Category: Nature

Moosekiss and weather

I had yet another wretched night of insomnia on Saturday night and was so messed up it rather upset my plans for the day.  I suspect that even if I’d been compos enough to go to work I would have thought twice given what the weather did yesterday, which was everything including blow really hard.  Instead I cooked a couple of meals and stayed in bed and slept for a good chunk of the day.

I’m feeling a lot better today.  Better enough to post this moose picture forwarded from Leo, provenance unknown. There’s another moose in there for good measure.

Big dog

Samantha is a mastiff cross, and small, dainty and elegant do not describe her. What she is, is big, although as we slogged through the rain and mud at Trout Lake yesterday there were bigger dogs yet at the offleash part of the park.  My companion was amazed that there could be an offleash park where there were nesting birds, and I asked, somewhat rhetorically, if he’d ever been to Trout Lake in the summer time, when it is a warm green hymn to avian fecal material. Given that human beings also swim there (I have seen it, although you wouldn’t catch me in there unless the person next to me was encouraging me with a semi automatic) I don’t imagine the city fathers care if a few birds get harassed.  The fewer nesting there the better, and none of them are exactly what I would call endangered species.

While we were there, the tree next to the parking lot was full of birds, all singing as loud as they could simultaneously.  The light was crappy, but it sure sounded like starlings and red winged blackbirds having a smackdown.  It was so loud that I just stood gaping in the rain.

Samantha got in the water and got very dirty.

When my companion came to pick me up, we attempted a greeting kiss. We both ended up kissing Samantha’s nose.  I can’t remember laughing that hard in quite a while.  After the park we went to Burnaby Palace (Jeff got the leftovers, so apart from waffles on Saturday morning I dodged cooking every meal this weekend), and had a lovely time.

Church was great yesterday morning, Marci Green did the service, which was about the Grandmothers to Grandmothers campaign.

The Black Fox, and why you shouldn’t have to pay to poop in a plane

Wow.

Anyway, I hears that Ryanair wants to charge me a pound every time I go to the crapper.

Mh.. hrm.  So, speaking as somebody who pooped themselves in public as an adult – it’s a funny story, but I won’t tell it here – I have to say that if I did my drawers to make a political statement, and everybody around me sued Ryanair because all of a sudden they couldn’t eat their packets of crisps for the eyewatering stench, where would the profit be then?  Charging people a pound to poop in the correct place on an airplane is one of the most irritatingly stupid things I’ve ever heard.  The first time some guy pulls out his schlong and fills a paper cup with pee as an economizing gesture, that’s gonna fly real well too, even if I later ask him for his business card.  What the hell is wrong with these people at Ryanair?  Have they not heard that the Grim Reaper has a little sister, and her name is Unintended Consequences?  IT’S A SAFETY ISSUE.  You don’t want tampons, crap and urine in the cabin of an airplane if you can possibly help it, and there are a LOTS of good reasons why.  It’s common courtesy, and common sense, and they don’t want to go to the place where they will end up.  Really.

Relief at last

I lost my bank card about three weeks ago but only called the bank to replace it a week ago, and it turned up yesterday.  Without a bank card I couldn’t pay bills on line which was bad, or spend much money, which was good.  I think I will start leaving it at home unless I have a planned cash expenditure that day.  I run a tab at the cafeteria at work and only pay it off twice a month.

I light a candle for Zari at work; her mum died back in Iran and she couldn’t go to the funeral, and she’s been feeling really blue ever since.  Then she said something that made me really sad; she said that even with everything that is so bad about back home, she’d be retired by now if she lived in Iran.  I will be working until I am sixty-five, so I know how she feels…

After sober consideration, Jeff responded to the twit next door who told him in a note on his windshield to quit parking in his space.  There is no assigned parking on this street.  To think I cut a hole in the snowbank so the neighbour could have access to his car, during the last snowstorm!  To think he has SIX PLACES TO PARK, two in his garage, two in his paved over yard, and two in front of his house!  Anyway, Jeff’s letter was a masterpiece; too bad it won’t help do anything except vent Jeff’s spleen.

I forgot to mention that when I left Mike’s place on Monday night a skunk greeted me.  I walked out into the road and said what I always say when I get too close to a critter; “Evening, brother skunk,” as I have heard that if you project civility animals are less likely to attack you.  Skunks sure have an odd gait.

Every night at 5:45, about three to four thousand crows gather around the Keg on Willingdon.  The sky is sometimes black with them.  I am going to try to get pictures tonight.

I hope everybody has a simply splendid day, and a nice weekend.

Next one will be a hole in the wall

The sunset, annoyingly enough, didn’t cooperate, but the rest of yesterday evening was loads of fun.  I finally have a date for meeting Sammy (my date’s dog); that will be next Sunday afternoon.  I am going to secrete a couple of milkbones about my person and then I should do fine.

Horizons Restaurant is just as excellent as it ever was, and I will be thinking about the Arctic Char for a while – it was superlative.  By mutual consent, our next meal will be someplace much less classy.

Lots of links

Biggest space disaster. Dr. Filk told me about this some years ago.

Gahan Wilson explains it all for you. The SF movie plot generator.

Oh look, a rat playing banjo…. and standup bass.

Once upon a time I made up a character named Pockets.  She was an alien and she carried everything she needed.  Now, there’s Eric le Fou.

Fellow Performers!  How to craft a good set list.

D’oh, a deer.

You will notice my mother’s blog is now on the blogroll.

Gerald dear, when are you going to start blogging????

Happy New Year

So Keith, Paul and I were at Jarmo and Susana’s last night, and once again performed the stannomancy.  Katie and Jeff chose the better part – to stay home, and not to drink!

NOT A SINGLE PERSON had money for 2009.

Not one.  Out of fifteen people. You may recall Dr. Filk was told that he’d get money two thirds of the way into the year and found it laughable, and then went from John’s Jukes to Earl’s at a considerable increase in rate.  But it also said there was a baby in his future so you can’t b’lieve everything the tin tells you.

My year is smooth, and expanding, for 4/5ths of it, and then there’s a hell of a twist at the end.  I’ll post pics at some point… I actually have to pull everything off my camera and stick it someplace where those interested may view them… I still haven’t posted the Louvre, and I should, but that was, candidly, one hell of a trip and I get kind of shaky when I go anywhere near those memories.

Anyway, it was a lovely, congenial crowd, and there was even a lovely dog named Kona (lab setter cross, from the coat) who was being dogsat by some of the attendees.

Snowed more.  Lots more.

; why is the rum always gone?  Between us all we killed a forty pounder, and I had two triples so I definitely helped.  I’m still hanging on the edge of a migraine so I’d better get off the computer now.

And, via an LJ buddy, Neil Gaiman’s blessing:

I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you dream dangerously and outrageously, that you make something that didn’t exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked. And most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now) that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind.