wotta burst

22648 words, Wordle in four when it SHOULDA BEEN TWO. Two top fives in Lumosity.

Yesterday I put off getting out the door for errands too long. Jeff got embroiled in a work issue and was no longer in a position to offer me a ride. I did a cognition check, decided that if I was literally going to be driving two blocks and back again I COULD DO THIS THING so I went to Burnaby Square and I got my damned meds and I got my blood work did (as always the vampire women at Lifelabs gave THE PERFECT STICK) and EKG (COLD AND RIPITTY SKIN COMING OFF) and I peed in the container (prob’ly not enough, I was dehydrated all day yesterday) and confirmed it would all be read before next Tuesday’s doc appointment.

I got back in the car and decided that Jeff, after bringing treats home various times of late which perked me some considerable, needed to have something treat-like so I went to M&M Meats and bought two chookity pop pies, one lazzyggna, one breaded shrimpity thing, and a box of mini creamitypuffs. We had cream puffs and shrimps for supper, WE RAGRET NUFFINK, especially when we contemplate the amusement this will prompt in our elders….. On the way out of the M&M’s at The Royal Square Mall (not the Royal City Centre, which is also in New Westminster 2 km away) IT HAILED.

I thought it was graupel, but it was round, and it beaned me, and stung my little head. I thought, OW and put the food in the back seat and then ran over to Sally’s and grabbed more emory boards since Jeff is continually frowning over how snaggy my fingernails are any time I hand him something. After pricing meshuggas (I am sorry, but I didn’t mean to reenact the entire drugstore scene from ‘What’s Up Doc’ (“How much is it without the …”) while out for a shopping jaunt – they tried to charge me $43.95 for an emory board and I’m, like, haaannnh???) I paid the 6 bucks total for my self-care order (I’m just trying to meet MINIMALLY APPROVED GIRLY STANDARDS THOU MISERABLE GODS OF GENDER CONFORMITY BOOOO) I went outside, received the continued icy blessing of hail-strikes on my bean, and departed for home; the hail stopped before I even left the parking lot of the mall.

Stopped watching Station Eleven. Any time an episode ends with two small girl children appearing to voluntarily blow themselves up killing a family member at the behest of a post-apocalyptic prophet I am going to fucking check out because I am already well aware of the extent to which #notallmen will destroy things to assert control over them and would prefer not to have the point made in the story with shrapnel-laced chunks of what should have been the carriers of our future.

Jessica Wildfire’s most recent post is one of the hardest and most necessary things I’ve read lately. You don’t have to read it and I’m not linking to it because it’s very very bleak, but you can search for it under her name and ‘Behavioural Sink’ on substack. It confirms in me that Keith laboriously helping to build community in his own way IS the way out. We must all community build or die. We find what we can do for that community and we build it. It also explains why reddit is full of straight women who’ve stopped dating….

 

Cold and windy

Buster finds that weather a sore trial. Checked ventusky and the swells travelling down the coast from Haida Gwaii to Mexico are the same size as current Antarctic storms….

19946 words.

Started watching the spy/dramatized historical show ‘A Spy among Friends’ with Damien Lewis, Guy Pearce and Anna Maxwell Martin, all actors we enjoy. I quite liked the script but the ‘jumping around timelines to keep it interesting’ overdid it and a couple of times we were scrambling to figure out where we were and what year it was supposed to be. That will not stop us from watching it.

I need to go for a walk today. At the absolute minimum I need to get out of the house for more than fetching delivery from the stoop.

Still snickering about Joe Biden going for a stroll in Kyiv. He was an asshole for crushing the railway strike – as events in East Palestine show – but damn he had to be brave to take that walk. Right before Putie’s all staff meeting, er, address to the nation. He must have been incandescent with rage. LOL.

Officially old, got my pension letter from service Canada.

Perhaps I should pop over to Caspell Junction.

 

 

a little list

  1. Pork chops of superlative tenderness achieved. Last two were fossilized so it made a nice change. Roasted potatoes and Brussels sprouts dressed with sesame oil to go with.
  2. Three whole loads of laundry. Not put away of course but I’ll make an attempt.
  3. We’re going to get a buttload of cold weather. I’m hoping the furnace makes it.
  4. Brief call with Katie; she’s managing.
  5. Janice did not come this weekend.
  6. 15275 words
  7. Twitter is continuing to make circling the void/drain/black hole noises.

left a message for Keith

Didn’t hear back. I’m assuming all went well.

Wordle in 3 this morning. I suspect that Suzanne will laugh when she gets it. I know I did.

Weather continues warm, overcast and intermittently rainy; no break for many days.

The Russians lied their way through the ceasefire and are fumbling their way through the Donbas attack. As the weaponry between the nations equalizes thanks to NATO Putin’s desire to use nukes must be well nigh insupportable.  I’m sure his people, over whom the fallout will land, are right there with him. In the last episode of first season The Peripheral a bunch of kleptocrat Russians in London talk about the Putin diaspora and I involuntarily smiled. The show hasn’t been renewed by Amazon yet but it’s apparently just being finalized.

Jeff and I, despite our very commendable urge to stay the hell home, went to London Thugs yesterday. As we came down the escalator (I was wearing the highest standard mask that we own, Jeff had a KN95) we saw that we were walking into a store where no one including the staff were wearing masks. Needless to say we didn’t hang about. I purchased an alarm clock (a really nice one) and more importantly a proper charger and charging cable for the little non phone Nokia Jeff loaned me, since I was not consistently able to get a charge out of the old one. Once again I spent the money and got a two metre cable and a decent charger and glory be, all of my charging issues are done and the non phone charges almost instantly now.

We should probably go do a shop this am, got no more eggies.

14223 words

Lovely night of sleep after a lovely bathe and brush-up. Finally recovering from a couple of ragged nights. Jeff got me a chicken breast over caesar salad for dins last night and it was nom. A couple of amazing pieces of garlic bread came with – it’s the simple things that make life better…

Blood pressure is fine.

Mike would probably hate us but that one last piece of slowly drying prime rib (literally all the other leftovers were long since eaten) in the fridge was cut up and given to the crows (with peanuts). GONE pretty much instantly. Curvebeak must have been reproductively successful, there’s another curvebeaked crow out there, a little bit smaller, showing the raven lineage.

Lumosity up next.

Anyway, I am definitely feeling much less like whining, fussing and crying this morning so let’s see what I can do to either make my life better or someone else’s today. Thanks mOm for the kind words. I try to write amusing things and when I manage it’s lovely.

Late post

Normally I’ve posted by now but I’ve been feeling lazy. Keith called. We chatted about pretty much the only thing that’s on our minds right now. Paul is still very concerned about the car – there’s an appointment to fix his Echo on Jan 12.

Oleksiy Danilov says, via twitter this morning:

How does a pack of petty kremlin devils relate to a Christian holiday? Who will believe scum that kills children, bombards maternity hospitals, tortures prisoners? A ceasefire? Lies and hypocrisy. We will bite you in the singing silence of the Ukrainian night.

This in response to the Russian demand for a Christmas ceasefire. Yikes. The grim poetry of defiance.

Keith wants to write an essay called, “Okay Canadians do you understand the Russians now?” about how they have the power to change their circumstances but don’t because they’re busy staying alive.

This will be a cold hard winter, not that Galen Weston, extracting record profits from broke Canadians, cares.

50 foot waves off the California coast with the bomb cyclone. The visualizations on ventusky dot com are WILD.

Europa just broke every January record for how hot it was. They were recording summer-in-vancouver temperatures across thousands of kilometres.

 

while I still have power – no water

The pipes in our rental have frozen. I’ll waken Jeff in an hour to tell him if he’s not up by then. We are supposed to go shopping this morning before the icestorm starts.

Oh did I mention that?

this is what I posted on facebook:

 

Everyone in the lower mainland please read this. The atmospheric river last year was a simply terrifying event; now imagine an atmospheric river of half that volume BUT IT’S ALL FREEZING RAIN!!! This forecaster says we may get 36 hours of freezing rain totalling as much as 80 cm. Mark Madryga at Global is NOT arguing with him.
This will be one of the most messed up Christmases in the history of solh temexw. I beg of you all to stay home once the event commences, if you can.
Consequences: complete shutdown of all transit – air, ferry, ground. No ambulances. Fire/rescue hampered into immobility which means house fires may not be put out fast or well. Unless you have crampons and walking poles the outdoors will be extremely unsafe.
Be prepared to literally chop ice while freezing rain sticks to you, if you’re responsible for clearing sidewalks. I plan on using the edger to bust it up.
If you are required to drive over the period in question do not go anywhere without chains. If you don’t have chains now’s the time to buy them. TODAY.
***Cover your car*** if you park outdoors. ***charge your devices***, & charge anything that can charge devices.
Ice melter may not work all that well. You may need to apply sand or grit for traction instead.
LARGE ZONES OF THE LOWER MAINLAND WILL HAVE POWER OUTAGES (remember the Quebec ice storm in ’98? I was selling portable power equipment at the time so I sure do!) AND THE POWER OUTAGES WILL GO ON LONG ENOUGH TO KILL FRAIL ELDERLY AND DISABLED PEOPLE. So check on your neighbours if you feel safe to do so.
Outages (as in Quebec) may go on long enough that there will be no power at hospitals. They may go on long enough that the pumps for the dykes run out of fuel and fail in Richmond; flooding along the river in some places is likely, especially if drains get frozen over or clogged.
AFTER the storm there may be pockets of the lower mainland that don’t get power back for literally weeks. Hotels and motels will be jammed.
If you have a gas generator BUY FUEL NOW AND START IT UP TO MAKE SURE IT IS WORKING. Get a chain and a lock. One of the most memorable takeaways from the Quebec ice storm was that if you had a functioning generator, poltroons would steal it from your porch. If you have a woodstove or a safe fireplace that draws properly get some wood in. Get food you don’t have to cook into the house – even a flat of replacement meal shakes will be better than nothing.
I am so glad I’ll be able to stay home for this. Not everyone is as fortunate. If you have money to spare for the unhoused who will suffer tortures from this weather event, please do so.

weather chaos

Jeff and I are most assiduously staying the hell home in our coldass little rental, because the following is going on out there:

  1. folks sitting on the snowy tarmac of YVR. The de-icing crews apparently had all been working doubles and a lot of them went home; many crews are sick. The current record is 8 hours for smaller airlines that don’t have the deep pockets to advance their slot-time agendas
  2. we were EXPECTING this, all of this, and yet the snow response municipality by municipality, much like the police ‘services’ ahem, are patchy and also impacted by callouts from sick staff. New West cleared all of its roads by the time they said they would. Burnaby kinda kept up; Vancouver proper was a fucking disaster.
  3. in the old days, it was 8 to 10 inches of snow. These days it’s 25 cm. You would think a major Canadian metropolis would get out an’ plow er something, but it’s not good.
  4. TransLinkBC on twitter minutes ago (5:30) “Good morning, folks! Due to inclement weather, the transit system may be experiencing delays.” Like if that isn’t the single stupidest thing, stay home f’chrissakes, I’ve seen video of snowploughs pushing busses down Joffre. I mean unless you want to be standing in this freaking wind for an hour or two, stay home.
  5. Man skiing down Como Lake Road last night, just like how people got around during the Century storm in ’96 in Saanich/lower mainland and the Great Blizzard of ’71 in London and most of the northeast.
  6. More snow today and then bonechilling cold right into Christmas, so this natural phenomenon will remain here for most of a week.

Pity Katie; she has to both remove snow from her car and drive in this shit. At least once she’s out of the alley she’s on cleared roads.

My health and brain are much improved but FUCK it is cold in the house. I may bake today just for the heat.

walkies

Jeff frowns, swings closed

Jeff and I went for a little walk in the gorgeous sunshine yesterday afternoon. Jeff said that he should go for a walk and I said, “I’m going to stagger up the stairs, stagger up the hill to the park and stagger back again,” and he thought I was joking; he joined me after watching me put my shoes on. This is the same park at the start of the pandemic; the logo has all washed off that hoodie but the hoodie remains.

I missed the DD celebration yesterday. I am not sad, I don’t feel sad. I am somewhat immobilized though.

Russians out of Kherson. They’re starting to put anti tank cement blocks on their side of the border, which triggered Finnish Twitter to do a most pointed and technical takedown of how insanely useless it all was. (Altho the discussion was in Finnish you can translate tweets on the fly and man the Finns were just shaking their heads, it was wonderful. There were also comments that since it WAS useless, some oligarch musta got paid for it, ten times what it’s all worth. Lovely.)

Supposedly the new washer will come in the downstairs back door around 11 am today. No movement on the tree, not that I’d expect it on Sunday.

 

by aquilegiaformosa on tumblr
guys we’re not being cringe to keep out the twitter users. we’re being cringe to keep out the ALGORITHMS, the CAPITALISTS, the INFLUENCERS. twitter users are welcome as long as they agree this site is UNMARKETABLE

In other words become ungovernable by being someone you can’t make money from…. by being cringe. You know who’s cringe ? autistic people, by virtue of the intensity of their many hobby horses.

I prefer to be ungovernable by having my own website, that nobody ever looks at, but which will be invaluable to my family after I’m dead. That’s how things work. It’s the longitudinal and continuous energy of it, not the content, necessarily.

Worked on yet another fanfic, “Special Deputy on the Run” yesterday.  I’ve poked into the file for Part II but I think I added 36 words.

The amount of shit kicking Zibethicus (my name for Elon, means muskrat) has taken on the internet is amazing. In a few short weeks he’s scorched his fortune, facing a lawsuit for over 50 billion dollars from a former investor choked that he essentially stole shares from Tesla, received the brickbats of the commentariat and been held up as a model of everything not to do in business. Every time he says so much as boo on twitter hundreds of thousands of people tell him he’s a fucking idiot; it’s glorious, but not enough to get a twitter account.

Continuing counts in the US election still trend Biden’s way. They didn’t poll people who never voted LOL__  so many pundits have tender buttskin hanging out on this that another public spirited activity on twitter these days is going through the pundits’s last two weeks of salty prognostications and retweeting it, saying things like THIS AGED LIKE MILK or DO YOU SUPPOSE YOU WILL EVER BE RIGHT ABOUT ANYTHING EXCEPT AS THE SPECTRUM FOR YOUR POLITICS etc etc.

It is GLORIOUS and marvellous in our eyes. The night show hosts are having a field day.

Mitch McConnell, easily one of the most corrupt and disgusting politicians in American history, is not Senate GOP Leader any more, and rumblings are someone is going to grab his 15 year old perch in the Senate. The people who are candidates in replacing him aren’t as likely to be as competent at either whipping votes or stealing anything they can reach.

We are about six episodes into Farscape. Every episode is weirder than the next. Truly bizarre show.

Virtually every pediatric ICU in the country is at double capacity. There are so many sick children that you cannot buy children’s aspirin in this country right now.

Spoke to Tammy on the phone the other day, she called. She confirmed that she’s coming at Christmas and I’m seeing her on Boxing Day.

 

Tea and leftover rice for breakfast

Not exactly nourishing, but filling. I’m planning on finishing the rest of the leftovers today.

I turned all the house lights off and slept with my door open so Buster could come and go as he pleased. Normally I sleep with the door shut but that seemed a little rude to the kitty.

Washed some underwear yesterday in the sink and dried them in the dryer. Still no word on a washer, but I wouldn’t expect that until next week anyway. I may go over to Katie’s today but then again, maybe not.

The ‘Admiral Makarov’ a Russian navy frigate, may or may not have been destroyed by a large radio controlled boat. I mean FRANCHEMENT why build a warship so big and expensive and capable of hurling explosives such long distances if ten thousand dollars of explosive, an encrypted radio control rig and a speedboat is all you need to blow it up? Anyway, it’s not PROVEN that the Makarov was damaged, but what has been proven is that if it floats anywhere in the Black Sea, the Ukrainians can get to it, even after they move it 100k down the coast lol. Have another great week, Pootie baby, and another good one after that. Source forbes.com

A man was apparently living FOR FIVE YEARS with a seven foot alligator (candidly, he grew) in a shipping container. The alligator, in good health despite only having a bathtub as the water part of its habitat, and after really making the cops work to get it in a van, has been delivered to an appropriate wildlife facility in Tacoma; the man took a powder as it’s actually illegal to own alligators in the State of Washington. The neighbours, living in a rural area, are now looking around dubiously to see if mebbe there be hippos, ocelots and wildebeest hiding in the hills. source: katv.com

Rainfall warning in effect. We’re getting between 40 and 100 mm, mostly before noon. It’ll probably rain Halloween for the kids…

One hundred fifty-one dead in a crush incident in Korea. An incalculable loss and I imagine the guardians of public safety are going to catch much grief.

Bolsonaro may not accept the election results if he loses. Brazil’s a powder keg right now, I hope it doesn’t turn into mass violence by the right wing.

8991 words on Part II

355 words on ‘the New Guy’ fanfic

Jeff off to Victoria

The car via ferry is the only reasonable way to get there and maintain your personal mobility, but if they ever invent a matter transporter, Jeff’s got dibs.

Rain lifted and the sun came out and it was quite pleasant late yesterday afternoon.

8814 words Part II. Sent a tiny squib to mOm yesterday. It won’t be enough to keep her (drum roll for over-exaggeration here please) fiendish appetites slaked, but them’s the breaks I reckon.

Damn that lamb was good. However in the interests of roommate comfort I’ll order chicken next time – Jeff finds the smell of lamb queasy making and I don’t want to put him off his chicken skewers.

I have more than 60k reddit karma points. Talk about yer wasted life.

Just read the opening line to a fic, “Why is Dean a capybara” and now I want to finish that prompt myself.

we actually phoned pOp

So we got to wish him the best of the day, which it sounds like he had. Any day he can get in the Camaro and drive to the Place of the Rural Pollinators with his sweetie is a good one.

Ordered curried shrimp and rice from D Roti Shak yesterday. DOD it’s so good and as usual it arrived more or less as I clicked on Door Dash to order it. Jeff got a chick’n roti.

Keith came by and fetched the frozen food we’ve been keeping for his household. He didn’t hang around obvs; it had to go back home.

Buster trained HARD this morning, good kitty.

Kyiv still facing blackouts as the Ukrainian grid totters under Russian attacks.

More Hornblower. g’DAMN but David Warner plays such an amazing villain; in this case a Hero Gone Bad with opioids and drink, and possibly early onset dementia. Jeff and I were so thrilled that the movie/episode started with a flashback and there was no trial. (Believe that Jeff and I have made clear how we feel about courtroom episodes except for Good Wife). Now we’re shuddering because chances are the next episode will be nothing BUT a trial. Here’s hoping.

Most recent stats show one in ten americans over 65 has dementia and 22% have cognitive decline. Source: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IRVING MEDICAL CENTER October 24 press release

one quarter of the Canadian population is immigrants. Source: Statscan via CBC October 26. With climate change and other issues I think their predictions for the future are sadly out of whack, but that number will definitely rise no matter who’s rattling and jimmying the population model.

of course Indigenous people count those numbers differently, and I mean no disrespect. Population stats for Inuit, Métis and Indigenous peoples shown here.

Another chunk of the Epic of Gilgamesh has been discovered, to the joy and wonderment of archaeologists. The joke going around the internet is that our anonymous scribe from ancient times ‘dropped a new chapter’ before George RR Martin coughed up another Winds of Winter book (What Game of Thrones was based on.) If you know, you know, and if you don’t, we still have more Gilgamesh.

so happy for the rain we’ve been getting. We’re about to get a flood more, but nothing like last November.

Just heard the foghorn blow FIVE TIMES blasting up the hill. Guess it’s foggy on the Fraser.

 

This showed up on facebutt this am:

I entitle this picture I FART IN YOUR GENERAL DIRECTION.

Alex and Ryker at the park Oct 2022 also you get to see which of my apps is open

Hey, feel like vomiting in disgust? look who’s back. …at a tough on crime hoedown. Good to know wife murderers are allus welcome.

And just for laughs here’s my stats from AO3 yesterday sometime. I’ve posted more than 36 stories since 2017. I deleted some; total is currently 36.

Because Rishi Sunak is a horse’s ass, (and a fucking rich horse’s ass, to be sure) he didn’t acknowledge Larry the Cat as the UK’s new PM went to Number 10 Downing Street for the first time. Larry made no comment after regarding this untoward snub.