HAPPY NEW YEAR
Last night was our big night out. For my birthday we went downtown and got a room at the Paramount Hotel. I put on my party dress, which I normally wear on New Years Eve but since we're staying home this year I wore a day early, and we headed out. We had cocktails and then went to the Fox Tower theater to see The Royal Tenenbaums. Great movie -- we still haven't stopped talking about it. Then we went back to Dragonfish and their late night happy hour had started so we had specialty cocktails and sushi specials. This morning we slept in and then went out for breakfast (banana nut pancakes) and wandered over to Powell's and finally went home. The best birthday ever.

Tonight we're going to Aileen's for dinner and we'll probably come home early. I've got some stuff I'd like to do tomorrow and we're still trying to see Vanilla Sky.

Yesterday we went to the movies and saw Amelie. We've been wanting to take Priscilla and it hasn't worked out so we just went ourselves. It's a fabulous movie and everyone should see it.

Right before the movie started two women came in and sat in front of us and you can imagine my alarm when they both checked their cellphones and then PUT THEM IN THEIR CUP HOLDERS. No, I am not making this up. I saw one of them fiddle with her phone during the movie but they didn't take any calls which was a huge relief. I thought they were teenagers but when they left, they looked like fully formed adults. [Rant about cellphones omitted.]

Wasn't there a time when the movie trailers were aimed at the audience? Like, if you were watching a chick movie, the trailers would be for chick movies. If you were watching a artsy film, the trailers would be for artsy films. Last night the trailers were for some of the dumbest looking movies ever in an era of movies that compete for dumbest status -- and not at all aimed at the audience. There was a trailer for the Tim Allen movie and the remake of Rollerball which strikes me as unnecessary and this animated ice-age movie which looks completely dreadful. Where are the good movie trailers?

Well, it's been an interesting week and I seem to be recovering just fine and have repaired some of the loopier blog entries. I've also fixed my desktop among other computer light repair needed after my Xmas stunt.

I saw in the paper this morning that Concrete Blonde is on a reunion tour and according to the website have a new cd coming out in January. This is a big surprise and makes me very happy as I saw them whenever possible back 100 years ago when I lived in LA.

I finally get the commentary tracks on DVD. I guess it depends on the movie but I always thought that you'd have to have a lot of time on your hands to be able to sit through that -- but if you're a big fan or the movie and/or director, then the commentary track is a lot of fun. Over the weekend I watched Rushmore with Wes Anderson, Owen Wilson and Jason Schwartzman doing the commentary. I'm going to cram in a quick view of Bottle Rocket again and I'll be all ready for The Royal Tennenbaums. Last night I watched Cameron Crowe and his Mom do the commentary for the director cut of Almost Famous. Excellent. I'm ready for Vanilla Sky now too.

Here's the recipe for the poached salmon from Sunset Aug 00.

1 onion
1 carrot
2 celery stalks with leaves
2 cups dry white wine
1/4 cup lemon juice
salmon

Peel onion, carrot, rinse celery and chop up. Toss into pot with wine and water.
Bring to a boil, and simmer for 15 minutes. Add salmon fillets to mix, cover, take off heat for 15 mins. Check for done and heat as necessary. Remove salmon and refrige.

FOR SAUCE: take a bulb of garlic, halve and rub halves with oil, put into foil,
seal and bake in oven for 1 hr. 350 degrees. Squeese roasted garlic into processor along with 1/2 c. mayo, t T lemon juice, 1/2 t. rosemary leaves, 1 t grated lemon peel. Whirl until smooth. Dump in a bowl and add 1 6 oz. jar drained artichoke hearts, chopped. Add salmon poaching liquid as you think necessary. Also add salt and pepper as necesary. Refridge sauce and serve with poached salmon. Yummy. Trust me.

Listen, we're still delirious with the Xmas meal. More details to follow.

Merry Xmas everyone.

This current login was sort of bizarre and paranoia inducing but we won't address this at the moment.

We're still getting ready to grill our salmon for dinner. I just called the family down south and got passed around -- I love it. Santa was incredibly good to us. The highlight was the new Titanium Powerbook which my sister said, "You can't share something like that." But believe me, I will find a way.

I always want to be prepared before I blog -- like I should have something to say. I think I should just log on every day and go by the seat of my pants and see what happens.

Yesterday we saw Ocean's Eleven which I enjoyed thoroughly. Nothing like looking at pretty boys for 2 hours. Bob pointed out that it was a pretty generic heist movie. Well he can sure spoil a mood. Afterward we drove to West Linn to go to Don's xmas party where we visited and ate party snacks. On the way home we hit Conan's Pub for Roz's Xmas show. A super fun holiday evening.

Today has been relaxing. We're on the progressive Xmas tree decoration schedule. Bob bought the tree last week. We got it into the stand and set up in the living room a couple days ago. Tonight we threw the lights on. Tomorrow we should manage the ornaments and not a moment too soon. It's nice not to be stressed out about it.

I have my Xmas dinner menu almost figured out. We're having two kinds of salmon. Then a rice thing and something with fruit and a decadent dessert with lots of fat and chocolate. I have to go shopping in the morning so I hope to have it all figured out by then.

I think I said I was going to blog about my reading strategy. I'm currently cleaning out my reading pile which is the bottom drawer of my nightstand. There was a huge pile of literary journals and half-read magazines that have been collecting dust for who-knows-how-long. But I've been methodically reading my way through everything so that I can start the new year with a completely empty reading pile. This gives me a sense of accomplishment.

I saw Lord of the Rings yesterday and LOVED it. Bob went to Burger King today and got me two of those light-up mugs -- truly the most amazing movie merchandise ever -- and believe me I hate that stuff. It just keeps getting better.

I just took the slut test at thespark.com and got the following results: .

I also took the personality test and I'm a: Submissive Introvert Abstract Feeler like 12% of the population. How many choices are there? Last night I took the sex test but this morning I remembered I answered some of the questions wrong. The tests aren't really designed for old married people.

First of all, Google has a 20 year archive of Usenet now. This is unbelieveably cool. You can find historic first posts linked to this page.

In other news, I had a run of 4 consecutive days with blog posts. A new world record. But then I dropped off. This is harder than it looks.

I wrote the PamNewsletter on December 1st but here it is the 13th and I still haven't mailed them. I've handed out about 6 and today mailed out about 12. Otherwise they are still sitting here. I started to get them done but I'm not sure what happened.

Today we had our "company xmas party." This is a small joke at our firm because there are only 3 people so we make jokes about having "staff meetings" and when we had our new phone system installed we had an extra phone installed which sits on a table about 4 feet from my desk and we call it the conference room.

For lunch we went to Abou Karim which is just about my favorite place to eat. I think we've gone there 8 of the last 9 company xmas parties. We always get the mezza (?sp?) platter which I could eat once a week. Can I legally change my name to hummus? After lunch we did a new thing and we went to OMSI and saw Everest. I've never seen an IMAX picture before and for the first 15 minutes I thought we were going to see Abou Karim's sprayed everywhere. But once I got used to it I loved it. And if you've read Jon Krakauer's book, Into Thin Air it adds a whole new dimension.

In other news, Kenman is going to be in Vancouver on Dec. 19 so I have a buddy to go to Lord of the Rings with. I'm wondering if I can re-read the book this weekend.

That reminds me I was going to write a whole post about my reading strategy but I will save that for later.

Also, I believe this post is the record holder for linkage in the history of me doing this.

The 2001 Volume 11, December 2001 PamNewsletter is finished and posted. The web version is a little longer and has 1 extra picture and doesn't include the Bob page that will be included with the paper version. My first version was padded to fit into 4 pages, but then Bob came through with his page and it made sense to cut it back down so the whole newsletter would be only 4 pages. To send out more seemed to ask a lot of our readers.

We saw another movie this weekend: Waking Life which was directed by Richard Linklater who also did Dazed and Confused. I can't recommend this one. I don't think it was bad but I don't know many people who would enjoy sitting through it. It was like sitting through an academic lecture. I'm glad I saw it but if I had known what it was like I probably would have picked something different seeing as how there are about 8 movies on the list right now.

I think someone (?) spread a bucket of gravel on the gravel part of our driveway. It seems like a bizarre, random thing to do, but there is a fresh patch of gravel in the middle that's different from the rest of the gravel. Why would anyone do this? Is it a hint? Is our gravel tired looking to someone? Some utility has been doing some work on our street -- maybe they had an extra bucket they needed to dump somewhere so they just tossed it on our driveway? It doesn't make sense any way you look at it.

Bob and I decided not to do Arts & Lectures this year and try some new things instead. The first thing we did was join the Portland Art Museum and saw that modern art show.

For the holidays we got a flier from them that they have a members night with music and cheese and wine and we could check out the European Masters exhibit. That was Wednesday and we decided to go but Weds am I noticed that you were supposed to RSVP. I assumed it wasn't that important but I called just to make sure and good thing because the event was full.

Instead, we went to see Ghostworld at the KOIN. We loved it. If I would have seen it before Halloween I would have dressed up as Enid. Maybe I'll dress up as Enid for Christmas.

I can't believe I forgot to write the latest on Dearthlink. I got a call shortly before Thanksgiving and the guy assured me that I no longer needed to worry about being sent to collections, that they'd gotten information from Teleport that confirmed that I'd prepaid up to the date I said I'd prepaid to.

The call was quite a shock seeing as how I've provided copies of items that prove I prepaid twice by fax and once by snail mail as well having a lengthy, unpleasant conversation over the phone with a "customer service" person who assured me that my account was settled.

I spent an unbelievable amount of time dicking with the archives and I can get them to work from the mainpage -- but if you click on an archive from an archive you get a file not found and somehow it's looking for an extra level and I don't know how to fix it and have run out of patience for now.

I saw Harry Potter on Friday. I felt about it the same way I felt about the books: I liked it, I didn't love it. I didn't sense that it was an instant classic. The special effects were great and the casting was great. It was completely fun. There was just some level that I didn't connect to make me love it.

It's been endlessly raining and storming and it's starting to get to me. We haven't been able to go for a walk for several days. Today we saw a break and by the time we put on our shoes it was raining again. We went anyway and it was too wet and cold to be enjoyed and I was happy to turn around early.

I'm working on Pam Newsletter 2001 and I can't find anything interesting to write about. There weren't any good pictures either. I'm not sure what this means.

I made cookies this afternoon and I think my oven is disintigrating. Everything takes longer to cook than the directions say. I'm not in the mood to deal with appliance repair at the moment.

ARCHIVE ALERT
It looks like the archives are all fubar again. And it looks like a smart person could fix it right away. I've tried a couple of things and it's not working and I don't seem to be capable of fixing at this moment. If you're dying to read the archives, you are a rare breed, so please, please come back. I will fix them.

I keep telling myself I am going to blog every day, but when I sit down each morning I can't even think of the most mindless thing to say. I think there are higher psychological implications.

Check out this site. I don't know why but Bob and I think this is hilarious tonight.

This morning I was looking for something in the freezer that I was positive was in a square container. It's the leftover 1/2 of a can of pumpkin that I used to make pumpkin scones. I want to make them again this weekend. I looked in the freezer twice and couldn't find them until I realized they were in front of my face in a round container. I think there is a lesson in there somewhere.

Tonight on the Daily Show (which took a million years to load with DSL) Jon Stewart said something about John Ashcroft being in a charisma vortex. "Charisma vortex." I like that.

I'm back at home after the holiday. The Thanksgiving part of the trip was great but the travel was completely screwed up. The trip down was just slow because of heavy traffic and darkness and rain. The trip home was gruesome.

On Saturday we left Orleans at around 9:45am in the pouring rain and by the time we got to Happy Camp it was snowing. Oh, also before Happy Camp we had to stop because there was a fresh slide and we had to get out and move big rocks out of the road so we could drive by. It snowed the entire drive to I5 -- slushy but heavy and accumulating. At the 96 I5 junction we stopped at the rest stop to see how the road was and we were informed that Siskiyou pass was a mess, chains required and that two semis had jackknifed southbound and it was an everloving mess and gee, didn't they feel sorry for us having to go that way -- it would probably take 3 hours to get over the pass.

Since I moved to the PAC NW I have been paranoid and ever watchful of winter weather on trips to California. And on this trip it never occurred to us to even check.

We weren't happy with this news, but what can you do? We drove to Yreka which had very heavy accumulations, not a whole lot of plowing happening, and we slushed our way to a tire store to buy chains and then found a nice Mexican restaurant and had a relaxing lunch and then went for it -- figuring the pass was probably plowed and we wouldn't need the chains and we'd just enjoy each others company and listen to books on tape and deal with it.

I do not ski, so have never been in a mandatory chains situation before and I found it rather thrilling. We pulled over in a long line of cars and trucks stretching as far as you could see up and down the mountain and put on chains in the wet and heavy snowfall. Do you mean to tell me we can send a man to the moon but there is no better way to make tires safe for driving in the snow? They even had a chain inspection station to see if you had them on. But no jackknifed semi and not even a lot of traffic -- we breezed over -- at 30 miles an hour with our heads vibrating from the chains and finally got to Ashland, got the things off and continued home in what quickly became pouring rain.

It took us over 10 1/2 hours which is about 2 1/2 hours longer than usual but didn't seem so bad when we heard my mother-in-law's tale. She got stuck in the backwash of the Sea-Tac meltdown. She was in Orange County and her plane got stuck at Sea-Tac. To make a long story short she didn't get home until 3am.

We have a rhodie in our front yard that didn't have one bloom this spring. I don't know what's wrong with it. Probably underwatered in the summer and it's probably depressed that all the cats in the neighborhood think it's just shade for their cat box. (In case you can't tell I am not happy about the vast amounts of cat shit that end up in my yard. If I wanted to pick up animal shit I could easily provide my own pet.)

This morning (yes, middle of November, butt cold, pouring rain) I noticed a bright pink flower right in the middle. Hopeful, yet depressing.

Yesterday I was cleaning off my harddrive and I found about 6 various version of Stuffit and related Aladdin software and somehow managed to delete every single thing. Long hassle ensued but I eventually upgraded to the latest version of Stuffit Deluxe and got it loaded up and backed up my computer. Oh, also my Norton doesn't work since I upgraded my software. And I'm not even to OS X yet. I just upgraded to OS 9.1. I used to be the hip up-to-speed Mac person. Now I'm the one running after the wagon, barefoot, begging everyone to wait for me.

But the big news is that Bob took me to school for the big PMUG "You Don't Know Mac" contest at Clark. And while we were there, we slipped off to some computer lab with a big projection screen and I got to use my Phantom Menace DVD special feature and download an Attack of the Clones trailer. It made me unspeakably happy. I watched it 3 times.

I always think I'm going to think of something good to say later. HA. This has been a strange week. I have been endlessly crabby so that even I didn't want to hang out with me. I had one of those weather headaches where it feels like there is a balloon expanding up inside your skull. And all this random frustrating stuff like Merrill Lynch sending me a stupid note with an exclamation point, (it wasn't the exclamation point itself that pissed me off but we don't need to hear the whole story now) and getting the car insurance bill and seeing that none of the changes I talked about with the agent were on there. Are there any competent people in the world? I bet there are only like 3 and we can thank them that the world is even standing right now. I woke up feeling better this morning and I'm caught up on all my shows -- finished the last tape last night. My reviews: Angel, Buffy, Roswell -- fabulous. Simpsons -- uneven. Malcom -- funniest show ever. XFiles -- um, not sure yet. I don't think that continuing to add more and more characters is going to save the show. I'm thinking that I will be glad to have that hour of my life back.

Okay -- the archives seem to be working again -- no thanks to me. But I just realized that when you're in an archive you can't link thru to other archives. I guess I should figure that out too. Not right now.

This weekend we went to Seattle and it rocked. We drove up on Saturday and met Matt, Kasey and Ruth in Queen Anne for fabulous Thai food. Then we went to Ken and Joyce's and visited and stayed the night. On Sunday we had a good breakfast at Vera's in Ballard and then to Archie MacPhee and I never thought I'd leave. Then to EMP where we waited in line for Quincy Jones to sign Bob's stuff and later that day, a great Q&A with Quincy moderated by Elvis Mitchell.

I bought Phantom Menace DVD as my reward for getting my manuscript in the mail on Wednesday. By the end it was like finals -- all I did was eat, sleep, go to the office and work on my manuscript. I read an article recently by a woman who said after she finished a big writing project she sometimes got depressed. I've been pissed off. Maybe it's some other things going on that are bothering me but I've been a bitch on wheels ever since the guy at the post office said he'd never heard of manuscript rate. Well, other people who work for the post office have heard of it. I couldn't have made it up.

But back to Phantom. I haven't watched the whole movie yet but I watched the deleted scenes and I found the easter egg blooper reel and I watched some other stuff. It is amazing how happy this makes me.

I tried to blog twice on Friday but instead of clicking "post and publish" I clicked "sign out" which erased my post. Since it happened twice, I figure I am not supposed to blog that item which had to do Enya and we'll leave it like that.

I'm still just spending all my time working on the manuscript and even though I'm enjoying the work it would be nice to do some other things. I think I can get it into the mail tomorrow or Tuesday.

We got the flier from EMP and they're doing a thing with Quincy Jones who is one of Bob's personal heroes so it looks like a trek to Seattle is in our future.

I guess I didn't blog about it yet but when I was in Oklahoma I talked to an agent about my manuscript and she asked to see it so basically every spare moment of my life since then I've been doing a bit of polish and clean up before I print a version to send. During the summer I went to a workshop at the Willamette Writers Conference and I learned a lot and had a bunch of notes but at the time I decided I didn't want to invest the energy into the old manuscript but would rather keep working on new things. And of course now I wish I had started the work back in August. I'm having a fun time doing the revisions but I feel a little rushed. I'd like to get it in the mail a week from Monday. We'll see how I do.

Not too long ago I was in a bookstore waiting for someone and had enough time to browse a lot more carefully than normal. I found this book about fashion and style and since I still want to improve my style even though I don't put any effort into it -- I scanned this book for quick tips. The first one was, "You can't have style if you're shopping on your lunch hour." Oh, so that's my problem. Apparently to have style you have to spend lots of time in shops and I loathe shops so there's a bit of a problem there.

This week I went to the Rack -- not on my lunch hour but in the hour between after work and before yoga class -- and I tried on a bunch of stuff and even bought things not-black. But that isn't the story. The story is while I was in the dressing room I overhead two women talking and one said, "This is so last season."

How do you know if it's last season?

Does anyone else feel their username/password situation getting out of control? I try to keep things grouped thematically and keep them the same but I'm starting to lose it and am wondering what's going to happen if I get hit on the head or something.

Not too long ago I was at the bank and there was this lady who appeared to have challenges of both mind and body. She was trying to make a withdrawal and of course she didn't have an account number and it wasn't her normal branch so no one recognized her and she fussed about getting out her ID. In the meantime there's a gigantic line. The teller was politely hostile. The teller was finally able to get her account info and announced that she had: $6.31 in the account. The lady says to go ahead and give it all to her. The teller says, "Is a five and a one okay?" Completely hilarious.

I still haven't gotten my act back together since Oklahoma. There are books and papers and lists and notes strewn from one side of my room to the other. I'm going to get it all reeled in tomorrow. I hope.

I'm back. Everything on the trip to Oklahoma went smoothly. Yes, I had to sit in the back row or middle seats on the flights, but everything was on time and safe so we'll just leave it at that. Security is interesting. At PDX on Thursday morning you really did need the full 2 hours for check in. Our flight left at 8:10a and we got to the aiport at about 6:15a and we still had to take cuts in the security line to get on our plane in time. At PDX we walked through the thing, they wanded us and patted us down. In Oklahoma City we just went through the thing. In Denver they were doing random wanding at the gate. Also my ID was checked at least 15 times with my ticket and not one person ever looked at my face to see if it matched the ID. I think that's a flaw.

The Conference was super fun and I have lots of notes but I'm still a little frazzled catching up from things when I was gone, so more later.

I tried to do this last night and after I had my thing all typed up I accidentally clicked "back" and it all went away.

I'm going to Oklahoma today for RTG and I've been rushing around trying to get my act together. I need to bring more stuff than fits in my "tiny" travel bag -- but not really enough to fit in the gigantic bag. We have no medium bag. So I'm bringing extra shoes and warm things since I'm paranoid about being cold. Probably no blog until I get back.

I'm forgetting the stuff about our itinerary getting completely "adjusted" by United -- I can't believe they didn't expect me to be upset that instead of getting home at 6pm I was getting home at 11:30pm on Sunday. I still have to fly through Seattle but they did get me out earlier. We still have a 4 hour delay in Denver today. But -- I see it all as catching up on my reading time.

I haven't gotten the stuff in here about Alicia. She's going to be in this documentary on PBS called Local News. There's a newspaper article about it here and here. I've gotta run, more later.

Well, I was going to do some stuff online tonight but now that I'm here I don't want to do anything. I'm going to finish my soccer game and do some ironing and watch Angel at 9.

One good thing that happened is that my sister was picked to be a torchbearer for the Olympics in SLC. It was Mom's idea but I wrote the nomination so I'm pretty excited about this.

Also I forgot to tell this earlier but I made this dish this weekend with sweet potato and apple which you cook and puree with butter and whipped cream. It was amazing. I ate bowl after bowl and convinced myself it was because I need the yellow vegetable vitamins.

Okay, I just spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to make my blog personalized in the tiniest way. I'm so slow, I still don't have the faintest grasp of tables. I'm sure it's not that hard, my mind refuses to get it.

Today it's cold and wet and grey. I can't believe the heat isn't kicking on. I'd nudge the dial but I hate to be a wimp. I've been working on projects all day including processing about 6 pounds of tomatoes. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

This morning we got up early and went to the Farmer's Market. I bought a ton of bell peppers among other fun vegetables. Then we went to the Credit Union to open a checking account for Bob. I generally like to avoid doing anything remotely errand like during the day on Saturday but this didn't turn out as bad as I had expected.

I then spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to set up my archives so that they would list on this page. I just can't seem to grasp anything more advanced than basic html. Next will be trying to customize the page a little bit. Later this afternoon I put in some time in the yard and got things pretty much put away for Fall. There is potential to do more but I'm guessing this is it. I watched 1/2 of the Germany v. Finland World Cup qualifier -- I have it on tape so can catch the 2nd half in a second here.

I just connected my DSL. Yay. As of 3pm today I still hadn't rec'd my modem so I got on the phone and was in phonetree/hold hell when I heard the doorbell ring. I opened the front door and there was my box of loot.

The directions said to expect 60-90 minutes for the install which frightened me, but here I am. More on this story as it develops.

I keep scribbling out little notes of things I want to blog and then I don't know where I put them. We saw Douglas Coupland read at Powell's last week. During the day I decided that I wanted to check out the Tour Diary and just punched in www.douglascoupland.com which turns out is some random site that links to this other author -- a squatter on his name. I even tried it again to make sure I didn't screw up. I eventually figured out the other URL and I still haven't had a chance to read the Tour Diary because it takes about 100 years to download so I'm waiting until I get my DSL which will hopefully be very soon and is a completely different story altogether. Back to DC -- at the Q&A or in this case it was an A&Q -- I asked DC about it and he was completely unaware and told me he was going to check it out.

The new book is called All Families Are Psychotic and I read the first 60 pages in line waiting to get it signed. I finished it on Friday. It's over the top and completely funny and, I think, a lot better than Miss Wyoming. FYI -- this is the fourth time I've seen DC read. A little fixation here.

In other news, I tore out all the tomatoes this weekend, and enjoyed doing it. I picked all the green ones so I'll be stocked in tomatoes for at least another month. And I'm processing a few for winter. Next year I am sticking to 2 plants and if one ends up to be a cherry tomato, I'm pulling it out.

I spent an insane amount of time on Friday in Qwest's phonetree bowels of hell. I can't imagine that any company anywhere really thinks they are doing a good thing by making their customers work through a phone tree.

First I had to call and find out the story on my DSL. Actually FIRST I had to call Pacifier (ISP) back and find out what was going on there -- get some additional info and then call QWest. Thank my lucky stars after a couple of transfers and endless being on hold, I ended up with David who was completely competent and was quickly able to see that my order had been screwed up pretty much from page 1 and was able to get me fixed up, anticipate that I'd have billing problems, and told me exactly how to handle it. Yay David.

BUT -- I still didn't have my modem because when the order was put in there was a note that said, don't send a modem. So we had to order it so I won't have a modem for another week, even though my service will be connected on the 1st. But that's fine, I've lived without it this long, I can survive another week.

So my separate Qwest matter was to get that stupid Customer Choice thing taken off. This is some great service that costs $32 a month and I'm not sure if this is the line charge plus all these worthless extras -- or $32 on top of the line charges. I ordered it to get the activation fee on the DSL waived and agreed we'd try it and we loathed it immediately. I don't like call waiting. We don't have a caller ID rig. We still got solicitation calls. And the freaky alternate ring for long distance calls freaked me out every time.

To make a long story short -- I had to be transferred around to at least 5 different people including one jackass who insisted that I should really keep the Customer Choice and learn to like it. What, does this lady get beaten at the end of the day if a customer cancels the special package? We'll see how it all turns out when I get our bill.

I feel like I'm behind in everything. Maybe I am. Or maybe everything isn't that important.

My DSL is supposed to go on tomorrow. Except I haven't gotten my modem yet and I called today and they advised me to call someone else because it should be here right now. I got another call (different person) from Qwest that my ISP isn't signing up new people or doesn't recognize them. And I called my new ISP to sign up and there was some sort of hold up and they would call me back in a half hour and never called back. This isn't looking so good, is it?

Bob found the 9.1 disk so I can update my system now. Better back everything up and disk doctor and that whole tap dance again to be on the safe side. If I can get 9.1 on here and get iTunes and that Gnutella thing figured out and get DSL working all in one weekend I will proclaim myself the technological genius of the century.

We watched Pulp Fiction this week -- I wanted to see it again because I read this article about some different films and I haven't seen it for several years and if you haven't you should go see it again because it's brilliant and Bob and I have had an extended conversation analyzing it. If forced to chose I'd have to pick Harvey Keitel as my favorite character in the movie.

We got the latest MacMall catalog this week and I noticed that RAM is unspeakably cheap. I thought I might try to max Yoda (266 mhz iMac) out and researched whether I could do the install myself. I found a website (which I neglected to bookmark but something imac2.com or whatever) and it had very wonderful instructions with detailed photos which convinced me I'd better pay someone to do this. I'd probably be more adventurous if I hadn't had such a bad time replacing the hard drive in Billy's Compaq piece of crap at the office. (To be truthful, I only partially replaced the item and had to call in a professional to complete the job.)

This weekend I'm going to be as lazy as possible for me and probably start phase one of putting the garden to bed. I've just about had enough.

Do you ever do this? You need to be somewhere at a certain time and you look at the clock and can see you're absurdly ahead of schedule so you dick around a bit and then suddenly you have to rush around and you end up being late?

On Wednesday Bob and I went to the Portland Art Museum to see the Clement Greenberg collection. I've been referring him as Stanley Greenberg (does anyone know who Stanley Greenberg is?) and Bob just corrected me this morning so don't look here for accuracy on this report.

Greenberg was an art critic in the US for years and collected modern art. Generally, I'd characterize my appreciation for modern art as being difficult to locate. We went to that modern art museum in Paris - the Pompadeau(?) and it was about 8 floors of waffles surrounded by chicken wire and pieces of rope taped to the wall and I was a bit underwhelmed by the whole thing.

This collection is interesting because it's one man's vision and I viewed it as a challenge to figure out why it was art. The museum displayed a number of quotes from Greenberg's writings and I was impressed by the strength of his conviction. He knew exactly what he liked and why he liked it. And I liked a lot of the pieces and I'd be a better blogger if I could tell you the artists' names.

Another plus, the museum was quiet so we could wander around in almost complete privacy.

On Saturday afternoon a guy came and knocked on our door. He claimed he was from a meat delivery service (points to refrigerator truck parked out in street) and had a bunch of extra stuff on his truck and rather than take it all back and have to do the paperwork, he'd like to sell me some of these conveniently already assembled assorted packs. Does this sound sketchy to you?

Yesterday I signed up for DSL. I'm supposed to be connected on 9/28. Stay tuned for details. I've been researching DSL v. Cable Modem all summer -- knowing that my current ISP account expires at the end of this month. AT&T is currently running a promo -- and Bob and I know several people using @home -- so I asked around and decided that we'd try that.

I had a list of questions, like about adding a 2nd computer and about remote access so I visited their completely worthless webpage and realized that I had even more questions. I wrote everything down and phoned them assuming that I would sign up with them.

First I get vaulted into the AT&T standard phone tree from hell. If you have any AT&T service of any kind, you know about this tree. I patiently press 1, then 2, then 1 again, then 1 again, and so on until I get put on hold. I'm a potential new customer, shouldn't they be trying to impress me? If it's this bad signing up what's going to happen when my connection goes dead?

I finally got a sales person who was completely unable to answer my questions and at my request transferred me to a more technical person, more on hold music, then the technical person is in service and tells me they aren't supposed to deal with sales calls. She interrogates me as to why I've been transferred and somewhat begrudgingly agrees to answer my questions. She proceeds to tell me that they don't support computer networks or remote access. hm.

Of course, I'd already had enough 10 minutes earlier so I thank her and call QWest and set up DSL.

The Cosmic Meaning of Sneezes

1 sneeze - you have allergies
2 sneezes - you'll never get out of debt
3 sneezes - an angel flew past your head
4 sneezes - your ab workout is finished

A Day in the Life of Pam

A week or so ago I read in the paper about the alternatives to Napster. I'm not a big music fiend like I was once upon a time, but I am curious about this whole music online scene so I saved the article and yesterday I visited a couple of the URLS in the article. I became interested in Gnutella [I love Nutella] and Mactella so I decided to download and check out. Except I need to upgrade my OS because I am still using 8.5.

I have OS 9 just never got around to installing it (to quote Kenman, I haven't wanted to spend one of my Saturday's saying "shit") so I Disk Doctored and backed up and zapped my PRAM and rebuilt my desktop and finally I'm ready for my upgrade -- except there is no disk in the box.

Bob thinks I have the disk so I clean off my bookshelves, my computer/junk cupboard and my closet. In my closet I found a box with old letters and cards I've saved over the years -- omigod, I didn't know I still had half that stuff. I had cards from guys I don't remember ever exchanging cards with. Akka sent me newspaper articles from UCSB when Javier was AS president that I didn't remember having. I have letters that are over 20 years old. (Julie Kaufer and Lisa Pine, are you out there?) So from Napster to memory lane, that was my day. And I never found the system disk so I'm still using 8.5.1

Today I went to the mall to try to get a few things for fall. I'm not going back to school, but I'm going back to cooler weather. I still have a hard time finding anything that fits. Petites are a wee bit wee, regulars are baggy and need 8 inch hems and Juniors large is way too small. Where are the clothes for the girls like me? I got a couple of pairs of pants for my hours of trouble. I still need tops and shoes. I had a miserable experience buying shoes. I was the only person in the store but could this gal have been any less interested in helping me find something that worked? She was friendly but useless.

In the meantime, we're having a plumbing issue downstairs. When I got home Bob announced that we were getting a new water heater installed next week ($350). I asked him if he remembered that when we bought the house we'd signed up for a program where you pay extra on your electric bill and then the power company bails you out if your hot water goes? I'm not clear on the program exactly and am almost certain it sounds better than it is -- but regardless, this had completely vacated Bob's memory and I had to dig around in our files until I found proof on paper. So now we have the power company coming out to look at our water heater and hopefully save us a bundle.

Fremont Bridge
I can't remember if I put this up here or not -- but when I did the bridge walk, I saw the signs they have on the upper level of the Fremont Bridge. It's the phone number for suicide hotline. Now let's think about this for a minute. You are in deep despair, you decide to end it all. You stop on the Fremont Bridge. You see the sign. But you don't have a phone. And you don't have a piece of paper to write the number on. And, the signs haven't been updated for 10 digit dialing. Wouldn't you just throw yourself off the bridge?

Saturday SoccerDay
On Saturday morning Bob and I went downtown. Bob intended to go to Powell's technical to see some computer head guy. I intended to go to Kells to watch the Germany v. England World Cup qualifier. I had called the bar to confirm that they were showing the game.

We wanted to have breakfast first at the Bijou Cafe - which Bob says is very yummy. I've never been there. Well must be since at 8:15 am there was an hour wait and a million people crammed into a waiting area the size of a broom closet. I don't know if it's age or what but there is very little in this life that I want to stand around waiting for.

We decided to try our luck elsewhere and happened to walk by Kells and figured we'd see about their breakfast. Great idea except that the Norway v. Ireland soccer match was on and, oh yeah, a $20 cover charge! Yes, they wanted $20 to watch the games. You think that might have been pertinent information when I called about the match.

We went home to see about pay per view but AT&T is completely worthless for anything except raising their rates. I called to ask and the guy is like, "Do you know what time?" I tell him. "Do you know what channel?" What kind of idiot does this guy think I am? So we didn't get to watch the game or see the computer guy at Powells. On the plus side, I did not drink a gallon of beer before noon and thus render myself useless for the rest of the day.

Tonight we went to a Portland Timbers Game. It was so fun (It was also $1 beer night). They've renovated the park and I was only there once before for a women's world cup game but I guess it's more earthquake safe now and lots of other nice amenities. I note that there are lots of women's restrooms. Timbers won. I'm ready for more stuff at PGE park.

re: elvis birthday
If I had half a brain I could probably do some tricky link to this post but just look below or in the archive or something.

Anyway, when I was in Orleans I asked my Mom if she could remember where she was when Elvis died and she totally remembered the Alpha Beta and music store. She said I told her (that part I don't remember - I thought she came into the store and my music teacher told her) but cool, huh? And she said the music store was in Woodland Hills off Valley Circle and now it's totally different and I would never recognize it.

I have a yahoo account and everytime I log in my ad is for diet products. Today they tell me I can lose 20 pounds by October 29. Do you think this is true? If I lost 20 pounds I'd be awfully skinny. What would I have to do? I mean, if I ate nothing but celery and V8 juice, it might be possible, but how healthy would I be?

So has anyone been following the shark attack thing in Florida? Every time I log in there is another person who has been half eaten off the same beach where like, 9 people have been attacked in the last week. C'mon people, if you knew all these people had been attacked by sharks, why would you go swimming? I can barely swim in ocean waters where no sharks have attacked ever. What are people thinking?

But then, I just made a pie while wearing a dry clean only shirt. What was I thinking?

I'm back. I forgot to blog that we were going on a vacation that involved no computers so there would be no new stuff for a week+. We went to Orleans and hung out with the family and swam and played some rowdy poker games and hiked to Indian Rocks and ate a lot.

Yesterday was my first day back at work and lucky me - a semi jack-knifed and fell on its side on the Marquam Bridge and completely blocked I5 south. I already had left late and then I had to buy gas (Pam travel hint: fill your car with gas and keep a small stash of cash for when you return from vacation -- you will be happy you did.) Since I get off at the Morrison Bridge before the accident I didn't think there would be much of a problem (doh!) so I stayed in the left lane and completely ignored the signs that said we would be diverted to the 405. Freeway blocked off at 405 so I got stuck in the huge car-jam trying to get onto 405 and a good time was not had by all. Anyway, an hour later I got to work and I could see the accident site from my desk and realized at least I didn't get stuck right behind the truck and have to sit on the freeway for two hours.

It's situations like this that give you time to reflect on your life and I used this particular incident to ponder: am I drinking too many liquids in the morning?

I heard on the radio this am that Elvis died on this day 1977 so I just wanted to tell you I can remember where I was when I heard. I was born in 1963 so I was 14 and I was at my oboe lesson. I think it was in Woodland Hills. I can see the music store in my mind and my music teacher was named Jacques Robinson. It was a funky mini-mall and I think the grocery store was an Alpha Beta -- but I can't remember precisely. I just remember my music teacher telling my Mom and she was shocked.

I just checked and now my posts are all showing up. hm, magically fixed and I didn't do a thing.

I wanted to tell you one more thing. We have this problem in our neighborhood with people stealing the recycling -- the bottles and cans -- on pickup day. This bugs me -- probably more than it should -- but the recycling pickup is a business that provides a service. I don't save my bottles and cans for the neighborhood riffraff. Bob and I started putting our stuff out in the morning -- and even then one time Bob put it out when he left in the am and I left an hour later and it was all gone. This week I had a ton of stuff and I put it out the night before because I had to leave extra early for work -- the jackass(es) took the whole bin. We used to have a bin of each color and now I have two brown ones because the criminal left me an empty brown one when s/he took my green one. What a loser.

I don't know what's going on with my blog. My posts don't seem to be appearing on my page and I'm not in the mood to try to figure it out.

I just wanted to tell all my loyal readers that I FOUND A FRIGGIN BATHING SUIT. Yes, it was $80 and no, I don't LOVE it, but I like it and it covers all my naughty bits and that's going to be good enough.

We saw Patti Smith and Sleator-Kinney in Seattle last weekend and I never even mentioned it. Great show.

I have been so friggin busy I didn't even log on for almost 48 hours -- that never happens. Completely busy weekend. I went to writing workshops all day Friday and Saturday.

Today I got up early and did the bridge walk. I wanted to do the 8 mile but I only did the 5 mile because I had a severe need to pee and for some reason the organizers seemed to think that like 6 stalls for 5000 (or however many) walkers at the station just after the Fremont Bridge would be plenty. I saw this gigantic line and decided to just walk as fast as humanly possible (which wasn't too fast seeing as how there were all these other people walking) until I could get back to the office. But I got to walk on the Fremont Bridge (last year photo) and that made me happy but it was a lot more fun last year with Bob.

Also today I watched this movie Cruel Intentions which was my relaxation 90 minutes. Completely twisted and hilarious in terms of the over the top clothes and housing. Then I ran a bunch of errands and then I did yard work and got all the various containers (garbage, recycling, yard debris) ready for tomorrow morning. So now it's almost 9pm and I JUST got out of the shower. I'm going to the coast for work tomorrow so it's off to bed for me.

More On Bathing Suits
I tried one more time to find a bathing suit. I've probably tried on 30 or 40 and I've found maybe 4 that fit but I didn't like them enough to pay $80. I don't mind paying $80 for tiny bits of cloth if I like them. But if I'm just buying something to cover my butt when I swim in the river, I'm not so inclined. So I figured I'd just safety pin last years on me and make do. Well, I decided to get some sun this afternoon and safety pins aren't going to be much help, that thing is so stretched out. I don't know what I'm going to do now.

I thought this week would be a lot more productive than it ended up being. I have no idea what I did but it kept me busy. I did manage to clear one or two things off my desk so I'll just be happy for that. On Monday I had lunch with Liz and suggested we go to Abou Karims. She agreed and we had the Mezza for two. On Wednesday I had lunch with Don for his birthday. I thought about AK's but then thought, no, I can't go to the same place twice in one week. So I tried to think of other foods that sounded good but the only thing was hummus so we went Abou Karims and had the Mezza for two. I have no regrets.

Bob is at Shasta seeing String Cheese Incident. In a possibly related story, I woke up a 3am and couldn't get back to sleep. I tossed and turned for an hour. I have been having all kinds of problems with my various email addresses and domain and so forth and as I tossed and turned, I had an idea and decided to go ahead and get up and try it.

Once I get on the computer, I'm history in terms of getting back to sleep.

So I somewhat resolved my computer problems and I read a bunch of The English Patient and at 5am I decided to try and nap a little. I think I dozed but then I thought I heard someone in the garage so I jumped up with my heart pounding and then figure out it's just people packing a moving van on the street. So now it's 5:30am and what's the point of even trying to sleep? So I threw in laundry and looked at the paper and did a nice long jog/walk.

Hi: I was cranky today. Am I crankier than most? Or just more honest about it?

I'm feeling much better now but then, there is about a gallon of beer involved. Well, whatever works, I say.

So Little Friday-- I'm taking a day long workshop next week to work on this. I have all kinds of homework to do but the biggie was re-reading the manuscript. I was expecting to cringe a lot more. There are a couple of chapters that need a lot of work but overall I think it still works. The homework is definitely opening up some ideas -- it's just how much work do I really want to do on it at this point? And the answer is, I'm not sure.

Tomorrow is errand day and Saturday we go to Seattle for a party. More on these stories as they develop.

I usually like to be a little bit prepared before I start typing the blog but tonight I thought I'd go by the seat of my pants. Not like I'm trying out for the Olympics or anything.

Today we saw Shrek which I thought was hilarious. Yesterday we watched Oscar & Lucinda on tape and I'd advise missing it if you haven't already. It's a well made movie and the acting is fabulous but the story had some problems which might work in a book but didn't work in a movie and I won't go into the whole thing now. On Friday we saw Planet of the Apes in a theater with me and 50 guys Bob's age. I LOVED it. I would see it again. I'm not in the mood to explain why I liked it, let's just say it entertained me and there was fighting and apes and Helena Bonham Carter with the most swell ape-doo you've ever seen and Marky Wahlberg dreamy air force guy.

Last week I tried to get all my various emails organized. I finally have a separate email for work: pam(at)lwilder.com and that is aliased to another address (I'm not sure if my terminology is right so bear with me) and then I have my domain and my alias that goes with that and then I have my yahoo mail so all together I have all these addresses I am juggling around and trying to keep all the passwords straight and pay attention to my sig files because last week I wrote an email to the webmaster about the gov't site I complained about in my last blog post and then realized I had my personal sig file with my blog.html URL right there. How professional. My little struggle with technology.

Oh, also, we just started watching Jiminy Glick. I am not a Martin Short fan but I am telling you, this show is HILARIOUS.

I also finished re-reading Little Friday this weekend which I will write more about later.

argh Have you ever had to deal with a government agency? Well, at work I have to do this all the time and based on my experiences I find it hard to believe that this country runs at all. I needed to track down information on this government program which took me *9* contacts -- phone calls transferred here and there and then routed to a website and I contacted that person by email who directed me to a different person by email who directed me to another website. Okay, so I have the correct website but gee, NONE of the links work. So I contact the web admin and *get this* I need to UPGRADE my web browser to view the friggin information. Hear that noise? That's me screaming my head off.

This is a GOVERNMENT agency. Their job is to make this information available. They aren't trying to sell a Porsche. They're not Dreamworks. They are a friggin government agency and I should not have to do ANYTHING in order to access this information. And while I'm on the subject I have to say that about 90% of the government websites I visit are ugly, have horrible download times and are often confusing to navigate.

omigod. I put 4 more volumes of the pamnewsletter online this weekend. I'd try to type a URL for the blog but I'm afraid the process would force me to put my eyes out. You'd think transfering the pages over to the new site would be easier than it is, but for some reason I slightly altered my folder structure and it's making everything a giant pain in the ass. What was I thinking?

It took me about 15 minutes just to get the Secrets of the Louvre link right. I was ready to dropkick Yoda (my iMac) into the backyard before I finally got it right. I think I still have a few screwed up links but I'll leave those for another day.

Tonight we went to McMenamins in Vancouver for dinner and I had the hummus plate. I should have my own hummus restaurant. It's my favorite food. I can't believe there is a www.hummus URL -- I typed it into my computer as a joke.

I'm reading my manuscript Little Friday this weekend because I'm doing a writing workshop for specifically that in a couple of weeks. I haven't looked at it for 2 years and it's not as dreadful as I had convinced myself. There is some tweaking to be done, but I still think it works. More on this exercise as it develops.

This weekend there was free cable because the shameless money grubbing capitalists better known as AT&T are doing a drive for our tax refund checks. Bastards. (Long, long rant omitted.) I taped Pitch Black because I always wanted to see it and I liked it -- esp. when that thing bit that guy's head off in a spray of blood. We also taped Trekkies and all I can say is, don't miss this movie. I can totally relate to the obsessed fandom and I am happy that it exists in this country -- but mygod, are there some freaks in that universe. Fun freaks, but freaks, nonetheless.

Keeping up with the blog is much harder than you might guess. It's not even my intention to post every day.

I'm going to Norman, Oklahoma in October for Returning the Gift X. Just this week I decided to do some homework and check airfare, etc. So guess what 2 of the 3 airlines that fly into Oklahoma City are? Yes, Delta and Southwest. How unlucky is that? It's not even that I have too much pride to give the two suckiest airlines another try -- but I've been getting contacted by their shills since I posted those stories -- how do I know they don't have my name in their systems and will torture me on purpose, just to get me? I guess that's a little paranoid. I'm guessing I will take Delta over SW since I haven't been to Salt Lake City for awhile (ahem) and because I would happily pay an extra $20 to get an assigned seat. What some people are willing to put up with to save a buck, I do not understand. Oh, and the 3rd airline is American and maybe I just didn't understand how their webpage worked but when I check on a fare it was $1100 -- I'd rather walk.

Baking update -- made a Cooks Illustrated recipe for biscotti yesterday and I think both Bob and I will require extensive dental work. These things are like little rocks. They taste good though.

Blog catch up day.

New Yorker - Finished at Last
We got our last New Yorker on our subscription over the weekend. I was only one behind at that point but I sat down and plowed through both issues and now I'm done. No renewal for us, I like the magazine but it's too much -- I'm going to read some books for a change.

PIE CRUST BREAKTHROUGH
After troubleshooting my pie crust for the past couple of months I think I figured out part of my problem. One of my foolproof pie tips said to be careful not to use too much water. So all this time I've been adding the most skimpy amounts of water. This last pie I put the entire amount the recipe called for -- didn't even add a tablespoon at a time, I just poured it all in and hey, what do you know. The crust actually held together. I guess it was a little tough. But at least it went into the pie plate without a struggle.

HOLLAND CLOSES
Just because a restaurant has been around for a long time and lots of people go there doesn't mean it is good. Case in point: The Holland. This was a restaurant in downtown Vancouver and we've been there for breakfast a couple of times -- usually because it's a convenient place to meet the in-laws if there are relatives in town. I never liked it. I'm completely challenged when it comes to breakfast foods I will eat so I was pretty much limited to the oatmeal and even that was icky. Last time I was there it had obviously been sitting under the lamp -- nice skin on top. I mean, come on, how hard is it to serve an edible bowl of oatmeal? But my reasons for not liking it go beyond that and now that I'm sitting here typing this I can't even articulate them.

We drove by there a week or two ago and the Holland was closed and I didn't didn't feel sorry. There was an article in the paper and Bob saw it and asked why they closed it and I just said, "Because it was a bad restaurant." I didn't even read the article.

I came back from basket camp on June 9 and I've been on an anti-domestic chore kick ever since. Especially cooking. I just don't have the energy or motivation to get fancy. I can't explain it except to say that I'm overwhelmed with the care and feeding of this other person and yah, he does take care of it himself sometimes, but mainly it seems up to me and I just get sick of it. Lately we've been having a lot of things that can be defrosted and heated up and served with a green salad which I've been making by the bale since the farmers market started. Last Thursday I bought a bunch of spreads and dips and a baguette and crackers and some vegan chicken mcnuggets and Annie's BBQ sauce and that was dinner. It worked.

Today I was coming back from my errands just as I turned into the courtyard right by our office I saw this large bird on the sidewalk clutching a flapping sparrow under its feet. It took me a second to register what was happening, it was so out of place. I realized it was a hawk -- that close to me. Sometimes when I see a hawk, it looks sort of shabby, but this one looked dangerously beautiful. I stopped and tried to blend into the scenery because I wanted to watch. The hawk just stood there, regarding me, and then took the flapping sparrow and flew to a nearby tree.

I very slowly walked to where I could see up into the tree and the hawk looked down at me with these intense eyes -- it was a little unsettling. The poor sparrow continued to flap in vain. Finally the hawk took off again and I didn't see where it went.

ug, what a wretched day. People can be so aggravating. If you can conduct business in a pleasant way or a nasty way, why not just pick nice. I don't understand. And if I already sent you the crap you need, don't call me and ask for it again. The biggest crime in the pam universe is wasting my time.

Remember the story about the Patio and their fancy-shmancy baby turnips and new england marinated veal strips with kiwi vinagrette? There was an article in the paper that they are trying to re-vamp their menu to make it more accessible and cheaper. wah! I am a restaurant activist. I think they should offer me free visits to check out the new menu and give commentary.

Insects
I'm having some insect issues. What does this mean? First I saw an ant in my room -- of course while I'm doing my yoga practice. The next day I saw two and if history has taught me anything, that means the whole trail of swarming ants taking over is not far away. So far, hasn't manifested. Then yesterday I was mixing my breakfast meusli which I make with oats from the bins and then adding in trail mix and the trail mix bag was filled with fruit flies. Gave me the heebees. I had to toss everything in a bag in a bag and then, like bleach the container and now I don't want to eat that stuff. My favorite breakfast, ruined.

Tonight we watched part of this VH1 Behind the Music thing on 1987. It was too damn funny. They talked about current events/politics and related it to music. So you've got the stock market crash of 1987 cut to: Bon Jovi. And then they do a big Iran-Contra bit cut to: Beastie Boys. The simplification of modern history. Too funny.

I viewed the history part with an odd POV because there I was post college person dealing with a supposed adult existence and I was so friggin self-absorbed -- these history events seem like a dream. ah, to be in my 20's again. Just kidding. Wouldn't go back for anything.

I don't know who reads this or how often, but I don't assume I have too many regulars. Regardless, I find that I am always editing myself -- things that I wouldn't hesitate to write to myself in private I wouldn't dream of alluding to in this space. And when I was thinking about this - I wondered what my purpose was, I mean, why shouldn't I edit myself? Do people really want to see the unedited brain dump of any person willing to throw it out there? Especially someone like me who spends so much time analysing her brain.

Today my computer is acting weird or else the Internet is acting weird but I can't stand being online today. I'm having wrist issues again on my mouse hand so I don't know when I'm going to finish moving the pamnewsletters over. I'm up to v. 3. Whenever I feel like it, I guess.

It's been a great weekend so far. Friday night I went with Bob to the Waterfront Blues Festival and saw a band called something like Wild Magnolias from New Orleans and I called them "Las Vegas Indians" because of their outfits. It was super fun -- I love events where all ages of people are having a good time dancing and enjoying music -- is there any other artistic medium that compares in terms of group interaction?

Yesterday we went to Tacoma to visit Phil to talk about RTG XI and then we went to the Washington State History Museum to see the Woody Guthrie exhibit which I cannot more highly recommend. What an amazing life. Even if you have zero interest in folk music, you can't ignore his amazing contributions or the impact he had on so many artists. I found it particularly ironic that such completely non-American artists like Billy Bragg and U2 had so much to say about him. I mean, can you imagine someone like Steven Tyler talking about some random British guitar strummer from over 50 years ago?

The Museum is amazing in itself. A beautiful facilty, well built and nicely organized. On the one hand I was sad to see it so dramatically underused -- a Saturday and it was a snap to park in the lot and we could cruise the exhibit at our leisure without worrying about other visitors -- so at the same time I was happy to enjoy it without pushing and shoving and being annoyed by people in my way. I'm not into folk music but it made me want to invest a little time listening to his work.

Bob sent me this yesterday: Lincoln's Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation. It's too damn funny. We don't have to use Power Point at my office (thank God) and I rarely have to sit through a presentation but based on my extremely limited exposure, I loathe it.

I don't know why I always think I have can post only when I have something to say. Why can't I just sit here and type if it pleases me?

Yesterday I got myself worked into the most godawful snit which made me feel like crap all day long. Sometimes I wonder if it's worth the effort since I don't seem to becoming any more evolved or any better at asking for what I want. In fact, I just sit here and beat myself up for wanting anything. I know, veering awfully close to a public confession of neuroses -- wasn't the world a lot better place when people kept these things to themselves and it was considered impolite not to?

Happy 4th. Today we're going out towards Mt. Hood for a gathering and then on the way home we're going to Jimmy's for a party with a band. I think it will be a fun day.

I'm going to take a few minutes here and catch up on some blogging things and not boring things about my new domain which is the center of my computer existence right now, but I'm sure mindnumbing for you to read endless updates on.

REUNION
(why does that word look not spelled right?)
The announcement for my 20 year HS reunion just went up and Cherie sent me the URL for www.classmates.com. Am I the last person alive who has heard of this site? Where have I been? I logged on immediately and was glued to the screen for like 8 hours until my eyeballs dried up and rolled back into my head. Almost half of my graduating class is listed. I'm having a hard time with the $30 gold membership thing -- (a) on principle I don't pay for access to web content; (b) I hate to pay for a year when I doubt I'd use it that much; and (c) I don't think it's set up very optimally and it's slower than hell which was why it took me 8 hours and I managed to catch up on my New Yorkers pile while I was waiting between clicks to look at the info boxes of everyone in my class who had one. I'll probably end up caving, but we'll see. Maybe they'll negotiate. I'd pay $12 for a year.

This whole development got me digging out my old yearbooks -- and for some reason I can only find freshman year and senior year. My senior year has the last issue of the school paper in it with the senior wills and for some reason I don't have one in there and I don't know why. I remember writing one -- but that could be a made up memory. I have no idea where the other two yrbooks are and I know my senior prom bid and the graduation program are stuck somewhere too. I don't save a lot of stuff, but these things I did save. It's kind of weird to be thinking about these people after 20 years -- but it's a good weird. I'm looking forward to the reunion since I missed the 10 year because I'd just moved up here and was about a trillion dollars in debt and my income was like 50 cents a week so flying down to LA was out of the question.

WHERE ARE ALL THE BATHING SUITS?
I have been desperately trying to find a bathing suit for a month now. I've been to the Jantzen store, that bathing suit store downtown, 2 different Nordstroms, 3 different Meier and Franks and a jumble of discount stores and I can't find squat. At this point I don't even mind paying a lot of money if I can find what I like. I want a modestly cut bikini and I want underwires in the top and I want cute colors, preferably dark. I can't find squat. It's either not my size, or it's cut so half my ass hangs out or my boobs are bulging out, or else it's really ugly colors. It's been very frustrating.

THE PLUMBER
Last week we needed the plumber to come over because we had this incredibly slow draining sink that I had poured two different products "guaranteed to cure any slow drains" -- one was a toxic-waste product and the other an organically friendly enzyme thing. Both were equally worthless. Also the faucet in our kitchen had turned into a trickle so that if you wanted to fill a pot with water to cook pasta, you could stick it under there and go an take a nap and come back and it would be almost full. The last thing that concerned us was our water bill showed our usage almost doubled the last two billing periods and we didn't think we were using twice as much water.

Gene came over to look at our stuff for us. He is this cool old guy -- who should be retired and he told us he would be in about 3 months. I liked him because he took the time to visit with us and asked about flower in the yard and the sandwich creation that Bob was making and he knew some of our neighbors and told us about some history he shared with them. It was actually nice to have the plumber over.

I'm not sure what's going on here. My last post isn't on my pages but I can see it here when I'm in my "post to pamblog" window. I just clicked publish again so we'll see what happens.

So I am still up to my elbows in the big move over to my new domain. It's a lot more labor intensive than I expected. The PamNewsletters are going to take forever. I have no idea when I'll be finished but I'm thinking I'd like to spend some time outdoors today so it's going to sit for right now. I think I did get the blog moved over and I need to do some testing to see how it's all working.

I always think I'm going to have more time to blog later. I have a list of about six things that I want(ed) to put up here. We'll see if I ever get that far.

Yesterday I registered my domain. The registration form was online and included a line for "organization" which I left blank because it's just me, not an organization. Now that I think about it, I should have put organization: "superior" or "God-like" since being organized is the thing that keeps me glued to this planet. But back to the order form, it got kicked back to me demanding I fill in the line for organization so in an impulsive smart ass moment I typed in: Insane Genius Posse. Now I'm wondering how this is going to come back to haunt me.

Since I started my whole web-hosting thing I've been working on my pages for the re-launch and finally last night I viewed some of the pages in Netscape instead of Dreamweaver (where they look spectacular, for me), and they looked like crap. Since I'm a style sheet novice I've been trying to figure out if it will be faster to just bail on the style sheets and put everything back OR if I can tweak the style sheet and make it work. I'm thinking the style sheets are going away.

PERFORATION QUESTION

Does anyone know anything about perforations? Like on your bills. I mean, have you ever noticed how the perf that you tear for the little section you put in the envelope to mail back with your check -- it doesn't line up with the natural crease of the paper the way it's folded to go into the envelope -- like by about 3 microns? Okay, well I have noticed this and it's on lots of different bills. This makes no sense, why not design your bill so it lines up? There must be some sort of techno-mechano reason that a form can't be made that lines up the crease and the perforation.

I just signed up for my domain and webhosting last week. I'm not sure how long it takes for it all to be running but over the weekend I started re-working my pages for the big relaunch.

I had hoped that by the time I got my domain I'd be much more advanced in my web skills and I was going to get all creative and design a fancy new page with rollovers and flash and my own graphics. Not quite there yet but I did change the background colors and I spent all day Saturday learning about styles sheets which I am going to be implementing and I'm not going to test the site on too many browsers so I'm sure there will be trouble.

Finally, I'm back here. I have some stories to tell but I was busy this week.

DISAPPOINTMENT ON THE PATIO

The backstory: last summer me and Billy started going to Happy Hour on Thursday (my Friday) at The Patio - outdoor tables on the Esplanade by the RiverPlace Hotel. The Patio closes in winter and since April, every time there was a nice day we'd start talking about The Patio re-opening. A couple weeks ago they put the tables outside and we were all in anticipation and finally they opened last Friday so yesterday was the first day of Happy Hour at The Patio. I had to look at documents on the coast and I was extremely motivated to get the job done quickly and efficiently so I could get back in time for Happy Hour.

We go to The Patio and we're both starving and we're all happy about first day out at The Patio and having a snack and then: WTF?

First of all, The Patio serves beer in 12 oz plastic cups for the same price as the hotel bar which serves beer in pint glasses. (The Patio is run by the hotel). We get the menu and where are the fun normal snacky bar snacks? No, it's like "Baby New Zealand Artichokes steamed in Bavarian butter and Serengeti seared raspberries over a bed of wild marsh goatnut ricepatties and percolated snaplings" for $19.95. WTF? This is a friggin outdoor patio. So the gal serving us is helpful and sweet and we've already complained that they no long have MacTarnahans Ale and we have to get Fat Tire and I ask her about the menu and what happened to the snacky snacks and she explains that they have a new chef, from France, and how they still have snacky snacks but Americans might not recognize them as that. So she points out the "East Atlantic popcorn shrimp, served with wilted red pepper aioli and truffle sauce and capers" for $4.95 which I knew was going to be three little shrimp the size of my pinky-nail and not going to do squat for our hunger problem. So we're sort of lukewarm so she points out the "Northern Idaho baby roasted potatoes" with some sort of Frenchy huey-palooey sauce that American's wouldn't know so they called it chili nut sauce and I look at her and I say, "Does this feel like a baby roasted potato moment to you?"

I mean, come on. We're on a friggin outdoor patio -- total black bean quesadilla territory, it's like 80 degrees out and I'm drinking a beer and I'm going to order a plate of potatoes?

It was quite the disappointment. I felt bad because the gal was being so sincerely helpful although Billy suggested the whole "we have a French chef" routine sounded snotty. We ended up going back to the hotel bar and since we're regulars there ("everybody knows our name") we told them our issues with the menu and I'll bet last night Pascal French Chef went home to his significant other bitching and moaning about those low brow Americans who want mini pizzas at the bar instead of the "Newfoundland foie gras pinwheels with roasted Arizona baby pepper syrup and unleavened croissant wedges."

I finally finished my brick books! You know, the swords and dragons thing by Tad "insomniac" Williams. I liked the story but 3,000 pages is going to try your reader's patience. Well, your reader who is not a regular brick-book-swords-and-dragons person. I was telling my Mom about the story this morning and she says, "Oh, so it's like a good v. evil thing?" and I'm like, "aren't they all?" Since I finished I've been finishing up my various odds and ends like New Yorkers. I thought our subscription had died and much as I LOVE the magazine, it's just too friggin much when you only have limited reading time. But we got a (sigh) double issue yesterday so I STILL have a New Yorkers in my pile. There is no way to catch up. Unless you are in prison and I'm not making a wish here.

Yesterday I tried to cook these chili rellenos from Trader Joe's. They come frozen and I followed the package directions and had them covered with foil and baked in the oven for about 30 minutes. When I took them out, the top still felt frozen. I threw them in the microwave for 2 minutes thinking that would do the trick and when I took them out they were still frozen on top. So I put them back in for another minute. Took them out -- the top still felt frozen. Okay, what kind of food, or any earthly substance for that matter, still feels frozen after all this heating? I tried to scrape the top frozen part off the top and it was like a layer of frosty sponge. The relleno thing underneath looked hard and yellow so I ended up throwing the whole thing in the trash. It scared me.

Microplane zester -- great product. You can grate parmesan, chocolate, garlic, excellent tool for lemon/orange zest. And works great on the human body too. I did a number on my thumb last night that was extremely gross. I had to clean the zester after I was done swearing and applying pressure with a thickly wadded paper towel -- nothing like skin zest to kill an appetite. Today I have a lovely moist, pink area on my thumb.

Why is it always so hard to come back from vacation? So many things to do, the yard (weeds) is out of control and there are so many maintenance things to do - you know, bills to pay, big pile of crap to sort through, tape of Daily Shows to watch.

I got back from Orleans yesterday. I had the best time and have a lot to write about later. One point is that I only got one good night of sleep the whole time I was gone so I'm still a little tired. I took a nap yesterday and we went to Rhonnda's birthday party at the Green Room last night but we snuck out pretty early. I slept in until 8:30am (amazingly late for me). Tonight we have Ray Charles and tomorrow already back to work.

I'm a little overwhelmed at the moment since I'm tired, the yard needs much attention and I have all these notes and things to do to follow up on my adventure last week. I think my intention will be to not get so wound up.

More to come.

There's some stuff I want to fix in the post from yesterday but don't have the patience right now.

Going camping in Orleans for a week. No PamBlog until I get back -- so sometime after June 10. See ya then.

Okay, here's a story for you. I have a festival of plantars warts on my left foot. About 10 years ago I had a major plantars wart on my big toe, right foot. I ignored it, thinking it would go away, until finally it hurt to put on shoes.

At that time I had no Dr. and for my "health insurance" you went by your zip code and I lived in North Hollywood. That was how they referred me to a doctor. Huge reading between the lines here.

So I make my appt. with the foot Dr. and I arrive at my appointment at the lovely clinic in a strip mall and my Dr. never came in that day so some other ESL Dr. says he can handle it and proceeds to give me the shot to numb my foot. Imagine a big long needle (and I'm not afraid of needles, normally) BENDING into my big toe to numb it for my procedure. My unfortunate but very devoted boyfriend at the time, Brian, (who is still a good friend, and all bow heads and think nice thoughts for B who is in Montana right now finishing his undergrad degree after all these years - go guy!) came in with me and I almost killed him squeezing his hand off. The Drs. assistant complimented me for not screaming. So the witch Dr. carves the thing out of my toe and wraps it up.

Brian took me to Dances with Wolves after this nightmare medical office experience -- which haunts me to this day. Although I will go into a medical office, I cannot hear about Dances with Wolves or Kevin Costner without telling them about my plantars wart.

So now how do I handle this new crop?

I hate being a computer nimrod. I usually think I'm pretty computer smart but whenever I try to do anything more complicated than say, oh, I can't think of anything that would even sound clever, but whenever I try it, it seems to cause grief.

I'm trying to do something to my blog here and I'm not sure if it's working. I just checked and all my archives except Feb. had gone away -- I think I fixed that, but I'm never sure exactly what's happening.

We have a Trader Joes in Vancouver now, I saw it for myself today and let me tell you I'm happy. It's on the eastside at 205 and Millplain across from Fred Meyer in a hideous strip mall. How could anyone think that auto-dependent strip mall development is a good idea? I had numerous activites on the eastside today and it's like drive to a huge intersection, wait 5 minutes, drive a block to a huge intersection, wait 5 minutes. There a millions of cars. It's just plain ugly.

Monday was my brother-in-law's birthday and we went out to dinner. We went to this place called something like Salyer's Old Country Kitchen in Portland and there is no reason to go to this place unless you are going to eat a big old slab of red meat.

Their gimmick is the 72 oz. steak (that's 4 1/2 pounds, in case you're slow at math) and if you eat the whole thing, you get it for free. You have to sit by yourself and you get one hour and you also have to eat a salad and some french fries and a celery stick or something -- there are specific regulations. In the lobby there are newspaper clippings showing some of the challengers and it made me lose my appetite. Do you know how big a 72 oz. steak is? Can you imagine digesting that thing? There is no way that can be good for you. There's also a tally board with how many people have tried and how many succeeded. I can't remember the exact numbers but I think it was like, 8 women out of 90 who tried and 150 men out of 600. And this is since the restaurant opened in 1946.

I had a piece of grilled halibut and some vegetables for my dinner, since as you may or may not know, I am not a red meat eater and can count on one hand how many times I've eated red meat in the last 10 years.

There is this song I like. I've heard it on the radio on a couple of times -- it's sort of a hip-hop kind of song and not what I normally like and not the usual fare on the radio stations I tend to listen to. I really want to know who the band is but can't figure out how to do that. Last time I heard the song I dutifully waited for the DJ to tell me but instead he told me about some great product I should buy or maybe it was some contest I could win, but it was not the name of the artist. I also tried going to cdnow.com and I went through several of the charts and clicked on the samples to see if I could find the band that way -- labor intensive and yielded nothing. Someone asked me how it goes and I said "do do-doo, do do-doo" which also didn't help -- I'm apparently not a gifted vocalist or even capable of humming in a way to make the song easily identify-able.

Yesterday I tried to make manapua and I'm no expert on the correct names and origins of this food but generally I think you could also call this hum bao or bao buns or steamed buns. I have never made this before or seen anyone make it, but my cousin Lisa told me she made them once and it was easy.

So I made the filling and that went fine. I didn't like the recipe's filling so I invented my own which was chicken and pressed tofu baked in homemade bbq sauce and then minced carrot, turnip, onion and mushroom sauteed in a bit of bbq sauce and mixed with the tofu/chicken.

Then I made the dough and that actually turned out okay too except it seemed to need an awful lot of flour and I had a tough time getting it all mixed in and the recipe said to be careful not to knead too much because you didn't want gluten to form.

I did all the steps, did the dough rise, rolled out my dough, filled em up and here's where the problem came in. The recipe guy said he steamed them in a bamboo steamer in his wok. Since I don't have a bamboo steamer or a wok, I decided to use the steamer insert in my soup pot. He said he did 12 at a time, two layers of six, but as I made mine I thought, "Hey, I can fit 12 at a time, in two layers," and I packed them all in elbow to elbow.

So when I did the rise, the buns all fused together into a giant lump of dough and then when I did the steam/cook part, the only part that cooked was the bottoms and along the sides. Then when I took them out, the individual buns were all stuck together and when I tried to separate them, the filling flew out. So bascially I ended up with a manapua dough cobbler. We threw them on a cookie sheet and baked them in the oven and salvaged them somewhat. But I was quite disappointed as this was a fairly labor intensive meal. At least I know what I did wrong for next time.

The person that cleaned our office quit in November, pretty suddenly, because we dared question the quality of her work. In the meantime, we've done without cleaning and I've emptied the trash and ran the vacuum and scrubbed the toilet bowl now and then.

If finally was getting to me because the office was getting grunge city so I went in on Sunday and did the full monty cleaning pam-style which means I move furniture and everything. I took some cds to listen to, including Limp Bizkit. We have a potty mouth jar -- .25 per word and we're pretty lenient and only charge for sh*t and f#ck and variations. Also, the boss is exempt by his own choice. We still have managed to accumulate over $30 and talk about using the funds for a trip to Disneyland.

Anyway, Fred Durst owes the potty mouth jar about $35 and I intend to collect.

I have a yahoo email account that I set up last summer before my trip in case I couldn't send mail from my regular account. I don't use it much, but that's not part of this story. The sign-in page has an advertisement and mine always was coming up as a weightloss thing and I started to get paranoid that maybe my computer was trying to tell me something. Yesterday I got an ad for eye makeup and later for some skin stuff so I guess my computer would like to see me with a more comprehensive beauty regime.

omigod. I haven't been here in almost a week. What happened?

It's not lack of thoughts. I can make an essay out of a library card application.

Yesterday on the radio as I was driving in to work they were talking about 80's bands which I consider myself to be pretty expert at. The guy was saying this stuff that was DEAD WRONG like David Coverdale used to sing for Rainbow, or possibly DIO. I think the only person that ever sang for Dio was Ronnie James Dio -- correct me if I'm wrong. Then he talked about John Waite and mentioned he was in The Babys (which I STILL own on vinyl) and a band called Modern English. doh! Someone called and corrected him. It was Bad English.

So one of the other DJs was just amazed at this guy's knowledge and he was like, "yeah, I know all about 80's bands." In the meantime, I am bursting a blood vessel screaming at the radio because these people are such bucket heads.

I don't understand this whole morning radio thing. Every single station needs to have their team of "funny" DJs who pull pranks and get people to call in a humiliate themselves or others. When I'm in my car and I'm driving to work, I want to hear traffic reports relevant to me and I want music.

Yesterday I got home from work and immediately jumped in -- making dinner, emptying the dishwasher, folding clean laundry. Basically doing 100 things at once because I wanted to try to watch Buffy that I'd taped.

So someone leans on the doorbell. DingdongDingdongDingdong. Normally I ignore the doorbell if I'm not expecting anyone, but I've been trying to change my ways to be more neighborly and what do I get for my efforts but the Bible thumpers and the Sierra Club. I believe there is no excuse for being rude so I try to be honest, but kind.

So Mr. Sierra Club starts his song and dance with the whole manipulation how all my neighbors have signed his clipboard and the Arctic and oil drilling and save the polar bears, etc. So I'm standing there, hungry and tired and he's talking to me like he suspects I don't understand English. I am politely listening and then he asks for my signature and $75!

I snort and hand him back his clipboard, like I have $75 laying around. And he pushes it back at me, "you can donate at any level."

Now isn't it sort of presumptuous to show up at some strangers door, ask for personal information, a signature and $75? I say, "Look, I'm tired, I'm hungry and I don't even want to think about this right now."

So he gives this pained look and checks his watch and says, "oooh, I'm only here until 9 o'clock. Should I come back?"

"No," I say, and hand him back his clipboard.

It rained yesterday and today and I have the biggest hair in the world. It's hard to believe it's a part of my very own head. It's Rosanne Rosanadana and then some.

I got my tomatoes in yesterday. I'm not sure what to do about the cucumbers. I sort of cleared a patch but it's pretty dry and weedy and rocky and not the kind of place you'd want to raise cucumbers. But I could put the seeds in and let them decide.

I bought this OneClick software years ago and still hardly ever take advantage of it and I'm finally trying to play around with it and can never seem to make it do anything that the books/tutorials suggest. Like it will say, "open the ---- menu" and I won't have that menu which makes me feel like a big fat idiot.

I baked a pie tonight and we'll be digging in when Simpson's is on.

I wrote this earlier and my blog got eaten. What a world.

SNACKS
Bob and I have been talking about cleaning out our shop for months. The "shop" is a room off the garage that's a handy place for throwing empty boxes, broken chairs, old moldy tarps - you get the picture. We never seem to get around to it so I decided to schedule a time. Last Friday I taped a sign to the microwave that said, "Sunday Shop Cleaning 2-4pm, Featured snack: vegan chicken nuggets with dipping sauce." Bob thought this was hilarious. I explained that I thought a snack would ensure participation.

CINCO DE MAYO
For Cinco I made a bunch of festive foods. I tried a Sunset magazine recipe for Green Chili Rice which came out great even though I didn't have some of the ingredients and I didn't follow the directions very well. The recipe said to add to make 3 cups of liquid but I accidentally put in 4 cups of liquid so I just threw in some more rice and we didn't have long grain so I used short grain -- if you enjoy eating it that's all that matters, right? Then I made sweet potato quesadillas which sounds like a yuppie restaurant food, but we liked it. Next time I'd mash the sweet potatoes better. The last thing I made was chicken posole soup and I used the slow cooker which turned out to be a mistake. But we added green chili rice and salsa to our bowls which perked up the boring soup.

GARDEN
I'm behind in the garden. I got one row of greens in a month ago and now that the sun's come out they're growing like crazy. I put in two more rows last weekend and bought my tomatoes yesterday. Earlier I reported that I'd planted about 60 peas and only about 3 have come up -- the slugs eat them as soon as they show their faces. Next year I'll sprout them inside first.

CUSTOMER SERVICE
I hesitate to even write this because that goofy guy from SW Airlines is probably going to come back and beat me up again for having my panties in a wad and wanting the world to run my way. (Well, we all do, don't we?) But since when did customer service turn into employees running over to you the instant you pause in a store to ask, "Can I help you find something?" Yeah, it's nice to see there are employees around who can help you if you need it and if I need help I will ask for it, but sometimes you just like to look at the salad dressings to see if there's a new one to try or you need to stand there for a minute to remember what you need and you've got some employee interrupting you and saying, "You look like you need some help." Sometimes I want to hand them my shopping list and just go wait in the car with a magazine and some cookies. The latest that got me going was this goofy guy in this bookstore downtown who says across the entire store in his priggy voice, "May we help you?" when I very clearly did not need help.

Today I was standing outside Pioneer Place and a sort of skanky looking guy walked out of the mall and I could seem him holding a wad of cash and then stick it in his pocket. About 15 seconds later he comes up to me and holds out his hand which has a couple of coins in it and asks if I can spare 50 cents. I did not feel inclined to share.

Somewhere I have a bunch of notes for items I want to blog but I think it's at home so it will have to wait until later.

I want to add something about Billy's computer which FINALLY got fixed on Thursday when I convinced the audibly sneering techie guy to drive to my office to do it for me. I guess it was a master/slave problem and slightly above my amazing technical skills. I just couldn't deal with it anymore, I could not be kind concurrently with trying to fix that f*#king thing and it cost me about $5 to the potty mouth jar.

oh, another week like this.

Just have another margarita. My car developed an unfortuate sound like the Karmann Ghia I drove when I was in college and the lovely repair shop, once they got their heads under her skirt found about a zillion dollars worth of maintenance that I should look into, why would I be driving a 100 year old car with zillions of miles on it if I had money laying around?

So how does anyone know how to make webpage stuff? Am I just slow? I've been trying to work my way through these tutorials and I still can't create anything.

Monday was an incredibly wet day so I decided to do the non maintenance hair and it ended up looked just about the same as if I would have tried to use products to force it into submission.

I bought a new CD last week, the new Limp Bizkit. I can't tell you how happy I am that I like a currently popular band. I was walking downtown and this young guy said hi to me and I think it was because he knew I like Limp Bizkit.

I finally finished watching the VH1 Top 40 Hairbands of all time. We taped it and I've been working my way through it -- what was the original show, 4 hours? That's a lot of hair for one sitting. Plus, you know VH1. It's like 1 hour = 20 minutes of content, 20 minutes of filler and 20 minutes of commercials.

Okay, so first of all, what were their criteria? I would never dispute Poison at number #1. I will dispute 'til my grave, Twisted Sister at #2. Dee Snider (Fear the Mullet!) made the perfect host for the show, but sorry, no way do they deserve the #2 spot. And if they included bands like Def Lepp, Quiet Riot, Crue and Kiss, why not Guns & Roses? (My theory is Guns & Roses refused to be involved.) And how come Slaughter at #9 beat Ratt (#11) and Dokken (#10)?

I made a chart, giving myself 1 point for every band I've owned a record, 1 point for every band I've seen live and a point for every band I saw on-set at one of their videos. I gave myself extra credit for bands I have guitar picks for. I thought my stats would be more impressive. I got 50 points out of 120 (160 with extra credit.) I saw 18 bands live, owned 24 bands and worked on 5 videos. I got 3 points for guitar picks and two bands got me 4 points: Great White and Tesla.

I thought it was hilarious that about 90% of the bands had some sort of excuses why they weren't really "hair" bands. There was one band I never heard of: Steelheart. Must have been an east coast band and must have been really late in the game.