Category: Food

Why I think Jeff is a genius

Jeff’s tenancy with me has consisted in part of him going away and thinking for a spell when I say things like “Why can’t we have the internet on the big screen?” and “We have to many fucking remotes; when you go out of town I can’t even reliably turn the TV on; can you fix that?” mostly to prevent himself from saying something mean to me about how I’m too dumb to understand the two page instruction set he laboriously wrote, AND updated at least twice.  Jeff produces good documentation and I am dumb as a brick; these two facts are incontrovertable.  With respect to the “Why can’t we have the internet on the big screen?” question he had to do a ton of stuff and set up another computer to make it happen.  SO I get to go skipping through life asking why things don’t happen to my liking and he gets to spend hours of challenging labour AND money making it happen.  I don’t know which is worse, that I keep thinking I can get away with it, or that he just quietly goes away and does it without presenting me with an itemized bill.  On the other hand, I do cook around here.

His latest act of genius has been to bow to the inevitable.  I am indeed TOO STUPID to handle more than one remote, but universal remotes almost universally suck.  After lengthy study of the problem, he purchased a universal remote and then spent a goodly number of hours programming it to withstand the depredations not only of myself but of my son, who can be a complete ass when borrowing media.  Sorry son, it’s true.  Of course if you get hit by a car I’m going to regret this, just like I regretted my daily description of cleaning John’s apartment when he moved out immediately after he got killed in an accident, but I don’t go back and oubliette that shit because that’s just lame.  I would rather be complicated, messy and inconsistent, because, er, that’s how I am….  But the truth keeps on being the truth even when you could have picked a better moment for the reveal.

Jeff has not only programmed the remote so I can do whatever I want to do with the tv and the Xbox and the monitor, he’s SET THE AVERAGE AUDIO LEVELS.  So if you’re going back and forth between media you don’t get blown out of your seat if you land in the middle of a tv commercial.  That, friends, is true genius.  And he’s always finding new ways to tweak the remote.  Go tech!

Today is Mother’s Day.  I’m opening at church (and if I’m not, I’ll help….) and then assisting with a Mother’s Day tea.  I decided I couldn’t deal with making soup so I baked a whole salmon and made cinnamon buns.  Jeff doesn’t know I plan on making more, but I do; it’s mean to fill the house with the supercharged smell of home baking and then say oops, you can’t have any.  (Actually I let him eat a couple: “I have good news and bad news.  These are the best cinnamon buns I ever made, and the rest are going to church.”)

Yesterday I did laundry and played Buzz ALL DAY.  I do not play Buzz every day, but I had four separate guitar playing sessions yesterday and I LOVE HOW THAT GUITAR SOUNDS OMG OMNOMNOM.  Also yesterday watched chunks of Canucks game and laughed at Margot for watching Nascar again.  She really likes Darlington, and why not.  My shopping trip yesterday consisted of propane and guitar strings, because the g string ALWAYS breaks on a 12 string; I bought two whole sets and spares.  I talked to Neil Douglas about effects pedals and he laughed and asked me why I’d bother.  I s’pose.

I managed to cut the grass last weekend but I have no fucking clue when I’ll get to do it again because the sky continues to dump precip at an unholy and quite soggy-making rate.

After church, the Horde will descend and I am hoping to barbecue some MORE salmon.

Did I mention that I think my brother is a genius?

Last day….

It was sad to be in that building for the last day.  I moved into that building many years before I started this blog, and now a new and exciting chapter starts (and I’m much closer to Brian C, Tom U, and numbers of other former coworkers who are now at a company ‘across the hall’ so to speak).

We packed up the desks about noon and then went to Joey’s Coquitlam for lunch; then I drove Dustin back to the office, picked up some cleanser and a vase that had been left there, wandered back to my old desk to say goodbye, picked up the yogurt that I’d left in the fridge, and felt a surge of unhappiness.  Then I got home, struggled with the fucking lawnmower for quite a while, said fuck it and did the weed-whacking instead, and then went back, gave it a mighty heave and got the lawnmower running.  Then I finished the lawn.  Since the back lawn grass was wet as a baby’s diaper the exercise provided was kind of extreme; mowing the front yard left me exposed to the sun to the point I thought I’d pass out.

Sweating like a pig, I brushed myself down and then went and got my new stickers for the car (having thoughtfully changed my coverage to include the kids), fetched beer as per Jeff’s request, taste tested a new vodka cooler (cranberry lime) and upon making the discovery that unlike every other cooler I’ve ever had, it wasn’t disgustingly sweet, I purchased some.

Then I planted some seedlings and discovered an ant colony in our compost pile.

I was supposed to go to Tom and Peggy’s to practice, but after the exertions of the day I couldn’t move.  I eventually recovered to the point of cooking toasted ham’n’eggers and collapsed for good around nine without even looking at my computer.

Impossibilium ain’t just a song

Canadian scientists plus international cooperation FOR THE WIN.

Hmph. Listening to “The Future’s so Bright I Gotta Wear Shades” on a day like today on the way in…. wrongness, somehowerother.

Lovely time re chicken dinner at the ‘Villeans last night and then singing filk and other stuff. I HEART HEART HEART that 12 string of Tom’s and Peggy expressed surprise that I can actually play a 12 string now.  Didn’t mention that my left fumb now feels crabby.

Peter A at work has come back from another vacay with his lady wife, and once again they have brought me a tshirt, this time a flaming dragon from Tintagel.  This word will set off a long happy sigh in my parental units….

Mike got a phone interview.  He has passed the first gate… will he slay the dragon?

I KNOW TWO PEOPLE IN PERSON who have been omnominated for Hugos.  Ay!

In The Correction news…. Aughh.

Hey hey my my Ai Wei Wei

One of the most brilliant and humane artists of this or any century is Ai Wei Wei.  I recently saw a documentary segment on Frontline about him and both Jeff and I were blown away at how amazing he is.  He’s being set up for a long jail sentence.

The church spring potluck was last night.  It went very well and in the end, as always, there was enuff fud.  I contributed two entrées, set up, clean up, butter, a starch dish and the Tapioca Song and I was exhausted when I got home.  Paul turned up for as much as he could stay for and contributed his best ever quinoa salad and home made bread.

Face blindness

I just took a face blindness test at Faceblind.org and got 71 out of 72 faces correct.  I always would have thought myself better at recognizing faces than average, but to avoid bias I put myself down as average.  I’m going to ask family members to take the test.

Saw Jessica yesterday at the store.  She gave me a big hug, which is always welcome.

Church was awesome.  I for one give very ‘Apollonian’ homilies and this one “What I learned from Photography” was NOT intellectual at all, very heart centered and beauty centered, and a nice change it was.

Talked to Tammy, and how good to hear her voice.

I can haz clean clothes. Also got rid of 2 bags of clothes and gave my guitar tie dye shirt to one of the youths at church.

The soup for the soup lunch went over very well.  I stayed for clean up as I didn’t notice anybody volunteering for that, and then I drove Carol home.  Made hazelnut biscotti and chicken in gravy.

 

 

Too bad

I WISH I could talk about work in detail.  There was a communiqué from Finance yesterday that managed to combine Kafka, Jacques Tati and General Nivelle in its spirit, tone and usefulness.  The originator will be receiving one of Allegra’s Famous Emailsâ„¢. Since that about covers it without being too specific or blaming individuals, I’ll let that one go out into the world unchallenged.

Last night Jeff and I had purple potatoes, steamed carrots and onions, and the leftover pork chops.  The purple taters were so om nom nom.  I will do them mashed sometime for fun.

After supper we watched Capitalism, A Love Story which had the usual annoying Michael Moore tics (I prefer people with some dignity so I always hate it when he lets people cry on camera, but that’s me being a frikkin WASP there darlin’) but was otherwise very well done, and if I disliked the crony politicians of the Reagan, Clinton and Bush eras I loathe them now.  The scale of the plunder that has occurred and the short sightedness of it all disgust me to my core.  However, a collapse at this point is inevitable, and Canada and many other places will get dragged into the maelstrom, so everybody learn to grow food.

After the movie, I dragged myself out to the Puddleâ„¢, where Paul, Keith and Katie were also swimming and soaking.  It was very nice to hang around with them.  I didn’t actually swim, I just gave my back some relief from the horrors of being attached to me for a while.  Then I came home and slept until 6:03 in the morning, which is like a frikkin’ miracle.

Also, I finished a song in Songwriter (Walk Away)… the one that goes I have tried to walk away, but my thoughts will not wear shoes, I would pity my poor mind, if I had a mind to lose (which I wrote last summer but seems very apt these days).

I don’t know if any of the foregoing constitutes staying busy or not.  When I see what other people accomplish I feel pretty slow.  Anyway, to horse!  I need to get into work and flatten some paper.

 

Why it’s been bally ages since I posted a decent moose pic

I just had a giggly notion to google Moose Porn but I don’t want to see cheerful and inebriated white people in moose headdresses having at each other (for, brethren and sistern, think ye not that would be my portion in so googling?), so instead you can have this perfectly safe for work newspaper article courtesy of Cousin Gerald.

 

While you were looking at the safe moose pic, I went off and googled Moose Porn.  Now I can say, “Oh god, I’ve just seen a cam pic of a moose’s ass in rut.”  I told myself don’t go there, and I went there, and I’m sorry, and that’s how I know I’m not old yet, I keep doing entirely dumbass shit like that.

Pork chops with a crust of hazelnuts, dijon mustard, maple syrup, salt and pepper, lightly broiled, with nuked red potatoes and corn for supper.

Tonight I said, “Colin Ferrell’s accent when he’s not acting sounds like he’s trying to barf up the Blarney Stone.”

so grateful…. and a bit sad

Spent the evening of Peggy’s most recent b-day hanging around the Puddle (I swam eight lengths but boy is my back stiff this morning) and consuming mint tea and biscotti.  Highly recommended.  Paul and Tom were there too.

Last night I dreamed that Justin Bieber was dead and I was hired to squeal like a teenaged girl at one of his retrospectives, there being no actual teenaged girls to do the job.  I was giggling and squealing like a trooper when an unidentified woman about my age came up to me and shot me in the head with a Nerf gun.  And, such are the manifold blessings of my life, I woke the hell up.  No disrespect, but I think The Bieb has peaked.

My coffee is ready.  Jeff has consumed half a honeydew melon for breakfast, but I cannot bring myself to follow his example.

I get to see the Bean soon! My time off at the end of the month is rapidly filling up.

Kenneth Mars has passed away.

A selection of Valentines

I’m at an appointment this morning so I won’t be going to work to hand out Valentines, but I will share this with you. I thought of doing it yesterday afternoon but it was cooking and laundry after I got home and I couldn’t get excited about printing them out.

Guess I’m just lazy.  Snurk.

Homily went well.  Double snurk.  I took half the biscotti in and that worked out well… Peggy took the leftovers.

Most mornings I awaken

to the sound of Jeff tapping on his keyboard.  Sometimes it’s a cat and that staccato defooding sound in some very long-to-be-discovered corner.  Sometimes it’s the smell of a skunk penetrating through the window; sometimes it’s my natural clock, which spits me back out into consciousness anywhere between 2 and 7 am.  Sometimes it’s a leg cramp, and that’s what I got this morning.  I woke to pain pain pain and had a hell of a time getting my foot flat to the ground to get the muscle stretched out and the muscle – the same one I blew out running for the bus the year after I hurt my back – is still grumbling and hot.  Ah, but pain is what tells you that you’re alive.

Daughter Katie came over last night.  I picked her up after work (Dax tried to scare me by materializing next to my car window, but Katie had the kindness to warn me, so I let him know that he WOULD have given me a heart attack if I hadn’t been warned.  He also told me the size of his paycheck, which was respectable for his age and educational level) and then fed her and Jeff home baked schnitzel and veg, and we talked and watched CSI and the Mentalist, which amusingly enough had identical plots, and then we walked up to 7-11 where I got her bus tickets and milk and eggs for myself, waited with her for her bus and then walked home.  Canada Way is so noisy for pedestrians it’s practically deafening; two streets in Jeff and I enjoy a very peaceful little enclave, no barking dogs or noisy neighbours, and yet we’re smack in the center of Edmonds, 10th, Kingsway and Canada Way, all busy arterial streets.  We do get train noise at night as it echoes in the Fraser Valley and comes up the hill; we get the eerie booming noises at night that are actually special effects explosions down in that movie set off of Marine down in the flats; and we get airplane noise a fair bit, although rarely at very low levels, and hardly ever helicopter noise, which scares the crap out of me.

Soon there will be a visit by the rest of Paul’s family to abide for a while in the bosom of the alternative justice system of BC.  I have decided that with all my quirks and drama I’m best off staying away.  My mother is hosting them and that will be the right end of the family to shelter and help them while this goes on; who can say what will happen but I earnestly hope for some closure and a feeling that it’s what John would have wanted rather than a trial and jail for the woman whose inattentive driving killed him.

I am very seriously thinking of either giving Ziva to a family member or selling her.  I have taken so much pleasure in owning her that it may seem a little odd, but if I’m going to be that close to the new location of the office and I can still borrow Jeff’s car occasionally to shop, I should be in good shape to have enjoyed her and then released her back into the wild.  Neither of the kids have evinced much interest because they don’t really have the cash flow.

Ocelots at the Seattle zoo.

I am waiting for Jeff to awaken so I can cook him breakfast.  Finn pancakes and coffee; I’m going to have mine with applewood smoked cheddar.

I have shippiles of work to do today; I have Valentines to create.  I am planning on sneaking into work on Sunday after church and putting them in people’s mail trays.  Every year it’s the same thing.  People are travelling, or they never check their mail trays, and the next thing you know you’re getting thanked for the Valentine on March 1st.

I brought home the flowers Jeff and the folks gave me and they are still gorgeous and sweetly scented.  I know cut flowers are frowned on by some people in my connection, but I will never frown.  Their colour and scent brightened my work area and made many other people happy but me for the balance of the week, and now they’ll be pretty in my kitchen until they’re done.

I send a hug into the ether for Lady Miss B and warm wishes to her hub and miniB, and a big old mushy group hug for Tom and Peggy, my folks and brother (nearly typed bother, and that was NOT my intent), Scott for digging up the name of the psychologist for me, my coworkers Mike Y and Hassan and Kev and Patricia, and I blow kisses at Veronica.  Sneetchy scowling at some other folks for workpain, but I won’t name them. More hugs for Rev. Katie who visited me in sickness and hell that’s what ministers are s’posed to do, and Sue, Carol, Kathleen and Gary for a really good board meeting.  I wish the contractors working on the new building the time, money and safety to do a good job.

I wish a lot of things.  It’s strange to think that this time last week I wished for nothing but cessation of wishing.

Life is good.  I’m going to go work on Dandelions Dreaming now, it’s the best thing I can think of for Peggy’s birthday.  Later today I’m going to talk to Jeff about capturing video from games so I can do something really kickass for Left4Dead/Rising in a Zombieland Redemption, which is the new and deliberately awkward title for my zombie choon, and it may get even longer, at which point I’ll shorten it again.  Such is the creative process; you put your best shit in, you take you best shit out, you put your best shit in, and you shake it all about.

W00t

Off to the Big 6 for brekky.  I’m leaving straight for work after that.

Didn’t mention I had my planning for this year meeting with my boss yesterday.  I told him about my challenges and he is supportive.  We slogged through some stuff that was quite hard, brainstormed a bit and then he made it clear to me why I respect him so much.  He knows what’s important, full stop.

I have long since finished the homily for Sunday but now I’m working on the framing words to take people into and out of the homily without freaking them out too badly.  I think I will manage nicely; we’ll see on the day.

Happy sigh for meals with friends

Man when the hell did I get old enough to have a friend for 45 years?  C’est bizarre, ça.

Anyway, Bonnie has a few grey hairs and perhaps her smile lines are a little more chiselled than I remember, but she is STILL BONNIE, the petite and energetic and outdoorsy and powerfully intelligent friend of my childhood who looks at least 15 years younger than her lying ass birth certificate, and she is a happy person to be around.

We watched pictures of John on the laptop and Bonnie brought a photo album which had pictures of her mom and John and various rellies in happier times.  I took some pics but I won’t post them without permission.

The Royal City Thai restaurant is assenkicken.  They must get by on the lunch trade, the joint was deserted the entire time we were there but the food was nothing short of spectacular.  It was $130 with tax and tip for five hungry adults, there was about one meal’s worth of leftovers, and there was alcohol too… gosh the soup was stellar.  Service stellar too.  Attentive without being pestery.  A find, I must say.

Keith and Kate both came AND I AM SO HAPPY about a) Paul suggesting it and b) how happy Bonnie was to see them and vice versa.  Katie got to see the only surviving picture of John on a skateboard.  I said to her afterwards that alone was worth the price of admission.  Who’da thunk it? Gave Katie and Keith rides home.  Jeff’s subpar and didn’t attend but there’s a whole host of gut wrenching bacteria writhing around the GVRD these days; I hope they don’t sink their little pseudopods into him too far.

Ziva is burning lots of oil.  I should check levels before setting out tomorrow, and I’m probably looking at engine work.  Jeebus, I ain’t paid for the last lot yet.  I have to stay alive, I have two dependents, one metal, one furry.

I couldn’t find the god forsaken USB microphone, so I bought another one.  If the original turns up I’ll give it to Paul.  I tried to buy a slide whistle but they didn’t have one. Twelve on order and no slide whistles, what’s this world coming to. I MUST HAVE A SLIDE WHISTLE. It’s impossible to be a living cartoon character without one.

I can hear Miss Margot’s stertorous breathing. I cleaned her eye gunk this morning and she accepted it with good grace (filled 10 saline soaked qtips with her eye gunk).  The second I tried to clean out her ears, World War Kitty was declared and I beat a hasty, but integumentarily intact retreat.

Anyway I have an appt. with Mr. Methocarbamol followed by a long sleep on the complaisant Millie the Mattress.  Tomorrow morning I’m going to fire up the computer, get the order of service done, and pray to the shade of Ada Babbage that the server reboot contemplated yesterday at work will make a proper workday possible.  Also, I have a one on one with my boss (who is really, really awesome, and I’d say that anyway, thanks) tomorrow.  I haven’t exactly told him anything, but I will, tactfully.  Hopefully before the half dozen or so coworkers who read my blog rat me out.  And no, ratting me out is neither polite nor accurate; I’m just shouldering my responsibilities again, and grace and temperance are threatening to bitch slap me if I don’t stand up straight under the load.