o....

I was upset after visiting my local library and having a bird commit suicide into my windshield (cracking it terribly) so my hubby took me thrifting about a week and a half ago--some of this is from then, and some earlier:

( Books, some dishes and random other stuff... )

I found some good stuff!!! ^_^

I'm going through a weird phase. For years, I've been scrimping and saving for a rainy day. While I haven't been a complete miser--I eat out a fair bit, and I've bought my fair share of records and books as well as the occasional video game or console--it's not as if I've slunk into debt while constantly buying new clothes and updating my gadgets on a regular basis, either. I save money whenever I can and sock whatever I can away into a high-interest savings account and occasionally roll some money into RRSP GICs. So I'm pretty sensible when it comes to money.

But lately, I haven't been sensible. Shocking, because while it's not a rainy day for me just yet, there are definitely storm clouds in the sky. There's a recession going on. My high-interest savings account isn't so high-interest anymore. Other people are losing jobs, houses, and more money than I can ever imagine making. Hell, my dad doesn't even open any RRSP statements he gets from the bank anymore. But me? All I seem to be doing is spending money. First, there was the expensive overnight romp to Seattle to see My Bloody Valentine. Then there was the decision to go to Seattle again, this time for a weekend to attend the Capitol Hill Block Party. And now? I want an iPod Touch. Yeah, seriously.

Yeah, I know I just bought an iPod Nano a year ago. But that was more of a stopgap than anything else, as in my old one stopped working and I needed to fill the gap suddenly left in my life. So I bought what I felt I could afford, and what made sense at the time. But now, I want more. I want something that I can write notes on while on a crowded Skytrain. I want more song space, so I can keep my favourite records with me without sacrificing new music or running up against hearing the same stuff over and over again. I want to Tweet and use Facebook on the go. I want a little entertainment, as well--maybe a game or two. I want a lot.

But since I'm not impulsive, I find myself stalling on the details. Like battery life. If I were to, say, tweet from Seattle, would that kill the battery and therefore music on the bus home? And how much space do I need for my wants? Knowing me, I'll have the 8gb filled up right quick--but the price tag is much easier to immediately justify than the 16gb model, which costs $100 more after taxes. Of course, if my Touch lasted three years, that hundred dollars now would save me money in the long run, because I know how it is and how I am.

Speaking of money, you may be wondering how I'm financing all these Seattle trips and future iPod purchases. Well, there was the tax refund that paid for my dental work and MBV day trip, and made up for that shortfall during that month where they cut our work hours. Then there was the birthday cheque from my dad, which covers a fair chunk of my next Seattle trip. And then, there was the sweet, sweet vacation payout, which covers the rest of the trip with room to spare. And if I ever got Worker's comp for my tooth, well, it would cover my new iPod--though I'm not exactly holding my breath for that. So long as I don't raid my savings, it's okay. And if I do take anything from savings, I like to pay it off, even going so far as to put the payment installments down as a budget item. Lame, but it's how I roll. So I could swing a new iPod. Still, there's part of me that thinks that I should have socked all the windfalls away in savings. But what are you gonna do?

I think it's a Cramer Desk Chair (the C is missing from the back) and probably circa 1970s. I got it for $3.50. It still swivels and rolls perfectly. I love it. It's my new desk chair.

I'm only going to be semi-available on line for the forseeable future. Please text for any immediate concerns!

My mother and I went to a flea market and 2 thrift stores today...


( AWESOME LOOT, but not everything I bought is pictured! This is image heavy! )

Yesterday I woke up to the radio saying "Paul McCartney's appearance in Halifax has caused quite a stir!" and imagined him spontaneously popping in to existence downtown, abusing his secret teleportation powers to get a haligonian donair, perhaps. (Ick, why, Paul McCartney, why?) But no, he just flew there in an airplane, on a pre-planned trip, to play a concert. I was quite charmed to see Halifax's mayor and the NS premier put on goofy wigs and pose for an Abbey Road shot to join all the fuss. Hee hee.

I just worked 3 10-hour shifts in a row for the first time in er, a while. Normally I do this every two weeks, but basically the whole first half of 2009 has been a confusing patchwork of vacation juggling in the pharmacy. (Mostly my fault of course! Although my opposite number did go on a three week cruise.) Ooh, ooh, I'm out of practice! I'm very sore just from the amount of standing this involves. I was going to say I feel like I ran a marathon, but I have run a half-marathon before and this is NOTHING like that, so I feel like I just.. uh.. ran a 5-k? And not too fast? This is getting less interesting by the word. Well anyway. I'm back to my normal work schedule until, hmm, labour day I'm taking one day off, and then nothing else until OVFF in October. And I'm realizing again that dude, my normal work schedule is really awesome. I work 7 days out of 14 and I get a 4-day weekend every second week. I'm such a slacker. But I'm a slacker who gets paid well enough to fly off to random locations on really quite a lot of those weekends. Hooray! Motivation to work full-time: lacking. Not that I could physically hack working full-time anyway, not in a profession where you stand all day.

I figured out this morning that I'm going to have flown enough this year to get MVP status with Alaska Air for next year. Besides the dubious benefit of getting to board early with the first class people (oh boy, an extra 15 minutes crammed in to an airline seat!) (Actually, at some airports, that really is better than waiting at the gate, not naming any names, LOGAN.) this means I get all kinds of extra bonus miles on flights next year, which means MORE CONS! I am so madly in love with their mileage plan. My credit card gets me miles with them, and we put all the big household expenses on it, with the result that I've gotten, hmm, 7 free flights in the last two years. I gave a bunch away because travelling is more fun with company, but like, my being at Duckon at all was totally "Brought to you by the Alaska Mileage Plan!"

I read Starship & Haiku, which I'd won in the Interfilk auction at Concertino, during my commute this week. It was nothing at all like what I expected based on hearing Kathy Mar's song of the same name. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was quite a grisly post-apocalyptic story, mixed with a grim little piece of hope. It's the same kind of mix you find in a lot of Octavia Butler's work. I was surprised to find such an excellent novel from an author I'd never heard of before - Somtow Sucharitkul - but google tells me most of his books were published as S.P. Somtow, which sounds more familiar. (He is the director of the Bangkok opera! He sounds like quite the character.) Time for a trip to Pulp Fiction to look for more! Because the 300 books in the to-read pile stacked precariously by my bedside aren't enough, obviously. The song somehow manages to be absolutely faithful to the book's spirit and still have the same message I originally got from it, despite the book being so vastly different from what I had in mind from the song.

Now I am working on book 5 of the Merchant Princes, Charles Stross' crazy economic-science-fantasy-soap-opera series, mixed with slowly creeping through Consciousness Explained, which seems to me to call for a few days of digesting assertions between chapters.

Joe is off playing paintball this morning. I somewhat guiltily hope that he's not very good at it, because then his outfit will be way more fun to photograph when he gets home. Or do they just issue you a burlap sack or something? Oh well, I already have enough incriminating photos for this week: yesterday was Blackmore Memorial Mustache Day at his office. Theobald Blackmore was some character in one of the WWII games his company makes, who, I hope I'm not spoiling anything for you here, dies in the game. He had a goofy mustache. Now once a year everyone in the office grows a scraggly beard and then shaves it off, leaving only a mustache, for BMMD. (And then shaves that off too, because the dress code doesn't actually call for 1970s Pornstaches on everyone.) Or the girls (not that there are a lot in the office - welcome to the games industry!) glue on fake moustaches. Oh hah, the company already posted their pictures! Seph is the one crouching down who looks like the Dread Pirate Roberts. Swoon! That's my handsome, handsome man. Ooh, I totally have an appropriate icon for this.

Through the aid of google I finally found an mp3 of the Russian children's version of "Bella Ciao"--there was a Russian adaptation that was more or less faithful to the original, but the children's version changed the refrain to "Mama Ciao" and was all about forest camps, sunlight, flowers and love for one's country and not so much about dying partisans and flowers growing on the graves.

Here it is, if anyone is curious, of if anyone, like me, learned it in the Soviet school choir in the 1980s, and wants to hear it again:

http://ars-r.narod.ru/audio/cd2006/08/15.mp3

Also I want to just say that in the course of looking for this I stumbled onto a website of soviet songs, arranged in the following categories:

Songs about the Motherland
Songs about Labor
The International
Revolutionary Songs
Songs about Che Guevara
Songs about Cities
Songs about the Sea
Sports Songs
Komsomol Songs
Young Pioneer Songs
Songs about Leaders
Military Marches
Military Lyrical

...

other representatives from the "songs I learned to sing in Soviet Choir and are thus now lodged in my brain forever" collection:
http://download.sovmusic.ru/m/3tankist.mp3
http://download.sovmusic.ru/m/belarmia.mp3

I'm really excited about a few of these and no one else gets it so I'm happy to share here.

Old Books from Peninsula Rescue Mission Thrift Store $2 for all. I went to a new thrift store called Morning Star Thrift Store. The place was really junky (and kinda smelled funny) but they had so many old books (it was like a book graveyard!) and a ton of vintage suitcases (I got the trunk though). I was a little worried that they were going to charge me a ton for the things I picked out (because they were price at the counter) but the guy said $7.35 for the four books and my trunk and I was like SOLD! If I hadn't been so excited to pay for my stuff and get it in my car I probably would have bought a TON more books. Note I found tucked inside Modern Biology.

( More Old Books, an Old Trunk, Furniture and Vintage Dresses! )

Went treasure hunting at yardsales today... these are my treasures..



( Read more... )

This morning, I pulled on my jeans, grabbed my iPod and a book, and proceeded to wait in the lobby for the postie. I wasn't waiting for a love letter, this month's Sub Pop Single, or even an iPod Touch. I was waiting for my passport, which was tracked as being sent out for delivery today--and I didn't want to chance the postie not delivering it and leaving me with a missed delivery notice. I wasn't going to delay arrangement making by having to wait another day or more to get my passport. So I decided to wait in the lobby for a while instead.

Eventually, the postie came down the walkway to the building. He was holding a thin Expresspost package and looking at the intercom listings. My passport! I immediately opened the door for him and asked if the delivery was for Cinemagirl. It was! And it was my name he was looking for--he saw the listing that said CINEMA #373, but ignored it since the intercom number didn't match my suite number. Would it have killed him to just dial the number and ask for Cinemagirl? I'll never know because I was here and he was asking for my ID and signature. I complied, and he gave me my passport. I was finally on my way.

I spent the afternoon booking a hotel (my hostel choices at this point being slim), buying a two-day pass for the Capitol Hill Block Party, and getting Greyhound tickets. While I originally wanted to go via the Amtrak Cascades train, the price was too high ($55 one way!) and the departure and arrival times didn't work with my planned itinerary. I booked the time off from work weeks ago. so that shouldn't be a problem. All I need to do now is pack and leave.

Oh, and have a good time. That would probably be nice.

-------------------------------

Anyone want to buy my Black Lips/Deerhunter ticket for $20? They're playing the Commodore on the 23rd, and seeing as how I'm leaving early the next day, I'd much rather rest up for Seattle. Let me know.

Lumping in a couple of Outlaw Band shows to the Island (the band room at the Nanaimo Cambie once wallpapered in male genitalia, an entire lower male torso drawn around the showerhead), a visit or two to Yolandivar's pre-Cedarton farm (pre-Rufoustan would be ... before 2002!?!), my trip to Saturna with Dominique and my cursed 2007 Valentine's Day visit to Victoria in order to purchase my bitter-medicine accordion mics before playing a show that night and leaving on tour with the Outlaw Band the following day for two weeks on the road, and maybe even the turbulent UVic TABmeet... it's all outweighed by the Planks' "Flogged Round the Fleet" tour (which will someday garner its own entry -- in the meantime, all I have to say is "whaddaya mean you have to go back from Nanaimo to Horseshoe Bay in order to get to Gibsons?!), immediately followed by joining Jen at steel guitar whiz kid Tim Tweedale's (much appreciating superjill's old rockstar uke) much-musical (and temporarily sans-electricity) birthday weekend celebration extravaganza on Galiano with Headwater, Corbin Murdoch, Sarah Macdougall, my sister's dog Fargo and an entire army of mosquitoes, immediately followed by three "why not?" days of impromptu Jen accompaniment to a HEU workshop back in Victoria.

Between those sessions I enjoyed about enough time at home to do a load of laundry before plunging right back into the next round... now I'm back for slightly longer (but not by much -- leaving Wed morning for Quesnel, to play, host and help at Billy Barker Days, returning on the 20th. Barry, the great sound engineer of the Cariboo, enjoyed my musical time-killing while recording the Outlaw Band immediately prior to the Flogged Round the Fleet session (literally -- got a ride from the Quesnel studio to the Greyhound terminal at 10 to 1 am, boarded the bus, 10 hours later disembarked at Main & Terminal, walked up to Video In and started recording with Emme... the sacrifices one makes for free studio time!) so much that he invited me to come up and somehow, against all odds, I was able to get my act together sufficiently to actually do so. Now I have just enough of an opening to put some affairs to bed before gathering my materials for a grander time out for a longer span, further from home.

But first: Victoria! My plans fell through in the specifics but the hopes were generally met: one of the two open mics I wanted to hit (Pluto's) was discontinued for the summer, the other (Ocean Island) I turned up too late for sign-up, and my intention of visiting the Island accordion mecca Tempo Trend one week after their accordion festival was stymied somewhat by the principals having packed up and decamped to KIOTAC, as I would have realised they must had I stopped to think about it for a minute. So instead of dropping off dozens of our new Accordion Noir stickers and presale tickets to the 2nd annual Accordion Noir festival of squeeze (workshops and mainstage Sept 12th at the WISE Hall, feat. Story (Halifax), Geoff Berner and Jason Webley (Seattle)!) I just had a fun chat with the remaining clerk, the guitars-and-drums guy (ironically from Germany, marveling how he had left Bavaria, the centre of the traditional oompah accordion world, traveled halfway across the planet and touched down in a situation virtually indistinguishable from the context he had left behind.)

But it wasn't all disappointment: magpieulysses made an awesome dining recommendation of the Lotus Pond, the closest I may ever come to revisiting Vancouver's legendary Buddhist Vegetarian Restaurant (half-off during the last half-hour of their lunch buffet starting at 2:30 pm, when the room fills with bike couriers and assorted vegan hipster punx), so delectable I was back for supper three hours later. And while Jen was working, I beat a patient path on foot to all the used bookstores and thrift stores within an unreasonable walking distance (90 minute walk) from our hotel, seeing if my trifecta of esoteric interests (gamebooks -- think Choose-Your-Own-Adventure early hypertext, old video games (and game novelizations) and accordion paraphernalia) could be satisfied by their contents. I only found two or three volumes of accordion sheet music (additions to the squeezebox circle learner's library), but hit the jackpot at Island Collateral, which was having liquidation on old video games. I left beneath the weight of some maybe 50 titles for Xbox, PS1 and PS2, including the legendary ToeJam & Earl 3, most obtained for the kingly price of $2 a piece. I thought it was too darned bad that I couldn't justify stocking an entire library of the classics from the SNES, NES and Atari 2600 cartridges (Adventure! E.T.!) they were liquidating at that price, but maybe someone (are you listening, marlo?) else can profit from my nerdy discovery. (The clerks there also recommended a mainland counterpart, Krazy Bob's in Langley.)

I was a massive gamebook fan as a kid (a misremembered endorsement by Michael Wilkison for the Thieves' World anthologies pointing me to Ian Livingstone's City of Thieves and down the lane of no return) and they were a popular enough flash in the pan that scouring secondhand shelves for them grants me a happy dose of nostalgia while I get to play publishing archaeologist (Dude! A Fighting Fantasy by the GURPS Steve Jackson! Yow! A TSR-published Marvel Comics gamebook written by Warren Spector!) and puzzle out why these went virtually extinct at the advent of the WWW, a medium seemingly custom-designed to facilitate their explosion! (I've isolated, I think, three significant factors: Nintendo's popularity sucking kids away from books and on to consoles, multimedia distracting computer game developers from virtually all text-based gaming, and anyone being able to make a CYOA and give it away for free meaning it became exceedingly difficult for anyone to get paid to do so, resulting in a huge field of amateur entries making people forget that better gamebooks were possible.)

I satisfied the bizarre monkey on my back by loading myself down with what must have been 60 or 70 gamebooks and video game novelizations before revisiting a store on day 2 on a hunch and uncovering the nerdly motherlode: a randomized solitaire adventure featuring a ream of tractor-feed dot-matrix-printed gamebook paragraphs, sandwiched between two pieces of construction paper depicting a cruel wizard straddling a mainframe computer with magnetic tape storage. At this point in the very early gaming industry, I figure Flying Buffalo had rented some surplus cycles on a PDP-11 somewhere (used to automatically calculate turns for play-by-mail gamers) and devised this system to deliver a unique dungeon to solo gamers. I look forward to digitally converting the document and analysing how rigorous its algorithms were (ie is the dungeon actually completable?) This sounds like a very mild curiosity to most normal people, but even as someone fascinated by such things I would not have believed it existed had I not held it in my two hot little hands. In 1977 people actually paid money for a computer to madlib a dungeon together and mail them the tractor-feed results? Well, I paid money for it in 2009 so who knows.

The icing on the cake was also finding a paperback copy of a 1960 printing of the Saragossa Manuscript (which I should watch again someday... I recall this inaccessible Polish black and white film once being the only thing to catch tlf's attention during a scattered Rufoustan visit in which he must have started and stopped maybe two dozen movies after five minutes.) So I missed two open mics? It was worth it!

Which brings me to the present: scouring the internet for squeezebox-demonstrative recordings of bands performing at this year's Vancouver Folk Music Festival to air on our radio show tonight -- on which we will be giving away two tickets to the Festival! (So there's the palpable payoff to locals who waded through this largely-irrelevant post. Those have a substantial value associated with them!) We're especially excited about Bellowhead, and Geoff Berner will be announcing the AN Festival.

Then I really really need to unpack the basement boxes remaining from my move (most of them) in order to find my old passport, needed so I can apply for a new one in the interest of attending the Arts-In-Nature Festival in Seattle Aug 22nd and visiting my accordion-graffiti pal Tiffany. That's over a month away but I now require a passport for ground crossing (disinclined from gambling on a porphyre scale) and giving it enough time for processing means I really ought to have it in before I leave to Quesnel... in a few days.

Though I'm finally IN TOWN for the relevant dates, the 57 Varieties open stage is on hiatus due to a volunteer drought at Spartacus... when I can rustle up a partner-in-crime associated with a venue that grants us free use, the series will resume (and until then I will shift my focus and energies to other back-burner projects: the textmode art retrospective gallery exhibition, the Living Closet reunion show, and some text adventure and computer game plots in dire need of hatching.)

Supplementary: after what's got to be close to a decade, another stranger has emerged from the woodwork quoting a fragment of my Elegy for La Quena back to me. The last time it happened was five years ago and it rocked me sufficiencly then to write about it here... certainly after having maintained my decidedly moribund relationship to my onetime poetry career (ah, but who else but a poet would say "moribund"?) it's the last subject I would expect anyone to spring on me. I don't have much further to add, but as I told the fellow, "periodically I regret setting poetry aside in favour of spreading around other people's words with an accordion... perhaps someday these two disciplines will dovetail."

The Good News: I found my camera charger!  (... it was still plugged in to the outlet where I last charged the battery. *sigh*)

The Better News: More pictures!  I went to four of the five Goodwills in the area yesterday (the fifth is... icky) and have also been frequenting a couple of resale shops, a used book store, and this inexpensive little antique store I'd never been to before.  So I have a lot to share... ;D


( Lots o' good stuff... and mugs, of course! )

This week I've spent 2-4 hours every evening working on the move. Louise commented recently on how much work I've been doing, even.

This doesn't count time spent eating, cooking, trying to get myself sorted out for work or any of the other things I need to do daily. I'm proud that I was able to find time to do yoga and dye my hair this week, though.

However, there's a lot of boxes over there now, in the correct rooms. Mel has said she will do some trips with my stuff later this month (probably mostly the books in storage.) 

A lot of STUFF is out of the way and the furniture can be moved out of our place with relative ease.

Tonight I'm doing one more load with Elwood tonight, then re-arranging some stuff in the new place, then Louise will pick me up, bring me home, and hopefully convince me not to stay up all night trying to pack or sort more stuff.
Saturday morning, last-minute packing, then furniture moving happens from noon onwards.

I'm still waiting to get my email quote from the SFU microcomputer store on my future laptop. But I want it NAOW.

i make your beverages and smile awkwardly.

My UK voyage was three days in Leeds bookended by two (and a half) days in London. I had never been to Leeds before, and loved the look of the city--Victorian-Industrial-Gothic, dilapidating sooty red brick against the alternately gray and bright sky. Charity shops populated by sweet old ladies selling books of erotic photographs from the 1920s. An empty overgrown trash-filled lot next to a highrise building, where, for two days in a row, I saw a lone horse, with no humans in sight. Leeds has urban magic. I didn't have nearly enough time to tap it, but I skimmed the surface and saw that it was there.

When I got disoriented on my way to the station, a zoologist helped me. I spent the train ride talking to a biochemist. And while in London I stayed with a lovely anthropologist, khalinche, who is a kindred spirit. She was in the process of moving from one East End apartment to another one, so I got to stay in both. I met her lovely friends, we went to see Arcadia (sigh! Tom Stoppard!), and I saw one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. Unfortunately I was not in possession of my camera when this urban vision transpired, so I will have to just tell you about it. We were walking across the Thames (not sure which bridge?) and we saw, as we approached the crest of the bridge, that the moon was full and shimmering-bright amidst a thin aura of night clouds. This cluster of luminescence was positioned right in the middle of the London Eye, the big ferris wheel over the river. Like a lunar iris, overseeing the shimmering and illumination of the riverbank. It looked unreal, like a not-so-distant shore of a fairy tale, steampunk city.

My last morning in London we wandered around an overgrown Victorian cemetery, filled with thyme and ripe plums, little ponds covered with algae the color of spring, and leaves the color of perpetual autumn, we looked with futile longing at an abandoned mental hospital that was right there but clearly impenetrable, at least not like that, on a whim. And on my way out, to catch the flight to Amsterdam, I came across a patch of pavement that was like a portal to Alice's wonderland, and had I had more time I would have done a tap dance on it and tried to commune with the Mad Hatter, but as it was, I just thought--whoever infused this city with magic, they hid it everywhere, in the tiniest details, and it seeps, seeps, seeps, in overgrown headstones, and a perfect ripe plum found amidst the graves, and ocular moon sightings, and a wild checkerboard, now home to rogue, determined plants that will grow anywhere and through anything.

in an ideal world i would:

- buy nice magazines
- peruse used bookstores
- set up my record player and buy records
- care about making the space i live enjoyable for me to be in
- have plants
- own a vacuum cleaner
- quit smoking
- live in a place where my cats could go outside safely
- do yoga, swim and actually use my gym membership
- cook healthy meals at home (expand repetoire beyond glico curry & random pasta)
- love my body for how it looks and is, be okay with being a bit on the thick side
- be able to afford clothes i want to wear and not look like a brokenshoes hobo
- not be frightened or put off by spending time alone
- regularly make art and things
- have my choices with regards to diet and exercise be motivated by health and not vanity
- finish books

what about you?