Category: Whining

puttering

Housefilk at my place tonight, festivities commence at 6 pm or maybe even earlier. Mike and Rozo and Tom and Peggy and Cindy and Paul will be coming… Jeff is considering fleeing to the Robzone to avoid the noise.

Still haz a happy about me being the Interfilk Guest of Honor at GAfilk in 2014.  I have a year to prepare a set list… almost long enough eh wot?

On my list today:  reconcile October, enter November, reconcile November, enter December, reconcile December… and then the simple part of the bookkeeping for the year is done!!! w0ot!

Also, I am on tap to pick up Izzy’s luncheon.  I am sorry, widdle mousie, but your role in the great chain of being is already cast.

Have to make a deposit for the soup luncheon. Sigh.  It missed getting to the collection counters last week and it’s almost a hundred bucks so I can’t leave it lying around here.

Carrie has less than two weeks before she gets off Haida Gwaii for good. It’s too bad her ex is phoning her all the time and breaching his conditions, but that’s life I guess.

There are other little bits of news but that’s enough for me right now.  There’s a hungry snake waiting for me.

 

 

What the Grand Joculator brings us

1.  Jeff says he’s paying too much money for rent.  In Vancouver that is not true but he sure could pay less rent elsewhere in the province, someplace on the Island for example.  He says he’s going to give me plenty of notice so I am very relaxed about this.  Not having in house tech support would just about kill me, as would giving up the flat screen and cable and the PVR, but life is full of interesting times and changes.  It definitely means I might end up with a different roommate though, and that raises the specter of a whole other series of maddening things; Jeff is/was the best roommate evar, as I believe I have stated a number of times.  I can see his point though and we all have to take care of our own needs.

2.  The new Galapagos BBC 3D documentary from David Attenborough is ABSOLUTELY STUNNING.  Highly highly recommended.  Don’t forget to watch the “making of” too.

3.  Signed off on my taxes for the last 4 years.  I should get a large amount of money back, but of course the feds will have to look at the returns before that happens.  I remain sanguine.

4.  Job hunting is interesting.  I got a lead from my network of contacts, and it is wonderful that it happened BEFORE I started instituting the new job search parameters (working the network).

5.  South Fraser Unitarian Congregation may get me as a speaker for Easter.  I’d whip out my previously provided Jesus service.  We shall see; I have not yet received a response.

6.  The sun is out, and I walked around in it, and of course the world seems like a better place.

7.  (link removed for safety) This.  Oh, this.

8.  I came up with a really cool idea for a science fiction story and forgot to write it down.  It has something to do with old people and robots, and damn I’m mad – I have a pad downstairs for all the ideas I get while I’m watching tv and there are tons of them so far.  Why, o why, blarp blergle.  I could have just written it down.  That’s what pen and paper FOR, SILLY APE.

9.  Did I mention I am on the waitlist for the Translink busker program?  If I’m still not working, I may do that to raise cash.

10.  I’m going to have some of the roasted squash and roasted garlic soup for lunch and then back to the job hunt.

11.  I’ve been sleeping downstairs and completely NOT HAVING ANY SCREENS in my sleeping room.  As a consequence my back is much better.

12.  WOWZERS.  Great news for deaf people.

I know I have never

fallen asleep like this.

It’s a dog with its paw in its mouth.

Chalice circle was a very big disappointment.  Like uncomfortable making disappointment.  It got better, but I still felt very withdrawn and disconnected at the end.

1.  I did some but not all of the homework.  I was supposed to print out the homework and bring it with me, and also a show and tell item, but I didn’t do that.

2. Lot of no-shows.  This is hard to bear; a lot of organizing went into this and I feel for both host and facilitator.

3.  The ritual was in my view goofy, poorly worded and ever so sincere (we’re doing this out of a book called Soul to Soul and while I admire the effort put into it it’s all a bit ‘canned’) with that reverent spoken word Unitarian sincerity which long timers will completely get and the rest of you will go hunh?  And it got my atheist back up.  I don’t give a shit about facing north and thanking mother earth for her wisdom or toenail clippings or whatever.  I was sneakily pleased that I wasn’t the only person in the room with the ish.  NOTE: If it had been a real Cree or Salish greeting of the directions, I could have stood that.  That has emotional resonance; not some made up pseudo Wiccan horse maneuvers.  However the ritual was brief, I’ll give ’em that.

4.  I was appalled, and I mean it, when I brought 10$ worth of cheese and got told to take it home with me as these chalice circles were not to involve food. I could feel the ghosts of a hundred Mennonite relatives cluster round me with staring eyes and pointing fingers, Matthew 25:35 “I was hungry and you fed me!”  How can the soul be nourished without the body!?

5.  The long pauses in between sharing were good.  That was stabilizing.

6.  There was housekeeping afterwards and my comment about food got taken seriously.  We will have tea or something bracing and then have the sharing.

7. The goofy ritual is supposed to be tried 4 times until we get used to it and THEN if we don’t like it we’re supposed to ditch it.  Hard to believe this never caught on with the Catholic Church.

8.  And there’s @@@@@@ homework.  We covenant to do the *$YO homework.  Srsly.  The point is to increase sacrifice and therefore commitment and it counts as religious education, which the minister is getting marked on, and it means that everybody is going to go through the curriculum at the same time in much the same way (varying by facilitator of course).  If it was my puppy, I’d be doing it SO DIFFERENTLY AND  there would still be more time for sharing.  I totally get why this is happening this way, and the increased emphasis on shared experiences to somehow account for how we don’t really have a liturgical year or specific faith wide rituals has to do with gluing newcomers into the church and broadening and deepening fellowship.  I get all that.  But without food?  Jesus wept.

I believe it could be done better, but since I’m working on other stuff for Unitarianism (my current in process homily is called “Threat Level”) and there’s this LITTLE NOTION THAT I CAN’T FIND A FUCKING COMPETENT BOOKKEEPER TO SAVE MY LIFE and I’m desperate and miserable and anxious and horrified and frightened about it really is not helping.  I thought I had a back up plan but I can’t get anybody.  It’s so painful and awkward it’s warping my frame.

On the plus side I’m getting a lot of money back on my taxes, or so the accountant tells me.

 

This is a year when my faith will be tested and toyed with, and it was ever so.

 

 

 

 

Lovely long chats

In the last week or two I have spoken on the phone to Lois and Terry and Bonnie and Carrie and Ron (an old family friend I probably don’t often mention) and Tammy and Dave the poet and my mother and the minister…. I keep forgetting what it’s like to really talk to somebody who knows me from when I was a pup.  And sometimes I am doing more listening than talking, but…. I believe there’s something about friendship which occasionally requires this ‘sacrifice’.  Tammy more than anybody I know makes me feel heard.  It is a most wonderful sensation, even if we are murder on each other as travelling companions, heavy sigh.  Carrie is being driven spare by repeating earthquakes and aftershocks and her moronic and supposedly no contact order former spouse.

Chalice circles start up again tonight.  There is homework, darn it and we have to COMMIT to going twice a month for four months.  It’s down at Sue’s place which is nice and close.  I hate that there is homework.  The free form chalice circles of yore worked a lot better for me.

Out to brekky with Jeff this am.  I am hoping to convince him to combine it with a trip to Thrifty’s first as there are tiresome holes in our larder, like eggs and cream for coffee and white sugar (we have brown but it just doesn’t cut it for certain kinds of baking).  Yes, he has agreed – as long as we don’t get anything frozen.

RGIII’s knee injury last night during the Seahawks Bengals game was just about the most disgusterpating thing I’ve ever seen lovingly replayed about a hundred times.  Blergh.

Between now and shopping and brekky, it’s JOB APPLICATING TIME!!!

KATIE was at CHURCH YESTIDDAY!  I haz a happy!  (Song went okay).  JEFF fixed KYLE’S COMPUTER.  I haz a happy!  I can’t get hold of the new bookkeeper!  I haz a panic attack!  TRE AND BATTERY dropped by for an impromptu visit and TRE PLAYED ON THE PINBALLS while BATTERY AND JEFF CHATTED!  Tre is three and really really enjoyed it, although Margot wishes him to the uttermost pit.  We haz a happy about dese tings!  EDDIE IS UPSET AT SOMETHING in the yard.  We haz a scaredy.  LIZ MCINTOSH FRIENDED ME ON G+.  Yay, my second oldest friend has gotten back in touch with me electronically.  I HAVE AN EVIL PLAN TO MAKE MONEY IF I CAN’T GET A JOB.  I can haz a scheming plot!   And so, from asterisk to asterisk, from ALL CAPS TO italicized, from call to call and packet to packet and cheque to cheque and cheek to cheek and from plug to drain, these are the expostulations of our lives.

 

 

 

 

Didn’t happen

I drove all the way down there and there was no safe place to park (sorry, I’m no parking under a towaway zone sign so I can – with no cash on me – deal with trying to get home on transit  or cab and then bail the car out).  I guess my revisionist tendencies continue.

Church in 3.5 hours.  I am going to go a bit early to make sure the instruments are at the right temperature and help with set up.

And I’m not already anxious???

“Believing that we just reached the peak of our personal evolution makes us feel good,” Dr. Quoidbach said. “The ‘I wish that I knew then what I know now’ experience might give us a sense of satisfaction and meaning, whereas realizing how transient our preferences and values are might lead us to doubt every decision and generate anxiety.”

In other words, I am going to change just as much in the next ten years as I did transitioning from my 20s to my 30s.  So will my parents.  So will everybody else I know.

I don’t really feel like my preferences and values are transient though.

Thanks a pantload, science.

Anybody reading this who’s familiar with the concept of spoons… I have one left.  When I’m at the center working on things I feel all upbeat, and when I’m home, I’m not, so I guess I’m going out today.

 

Things ta do

I have already applied for two jobs and it’s just gone 6 am.

I will continue to look, however.  I’m supposed to hear back about the job in New West today.  Hope I do, it’s a fifteen minute bus ride.

Kitchen clean up.

STACKS of church paperwork, but I have been given an energy boost by positive interactions at church yesterday.

Laundry…. the continuing saga.

Trying to figure out a mandolin part for the keeping bears happy song.  Or a guitar part, but I hear mandolin.

Justin Timberlake clogs.  In a movie, not a drain. 

Margot was running around the house doing the crazy cat thing.  Since she’s never done this before, she’s now laid up in the cat hotel in the corner of the living room and breathing with an astonishing stertorousness.

I need to find out what those folks are doing with my tax returns.

Thinky thoughts

So five years ago I was too fat and unfit to flirt with (this was SAID, not IMPLIED), but today I am not.  I will never understand men if I live to be 100.  If the flirting turns into asking me out, I’ma about lose my mind, and of course politely say no. You sure as hell can’t unring that bell.

I enjoyed the job interview yesterday.  They certainly conducted it with dispatch – I was in and out of there in 25 minutes.

I am going to get a little PC to handle PC type stuff for church.  I don’t want to get a virtual machine on my Mac, given that it and its hard drive is quite old and Apple has already told me to go fuck myself if I want to replace it, okay maybe not those words but “This is so old, why don’t you get a new one” were literally what the fixit man said when I was having troubles with the DVD player.

Made refrigerator cookies yesterday.  It’s almost four in the morning and I’m thinking of getting up and slapping some into the oven.

 

Weather report

To quote an Aberdonian “Aw naw, snaw!”

Yup, soggy shit be fallin’ from de skies.

Open and close at church again today (traded with someone so she could be with her family).

I am currently working up yet another shopping list (this one will be official and look purty).

In family news, the grandsnake is now called Izzy.  HE IS HONGRY ALL THE TIME OM NOM NOM.  Kyle said he wanted to feed him live ones, but he’s eating reconstituted frozen ones as if he was a high school linebacker let loose on an all you can eat buffet.  So Katie’s year of snake care (she actually slept in Opal’s room) comes through again.  He’s shedding, so he’s crabby.  Katie says he’s becoming hand tame very fast…. provided YOU move slow.

Now I need to jump in the shower and get gwine.

Visits.

Visited with Sue this morning to help her download from her daddy’s funeral. He was 102.  Meshuggas about the inheritance; waiting is.

LOVELY visit with Mike last night (funnily enough I’d been kvetching to Paul, with whom I was practicing yesterday, about how MIKE WUZ NOT RETURNING MY CALLS WAHWAH) and he called around 8 and I kinda forst him to let me come over.  I brought Otto and sang Theo’s Theme and John Scalzi’s Blog and Compost and Grateful and It’s Just So Nice When Someone knows your Name, and Lemming’s Twofer, and the first verse of Wanted to Believe, and Mike sang the drop D version of Dylan’s Tangled up in Blue and another song, I can’t remember which.  We talked about various things, including how trying work is for him right now, and how the insomnia really doesn’t help. BUT HE FOUND THE TAYLOR.  His parlour guitar was lost in the move but he found it again, and so me happy.  I was VERY BAD and drank two beers, which made me so drunk I collapsed on the sofa and slept from 10:30 til 8:30 the next morning.  Two beers.  I always was a lightweight, but this was ludicrous.  Also worked on Rozo for a while, her shoulders were a reticulation of weenie little knots.  While I was there Mike called Brian and I got to talk to him for a while.  There is nothing like the sound of a friend’s voice, yanno?

This morning I came home and promptly started brekkie for Jeff, being melon and bacon and pamcakes, and then Sue called and I went off and had a second breakfast of more coffee.  Also, getting checks signed so I can pay some churchy bills. Then I wandered into a sign shop and ORDERED the John Caspell Memorial Pinball Parlour sign for reelz this time, and then my other errands got shunted aside as I had to trot home due to the coffee.

Now I am looking up the language of flowers on the internet for a bouquet I’m buying for the minister tomorrow and as soon as I change my clothes – ew, slept in my clothes, what am I, frosh at some scummy college??? – I’ll be off to buy a floral bouquet, pick up some more spray paint, and buy some eggs and butter to get going on some biscotti.  Roast chicken for dinner tonight.  MMMMM chicken.

I cooked a pork roast the other night with basil and lemon thyme from Suzanne’s deck garden.  It was nommy too, although Jeff owned that it was a little overcooked.  We did agree that pork roast should be roasted, it doesn’t cook right in the crock pot.

Paul and Keith are off to Seattle for the long weekend.  Katie is doing cat care this time; I should call her.  The only reason I know she’s alive is from her facebook comments.

Miss Margot has been extra barfy.  I need to brush her very very thoroughly and give her a lot of kitty malt.

SO LOOKING FORWARD TO SINGING NEW SONG FOR MINISTER.  he he.

Lovely!!!

Had a wonderful visit to Victoria with Keith.

It took 7 hours to get home, but it was a nice visit.  I am not very happy with BC Ferries right now, and having to drive Keith to his meetup afterwards because he was running late wasn’t a problem but it did add a lot to the drive.

I traded up phones and have still not been able to activate it.  I am seriously considering taking it back to the place of purchase and letting them know that if I have to spend three days trying to activate a phone there isn’t much point gamely staying with the same company.  The chat on line help has sucked as well.  Very disheartening.

I have to get a job, and the market is very poor.

I decided that since being conscious was actively causing me pain that I should take refuge in sleep.  As soon as I was decently unconscious, and far away from my back pain, BC Ferries and the utter pointlessness of life, the phone rang and it was somebody from church reminding me to bring the checkbook to service.  Serves me right for going to bed so early.

It is now 2:35 in the morning.  This is not a good time to be writing blog posts as they are likely to be rather grim.  Oh, sorry, too late.

I hope today will be a better day.  I’m going to get a glass of water and go back to sleep, if Morpheus is kind.

 

thank you mOm

You know, my mOm raised me to not really give a shit about cosmetics.  She quit wearing her one concession to patriarchal culture, lipstick, the instant she retired.  Over the course of my life I’ve probably saved fifty grand not buying them. I have powder, probably time-expired, and one jar of nail polish, in my bathroom.  I think Katie cleaned out anything else I had lying around.  I do concede that my face looks better if I prevent my eyebrows from meeting in the middle, and I do pluck the darker hairs off my chin and chest because even though I’ll never get mistaken for a man I would prefer to present as a woman.

I don’t care who consumes cosmetics, but I am upset and disgusted by people smearing fishscales and metal oxides on their faces without understanding the long term health consequences.  Makeup, unless it’s part of what you do for a living (rock star, sex trade worker, actor, television personality, model, emo kid) is a waste of money.  It doesn’t get wonderful just because a group of men decide to spend money on it.

woe is -aaack- me

So I completely blew the interview yesterday – fell apart during the test.  I solaced myself with beer and lobster afterwards, so thoroughly downcast was I, and my Lumosity score fell like a rock this morning subsequent to me having two beers, so, note to self – alcohol does make you demonstrably dumber, please avoid (yesterday’s score was one of my highest ever, so it seems germane to mention the difference).  No I did no driving yesterday, for the safety minded among you.

The stye has come to its fruition and no longer hurts; it’s just making me look like Margot with the ludicrous amount of eye gunk it is producing (which is actually impacting my ability to see out of my left eye.  Very glad it’s in my left eye, my right eye doesn’t produce enough tears so I’d be in a very sad way.)

Margot fell off some boxes in my closet and trapped herself in my clothes.  I have never heard her make that much noise in that short a space – she really is getting more noisy, which means she’s just barely audible.

Amazing science / health news.

He only posted it yesterday and I’ve already set it to music.  OH GOSH HOW I LOVE THIS POEM. Mind you I wrote the choon two days ago.

I love the show ER so much I want it to be in space. Yes, Trauma 3000, in which our fearless surgeons and internists rotate between a mother hospital on the ground and a microgravity trauma unit in orbit, including tours of duty with trauma units at the front lines of an alien war.  And I want an alien social worker.  I want it to be ER x Babylon 5 x Battlestar Galactica. w00t!~

My fave Hollywood badass does his thang.