butterflies

I’m going to go perform in public so of course I have butterflies…  Peggy has decided to come as well (separate conveyances) and so I asked my folks if she could crash there rather than at Pondside and my folks said yes.  (Lots of room at Pondside, but I volunteered to crawl out of bed early to get her to the bus.)  Pondside, in case you need to know, is where Dr Filk and his madly filking&recording landpeers live.

Last night I went to Superstore and did a small shop.  Forgot bread and cheese.  Duh.  Jeff picked me up and then I cooked salmon steaks, corn and bok choi, with strawberries, bananas and cream for dessert.  Yeah, I got my cooking mojo back after a slack couple of days.  Jeff has acquired a barbeque (Paul has kindly agreed to help him fetch it as the MR2 is a tad parsimonious of cartage room) and we are now looking forward to seared meat on the back deck in the hottest days of the year when you don’t want to be cooking indoors anyway – and believe me Vancouver gets smoking hot in the summertime.

I have just finished the first bake and slice of the biscotti I have been requested to bring to Victoria.  The ones on the top rack are almost but not burnt – the bottom rack biscuits are pretty close to perfect. I guess I am still not one hundred percent with this stove.

Neglected to mention that Jeff and Mike were much amused, last Friday, that they both liked the MR2 and were making tentative plans for a car swap and drive up to Pemberton or some such place…. hope I can come for the ride!  It’s such beautiful country up there.

I was supposed to go with Katie and Suzanne to a comedy show last night in New West, but I was bagged from an emotionally draining day at work (good emotions are draining, too) and knew I had to do a shop and some cooking.  Alas that I canna be in three places at once – I wouldn’t have minded seeing Glenn, either.

Watched a good chunk of Movies 101 last night which is essentially a very long and extremely sympathetic interview with Martin Scorcese.  Jeff and I kept looking at each other and saying, “Scorcese directed that??” or mentioning the Scorcese movies we’d seen that the other hadn’t.  I LOVED the Last Temptation of Christ and Raging Bull.  Jeff hasn’t seen either of them, but he has seen New York New York and Gangs of New York.  I haven’t seen Taxi Driver.  Okay, I guess I have a lot of those movies in my future.  Boxcar Bertha is inbound from zip…..   Barbara Hershey and David Carradine???  mmmm’kay.

Then some Deadwood.  We got up to the part where Woolcott does his nasty deed and Cy bails him out.

Time to get biscotti out of the oven…

the house smells heavenly.

Time to pack…. and feed some butterflies.

Ten things I love about Vancouver

  1. Pacific Cinematheque
  2. The view from Burnaby Mountain Conservation Area at sunset.  The view from practically anywhere.
  3. O My God the food.  Amazing restaurants, not too expensive.
  4. Really helpful passersby for every vehicular crisis I’ve ever had
  5. I have always received excellent care in any GVRD hospital emergency department
  6. Watching men in turbans eat with chopsticks.  wOOt.
  7. Sitting in the front seat of the new Skytrains.
  8. Watching the mighty Fraser.
  9. The Commodore!!!
  10. Pride Day!!!

Ten things I hate about Vancouver

  1. Driving in Richmond, except close to the airport
  2. The combination of rain, wind, darkness and pedestrian invisibility which constitutes winter around here
  3. Crow conventions outside my window just before dawn on the one day I can sleep late.
  4. Drivers who seem to have mistaken their sex lives for their driving – you know, fast, loud, unsafe, clueless and like they’re the only one there.
  5. The escalators at Granville station.  Vertigo, vertigo.
  6. ESL students.  I don’t mind that they can’t speak English, but they walk really slowly and throw garbage around like they’re getting paid to.
  7. Ferry lineups. 
  8. Guns n tasers on the fracking Skytrain.
  9. Transit sucks for the airport.  We are so mickey mouse it’s unbelievable.
  10. Homelessness.

Fur

Yes, there’s a lot of it.  Eddie is shedding, and I occasionally try to help the process along my taking a big brush and loosening it up….

Eddie is a very bizarre critter.  He LIKES having his fur vigorously rubbed the wrong way, including on his stomach.  For virtually every other cat I’ve ever met, such activities would result in a quick trip to the bathroom while dripping blood and cursing, but Eddie explodes into a 30 decibel purr and swims sideways across the carpet.

Gizmo came into my room last night.  I hoped he’d jump up on the bed, but instead he crawled under my desk and batted some loose cabling around until I sternly said, “Gizmo… beat it.”

Duh

Some female is posting her marital grievances on Youtube.

I keep tripping over it on the inertnest (click here and see this), and I’m just not going to go there.  I won’t watch it, I won’t comment on it.  I just really don’t know how many more apocalyptic signs we’re supposed to absorb before whatever happens happens, y’know?
I am Legend is playing, and you know, I just can’t deal with these critters always jumping out at Will so I’m playing on my computer instead.  It’s not a bad movie, I just am jumpy right now.

Quiet evening

I sure am lucky about my workplace.  I had an interesting day yesterday; I made Francis stand on something to find out where a serial number was; I almost called a customer a racist (this in response to not trusting factory trained repair personnel in furrin parts); I almost sicced HR on my boss (it’s all good, and I merely wish I could cross post the email because I think it’s one of the funniest – and tersest – I ever sent); and LTGW one-upped me in the anecdote department.  I didn’t think anything could top looking after the disposal of a companion animal, but evidently I was wrong.  Any evening that involves ICBC and the cops must by necessity suck worse than mine…

Anyway, I was ready for a quiet evening when I got home, and I “cooked” weiners and we watched No Country for Old Men. Yes, there are nights when my cooking is not exactly meat and two veg, unless you count ketchup and relish.
I liked the movie, but I told my mother not to watch it.  Violence, you know.

Trying times

There are occasions when being a writer and having a blog is a curse. An event will occur, or happen as a consequence of matters I am party to, and nothing would suit me better than to give a full account of it. I would have liked nothing better than to have given a full accounting to the exact reasons for and the beastly behaviour of other people during my marriage breaking up – fine, let it stand that I was self-willed and I’ll leave the name calling and cruelty and bald faced f*cking lies other people subjected me to out of the picture. To protect innocent people, and to prevent myself from looking like a goddamned asshole, more to the point, I guess, that’s what I have had to do. Nor am I complaining about the results. I am clearly happier and better off for having moved out of that house. I just wish I could tell the truth about it. I’m still on good speaking terms with my ex and kids, so no harm done, right?
I would like nothing better than to describe in gory detail what it’s been like to stop being a member of a couple and to have many of favourite activities curtailed and destroyed. Yes, I had to go there, yes, it was my idea when I was no longer psychically safe, but I really really haven’t liked it, and I haven’t talked about the times I’ve spent a day or two, here and there, crying for reasons I can’t describe. Yeah, I could definitely go on at length there. Into the memory hole with it. I’m not even keeping a private journal of those events, it’s not worth it, as in the end it’s living well that counts, not keeping a tally of every grievance. If I wrote it all out it would become impossible to forgive, and even now I haven’t forgiven… into the memory hole. There is no good outcome in setting it all out, whether for myself or others.
I would like to render a full account of yesterday evening’s events – how an entire panoply of human cruelty, stupidity, waste and denial played out as a consequence of the death of a companion animal and how I had to sit with it, and be companionable with that parade of nastiness, and deal in practical terms with it (ie, help move the body of a large Rottie cross onto a board and then a truck, and clean the inevitable leakage off the floor). When Scooter died, it was an opportunity to show family solidarity when we all went to the Lodge to say goodbye to her, in the dark midwinter; when Bounce died we were all together and had each other for one of those uniquely horrible and sad days families go through. Last night wasn’t like that. I have no beef with Mike, he lost his dog, and I am honoured he called on me to help. I have no beef for the icky factual stuff, and I now know that eating a pizza pocket and then cleaning up after a dead dog is a great way to remind yourself your gag reflex is set way high. I am angry, hurt, bewildered and rendered half daft by how mean some people are. Fifty years old almost and I still think people should be nice to each other, and here’s me upset when they aren’t. What am I, a child still?
I intend to give a donation to the SPCA in Vancouver and say a brace of prayers for the animal control staffer, who was an angel of mercy, dignity and punctuality.

I thank my mother for being a civilized human being unlike some others whose behaviour I am shielding as a result of my mother’s teachings, and my brother for his material aid yesterday in conveying me to Mike’s after work.

Chores

Practicing for the gig on Friday went very well; one of the cats, presumably Eddie, had an accident requiring additional laundry but you can ALWAYS wash your bathroom rugs anyway so what the heck; I learned how to play back prerecorded video from Shaw thanks to Jeff’s fabulous instructions (he wrote a BROCHURE); the weather was six kinds of gorgeous; church was great thanks to a really great service and I really didn’t mind doing chairs; my back doesn’t hurt for the first time in about three weeks; all my laundry is done and hung up (remarkable) except one load which I intend to go deal with right now; saw Keith briefly yesterday and he brought a Useful Object into the house, namely something to catch his immense nest of hair in the shower; cleaned various kitchen and household objects; I renewed the server account for this site and paid some other bills; more yelling downstairs but much more subdued than Friday night; ran into Heather at the Nanaimo skytrain and things don’t sound too good in her world right now.  Dunno. I guess I’m happy to be me.
The Luddite took a day off work to play with trains which involved him and a bunch of other guys moving track onto a new setup…. we’re talking about something the size of a basement.  He also mentioned something about strawberries in pots for me; I look forward to this with interest and yumminess.  Container gardening is about all we’ll be able to do here.