Heavy sigh, happy sigh

So the heavy sigh is for missing posting yesterday, but I got called into work.  The great thing about temping is that you get to see what other places to work really look like.

This place had:

  • decent coffee
  • an infestation of mechanical engineers about six deep
  • it’s own ERP
  • a decent fast restaurant in the basement
  • one bus ride from here
  • less than twenty minutes from here
  • walking distance from here in a pinch or bad weather
  • interesting, worthwhile work
  • and the job is currently available

The heavy sigh is because I won’t get it, but gosh it was pleasant working there and I would have had loads of fun teasing elderly engineers.  I would have also got to watch the Skytrain go by all day long, which doesn’t hurt my feelings.

BEST LINE OF THE DAY.  One of the engineers, responding to something a contractor was saying in a conference call, and sounding, how shall I put it, mildly exasperated, said, “You are confusing expediency with practicality“, which caused me to SWOON.

Then I came home after a satisfying day, smiling in the rain and clutching my signed sheet, which I still haven’t faxed, and found my brother had just got home.  He said, “I got ya a present, I hope you like it.”

Well, it was from that batch of slides that Loki processed from 35 millimeter to digital, the slides from when we were, like, 9 months old and 2 and a half, respectively, and Jeff’d had it blown up to half poster size (with Blossom Su of course, the framing magician of pictures, art and media, she wot did the Inuit hunters).  Of all of the pictures in that batch, it was the one I wanted.  Both of us look incredibly goofy, and nothing much has changed.  I could hardly be more pleased.

A thoroughly satisfactory day.

Today, dentition maintenance at noon.  Dafter Katie (that’s daughter written US Revolutionary War style) is going to Victoria to be a prop and stay to her grandmother (and, if I may be so bold as to say it, to get the hell out of Dodge the week before her -hopefully- last legal encounter with her ex boyfriend.)

Also today I have to phone my old employer and work some contacts.  I am so ready to go back to work it’s ridiculous.  And to think, a couple of weeks ago, I thought I had forgotten how.  I am anticipating work – but things are, apparently, not very rosy at the old place and I have had two different engineers tell me not to come back, although I suspect both of them have ulterior motives.  Maybe it IS time for me to move on, can’t step in the same stream twice, harrumph harrumph.

News out of Haiti is very grim

The wikipedia article is claiming that there may be more than 100000 dead.  Three Canadian police are unaccounted for; the Catholic archbishop was killed when his office collapsed.  Communication is impossible.  I light a candle for the survivors; I think some of them may soon have cause to envy the dead.  Red Cross donations link is here.

Update:  the news is worse and worse, but a couple of the missing police officers turned up.

Still feeling cheerful despite everything

My thinky thoughts include sadness at the dissolution of my granny, who, candidly, ain’t getting better, and why should she, being 98, and what I’m going to plant when I have a garden next year, and how I need to get going on my projects because I won’t have much time soon because I suspect I’ll be working full time, and how well the bagels went over yesterday (I took homemade bagels, plus butter and cream cheese, in to my assignment), and how I’m a bad puppy for leaving the passenger side door unlocked the last time I borrowed Jeff’s vehicle, and how not taking glucosamine for three days makes my back hurt scandalously, and how Jeff is working on getting a somewhat more modern furnace filter installed (you should see the old one – it is disgusting), and how I wouldn’t mind learning how to do different things to my hair as opposed what I do now which is wash, comb, leave it be, and how hilarious it was that Robert Wagner and Michael Weatherly got to play opposite each other on NCIS when Michael Weatherly looks so much like Robert Wagner he played him in The Mystery of Natalie Wood. By all accounts a ludicrously bad miniseries.  This all represents a tiny fraction of what I am currently processing.

Bedside reading – Worship that Works, The Artist’s Way at Work, and a Latin English dictionary.  I should probably find something fictional. It’s just, as I get older, I realize that the odds of me reading any fiction that will be as good as Dunnett or O’Brian is freaking small, so I’m a lot happier with non-fiction.

And now for something incredibly cheerful, and sexist (all the way ’round).  The person who forwarded it to me (the Luddite) called it “East Germany’s answer to West Side Story” but I suspect it’s actually West German.  I don’t know how they got all the women to dance like penguins, and all the men to scowl in such an ineffectual way, but full points for goofiness, folks!

All done!

My temp assignment, being, uh, temporary…. is over.  Free lunch, pleasant work, really great supervisor (she faxed my pay sheet in for me), really smart fellow temps.  A magnificent reboot of paid employment.

I will be cooking hockey pucks for dinner (note, this means filet mignon) and the rest of the meal will be leftovers.

Honestly, I’m so happy right now I can’t stop smiling (and singing Shuffle off to Buffalo, which is weird).

Cat plus pig = cute picture

I warned you. Scanged from Reddit.

I checked my job card again and I don’t have to be at work today until one.  Full report upon my return.

Paul called me up yesterday and we went for a walk on the Quay and then we sang and played for a while – like a couple of hours, so it was a singing kind of day yesterday.  Also, balm to my wounded ego, he wanted to play along to a bunch of my tunes (he did the back up guitar for the recorded version of “Evening News” which I have always found quite tasty).

John’s six string Guild is a Man’s Freaking Guitar; the tips of my left hand fingers feel like I tried to stop a grinding wheel with them. And of course playing it without crying is hard to do sometimes; I’ll be messing with it and there will be a vertiginous sense of loss, and then it’s “Just keep playing, just keep playing.”

On the plus side I know how to play the rhythm mandolin for Two and Twenty Blues now, and the only solace as my fingers started to burn was that Paul was having a bear of a time with the guitar portion.  We played just the guitar and mando parts through about four times; Paul said it was all he could do to play the guitar part let alone sing on top of it. The mando and the guitar sound sweet together – the final result will be worth it.  We STILL don’t have a set list, but I suppose I shouldn’t whine, it’s all about the having fun, right?  Except it doesn’t sound bad, and I enjoy performing, during the brief spells when I’m not wanting to cocoon against the rain and the O Rim Pics.

After weeks of being impossible to keep in tune, the mandolin is finally behaving.  Turns out the problem is the hanger!  When I hang the mandolin up on the wall it promptly goes out of tune and stays that way.  However, when I put the mandolin in the case and hang THAT on the hanger, it behaves.  The guitar doesn’t behave like that at all.  I need new mando picks, all my old ones have wandered away, the little beggars.

After 8 months, Margot has finally figured out that when I pick her up I may just brush her, so she’s learned to scamper away at my approach.  If this keeps up I’m going to have to take her to a groomer and get her taken down to about an inch.

She really enjoys getting right behind Eddie when he’s eating and enthusiastically licking his butthole.  Eddie makes a series of loud and unhappy noises – mixed with eating sounds – but stands his ground.  The visual is really quite striking.  She never does that to Gizmo.  I guess there’s something really irresistable about Eddie’s butt, and if I ever said I wanted to come back as a cat, I take it all back now.  Really.

Birthday party

Last night I attended a co-birthday party with Kat and Kashka and Katie and their friends, which included the following events and observations.

  1. Kick ass margarita courtesy of Kat.
  2. Hugs from Cassie, which were improved by her Dita-von-Teese-worthy hat and veil.
  3. Communing with Speck, who LOVES my hat.
  4. “O my gosh, there’s a snake on your hat”.
  5. Feeling better after letting a snake crawl around my hat, collar and glasses for a while.  I have no idea why this would be, but it is so.  It might be the beautiful, incremental muscle motion; it might be knowing that somebody really enjoys my body heat. Speck is a lovely, lovely snake, pretty and sociable.
  6. Getting a chance to hang with my current favourite teenaged boy (in terms of raw appearance).  I gots nothing to say to him, but he’s so pretty and good natured that it hardly matters.
  7. And what music were they listening to?  The very same stuff I was listening to in Toronto on CFNY during the eighties.  At least half a dozen times I said, “The first time I heard this song I was your age.”  All this has happened before, and all this will happen again.
  8. I told them about the fan made Brad Sucks “Making Me Nervous” video and we watched it.
  9. The girls got Pocky and lamb kebobs for their birthday.

Today, The Dreaded Tapioca Song goes to church.

The atheist’s dilemma

There are essentially two broad lifestreams, ways or paths of being an atheist.  One is to define oneself in opposition to theists and purveyors of superstition.  The other is to define yourself in terms of reason and leave God out altogether.

Up until this point I’ve felt the need to define myself in opposition to God-wallopers, but more and more atheists are striking up a new tune.  There is no reason for superstitious people to expect to call us down to their level for the purpose of the argument they wish to win; it’s the job of the modern atheist to get free of the mire and muck of hatred and ignorance, however fancily garbed – and stay that way.

I believe in the power of the human mind, and sadly rue its limitations. I would rather live with those limitations than any imposed by any supernatural being, however benign.

I believe that an ounce of my experience is worth a pound of someone else’s prescription; but when I don’t have the experience, I will gladly fill the prescription.

I believe that from atoms I was constructed, in the shelter of my mother’s womb, and to atoms I will return, and that these atoms will never appear again in this orderly dance, no, never, even if the universe is eternal.

I believe that apes are my cousins and that we share a common ancestor not just with apes, but with every mammal; I believe that every cell in my body is a timeline of life on Earth, from the viruses my ancestors took into their bodies and bequeathed to me, to the DDT that’s lodged in my body fat.

I believe with a passion and anger that occasionally startles me, that every child born should be a longed for, welcomed member of my planetary family.

I believe that every person on earth has meaning, value and inherent dignity, even the ones who hate me and want to kill me.  I believe that if I cannot look at a good and productive person and an violent malefactor without seeing myself mirrored there, I am likely lying to myself and losing a lesson.

I believe that the power of intelligent consensus will replace the clunky and meanspirited political engines running amok in the world today, and to the extent I can, I run my life by consensus.

I believe that corporations should not be legal persons.  Until a corporation could be jailed, it cannot be a person.

Family, love, learning, work and service to others are the five pillars of my life, and each day is an opportunity to give myself to these things.

I believe I am responsible for my own health, mental and otherwise, and that part of that responsibility is looking out for others so that they will see some benefit in looking out for me.

I believe in drinking beer from the bottle to avoid dirtying dishes unnecessarily; that games and sports are to be played first and watched only a distant second; that self-sufficiency and generosity co-exist in a balanced life, and that although no good deed goes unpunished, it’s the badly thought through good deeds that tend to cause the most trouble.

I believe it’s possible to think about things too much.  As much as I like words, I cannot express all I think I know, and all I know I feel.  I believe I must spend a part of every day deconstructing myself, my biases, my weaknesses and my strengths; part of every day laughing; part of every day working; but I am happiest when I don’t seem to be thinking at all.

I believe that science, inquiry, observation and intuition all have their place in coming up with solutions to human problems.  I believe that I will never fully understand how my mind, my senses and my body work, or don’t work, together, and that’s okay.

I believe in the power of individuals and families and whole civilizations to change, both for the better and for the worse, and that change for the better takes love and work, and change for the worse takes hate and destructiveness. We may never tire of war; the uniforms are too cool.

I believe in the healing power of nature; the grandeur of space; our cosmic good fortune in dwelling on our green blue world.

I believe that the moon belongs to everybody, and the earth does too.  But I don’t believe that anybody else will necessarily agree with me, and I believe it would be a terrible world if everybody agreed with me and was just like me.  I believe in variety, I believe in mongrels, and I believe in life.

nautilus3 is going to upload herself into an AI and keep working

….because her list of shizz to do before she dies is TOO LONG

Here’s the list as edited by me. I’m leaving the family names off.

Cousin’s letter (which I have stolen as an idea for an SF story).  A cousin’s letter goes around to all the cousins and they add something to it and send it to the next person on the list.  This has been a ten year project.

She does a family calendar (with Loki) and has done for a dozen years – one each for both sides of the family.

She has a family history site and blog.

She maintains a genealogical database.  Note to self… if Alex is going to catch the family history next, what the hell is going to happen when the database needs to be switched from PC to Mac?

Two other family letters.

Activities around a once-every-three-years family reunion.

Family tree, third edition due soon.

Completed projects include Aunt Mary’s diary, my paternal granny’s life story, a Dresden plate quilt worked on by five generations of women (gives me chills to think about it, which, thankfully, a quilt can fix),  a dozen life stories of family members and their life partners, my dad’s stories, my grandad’s stories, transcriptions of diaries, letters, and papers of yet more rellies, in profusion, picture her hacking her way through flabby sentences and questionable spelling with her Editrix Machete of Coherence, her dad’s stories (a two volume opus of such merit and wonder that I am baffled as to how to describe it).

And there’s more.

Coming up …MORE THAN TWENTY PROJECTS.  I went through the list but I started to feel chest pain at the notion of retyping it.  I exaggerate, barely.

All I meant to say about this is that, just in case nobody had noticed, my mother is completely awesome.  In addition to all that she quilts, knits, keeps my dad fed and happy, puts up hordes of relatives and is a meeting point for many friends and family coming through town (she recently entertained both Bonnie and Rani when Bonnie visited her sister in Victoria), is a two time cancer survivor and is intimately involved in the eldercare of her 98 year old mom-in-law, reads non-fiction, keeps up with contemporary movies and TV on DVD, gardens, bird watches, clears about thirty to sixty email messages a day, and keeps her temper while being pestered for her ‘prayers’ for ministry by relatives in furrin lands civilizin’ the heathens. She is currently in the market for atheist tracts to send to relatives.  No luck so far.  I may have to write one for her.

To recap.  Awesome, and a good person, too.  I’m not going to say that everybody who meets her loves her, but the fans outnumber the detractors by a very wide margin.

So I hope nautilus3 lives until the singularity and uploads herself, because I’d like to think that she’ll be giving her attention to her family members for another thousand years.  In my universe, she is grandmother spider, holding the family together with a skein of light and powerful threads.