blatant self-promotion

So this is a thing I'm doing.

Coldest Night of the Year

For those of you who hate clicking on links, it's a walk to raise money for charity. In this case, an emergency housing/support services charity for youth.

And this is my team/donation page.

signs and portents

The gf took me to see a production of Uncle Vanya last week. Chekov is one of our mutual passions, she introduced me to his plays and I instantly fell in love. Every single person in his plays makes me want to smack them and I can compare every single one of them to at least one person I know in real life. Masterful. And this particular production is fantastic.

The director's notes in the program referred to Chekov as soothing, and uh, I love his plays but that is definitely not the word I would use. It also made the claim that he is the second most performed playwrite after Shakespeare and that I also didn't expect. Finding commonality in pre-revolutionary times, I guess.

***

The Old Man's hospital count has risen to four since Xmas. On the plus side, he's back at home now and I saw him a few days ago. He honestly looked better than I've seen him for a while.

However, not be out-done, Old Man #2 (my actual father) has stepped up to fill that gap. My sister ran hospital duty and I've offered to run point on any appointments she can't make it to since I have a backlog of PTO and she's in a new job.

Ice flow. Just sayin'.

***

Today is a provincial holiday so I got a day off work. So today has been a dig-through-piles-of-paper, pay-bills, follow-up-on-phone-calls, make-appointments kind of day. I've sorted all my tax forms and found almost all the paperwork I need for the house sale so I'm feeling like I was productive.

I'd like to have a workout, but I'm having the worst gout flare I think I've ever had and my left knee won't bend properly. Maybe some hand weights. I dunno, I'll figure it out.

It doesn't usually last more than a week so I really hope it clears up before I have to do that charity walk. Walking hurts like a motherfucker.

***

I also took the new stove-top out for a test drive this weekend. Whenever it looks like vegetables are going to expire before we get around to eating them I toss them in the freezer and I also had a big bag of left-over turkey bones from Xmas dinner with BC. Our freezer was running out of room so yesterday we cleaned it out and reorganized everything and I put all the veg and bones into a couple of big pots and made stock. Which of course then had to go back into the freezer and filled it back up again, but one step at a time.

I had to clean the cement and drywall grit off the range before I could use it of course. And dig the pots out of the storage bin they were in. Fortunately I knew exactly which bin they were located in because Dr River Song decided to go mountain climbing one day and sent the entire stack crashing to the floor, thereby revealing their location. (Took a second stack with it as it went down, just like one of those dominoes videos. It was honestly pretty impressive.)

I honestly can NOT wait to be able to finally fucking clean in the main floor. Every surface is covered in grit and cat hair. I start sneezing the second I walk into the room. There's just no way to squeeze through all the stacks of boxes to do anything about it and it's frustrating as hell.

During one of our podcast recordings there was somebody new in the audience who asked in the chat if housemate is a hoarder because he could see the stacks of boxes and furniture on the screen over their shoulder. NO FRIEND, BUT I CAN UNDERSTAND WHY YOU MIGHT THINK SO.

Onward and upward.