruce out front that’s four stories tall…
The moon from the second last time I was at Jericho. I think I posted something similar earlier, but I just love the feel of it. And I wish the city wasn’t always lit with sodium vapour lights….
My desk, with my Jayne hat (wot nautilus3 knitted for me).
Power shop
Pic is of me and Patricia at the party. Hey nautilus3, recognize that jacket??? (honk, tweet, snicker).
So, between 12 and 2 today, I:
Booked the car and ran downstairs and threw a bag of to-be-recycled clothing in it; drove to Planet Bachelor (having phoned and ascertained that Paul wasn’t there and Keith was) and hung with Keith for about 20 minutes, also unloading two books of Paul’s that ended up over here, taking back Katie’s bag and cleaned clothes and Harry Potter VI and VII AND her volume 2 Strangers in Paradise and a couple of free movie tix for Keith AND Paul’s mickey of Ron Superior which I picked up for him in Santo Domingo; then went over to Highgate to the Liquor Store and picked up Saint Ambroise Apricot (I had no idea it was still available), Stella Artois and Lion Winter; dropped off the clothes at the Value Village on Edmonds and picked up a 20% off coupon; went into the store and picked out 4 dresses and bought 3 (all very frou frou, and one is Allegra brand, so that was a giggle – I had wanted to buy it in Costco 4 years ago and here it was for 6 bucks….), then drove like the hammers for the Bay where I ran up the escalator, located a coffee maker to replace the one I broke (set it on a stove burner and turned the wrong burner dial on, quelle morone), paid for it (and some unscented laundry detergent as an impulse buy at the checkout) and drove home. I really don’t think all that in two hours is too shabby.
Last night’s party continues to resonate. They said “eat first” but there were boatloads of food, all really nice substantial appies. Katie K and I wandered around the Georgia O’Keefe exhibit – the party was at the Vancouver Art Gallery. She was a remarkable artist, and a remarkable woman, and I think I’m going to look around for a decent bio of her. I think of all the stuff I saw last night that it was her cityscapes which I found most compelling. I have been trying to think of a word for her style, but I’ll have to use two words instead of one: recklessly beautiful.
Snide note. That fecking DJ couldn’t sync a beat worth beans.
The weather today is simply glorious. I was thinking of continuing cleaning, but I think I’ll go for a walk instead.
Tonight, orchestral music at the Orpheum. Katie K keeps exposing me to Kultur, and I trot meekly behind, trying like hell to look intelligent or keep up. Here she is at the party looking glamourous.
Work work work
I used to have a picture of Kung Fu Mike, figleafed by a laptop but otherwise starkers, which had that title. I suspect it’s on the old computer back at Planet Bachelor; I must recover it at some point.
I had a very productive day yesterday, having drawn some of my bile during my long conversation with Patricia, and then I had a very pleasant evening with one half of the Minions of Loki, since we ate at the Penny, which is more or less halfway between her place and mine on Hastings. The Penny is the very model of a Chinese greasy spoon. I had sufficiency of leftovers for another two meals, yay.
I need help from a Mac geek to figure out why I am having problems with making my RAR or avi files run. I suspect a compression issue.
Saturday is the company Christmas party…. Katie K and I are going. She is planning on wearing a dress and getting an updo, which is a lot like saying Eddie Izzard has given up on high heels. I am trying to figure out how I’m supposed to acquire a second hand tux between now and then; I think it’s more likely I’ll just wear what I wore last year. It makes me look immensely fat and I have to take the whole thing off to take a whiz, but it’s comfy and dressier than what I normally sport… as Catherine once remarked, “Oh, Allegra, you dress like a grad student” which, considering I was raised by grad students, seems no stretch. As for the tux, I can picture the William Hamilton cartoon with a woman sporting a tux with no difficulty, which is probably why, besides the expense, I am resisting. There are apparently going to be Engineers in Tuxes at the Christmas (oh hell, the Company Holiday Cheer) party. The following Saturday we’ll be going to Katie K’s company holiday buntoss, the biggest difference being there are TWO free drink tokens, and people will be bringing dogs. I am OBVIOUSLY working for the wrong company.
Daughter Katie’s 19th passed without incident; Dax gave her a handmade plaque with her name on it, so it sounds like he was doing something to improve the shining hour while she was gone.
It’s been quite frosty up here in the mornings; walking to work has been an adventure.
By copy to Chipper, on the subject of Christmas songs, have you ever heard Dominic the Donkey? I think you have to be Italian to be familiar with it; Gianna at work exposed me to it and now I can’t get the little beggar out of my head. It’s all about how Santa has to deliver prezzies with a donkey because reindeer cannot climb ‘the hills of I-ta-ly!’. It was a new one on me.
Saturday will be a busy busy day for me, because the Dunnettfolk will be Spitting over at Jan’s that day. And Spits, as I must explain, are the names those events where Dunnett fans gather and eat and talk and drink and show slides of their trips to Dunnett places (like Iceland and the Orkneys and the west coast of Africa and Cairo and the Crimea and Russia and Bruges). My father’s eyes glazed over at gather.
last impressions
This morning, Miriam funnelling Bloody Marys into Katie at Las Carambolas, our favourite bar at the resort (I stuck with beer). Last night, lightning flashes in the distance around 1 am when we emerged from the disco. A night heron who posed for us, but who, when we first saw him, appeared to be mesmerised by the music coming out of the disco (he was actually using the lights to hunt crabs). I walked up to him slowly and he ran like the hammers for the water but did not consider taking off. Then he came back and eyed the moths longingly.
Walking in the waves with the brilliant stars overhead speculating on when the next nova that will be visible in the daytime will occur. Then a DAMNED BIG COCKROACH. Outside. And proud as anything; she scarcely moved when I tapped the railing next to her.
This morning, we called for the big lizard (about an 8 inch body), who greeted us every morning for three days and then inexplicably vanished – and there he was, running along the path to say goodbye. Katie finally catching a glimpse of the enormous hummingbirds. A woodpecker in the palms. Check out ludicrously easy and they gave me my change in American money, which, if you knew how f*****g hard it was yesterday to get enough US money together to leave the country, was as laughable as how painless the checkout was after the extended agony of my interactions with the front desk over the course of the last week.
Now I’m sitting in the internet cafe and I just forked over about 20 bucks for Katie to get braids.
Happy birthday to me.
No vegetarians need apply
This is a hard bloody place to be a vegetarian in. They serve meat with every meal. If you’re a vegan, you’d have to pack your food in – it would be virtually impossible to live here otherwise.
Today, more collapsing gently and beaching. Plus eating and drinking. The weather has been gorgeous with the exception of a very well behaved rainshower yesterday. Katie got a magnificent picture of a jewel green lizard yesterday which I hope to post on my return.
I read her the last 5 chapters of Harry Potter VII and we both cried like idiots. What’s wrong with me??? I’ve read it already, it’s not like it came as any surprise.
Tattoo you
My mother has a tattoo. Don’t worry, she didn’t have a Raging Granny fit and have Fred Astaire in a top hat engraved on her bosom; it’s the merest few dots for the siting of the radiation. My father has now had occasion to ask an uncaring universe why it is that he is now sleeping with a tattooed grandmother. Age spares us no indignity, as a great man once remarked. Continue reading Tattoo you
Death in the family
Cousin Rawd passed away yesterday. My mother writes,
Rawd died at noon today. He had been in the hospital palliative care unit since Thursday and Graeme had hoped to get him home Friday. He was so tired, Graeme said; he had no fight left in him. Graeme said it has been grim the past few months, with Rawd fighting so hard, and day by day failing. He was conscious and alert until the last few minutes. Graeme was with him.
Graeme and Rawd were the first gay couple to marry in my family. They are the most gentle, courteous and intelligent people; Rawd was a pillar of his profession in Saskatchewan; he fought the cancer with humour, wit and an abiding courage that has served as an example to the rest of us as we have been personally tested by this same scourge. I’m crying as I write this, because I have one luminous memory of Rawd; he came to Pride Day in Vancouver two years ago, and he was SO happy to be among friends and participating. Even then he was quite frail and ill, but I’ve never seen anyone so lit from within.
I hope that genealogy programs change to accommodate gay and lesbian marriages.
And today is All Souls.
Sundry and Various
To address any aspect of my personal life in my blog, consisting as it does at the moment of a bundle of indignities, gripes, aches, bitches, whines and bs, would be merely foolish, so I will try to herd my thoughts into lusher pastures.
My mother’s arm is much improved. The burning is greatly reduced.
I have forwarded pictures of my mandolin to Tom MacMurray, local LOLcats dude, and expect to see pics of his Piggy Sue and Mawgey playing mandolin SOON. (This is something to be anticipated with pleasure).
Deb sent me this. Don’t watch unless you have the speakers blasting and ten free minutes!
There there, Canadian investors…. don’t worry about the subprime crisis in the States.
Delightful Chick style pamphlet on what to do when the Elder Gods are coming!
Deadwood
This TV show is beloved by some and loathed by others. I am definitely one of the fans, now that I’ve seen the first four episodes of the first season. Tim Olyphant is cuter than a bug’s ear, in stark contrast to nearly everybody else in the show (okay, Molly Parker, the pride of the lower mainland). Keith Carradine, who has a major part in the first 4 episodes as Wild Bill Hickock, before he’s shot (kudos for the director to not panning over his hand, the now legendary aces and eights) is absolutely brill; his voice alone is amazing and he bites off two word lines to splendid effect.
I am now going to watch the rest of the show, which has passed into history. I told mOm not to bother. The violence, unbelievably foul language (like, from ME, a comment about foul language), the rampant sex and drug use…. yeah, she’s going to stick with Fred Astaire….
mOm, in yet another demonstration of her supernatural cheerfulness, commented last night that if she does go on chemo (it is at this point by no means certain), she will look on it as an opportunity to lose weight. May we all profit from her example.