BAKING BAKING FILKING FILKING

So the Lunderbake of 2017 is underway, and here’s me and Jeff C tandem playing dulcimers.

There were so many lovely moments yesterday, herewi(s)h a string of pearls..

  • hovering over Peggy’s phone and looking a pictures of newborn twins – yes she is now a gran 4 times over!
  • talking to Jeff C about Elon Musk’s plan to end the reign of gasoline engines
  • Many necessary hugs with his lady wife Jeri Lynn
  • Noodling on dulcimer with Jeri Lynn noodling along on BETSY – ALL OF THE CELLO LOVE
  • The phenom smells from 8 hours of baking
  • Two meals, curried squash soup and butter chicken and veg
  • Jeri Lynn saying that it’s nice to go where your wifi just works
  • WHERE IS OTTO ??? Shad being appalled I didn’t bring him “We’re on a break” and “I think I know who the new baby is”
  • Shad pulling out 40 Million Light Years, which I wrote, and she had the lyrics and I didn’t
  • shame, not shamed, it was ossum that fucking chorus is one of the best I ever wrote in terms of immediate appeal and singability
  • Me describing to Jeff C how I grabbed the underloved Buffy characters to write filks for
  • JOCO references. SO MANY JOCO REFERENCES
  • I can talk about fanfic without anybody blanching. Get recs.
  • Maple syrup shortbread cookies. I’m glad I’m not a man, I would have overloaded my trews.
  • Finding out that my dulcimer is not weird, but it isn’t common
  • Messing with tunings
  • sadface, called Mike but he was in for the night
  • GOT A JOB INTERVIEW (it’s an agency, but even so) for Monday morning while I was there

Family news

Paul took me out to Oakalla, and then Pho Edmonds, then a little schlepping, then his place for neckrubs and musical stylings, and then I got to talk to Katie for a while, and then he gave a lift home.

Sometime yesterday I learned that Keith purchased his first vehicle. It is a forest green Echo. There are now three Echos parked outside — shit, can I still call it Planet Bachelor when there’s a toddler running around? It’s not seemly. Perhaps something else?

Word count

19391 words  on HOTM. Plugging away on my hurtfic for Destiel, plus another more Harlequinny Destiel, plus the Robot Love Destiel. Also I’m working on edits for SOTW.

Jeff took me to Thor Ragnarok yesterday. I super enjoyed it, it was a noisy fun bit of spun sugar. It was interesting to me that it was more important to save the people than Asgard. Also, Tom Hiddleston flatly refuses to stop being yummy, and Chris Hemsworth is LUMPY WIT’ MUSCLE but still really cute. I think Taika Waititi did a great job of directing, and I think the fight scenes went on too long, so that’s me.

Season 6 of Longmire is excellent and Katee Sackhoff’s eyes crossing as she was ‘bleeding out’ was some of the wildest acting I’ve ever seen. Zahn McLarnon, A. Martinez, Lou Diamond Phillips, Tantoo Cardinal and Graham Greene are all fucking standouts.

love long hair on boys sigh

 

alex called

Hiya!

Hullo Alex!

You got me colour changing straws thank you for getting me colour changing straws.

Oh you’re very welcome! I’m glad you like them!

What are you doing today?

I’m writing but I’ll see you anytime!

Okay I’m coming over

 

clunk as the phone goes to mama THEY ARE COMING THEY ARE COMING

Dr. Makh walks it back

Dr. Varisha Makh stood on her balcony with her morning tea, and made a noise between a sigh and a grunt of irritation. Theo, who most nights slept on her balcony, shimmied up the railing and sat next to her.

“I can’t help thinking,” Varisha said to her sixer companion, “That the solution to the problem is so simple that I’m going to kick myself when I figure it out.”

“Perhaps the solution awaits a new, as yet unknown refinement of current imaging techniques which requires the power of quantum computing,” Theo said. He now affected an orotund, lugubrious timbre that would have knocked Charles Laughton off his game had he survived to experience it, while Theo’s accent approached that of a closeted western Canadian politician orating during amateur theatrics. When it wasn’t annoying, it was amusing. Or she’d get gooseflesh, listening to him; the contrast between his voice and his appearance was so vast. He often said grisly, repellent things in an offhand way, as if he was checking to see if she was paying attention.

She looked out over a sliver of the Burrard Inlet, the only remaining view after more towers had gone up around her condo building, and tightened her grip on her teacup.  “The lattice-work structures Kima made for Raven’s recovery are consuming me. FAS and the media and every burn patient currently alive wants to know about that, and I don’t know what to tell them. I want to work on the imaging problems instead and I don’t actually have any budget for that. Being worn to a thread by the barrage of bullshit waiting outside the front door and knowing that some hack is probably taking a picture of me, right now, while I’m standing here in my dressing gown, is destroying my life.”

“No hacks are taking pictures at the moment.”

“I wish I knew how you know that’s so, but I believe you,” Makh said, “It’s a relief, really.”

Theo returned to the problem they were working. “When trying to get a new perspective, a common approach is to find something that forces you out of whatever conceptual rut you are in. I have compiled a list, and hoped you’d favour me with a demonstration of your lateral thinking skills.”

Makh briefly considered how useful Theo’s advice was likely to be. “Well,” Makh said thoughtlessly, “If I really wanted to send my brain sideways, I could always try drugs.”

“That is a known stimulus for creative thinking,” Theo said agreeably. “Would you like me to procure you some which have demonstrated utility in the past, and test them for freshness before I give them to you?”

Makh tried to picture her stepmother’s reaction to her being busted for drugs. “I was being facetious, which is always a horrid mistake with you,” Makh said.

“I wasn’t. Let me know how any other approaches work,” Theo said. “You’re an unconventional person, or you would never have agreed to help Raven.”

“And I came within a hair of losing my licence to practice medicine, you shiny bag of trouble,” Makh said.

“Money fixes almost everything in human space,” Theo said. “Drugs take care of the rest.”

Makh was not having it. “Really? I suppose the equivalent in sixer space is denial and being glib.”

Theo vanished, and Makh rolled her eyes and went back indoors.

Wonderful birthday celebration

I heard from the kids, Jeff started my birthday by firing up the Bourne Identity (a movie I can basically rewatch any damned time) and now I’m working on HOTM and I’ll post a minichap with the next blog entry.

Victoria and Abdul was very enjoyable, and it really was based on a true story, and the worst parts were true. BERTIE IS AN ASSHOLE THROUGH ALL OF TIME AND SPACE THANKS.

 

 

Another year successfully concluded

Today Mike’s gonna take me to Atlas Steakhouse and I am going to pig out.

TLDR pOp you can stop reading now

So there. Also he’s taken tomorrow off and I am hopping from one foot to another because that means I’m going to have about 45 minutes of massage tomorrow, or possibly this evening, and I am really needing the pummelling. I already subjected him to all my latest dulcimer stylings so I am not doing that again. There’s friendship and then there’s torture.

The weather has been so crappy that even though there have been breaks in it they are never at a time when Jeff and I can agree to do a shop by cab, which we have to because Jeff’s vehicle is in the Schroedinger box at the moment. It is alive and it is dead.  And we were thinking about brekky at IHOP but you don’t want to walk down there in the dark with bits of trees flying the fuck everywhere, which was the case yesterday morning.

18680 is the formal wordcount on HOTM right now, just for a little accountability. I wish this book had a straight through-line like MMCo. I am working on edits for SOTW and writing every day now. My volume isn’t great but the work is fiddlier.

I recently learned that a family member by marriage had a mental health episode. Big hugs all around and I hope everyone is feeling better soon.

Vampire family in Toronto got better and bigger! Welcome Baby Viggo and thank god you’re out of the NICU and big hugs to grandma Jan.

 

happy sad

It felt good to be toasting Dame Dunnett yesterday.

It was a group of women who can afford to own condos in Vancouver, and so when various social issues came up you can imagine that I took the opportunity to be pretty sad and at one point crassly remarked that we might as well declare war on the poor.

The food was excellent. I brought a reasonably expensive (and tasty, I had a drop) red wine.

I committed to going back in January because I borrowed some books but I’m feeling kinda battered today.

I tried about five times to talk about the books I’ve written and what’s for sale and everyone talked over me and finally we listened to people who can afford to cruise the Med twice a year talk about ‘that hotel in Istanbul’. Yeah.

Also, think about how much happier (and Seen and Heard) I was eating with Ben the other day one on one than in a room full of smoothly polished middle aged women clacking about how bike lanes are a terrible waste of public money when the sidewalks are in such poor shape.

I ran an errand on the way home. I managed to get some exercise and do something for the household. It’s okay. I’m writing this morning.

Also, Jeff has some news but I’ll leave it for him.

Hot Pot at Morals Village

TLDR oldfud report: She et with a friend but it was not a true pig out. moar friends today.

Met up with Unconbentional (a late twenties wedding photographer, brony and lifehacker I met through Lorraine at the weiner dog races, blogs passim and don’t you just love how I get to write true sentences like dat there’s a little old lady living this weird goodness vicariously) and the food was amazing. You pick a broth and then pick stuff to add and it boils away merrily on your table. NOM

I don’t take pics of my food unless I prepared it but YES IT WAS GOOD. We got caught up on our various projects and it was amazing to get out of the house into the bright sunshine and very pleasant day.

NOTE TO SELF do not try to find a Chinese restaurant in Richmond on the fly, figure out where you’re going first. I texted him after my unsuccessful traverse of the mall with I WILL GO HOME TO DIe so sorry CANNOT FIND and he ran out of the restaurant and danced up and down and yelled until I located him which given that I’ve only met him once IRL was really decent of him. You know, pro-social.

TODAY the Dunnetteers – I’ll be leaving in half an hour or so.

working away

continued progress and happiness.

Tomorrow I’m going to get out of the house and go for Hot Pot in Richmond with a bunch of people I usually only talk to on social media, and Saturday I’m going to be lunching with the Dunnetteers, which means I should probably pick up a bottle of wine and some cheese. I will be using both opportunities to sell books, so sue me.

Last night

Planet Bachelor, including Katie, Alex, Paul, Keith and Jeff and me had A FEAST and it was

I always say what the food was so mOm and pOp can enjoy along at home.

Crock pot pork roast with sauerkraut

Green salad (I provided)

gravy

Smashed potatoes

steamed cauliflower and carrots

HOME MADE INDIVIDUALIZED YORKSHIRE PUDDING

Alex was wonderful, and we had food and fellowship and it was just so wonderful in that quiet “nothing happened but it was everything” kinda way.

I spoke to Mike and invited him. Just not feeling it. But we connected and that counts to me at least.

Spoke to Tammy on the phone today, I will with luck see her next month when she comes to Van over Christmas.

 

who are all these people

No Mike this weekend, I don’t know whether he’s out of town or what. Normal rules apply… if I don’t hear from him once every two weeks I call him to ask him if he’s dead.

BUT I got the kidlets yesterday. We sat around Planet Bachelor with Alex as he slowly started to get sick. He goes to the bathroom by himself now and announced at 5:30 that he was off to bed. Katie lay down with him.

Keith fetched us Desi Turka food which was yummy and we watched a bunch of Paw Patrol (the theme song to which I loathed immediately, but the show itself isn’t bad) and some Moana and some Rock-a-Doodle and we talked about our favourite shows when we were little.

Alex had sparkly fingernails and toenails.

He complimented me on my red dress. Imagine wearing a red dress because you think your toddler grandson likes the colour and he says I LIKE YOUR RED DRESS GG

and you meeeeeeellllllllt

Katie gave me a lift home. It was a very cheerful little visit, and it was like we were four people all doing our separate thing in the same space, and that was really kinda cool. ALSO Hot Wheels.