hel - pez dispenser of happiness

Hey friends

Specifically much_ado and pundigrion, but anyone else with thoughts is also welcome to chime in.

A friend of mine in the UK is teaching himself to use a drop spindle. He has asked:

Friends that spin with the drop spindle method, I am trying to follow the videos but if I twist it tightly enough to form wool rather than a cloud of fibres then it knots up as soon as I take the weight off it. What am I doing wrong please?

Does anyone have any ideas?

I had my H1N1 shot in the waning days of my pregnancy. This followed a week or so of stress and "no cope for you, Placenta Girl" moments.

Four years ago today was also our due date. hahahahahahahahaha*sob*

Four years goes by really quickly.

Well, I'm glad we finally got the NRA's incredibly helpful contribution to the discussion. A gun in every school, you say. I wish I could say I was surprised.

No word, of course, on when they'll be starting the fundraising drive for that, since school budgets are already so stretched that many of them can't afford textbooks.

This article discusses the recent request by the management of Trails End Farmers Market in London to one of their vendors to either get rid of the transgender employees working at the booth, or find another farmers market to vend at. According to the booth owner, the manager of the farmers market offered as his explanation "This is a family place, a family market and this just isn't right."

When called, the owner of the market said that it "wasn't discrimination", it was just about "which washroom these people would go to". Excuse me while I shake my head to get my eyes back into position; unfortunately, they got a bit stuck when I gave that the eyeroll it deserves.

There's a petition linked to from the story and also a piece about it on Jezebel. The booth owner is filing a case with the Ontario Human Rights Commission and I wish her success with it. I've never been to the market, and I'm now really glad about that.

As an aside, kudos to AM 980 News for consistently getting Dani's gender designation correct. Yay for respectful news outlets!

Good morning, Mr. Braid

I'm writing as one of your constituents to express my concern about the announcement on the Canada Revenue Agency website about mail delivery in the event of a strike or lockout (http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/gncy/pstlstrk/menu-eng.html).

I am deeply unhappy that the decision was made to deliver CCTB benefits over EI benefits, and I say that as a fully employed Canadian who receives the CCTB. I question the thought processes behind this; did no-one making the decision think that perhaps a program that delivers 100% of a person's income when they can't find work might be slightly more important than the nice supplementary income that at least some people just stick into their kid's RESP? Who made this decision, and was any concern paid to the plight of unemployed Canadians? What will happen to the economy when people cannot pay their rent, pay for food, pay for a bus ticket to the library to look for jobs or to an interview? Is it really the best decision for Canada to push vulnerable people into an even more untenable situation? It's hard enough to escape EI for many people, given the high unemployment rate; if people are made homeless, it will be even harder for them to climb out of the hole.

How is that reasonable or fair?

This is a terrible, terrible prioritization that makes no sense on either economic or moral grounds.Shame on the people who made this decision. This is something that needs to be fixed quickly, before vulnerable people have their situation degraded past the point where they can reasonably be expected to escape it.

Sincerely,

me

+ woke refreshed
+ made the bus (even if it was the more circuitously routed one) in perfect time
+ mechanic figured out what was wrong with the car
+ it was a simple fix, and relatively inexpensive (>half the cost of the bill was the tow)
- the fix involved disconnecting my battery, and thus my radio from my battery
- the previous owners did not supply the security code for the radio
+ the mechanic can discover what the security code is by removing the radio and calling the dealership with the find-out-what-the-code-is code inscribed therein
- it will cost, at worst, another 90-100 dollars to remove the radio, call the dealership, replace the radio and enter the code
+ dinner tonight with good friends

So now I have to decide how important a radio is to me, in a car I hate and want to consign to oblivion. Normally, it wouldn't be an issue, but right now, the route of prudence would seem to be to cut out unnecessary spending in advance of next month's biggest-purchase-of-my-life.

I want a new car.

So, as a piece of back story, Mer is currently sleeping in our room and I'm back to sleeping in my own bed (most of the last 6 months was spent with Mer sleeping in her crib in the dining room while I slept on the living room couch. But I'm back at work now, so..)

Mer's in our room because her room has insufficient wall-age to make for a happy sleeping baby. There's a night light, which is behind her pack and play, which has a tent-like cover. The side toward us is mesh.

So this morning at six, she starts coughing, which wakes me up, and I slowly sit up and look at her. She's fast asleep, on her tummy, and between the shape of the pack and play (plus lid) and the backlighting, I could only think, as I fell back to sleep, "my daughter sleeps in a terrarium."

I was invited to see the dress rehearsal of KWLT's The Penelopiad and I must confess that I went in somewhat .. well, begrudgingly is the wrong word, but it definitely wasn't eagerly. Why? It wasn't because I expected it to suck; it among its cast a number of women I admire greatly and a director who's produced great work in the past. So why? Well, honestly, for two reasons:

1) I'm crazy-sensitive to violence (it was all I could do to keep from bolting out of my seat and out the door right beside me during the Valmont attacks Tourvel scene last year, and I couldn't actually *watch* it all), and a lot of the discussion around Penelopiad has been about the dark and twisty.

2) Frankly, I like my visual entertainment light and somewhat fluffy. That's just who I am.

So yeah, I went in expecting to appreciate it, but mostly I went because I was asked to.

With that said, I was blown away with how riveted I was. The script itself was way more compelling than I'd expected, and the actresses completely worked it. The choreography, specifically the weaving, was, IMO, inspired and the music/singing was some of the best I've heard in a KWLT production. Of special note, there were two points in which the harmonization of Erin, Mel, and the lady whose name escapes me right now was sublime, but all of the cast members have clearly been working hard on the music as much as the dialog.

While the piece is definitely a strong ensemble work, and the entire cast was strong, a couple of people really stood out for me. Jessica C was an inspired and solid anchor as Penelope, and to say that she had me at hello isn't an exaggeration. No-one who hasn't been reading Ange's LJ for the past month would guess that she was a late replacement; she's especially wonderful as Telemachus. And the lady who played the nursemaid evoked some very strong responses (I'm not going to say more since to explain why would be a total spoiler) from me.

The play opens on Thursday, and runs for three weeks (Thurs-Sat). I'll be going again towards the end of the run.

And now, to bed.

and thus realized how long it's been since I last posted, here's an update, in point form:

• We headed into the city last weekend for a last-minute visit to Taste of the Danforth. We'd been considering going on Saturday or Sunday, but a) friends of ours were moving on Saturday and we wanted to help and b) friends of the Paramour's were available Friday night. So, mid-Friday afternoon the call was made to head into the city. Fun times, great food, and the baby was a trouper (on top of her bottle, she ate about a quarter of an avocado.. fun times getting that; when I asked the guy at the booth if he'd sell me avacado, he waved at the maki on the other end of the booth. When I said "no, I mean just avacado", he looked at me like I was crazy, until I said "for my baby".)


• Mer continues to grow. She marked 9 months on Monday and celebrated by taking a nap. I know, I know, you're all jealous. Further Mer news (all concentrated into a sub-list):
  
  • She's capable of standing up without anything to pull herself up on, and staying up unassisted for between 10 and 20 seconds at a time. She also started cruising a couple of weeks ago. She's also capable of getting herself safely both on and off the futon in the attic.
  • Her two upper teeth came in recently and this morning as I was putting her down for her nap (and thus she was wailing like a banshee), I noticed that she's got the two on either side of the front teeth getting ready to cut through the gums. Poor girl.
  • She *loves* puppets, we've discovered. I was given an Elmo puppet book (sing "If you're happy and you know it" while waving Elmo's arms and flapping his mouth, with kind of odd lyrics). Love. Instant, total, joyful love. So we got her duck and frog puppets, which she also adores.
  • Adventures in baby food continue. Stuff in the freezer that she's currently enjoying the heck out of include a too-coconutty-for-my-taste chicken/sweet potato/cauliflower curry, a "Moroccan" beef stew, a cauliflower/potato/lentil curry, and baked squash and sweet potato. Food is good, apparently.
  • She has her 9 month, no vaccination, appointment with the doctor on Monday. She had an eye infection a couple of weeks ago, which cleared up with antibiotics nicely.
  • She's totally caught on to books as super-fun time, both in stacking them and in having them read to her.


• The Paramour is starting up his job search. Cross your fingers that something good will turn up soon enough for me to figure out daycare.


• I'm currently avoiding thinking about heading back to work (in 3 months.. eep!), though my boss has asked me about it.


• My mother's family is having a family reunion tomorrow, which I'm very much looking forward to. On Monday we're having dinner with my cousin Dharlene and her husband, and I have a KWLT BoD meeting on Tuesday night.


• We're a scant 3 weeks out from Annual Thyroid Fun, though it's going to be different this year. Normally, since it's in London and I have to work, I do the ultrasound/bloodwork in the morning, and the appointment in the afternoon. My more flexible schedule this year has me making two trips down, so that the bloodwork/final ultrasound report will be available at the endo appointment three weeks later. The downside, unfortunately, is that I didn't consider my parents' annual trip out to BC when I made the bloodwork/ultrasound appointment; they'll be Not Here for it, so while my mom, aunt(s) and I will be able to have lunch and go shopping on the day of the doctor's appointment, I have to figure out a baby-corralling strategy for the ultrasound appointment.

And that's about all that's coming to mind.

They published my revised letter: http://news.therecord.com/Opinions/LettertotheEditor/article/741617