Category: Domestic Life

rattling around

House shure feels empty.

Meadow came to say goodbye yesterday.  The moving truck came and went and it’s been powerfully quiet, so I am assuming that’s the last I’ll see of that little dog.  I kept a bunch of dried meat snackies around for her and she hoovered them back with every sign of joy.  (I know I should not have and she gets fed at home…) The cats ignored her.

Well, I have to shower and power out of here.  Everybody have a good day!

Cryptic email and status report

Yesterday at work I got this massively cryptic email from the senior finance person who says check into your share situation.  Normally I have stuff neatly filed but I can’t find anything more recent than 2003.  I don’t think the phone number is even the same from back then for Computershare. Now I have to phone Computershare and find out what’s going on.  Needless to say, there have been public announcements about the company which may not be named and while I don’t imagine this actually means a lot of money I am mildly excited.

Pressured speech commences:  Continue reading Cryptic email and status report

Came home from drinking with coworkers last night

And there’s a block for all the knives, a new toilet seat, and, in the freezer, chocolate ice cream. It’s like I live at Hogwarts and every time I turn my back the house-elves have done something. Go Jeff.

Said goodbye to Liz and Klaus last night. Liz is an Irish lass who was with us in HR very briefly but memorably and honorably (and if I say why she was memorable, that would be indiscreet) and Klaus is a German lad who was with the company for about the same length of time as me. Like everybody who’s been at BigCo for more than ten minutes, he has an Allegra anecdote; faithful readers of this blog will know that I write Valentine cards for coworkers every year. One year his read, “I love you as much as I love the company ERP” which is kinda like saying you love boils, plague, cedar splinters and popped collars. He sought me out afterwards and with a classic everyman WTF expression on his face BEGGED me to reveal what in God’s name he’d ever done to deserve such a card. Everybody in earshot hearing this for the first time burst out laughing…especially the people from Finance.

I spent 50 bucks on jugs of beer and nibblies, and some of the folks there coughed up some money, so I only ended up spending what I would have spent on myself, so it was more than satisfactory.

I am making chocolate waffles. My happiness is tempered somewhat by the knowledge that somewhere, lurking in the batter, is a piece of eggshell. I hope I get it and not Jeff.

Ooh, I just remembered. Ian M. gave me a lift home and he’s got a brand new Prius. Silver, of course. What a sweet ride that car is!

Star Wars floppy & other news

I don’t know why I thought this was so funny, but I did.

Chipper got her dvd of puppy power but has not reported back yet. I’m bouncing from one foot to the other wanting to know.

Paul’s back from the Adirondacks. Tish and Terry are doing fine. Paul says he had a really tough time keeping up with Terry, but he’s been saying that for 25 years so I don’t think this represents a change. Terry always seemed to be a secret new power source anyway. And sing yip and whoo hoo! Paul quit smoking! Seven days no smokes, let’s all think positive.

No word from Katie, but I imagine somebody would have called me if any further insanity had taken place that I really had to know about.

I just made french toast. How amazing! Jeff has just gotten up! Good, otherwise I might end up eating it. Time to put on the bacon. Jeff doesn’t drink coffee anymore, but he misses it. I say things like “I can’t live without coffee” but of course I can. I’d be learning how to roast chicory as a substitute.

A death and an incident involving lots of blood

I light a candle for my beloved worksibling Tanya’s grandmother, who passed at RCH today.  Go gentle across the rainbow bridge, elder.

Ahem.  So I get this cryptomundo text message from Katie saying that she’s been living in a horror movie.  OF COURSE I immediately assume that it’s Dax, and it very plainly turns out not to be, in fact, Dax behaved with more calmness and civility than anyone could credit him with, considering that a guy with a dirty great knife was alternately trying to stab him and kick his door and his HEAD in.  End result.  One of Dax’s roommates is homeless, with about 7 criminal charges pending, Katie is fine except for the strained muscles you always seem to get when some drunken animal is trying to kill you with a knife, Dax had to have stitches, the culprit had to have reconstructive surgery because he was so fecked he sliced himself across the tendons in three fingers. Katie is here, helping me cook spaghetti and vibrating gently.  Dax put his life on the line, literally, defending Katie, and has been the soul of gentlemanly courtesy since, so I am much obliged to him.

The perp is an ex drug addict (now just a drunk) who is normally a really sweet guy.  He also has brain damage from having been electrocuted and he was already on disability.  Oh yeah.

Katie and Dax cleaned up the house.  There were apparently torrents of blood… I’m debating whether to ask Dax for his cell phone footage, as he filmed what the place looked like afterwards.  Schadenfreude, anyone?

Knew it

I am currently typing sideways so I can see the screen due to a migraine, but I’m going to go jump in the tub with some Epsom salts and just take it easy this morning.  I had a feeling that my aura of impending doom was just my brain chemistry and not anything external.

Today I will do laundry and work some more on Buy me a Beer and Happy Feet, which I am grimly determined to learn how to play, despite the fact it has forty bazillion chords and the version I have was kitted out for banjo, not mandolin (hint, hint). I can has F9? Cm? A flat minor 7th?  urgh.  Screen is filling up with a multicoloured flashing rainbow dragon.  Time to go run that bath and think happy, happy thoughts, like maybe Katie or Keith will come over today.

Meadow visits

That’s twice so far today and it isn’t even dinnertime yet.  I am starting to be afraid that the downstairs neighbours are going to abandon the dog, you know, sort of accidentally on purpose, when they move.  Meadow was gazing me adoringly just now as I repeatedly tried to play Bbm.  Any dog who can sit through that cacophony while ignoring her master’s whistle is really trying hard to get adopted.  I don’t mind, but I have to wash my hands every time I touch her – she is not particularly dirty for a dog but Jeff and I are both susceptible to animal dander…. I didn’t want her in the house because she eats the cat food and it’s obvious she gets fed at home.  Meadow may not be the happiest dog in the world but nobody is beating or starving her.  So I sat outside on the deck and communed with her for a while, before she started getting all enthusiastic and trying to play with Giz, who’s having none of that, thanks.  Damned dogs, not even smart enough to snooze on the deck….

Domestic life and creativity

Emily Dickinson would bake biscuits when the poems wouldn’t come.  My creative process is not particularly clear to me; I write more when I’m very happy or very upset – the November before I split up with Paul was a veritable creative ferment – and there are two kinds of songs, easy and hard.  The easy ones come out, chords and lyrics and choon, all in one easy go.  Everything else has something missing; gets shelved; gets worked on; then one night I finish it.  I mostly write songs after dark, but not always.  I quit writing, and singing, almost altogether when I was on Prozac for four months, and the eight months afterwards getting the stuff to clear my system was pretty much a dry hole.  So I guess I have to be a little crazy to write songs.  As for writing on a sheet of paper, the rest of the time, pick a topic and point me at the internet; I can write about pretty much anything that isn’t actually advertising, because my attitude toward advertising is so disrespectful.  Except Blast-Eeze, the Laxative Coughdrops.  I did write a jingle for those, but that’s only because they are an imaginary product.  (There… will be… a brief hi-a-tus…. then… the mentholated… flatus).

Tamara just called and cried off for this afternoon – she’s the videographer I work with.  I’m not in fabulous voice today so I was just as happy about that. We’re re-skedding for next week.  I was supposed to be doing Buy Me a Beer, but some other time I guess. Maybe I could work on something else… or just swither on things.  I think Jeff would like me to clean my room again, but he’s too polite to comment.

Made Jeff french toast and deli bacon for breakfast this morning.  Now that’s creativity.

Got out of bed and out the door rather faster than I wanted to this morning; I heard bloodcurdling screams coming from the alleyway and learned which house it was coming from and banged on the open front door (they had put a waterfall on their front steps, I still can’t figure that part out – why run water down your front steps?).  A button-cute eight year old Asian boy answered and in perfect Canuckistani said, “Hey mom it’s a housewife!”  Didn’t know whether to slap him or burst out laughing.  Anyway, it was just kids screaming, and then their parents yelling at them in some language or other – maybe Vietnamese – but after Brianne Voth, it doesn’t pay to sit on your ass when you hear screaming in this town, so maybe I looked stupid but that would be no stretch, and at least those neighbours know that if something doesn’t look right some nosy cow with a cell phone will turn up and poke around, not always a bad thing.  Note to self – next time tell Jeff you’re leaving the house….

Zow.  That’s the biggest jumping spider I’ve ever seen!  I just had to leap up and grab pictures.

Since I have my afternoon free now I’m going to text Katie and ask her to come over for the movie that Jeff rented for her….

I know it will confirm my reputation for being terminally lazy, but I’m so glad I got the day back.  I’m not burned out, but I’m crisssp around the edges, and this should really help.  Back to bed and maybe do some reading, you know, with a book.

Fell out of bed

At 1:30 this morning I fell out of bed.  I landed painlessly on the floor (I was rolling over, and I just kept going), and lay there for a second, disoriented and wondering if I’d woken the whole house up.  Given that the dryer was running, I guessed not so much.  Now it’s quarter to three and I really wish I could go back to sleep, but I’ve been lying awake for an hour and decided to get up when a) I cracked my lower back so loud it rang around the room like a gunshot (never done that before) and b) I realized I just wasn’t going to do the usual, which is fall right back asleep again whenever I wake up.  Then the inertnests called, and I found this photographic gem off reddit.

Mailed puppy pics off to Chipper yesterday at lunch.  I met Robof9, Francis, ScaryClown and somebody else from work going out on a nature walk just as I was getting back from the Post Office up the hill.  Came home after an interesting day full of portents of the future and prepared part of supper – Jeff grilled salmon on the bar-b-q, and it was yummy.

20 hours and some thoughts about anger and hair.

It took 20 hours to convert the entire dvd from dvd format to mp4 format. It worked perfectly – but too slow. Anyway, after much agony, I can edit down the puppies and kids video. Part of me wants to kill the audio portion of it, which consists of, in a very boring way, Allegra saying, “Put the puppy down, put him down, put her down, put the puppy down, Keith don’t do that, that’s ignorant, Katie, sit down, put the puppy down, put the puppy down.” But I will avoid the temptation to do that. I can haz patience.

Continue reading 20 hours and some thoughts about anger and hair.

Off to Mission.

I won’t be posting until after I get home from Mission tomorrow; it’s time for the festival out there with my current and previous coworkers, including no fewer than two bosses, and which involves stringed instruments, alcohol and the World’s Best Campfireâ„¢. Continue reading Off to Mission.

The Soft Collision

That’s what this Cassini movie is called.

Last night Katie and I got together for more resume magic.  We thoroughly reviewed it and then printed out 40 copies.  At one point during the evening she curled up on the couch with me and I got kinda nostalgic about the other times we curled up on the sofa watching  Buffy, you know, back in the good old days when my (Ed: enough of that, now!) – well erm, uh.  Nostalgia, the curse of humanity (points if you know which Dunnett book I swiped that from).

Keith was over too, his job is going reasonably well.

We all ate pork chomps, expertly cooked by Jeff, and broccoli and corn and garlic bread.

It’s not like Jeff and I have been wishing that the people downstairs would magically disappear or anything, but I guess telling them in writing that the domestic violence and partying on weeknights until 3:30 am had actually penetrated our thick skulls was TOO MUCH for them, so they told the landlord we were crazy and made incredible amounts of noise and gave their notice yesterday.

I hope they get counselling.  I remember overhearing Amber say to her girlfriends when they were outside partying last Monday that she wished she could have a relationship where she could just call him and tell him where she was going – and she sounded amused and resigned, not bitter or resentful.  Erk.  I think he’s too smart to actually hit her but their fights were screaming repetitively I’m done with you and making so much noise with the furniture that it sounded like pianos being pushed off balconies.  Of course, the people who move in next could be worse, but I’m thinking that if the landlord has the sense to tell the incoming tenants that our schedule is 5:30 am to about 10:30 pm, 7 days a week, he’ll be able to cull the party animals from the herd.

Also, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s a landlord’s market in Vancouver right now.  Tony the landpeer can set the bar really high if he wants to, and he likely should try. Gentrification strikes again, and affordable housing is vanishing.

The saddest thing about them moving is Dezi and the dog.  Dezi’s the 4 year old.  A sweet thing, but whiny.  Meadow, OMG Meadow is a sweet sweet dog, and she came up yesterday and hung with me and Jeff as we had our Frostees on the back deck.  She curled up under Jeff’s chair and visibly winced when her master called her – repeatedly – and only went downstairs, throwing reproachful glances over her shoulder with every step when I softly encouraged her to go on home. What will happen to them, God alone at his eye-window knows.  (Points for the Dunnett reference… again).

We haz the cool

  • I will never be cool in THAT sense, but I can certainly praise the thrice blessed Jeff, who got an air conditioner yesterday.  It made living at Geekhaven Beta a damned sight more pleasant – it was fracking hot.  Eddie was all over it.
  • I will resist the blandishments of my naturist friends today and NOT go to Wreck Beach.  Jarmo & Co and Mike will be off there today but I simply have too much life maintenance to do, and then Jeff and I will go pic-a-nic someplace, maybe. Depends how appealing it is to stay where there’s a steady stream of cold air.
  • Lawrence H, one of my coworkers, saw a Dall’s porpoise out in the Strait on Saturday.  It was just part of how awesome it all was, the trip from Vancouver to Victoria.
  • Victoria, approached from the ocean on a hot day, has a mesmerizingly beautiful scent of hot, sweet pine.  NO not like Pine Sol.  A magical, resiny gorgeousness that lifts on the breeze and drowns one in anticipation.  As drfilk noted, “Well, that’s better than I thought it would smell.”
  • I sang much of the way there, as much nautical stuff as I could remember, which isn’t much, but thanks to my mother and father I know all of the lyrics to at least one version of “The Eddystone Light”.
  • I learned last night that somebody I never talk to at work (I don’t sit with him at lunch anymore) thinks I’m a great performer.  Now I am thinking “When the hell did I ever play in front of him? And PS, thanks.”
  • Oh, is the rent due?
  • My rear end still hurts from the trip there. A little.  Not like Sunday morning, when my parents were giggling at me every time I sat down and squawked.  My back isn’t great but I know walking will fix it.
  • I have to water my plants; they got a good soaking Saturday morning but they are droopy as hell, as container plants are in this kinda heat.
  • Robof9 took pics of his wife’s work.  She is a professional plant person.  Sheesh, I guess that makes her a horticulturist… anyway, 100000 plants that she grew all needed watering on Sunday and he took pics and I await them happily.
  • Next post, various pics.  Be prepared..
  • I have booked a Can Car to deal with the box situation.
  • I think I need a summer weight housecoat.
  • For those who might be nervous on his account, Paul survived the last round of layoffs at his work.
  • The folks downstairs, in an effort to avoid us, have taken to smoking cigarettes indoors. For me this is annoying, due to my disturbed relationship with tobacco; for Jeff it is nauseating and hopelessly rude.
  • I participated in a Pagan ceremony on Sunday.  I am still processing it. When asked to pray I directed my energy towards a good outcome for somebody I despise, in an effort to cultivate both mindfulness and compassion.  The notion of praying for myself when I’m so comfortably settled with life the universe and everything (occasional bitchiness and annoyance with incompetence aside) was not on.  Runnerwolf was very specific about saying, “If you’re praying for somebody else, always pray for the best outcome – something concrete might not be what’s required for the person you’re praying for.” The psychology of this seems wise; you have formed an intention without becoming attached to the result, which is better than petitioning the lord with a laundry list of ‘want-its’ and then getting miffed when they don’t come to pass.  Funny story: she used popcorn instead of dry corn for ceremony once, with entirely predictable results come time to put the bundle in the ceremonial fire.
  • I know what copal and frankincense and myrrh look like now.
  • Why would an atheist bother with all that?  Because of Tennyson (oops, nearly said Donne)
    I am a part of all that I have met;
    Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
    Gleams that untravell’d world,