Category: Family

Dr. Filk Posts an Ad

Dr. Filk posted an ad for a BMW bike on Craigslist yesterday, used the household phone number, and then messed off for the afternoon.  He apparently doesn’t believe me when I told him that the phone rang off the wall; he could always check with Keith, who would be happy to corroborate.  It only remains to be added that the phone rang at 7:30 this morning about the ad.  Although it would have been extremely enjoyable to dance cheerfully into his bedroom with the phone in my hand, to announce in thrilling tones, “Phone for you, darling!” I politely told the guy to email back.

More family news

Keith sez to me the other afternoon, “Wanna see something that will make you just vomit?” in the tone of voice that indicates that what I’m about to see will be gross but not actually flies buzzing over a corpse gross.  Then he pulls out the new T-shirt for the promotion at Great Canadian Stuporstore.

“Oh my f*****g god!” I scream obligingly, then clap my hands over my eyes.  “No white person should ever wear that color!”

“Yup, it’s about that gross,” he agreed.  But wait, it gets better.  Katie phoned today to say, “Mum, you will never believe what happened at work!”

And I said, “They are asking you to wear the most eye-wateringly horrid shade of dayglo greeeeeen – with sex toy pink lettering – that the world has ever seen.”

Brief shift of Katie mental gears, then she says, “Suzanne at work wrote the managers a letter and I swear to god the first line is, “What kind of drugs are you on?”  Not even a man with a TAN can wear this color, under the fluorescent lights even black guys look green with this shit on.”

I suspect that they will grieve to the union about it.  The last t shirt was pretty icky, but tolerable.  This t shirt is an incitement to riot and mayhem.

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Dr. Filk is moving to Victoria at the end of the month, cats and kaboodle. I called Paul to tell him; it sounds like he’s having tons of fun in the Bay area.

Jeff’s gone

We watched two more movies (Local Hero and Impromptu, which I loved), and now he’s off to the ferry to start (brr, yech) another work week.

I recited the lyrics to Scary Clown’s birthday song (one of the many I can’t post because it is…. scurrilous) and Jeff justabout folded up laughing.

Where are they now?

Jeff took off to Rob’s yesterday around noon and hasn’t been seen since (although he did phone.)  I am expecting him to show up back here, all sheepish and giggly, sometime just before he has to jump back in his car to get to the ferry.

Katie said she was coming home and didn’t.

As for me I’ve been plugging away on domestic stuff.  I’m not moving fast, but I’m moving steady.

Sundry and Various II

Katie has announced, after spending a weekend with Sapphire (born last August, and her equivalent-to-niece) that she has no intentions of going into the baby making business anytime soon.  Tonstant Weaders of this blog will likely feel MUCH BETTER upon reading that.  Not that Katie doesn’t LIKE babies, she just said it was exhausting.  I forebore comment, can you credit it?

Paul appears to have located a 3 bedroom apartment close by the current house.  We shall see if the landlord goes for the plus 1 cat situation.  Seeing as how we don’t even have the house listed yet…. no, better not go there.
Work continues to be interesting, challenging, and suboptimal; I think my performance is suffering.  See what happens when you get a bonus? There’s no point, really…..
Jeff comes tomorrow.  I have to think of a good nickname for my brother, but my brain hurts right now so it will have to be later.

Keith took a tour of the David Lam campus for his Optician course.  He says, “They remembered me!” as if this was a startling occurrence.  Keith is pretty damned memorable, and I don’t just say that because I spawned him.

I would like to sing, shout, and rattle a sistrum for the sistahs!  Catherine, Tammy and Sandy – thank you for the long and heartening conversations.  I note with amusement verging on hysteria that Catherine, one of the most militant atheists evah, recently spent a day making Easter altar scarves.  Yes, her mother roped her into it, and yes, she volunteered.  But it’s a lot like finding out that Shostakovich keeps the dial on Rock 101.
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I rehung the Inuit hunters on the wall.  Now that the walls are the right colour, they look like they were supposed to be there.

I looked out the window this morning and saw the pear tree starting to bloom and burst into tears because that’s the last time that will happen.  It’s the little things that get you.

I slept 12 hours yesterday, but the allergy / cold thing is grimly clinging to my facial mucosa with the adamancy of one of the Old Ones denied a sacrifice…

Dungeon Siege prop

It’s been bally ages since I posted a pic of a prop of a movie which got made down the street and has never been released.  Uwe Boll, please stop making bad movies!  This cheesy hunk of foam was sitting in the woods in Robert Burnaby Park and I really wanted to take it home (gee Mom can I keep it?), but sanity prevailed.  But doesn’t every house need a cheesy fake megalithic structure?  Pic is about 18 months old.

Celebration of another year survived

Burnt, who is in his early thirties and has more energy than any sane human can compass, allowed me to attend his b-day celebration last night, which was very kindly of him. Alas for my 48 year old sagging bag of mostly-carbon, I had gotten two hours sleep the night before and after a couple of beers (okay, three beers) I felt my hold on consciousness become rather greased.

I did meet Phd, Burnt’s astonishingly awesome and recently highly educated fiancée, and numbers of his other friends. Scary Clown indulged me by bringing enough dead cow to the barbecue to feed me. He had a hard time believing me at first when I said that barely seared pepper steak and salad was indeed my idea of the perfect meal at that moment, but I guess he believed me after I consumed both steaks in short order. I told him that I wanted to adopt him as a sibling and he made a number of comments about my sanity, but from the first second I laid eyes on him he’s felt like family to me and nothing he’s done – even (or especially) the really gross or inappropriate stuff – has changed my mind since. I’m going to have to get a wav file of his clown laugh and post it to my site…..

Patricia, LTGW and I started the evening by leaving directly from work to visit Hellsgate Mall. Now, I don’t mean to berate the young folks, but a mall is no place to be on a Friday night (or the equivalent) and a liquor store is to buy liquor in. So I dashed in, grabbed a six pack of Thirsty Beaver, and dashed back out to the car (the mando was in an exposed area of LTGW’s scabrous diesel Rabbit, and I’d take a bullet for that instrument, so I wanted to stay close to it). I then got 20 MINUTES to people-watch as it took Patricia and LTGW that long to get the fuck out of the liquor store. What on EARTH were they doing in there? And do you know what it’s like to stand around a parking lot in East Van clutching a six pack of Thirsty Beaver beer? It was…. a slice.

Then Patricia and I inspected LTGW’s apartment. He had mentioned that it was small. It’s hard to find the diminutives which could adequately convey how weensy it is. LTGW, not to put to fine a point on it, looks like a cat in a carrier in that apartment.

Then we went to Scary Clown’s, where he greeted us by blowing a raspberry into the enterphone while we were still about 30 meters from the apartment block (it echoed terrifyingly in the entrance way and just about stopped me in my tracks). There we listened to his most excellent music collection – he really has exquisite taste – and viewed some pictures he took, some of which are, um, disturbing, and others of which are quite amusing, and also reviewed the personals on Craigslist Vancouver, which proved to be v. amusing. Then we staggered the two blocks over to Burnts, ate, hung out, and then home.

Well, not quite that fast. I managed to get myself to Main Street to get on the bus to the Skytrain Station, but not after walking rather farther than I wanted to because of construction along that stretch of road. A street person addressed me about something but I stood there radiating exhausted calm and good humour and only spoke the minimal amount (I was just about speechless from being so tired anyway). On the bus I got to listen to a girl from the Interior go on about what a hick she was. I found myself laughing at her and when I looked around I noticed that almost everybody at the front of the bus was trying not to laugh aloud, so I wasn’t the only one affected by her rather endearing looniness. Then on the Skytrain, which came right away, I was accosted by a young man who was just a big friendly puppy dog of a guy, and we traded comments about the difference between drinking when you’re 22 and 48 respectively and people sitting close to us started giggling. Then a smartly dressed (picture Ice Cube) black dude sat down and apologized in advance that he wasn’t going to be as interesting as my former seatmate which again made me laugh. All in all, it was quite an evening for entertaining and pleasant interactions with strangers. I lugged the mando around all freaking day and never got to unlimber it, though.

OMG. The walk from 13th and 6th to my place when I got off the bus nearly killed me. Now to the garage to move boxes….

Grey day

There’s high overcast and ground fog, so it’s a bleary kind of day.  I’m just as happy not to be going to work.  Heather will be over later for more cleaning.  Katie was here last night.  My mum appears to have gotten home okay.  You certainly spend less time travelling when you take the harbour flight.

Yrch.

Darned inertnests – every time I turn around the access is dead again so I’m chipping away at blogging….  Anyway, I am currently locked out of the garage so I cannot get my gear for the sermon together – but the sermon itself is locked down.  One up, one down.  Mum’s here and had the benefit of one of Tom and Peggy’s salmon dinners (hey pop she ate two desserts, but she has a care package which may be of later interest).

inertnests weirdness

We’re running bareback —- no router…. or is that commando?  I can ne’er tell.  Anyway, the only way we can get the internet to work is without the router.  As Lady Miss Banjola remarked, welcome to malware land, population, you.

I have tons of news, most of it not fit for public consumption, alas, but I guess I can say that there will actually be bonuses at work this year.  I think mine will come to just enough for one really fun bender, but hey, it’s all in the game. I associate work with alcohol, or at least the requirement for same.
Katie and I are off to Ikea to purchase the bed hardware that got lost when the bed was taken down.   Pic is of my brother’s house.  He’s coming to visit soon so I am thinking of him and I miss him more because I know he’s coming.  Does that make sense?