Quiet evening

leftovers and Beowulf…. 2/3rds of a good movie.  I know the original poem didn’t know its accent from its ass (to quote the charming Bill Burroughs) although I didn’t know, until I read the wikipedia article, that some people think the whole poem’s a fraud and wasn’t even written until the 16th century, as that’s when the manuscript miraculously turned up; the accents in the soundtrack come from everywhere in the northern world at that point, which wouldn’t have been too different from real life, when there was a lot of travelling across the northern sea.  I didn’t find the accents as weirding as some critics did; I guess after reading Dunnett’s King Hereafter I was prepared to hear just about anything.

Loved the monster Grendel.  The script was interesting in spots but mostly so pedestrian that I wanted to slap somebody.

Stephen Harper shows some class

Normally I don’t care much for the gent, but I have a lot of respect for somebody who goes to Auschwitz and then declines to comment to the press afterwards.  He showed up and didn’t use it as an opportunity to grandstand; kudos to the man.  Of course, I guess this just proves that he’s part of the international Zionist banking conspiracy, or may to the “I can has armband” crowd.

Lazy weekend

You know it’s a lazy weekend when the most impressive thing you did was stack and unstack chairs at church. (Good service.) That and go rescue Season 2 disk one Deadwood out of the DVD player in the storage locker (Jeff had other, arcane power supply business in there as well). Both of the kids were here yesterday; Katie insisted that she had to drop off Suzanne’s laptop for TLC from Jeff (note to everyone in Vancouver… Jeff is not some free Geek Squad wannabe) and then leave and then stayed for porkchomps Paulegra and The Scent of Green Papaya.

You must understand… getting Katie to watch a movie with virtually no dialogue and subtitles is like telling ball lightning to pose for paparazzi. She entirely volunteered, but I was gobsmacked.

Keith just hung around (he left just before dinner) and either watched Nascar with his uncle or played non stop computer games. In desperation, Jeff is building him a ‘good enough’ computer out of various scraps to perhaps stem the Sunday tide. Every other day of the week Keith is very busy; Sundays he wants to blow his brains out on computer games. This would be okay but Jeff can barely use his room; I’ll let them sort it out but the parking at the computer combined with Keith leaving about half his coiffure in Jeff’s soap made for interesting times. No, I do NOT want to live in a sitcom; it just keeps happening with grisly regularity.

Back to work, where a group of senior managers has decided to manage by cancelling the one useful meeting we all attend once a week. I could expound at career limiting length on this subject, but we polled the attendees and we’re going to book the damned meeting anyway, and if the managers don’t want to attend for their own reasons, that’s no reason not to meet and exchange information and work our projects, which is what we were doing before. My manager supports the meeting, at any rate, and gave me a thumbs up on rebooking with the relevant attendees, so my precious heinie is safe for the time being. Heavy sigh.

Off to church

our theme this morning…. tattoos and body modification.  I’ve had all the body modification I want from childbirth, thanks.  I do talk up the notion of getting a tattoo from time to time, but I just can’t think that it’s anything except a “I’m really cool for 50” move, and that makes me go skwik.

party

was success….. music, v. little alcohol, and the pleasure of the company of Tom Peggy Barry Keith Dr Filk Rob Mike Heather Patricia & Nicholas.  So all in all a nice blend of friends family and coworkers.
I must say, the biscotti were a success, and I’m glad I deked over to the cheese aisle for some brie….  This morning picked my way round the sleepers to load the dishwasher, then made coffee, then retired to the second volume of Quentin Bell’s bio of his aunty Virginia Woolf, then passed out again until about 10:30 am. Keith’s off home to do a laundry (today is not one of our days) and I just trimmed Dr. Filk’s scalp, something I haven’t done for a year.  He was describing, in amusing terms, his current job situation, which is reasonably secure but quite unhindered by management.
The Willie P Memorial concert is two Fridays hence.  I will try to get over there to sing and play but that means dreadful things like picking tunes and practicing.  Which reminds me, I have to get Dr. Filk’s arrangement of Step Away …. that’s one I’ll do for sure.  Oh god, it sounds like I’m committing myself.

more later….

Biscotti for partti

There will be an assortment of other pleasant things to munch which I won’t enumerate out of respect for my parents, who might be tempted to get on the ferry and join us if I did.  I am feeling very odd still, but I think it’s a migraine.

Jeff says he drifted off to sleep last night to the smell of almonds toasting, and now we are waiting for the first bake to be done so’s I can slice ’em and throw them in the oven. Lost my bank card last night, or at least one of them.  As I’ve had to replace it twice in the last year through no fault of my own I was a bit blasé about the whole thing, but earned a mercifully brief lecture from Jeff about being more organized, and maybe I should just leave it off there while pointing to the small grin distorting my phiz at the moment.  I am also smarting from having packed the season two disk one DVD of Deadwood in the *^%^* DVD player, which is resting comfortably in storage. Hopefully that will conclude my acts of dummheit, and I can fix these problems on the weekend, and hey, maybe even do some important banking that I had been putting off.

Okay! the biscotti, a perfect 10 of goldenbrown-ness, are sliced and back in the oven. If the downstairs neighbours are awake they are probably wondering what’s up – it’ll fill the house for sure.
Patricia’s coming home with me from work tonight and we are going to prep for the party together.  Either that or start partying early, I wouldn’t put it past us.   No.  I wouldn’t.   Turn up ze musique!  Dansez, mes enfants!  I have made the determination that just in case the Luddite shows up I am going to stay reasonably sober (he doesn’t care, but I do) by which I mean having three whole beers, instead of maybe six over the course of the evening.  We shall see.

One last comment.   I watched The Thing, the last 45 minutes, last night.  I had forgotten what an amazing bloody movie that was.  Then I watched Planes, Trains and Automobiles, which was on my lifetime list.  It’s always good to have a conversation starter for the office….

Sundry & Various

I came home from work last night and Jeff had moved all of the boxes we moved on Sunday into the spare bedroom. I was a little off colour yesterday, I’m not precisely sure why, and I was very grateful not to have to physically move anything.  I’m still feeling ‘strange’ today but I think it’s yet another one of my ‘atypical’ migraines. Nothing like being told by a neurologist that you’re ‘atypical’…. as if I could be anything else.

In an explosion of efficiency and organization (his response when I said this, Ha!) Jeff has prepared a list of everything that needs to be done around here. We find the taps in the bathroom, both sets, to be a trial; the bathtub taps have a really unpleasant mushy feel as if you can never get them entirely open or shut; the vanity taps squeak in an astonishing way. He’s already fixed the kitchen tap, and he moved the freezer downstairs on the weekend and it’s now running (the landpeers said we could have a freezer in the laundry room and the downstairs neighbours can use it too if they like). Earlier in the week I finally passed along the box of coloured pencils to the little girl downstairs (whom I have heard but never seen…I gave them to her parents.) It felt weird to have hung on to some stuff of Katie’s for years after she’d stopped using it, and really good to give it to somebody who would use it. Now if I can just get rid of the rest of my crap, life would be a glorious thing.

Scratch made meatloaf and tater tots for dinner. Jeff bought commercial biscotti earlier this week and I laughed at him.

Spoke to Tom and Peggy last night. They will be coming early and leaving early for the party on Friday as they have another event to attend, but even seeing Peggy for two minutes would be lovely (mind you I am going to church for the next two Sundays to help with set up and take down so I’ll see her again soon). I also spoke to the Luddite and assured him that my friends and family would consider his sitting in a corner and reading a book for the entire duration of the party to be unworthy of comment or criticism, but I don’t think I managed to sell him on the idea of coming on Friday, and given that I haven’t laid eyes on him in the best part of a month… oh well. Saturday’s out as he has another engagement and I have to be out the door at hours ongodly for church on Sunday morning. Grr.

My mOm has FINALLY received the results of her followup tests, and everything looks fine. Having braced herself for bad news she’s feeling a little blah. Granny is now well enough to do her own shopping although she fatigues easily. When you’re pushing a century with a broom you’re allowed to get tired; I’m just amazed after her last horrid illness that she’s made the recovery she has, and I am thankful beyond words that my parents are doing such a great job of looking after her while she preserves what independence she can.

At some point I’m going to imitate Jeff and start making a list of the stuff I want to do around here, but I’m still in confusion and error mode, so it may be a while before I’m back on track.

I have a HUGE bolus of work to digest today after many weeks of prep, so I should get off this thing and go deal with it. Have a great day, everybody.

One last thing. I just read a restaurant review which contained the line “If I didn’t know better, I would have thought I’d ordered thin slices of mole poached in Ovaltine.” Bleaugh!