2700 words

Yesterday was awesome, and who knows what today will bring.  I am officially at the halfway point; there remains 60000 words to write in the first draft, and then:

assembly – I’m not writing it in order so there will be a little hammer to fit and paint to cover in there

editing – there are certain words and constructions that characters never use, so I have to go through and remove them, as well as ensuring that verbs all tense up together in the appropriate places and I don’t do my normal firehose style application of adverbs and adjectives to every hapless noun.

beta readers

paid editor

final work and then I either self publish or see if someone will take it on.

I have a real job interview for a real job next Wednesday afternoon!  Not an agency. I am pleased, and I am still looking for work every day.

 

Great phone interview!!

OMG. Best phone interview ever. I said (Coles Notes Version), “I’m 55, if you’re looking for a soignée young thing with career aspirations, don’t even call me in; if you want somebody who can be den mom to a bunch of engineers at a start up, deal with four things at once and stay cool on the phone, do at least bring me in.”  Nothing may come of it, I don’t care, it was very positive and I did enjoy speaking with her; she sounded warm and intelligent on the phone, as I judge these things.

A satisfactory day so far

Jeff helped me set mousetraps at the shop.  Sigh.  But he got breakfast, so that was good!

Dishwasher is running, Jeff is downstairs catching up on feetsball on the PVR.

I’m posting my resume every place I can think of.

Later on we’ll watch some more Foyle’s War, maybe I’ll go protest something, and I will definitely eat steak.  So a satisfactory day in prospect.

Food and more food

Cooked up a standing rib roast for Jeff, Rob, Tom and Peggy last night; the taters were an extremely well received new red-skinned potatoes, quartered and dredged in salt, rosemary and garlic and roasted and I also made steamed carrots and the usual corn and peas.  Peggy brought HOME MADE PUNKIN PIE X 2 may she be worshipped and adored forever and ever, AND whipped cream, and whipped the cream TOO. OM NOM NOMMITY. Rob brought a blueberry pie, which I am, like an evil, evil crathur, contemplating for brekkie.

Reviewed the birds’ eye maple which will be used in Tom’s custom guitar (it’s a good thing, and will be a pretty thing). Once the guitar is made he will be playing a lot more.

Job interview went well.  I am now hoping my former boss will get back to me via LinkedIn with his phone number so I can get a proper reference.

Life proceeds!

Back to work maybe.

I am hopeful to at least get sent to an interview this week.  In the meantime, I have completed and frozen the turkey soup, which is more like turkey stew, and now must repair the damage to the kitchen – a twenty pound turkey carcase leaves a greasy trail.

Landlord was unhelpful.  I must now wait another month.  Oh well.  Those that burn their arses must sit on the blisters.

New Game of Thrones Mashup.  I did laugh quite immoderately.

Incremental progress

Good news first, I have been asked to come in and talk to a recruiter this afternoon.  This is the closest I’ve gotten to genuine job hunting activity in months so I am obviously thrilled.

Bad news. I’ve lowered the price and still can’t get anybody interested in the cafe; I will have to break the lease.  HEAVY HEAVY SIGH.

Tarot for Atheists, a couple of hundred words’ worth of progress.

Turkey soup is on the stove – I will adjust seasoning shortly and then start freezing it in containers. Jeff can’t stand the smell of the bones, and has no idea how this sentence would have ended if I hadn’t backspaced over it.

Replaced cpap machine with one that smells a little less disgusting.  I must make a purchase decision within 2 weeks.

Completed writing down a song, converted it to midi and fired it off to mOm.  I only have another hundred songs to write out.  It really IS the Song That Never Ends.

Herewith today’s linkorama:

Crowdsourcing Tolstoy. 

This guy and guys like him are why I make no further efforts to date.

Fighting sexism… using MATH.

My cat wants an escape pod.

If you rape a girl and leave her naked outside in freezing weather, and you work for your family’s restaurant, and your local prosecutor despite eyewitnesses and video refuses to prosecute, and then the whole town turns on the rape victim and burns her house down, well, the internet just might give bad reviews to your restaurant.

Little yawning kitties.

 

 

It’s a sad long story

But if you want a brief good death, you might want to consider it.

There was a LONG convo on facebook this morning about people always wanting to know how somebody died.  I want to know so there wasn’t any suffering.  However, some people want to know so they can shame the dead for asking for it.  It was a really interesting conversation and I’m glad I participated.  I just don’t want to say the wrong thing, yanno?

Fraser Health is coming by the shop tomorrow to inspect it.  Good thing it’s clean and free of vermin.

I guess I have to announce a re-opening date.  I will advise the inspector that this will entirely depend on what my doc says.

Got some mando time in, happy sigh….

Great, there’s a new, big, formal, scary climate change denying group of scientists.  If they look right, they’re right, right?  The basic tenet is that nothing humans can do can change the climate.  Everything problematic about the climate is external to human beings.  In a sense, they are right, I suppose.  When it comes down, nothing humans can do will help, I spose.

Funniest thing about this is not the SKY DRAGON of bad climate science they want to slay, it’s the methane that’s going to come out of the ocean.  So let’s worry about SEADRAGONS instead.  Go on Jeff, I know you heard that the same way I did…

not a lot of money, but a really good day anyway

Katie is increasingly stoked about her camping trip.  Wish I could say where but we don’t want uninvited guests now do we…

The shop SMELLS OF BACON.

We experimented with a new soup recipe and it’s so simple and so tasty Katie and I are both doing the Snoopy happy dance.  We can haz cheezy broccoli soup!

It’s raining, and we don’t mind.  Only one more hour to go, and then I pick up Ziva (again) and we go to Costco (our home away from home) and then… ep 4 Band of Brothers with Jeff, since we are rewatching it.  SUCH A GOOD SHOW.

Gotye’s Heart’s a  Mess is playing on the shop sound system.

Yeah, so not so much revenue, but a good day anyway.  Regulars came by, newbies came by, I got my CRA letter off to the post box, all the fridges are behaving, I organized a bunch of receipts, wrote down the new recipe… and Katie’s crush forked over his phone number.  I can now let my breath out after a month.

I light a candle for a close family friend who just lost a baby.  I sucked in my breath when I heard she was expecting… she’s multi-risk.  And now she knows why women don’t announce pregnancies until they quicken.  It’s horrible, it’s sad, it’s completely messed up, and it is life in it’s glorypain.  She and her husband are going to lie low for a couple of days.  Hell of a thing to happen on Mother’s Day, god help us all.

 

 

Sundry and various

Yesterday I made the dough for biscotti, got the sign down and out the door on to Signfast’s truck and believe me that thing is AWKWARD to shift around, ran coffee through the Bunnomatic for the first time (it’s okay but we gotta make sure the sprayer is set right and we have to turn the machine on the instant we get in in the morning or we won’t have coffee for about half an hour or more), got the back fridge working with the help of my wee man. a temp sensor (which he says was located in the wrong place which is why the thing was rusted as a car on blocks), watched the amazing amount of foot traffic that goes by the store, learned that there is a coffee shop going in to the Community centre (which obviously made me sad), got a schoolin’ about what to do with the waste heat from the compressor which made me very thoughtful but means that the shop will be cooler in summer and warmer in winter, got proper knobs for the gas ovens, swept the shop, did all the dishes, made myself a sammy with the chicken breast from Grimms (I think we should order from them, their meat is really good), found out from the City of Burnaby that we do NOT in fact need a permit for our sign (I had been concerned), arranged other inspections or got them in train with the City, transferred some money into the biz account, got stuck in the worst…fucking…traffic ever while getting the last items out of Katie’s apartment, talked briefly to her former co-tenant Randy, who dished dirt on a friend’s drunken ass ex in a most entertaining fashion, found out that the Dandy Warhols are playing the Commodore June 22 AND IT’S A PLAY THROUGH OF THIRTEEN TALES FROM URBAN BOHEMIA one of my fave albums ever and I’m STOKED,  had an extremely emotional conversation with Jeff during which he was extremely supportive and calming (thank you, and bless you) and no I’m not going to talk about it on my blog, watched a couple of episodes of Third Watch, and watched Eddie bring in a baby mouse, which after a brief discussion about what to do with him (Izzy living here after all) Jeff put back outside much to Eddie’s disgust.  Candidly I shouldn’t even have suggested it because Izzy is a hand tamed snake and wild critters carry all kinds of interesting diseases. Day before yesterday learned about a Swedish sci fi show called Real Humans which is awesome even with subtitles and which I want to see the rest of soonish. Today I learned that Margot is turning into a dog.  She now circles once (forwards OR backwards, which is beyond words entertaining) before lying down, and she still comes to greet and say goodbye when we go places. Jeff got her to almost fetch the other day, and she chases the floppy flyer (fabric frisbee style thingee).

Today back into the shop to wait for the sign and work on various things that you can’t work on when all the shops are closed. Katie’s at her friends place in New West but I wasn’t expecting her to come home, she was partying with the buddies who have been so supportive to her this past year.

Apart from the church stuff, which I would like to chuck over a back fence, and the lawn, which needs mowing, I’ve never felt better.  I’m even recovered from the move.  And it doesn’t matter that my todo list looks as it does.  Gradatim, baby.

Busy bodies

Naomi said, “There’s no chairs downstairs!” as soon as she saw me at church yesterday, so John H and I put out tables and chairs.  John’s over 80 so I really appreciated his assistance, especially when he realized that somebody had stacked the chairs in such a fashion that one good shove would put a couple of hundred pounds of chairs on top of somebody, probably a small child.  We fixed that problem.  Hope the insurance people don’t find out.

Today I am going to harass the business licence people to find out why the hell they haven’t gotten back to us in three days like they promise on the web site (if ever a girl was fooled…).  Rat(((((ers.

Also, baking today.  I’m going to find out where the cheapest almonds are and buy and toast a lot of them, and then make a quadruple batch of biscotti.  (Some for the Beacon Birthday party!).

Also, buying more printer ink, why else was I born….

Also cleaning kitchen which is a sty after my cooking frenzy yesterday (haddock and veg, butter chicken).

Also, reviewing the deposit sheets for church to cross check the donation amounts by donor, plus updating the new addresses in the system.  A treasurer’s work is only done when she leaves the job at the AGM!!! Two more months, and a bit.  I believe I should actually have the receipts out in time!

 

 

Big News, small news, glad news, sad news

I put a deposit down on the cafe yesterday.  So begins an enterprise.

Expert, schmexpert.

The only thing I don’t understand about the rogue LAPD cop Christopher Dorner is not why he hasn’t been caught – he will be, and I cheerfully predict that he’ll go quietly and not die in a hail of gunfire – it’s why nobody’s bought the domain name yet.

My fellow board member Audrey has lost her mother.  She was well into her nineties.  Blind Lemming Chiffon, when we had dinner at Conflikt, said that until you’ve lost a parent you can’t understand what it’s like.  That was also the same supper where he gave me the Ebay overview on what allows him to sell like a master, and where he recommended Searching for Sugar Man, one of the best and most astonishing music documentaries I have ever seen.

Jeff is having pie for breakfast.  He’s a rebel.

I was thinking (as I had another crying bout thinking about John last night) about loss.  I thought, “Ah, so selfish.  It is not my love for him that hurts me.  I will have that forever; I can’t stop loving him just because he’s dead.  I’m sad because he loved me, and he’ll never stop me from falling off a mountain, or give me a lift on his motorcycle, or make me laugh, or sing with me, or feed me or lift my spirits or be a familiar face in a crowd of strangers ever again.  And that is why I am sad.  Not because someone I love died.  It’s because someone who loved me died.”

I saw both of the kids yesterday, yay, and fed Rob and Keith as well as Jeff.  I made pork schnitzel, taters, broccoli and carrots, and there was a tablecloth and pie and two kinds of ice cream, so it was rather festive, even without beer.  I’ve gone off beer again.  There is a medical condition which I’m too polite to whine about in public which improves by about 30% when I don’t drink beer, and it definitely hurts the insomnia when I drink beer.  I just love beer and wish it wasn’t so mean to me.

It’s a fine axemurderer’s fog out there this morning.

Obviously I have a lot of work to do before Katie calls me for our trek up to City Hall, so I’ll get to it.

Gay schlafen

The newest character in Midnite Moving can be sent to sleep for a couple of hours by saying gay schlafen, which is go to sleep in Yiddish.  Which is the kind of thing that happens when two people who are alien mad scientists who shouldn’t be having or raising children decide “I’ma risk it”.  And don’t you wish you had THAT app.

Awoke far too early this morning.  (boring SG1 reference) Amanda Tapping tweeted about her Bouvier, George, who’s 120 lbs of lapdog, and whose gas rivals that of Christopher Judge.  These are the kinds of things I find teddibly amusing, which is as much as you need to know about the compos of my mentis these days.

I am arguing with myself this morning as to whether I really want to go to an all day church event about growth.  I think it’s a waste of money, but I am curious about how this expensive Unitarian boffin – who just so happens to be the establishing minister for the church – is going to fire us up.  I don’t want to go, as I am afraid I will ‘air my views’ in a ‘less than respectful or helpful way’.  Maybe I should.  Teach the controversy and all.

The waste of money part comes from the notion that growth comes from being an attractive church.  Our Religious Education program, which is the magnet which draws young adults with children to the church, is fanTAStic in terms of curriculum and staff . no srsly . but badly housed.  I mean, really badly housed.  The space we’re renting doesn’t suit and most parents come in and see it and recoil in horror.  We have tried to get this ameliorated but we DON’T OWN THE BUILDING, and of course unless every elder in the congregation drops dead and leaves his or her entire estate to the church, we never will own a building either.  On the basis of my conversations with other churches this not having a building ain’t a bad thing.  Church buildings get older than human beings eventually and there’s nothing like remediating asbestos tiles and leaky roofs and recalcitrant dragon-furnaces to put a damper on Sunday worship and cast a pall of gloom over the Board.

As it is, we can do church anywhere, with despatch and aplomb.  We’d hate to move again, but we will if we have to, and church will continue no matter what.

Looks like Katie’s buying a restaurant.  She’s seen it done right and done wrong, and I’m sure she’ll be fine.  We do NOT have big plans.  We have small ones.  I am going to be the silent partner and biscotti baker, which I am very happy about, since I will finally have a space close to my house which is exactly what I want for baking biscotti, and the way the law works anything that’s baked there must be sold there in at least some quantity so it’s not a factory.  I’ll be making a deposit on Monday (she’s at work even though it’s a stat) and Katie and I already have an immense list of things to work through.  I want her energy and intelligence to be rewarded.  Keith expressed reservations, interestingly, but I think he may be experiencing jealousy.  Which reminds me, now I really DO have to change my will, so Keith and Katie get a more equitable share, and so Paul is no longer the executor.

We’re not planning on making any money for most of the first year, start up date April Fools (and you should have seen Katie’s face as we set the date).  The easiest thing for me to do is to think about the money as being lost.  Out of the gate.  Something about this feels right though, there’s a weird ‘this will be okay’ vibe.

The Treasurer problem I had has been resolved.  I crashed the chart of accounts somehow in Simply Accounting and reasoned my way out of the problem with a few adjustments. Now it’s time to MAKE RECEIPTS FOR ALL THE DONORS.  It is a finite problem with a deadline, and it’s all good.

Laughing at myself

There was a game yesterday.  The Superb Owl game.  There was Stygian darkness.

Church yesterday was great.  I told Anita I’m throwing both the Secretary and the Treasurer jobs over the side effective the next AGM and of course while I feel guilty relief is coursing through my veins in a startling way.  Also I wrote some checks and entered some data.

Work search is still ghastly.  No responses.  It’s like shouting down a well.  Its a damned good thing that I’ve got money in the bank.