Unfortunately, I get out quite a bit...

This appeared at my local coffee shop a few weeks ago. I don't know if I can confirm Douglas Coupland wrote it, but if he did, he wrote it when people were still watching television and before social media really took hold.

Something that is

The eye is round and rather a bright blue.

It belongs to a large, older man who is seated in one of the armchairs at the edge of the coffee shop. He's holding a Times-Colonist up close to his face, and is clearly not reading it, because his left eye is peering around the side edge of the newspaper, and it's fixed on me, as I arrange the chair, and place my journals across the table I intend to use. Two or three times, I gaze back at him, keeping my face neutral. The eye does not blink.

I go get my coffee.

I ignore him for the rest of the morning.

A standard sunset

Hurrying home from Demeter's, I saw a crisp, not-quite-full full moon swinging up into the sky. I glanced over my shoulder to the west, and picked up my pace, heading straight through the building entrance to the elevator, where I rose to the fifth floor, turned right, and through the door that leads to the roof.

There's talk of moving to Pacific Daylight Time permanently. I'm not sure how great an idea this is; plenty of health researchers are not in favour.

This may be the last Pacific Standard Time sunset in British Columbia.

What you really really want?

I was a mum of little girls in the 1990s.

You know what that means, don't you?

Elder daughter was so obsessed with the Spice Girls that, at age six, she phoned the video store on her own, to reserve a copy of Spice World. (Oh gawd. Spice World. How many times did I have to sit through that?)

I was dressing younger daughter (about two), one morning, when she suddenly yelled "Baskers! Baskers!" It was only when I followed her downstairs that I realized it was because elder daughter, having borrowed the CD from someone at school, was playing Spice Girls music in the living room, where I couldn't hear from upstairs, but sharp-eared younger daughter could.

After years of "girl power", I finally get my reward.

Whoops apocalypse

Oh gawd. Just before waking, I dreamt that Alex Trebek was gesturing to me, indicating the safe way to negotiate a sidewalk blocked and surrounded by some sort of construction. (Actually, a way of life in Victoria, which is in a frenzy of pipe replacement and condo-building these days.)

I reached a place of relative safety beside Mr Trebek, and we paused to chat about gardening decisions in the wake of the construction. I perused the plantations fronting what was apparently my building -- odd, considering it was neither my actual home, and I do not garden, but that's typical of my dreams, which usually involve things I don't do and places I don't frequent.

I turned to Alex Trebek, and he had flung his arm around the shoulder of William F. Buckley Junior - a big clue that this wasn't real - and then Alex Trebek made some sort of apocalyptic statement while gazing into what looked like molten lava bubbling out of the building. I struggled for a polite and appropriate remark, thinking: This is all very well for him; he'll be dead soon.

Then I thought: So will we all.

Not, on the whole, a pleasant vision from which to awake. I think world headlines must be getting to me: Australia blazing away, kids dying from the cold in Syria, locusts in East Africa, some dang virus causing people to stock up and racial-profile...

As for the real Alex Trebek, he doesn't seem to have any plans to die soon.

The importance of looking up

On a crisp sunny morning, the huge old trees that line Chester Avenue are stripped of last year's leaves -- it took a while -- and one can see things.

But only if you look up. I looked up and saw a holly bush growing out of an ancient trunk. How long has that been there?

I don't do that dance no more

One cool thing about living in Victoria is that I don't have to stay up until 11:30 to watch Saturday Night Live.

Mind you, if I PVR it, I also don't have to sit through interminable commercial breaks.

There is a certain thrill, though, in knowing what you're watching is going on at that very moment. Or with a two-second delay for bad language...

Last Saturday's thrill was seeing David Byrne, in an impeccable grey suit, and bare feet, performing with a large group of musicians/dancers/singers -- all in impeccable grey suits and bare feet.

This song was written in 2008, I think.


It was the second song they performed, and I understand that, on Saturday Night Live, the second song is the one the musical guest artist actually wants to perform. The first one is usually a big hit.

This one certainly is. It's from 1980.

Just for the record, David Byrne is 67.

I'm not obsessed with Hallowe'en, but I love my mother.

Awards season is long over. I saw most of them, despite really not being that fussed about the majority of nominees. I liked JoJo Rabbit; I liked A Marriage Story. If either had won, I would have been well pleased. Neither won for Best Movie, but JJR got Best Adapted Screenplay, and Laura Dern won Best Supporting Actress.

One awards show I didn't see was the Independent Spirit Awards. I don't think it was televised, not on a channel I could get, anyway. However, this clip turned up on social media, and I've played it repeatedly, partially because it's adorable, and partially because I'm not gay enough to totally get it.

I get bits of it. (I'm not totally unevolved.)


Demeter, by the way, is much better. Thanks for asking.

Going agley (or whatever the Welsh variation might be)

I had such plans for today.

It's St David's Day, of course, and the Resident Fan Boy picked up a generous bunch of daffodils yesterday. (Some years, they're scarce, but there's an abundance today.)

I headed into the cluster of shops near us and picked out two daffodil-bunches for Demeter: one opened and one nearly opened. "No bag," I told the cashier. "I'll just carry them to my mother like a kid heading home from school."

Demeter has whatever was laying me low a week ago, a nasty cluster of colly-wobbles and chills, seasoned with an afterglow of enervation.

When I got to her apartment, she'd become scary-sick, needing help to negotiate the trip to her ensuite bathroom, and refusing food, drink, and medication. That last item was particularly worrying, as she has the usual stack of medications required from a person her age. I stood over her and (gently, I swear!) persuaded her to take her morning pills, then controlled my panic as she nearly choked on them.

Spent the afternoon in her living room, staying within earshot, and ditching my plans to attend a St-David's-Day-themed cemetery tour. (Hey, you have your thrills; I have mine.)

Waiting for the great leap forward

I love the evening light of this in-between time, as the year rolls away from winter and dips toward spring.

It's also my first leap-year in Victoria since 2000. I had four in Hades. I don't remember much about the one in 2004, but, thanks to this blog, I know that in 2008, I was struggling with the nightmare that younger daughter's elementary school had become; in 2012, Davy Jones of the Monkees died; and in 2016, we were struggling to stay ahead of one of the heavier Hadean snowfalls sent to remind us that March has nothing to do with spring in Hades.

I saw daisies today in Victoria. And I saw the soft golden midway light hitting the enormous sinuous branch making a left turn in front of where we live.

Leap days are rare and precious things. Most of us don't get that much more than twenty of them.