Category: Al K. Hall

ScaryClown wuz here

Jeff and I introduced him to Harlan Ellison (he had never heard of him before) via the documentary Dreams with Sharp Teeth, and ScaryClown howled with laughter in all the right places, along with saying, repeatedly, “This guy is a f*cking lunatic” which of course is a true statement.

We had pork chomps and one lonely chicken breast, stir fried veg (mushrooms, bean sprouts, onyums, red pepper and carrips), little cookies I picked up from a deli, and a lavish amount of beer.  We had an awesome time, and we didn’t even break out the Star Trek game!

Bareld just phoned to ask me to do the homily (The Meaning of Home) on October 25th.  The morning after the congregational dinner, so I’ll be saggy and baggy in the eye department, but oh well.

Partay

My dinner partay started off, amusingly, with me calling Mike around 5 and reminding him that we were set for dinner tonight.

After a very long pause (during which I began to worry about him), he sheepishly admitted that he was hanging out with his new squeeze.  I assured him that it was okay and got off the phone shaking my head and laughing.

Suzanne, Paul, Jeff, Keith and I ate, talked, ate some more, watched Bubba-Hotep (Suzanne hadn’t seen it) and played lots of pinball.  Supper consisted of (why, do you ask, do you always put the food in? because my mother eats extremely boring food so this is kinda food schadenfreude) pork chomps and chicken breasts and corn on the barbecue, plus I bought Portuguese buns and made three-cheese buns on the cue.  Recipe follows.  Suzanne brought puréed squash with cinnamon, squash gems (bacon and squash rolled in corn flakes) AND home made carrot cake with scratch made cream cheese icing.  I made a macédoine of vegetables (zucchini, broccoli, lima beans, green beens, carrots and onions, all fresh except the lima beans).

Cheese melts. I took the left over feta, which I had soaked in water rather than brine so it was much less salty, medium cheedar and parmesan, and mixed that all up, then added pepper, basil, parsley and garlic powder, then stuffed the buns, then wrapped each individually and tossed them on the cue.  Keith turned up when there were two left and then devoured them with an eagerness that was truly remarkable.  I know I made the damned things to be eaten; I wasn’t expecting to watch them disappear like soap bubbles.

Speaking of truly remarkable: KEITH DIDN’T GO HOME.  He appeared at my bedroom door, remarked that he had just put down the game controller for Arkham Asylum, and that he’d like breakfast. I told him to help himself to the leftover waffles. (I make waffles pretty much every Saturday morning with the waffle iron Jeff inherited from Granny.)  So he didn’t sleep over, but he didn’t go home.

Anyway, Paul brought the corn, which was yummy, and two pies which we didn’t even touch because the carrot cake was SO amazing (superlative, actually, maybe best ever) so I feel like I hardly had to cook at all. We had much enjoyment of each other – everybody very mellow and low key and comfy.  Suzanne drinks very sparingly, but I thought I would tempt her by picking up some Baja Rosa yesterday, and she had one small glass on the rocks, on the back deck while perusing Jeff’s copy of the Joy of Cooking for yet more squash recipes (her friends keep giving them to her).

From all this is should be obvious that I had a good time.  I think everybody else did too.

Beautiful day

It’s difficult, when you’re not an art historian or otherwise an art geek, to assess the value of seeing a real Vermeer or a real Rembrandt.  But it is supposed to be good for one, so I accompanied daughter Katie to the current exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery and was happy to be thrust 350 years into the past, when the current ideas about what constitutes the middle class were putting down sturdy roots. I looked into portraits whose faces bore the stamp of This is my Relation; I was struck, over and over again, by the beauty of details, clouds, ships, insects, trees; by the shine of the silver, the connections to the Dunnett books, and the pushing of art into places where it had never gone.  Why draw a dead and a dying horse side by side?  Why depict the interior of a synagogue (showing the mothers attempting to ride herd on their kids at the back of the shul)? Why elaborate on a new fashion of depicting happily married couples in a fantastic amalgam of backgrounds – he set amid his globe and his expensively bound volumes, she sweetly tugging at him to go into the garden for a moment?

It was the Art of Middle and Upper Class White Folks, writ large and small and in brilliant detail.  As a result, it is comfortable art.  Not challenging, not disturbing, not heartbreaking.  English contemporaries commented on the Dutch mania for everybody, from the greatest to the meanest, having pictures on their walls.  It’s pretty standard now, that your house isn’t a home until the pictures go up, and now I have a solid sense of where that notion came from.

Katie really enjoyed it.  She particularly enjoyed the paintings with trees, the detail and substance of them. We also agreed that the paintings on copper were the most beautiful, texturally.

I only played Art Troll once, forcing her to stand in front of the Vermeer, telling her that it was the first time in 50 years that a Vermeer had come to Canada and that she bloody well better look at it.

Then we wandered up and down Granville looking at the trendy shoes and clothes, I stepped into Tom Lee for a couple of packs of strings, we had a beer and cocktail (Sex on Wreck Beach, fancy that) respectively at Speakeasy, and headed out for Metrotown where she bought hair gunk and I heard the siren song of new smallclothes.  We parted at Edmonds Station.

Then I went to Planet Bachelor to hang out with Keith and Paul (Keith bailed on karate) and sing and play for a while.  Watched the 1929 documentary about the Peking (4 masted barque) again; I never get tired of watching that. I was very out of kilter and didn’t do anything very well; couldn’t remember lyrics etc.

Katie and I had a very good day, and I get some more Katie, greedy me, when she comes back today and I get my hairs cut.

Then she’s off to the PNE and I’m going to cut grass and tidy the kitchen and put away my laundry (finally) and start figuring out how to transfer the John tape onto another tape so that Phyllis can hear her son singing, and get ready for the small dinner party tomorrow night, which will consist of me, Jeff, Keith, Suzanne, Mike and Paul.

John’s interment in London is tomorrow.  Ruth and John and the kids will be going; I don’t know if any other relatives will be there.

Watched the Ellison doc last night

Dreams with Sharp Teeth is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.  Mike, Paul, Keith, Jeff and I had a glorious evening of pizza, beer, G&Ts, wasps drowning themselves in our drinks (this being August in Vancouver and virtually impossible to avoid), me printing out songs of mine for Paul to put in his songbook, me and Paul hanging the Japanese door hanging in the R. John Caspell Memorial Pinball Parlour, pinball (Great Finagle, but how much better that thing works when it’s level), bodywork, cheesecake and fellowship.

Dreams with Sharp Teeth is a must see if you’re into Neil Gaiman, BSG, or the English language.  The initial ‘interview’ sequence between Robin Williams and Harlan Ellison is PURE COMEDY GOLD. Also Richard Thompson does the soundtrack.  Once again, how much do I miss sharing stuff like this with John.

Now I am trying to wheedle Jeff into getting milk so I can make waffles.  I haven’t made waffles in ages.

Paul and I said to each other last night how much we missed small group ministry.  You think it’s Newage Nonsense, but it’s not – it’s major amounts of stress relief for your poor ol’ brain.  I remember the group meditations as being just about the only thing that kept me sane during a very trying period of my life.  Earlier in the day Paul came by and remonstrated with me about my lack of a rear view mirror on my bike (as well as to pick up the sewing kit, which is going back and forth between our houses like a sorry assed ping pong ball) and then he went out and not only bought one for me and installed it free gratis he got me a couple of really good bungie cords too.   All demonstrations of interest in my safety and comfort gratefully accepted, thanks.  As soon as the weather cleared in the midafternoon I went to get beer on the bike, and what an awesome ride that was, the temp being perfect, and the only hitch was when I tried to clear the intersection at Mary and Edmonds and nearly got crushed between two cars, and pulled a muscle in my calf.  It still stings – it’s a consequence of my ongoing L5S1 nonsense in my back, with the sciatic nerve pinging like a gas station bell – but I am taking painkillers PRN and otherwise ignoring it.

Also, I watched a DVD about church growth from a U*U perspective (man, it was interesting!) and had a long, interesting conversation with the minister.  Also, I practiced guitar for two hours and worked out the chords for Catnip on My Shoes, which I had never done before, so I can actually perform it in public now.

And here I was thinking I didn’t DO anything yesterday.

Like a complete unknown

Bob Dylan finds out that he should carry ID.

Last night we saw Sarah off, we being me and Paul, since we go very far back with those folks.

All I can say is that we had a hell of a good time and I didn’t hit the sack until 10:45 – which given I told Paul we’d be out of there by 8 pm is pretty funny.

Also, I talked to a former coworker and mentioned I’d be looking for work in 8 months or so and he told me to look him up then… I suspect looking for work will be interesting, but not difficult.

I’m going to try out the panniers today…. in about ten minutes I’m going to hop on the bike and go shlepping.  And taking back movies, etc., to the library.

Jeff’s off in Courtenay and I miss him… cats are unsettled and the house seems just that tad too quiet.

Brian C’s 50th.

The Charbaums very kindly put up their land for a party; the usual gang of well loved friends was there, as was a proper portable Finnish sauna.  Yay is for Jarmo.  Mike and I slipped away at midnight; he had to go look after his Spuddy-buddy.  I could have spent the night, but I didn’t want Mike driving back by himself.  No, he wasn’t impaired; he’d quit drinking around 8:30; I wanted him to have the company on the long drive back.

The downside is that somehow, probably because I was sitting in Very Bad Chairs, I have put my hip out very badly.  I suspect this is actually referred back pain.  I am stumping round like an old lady.  Jeff will be back with pain killers and milk shortly, and then I’ll make brekky and start laundry and all that domestic style stuff.

I got to meet Braden, Jerome and Shannon’s baby. Never in my life have I seen a 15 day old child with that much blonde hair.  We’re not talking that flossy blonde hair you get on babies, this is like Spike’s do in Buffy, and there is SO much.  I got to see Sarah and Ian’s young pjokk, and had a boo at Vijay’s two gorgeous boys (oldest is 8 already… and I can remember Vijay going through hell trying to get Lakshmi into the country… how long ago it seems) and then there was Elise and Arden (Elise is heartbreakingly gorgeous at almost three) and there were Sigrin and Lobo and Max the dogs, and Ariel, Megan’s daughter, in pre med at UBC while her parents explode with pride. Jenn and Rob, Kyi and May were there… Wally …. Tom U… Otto… Mike of course and Jim E., all the good folks.  Jarmo and Susana, without the boys.  Remember when the boys locked me in the outhouse?  How long ago that was.  Brian said friends and relatives he hadn’t seen in years were there; he was a little overwhelmed.

Next Friday is Sarah’s last at Xantrex.  I’m going to the golf course to see her off.

We didn’t have a campfire…. we respected the fire ban and used a portable campstove on ‘simmer’ for a fire. A beautiful, happy, mellow time was had by all.  Yes, I went in the sauna; yes, I let Jarmo beat me with hot wet birch branches.  It felt UNBELIEVABLY GOOD.  Especially on my back. It was so funny sitting outside the tent and listening to other folks get whacked… the noises!  People might have gotten the wrong idea…..

Storm Brewing Keg.  Jarmo fries.  Nuff said.

Salt, sand and sunjuice (the day at Wreck)

Mike picked me up around 2:30 – wearing his kilt.  Ten minutes later we were at Suzanne’s; she was waiting downstairs after I called her to come on down, and you should have seen her mile wide grin as she saw Mike’s ride pull up.  They introduced themselves.  We had a gorgeous, rather warm ride in Mike’s Mustang convertible.  We spent about ten minutes gossiping about family members – neither of us being too pleased with the respective number two childer in our families, nuff said, and then dispensed with further whining for the rest of the day. Continue reading Salt, sand and sunjuice (the day at Wreck)

And the real world keeps getting more like a video game

Bruce Sterling pointed to this article.

Yesterday the pinball games came home from Victoria.  They are Xenon and Star Trek.  Xenon needs a lot of work a diode, Star Trek needs a diode is functional.  We’re going to get a brass plaque that says, R John Caspell Memorial Pinball Palace, seeing as how the pinballs will be in his old room.  More furniture came into the house, including my room, so I now am overstuffed with solid wood furniture, just the way I like it.

Chipper, you will remember that Xenon was a game you and Steve B useta play on downstairs from your place on King St.  Colin and Catherine, you will remember the Star Trek game as the game that went to Rhino – the same con where Jeff was Robert Bloch’s gofer.  Ah, the good old days.

Margot keeps trying to be trodden on.

I am contemplating the pile of work I’ve undertaken this year with some sadness. It is, after all, work.  But at least I don’t have to commute.

Watched the 25th Hour. Really, really great film; Spike Lee did an awesome job, and the cast is brilliant.  Lee is SUCH an actor’s director.  If you’re in a Spike Lee movie, you may not like him, but he WILL get a good performance outta you or die trying.  I am considering reviewing it.  My review is up on imdb.com

Hotter than the hubs of Hades.

Yesterday I brought 20 beers home on a bicycle.  Mike, you will be amused to learn that I bought 12 Bud Light Lime, having become addicted to them at your place.  (Mike, knowing that I’m a beer weenie, didn’t expect me to like them.  But Jeff and I both do, as it is lime flavoured beer water, and a damned fine thing on a hot day.)  I only had one bungee cord, so getting it all home was a challenge, but the house is downhill from the beer store, at least.

Song for today is All the Con Men I have Known.  A brilliant tune; it’s the one that gets me the most “That sounds like Joni Mitchell” comments (which frankly I find irritating while understandable) and I personally think the lyrics are among my best.  It’s just not an easy tune, and OF COURSE every goddamned verse has a different tune, because that’s just the way I crawl moaning across the floor.

video and audio

I found a tape of me and John singing, at a coffeehouse or something.  Don’t know how old it is.  He starts off singing Demon Java.  Jeff is going to transfer it into more easy media for me.

The house is a LOT more secure (good luck trying to kick the doors in) now that the locksmith has done his thing.

I forgot to mention that one of the really amazing things about the Cavalcade of Cheese on Tuesday was the soundtrack.  Patricia’s friends make AMAZING mix tapes.  I’m so old I still call them mix tapes.

Butter chicken, height-of-summer salad and rice pudding with strawberries and nectarines last night.  It was a darned good meal if I do say so.  Height-of-summer salad is purple onion, peppers of various colours, mango, and tomato, all chopped into even(ish) pieces in a raspberry dressing.  For the rice pudding, I cut up the fruit and briefly soaked it in rum, allspice and sugar, then turned it into the pudding and cooked it.  Jeff om-nom-nommed like a good thing.

Jeff predicted (but I note in my blog of April 29th that I don’t mention it was his idea) that NCIS LA would come to pass, and so it has. The new series debuts 22 September.

Here’s video of the Wednesday night fireworks.

Wasn’t that a party….

So, anyway, I had a faboosh time at the going away bash last night, and yes, there was a rainbow.  There was also a cement mixer, purchased by RobbieBaum, but I know what happens when you mix Baileys with something sour.  It curdles, resembles vomit, and makes the recipient unhappy.  Drunk as I was, I looked at it, realized I was going to have limey tinged cheese curds appear in my mouth, and didn’t even change my facial expression, causing me to uplevel to a new platform of coolth.  Nobody wanted to believe that I wasn’t disgusted.  I wasn’t.  It’s all about managing expectations, yanno?

Here’s my good-bye email:

11 Commandments for an Enthusiastic Team

1) Help each other be right – not wrong.
2) Look for ways to make new ideas work – not for reasons they can’t.
3) If in doubt – check it out! Don’t make negative assumptions about each other.
4) Help each other win and take pride in each other’s victories.
5) Speak positively about each other and about your team at every opportunity.
6) Maintain a positive mental attitude no matter what the circumstances.
7) Act with initiative and courage as if it all depends on you.
8) Do everything with enthusiasm – it’s contagious
9) Whatever you want – give it away.
10) Don’t lose faith – never give up
11) HAVE FUN!

A long vanished Sales VP gave me that list, and I’ve tried to live by it.

As I survey 12 years of employment at Xantrex, I have a LOT of happy memories…. And not so happy ones…and downright bizarre memories.

The time a customer told me, “Lady, your hold music would make a dog eat her puppies…”

Walking around the office and seeing Valentines I handed out 5 years ago still tacked up over people’s desks….

Sitting around a campfire on Gabriola at the old Statpower company camping trip….

People screaming in delight when it was November and I started baking biscotti again….

Forcing a CEO to buy me beer after I invited myself along for a team building exercise…. (now THAT was satisfying….)

Going through a team building exercise during which all of the people on the team reviewed the ‘challenge’ and then turned as one person to the smartest person on the team and said with one voice, “You do it!” (No it wasn’t me, it was an engineer).  It was like being back in high school.

Fires…. Power outages…. Ludicrous, inhuman weather… getting really good help from the first aid people (who rock, incidentally).

Having a coworker come through on an orientation tour with a new HR person, and when asked, “Do you know this person?” saying, truthfully, “Well yeah, I’ve seen him naked.”  (Long story, and not anywhere near as dirty as it sounds….)

A lot of really amazing customer interactions… because really, without customers, Xantrex doesn’t exist.    And some of customers are very smart, and very nice, and they shared a lot of good information with me.

“When are we doing a product rationalization?”

The time a customer said “Do the fans on your inverters exhaust or intake?”  And running to a certain person who is still working at Xantrex for help.  And he said, and I quote, “We used to suck, but now we blow.”  And I ran back to my desk and told the customer that –  he laughed his head off.  We weren’t recording Customer Service calls in those days….  Too bad, that would have been a keeper!

Neckrubs!

Taking care of my ‘internal customers’ at Xantrex.  Because we’re not in this alone…..

Trying really hard to be a good coworker.  For those of you for whom this was not a reality, my abject apologies and a hope that you won’t take my lapses personally.  For those of you I didn’t get a chance to get to know…. We were part of the same team.  We served together, and that counts for a lot.

I’m taking a year off paid employment to ‘pursue creative interests’.  Yeah, I know, it’s lame, but it’s also true.  I lost a close family member at the beginning of May, and it made me re-assess my life in a way that I hope none of you have to go through anytime soon.  When the year is over, I’ll be back in the work force, hopefully with a lot of items scratched off my ‘bucket list’… as in, things I wanted to do before I die.  But not at Xantrex, unless you guys are crazy enough to want me back!

The friendships, the unparalleled learning experience and the opportunity to serve our customers — all this has been humbling and character building.  I’ve worked here more  than a third of my adult life…. I will never forget Xantrex and you can bet I’ll be by to say hi, and re-acquaint myself with Chris’ cooking in our ‘caf’.  Yes, Andy, I paid my tab.

I’d like to thank Tanya, Frozan, Cris, and Andy N (my immediate teammates and boss) for being awesome, and ALL the CS techs whether in Renewable or Mobile for their long-suffering assistance…. You’ve all been great.  I’d like to thank the equally long-suffering bunch of folks I’ve eaten lunch with so many times over the last few years (Ryan S, Scott, Trevor, Peter A., John A., Francis K., and Hardeep).  Sorry about all those anecdotes that made it impossible for you to finish what you were eating.  A special shout out to Patricia O’Connor and Mike McG for their helpfulness.

I’ll be seeing some of you at the Golf Course for beverages later….

My apologies to anybody I missed… it wasn’t deliberate….

I can be reached at allegra.sloman@gmail.com if anybody wants to get hold of me. Goodbye, and take good care of each other and the customers!

All the best,

allegra

Back from the Partay

Jeff and I are just back from collecting the Mr. Two from Dundas Street, where it was parked overnight after we hung out at Jim’s party.  Keith came along as well.  A substantial chunk of Jim’s old band was there and they backed me up on Buy Me A Beer, which I managed to get through quite creditably considering how impaired I was, and playing it on the ‘wrong’ instrument, being Jim’s acoustic guitar.  Jim also got me singing An Evening of Serious Drinking.  Oh, those hot wings!  and Otto-man was there, big hugs.  First reunion of the Lunch Bunch in about five years.  We’ve had three out of four multiple times, but not four out of four…. Being me, Mike, Tom U and Jerome.

Anyway, it was a fabulous time and Mike drove me, Jerome and Brian C. home as he had spent several hours only drinking pop prior to going home.   Now brunch and then I’m taking Keith to MEC to go parkour shoe shopping.  Grosses Bises everybody!!!

Fabulous evening

So I went with my/an “I-met-him-on-line-so-I-don’t-know-what-to-call-him” to a dinner party last night and I had more fun than I knew to predict, that’s for sure.  I mean any evening that starts with “Bring your mandolin, they’ll love it” is shaping up to be okay.  I drank a lot of beer, and two shots of Grand Marnier (when did that stuff become so yummy?), ate perfectly cooked prime rib, laughed until I cried about three times, sang and harmonized my lungs out, listened to Pete Seeger’s greatest hits on the stereo, stood up to play Spinal Clinic and got hijacked into playing backing instrumental on Heidi singing/improvising “Border Collies are smarter than you” and got called outside to see the ring around the moon.  I met some wonderful people, I mean really seriously wonderful folks, and now Jeff and I are consuming waffles and trying to figure out if we really need to do any running around today.

Cooperative play

Jeff picked up an instrument and played Rock Band last night.  Now I will relate to you a story of such …. well, I’ll just tell the story.

The boys (Jeff, Keith and Mike) were crashing through the final chords of Creep by Radiohead and….phhht.  The power went off.

There was no reason for the power to go off.  The inevitable – the inescapable – conclusion was that their playing was of such total awesomeness,  they rent the space time continuum enough to make the fuse go. Is that not amazing?

Apart from my home made cole slaw I didn’t actually do any cooking, Mike did it all.  But steak and chicken and home made french fries?  And cole slaw? That’s a meal.

I attended the baptism of Darwin this morning.  He was angelic.  That’s always nice. I briefly spoke with Unca Barry and Ontie Jackie, as well as the happy parents, but alas my excesses of the night before caught up with me and after I woke myself up snoring during the service I realized I should go home.  Fortunately, an IGA was on the way to the Skytrain, so I could buy yummy snacks, and the Granville cold beer and wine store was awful handy, so I’m now stocked up again for the rest of the day.  This is a good thing, because I’m going to be watching Army of Darkness.

I am thinking that I’d like a steam or soak though.  I don’t know whether I’ll go all the way up to Hastings Steam and Sauna – I’ve never been there stag, which is funny when you think about it – or just to nearest rec center, which would definitely be cheaper and closer.  Hell, I may even walk.