And I get to drive in it. Woo hoo.
Life
Grandpa
On the Tuesday before Hallowe’en, at 11:20 at night, my phone rang. Through the wonder of call display, I saw that it was my sister in Winnipeg calling. That time of night, it’s probably not going to be good news.
My grandfather had died at 11:00 that night. He was 88 years old, and he went, like Grandma in April, quietly in his sleep.
Whirlwind Weekend
This weekend I: saw, and had a brief chat with, William Gibson; did nage-no-kata with the head of the Canadian Grading Board for judo, and also had a brief intro to the first set of ju-no-kata; drew Darth Vader in Crayola crayon; and heard the cutest version of the ABC song I think I’ll ever hear.
Friday
I took the day off, since I wanted to be able to get to the reading at 2:30 PM. I left town about 11:30 AM, a little later than I meant to, but isn’t that always the way? Barreled down the highway, got into the city at about 1:15 PM or so, then made my way through the tail end of the noon rush to Portage Place. The reading was at the McNally Robinson bookstore on the main floor, in the little eatery there. I got into the store, and the food smelled so good. I regretted eating at McDonald’s in Portage, but I’d been hungry.
There weren’t any tables free. There were, however, quite a few tables with one person at them, and most of them looked like they were there for the reading. I was just trying to figure out who I was going to approach when two women got up from a table directly in front of the reading area and said they were leaving, and I could have their table if I wanted. Uh, yes. Thanks.
So I sat down, and the waiter came around, brought me a water and a menu. I ordered a root beer and waited. It was 2:00 PM, half an hour yet to go. A girl showed up, looking like she needed a seat, so I offered her a spot at my table. We chatted about writing for a while, then the reading began.
William Gibson (L) and John Havelda
Gibson read from his latest book, Spook Country, which I finished reading last week, and thoroughly enjoyed. It’s set in the present day; as he’s said in recent interviews, the present is pretty much science fiction these days. After he and the poet John Havelda did their readings, there was about a half an hour Q&A with the audience. Some good questions were asked, on the nature of language (both authors like to play with language; Gibson, after all, coined the term cyberspace back in nineteen-eighty-what-have-you, and Havelda is (IIRC) a Hungarian poet, raised in England, now living in Portugal with his Portugese wife), on the future of books, and the like. Afterwards I was one of the first in line, and I got my beat-up old copy of Mona Lisa Overdrive* signed by Gibson.
to be continued…
________
* I couldn’t find my copy of Neuromancer.
This weekend
Well, this weekend, up until Wednesday.
Friends of ours came into town, from all the way out in Saskatchewan, so we had some fun. My friend Kevin owns a couple dirtbikes, so I went dirtbikin’ for the first time ever.
We went out to the Double Decker, too. For bonus points: How many shots of tequila came to our table, and who shared them?
I think we’re finally back to our regular sleep patterns.
More bathroom reno photos
K, priming the walls.
Me, chiseling the shower drain a little wider so my pan would fit.
What I did with my summer vacation
Well, part of it, anyways.
I removed some moldy drywall from our basement bathroom a while ago, and I’ve been replacing it for the last little while. Well, actually, I’ve been hanging drywall yesterday and today; before that was some prep work, some more demolition, and a trip to the Peg to visit our respective sisters and their families.
Photos:
My nephew watching a Bobcat jackhammer concrete in his backyard.
Some of the demolition — pipes in the shower, and linoleum coming up.
Continue reading “What I did with my summer vacation”
Update
It’s been a little while, hasn’t it?
Tonight I have judo. Next weekend I may be heading into the city for a coaching technical class. Yes, the two of them are related.
I’ve been working on Everything that never happened, but not enough. I need to get some serious writing done tomorrow.
Facebook is, as I think I pointed out earlier, a bit like crack over DSL.
Xubuntu still rules, and still runs my nerd-box upstairs. It’s even lost its WiFi network connection less frequently and less catastrophically than the Windows box that it has replaced.
And that’s all I can think of now. More updates when I have something to say.
yrs,
-pat
Hmmm.
Maybe the NDP’s goofy slogan worked after all; they’ve got another majority, the biggest one yet.
In other news: I’ve gone twenty-four entire hours without hiccuping once. Awesome!
And now I must R‑U-N-N-O-F‑T to go pick up my wife.
On and off my meds
Days I’ve been hiccuping: 9.
I had my wisdom teeth removed on May 10th; since then I’ve had on-and-off bouts of hiccuping lasting, oh, three or four hours at a stretch. It’s really quite distressing. Okay, it’s !@#$ing irritating. You wormed it out of me.
I’ve been to two doctors about it. The first one suggested a low dosage of Haldol, which is an anti-psychotic (really). That didn’t seem to make a whit of difference, though, and so the next one prescribed something else, a muscle relaxant used to treat multiple scelrosis patients. He also prescribed a tiger-striped antibiotic for what appears to be an infection that’s got my right cheek puffed out almost comically. (Well, others might find it comical. Since it’s also tender, I’m a little less amused by it.)
So here’s hoping that the new drug stops my hiccuping. It’s had some effect already; right now I’m hiccuping, but for an hour or so while I played Lego Star Wars earlier today, I was fine.
Election funnies
So there’s a provincial election coming up. The incumbent party, the New Democrats, have decided to use “Forward, Not Back” as a slogan in this election:
Which makes me wonder if no one–no one–in their entire campaign apparatus has seen the Simpsons episode where Kang and Kodos run for election on Earth:
I mean, really. Sometimes it’s just too easy.