Five layers (what, like an onion? A really good chocolate cake?)

There’s stuff I don’t talk about with anyone. Some of it is festering; some of it is just the froth and bubble inherent in having a brain; some of it is me stolidly processing events and patterns.  Some is preverbal.  Most isn’t – I try to put everything in words.

There’s stuff that only the people it happened in front of know.  It never gets written down.  It’s ‘Hopi art’ or a coloured sand mandala.

There’s stuff that only goes in a little hardback diary; I make an entry maybe once a month – more often when my love life, such as it mostly isn’t, gets more interesting.  I try to make it as much like Mary Astor’s diary as possible, you know, breathless and candid and o so girly…. although I have no George S Kaufman.  (Darn! he was quite the, uh, provider of exclusive, quality adult entertainment, or so Mary’s diary recounted).

There’s stuff I put in the locked on-line diary at livejournal, mostly stuff that’s bad and I want to remember the date it happened later.  Almost all of my entries are friends only.

Then, there’s this stuff.  There’s an inherent bias towards good news, because, after all, my mom reads this. There’s also a bias to not whine, although I do.  So consider this a virtual whine, because, by golly, I really feel like bitching right now, and what prevents me from doing it is knowing that in a week I’ll have completely forgotten what I was cheesed off about. That has been the overwhelming takeaway for me as a result of keeping an online diary for four years (yup, I started in April 2004 but lost everything prior to August of that year).  As bad as things may be, whining doesn’t help. Good news longs to be shared, and urges to whine should be entertained at a halberd’s distance. I consider whining and recounting ugly facts to be two separate things; it’s the absence of adjectives that denotes serious efforts not to whine. Also, I swear more when I’m whining.  Or ranting, which is whining spun into entertainment, at least as I care to practice it.

I light a candle for folks dealing with allergies; for the lonely; for the sick; for the hopelessly confused and socially awkward.  I light a candle for the unemployed who wish to work.

PS.  The World Series is actually very good baseball.  I was enjoying it immensely when I watched it last night.  It was the first time I actually got an idea of how a superb pitcher plays with the strike zone to mess with batters’ heads.

A special shout out to Mike McG, who opened a phone conversation with, “Hey, wordsmith!” and made my world a better place thereby.

A special shout out to Marc, who answered my email about visiting headquarters in France with a brief and charming email.  The upshot is I am welcome, but nobody is exactly sure WHERE to roll out the welcome mat, as apparently they are moving!  I would post notes about the integration but it might limit my future employment opportunities.

The Barque of Concord hits a rock

I guess I tried to explain to Jeff prior to moving in that I make a lot of noise when I am singing and writing songs and that it can get quite annoying.  His response was that he could wear headphones. Well, last night I was working on a tune and he told me to be quiet because what I was doing was annoying him. It was plenty annoying, but I had warned him.  I dunno.  I hadn’t worked on a tune or come up with anything new in yonks, and only being exposed to the brutal indifference of previous roommates and other relatives prevented me from curling into a fetal ball at his disapproval.  When I was living with Paul and the kids I’d get that annoying at least a couple of times a week – I guess Jeff is unaware of the extent he’s been spared my usual behaviour.  I have been unusually quiet.

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I will be looking for rehearsal space, I guess, and once I calm down, other possibilities. It’s too bad that it’s now officially too effing cold to play outdoors.

Keith came by and picked up his phone.  What a turkey I am!  I didn’t even know it had a camera in it.  Mine’s kinda like a little rubber brick and all it has is Mah Jong and Tetris and Bejeweled and Sudoku to while away the time.

Give my head a shake, if I can’t do it for me….

I can really tell I’m upset about no more NCIS – I found myself going to fanfic sites this morning.  And… backing away slowly.  Do I really – I mean really – want to read Gibbs-on-DiNozzo slashfic?  It is to heave.  Gibbs/Abby?  Tempting, but no.  On the other hand, Salmon Guy returned my S1 Deadwood box, so I could go back to Deadwood if I wanted to.

My nose has stopped running and now I’m coughing.  A dry, hacking cough.  The next week will be joyous; I remember thinking about a month ago that it had been bloody ages since I was really sick with something.  Note to back:  Please keep improving somewhat.  I’m experiencing less pain, although I nearly went ass over teakettle down the stairs at Production Way Station yesterday morning when my leg partly buckled, so I guess I need to work on some muscle strength.  Patricia recommends running in water. Anyway, I thought “all those kids will break my fall’ – the station is jammed at that time of day – but you KNOW it never works out like that in real life – the stuff you don’t break bruises to the bone, and my back already hurts, and I don’t do pain well.  I’ve learned my lesson; I have to go down the stairs with my hand floating a couple of inches above the handrail, just in case.  The one day I thought I could go down the stairs in the middle I learned that my earlier caution was entirely justified.  Then I think about my grandmother, and I figure it’s time for me to shaddap.

Tonight, Sloppy Joes, if I can remember to ask my bro to get nice, structurally sound buns for dinner, and spaghetti if not.  Can you believe it? Katie came through and the macaroni is all gone AND she ate dinner.  Honestly cooking to make leftovers around here is hazardous. We either get bored of it or it vanishes into Katie’s piehole before we even have a chance to get bored of it.

I light a candle for Tom, who’s back in hospital.

I light a candle for Jeff, for being understanding.

Hymn Sing

So we made with the churchy ballads at Tom and Peggy’s last night, and it was wonderful fun.  Paul and Keith had come over earlier to have a low key birthday celebration for Paul; we watched The Bucket List and I made tortillas.  Then I made pork fried rice for Jeff so he’d have some dinner, and I made lentil soup to take to the hymn sing.  Keith came along too… I nearly lost my eyes when I saw him eating lentil soup.  He really is pushing the envelope on food these days, which makes me extremely happy.

Katie is here, boiling up eggs and making a healthy lunch.

It’s bizarre to be watching the Civil War documentary at the same time as following the American election.  I feel like a whole bunch of people need to be reminded that it was a Republican president who issued the Emancipation proclamation.  Democrats are talking about Republicans as if they are brain dead traitors, and Republicans are talking about black people as if the Civil War had never happened.  It’s disgusting.  It has nothing to do with the glory of the Constitution.  Oh my neighbours, a house divided… will you never learn?

I am really glad I’m Canadian, and I learned how to seethe gently without taking up arms.

I did all my laundry this weekend, and put it all away, and cleaned my room.  It’s completely changed the acoustics in there.

feeling yucky

I can’t really focus my eyes right now so I think I’ll give them a rest and go back to sleep.  I had a migraine earlier this week which had me go for a lie down at work for about 90 minutes. At the height of the migraine, just like Lymond, I was blind.  I could see in normal perspective about 1/10th of my normal visual field and the rest of it was a beige wad of cotton batten with a couple of flashing lights stuck in it.  That part – thankfully – only lasted about ten minutes, and I had the first aid attendant with me – and I got into a dark room and unconscious fast enough that it didn’t get worse or convert to head pain.  Also earlier this week I got tingling and numbness in my extremities. I suspect all this weirdness has to do with the spinal decompression stuff and will lift when I stop getting treatments.  In the meantime, I enjoy the treatments a lot and they seem to be helping with range of motion and my sleep, which is much improved for the most part.  The symptoms I wanted to get cleared up – the numbness and weakness in my right foot and leg, which is with me night and day and is emotionally and physically exhausting – I still have in plenty.  Oh well…..  Such a whiner…. really.  I need to count my blessings.

Cryptic email and status report

Yesterday at work I got this massively cryptic email from the senior finance person who says check into your share situation.  Normally I have stuff neatly filed but I can’t find anything more recent than 2003.  I don’t think the phone number is even the same from back then for Computershare. Now I have to phone Computershare and find out what’s going on.  Needless to say, there have been public announcements about the company which may not be named and while I don’t imagine this actually means a lot of money I am mildly excited.

Pressured speech commences:  Continue reading Cryptic email and status report

20 hours and some thoughts about anger and hair.

It took 20 hours to convert the entire dvd from dvd format to mp4 format. It worked perfectly – but too slow. Anyway, after much agony, I can edit down the puppies and kids video. Part of me wants to kill the audio portion of it, which consists of, in a very boring way, Allegra saying, “Put the puppy down, put him down, put her down, put the puppy down, Keith don’t do that, that’s ignorant, Katie, sit down, put the puppy down, put the puppy down.” But I will avoid the temptation to do that. I can haz patience.

Continue reading 20 hours and some thoughts about anger and hair.

Off to Mission.

I won’t be posting until after I get home from Mission tomorrow; it’s time for the festival out there with my current and previous coworkers, including no fewer than two bosses, and which involves stringed instruments, alcohol and the World’s Best Campfireâ„¢. Continue reading Off to Mission.