This lively piece of art was made by Lady Miss B, in consequence of a dreaded livejournal meme. Briefly, I asked for it, and she rendered it from a list of my interests from my lj account.
Category: Friends
last Jericho of the 15th season
The season closer, which I attended with Paul, Paul’s boon companion Mike J, Keith and Mike, was a barnburnin’, kickass, upsidethehead HOWL of an evening. Three professional musicians on tour (two of them being the Undesirables, a very amazing Canadian duo who TRANSFIXED the audience and the other being David Ross MacDonald, an Aussie who blinked at us when we wouldn’t sing the chorus of his rubato version of Waltzing Matilda because he wasn’t singing) joined the open stage, and the Galley stayed open long enough to serve beer at the break, may it be blessed among restaurants, and apart from it being ass freezing cold it was a splendid evening. Banjo! Mandola! Social Justice songs! a song by Stompin’ Tom Connors about the Iron Workers’ Memorial Bridge collapse! Ashokan Farewell played during the jam session by four fiddles (one of whom played with polish and precision by a ten year old boy), one bodhran, one pennywhistle, two guitars and two mandolins! No fewer than two Bob Dylan songs (nobody plays Dylan at Jericho, it’s odd)!
When Fraser Union, the ‘headliner’, finally made it to the stage, one of them remarked that the headliners had already come and gone. But you don’t go to Jericho thinking you’ll never be upstaged; on any given evening the quality of the musicianship is enough to give you severe pause.
Thanks to Mike J for giving me the musical term rubato and explaining it (he’s a second tenor with Chor Leoni and knows his shizz); thanks to Mike for the lift home; thanks to Paul for lining up for beers for us and loaning me the entrance money because as usual I forgot to get cash.
Bright blessings for the gift of being in that room, where sixty voices, in three and four part harmony, lifted the beams and raised the dust. I didn’t want to perform that night, and I’m glad I didn’t try!
Meaningless ranting about unverifiable incidents
I have had one precognitive dream in my life, that I recollect. Continue reading Meaningless ranting about unverifiable incidents
I have world class heartburn
People over 50 who eat hot wings after 8 pm deserve world class heartburn. I ask for no sympathy and it’s a good thing I expect none.
It is with flaming heart, therefore, that I announce the following horrific news. I decided to clean off the memo portion of my cell phone as I recollected just now that I had sung a number of tunes into it. Well, a number turns out to be seven, all but one without lyrics and me with no clue what key they are in or what to call any of them. Thank you o great muse for your immense bounty, but I JUST SAID on my blog that I had 39 percent of them written down, so I’m down to 36 percent instantaneously. Now, this is a fine, a stupendous problem to have, and I’d be six kinds of fool to even hint at wishing for a shutoff valve, but I refuse to do anything but acknowledge the fact that I have yet more work, as sleep beckons.
I got to meet Mike’s new inamorata Vilma. (While Keith played Rock Band non stop). She can sit on her hair. I know personal remarks is rude, but her hair is stupendous, and comes entirely unregulated or mishandled by professionals in cascading rippling waves of honey blonde that terminate just above the backs of her knees. The full effect is enhanced by her petiteness, and of course if she wasn’t a lovely, smart and good-natured woman the personal remarks would be even ruder. Mike has horseshoes clanking around in his sitz platz.
Oh, and me and Mike and Keith played darts. Mike won with a dazzling “come through in the choke” maneuvre.
Summer and fall mix it up
The weather has been going back and forth, back and forth between summer and fall. It was pretty hot yesterday. I mowed the lawn. I wish it was the last time for this season, but I imagine I’ll have to do it sometime again in October.
Paul called from Ontario to wish himself a happy birthday (that was pretty funny, actually) and to get the update on Dave. He also mentioned he’d be going to visit Chipper on the way back from his canoe trip with Tish and Terry and Margo (Tish’s cousin). That should be fun for all concerned.
Jeff’s taking the day off. He bet me $20 (and remember, I don’t normally gamble) that he’d a) get Xenon running b) get the Xbox diagnosed (it failed yesterday when Keith fired it up, causing much unhappiness, and it’s an E74 failure mode, whatever that is, which is apparently so common it automatically extends your warranty) and c) get the new media box running the way he wants it to by bedtime tonight (or possibly tomorrow morning). Knowing what I know about the ‘total depravity of inanimate things’ (Katharine Walker) I took that bet. … actually, it turns out that Xenon is being a fussy gussy, so I am not going to collect; I thought it was too much when Jeff suggested his busy day.
Dancing
Went dancing with Katie K, aka Kopper. It was mostly an older crowd so it was all classic sixties R&B with occasional pokes into the 90s. We ate before the dance at Vera’s, there being no room at the inn at the Raincity Grill. I had a simply lovely time and only drank two beers. Laughed my ass off, repeatedly, danced ass off, rinse, repeat, drink more water.
Took a cab from Edmonds to Planet Bachelor to feed Kira; both of the denizens are out of town at the moment. She was powerful glad to see me. Said cab, driven by an immaculately mannered young man whose immigration to Canada seemed obvious, but whose ethnicity was not, then conveyed me to my domicile, where Miss Margot waited on the back deck. She scarcely mewed when she saw me; she’d had no difficulty staying out of trouble in the interim.
Now sleepy-byes. I hope Eddie and Gizmo, both of whom are out catting, have the courtesy to give me at least 4 hours of shuteye before Eddie starts making Doleful Moan on the back deck.
Church tomorrow.
long post
I bagged on the puddle yesterday, but in good news, I have lost ten pounds since I quit working and the trend continues. Who the hell knew that eating less and exercising more would work? I am looking forward to v..e..r..y slowly losing the rest of it. Keith is dragging me out to exercise today. Paul and Keith and Katie went jogging on Saturday, can you credit it? I thought it was happening at one, so I was shopping on Main St. I bought…. a pick guard. Two instrument wall hangers. A gig bag to replace the trashed one which Eddie whizzed on. It was trashed before Eddie whizzed on it; I hated the damned thing and the zippers were junk. I came this close to getting a guitar stand, but no. Margot continues to enjoy her cat toy, to the extent that she came and slept with it while it was charging on my bed last night. Although her appearance in my room was probably triggered by Eddie permacrabbing at her in the hallway last night. Yes, I permanently mounted a power bar a railing on my bunk bed. There are four items plugged into it currently, three of them chargers for various gadgetty things. Nascar yesterday. I am starting to like it, because when I watch it I go into this really creative zone. Whatever works. I solved a story problem while watching the race yesterday and went upstairs to write it down. At one point a car spun out, exploding grass divots into the air at 150 miles an hour, and then ‘wearing’ said grass divots as it went into Pit Road. Keith and I looked at each other, and Keith said, “Camouflage; you’re doing it wrong!” which cracked me up. It even went back onto the track with grass stuck in the bumper, reminding me irresistibly of a muscleman with spinach in his teeth. I can’t leave a message for Katie because Daxus filled her mailbox. Katie just shrugs. Since the phone’s in my name, I’m going to block it his number for her; she’s looking for work right now and it’s essential that she have access to her voicemail. Thursday Brian C. and Chari are coming over for dinner and la musica. Mike will be free that evening and bring that sweet electric twelve string he recently rescued from his parent’s basement. It makes everything sound like a Byrds song. Today…. all the things I haven’t been doing, like getting my taxes mailed off and booking a truck to empty the storage locker, and maybe, just maybe, knocking off another song.
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.
Stay on good terms with engineers
Or they will f*cking KILL YOU. Or themselves, in this case.
I realized, reviewing my social calendar for the last few weeks, that it’s been pretty heavy on my rellies, and not heavy enough on cool boys who like to talk tech. For this reason I called ScaryClown and invited him over for dinner. Jeff was pleased.
He’ll be here late, as he’s got to go to BCIT first, but that is only one bus ride from here. Now I contemplate what to cook, hoping for inspiration…. nah, I want chicken! That was easy.
Went to Shiloh 6th Avenue Church this morning to look at the space for the satellite service. It’s a rather austere and functional room, but it’s still nicer looking and with a higher ceiling than Place Maillardville. Peggy signed the contract for four months (one Sunday per month) of function space today. Shiloh’s the church Suzanne goes to, so it’s all part of my insanely small world. It was nice biking down there, but I was annoyed to discover that Neil Douglas’ shop doesn’t even open until noon these days. I also checked out the menu at Olé Olé which made me instantly hungry. I was thinking of biking all the way down to the new location of Renaissance Books but decided that was too much hill on the way back. I also thought of going to the Royal City Farmer’s Market. But I won’t – I don’t like leaving the house when the dishwasher and laundry are running.
Margot is still in love with her toy. Anything to get some exercise into that kitty. I was telling Peggy last night that I’m looking forward to her first interaction with snow. I bet she loves it.
Unca Dave’s “I’m not dead yet” partay will be the last weekend in September.
Carrie’s coming through town the third week in September on her way to see kids in Ontario.
Further news as events warrant!
Mike brings dinner and “something for the kids”
Mike brought marinaded chicken, with a side of rice, and I made salad and bought tiramisu cups from Langley Farm Market, and we watched the latest episode of True Blood and T2. (After Keith and Mike had a Star Trek match). My new fave movie scene is Linda Hamilton’s escape from the fool farm.
Mike said, “I brought something for the kids” which proved to be one of those motorized balls that wibbles and wobbles and scoots all over the floor. The boys ignored it. Margot LOVED IT, but doesn’t actually play with it, she just chases it around. Will provide video once it’s available.
Mike recently had the astonishing experience of having an ex a) apologize for any harm caused and b) repay the money owing. The universe did not fall off its axle, but I damn near did when I heard about it. Wonders cannot cease while we live.
Today, return library books, add receipts to our monthly who-owes-what-to-whom reconciliation (grr, I lost my second biggest receipt this month), tweak various recordings for posting and adding to running-total list of songs, clean house from top to bottomus, prep for dinner with Tom and Peggy, try to get hold of Cindy to see if she can come tonight as well, laundry, and mow grass. I will try to squeeze one song in there if I can, next up is “Beloved Coworker (I guess I never felt this way). Which I wrote in Montreal. I wrote “She” and “Evening News” in Montreal; my dwelling there was an interesting failed experiment in many ways, but at least I got some good songs out of it. Living in Montreal and Toronto have definitely brought me to a finer appreciation of Vancouver; with all its flaws it’s a very good place to live.
The weather has been overcast, occasionally rainy, and cool. Feels like fall already, but we had a deliciously hot summer and I had lots of beach days so no whining here.
Off to do the first load of laundry now…. Should think about what to bring up from the freezer while I’m down there. It’s cool enough I could cook indoors, and I’m thinking meatloaf? with spuds and veggies?
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.
Saw District 9 this afternoon
It kicked ass. It is also rather a guilty pleasure. But really, worth seeing on the big screen.
Kat, Kashka and Katie, plus Paul and Keith, were here for supper. Barbecued chicken thighs, garlic bread, broccoli and scratchmade cheese sauce, potatoes or yams. Strawberry rhubarb pie for dessert. Katie and her housemates are playing on the Star Trek…. happy sigh.
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.
Bob Dylan’s New Year’s Day is done
I have always been much more fond of the lyrics than the tune on this one, but I don’t mind. …. I remember the day I wrote it… on the subway, coming back on New Year’s Day from crashing at Dave’s the night before. Toronto seems so very far away from me now. And yet thither must I go.
The landpeers are power washing the back deck preparatory to painting it.
I had lunch at Himalayan Peak with Hardeep, Trevor, ScaryClown and Robof9 yesterday, and hung with the folks in the cafeteria after that. LTGW encouraged me to go to the 4:24 showing of District 9, but I wanted to get home and make dinner.