Category: Urban living

Time vs money

I am SO tired of the commute, I’ve decided to buy a car.  Kat has one for sale and she said she would do the cv joint and the muffler for me if I buy the parts and I am very tempted.  It is not a particularly useful car, being, like the MR2, a two seater.  LTGW told me to buy a truck.  This was in the same week he told me I was wearing sensible shoes.  I ended up screaming “Want me to shave my head and start wearing overalls TOO” in the middle of the cafeteria, which certainly made Robof9 laugh.

Robof9 is leaving the Tiled Cell on the Hill later this month.  I am just punched out about that too.

The lights over my desk give me a headache every day.  My eyes are so tired by the time I go home I feel like I’m in a dissociative state.

The weather is cold and windy.  I heard what sounded like ice pellets pinging off my window at 3 am this morning.

Anyway, now that I know I’m getting a car I feel very bad at the same time I am feeling better.  It’s just that I can’t read, play games, watch video on my phone or do anything that doesn’t involve looking out the window to prevent motion sickness whenever I ride the bus.  I can spend two and one half hours a day commuting, or half an hour driving.  I’m 51 and I’ve only got so many hours left.  Translink is not bad for my part of the world, and it’s not their fault that there’s a fucking lake in between me and work.  I am tired of the asinine creature who takes up five seats on the bus with the rude way she occupies the front section.  I’m tired of the men who smell like pee and spilled stuff and the women who smell like air freshener.  I am tired of listening to phone conversations in a babel of languages; I am tired of hearing conversations that make me want to butt in and describe in detail the cognitive biases involved.  I am tired of fucking rude bus drivers (I’ve seen some good ones, but a couple of events in the last month have left me gobsmacked with disappointment and too disheartened to even complain.)  But I should commute because it’s better for the environment.  It would be better for the environment if I jumped off a bridge, too, but that is not in the cards.

The house is shifting on its foundations with the wind.

I want rainbows and unicorns and world peace, and I’m getting dying cats, blue relatives and friends, (this item deleted), (this item deleted), (this item deleted too, sigh), and a bunch of other stuff I can’t complain about.  Currently there are 18 items on the list; most of them I only wrote down so I could add one last item to the list & I FEEL REEAAALLY SHITTY about not being able to DO anything about the stuff that’s wrong.  Oh yeah, Mr. Cheerful Pants, I should just work on the stuff I CAN fix.  It’s all about reframing things.  Well how about I reframe this by breaking it over your head, how’s that work for you?

The only good thing that happened this week is that Mike showed the pictures he took of Rozo in the woods – nude.  Unbelievable.  All that hair, and her standing on a tree stump in Robert Burnaby Park looking like something shot out of a New Raphaelite wet dream.  There was one particular pic, her figleafed with hair, that I want to carry around with me in my wallet so I have something pleasant to look at when things really fuck up.

That’s not true, there was one other thing that happened this week.  I found a website with erotic photos and art that actually has about one in ten pics that I like.  I guess it’s yet another sign that I overshare that my first impulse was to email a couple of links to my daughter.  That’s not funny, it’s sick.

Jeff cheered me up by loaning the car to me yesterday – he stayed home with Gizmo.  I went and got treats after work to cheer us both up.

Now I’m going to do a Tarot reading.  The day can get worse any way it likes.

an open letter to Kash Heed

Dear Sir,

My initial reaction when I learned that the BC Liberals think it’s a good idea to axe the mandatory inquiry after a death in custody was, wow.  No more coroner’s inquests into government embarrassments.  Maybe articles like this will magically go away.

Then I thought, you know, just because I’m a tubby left leaning atheist with queer sympathies and anarchist tendencies doesn’t mean I have to even react to it.  After all, a 51 year old white woman who lives quietly in Burnaby (honestly, my neighbours probably wouldn’t even know I was here if my cats didn’t crap in their gardens, and if my brother’s car didn’t rumble in and out of here twice a day) doesn’t really need to put ‘death in custody’ on the top of her most feared methods of checking out.  I’d just pull out all of my priviliges and a harassed looking lawyer would show up and I’d waltz out of whatever misunderstanding had occurred.

Then I thought, well, sheeeeit.  It’s not like the BC Liberals do 5/8ths of a listless denial about deaths in custody right NOW, so why should anybody care that they are legally mandating what’s happening in truth in the cold light of spring, 2010?

But won’t someone please think of the children?  I tried to think of how an appeal to the interests of children might get spun by the BC Liberals.

There are hundreds upon hundreds of children growing up in BC – and other places, thank goodness – who want to be po-po when they grow up.

They want the gun, the badge, the pulling prostitutes over and getting free blow jobs in cars.  They want the skittery way meth-high teenagers deke down alleyways just before the Tazer comes out.

I kid, I kid.  Really what people want when they grow up wanting to be cops is to be on the right side, to catch dirtbags, to jail pedophiles, to bust drunk drivers.  Nobody who wants to be a cop when they are little thinks about the mental hardships and physical perils of being po-po.

Right now all police departments are having a bitch of a time hiring.  The RCMP nationally is looking to hire 8000 newbies in the next five years to handle resignations and retirements.  Things are so bad that they are hiring – so I have heard – people with known mental illnesses.

So I guess one way of looking at it is that the BC Liberals are canning inquests into deaths in custody as a recruiting ploy.  Come and join our police forces, all those with barely concealed personality problems and contempt for minorities!  If you get a little enthusiastic with a scumbag and he or she dies, not only will you not lose your job, your badge or your benefits, you’ll never have to face the scorn of the public and you’ll be able to sleep at night knowing that it was all a tragic misunderstanding.

Good job, Kash, hope that works out for you and your somewhat tinted kinfolks in the years ahead.  Yeah, I know you were the first Indo-Canadian chief of police in Canadian History, and that you have a storied career.  I just have one last question to ask.  Given that the Chief Coroner in BC is a political appointment given to a retired cop, do you have your eyes on that job after your political career moves away from you?  Cause if the omnibus bill passes, the Chief Coroner’s job just got easier.  That’s what I call planning ahead.

Peace love and anarchy,

Allegra

My head it is reeling

I just wrote two hundred and fifty words about the coffee date I went on tonight.  I backspaced over the whole thing.  I have no idea what to write that doesn’t sound like I’ve gone completely insane.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy at how things went.

He’s paralyzingly cute, without being an ass.  How did that happen?  Yeah, you read that right.  Paralyzingly.

Emotional pointillism

Yesterday’s practical job interview was a disaster, but a low key one.  I’m not displeased with the haircut Katie gave me in the course of the interview, but I’d like to take the woman who supervised her and fire her at high velocity from the deck of the Iron Workers’ Memorial Bridge… in effigy, of course, I do not advocate violence except when in an excited and irrational frame of mind, which advocacy, when it occurs, I am obliged to immediately retract as being contrary to both my core self interest and my belief system, spindrift as it is.  Katie was philosophical about it, which helps.

I googled Glenn Beck to find out what church he goes to, subsequent to learning that he blames atheism for the end of the American dream.  Personally I blame their judicial system, which, skipping hand in hand with television over the last 60 years, has f|cked the Americans to the point where recovery into a society where self-governance and personal responsibility are considered virtues seems very unlikely.  Anyway, Glenn Beck, a Mormon, blames atheism.  It’s a lot like blaming Canada in its charming looniness … and it sure as f8ck is easier than looking in a mirror.  Of course me blaming the judicial system without pointing to the interconnected power structures which have allowed Glenn Beck to make fabulous amounts of money by being emotional, uncommitted to the facts and verbally abusive to people who haven’t ever done anything to him personally, would be very remiss, but the courts could have done more in the last 60 years and they haven’t, so they are the notional cat I kick this morning.

Marc Emery was taken into custody on Monday.  He’s a manic self-publicist with a libertarian messianic complex and a smoking hot wife.  I still don’t think he should have been extradited.  I hope he isn’t injured or murdered in custody; I hope he comes out of it sane, or at least as sane as he is now.  I am very angry at the Canadian government, but as long as we have Harper, it’ll be like this.  I knew Marc when I weighed 132 pounds and wore aviator frames so I guess I am biased.

After the interview disaster in the late afternoon (softened by the Seabus ride somewhat) I took the girls (Cassie, Kashka and Katie) for a drink at drink.  Yes, the department of redundancy department has made adjustments, and there is a new drinking hole for adults who wish to have a conversation and properly constructed drinks.  This new establishment does not use drink mixes.  The music is not turned up full blast; the wait staff are attentive, professional and fun.  I am booking Katie’s 21st bday party now!  609 Columbia for anybody who is interested.

Today is a day of packing and worrying.  I f|cking hate travelling, but if you want to get someplace you have to travel, alas and oy vey iz mir.  Jeff says, mimicking piteous kitten for comic effect, “But what will I eat?”  He’ll be fine of course.  He got the Margot grooming course; she bitched at him exactly the same way she bitches at me, so that will be fine too.

I closed all the windows permanently in preparation for winter.  The air conditioner needs to get put away, except I’m damned if I can figure out where.

I’ve decided not to take my computer on my trip; but that’s only because the notion of backing it up before I leave makes me all exhausted.  I’ll take pot luck on internet access; I don’t imagine it will be much of an issue, as everybody I’ll be visiting has some.

Currently, it is raining.

I made mini-cinnamon crunchies yesterday and gave some to Landpeer Kim with the rent cheques for the next three months.  I had to do something after she gave me all those home grown tomatoes.  Yum!  Also, I invented the recipe while I was making it.  The two people I thank most for my current ability to cook are Catherine and Paul.  Catherine because of her very inspiring adventurousness, Paul because I got kinda competitive with him in the ‘not using a recipe’ department.  Now I feel like I’m a good cook almost without thinking about it.  I can’t remember the last time I cooked something inedible; the worst thing I cooked in the last year were those dreadful muffins; they induced heartburn of world class immensity.

My back is really bothering me, which is another reason why I do not want to fly.  Or rent a car.  Silly me.

I light a candle for those killed and homeless in consequence of the earthquakes and flooding in the Philippines and Indonesia.

People keep sending me links I’ve already posted to my blog, in one case two years earlier.  It is to smirk.

I had a lovely conversation with Patricia the other day and look forward to catching up with her live upon my return.

I am a cool hunter.  One hundred thousand years ago I would have been finding tasty things to eat for my kids and grandkids.  It’s the same, but only different, as an ex-coworker of mine used to remark.

MilkDrop is a superlative visualization plug in.  Highly recommended; trippy as all get out. I occasionally have to look at the ground when the presets go into migraine-inducing territory but that’s my only complaint.

I am emotionally sensitive to certain wavelengths of light.  The more I consider this, the more I think, what?

I can hardly wait for the first snowfall so I can take video of Miss Margot.

She is very rotund.  We will have to start meal feeding the cats, which is harsh.

I have decided never to take her to my parents’.  Given her unaccountable urge to tangle herself up in people’s legs as they are going up the stairs, the prospect that she would either trip and kill one of my folks or get crushed by accident is too much to bear.

Science roundup

I loves me some cheap mass storage.

I should probably bring the results of this study to Katie’s attention. Hair stylists and social services?

A great idea for cleanup of radioactive areas…. love the picture of the waldo.

I talk to the trees…. and now they’re actually talking back. No, not really, but that’s the way to bet.

Great, a Taser version of an elephant gun.

Brain, brain, go away.  The examination of and debate over male/female brain differences continues.

Creating your way to reproductive success.

Can I pat myself on the back for linking to the metal velcro article two days before boingboing?  I AM a trendspotter, after all.

so much is happening!

Or nothing, depending on how you look at it.

Last night I went to the opening fireworks (Canada) and it KICKED ASS.  The theme was the Wizard of Oz and they did an amazing job of synching up the fireworks, and the colours and patterns, to the music.  I recorded it on my dinky camera; looks like shite but at least I have a souvenir.

The ride downtown last night was difficult; the ride back was scary.  I am SO glad Keith came with me because he was the only thing preventing me from having a full on anxiety attack, so quiet and calm and martial artsish was he.  Suffice it to say that I came a micron from getting backwashed in bear spray.  I didn’t, but it was a near thing.  The cop presence was beyond anything I’ve ever seen in Vancouver. If this is what the future looks like, it can kiss my ass.  I was deaf after I got off the Skytrain – the noise level was incredible – and I had had to ask one particularly lungworthy native chick to kindly please stop yelling in my ear.  (“KAYLA YOU STUPID BITCH BRING ME THE CAMERA I WANNA SEE THE PICTURES!” over&over&over).

It was great to see Alex and Rob and get the benefit of their roof deck once more – unimpeded view and lovely company.  Darwin made little happy bird noises all the way through the display, which was civilized of him; Alex was concerned he might scream through the whole thing, having been so rudely awakened and hauled upstairs.  Alex put on a lovely spread as always.  Cheesy, cheesy goodness! Paté!

Today, I SLEPT IN.  I was supposed to be at Suzanne’s for 9 and woke up at 9:35.  What to do?  No change, no bus tickets; didn’t want to take a cab, so guess what, I rode.  (Thanks Keith for the tire pumping).  The trip there was a breeze, being almost all downhill, and the trip back I took in stages, stopping off to get foodicles for dinner for Jeff and me.  Thanks to Leeanne and Patricia for getting me more inclined to ride; I was amazed, given how out of shape I am, how good I feel now. I mean, I feel really good.

Anyway, Suzanne and I had a good old chinwag and caught up about  the kids and their various interesting life frolics, and then I found out she’s never been to Wreck Beach. This is an outrage!  I immediately called Mike and he agreed this is a problem we should immediately fix, like maybe tomorrow.  I will call her and give her a head’s up.

I rode (okay, that hill above Royal Ave I walked) home, stopping off at the bank and Joe’s Farm Market and Farm Town Meats, getting a mango, a tomato, a red pepper, and orange pepper and a purple onion, and also chicken breasts and pork chomps, and coconut milk for the rice, as when I called Jeff I offered him the option of bbq chomps or butter chicken, and he immediately said butter chicken.  That’s gonna be yummy.  I already made the salad, and as soon as I get off here I’m going to finish cleaning up the kitchen and maybe start running a load of laundry, and then I am going to rearrange my room so I can have all of my recording equipment and musical instruments out at once without difficulty.

I missed the locksmith by literally 7 minutes but that’s not too surprising given that he said he’d be by on Tuesday, and does today look like Tuesday to you?  A good tradesman is hard to find.

Tanya is thinking of dropping by with babby again today.  Happy me.  I have to be here for the rest of the day anyway, visitors would be so nice!

Wreck yesterday

<snippets>

In the morning I loafed and lazed, squeezed in a grocery shop, and then reverted to dawdling and doodling; around 1 Mike came and fetched me in the convertible, and then we went down to New West to get Katie and Kashka.  (One half of the reality show girls).  Kashka is covered with ink from her ears to her ankles, including Betty Boop as a skeleton, which is freaky, because Betty Boop’s skull looks exactly how I would imagine Margot’s skull to look.

It was very pleasant on the beach.  There was a kicking breeze all day, and it was not from the usual angle, and pushed the incoming tide up the beach.

At first Mike tried to fly his approx 4 square meter kite but the breeze was so stiff he was getting dragged 10 and 15 meters down the beach, which I watched with the kind of chill consternation which is all you can muster when you’re feeling so mellow.  Then he tried smaller kites, which was much more successful, and provided us all with much in the way of aesthetics.

Liz, Kashka’s ex, joined us.  I’d met her when we were still living at the Augur Inn and really liked her; I still do.

As the tide came in (Mike always checks the tide tables and parked us WELL up the beach) the breeze shifted until it was straight onshore.  Surf’s up kids!  The girls were bobbing up and down in the waves several times – they’d come back out to warm up and then go back in.  I asked Katie if it was awkward to go the the beach with mom and she just laughed and said after ten years she was used to it.  And it’s been ten years since we started going as a family.

Odd, isn’t it?  I got in to waist height and let a couple of waves slam into me, because I wanted to say I had gone in and had some idea of the physical exhilaration of it all, but I’m 50, and the idea of trashing the bottoms of my feet and then having to climb all 407 stairs (counts vary!) had very little appeal, and at the end, the girls complained that their boobs had been thrown around so much they were all sore.  Mmmm… My kind of fun doesn’t have that kind of toll, but that’s just me being lazy again.  Also, Mike and Liz and Kashka and Katie all complained about how much salt water they swallowed.  Ick.

A man with t shirts and beaters went by; one showed a parody of a Starbucks logo with beers and WRECK BEACH instead of STARBUCKS, and the mermaid wearing sunglasses.  Kashka leaped up and said, “I want one!” so I obliged her.  I laughed, “All your mother’s many kindnesses to Katie are coming back for YOUR benefit, how annoyed Suzanne will be!”  But no probs, I’ll be seeing Suzanne later this week to catch up on the buzz.  Katie is living rent free at Kat and Kashka’s, so I am being politic.

I ate the best hotdog ever on the beach.  Those three jalapeños I added made for just the right amount of heat.

I wrote a song on Mike’s parlour Larrivée – no lyrics yet. Which reminds me I should pick up my guitar and make sure the tune is still there.   I believe so.

The GVRD but not the cops were on the beach.

All in all, it was a lovely, lovely day, and I got home around 7:45, very crisp around the edges. Tonight, off to see Patricia for the long promised Cavalcade of Cheese.

One thing and another

Yesterday… I mean apart from getting ZERO done on my life list, I had something resembling a perfect day.  I got to see my kids and Paul as we chatted about the job hunt for the kids (got some things straight). I got fed a yummy tortilla lunch which Paul and Keith and Katie assembled; later I did a kindness for someone which triggered him buying me sufficiency of beer for the nonce.  Happiness is a fridge full of Corona.

I got to visit with Tre.  Logos, but that’s one cute babby.  Battery and Tanya and Jeff and I laughed and chatted and had a very pleasant time while I got the grisly details of the birth, none of which are for public consumption.  The result, a calm but busy 6 week old who developmentally is a month ahead (REALLY strong), is what counts.

Margot couldn’t stand the lack of focus on her, and came into the livingroom to (very ladylike) hork up some grass, because the babby was being changed at the same time…

The weather, after a little overcast, was perfect all day.

Then, hung out for a while not doing much of anything and Mike came by and took me and Keith and Jeff to the Richmond Night Market, where I bought nothing but REALLY GOOD kettle corn, and where I watched my beautiful son metamorphose into a steely eyed killer (there was a mini-midway, and he shot enough pins to get me a little purple bear (not exactly worth the five bucks he paid to play…. but I digress as usual and besides, Miss Margot is eviscerating it as I type, so its purpose has been revealed)) and after we drove away Mike took us to his cefu’s traditional chinese martial arts club (Mike corrected me, Jack is NOT his cefu, Galen is.  Men can be so STERN when you get things wrong) in an industrial park in Richmond (and boy, has he done a pile of work on that place to help Jack get ready) and then I got to watch the north shore skyline etched against a sunset sky while the wind whipped through my hair.  Ah, convertibles. And I cried a little bit, because I am so happy, and so grateful to be living here, surrounded by such loving friends and family. Side note, John Caspell trained with Jack.  Everything is deeply intertwingled.

When we got home, TrueBlood.  Not enough Eric; no Pam, not enough Jessica.  But considering what the first four episodes of the season were like, I am willing to cut some slack.

Can you tell I had a perfect day?

And today, instead of working, I’m going with daughter Katie and Mike to the beach.  My happiness is like a golden thread.

I would like to give special, extra, crunchy golden props to Jeff, who has been leaving the real for real audio of the Apollo 11 mission running for the last couple of days during waking hours.  It’s been an ongoing reminder of why I’m an atheist.

Until we saw the Earth rise over the moon, I don’t think the fundamental unity of human life, and its fragility, had ever been so starkly drawn.  And it wasn’t the Pope or Mohammad, peace be upon him, what got us there.