You see, agave like to be abused. They like horrible crapass soil, no fertilizer and next to no water. We saw this neglected plant and promptly cleaned it up, gave it rich soil and some water. Which made it do this:

This is the agave dying. Apparently, if you treat them to well, they bloom.

And then they die.

Of course we learned this after the lovely floral death spike had already appeared.

*sigh*

Anyway, it is a truly weird thing that neither of us (or any of our neighbours) have ever seen before, so we’ve decided to enjoy it. The flowers are full of nectar to the point that it runs out of them and drips on the ground. Honey bees have found it and now the flowers have tiny bee bums sticking out of them on a daily basis.

Meanwhile, the backyard is producing fruit much faster than we can eat it. We figure the yellow plum tree produced almost 80lbs this year and the blueberry maybe 20lbs. The apple trees are also loaded and we’ve picked enough blackberries for jam, jelly and pies. Even the fig decided to fruit this year. I warned the neighbours about the bumper apple crop when I forced *ahem* gave them shopping bags full of plums.

They may not open their doors when apple season starts. We’ll see.

Our old house with renos fully finished

Bought this instead (after almost two months of viewing the most horrifying and expensive houses I’ve seen):

House that needs a complete overall

New house had this kitchen:

Filthy tile encrusted space that bleach and steam could not clean

Gave it some lipstick and mascara:

Cheap overhaul that doesn't make me want to cry

When looking around the house at what needs to be done makes me want to curl up into the fetal position, I go out on the balcony and look at this:

The view from here that makes me forget the horrors of house renos

And in amongst all the house moving, both my brothers got married, there was a new nephew, some old friends passed away, the monkey got a new job, there was a trip to Hawaii, many blankets were knit.

And now we’re all caught up.

November:

Fresh ink in the form of a blue ring octopus on  my left wrist.

December:

Tree trimming with the family.

January:

New hair colour.

February:

Stash busting blankets.

I can sum up how I felt about last year in four words, “fuck you Mr Bitey!”. Glad it’s over.

I didn’t finish Cryptonomicon, but I am about 100 pages farther in than I was before. I’ve resigned myself to this book being a decade long read.

I didn’t blog every month. Did anyone care? I know I got over it.

I did knit 59 pairs of socks.

Everyone who managed to churn out a pair a month? Good for you! And? Kiss my ass!

We’re planning to sell our house shortly so I’ve got to get things down to manageable levels. I plan on this being a blanket year. Aiming for an even dozen. Got three done already.

Guess what you’re all getting for Christmas.

Whoa.

I knew it had been a while since the last post but, well, oops.

I got a new tattoo last month. It’s inspired by one of my very favorite movies, Spinal Tap. After all, there is such a fine line between stupid and clever. Lately I feel like I am that very fine line.

Things are in a constant state of flux around here right now.

We ordered new furniture at the beginning of the month and it’s ready. How the hell is that possible?! I was waiting a couple of weeks before I listed the current stuff for sale so we wouldn’t be sitting on the floor for weeks on end and the bloody stuff is ready before I even list the old stuff!

I am impressed by their service but part of me wonders if I placed ads for the old furniture right away, if the new maybe wouldn’t have been ready until Christmas…

House next door is still in place and without power or siding or any semblance of yardwork.  No sign of the people who bought it for months now. Looks like I am going to have to call the city. Bleh.

The furnace man finally (it was almost two years) came and put the chimney sleeve in so we are set and legal now.

Plans are afoot to organize the stash room. I have enlisted aid of an unsuspecting and fairly OC friend. She has no idea what this will take, but I know that once she’s into it, she’ll see it through. Hell or highwater.

Looshkin is still evil. He spent most of my “relaxing” bath the other night whacking at my boobs every time they stuck out of the water.

He pretty much defines evil.

Sock count is up to 46 pairs. I’m right on track for finishing 50 as I had planned. Sadly, it hasn’t put even the slightest dent in the yarn stash. I have managed to knit a couple of sweaters, a scarf and some shawls too.

Dismal Octobers for Canucks seem to be the norm. Although this year seems worse than usual. Luongo has become a 5.3 million dollar sieve and may become the most expensive backup goalie in the league. Last night’s game seemed okay until he folded in the shootout.

There was much swearing.

I hate Chicago.

Fall brought a ton mushrooms this year.

That one is the size of a side plate and the ones below look like leaves at first glance.

Wish I knew if they were edible, there were enough for a feast.

Monkey goes sturgeon fishing this weekend and hopefully I’ll be sitting on the floor when he gets back. The new furniture arrives next friday.

For those who aren’t familiar, it’s basically this:

- are there two women with names

- do they talk to each other

- do they talk about something other than men

As I was describing this test and talking about it regarding movies with a couple of guys, I realized something.

The movies that pass that test? I likely don’t want to watch them.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Thelma and Louise. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? is also right up there. But those movies are full of violence and a healthy dose of crazy.

Eat Pray Love? You couldn’t pay me enough. Look for me in the line for The Expendables. I am literally counting the days until Machete opens. When I saw the trailer (the fake trailer) for it in the Rodriguez/Tarantino double feature I wanted it to be real.

Jackass. I freaking love Jackass. Women would NEVER make that movie. And before you disagree with me, think about this: if your friend snuck up behind and shaved a patch of hair off your head, would you laugh? Probably not, but the guys on Jackass do. ‘Cause men are stupid, and fun, and mostly take things a little less seriously than women do.

This makes men more entertaining. At least for me it does.

The monkey and I went to a couple of olympic hockey games, one men’s, one women’s. As I watched a Canadian woman go to the penalty box, I asked the monkey what I’d missed, it looked like a nice clean hit to me. Apparently, I missed the fact that women’s hockey is no contact.

WTF?

Really?

Why?

They wear the same gear, it’s the same game, why the pansy assed rules? I watched the gold medal game, those chicks wanted to hit each other, why are we stopping them?

I don’t get it.

If we want the playing field to be level, we can’t complain when we get our heads shaved or take a clean hit.

And sometimes? We’re gonna have to throw the gloves down and have a fight. And I’m not talking about pillow fights in jammies either, I mean a good old hockey fight.

It’s not about titillation, it’s about taking ourselves less seriously and just having fun. When that happens, more stuff will pass the Bechdel test and I may even want to go see it.

In the meantime, who’s wants to come see RED with me? I hear Helen Mirren kicks some serious ass.

Yee frikkin haw!

Like this:

View of neighbouring houses that will not allow us to sell out house for what it’s worth right now?

bad

Costco dahlias?

pretty

Strangers peeing in our yard in broad daylight?

bad

Fushias?

pretty

White Rock water testing positive for e coli and Epcor only telling us through Global news?

bad

Pink cosmos?

pretty

Rogers charging us for roaming when we’re in our own house?

bad

Hardy hibiscus?

pretty

See? I bet we all feel better now.

And? The monkey’s annual Brokeback weekend fishing trip was a great success! He came home with 6 sockeye and a ling cod.

There’ll be some salmon going in the smoker tonight.

Life is pretty good.

Last year was incredibly sucky for almost everyone I know. We weathered it okay, but people we loved were treated badly, lost jobs, got sick and just plain died. This isn’t the first time we’ve had a stretch like that, but it never seems to get easier to deal with.

We all hoped that this year would be better.

I think we all need to hope harder.

I’ve decided to call this the “transition year”.  Seems more promising than “the second year in a row that everything went to shit”.

And again, it’s mostly worse for the people around us, we’re dealing with changes, but we’re not sick or destitute, so it’s all good.

I can’t really get into what’s going on around here except for the monkey’s new job. He’s finally made the decision (weeks of agonizing and I managed not to kill him). He starts on Sept 7. This is great except for the fact that the new job is downtown. It doubles his commuting time and he’s going to use transit. Sounds like many kicks and giggles doesn’t it? Oh and he’s taking a pay cut. woohoo

He is very excited about the job though and that was definitely lacking lately with his current position. We’re hoping the better working conditions will make up for the other stuff.

The only other thing I can say is that I have a little over a year to get my flabby butt back in shape. Started the program in earnest this morning. I think the chick on the workout dvd is a cheery little sadist. I’d find her and kill her if I wasn’t trying so hard to breathe. Fifteen minutes of her perky little moves had me wanting to lie face down on the floor and cry. Of course there was no water left in body, so crying was completely out of the question.

Wish us luck please.

We’re gonna need it.

We don’t water the grass, just the plants so it was turning into a bit of a dustbowl around here. Things like the complete morons new neighbours apparently doing the tear-down on the house next door themselves definitely does not help.

I am not kidding, check it out:

The plants have been loving the weather:

The passion vine came back this year and has a minimum of three flowers booming every day. It’s gorgeous and smells kinda like candy.

And the meyer lemon has actual lemons on it:

The bottom one is about the size of my thumb now. They take two years to mature and there’s a second bunch of flowers blooming now. Hopefully the bees will do the work this time as I had to pollinate the first lot myself with a q-tip.

The usual fibre crap that goes on around here was brutally interrupted last week for mechanical work. First car repair, then plumbing.

I love my car. A lot. But the mofo leaks and I want it to not leak. So the monkey helped me take the back end apart, replace some clips, weather seal some joins and lube up all the rubber seals.

It looked like this at the worst point:

No trim, no bumper, not so pretty.

I got it put back together the next day so that I could go buy plumbing fixtures. Our shower had finally given up. The monkey’s repair involved masking tape (seriously, don’t ask), mine involved replacing the stuff that no longer worked.

I won.

Then, after these two raging successes, WordPress crapped out, I couldn’t log into cpanel and Flickr decided to change their stuff so it was more of a pain in the ass.

I am not a techie.

Give me organics and I can make stuff, give me code and I’m totally screwed.

I’ve been screwed for a few weeks now. Sadly, the people in my live who can help me out with this stuff have been ass deep in their own problems and really give me too much credit for being able to learn on the fly.

They say, “just read the web hosting instructions, you’ll be fine”.

I say, “here’s some glue and wood and a book, build a guitar, you’ll be fine”.

Asshats. I love my friends.

Anyway, I’ve managed to figure it out. It works. I’m not sure how, but really? I. Don’t. Care.

It works!

Now I’m gonna go sew this together:

I totally get how this works.

That’s Star’s Tour de France pattern.

Seriously people wtf with knitters and the bike racing? I understand that it’s not that exciting so there’s no bothersome changes in tension like the ones that occasionally happen to me during hockey season, but omg! Go outside! Watch grass grow! Same effect! And you get some valuable vitamin D. It’s good for you!

Anyway, it started out well as you can see. I was just about to start the toe, but something had been bugging me about it. I don’t usually do socks taller than 5″ to the heel, so this thing looked monstrous. Like some sort of giant pink kilt hose. I tried it on. It was okay. Just okay. Kind of binding, but I have giant cankles and even bigger calves, so I figured I could give it to one of my friends who had more gazelle-type legs.

It was also getting very long in the foot. This was a problem.

So today the sock is again a ball of slightly crinkly yarn. I’ll use a finer weight and bigger needles when I tackle this again and likely will leave out a couple of the leg repeats.

It’s not going to happen right away though, as I’ve got a sweater to finish, a sweater to start and my new wheels will be here this weekend!

I did some designing this week and there’s drawing and calculations for a sweater and a pair of socks. The sweater was a huge amount of math. Took hours and there’s still a bit  more to do.

In other news, the power to the house next door has been disconnected and the random visits from my old neighbour have stopped. Maybe there is a god.

We decided the deck furniture was looking a little sad so we got these:

Now I just have to make some tables to go with them. Love being able to lie in the sun without ants running all over me.

With June being so cold, I guess these guys were a little late this year:

That’s a long haired June beetle. He’s huge. About 2″ long and 3/4″ wide. They sound like small birds when they fly. Kinda cool, but they like to eat fruit tree roots, so I was happy when he decided to go elsewhere.

Gonna go get some vitamin D now, you should too. Who knows, this may be all the summer we get!

The monkey is back from Sweden, we still haven’t gone through the kajillion pics he took. The Festival of the Farts is on across the street making leaving the house and getting back a pain in the ass as people tend to park across the end of the driveway.

Still haven’t sold my car.

Wheels should arrive with Holly this weekend.

Didn’t bother with Tour de Fleece. In fact I don’t think I ever have. Not a big fan of watching cycling. It’s like watching golf, or bowling or grass growing.

Still not sure about HS reunion. Part of me is curious and the other part of me won’t stop screaming.

Pondering moving to a larger house.

Trying to decide the best way to kill some of my neighbours.

Reading lots of trashy novels.

Listening to lots of metal, old and new.

Thinking ’bout dyeing my hair purple.

You know, the usual.