Category: Whining

Heave ho

I am still in shock about how much freaking junk I have.  I am so emotionally attached to my books that I’m sitting in the pile of boxes going, wah, wah instead of brutally tossing them.  I’ll be a lot happier when I’m done.  When I get rid of clothes I think “Off to Value Village with you!” and there isn’t a horrible feeling to go along with it.  Books are like little, immobile, rectangular friends, and you don’t just haul your friends off to the garbage.  I have Bookcrossing on some of my books but to do all of them would many days of labour, and so…. I guess they are off to storage.  Heavy sigh.

It freaking SNOWED here again last night.  I know that in late December a dusting of snow on the neighbourhood rooftops is all pine scent and lush orchestrations of cherished carols, but this close to the first of April methinks anything but peace and goodwill when it’s something I see before I’ve had any coffee.

Last night, I failed to cook dinner!  I made cheese scones, but I actually went to bed before sunset, woke briefly at 10:30, and then back to bed until ten after seven.  Moving is tiring; yesterday it was unpacking pretty solidly.  I did make lunch for the menfolks – Keith was here and how good to see him.

Grr

Made another long post this morning and lost it.  Loads o linky fun, o well.

Anyway, Dr Filk is coming to the housewarming party.  The True Party Trifecta is in play!!  Jarmo’s fries, Dr. John’s inimitable musical stylings, and Lexi’s tumtum.  wOOt.

Sundry

It had to happen.

I’m off to the US today.  I have to leave to go pick the car up in about an hour.  It used to be that you took your birth cert and off you went, and now it’s B1 letter and passport and be prepared for a lengthy wait.  I am glad I am going, but not glad that my back will be trashed by the time I crawl into bed tonight – and it’s been so good since Monday night – and not glad about some other things about which it would be impolitic and possibly career limiting to whinge.
Beef teriyaki stir fry last light, and an episode of Deadwood.  Managed to get my driver’s license address/care card address changed, and stopped off at Brentwood on the way home for ingredaments – what is it about pea pods that makes stir fries automatically better?  I’ve fired off the invite for the housewarming (April 4) and the first FNFD (April 11) and I’ve already gotten a couple of responses, which is great.  Ack, time for a shower.

Eddie was meowing at the back door at 4:22 this morning.   Pouring rain still.  Flurried briefly on the mountain yesterday, everybody in my department all looked up from their desks and gasped simultaneously.

The move still isn’t done….

But I have some more stuff from the old place and it’s much improved.  More unpacking tonight – last night I was so exhausted all I could do was rewatch Zulu and a couple of episodes of BGs3.

Blecch. Back to work.  I miss my mates but there’s (aw, shaddap) something on my desk that’s a lot like a brown object you find by mistake in the park.

FINALLY SOME CLOSURE

I have been waiting for months for ‘a conversation’ with somebody so I can get over a really interesting and intense part of my life.  I had that conversation last night, and I am so relieved, I can’t believe it.  I even predicted to someone in the phone conversation immediately prior that it would be happening soon – ha!  I should hire myself out as a sibyl. (Thanks Kopper…) 

Now I can pack! I had been resisting packing, and now I can pack.  And I’m picking my bike up tonight.  I’ve decided I’m riding it back to East Van, which may be six kinds o’ insanity with a side of fries, but I don’t care.

I went home sick with a migraine yesterday and I’m still feeling a little queasy and a little ‘odd’ – almost but not quite dissociative – but frankly the emotional lightness I feel right now is making up for all of it.

Grr

Tonight, a trip to the ‘investment counsellor’ followed by daughter Katie kicking me around my apartment and telling me to pack boxes – which I neglected to pick up from Jeff’s last night.  I feel totally useless and extremely sleepy.

Last night, Superbad.  Meh.  I just couldn’t channel my inner teenaged boy to enjoy this movie, although I have to admit the dialogue was great.  I just had forgotten how ******* horrible teenaged boys are…. this being an accurate rendition thereof.

I’m home,

but I’m not where my bed is.  I pulled out the guit and the mando tonight and HOLY CRAP is my bedroom LIVE when it doesn’t have any furniture in it.  It’s a little tiled cell in which the sound of my breathing echoes like there’s a Balrog stuck in the corner.  All I practiced was Spinal Clinic and one of the new ones (These Things Happen).  This after watching Robert Downey Jr (can he do a bad acting job? the man is incredible) in this movie.
I am a woman of noisy enthusiasms.  Jeff keeps scowling at me; if I laugh at something with my usual vigour  (read volume) whichever of the cats is cuddling with him messes off the couch with a disgusted air.   And hey, two new-to-me Robot Chicken episodes and the season finale of Atlantis (it being the first Stargate Atlantis I’ve ever seen).  I’ve heard his fame well sung, that Rodney guy from Stargate Atlantis…. Now’s the time to queue up some Lady Miss B.
Patricia let me cry on her today. Thank you Patricia.  I’m not very aesthetic at the best of times; snivelling over onion rings is an incorrect form.  It was a summer storm, I’m not upset anymore.  She wants to meet the Luddite.  Like Ambrose Bierce, I have my doubts that all my friends should be introduced to each other even if they all rock.

Lady Miss B’s instrument was plucked from its case whilst being inspected by TSA goons, who played it laughing and broke a string.  May they receive the blessings of heaven and it not enough to spare them the lashings of hell.

It’s all bout the timing

I wuz feeling all sad and bent out of shape (mostly because I want the moving faeries to deal with my packing) and the Luddite phoned and announced that he was going bike shopping with me tomorrow and all of a sudden I felt much better. I am not sure how he does it, but he has a real talent for communicating with me when I want to hear from him, and a priceless ability to leave me alone the rest of the time.  So I will have plenty of time to commune with cats and do a small grocery shop tomorrow (I brought the bundle buggy) so there will be food in the fridge when Jeff gets home, but I will also with any luck have a bicycle by this time tomorrow.

Confirmed sighting

Well, nobody can say the Luddite’s imaginary any more – as fictional a character as he appears to be sometimes, even to me, he has BEEN SEEN by Jeff, and proved to be substantial enough to help move a freezer and a rug.  My nefarious posse is proving of service…..

It is snowing very hard and very abruptly. It started spot on 6:45 and it looks like staying, gosh darn. Another night of glorious weather while trying to get to singing lessons.

Busy day

I HOPE I didn’t catch what Tammy had.  She was not exactly deathly ill while she was here, nor was she knocked much out of her usual cheerful demeanour, but man, she was sick, and I am really glad I could put her up where she’d get some TLC. I got the car around 9 and drove her to the airport.  We had an extremely long and involved conversation on the way out there – and Tom L. tried to run me off the road in HIS Prius, which was amusing after I stopped cursing at this bozo who couldn’t stay in his lane.
I dealt with the flat (total props to Joe at the Shell at Main and King Eddy) and then thought f*ck it, I’ll call ScaryClown and ask him what he’s up to, seeing as how he lives about ten blocks from where the tire got fixed.  He was sitting with Tyson and Luke, two buddies of his, in the Starbucks at Main and 14th, and then we had a late brekky at the breakfast joint on the south side of the intersection.  His buddies (whom I have heard MUCH about, mostly positive and somewhat in relation to alcohol consumption, life threatening illnesses and mischief making) were funny and sweet and entertaining and it was a remarkably successful lunch given I’d never met them before. ScaryClown had of course said much about ME, which gave me pause, but it must have been mostly positive because they seemed disposed to like me.

Got a call from Kopper saying that I need to do something political soon, and I agreed, smiling at the notion that given what an absurd bunch of clowns we have on council in Burnaby anyway, why not have a comedian run for office?  So I will be supporting same.  Updates as events warrant.

Then I paid the March rent for the new place, crossed the alley and tried my front door key for the first time, and in a burst of energy, unpacked the kitchen so that when Jeff gets there in about three hours there will be one room of the house (besides the bathroom) that isn’t a complete disaster.   Then I called him and gave him an update.

Sigh.  Unpacking is way more fun than packing. I have now reassessed how much room will be in the new place and I will be storing every stick of furniture I have except my bed and dresser.  I literally won’t have room for anything else.  Oh, and I must have been taking colour blindness pills when I looked at the kitchen.  The kitchen is red white and green. Yup, I have a red (REDDDDD!!!! RED RED RED counters) and white (trim and cupboards) and SLIME GREEN (remember slime green???) kitchen.  The slime green is going to get buried under eggshell white as soon as I have the paint, the energy and the buy in from brother dearest.

Tammy was all upset on my behalf that Jeff is getting the lion’s share of room for stuff, but I think we’ll both be reassessing things after we’re in, and his furniture’s way nicer than mine anyway.

I am SO excited.  My life is about to drastically improve, and I’m already thinking of ways I can improve the shining hour during my commute.

Waiting

Boy, it didn’t take long for my mood to change to something more sombre! I waited at the airport until 10 after 10, and Tammy phoned to say she was stuck in SF. She sounded like she’d been through the old wringer washer. The plane she was booked on ‘went mechanical’ as they say. On a whim I phoned Paul and found out he was almost done work and hadn’t brought the car, so I bought a magazine and sat in the parking lot and drove him home. I poked my head in to say hey to Keith – who just got 40 out of 40 on a practical test, how a mother’s heart sings – found out that somebody had phoned in a ‘creditable threat’ whatevah the hell that means to David Lam campus so he had no school today – and got home around midnight.

Tammy offered to pay for the CAN car booking, I couldn’t believe it. After what she’d been through my troubles seemed pretty minor.

An open letter to the Defence Minister

February 24, 2008

The Honourable Peter Gordon MacKay
Minister of National Defence
National Defence Headquarters
Major-General George R. Pearkes Building
101 Colonel By Drive
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
K1A 0K2

Dear Sir:

I was alarmed to learn via the National Post that Canada is currently
negotiating an agreement with the United States to allow American
troops on Canadian soil and vice versa for the purposes of mutual
assistance during civil emergencies.

There is no question that the US and Canada as part of NATO must
rehearse and communicate coordinated military maneuvres and strategy.
American troops on Canadian soil, even in the event of an emergency,
is an entirely different — and to me, horrifying – prospect and unless
the locality affected by the disaster (ie province, municipality)
specifically asked for the assistance and expertise of the US military
and coordinated the request with the federal government, not to be
borne.

Why do we want US troops on Canadian soil when they mismanaged the
Katrina response so badly that the US became the shame of the
developed world?  Civilian Canadian responders were on the ground in
the lower lying parishes faster than the US military anyway.

As a citizen of Canada and resident of BC, the first thing I thought
when I read that is that we’re going to have US troops walking up and
down the streets of Whistler in full combat gear during the Olympics
in 2010.  I can think of other, equally gloomy and distasteful
scenarios.

Unless the full text of the agreement is publicized prior to
government approval (I am assuming that this will be passed by an
order in council rather than being exposed to the harsh light of
parliamentary democracy) this proposed coziness with the American
military is a looming disaster for Canadian civil rights and
sovereignty.

Please publicize the details of the agreement.  Perhaps I’m upset over
nothing — but at this point I can hardly be sure.

Yours very truly,

Allegra Sloman

Coughiness.

I mailed my “I am so annoyed with you, you great Canadian” letter to Mr. Peter Gordon MacKay and cc’d Bill Siksay, who’s only going to be my MP for another 4 weeks. I don’t think that Canadian troops belong on American soil either, by the way, not that there’s a snowball’s chance in hell the US will ask for them.  See previous post about sending off a letter.

It was lovely havng both the kids here.

I lost my bloodwork requisition.  I’ve now looked everyplace logical and I think – I mean it’s possible – that I threw the damned thing out while cleaning my apartment.  Annoyance and irritation.

and it’s 3:01 in the morning and I can’t sleep for coughing and I am officially out of cough syrup and won’t have any until after singing class tonight, the earliest I can get some.

A small but appreciative audience.

I read my story-so-far to the Luddite, who is now encouraging me to finish it, and making suggestions, including less talk and more action.  ‘Twas ever thus!  About some things men are quite consistent.

Dragged my surly self into the office an hour early to learn about setting up queues for the VOIP lines.  My head  buzzed like a thwacked beehive and I was insufficiently slept and caffeinated to actually take on anything resembling information.  Fortunately the day got better although I felt like I could have used toothpicks to keep my eyes open.

Sick still

Oh, my, Lord, I am SO tired of coughing.  Woke up at 3 and worked another thousand words on my new softcore epic.  I made the mistake of thinking about what would happen if all of my current fave people ended up in the same room.  Zow!!!! No, Johnny Depp isn’t in there.  I’m thinking real life, as we laughingly refer to it.