My Mother’s Day

Pack cinnamon buns and a whole baked salmon for church.  Open and set up.  Guest minister; really scrambled service.  Dave T the sound tech, may the rich blessings of his hard work attend him, ripped me a copy of Freedom from last week’s service. Got asked for the music.

Helped a tiny bit with cleanup for the mother’s day tea (which was mostly soup and coffee – I had the nine bean plus smokies soup and it was awesome.)  Got all pouty over taking dirty dishes home to wash and Peggy released me from that duty.  John / Joy S took Carol home which was very kind of them.  Talked to Frances Deverell for a bit.  Why does everybody think I should go to leadership school? It’s a poser.  Food I brought went over well.

Dinner, for which I had help, consisted of Paul and Keith and Kate coming over for dinner, Paul barbecuing salmon, me boiling up a head of cauliflower, Paul committing corn to a watery boil, and me making salad.  All the food was fabulous and there’s one tiny bit of leftovers.

After dinner called me mOm and everybody got to talk to her on the phone and that was HER mother’s day present and she has neither to unwrap it nor store it.  She mentioned that she’s getting Rawd’s 12 archive boxes of family history stuff.  Yikes.

I also played Buzz a lot.  My callouses are thick and I’m really enjoying it.

Why I think Jeff is a genius

Jeff’s tenancy with me has consisted in part of him going away and thinking for a spell when I say things like “Why can’t we have the internet on the big screen?” and “We have to many fucking remotes; when you go out of town I can’t even reliably turn the TV on; can you fix that?” mostly to prevent himself from saying something mean to me about how I’m too dumb to understand the two page instruction set he laboriously wrote, AND updated at least twice.  Jeff produces good documentation and I am dumb as a brick; these two facts are incontrovertable.  With respect to the “Why can’t we have the internet on the big screen?” question he had to do a ton of stuff and set up another computer to make it happen.  SO I get to go skipping through life asking why things don’t happen to my liking and he gets to spend hours of challenging labour AND money making it happen.  I don’t know which is worse, that I keep thinking I can get away with it, or that he just quietly goes away and does it without presenting me with an itemized bill.  On the other hand, I do cook around here.

His latest act of genius has been to bow to the inevitable.  I am indeed TOO STUPID to handle more than one remote, but universal remotes almost universally suck.  After lengthy study of the problem, he purchased a universal remote and then spent a goodly number of hours programming it to withstand the depredations not only of myself but of my son, who can be a complete ass when borrowing media.  Sorry son, it’s true.  Of course if you get hit by a car I’m going to regret this, just like I regretted my daily description of cleaning John’s apartment when he moved out immediately after he got killed in an accident, but I don’t go back and oubliette that shit because that’s just lame.  I would rather be complicated, messy and inconsistent, because, er, that’s how I am….  But the truth keeps on being the truth even when you could have picked a better moment for the reveal.

Jeff has not only programmed the remote so I can do whatever I want to do with the tv and the Xbox and the monitor, he’s SET THE AVERAGE AUDIO LEVELS.  So if you’re going back and forth between media you don’t get blown out of your seat if you land in the middle of a tv commercial.  That, friends, is true genius.  And he’s always finding new ways to tweak the remote.  Go tech!

Today is Mother’s Day.  I’m opening at church (and if I’m not, I’ll help….) and then assisting with a Mother’s Day tea.  I decided I couldn’t deal with making soup so I baked a whole salmon and made cinnamon buns.  Jeff doesn’t know I plan on making more, but I do; it’s mean to fill the house with the supercharged smell of home baking and then say oops, you can’t have any.  (Actually I let him eat a couple: “I have good news and bad news.  These are the best cinnamon buns I ever made, and the rest are going to church.”)

Yesterday I did laundry and played Buzz ALL DAY.  I do not play Buzz every day, but I had four separate guitar playing sessions yesterday and I LOVE HOW THAT GUITAR SOUNDS OMG OMNOMNOM.  Also yesterday watched chunks of Canucks game and laughed at Margot for watching Nascar again.  She really likes Darlington, and why not.  My shopping trip yesterday consisted of propane and guitar strings, because the g string ALWAYS breaks on a 12 string; I bought two whole sets and spares.  I talked to Neil Douglas about effects pedals and he laughed and asked me why I’d bother.  I s’pose.

I managed to cut the grass last weekend but I have no fucking clue when I’ll get to do it again because the sky continues to dump precip at an unholy and quite soggy-making rate.

After church, the Horde will descend and I am hoping to barbecue some MORE salmon.

Did I mention that I think my brother is a genius?

I blame the patriarchy

….is a blog, not mine.  The rude and rowdy feminist who runs the site quoth she, quoth she:

Did you know that not being happy for people on demand is some sort of crime? It’s true! The minute you aren’t happy for somebody who is making the worst decision of her life, they absolutely have to take you off their speed-dial and snub you in social situations.

This in response to not being thrilled when a friend announces impending nuptials.

Turtles

I counted 8 turtles (okay, Dustin did, but I helped) from the 4th floor balcony of the new office digs.  Think I’m gonna like it.

Had lunch at LifeLabs cafeteria with the ever wondrous Tom U., ran into Mare and Dave De.  Good lunch, and Tom paid.  Got a link to his picatures.

Mike wondered if I wanted to go to the Oliver Twist and I said, come here, it’s cheaper and I’ve got three pork chops thawed.  So that’s what we had for dinner, plus green beans, taters and green salad.

Now a shower of power and a blast off to work.

 

History

Oh well.  They don’t have a majority government except where it counts; in the ability to pass laws.  May the great Parent of the universe take suitable notice and apply fire to the ass of the lazy duckwits who didn’t vote.

Various

Some son of a seacook left a looped piece of cordage tied to the front step at church.  I stuck my foot through it and then wrenched my right foot and fell heavily on my left elbow and knee.  Then I had to open church as Kathleen couldn’t (but my spidey sense had told me to come to church early anyway….) and get ready to perform.  Which I did.  Went okay.

Woke at 2 am and could not go back to sleep.  The move went fairly slick; all the software seems to be doing okay.

Paul cooked barbecue last night.  The chicken from the halal place IS DIVINE, and when Paul ‘cues it, it is truly awesome.  Then, I collapsed after supper.

Not super energetic today, and my mood is not assisted by the fact that it’s about 30 degrees C in here right now.  The HVAC still needs some ‘adjustment’.

Last day….

It was sad to be in that building for the last day.  I moved into that building many years before I started this blog, and now a new and exciting chapter starts (and I’m much closer to Brian C, Tom U, and numbers of other former coworkers who are now at a company ‘across the hall’ so to speak).

We packed up the desks about noon and then went to Joey’s Coquitlam for lunch; then I drove Dustin back to the office, picked up some cleanser and a vase that had been left there, wandered back to my old desk to say goodbye, picked up the yogurt that I’d left in the fridge, and felt a surge of unhappiness.  Then I got home, struggled with the fucking lawnmower for quite a while, said fuck it and did the weed-whacking instead, and then went back, gave it a mighty heave and got the lawnmower running.  Then I finished the lawn.  Since the back lawn grass was wet as a baby’s diaper the exercise provided was kind of extreme; mowing the front yard left me exposed to the sun to the point I thought I’d pass out.

Sweating like a pig, I brushed myself down and then went and got my new stickers for the car (having thoughtfully changed my coverage to include the kids), fetched beer as per Jeff’s request, taste tested a new vodka cooler (cranberry lime) and upon making the discovery that unlike every other cooler I’ve ever had, it wasn’t disgustingly sweet, I purchased some.

Then I planted some seedlings and discovered an ant colony in our compost pile.

I was supposed to go to Tom and Peggy’s to practice, but after the exertions of the day I couldn’t move.  I eventually recovered to the point of cooking toasted ham’n’eggers and collapsed for good around nine without even looking at my computer.

Lovely!!!!

Jeff and I and the folks had a lovely meal last night.  I am so happy to be able to return at least in some small part their hospitality.

Work is intense with the move coming this Friday and then Monday, hopefully all phones will be working.  It will probably go a lot better than I think.

I have lots to say but don’t know how to say it without sounding hopelessly self involved or just plain nuts.  Since anybody who reads this blog already knows I’m both (in heaping handsful) I can just leave that to one side.