Category: Friends

Various

I spent the weekend in the bosom of my family (having declared a mental health emergency) and am feeling much restored.  I’d like to thank Paul for coming over and dragging me off to Deer Lake for a walk and then cooking dinner at Geekhaus AND cleaning up after.  Sanity ++, thank you.

Keith took fireworks over to a friend’s place last night.  I expect a report on the reports.

Katie worked midnights on Saturday and I felt so sorry for her I went to pick her up.

Nasty hydroplane conditions on the hill this morning … really nasty.

quhat a day

Quhat being Scots dialect for What.

The night before I didn’t contact the volunteers.  I was SO anxious and phobic that I literally could not pick up the phone.  (Most of the time I’m not affected by anxiety to that extent but making phone calls is really hard for me, and I’m trying to work out why.)  I realized that I was a wreck and went to bed.  I got up at 4:30 am, picked out and edited the poem I read for the children’s story, printed it, edited the homily a couple of times more for clarity and accuracy and printed it, went through the undifferentiated piles of emails that are the complete mess that is cooperative ministry right now and found to my surprise that I did in fact know who all the volunteers were (amusingly, Paul was supposed to do set up this weekend but he left town… Luc covered him) and they were all sober and reliable people who of course all showed up.  So my list of cooperative ministry (the volunteers who bop about the church and make things happen on Sunday morning, from the extremely amazing Sally (aesthetics) to the extremely amazing Laura (coffee) was actually accurate!

I even put in all the announcements that Rev Katie emailed me, AND put in a different graphic for the front cover AND got the order of service printed all by about 7:30.  Then I packed everything up, had a shower, and realizing I had a WHOLE HOUR before I had to get to church, so I did the sensible thing and made Jeff waffles for brekky.

Saw Margot crawl into the garden plot and flatten herself to the ground to become ‘invisible’ waiting for the juncos to come back through the quinoa.  Sorry kiddo… you ARE NOT invisible.

Went to church under overcast skies – I was the first person there so there’s that great feeling of unlocking all the doors and turning on all the lights

It’s time to play the music

It’s time to light the lights

It’s time to meet the Muppets on the Muppet Show tonight.

That kind of feeling, and then getting out the mats for the kids to sit on and helping set up the table for the altar and hauling out the podium and consulting with various folks, and watching as Sandy hauled out the enormous cart Tom made for the sound system. (Brief aside – we have hard of hearing folks in the congregation so we have a bunch of wireless headsets for amplification and all that stuff is in the cart, along with the board and the cabling etc etc.)  Then the greeter’s table is set up, and then parents come in to set up the kids (the older kids were off at a Catholic mass).  And just greeting people…. and then Tom and Peggy and Marnie show up, and music starts happening (12 string, stand up bass and piano).  Getting asked, once again, why it is I don’t consider ministry…. what am I supposed to say?  God told me not to?  I do not have a vocation, peeps!  When you get the call it’s unmistakable.  The only time I get a call that’s unmistakable it always ends badly, with me yelling “You freaking telemarketers, how did you get this number?!”  I’ll tell you why I’m not a minister…. because I read the behavioural standards that I would be expected to adhere to, like not sleeping with parishioners and ceasing to be nude in public on occasion and being somewhat less vivid and colloquial and vehement in my speech.  And don’t get me started on the drugs and alcohol stuff, it’s just unconscionable.  I’m also, not to put too fine a point on it, making the same amount of money as our current minister, who is 13 years out of school.  Ayuh.

Then it all started and it went very well.  I made the aside about being asked about which version of the Bible I was using for the verse and answering “Sheesh, Mom, what difference does it make to an atheist?” which got a huge laugh.  I have a lot of people to email the homily to.

I remember gazing at the congregation during the meditation and seeing Erin shifting her little one around trying to get her to latch, and passing my eye over all the mothers in the congregation and they (and a few of the men, truth be told) were all grinning.  They knew the feeling… after the service I went up to Erin with a mock look of distaste on my face and said, “Baby did NOT get memo about staying quiet during meditation!!!” and all the women clustered ’round her cracked up and chided me, and that’s when I told Erin how many people were smiling with their eyes closed as they heard the baby – I think she was pleased.

Delivering the homily and feeling comfortable enough to wander around the stage instead of staying glued to the podium like I have always done previously, remembering to look up often enough to connect with folks. It was easily the most attentive group evar….

Having all the handouts disappear. Anne in particular liked Carl Sagan’s baloney detection kit; somebody else, can’t remember who, saying that the little List of Cognitive Biases would make for an amazing conversation starter at Thanksgiving dinner.

Bringing strawberry twizzlers for snacks, and helping myself.

Talking, talking, to lots of people afterwards. Giving Carol a lift home in that magical fall sunshine that feels like summer filtered though dreams.

Blowing through the door like a hurricane and frying up the pork and onions for the stuffing, firing up the oven, stuffing the turkey, draping it with four pieces of thick cut bacon, jamming it in the oven, and ignoring it for about four hours. Katie calling to ask me if I’d forgotten anything and then showing up with cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie and whipped cream.  (She called ahead and offered!  I am not a failure as a parent! subtext).  I then hauled the bird out once and basted it and put it back in while Katie and I made veg.  Falling asleep on the upstairs sofa and awakening to see that Mike and Rozo had arrived, which triggered another round of Holy Crap, Must Feed People.

Final dinner arrangement;

Me Jeff Katie Mike Rozo:

Turkey with pork, onion, apple, brown bread, sage and garlic stuffing; hubbard squash drizzled with maple syrup, black pepper, garlic and allspice, boiled carrots, mashed potatoes, dripping gravy, green salad and dun tot (egg tarts from Anna’s Bakery OMG provided by Mike & Rozo) for dessert.

I came upstairs and both of the cats were on the dining room table.  Margot was inspecting the last of the gravy…. Eddie looked hideously guilty and was licking his chops rather inelegantly (his tongue was out an inch) but Katie couldn’t find anything missing.  Eddie’s expression made me howl with laughter.

I then bopped over to Planet Bachelor with Katie in tow (didn’t feel like going over there by myself) fed Kira who was most happy to see us, and then came back, watched some tube with the folks, and then announced around nine-thirty that I’d had a most excellent but also most lengthy day and I was going to have to say my goodnights.  Katie slept over and now I’m going to get up and make her a breakfast that will be awesome.

And that was my very long, very happy making, most excellently wonderful Turkey Day.

Today I plan to drink beer and wash clothes.  There IS nothing else on my to do list that I will do today.  Well, actually, if I want to keep things copacetic with Jeff I should clean the kitchen and run the dishwasher.  It’s pretty thick in there.

Oh, I lie.  After breakfast I have to run to the bank and get some money.  I think I may be buying a guitar today.

Heron Woman does it again. I do nothing for days and then explode into non stop action.  It is my way.

And the web swings wide

I am breakfasting with Paul – oatmeal – and drinking coffee.  I know I’m being a slug so I’m encouraging Paul to get me exercising so we went for a constitutional this morning.  Margot thought about coming along for the first little bit but she’s even lazier than I am.

I have been watching the world, and I am not happy with the signs.  I do not trust the future; I’m uneasy in the present and the past is gnawing at me.  Many different waves are coming at me and I am reminded of Loppe’s comment to Gelis, “Buoyancy, mademoiselle, is always an asset.”

I am hoping my mother will get some mileage out of the Henry Thomas Wake diaries – there’s somebody in England who runs a lovely blog who’s interested in them.

The homily is stalled on the notion that if you can’t connect cognitive bias to a story (without stories how shall the people live?) the homily itself will be lifeless and unmemorable.

The hymns, fortunately, are picked out and off to the accompanist, thank you Marnie!

I borrowed Mike’s 12 string Aria electric, and now I’m in the market for an amp.

Tom is working on my subwoofer for the car.  I may have to buy a new one, and it’s my own fault for letting groceries slosh around in front of the unprotected cone.

Now it’s time to get a real start on the day.  I like this getting up and going for a walk.  I do feel very awake.

Paul fixed up my bike so I could give it to Katie and we haven’t seen hide nor hair of her.  She’s been working almost every day though.

I am having SEVERE “the Wire” deficiency.  I love that show, and we can’t get more of it from Zip until we start returning things.

Jeff and I watched the Departed.  That is also a very good watch. Leo diCaprio was so visceral….

I let Paul drive Ziva last night

And I complained non stop.  Some things never change.

Anyway, I ate supper (stellar meal, fresh tomato and fresh basil salad, pork chomps with Paulegra spicing and Chilliwack peaches and cream corn so fresh it was like an explosion of sweetness) with Paul and Keith last night, and I was expecting Part II to be me whining at Paul to put the new Resophonic strings on John’s resonator guitar, but instead he says, “We’re going to Rev Katie’s place to get her hockey gear.”

Turns out Paul’s having a visitor from Seattle who is a ginormous hockey fan who is planning on taking it up as a hobby – she’s about my age.  She’s coming to town and Paul thought, “Rev Katie doesn’t play hockey any more, maybe she wants to ditch her equipment”.  Strangely, she did, and we also got in a nice visit, more social than bitching about church thank goodness.  But honestly, I didn’t think I would be hauling women’s hockey equipment across the Pitt River bridge when I got up yesterday morning; all I can say is: my life is full of incident.  Got home around 9, watched tv for a bit and collapsed.  I drove home BTW….

Unbelievable, very stressful but ultimately good things happened at work yesterday, and of course I can’t talk about it but I am very, very, very stressed out.  Good stress and bad stress.

Sad Face

It is with blank incomprehension mixed with sadness and dismay that I bring to you my woeful tidings.  Rev Katie has resigned.

Now, she gave us a year’s notice, so it’s not like we immediately have to run out into the street looking for another minister, and it’s most likely that she will stay in the lower mainland, so we won’t lose her presence, but I called Paul when I got home from the board meeting last night and we just went “Wow” at each other for about fifteen minutes.

I am exhausted this morning; it took ages to get to sleep, I was so keyed up.

Finally made it to the Orange Room

It’s a restaurant / bar in New West I’ve known about for some time but I’ve never been.  Véronique and I had a bit to eat and a little something-something to drink, and it was very yummy and convivial.  I am hoping at some point to get custody of the church website, currently her bailiwick, so we worked through my extreme rudeness in asking for it when I wasn’t really authorized by the Board to do that (sorry!) and how any handoff will be handled in this ‘real life’ we keep hearing about.

I recommend  the Orange Room; pricey but really nice and comfy.

We also talked about some trends in second wave feminism which includes a culture war with transpeople, which I had been dimly aware of but not really up on, and candidly it’s appalling, but it’s hard for me to entirely sort out how icky it is because I’m not in possession of some background.  Anyway, I need more reading material, so I asked for it.  I do think gender essentialism, unless you’re talking about the mechanics of getting and bearing children, needs an enema.

Katie has moved into a place with the help of her father.  I came home and the top mattress off my bunk bed was gone – so that’s done.

Canoe trip

The minister, Rev Katie, sponsored a church fundraising trip via canoe. We took the “Cranberry Lady” out onto the Fraser, and there I saw:

  1. Gillnetters working.
  2. More raptors and birds of prey than I can ever recollect seeing in one day.
  3. A LOT of dead salmon.
  4. A LOT of very bloated, unable to fly seagulls.
  5. The rotting backsides of businesses facing onto the Fraser.
  6. Kanaka park.
  7. A convivial bunch of fellow church goers including the 17 year old grandson of one, (who’s a bible believing Christian, but I don’t hold that against anybody I know in meatspace), whom I got seated with, and who regaled me with Red Dead Redemption stories, seeing as how I was the only one in the canoe who had clue ONE what he was talking about.  And I know who Linkin Park is.
  8. My lunch.  Rev Katie makes insanely good potato salad.  It wasn’t on her resume, but YUMMERS.
  9. What it’s like to paddle on the Fraser when you’re paddling upstream and the tide is making.
  10. Monster homes with monstrous docks.

I am a little stiff and a little sore today, but nothing like I expected, and I’m feeling a little giddy today from the exercise.  Blessed be!

More meetings?

More meetings.  Last night’s was awesome… a planning meeting for the 5th September service, which I’m abruptly helping with.

There’s no beer in the house, and Jeff and I are going to leave it that way until the weekend at least.  I am finding my crabbiness has increased somewhat, but not enough to be too worried about it.

Katie has definitely found a place to live and is now agitating for help moving.  I’d say no, but I volunteered already.  One of my ongoing personal hazards…..

John gets a parting shot

From his close friend and landpeer, the incomparable Juliana, comes an email I simply must share in its entirety:

Allegra, as an anarchist I thought you would appreciate this.   In 2007, John took to me a movie to celebrate my birthday.  It was at University of Victoria, where he had a film membership.  He carefully parked his scooter on the sidewalk next to the bicycles and we attended a wonderful film about the life of Edith Piaf.  When we came back out, it was to find a parking ticket, & he was NOT amused.  Being John he had no intention to pay the ticket and ignored a number of friendly reminders from the University.

Forward to this morning when “he” received a letter from the University telling him that they had not been chasing him for the past 1.5 years because of a court dispute regarding the right for UBC to issue citations but that he still owed the money and they now wanted it.  Apparently after appeal and counter appeal, UVIC is with it’s rights to cite violators so…. they were back at it.

I phoned, asked for Accounts Receivable and started the conversation with  “Account # blah blah”  …   I explained that John would not be paying the bill because he was dead.  I controlled the urge to tell her he wouldn’t have paid it if he was alive either.  Period of Silence, then a pause for review and she came back on the line to tell me his account had been deleted from the system.

I know John is happy to know he won.  A small victory and I’d much rather pay the $20 and have him back but… he won.

hugs and love

Juliana

busy tizzy

1.  Paul and kids over to watch latest True Blood.  Since I knew they were coming I went to Choices and got delicious om-nom-noms for them, like fresh bread and Dijon turkey and Avalon chocolate milk, which still comes in a glass bottle and is the best commercial chocolate milk in the known universe.  Even Paul had some and he stopped drinking cow’s milk years ago.  Damn, it’s fine!  Also edamame salad and fresh veg.

2.  Leo and Linda coming tonight…. can’t wait for them to meet kitties.

3.  Jeff biked to and from work yesterday… go Jeff. The last three 3 k involve about three hundred feet of elevation, so he was rather warm by the time he got back.  I took one look at him and asked him if he wanted some water.

4.  At church meeting last night (Nominating committee, my house) we had fun and got shiz done.  I was so happy to see everybody.  Now I have more work to do, even though an item came off my list!

5.  I’ll be doing a bed and breakfast thing in Bellingham in September but I don’t know which weekend.  I’ll be taking Katie for some CBS.  (Cross border shopping).  Clothing for women my size is more easily obtained Stateside.

6.  I’m helping train somebody at work, and as a consequence my house-fly strength attention span is even MORE truncated.  I’d like to thank her family for raising somebody so smart.  And she takes kick boxing classes, too.

7.  Keith was too – I don’t know – to check flickr for pictures of Animé Evolution, and when he said he didn’t know where pictures would be, I said, “You’re daft, check the flickrstream.”  Gosh all whacky, am I the only person in the world who knows how to use the internet, grump grump.  And there he was, in his costume.  Now I go looking for it and I can’t find it, but suffice it to say Keith made a GREAT Dr. McNinja. Grandparents are warmly encouraged to apply to him directly for photographs.

8.  Dropped by her workplace to see Lady Miss Banjola and inspect her tummy.  Yup, she’s knocked up.  She’s also artistically pale but I think she looks great.

9.  The spicy Thai beef salad yesterday was unbelievably yummy, but the transit time of 8 hours was accompanied by the burnination of a lifetime.  I can no longer eat hot peppers, unless I want multiple lashings of discomfort and abrupt departures from whatever conversation I’m engaged in at the time to flee for the house of ease.  It was worth it, but only just.  Ky can cook.

There’s more but I gotta go.

Cool runnings

Yesterday I made a run for Wal-Mart (first time in 8 years) to get coolant for Lady Miss T at work.  She said she’d overheated on that bloody great Gaglardi hill so I said, “let us go to your car and check your coolant!” and like, there wasn’t any.  Her brother, who is, like, the anti-Jeff, had told her he’d checked the coolant and he dinnnnt.  Lie or mistake, it was pretty typical.   I looked at her and said, “You are not moving this car.  Let us go talk to beautiful Bossie and see if I can’t get a hall pass.”  You may infer from the fact that it took me 40 minutes from door to door that my observation of the speed limit during this excursion was notional and inconsistent.  SFU to Lougheed Mall and back, including a purchase….yeah.

Day before yesterday, I had a brief and hormonally truncated visit to Paul and Keith’s (Paul said something innocuous and I burst into tears and ran away, aren’t I special, but at least Paul and Keith had the decency to shrug it off) and while I, tears still drying on my face and clutching my mandolin, was escaping to my car, Paul’s brand new neighbour said something that stopped me in my tracks.  She said, “I like your purple car”, and her male companion (actually her daughter’s agent) said, “Yeah, that’s a 94 Ford Probe GT and I think that’s the version with the special paint. I’ve owned four Probes, they are my favourite car.”  AN HOUR LATER I pried myself away.  Much restored, I went on my way home.

LOTS and nothing

Yesterday I cleaned up under the deck – mostly pulling weeds and garbage removal – with Margot carefully supervising.  She madly loves to supervise humans working, I think, besides chasing flies, it’s her fave thing to do.

Pulled the first pea pod out of the garden for Jeff.

My mint got so sunburned it almost died; I have to find a better place for it  out of the direct sun.  I watered the cedar hedge at the back of the yard as I promised the landpeer I’d do.  She laboured mightily to put them in and the first year she planted them she was coming by every week to water them during the dry of the summer.

Margot has taken to sitting under my car before I fire it up in the morning.  I could wish she wouldn’t do that.

Had a lovely time at Mike’s birthday party last night.  It was good to see Heather and Margaret and Rozo and Tom U., and Jerome briefly dropped by as well. Paul and Keith and Jeff rounded out the gathering.

The quinoa is getting big.  I don’t imagine the corn will actually get tall enough to set ears and ripen, but they are fine looking plants.  The rest of the yard is looking very brown, but we don’t water the lawn, and the roots on this lawn are very very deep, so it always greens up nicely after a rain.  The pine trees I got from work are still doing fine, but I’m going to have to consider where to plant them.  I’m almost inclined to transplant them into a park – but in the meantime all I have to do is keep them alive.

Friday night falldown goes mobile

Last night me and Jeff and Paul and Keith and ScaryClown went to the Peak for dinner and then to Inception at the Dolphin afterwards.  We could have gone to see the Blue Meenies at the John B Pub afterwards but it was 9:30 when we got out of the theatre and I was ready to go home.  I dropped ScaryClown off at Brentwood and headed home in the lovely cool dusk.

Inception is not a classic movie – by me – but it sure is visually stunning and challenging, and I enjoyed it immensely.

Lady Miss B shares flying tips with you

STUPID FLYING TRICKS FOR HUMANS!

1. Bother to collect frequent flyer miles! They eventually add up even if you don’t fly a lot, and then you can fly places for free or at a heavy discount. I fly everywhere I can on Alaska, even if the fare is slightly higher than another airline (usually they’re pretty good, though.) because they have a really generous mileage plan. (If it’s a route I’ve never flown before, I do a quick check on expedia to see if the fare is way out of line or not.) I get two or three free round-trips a year from them on miles. (Partly because of #2.) Whee! Plus after you collect a certain number of miles they start treating you like you’re a rock star, randomly upgrading you to first class, giving you bonus miles, waiving baggage fees, letting you skip lineups.

2. Get an airline mile credit card. I figured out that my alaska card works out to basically getting 4% cash back in the form of free plane tickets, which is better than any cashback cards I’ve had offers for. (Plus or minus a percent, depending on how expensive the tickets would have been if I paid cash.) Also it comes with coupons for cheap companion fares, and you get 1000 bonus miles this, 1000 bonus miles that all the time for seemingly random reasons. It makes me happy to pay my house insurance because I imagine the bill moving a little stick figure me across a map on a crayon airplane.

3. Book several months in advance if your dates aren’t flexible. Usually about 3 months out is the cheapest, except for last-minute seats on unpopular routes, but that’s dodgy to count on. This varies a lot by route – like, I know that _two_ months ahead of FKO is when Westjet and AC have the cheapest seats – but it’s a good rule of thumb. (Bing.com/travel has a fare predictor, since Microsoft bought farecast. I have never found it that handy because it has crappy data for my hometown, but your city might be one of their useful spots.) If you book more than 3 months ahead, you should go check your seats about 90 days before the flight, since they will randomly switch around what size plane they use. Check again a month ahead in case they went “Oops, this flight is way undersold, let’s put you on an Embraer and assign you the seat next to the stinky lav.” (This doesn’t happen to me with Alaska, since they have 737s, 737s, and 737s, but when I fly American it happens all the damn time.)

4. Check in to your flight as soon as you can on the web! Usually this is 24 hours ahead these days. Sometimes you can switch for free to a way better seat that they were hoping to sell for more bucks but didn’t.

5. Do you know about seatguru.com? It has the seat layouts for pretty much every airline, and commentary on which seats are good or bad and why. It’s SO HANDY.

6. It’s time to fly! Be polite, friendly, but not chatty with the customs officers. Be really organized with the TSA. If you have your shoes off, your laptop out, your liquids in a baggie, your boarding pass and passport in your hand, and a bored expression on your face, they usually save the harassment theatre for someone else. (If you’re white, cis-gendered and able-bodied, that is. :/ Oh Homeland Security.) I always bring a blanket and a stuffed animal big enough to use as a pillow on the plane so I can sleep through the parts where you aren’t allowed to listen to headphones.

7. Stay calm about things. Turbulence happens! Pretend you’re on a ride. Delays happen! It’s okay, you will get there anyway, they will take care of you. People budge in front of you in line! The plane’s not leaving until everyone is on, and once you’ve landed, even the last person off will still stand around waiting for their baggage. There might be crying babies, unpleasant seat mates, and gross food! Write imaginary articles about them for the in-flight magazine.

8. Read the in-flight magazine! Sometimes previous travellers have written in notes. If no one has yet, write in some notes or start a game of tic-tac-toe. Or take the magazine and switch it for a different magazine and really confuse the next person. Also, watch the safety demonstration. The flight attendants are way more bored of it than you are, and some of them spice it up with dance moves, seriously.

9. Bring hard candies and a decongestant nose spray, in case your ears get really cranky. The one time you need them you will be so happy. Also put the charger for your cell phone in your carry-on, in case you are randomly delayed between connections.

10. Remember to look out the window and think I AM FOR REAL FLYING THROUGH THE AIR LIKE A GODDAMN BIRD OH MAN HUMANS ARE AMAZING.

Okay now tell me your stupid flying tricks!