In Case of Emergency

I was reading Lifehacker about six months ago and it advised to put “In Case of Emergency” in your phone (which I did).  Debbie has sent me an email reminder to do this, so I’m letting everybody know.

If you carry a phone, put a number in called ‘in case of emergency’ and have it point to whoever on you contact list you would want contacted in case your phone was conscious and you weren’t.   This has been a public service announcement care of Debbie.  Thanks y’all.

Nine hours sleep AGAIN

Either I’m clinically depressed or I’m actually getting enough sleep.  Since I wake up in the morning feeling calm, relaxed and rested, which is usually the opposite of either depressed or sickening sleep (you know, the sleep you get when you’re trying to fend off the latest round of germs) I think it’s the latter, and that’s just fine by me.

On the list today:

Get my thank you letter off to my Granny; put all my laundry away, which laundry has transmogrified from Dirty Pile to Clean Pile without significantly reducing the wreckage that is my apartment; Cook Things (I have chicken and beef to cook up for premade meals); send out invites for the Friday night beeriness (which will also encourage me to tidy in the public areas at least although the bathroom’s already clean); assemble my outfit for contradancing on Friday (it’s literally one short bus ride from here); get into work early because me covering for somebody’s lawful absence for the last week and a half has put a cinder in the eye of all of my other customers, who are sending baleful emails.  I should also get stuff ready for Conflikt but I imagine I’ll get into a frenzy of printing stuff out later.. it was odd having somebody who knows me IRL emailing me and asking if she could print out the Tapioca Song for the song book – it’s on this site and under a Creative Commons license.  Unless you are planning on turning it into an international hit children’s song (as…bloody…if…) anybody can do what they want with it, and it’s already been parodied, so nu?  Oh, and I should cancel & rebook next Friday evening’s medical appointment downtown because I’m going to be in Seattle….

Before I die I want ONE of my songs to have a goofy flash animation.  I may have to go back to school to learn how.  I’m thinking “Catnip on my Shoes” because it’s only a minute long, and cats are definitely popular with geeks.  Why?  because they are Just Barely Social Enough.  Dog owners can be easily as crazy as cat owners, but at least they have to leave the house.

Dreams

Last night I dreamed that I, my cousin and an unknown accomplice used a passkey to get into a stylish penthouse where we stole …shoes….  why shoes? What about jewellery and money?  I am a lousy thief even in my dreams.  Then she came home and was…. suspicious of these chattering women on her private stairs and like a moron I said, “We were up on the roof garden” and I ditched my bag of incriminating evidence – at the very last minute I had decided to huck some Capezios into my bag – and promptly locked myself in an extremely cold, dank, dark and disgusting room.  The end.

Tonight I’m off to get fed by the Luddite, tomorrow, Tom and Peggy will be feeding me, what bliss.  I like it when the major meal for the next two days is looked after.

You would never be able to tell Katie cleaned my apartment on Monday.  I am a bad, bad puppy. So until I’m off for dinner, it’s cleanin’ time.

More cleanup

Katie said to me on Monday, “There was something in your fridge I couldn’t identify.”

I said, “Was it green?”

“Yeah. I think it used to be a vegetable.”

“It was a cucumber – the beginning of October.”

Hysterical laughter.

I am trying to practice thankfulness.  Today’s thank…. Hot shower.  Oh, oh, the beauty of a hot shower.

spending money again

I love the week after Christmas. Picked up a nice jacket to replace the third hand John Deere jacket Keith’s been wearing for the best part of ten years at the Bay yesterday… half price. Picked up a laptop snare and have fallen deeply in love with it, as it produces a starting depth and variety of percussive noise. Picked up a button which says Beer is my comfort food, and a couple of others equally snide, and watched Keith zone out in a comic book store (the height of entertainment). Also picked up the Collectors Serenity. Keith wanted it for the cast commentary… I didn’t find it all that gripping, so I went to bed. We also watched Pan’s Labyrinth and I have to say although it was good and creepy, I am not getting what all the oohs and aahs were about when it came out. I guess watching somebody innocent die at the end wasn’t my idea of a good time.

Today I’m going to wheedle Keith into helping me move more furniture and maybe do an abbreviated shop.

Happy

I’ve been working on comedy routines.  The current one is “what happens when my inner Buddha meets my inner Hitler”  (hint, Buddha doesn’t always keep his teeth) and the inner Gord.  I am having lots of fun, as Gord just said something entertaining which I need to write down.

I’m off to visit the Luddite tonight and have food with him.  I tried to get him to cook for me but he made grim pronouncements about burning things so I think we’re going for Chinese.  It’s certainly a treat to meet somebody more optimistic than I am.
There’s another goddamned foot of snow on the hill here.  I am sure the ski operators are peeing their snowpants with glee but I had to heave a bundle buggy full of crockpot and crockery and food through it both ways yesterday.  I had to stop about three times coming back up the hill and check my pulse to make sure I was in the right zone for my fitness level.

Right now I am very happy.  I know that what I am about to describe will sound like the third circle of hell to some people, but my girlfriend Tammy phoned last night and we spent TWO HOURS on the phone, role-playing ‘difficult conversations with people we love’.  Tammy’s got more training in this than I do, so I’d say, blah blah need to talk to you about something are you ready to hear it, and she’d say.  Yeah.

So I’d say my thing, and she’d say, “You’re not quite getting it.  You need to only talk about one thing.”

“It is only one thing.”

“No, it’s two.  This and this.”

And I’d pout, and try again.

“You’re still trying to talk about two things at once.”

“F)ck, no I’m not!!”

“Yes you are.  There’s this… and there’s this.  Two separate issues.  You have to respect the person you’re talking to by only dealing with one issue, that you’ve thought through, at one time.”

“AAAAAAAAAAARgh.”  (More briefing?  More briefing.)
She’s right of course. I almost had the hang of one corner of it by the time we signed off.  And this morning I’m happy, because as I prepare for a ‘difficult conversation with someone I love’ I’m a little closer to getting my half of it right.  Is it a particular person?  A particular conversation?  Nope.  It’s just life.  Be prepared – and if you can’t be prepared, be present.

Cooking

Here I am cooking lunch for I don’t know how many people.  I don’t know how many because the cafeteria is closed today but there will still be people at work.  I told all my lunch buddies that I’m cooking today, but I bet they all packed lunches because, well, they’re engineering staff and they’re like that.
Anyway it’s parsnips pan fried in butter, basmati rice, an abbreviated sort of salad, and crockpot chicken thighs with basil, pepper, kashmiri red pepper, celery salt, two cloves of garlic, a bay leaf, and about a quarter teaspoon of cardamom.  The smell in here is enough to turn your salivary glands into Niagara Falls.

Now I have to figure out how to get it down the freaking hill without breaking anything.  I am not stupid, I’ll come up with something.

Merry ho ho

There is now enough chocolate at the office to paper my wall with.  Mmm… edible walls.

I am so looking forward to five days off I can’t tell you.  Except that I’m getting all scratchy and coughy and thinking I’m about to get sick.

Goldman Sachs shorted their bad mortgage loan paper.  I love how that works.  Let’s take a debt instrument that nobody understands and make book on how far it can fall? The whole house of cards is about to come riffling down at high speed… just like I’ve been warning about for years; it’s just that it’s closer than it was in 2004.

I can’t talk about work.  I’ll talk about underwear instead….. my daughter gave me really cute underwear for Christmas.  Or if I talk about work, how about peripherally?

Dave DeR gave me the Onion Atlas for Xmas.  It’s very funny.  Yes, I opened it early! I open every Christmas present I get when I get it.  This crap about waiting just means that the garbage gets loaded into one week, I prefer to spread the Christmas debris over a couple of garbage cycles.

Bitter?  Not at all.  I’ve just gone back to my normal state, which is grumpy.

Church this am

LOTS OF SINGING.  This is a goooood thing, especially around Christmas.  The vein of gossip at church this morning was solid gold, with hinted deposits of platinum and neodymium.  Let’s just say that if you hear me snickering with nothing in sight worth laughing at, it is because my thoughts, so recently dark and sad, have been transformed into joy, mirth and mild self-derision at my not having faith in my long term prospects for happiness.  I really do carry happiness, sanity, and the ability to assist others in their pursuit of happiness and sanity, around with me. If I am occasionally self-serving in this regard, it’s only because I wasn’t crazy to begin with.  As daughter Katie remarked, I am right more often than I am wrong, but I need more patience in waiting for results.
And I’m working on a new song… the chorus runs

Be wary

Be wary

Be wary of the fury of a patient man…

Xmas Antidotes

Funny cards.

The economics of Xmas giving.

Xmas hate – ten reasons to not like it.  Yes, the list is familiar, but there’s a sophomoric venom to it which I quite enjoy.

My ten favourite things about Christmas.

  1. Carols.  Singing them.  I don’t give a shit if I never HEAR another canned Christmas carol, but singing them is a different story.
  2. A string of dark blue incandescent lights along the roof line of a bungalow.
  3. Cooking up the turkey and having everybody go “ah!” when it comes to the table.
  4. Sitting around the homestead looking at old pictures with the family.
  5. Watching the Alastair Sims version of “A Christmas Carol”….  and turning on the TV just at the right time to catch the “Sisters” duet from White Christmas without having to watch the whole movie.
  6. Knowing that I will never again get exactly what I want for Christmas and being fine with that, because the gift part of Christmas really is for little people.
  7. Not having to beat the kids over the head anymore to write thankyou cards.
  8. Making biscotti all through the month of December and treating people at work.
  9. Listening to my father roar with laughter at the weather forecasts elsewhere in Canada.
  10. I always get cool books from Jeff.

Feast your eyes on the pictures

Science and other pics.

Last night I had the privilege of introducing Mike McG to Katie K and it’s always a pleasure to introduce two smart funny nice people to each other…. then Mike had to split and Katie and I hung out.  As always, she inspires me to actually COOK so I made…. ta da!  Tortillas, with tex mex seasoned meat, cheddar cheese, red pepper, purple onion, romaine lettuce, tomato and cucumber.  I was under the impression that you had to have a cast iron pan to cook said tortillas, and was pleased that non stick pans work just as well.  I’ve only had that bad of corn flour for two months, it was about time I cracked it open.  Then, evil creature that I am, I said, and for the first time since I moved in – there’s chocolate ice cream in the fridge!  I sure know how to haves me some fun.

Except that I am now migraining.  I’ve popped two T3s and I’m about to get some coffee, but I learned in the DR that if I think happy thoughts and stand up straight, I can actually get rid of a migraine before it starts to hurt.  This morning’s visual sign – it’s different every time because I have (wtf else) ‘atypical’ migraines – was a question mark made of accordioning rainbows which occupied the right upper portion of my visual field before dancing ceilingward and vanishing.

Weird you want, weird you get….

The first thing I watched on my new used TV was Happy Feet from King of Jazz.

Sleepless in Burnaby

I went to bed at a decent hour, but at 2:37 I woke up.

After contemplating the play of filtered light in my bedroom and the silence of my apartment, punctuated only by the hum of the refrigerator, I decided to get up. Folks, it’s real peaceful up here at night. No sirens, no buses, no nuffink.

After discussions I think I will be wanting to set up Geek House either somewhere along Hastings in Burnaby or in the east end of the Strathcona area. We’ll see what Jeff says.

My video is ready but I can’t go get it until Friday.

I’ve been waiting and waiting for the phone to ring and last night the phone exploded! I got about ten calls in about a two hour period. Amazing. Entertaining… life enhancing! As good as a hug, too.