Allegra the human ATM bonds with her son

I offered to buy Keith a leather jacket, so we went to Metrotown last night to pick it up. It looks awesome on him, even if it is brown, and it has a zip out lining so it is actually a three season jacket. After we went to the Bell store and I picked up a Blackberry, which I have now set up except the damned password for the phone doesn’t actually work and they don’t have any customer service over the phone until Monday, how lovely. Sigh. Anyway, it’s not like hundreds of people are calling me and I need to access the voicemail immediately. Apart from that little glitch, set up was quick and easy, and I can now type with somewhat more ease.

After the phone, we went to a Japanese restaurant in Metrotown and DAMN the food was good. We sat next to an Asian couple with two little kids. The little girl stared at both of us, but after half an hour she started fussing. Most of the time she was solemn as all get out, but when I started imitating her she grinned so adorably that Keith and I just melted.  Keith always gets stared at by little kids.  He’s attracted that kind of attention since he was tiny.

On the way home Keith started riffing about how he would love to make a movie starring Meat Loaf and Jack Black as father-son rock and rollers.  About the time we decided we wanted Jack White to be mistaken for Johnny Depp at the Rock and Roll hall of fame, we realized we were banging against the cage bars of fanficmeta perhaps a little too hard, but then I decided that Mila Kunis should be Jack Black’s girlfriend, and that the movie should start with a funeral.  And it all started again.  Keith and I can be a little nuts together when we hang out, but gosh, I had a good time last night.

His new job is working out okay.  It appears he brings out the motherly instinct in his boss, she keeps feeding him small treats.  I know exactly how she feels.

Then we came home and Jeff said, “Dere’s Pocky!” and we watched the Mentalist (I had to see the episode where Lisbon clobbers Jane in the head, and yes, he richly deserved it).  Then I messed around with my phone.  Then I slept…. and dang, after I cooked breakfast and poked around on the inertnets a while, and communed with Eddie who came to sleep on my bed, by cracky it’s almost noon.

The lying blogger

Ik.  The latest episode of House revolved around a blogger.  Everybody lies, but I try to make any lying I do on the blog one of those Omission rather than COmission things.  Nobody wants to know about my bowel movements, my sex life, my elaborate fantasies of revenge, my elaborate fantasies of, well, anything else.  Anybody who wants to know about these things (Ik, in case you hadn’t noticed) can apply for the details from me personally.  In person, I can lie with tremendous savoir faire, but not if you ask the right question.  Because, strangely enough, if you ask the right question, I’m obliged to tell the truth.  If you ask the question in a really offensive way, I’m likely to lie in a way a cheap rug would be all envy for.

In the meantime, I am reasonably happy and reasonably healthy and I’ve started making vacation plans for later this year, so there you go.  Nobody wants to know that because it’s boring.  I’ll have to think of something exciting, like, I’m planning on getting Keith a jacket tonight.

PS, somebody once commented that they don’t think I’m a liar, but I do tend to answer questions in a very evasive way.  I guess it’s better than saying, “Ik”.

More lovely technology

Follow me into the bathroom, will you?

Monday, I saw a coyote.  I said, startled, “Brother Coyote!” and he stopped and looked at me.  Really looked at me.  Then he moved on.

Tuesday we had a family kind of evening.

Last night I fed Jeff, Kashka, Katie and Keith at Ki Sushi.  We ate like morons (no alcohol) and the tab was 70 bucks and there were three containers of leftovers for Kat.

Today I hope to get to and from work without injuring myself … it snowed, and you know that means a possible horror show going down those snot-slick hills at SFU.

Work is fine.  There’s rather more of it than I like, but at least most of the phone calls I’m getting now are actually for me or people in my department.

Big Bang Theory’s most recent show was an instant classic, in my opinion.  I don’t know why Raj knows ballet terms, but it was pretty funny.  I like the way the show veers wildly between situational comedy, straight on slapstick, and extremely subtle verbal humour.

Could not have happened to a nicer guy

I don’t know if any of you have been following along after the career of Joe Arpaio, the meanest sheriff in the US.  He’s actually a full-bore sociopath, from what I can gather, whose office and cadre of patriotic meanies have been abusive towards pretty much anybody they could abuse while they had their guns strapped on.  The ACLU has had at least three motions in play at any given time against him for the last five years.  Here’s a timeline of his reign of terror, and I fail to see how you could call it anything else.  One that reaches into 2009 is here.

If ever there was a reason to distrust democracy, it’s in his person.  He’s been re-elected five times.

Anyway, a whole slew of emails which were supposed to have disappeared, to his advantage, have reappeared.  Now things will get interesting.

I’m recollecting several times a day the choir singing in church on Sunday.  It was so good I cried. Marcy told me after church she could see me grinning in the back as she addressed us… and well I know that feeling of what it is like to see a friendly face up there.

I am doing a lot better, although I wish the weather would decide it’s spring.  There are skunk cabbages in Lynn Valley now, so it is officially spring by my standards.

I took it pretty easy this weekend

But I still managed to get a few things done, namely, church, a church meeting, two loads of laundry, a couple of meals cooked, a tiny fraction of the digging for the garden, an audition, a nice long hot bath (mmmm).

I’m still feeling the pinched and weird effects of the ‘megrim’ but all things considered I feel pretty good. Today… there will be meetings.  I get to meet some of the folks from Chicagoland.  I hope they like biscotti.

Sunday miscellanea

Dug out one fifth of the garden yesterday, after an entertaining visit chez Tom and Peggy (Peggy was working) to borrow gardening tools and drop off the busted mandolin.  Anybody who has seen Tom’s garage knows how this is possible.  Paul accompanied me, and there was much mirth and mocking; personally I found the image of the concrete bags which had turned solid enough to form gun emplacement material very happy making.   Tom offered four substantial pieces of wood to frame the garden plot with (I am not turning down ten foot lengths of six by six treated aged cedar for this purpose).  I didn’t need a mattock, but it was so axe murder-y I had to borrow it.  Also, I now have a picture of myself cuddling a meter long spanner, this also being the kind of thing one finds lying about in Tom’s vicinity.  I was also thinking of asking him for sand as I was thinking of doing the potatoes grown in tires thing, but really I only have so much energy, and Jeff has already registered misgivings about my ability to keep up with a garden, which is only reasonable. I volunteered for various of Tom’s plans (mostly holding the ends of things, this being a requirement for most of Tom’s plans).  Tom and I also agreed to split a cartload of topsoil; Paul is going to investigate manure for his little garden plot.

I stopped digging after I twisted my knee.  It appears to be okay this morning, so back to the grind after church.  The dirt I’m pulling up is full of earthworms (also those nasty lawn chafer larvae, which I carefully threw onto the concrete so Margot could mishandle them).  Margot croaked in excitement when she saw the measuring tape.  So shiny ! So crinkly ! So making a wonderful noise as it disappeared into its hole !  She pounced on it but I was able to wrestle it away from her.

Great church meeting yesterday.  Various matters arose and I slept on them; I will be taking a decision later today.  It’s not particularly earth shattering.

It turns out the migraines were hormones.  As my career as a breeder staggers to a close, I suppose I’ll get this crap happening occasionally.  Grr, the mama bear said.  Grr.

When I was a kid I thought my dad was the coolest man who ever lived; he let us watch Laugh-In, he bought gouramis and lizards and four eyed fish (anableps anableps) and painted a stick man on the side of the house and he had a beard and he put up a geodesic dome in the backyard and he had trophies for shooting and he’d been in the Air Force and he could fix anything and he had a succession of unusual cars (Simca, anyone?  original Mini Minor?).  One of the many cool things about him was his taste in music.  (This is no longer the case.. he listens to Muzak now, but we all get old and tired, so I won’t repine).  I used to love it when he played the soundtrack from the early sixties show “Checkmate” – he had the soundtrack album – and it wasn’t until last night that I realized that the Johnny Williams who wrote that score (which is MADE OF OSSUM) is the same John Williams who wrote the Star Wars theme, and many many many others.  Prescient dude, mi papa.

Steak and eggs and coffee for breakfast.

Biscotti are on for the first bake…. I promised some to Tom this morning, and given his many kindnesses I’d better get on the stick.  Can you tell I’m feeling better?

Oh, my eyes

I am going to try to live screenless for the day.  Went home with a migraine yesterday.  I had the most appalling array and variety of symptoms.  Flashies, aphasia, feeling of impending doom, tingling and numbness, shooting pains, weakness, nausea (please, not the details), and now that wretched dissociative state that can go on for days. No headache or visuals, but I can’t spell and feel quite clumsly.  No, I didn’t do that on purpose.

However, that garden is going to get dug out this weekend no matter what.  I am gonna be a wreck, I suspeck.

Overwhelming feelings of depression resolve…

as soon as I have a migraine.  I must keep remembering that

I have atypical migraines

They are frequently preceded by days or weeks of feeling just dreadful

Because my migraines are atypical I don’t get standardized ‘signs’ for them

I can’t tell the difference between feeling depressed and being in the run up for a migraine

Afterwards it seems obvious.

So I got a migraine at work yesterday.  I couldn’t actually see properly for the best part of an hour, but fortunately if I turn my head sideways I can still see enough to type.  It resolved quite suddenly without pain, but I feel rather etiolated today.

It’s a good thing I’m used to this pattern; instead of throwing myself off a bridge I just wait, and strangely, one way or another, I feel better.

There was an incredible sun halo about an hour before sunset last night.  It’s been a heckuva week for atmospheric phenomena.