Category: Domestic Life

Can’t post pix

Interesting… I can’t upload pix anymore. I will ponder this further when I get home tonight. I suspect there is a setting amiss someplace in WordPress that will be relatively trivial… everything else is working great.

As beautiful as this place is, it is also a construction site… more buildings will be going up over time. Fortunately there’s very little work done on weekends and the rest takes place when I should by rights be awake.

It was so good to see Peggy, however briefly. I light a candle for her.

Sheesh, look at the time. Must fly.

It’s late and I should go to bed

But my widdy head is still spinning about how easy this computer is to use. I downloaded a 139 meg file in just shy of 8 minutes, pressed “Install” and 90 seconds later I was opening a new document and typing away. And I downloaded a bunch of other software as well…..

I really really should take some painkillers and go to bed…..

Peggy picked up more boxes for the church move. I’ve got all boxes out of the living room but the bedroom still looks… eesh.

Workt round house

Painted Dr. Filk’s kitchen, did the upstairs trim touchup, upstairs linen closet as it was the ONLY thing upstairs that makes you jump when you look at it, (partial, more tonight), vacuumed out the dungeon storage room, got the headboard into the garage, helped Katie find stuff, took three boxes home (groan, where am I going to PUT this crud??? – actually it’s already unpacked) and worked with Paul on the separation agreement a little.  Katie showed up, heard my voice, burst into tears and flung herself into my arms; Paul took her back to his new place to help her look for cds. Keith did part of the lawn but he’s still really sore from his Parkour workout last week and didn’t even go to karate last night. Hauled two HUGE bags of garbage from my apartment this morning. Saw some orange (Like, dayglo orange) bees on the way to work and then noticed that there were half a dozen sunning themselves and getting ready to work for the day. I light candles for expectant mothers, my girlfriend Tammy, and for my mom in hopes she will be able to prevent a bunch of family papers from vanishing now that an elderly relative has gone to a home. I love Patrick O’Brian novels, they repay re-reading quite as much as Dunnett novels do. Internet today, with luck.

More movies, more paint, more O’Brian

Yesterday, I was cleaning the back deck and stairs (almost three hours of backbreaking work), policing up the upstairs fireplace (it is shiny now!), priming cupboards in the upstairs kitchen, and policing up the fridge and stove (the new used stove has some really weird plastic bits on it that are nasty to clean) and now I just finished scraping paint where I could off the back deck and finishing/detailing the upstairs bathroom, all but the floor and toilet. I must have cleaned the shower doors 5 times before all the smears came off. Now to the dungeon to finish cleaning out the storage cupboard so I can do the downstairs ‘dungeon’ rug, or maybe I’ll detail the last item in Keith’s room (louver doors) and then go eat something. I sure wish Paul hadn’t cut the hose on the central vac (it was awkwardly but usefully long), there’s parts of the house that are not reachable as a result; I may have to bring my new vacuum cleaner down here, which I emphatically don’t want to do without a car.

Last night I watched District 13. I heartily and without reservation recommend it if you want to watch a pure, adrenaline soaked, heart’s in the right place action flick (watch it in French with the subtitles. This may be one movie where the subtitles are better than the original….). The reviews I read of it led me to believe that the script was crap and the acting worse, but that the action sequences were worth the price of admission.

BS! It’s a good movie. It ain’t a film, but it’s a movie, and movies, by Gar, are supposed to MOVE. I liked all the actors and the violence was cartoony and the script was snappy and the basic premise was nasty and believable, at least to an old conspiracy theorist like me. I have every intention of sitting down and watching it again when I get home.

I was talking to Keith (who else would I watch a parkour movie with??) and he said that he has no intention of moving in with me. I was relieved by this. I want him to come see me when he feels like it, but I think he’d be better off with his dad. I also straightened a couple of other things out which I had been somewhat concerned about, and while the truth may hurt, I feel much better. I will say one thing, which I am finding amusing. As I badmouth Paul less and less – because 25 years of bottled (and alas, not so bottled) rage, frustration and disappointment are now turning to “Thank Goodness that phase of my life is drawing to a close”, I learn from Keith that Paul is badmouthing me more and more. Anyway, considering the sh*tpile of nasty things I’ve said about Paul it’s only fair that some of my chickens come back to their guano-coated abode. In the end, I hope I can always boil it down to, “Nice guy; can’t live with him though.”

But life is beautiful these days; I have another 17 Aubrey/Maturin books to read, as Keith has borrowed HMS Surprise for me. I read the durned thing, which candidly explains my grogginess today! Back at home, I keep hearing the SFU pipe band off in the distance (where it belongs, as Keith drily remarks). And with any goddamned luck, my internet will be running again tomorrow. Here’s hopin’.

I’m smiling a lot these days.

not much happening

I unpacked yesterday.  I prodded Telus again but it appears that there is genuinely something wrong with either the modem or the incoming land line.  I meant to go work on the house, but Telus, in combination with a rather emotional phone call with my oldest gf Bonnie (lieber Gott! are some of her family members having a rough go these days, way worse than I am…) kept me at home past the time when I would be heading out to the Augur Inn.

I’m still glad I drop-kicked that Vista machine.  This one plays movies better….

Still no internet at home – Telus is actually sending someone out

But the new computer is sweet and it’s amazing how much faster you get where you’re going.  It too came with a remote, which works great.  Some of the software on it – like Garage Band and Comic Life – looks intriguing.  It also looks like I can just plug my Midi keyboard into the computer without worrying about software.  This is amazing.

I have already taken the liberty of creating an account for Keith.

I listened to the SFU Pipe band practice last night.  I can’t tell you what it’s like to sit in a beautiful room and listen to the pipes (at a suitable distance, of course…) while messing about with a new computer.

I found a single lonely DVD in with my moving crap, and watched the first half of Hunt for Red October last night.  Unpacked about half a dozen boxes last night and I swear half of it was landfill that I paid somebody to sling around.  Ve Grow Too Soon Oldt und Too Late Schmart.

More paint

Last night I cleaned out Dr. Filk’s old bedroom, and now all Paul has to do is the light fixtures and outlets.  Everything else in that room is done.  I put another coat of paint on the insides of the downstairs kitchen cupboards, another coat of paint on the dungeon cupboard, cleaned out (ALMOST) the dungeon storage room, got the dry towels out of the dryer and bagged them up for Paul, and took two more boxes of crap to my place, thanks Paul for the lift home.

Joy of Joys, Keith joined me and we had a pleasant evening of reading sea adventures aloud, had dinner at home and crashed out early.  Very restful.  Up early this morning and left Keith the keys so he could work out and then he’ll saunter down the hill and give me my keys back sometime later this morning.  I wrote out and stamped and mailed five change of address cards… Now on to work….

More painting w/ prayer

So….Now I have to go back and put second coats of paint on LOTS of cupboards.  My back really hurts, but we’re SO close to being done.

Had a very long and very pleasant (with tense interludes, due to content…) chat with Glenn last night.  I called him at 11:30 and then walked over to see him, and we sat and shot shit until about 1:30 this morning, and then he walked me home.  There are distinct advantages to living and working on campus.

Big hug to my mom who innocently asked on the phone yesterday, “Am I worrying enough?”; I controlled my immediate and unprintable response and said, “Yeah, ’bout enough.”  The unprintable response I will pass over, but, “Sheesh, mom, I’m 48” will cover for the meantime.  PS.  A DVD with the best of LaughIn is now available.

Katie is exhausted.  Shout out to Paul for standing the two of us to a meal yesterday – lunch at Chong Lum Hin.  I gave her 20 bucks for bug spray. 

I have new folks to light candles for.  I light a candle for a certain incarcerated man, and pray for his rehabilitation.  I light a candle for Beacon’s minister Katie Stein Sather, whose father is coming to the end of his long and productive life, and for him and his comfortable passing.  I light a candle for Maggie’s dad and his swift recovery from his surgery. 

And I light a candle for my apartment, which looks like a well behaved grenade went off in it.  Dang!

Snerk.  My clothes are fitting better….. Glenn laughed last night and said, “Isn’t the first thing a woman does when she leaves her husband is drop 20 pounds?”  I have dropped maybe two, but I can live in hope.

more brevity

my mother sez, she sez to me…. speak to me of Dull Peeple and I sez, sez I, I always just figgers they’ve got themselves some of that there Brain Dammidge.

I took an internet break from cleaning and bending and NOW I’m going to go back and paint some more.  Turns out the touch up paint was the WORNG COLLER.  Good thing I didn’t use too much of it.

Tom and Peggy are going to feed me dinner, may they be honoured and blessed. (And I will pick up the salmon, if I remember!)   I light a candle for Tammy, how good to hear her voice this morning!  and for the bus driver this morning, who was expecting to have today off and had to work instead.  I know the feeling…

hmmmm

I’m getting a Mac laptop. Stable software, no tech support issues, and the audio stuff (good for singers and people who record) is hands down better.  However, I’m not getting it until Wednesday because of …. other issues.

Augur Inn redux redux

Paint, clean, scrape, remove silicone seal (2.5 hours worth on that alone.).  Other people in the family are breaking up too, I light a candle for them (you know who you are, and I needn’t comment).  I worked from 9:30 until 4:30 with an hour break.
I was hoping to see a movie with Keith tonight but it turned into a mob scene.  I’m going to go home and have a home cooked meal and a hot bath.
My internet at home died.  Telus pointed at Microsoft, Microsoft pointed at HP, and everybody had a great attitude and answered promptly and the fucking thing still doesn’t work.  I will try to get it running from home, and if I don’t, I’m going to take it as a sign from the gods and just take it back to the place of purchase for refund or exchange.  Mike says London Drugs will actually fix it.  We’ll see.
Vista bites.  This line deleted on advice of counsel.  As for the rest of you, make a system backup disk the second you unpack anything with Vista on it, I guarantee you’ll need it.

Brief visit to Augur Inn

I’ve been fighting a megrim on and off for a couple of days and last night as soon as I got into the cleaning of the bathroom mode, it threatened to come back again big time.  So I cleaned the upstairs bathroom a tiny bit, cleaned out the kitchen drawers a little bit, got a bunch of stuff into the big recycling bin called ‘the alley’ – where I imagine everything will be gone by morning – and walked around the house with Paul, contemplating the 20% that’s left – which will expand like an accordion file dropped on the floor to 80% in no time.  We made a partial list and then I grabbed two more little lots of stuff to go to my place, including hangers, thankgoodness, and declared peace.  I’m going to be at the Augur Inn for the whole bloody weekend, and neither Paul nor I are unpacked, so we declared ourselves done for the evening, not doing anything Thursday, and I’m thinking of actually bunking at the Augur Inn this weekend so I don’t get all cheesed off about the commute.

Paul gave me a ride home, and I’ll be unpacking tonight and thinking about what to do next at the old place.

Work has improved marvellously, but I’d best get out the door.  That half hour before the phone starts ringing is pure gold.

So I don’t have rights?

Apparently Paul is upset with me that I at first said that I wouldn’t go after his pension and CPP and now I’ve changed my mind and I will, and that I will be amending the separation agreement to reflect this.

I was hoping that he would understand what a good deal he was getting and sign off fast.  Instead he stalled, and told me that the house was not going on the market until the separation agreement was signed.  In the meantime, I got unbelievable phone calls and emails from friends and relatives, some of them PAUL’S friends and relatives, all beating me up something ferocious about what a prize moron I was being, what an unmitigated ass, and suchlike.  So I changed my mind.  My father, for one, will sleep more soundly, because he advised me ONCE at the beginning of this process, and having both more life experience and forbearance than my friends, has declined to advise me further, considering me both too foolish and too headstrong to take advice.  Okay pOp, the chump wised up, but only after repeated floggings!

However…. I am within my rights to request access to these sums, however paltry, and if Paul wants to be angry with me for asking for my rights, that’s his privilege.  I have something else to say about this that is extremely funny and mean-spirited, but I’ll save it for the Gang of Three.

I will quote from Cat Ballou, “….and made him talk to LAWYERS!” as my envoi….