Category: Family

Events in Bolivia

Sometimes I feel very isolated from world affairs – then they strike at my friends and family. This is verbatim from Leo Makela. I am very grateful for the opportunity to repost.

Hi all,

You may or may not have been aware of the incidents in Bolivia:

Bolivian airline nastiness

We have more personal details.

Last week Kevin flew down to Tarija Bolivia for the International Tae Kwon Do Pan-American tournament. He went with Master Lu and another student from Ottawa and another 3 participants flew from Toronto. The tournament was great (Kevin got Silver in patterns) and he loved Tarija, especially the girls.

However,

On the way back they were waiting in Santa Cruz, Bolivia to board an American Airlines flight to Miami when the dispute between the Airlines and the local airport authorities occurred. American Airlines refused to pay the extra fee that the local authorities were demanding (about $2000). After a couple of hours of stand-off the pilot and aircrew suddenly left the departure lounge, boarded the aircraft and (without permission from the control tower) took off – abandoning about 140 passengers in the departure lounge, including the Canadian, American and Puerto Rico TKD teams.

Then the airport authorities told the passengers to collect their checked luggage and leave the airport. Kevin got his luggage and tried to return to the departure lounge to rejoin the other people on the team. Security guards tried to stop him but he pushed through. Then he and other TKD people faced off against about 1/2 dozen riot police who appeared carrying batons. They refused to leave until people were reunited and some settlement was made. The Canadian consulate, the American consulate and the local senator got involved and finally transportation was arranged to take the Canadians, Americans and Puerto Ricans to the Cortez Hotel.Thank God Taekwon Do people, especially our own master, Master Phap Lu know people “in high places”.

The next day the TKD masters refused an offer by American Airlines to fly them out “sometime during the weekend”. Instead, on a strongly worded recommendation by the Canadian consulate and Foreign Affairs in Canada they paid the local airline about $500 per person to fly them to Miami immediately. Darn good thing too – they left around 11:30 Wed night and on Thursday the army stormed the airport.

From Miami, after considerable argument, they managed to get booked to O’Hare in Chicago and then to Ottawa. Finally, around 6:00 pm on Thursday they arrived at the Ottawa airport. Kevin and the others were thrilled to be home in Canada and of course all of us were relieved to have them back. We along with John and Val all showed up to pick them up.

It remains to be seen whether we will be able to get any compensation from American Airlines. – At least everyone returned safe and sound. This incident may severely restrict future international TKD
competitions in the future.

Weekend wrap up.

I can’t believe Pukka Orchestra didn’t make this list.

– this list will be food for arguments for the next dozens of years.

The church supper went great – as we are a caravan of faith at the moment, with no settled home (besides the Gathering Place), I now have dishes from the banquet to do. Fortunately I have a dishwasher ;). I also performed The Tapioca Song. The Beacon Home Companion was even better than last year, and that’s saying something. Don Hauka is a genius… There, I said it! And everybody else was wonderful too… Derek’s antics as “The Chalice” (the Unitarian Superhero) were wonderful as always.

Sometime today I will be getting the Quicktime version of the Tapioca Song video, and THEN I’ll post it to Youtube. Stay tuned, as they say. Katie K saw it yesterday and pronounced herself entertained.

Katie has moved back in with Paul and Keith and now is a resident of Planet Bachelor. She has her own bathroom too, the lucky stiff. I suspect she will greatly appreciate her new digs.  Her boyfriend… for such he is, still, alas, has a couple of three inch souvenirs from the cop dogs who took him down last week.  He has sworn to mend his ways.  And I’m going to lose forty pounds by Christmas.  I have seen Katie’s new tattoo, or at least the start of it.  It is a foot long snake wrapped around a heart.  (Fanboys note… it’s modelled after Katchoo’s tat from Strangers in Paradise)
On a happier note…. last night the four of us (me Paul Keith & Kate) did something we hadn’t done in the best part of a year. We watched a movie together! Cats crawled all over us purring happily! It was Les Misérables with Liam Neeson. I had to extend my booking on the car and then *&$^ forgot that I had to put gas in it, and then *&$*&! forgot to get a receipt so had to dash back for it. Didn’t get home until almost two. My weekend has thus far been enlivened by the existence of the progressive lenses perched on my nose. Driving was, as they say, interesting. I suppose I could have extended the booking and driven out to Richmond to participate in filking at VCon but not even the prospect of vixy and Tony performing her stellar “Mal’s Song” could make me want to drive out there. I’ll get a report in the fullness of time from Tom and Peggy.  Vcon of course has been rendered more interesting, at least in terms of GETTING there, by that 82 year old dude flying his plane into a building three blocks from the Con hotel….
My apartment is a disaster but unfortunately, as I was trying to wind down from my yesterday in the wee sma’s this morning, I picked up Gene Wolfe’s Shadow of the Torturer and, well, like that. I’m not sure how much housework I’ll be doing today. Especially since my laundry’s done. At first the book annoyed the snot out of me, and now I can’t put it down. There’s one of the most succinct arguments for atheism I’ve ever seen in it. Hey, this is fair use, isn’t it?

From Chapter VIII of the Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe, 1980. Thecla, a courtesan, speaks:

“One can’t found a novel theology on Nothing, and nothing is so secure a foundation as a contradiction. Look at the great successes of the past – they say their deities are the masters of all the universes, and yet that they require grandmothers to defend them, as if they were children frightened by poultry. Or that the authority that punishes no one while there exists a chance for reformation will punish everyone when there is no possibility anyone will become the better for it.”

As soon as I hear from the videographer, I’m going to head off to RCH to visit somebody from work who’s in hospital, unless she’s home already, in which case I’ll try to call her.

yesterday

For Can Con, and because it’s a great movie, and because after the Heavy Stuff I wanted a comedy, I watched the Barbarian Invasions with Jeff.  It is a great film.  I must see it again.  Also, I desired about ten times to correct the goddamned subtitles, because a couple of the times they lacked nuance and verve.
Hiking with Hunter S Thompson.

We dropped by Gadget House on the way out of Victoria, where I found out that my mother had a rubber glove full of ice in the fridge.  If you have a rubber glove full of water, tied off at the wrist, and you put it on a shelf in the freezer, once frozen it ends up looking like it has joints.  I wanted to take a picture of it, it was extremely disquieting.

Yesterday the dejunking was clothes and shoes.  It went very well; I acquired a really nifty pyjama set which is about as sexy as a hairball, but fits perfectly.

There is a LOLcats version of the Holy Bible. God is referred to throughout as “ceiling cat” (which should make any of you who know who ceiling cat is fall about laughing) and I read the first chapter of the Book of Job, which had me screaming with laughter so loud that Jeff was telling me to shut up because I was scaring the cats.  Or maybe that was another time. I do scream with laughter, it’s one of the many things about me which are childlike.

Google – is stupid the new evil?

Google is sucking these days….

A reason to go to Ottawa….  (I mean, what the hell kind of country pays for public art that will scare the bejasus outta small kids and arachnophobes).

Words to live by. 

In family news, the elephant has decided to sit on pOp’s chest again.  This means medical attention, which entirely sucks.  In further family news, the surgical drain has been removed from my mother, who’s damned happy about this improvement in her well being.

I watched Stargate Atlantis for the first time last night.  The script had me pecking a bit, but the charm of the personalities shone through nevertheless.  Finished up a re-rendered copy of Robinson Crusoe on Mars (does Paul Mantee EVER have nice body hair!  Yowza!).  Watched a Family Guy episode all the way through (1st time ever) and laughed my ass off.  Hitler juggling three fish on a unicycle?  Instant hysteria!  Why?  Mostly, says Jeff, it’s the snippet of music that goes with it.

We finished de junking the kitchen, dealt with the linen closet and itemized all the furniture for Geek House, as well as figuring out some stuff for storage, Craigslist, etc… I hardly took any cooking stuff when I left the Augur Inn, so I did grab a couple of small boxes of stuff – they will all get merged back into Geek House but I can use it in the meantime.

Today, we see Unca Barry and Auntie Mary and go for dinner with my parents – if they can lever themselves away from the emergency room.  Yeah, I know I sound like I don’t give a shit.  I am concerned and anxious, but how does that help?

Still in Victoria

Watched Blackhawk Down, The Machinist, a little Robot Chicken, (scroll down on link for pirate humour) and nothing else because we actually did work yesterday.  Now it’s the crack of noon and I’m finally out of bed.  What gives?  I was in bed by 10 last night!!?  Maybe I’m lying awake in bed for hours thinking dark thoughts.  Dark thoughts which I cannot commit to my blog, lest they be used in turn to commit me.  Sorry, the paranoia is lying deep, and deep, upon me right now.  It’s hard to watch a movie like The Machinist and not go to a dark place afterwards.  And this was the movie that Joe at work has been bugging me to watch since the day he started!  Now I’ll have to watch it again.

I know it’s really really sick, but Christian Bale at 121 pounds is the hottest thing evah.  I normally don’t go for extremememes in male shapeliness, but the idea of (ed.: Cut that shiat out, right now!).  Aherm.  Yes.  So to recap.  Skinny Christian Bale equals teh hotness.  That is all.
One more cup of this extremely fine coffee, and it’s back to the dejunking.

In Victoria

Movies: Pink Floyd Live in Pompeii;

Children of Men

and we got half way through a CHERRY print of Robinson Crusoe on Mars

GRRR there was something wrong with the actual DVD; it stopped in the middle of a closeup on Mona’s face.

Yesterday, in church, bad puns broke out. It was very, very bad, mostly because Lady Miss Banjola and Dr Filk were not there to raise the insanity to ever higher levels.

Now I’m going to see if I can drag my bro out to breakfast. Nope – he’s made me oatmeal. Then the food shop….
The trip here started repulsive and got better and better; the weather was so much more clement it was very pleasant to stand it in while waiting briefly for Jeff. When I left my place at SFU it was howling a gale and slanting rain, and I lost my bus pass on the ground, and so missed the first bus retracing my steps to see what the hell I had done with it. I found it right out front of my apartment building (thank guh) and then spent three hours alternately waiting for a bus and riding one. It’s an $85 cab ride to the ferry terminal from my place (I did it once, partly to see how much it cost and partly because I was feeling quite worn out) but I don’t think I’ll be that self indulgent again if I can help it.
Jeff’s kitties are doing famously. They were both sitting in the window of the computer room this morning intently looking at something of cat interest.

Ow-iest moments in sports

For most of these shots, I was ducking into my chair and wincing.  Ow ow ow.

Don’t assume the best shots are all at the beginning,  there are corkers all the way through.

I FORGOT TO PUT THE KEY BACK in the car last night.  I guess I am still needing to work on my manners.  When I ran downstairs to let the next guy have the car I saw the most gorgeous man I’ve seen in years.  Like, every guy I’ve ever had a crush on, and Tom Baker too.  Swoon.  And of course I had to apologize to him.  Hope I see that one again, when he loomed up out of the fog I thought my heart would stop.

Tom and Peggy fed me and the hordes Sunday dinner. Roast pork, salad and taters and corn, and I helped with salad.

I forgot to mention I ran into the gals who run Laff Riot Girls when I was brunching with Katie C on Saturday.  And then a pedicure – Katie’s new job involves a lot of standing and I felt like babying her.
Off to work soon…..

Faw down.

Yesterday I performed the most spectacular inadvertent pratfall I think I ever have. In front of at least a dozen people (not all of whom were looking at me) I turned my ankle in the middle of a road, right next to the construction site up the hill, pirouetted with great speed and no grace and did a shoulder roll onto my back.

Patricia (who was with me, and who better to see this than somebody who will be teasing me about it until one of us goes senile) said that the flock of ESL students coming up the hill towards me all clapped their right hands over their mouths in a simultaneous display of distress. I just lay there looking up at the sky and laughing. Apart from a smudge of dirt up one leg there wasn’t a mark, scratch or bruise on me. My shoulder is no more sore this morning than it would have been if I’d been in the front of a canoe for a trip to Widgeon Creek. You’d think my hip or my back would have protested, but I’m no worse or better off this morning than I was yesterday. The body is a remarkable thing. It’s odd. I likely wouldn’t have fallen if I hadn’t consumed beer at lunch but on the other hand, I was as relaxed as a rag doll when my balance let go.
Today it’s daughter Katie (“I spent all my money on a suit, can you buy me a bus pass?” – and I just paid her cell phone bill. Mothers.) from about 9:30 on and then home before supper time to attempt to make myself beautiful for my date (here insert the faint sound of eyes rolling).

But what a suit! Katie got a black Hugo Boss pure wool men’s suit, which fits her, down to the arms being shorter than the average guy’s, for ten bucks and tax. You have to admit that’s a pretty spectactular find. I had to rip Katie a new one for taking her GODDAMNED PAYCHECK TO THE MONEY MART. Girl, don’t pay almost 30 bucks for the privilege of getting your own money, come to me, or your dad, or Keith, or guh, ANYBODY who knows you with a bank account. I can’t imagine Keith doing something like that on the worst day he ever had; it’s remarkable how different two kids can be.
Anyway, it looks fair to be a wonderful day, and I’se so happy to be alive.

Craigslist to the rescue…. Monty Python trumpet blast.

It is with some satisfaction that I report that I have met a really cool guy from Craigslist.  He meets every single one of the criteria I set myself out to find (including that he’s into being less lonely, not more married).  Urbane, intelligent, musical, accomplished, well travelled and an excellent communicator. I’ve come up with a blog nickname for him, but in keeping with my “Learn to be more respectful of others, you great sow” vow, I’ll run it by him before I start using it.

And I got enough sleep, and the balance board I bought is doing great things for my back.

I’m swithering about going to Jericho.  I still feel like some kind of crud is holding over from the weekend, trying to find a part of me to land on so I’m not sure about the wisdom of yet another late night during the week.  In addition I have a project breathing heavily in my ear about its completion, due on Thanksgiving.

This will be the first homily I’ve written that I didn’t read aloud obsessively to Paul (or Dr. Filk) for the week prior to the service, and I find that I’m missing that. You just never know what you’re going to miss when you bail on 25 years of marriage.  Many of the things I thought would hurt, haven’t, and vice versa.  It floors me, and stuns my mother, that I miss cooking.  mOm would probably say, And I miss Root Canal! And I miss Income Tax!  And I miss Halitosis! and I miss WWII!

Another loverly day

My passport’s here already!  I get to pick it up tomorrow. Katie says hers has turned up but she has to take time off work to pick it up so she’s some choked.  Oh well  ….NOW I CAN BOOK OUR VACATION!!!!! WEE.

Keith watched the Happy Feet segment of King of Jazz and he loved it almost as much as I did.  If anybody cares….

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Keith reports that he was on a Skytrain that got struck by lightning.  He said the car went deader than a doorknob and when the repair guy showed up (4 minutes later) he said the car disappeared off the screen at central like it wasn’t there any more.  To be anywhere in Vancouver and see lightning at all is unusual – to be in a Skytrain car that gets hit is downright freaky.

Went to Planet Bachelor tonight for a cooperative dinner and to pick up the camping gear.  I will not be posting unless my cell phone works up there, which I doubt, and I don’t feel like paying $30 in internet charges just to log onto my crummy site.  So I’ll be away from Friday night to Sunday night.

I am really looking forward to it, although a lot of my fave folks will be no shows due to other commitments.

Spoke to one of the Beacon young adults today about getting cooperative ministry set up at SFU.  We will see what happens.  I loved small group ministry when Paul and I were hosting – I have so many happy memories of that time.

Kira JUMPED INTO MY LAP when I was at Planet Bachelor tonight – that was a lot like getting struck by kitty lightning.

I must with sadness report that Speck, a companion animal in Chipper’s family, has gone where all good dogs go.  He was a lively critter – he loved to run.