Corner of Bourbon & Division

 Backdating this entry as well...

( Warning: contains harm to an animal done by another animal )

In other news, everyone is dying this year. Brian Bedford, Alan Rickman, David Bowie, Prince, Mohamed Ali, Gene Wilder, Florence Henderson, Anton Yelchin, John Glenn, Alan Thicke, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and now George Michael. I'm sure I've forgotten a bunch. Not to mention Carrie Fisher's massive heart attack, from which no one is sure she'll recover. Though if anyone can give 2016 the finger, it's our General.

Someone on Twitter summed up this year nicely:

So. 2016, a summary:
Death.
Death.
Death.
Brexit.
Death.
Death.
President Trump.
Death.
Death.
Christm...Nope. Death.

— B52 | @saltwateritch (@Bristol52) December 25, 2016

( Uncheerful thoughts about 2017 )On the plus side, so far Christmas has been kind to me. I've put up a tree, which the cats, weirdly, are ignoring entirely. Clearly, Christmas ornaments just aren't as interesting as live mice. It was a bit of an adventure, as first of all the place I went to no longer had any small trees, so I am now boasting an eight-foot tree, which I had to cut down a bit because my ceilings are not high enough to accommodate eight feet of tree plus a stand. I have a special stand that I bought years ago at Canadian Tire, which balances your tree by itself so that perpetually single people like me can put up a tree on their own. It still works well after all these years, and after being left outside for two years in the rain and the snow (because I'm a careless person, sometimes).

Second, I had trouble with the tree lights. I bought a second strand (because eight foot tree), and wound it first around the tree. I was talking to my mother on the phone, and accidentally unplugged the power supply while I was trying to light the strand. Oops. Then when I got her back on the line I dropped the phone again, so we decided to call it there rather than invite further problems.

That's when I discovered that my first strand had a neutral prong that was bigger than the hot prong (which is how most are made these days), while the new strand had equal sized prongs, which made them incompatible. No worries, I thought, I would simply switch them around and plus the new strand into the old strand instead of vice versa. No dice. The old strand only had half the lights working. Since these are LED strands, I don't think it's a question of one light being burnt out (the way they used to: I have memories of exasperatedly switching out one bulb after the other to determine which was the defective one, and sometimes it was two bulbs and then you were screwed), so I had to go out and get more strands. I got two to be on the safe side, so now I have a very lit tree. No complaints, tbh. I didn't even have to use the extension cord I got.

After that, thank goodness, the rest of the tree decorating went without a hitch. I had to split it over two days, as I was working early in the morning (for those of you who are relatively new to this LJ, I have to get up at 04:00 to get to work on time), so I ended up finishing it on Christmas Eve. I had on the traditional Christmas music CD that my father gave to him (classical choir music, I should specify), and all in all it was a lovely and peaceful experience. Las year and the year before I had no tree. Last year I went to my parents' for Christmas, and the year before I had just moved to Ottawa and the idea of a tree was exhausting. In 2013 I was still with my ex, and we used her fake tree, which I was mostly not allowed to decorate, and we used none of my decorations at all and didn't listen to the music that had been my family tradition when decorating the tree. So 2012 was the last year in which I had my own tree (it was a collaborative effort to decorate it, which was equally as nice as decorating on my own), and I missed being able to do it.

And the finished result:

Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.

In the meantime, I'm in the midst of prepping for the "Un-Christmas" lunch I mentioned in my last post. I have all the cooking set up, either frozen and waiting to be thawed, or else sitting in the fridge or pantry waiting to be prepped. I have some last-minute fresh ingredients to buy, but apart from that, we're looking good.

Today I'm going to give the house a thorough cleaning (I hope I'll have time for everything I'd like to do, but it should be okay), and will finish Wednesday if I must. I have told myself that if I finish it all today I am allowed to treat myself to Rogue One at the theatres on Wednesday evening. I have two free movies thanks to my Scene card, so it'll be a nice, inexpensive reward, especially if I don't splurge on popcorn or anything else. House cleaning is not my forte, though, so I'll have to see. Maybe if I finish early enough on Wednesday I'll still get my treat, but the plan is to do as much as possible today.

Anyway, this entry got much longer than I was planning, so I shall stop there and pick up in a later post, possibly my 2016 recap post.

Nana passed away the day before yesterday, from pancreatic cancer. She was at home, surrounded by her chosen family, and as far as I know, it was quick and relatively painless.

I am... I don't know.

She was one of those seemingly indestructible tiny maritime women. She would have been 96 this spring, and when I saw her last February she was in perfect health, and in fact made a joke that one of those "assisted living" programs had refused her access because she was in such good shape. I thought she would live to be 100, at the very least.

Nana was the closest person I ever had to a grandmother. I'm going to miss her so much.



Nana's on the right. With her is my childhood friend E. and her father.

As most of you no doubt know, Dr. George Tiller was murdered yesterdaywhile attending his church.

Now, I don't usually care what people's politics are. As I've said before, I'm anti-abortion, but pro-choice. I don't like the fact that abortions are necessary, but I firmly believe that it's every woman's choice to make.

This killing? This was murder. This was the murder of a good man, who not only stood up for his convictions, but lived by them, every single day. He went out of his way to perform a service for women that many others could not, and would not perform. Calling him a mass-murderer is, as lightcastle put it, a particular flavour of viciousness. It's not subtle to encourage people to invade people's sanctuaries, no matter how you try to couch your threats in terms of "peaceful" protest.

I don't know if it makes it somehow more heinous that someone violated holy ground in order to perpetrate the murder. The act itself was so heinous that I am hard-put to see how it could be made more so, but whoever the suspect is, he certainly gave it the good old college try.

Every time I think we might be going forward, something like this happens.

:::ETA:::

Here are a few posts by friends of mine, both of which offer particular insight into the matter:

Meallanmouse's perspective, as the daughter of an ob-gyn, with useful links too.

Lisa Small's entry, complete with links.

I've been too busy to post. I keep telling myself that I should write posts in here that aren't "here's what I did while I wasn't posting" entries, but I never seem to get around to writing those meaningful, insightful entries. I rather think that I don't have any to write. I've lost the knack of writing analytical text ever since I left university. Besides, I don't know that I'd want to inflict my essay-writing skills on my beleaguered flist, as I seem to recall that I bored myself silly with my own academic writing. I remembered wondering who would ever want to read such dry stuff as I was able to produce. It's not that it wasn't good —it was just really, really dry going.

Anyway, I've had a busy couple of weeks.
I saw an old friend of mine from high school last Saturday, although we didn't have much time to actually catch up as he had to go back to his office right after lunch (he's a lawyer). We did have a nice chat, and wandered through Atwater Market before he had to go, and it was really nice to see him again. Of all my friends in high school (of which there admittedly weren't many), he was the one with whom I got along the best. We're supposed to meet up again at some point in the near future, which ought to be nice. After that I got treated to a lovely private concert in the living room of some family friends, and spent the afternoon and better part of the evening making slightly awkward small talk with three roomfuls of people I didn't know and with whom I had nothing in common. Still, the concert was quite nice. The violinist was a young man, somewhere between nineteen and twenty-one, and he's quite promising. His playing was very adept, although it lacked depth and intonation, but with time I'm guessing he'll turn out quite well.

Sunday was spent hiding from the world recovering from that stupid migraine which started late on Saturday. Annoying in the extreme, as it was a gorgeous day out.

Monday was a writing jam with owldaughter, in which I got more writing done in one morning than I had in the past four weeks combined. I'm finally getting back into my ongoing YA novel, and I'd like to have it finished by the end of the year. I might "cheat" and make finishing it my NaNoWriMo project for this year. Either that or I'll write another horror novel, since they appear to write themselves for me.

I forget what I did on Tuesday, but I do remember that I had to be out of the house stupidly early to do it. That's probably why I don't remember: I was still half-asleep. ;)

I met up with ai731 on Wednesday morning, and she taught me the mysteries of canning. It's a really fun process, I assume more fun because there were two of us. We went through about three-quarters of the 20lb bag of apples I'd picked, and made apple sauce, apple butter (so very yummmy!) and an apple cake based on her grandmother's recipe, which was so very very delicious that I brought it to work with me so that I wouldn't be tempted to eat the entire thing by myself. I brought half to work, and ai731 kept the other half, naturally. I had to abandon ship just before the end of the session, as I had to go to work, and I just received the last three jars of apple sauce last night. I am very pleased with how the whole thing turned out.

Thursday was spent driving my mother around so she could get some errands done without spending the whole day doing it. Since she doesn't drive, and generally gets around pretty slowly anyway, it's easier for her if I occasionally spend a morning driving her around, and I don't mind doing it in the slightest. I tend to lose my mind if I spend too much time with my parents, but a couple of times a week is enough for me to keep my sanity.

Friday's Ubisoft lunch got canceled for me due to the (not unexpected) passing of my great-aunt Margot at the age of 93. I have very fond memories of her, and of going to her apartment in the Linton for a New Year's Day luncheon every year until I was about eight or nine. After that she moved to a smaller place (I believe it was a residence for relatively independent retired folk who only needed minimal amounts of help to get through the day), and she became a little too frail to be able to put on the spread she really wanted to. None of her three daughters ever kept up with the tradition, and so I sort of lost track of her for a while. We still saw her at the larger family gatherings, but it wasn't really the same.

The funeral itself was interrupted when my cousin Ophelie (the youngest of all the cousins, and one of the two cousins near my age with whom I actually keep up and get along) suffered some kind of seizure or syncope in the middle of the service. She was sitting right next to my father, and the next thing we knew she had turned a horrid shade of green, her eyes rolled back in her head, and she slumped forward. Luckily my aunt (not Ophelie's mother, but another aunt) is a nurse and took over immediately. I was rather grateful not to have to step in and apply my limited first aid skills to the situation. Someone produced a cell phone (a blackberry, I think) and called 911. I spent most of the time keeping people from crowding around, and reassuring people that no, it wasn't taking as long as they thought for the ambulance to get there. I timed it, see, and it took nine minutes from the moment the call was placed to the time the paramedics got there. In times of crisis, people's perception of how quickly time elapses gets seriously distorted.

My mother spoke to my cousin yesterday, as well as my aunt. Ophelie is doing okay, as it turns out, but she's going to have to see a neurologist, as her symptoms were quite alarming (swelling in the throat, stiffening of the extremities, extremely elevated heartrate, etc.). My mother, in true keeping with her nature, has invited her to dinner next Sunday.

After the funeral I took my mother to Juliette & Chocolat for lunch. Egads, it should be illegal to make chocolate that good. I have rarely had anything quite that sinful. I must go back.

Yesterday I got shanghaied by my parents into helping them shop for appliances. God help me. The less said about that, the better. The day improved immeasurably by the time I got to luvenditti's for dinner, and had a wonderful time with all my friends, chatting about movies and books and games and food and all the usual things we end up talking about at these events. I borrowed the movie "Clue" and watched it last night: it's a great deal of fun.

All right, the rest of my day beckons. More updates when I have something to say. ;)

I'm oddly saddened by the news that Stever Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, is dead.

I wasn't a fanatic of his show or anything, but I enjoyed it on television, and I admired the lengths to which he went to promote conservation.

It's not a surprising death, really, but it does go up there in the Annals of Weird Deaths: turns out he was stung by a sting ray during a film shoot, and the barb went right through his chest. He was 44.



Using my frog icon because it's the closest thing I have to a reptile. Amphibians count, right?

:::ETA:::

Holy cow! Everyone's talking about this today!

My godmother just died. It was announced in the paper today. I found out because my mother called to ask me to bring home a paper so we could keep the obituary.

For the record, I have three godmothers. Had, that is. Now I have two.

Aunt Molly (not my real aunt) was ninety-six years old, and was one of the pillars of anglo Montreal in her day. She was tall and beautiful in a non-classical way, and had a tongue so sharp she could cut steel at thirty paces with it. She led a colourful, eventful, sometimes tragic life, a life without compromises.

She kept to herself for the past ten years, didn't want to see anyone, embarassed by the toll that age was taking on her, physically and mentally. I hadn't seen her in nearly eight years.

I am very sad that she's no longer with us, and sad that I never got to say goodbye, but I know that she'd been ready to move on for a long time now. I hope she's found what she was looking for.