Category: Weather

much better aqi, all things considered

It’s dropped 20 points since 1 am (now 145 LATER AT 8:30 AM UP PAST 160 AGAIN), and should get within kissing distance of normal – under 40 – sometime by Friday.

Buster has been extremely variable about wanting to train. Some mornings he’s all over it, but the last couple of mornings he wants to just be handed treats, so I cut short the training this am after one treat and we’ll try again in the early afternoon. This morning first he huffed training and then he begged for it and we got three paw claps and a jump and chase and a run and chase in.

My experiment, stealing a cushion off one of the downstairs sofas and using it for a backboard, is a success – however finding a replacement pillow even at places like Bed Bath and Beyond that are supposed to specialize in shit like this has proven rather difficult. I will ask Paul to assist with cushion shopping today, then I can put the danged cushion back.

Jeff took me to breakfast at IHOP yesterday and I just ate what was left of the leftovers. We had the leftover sushi for supper last night as the folks kindly shared out leftovers from Paul’s bday.

Doctor’s office phoned me saying they wanted to schedule ‘a medical review with an RN’ and I told them to go fuck themselves until after the 22nd when I (hopefully) get my glucose tolerance test. What the hell is wrong with these people? Why do a medical review when the single most important piece of test data isn’t available? Anyway, I wasn’t as rude as I sound but I took no shit, I assure you.

The hot stone massage at Head to Toes day spa with Pauline was AMAZING, I’m still feeling comfort right into my bones.  I may book another one next month just to have something to look forward to. But I suppose I should probably wait at least that long to ensure I neither caught nor brought anything.

14,487

Review of day:

Didn’t drink enough water yesterday. It needs to be less than half tea, my liquid consumption. Did practice x 3 instruments; did walk 1.5 k, did empty the sink and fill the dishwasher; did not meditate or take my bp and pulseox; I did not work on a manuscript; I did take my pill and brush my hair and teeth; I did my shoulder exercises. No laundry yesterday or today; no osteofit, no dejunking yesterday.

french toast and bacon

Not exactly on the high blood pressure and kidney problems diet, but I will only have two pieces of bacon. In a few minutes we’ll take off for the store; Jeff will stay in the car and I’ll go do the shop, as per their current instructions – they only want one person per household…

Latest bp 157/87, not too bad. Nice walk back from the pharmacy yesterday – it was literally the only part of the day that wasn’t too smokey to be outside.

Two dozen deaths, minimum, from the wildfires, and it will be closer to a couple hundred by the time it’s all over.

I got 11/15 daily routine items taken care of yesterday, so even if I feel like I didn’t do much besides laze around and harvest squash (put them in a carryall LOL to carry them, otherwise you’re negotiating with a dozen verdant cannonballs) I did actually DO THINGS yesterday

et the littlest one last night as a bedtime snack, seeds and all, damn it was good

LATER ABOUT THE SQUASH two more of them found homes

13,359 words

The weeping and wailing about Supernatural ending continueth on twitter.

 

wringing sweat

Work’t in my garden. f’in hot out there. This involved sweeping up lawn clippings so you can actually see the walkways and driveway, watering the squash, (I could hear them slurping, it’s been ages and I think there may be a single lone pumpkin in the pile) and walking the boundaries to pick up the inevitable logo’ed paper and plastic trash that’s blown in. I also carted the cactus soil and the deck salt out to the locking side of the carport so they aren’t posing a tripping hazard by the back door any more..

Now to collect the clean mats from the dryer, except that I have to sweep the kitchen floor and mop it first, which I am now by the power of mental effort going to try to silently encourage Jeff to do.

later: Jeff did sweep but I hadn’t yet cleaned out the hellhole under the kitchen table, and now you can see all of the floor and it’s all clean, hallelujah. There’s a tiny bit of paper cruft to sort, but I could probably throw it all out and not lose anything. Also: cleaned the extraneous paper cruft from the side of the fridge.

and i am STILL WRINGIN’ SWEAT YEAH

Finally got hold of the doctor and gave her a piece of my mind, but of course it makes no difference. Managed to winkle out a prescription renewal. Why do we need gp’s again, blech.

I’ve already practiced three instruments and done my shoulder exercises this morning. I’ve even written a little. 13,301

u/Zinan took this flying out of YVR this am, check the haze effect on the mountains

ermagerd, somebody I really like on twitter retweeted something nasty I said about Trump and Nate Silver so I am ha ha’ing to myself.

The McDonald’s closest to my house has a worker sick with Covid.

fucking ronald damn his eyes

now it’s time to unionize

Jeff and I never go there, it’s the second worst Ratlands between the Port Mann Bridge and Main Station. (The worst one is right on Main. WHAT A ZOO)

I KNOW that none of you care, but today’s the last day on set for Supernatural after 15 seasons, and the people who guest star are openly weeping about it, and it’s a Thursday, and Castiel is the angel of Thursday, and now it’s over.

trying….

Something for the parents

fic 13,205 FINALLY managed to get through the scene at work. I think it will play most amusingly. Just imagine a guy getting his face teased off by two co-workers, that shouldn’t be too hard.

Trying something different with respect to a daily routine. Even half-assing it yesterday I was more productive that I normally am and scheduled a whole bunch of much needed self-care. All in all I am very pleased.

Made a small luncheon salad – chopped cooked chicken breast, lettuce, onion and olive.

Buster trained well yesterday.

Wanted to go walking with Paul today, but it will be a mall walk, if anything; the heat and the particulates make walking outside a mug’s game. So I emailed him and expect to hear from him midmorning.

I backed up my hard drive this week; Jeff thinks I should be scheduling it more like once a month than three times a year, and he’s right.

Spoke to Peggy on the phone yesterday. She was putting up pears and applesauce when I called; how very Peggy. We had a delightful chat although she definitely is not enjoying this phase of the pandemic, having school aged and toddler grandchildren.

Drone footage of San Francisco, with all the orange wildfires, is…. jeez am I wearing out ‘apocalyptic’ yet?

There aren’t enough public washrooms in Burnaby.

I’m out of bocconcini pearls and it’s making me crabby. SALT FREE CHEESE! ya-harri-hoy!!

They’ve torn down the last of the sets for Supernatural and Baby rides for the last time today.  Sigh. End of the show is coming.

Just told someone on AO3 not to give drunk people ibuprofen even in fanfic. I M BITCH, HEAR ME HOWL

My strongest weapon, my weakest link

That would be my mind, although Jeff might argue that it’s really my farts.

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2020 really is something.

Stopped watching Hannibal, it turned out that even if it was network tv it’s giving me the collywobbles.

Walk and lunch with Paul yesterday was most pleasant. Weather continues particularly fine. The Usual Domestic Tasks like laundry and dishes continue….

533 words of fanfic.

The hammered guitar song is responsible for me toasting one set of strings, lol – the bronze wrapping is coming off and making the string buzz

mood crashed again

after a couple of days of feeling better I’m feeling iffy again. I think I’ll force myself out of the house to go to a farmer’s market up at Brentwood this morning. Jeff hasn’t shown any interest in going, so I’ll suit up and take the bus, since it’s just one hop.

The pumpkins and the two surviving sunflowers are doing well, and I did get some carrots.  Everything else in my garden sucks because you have to water things. My mOm knows about how to get things to grow but I’m forgetful and lazy and those are two things a farmer cannot be.

Five hundred words on the fanfic. Inexperienced character is being exposed to ETOH, hijinks ensue. (ETOH means al k hall)

Image Erica Henderson, Eisner-winning artist, made this

@ericafails on twitter

THE US IS A FAILED STATE

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Looking Inside Myself, 2002, carved whalebone by Susie Silook, artist of Siberian Yupik, Inupiaq descent

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Rogers, 2012, Post Gazette

Rob Rogers was fired from the Post Gazette in 2018 because all mainstream media outlets in the US are owned by right wing oligarchs

ah the good old days – open in a new tab and it should be (just barely) readable.

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THIS IS KOYUKI

He is a ‘cat monk’ in Japan. Nice blink, Koyuki.

Brief walk with Paul yesterday. Weather outrageously glorious. Four hundred words of fanfic. No practicing of instruments.

Katie will never read this, or not likely read this, but this is for her. Image

SPRITES

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PHOTO CREDIT STEPHEN HUMMEL MCDONALD OBSERVATORY FORT DAVIS TEXAS from an extensive wild storm in May of 2020

Training Buster

I thought of training Miss Margot

to be a circus cat but she wasn’t really ept enough. Buster,

however, has the combination of smarts, suckiness and athleticism which makes for a perfect circus cat. His contemplation time is 5-10 seconds, as opposed to the 18-20 seconds it took Margot to work anything out. (All cats have a response time to inputs, unless you’re dropping something on them or they’re actively in danger. It’s not the only thing I gauge intelligence on but it’s quite indicative.)

This morning, he announced (body language, he’s a quiet critter normally) that he wanted to train. He flopped on the rug (which our mOm made….) and I bounced a couple of treats over to him. It seems weird to start training by offering treats for no harder a task than showing up in the kitchen, but Buster wants to know if I’m going to keep loving him even if he’s feeling lazy, so I bounced the treats. Then he got up and wound himself around my ankles making very quiet mews, so I asked him to jump for treats. And he did, twice. Then he jumped onto the tuffet and stared meaningfully at me. When he sits nicely on the tuffet he gets a reward. I gave him a treat and he dropped it from his paw onto the floor. He just stared at it and I picked it up and put it back in front of him.

He mewed after he finished eating it, and then I put the next treat in the air above the chair next to the tuffet. I said jump, and HE DID, HE JUMPED OVER TO THE OTHER CHAIR, and then jumped up for his treat. Then we did the ‘cool down’ which is him running after treats along the kitchen floor, which can be marvellously entertaining, and then I gave him a pat, told him he was a good boy, and gave him the sign language for ‘all done’, so he knows it’s over (I’m trying to do that all the time now when I’m done with whatever activity, cleaning him or treats or grooming.)

It’s May and it’s just so frikking cold all the time. It’s not my imagination I just checked the data for May 2019. If this is another ‘no sun summer’ I’ma gonna be choked. I think we had the aircon on this time last year at least once.

My current fave pic of Katie

My current fave pic of Keith:

My fave pic of Paul, or among them anyway.

16cm yup another six inches

that’s what’s forecast between now and Thursday night (it’s midnight Wednesday now.) We definitely need more salt,  but I’m not shovelling until 6 am. It’s East Burnaby so we’ll probably get 1.5 times the forecast.

mOm very kindly put cousin Laurel on the phone yesterday so I got to talk to her. There’s been a death on the inlaw side of the family and it coincided with the worst of the ferries and roads, so she’s had an adventure; this is also the week her husband turned seventy. Much sadness about the new normal. Supporting the recently bereaved is a beautiful challenge though.

Anyway, I woke up dizzy, a horrible feeling, got up and peed, sat up and now I don’t actually feel fine but I could probably go back to sleep. I should, I only got four and a half hours…. Read on line, I’m probably dehydrated or have low blood sugar…

No I did not go back to sleep I made coffee.

55073 HOTM

It’s been weeks, but every time I think about that piece of grafitti in Ultraviolet “Czirny fans get sick notes from their drug dealers” I crack up all over again. Czirny was a made up football team for Łódź which is pronounced wutsch.

View image on Twitter

the Duchess of Sussex is out and about – shown here at a women’s centre in Vancouver yesterday AND NOT WEARING A DRESS lawks

I MEAN IT’S WONDERFUL but TERRIBLE and EXPENSIVE like 10 million dollars of extra colonial expenditure and all we really care about in this household was her gig on the TV show Suits. I feel sorry for Harry, although not for his choice of bride.

Environment Canada says Howe Sound is going to get wind and snow something awful so it’s a good thing Laurel’s not travelling today.

 

HA HA HA HA STEFAN MOLYNEUX that unregenerate Nazi sockwad has been cut off from Mailchimp so his list of 70K asshole supporters is no longer his. LOLOLOLOL excuse me cough cough.

I sent mOm a couple of links about a former colleague….

LATER THAT MORNING

wanna drive?

Alex’ school’s closed. Katie is staying home. I did volunteer….

Later, around ten after seven

All the schools in the lower mainland are closed. There is not a snowball’s chance in a foundry that I could have made it to Victoria today without considerable horror.

snow mebbe half an inch

winter grips the lower mainland in time for a completely messed up morning commute.

After I hang it up here I’ll be shovelling and salting. I bought a lighter shovel the other week while I was out with Katie, so we now have two shovels in case we have to apply that much elbow grease to the walkways. It’s typical that the first power outages of the day (not here, elsewhere south of Sto:lo) are caused by people driving around on lightly embossed baloney skins and taking out power poles.

later…

 

there’s about half an inch to an inch of accumulation, and I’ve never seen such perfect snowball snow.

blanky part le deux

Success! I slept an additional 2 hours with the blankie, garnering almost 7 hours of (almost) uninterrupted sleep. I think Katie will be pleased when I hand it over to her this morning for non-destructive testing on Alex.

This is me 30 seconds before I found the box on my step. This is the weather their delivery company dealt with. We got two inches of dense, slippery af snow pounding down over about four hours, then it abruptly stopped and a watery sun came out and said oops.

When that snow all turned to water at once, that was an interesting moment.

Katie took me to breakfast – it’s a grey day, but much warmer and the snow’s off the walkway.

Stanley Donen is dead. The man who directed Charade is gone. But here he is being fucking amazing in 1997.

calm before storm

some unhappy predictions.

Irma the Hurricane is going to stall over south Florida the way Harvey stalled over the Gulf Coast.

By what even atheists are going to describe as a miracle, Miami will not get a direct hit as Irma will veer at the last moment. Evacuation screws ups will kill more people than the blow.

Cuba will not have any fatalities despite a direct strike. Those people know how to do civil defence against hurricanes, people.

The Leeward Islands will just get to figuring out how many people died before José hits, although José won’t be as bad.

José is going to violently change direction and scrape up the coast, causing ludicrous storm surges.

Mar-a-Lago will escape and Trump will thank god.

If Mar-a-Lago doesn’t escape Trump will spend the first federal funds on fixing it.

weather whither

Commute into work tonight was horrific; I arrived, 7 minutes late and as cold as a damp grave, after leaving the house literally an hour early. Translink, which had been faithfully waking me up every fifteen minutes with pings on my phone about cancelled buses, had fallen silent so I assumed, entirely wrongly, that the buses were now running. Anyway, stood in the freezing rain for a long fucking time before a bus came, and got to watch people behave like arrestable idiots on Canada Way.

Shoveled the walkways before I left for work; if the snow stays snow I’ll have to do it again when I get home; if the rain comes it will depend whether the temperature stays above freezing or not. More salt must be purchased; this is obviously not going to be the last snow of the year, since the arctic outflow conditions over the balance of the winter will only too swiftly return….