Category: Weather

Lists of lists

Yesterday:

Heaps of Stargate Atlantis, but also talking to the outplacementthingy and the HR gal at Schneider as it turns out I had NOT actually signed everything I was s’posed to, booking appointments, paying bills, getting programs to run properly with the new OS, hanging out with Keith and calling my mother.  Cause you cain’t call yer mother enuf.  I did not actually leave the house yesterday.  But I made cookies.  And cooked chicken and zucchini with black bean sauce over yakisoba noodles (Keith provided the sauce and noodles, I believe to nudge me to make something) and we had leftovers so that’s one less thing to disturb me today.

Today:

Gotta get Buzz set up properly and restrung.  Also buy more instrument stands, hopefully one of those threeway bluegrass ones for three different sized instruments.  Also I am tired of my tuner; I am going to get contact tuners because balancing that black box in my lap while trying to keep fretted instruments from sounding like the wailing of the damned is TOO DAMNED MUCH.  See how low my frustration tolerance is these days?  Ha.

The Grass.  This is exactly the kind of weather that makes grass tall, lush, and impossible to cut.  Lots of overcast and rain off and on with the occasional blinding sunshine.  Very, very occasional.  If it dries out the least bit I gotta do it before it attempts to eat east Burnaby.

Checking with Kathleen that we’ve paid the church rent and figuring out how much it is (it changes from month to month) if we haven’t yet for May. Also getting hold of Lady Miss D for an interview about what it’s like to bake / construct hors d’oevres for a living.  I will probably bake biscotti, it’s such a crappy day, heating up the kitchen with nice smells seems like a plan. I already made Granny’s recipe oatmeal cookies mit chocolate chips this morning for Jeff (I can’t eat them because le migraine keeps whacking me.  I’ve had scintillating scotoma every day for a week now… it’s fraking tiresome although late last week I got visuals I’ve never seen before; imagine rainbow coloured fish scales about two inches across at arms length dancing across your ENTIRE visual field – and it disappeared as fast as it came on thank goodness). I’ve also loaded the dishwasher, taken out the trash and played with Margot, who did not actually come in and cuddle this morning, darn. Her eyes are much less disgusting, the allergies must be lightening up somewhat.

Completely dejunking my head, a la Getting things Done.  I have a program (Thinking Rock) that helps with that.  Considering how many balls I’m going to have in the air for the next little while I need to marshall my time intelligently.

Deal with the exercise issue.  I’m completely on board with Lady Miss Banjola’s recent extremely useful and heartfelt rant about weight loss; what I am not on board with is actually stirring my stumps and getting enough exercise to overcome the fact that my weight is stressing my whole body.  IT AIN’T THE MASS IT’S THE MOTION.  Ahem. As in, the lack of it.

Booking the camping trip in the US in August.  Planning a circuit of the Island.  I have a strong urge to drive onto a ferry and go to Haida Gwaii, and precious little to stop me.

Just last week I was saying how I wasn’t going to go to Jericho any more because it’s so far on a school night.  Now I’m thinking I can do it every week for the whole summer!  Woot! So that may be my evening.

And soon the Dandy Warhols.

I have had precisely four beers since I ‘quit drinking’. What I have learned.  Alcohol makes me happy for about five minutes.  Then it irritates my bladder, fogs my thinking, prevents me from driving or leaving the house, screws up my nights’ sleep, makes my stomach hurt and gives me a mild to moderate feeling of wretched blankness the next morning which coffee can usually shake off.  So for the purposes of keeping tracking June 4 is now my official quit drinking date.  Unless it would be rude not to (a wake, toasting the bride and groom) I’m not going to consume alcohol any more.  Nothing bad has happened in its absence except I’m spending a sizable amount less (like, 200 dollars a month, which is not an inconsiderable amount).

 

Board meeting and other stuff

So I’ll be having lunch or dinner with Carol and Sue sometime after mid February regarding the transition to becoming Secretary for the church.  I think Carol is very relieved to be going off the board – Karen is too.  Everybody is so busy and tired but the meetings are very cheerful and energizing and sometimes quite passionate without ever becoming disrespectful or heated.  It’s at  the Board Meetings I really feel like I’m living my U*U values…. the whole “Step up instead of back” and “Respect for oneself, respect for others” stuff that’s very hard to learn unless you have ongoing, important and committed EXAMPLES in front of you.

 

The weather continues glorious.  As does my mood.  Even if – one of my star performers at work is probably going to find another position within the company which will be insane making for me especially if, as I see likely, they will tell me that there won’t be a replacement.

The cats have decided to only come near me if I’m feeding them or on the can.  Eddie always looks at me like “Why can’t you use a cat box like a normal person”.

I want to slap everybody in Finance, with about three exceptions, until they cry.  Shows you that my U*U principles can’t stand the strain of crossing the threshold at Doc Oc’s Lab here.  But we must bring our light out into the world, until somebody steals the damned thing.  And when my light gets stolen, I get PISSED.

I am settled into my room at the Double Tree Worthington

Cindy will arrive shortly and go straight to sleep in my room. I will find something to do with myself while she kips and waits for her room to be ready – I am thinking I might like to go look at the enslaved animals, if only in remembrance of the other Ohio animals who didn’t make it.  Besides, they have bonobos, and I ain’t never seen any.  Or I could wander down to the “German Village” room (!?) and see if anybody is filking yet.  Or maybe I’ll say fuck it and go to Macy’s.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Starbucks coffee is nauseatingly bad.  They may be proud to serve it but I’m a fool to drink it.

Gadhafi’s STILL dead, sic semper tyrannis.

So far, except for the coffee, I am loving this hotel.  The staff are really, really professional, friendly and courteous.  Room was supposed to be non-smoking, when I bleated they fixed it without a hiccup.

Weather’s like Vancouver, but windy.

I got selected for ‘special screening’ yesterday.  O goody.  I also got yelled at by every single one of the ‘security theatre’ staff, to the point that I would say “Please don’t yell at me,” not that it helped.  Note to self – travel in slip-ons next time.

“Miles Vorkosigan’s” filk of Lady Miss Banjola’s “Wreck of the Crash” MUST GET LYRICS and sing for my pOp.

It’s about the legal repercussions of losing your hotel room key, and it, like the song it’s based on is bloody hilarious.  YES there was filking last night and it was still going on when I went to bed at midnight local time.

Monday linky-lous

This is wonderful– a list of unlikely meetings.

Take your granny to the mall today. Remember, when it gets hot, you can prevent deaths by banging on the doors of your elderly neighbours and making sure they stay hydrated and cool.

Nancy the sheepherding …… chihuahua?

In keeping with the “Fuck, it’s hot” theme, today is the anniversary of the first day napalm was used on human beings.

This speech aligns well with my thinking about filk.

Jeff and I had a conversation about this the other day and thankfully he pulled the quote for me.

YAY!!!!! Google applies Boots of Buttkicking to Malware’s ass.

Jeff and I watched Dawkins on Darwin. Man, there are a lot of stupid people in the world.  I’m still having a hard time understanding exactly how people can tie themselves in the cognitive knots required to deny evolution.

Why I think Jeff is a genius

Jeff’s tenancy with me has consisted in part of him going away and thinking for a spell when I say things like “Why can’t we have the internet on the big screen?” and “We have to many fucking remotes; when you go out of town I can’t even reliably turn the TV on; can you fix that?” mostly to prevent himself from saying something mean to me about how I’m too dumb to understand the two page instruction set he laboriously wrote, AND updated at least twice.  Jeff produces good documentation and I am dumb as a brick; these two facts are incontrovertable.  With respect to the “Why can’t we have the internet on the big screen?” question he had to do a ton of stuff and set up another computer to make it happen.  SO I get to go skipping through life asking why things don’t happen to my liking and he gets to spend hours of challenging labour AND money making it happen.  I don’t know which is worse, that I keep thinking I can get away with it, or that he just quietly goes away and does it without presenting me with an itemized bill.  On the other hand, I do cook around here.

His latest act of genius has been to bow to the inevitable.  I am indeed TOO STUPID to handle more than one remote, but universal remotes almost universally suck.  After lengthy study of the problem, he purchased a universal remote and then spent a goodly number of hours programming it to withstand the depredations not only of myself but of my son, who can be a complete ass when borrowing media.  Sorry son, it’s true.  Of course if you get hit by a car I’m going to regret this, just like I regretted my daily description of cleaning John’s apartment when he moved out immediately after he got killed in an accident, but I don’t go back and oubliette that shit because that’s just lame.  I would rather be complicated, messy and inconsistent, because, er, that’s how I am….  But the truth keeps on being the truth even when you could have picked a better moment for the reveal.

Jeff has not only programmed the remote so I can do whatever I want to do with the tv and the Xbox and the monitor, he’s SET THE AVERAGE AUDIO LEVELS.  So if you’re going back and forth between media you don’t get blown out of your seat if you land in the middle of a tv commercial.  That, friends, is true genius.  And he’s always finding new ways to tweak the remote.  Go tech!

Today is Mother’s Day.  I’m opening at church (and if I’m not, I’ll help….) and then assisting with a Mother’s Day tea.  I decided I couldn’t deal with making soup so I baked a whole salmon and made cinnamon buns.  Jeff doesn’t know I plan on making more, but I do; it’s mean to fill the house with the supercharged smell of home baking and then say oops, you can’t have any.  (Actually I let him eat a couple: “I have good news and bad news.  These are the best cinnamon buns I ever made, and the rest are going to church.”)

Yesterday I did laundry and played Buzz ALL DAY.  I do not play Buzz every day, but I had four separate guitar playing sessions yesterday and I LOVE HOW THAT GUITAR SOUNDS OMG OMNOMNOM.  Also yesterday watched chunks of Canucks game and laughed at Margot for watching Nascar again.  She really likes Darlington, and why not.  My shopping trip yesterday consisted of propane and guitar strings, because the g string ALWAYS breaks on a 12 string; I bought two whole sets and spares.  I talked to Neil Douglas about effects pedals and he laughed and asked me why I’d bother.  I s’pose.

I managed to cut the grass last weekend but I have no fucking clue when I’ll get to do it again because the sky continues to dump precip at an unholy and quite soggy-making rate.

After church, the Horde will descend and I am hoping to barbecue some MORE salmon.

Did I mention that I think my brother is a genius?

Sundry and various

Call centers in Indian jails, this should work out well.

One Life to Live and All My Children will be cancelled. And replaced by a celebrity cooking show.  Hey women and shift workers!  Stay home and get fat, it’s not like you do any good to our advertisers otherwise.

Why would narrowed neck circulation have anything to do with MS?  But apparently it does.

Get your hands off that peen, or, what eXACTly are you testing for?  BC cancels controversial test of young offenders which involves handling young men’s junk.

If you’re a cop and get involved with drugs… you can collect two paychecks!  Mind you you’re not reporting the second one, but o well.  Woot!

Teachers in BC get a say over class size and composition. This is very good news for BC kids and parents, not to mention the teachers.  If you’ve ever taught a kindergarten class which is 1/3 ESL and has two special needs kids and is 30 students (not making this up, I have a friend who was in this spot) you’ll know what I mean.  Just getting them to line up for the can is a challenge!

I don’t get it. Can somebody explain to me why this is funny?

I’m impressed!  Ba-dum kish!

Katie’s only been here two nights and already I am fidgetty.  9 pm last night she leaves, says she’ll be back late, doesn’t show, doesn’t text.  Is she in a ditch? Did she crash at Kashka’s? Is she where she probably is?  And why’n fuck do I care? (Apart from how, every time she doesn’t come home, I have to rehearse what I’ll say to the cops if they come to my door?)

I blearily and wearily looked out my back door this morning, and thought, “Spring and Vancouver… no longer BFFs?”  There’s like half an inch of hoarfrost on things.  I knew at the end of March we’d get more snow because I could smell it.  Sounds stupid, but it’s true.  Now I can’t smell the end of it.  Snow tires will remain on car until further notice.

The move at work is getting closer.  Sure would like to know when we’re getting training on the new phone system and how it interacts with the call center software, but I’ve been assured there will be training.

Our CEO is leaving, and our new CEO is younger and French.  Rumour has it he’s moving to Vancouver.  I’ve met him the once, and apart from observing that he has a George Hamilton grade tan and a sense of humour, I have no comment.

The cats have been extremely rangy.  Margot in particular has been up in Eddie’s grill.  Eddie came for a nice long hug last night.

I played Buzz for about half an hour last night.  He’s going to be my bed time snack.  He’s so quiet when unplugged, but he sounds great.  I was thinking of dragging the amp into my bedroom, and just said screw it and brought Buzz in.

I can hear Margot laboriously licking herself on the basement stairs.

 

 

What the ?

When Katie and I got off the ferry last night, we noticed a great deal of unsalted/unsanded snow on the roads.  The highway was white with snow; the traction was miserable; I saw three cars in the ditch between Tsawassen and home; a Pacific Coach lines bus tried to kill me at the intersection of the highway and Ladner Trunk Road (as Katie will be only too motivated to confirm, and which I responded to appropriately when the bus cleared my driver’s side mirror by four inches at best) which was also the first place we saw a salt truck; we didn’t see another truck until Fraser and Marine, and didn’t see another one after that.

It snowed another two to three inches worth, and then around 8 am this morning it started snowing again, huge flakes that are falling like rain on tranquillizers.

What happens when customer service interactions go so wrong they go right.

Oh, grrreat.

Migraine sign this morning.  It’s probably from the nifty weather change.  (Last night, graupel mixed with sleet and punctuated by lightning as I came back from dropping Katie off (and thanks for the hairchop, girl!))

On a hunch, I went back and looked at the barometer for my Weekend of Crazyâ„¢and now I have something to else think about, because the barometer did leap and gambol like a spring lamb immediately prior to the wackiness.

I have never been able to get a thyroid diagnosis because the test results don’t support it.  However, just about everything that I’ve experienced in the last little while could be explained by thyroid problems, which occur in my family.  More interesting stuff to ponder I s’pose.  In the meantime, I need to get away from a computer screen, cause, like, that never helps, as I know from experience.

PS I wondered if this was a migraine when I heard about it.  Oh great, my tongue is going numb and I’m getting tingling and numbness in my fingers…..  This is going to be a helluva day.