You See Your Gypsy
Here's what my Halloween costume looks like except without the bird. They told me I couldn't bring a pigeon into the building. (That was the only bird I could find.) And my outfit looks different because I was afraid all that swirly stuff might slow me down when I'm running back and forth from the copy room. I'm Stevie on the inside.

Yesterday I had two panic attacks.

The first one had to do with our property taxes which are due today. I am brand new to online billpay and I paid this bill two weeks ago but the trusty Clark County treasurer's office webpage where they tell you to check indicated that they were still waiting for the payment.

It took a couple of phone calls before I found help. The guy at Wells filled me in that generally they recommend that you not use online billpay to pay government agencies because if there's a problem you're stuck with their bureaucracy. When they say that they recommend this, apparently that means when there's a potential problem, they'll bring it up.

Then I went through the Clark County phone menu until I got a person who told me that my payment had cleared but it takes 3 days to update the website. How handy. So panic averted. Taxes paid.

The second panic session had to do when I tried to post here and blogger gave me an error message. I'm not a technical person but as I understood it, it thought my domain didn't exist. I could access my page and email so I'm not sure what the problem was, but I had my panties all in a bunch because tomorrow starts NaBloPoMo and how was I going to do it if blogger thinks my domain doesn't exist. Later in the day it worked, so hopefully this isn't foreshadowing some new technological research project.

Three Things for Monday
1. Yesterday I saw XMen 3 on DVD and thought it was a major stinker. Possibly part of the problem could be watching it at home on little screen with interruptions. I saw 1 and 2 on big screen and thought both were great. This one was just another big dumb action movie with a particular fondness for tossing cars around or smushing them.

2. Everyone I've told this to has been fairly horrified: I don't hate the new Justin Timberlake. I'm not going to run out and buy it or put it on my iPod or beg the DJ to play it over and over when I'm dancing on my barstool. I'm just saying when it comes on the radio, I don't hate it. I listen to the whole song and even hum a few bars quietly to myself later on.

3. Did anyone else get this class action suit settlement against Verizon? It's a bunch of tiny writing so I'm still not sure what it's all about but what I do get is: Verizon will be punished by giving me $15 off when I add another year onto my contract. Wow, way to stick it to Verizon. That's not the only choice. There are about 6 others. They have to give me $30 if I extend my contract 2 more years. Seriously, attorneys made money negotiating this settlement?

This Year's Harvest
I was going to have a pumpkin picture with the special effects camera and then draw a picture of my pumpkin crop using my amazing Illustrator skills. But look, the camera worked fine. What do you think this means? Maybe the outdoor light makes it tweak? Maybe there was a hoozit loose and I bumped it back in? My guess is that it's still broken and this is the anomaly.

Last night I got rid of a door-to-door salesman by whining. It's not such a great story but the gist of it is, he was a nice guy and I didn't want to be an ass but I really didn't want to deal with him, especially at that moment because I had food on the stove. He did his script where no matter what I said, he had a response and he wanted to make an appointment and if I've learned anything in this life, it's that if you put your name and phone number on a piece of paper, you will be tormented without mercy until the end of time. Don't do it.

He kept doing his thing and I finally interrupted him with my whiniest whine and said, "I know you're trying to do your job but I don't want to deal with this." He thanked me for hearing him out and left.

The power of WHINE.

I Catch Up With My Senses
I'm not going to do NaNoWriMo (the novel one). It would be too much and amount to a typing contest and I would make myself crazy because I'm just the kind of person to make myself crazy over some self-imposed radical discipline. I made this decision during my Illustrator class when I realized that I have only the faintest hint of a clue what's going on and need to go back and review the homework and should be using my spare time to learn this program.

I felt so good about this decision that I celebrated by going to see The Prestige the first movie I've seen on big screen in months. It's one of those movies that the less you know going in, the better, so I'm not going to say much except: I enjoyed it a great deal and would love to talk about it so if someone I know could go see it, that would be grand.

I've also decided that I'm going to buy a new camera and use the broken one as a special effects camera. The above was taken this afternoon as I pointed my camera straight into the shiny sky. I've done some very preliminary research and things aren't set up so that one can purchase a camera based on the handful of memory cards plus card reader that one already owns. That's my main criteria at this point. I'm looking for something on the low end because I like to carry it everywhere which means it bounces around in my purse and backpack and the car.

I'm not sure what my next step is. Maybe a trip to Costco. I can't figure it all out right now.

Enforcement Overkill
One of my missions in life is to lead a campaign to end the high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane on I-5 northbound to Vancouver. I'm going to write more about this next month. (Can you believe Wikipedia has an I-5 entry?)

Last night, as I sat in the bumper to bumper scramble that occurs where people who need to be out of the HOV lane try to merge right while the people who want to be in the HOV lane very purposefully "ooh-look-at-me-with-two-people-in-my-car-everyone-out-of-my-way-so-I-can-get-over" try to merge left, I was trying to remember the last time I saw any police enforcement. At least one out of every five cars in the HOV lane has a single occupant zooming along at 60 MPH neener-neenering those of us following the rules and rolling along at lawn mower speeds.

A short moment later, I spot flashing red and blue lights. Someone was pulled over. And, oh look, another. And another.

THIRTEEN Cops between Alberta and Delta Park where the HOV ends.

Who Woke Up the Long Dormant Overachiever?
On Friday we have our first test in my Illustrator class. When I originally talked about taking the class, I asked Bob if I could take it pass/no pass. Maybe I'm high here but I seem to remember when I went to college, this was a choice you could make by checking a box on a form and getting your instructor to sign off on it. You could only use it in certain circumstances, such as when I realized I wasn't going to make it as an engineering major and was never going to pass second quarter calculus. I converted my grading option to P/NP and my failure to understand whatever second quarter calculus is all about, did not tank my GPA.

This seemed the perfect option for the Illustrator class because I want to learn Illustrator and I'm confident I can pass the class by showing up and doing the homework. I don't want to worry about it any more than that.

I guess there's a failure to communicate or maybe I'm triggering Bob's harried department-head personality but whenever I bring this up he gets this sort of vague look on his face and waves his arms around and makes it sound harder than a box on a form.

So now I'm taking this class for a grade and I have a test and I really don't want to study for it. I keep saying, "I don't care what kind of grade I get but I don't want to do badly," which sounds suspiciously like I care. And I do. But I don't want to study. On the plus side, I was so busy procrastinating on studying that I got epic amounts of yardwork done this weekend.

Meanwhile, as you may already know, next month is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). You write a 50,000 word novel during the month. Of course I wouldn't do that and decided to sign up for the much less punishing National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) where you write a post a day and no cheating with the dates. I figured I could do this and already have a list of about 12 post ideas to reach for when I get stuck.

I've been talking about writing another novel but haven't gotten too far. I have a vague idea who and where and peripheral stuff but not a clear idea of what is going to be the thing that hangs the whole masterpiece together. When I wrote Little Friday before I wrote the first word I knew exactly where I was going to start and where was going to end up so at least I had a direction when I started to type.

Monday night as I drove home thinking about how badly I didn't want to study for my test, I got the what. The whole thing started to flood my head. I came home and told Bob I couldn't eat dinner right then because I had to scratch it all out while it was fresh in my mind.

So now I'm thinking, maybe I should just do this NaNoWriMo (the novel one) and go for it. It's about 1600 words a day. I probably can't do that every weekday, but if I wrote 1000 on weekdays and made the rest up on weekends ... . But I already signed up for NaBloPoMo (the blog one) and I'm still taking the Illustrator class and the final project and another test are happening the first week of December. Thank God I didn't sign up for that knitting class.

It's not like they're going to take my birthday away if I fail at any of the above. Or to stop me from writing my novel during the month of December, instead. But my inner schoolgirl wants to follow the rules and wants to do good.

I'm gonna think about it.

The Comcast Experience
On Friday I went to Comcast to swap out for a new DVR. It actually wasn't that bad but I'm going to complain about it anyway.

First, the parking lot was obviously the prize winning entry in a challenge to build America's stupidest parking lot. It didn't win first prize because that honor went to the Bank of America on Hwy 99 in Hazel Dell across from Fred Meyer which only has 8 spots, all slightly smaller than any normal car and only one entry/exit so that there are 8 cars trying to get out and 8 cars trying to get in at the same time. It's the Rubik's Cube of parking lots.

At Comcast I missed the first spot where I was supposed to turn into the customer parking area and the second spot said DO NOT ENTER which meant that I had to drive all the way back around where the vans are and into what must have been the employee parking lot and then make an 150 point turn to get back out because it all dead ends right there.

Once I got myself parked, I went in and it was basically the DMV except smaller and with better technology. Way better technology. They spent big on the electronic signs and digital announcement to let you know it's your turn and there was nothing left for the waiting area. There's a gizmo where you get your ticket and you have to pick TV, Internet and I can't remember what the third thing is, phone service? It prints you out a ticket and you can go sit down on the 4 padded cubes (they couldn't even pony up for chairs with backs) which were all full so I had to stand there in the middle of the room holding my DVR.

Of course there was a giant flat screen TV cranking out CNN, strategically placed BEHIND the seats so that the only people who could conveniently watch were the joyless clerks who were a tad overqualified for the DMV so they got this job instead, and me standing in the middle of the room and hating all forms of televised news. (Except the Daily Show.)

I didn't wait long and they got me set up and were polite to all the crazy customers who were demanding extra receipts and asking nutty questions such as holding up their modems and asking if it could be tested for how fast it worked. I guess under these circumstances, I'd be joyless too.

Now I've got my TV back.

Fall Colors?
Yesterday I went for a walk with my camera and this is what I ended up with. H'ep! (Although does look cool.)

Could we just go for 3 weeks without something breaking around here? I'm going to fiddle with it this afternoon. Maybe this is just a freak anomaly and the camera is just fine.

Last entry on the Potter adverb watch: sychophantically.

I finished the book this morning and the last 300 pages redeem the tome. Great set up for last book.

I thought I had more to report but I'm drawing a blank and don't see any scraps of paper with hints around.


This is the last of my tomato crop, taken before the camera died, in case that wasn't clear.

Camera Update: I tried swapping cards and jiggling the handle. Still looks kaput to me. Crap.

Have Ya Got A Bad Back?
At last, a good night's sleep last night. I feel 100% better.

The DVR gave up the ghost this week which means that I missed almost all my shows, which is fine. I like my shows but I get along fine without them. However, it's amazing how dependent one can become on this kind of technology. I don't even know when my shows are on or what channel. If I want some TV, I tune in to the DVR and see what's waiting.

This afternoon after class I'm going to Comcast to swap out for a new box. I should be up and running in time for Battlestar Galactica tonight.

I've decided to take a 24 hour computer break this weekend. Between work and the Illustrator class, I think I ruined my neck. Or it could be this yoga pose that I did for the first time these past two weeks. Mine looks a lot more free style than this photo, which I borrowed without permission from Bill.

I'm going to do crafts tomorrow and organize my spice cupboard. See ya.

Hey look, someone else has my theory.

Humanity may split into two sub-species in 100,000 years' time as predicted by HG Wells, an expert has said.

Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics expects a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass to emerge.

The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the "underclass" humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.

The only difference is, I don't think people are going to be on the planet that long.

Favorite headline from a small town paper we get at the office.

Written Clickingly
Yesterday I woke up at 4am and couldn't get back to sleep. I went to bed early the night before so I had a pretty decent night's sleep and didn't notice feeling tired until last night.

The teacher for my Illustrator class told us it would be frustrating sometimes and we'd want to throw our computers out the window. Last night I finally hit the wall and I didn't want to throw my computer out the window but I did want to throw something at someone.

The lesson was to design a graphic for a website and it was all this: "Double click the endpoints and anchor points, copy and paste behind. Then, clicking the bottom layer, click on the clicks you just made and click them. Once you've clicked, drag, release and re-click the point and the clicks. Click the clicks and click them until you can click no more."

Seriously, no one needs a website that badly.

Since I was tired, I went to bed. (Also, my DVR is broken and I had to try to remember how to use a VCR again, but that's another tale.) And I couldn't fall asleep. And I woke up today at 4am again. At the moment I'm feeling a wee bit groggy.

Also, I write this only because WKB will be horrified. Yesterday I had my leftover smoked salmon enchilada from Monday, for lunch and I ate it cold. I don't know how the office microwave works and anyway, it smells like ass and I don't want to put food in there. I'll admit, the cold enchilada was not the most appetizing thing I've ever eaten.

Update: I'm a moron. Turns out the clickety click thing was not part of the homework. I wondered what that random sticky note was doing in there. It meant, "skip this part."

Something Stinks
And it's me.

Last night I put on my yoga outfit before class and it smelled like something died in it. Yuck.

I'm super sensitive of smells (ask my husband, I believe he called me a Terrier although that might have had to do with my Jaime Sommers hearing). I could hardly enjoy class because all I could smell was myself and I was all self-conscious that other people were growing light-headed in the vapor of my stench.

If you've been to many yoga classes, you might be snickering about now because there's almost always someone in class who has elastic ideas about bathing, use of deodorant and/or wearing freshly laundered yoga clothes.

I couldn't wait to get home, fling the clothes into the wash and fire up the spin cycle with extra pretty smelling essential oils (just a few drops, I buy my stash here.)

I figure what happened is that I tossed them to the floor last time I wore them. And then seeing them on the floor picked them up and put them on the dresser. Then seeing them on the dresser thought, "Oh these must be magically clean, I'll put them back in the drawer."

I'll have to develop a whole system to prevent this from happening again.

Meanwhile, Potter adverb watch: reminiscently.

Thanksgiving Security
I found this at boingboing.net. You can see the entire illustration here. The artist credited is Erik Johnson.

I think it's a classic.

Adverb Reform School. STAT!
I'm reading Harry Potter #6. I'm not a diehard HP lover but I've enjoyed the books and movies.

So far, this book sucks ass. I read 225 pages and nothing happened. Nothing. It was the equivalent of reading about Harry flossing his teeth for 225 pages. I felt sorry for the kids who stayed up until midnight and paid $30 for a hardcover of this book. I'm now about halfway in (it's about 800 pages) and a few things that might indicate some sort of plot have happened, so maybe the book will make up for it in the second half.

Along with the crime of writing pages and pages of plotless fiction, J.K. has never met an adverb she didn't like. Bracingly. Quellingly. Warmingly. Are those even words? Are you allowed to put "ly" at the end of any word that you feel like? Another gem was when someone said something with a "significantly dark tone." Marc said that he had to negotiate with his editor because he likes to invent verbs. (Just in case it's not clear here, I know that bracingly isn't a verb. I'm suggesting that Marc was inventing fun words and had to negotiate with his editor while J.K. makes up adverbs which any basic writing lesson will tell you to use sparingly.)(HA HA, I used an ingly word.) Yeah, yeah, I know if you sell a gabillion copies, you can do whatever you want. And at least people are reading.

And while I'm bitching about popular entertainment, I also watched Flightplan. I've been sitting on the DVD for two weeks. Kathy said she was disappointed with it, but I like Jodie Foster and thought it would be an entertaining thriller for a rainy afternoon. If you haven't heard of it, it's about a woman who goes on an overseas flight with her daughter and falls asleep. When she wakes up, her daughter is gone. There is no record of the daughter on the passenger list. Sound a bit intriguing? You'd think.

Turns out, it's pretty stupid. Jodie's character goes so completely batshit crazy, like climbing around in the ceiling of this plane which is the size of a cruise liner (I kept waiting to see the room with the pool) that it's hard to sympathize with her. I'm not going to spoil it but the huge money shot at the very end is so completely contrived and ridiculous that I laughed, nay, I cackled while slapping my knee and stomping the floor. I can just see the writer at his writers group and creating this moment, the whole reason to have the movie, and the others chiming in, "Yeah, and she can emerge from the smoke. Yeah, and there can be emergency lights flashing in the background. Yeah, and … ."

Also the movie barely has 90 minutes worth of story so there's some padding going on.

Final tidbit of the day, I made this epic casserole last night. I had to ask Bob to stop eating so we'd have some leftovers for this week. On Weds I bought a pound of roasted Poblanos at the farmers market. They have a guy there with a rig to roast them while you watch. For the casserole I took half that and diced them and stirred them with sour cream. I used a bunch of cooked rice and layered the rice with the sour cream mix, a diced Mexican style cheese that I can't remember the name of, and diced cooked chicken. You do that for 2 layers and then top with rice and a sprinkle of cheese. Bake for about 30 minutes. Enjoy.

Be A Good Worker
This morning I procrastinated for a bit and then worked on the illustration for my project. I think I made it more complicated than it had to be but I felt like I was learning something so I stuck with it.

I finally decided I was fried and checked the clock and saw it was after 1pm and since the news is that it's going to rain tomorrow, I thought I should try to put in a little more time in the yard. I cleaned up some general stuff and dug out the roots of this lavender thing I cut back to the nub since it looked bad. Then I cleaned up the rosebed and then, finally, after having it for eons, I took out the hedge master and went to town on the front hedge.

If I wasn't so tired I'd tell a better story, but basically it's this stupid box hedge that was randomly placed out front and a couple of years ago we had a bunch of snow on the roof and it all slid off at once and did some major damage to the hedge. We chopped it back and intended to pull it out but never did and it's been growing and growing until it looked like a spiky space alien out there.

I finally took the hedge cutters to it and smoothed out the edges. I considered taking pictures but it doesn't look that special now that it's done and I could see you guys thinking: Why the hell did she put a photo of her hedge on her blog? It looks like it was trimmed by a blind person.

[Aside: don't you hate when your software checks for updates all by itself and randomly interrupts you when you're doing something to say, "Hey, I have an update, do you want it right now?" and I want to say, "No, do I interrupt you when you're in the middle of doing something and say, "Hey, it's my birthday, do you want to bake me a cake?"]

My confidence boosted by how easy it is to use that mother, I went to the side of the house to chop at that hedge. That's another story I can't get into right now, but basically I chopped until I felt like my arms were falling off and they still feel like they're falling off and my forearms are throbbing and typing does not feel good.

Tomorrow I'm making something with those roasted Poblanos I bought and doing some serious couch surfing.

I Want My System Font Back
This morning I arrived at the office to find that the last person on my computer was an administrator and that my display settings were all screwed up. The system font is stupid and all my desktop icons are smaller and so on like that. The sad part is that this majorly aggravated me and I stomped into someone's office to bitch about it.

I have become that woman in the office whose head spins around and who loudly whines about her system fonts. Get over it already.

Also in today's ramblings, I just read my Wednesday NYT Dining Out and on the cover is a super interesting article about a guy who studies how outside influences affect how much a person eats. Try this link.

The article starts out saying people will swear they aren't influenced by the size of the package or how much variety is on the buffet table, or fancy names on the label.

Nuh-uh. I'm TOTALLY influenced by portion sizes. I'm the queen of eating junk food just because it's there on the table. I will run out a buy a goofy product because of advertising or pick the prettier label if deciding between two brands. This is exactly why I don’t like to buy a lot of chips or any food I know I will eat in absurd quantities. This is also why I don't like for my husband to fix my plate because he loads it up with so much stuff and I'll eat it because it's there. My serving guideline for him is: "Think about how much you think I would eat. Then cut it in half."

Finally, did you know rebates are a total scam? I've always thought they were an excuse to collect your personal data for direct mailing/telemarketing. Turns out it's more insidious than that AND a company was recently granted a patent for their business practice that takes pride in denying you your rebate. Their mothers must be proud.

Crazy Man with Red Ponytail
This morning I walked down Main Street near a young guy smoking a cigarette and wearing green pants with a green bag slung over his shoulder and sporting a red ponytail. He looked like a character in Dazed and Confused but time does not permit me to find a photo. Sorry.

I stopped at the red light on 2nd. He continued across. There was no traffic. He made a production of looking to the left and then to the right and then looking back over his shoulder at me standing on the corner and giving me something between an irritated sigh and the stink-eye. (And it's a one way street so the right glance was superfluous Mr. He-Who-Thinks-He's-So-Great.)

So you chose to go, I chose to wait. Let's agree not to judge each other.

Then my light turned green and I crossed and caught up with him at the next corner which was red and the intersection filled with cars. We stood waiting. Traffic thinned out. One car remained but paused in front of us so that the driver would not block the intersection.

Mr. Green Jeans opens his arms to the sides in a big impatient "what's the matter with you lady" gesture and as she drives through the intersection he does a big high karate kick at the car.

I was terrified he was going to go into my building because there was no way I was getting on the elevator with that bundle of crazy. I suppose we should be grateful he wasn't driving.

Three Unrelated Items
1 - On Saturday morning I went out to the kitchen to refill my tea. My husband sat at the kitchen table with his headphones on, eyes closed. The paper was spread-out before him and his head tilted forward as he gently snored.

He sat up a bit when I came in the room.

ME: Hey Hon, whatcha doing?

Him: Sleeping and reading the paper.

2 - This weekend I read three reviews of Cormac McCarthy's new book The Road. (The URL takes you to the website of the Official Cormac McCarthy Society. Who knew that even existed? Also, they don't have the new book on their site. For shame.) I like McCarthy's writing a lot. However, one of the reviews I read characterized this as his bleakest book yet which doesn't put me in a big hurry. If you recall, I read Suttree earlier this year (see book #9) and the words I used were grim and joyless.

3 - My text book for my Illustrator class starts each chapter with a section called, "Why Would I Do This?" Why, indeed.

A Conversation that took place on Tuesday evening, the day the cleaning person came, one minute after arriving home and putting my things on the kitchen counter.

Me: Omigod, the counter's all sticky.
Bob: That's where I made my lunch.
Me: You mean we paid someone to clean today and I don't even get to enjoy it for 5 minutes?
Bob: I can wipe it off if you want.
Me: No. I want it sticky.

Real Electrician
Actual electricans came to our house to look at our problem and turns out, portions of our electrical system are totally mickey mouse. I had noticed, as early as shortly after we bought the house that there were signs of people without a clue doing projects on the house. And we've had other clues that things were a bit off so this wasn't a huge surprise.

I suppose I can see why some people would cut corners and have a nephew do a shitty paint job OR reinstall only part of the kitchen floor OR wallpaper right over the old wallpaper.

But why would you mess with the electricity? Why would you do the cheapo, I have a friend who read a book about wires and breakers once and took shop in high school do the electrical work?

We're still not clear what we're in for but we'd like to get it right so some dollars will be going into electrical fixing. And here's a shout out to LeRoy who mentioned when we bought the house that it was a good idea to set money aside every month for a house fund for just these types of situations.

Meanwhile, my class is taking up more of my free time than expected so the blog lags. I never told you about the food article that paired wine with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or FoodDay Martha on another bender about things in the east that are better than the west. She mentions this family farm where they get their better apples and how this farm has been in the same family since 1700-something when King George (or whatever) gave them the land and isn't that cool? Yeah, sure if you conveniently forget that other people were using that land first.

Bitty Booties
I made these with a pattern from Heather Baily which you can find here. I wish I knew how to take better pictures of things and I'll invest some time and energy into that at some point.

The star booties were the test pair and the heart booties I gave to Katie. The hearts are a picture of the cast of Beverly Hills 90210 and came from some earrings Katie's mother gave me years ago.

The booties weren't too hard to make but the test pair took forever. I've got two more pairs for gifts sitting by the TV about 50% finished. Just an hour or two of hand stitching and they'll be done, too. They aren't practical for wearing. At least not the way I made them. But they are cute and a fun little gift.