Plane crashes and setting the mixture lean

So there was a plane crash in Langley yesterday. I heard about it on the radio. Then I read on line that the airplane – a small private craft – CLIPPED A TRUCK on the highway before coming in for a crash. Ya know friends and neighbours that is most likely to mean that HE DIDN’T SET FUEL TO RICH MIXTURE so he had ZERO OOMPH when he needed it. Since this is exactly like the plane crash I was in I’m of course predicting that’s what happened. Everyone including the poor bastid in the truck got conveyed to the hospital and in true Canadian fashion, lived to complain about it all.

I picked Keith up in his own car from the Ferry Terminal at Tsawassen yesterday. It was a STINKING HOT DAY, much hotter in Burnaby than the records might indicate. I had to drive in traffic. People who drive from east Burnaby to the southern terminal know well that there are a couple of choke points. One is the bridge access southbound on 20th; queued there for 20 minutes or so, cursing most immoderately the entire fucking time. One is the ‘curve’ on highway 91A where the traffic ALWAYS slows down even though there are no on-ramps? Like- what the hell, people. There is no earthly reason for this to happen, so I unscrambled my brains and gave it some consideration and I guess it’s because trucks have to slow down because it isn’t banked properly or something and that has a standing wave effect on the rest of the traffic. And of course another is the run up to the Massey Tunnel, but that was barely a blip because they had the counterflow set in favour of the traffic direction I was on.

After all that, got there in plenty of time to greet him for the ride home, and he thank god did the rest of the driving because I was once again pretty crispy toast from driving with due care and attention in that relentless traffic and heat. I didn’t want to put the air con on because we had less than a quarter tank of gas and I wanted to make sure that I didn’t get stuck behind an accident with no gas.

All was well, Keith efficiently gave me back the stuff I’d left in his car after the trip, and discovered ANOTHER BAG OF BISCOTTI – I told you I made a lot of that – which is going over to Peggy today because she is awesome and could use a break. With coffee, and biscotti. I won’t stay, I’ll just biscotti fairy it over to her when Jeff and I go to errandry later this morning.

Right now, I must dress, brush teeth and watch Endeavour, and then we’re going out. The downstairs toilet needs a part, and I want to get the Marvin the Martian watch I got from John’s stash running again. Curiously, I found the identical watch (right down to the watchband, which is an unusual leather and colour) for sale, secondhand since it was made in 94, in Europa for 339´€ and in the US for $39, so someone’s getting hosed and it’s not me.

Embarrassing as it is to relate, it is entirely possible that I will purchase another cell phone. Spending time with a dementia sufferer and being out of touch while I’m driving him around (he often forgets his phone) has made me understand the value of access. As I was driving to the ferry I kept thinking if I’m in an accident I’ll have no way to contact Keith and it made me unduly fretful.

recovery day

So yesterday was a perfectly fine recovery day. I slept in, got my booster, came back home and we watched TV and ignored the world. I had premade lentil soup for lunch and toasted the chickie sandwich Jeff got me for supper the night before last and it was NOM, so no cooking. I still have some sweetened condensed milk so I didn’t have to do any shopping before I could enjoy coffee. Jeff has been most kind.

Today I’m going to see what I feel up to and then hopefully I can stop meeping.

Spoke with Paul on the phone yesterday. He’s back to telling me I took his drivers’ licence away. I guess I still want to run away from home some days. He said he’s not going to his volunteer job today (I offered to give him a lift.)

left for the 5 pm

didn’t get home until 10:30 pm. BC Ferries was completely and utterly borked.

The Celebration of Life for Jim Palmer was perfect in terms of weather, company, food, location, and meaning, and it ended with us toasting him and singing “Always look on the bright side of life”. I baked almost 200 biscotti and nobody et them so I took them to Barry and Jackie and my fOlks.

Hi Glenn it was great talking to you and sharing space. scrivener r u l e s

Hi Leo

Hi Linda

Hi mOm

Hi pOp

Hi Dave

Content warning – assault, dementia, me being over sensitive.

Continue reading left for the 5 pm

sick with dread

I am so freaked out about this voyage I’ve gone completely limp and I haven’t finished the biscotti.

3:18 biscotti have commenced. I’ve got two logs worth of dough left to cook. House smells amazing.

5:36 last batch is in for the second bake. As soon as they’re out: shower, lay out my pills, finish packing and wait for the pickup.

I may or may not post again over the next 48 but I’ll keep notes and do a big round up sometime shortly after I get home on Sunday. Picked out the ‘burntest’ ones for Jeff, who does NOT mind, but there’s no way I’m subjecting him to 4 hours of biscotti baking without leaving him any.

 

list is getting ticked

Happy St. Sitha (Zita) Day, patron saint of domestic work, domestic workers, and lost keys. Here she is from a church wall in Norfolk UK.

Feast day April 27, St. Sitha patron of domestic work, workers and lost keys, winks at us from a church wall in Norfolk UK

Laundry is done and I’ll go back to folding it when I’ve finished posting. No Lumosity yet, wordle in three (the word made me laugh out loud because it is NOT a word I personally am associated with, like, at all). Five kudos from one person on AO3 last night… I mean woman did you SLEEP that was like 50K words LOL…. Almonds are in the oven for toasting and the timer is set to explode (finally have a LOUD kitchen timer) in an hour. I have started selecting my clothes to be packed. I’ve been practicing my instruments every day, I keep starting on and then refusing to write down any of the gags for a standup routine (part of it involving a ‘tactical ukulele’ which describes the second uke Mike bought me), I wrote 899 words yesterday on the fic and about 40 on TB. Dejunking has slowed but not stopped. Played Original Green Tetris on the Tetris website yesterday and I have to say I prefer newer versions LOL. I’ve booked my next flu/covid shots with the pharmacy.

I send a special family hug to Leo and Linda this am (they are always sharing pictures of their family in the background with me and it helps me stay connected to their fam and I really appreciate it) and a big long rocking hug for Dave, who is mourning his kitty and will be for a while. He still has Pippin, but Mookie was a real character.

Here’s a list of free websites that are apparently useful from boing boing dot com this morning. I’ve only had a good look at witeboard and untools but intend to explore more:

  1. Witeboard: https://witeboard.com 6
  2. Blush: https://blush.design 5
  3. Carrd: https://carrd.co 7
  4. What runs: https://www.whatruns.com 7
  5. Coverr: https://coverr.co 5
  6. Flourish: https://flourish.studio 7
  7. Untools: https://untools.co 10
  8. Lumen5: https://lumen5.com 10

Just in case anyone is thinking of me, please don’t get me anything for Mother’s Day that doesn’t involve tasty food I didn’t cook.

Still very much enjoying Medium and we’ve started The Diplomat and are LOVING it. But it’s (ratchet ratchet ratchet sound in the background) berloddy tense.

bang the starting gun

48 hours to leave for Jim Palmer’s Celebration of Life in Courtenay BC

make a proper list including folding chairs and whatever I want to bring to the fOlks’ place on Sunday and make sure I’ve got enough masks

clean out my purse

pack for an overnight

toast enough almonds to make enough biscotti for a hundred people, and then make enough biscotti for a hundred people, which is three double batches, possibly more depending on ‘shrinkage’

find a gift/card for the folks putting us up

not panic the way I always do before a voyage of any description

Ran the dishwasher and a load of laundry yesterday. Jeff cleaned out the moribund stuff in the fridge may all gods cherish and protect him because YUK it was ghastly.

 

we were expecting lunch

Jeff and I have been expecting lunch and the Keith who was going to make it, but I can only assume he’ll breeze in late or call in apology. In the meantime we had pastries delivered.  NYA HA HA HA HA HA HA

LATER: He’s fine, no huhu, and I’ve got a very nice lentil soup going so I didn’t miss much and I made cinnamon buns. That’s sort of Keith’s favourite thing that I make. Oh well he missed it, Jeff will be fine. Paul had a gerontology appointment this morning and something else happened and that cleaned Keith out for the day. I know how he feels. On the positive side there’s movement on a rental possibility.

Medical advancements

Imagine going in a panic half an hour early to your eye doc appointment because you’re not sure which suite it’s in. Imagine getting on the elevator and there’s a sign.

The eye doctors are on the second floor.

The optometric clinic is on the seventh floor.

AWESOME, I know it’s a specialist so I go to the second floor. I’m greeted by someone who examines my services card closely and then tells me to sit down. Within about two minutes (it’s still 20 minutes at least before the appointment time) I’m getting pictures taken of my eyes. I sit down and just as I pull out my pen to write a poem about how people in health care settings don’t wear fucking masks (all the staff were masked thanks), my name gets called again and I get a basic eye test and hand over the list of medications they asked me to prepare WHICH I HAD ON ME because I have a care sheet on Google docs, and then I barely sit down and have to get up again when they call my name to freeze my eye and bounce a pencap off it a couple of times (what it sort of felt like) and then the dreaded drops, which have by no means worn off. Then I get stuck in another room while the doc, a Desi woman in her late forties, takes a good long look inside my eyes. She is happy with the results and says my eyes are about as good as they can be for my age, to watch my sugars, and to expect my eyes to change from day to day with my sugars. She told me to use hot compresses and to clean my eyelids more thoroughly and suggested eye drops.

Got there by cab, walked from the Professional building to the cab stand at 6th and 6th (was thinking longingly of having a coffee and croissant at Waves, but oh well, why should I clog some poor bastard’s toilet) and then went home by cab as well.

The medical advancements I’m twittering about were the fact that everything ran like a machine, I got good and thorough care, and everybody patient-facing was masked, polite, competent and efficient. I JUST AIN’T SEED NUTHIN LIKE IT BOYS SINCE BEFORE THE PANINI!! (internet speak for ‘the pandemic)

TL;DR my eyes are fine, that eye doc practice runs like clockwork.

 

Long COVID testing regime

List of Long COVID tests from Lifelabs, BC, April 2023

Someone ACTUALLY POSTED ‘It’s a fine spring day in Saskatchewan’ on one of the video social media sites; it shows a my kind of fine looking young white man trying to pour coffee, which emerges from the carafe at about a 30 degree angle in a fifty-knot gale. With snow. While he is inadequately dressed for the weather. While smiling charmingly. It would take me longer to figure out how to cross post it than describe it, so I described it.

Eye test today. I will be getting the dreaded ‘drops’.

whatzit

Why would I stop pubbing this blog? Because it costs money and I can send it out as a newsletter digest, once a week to the N people who want to read it, for free. I need to reduce expenditures, especially those nibbly, come-out-of-your-bank-account-quietly-month-after-month expenditures, because harder times yet are coming and the world is shifting again.

I’m tired of it. I have said all I’m going to about any of the things that I find important and all the new things look like a subset of the old things, only this time they’re 33% microfibres and 67% self-involvement. Everything is shiny until you scuff it. I’m tired of shouting into the void. I’m tired of it being an increasingly onerous duty and an increasingly obvious failure to connect. I’m tired of its vanity and its assumptions. I’ve never expected anyone else to care that much, and I’ve finally caught up to the rest of the world.

I know that what I do (all of it, from stand-up to kid’s songs) isn’t something monetizable and I knew it when I first started to spend money on it. Even so, I look at the millions of words I’ve written and see nothing of lasting interest or value to the larger world. To certain very dear, delightful people, yes, and to myself, yes, no question. But it doesn’t have to be in this format, and probably never should have been. It’s a hobby and should be private.

This also means that John’s memorial site will be coming down. I will try to get someone else to take that on but it may not happen. Bitrot, folks. ‘sgonna happen anyway, may as well try to roll with it.

And that’s why. You were right pOp, you were always right.

It’s not disabling ‘depression’ making me do this. (I thought, okay, I’ll fill out a depression questionnaire. Here’s my result: Use clinical judgment about treatment, based on patient’s duration of symptoms and functional impairment. Yes I answered honestly. Not ready for meds I reckon.) I’m not giving up because of any fanciful (or genuine) feelings of self-harm because I haven’t had those feelings in more than a decade and I have a much easier time fending them off now that I have grandchildren – it’s caution. Other factors feed in, but they aren’t for public consumption for the same reason I don’t post my street address.

I leave you with one of the people who did her best to face down Hitler’s fascism:

“The real damage is done by those millions who want to ‘survive.’ The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.” –– Sophie Scholl

excelsior or word to that effect

Helped Paul dejunk yesterday. Always painful for two people with ADD who lived together for a quarter of a century. Of course I was essentially dejunking JOHN’s stuff and when did he die exactly? Anyway, there was his photo book from his trip to Okinawa, the brown belt, the blue belt, a couple of his shirts, a whole bunch of his gloves. Everything but the photo book off to the Goodwill. Regular books, too. “Loving what is” ?? – rather that you weren’t there at all, actually. Recycled the notes for his Avionics course (I asked Paul to do that, I couldn’t face tossing so much of his work, but he’ll never need it again.) I found yet another one of John’s filk books, this one more tailored to group work, and absconded with that, also a watch that I don’t know works. I also found a first season DVD set of Rocky and Bullwinkle, that one will be a keeper for sure. Moved any toys or kid stuff into the appropriate place.

He expected me to mock him for how many self-help books he has. Oh, no honey. You fought to understand yourself your whole life.

Really felt like I’d helped. We went for a walk in the POURING, ASS FREEZING COLD RAIN and then continued the work and then I went home. I hope to have the energy to do my own dejunking today.

Wordle in 4 – shoulda been 3 – one top five score in Lumosity – 288 words on fic – absolutely no other labour performed because I was a tired piglet after my morning with the mouse turds and the ex husband and the finding of some of my stuff in with his….

Although I’m not a fan of the carceral state the prospect of Tht Fcking Gy being forced to deal with arrests and lawsuits and depositions for the rest of his (hopefully short) natural life does please me.

Someone wanted me to advice who’s my fave Star Wars character. There he is, Captain Carson Teva, played with affable steel by Canadian Paul Sun-Hyung Lee. Anybody who weeps in sentimental gratitude when he’s given a chance to wear Biggs’ helmet from the original Star Wars deserves the role. (That’s not what he’s wearing in this photo btw.)

The enshinening

Suzanne has been and gone and of course Buster has already scooted across the newly clean kitchen rug. Definitely need a walk today.

Washed my room rug and the cleaning rags from yesterday, all dried and put away. Linens today maybe. I hear that Ataulfo mangoes are in at Fruiticana.

Wordle I blew completely (I ended up using a solver …. stupidity) BUT three top scores in Lumosity after a cup of tea and a roborative night of sleep. 140 words on the fic.

Weather continues damp and cloudy and cold.