I announced to Jeff that we are eating that entire batch of biscotti ourselves. Sorry about the previously announced apportioning of the spoils.
Category: Food
Errands and Paul and biscotti fae
got a call midmorning from Katie saying that what with Paul being alone in the house while Keith and Alex are off in Saamich and Dax and Katie being at work he might be lonely.
So I used the opportunity to drop off his household’s biscotti portion, get a meal into him at Pho Edmonds, ran biscotti over to Sue and to Peggy, walked in Fraser Foreshore (JEEEBUS it was cold and Paul was definitely having mobility issues, although he perked up after a few hundred metres), and picked up a bag of walkway salt for his household after I noticed they were almost out of it (paid a swingeing great price for it too but it’s 20 kilos and who knows how long the salt will last in the stores, so I’m glad I did it, glad, I tell you), and then a couple of party favours from the Bohemian.
Once again he greeted me by asking me whose idea it was to take away his licence. I told him his license is in his wallet, same as always, and now that he’s had symptoms like chatting with people who aren’t there it’s too dangerous for him to drive. If he wants to book and pass a drivers test in BC he can drive again no matter what his doctor says, and he objected most strenuously to this and asserted that I couldn’t pass a drivers test either and my driving was terrible. As best as I can make out, he wants me to get a dementia diagnosis as well, but as long as my LPI on Lumosity is over 1400 I’m not doing any such goddamned thing. My performance stats are above 80th percentile for every game for people my age and over 95th percentile for 5 out of the 7 categories (I do worst in math but still better than 4/5 people my age). I do not have dementia. Has driving in Vancouver, recently rated the 2nd worst city in NA for traffic, RUINED my driving??? POSSIBLY. But I don’t need to surrender my licence yet.
Since Paul says this to me every time we get together in an attempt to get me to admit it’s my fault, I stopped inserting myself in the picture and told him what to do to fix it. Thirty seconds later he tells me he keeps missing appointments and he’s anxious about his skull scan. The lack of insight which characterizes his ailment is a sore trial, but he has not stopped being loveable good company when he’s not grumping about the shitty hand he’s been dealt.
Peggy’s biscotti response:
No one seems to know where the bag of biscotti came from. I tested them for poison and survived. It was necessary to have a second test to be sure.
I am suspicious that they came from you and just wanted to say thank you
My response to this:
It was hilarious. I tried the door and came in. I said, Hello this house. Then I said Hello this house, louder, and Kali ran up barking and I assumed the sniff hand position and said in a jolly voice, relax Kali you know me. I could hear voices (?) coming from the downstairs bathroom, the door of which was closed, and not wanting to linger and loving the idea that I could just manifest biscotti in your house, I put the biscotti on the counter, ensured that the dog did not escape and the door was in fact latched, and departed, to Paul, who was waiting in the car.
Sue’s response:
I was out getting a mani/pedi and when I came home, love was at my door.Sue
That was so sweet of you. I’m sorry I wasn’t home but not sorry cause it was such a wonderful surprise. I shall have biscotti with hot sweet tea this very evening.
Alex is coming
Alex will be here for a sleepover tonight.
Two loads of laundry. 19336 words.
I made split pea with ham soup yesterday. I’d bought the ingredients but hadn’t got my shit together to make it. The soup filled the house with a heavenly aroma; then the flatus begins.
I hope you all have a wonderful day.
posted these yesterday on social media
bathtub dive and Alex pickup
I just found out you can sing into the extra soundhole on this Riversong ukulele and get absolutely wild harmonic effects. Also, yesterday I learned THE ORIGINAL LYRICS to the ‘2 & 20 Blues’ and they completely change the tone of the song. I shall herewith demonstrate: The very first line is “There’s evil men in this DOGGONE town” but the way my ex (and Dr Filk) taught it was ‘GODDAMN’ and that really changes things. First is worldweary, second is angry, and the song is resigned, not angry. The very last line is “You may say that I’m wrong but you know I FEEL all right.” I was taught ‘I’LL BE’. The singer is OKAY IN THE PRESENT, not sometime in the future. But right now! The song’s about grabbing life where and when you can, not hoping you’ll be happy sometime.
Thank you for attending this bathtub dive into 2 & 20 Blues by Linda Morrison, pressed 1981.
more fizzling and chortling
My my my.
So the family meeting that was supposed to happen about Paul’s future did not happen because Katie wanted to be involved and she couldn’t be until tomorrer, which is now today.
“Beep beep beep” goes the alarm on the door as Jeff leaves the house to get some Timmy Ho’s.
Ah, wonder what wonders of glaziery he will turn up.
Anyhoo, while I’m over there having lunch because that was still on offer Jan phoned Keith and told him she was in town and could be at Edmonds station soon (she was a walk-on for the ferry because she cheerfully admitted she had zero stomach for driving around the lower mainland, which looks like the wild west to everyone else in BC on the media what with every truck on the road having bad brakes, thousands of people on the road driving under suspension or without ICBC coverage, and the one in one hundred likelihood that the fucker in the Audi next to you has had A FUCKING SNOOTFUL at 11:30 in the morning and will blow so far over that the cop administering the test visibly flinches). Keith of course joyfully accepted and since he’d been given back his car by Suzanne (that all went smoothly for Keith, as usual it was a gong show on Suzanne’s end because her and bureaucracy are ‘mongoose vs cobra: the rematch’), he went to pick her up and then went and picked up foodicles for supper and picked up his nephew from school and we all chatted in the living room at Caspell Junction and drank lashings of tea.
Alex came home and I briefly interacted with him before he got on Minecraft (Keith was also playing with him for a while) and then Katie got home. She was supposed to drive Alex out to be with his dad in Langley for an overnight after which hang out with Jessica for the evening and when she was making final phone arrangements with Daxus, he pointed out that it might make more sense if she stayed put and he picked Alex up and then she could go straight to Coquitlam, because I’ve done that transfer once with Katie and it’s AN IMMENSE AMOUNT OF DRIVING. (Dax is keeping his place for the foreseeable, for various good reasons.) So Katie got to stay and visit with Jan AND THEN NITA AND HER DOG ELLA ARRIVED. SWEET PUPPY. Likes people, not crazy about other dogs.
Where was Ryker in all this? Daddy Mike’s care day, safe in his other grandma’s care.
I was very emotionally exhausted by that point and also realized that I might be in someone’s parking spot so I made my way home, whereupon I was made aware that Mike had called.
He came over, bearing a brand new ukelele. He played it a bit (sounded fantastic) and then I realized he had it customized with my name – backwards. So welcome Argella, you are my latest instrument. Unlike most ukes, Argella has a spine that runs her length, so she would actually be the single most useful ukelele for a bar fight, plus she has a tuner and pickup. HEAVY tho so I need to find that uke strap.
Then we watched The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent with him and ate halibut and chips and also shrimp and took much joy in our little social gathering.
My bucket, it’s full. THEN I GOT ENOUGH SLEEP. Woke up just in time to set up my medications for the week and take them this morning and then Jeff came back from Timmy Ho’s so we had a Tim(e) Team breakfast (the Smallhythe episode, the one where Tony sprays Phil with a hose.)
I am so happy right now. It won’t last but I report it so I can come back and relive it later.
still haven’t left the house LOL
Making biscotti and chicken stir fry yesterday put paid to my mobility ambitions. I will get going today, I promise. Cleaned out the kitchen compost bins and hoooeeee did they need it. Anyway I’m having tea and chicken stir fry for breakfast, because damn it was good. I’ve been watching a Chinese lady cook on facebook videos and she really inspired me.
17529 words.
Found out there’s a samosa factory on Beresford…. I intend to visit there today too. Hopefully Paul will be in the mood for errands.
Absolutely dreading the family meeting on Friday. However, if Paul reacts poorly, he won’t get asked in future; stuff has to happen whether he’s composed enough to take part or not.
I’m reviewing myself
First biscotti I’ve baked in many many long months are ready. Time to head out to deliver them. Or not. I’m feeling sessile, again again. As soon as I stopped baking them the stove threw an F1 error so I guess the stove has quit (it’s either a control board or a door sensor.)
Got an hour into Babylon (2022) and realized I literally could not sit through it in a theatre; my viewing habits are so fussy I’m thinking it should have been a mini series so you didn’t get more than an hour of it at a time. Margot Robbie is, as always, eye-popping. I learned from her wikipedia article that she extemporaneously slapped Leo DiCaprio as part of her audition for ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ and I AM SO HERE FOR THAT FACTOID. Anyhoo…
I committed many voracious re-reads of (the almost totally fictional, thoroughly and salaciously scandalous and culturally influential Kenneth Anger book) ‘Hollywood Babylon’ as a youngster, so I know ‘how this story ends’ (please see my song “Slimfast and Methadone” for my reaction to this story line which I wrote almost fifteen years ago); and I can’t *feel* anything about it that the moviemakers might intend; not a good way to watch a movie. Knowing the source material too well is cloying; we’ve known young good-looking people are just meatpuppets for the rich for HOW LONG? NOW?
This is now the fourth or fifth full length movie I haven’t been able to finish in the last month. I blame the pandemic. It’s me. I know it. Is Babylon technically deft and scathingly funny? Yeah, very much so. I’m just a lump of melted down critique rn. So my review is of me. Allegra is having a little moment of wondering when I stopped being able to sit through a two hour film. In my defence, ‘Babylon’ (2022) is three hours long. Apart from more inclusion of Black, Asian and gay characters, the novelty of wretched excess in the service of entertainment for the masses has kinda worn off for me. So it’s not really a review, like I said, and it’s very very funny in spots. I just…. can’t. I’m tired of this story.
I think I need to get back to work on my own stories. I spend a lot of time thinking about Totally Boned. The whole point of it is two broken people find each other and start healing, and since neither of them are conventionally attractive men, it’s not something that would ever get adapted as a script or screenplay. (Plus in my universe if you kill someone, even to protect loved ones, you don’t get to Jack Ryan your way out of it thinking that ‘they had it coming.’ Two mothers are now grieving dead sons, even if they were total assholes, they probably got mom flowers.) Brad and Omar would both get ‘glowups’. Remember the white man laughing at the warthogs getting frisky and the Black man who was acting as his guide remonstrating with him, “They are beautiful to each other.” That doesn’t fly in visual media….
a little list
- Pork chops of superlative tenderness achieved. Last two were fossilized so it made a nice change. Roasted potatoes and Brussels sprouts dressed with sesame oil to go with.
- Three whole loads of laundry. Not put away of course but I’ll make an attempt.
- We’re going to get a buttload of cold weather. I’m hoping the furnace makes it.
- Brief call with Katie; she’s managing.
- Janice did not come this weekend.
- 15275 words
- Twitter is continuing to make circling the void/drain/black hole noises.
omnibus again
- today’s wordle can best be solved if you put the word ‘Arrrr!’ in front of it.
- Halibut for lunch yesterday. It was so capacious it served for the rest of the day. I know it’s got a lot of salt but goddam I want the leftover poutine for brekky
- Pork chops for lunch or supper today. Johnson Pork is superior, just mentioning it again.
- No word comes from Caspell Junction. Is Janice there? Is she not there? I’m almost scairt to ask.
- Fascist brand ‘Diagolon’ leader Jeremy MacKenzie has been fired by Scotiabank. He reports to the Western Standard “I have 30 days to find alternative means of financing the mortgage on the home, where my children live & everything else you could imagine.” I can imagine a lot of scummy things living with a neoNazi so thanks for that little kick at the end of sentence there. I personally have no beef with this kids, who will either turn out to be just like him or the BUCKwildest climate activists in Canada, that’s just how things turn. In a letter he received from the bank, no other reason than, “The bank has determined this relationship is outside of its risk appetite,” was given. LOLOLOL
- I was disturbed to view a Hudson & Rex episode (S5E7) in which the writers came out firmly against MAiD being offered after a deliberate medical failure to treat illness – regarding prisoners, in jail. Not a peep about disabled people tho… only watch the show for Mayko Nguyen and the dog, Diesel, anyway, I grumpily add. Once you start looking for the Canadian cultural lietmotif of disability erasure it’s frelling everywhere. thank you @mssinenomine for helping shift my viewpoint (which still needs work, my internalized ableism IS IMMENSE) *this item copied from my twitter
- Everything peaceful around here. Time to locate caffeine and squeeeeeky cheese curds on poutine.
Visit from Mike
/ the great Guilt Trip. more on that later.
He brought a bag of perfect mandarins and little oranges for new year.
We ordered from Fusioncore Japanese, the three of us, and watched some TV and hung out and talked. After Jeff went to bed Mike asked the my uke that he just restrung with very plangent strings and he played (in rapid succession) about ten tunes that I had no idea he knew on ukulele, all the way from Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out to Who’ll Stop the Rain. I mean, he only just BOUGHT a uke. He’s absolutely loving the instrument.
All in all a good day, even if I left a message for Paul and never followed up so I never got him out of the house. And slept more than I should. And didn’t pick up my inderal.
And after Mike handed the uke back I said, I have something unpleasant to say and I have to get it over with.
“I tried so hard to love the Blue Lava guitar you gave me. I tried playing it, playing with the cool electronics, compose on it. I couldn’t love it. I know usually when I get a new instrument the other instruments are mad and they are left alone while I have New Instrument Energy with My New Fave. But it never happened with this guitar. May I give it back to you?”
And he said thank you for telling me.
I knew where all the bits and bobbles were, and packed it up along with the Instant Pot insert and Bouillon he left her from New Years. I felt so relieved because Mike just didn’t take it the wrong way.
I am so fortunate in my friends.
everyone have a hellafine day. Wordle and Lumosity done, I’m in good shape today.
COVID data resource for Canadians.
14678 words
Car’s back
Paul insisted on paying for half of it. It was the rear O2 sensor. Parts and labour were well under $400 which was fair. Keith, because he is wonderful, took care of driving on the ‘picking up the car’ end. I am fortunate.
Suzanne is very much enjoying Lucky. Like many Russian Blue coloured cats, Lucky enjoys playing fetch.
I have to run off to the pharmacy this morning. I didn’t note that I was out of Metformin so I’m taking care of that as soon as it opens. In the meantime I think I’m going to make myself an eggie on toastie.
left a message for Keith
Didn’t hear back. I’m assuming all went well.
Wordle in 3 this morning. I suspect that Suzanne will laugh when she gets it. I know I did.
Weather continues warm, overcast and intermittently rainy; no break for many days.
The Russians lied their way through the ceasefire and are fumbling their way through the Donbas attack. As the weaponry between the nations equalizes thanks to NATO Putin’s desire to use nukes must be well nigh insupportable. I’m sure his people, over whom the fallout will land, are right there with him. In the last episode of first season The Peripheral a bunch of kleptocrat Russians in London talk about the Putin diaspora and I involuntarily smiled. The show hasn’t been renewed by Amazon yet but it’s apparently just being finalized.
Jeff and I, despite our very commendable urge to stay the hell home, went to London Thugs yesterday. As we came down the escalator (I was wearing the highest standard mask that we own, Jeff had a KN95) we saw that we were walking into a store where no one including the staff were wearing masks. Needless to say we didn’t hang about. I purchased an alarm clock (a really nice one) and more importantly a proper charger and charging cable for the little non phone Nokia Jeff loaned me, since I was not consistently able to get a charge out of the old one. Once again I spent the money and got a two metre cable and a decent charger and glory be, all of my charging issues are done and the non phone charges almost instantly now.
We should probably go do a shop this am, got no more eggies.
14223 words
Lovely night of sleep after a lovely bathe and brush-up. Finally recovering from a couple of ragged nights. Jeff got me a chicken breast over caesar salad for dins last night and it was nom. A couple of amazing pieces of garlic bread came with – it’s the simple things that make life better…
Blood pressure is fine.
Mike would probably hate us but that one last piece of slowly drying prime rib (literally all the other leftovers were long since eaten) in the fridge was cut up and given to the crows (with peanuts). GONE pretty much instantly. Curvebeak must have been reproductively successful, there’s another curvebeaked crow out there, a little bit smaller, showing the raven lineage.
Lumosity up next.
Anyway, I am definitely feeling much less like whining, fussing and crying this morning so let’s see what I can do to either make my life better or someone else’s today. Thanks mOm for the kind words. I try to write amusing things and when I manage it’s lovely.
quietly productive
I emptied and ran the dishwasher, wiped down the hellhole surfaces in the kitchen closest to the compost buckets and got most of the rain of tomato out of the microwave, trained the cat, made and thoroughly enjoyed a coffee, possibly wrote a song, did my wordle and lumosity training, clipped Buster’s claws, made ‘meat and potatoes’ for lunch, sent a thousand words to mOm, figured out what my next couple of scenes are (although I’m not putting pressure on myself to write) and I generally luxuriated in the life of a retired person. I took my meds at the right time. I stayed hydrated. I put in eyedrops before I went to bed.
That’s what I’m supposed to do, right?
Watched the Netflix film the Pale Blue Eye. Harry Melling as Edgar Allan Poe was wonderful. Harry Melling’s grandad was the second Doctor Who, who knew. Gillian Anderson’s bizarre mom to a bizarre family was …. bizarre and hypercreepy. Christian Bale as the haunted detective was quite effective. I really enjoyed the script. Unlike many scripts (many, many; hear me whine) set in historical times, it neither gracelessly dropped modern slang like horseshit into a griddle nor overdid the ceremony and style of days of speech in days of yore. I didn’t hear a single anachronism. Do you have any idea how pleasant that is for a writer? I mean there were many constructions that would likely not have happened in the 1830s, but nothing so far from contemporary usage that it was repellent. For that alone, huit sur dix.
Jeff Bezos, may the intertwined Fates of a thousand cultures give him his reward, has, through Amazon, bought an Indian publishing house called Westland Publishing. It is one of the few publishing houses in India that has the wit and courage to publish ANYTHING that challenges Hindutva. (Spoiler alert, I think that all countries are idiotic, but once you have a settled state that calls itself a democracy, you should perhaps not support a political ideology that FIGHTS LIKE HELL AGAINST PLURALISTIC DEMOCRACY BECAUSE HINDUS ARE JUST BETTER, KK? Plus the caste system is groovy, men own women’s bodies, marital rape is super cool, cops can kill women who report rapes after raping them again, and Muslims are arson targets) OKAY maybe I’m being a racist asshole, oh look, I’m not. I really don’t think that China and India holding hands over kicking the shit out of Muslims is a good look for either country; people are dying in riots pogroms and political reeducation camps in both countries. Anyway, Bezos is literally supporting global fascism by doing that and we already knew he was a cruel billionaire, but HONESTLY can’t he just fucking stop.
Anyway, the closure of the publishing house means that hundreds of titles are no longer available. Absolutely no word on how and when they could be available elsewhere. There’s more than one way to be fash. Having the money to buy good things that support democracy and discourse, and destroy them (huLLLLLO Elongated Greaserat) is fascist.
a six year old is in custody for shooting his teacher. The cops didn’t arrest the person responsible for leaving a loaded pistol out. Everything you need to know about gun culture in the US in one story. (from CNN website, 6-year-old in custody after shooting teacher in Virginia, police chief says By Amanda Musa and Jennifer Feldman, CNN
Updated 7:19 AM EST, Sat January 7, 2023)
sadly no mochi
I lookit evvywhere in the freezer aisles, no go. I imagine if it was in a more Chinese neighbourhood it would be different. Do I REALLY want to go to T n T? er no. I’ll keep my eyes peeled when I’m out though.
Jeff and I are still enjoying the leftovers from our SUMPTUOUS REPAST™. He really wishes he’d been in better shape for the main event, but leftovers rule!
Jeri Lynn broke a rib coughing. Story of our lives these days. Jeffrey her husband is being very helpful (it’s his default setting; he’s one of the dearest and kindest of men, not that anykind else would be worthy of her, lol.)
Very much looking forward to the new season of Miss Scarlett and the Duke. Yes, it’s Victorian copaganda, but we do so love the principals, and mOm enjoys making a recommendation for a show to us once in a way.
I stole Jeff’s Oodie after I gave mine to mOm and I’m practically living in it; if I’m wearing it I don’t need the heater on in my room at night.
Thinking with longing of my friends and family today; Dave in his east facing eyrie at Bathurst and Sheppard, the jasmine and the sandalwood. Peggy in her sprawling house filled with family and TOoo MucH sTUff. All the Dunnett folk across the country and elsewhere, madly sending greetings on the chat line. All the Statpower folks. I could have seen Jerome and didn’t. I’m not exactly phobic about public spaces but I ‘git anxious’ that’s for sure. Mike in his west facing eyrie along Kingsway. No sunbathing in December on his balcony, that’s for sure. Alexis ensconced in the family eyrie in the West End. Feeding hummingbirds; tracking our insaniam producendo weather. Jarmo and Susanna and Ninja the kitty, grieving still and always, since Ville (may his name be remembered) passed over the holidays. Tammy – it wasn’t enough, what I saw of her. Glenn – how I would enjoy just sitting and drinking coffee with you somewhere, to roll all this madness and sadness around and try to get a grip on it. Rob P, who told me YEARS ago to watch Farscape. Sue and Marylke and Katie S. and Ivy and Madelyn. Talks and shows and canoe trips and their deep listening. M&D and Ontie Mary. Missing Jim. I barely saw him these last five years, but I can’t think about his death without an inner wail that comes from my toes.
I should call Jan. There are a lot of shoulds. Too many.
This is my heart’s longing, that you all be well and facing 2023 with the love and equanimity we will all need. It’s gonna be rough folks and we need to be helpful and soft to counteract it all.
now that was a meal
I made the gravy (roast drippings sufficient) and the salad and the roasted potatoes; Mike made the shrimps with garlic, the three rib prime rib, the airfried brussel sprouts. Jeff and I and Mike ate ourselves into a state of pleasant repletion and I just ducked out of cleanup long enough to brag about it. Mike dry aged the roast for a week. Unbelievably tender and juicy.
superb meal, no notes. We’re lucky dogs and that was an incredible start to 2023, thank you o founder of the feast.
653 words on ‘The New Guy’.