***SNOW DAY***

There are probably 7 inches of snow outside the bunkle right now. The photo was from first thing thing this morning, and it just kept coming. Luckily I have the ability to work from home if necessary, so that's what I did. And *bonus* some slightly down & out guy offered to shovel my walk for me - double win of meaning I didn't have to pooch my back any further by doing it, and a chance to give a few bucks to someone who obviously needs it. The other bonus was having a chance to watch the terrible twosome's snowday - I was working in the den so they took up space on the couch, pointedly NOT facing each other so the inevitable battle for couch-territory could be avoided in a dignified way. After a few hours on the couch, they moved to the red chair for a Sesame Street demo of some sort (...ON....UNDER....ON....)

Anyway, got a good amount of work done (phew), and had the added bonus of this arriving in the mail. Look forward to giving it a listen.

D'ya want a piece of me?

Taking a break from a busy weekend for a cup of tea. I'm posting more out of duty than inspiration, so if it is a bit tired sounding, it's because I'm a bit tired sounding.

Week started out with me getting some moles removed from my back, on the advise of a dermatologist. I went to Dr. #2, a cosmetic surgeon and he could only figure out 3 of the 4 that were supposed to be removed (as could I), which makes me wonder exactly what was wrong with mole #4 - heck, it makes me wonder if anything was really wrong with any of them. As Dr. #2 said, all my moles are odd, so he'd just be guessing. Comforting. Anyway, I went through a weird mourning period for one mole in particular - a very dark, penny-sized one in the centre of my back that I've always kind of liked. An old boyfriend called my back the night sky in negative, and I fear I've lost Saturn. Sounds really stupid to be bothered by any of this, but I have been. And not only because the stitches are pretty uncomfortable. I'll get over it, but after my recent biopsy and this I'm not volunteering any other pieces of my body for removal any time soon.

Also went to see The Black Rider this week - a musical developed by Tom Waits, William S Burroughs and Robert Wilson. Anyone who knows me well will know I am NOT a musical lover, but the combination of those three brains drew me to this. It took me a few minutes to relax into it all (I see white face paint, think MIME and I immediately look for the exit...) but it was worth the risk. Robert Wilson is a fascinating guy - there is a great documentary on his work called Absolute Wilson - watch the trailer here.

And as you'll see it is marmalade season at the bunkle. This is the first batch of Seville I've made in years because I have such a passion for my fave Lime - it's actually Seville Lemon, or "Chunky Breakfast Marmalade" according to the cookbook. I do love the colour of it.

And more Radiohead...

Well, Thom Yorke.
And you wonder why you never hear him laughing...

This by the way is from The Big Fat Quiz of the Year 2007 - which you can watch in 10 minute chunks on YouTube...handy if you have insomnia or just want to watch Russell Brand's hair.

House Of Cards (Scotch Mist Version)

So, finally bought "In Rainbows", Radiohead's latest. Love it. Love it. They are supposed to come to Vancouver this year. Hope so.

Discovered that they released a 52 minute film of all the songs from the album. You can view it in its entirety (Scotch Mist) on YouTube, but there are also individual songs posted - like this one.

Enjoy.

There Will Be Shingles...

So, here are the first photos of the new roof. NOTE that the new gutters are still on their way - the photo of the little roof above the back porch has an old gutter that is falling off on the right hand side. Next photo I take should show a marked gutter improvement.

What the photos DO show is how hard it is to actually see my roof. The little grey house that is right beside mine is RIGHT BESIDE MINE - so "right beside" that her roof actually drains into my gutter. The other side of the roof is more visible as the other neighbour is farther away, but alas it is the 'uglier' side of the roof as all the venting pokes through there. Anyway, it is much better than the old mushroom roof, which I am now realizing I didn't really have any good photos of. Oh well, some things are best forgotten.

What these shots also show is the weird some paint, some not situation - the body of my house is painted a rather hideous beige, but there are large areas of lovely new shingles too. Ohhh, would that my house were ALL new shingles! As it is, I have plans to paint sometime soon (soon meaning in the next couple of years ;-). I'm thinking a heritage red, but we will see.

In other news, just saw There Will Be Blood, P.T. Anderson's new film. As you've read before on this site, Anderson's Magnolia tops my fave film list - an imperfect film perhaps, but one that I can watch over and over and over. There Will Be Blood is unusual for a PTA film - the narrative is quite simple and linear for one thing - but there are other things that are clearly PTA - the trademark use of soundtrack as major character for one, and epic length as another. Daniel Day Lewis is fantastic as the dark and deeply driven "oil man." After the film, my pals and I joked about his character being a fair match for Javier Bardem's serial killer in No Country for Old Men. Could just be. But Daniel Day Lewis' Daniel Plainview is a much more developed, more human character. Certainly he manipulates those around him to his own end, but the levels of his anger and revenge point to the fact that he is a character that actually does feel - and arguably has genuine emotional connection and fondness his young son, as turned around and twisted as their relationship becomes later on. Bardem's ice cold, impassive Anton Chigurth is waaaay more frightening. Both are films you should see. And if you are looking for something less nasty in tone, see the really delightful Juno. Bonus: it's filmed in Vancouver ;-)

Things that go through my head when I look at my cats #1

She may be big...

It's only fair.
60 really boring seconds of Maggie, acting silly in the mess of the basement room.
OK, 75.
There is a rare Maggie belly sighting towards the end. Well, actually it isn't rare, it is something she exposes with some regularity as a ploy to get an unsuspecting human to try and touch it ("ooooh ... fluffy...OW!!). Kind of like an angler fish, but in cat form.
And I promise an update on the Bunkle's new lid soon! Just have to wait for the rain to stop so I can take some photos...

New Year, New Roof...

AUGH! It is finally happening - the bunkle is getting it's roof. I got the call that they would be starting next week - and really, who wouldn't start a reroofing project in the middle of January... (??!). The roofers assure me that they will only expose what they can reroof each day. Then again, rumour has it that most roofers are freshly out of The Big House, so whether or not I should believe it is another question.

As part one of the process, the little roof above the back door had to come down, and I didn't want to leave it to the roofers to do. My pals A & J once again swooped in and helped out (not sure what the bunkle would look like without their help). As it turns out, the roof was really more of an oreo cookie with wasp larvae as the soft chewy filling and rotting wood as the tasty outer coating, so I am glad it's gone. No idea really what will replace it, but will figure that out after the roof goes up. As you can sort of see from the photo, the wall above the door had to have some shingles quickly slapped on to keep the rain out (the roof had jutted slightly into the structure of the wall) - it will get properly reshingled after the roofers leave. And in a true masterwork of gubbins technology the top of a pop bottle and some caulking was used to plug a hole in the old gutters (which will be replaced along with the roof). As you can see by the drip, it ain't perfect but at least it stops a huge torrent of water spewing down.

In other news, the bunkle was de-Christmased today. Bit sad to get rid of the tree, and felt kind of ...mean...as I sawed it into three so the recycling guys will pick it up. Mags immediately sat where the tree was and looked a bit despondent. Thom is still asleep, so the trauma of losing the reindeer ornament he removed daily hasn't hit yet.

Speaking of Thomas, as you can see from the photo his vote on the couch fabric front is a darkish brown slightly velvety thing. I don't think he's backing the ultimate winner, but you never know.

In with the new, out with the plaid

Happy 2008.
Yikes.

So, the first new project for this year is picking out fabric for this - or actually, not exactly that but another couch made by the same company that is very very similar (think the only difference is the legs really). Which means the plaid livingroom couch, which has featured so prominently in the photos on this blog, is soon to find itself out of the bunkle and hopefully in the arms (or under the butt of) someone else.

The plaid couch was my first major furniture purchase. I was 18, and still at home, but they had a sale on couches at Ikea and I picked this one up for $250. $250.
Jeans cost that these days. And it has lasted me over 20 years.

When I got the couch it was gray, and fit in neatly with my slick grey/red/black/white bedroom. Life got less slick, the gray got dirty, so I recovered the couch, with the help of my long-suffering boyfriend at the time. We went to so many fabric stores. So, so, very many (did I mention long-suffering?). And finally found the green plaid, which somehow felt right. So, I made patterns. I sewed. And re-sewed when the cushion covers were too big. I covered all the cushions, front and back. I covered the sides of the couch. Then I lost energy. So the "skirt" area at the front remained gray. As did the back, hidden behind the cushions. Then the long-suffering boyfriend and I split up (which I don't think had anything to do with the couch), my Mum came to visit me, and we finished the last bit.

And I've really liked the couch. And the fabric, despite its ... plaidiness. It is so loud that it is somehow neutral, at least to me. But the time has come to say goodbye. And in my maturity I am stuck with deciding which fabric will work best. Be neutral enough without being boring, or showing the various nastiness that appears on the couch due to my two furry roommates. Which is hard for me because I am not by nature a neutral lover. Give me red. Or patterns. But as you can see from the swatches above, I'm trying to make a more flexible choice.

Even though the cats look so great on patterns.

How to age gracefully...or not.

It makes me cringe, but I had to post this. If you can hang in there til about 1:20 you'll be rewarded.

Ahhh, Bill. Those dance(?) moves.

And Joe, you're amazing.

One minute of Thomas

Be warned, nothing happens - this is one minute of your life you will never get back.

Christmas Belly

Christmas is over, many presents have been opened, and much food has been eaten. Though my brother tells me that eating turkey burns more calories than it contains. Which in theory would mean you could starve to death eating turkey. Then again, my brother once told me (ok not once, repeatedly) "Wild Horses" by the Stones was my favorite song, so it might be wise to take the turkey thing with a grain of salt or five.

Christmas always brings out the...something.... This year, we were unusually well behaved at the dinner table (no body parts were compared and measured, this year for once I couldn't tell you who has the biggest head or the longest nose. OK, that's a lie, I could, but the data is not that current). I missed an impromptu family dance party - to Bjork, instigated by my Dad - the weirdness of which can only be fully appreciated by people who know my family (and our general inability to dance).

Anyway, it was good. And just weird enough to be ours.

I am not willing to share my Christmas belly on the blog, so Thomas offered up his. He then tried to sniff the lens, which resulted in the closest cat shot I expect I will ever take. I like the way the flash made one nostril glow a bit.

Happy Boxing Day.

Sufjan Stevens - That Was The Worst Xmas Ever!

Sing along.
You know you want to.

Merry Christmas from someone else's cats....

I promise I will post something else soon, but quite honestly this is the best Christmas greeting I could possibly post, even if it doesn't involve my cats. If this doesn't bring a smile to your face or make you snort whatever you might be drinking through your nose, I'm not sure what would.

Happy Holidays.

And for more Winston and Rudy, check this out.

kitty teeth

So, Thom had to go for dental work - AGAIN. This year, it was sounding likely that he would need a couple of molars removed. Luckily, that wasn't the case. He has bad gums (OK, why is it that cats in the 1970s never had 'bad gums'??), but hopefully we can keep that in check.

He was pretty funny when I picked him up from the vet - slack jawed is the correct term I think, with tongue poking out and all. Funny thing is that he was very sprightly along with the slack jaw - truth be told I think he was having a fairly pleasant drug reaction and spent a fair bit of time and focus trying to catch shadows and lights, slack-jaw and all.

He's back to his inactive, tight-lipped self now.

All tree all the time

I decided to put aside my general not-all-that-celebratory attitude towards Christmas this year and (gasp) DECORATE. For years, I haven't really decorated at Christmas. There are a few different reasons - for years, I lived out of town and was always travelling back for the holidays - so why bother? And the one year that I stayed out of town and DID decorate was one of the worst Christmases in known history, so that scared me off a bit too. But this year, all year, I have been quietly sewing little things with plans for getting a tree to put them on.

My very first tree.

And I didn't want a big, bushy cultured mammoth tree - the bunkle is too small, and too modest for such...treeish grandiosity. So, when driving with my mum we found a tree lot that had "Charlie Brown Trees" (that's how they were labelled) - uncultured firs of some sort - which is just what I was looking for.

So here it is.

I admit, I have tree pride.











Cat reactions have been interesting. Maggie has a tendency to sit behind the tree and hide - if you can say that a 15 lb cat can hide behind a 2" trunk. Thomas has stolen a wooden reindeer from one of the branches, but seems more interested in the shadows the lights cast on the wall.

As for me, I will keep sewing little things, and will spend too much time looking for just the right branch on the just-right tree to hang them from.

If only all of Christmas was that simple.

I should also mention that I have been playing this to death, thanks to my pal A. - the perfect mix of traditional carols and soon-to-be Christmas standards like "Did I make you cry on Christmas Day? (Well you deserved it)".

Happy Holidays.

Kitty Interlude

It's about time I think.

Bathroom shot is Thomas trying to stare down a fly that was on the mirror. I eventually had to kill it for him.

He's a lover not a fighter.

And I'm not sure where the disembodied cat leg he is lying on came from. Haven't seen it since.

It's all in the 'stache...

As I was doing the post on Les Savy Fav, I kept on trying to figure out how to gracefully fit in a picture of the drummer from The Dodos. It didn't really fit in, the post was long enough already, so I didn't put it up.

As I thought about it more and more, I realized that I have a bit of a fascination with the drummer from The Dodos. I wasn't really sure why - heck, I don't think I could pick the guy out in a crowd really - but the more I thought, the more I realized...it's his moustache.

And the same could be said for Miles from Akron/Family. That boy is sporting a wicked chevron, and I've had a fascination with him as well. Go figure.


I don't know. It's not that I find it attractive per se, it is that I find it...compelling, if one can find facial hair compelling. I guess it is the very self conscious choice to sport something that is somehow so ... NOT cool ... that is making it cool. Or maybe that is just my misguided view of it.

I'm old enough to remember when the 'stache WAS cool, and when that love turned on it's head and made it the absolute worst choice one could make in facial hair. The choice to harken back to such icons of facial hair as Burt.

Or Derrek Smalls from Spinal Tap.

I'm not sure if the young guys sporting these things are doing it for the self consciously referential reasons I hope they are. I suspect not. But I don't really want to know for sure.

Naughtiness face-off

Went to see Guy Davis last night. Good voice, good playing, good song choices, good backup musicians. Very good sound. Questionable lighting (it's a bit stark in there - they really could work on warming their lighting up some, you feel a bit like you are watching a lecture not a concert). And an audience of middle aged North-Shore types, the same people you'd run into wearing their Tiva sandles at the Folk Fest. And they were in for a nice, enjoyable, fairly gentle night of music. A pretty big contrast from Les Savy Fav the night before - or was it? Take a listen to this one, and tell me what pushes your buttons the most - the lyrics to The Chocolate Man, or Tim Harrington putting a shaker ball down the front of his pants and retrieving it out the back? Ya, ok. Pretty weak comparison maybe. But give me another time and place and it might not be so clear. Ya, ok. Still pretty weak. But give me some points for trying to find the thread.

And as for performance - it was also an interesting contrast. Both of these guys know how to play an audience. With Guy Davis, he's got to find another way of engaging them and making them comfortable, as I'm guessing the middle aged North Shore folks aren't going to love watching him put a shaker ball down his pants (well, except me. I'd be up for that). Little stories, little jokes. A little smooth perhaps, but it works for what it is and for the audience he has. I prefer something a little less...contrived I guess...but that is splitting hairs. Maybe the shaker ball was contrived too, but somehow I don't think so. Don't get me wrong, I suspect many things have ended up in Tim Harrington's pants at concerts, but I imagine they aren't always shaker balls.

But back to Guy Davis. This is the only video I managed to take before the Cap College Concert Police (a mousy middle aged woman in this case) shut me down. I had hoped to record one of his banjo moments, which were highlights for me. I do love banjo. Next time, next time.

Rub my belly

Les Savy Fav at Richards last night. We showed up at our usual half hour before doors so we could score the old people seats - and no one was waiting at the door. We discussed the possibility that we might just be the only people going to the show on Vancouver's first seriously snowy night - and if you have seen Les Savy Fav, or watched them on youtube, you know that this is a band that relies on crowd craziness. Or rather, enough crowd to reflect Tim Harrington's craziness back at him. Thankfully, by show time the place was full. Not packed to the rafters, but pretty close.

The Dodos opened (as did another band which - sorry - I've forgotten the name of). I really like these guys. And they opened for Akron/Family last time, so this confirms the fact that they are being chosen by some pretty good acts. Great energy, great musicians.

And then Les Savy Fav. Tim Harrington came out in kind of a ... gnome outfit?.... well, at least a gray cape, plastic nose, furry mitt on his hand and who knows what else. Over the course of the show the nose - well, everything but the pants - came off. The man brings a new level of grace to being bald and bellied. Who says you have to look like Brad Pitt to get the ladies? or the men for that fact? The audience was all over him - rubbing what ever bit of sweaty flesh they could as he offered himself up to their adoring hands. Men kissed him (ok, he kissed one, then another hopped on stage to kiss him - but that's splitting hairs). People opened their mouths like baby birds to catch the water he was streaming from his mouth. The man is a force. There is no doubt about that.

I have uploaded a video (The Sweat Descends), and have posted a few more on YouTube for those brave enough (watch The Year before the Year 2000 and play "watch the ball"...). Hopefully I will also be able to post some more later, so if you like this kind of thing, check back.

And next time this band comes to town, GO. You might get wet, or sweaty, but you won't be disappointed.