Category: Friends

Crad Kilodney is back.

Crad Kilodney is one of those people you have to file in the part of the Venn Diagram where ‘literary treasure’ ‘full bore pain in the ass’ and ‘exceedingly rude bastard’ meet. Author of Lightning Struck My Dick, Pork College and World Under Anaesthesia, he used to sell his little chapbooks on the street in Toronto, where I first made his acquaintance on Yonge Street when our Saviour was still commuting by T. Rex, after he had escaped from New York City. Now he has rewritten the 38 canonical Shakespearean plays for the ‘don’t stop me from texting just cause the Royal Vic is performing’ crowd, and I’ve read portions of several of them…. Okay, you’ve been warned.

Margot made a tribble noise this morning, which is where cute meets alarming.

Physio this morning was great. I walked back, picked up some groceries, and feel much better about my recovery.

No joy on the shop sale.  I have a lot of work to do but at least I’m feeling a bit more like doing it.

Shallow little me

so…. one of my most contemptible obsessions is celebrity gossip.  Except I like celebrity gossip about Jewel Staite and Liev Schreiber, not Prince George and Kim Kardashian.  So, in my normal way, I looked up Derek Jacobi when I started watching Cadfael    and learned to my delight and amusement that Ian McKellen had a tremendous crush on him back when they were pupkins coming up in the theater. So we’re talking around the time I was born.  NOW they are in an ITV program together about an aging gay couple; show’s called Vicious  which of course I am looking forward to now like a slavering fool.  Bring it on, Netflix, I can hardly wait for the moment when Ian gets his wish and plants one on Derek.  Happy sigh.

Shop is being shown again today for the second time to one set of buyers and I am still getting strong interest.

I got a reasonable night’s sleep.

Chipper blogs… Kid says something funny.

Speaking of Chipper, she made my day, my week, my month when, having learned that Paul and his girlfriend, and two married couples I know well, plus his mother, were all going to Red Deer for his b-day, she offered me the use of the spare bedroom during that time.  Much restored in spirit, I thanked her, but I suspect if Paul had wanted me to be there he would have invited me… snarf.

I have reinstalled Skype on the Mac if anybody wants to talk to me.  I am u_must_b_joking (same as LiveJournal).

Hope everybody has a lovely day!

sundried and variolas

Foxination!

I am healing but slowly and I have another six weeks in the sling.  I am not allowed to do anything with my right arm, which is impossible, but I certainly got a lecture about how it will screw up my tendons and ligaments and rotator cuff if I don’t keep it in the sling.  The discharge instructions should have included  :How to wash your oxters: and didn’t, but I now know how.

Just found out that a friend is being assaulted on a regular basis by one of her children.  Well, that’s one thing I don’t have to worry about.

I am having a lot of trouble with motivation, and I have one memorial service behind me and another in front of me, so at least I’ve keeping busy.  And the one thing about being dead is that your amount of motivation doesn’t really matter.  I’d prefer to be lacklustre than dead, fer sure.

 

I watched the video of me falling.  It was unpleasant, but at least I know now that despite the incredible pain I was in, I didn’t go far wrong in guessing how long it was before the ambulance came.  And while I was waiting, and sweating like a horse, and crying, and cursing, and yelling, and moaning, I thought about the post apocalypse, which would have involved me walking until I found help.

Yes, I’m sure lucky.

 

 

 

 

roasting beef, baking macadamia biscotti

I’m at the shop (Katie out again WARNING RELATIONSHIP IN PROGRESS) and so far, in the 2 hours I’ve been here I’ve:

  • Run through the morning set up
  • Started baking macadamia nut biscotti (first attempt.  Nut flavour is so mild I added no spices, just vanilla, also thinking of Nora I leave cinnamon out cause she’s allergic to cinnamon).
  • Made myself a chai latte
  • sold muffins and coffee to a couple of people
  • Put beef on to roast
  • Put away a good chunk of the ingredients we got last night at Costco
  • got the bread out of Bertha, which I always forget to do so I’m glad I remembered
  • Taken all the fridge temps (report: we are nominal son)
  • Put my hair back and donned an apron
  • Figured out how to form my lips into a trumpet trill so I can blast through the William Tell Orchestra
  • Blown level 70 in Candy Crush Saga AGAIN.  It is a demonaically hard level.
  • sat up front and watched it droozle out there
  • Thought about awnings for the street fair July 21st.  I want to buy one, mostly because I know that the awning Jeff and I bought four years ago is not going to make it through another year and so when I’m done with it here I’ll just take it home.
  • Thought about the data entry job Tom gave me.  I was supposed to work on it some more last night but the Costco run intervened and then Katie tried to get me to go for a walk, but my sciatica into my right heel is making me limp like hell.
  • Thought about the big pile of cardboard at the back of the shop I need to flatten and recycle.
  • Thought about the very interesting news I got from the landlord’s agent yesterday about what’s going on next door as far as ownership goes.
  • Thought with irritation verging on acting out about the THREE UNLICENSED VEHICLES sitting in the parking lot of OUR CAFE.  The landlord’s agent says I can approach the miscreants responsible and ask them to move the cube van, the stake truck and the not-licensed-since-October-2012 shitbox compact sitting out there.  The Hino is parked crossways, FFS, taking two spots.  What the hell is wrong with these people?  It’s not the antechamber to a scrapyard.  Dayyum.
  • Thought with love and deep sympathy about my dear one Tammy who is burying her father today and will have to deal with that hard on the heels of breaking up with a man she has been trying to partner up with for 3 years.  It was his idea and he won’t stop calling her.  I know he’s not a complete asshole but sheeshkabobbers, folks, take a hint. And her complete and total born bad asshole of an adoptive brother is going to be at the funeral, and I tried to bet with her that he would show up at mom’s drunk, raring to steal money and valuables, but she wouldn’t take the bet.  He’s already been banished but you know how sociopaths press once they perceive an advantage.  Tammy and her mother took the high road and at least let the brother know his dad was gone.

further edges around Justified

Mercy me.  Moonshine is one of the background characters in Justified, and now it appears that artisanal ‘shine is making the big distillers lick their chops.

Downstairs toilet at home went kablooie.  Hope Jeff is coping with it okay.

Timothy Olyphant being adorbz on Ellen.

Timothy Olyphant demonstrating that nasty rotten lousy miserable trick men have of getting MUCH HOTTER as they get older.

Ok, gotta go pay some bills now.

 

 

Sundry and various

Brinicles. I had no idea such things existed.
Katie will be heading off for bloodwork this morning. She is fasting, and thus tired and cranky.
Izzy and I (the grandsnake) bonded nicely last night. He is one of the most hand tame snakes I ever interacted with, although I will never feel about him the way I feel about Speck, a little snake who hung out in my hat for an hour at a party, thus triggering the single funniest triple take I’ve ever seen in my life.
Margot is prowling around my room and quacking. Yesterday she got up in Creamy’s grill (he’s the Samoyed next door) by walking up to him when he was tethered outside, getting him to bark furiously, and then pelting away. What a jerk she can be.
Paul and Keith took me and Katie to supper last night at the Grand Buffet. In a stupefying and gratifying demonstration of customer service, the expensive sunglasses Keith left there a month ago were produced as soon as he appeared. You can bet Keith tipped the living shit out of those servers. The crab was particularly good.
I have found an internet radio station that plays bluegrass gospel, and it has no annoying commercials. That’s what we have on at the store now. It’s bright and bouncy and banjerrific.
Biz still slow and interestingly variable. Paul bought cherry biscotti, my latest creation, and took it to work, and there was much rejoicing. His work is going well. Per parental instructions I will be baking and shipping biscotti out to them by the end of the month.
All my friends from Ontario seem to be living through hellish times. I am not. I am having difficulties with certain aspects of my life, but these things tend to self correct. As mOm remarked, this too shall pass. In the meantime I have a loving family, a good place to live, choice friends, good health (even my back is whining less…) and the best stupid cat in the world. Hey, at least she’s keeping herself clean, although I still have to brush and de-eye-gunk her frequently.
I am now washing my hands forty times a day. It’s like acquiring OCD or something. Thank god for Uremol, and many thanks to LadyMissB for putting me on to it.
Off to work now.

Another lovely day

Sales are slowly creeping up, and we’re finding ways to keep things yummy and wholesome while reducing costs, which is great.

Peggy will be by soon to pick up some biscotti.  Mike McG came by and bought muffins.  Happy sigh.

Yesterday Janet Wilson popped by and it was lovely to see her after all these years living in the same town…

The building inspector was awesome and he made me howl with laughter.

Katie is going swimming with her buddy tonight, but I’m just gonna go home and hack away at church accounting as I have a deadline…

Hope switch located, turned back on

Paul didn’t even let me get twelve seconds into mah woeful tale before he said, walk first.  So we went to Deer Lake Park and saw:

 

  1. wood ducks x 3 plus mallards lazily walking along the path and grazing at the side
  2. hummingbirds x 2
  3. towhee
  4. the saddest crow in the world, behaving in a fashion I can only describe as inexplicable.  It sat on a sign, bowed its head and cooed sadly like a pigeon.  Repeatedly.  Like, so many times that Paul and I were starting to freak out.
  5. frisky squirrels, imports and natives
  6. many many skunk cabbabbages
  7. hardly any people, unsurprising given that every form of precipitation the lower mainland affords fell out of the sky earlier today.  There’s still unmelted snow on the front lawn in the shade.

But the sun came out and Paul received the Gift of Maple Bacon Muffins with great thanks.  Now I feel better, but this next week is gonna suck a large citrus fruit, and I must needs stay on task.

satisfactory day

well, parts of it were.  Tom and Peggy fed us beef stroganoff… mmm, and we provided maple bacon loaf. Tom hoovered through it like the gravy sucking ogreman he is.

Katie and Keith are off on their first trek via Paul’s car to Victoria to see the grands.  Yes I phoned to make sure they arrived safely, for whatever reason. Katie will be looking forward to tHE SleEP which she gets there in quantity.

The rain has died back and it actually got sunny this afternoon, which was good, since friends of mine are posting on facebook that they have five inches of water in their crawlspaces, always hideous tidings.

Jerome called me, bless that boy.  Lucas is 8 months old now, can you credit it, marine crawling and trying to stand like the good little boy he is.

My adventure in costumeland yielded two AMAZING hats, one outfit (vest and culottes) for a person weighing four hundred pounds, and a bunch of size xxl peasant attire, with one fire engine red lab coat in the mix for fun.  I can’t actually do up the buttons on one of the vests but it fits me perfectly anyway.  One of the peasant outfits is from SGA according to the label on the inside.  I will be donating them to Interfilk for auctioning enjoyment, since finding costumes for more lavishly upholstered individuals can be trying and it would be good for SCA or conwear.  Sorry fOlks, there were no props, just costumes and bizarre lighting.

 

 

Katie is here

Baking up a storm of maple bacon muffins, some of which will accompany to her foodsafe 2 class today.

Keith is going to the grands this weekend, and he will have biscotti in tow if the gods are kind.

Today I am ENDURING THE HORRAH of completing my first tax documents for the church. I will be glad when this term is over, despite all I have learned.

It is astonishingly windy – the recycling bin keeps leaping up and trying to make a run for it down the porch stairs.  The cats really don’t like it the noise.

Jeff says Margot had some kind of fit the other day.  Her eyes were open but she was impossible to rouse.  Then she perked up and was completely normal or as normalz as that crazy little fur machine ever gets.  Obviously I am mildly concerned but when cats are eating and drinking as per normal it’s hard to stay that way.

mOm, you will be amused to hear that Katie just came up behind me and said “can you read that in the dark?” and turned the lamp on.

Long and amusing phone call with Chipper yesterday.  She’s in much better spirits – her wordplay and sense of proportion have been somewhat restored – and she has been the biggest booster of the plan for the cafe.

I suppose I should pick up the phone and apologize to Carrie for our unfortunate text exchange, but I am still a little mad about it and if I am still resentful an apology will just make things worse.

Saw Mambo Kings the other day. I enjoyed the musical numbers and costume design a lot, and Antonio Banderas is a wriggling sack of puppies cute.

Lots of people asked me for the lyrics to my Beacon bday tune, so I am happy about that.

Receipting for tax time for donors at the church is done…. I will also be stuffing envelopes today.

And laundry.  I thought I was all caught up but the laundry basket is telling me different.

 

Big News, small news, glad news, sad news

I put a deposit down on the cafe yesterday.  So begins an enterprise.

Expert, schmexpert.

The only thing I don’t understand about the rogue LAPD cop Christopher Dorner is not why he hasn’t been caught – he will be, and I cheerfully predict that he’ll go quietly and not die in a hail of gunfire – it’s why nobody’s bought the domain name yet.

My fellow board member Audrey has lost her mother.  She was well into her nineties.  Blind Lemming Chiffon, when we had dinner at Conflikt, said that until you’ve lost a parent you can’t understand what it’s like.  That was also the same supper where he gave me the Ebay overview on what allows him to sell like a master, and where he recommended Searching for Sugar Man, one of the best and most astonishing music documentaries I have ever seen.

Jeff is having pie for breakfast.  He’s a rebel.

I was thinking (as I had another crying bout thinking about John last night) about loss.  I thought, “Ah, so selfish.  It is not my love for him that hurts me.  I will have that forever; I can’t stop loving him just because he’s dead.  I’m sad because he loved me, and he’ll never stop me from falling off a mountain, or give me a lift on his motorcycle, or make me laugh, or sing with me, or feed me or lift my spirits or be a familiar face in a crowd of strangers ever again.  And that is why I am sad.  Not because someone I love died.  It’s because someone who loved me died.”

I saw both of the kids yesterday, yay, and fed Rob and Keith as well as Jeff.  I made pork schnitzel, taters, broccoli and carrots, and there was a tablecloth and pie and two kinds of ice cream, so it was rather festive, even without beer.  I’ve gone off beer again.  There is a medical condition which I’m too polite to whine about in public which improves by about 30% when I don’t drink beer, and it definitely hurts the insomnia when I drink beer.  I just love beer and wish it wasn’t so mean to me.

It’s a fine axemurderer’s fog out there this morning.

Obviously I have a lot of work to do before Katie calls me for our trek up to City Hall, so I’ll get to it.

puttering

Housefilk at my place tonight, festivities commence at 6 pm or maybe even earlier. Mike and Rozo and Tom and Peggy and Cindy and Paul will be coming… Jeff is considering fleeing to the Robzone to avoid the noise.

Still haz a happy about me being the Interfilk Guest of Honor at GAfilk in 2014.  I have a year to prepare a set list… almost long enough eh wot?

On my list today:  reconcile October, enter November, reconcile November, enter December, reconcile December… and then the simple part of the bookkeeping for the year is done!!! w0ot!

Also, I am on tap to pick up Izzy’s luncheon.  I am sorry, widdle mousie, but your role in the great chain of being is already cast.

Have to make a deposit for the soup luncheon. Sigh.  It missed getting to the collection counters last week and it’s almost a hundred bucks so I can’t leave it lying around here.

Carrie has less than two weeks before she gets off Haida Gwaii for good. It’s too bad her ex is phoning her all the time and breaching his conditions, but that’s life I guess.

There are other little bits of news but that’s enough for me right now.  There’s a hungry snake waiting for me.