safely arrived

I had some issues with wifi (reddit is permablocked in this hotel, isn’t that hilarious? and I had to call tech support, although not about that, because I have an elderly Mac laptop) and I still don’t know if my credit card works but I am safely ensconced in the Hotel for Orycon. I have slept hours past my usual getting up time and am now listening to the furtive stirring of my roommates. Cindy and Peggy, because They Are Prepared, brought tons of breakfast stuff and so now all I need to do is get some food in me and then I can skate off to the reg table, which opens in about 25 minutes. That would be ten minutes. I am dressed, finally remembered to take me pills, we are awake, our day of delights has commenced.

Bought edibles across the street. Two ten milligrams at bed time and I was able to shut up (Peggy says *they* kept me up but believe me I gabbled like a lonely chicken) and sleep long about ten pm. Oregon is a reasonably sensible place.

Met a one armed bearded fan named Bandit last night. Within seconds he was telling fabulous con anecdotes and bickering with his partner and I asked him long they’d been married and he said about a year and I was howling because they sounded SO MUCH LIKE BRAD AND OMAR when they were bickering. Anyway Cindy paid fer mah steak. Twas good.

14 seconds of blue sky just now. That’ll be it for the day.

I still haven’t gone to reg. Peggy made me morning tea. Twice.

 

email exchange

for the dignity and privacy of everyone involved I will not cut and paste the email exchange between Cindy, Peggy and Allegra, because we all sound like amiable lunatics. Let us just pencil in that we are all quite anxious about the trip but we’ve all found our passports so really the rest of it is gravy.

This is Brooke’s fundraiser for a powered wheelchair.

 

lovely evening

We had two men out of six at the able, highest Dunnett ratio yet, lol. The Faux Bourgeois is a lovely restaurant, but quite loud. I had the soup oignon (divine) and escargots (not so, but still nice). I will have the beefsteak next time, Ingrid was almost overcome with happiness with hers; there were a lot of duck confits on the table too, and Simon had never had sweetbreads before. Jan had TWO desserts LOL. No alcohol for me but we killed three big bottles of San Pelligrino. Remembered to lard my tights with hand cream and so managed to kill the static.

I didn’t nap all day so I was tired. So tired I started getting migraine signs so I taxied hoping it would clear, it did. First guy drove like an idiot and cheated me, second guy was a total sweetheart with a delicate understanding of the needs of other motorists and how to increase and decrease speed without popping me through the fucking headrest….. Life’s like that. Seating was for 7:30, I got home at 10:30, absolutely shaking with tiredness… at which point I could not sleep. LOL

And I’ve miscalculated leaving dates, I’m actually leaving tomorrow morning. So I’m making dispositions for coverage thank you Jeff.

Love the world, hate its governments, be well everyone.

FOOD 2NITE

SO looking forward. However, I woke up before 2 am and that means I’ll have to have a nap today. I’m not looking after Alex so… that should be easy, right? Anyway I hope to have a compleat report for the drooling multitudes.

Coffee made, tea made, peppermint tea made; contemplating panancakes again.

little squib of a post

Katie and Alex were here sleeping in the basement but they’re gone now. She’s got flu, picked it up from Rikes by the sound of things. She woke up and grabbed Alex on the way to pick up Ryker and she’s headed home to her own bed. Jeff and I are glad to have helped and are equally glad to get the basement back.

I’ve revised “Set of Steps” and once I’ve finished tinkering I’ll post it again.
Tink
Knit
K-Tin
Inkt
don’ worry that’s just a note to myself for later, four new characters just stepped up in a whole new world.

yesterday, today, tomorrow second of its name

So yesterday I made coconut chicken soup, today I used the last of the mushrooms for scrambled eggs and mushrooms, and tomorrow I either dine at the gates of heaven or just have a regular meal at a French restaurant with the Dunnetteers, including the Grand Poobah Simon.

Today I will once again attempt to make a packing list. DAMMMMN these mushrooms are good, I have ceased my inhalation of food now.

Jeff got the kitchen fan running again so hopefully I’ll stop setting off the alarm if I’m bothering to cook.

Still playing with my Chromebook. I’m not sure I want to take it to the US, though, I haven’t set up all my daily tasks on it yet.

Alex will be here in about an hour. I missed him. He is such a loving child.

 

stew

After Jeff trundled back downstairs with his third bowl of stew, I quit worrying about whether he liked it or not. LOL

We were watching the season opener for S8 Shetland and I said, “Can I ask you to put away the stew,” and he said, “Way ahead of you.”

So I said, “Can I thank you for putting away the stew?” and he said, “No.”

Reader, it took me about 30 seconds to stop laughing, which is good, because he was trying to be funny.

Today is the anniversary of the ‘love declaration’ on Supernatural, and Guy Fawkes’ Day. I am thinking of a new destiel story or two, but no writing. I’m going to be pretty focussed on the trip to Portland for the next few days.

feeling pretty sad and bent

For reasons I can’t get into.

Jeff is aware and has actually been super supportive so I’m not on the ground, I’m just very demotivated. When I get my mo back I’ll make beef stew with thyme, which I hope Jeff will enjoy. Was very heartened by his defence of my overcooked pancakes – next time I think I’ll a) make the batter thinner and b) have the heat down JUST a smidge.

Towels and cleaning rags washed and put away.

Working on writing down songs this week so they’ll be ready for the con.

How’s this for a deal – I don’t have to take care of Alex on Friday, because his mother will. So we can be on the road first thing!!!

SO EXCITED. less than a week now. MUST FACE THIS NEW THING AND MAKE ALL THE LISTS.

the enshinening has happend

Katie had a bad day at work and knocked off early, she and Suzanne had a chinwag. Alex got to go home early too. Nearly cried when Suzanne folded all my laundry.

Doing relatively okay. Have a powerful urge to go out for breakfast but I think I’m going to make pancakes instead.

 

l8r very sub par pancakes accomplished but at least I used up the strawbs before they went bad.

yesterday Eighth of its name

we didn’t eat until 1:45, but what a meal. Oven baked chicken with onion gravy, oven baked spud cubes and carrots and green beans, fresh prepared. After we watched ‘Currahee’ the first episode of Band of Brothers. Peggy showed up for 2 seconds to give Keith GGma’s knitted sweater back and fled to other errands.

Paul had an excellent time, – he had half a beer, free healthy food, social contact, and the only thing he cared about was Buster making an appearance, he misses his cats so much – but he also showed issues with his illness; as much as he could recount watching TV with the woman across the hall at home, the stairs here were hard on him, and he recounted a tale of being assaulted in the hallway at his residence by two care workers who told him he smelled bad and stripped off his tshirt right there in public. He says he called Ruth to complain and she blew him off and none of that actually sounds plausible. 

Keith was in very high spirits when he arrived but he was exhausted when he left. I know the feeling, but it was a super good visit generally. He was very happy I went to the efforts I did to clean the kitchen, and I did all the clean up afterwards after his half hearted offer to assist, mostly because I move a lot faster. I imagine it’s very annoying to Jeff, but I hate cleaning up at night, I’d far rather do it in the morning when I’m first up and energetic; in this case I attacked everything right away, like the oven sheets and the cast iron pan.

Mike called, and then showed up with equal but even more theatrical result; he brought my birthday present early – a chromebook. I’m currently setting it up, having charged it. I’ll have a computer with nothing personal on it TO TAKE TO THE STATES which is why he gave it to me early. I was blown away and loudly and repeatedly thanked him.

And I didn’t have Alex yesterday, he stayed home with his dad. So I didn’t have to run away in the middle of a conversation to be with him, and that was nice timing too.

set of steps – new poem / song

YES I WROTE A SONG IN G#/Ab and I’m working on Uke chords…. I tightened the bottom string half a tone:::: and VOILA no more stretching my pinky like Elastoman’s dick stuck in a door.

An algorithm is a series set of steps
A set series of steps
Designed to get you to a certain place
what do I call how I got this way
I point and mimic and then I say
I’m
a set of steps in process
I
have not reached my the objective
It’s just as near and far
As the products of a star
I’m just a set of processes in tandem
Reaching for something
That looks like an objective.

And I said hold up, wait, wait a minute, stop
hold up, wait, wait a minute, stop
I said, hold up, wait, wait a minute
stop

Just getting here? my line
Went from being mats of slime!
To sitting on cardboard with a dog
begging for a dime!
The weight of my brain
On my neck
Is driving me insane
But I’m a set of steps
Flying in close formation
All my trials and tribulations
Are a set of steps

The algorithm looks a bit like plot
But it’s really not
And everything you grab on the way by
Is fleeting as the mood of the sky
I didn’t make the rules that I’m I am forced to live by
But something happened a long way back
You don’t always defend Don’t always play defence
Sometimes you can roll attack
Attack all the things that are holding you back
And
get a new (x3)
set of steps

You can’t erase
Or sponge off wipe out the old ones
They remain, they make themselves plain
They go through the same shit (steps, if you can’t swear) again and again
(They bleed through our whole lives again and again alternate line)
You don’t have free will and you can’t abstain
From the old set of steps

You don’t have free will
but something cunning and false
You can’t be mistaken for anyone else
The gametes roll/ed like invisible dice
And this part (snare slap) is almost automatic

(here follows a 2 minute percussive guitar solo, often omitted

to represent

ahem

the mating dance)

You can’t escape the way you were made
Nor will folks in the future I’m very much afraid
If we fuck with the steps they will fuck right back
(If we mess with the steps they will mess right back)
And we aren’t prepared to take steps like that

New poem – Someone must sell tickets

Imagine this : 107 beats per minute.
We’re used to hearing stuff synced
up to clocks so this is an almost
indivisible number for regular counted
time, the time of sports and records and
estimates and comparisons.

If you can’t hear, the part of your brain
that handles math and/or got rerouted
from where it would go if you could hear, that will do the job.

The brass instruments that are playing
in this tempo are lazy, barely registering,
with that unnatural dampening only the best can perform.
The percussion is robotic, uninspired,
trying very hard to be a clock
and yet not able to be there. There’s always an urge to speed up,

never to slow down.
The high hat and the snare
have the same unfortunate conversation,
the same eight bars, over and over again.
The brass is having trouble breathing,
each instrument breaks slowly free
of the ensemble of soft, tight harmonies, a
pinball bounce against the constraints of melody.

The flugelhorn, the trombones and the tubas
pause in horror as the piercing notes of the cornet
and the blaring agitated french horn crash into each other.

They perfect an oscillation which mimics the collision
of two great stellar masses. No one in the audience
cares about that, most of them want their money back.

sadly no

The laundry despite my best wishes did not self assemble and haul itself upstairs but remained, grimly inanimate, over the entire surface of the furnace/laundry room. Sigh.

Jeff is making sleep noises after his Grand Evening Out. I await his probably later than usual rise to enquire about how everything went.

Lovely but brief convo with Dave last night.

The bear scares, fireworks, whistling shrieking dying noises went on for hours and hours. Poor Buster hid and stayed that way, and he’d already received a challenge from Ryker, who was here RUNNING NON STOP AND THROWING MY SHIT AROUND while Katie stuffed a contact lens into Alex’s eye, put on her sugar skull jewelled face gems and Alex got into his costume. It was absolutely exhausting and he was only here 45 minutes. It was all I could do to drag myself upright. I managed to get him to sit still for half a minute but other than that I was literally chasing him.

Suzanne appealed to me to come back to facebook so I did.

Made a pork and cabbage fry, it was so good I had thirds and there’s hardly any left in the fridge. Unusually for me I made a sauce to go with and that realllly improved things, must remember to make sauce for stir fry more often. Half a pork tenderloin, three slices of cabbage about a cm wide, chopped, rude amounts of garlic and ginger, carrot and baby peppers that Linda got for us. (We finished the honeydew, it really was exceptional). Added thai fish sauce, soy sauce, cornstarch and a bit of water, and all fried in safflower oil. Pepper to taste.

Wordle in three this morning. It was a good word considering the racket last night.

I can’t believe Katie managed to get the freaking contact in his eye. We’re such a weird family.

I believe this.