Category: Domestic Life

To do list got much bigger

In the last two days I’ve added about 45 items to my to do list and removed…2. However, I’m LOVING Thinking Rock, and it’s finally giving me what I want since the original DOS based Sidekick fell off the software map.

Keith is off to work, I’m off soon to look at a co-op, and then I’m off again to visit Brother Jerome in his new digs here in Burnaby after I pick up an action flick for us to watch. (His spouse doesn’t like action flicks. I do, but only because I’m a sad excuse for a film buff). Katie’s asleep.

By copy to the travelling ones, I’ll have my cell, give me a call and we’ll get the keys squared away….

Thinking Rock

As you can imagine, I have a ship pile of work to do to get myself successfully launched in my new life.  I have been kicking the tires on organizing software, and I think, thanks to deli.cio.us, I have finally found what I’m looking for:  Thinking Rock.

I’ve been messing with it for about an hour, and I have to say that I’m already really enjoying the power and flexibility.  You do need the most recent rev of Java to use it.

Now I know that those of my rel-eo-tives who have a getting-things-done software chip embedded in their skulls, and yes I mean you GoToGirl and Nautilus3 and Tammy too, will be laughing at me trying to find software to help me as I meep meep my way through this tangle of to-dos, but I say if the technology is there, use it.  I’ve now downloaded seven different kinds of GTD software and this is the first one I’ve liked. Not that a recommendation from me means dick-all, but  there you go.

… today so far, with a bit of yesterday

Slept late – first time in weeks. Got up and went through five photo albums, removing my photos. I have to admit that in this at least, the digital age is superior. It was really hard not to cry when I got to pix of Grandad and Bounce.

Both the kids are working today. Keith got an extra two hours put on the front end of his shift, which is something you only do to a 20 year old man if you know he’s organized and disciplined and won’t have been up all night drinking. (At at internet café playing WoW until three, yes, but not drinking.)

Paul paid somebody to get a haircut – first time in over 15 years. I admit to some interest in how it will look the first time he washes it, but he certainly looks different. I admit to some amusement that he went to my stylist, as she had to be polite and say that I’d done an okay job so far. I think we saved about $1500 in haircuts.

Last night I went to the Massage school in New Westminster and got an hour long massage for $30. My foot stopped being numb for about 15 minutes – I wasn’t expecting even that so it was kind of miraculous.

My boss, who will henceforth be known as Mr. Clean (because of a canister of cleanser which is part of his deskshrine), gave me a lift, after he told me that he’d give me a lift if I cleaned off my desk. Ha. He didn’t think I’d do it, and I really DID clean if off, not just pile stuff in corners. And I wiped it down afterwards, seeing as how it looked like a Rorschach nightmare in coffee stains.

Katie’s home

Katie turned up around 5 this morning, looking just fine. She was at a friend’s house a couple of blocks away. She was about to go back to bed and I asked her when she was getting up in the morning and she said 9, and I said, Hunh? You don’t have to work until 5 pm today!

She looked at her schedule and acknowledged that she was having a little temporal difficulty.

Now that I can actually concentrate rather than being entirely freaked out all the time, I plan on having a great weekend, starting with a massage tonight, and then a friend’s birthday party tomorrow, and then lots, and lots of packing and dejunking. That part is a little harder to be enthusiastic about.

In happy family news, Paul has a great niece named Ava and Jesse sent us pix. She must have been scant days old in the family picture they sent, just a wee little mite; we are happy to welcome Ava to the family.

Paparazzi free zone

Until this morning, when I learned of the existence of Kate Middleton, I didn’t know where the term paparazzi came from. It came from the name of a photographer in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita who was in turn named after a school chum whose nickname was Paparazzo – “Mosquito”.

Kate Middleton is somebody or other’s girlfriend, and as far as I know, she doesn’t have a blog. She doesn’t have to, with half the scurvy press outside her door.

Continue reading Paparazzi free zone

New recipe

Four dry cups tricolori noodles, boiled and drained

2 – 4 chicken breasts minced (I used a food processor)

Basil, parsley, garlic, black pepper, a leedle bit salt

Cheese sauce (about a cup of grated cheese, flour, butter) – make it runny

Can mushrooms

Assemble in casserole dish, slap on lid and cook for an hour at 350 F

Yummy. Intensely foodlike, and a definite step up from KD.

New look

There are two thousand and counting WordPress ‘themes’ which I could be using for this blog.   Glenn was here this afternoon and we mucked things around until it was all more or less working.  I seem to have lost some of the January posts, but frankly, apart from the moose pic you aren’t missing much.  Also, the links don’t seem to be working for the archive – although they were working earlier this afternoon.

May I welcome Lady Miss Banjola

Lady Miss Banjola needs little introduction to my readers. A wonderfully intelligent and only mildly chaotic force for good in the universe, she is a woman of many gifts. I welcome her! I welcome her usefulness and her sarcasm! I welcome her superhero capes! and when I can find a camera whose lens won’t break at the prospect, I’ll take a picture of the one she made me last fall.

Mocha

Katie bailed on work yesterday, which, considering she was exhausted from the social whirl earlier this week, was wise. She watched Ice Age and Titan AE, drank hot chocolate, and went to bed early. She’s also made the decision to get herself free of the restaurant job, as the hours are just too long for her to manage that and school. It was very pleasant to have her at home yesterday evening, and I rewatched my favorite scenes from Ice Age (the Tae Kwon Dodos (apologies to the Finn Family Kanata) and the slide scenes) and tried to watch the first ten minutes of Titan AE and just couldn’t do it. I’m thinking the last anime I watched with any pleasure was Ghost in the Shell II, and that’s much the standard I’m holding anime to.

Her boyfriend is taking her to Evanescence later this month! It’s been ages since she went to a concert. I’m going to the Vancouver Lesbian and Gay Choir “Heat” concert later this month, and much looking forward to it.

I’m packing up an “Ooopsie” package for my folks. I completely forgot to give my pOp the control panels for the inverter I gave him last month, nor did I, in my excitement at the prospect of seeing the folks, remember to include the manual. Duh, as they say.

Speaking of Duh, may I welcome to the comments section, Duh, who not three days ago emailed me to ask me if I was who I was – after we hadn’t spoken for something like 30 years. Duh is a high school buddy of mine currently living in the US but working on coming back to the People’s Republic of Canuckistan. Duh always was that combination of rude and intelligent that I really like in a fellow primate, so it is with apprehension and amusement that I welcome him back into my life. Welcome, Duh!

Cure for Cancer

I wiped the sleep out of my eyes and discovered that somebody invented a cure for cancer. It’s amazing what happens on the Interwebs when you’re asleep! Oh, darn. There’s the fine print, it hasn’t been tested in humans. Okay, I can go back to sleep now. The reference is on Bruce Sterling’s weblog, in case you have any interest.

Today will be more like a full and proper day at work, with a full complement of staff, which means I should have my lunch bunch back in one fine ensemble of photography afiocionados.

Irina in the caf is quitting wah! To get more education and higher pay, yay! Honest to God, everytime I hear her say, “Biscotti” in that heavy heavy Russian accent, I shiver in pleasure. I’ve given her the recipe twice now – she was frantic when she misplaced it during her move – and I was commiserating with her about how the results are even better in a gas stove but you have to watch it like a hawk because it burns so much more readily. I know that a girl’s supposed to have a signature recipe that she possessively clings to, but I’ve always given the recipe to anybody who asked for it, and dang, I’ve posted it to my blog twice…

I finished mailing out the co-op applications; now let’s see who wants somebody with a fair amount of non-profit experience… who won’t need a subsidy.

My to do list magically got bigger during the night. Has this ever happened to you???

Happy sigh

In the face of overwhelming odds, I maintained my sanity; I performed laundering and cleaning of dishes and emptying of cat litter (whoo-wee), I mailed off about twenty application requests to co-ops, I walked around downtown in the rain with Keith a lot, visited Doug and L.E., heard cuts off Odditorium, watered some plants (after trying to open the wrong fricking door, thank God the tenants weren’t home), I called a bunch of people to wish them a happy new year (and only people I really felt like talking to, and mostly got voicemail) and talked to Maggie and cleared up a misunderstanding. Gosh I’m dense sometimes. I’m okay with that.

Picture is of a headline from a local newspaper. I would like to be subtle about this, but there are a couple of other laughs on this front page, so I implore you to examine the entire image for chuckles.

how many times did I use enough sleep

enough sleep
2004-08-30— Posted by: allegra

Ah yes. There is a ghost in the machine, and his name is Glen. Some of you may be aware that the picture with the snake was the size of a dinner table; Glen held his peace for a couple of days and then without comment resized it.

The first time my website was live, it had nothing but a bunch of pornographic writing in it; that pesky spirit. I’m a pro porn feminist, so I was irritated without being scandalized. Most of my irritation came from a feeling I get rather more often than I ought, which is HEY I can do better than *that*.

People who know me know my flinching muscles work over time. I am an extremely tic’y kinda person, and I actually sat down and tried to review all of my personal tics, and I’m too smart to write the list down anywhere but it certainly got interesting before I lost track of how many I have. Then I reviewed a list of all the things that can happen during sex to make me completely reset to zero, and that made me want to phone Paul and apologize to him; I must be a sore trial to that man. Strangely he only really complains once in a long while. Really, the inside of my head never ceases to be of more fascination than television, lawn bowling (I typed blowing at first, and wish I’d left it that way) and everything else except the internet.

Pic is Paul’s.