Category: Friends

A Date, among other things

Jeff tells me I am unusually buoyant, to keep trying after so many hilarious (and occasionally creepy, like the guy who put his head in my lap on the Skytrain after I’d told him to bugger off, but I digress) disasters.  I suppose last night gave me a demonstration as to why maintaining a positive attitude is what a person needs to do.  I sure enjoyed myself last night.  It was a cup of coffee & a walk to the salamander pond (they showed up last night, and zow, but there are a lot of them.)   I drove home with the cheerful sensation one gets when one has had a date, enjoyed it, and arranged a second one.  I don’t have his permission to write about him, so I’ll leave it at that.  No, I lie.  He is the single most pleasant person I’ve met in ages – now I’ll shut up.  I have a head cold…. so attractive.

Work is interesting and challenging these days.  I found out that my not having completed a course at work (they have on line courses) rolls up on a report visible to my grandboss and great grandboss.  Never have I felt so motivated to finish something.  Time to get in the car, gas up and get going on it.

The Netherlands-Denmark World Cup game had one of the most amazing saves I’ve ever seen.  It was spectacular.  I can’t find a single mention of it anywhere in any of the sports news and I’m not competent enough to describe it or even remember the defender’s name. (UPDATE.  I changed my search criteria and got “Poulsen’s spectacular sliding save”).  It was one of the Danish players.  I’m thinking of changing my blog topic header to “Soccer, the sport that makes the words “Nil Nil” work as a sentence”.

Damn the vuvuzelas, they make watching the game with anything like true enjoyment virtually impossible.  The BBC is trying to figure out how to strip the noise from the feed.  Go to it, ladies and gentlemen.

The quinoa is two inches tall and the peas have started to sprout.  Everything else is being eaten to the ground by slugs as soon as it pokes its head up.

Margot sits outside Jeff’s door and meows up a storm.  She really does prefer him to me, mostly because he’s home a bit more, feeds her in the mornings more than I do, and he doesn’t brush her.  Sometimes she begs for the brush if she sees it – other times she struggles and complains.  I never know in advance what I’m going to get.

Jeff cut the lawn, after asking me pointedly this morning when the bag and frame for the lawnmower are coming in to the store where I ordered it.  It’s going to be at least another week, which is annoying.  Anyway, thanks Jeff!  It was pretty long.

Be good, all y’all.

Chevy no va

What the hell is wrong with people?  Chevy is no longer an acceptable nickname for a product? Who writes this shiz?

I went on a coffee date last night.  You know, you try to let guys know that you aren’t up for a booty call, and they just run away.  Not much of an advertisement for the boys in the world.  I was nice enough to give him a ride home, anyway.  Not exactly what I had in mind when I purchased a vehicle.

I’ve been listening to the On Spec album, and to my astonishment, I’m really enjoying it.  I’d add a link for the album, but the On Spec website pushes poo with its nose, and the R Cat site is even worse, so, not so much.  Anyway, it’s called “Because we hear voices” and if somebody had told me there were no vocals on the album I probably would have listened to it sooner.  It’s very mellow – or cinematic – or game play – electronica.

I canNOT get the Lords of Acid’s “I Like It (Hey Hey Hey)” from their Farstucker album out of my head.  It is ludicrously catchy, worse than the Tapioca Song.

Prior to the coffee date, supper with Jeff and Mike at the Twist.  The dry ribs there are amazing.

Yesterday

Yesterday we went for a drive in the open-air chaise (ie the Camaro – pOp was wearing his pimp hat, a broad brimmed leopard velour creation, which added to the carnival atmosphere) and we drove in the country, saw THE biggest patch of skunk cabbage I’ve ever seen (it went on for literally city blocks in depth and width) and went to Dan’s Market, where we ingested treats and coffee and where I picked up treats to bring back to Vancouver, then outside where we fed ducks and chickens and goats (and I petted a duckling, goodness but they are soft, and admired the glossy plumage on the chickens, who looked magnificent), then went to an apiary and picked up lovely beeswax candles, including two I intend to inaugurate the next time I attend small group ministry, and then through the beautiful green and undulating countryside to a greenhouse which specializes in lovely smelling and odd-times blooming plants and thence back home.

After some uninteresting bits we went downtown in Ziva to Village de Valeurs, where I got the outfit I’m currently wearing (brown cords and a very nice top for work) and one other pair of pants for myself (stretch cotton with a vibrant black and floral pattern).  Katie got a purse for job hunting (she says it’s not professional to be carting about a skull and cross bones pack), two pairs of jeans and a pinstripe wool blazer so she can have a suit.  I smirk when I think she’ll look like Al Swearengen when she dresses up for an event.

Katie cooked supper – chicken Caesar wraps. I never taught her to cook; somehow she managed to teach herself. She apparently does much of the cooking in her household.  And further to the comestibles, they had yet more Lion Winter Ale at the Hillside Liquor store the day we came into town, woot.

Generally we are hanging out and being mellow.  I have been relieved of doing anything at all for transcription of family books, but will have to work on it back in Vancouver, which is good as I definitely type faster on a keyboard I’m used to.

As you can see it’s excitement central around here, and that is as it should be….  to give you an idea of the parents’ priorities, the pictures on the walls are of grandchildren and pinball machines.

Saturday round up, occasionally unsafe for work

Religious persecution quiz, scanged from a facebook/filking buddy.  Who himself was reposting it.

Statins have much worse potential side effects than was previously believed.

Wretched excess meets explosive cuteness.

I’m not posting a link, but one of the church women posted a youtube link to her toddler doing the Hokey Pokey with her, and I just wanted to mention that that’s what it’s all about.

We live in a culture which has little use for our basic instincts, and is thus breeding / punishing their existence out of us as fast as it can.  One can only wonder what the hell will take its place.  These days I wonder how some people manage to feed themselves.  As long as we are where our instincts don’t serve us, many of us will feel alienated.  I think church is a kind of hamfisted way of addressing that alienation. I can’t help thinking that we’re a step away from ‘customized religious experiences’ and I’m not just talking about going to rural Peru to have a drunken shaman pour ayahuasca down your throat and then count his money while you trip endlessly into a brightly painted bucket of existential horror.  I’m talking about thinking, “I want a religious experience that includes singing and labyrinth walking and drums this Sunday,” and if you live in a big town, actually being able to get it.  Virtually, perhaps.                  but if we do not breathe together…. if we do not conspire….. what are we?  That’s why we live from con to con, from dance to dance, from concert to concert, from gig to gig, from (please do NOT CLICK ON THIS LINK AT WORK or IF YOU THINK Lesbian or BDSM sexuality is icky) hookpull to hookpull, from Sunday to Sunday (or whatever your religiously mandated gathering day is).  Re hookpulls, I personally know two people who have attended and participated in these events, and I like ’em fine, so if you want to remonstrate with me about how sick it is I’m just gonna make a sad face and change the subject. You wouldn’t catch me dead at one of them though, I ain’t going anywhere like that just to be a voyeur and I don’t need any additional pain in my body at the moment, thanks.  My complete incomprehension does not include disgust.

Extra solar planets for the win. Every time I look at it, there’s more.  Everything is on fast forward.

Of course, if I fail to mention the artificial life, people will wonder if I dropped off to sleep.

As I type this I am looking at the handwriting of my ancestor Henry Thomas Wake, and wishing I could have handwriting like that.  Copperplate. He actually made money from designing lettering.  mOm says he would be a blogger if he was alive today.  He records in his diary, March 1859, that we went to Euston Square Station to determine the cheapest way to go visit Carlisle, and also that a friend has kindly lent him a book on double entry bookkeeping.  (He was demoniac about self-improvement).

I’m going to take my chalky and somewhat premigraineous brain out for a drive now.  I want a drum.

That giant sucking sound you hear is car ownership

Sixteen hundred dollars poorer, she emerged.  And I still need an alignment and the car DESPERATELY needs to be detailed.  There’s a lip gloss tube EMBEDDED in the driver’s side carpet like a dinosaur bone emerging from a dig.  I also just realized that the dangly thing hanging from the rear view mirror is a beaded toy flogger, and since I don’t swing that way (pitching OR catching), I should prob’ly take it down. But it’s PURPLE.

Anyways… drove ScaryClown home with me last night and we supped on Swiss Chalet that Jeff brought home and drank beers and watched TV.  At one point Jeff said something so funny that ScaryClown and I were rendered absolutely helpless.  Unfortunately, despite its merits as humour, it is not repeatable, even by me, but please accept my assurances that it was convulsing.

Then the phone rang.  I could hear it but Jeff couldn’t (I answer the phone for a living so heard it over the tv noise which was hockeygamish at the time).  I picked up the phone, but because it was behind me & I wasn’t really paying too close attention I had the receiver upside-down.  Jeff thought I’d gone insane because – well, Jeff thinks I’ve gone insane most of the time, but he’s low-key about commenting – I was picking up the phone and saying hello hello with the receiver upside down – for no apparent reason. He said, brow furrowed, with that crystal clarity people use when talking to halfwits, “The phone is upside down,” at which point Keith and I were actually able to start communicating.  ScaryClown at this point was laughing so hard he lost control of his ketchup.  Keith said, “Ah.  Well, I was going to ask if ScaryClown was still there, but I can hear him laughing, so I’ll be there in 15.”

He and Paul came over (announcing pie and yet another six of Lion Winter, Paul found another source, and commenting that the car looks nice) and we had a very pleasant evening.  The highlight was the scary awesome Mt. St. Helens footage.  You know that this blog started with me commenting about Mt. St. Helens every other day, so I have a special fondness for it, and will stay fond of it if it stays dormant.

This morning

Kat put the plates on the car, moved her brother’s car (with the aid of 4 other people, gaack), and gave me the keys.  Squee! Next up, a leetle more getting ready for guests after I make a carafe of coffee, and then I’ll walk down to Kat’s mother’s, take a deep breath, and then drive a car – which cannot actually turn left – down to the krankenhaus. A call to my boss to advise him of my lateness is queued up on that list as well.

This morning my eyes fell on the happy news that a woman I know is expecting her first child, and I give her joy of the news.  Her report is that she’s peeing a lot and dead tired, and gosh, how familiar THAT sounds.

Saturday morning thotz

I don’t agree with everything this person says about swearing, but I remember reading somewhere that people who are freaked out about swearing are less egalitarian than people who aren’t.  Not particularly safe for work.

Believe me when I tell you this is cool. SFW.

Paul sent around an email yesterday announcing that a court date has been set for the woman who knocked John off his motorcycle.  It had been looking increasingly like nothing was going to happen, but the slow grinding wheels of justice are finally in motion.  May 27th nothing will likely happen except her entering a plea.  Paul will keep us all apprised.

I had a very productive day yesterday; I replaced the burner I covered in melted plastic; re-upped on the lease and gave the landlord six months worth of checks; did a load of laundry, worked on half a dozen songs with Paul and wheedled him into going to the first Tuesday at Jericho for the year in exchange for me working up Erica’s Song well enough to perform it, and man his guitar support is tasty as always), got plates and insurance for the car, cooked chicken schnitzel with quinoa salad for supper (Paul made the salad and insisted on sending me home with some, and it had so much garlic in it it practically triggered an altered state of consciousness); messed with the intonation on my mandolin now that it’s been repaired (sounds okay now); almost wrote a new tune and replaced my bank card which was compromised again if you can believe it (somebody tried to take $500 out of my account in Surrey three days ago and so the baloney alarm was triggered).

I of course find it screechingly funny that my bank knows I’d never take $500 out in Surrey.  Welcome to the Panopticon.

Jeff is likely off to Victoria and will likely be bringing back Andrew, so I have some ‘comfort of guests’ things to do today, not that I mind.  House guests are fun.  For three days, anyway.

Mozart, moods and metal origami

I was a complete frackup this weekend.  I did manage to get some cleaning and laundry done, and I did cook some meals, so I didn’t entirely lay about and do nothing – but mostly I did, while feeling sorry for myself.

Saturday I bought work clothes for our dreaded new overlords have high standards in these things.  I even bought stuff that matched, which is just weird, and it was all solids or stripes, no tie dye. All of it makes me look older than my mother, buy which I mean that it’s all like polyester pantsuits.  Saturday night Jeff and I went to the opera.  It was a masterpiece but the chairs are BRUTAL at the Queen Elizabeth theater and the perfume was a-waftin’.  At half time, despite it being a superlative performance with amazing direction and one tight orchestra, we bailed.  If we could have watched it without being gassed by the fancy lookers in the audience, that would have been grand.  Jeff and I want to go back but we’re thinking a matinee.  The opera was Marriage of Figaro, and honestly, a better introduction to the opera isn’t possible.

Sunday, despite the fact Joy sent me a reminder email that I was supposed to do set up for church, I forgot and came to church late and Jason did all my work for me.  I did a penance afterwards which consisted of drying every last dish that had to be washed out for the annual congregational meeting.  I came home in full bore collapsing mode, I was so upset, and watched Talladega for a while.  Many crashes and a nailbiter finish.  I finally hauled myself up and tidied a bit.  After supper Paul and Keith came over.  I got all weepy and tragic on Paul, who very sensibly responded by hauling out the massage table and working me over until I quit whining, at which point he tucked me into bed (trust a dad to know how to do that right) and went home and then I slept for ten hours.  This is so much more sleep than I normally get that I am thrilled out of my mind.  I haven’t had any beer in the last two days, either.

And just to prove I haven’t stopped taking an interest in cool stuff.  …. metal origami.

Not even with a beer in my hand and a few comments on social media

A series of large losses can make a small loss feel enormous. I told Rob I wouldn’t cry until I had a beer in my hand, and I lied then too.  I’m crying now, but Jeff is meeting the situation with sympathetic noises and the welcome sound of the coffee grinder.  I was going to say more tender things about him, but he’s off in his room now belching so loud something in my room vibrated in sympathy…. still in keeping with the theme, I spose.

There was a brief flurry of amusement last night at Robof9’s going away party while one party member commented to another, “We’re friends, right?” but in reference to facebook.

I now have more than 150 facebook friends.  I have met and spoken to every single one of them.  Some of them are my dearest friends; some I barely know; some are more other people’s friends than mine.  But they are my facebook tribe and I follow their doings, their triumphs and tragedies, the way folks follow soaps. Not so much on the story arc, but man, the set pieces entirely rock.

Livejournal is for filk buddies and church buddies.  When I realized that – that was the point I realized that filk is the religion-friendly portion of SF fandom.  Because all the most religious people I know who are also fans are also filkers.  Things that make you say hmm.  And when I say religion, I mean Judaism, paganism, UUism, and Mormonism.  We all get together in a room and sing our faces off, and we make sure that people’s dietary requirements, both allergy and religious, are met, and we don’t even talk about it because that would all be beside the point anyway, we’re here to sing and love each other.  Livejournal merely supports the meatspace- we are meant to be together, and LJ helps us do that.

Twitter is for people who like the kinds of things I like.  Twitter is mostly people I don’t know, will never meet.  The most recent person to start following me had two midwife attended births, co-slept, baby carried, tandem nursed and looky looky, she’s a vegetarian. All those things in common, and then, clunk.  Uh, no thanks. Personally I fucking hate it when people say they are vegetarian and eat eggs and milk.  You’re still robbing babies and eating them, so how does that bring you to fluffy bunnyhood?  Either be vegan or be sparing in your meat consumption or be like me, the meat on meat inside meat, with meat on the side, kind of person.

I will be a vegetarian when I have to, and not one second sooner.  My brain doesn’t work properly without meat protein and it sure doesn’t work properly without animal fat.  Wish it were otherwise.

Now I have to go outside and plant the saplings work gave me for Earth Day.  I have a funny story about that but I can’t publish because the inertnets are temporarily forever.  I hope Margot joins me.  There’s something very comforting about her watching me work.

Tom and Peggy and singin’

Tom and Peggy put together a housefilk last night, complete with little kids, blackberries and Brooke PLUS special guests from Washington state.  I really like Jeff C and Jeri-Lynn and Jeri-Lynn’s cello adds that touch of class to any musical gathering.  Was amused (and mentioned it to Paul) that Diane Loomer had done the choral arrangement for her sheet music for “Frobisher Bay” which is about getting on a whaler and not getting off it cause it gets stuck in Arctic ice.  Diane Loomer is the genius what directs the Chor Leoni, of which I have spoken many times here on the blog.  So it is all cunningly intertwingled, as it were.

Creede played Crossroads (how I love that man’s whiskers!  His whiskers should have their own TV show!) and when he didn’t play the last verse (the one which mentions the banjo) there was a simultaneous sad face across the entire room, followed by a couple of people saying, Hey, what about the last verse, at the completion of which Paul burst out laughing because he’d never heard it before.

Brooke played Orion Swings, which is such an ominous tune, but so pretty.  And there was a little bit of everything else, like all filks.  Oh, and I debuted “Forty Million Light Years” minus the last five verses, which I still have to write.

I forgot how to tune a mandolin.  It was like having an outbreak of Alzheimer’s in my head, or I could say something about how long it’s been since I cradled Mistress Aria in my arms.  Yes, indeed, Tom finished the repairs just in time for the filk, and I don’t think I ever thanked him. Well, that’s just how I roll, diving into things and then figuring out the social niceties afterwards.  Fortunately Tom knows me well enough not to take it personal.

There was a brief moment of WTF as I woke up this morning without being in my own bed (yes, I was at Planet Bachelor, where Keith woke me up with the blessed scent of coffee,  moving right along now) and now it’s the mad scramble for church and hopefully deking home to fetch Margot and give Brother Jeff the instructions for getting her home.

Time vs money

I am SO tired of the commute, I’ve decided to buy a car.  Kat has one for sale and she said she would do the cv joint and the muffler for me if I buy the parts and I am very tempted.  It is not a particularly useful car, being, like the MR2, a two seater.  LTGW told me to buy a truck.  This was in the same week he told me I was wearing sensible shoes.  I ended up screaming “Want me to shave my head and start wearing overalls TOO” in the middle of the cafeteria, which certainly made Robof9 laugh.

Robof9 is leaving the Tiled Cell on the Hill later this month.  I am just punched out about that too.

The lights over my desk give me a headache every day.  My eyes are so tired by the time I go home I feel like I’m in a dissociative state.

The weather is cold and windy.  I heard what sounded like ice pellets pinging off my window at 3 am this morning.

Anyway, now that I know I’m getting a car I feel very bad at the same time I am feeling better.  It’s just that I can’t read, play games, watch video on my phone or do anything that doesn’t involve looking out the window to prevent motion sickness whenever I ride the bus.  I can spend two and one half hours a day commuting, or half an hour driving.  I’m 51 and I’ve only got so many hours left.  Translink is not bad for my part of the world, and it’s not their fault that there’s a fucking lake in between me and work.  I am tired of the asinine creature who takes up five seats on the bus with the rude way she occupies the front section.  I’m tired of the men who smell like pee and spilled stuff and the women who smell like air freshener.  I am tired of listening to phone conversations in a babel of languages; I am tired of hearing conversations that make me want to butt in and describe in detail the cognitive biases involved.  I am tired of fucking rude bus drivers (I’ve seen some good ones, but a couple of events in the last month have left me gobsmacked with disappointment and too disheartened to even complain.)  But I should commute because it’s better for the environment.  It would be better for the environment if I jumped off a bridge, too, but that is not in the cards.

The house is shifting on its foundations with the wind.

I want rainbows and unicorns and world peace, and I’m getting dying cats, blue relatives and friends, (this item deleted), (this item deleted), (this item deleted too, sigh), and a bunch of other stuff I can’t complain about.  Currently there are 18 items on the list; most of them I only wrote down so I could add one last item to the list & I FEEL REEAAALLY SHITTY about not being able to DO anything about the stuff that’s wrong.  Oh yeah, Mr. Cheerful Pants, I should just work on the stuff I CAN fix.  It’s all about reframing things.  Well how about I reframe this by breaking it over your head, how’s that work for you?

The only good thing that happened this week is that Mike showed the pictures he took of Rozo in the woods – nude.  Unbelievable.  All that hair, and her standing on a tree stump in Robert Burnaby Park looking like something shot out of a New Raphaelite wet dream.  There was one particular pic, her figleafed with hair, that I want to carry around with me in my wallet so I have something pleasant to look at when things really fuck up.

That’s not true, there was one other thing that happened this week.  I found a website with erotic photos and art that actually has about one in ten pics that I like.  I guess it’s yet another sign that I overshare that my first impulse was to email a couple of links to my daughter.  That’s not funny, it’s sick.

Jeff cheered me up by loaning the car to me yesterday – he stayed home with Gizmo.  I went and got treats after work to cheer us both up.

Now I’m going to do a Tarot reading.  The day can get worse any way it likes.

Where’s the rat???

I bailed on church… fifteen minutes before I had to leave I got a message on the wind telling me to stay put and await developments.  Developments were more or less immediate…. ScaryClown and then Keith phoned, so my posse and I ate brunch at the Heritage.  Yummy as usual… ran into Glenn from church so that was all very recursive.  Anyway, as Jeff and I were on our way out the door we noted a dead rat on the back deck – young, headless and male – and as we came back in, no rat.

So, where the heck is it?  We may not know until it starts to smell.  The joys of having a cat door.

Gizmo is getting sicker and sicker, but he has good days and bad days, and as today had some rat in it, it’s probably a good day by cat standards.  Jeff will update with a post in due course.

Jeff has taken to calling me Miss Organized.  He is being sarcastic.  I think I’m doing okay considering how tired and sad I am most of the time these days, but I really shouldn’t have left the chicken out of the fridge.  Point taken…

Sunday miscellanea

Dug out one fifth of the garden yesterday, after an entertaining visit chez Tom and Peggy (Peggy was working) to borrow gardening tools and drop off the busted mandolin.  Anybody who has seen Tom’s garage knows how this is possible.  Paul accompanied me, and there was much mirth and mocking; personally I found the image of the concrete bags which had turned solid enough to form gun emplacement material very happy making.   Tom offered four substantial pieces of wood to frame the garden plot with (I am not turning down ten foot lengths of six by six treated aged cedar for this purpose).  I didn’t need a mattock, but it was so axe murder-y I had to borrow it.  Also, I now have a picture of myself cuddling a meter long spanner, this also being the kind of thing one finds lying about in Tom’s vicinity.  I was also thinking of asking him for sand as I was thinking of doing the potatoes grown in tires thing, but really I only have so much energy, and Jeff has already registered misgivings about my ability to keep up with a garden, which is only reasonable. I volunteered for various of Tom’s plans (mostly holding the ends of things, this being a requirement for most of Tom’s plans).  Tom and I also agreed to split a cartload of topsoil; Paul is going to investigate manure for his little garden plot.

I stopped digging after I twisted my knee.  It appears to be okay this morning, so back to the grind after church.  The dirt I’m pulling up is full of earthworms (also those nasty lawn chafer larvae, which I carefully threw onto the concrete so Margot could mishandle them).  Margot croaked in excitement when she saw the measuring tape.  So shiny ! So crinkly ! So making a wonderful noise as it disappeared into its hole !  She pounced on it but I was able to wrestle it away from her.

Great church meeting yesterday.  Various matters arose and I slept on them; I will be taking a decision later today.  It’s not particularly earth shattering.

It turns out the migraines were hormones.  As my career as a breeder staggers to a close, I suppose I’ll get this crap happening occasionally.  Grr, the mama bear said.  Grr.

When I was a kid I thought my dad was the coolest man who ever lived; he let us watch Laugh-In, he bought gouramis and lizards and four eyed fish (anableps anableps) and painted a stick man on the side of the house and he had a beard and he put up a geodesic dome in the backyard and he had trophies for shooting and he’d been in the Air Force and he could fix anything and he had a succession of unusual cars (Simca, anyone?  original Mini Minor?).  One of the many cool things about him was his taste in music.  (This is no longer the case.. he listens to Muzak now, but we all get old and tired, so I won’t repine).  I used to love it when he played the soundtrack from the early sixties show “Checkmate” – he had the soundtrack album – and it wasn’t until last night that I realized that the Johnny Williams who wrote that score (which is MADE OF OSSUM) is the same John Williams who wrote the Star Wars theme, and many many many others.  Prescient dude, mi papa.

Steak and eggs and coffee for breakfast.

Biscotti are on for the first bake…. I promised some to Tom this morning, and given his many kindnesses I’d better get on the stick.  Can you tell I’m feeling better?