Spam-O-Rama
This spam thing is getting me down. Every time I log on I have a bazillion bounced messages. I hit check mail and then leave the room and empty the dishwasher and by the time I'm finished the MAILER-DAEMONS are all loaded up. Plus all the nice auto-responder notes from people who are on vacation but will get back to me as soon as they can. Sometimes these messages are in a foreign language but I'm guessing that's what they say. Some messages inform me that the email user has a spam filter and I haven't been approved so please reply to I can be approved. Or maybe even a scolding message that they don't accept spam messages and I'm not approved.

Who thought that technology development was going to do anything? The spammers don't even see the rejected messages.

I attempted to set up my own mail filtering but there are so many permutations, it didn't help much.I'm trying to think of an evil punishment for spammers but my creativity is on the fritz and all I can think of is letting the victims throw things at him or her. I'd throw cartons of yogurt 3 months past date.

Hijacked Again
My domain has been used by spammers again. There should be a way to do something about this. Right now I'm getting about 100 mailer daemons a day. At first they all looked like they were from Germany but now looks like everything. argh.

Blogger is giving me fits. It won't let me correct "To Distracted for Words" to "Too Distracted for Words." I've even deleted the original post and then started all over with a new post. It's like Blogger knows I don't want to dick with the computer yet I wouldn't want to walk away from it with an error like that so it won't let me fix it. My other top annoying mistakes: its and it's and there, their and they're. Furk.

Too Distracted For Words
I have a few things here for a longer post but I'm distracted and trying to pull a few things together so this is it for today. The photo is the interstate bridge between Oregon and Washington at I-5. Bob and I took a walk along the river yesterday.

I'll confess that I've just this week figured out how to use the tabs in my browser and now that I get it, I love it.

Last item: when I was a kid I was interested in Amelia Earhart and for awhile read anything I could find about here. Here's a link to an alleged transcription of radio transmissions after the plane went down. A young girl was surfing the short wave radio — the page explains the story — makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

Spider Pig
Bob and I went to see The Simpsons Movie yesterday at the first showing. There hasn't been one movie I was dying to see all summer except this one and when I mentioned it a month or two ago, he said he might be gone because it was a Cheese weekend. I indicated some disappointment with this and what do you know, he modified his plan.

We are huge Simpsons fans and rarely miss the show. Our favorite episode, I think the first episode we ever watched together is Bart the Daredevil which is the Springfield Gorge one. We have seen it at least 10 times and we clutch our bellies and squeeze tears out of our eyes in laughter every single time. We will stop anything we're doing to watch the last 10 minutes of that episode. One of us could sever a limb and we'd be running out the door with the cooler and a bloody stump wrapped in a towel and if the TV was on with this episode we'd pause before we rushed to the hospital. You can imagine our delight when this episode is alluded to in the movie.

I'm surprised there wasn't more Simpsons-mania. Yeah, sure the Oregonian had a cover story on the outrage that Springfield, Vermont got to host the premiere instead of Springfield, Oregon. Even Matt said he thought the Simpsons were from Springfield, Oregon. Or Beaverton. (Local humor.)

We bought our tickets in advance and arrived early and quickly found a seat in the almost empty theater. We sat through a half hour of commercials, mostly for TV shows. I hate to say it because I am desperate to cut back on my shows, but that new Bionic Woman show looks like it's going to be good. Also they had a bunch of shows that look like shows we already have. Someone with powers has to stop evil from ending the world. Some plucky woman overcomes some setback to make a new start. Is it because I'm old and have already see it all? Or is it because there are 10 trillion channels and the creative forces in the TV industry only have so many ideas?

By the time the movie started more people arrived. Mostly guys in the 20-40 range and I don't want to use the word nerdy, but let's say the kind of guys who can write computer code and watch Battlestar Galactica rather than the kind of guys who work in finance and use hair product. There were two other women in the room, both accompanying people too young to drive. Ladies, take note.

It's hard to have hope for America after sitting through a half dozen trailers for what have to be the dumbest movies ever. Daddy Day Camp? Some sort of underground ping pong movie that looked like a spoof of a spoof. A Santa Claus movie with Vince Vaughn that you could tell the trailer had the only good parts in the movie. Plus an Alvin and the Chipmunks movie that Bob was excited about. (Generational thing, no doubt.) And Horton Hears a Who which I love as a book but the trailer was not even a tiny bit appealing.

We loved the Simpsons movie. There were a very few moments where I felt my attention drifting but otherwise, they kept the energy and the laughs coming. I don't think it was a magical life-changing Simpsons, just a really long good TV episode — but I love the show so why not a big episode on the big screen? Plus you get to see Bart's doodle and Otto with his bong. When are you going to see that on TV? Two thumbs up from this household.

In other film news, I watched Howl's Moving Castle on DVD last night and it is fantastic. I also watched the first Fantastic Four movie on cable recently and it was dreadful.

Look, my first tomato, yay. I'm going to have it in my dinner salad tonight.

How To Make A Taster Pie from Pastry Scraps
On Sunday I made a pie for someone else and what a rip to have the delicious smelling pie goodness in your house when you're not going to get to enjoy it. At least for Bob. I got a piece of the gift pie. So I made a tiny pie on the side.

I have a new crust recipe that has been working for me and part of the appeal is that it's generous so you roll out a giant thing and can fit it into your pie plate with ease. And you have yards of extra pastry.

We have a small casserole dish. I can't find a photo of something similar online at the moment. It's a little bigger than two grilled cheese sandwiches stacked.

I layer some scraps on the bottom. In advance I slice too many apples. This weekend I also threw in the last ½ cup of blueberries with a sprinkle of sugar, lemon and a thickener. Scraped the fruit onto the scraps. Covered them with the remaining scraps and crumbs and baked it next to the pie. I set the timer a half hour early and check it every ten minutes. Since it's small it can go from yum to sizzle quickly. Enjoy your mini pie.

In other news, I invented a fabulous sandwich for lunch yesterday which was Nutella and cashew butter on homemade buttermilk bread. Delicious.

Finally, I've been feeling a bit blue lately and decided to use my lunch hour for some retail therapy. First I went searching for a bathing suit (yes, not the best thing to be looking at if you're feeling down) but the Rack didn't have any or if they did I didn't see where they were. So I went upstairs to look at the shoes. The size 6 aisle: empty. The size 7 ½ aisle: empty. The size 7 aisle: about 9 women crammed in there. I didn't want shoes that bad so I thought I'd head over to Vicki's Secret.

They have this thing now (or maybe forever, this is the first time I've used it) where they have a sample of all the styles organized by size in the dressing room. So they measure you and then you pick the styles you want to try. Once you know what you like you can go into the store and buy what you want. I liked everything I tried which made me realize how stretched out my old ones are. (sexy!) But this was immediate love. It was the most fabulous bra I've ever put on in my life. I would marry that bra. I came out of the dressing room cradling the sample in my hands, demanding that I be taken to this section of the store so I could buy one in every color.

And you know what? That style is on clearance because the new season starts soon. There was not one bra in that style in my size. Not even brown. They dried my tears and told me to come back next week.

Breakfast in America

[Isn't the first rule of blogging: don't write about what you had for breakfast?]

I tend to eat the same thing for breakfast over and over and over. For years. This means the stuff I eat on work days. Weekend eating is a whole different story. I eat the same thing until I am sick and tired of it and have to come up with some new thing to eat until I hate it. Not a great system, I'll admit, but this is how I'm doing it.

One of my first major breakfasts, back in the 80's, was a bran muffin, an apple, and a Tiger's Milk bar. This was a time in my life when the size of my butt was an ongoing issue (well, you know, my size all over) and I eventually gave up the Tiger bar.

When I moved up here my breakfast was a bagel and a banana for eons. Then I graduated to variations of cereal and smoothie. When I was a vegetarian I made smoothies with tofu and protein powders and fruit and my favorite cereal was Grape-nuts. At some point I developed the notion that I was eating too many wheat products so I switched to muesli. Also yogurt was easier to deal with than smoothie making. So I had muesli and yogurt and fruit. Recently I changed the muesli to granola.

I've been getting sick of this breakfast for awhile now. I'm finished with bananas. I don't want to even see bananas and yogurt mingling in the same grocery bag.

Not last weekend but the weekend before we had tons of fresh berries in the house so I unwisely ate berries, yogurt and granola every day for about 10-12 days in a row which has pushed me to the edge. I have no idea what to switch to next. Maybe an Egg McMuffin. HA!.

Random Thoughts While Driving to Work
Do you ever have those mornings where you're driving to work and you wonder if you finished getting ready? You vaguely remember brushing your teeth or putting on your underwear but you feel like you need to check.

Invention #1 – If a car or truck's turn signal remains on for more than 60 seconds the car or truck will start saying in an annoying robotic voice: "Turn indicator time frame has exceeded maximum. Manual shut off now."

I used to have a folder that I carried with me everywhere that had all my "to do" stuff in it. I haven't been able to find it for a couple weeks now. When I first noticed it was gone I kept thinking, it'll turn up. It just got stuck somewhere. But now I'm not so sure. Maybe someone stole it. I hope he or she is getting all that stuff done.

Invention #2 – An teleportation device so when someone's pet poops in your yard the poop will instantly reappear on their lawn. If they don't have a lawn, on their kitchen table.

What are the bases these days? Like when I was a girl, first base was kissing and second base was getting felt up above the waist and so on. Have the bases changed? Who's in charge of that?

I barely read the comics any more. The only ones I read on any sort of regular basis are For Better or Worse and Get Fuzzy. This weekend I sent my mom and sister an email with the subject line: Elizabeth and Anthony Hooked Up. (RE: FBOFW) You could see this coming for awhile but I was really rooting for hot helicopter pilot.

Invention #3 – a freeway merger. Sort of like when you go to the car wash, your car would click in and the cars already on the freeway would be clicked in and the merger would quickly, smoothly and efficiently merge everyone so that the on-ramp didn't get all backed up.

Paris in the 70's
I've been sitting on this story for awhile because I didn't have the photo for accompaniment.

I'm sure you'll be surprised when I reveal, that this photo has been Photoshopped. I wanted a photo that looked like it was taken in France and had me in this swell outfit. Remember Chemin de Fer pants? I had one of every kind.* These were corduroy sailor pants. Aren't they fabulous? Also, I had to add something for my dear sister to be looking at.

So here's the story. I don't know how old I was here, maybe 14? My family went on a trip to Europe and for the first week we did a tour group together and the second week we hung out in Germany with Dad's family and the third week Mom, Erin and I did another tour group on our own. I'm sure I have a journal of that trip somewhere but I have no idea where it is right this second.

We went to France the first week which included a day or two in Paris. One day, during our midday break we were at a cafe somewhere and I had to use the bathroom. The bathroom was a unisex and you put a coin in and then went in shut the door and you were in your own tiny bathroom.

I put my money in but I couldn't figure out how to turn on the light. As I tried to figure this out a French guy came along who also wanted to use the john. He said a bunch of French stuff, probably something like, "Hurry up moron, people are waiting." And when I shook my head and was confused he said, "American?"

I nodded and he quickly took charge of the situation. He also looked around for the light and said, "Complications" only sing-songy with a heavy French accent. That parts makes the story but I can't spend the rest of the day figuring out how to put a 3 second audio clip on my blog. Use your imagination.

Then he came into the bathroom with me, shut the door, locked it and the light came on. There was a half second there when I thought, "This may not be a good idea." But right away he unlocked the door and went out and I was all set.

Except now when I did it, the light wouldn't work because the coin made the light go on and we used up the coin on the test run.

"Complications," Mr. French Guy said and he dug around and found me another coin.

So I'm in there, doing my thing and I look down and I can see his eyeball looking in the crack under the door.

And being the totally naive moron that I was, I said: "What are you doing? Are you trying to look at me?" Because honestly, who gets on the floor of a public restroom and peeks through a tiny crack to try to watch someone pee?

Apparently creepy French guy. He was gone when I left and that is the Paris bathroom story.

*Upon re-reading this, I realize this might be confusing. I didn't have every possible color and style of pants but I had the ones that buttoned instead of a zipper -- I think we called them tuxedo pants, and I had some that laced instead of zippered. That's all I can remember so really, saying I had every kind was pretty lame statement.

A Great Day for Book Buying
Bob thought it would be funny if we went to a bookstore this evening and said we wanted to buy Middlemarch. Should I be juvenile and admit that I already read all the spoilers online? (For historical purposes I'll mention it's Harry Potter VII day and also that as I write this it is before the official release time and Wikipedia has the whole summary up. What a world.)

We just talked to our neighbor and more info on the big crash. It wasn't a motorcycle, it was an SUV and the driver ran away from the scene. Our neighbor heard it and went down there and when he saw the carnage he rang the doorbell of the house. After a long while a lady opened the door and said, "Are you the driver?"

He's standing there in his jammies with bedhead and he says, "No, I'm not the driver."

He looked in the car to find the driver but didn't see anyone. Then he started looking around in the bushes. The first cop arrived and said, "Are you the driver?" and he said, "No, I'm not the driver. I'm looking for the driver."

They looked around and then the firetruck came and they have some sort of thermal search device (How James Bond, I had no idea your everyday down the street emergency crew had stuff like that.) and finally, the lady from across the street came out and said, "By the way, after the accident, the driver ran that way."

Our neighbor hadn't heard anything else but since the other neighbor heard he was taken away in handcuffs, my guess is that they tracked him down. Unrelated but on the same day, on the other side of town, there was a big standoff with a gunman and SWAT teams, etc. Not a regular occurrence around here and the local news is gummed up with that and nothing about Mr. Speedie who missed the turn and crashed through landscaping and rolled over a poor innocent parked car.

Migration
Last night Bob went to bed really early and crashed hard. When I went to bed he was sleeping on my side.

"Hey Hon, you're on my side," I said.

From the way he grunted without even twitching a muscle, I knew he couldn't be moved. I crawled in on his side favoring the middle and crashed hard myself.

I vaguely remember waking in the night and I was still mostly in the middle but Bob had gotten up and crawled back in on his side and was hugging the edge.

When I woke in the morning I was totally on my side and he was gone.

I think it's funny that people pick a side and stick with it. (I'm assuming this is true, any couples out there regularly switch sides?) And it feels funny to be on his side. Like if I wasn't so tired I might not fall asleep.

I don't know what to do with myself this afternoon. We ran some errands this morning. I'd like to putter in the yard but it's raining a little too hard for that. I don't mind a drizzle but this is heavier than a drizzle. It's not like I don't have a million other things to do.

The photo is from the men's room at the office. Apparently there is a room other than the bathroom part that is the "sprinkler room." I still think it's funny.

Photographic Evidence

The carnage was still there when I got home tonight so I went down to take photos. I could not see the full damage to the car this morning so my jaw hit the ground when I saw this.

A police car drove up right then and the resident was sitting on the porch but I was too embarrassed to ask questions. Another neighbor said he heard the guy was taken away in handcuffs. Wow.

Most of my photos turned out blurry. I'm the worst photographer ever. Here's the view from our street. You can see the rock wall ruined. (Also you can click on the photos if you want a larger view.)



This is the car. Look how far it is away from the curb. Yikes.

Watch for Speed Bumps
Last night I got up around 3am for the regular middle of the night stretch. I was about 3/4ths of the way back to sleep when I heard a loud engine zooming down the street. I like the windows open in the summer and the bedroom is in the front of the house. I guessed it was a speeding motorcycle and about the time I was thinking, "What a moron," I heard: THUMP SKID CRASH.

This was way down the street and I wondered if I should do anything. About 10 minutes later I could see a reflection from flashing lights on the wall and I thought I heard voices and that deep rattle-y sound that a firetruck makes when it idles and I drifted off to sleep.

This morning when I took off for work I looked around for evidence of a crash. A number of years ago the cops were chasing a car late at night and he tried to turn onto our street and lost control and took the turn way too wide, smashed a car on the far side of the street, bounced across and hit a huge truck on the driving side of the street and then spun back across and clipped another car before crashing into a giant bush in a neighbor's yard. It was very exciting. The police siren kept blaring and all the neighbors got up and stood out in the street in their slippers and bathrobes and watched. Our neighbor across the street, Olivia, was a senior in high school and she came and asked, "Does anyone know? Was it some kids?"

Just so you don't get the wrong idea, we actually live in a nice neighborhood. Not nice like McMansions and fancy homes but nice like, small mostly well kept homes where lots of teachers and people with small children live. It's not a like a suburban development. Well, maybe you could argue it is, but the 1940's version. What do I know, I'm not an urban planning expert.

Back to last night's crash: at first I didn't see anything. When I got to the end of the street I saw the problem. Mr. Speedy hadn't been able to make the turn. The street ends at a T and you have to do a slight left and then right (is that what they call a dogleg?) to follow on the other side of the cross street. Mr. Speedy went diagonally through the landscaping of the house at the end, went up and tore apart a little rock wall, through a giant shrub then in a shower of dirt apparently caught some air and landed on a compact car parked on the street before bouncing off and hitting the street. That must have hurt.

The Garden Report
This is the biggest pumpkin out in the front yard and I swear every time I look at it, it's measurably bigger. There's another good sized one in the backyard but the critters have already nibbled on it. This is why I don't worry about having too many pumpkins because something (squirrels? raccoons? opossum?) wreck most of them. The animals usually eat them as soon as they're as big as a grape.

My sunflowers are thriving. I didn't pull any so my entire garden is a forest of sunflowers. The tomato plants are big and dripping with tons of green tomatoes. Nothing even looks close to getting ripe. We're having a rainy streak which was nice at first but is moving into the category of dismaying. Outside my office window it looks like November right now. eek. I've got a few lettuce-y type plants and beets that don't seem to grow. That covers it.

We have an endless abundance of lawn weeds in the form of little yellow flowers. I spent hours weeding on Sunday and you can barely tell. In a related story I decided to devote a couple of hours to filing at the office yesterday. I decided that weeding and filing are the same: lots of work with little progress and there's always more on the way.

This is a rambling post meandering to different topics if you're not getting that yet. I don't know if I've written exactly about this as much as hinted about it but I submitted a short story last week for the first time in eons.

A shortish version of my writing career is I wrote various stuff for a long time and then wrote a novel which took years (Linking to exact pages is too depressing but if you're interested the newsletters tell the tale starting in the early 90's.) In 2001 I did a workshop and did my last major push for publication which yielded a tiny bit of interest and that's it. Then I took a screenwriting class and did that for a few years and for a long time it was fun until it became no longer fun and I got to a point where I no longer enjoyed even the thought of writing and quit.

I took a Photoshop class and learned how to work a sewing machine and tried new cooking things. But I never felt very good about not writing and it's taken awhile but I'm enjoying it again and finally completed and submitted something and it's a whole new world out there.

When I was on vacation I think my domain hosting tweaked their spam filtering because I had 150 spam for one week and normally I get about 3 a day. The spam filtering gives you the option of sending the spam to a folder or sending out into the ethers and I realize the drawbacks of this decision but I picked the ethers. Going to the spam folder to look for misfiled email was like a part time job and I very rarely found any real email and even then it was someone I bought something from who wanted me to buy more things. I noted the sudden spike in my spam with a "hm?" and never thought of it again.

I recently noticed I haven't been getting any comments from here. In case anyone reading doesn't know how it works, in addition to being posted on the page, blog comments are sent via email to the blogger. I figured my loyal commenter was disappointed that the posts have been so boring lately. But later I noticed that there were new comments. Even from new people. I guess the comments are flying off into the ethers with the spam and I should probably investigate further but for now the comments have been redirected to a gmail account so comment away secure in the knowledge that I'm appreciative and actually seeing all the comments.

One last thing before I go Bob and I have been loving the HBO show Flight of the Conchords. It's hilarious.

A Lot of Typing Without Much Content

I just scanned a few old posts and see I never finished writing about my trip. One of my goals is to make an Orleans, CA page that I can link to with photos and maps since it's a small town on a two lane highway in the mountains with two gas pumps, a café and a tiny grocery store and it's unusual to find anyone who's heard of it.

The discussion usually goes something like, "You mean New Orleans?" "No, Orleans." "Oh, I've never heard of it." Then you say Humboldt County and can usually get some name recognition there. I've traveled to some pretty far off places where they've heard of Humboldt County. But the webpage thing remains on my to do list.

My normal summer visit in at the end of August and a huge number of extended family are there and it's fun but hectic. (By huge number let's say around 20 grownups and another 20 kids ranging in age from 15 to baby sproglet.) Bob went to the High Sierra Music Festival the first week of July and suggested I visit the family during that time. Also, my Dad's birthday is 4th of July and I haven't celebrated with him in a long time. Very quiet visit with lots of reading and daily swimming trips. I spent more time in a bathing suit that week than I have in the past 3 years. My bathing suit is old and grotty but since I rarely have occasion to wear one, I can make them last awhile.

There's a point where the elastic turns on you and I've reached that point and should probably see if I can find a new one. And there's no better place for bathing suit shopping than Portland Oregon in the middle of July. (sarcasm). I just found these attempts back in 2001 (here, here, and here.) My current suit I found in 2004.

I went to the river with Mom and my Aunties and they do these Cryptic Crosswords. Have you ever seen these? They have a clue like: Man on horse: plumber? and the answer is: Mephistophiles. I know. I never got it either. You have to be a total brainiac and even then, the group mind is critical for working on these puzzles. I got one clue per puzzle we did and this after staring at the clue for 2 and ½ hours. I'm going to get Cryptic Crosswords for Dummies this winter and practice so next summer I'm ready.

I'll tell one other story before I run. I'm not a cat person. It's not like I hate cats, I just don't love them and would characterize my interest in living with one as: not at all. My Dad used to not be a cat person but now my parents have two cats. They were feral cats who have been tamed (and enjoy free meals). One is very shy (name: Shy Boy) and keeps a low profile when I'm visiting. The other one is much friendlier (name: Friendly) and its favorite thing to do is crawl on your lap while you're reading and knead its nails into your thighs. Then it drools on you. I kicked Friendly off my lap one morning and it went downstairs and returned awhile later with a flapping bird in its mouth. What a cutie.

Because I am lame I had no gut instinct about how to react to this so I said: "Ack! Ack! Mom! Make it go away!" And Mom chased the cat out of the house and Dad chased the cat out of the garage. The poor kitty had to rip up the bird somewhere else.

Still On The Run
Yesterday I alternated between my grant writing stuff and the giant pile of weeds-soon-too-be-seeds in my backyard. I also read almost everything in my misc. reading pile which is magazines, articles and pamphlets that pile up.

Did I say I was taking a grant writing class? Tonight is class 2 and I've been going through the class materials and working on my practice grant. I now understand why it takes so long to write a grant. I don't have actual data for my practice grant so I'm just working as if I did and even with making up data I barely made a dent in my statement of purpose and objectives and methodology.

Meanwhile, did you hear talk about another X-Files movie?

Don't get me wrong. I loved X-Files. I've been tempted to go back and watch the first three seasons on DVD except I always have so many other shows to watch. I loved the first movie. I'm just wondering how many people like me even give a fart about X-Files these days.

I'm on my way out the door to class right now.

Big Storm
On Thursday night we had an amazing thunder storm. I was just getting into bed to read and all the windows were open. I heard some rumbling and got up to look out the bedroom window and saw a huge flash of light in the sky. I turned out the lights and watched for almost a half hour. I kept thinking, "One more good one, and then I'll read my book. And then I'd want to see more."

We don't get many storms like that here. One of my neighbors had their window open and every time there was a big flash I could hear a big, "OOH!"

At the same time the sky opened up and it rained like crazy. Sadly I had spent a good amount of time watering everything thoroughly so it all got a double dose. I took last night off from watering and it's hot today so I'm sure my garden is crying about now. I've got to get out there and photograph the pumpkins. I put pumpkins in the front this year as well as the back and the plants in the very front of the house are going gangbusters. There's a pumpkin bigger than a softball sitting in the middle of a shrub. I hope no bad kids wander by and take it for entertainment purposes.

I'm taking a grant writing class and I'm going to do my homework now. I decided to make tomorrow a no computer day and free myself from this beast (that I love and want to sit at all day long).

Time To Beat
Oof. Very busy week with lots of personal growth activities which I won't go into details at this time.

This is the Klamath River at Dolan's. Among my favorite spots to walk when I'm in Orleans.

Today's commute (back at home, Portland to Vancouver) is our first entry in the worst cl*sterf#k summer commute day contest. 86 minutes from the time I left the parking garage to the time I pulled into the driveway. The drive is 11.5 miles so by my, understandably limited comprehension of math, that's about a 7.5 minute mile. I run an 11 minute mile on a good day so I couldn't have beat that on foot. But somewhere, someone could have. Even the carpool lane was backed up.

I have a class all day tomorrow and a goodly portion of my Saturday is booked as well.

Riveting posts will most likely few and far between. Go read a book, instead.

Manic Monday
One of the things I like about my job is that I only do it at work. Once I leave the office I don't think about work or worry or check-in or anything.

I've been holding my magical post vacation super-relaxed feeling right up until the moment when I sat down at my desk and saw the piles of stuff and notes I left myself for things that need to be taken care of this week. AGH!

So I have one quick story before I dig into it.

Our building was purchased and the management changed and they've been doing all sorts of renovations. Carpet and light fixtures were replaced and the walls painted and they've been replacing signs.

This morning I noticed a new sign in the hall. The regular "Men" sign is on one side of the men's room door and on the other side of the door is a sign that says: Sprinkler Room.

Book Reading Update
While on vacation I read a 646 page book that I hated. The review is here (Book #15). I know, I'm an idiot. I should have put the book down but I didn't know how much I hated it until I finished it and realized that I wasted precious vacation reading time on a stupid book.

Still haven't gotten any projects done. Crap.

Fourth of July
Dang. I had this photo saved especially to post for 4th of July and then got all in a hurry before I left and forgot about it. Vancouver has a giant fireworks display every year and people come from all over to hang out at the Fort for the day. There are vendors and music and all sorts of fun stuff. Sad to admit, I've lived here for 12 years now and I've never actually watched the display. You know, bright lights exploding in the sky and making a big boom, bazillions of people, babies, dogs. I don't really need to do that.

But if we're home, Bob and I like to take a walk down there during the day to checkout the scene and buy a corndog and have a whirl on The Zipper and find fun photos like the one above. Bob makes me stand and pretend like he's taking my photo so instead he can take the picture of the guy in a red, white, and blue diaper, or whatever that is. (Totally just kidding about the corndog and Zipper, by the way. I feel like throwing up just thinking about corndogs and/or The Zipper separately.)

This year we both missed it because we weren't in town. Oh well.

Last night I ran over to the local convenience mart to grab some beef jerky and diet Coke for dinner because we had nothing in the house and I was too tired to go to Safeway. I searched the giant racks of Funyuns and coolers filled with tall towers of frosty PBR in the hopes of finding another delicious treat to round out my meal. Instead I found a huge display with at least 40 different framed posters from Scarface available for purchase. What is that all about? (The part about jerky, Coke and Funyons for dinner is also a lie but sounds good, but the Scarface: totally true.)

I had a couple of major projects that I desperately wanted to get done today but so far other than doing a load of laundry and buying wine at Trader Joe's I've been worthless. I'm going to make some more tea and see if I can get with it.

Tripping Through Paradise
Wow. Fabulous trip. Exactly what I needed. I kept a few notes about what I did and a typical day says: wake up early, read, pick raspberries, go swimming, eat dinner, early to bed.

I'll probably write more about it tomorrow. I'm beat right now. I woke up at 1:30a last night and drifted without really sleeping until morning. I finally just got up and packed and hit the road. I keep having this weird dream where I think I'm awake but I can't move and I tell myself, "This feels like a dream, but I know I'm awake and I'm going to move now," and then I can't move. It's really disturbing.

It was over 100 the past two days and I was expecting the drive home to have furnace-like qualities but it was mild and I kept the window down the entire time until I hit Portland and then it felt too hot and turned on the air. (Of course now my eyeballs feel like felt covered golf balls dipped in battery acid.)

The first thing I did when I got home was crack open a cold beer. Then I turned on the computer. Then I checked my dahlias. Lots of flowers out there now.

I'm going to go and wash the car before I run out of steam.

BIG GIANT DAHLIA
I wasn't going to take any more photos but this flower is ginormous. I tried to put a ruler next to it but my arm's too short and the light looked funny.

I'm on my way out the door for a week long adventure in the boonies with no Internet. I had a couple of planned posts and other pictures but some other projects got in the way and now here I am in a big rush trying to everything at the last minute.

Hope you all have a fun week and see you when I get back.