thisCassandra

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

If month  = december then goto socialobligations
    elseif month = january then goto jetscoolage
    elseif month = february then goto whistlermaybe 
    elseif month = march then goto yearendsurely
    elseif month = april then goto easter
    elseif month = may then goto drivingholiday
    elseif month = june then goto beach
    elseif month = july then goto folkmusicfestival
    elseif month = august then goto hornbyisland
    elseif month = september then goto backtoschool
    elseif month = october then goto turkeythengraveyard
    elseif month = november then goto cenotaphthenturkey
Else goto end

December is always looming, and January is always just beyond that. I work myself into a lather for December, then rinse off in January, then repeat ad infinitum. Living and working in time gives me repetitive strain injury.

Speaking of repetitive strains, I am always surprised at how I can listen to the same piece of music over and over, sometimes for hours or days or weeks or even months at a time. It's as though it becomes an integral part of my brain chemistry and I need it to survive with any sense of certainty that I exist (I hear, therefore I'm here), as much as I need air, food and water. Maybe more than I need sleep.

I am always surprised at how addicted I can be to music. Just after Glenn Gould passed away, I bought a vinyl copy of his 1982 recording of "The Goldberg Variations" (GG1982GV). I transfered it to tape and I played it a lot. When CD players came out, I bought one, and the same day I bought the GG1982GV CD, put it on and pressed play. When it ended I put it on repeat and didn't stop listening to it for two or so years. I listened to it while I slept, while I studied, while I was on the bus, but always privately; I really only ever listened to it by myself. I didn't even want to share it with my friends. It was a soul-o activity for me.

I met a few other people who were addicted to Glenn Gould and/or his recordings, the most notable being S*****, who was a part-time library assistant in the Wilson Listening Library. S***** confided to me that she had fantasies of losing her virginity to Glenn Gould (who had been dead for almost two years by that time). I admit that I was sorely obsessed and had a few fantasies of my own, but he functioned pretty much as a signpost and literary muse for me; there was nothing ever virginity busting. That said, there might have been had there been any virginity issues at the time.

I don't listen to GG1982GV so much anymore, though I still listen to it when I'm studying or doing something that requires me to concentrate. It helps me to get to the calm and receptive state of mind that I need to be in to do my best work. There is something constructive and firm about the structure of this piece of music. Listening to GG1982GV helps me to prepare good foundations for things that I want to remember.

Though GG1982GV is still pretty much defined as music I listen to only when I'm alone, I have reached a point at which I am able to share music that is important to me with others, and also to accept the music that others share with me. I shared The Dhol Foundation, the Brit bhangra troupe (my then musical addiction - 1.3 years), with Brian, and he shared a bunch of bands, including Blank & Jones, the German trance duo, with me. I liked Blank & Jones so much that I got their Singles disc, and I play it again and again and again and again and again...

When I listen to them, my mind goes blank (in a good way), and when I don't listen to them, I jones (also in a good way). I think this may be a genetic trait, because my mother does a similar thing with films: she finds one she likes and watches it repeatedly. I believe that she watched Home Alone 3 so often that she wore her copy out, and likewise for her copy of the version of Cinderella with Brandy in it. I think she has now graduated to wearing out the first Star Wars trilogy.

My mother's mother had a gambling addiction, she told me once that she used to bet on the horses until the day she lost $600, which was, back then, a big chunk of money. That day she quit laying bets, cold turkey.

I wonder how long my Blank & Jones addiction will last. I'm not likely to lose any money on it, so I may never quit. Anyone willing to lay a bet?

On Friday, On Saturday, On Sunday

Friday I took my mother to buy her new walker. She bought one called the Evolution Sprite (for the tiny amongst us). She is at least 2 inches shorter than I am and I am not very tall.

Yesterday, influenced by the dance/trance music I've been listening to, I fished out the Monsoon cd to hear the ever-so-lovely voice of Sheila Chandra. It's hard to believe that the song "Ever So Lonely" was released in the 80s. How did that happen?

My great friend Rob H is thinking of taking some time off in July, during which he and his friend Mike and Mike's boyfriend may stay in the Okanagan at Sandy Beach. I have been invited to join them, and depending on work and school, I may. A week on the beach in the Okanagan sounds pretty good to me in these gloomy, stormy times we're having right now.

The idea of taking another short (7 day) Alaskan cruise has also come up, and we (Rob and I) may do that in addition to spending a week in the Okanagan.  It all depends on being able to book time off work.

It is tiresome to have to boil water for one or two minutes, though I used to boil it for even longer. I know people who work in the Enhanced Water Lab (do testing for microorganisms in water from regional districts), and one day, while I was visiting, Lorraine was looking at Vancouver City water and found some giardia cysts. She showed them to me, and for a while afterwards I boiled all the water for ten minutes before drinking or even filtering, but it's different if you choose to do it.

To boil or not to boil...that is the question...

The Neatette is here, and here is a picture. I'm going to go give it a vacuum and fill it up.

Later: I've gathered some of the stray stuff and put it into the Neatette, and the difference in the amount of clutter is astonishing. I recommend getting storage furniture.

The Neatette is definitely neato, and aptly named.

The white surface in the pic to the right is an porcelain coated work surface, so I now have a counter of sorts. It's not in perfect shape, but it's pretty good. The increased workability of the space is another astonishment. I'm astonished by the improvement to my life.

Later yet: I was able to cook an actual meal downstairs: rice in the rice cooker and turkey vegetable soup in the griddle-based crock pot (super fast) that I bought for my grandmother pre 1984. It was given back to me when my grandmother died in 1992, and I haven't really used it. I tried to give it away but wasn't able to and now I'm glad to have it. I'll probably be able to use the electric frying pan and the griddler as well. I may not have a full kitchen, but I have almost everything I'll need to cook whatever I want. What won't I be able to cook down here? Roast bird and beast.

The Neatette is the love of the day. How could you not love something with a name like Neatette?

Later still: Taking advantage of a window of sun-not-rain, I dried the flanges on the skylights and attempted to seal them up using Vulkem 116, a urethane-based caulking compound, as recommended by Greg, my roofing guy. Vulkem 116 is vile stuff, smelly and sticky, but it doesn't necessarily stick to the stuff you want it to stick to. It's also very thick and I had to use pretty much all of my (non-existent) hand strength to pull the trigger on the caulking gun to get the stuff from the tube to the tip. It's not at all like the other caulking compounds I've used in the past. The hassles and mess of using silicon caulking are nothing in comparison to the hassles and mess of using this stuff.

I did a messy job, but I have hope that I've been able to seal the skylights, and that the drips will stop.  I don't want to live in a house that leaks, so I hope. Please feel free to hope with me.

Little Old Chinese Guy's Shoes

Seen on the bus - a little old Chinese guy whose footwear was Converse All Stars, low-cut, turquoise blue. I had just come from an appointment with my dentist, and was feeling a bit mopey and this little old Chinese guy's shoes cheered me up immensely.

The turquoise shoes are the love of the day.

I had lunch at Kyle's, my favourite greasy spoon on Commercial Drive. Everytime I go there I have to ask that they wipe down the table because it always has some stickiness or greasiness near where I am sitting. Kyle's is near the lab where I get my blood work done, so I go there for hearty breakfasts after a fasting glucose.

Maybe next time I'm in the area and jonesing for lunch I'll try the taco place down the street from Kyle's. They serve mole, so it looks pretty interesting. Or maybe the Indonesian place across the lane from the taco place.

The best taco eaten was ten or so years ago at a street cart in Playa del Carmen. 44 cents for a beef taco and it was yummy. My great friend Rob H and I ate several, in fact, I would go back there for the tacos except that I suspect that the cart wouldn't be there anymore. The memory of those tacos in Playa del Carmen is the runner up love of the day.

When we were in Playa del Carmen, we were in a supermarket and saw a rabbit burn up outside. The engine of the metallic green Volkswagen Rabbit had caught on fire, it was smoking away and the street security people used up all their fire extinguisher power on the hood of the car without opening it, so, of course, the fire was still going. Someone else had to come and pop the hood and then shoot water (bad idea) onto the engine. It did go out, but it was touch and go for a second or two.

Playa del Carmen was beautiful back then. I think it's probably still beautiful, but it's also probably really built up and populated.

The Caribbean Sea is a gorgeous colour, turquoise, like the Old Chinese Guy's shoes.

Avocado Dreamin'

I dreamed that I bought another house which had been well maintained by its previous owners. All of the appliances and fixtures were avocado green except for the white stove. I was preparing to move.

What a nightmare moving would be. I need to de-clutter my life some (lots) before I am too old to notice how annoyed I am with it.

It's time to get rid of stuff, maybe even some of the treasures have to go. Is there anything that I have that you might particularly want? Let me know if there is.

Excitement of the day: getting the midterm back and my mark being 87% when all I knew for certain was that I had done better than 70%. 87% is quite a lot better than 70%.

Wonder of the day: at Vera's Burgers, some young construction workers came in, one of them carrying a plastic thermal lunch pail. From the pail he took out a litre and a half of water and a big plastic container full of salad. He even brought his own fork. I was awed by this.

Love of the day: the gorgeous amanita mushrooms that can be seen this time of year around the  Friedman building. They look splendid with the shiny green leaves around them.

Transformative Thoughts

When I arrived at my mother's house today, I saw that she had one of those walkers with wheels and a chair and a shopping basket that she has borrowed from the VON. She'll keep it until she gets one of her own. She said, "I need it for walking to the store. I can't walk a block without stopping to rest anymore."

I had an emotional reaction to hearing this, and, when she went into another room, I cried, and, when she came back, I hugged her. I remember how pure and uncomplicated my love for her was when I was a young-un, and I felt that purity, that simplicity, for a few moments today, but I want my love for her to be pure and uncomplicated again. I want to be able to hold that to me ever.

My mother is my love of the day.

My mother and I lunched at the Shalin Noodle House this afternoon, and there was a young man with a shaved head and trendy glasses and a camo t-shirt at the next table, talking loudly with his friends. He said of his look that he was emulating an underwater researcher, e.g., Jacques Cousteau.

Other parts of his conversation were interesting as well. He spoke, at one point, of going to a show of a photo essay which documented the transformation of a F-M transsexual, from shots of the bio-grl to shots of the F-M (former bio-grl) and another person naked and lying on railway tracks and writing in Sharpie on one anothers' bodies. Sounds powerful. I didn't ask where it was showing. I wish I did.

He said, in part, "There's all these photos of this person at stages of their change, starting out being female, and throughout loses tits and gains a beard. At the end, it's a person with a beard and no tits and no dick. Presurgery."

Interesting. I'd never really thought about how the differences in direction of transition would manifest. People going the other way, those presurgery bodies with tits and dick, get far more attention: she-males, the popular fetish object. He-females doesn't work as well as a word or as a fetish object.

I heard that when asked about how difficult/painful the M-F surgery was, our friend Ayanna said, "Having hernia surgery was worse." Hmm.

In my painting class (and outside) I spend a lot of time working on my colour wheel. In the art history class we're looking at Buddhist art, and discuss the wheel of Karma, the idea that people continually go through the same stuff, over and over through lifetimes, until they get it.

I'm not really getting what I think I'm supposed to be getting in the colour class, so the discussion of the wheel is somehow fitting: I continually work on my colour wheel, and I'll stop when I get it. Let me off this colour wheel of Karma. Please.

Though I think I might be getting close.

Camera upgrade: the Lumix DMC-LZ3 does not record audio, so I've traded for a Lumix DMC-FX01 which does, and it's a teeny tiny thing. Smaller than a deck of cards. It has a Leica lens (yay) which has a range of wide angle to zoom. It uses a lithium ion battery pack (boo) which is currently charging up. It'll be ready soon and I'll be able to play.

New technology can be an amazing source of fun. I now have the technology to make little videos (with audio) and post them to YouTube. Big fun.

Crush of the Day

I got a new computer in September and haven't been able to install the software for my ancient Powershot S20 to it, so I did some research and went out looking for a new camera (among other things) today.

The first place I went, London Drugs on Granville, I asked to see the Canon SD600, which has been reviewed quite well. The SD600 was a tiny thing, could fit into an Altoids tin when shut down, but I wasn't sure if it was the camera for me. It seemed so tiny in my hands, and I have issues with my current Canon camera (reliability, type of battery, slowness), so wasn't really sure if I wanted to stay with the brand.

Anyway, London Drugs on Granville happened to have been having a meet and greet. The Canon rep was present to show us all the Selphy photo printer and the new Canon SD800 camera (release date in December, just in time for Christmas giving). The printer is nice, the camera is nice (has image stabilization, which is likely to become ever more important to me), and I probably would have thought about buying it if there had been one available, but there wasn't so I didn't.

But if I stopped to consider the problems that I have had with the Powershot, I would never buy another Canon: two months after I bought it, it got sick. When I turned it on the lens would move in and out and the iris over the lens would open and close. Cameras don't work when they're doing things like that, so I took it back to the store where I bought it and they sent it away for repair. It came back a month later, and when I got it home and tried it out, it was still doing what it had been doing before the repair (not working), so I took it back to the store and again it was sent away for repair. It came back another month later. So, of the first four months of my ownership of the Canon Powershot A20, it spent half that time in the camera hospital in Calgary. When I picked it up the second time, the person at the store told me that the repair person had noted that the damage was caused by the camera having been bumped - they were making some effort to put the blame on me.

And besides, one of the things the rep said to me about the Canon SD800: "They've designed it to be simple, especially for women over 25." I suggested that he might want to use the term "the non-tech savvy" rather than "women over 25," but I suspect that he didn't understand what I was getting at.

Here is the list of cameras that were under consideration: Sony DSC T9; Sony DSC T10; Canon SD 600; Lumix DMC-LZ3; Lumix DMC-LZ5.

The two Sony DSCs got pretty good reviews, and they have Zeiss lenses, which is pretty tempting. Also, the zoom system works internally, so the lens doesn't extend and retract, which means that the unit has a thin profile. Also, the lens protector is a shield that you slide up and down manually rather than the two flaps that form an iris that is controlled electronically to open and close to expose or cover the lens. I like the mechanical version of the lens shield because on the Pentax at work the mechanism that closes the flaps is damaged so the iris doesn't close properly anymore. The camera still works though. When we sent it for repair, we were told that the problem was caused by water damage and so wasn't covered by the warranty. Again, the manufacturer attributing the blame to the purchaser. The evil bastards.

Unattractive features? They use proprietary Sony batteries and memory sticks.

The Canon SD600 got great reviews, but my concerns are outlined above. Also it uses one of those specialized camera batteries which can be hard to find if you happen to run out of juice - which happened to me at the far eastern tip of Prince Edward Island while taking pictures of the lighthouse there. Not only did I have to drive back (probably 15 km) to find a store that carried the batteries, but they were twenty dollars. And I have to say that I was lucky to have found them there at all.

The Lumix DMC-LZ3 uses two AA batteries (yay), has image stabilization, makes movies, got fantastic reviews, and additionally, is even simpler to use than the Canon SD800 - has preset modes for photographing food, parties, candle lit scenes, fireworks, snow and starry skies, among other things. It has a traditional 6x optical zoom, so it does have the plastic flap iris mechanism (which is not a great thing), but I can deal with it.

I chose the Lumix DMC-LZ3: it's a bit bigger (doesn't fit in an Altoids tin) than the teeny cameras, so feels more substantial in my hands. It's good value for the price, which appeals to me. I don't really need a camera that takes professional quality photos, I just need something to record things that I want to record - in fact I probably would have just continued with the Powershot A20 if I'd been able to install the software without endangering my computer setup - so it fits my needs.

The pic of the fan was taken with my new camera. I'm pretty pleased with it so far.

Maybe I'll post a pic a day, as Anna's bf Rich has resolved to do on his blog (only happens sometimes).

ps. I just discovered that the new computer has a card reader on it so I don't have to use the camera for uploading files to the computer. New technology that works well together can rock.

Learning Optimism and Love of the Day

I am trying to learn to be optimistic.

My friend Peter is very sick with a malicious, malignant, metastacized paraganglioma, and is on long term disability from work. He is so optimistic that he has been heard to say (about the amount of money he gets from disability) "I'll even be able to save!"

I am not optimistic that I'll ever learn to be optimistic like that.

In an effort to learn to be optimistic and full of awe (awful) and wonder (wonderful), I'm going to learn to fall in love at least once per day. It need not be requited, it need not be long term (more than a minute or two), it need not be with something animate, I just need to feel love, absolute and pure, daily. I need to learn to be joyful.

My love of the day today is the baby cups that came from Alda's china cabinet to me. After the service I was looking at the china cabinet and noticed two china baby cups, one of the Mad Hatter's Tea party and another with three elf or fairy babies on it (sort of like a Kate Greenaway illustration). I thought I'd like to keep them, but I felt awkward asking, so didn't.

Cyril and I were talking on the phone last night, organizing our dinner date for this evening, when he mentioned the few things that were left: a silver plated biscuit tin and two mugs from the china cabinet. I asked if either mug happened to be the Alice in Wonderland mug and he didn't know, but he would bring them to me and if they weren't I could pass them along. He brought them with him, and they were the two china baby cups that I'd admired. It was as though Alda had kept them for me, those two tiny and fragile, fine little cups.

I don't know anything about these two china cups from Alda, so I can fill them with whatever I bring to them. These cups are half full. Truly.