must have been a mighty fine town-o

The bear went out on a summer’s day
He prayed the cops would stay away
For he’d many a goose to crunch away
Before he’d leave the town o town o town o
He’d many a goose to crunch away before he’d leave the town o

Juvenile bear in Central Park in Burnaby, in front of MASSES of horrified witnesses, ran down a gosling, stomped it and ate it.

People who drive around Burnaby LOOKING UP AT THE NORTH SHORE MOUNTAINS keep asking a very jejune question WHERE DO THE BEARS COME FROM and it’s look up, ya dimwit.

26862 words on totally boned.

Walked three circuits in Hilda Park with Paul yesterday. I’ll be going over to his place tomorrow to help him with some phone calls.

Small shop & collapse

Well my brief burst of energy has imploded. I’m feeling small and tangled-up and misanthropic, but many things, including Buster’s training schedule, are exactly as they should be. But…. blueberry turnovers, for the first time, so that was tasty.

Slept from 9:30 pm to 6 am this morning! I am well rested but not energetic, what gives, body.

Heading to Victoria next week with some descendants, unless something hinders. Fingers crossed for a good visit.

This is for me mam.

Still LOVING “Wanted”, coming up on the end of the show, 3rd season.

And from the JOSUS FUKING CHRIS IT’S A PANDEMIC PEOPLE department…

OTTAWA — The Public Service Alliance of Canada president says he “will not stand for the termination” of federal public servants who refuse to get vaccinated, after Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau warned of “consequences” for those civil servants.

In an interview with CTV News, Chris Aylward said “it’s very concerning to us when national party leaders are making statements around discipline around terminations when it comes to these vaccinations. That is totally unacceptable to us.”

Aylward, who represents more than 160,000 federal public servants, stated that he supports the government’s stance that all federal public servants should be vaccinated. But he said unvaccinated employees will require accommodations to keep their jobs.

  • CTV News, from website 10;08 am PST 18 Aug 2021

An Alabama doctor is tired of helping people who refuse to protect themselves and others – so he’s no longer taking appointments with anti-vaxxers.

Mobile, Ala., physician Dr. Jason Valentine posted a photo on Facebook in which he’s seen standing in front of a sign that reads “Effective Oct. 1, 2021, Dr. Valentine will no longer see patients that are not vaccinated against COVID-19.”

from

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
AUG 17, 2021  5:23 PM
Today is the 40th anniversary of the day Paul and I went to housekeeping. I emailed him asking him if he wants to get takeout for lunch. His response was that he has appointments so we’ll do it tomorrow.
copyright Masato Mattori

I am not going to spend a lot of time yoinking your chain about Afghanistan. The politics of exploitation and colonization stretch into pre-history and I’m not a pro. Therefore I will stick with the present.

  1. If you have the money or donations in kind, please give generously to Afghan refugee and aid organizations in Canada or your jurisdiction. They are more clued in to what is going on and what is needed than I am and I’d rather give money to an Afghani woman in Canada, who will most intelligently disburse what she can to current refugees, than try to give a dime to international aid organizations, given the difficulties with freight at the moment. If your hope is lively donate directly to Afghan Red Crescent
  2. Please, if you have the stomach for it, read this: Stonekettle’s comments about Afghanistan.
  3. Please consider sponsoring or assisting in sponsoring a refugee, or asking your house of worship to sponsor someone. The one time I signed sponsorship papers for an individual it was the brother in law of a co-worker. I signed up for being financially responsible for him (as did another co-worker, who awesome as they are will remain nameless here) but never had to expend cash because he was working and self supporting two months after landing here (despite his considerable health problems, a consequence of the privations he endured as a refugee).

Sundry

Got to see a momma raccoon and her three babies in a stream at Fraser Foreshore Park!
Also got very close to the two herons.
Ate sushi in the shade outside LA Sushi afterward, and then picked up some milk and halvah as a treat.

This is a Highland calf

This is Granville street in 1959

A handsome family (Barry, Alex, Imp)

It’s nice when the temperature goes back to ‘normal’

Teddy Bear’s picnic gets kinky.

Go for the gusto buddy

Lucy Liu fest

Watched the last Elementary, and then the first one, because I missed it, and then the first 20 minutes of Charlie’s Angels, which got kinda repetitititive and then we stopped. Watching Lucy shake her hair out repeatedly and wear a series of truly stunning gowns was wonderful.

Like a lot of people in the PNW now that the smoke has briefly let up I can’t stop coughing.

Thinking about cinnamon buns and biscotti this am. Shall thought become action? stay tuna! Currently running the dishwasher

445 words on “Firehall Bob” an UPSUN short, and 15016 on the fic which has a working title of ‘daily schedule’

Below: artist: Peter de Seve

Shown, a witch on a broom looking at a black kitten through a pet store window at night, and the kitten is looking back. All the other kittens in the window are asleep.

Image

@TamikaButler on twitter is responsible for this gem:

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Incremental progress

Good news first, I have been asked to come in and talk to a recruiter this afternoon.  This is the closest I’ve gotten to genuine job hunting activity in months so I am obviously thrilled.

Bad news. I’ve lowered the price and still can’t get anybody interested in the cafe; I will have to break the lease.  HEAVY HEAVY SIGH.

Tarot for Atheists, a couple of hundred words’ worth of progress.

Turkey soup is on the stove – I will adjust seasoning shortly and then start freezing it in containers. Jeff can’t stand the smell of the bones, and has no idea how this sentence would have ended if I hadn’t backspaced over it.

Replaced cpap machine with one that smells a little less disgusting.  I must make a purchase decision within 2 weeks.

Completed writing down a song, converted it to midi and fired it off to mOm.  I only have another hundred songs to write out.  It really IS the Song That Never Ends.

Herewith today’s linkorama:

Crowdsourcing Tolstoy. 

This guy and guys like him are why I make no further efforts to date.

Fighting sexism… using MATH.

My cat wants an escape pod.

If you rape a girl and leave her naked outside in freezing weather, and you work for your family’s restaurant, and your local prosecutor despite eyewitnesses and video refuses to prosecute, and then the whole town turns on the rape victim and burns her house down, well, the internet just might give bad reviews to your restaurant.

Little yawning kitties.

 

 

Butterflies

We arrived safe in Victoria yesterday afternoon and repaired to the home of my folks with Katie in tow.  We have today been for a drive in the remarkably snowy back roads and we have also visited the Butterfly House and I hope to post pics after I get home. I figured out how to get butterflies to sit on me, and entertained a number of small children with my new knowledge. Might come in handy if I ever have grandchildren, sigh.

Yesterday I inspected baby Bean, Lady Miss Banjola’s offspring, who’s two months old more or less.  He meets all criteria for cute and normal; being who he is he could hardly miss the cute, but the normal is almost worrisome.  Katie got to cuddle him for a bit, and Lady Miss B stuffed him into his knitted yellow duck feet, which are squee-renderingly adorable.

I am looking at the facsimile of the journal of my great great grandfather Henry Thomas Wake.  There has been a terrible railway accident, 15 dead, and I am very very happy to see that my ancestor spent money on beer.

Having a lovely time.  Also, saw this, and loved it, highly recommended.

so grateful…. and a bit sad

Spent the evening of Peggy’s most recent b-day hanging around the Puddle (I swam eight lengths but boy is my back stiff this morning) and consuming mint tea and biscotti.  Highly recommended.  Paul and Tom were there too.

Last night I dreamed that Justin Bieber was dead and I was hired to squeal like a teenaged girl at one of his retrospectives, there being no actual teenaged girls to do the job.  I was giggling and squealing like a trooper when an unidentified woman about my age came up to me and shot me in the head with a Nerf gun.  And, such are the manifold blessings of my life, I woke the hell up.  No disrespect, but I think The Bieb has peaked.

My coffee is ready.  Jeff has consumed half a honeydew melon for breakfast, but I cannot bring myself to follow his example.

I get to see the Bean soon! My time off at the end of the month is rapidly filling up.

Kenneth Mars has passed away.

Most mornings I awaken

to the sound of Jeff tapping on his keyboard.  Sometimes it’s a cat and that staccato defooding sound in some very long-to-be-discovered corner.  Sometimes it’s the smell of a skunk penetrating through the window; sometimes it’s my natural clock, which spits me back out into consciousness anywhere between 2 and 7 am.  Sometimes it’s a leg cramp, and that’s what I got this morning.  I woke to pain pain pain and had a hell of a time getting my foot flat to the ground to get the muscle stretched out and the muscle – the same one I blew out running for the bus the year after I hurt my back – is still grumbling and hot.  Ah, but pain is what tells you that you’re alive.

Daughter Katie came over last night.  I picked her up after work (Dax tried to scare me by materializing next to my car window, but Katie had the kindness to warn me, so I let him know that he WOULD have given me a heart attack if I hadn’t been warned.  He also told me the size of his paycheck, which was respectable for his age and educational level) and then fed her and Jeff home baked schnitzel and veg, and we talked and watched CSI and the Mentalist, which amusingly enough had identical plots, and then we walked up to 7-11 where I got her bus tickets and milk and eggs for myself, waited with her for her bus and then walked home.  Canada Way is so noisy for pedestrians it’s practically deafening; two streets in Jeff and I enjoy a very peaceful little enclave, no barking dogs or noisy neighbours, and yet we’re smack in the center of Edmonds, 10th, Kingsway and Canada Way, all busy arterial streets.  We do get train noise at night as it echoes in the Fraser Valley and comes up the hill; we get the eerie booming noises at night that are actually special effects explosions down in that movie set off of Marine down in the flats; and we get airplane noise a fair bit, although rarely at very low levels, and hardly ever helicopter noise, which scares the crap out of me.

Soon there will be a visit by the rest of Paul’s family to abide for a while in the bosom of the alternative justice system of BC.  I have decided that with all my quirks and drama I’m best off staying away.  My mother is hosting them and that will be the right end of the family to shelter and help them while this goes on; who can say what will happen but I earnestly hope for some closure and a feeling that it’s what John would have wanted rather than a trial and jail for the woman whose inattentive driving killed him.

I am very seriously thinking of either giving Ziva to a family member or selling her.  I have taken so much pleasure in owning her that it may seem a little odd, but if I’m going to be that close to the new location of the office and I can still borrow Jeff’s car occasionally to shop, I should be in good shape to have enjoyed her and then released her back into the wild.  Neither of the kids have evinced much interest because they don’t really have the cash flow.

Ocelots at the Seattle zoo.

I am waiting for Jeff to awaken so I can cook him breakfast.  Finn pancakes and coffee; I’m going to have mine with applewood smoked cheddar.

I have shippiles of work to do today; I have Valentines to create.  I am planning on sneaking into work on Sunday after church and putting them in people’s mail trays.  Every year it’s the same thing.  People are travelling, or they never check their mail trays, and the next thing you know you’re getting thanked for the Valentine on March 1st.

I brought home the flowers Jeff and the folks gave me and they are still gorgeous and sweetly scented.  I know cut flowers are frowned on by some people in my connection, but I will never frown.  Their colour and scent brightened my work area and made many other people happy but me for the balance of the week, and now they’ll be pretty in my kitchen until they’re done.

I send a hug into the ether for Lady Miss B and warm wishes to her hub and miniB, and a big old mushy group hug for Tom and Peggy, my folks and brother (nearly typed bother, and that was NOT my intent), Scott for digging up the name of the psychologist for me, my coworkers Mike Y and Hassan and Kev and Patricia, and I blow kisses at Veronica.  Sneetchy scowling at some other folks for workpain, but I won’t name them. More hugs for Rev. Katie who visited me in sickness and hell that’s what ministers are s’posed to do, and Sue, Carol, Kathleen and Gary for a really good board meeting.  I wish the contractors working on the new building the time, money and safety to do a good job.

I wish a lot of things.  It’s strange to think that this time last week I wished for nothing but cessation of wishing.

Life is good.  I’m going to go work on Dandelions Dreaming now, it’s the best thing I can think of for Peggy’s birthday.  Later today I’m going to talk to Jeff about capturing video from games so I can do something really kickass for Left4Dead/Rising in a Zombieland Redemption, which is the new and deliberately awkward title for my zombie choon, and it may get even longer, at which point I’ll shorten it again.  Such is the creative process; you put your best shit in, you take you best shit out, you put your best shit in, and you shake it all about.