Til Death

I'm tired, but right now, good tired. I've had three field trips this week, that bit of my job is brilliant. But I can't believe it's nearly the end of March. It went so quickly, although as a money month, it seemed overly long.

French top banana Gerard Dépardieu is going to be playing Dominique Strauss-Kahn in a forthcoming docu-drama type film. He's doing this because he thinks DSK is a bit of a knob, well don't we all? GD however, thinks that his countryfolk in general are all a bunch of arrogant frogs.

Over in Deutschland, a bunny with no ears, Til, was going to make it big on showbiz. Sadly, its acting career was cut short at the press launch, when a camera op stepped on it and killed it.

And Deutschland may well have been less than happy with China. On FB this week, a picture of some product from China, had a display of several countries' flags on the packaging. Germany's flag had a swastika. Ouch.

Globally, 15% of drug users admit to having taken a mystery white powder without knowing what it was. Of those, a third said they had got said white powder from a stranger.

Outside, it continues to rain.

Moon, Venus, Jupiter

The weekend was two lengthening days of sun and beauty. Even the night sky was a sight to behold. A sliver of crescent moon, Jupiter and Venus to one side. The sun came with enough of a rise in temperature to allow the tomato seeds to germinate and the buds on the flowering cherry to threaten to open.
Today we have rain again, but the garden is glad of it. Next month's April showers will bring forth May flowers, although here, it could be May before March's flowers get their grin on.

 I have discovered the real and original use of a weblog. I had to fill in a form listing all the dates I was out of the country. It took some research, but the blog gave up its un-secrets.
It is a diary, so that's its purpose.

Mini-Jobs

Still delightfully cold. Presumably it can't last. Also, my tomatoes are germinating very, very slowly. Mountains look divine though.

March's dark moon is the seed moon. Perhaps I should only just have planted.

I'm loving having 'The Week' again. I was reading about Germany's 'mini-jobs'. Seemed like a good idea at the time, and solved their unemployment problem, but has now created an underclass living on subsistence level incomes and benefits. In some ways, there is a similar situation here, caused by the strength of the unions. The law itself gives little protection and only basic rights, while people in so-called 'union jobs' get several times the same rate of pay as other workers, and benefits which are often misused. The system needs a shake-up, but then that's what Angela Merkel is finding in Germany. She is having to consider introducing a minimum wage, something Germany has held out against.
Another problem it is experiencing, as are many western countries, is the low birth rate. Measures are being put into place to encourage families to have more children, but no-one can forget that so did the Nazis.

Since I've had this netbook, it has seemed slow and lumbering. This past week, we have discovered that the old 'you get what you pay for' adage, sometimes overlaps with 'be careful what you wish for'. Early on, I upgraded my AVAST anti-virus, and bought a version which was going to give me super-duper security. And it did. By scanning everything all the time and THAT is why everything I did on the computer was so slow. Now I have the slimmed down version and the whole thing is less frustrating.

Mothers and Dogs

Sunday was Mothering Sunday, but it had not registered on my radar, so I was surprised to hear the doorbell ring at nine o'clock. Whisky rushed downstairs barking madly. By the time I reached the door, there was no-one there, and Whisky slipped past me, bolted down the steps and trapped a woman who was trying to deliver an Azalea in a basket. She was shaking and trembling, and kept repeating how sorry she was, but that she was scared.
I'm appalled at how amused I was.

Monday morning we awoke to a hard frost, but it was sunny. Within the hour, the sky was covered with dark grey clouds, followed by hail and then sleet. Strange, but true.

The snowdrops are from our trip to England, here, there is just one tiny squill in the garden, the rest of the bulbs are just peeking a bit of foliage out of the ground, waiting for some sign that it's safe to come out.

The ignition mechanism on our furnace has given up. Naturally this isn't a piece you can just buy from Home Depot. Fortunately, we have a portable oil heater that keeps the whole house as warm as we like it, when set to half. I still wonder at people whose first reaction to feeling cold isn't to put on a jumper, it's to turn the heat up.
It's attitudes that sink us, and attitudes that raise us up.

The Knee, the Snow

The past week at the Schloss has been dominated by two things. Laurence's knee and the weather.

Whilst still in Birch Bay last Sunday, Laurence rang to say he'd been in hospital. He had been to the cinema on Saturday, early evening. He'd gone to the toilet and slipped. As he fell, his kneecap was displaced and he was in great pain. The security people called an ambulance and then he was taken to the hospital where they popped his kneecap back in and gave him painkillers. Then they turned him out into the night to find his own way back home - which, to his credit, he did.

He was told to stay off work for the week, but he won't get paid. That's the way it works around here. There's a two-tier system and a hell of a lot of people are left to spin in the wind if something like this happens.
I contacted the cinema and they contacted their liability insurance. We'll see what happens.
On Friday he went to the medical clinic and saw my doctor. She told him he needed to be off for another week and that he would need physio. Whilst the swelling on the knee looks as though it has gone down, she could feel it still. 

On Tuesday, it snowed. It snowed hard in that magical way that snow does. It stuck, and the parking lot of my work was transformed - in that magical way that snow transforms the world. By the end of the day it had gone, but the memory lingers. As magical memories do.

Circles in the Sand

Now where was I?
We came back, Kevin was ill, very ill, influenza ill. Unable to stand, feverish, aching, the whole shebang. And although he's now out of bed, he's still suffering.

While we were away, France dropped the title, 'Mademoiselle' because it is sexist and discriminates against women - fantastically done France!

Today, the New Statesman ran an article that stupidly asked the question, 'Is God Sexist?' and then didn't answer it, because the real question was, 'Is Religion Sexist?' because of course it is. A well-written article though.

Last night's full moon was astounding, it hung huge and gold in the sky. Couldn't get a good picture of it though. March's full moon - plough moon. You could have tilled a field by it.

Still pleasantly cold, it has been struggling to snow, at times cold and sunny. Frosty times.

This is England 2012

So that was England 2012. Alex says that ex-pats call it the thousand dollar cure. You think you want to go home. You go back for a couple of weeks and that cures you.

I must say, both of us were very taken by West Sussex. It is beautiful and it undulates.

The driving went well. I was surprised at how little trouble I had getting back into it, I was also surprised at how fast we drive over there. But we certainly needed a car, a little car, a little car with a ready-made dent in it.

We found new TV shows - not bad since we didn't watch much.

On the train on the way home, we watched 'Anonymous', a fictional account of Shakespeare's life. Vanessa Redgrave as the older Queen Elizabeth was an inspired choice, especially since her daughter was able to play the younger queen.

Back at YVR, we sat on the tarmac as the auxiliary power which pushes you to the gate, failed to come on. As soon as you're on the ground, it gets hot. People got up and stood in the aisles, in spite of being told not to. They made it hotter. When we did get off, we had to wait for an hour for our luggage, all pretty tiring. But oh well, we're back.
Work tomorrow.
No sweat.

Red Letter Day

Yesterday (Thursday) was an all-systems go, start to finish day. First thing we went to the Register Office in Portsmouth for our friends' wedding. The perfect wedding, since they had been married for some time, but needed the legalities done. So this was what it was, no rings or vows exchanged, just papers signed in front of witnesses.

The brides treated us to an amazing lunch at a very high end restaurant, my goodness are those waiting staff polite without being obsequious. Food - out of this world.

In the evening, fate had accorded us a rare treat - Ben's band were playing in Pompey. And my god were they amazing! just phenomenal, of course I'd seen them on YouTube, but live - just awesome.

Back to Pulborough for a rest, seeing a friend locally tomorrow:)

V-Day

The story so far.
Friday, took Whisky to Kev's parents' house, went to work, came home, my friend Yvonne picked us up and took us to the airport. Plane left on time, slept most of the way, sorted.

At Heathrow, not so sorted. Even the new, swishy terminal five was not working like the well-oiled machine it should have been. We waited ages for the shuttle train to take us to Arrivals. At baggage reclaim, and how is it this can happen? one bag came out almost straight away, the other, handed over at YVR at exactly the same time, took another half an hour or so.
Then Avis - who managed to rent us a car with a huge dent in it. If I'd wanted rent-a-wreck, I'd have done so straight off the bat.
Oh well.

Then we had difficulty finding Austen and Sue's new place, Google maps weren't as helpful as I usually find them, and the country lanes were dark, very dark. Luckily, navigating the narrow, windy, unlit roads and passing people coming in the opposite direction by a fraction of an inch, all came back to me.

West Sussex is lovely though. There's a tawny owl roosting in a tree next door. The countryside feels very comfortable and we're enjoying the walks and the ruined castles and such like. There's still snow on many of the fields and hills.
Oh, and Sainsburys, which, admittedly isn't confined to Sussex. Sainsburys has this awesome new scheme. They monitor their main competitor's prices daily on everything they sell, then they give you a money back coupon for the difference on any item that their competitor was selling more cheaply that day. Certainly keeps me coming back!

Tomorrow we'll re-connect with Portsmouth. Tally-ho!

Lego State

Washington State has passed a law to allow marriage equality. This should come to pass in the summer sometime. Naturally the bigot wheel has been rolled out. I can't even be bothered to look at their spew to be honest.

I see that the weather in Britain has become colder, even colder than here. I look forward to it.

A YouTube clip about Lego has me gobsmacked. It seems that real research has linked enhanced development in the thinking skills that are needed for science and engineering, in children who play with Lego.
The Lego company, according to Spokesperson Mads Nipper - has spent four years trying to find out how to market Lego to girls. You think I'm not going to say it, don't you?
But I'm afraid I am.
You make it pink and purple, you put the little people in short skirts, and you have them do girl friendly Lego activities such as keep house, visit the hairdresser's and, well, just generally hang about being girls. Of course I like arranging my house and going to the hairdressers, but I also like dinosaurs, sciencey things, splitting the atom, and other not-very-ladylike activities.

But, if you think about it, you don't really want girls going in to science and engineering, because there might not be enough to go round. Or it might become not cool, because girls like it.
Or something.

Good gracious. There are so many freaking layers of patriarchal oppression, tis difficult to know where to start.
And four freaking years to come up with what most people could groan and predict in five seconds.
Here's some free advice Lego, just market it to girls by simply putting girls in your ads, showing girls playing with it, by radically changing your mindset to the fact that girls like dinosaurs, aeroplanes and building things.

Zombie

Yeah, no, not her.

So, one of the ongoing REALLY BIG QUESTIONS is, how to make Zombies interesting - except of course for those who find Zombies inherently interesting, not me, I don't, but lots of other people who I like, do.
Where was I?
Oh yes, 'The Fades'. My goodness, what a little gem of a TV series - BBC I think, but it was on our telly, and such a quirk that we found it. Since we rarely watch the telly as it happens, we are rarely channel surfing, but we did, once, and we found this. Awesome series. Never let up. Watch it and then we'll enter into dialogue about whether the Fades count as Zombies. Um, and not just the first episode,




Another unbelievably fab series is 'Call the Midwife'. It is about a group of midwives/district nurses operating out of an Anglican convent in the East End of London in 1957 - yes, the year of my birth. Utterly fascinating, and finally we are getting some programmes about women's work.

Ever thought of this ? - You know those questions you get where someone asks you who from history you would most like to meet? And you say, 'Eleanor of Aquitaine'. Well, I would. And what if we DID get to meet that person and it turned out that actually we WERE that person. That in a previous life, we were them. How would that work? Spookily, I feel.

So, that aside. Saturday evening, returned from work, straight down to the Static. Icy rain, dark, I cycle to the barely heated swimming pool. I swim, alone, every time the wind blows, the awning - the bubble - over the pool, shudders and icy water rains down through the holes in its roof. Enjoyable though. I put my jacket, trousers and trainers on over my cossie and towel, and cycle back through the icy rain, and realise I am racing a skunk. Who knew they could move like that? They always seem to amble along - waddle almost, but this one was really legging it. Important to outrun a skunk though.
You could argue - training for the zombies apocalypse.

Solar Flare

So, bit of confusion over the Year of the Dragon - thought it was yesterday, so did the rest of predominantly Chinese Richmond, but the Chinese astrologer in the local rag reckons it's 4th Feb. This is the same local rag that this week brought us the gem, 'We got a funnel!' Indeed.

Still, the year of the dragon appears to be heralded by severe solar storms raging out in the ...well, solar system. The Aurora Borealis is apparently so active that the lights can be seen down here. Not quite sure what you have to do to see them though. I've peered out at the night sky. There is a stunning sliver of crescent moon and a bright star, but no light show.

On Friday we awoke to really big snow, the sort that makes you think you've moved to Sleepy Hollow, but by the evening it had been mostly melted by the driving rain. And the rain is still driving, let me tell you.

It comes home to you how many channels on our TV are from the US when Obama is giving his State of the Union address. This evening I had to scroll through quite a few before finding an actual programme.

Amazon recommended me a bunch of books based on my recent purchases - according to them."Hokkaido Highway Blues : Hitchhiking Japan". Seriously, they got this from a bunch of British Field Guides and some random fiction?

Trinity Baptist church on Granville Street, Vancouver, has a sign outside that declares that God's favourite word is 'come'. Hmmm..Well I suppose God's name does get called a lot at that moment.

Why does Julian Assange think he's worthy of a TV prog? Good grief. Must be the solar storm messing with reality.

Big Snow

Well, biggish. We had snow on Friday evening. When I drove to work from Birch Bay on Saturday, the fields to either side of Route 99 were insanely beautiful. The evergreens were draped with sparkling white, and in one blanketed pasture, a bunch of dark-coloured llamas were kneeling down. Right at the tope of bare-branched deicduous tree, a bald eagle looked hunched into its feathers. Yet the eagles love the cold weather, they simply own the sky.
There was another sprinkling overnight on Saturday-Sunday, but when we got back to Richmond, there had clealry been more.
Very early this morning it started up again and the drive to work was through driving snow. If I didn't have the windscreen-wipers on all the time, then the snow froze as the blades cleared it. The roads hadn't yet been fully cleared, but at least people were driving at sensible speeds and with a good stopping distance in between.
For now, we are not due any more until tomorrow night, we'll see. Today, the top temperature has been -6.

Just Bleuch

My day off! So typical then that I felt suddenly so rough around midday and throughout the afternoon, that I thought I might be seriously ill.

I took my pulse and found I had none. Rather than assuming I had hit the wrong spot, I naturally wondered whether I was in fact dead and hadn't realised it.
This was probably more as a result of watching a British TV programme yesterday called 'The Fades', where people who couldn't find the way through to the afterlife, wandered around, unable to interact with the living world, and getting angrier and angrier about it.
I noticed that I was in fact able to interact so the chances were that wasn't what had happened. When I did find my pulse, it seemed to be a fairly normal 68.

Still, waves of nausea, feeling that I was going to faint and feeling hot and cold wrecked my day. I know several people who have had truly awful bouts of gastric flu in the last couple of weeks. This, I was not keen on.
I'm still hoping it won't develop, and I certainly feel much better than I did earlier, but haven't been able to face any actual food. I've drunk water and hot Marmite and lain around like a sickly heroine.
Feeling cold's a bit of a novelty.I think I could handle it without the nausea and faintness.

Apocalypse...sometime

Television's coming back. It has been away for about a month, and we had almost exhausted our saved-up British TV programmes and then the new episodes of things started to trickle in. This Sunday, it starts up in earnest and of course soon, so will the meetings.

This week we have had Noah-esque rain, although today was dry and by the end, clear. And thus, colder. In fact, when I left work this evening, the sky was an almost-dark blue, rather than black.

We've been watching a programme about the people who believe the Mayan prophecy about 2012. It seems that it has been downgraded to more of a 'something bad will happen sometime'. Yes. If we don't stop warming up our planet, the climate will change cataclysmically.
Apart from the man who thinks it will happen earlier. Say wha'?

Happy New Year

Happy New Year wherever you are.

We were down at the Static for New Year, a friend stayed over and we had a quiet but enjoyable evening, food, film, wine, sparkling wine and oddly timed fireworks. They seemed to go mad between nine and nine thirty and then nothing.
Today we returned and took the Christmas decs down, swept the floor of fir needles, put washing on.

Our Christmas period entertainment has been mostly Downton Abbey. England's obsession is our obsession. With just the two-hour Christmas special to go, we face the long, dark teatime of the soul until the next series appears.

Sometimes, the Christmas period seems interminable. Sometimes it's over in a blink of an eye.

I don't have any resolutions. I have things I want to do, to explore, to face head on, but nothing as specific as a resolution.

Today would be my friend Anne's birthday. I have been typing up some of the 'missing' chapters from her novel. I have the hard copy, but no electronic file. For one reason or another, I had to photocopy some of the pages. As I typed them up, I put them in the recycling. One morning over the past week, I awoke to a familiar, yet unplaceable scent. It came into my head that it was Anne's soap, yet I still couldn't say, 'oh yes, of course.' I went down to make the coffee. I was standing on the opposite side of the kitchen and suddenly, the pages of Anne's novel lifted up from the bin and fell down the stairs, as though they had been moved by a breath of wind. Of course, there were no windows open and there is no heating vent anywhere near the recycling bin. Coincidence I guess, at a time when my friend is very much in my thoughts.

I still find it unbelievable that she is no longer here. In the grand scheme of things, I hadn't known her that long, but we were good friends. When I think of friends that I don't see, or don't see very often, but whom I've known for almost my whole life,  it seems impossible that the world could continue without them being in it. At some point in my life, I guess I'll experience that - or they will.  And I can't imagine it, nor do I want to.

New Year.
Makes you think.

Rain Tree

Christmas was wet, very wet, not a single flake of the snow that I had ordered. Actually, Christmas is still wet. We are heading towards a record-breakingly dry December, so natch, the weather gods had to try to avoid that and unleashed water from the sky.

We've had a very Downton Christmas, it must be said, but we can't even watch the Christmas Special until we've watched Series Two.
Great Doctor Who Christmas Special though.

There was no Midnight Mass in church this year, just a Mediaeval Christmas service which includes lots of Latin. Unfortunately, having studied Latin for many years at Grammar School, I understand it. Back door sexism. `Really, I don't care about the lack of Mass anymore. Instead, I drove to the airport to collect Kev's brother, flying in from Toronto.

I have eaten much good food, Kevin did us proud. Now I need the feeding frenzy to settle down.
Back to work tomorrow.
Redemption the day after.

Solstice

Solstice at 5.30 this morning. I led a Solstice Walk at 15.00. I enjoyed it, and did some meditation exercises with the people who came. They all seemed to enjoy the experience.

Kevin sent me this article. Seems as though Atheists get a raw deal.  I sent this article to my friend Raymond. His response was 'It's the cross we bear,' which I thought was chortle-worthy:)

And women continue to get a raw deal. Feminist Hugo Schwyzer explains how women suffer 'gaslighting' and why he disagrees with people who use it as a strategy whilst claiming to support women.

Tuesday Jelly

I keep thinking it's Tuesday. You know those dreams where you are struggling against jelly and you try and try to move forward but you don't get anywhere. Yes, that. I haven't even bought any cards, so that's not happening. Fortunately, we only do pressies for the kids and grandkids, and we've gone with green, by default, but we have. They have money and tokens. They seem happy enough.

Happy Chanukkah for anyone who Chanukkahs.
I have a number of people signed up for my Solstice walk on Thursday - Solstice. I'm looking forward to that.

The weekend at the Static was relaxing. Well, just a day for me because I had to come back up Saturday morning for work, but I did manage to swim and sleep and clear up a bit, no appreciable internet still but, whatever. Monday I cleaned back here, or let the energy flow as I see it.

Weather's gone warm again, that's not so good, but then even that's relative. 

I suppose, in a manner of speaking, I'm ready.
Bring it.

Trudeau

One of the few Prime Minsters that Canadians actually seem to like, was Pierre Trudeau. His son, Justin, is now an MP and currently sporting some dashing and altogether rather embarrassingly awful facial hair. Post Movember I'm told.
But right now, he is a bit of a hero.

The greater embarrassment for Canada, far greater than Justin's beard, Celine Dion and Bryan Adams all rolled into one, is the fiasco of the Durban Climate Conference when Canada withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol. In truth, we had a commitment to reducing emissions by 6% by next year, whereas emissions in this country had actually risen by 30%. Epic failure on that one.

Canada's so-called Environment minister,criticised another minister who took up this awful state of affairs with him in the House of Commons, but he had personally prohibited the other ministers from going. Trudeau, in parliament, called him a piece of shit.

Like a true Canadian, he then apologised.
But he was damned right.