Category: Nature

Delightful visit and some news about that chat

All my relations, I acknowledge my unpayable debt to the peoples, lands and waters of MST country.

For Paul’s bday his double cousin Jim and spouse Jan cooked dinner; a pink salmon (they are hard to cook right and you need a meat thermometer), corn on the cob and a delicious greek salad with veggies from their garden.

Katie turned up later after dropping off Alex and Keith was supposed to go gaming but didn’t and was too upset in the tummy to eat with us. It’s all good, it was the perfect amount of food, no leftovers.

While we were talking, as we do, Jan was curious about my encounter with a yellow breasted chat.  I had read that they live in BC so hadn’t worried too much about where it appeared, but it turns out that they are rare in the lower mainland, possibly not regulars at all. She found something on line about the chat – how it was the subject of habitat rehabilitation in the Okanagan. It needs a bunch of stuff to breed. A wild rose bush in a clearing of a forest with willow and cottonwood is their idea of a home in Heaven. If you clear the wild rose bushes for development bye bye chats. Also, they just got themselves into a new bird family because they’re chonky, among other things. The one I saw was monosyllabic, but in the spring the wee bastards never shut up and have as many as 40 separate calls. Also the boys dangle their feet and shake their booties to attract girls, who watch from underneath, and they have big goddamn marks on their plumage only visible in UV. All in all a wonderful evening of natural history, family love and damned good food.

December 31-2021 – I also learned this year that chats SING AT NIGHT

BREAKING: BC MASK MANDATE FOR ALL INDOOR SPACES REINSTATED

Training advice from hunger4words

from Christina Hunger, Speech Pathologist and the woman who taught Stella to ‘talk’:::

As you introduce new vocabulary to your dog, teach contrasting words together.

It’s easiest to teach a word when you have something to compare it to. This helps differentiate word meanings! Here are some examples of pairs of words to teach together:

Outside & inside
Happy & mad
All done & more
Yes & no
Your name & your dog’s name
On & off
Now & later
Ball & Toy
Come & go or come & stay

Example 1: When you’re playing with your dog, you can model “more” each time you throw a ball or toy for them. When you stop throwing the ball or toy, you can model “all done.” The meanings of “more” and “all done” become clearer with each other’s point of reference.

Example 2: Every time you come over to your dog, you can model “come.” When you leave the room or walk away, you can model “go.” The meanings of the actions are more defined when you have the opposite action to compare it to.

Ratcatcha

Buster caught a teeny weeny rat outside the building this morning, then took it inside and either ate it or let it go. Hopefully it’s not curled up dead someplace, I find dead rat odour to be one of the most trying things psychologically.

Storm Ida had a few things to say about rats too.

If the link disappears, apparently the storm drowned almost every rat in NYC.

That’s what happens when you get too much water. How about just enough?

Above noted link is about how reintroducing water to a dried out river in Tucson has had stunning ecological effects. I prefer dragonflies over rats.

Ever notice how white ladies love to steal Indigenous ancestry?

WHERE IS YOUR KOKUM, KIES. I prefer people who don’t lie about their ancestry over rats.

 

And the worst part is that I have to fly two miles with it and then barf it up again

If you don’t like the post title, you won’t want to watch the video.

However if this was taken when they say it was the herons are off the nest already and mama heron’s keeping that ratshawarma for hersel’, she will not be casting up accounts for any babbies. NYC Great Blue Herons ARE METAL AF.

I’m 1300 (okay now 2028 words 2533 words I should close this tab) words into my third fanfic in 3 days WARNING GRAPHOMANIA IN PROCESS. La la la. So easy.

Toad-o list

I’d like to have an effective to do list and even more I’d like to never do anything again because even putting half of the groceries away nearly killed me.

I wrote a 4K word fic in two days, actually finishing it.

Still coughing like I’ve sprung a lung. Jeff has borborygmus so bad he was literally drowning out dialogue for the Time Team.

Buster training report: I needed to get some hairball remedy into Buster. He hates this newer stuff so I have to literally womanhandle him into a hold and jam it in his gob. His response: to jump up onto one of the training chairs and Jack Nicholson-eye me until I gave him treats (he knows if he jumps up there I will give him a treat). As plain as day: If you’re going to mess with me I GONNA GET DA MONEYS MODDER

going home today

We went to the Butterfly House and the Country Bee House yesterday. At the Butterfly House Little E the parrot was three deep in Taiwanese uni students, as far as I could tell, so I didn’t get to love on him at all, but I had the great joy of telling a little girl that a tortoise had ‘broken out’ of the tortoise pen, and otherwise it was much as it usually is, and Alex enjoyed it. Alex enjoyed me imitating the goats and sheep at the Country Bee and we talked a bit about the animals and what they were eating.

Slept until about two, woke up not able to breathe, got up and brushed my teeth and drank some water and forced myself to lie down. Fought with sleep for about an hour I guess and then finally found a comfy enough position to go back to sleep.
My hand is much better today, but the ribs are sore and tight and I can neither bend nor twist, and there’s a hot patch, so I’m thinking I need to get a chest xray at the very least, which I’ll arrange when I get back.

about to leave the house whooooppeeeee

Paul’s arriving shortly for masked walkies and pho.

Jeff and I are halfway through “Swan Song” an Udo Kier film. I’ve already cried six times I’m sure I’ve got some left in me but GAh I’d better take water in a bottle.

Gene Roddenberry would have been one hundred years old today. He was a massively imperfect human being and sexist af and Star Trek is an important cultural inflection point. We can think these things at the same time, because imperfect beings are always thinking about imperfect beings, and think they can still get it right.

Corpse flower

Uncle Fester, Bloedel Conservatory’s titan arum or “corpse flower,” bloomed on Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2021. (YouTube/Vancouver Park Board)

Wednesday on 3.5 hours of sleep

I’m just finishing up the last of the Indian food from L&R today; it’s succulent, mild lamb curry over rice pilau. The naan and the samosas always go first; I didn’t quite eat the four samosas in a row, but over about a six hour period; truly great veggie samosas nom nom nom.

Two straight nights of terrible, terrible sleep. It hasn’t been warm enough to leave the AC on but I really feel the difference in the humidity and I feel like I’ve been going through a mini menopause every night. I leave the box fan on just to get some circulation, but it’s most sticky. I shifted the little icon of Sandman from the Gaiman comics so it’s closer to my head and hopefully I’ll start sleeping better again.

I have a list to get through before Jeff gets home as long as your forearm. There’s a shower in there somewhere as well.

Local news, or newish items:

Burnaby Council has peed on the most direct route for the proposed gondola from Production Way/University Station to SFU. I hope they shitcan the idea entirely, at least until they’ve asked MST peoples for permission among other steps that seem to have gone missing. It’s likely to be an expensive boondoggle and for what… to carry 10K people a day at most? sounds like bs to me. Anyway, the translink people didn’t ask any of the businesses and scarcely any of the residents that would be under the shadow of the gondola what they thought about it (not that I have experienced Burnaby as a place that gives two shits about small business owners, but that’s just me) and it just seems all very hasty and poorly prepared.

I have learned that there is a 60’s style diner (they have no website and it wouldn’t help anyway since the internet’s off between 4 and 7 am so I have no way of checking and I’ll probably forget to before I post this; Chris Campbell at Burnaby Now says they have neither social media presence, nor change in the menu for decades – I mean they still serve salisbury steak, try finding that at a restaurant) here in Burnaby and I’d like to drag Jeff out to there at some point, they’re up around Kensington and Lougheed, which isn’t too far a trek, but they don’t open until 8 and keep bankers’ hours so we may not go since we prefer first thing instead of messing with the morning traffic.

Buster is currently kneading my left tit like he plans on drawing a paycheque.

Ah, he’s stopped; I’m supposed to pet him and I’m still typing, so now he’s parked on my right foot.

He’s already had his breakfast (wet and dry food) and I refreshed his water, and I told him repeatedly that daddy is coming home today but I am not sure he believes me.

I tried locking the cat door at night while Jeff was gone as I didn’t want Buster to get et by something, but he was adamant; even if he wasn’t planning on using it he complained vigorously about it being shut.

Time to start some laundry and attack that list.

(Shower’s done.)

aw shit Jeff’s noticed I’m playing on twitter, back to work

another beautiful day at the Foreshore

I SAW A NEW MAMMAL YESTERDAY

Yes, it’s worth yelling about.

And now I want to rant for such a long time, but I won’t. It has a white guy’s name.

I saw a townsend’s vole. And you know what else!? I saw it for perhaps 1.5 seconds as it ran from the water’s edge to the cover of the rushes and IDENTIFIED IT AS A VOLE RIGHT AWAY. No hesitation. Just THAT’S A VOLE at the top of my lungs. Despite the fact it was about twice as big as any I’ve ever seen in life…

Do you know how often I get to see a new mammal? Last time was the bobcat and that was the November before the November before the pandemic.

The critter was EXACTLY as I remembered it when I looked it up less than two hours later. Only difference was it had been tooling around in grey green mud so he was a little closer to the grey green end of the spectrum, not a wholesome plump brown like the illos.

No masks. Paul still wanders WAY TOO CLOSE to people, that man’s going to get himself a faceful of virus one of these days. I try to keep 6 feet, outdoors or no.

Also yesterday I made Paul sit through all the work I’ve done to get a bird list with calls together for us for when we go through Deer Lake Park. We ate Mike M’s chowder, which he dropped off Sunday night and how good it was to see him.

Continued writing, about 500 words yesterday and the same this morning so far.

Buried in ants in the kitchen. Something must be done.

cheerful but lazy

Uh, yup, that’s me.

Temporary crown has not come off yet.

Timmy Ho’s yesterday morning, followed by Time Team… happy sigh.

Fed Paul over at his place yesterday – finished off the Salad Shirazi (finely chopped english cuke, couple tomatoes, fresh mint, fresh parsley, juice of one lemon, a little onion – absolutely amazing, who needs salt?), provided him with chicken curry and rice pudding. He ate it with gusto.

Keith seems to be doing okay. He had a tiny bit of Shirazi salad and Paul hoovered up his leftovers… lol. Keith’s thinking about going back to school. Obviously I am more than happy about this and will approve whatever he chooses to study. Also, offered him shelter/respite if the baby turns out to be colicky or has a bad turn and he needs a decent night of sleep for his own health.

Prior to that we went to Fraser Foreshore Glenlyon side. Paul and I have watched any number of herons do any number of things – shit on our windshield while we’re going down the 401 at 90 kph – make a left hand turn on final descent into an airport on Christmas Day – leap into the air in front of us while we’re bike commuting – FUCK THAT’S BIG – gain three meters in altitude instantly upon taking a massive dump after take off – but we never saw what we saw yesterday before.

The heron landed sideways. It looked like it was doing a sliding tap dance on the surface of the water, and then just flung out its wings and set down. The grace, the total coolth and control… fabulous. Just wonderful. Like Fred Astaire possessed its body for five seconds.

SO MANY BEES: bumbles, honey bees.

Nice people to talk to. and Dorgles.

Amazing, beautiful weather, not too hot in the sun or chilly in the shade. Tide was EXTREMELY low.

Only grit was MUCH NOISE from Parks workers and the local industries.

Today – laundry and a quick shopping expotition.

I’ve started writing down songs again

Finally got Finale running, haw haw, so I’ve started putting Thorfinn’s song (Standard of the Crow) into musical notation. I’ve got about a hundred songs to write down, and I’ll start fitfully posting songs over the rest of the year.

It was like air and water to see Katie yesterday.

I said to Jeff yesterday, “I’m in a good MOOD I just can’t get anything DONE.”

He’s not happy because Nürburgring was called on account of fog so there was virtually no night racing, which is what he *wants* to see.

Hello my SF fans, check out this science news. It’s an article from the Asia Times about how we as a species have figured out how to jam photons together to make matter. You need a dirty great laser….

Better days are coming

Superb night of sleep, I think I’m managing my drugs much better. It was almost six when I woke up!

Curvebeak greeted me from the neighbour’s roof the other day. Very strange to be recognized by a crow.

Of course they bloody well recognize me. The hazelnuts turn out to be contaminated with something I’m allergic to, so I’m feeding them to them a handful at a time and snork snork snork down they go. This being the season when they’re bringing off young ready access to quality food close to the nest is going to be a big deal.

Buster is not happy that I’m feeding crows, but he’d still rather train than sit on the deck with his tail switching, waiting for them.

Timmy Ho’s coffee in mah belleh, I should feel shame but all I really feel is a strong urge to write a scene I’ve been putting off for about three weeks.

TIME TO GO DANCING

Roborative sleep

not, ha ha, rebarbative. Don’t get those two words mixed up.

Jesse and Slider are going to go dancing. Outside, in the summer, at night. I am putting together a playlist, which include Serena Ryder’s “Ice Age”. I heard it this morning as muzak at the Save-On and as I listened I thought, you know for a pop song this is actually tolerable (lyrically and musically). Then I find out she’s Canadian and won Juno awards and is part Trini and part Indigenous and I thought, yeah, okay. Definitely going on the playlist.

Jeff didn’t come, he’s buried in work at the moment. I thought about stopping off for a coffee at Timmy Ho’s but decided to come straight home, and I’m glad I did.

The Kaossilator, which has had a whole ALBUM done on it alone (this is one tune) is continuing to provide me with entertainment.

JUST at the point the battery starts to die, it makes ABSOLUTELY incredible noises, since it hangs and starts to loop (especially in the voice effects, I’m not entirely sure why). The effects can be everything from sinister to gutbusting. Hope to do something with that some day, in terms of home recording.

Hives came back, it’s definitely the nuts. Good to know!

Bison can hop like bunnies, who knew.

 

 

Today, the ducts get cleaned

We haven’t had anybody in the house who wasn’t part of our pod for …. a year? I guess? So I think Jeff and I are a leedle stressed at the moment.

I’m going to run a load of laundry and then get back to shoving stuff in corners in my room.

Are dogs self-aware? Some more so than others.

I have a dr and dentist appointment.

As soon as the duct person leaves I’m mailing biscotti to my mOm and Jan G OR making a beef stroganoff pack from M&MMeats OR going for a walk with Paul. Life is turvy right now, topsy