Settler words&music in S'ólh Téméxw, (leanpub.com/upsun) living where privilege meets precarity in MST country. she/her/they———– Novels: Midnite Moving Co., Upsun; Sweep Off Those Waves coming soon, Hair Sinister after that. —Restore All Indigenous Lands!
Check out the tail on a Scottish wildcat!
Margot actually jumped up on the sofa and was friendly yesterday. Eddie has gotten quite noisy about demanding pets, as well.
Time to make bacon and eggs and think about what I’m wearing for summer church today. Speaking of which, I find this hilarious.
Today I will attack some laundry.
The new nova that showed up in Delphinius is alREADy losing luminosity, so we may not even get a chance to see it before it fades beyond binocular recall.
Andrew Brechin is dead. He was active in the poly, SCA, pagan, lantern festival, fannish, filkish, trans & queer rights, union and clown band communities; he could pun without apparent effort, was a wonderful coparent to a number of children, not all of whom were biologically his, made me laugh harder than any of my other facebook friends, and he was younger than me. He wore OUTRAGEOUS hats, and once showed up to Fetish Night dressed as Cthulhu (man, he musta sweated his balls off in that head to toe gear) with no fewer than 8 skimpily dressed women in attendance as his priestesses. (The pic is now going round the internet like a dose of salts).
He apparently died in his sleep, which is definitely the way to go except it should have been at minimum 30 years hence. I only met him half a dozen times, if that, but he was the menschiest of men and had more friends – more real friends – than many people could claim. The last time I saw him IRL he and Mike M. realized that they had sat next to each other in engineering school (and they both flunked out, mOm tell pOp that as I think he will find that mildly amusing). And we ate. There’s a memorial dinner for him next week and unless I feel really bad I’m going, because I want to hear more stories about how awesome he was, and I think he had the coolest friends circle in town. I will miss his wit, his humanity and his mighty heart for justice. I had no idea Cindy knew him – her precis of her relationship with him on livejournal practically had me in tears.
The video camera aimed at the cat door has revealed that Miss Margot does not re-enter the house daintily. Generally she rockets through the door at such a rate of speed that the effect is quite comical. Hope to have video at some point.
Physiotherapist scolded the crap out of me. NO I MAY NOT DRIVE. I may do the following three exercises. I may not sleep on the injured shoulder. MY POSTURE SUCKS (HOW HE FROWNED). Here is how I should sleep. I crept out of there in a very sad frame of mind, but I’ve been doing my exercises faithfully.
Showed the shop two days ago, showing it to a different set of customers tomorrow. I am no longer worried about it…. it is what it is, I have a roof and food and friends and painkillers, so tra la la. Also Cadfael on Netflix. Man, I do heart Derek Jacobi.
I have the tester cpap machine. A new one is going to cost 2400 dollars, but it’s the ResMed, and it has all of the features I want. The tech said the Respironics machines break like clockwork just out of the warranty period, and he’s sold 300 of the ResMeds and only one ever came back and that was because the dumbass customer left the water in when he put it in his car and of course fried the circuitboards. I haven’t started using it because CANDIDLY I am feeling just that little bit overwhelmed at all of the changes I’ve had to deal with in the last six months. Getting into and out of the restaurant, Audrey and Andrew and Bareld dying, breaking my shoulder, deaths and breakups in my circle of close friends, Kira dying, estrangement from one of my children, not being able to drive…. and there’s more but listing it all seems a mug’s game. And of course if I don’t mention how my church family has rallied round me I’d be a true mug.
Jeff and I are heading out to Home Depot. Type atcha later.
Got a couple of nibbles on the shop, we shall see.
My shoulder is not healing as well as the bone doc would like, the bit of the tuberosity that broke off isn’t staying lined up properly because I keep overdoing it. This week my job is to keep that sucker immobilized and laze about. This is not a hard sell and by next Friday I’ll know whether I’m good to start physio or not. Otherwise, alas, it’s surgery, and a whole nother set of months recuperating. I know, sucks to be me, but I can’t say I’m unhappy to be living where this kind of stuff gets looked after.
Anyway, positively no housework that can’t be done one handed, and I’m staying locked up in the sling.
My cloak works great in circumstances where I have a sling and it’s raining.
Damned grass is growing now and I can’t cut the lawn with one wing.
Monday we’ll be open 7 to 7 six days straight. Part of me is sad I won’t be spending as much time with Katie. But we now can do what needs to be done over the course of the day and we just need to bite the bullet and DO.
The ovens will be about $1.5k to fix. Given that they’d be 5 to 6k each to replace I figure we are getting off lightly. The top oven is working safely again but a draft diverter is the next major expense. Who knew that the fans for Bertha’s compressor would wreak such havoc on the gas ovens. Damned good thing we keep both doors open for ventilation most of the time. Oddly enough the temperature regulation for #1 Dragon was bang on all the way through these trials, which says a lot for the quality of these Canadian made pizza ovens.
I have an enormous list of things to do this weekend. If I get through a third of it I’ll be happy.
Despite Jeff and I jumping on this show with enthusiasm, I still managed to get in a brief shop, hang around the shop for 4 hours while the temp sensor solution got put in for Bertha, launder many clodes and rugs and fold towels, clean the hell hole under the kitchen sink after scrubbing down the tub and the kitchen cupboards, which looked yucky, and sweep the kitchen floor and cook a tasty dinner (chicken thighs, noodles and fresh green beans). But I have to say I love love love the character of Raylan Givens, and Boyd Crowder isn’t far behind. It’s interesting that while the show is violent (the body count is what it is) there’s virtually no swearing and the nudity is in my view not gratuitous. Although Mr. Olyphant can take his clodes off annnnnytime.
It’s 1:30 in the morning and I am up because of heartburn. I should probably attempt to go back to sleep.
Went to a party last night. I don’t mind meeting new people. Every man I spoke with wanted to have about 90% of the air time. Or wore so much scent that I thought, “A nice guy but you could float an anvil on the lake of his cologne”. I guess I am just too effin picky, but at least I made the effort, and it was Garlen’s 50th.
Katie is dating again. When she went for a walk with her new beau, great blue herons were following her around and glaring at her. She found it amusing that my totem animal was following her around. She’s gone off to New West now to be with her bestie for a while.
2020 says CONSULTING ANIMAL YOU FOOL
I am waiting for it to dry enough that I can cut the grass. Other than that I have a pretty lazy weekend planned, except for taking down the wasp nest at the shop (it’s over the back door, a truly lousy place for it, and continuing to much out my room. Maybe I’ll even write some songs down.
The ISS space walk was successful! Go team Space!
Just for the headline (SFW)
This is a candle for Katie’s bestie, who is having serious problems with her first pregnancy. Katie will hang with her later today at a birthday barbecue.
Katie is going to go camping for May two-four weekend, first time since she was a kid. She is squee-level five looking forward to it.
I am going to go back to cleaning my room and doing laundry now.
Jeff is too tender hearted to deal with the wasp nest at the front door, so I dealt with it as the sun was coming up. I kinda had to as the pizza delivery guy was Freaking Out.
It was another quiet week at the shop. We are starting to get regulars, we are wasting much less food, and we need to start focussing on catering.
All the treasurer stuff is handed over and I need to finish up some secretary stuff. Relief is unbelievable.
Ziva goes back into the shop. Perform-x got her through Aircare but now the idle is around 500 rpm and she just keeps stalling in intersections which is frickin dangerous. If I put an additional load on like a fan it’s manageable but I can’t sell her like this.
Can’t do anything re the shop today or tomorrow. I have shitpiles of unavoidable work re the AGM.
There’s a biscotti batch in the cooler at the shop, and I brought home the lentil soup. Jeff is tearing a hole through the split pea with ham soup; it really is awfully good.
We found really cheap split green peas at the warehouse place on Kingsway but strangely a 20 kilo bag of lentils is the same cost as what we pay at Galloway’s, so that was weird to find out. We also found lots of consumables for cheap, including coffee cups, glassine bags, etc. Snow Cap trading has everything we need in terms of baking supplies in bulk, and then some, and we found a place for plastic containers for muffins for people who want to buy a half dozen at a time.
The website is pretty much done, we’ll be adding menu items slowly and carefully. We still haven’t settled on a bread supplier but Costco will do for the time being. I roasted up another hunk of beef.
Katie got up at 4:30 to go pick up Jessica from her midnight shift at SaveOn and they are going to hang out today. That is true friendship. Spoke briefly to Keith yesterday and told him he must come over and watch Real Humans, the phenomenal Swedish sci fi show. Cannot recommend it highly enough.
Yesterday we were at the shop all day and baked in the pizza ovens. They make really good muffins and that’s good because we can fill an oven with morning muffins and it will reduce prep and cook time immensely. Then if there’s going to be a biscotti bake we just leave em on. Katie’s got other stuff to do and I am at the shop again, REVELLING, REVELLING I tell you, in the abundance of hot water. Sanitizing powers ON.
Katie and I ripped through all of the crap we will never use in the storage loft and an amazing amount of junk went to Value Village. That also made it easier for the tradespeople to do their thing (it took a day and a half longer to get the job done, but all I do is phone him and ask him for a revised estimate of his arrival, and he never, ever ducks my calls, so I am very sparse in my “Where the hell you at man” calls.)
The wee man arrived with the new hot water heater and a rather ascetic helper and he took the old one, whose continued functioning was a rather amazing thing on the basis of the pitting and rust and the mess the fittings were in, away (part of me is thinking that the wee man saying NO NO NO lose this one and get a bigger one, you’re not saving money and you’re making trouble – was good damned advice). They had to use axle grease and shoe horns to get the sumbitch in, but it’s in and making lovely hot water, oo, yes indeed. Soon he will come back and fix the rest of the walk in cooler compressor (it works but needs cleaning and sound isolation) and then once we have the special order light fittings for the lights, that’s it, we have no more problems to fix for the health inspector and we’re just waiting on fire and building.
Paul and Katie got up on the roof and there’s no obvious leaking but Katie says the tar is too soft.
I took pictures of the potholes to send the landlord. Wish I had a buck for every time I’ve turned my ankle back there in the ‘parking lot’ which is actually more like a ‘hole farm’.
I have put the previously existing comfy chairs out front, free to a good home, and Katie washed and I put the covers back on our new used chairs, They are Ikea second hands from a restaurant supply place that we heard about at church on Sunday, if you can credit it, and they turn out to be super nice and having the solution to a major throughput problem we were having. But soon we will be able to run 350 pieces of toast an hour through a toaster. With the Bunnomatic being able to make five carafes of coffee in just over half an hour I don’t think we’ll have a problem keeping up with plain coffee, and we have the espresso machine for the fancy schmancy stuff.
Lentil soup is on. I got banking and church stuff to do today, which I am NOT LOOKING FORWARD TO, but haven’t I complained enough already? Everything is coming together nicely for a 15 APRIL start.
Iain M. Banks is reported to be dying of gall bladder cancer. Fuck cancer. He’s one of the best writers in any genre and he had another twenty years of awesome Culture novels in him and now he’ll be lucky to finish his most recent effort.
pOp has had a rough couple of weeks compressed into one brief hospital stay. He’s back home, and none of the rest of it is anybody’s business.
Yesterday I made the dough for biscotti, got the sign down and out the door on to Signfast’s truck and believe me that thing is AWKWARD to shift around, ran coffee through the Bunnomatic for the first time (it’s okay but we gotta make sure the sprayer is set right and we have to turn the machine on the instant we get in in the morning or we won’t have coffee for about half an hour or more), got the back fridge working with the help of my wee man. a temp sensor (which he says was located in the wrong place which is why the thing was rusted as a car on blocks), watched the amazing amount of foot traffic that goes by the store, learned that there is a coffee shop going in to the Community centre (which obviously made me sad), got a schoolin’ about what to do with the waste heat from the compressor which made me very thoughtful but means that the shop will be cooler in summer and warmer in winter, got proper knobs for the gas ovens, swept the shop, did all the dishes, made myself a sammy with the chicken breast from Grimms (I think we should order from them, their meat is really good), found out from the City of Burnaby that we do NOT in fact need a permit for our sign (I had been concerned), arranged other inspections or got them in train with the City, transferred some money into the biz account, got stuck in the worst…fucking…traffic ever while getting the last items out of Katie’s apartment, talked briefly to her former co-tenant Randy, who dished dirt on a friend’s drunken ass ex in a most entertaining fashion, found out that the Dandy Warhols are playing the Commodore June 22 AND IT’S A PLAY THROUGH OF THIRTEEN TALES FROM URBAN BOHEMIA one of my fave albums ever and I’m STOKED, had an extremely emotional conversation with Jeff during which he was extremely supportive and calming (thank you, and bless you) and no I’m not going to talk about it on my blog, watched a couple of episodes of Third Watch, and watched Eddie bring in a baby mouse, which after a brief discussion about what to do with him (Izzy living here after all) Jeff put back outside much to Eddie’s disgust. Candidly I shouldn’t even have suggested it because Izzy is a hand tamed snake and wild critters carry all kinds of interesting diseases. Day before yesterday learned about a Swedish sci fi show called Real Humans which is awesome even with subtitles and which I want to see the rest of soonish. Today I learned that Margot is turning into a dog. She now circles once (forwards OR backwards, which is beyond words entertaining) before lying down, and she still comes to greet and say goodbye when we go places. Jeff got her to almost fetch the other day, and she chases the floppy flyer (fabric frisbee style thingee).
Today back into the shop to wait for the sign and work on various things that you can’t work on when all the shops are closed. Katie’s at her friends place in New West but I wasn’t expecting her to come home, she was partying with the buddies who have been so supportive to her this past year.
Apart from the church stuff, which I would like to chuck over a back fence, and the lawn, which needs mowing, I’ve never felt better. I’m even recovered from the move. And it doesn’t matter that my todo list looks as it does. Gradatim, baby.
I’ve washed the kitchen wipes for the shop, washed the kitchen floor and the kitchen rugs, and good god was that necessary, hacked around a little regarding church on the computer, answered some business emails and tried to set an appointment for Tuesday. We shall see.
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.
The Serenity Tea I purchased at the dealer room at Conflikt is now ALL GONNEE. I has a sad. Jeff and I were really enjoying it, but I guess we will have to make do with Yorkshire Tea now (by appointment to some English toff, don’t you know).
Miss Margot is very very slowly starting to develop brains. She is getting out of my way when I make for “my chair”, which is good, because I actually sat on her this past week (Jeff was horrified of course) but all that fur saved her. Speaking of which, I have a picture to post.
Watched this movie and if you are interest in art, archaeology, the films of Werner Herzog, Neolithic times, and data visualization (the fly through of the cave as data points had me gasping for air) it will blow your mind. As with all Herzog films, there are points when he departs from the narrative so thoroughly that you are left shaking your head, but as with all Herzog films, you are enriched and challenged.
Every once in a while this past week I could hear a blast of Looney Tunes music coming from Jeff’s room and I couldn’t help myself smiling.
Church this morning. It will be a rousing service by Robert Latham, and I am sure he will get as many of us as are able out of our chairs. The workshop was fab by all accounts and well attended.
Feels like when I woke up this morning. Ah well. At least I have conquered that part of me that takes a computer to bed. I am sleeping longer and better as a consequence, even if I am going to bed ludicrously early.
The movie Zero Dark Thirty was excellent. What I enjoyed about it most was that it was very easy to read the movie as a total indictment of how the Americans do foreign policy, and that it wasn’t just a rah rah torture porn American triumphalist spectacle. I know that is how some people parsed it, but Kathryn Bigelow has stated repeatedly that she finds war and violence repellent but it’s a fact of life. She once remarked that the dirty secret of war is that some men enjoy it, and knowing that makes some of her directorial choices seem a little more nuanced that a straight left wing parsing of the movie might suggest.