Category: Al K. Hall

Jericho Beach Folk Music

Every Tuesday in the summer one of the upper rooms at the Jericho Sailing Club turns into a Celtic jamfest with one of the highest quality open stages in history (and I’m not saying that because I was there last night). Here’s the link…

Anyway, Linda Allen played her deceptively simple folk tunes, most of which could be Unitarian hymns, such are the sentiments expressed. She writes labour friendly songs, too, which made me wish Dr Filk could be there, as well as a certain co-worker who once worked for a certain aircraft company in Washington state. There was a song about the two feminists who lobbied to get women the vote in Washington state as well, which was perfectly charming and which she performed for Christine Gregoire (current governator of WA).
I performed Buy me a Beer and Wish That I Knew Why. Rick Keating is coming by next week and I represented for Lady Miss Banjola when I innocently remarked “Trouble come by here?” to which Lynn responded with feeling, “Oh trouble will be right in this room,” which made me smirk.

At one point Linda needed a music stand, so I flounced up to the front and became “Allegra, the amazing human music stand,” to the appreciation of the performer and the amusement of the crowd. Linda then sang a song that was irresistably funny, so I had to Zen out and try to keep my shoulders from shaking with suppressed laughter.

Later in the show she had another song that she needed her music for so I reprised my role, this time taking the weight of her music book on my knees which made life a lot easier, and it was a much sadder song, so staying steady wasn’t so hard. I was moved to tears half a dozen times last night. Those looking for mad guitar skills or a strong voice are encouraged to go see another performer though. I’m glad I sat up front.

It took me almost two hours to get there by bus from SFU, and I took the wrong bus as it turns out so I did a LOT of walking. So I was very happy to get my hands on Raven Cream Ale on tap – a brew I was introduced to me by LTGW at the Brickhouse earlier this year. The weather on the deck was glorious and I watched kids and dogs and boats and sunset with a feeling of layered contentment. And a very civilized woman named Jane gave me a lift to Burrard Station, which meant I got home at midnight instead of one.

News roundup

Hurricane forecast accuracy is reduced, but you’re not supposed to complain about it.

Pride has two faces. 

Alcohol protects against rheumatoid arthritis?  I’ll drink to that !!  Ooh, and further down it says that breastfeeding longer than 13 months protects against rheumatoid arthritis as well!  (May protect, anyway, according to preliminary research…)

Junk DNA isn’t really junk?

Monty Python was wrong…. there is no Universally Funny Joke.

The majority of mammalian genes tick to a circadian clock.

Sundry and various

It was with horror, amusement and a lingering sense of having my hand in some kind of psychic cookie jar that I learned at Grace Hicks’ memorial service yesterday that one of the Beacon Church ladies is a ‘lurker’ on this blog.  I will refer to her as Aunt Ev until she steps up and gives herself a moniker. Picture the most well-dressed, soignee individual, approaching six feet in height, who took up community theater acting in the last few years, the possessor of what I consider to be the best hairstyle at the church, & a wicked sense of humour and an ability to be the only person in the room who thinks something without caving to social pressure in expressing it – picture smarts, a really cool hubby, hospitality that is both gracious and practical… Yes, I could spend a while enumerating her virtues, attributes, and accomplishments and not run out of things to praise.  Welcome!
Grace’s memorial service was everything a service like that should be.  Well attended without being a crush of people – a small enough gathering that everybody who wanted to speak memories had air time – excellent food and company – many pictures of her life, growing up in Kelleher SK – I sat off in one far corner (I only met her the once) and solicited memories of her from various Beaconites.  I salute you, Grace – you were a truly remarkable woman.  Her middle son characterized her with a single word – supportive.  There’s something to the sinews of the Saskatchewan farm women that is truly nation building.

Then, oh then.  Right next door to the funeral home was a…. Long and McQuade.  So if I’m with Tom and Peggy, musical co-conspirators since longtime, I’m going to stay out of a Long and McQuade?  I got a mandolin chord chart, located a really nice Sublime ball cap which I may pick up for Katie’s grad, and watched Tom and Peggy cruise the acoustic guitar and electric bass rooms.  I saw a parlor guitar that had me drooling, and for some reason started jonesing on an electric violin, but managed to get out with only the chord chart.

Then the folks dropped me off at the Braid station, and then I went and sat around at Lougheed Station and got on the 110 to get to Brother Jerome’s.  I was the ONLY person on the bus for most of the run, and that was okay.  Got off at the Greentree Village stop, lugging my beer and weenies, computer, Georgia Straight and umberella and chord chart in the pouring bloody rain, and got there really early, only one other person showed up, whom I won’t name because whilst demonstrating her fabulous ability to do splits and other feats of agility and flexibility, she whacked herself on the eyebrow (same place I got myself when I was a kid and wiped out on the ice in the neighbour’s yard) and probably ended up getting a stitch or two in hospital.

As always Jerome and Shannon threw a partay of unmixed blessings (well, except for the gal wot had the accident) and stunning food (Mike’s grace note, a bucket of chewy candy) and a really really great soundtrack. (Much U2, Warren Zevon, Tom Petty, Coldplay, etc). There was beer, massage and chicken kebabs; there was Wii (I abstained), many laughs, some philosophy, and Shannon bought the same plates I did at Ikea, which made me laugh…. Oh, and Heather admired a couple of books of Jerome’s and he handed them to her.  He said, “My mother gave me those and told me somebody would come along and want them, so take them.”  (It’s the Urantia book and the concordance, if anybody cares.)
Today I head off to Augur Inn to do one last widdy bit of touchup and cleaning, but first I’m going to try to straighten out my bedroom, do laundry and more to the point PUT AWAY laundry, and maybe do something slothful like have a hot bath and give myself a facial.  The living room side of the apartment is reasonably tidy, but the other side is definitely THE DARK SIDE.

sociable evening

RobofNine ran his hands over my new MacBook and got wordpress to behave by installing Firefox.  Alas, he did not put an icon on the desktop ere he left, which caused me an untold two minutes of anxiety, but now all is well.

Katie came for a visit (she is sleeping under the quilt five generations of her family worked on) and Mike & Heather came by as well and we went for a walk and drank beer and ate the apple pie they brought.

Spoke to Peggy about the arrangements for getting to Grace Hicks’ memorial service.

Spoke super briefly to Chipper.

And Katie spoke with her grandma, and all is right with the world.

Nothing to say

…except I made a herculean effort to clean my apartment, and now it turns out that nobody is coming tonight!!!!

 

OH NOZ…. I guess I get to go home and surf the internet in my skivvies instead of getting tech support.  Rob of Nine is putting an offer in on a house in Langley so he won’t be able to help me with my computer. 

 

Then, tomorrow, a memorial service and then a party at Brother Jerome’s.

 

Ran into Brian C in the liquor store last night and he gave me a ride home!!!  See how little it takes to make me happy.

Augur Inn, small amount of dancing, glorious family news

Really, I should have eaten something last night; that would have fixed it so I wouldn’t have had to be bear led back to Patricia’s. Must remember to lay down the carbs before the alcohol. You would think at my advanced age…. didn’t stop me from having a good time though.

I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and cleaned at the Augur Inn today. Paul drove me and Keith back to my place and now we’re waiting for Katie….

The listing agreement will get signed tomorrow and the sign will go on the lawn then. We’re expecting it to take about 5 days to get on the MLS after the listing is signed and then the weekend after that we’ll have our first open house. We’re putting it on for… well, let’s see what it says when we’ve signed the agreement, don’t want to count my chickens.

Speaking of counting chickens, Keith no longer has to wonder about school. He has been accepted into the Dispensing Optician program of Douglas College and I am so proud I could burst. But I won’t, that would just be gross.

More cleaning

I am off to the Augur Inn for more cleaning, and then a visit with Gail.  Hope everybody has a great day – the weather is simply glorious.  Which means, of course, that the chances are very good that I will be sitting on the administrative side of a table in a reception center after the Fraser floods….  Pray that it cools down and doesn’t rain too much….. or that we just get lucky.  The disaster planners are thinking about numbers that are just mind croggling.

Fridge contents

Are now milk, orange juice, one burrito and 13 beers (please note, the beers are preparatory for beers on Friday at my place – I hadn’t actually planned to consume them all). Cleaned Dr. Filk’s old apartment last night for two hours. Paul gave me a lift and helped haul groceries, which I appreciate.

Dan P and Dan T were both there working. For those of you familiar with ‘the dungeon’ most of the upholstered walls are now gone.

I actually ate a healthy breakfast this morning! Organic crunchy peanut butter and organic whole wheat bread.

Seared catfish at the work cafeteria today. That new cook is something else. I love the work cafeteria. They don’t even blink if I’m into them for $75 (and they know I’m good for it.)

First call on the new phone line last night, to the folks. Thanks much for the material and moral support, ’tis appreciated. You will be amused to note, after our conversation, that the first living thing I saw this morning that wasn’t human was a coyote, a young one, trotting along the edge of the parking lot south of my apartment.

Moved

 

I have moved in and spent the night in the new place – and I slept from 11:30 until 6:45.  My fridge contains one burrito and 7 beers.  I intend to improve upon this situation, expexially with respect to the beers, later today.  Okay, maybe some vegetables.  They will look lonely in that fridge, though.  There’s a nice big freezer in the fridge. 

Cleaning has commenced in Dr. Filk’s old suite.  

I have lots of other news, but nothing for public consumption. 

 

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….

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?

Rainy day, sunny heart

It’s entirely crappy outside, but for some reason I feel way better about the world today.  Keith seems almost entirely healed up from his wisdom removal (he isn’t, but the swelling is way down) and he is hardly using any painkillers.  He is steadfastly opposed to the unnececessary use of any drugs, prescription or not.  Katie is cheerful about the world too.  She’s decided not to get too upset about anything.  Of course I could go on at great length about THAT.

One of my regular readers complained recently that I’m not WRITING ENOUGH.

 

Honestly, I didn’t know how to respond.  With some effort, I said, “Well, I was kinda trying to take Thumper’s Mom’s advice, If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothin at all. But how ‘me’ is that?  Perhaps I should be locking and loading, rocking and rolling, twitching and foaming, as per usual.  But is this wise?  Should I not be aspiring to Buddha like calm and a world view which encompasses monts et merveilles without losing any cool?

Speaking of cool, I’m off to see Cory Doctorow at SFU on Friday.  I got the afternoon off.  I’m going to go and get a beer, and then go to the washroom, and then line up, and then call Rob of Nine (typed Nice, which is hilarious, because Rob of Nine is many things but ‘nice’ is not in the top ten soubriquets which I would apply to him) to come up the hill and join me.

Air Canada is full of devastated employees today.  The North Hangar is going to get entirely cleaned out.

Well, it’s time to suck back coffee and head for the salt mines.  More later.