Going over Greyback, November 2008

This day is not going at all how I wanted it to. I stayed in bed too long and I have just enough of a head cold to feel fuzzybrained and I can't focus and I'm getting annoyed. I'm going to make a hot drink and curl up and watch last night's Battlestar Galactica and try again later.

Dad's workshop

Spreading My Unique Joy Everywhere

A few weeks ago I went to the post office to mail some packages. The lady gave me this long spiel about the flat rate boxes and the priority rate boxes and how much this and that cost. At that point, since my stuff was already packed in boxes, it seemed pointless to unpack my stuff, throw my boxes away and then repack in their boxes just to save a two dollars and twenty-five cents.

I had some packages to mail today so I brought my stuff without boxes.

When I got to the window I said, "I'd like to try one of these boxes you've been trying to sell me on."

Their reply? What box?

So I said, that flat rate box.

Then they held up a box so small I wonder what the point would be. There is nothing you would mail in that box that you couldn't mail for a buck or so in a squishy envelope. We go around in a circle, they insisting, you have to tell us what box you want.

They finally tell me that I can mail my stuff in any packaging I want and I said: I didn't package my stuff because you're always telling me how great your boxes are.

These are the most anal retentive assholes in the universe. There is no way to win. I told them they were like the IRS and I would have to pay a trained professional to tell my how to fulfill my obligations. They finally handed me big old Priority Mail box and I got my stuff out.

Later today, I read about how much money the post office is losing and my cold heart felt nothing. (Sorry Kenman.)

When the news season of Flight of the Conchords was announced I started bugging Bob about getting HBO again. We haven't had HBO since The Sopranos ended.

Bob called on the day the new season started which was the same day as the Obama concert and the person asked Bob if that's why he was adding HBO. He told them no, his wife wanted to watch Flight of the Conchords. Then the guy agreed that HBO had many fine programming choices. Bob and I cracked up over that line.

Since we have a premium channel again, I did a quick scroll through the movies to see if there was anything I wanted to see and I added a few, mostly movies that are in my netflix queue.

And I added Ghost

Yes, the 1990 movie with Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze. I haven't seen it since 1990 and I think the first time I saw it was at a screening so I knew nothing about it except it was a new movie coming out.

I can't remember for sure but I suspect I loved it when I saw it. I vaguely remember it being something of a phenomenon and making oodles of money. There were various analysis articles like in Time Magazine about women watching this movie and love and death and so forth.

This time I found it entertaining and thought it held up pretty well for being dopey romantic ghost movie. When I checked the Wikipedia entry I just about dropped my teeth when I saw that it had earned a best picture nomination. Yikes. It wasn't that good.

But the leads were cute together. I love Demi's adorable short haircut. And Whoopie was really good. The special effects were laugh-out-loud horrible and of course I was wondering how Molly could afford that fancy apartment after her banker boyfriend was killed and didn't he have a family that wanted to swoop in and claim his assets?

The two decade old styles were more noticeable in some places than others. I loved the office for the bankers with the light blue carpet. Demi's outfit in the final scenes is awful enough to earn special recognition. It was like a jumpsuit made out of black t-shirt material and the front top half was completely cut out in a goofy shape and she wore a grey t-shirt with no bra.

I have no concluding statement.

Shadow searching for something stinky to roll in.

It must be at least three months since I've complained about the Oregon State Bar.

I've been doing this work for something like 17 years now and I don't think I've ever had a pleasant exchange with the OSB. It can't be that terrible a place to work yet everyone you talk to is like an embittered DMV employee.

I'm sure they have to deal with lots of assholes. But I'm not an asshole. I'm always friendly and polite.

I always look for information on their mostly worthless website first. It's filled with information that's difficult to find. It's as if the public library were a giant pit filled with books and papers and the librarians acted all surly and overworked and pointed at the hole and insisted all the information was there.

I think I'm done with them for this round. I hope.

Check out the local snow bunny.



I can never remember which weekend I'm supposed to prune my roses. I remember the lady in the paper saying something about a three day weekend in winter. Yesterday I checked my handy guide to roses and it said January but when the temperature is not near freezing.

I'm not sure what "near freezing" means but I'm guessing today isn't the best day to do it.



It was pretty when we woke up. It's all soggy and melty now.

Brontë Obsession

A new Wuthering Heights is on Masterpiece Theater. I saw an ad for it somewhere and thought, I haven't seen WH in a long time. I'm going to watch that.

Apparently I've never watched WH nor have I read the book because this story is intensely weird and completely unfamiliar to me.

I watched the first half hour on Monday night and then ran to the bookshelf and found the paperback and have embarked on a full fledged Brontë obsession complete with wikipedia-ing the Yorkshire Moors and then flickring the same thing. Now I'm thinking a library trip is in order so I can grab a Brontë sister bio.

Shouldn't I have gone through this about thirty years ago?

I thought maybe I had WH confused with Jane Eyre. Are there other old gothy romantic classics that I'm forgetting? I tried to formulate that into a query for search engine but didn't get too far. Netflix didn't help either but it gave me ideas for a ton of other movies to watch. I just put the most recent version of Masterpiece Theater's Jane Eyre into the queue.

I don't have much to say and forgot to upload more workshop pictures.

Instead you should follow Peter and Elise on their honeymoon. Best Travel Writing Ever. Sample 1 Sample 2.

I think those are chronologically reversed but you can figure it out.

Choice quote:

We turned the wrong way up our street at first and discovered that it terminates in an absolutely breathtaking overview of the entire city, with the Eiffel directly in the center. We were at a loss for words.

(That is, until I remarked that the roving light from the top of the tower is not unlike the eye of Sauron. Because we are huge, married nerds.)

The Bucket



Yesterday I felt a great deal of dismay over something I'll label: maintenance. It seems like everything is on the verge of breaking. Our landline phone sounds like a crackle storm. The DVD player is persnickety and will only play every other DVD so I have to keep the laptop handy. My cellphone hates staying charged, even with a new battery. My glasses need to be updated.

It seems like we take care of one thing (new gutters, check!) and ten new things sprout up.

I guess this is how it always is but at the moment it feels over-burdensome.



Yesterday I enjoyed my computer free day so much I thought about a computer free weekend. I used to do a computer free day every weekend and I think I might reinstitute that policy.

I read a bunch of stuff and noodled around in the kitchen. I listened to a bunch of podcasts while I made salad rolls, chocolate pudding and collard greens with bacon.

That wasn't the meal. I've had the stuff for salad rolls forever and I've never made them before. I thought it would be something good to snack on this weekend. The chocolate pudding was a surprise for Bob and the collard greens were because I had a Cooks Illustrated recipe and I had bacon leftover from something else I made so I thought I'd give it a try.



The photos are of something I've intended to blog about for a long time. We call it: The Bucket.

I'm not sure where that name came from but on weekends you'll hear one of us say, "I'm going to get started on The Bucket" or "Don't worry, I already did The Bucket."

I started The Bucket a long time ago, possibly as long as 10 years, when I weighed more than I do now. I used to bring it to the office and then when I wanted a snack, instead of eating Laffy Taffy and Ritz Crackers, I'd have vegetables.

You might think of it as a pain but once you get in the habit you hardly think about it. Every weekend or sometimes weeknight, one or both of us will drag out a pile of vegetables, scrub, peel, cut and pop them into these plastic containers.

During the week we can use it for our lunches or pull out and chop up for our salad at dinner. Bob likes to mix his with pickles or olives to give it more flavor. Cucumbers and jicama go bad pretty quickly so I don't recommend doing those in advance. The bell peppers can also get slippery so you need to keep an eye on them but The Bucket will usually last at least 5 days, sometimes longer.

The peelings all go out into the compost bin.



I should start a blog feature like "Where's Waldo?" only call it "Where's Pam's wine?" It seems like there's a glass or bottle in all of my kitchen shots.

Bob is calling me so I'm not going to proofread. heh heh, living dangerously.

Holiday Newsletter from 2008 Holiday Season is Now Up (And not a moment too soon).

Howdy: I have posted the 08 holiday newsletter at

http://www.pamrentz.com/pampage/xmas/v18/p1.html.

Enjoy! Please drop me a note or leave a comment. After you've read it.

Also, I'll probably do a spam-mail on it this weekend so you may hear about it more than once.

Yep, it's all about me, me, me.

Also, I'm shutting down the computer and keeping it off until Saturday morning and taking a much needed computer vacation. I know, one day. Hardly worth the trouble. Yet, I think it's good for me.

Two, Two, Two Posts in One

Here's Bob's write-up on Michael Pollan.

As it turns out we're going to another lecture tonight. Dr. Terence Love. Bob got these tickets at school so the content will be a big surprise for me. Here's a quick quote:

Holistic Design: A Philosophical Framework

Holistic design of products, services, systems, and organizations depends on the objective material opportunities but even more on our inner subjective, emotional life. We are both the creative designers and aesthetic participants in those designs.

I don't even understand what that means. Usually when I have low expectations I end up enjoying the lecture. We shall see.

It's nice to get out and do stuff but all this getting home late coupled with an intensive work project all week has me feeling a bit fried.

The newsletter is 10 minutes away from being finished. I just need to proofread and check some links and I can cross that off my list. I want to make tomorrow a computer free day because I really need it. So unless I'm feeling spunky when I get home tonight: Saturday the dang newsletter will be finished.

* * *

Equal Opportunity for Humiliation

In the past several years I've talked to a number of women my age who participate in adult women soccer leagues. It's come up twice in the past month. They all insist it's super fun and since I'm such a soccer fan I should try it.

When I protest that I'm not athletic they say no one is, it doesn't matter. When I suggest my overachiever will kick in and I will want to train. They say, no you won't, no one does. It's a good workout. It's fun.

I have never enjoyed playing team sports. I'm not good at kicking, hitting, aiming or catching. I prefer to beat people by being smart, mean and better organized, not by knocking them out of the way.

I never liked P.E. I remember starting sixth grade middle school a few years after that Title IX Equal Education whatever passed and we had to do P.E. with boys. Thanks a lot Patsy Mink. I dreaded that hour. Let's take someone timid and uncoordinated and make them play with boys. It seems like we did sports with just girls, too, which I also didn't like. I've lost a lot of brain cells since then. It's hard to remember.

I did like gymnastics. And I have this memory of spending week after week in the gym during the Saturday Night Fever era and doing The Hustle (my new favorite wikipedia entry. I hurt my chin when I fell on the floor laughing). Could that be possible?

Back to team sports. It's hard for me to get past those memories and think that all this time later I could try playing soccer and I'd have fun doing it. I have to admit I'm curious in a "doing something outside my comfort zone" way and I could use the exercise but I don't need to add any more activities to my roster at the moment.

"Culture Is A Fancy Word For What Your Mom Does"

Last night was lecture night and we got to see Michael Pollan.

We didn't get home until after 10pm and then I was all wound up and couldn't sleep and I'm still having trouble forming a few complete sentences to sum up the lecture.

He talked about food, of course. Sold out the house. He's an entertaining speaker and he backs up his statements with research and facts. I know, what a world where we give people points for using research and facts.

One stat: Americans eat 20% of their meals in the car. How awful. The only time I eat in the car is when I'm driving to Orleans and I don't want to stop. This is when I drive by myself. I fill the passenger seat with fruit, carrot sticks, trail mix and sometimes a peanut butter and Nutella sandwich. Bottle of water. You can do the drive in 6.5 hours.

I think the worst processed food I eat is Wheat Thins (Big). I don't know: is See's Candy a processed food? Let's just agree, no.

Here's Bob's review of bluegrass. He got some wonderful photos, too.

I swear I blogged about this a long time ago but where did all the old doctors go?

I had the same primary care doctor for at least 12-14 years. She moved on this summer but since my health insurance was changing with the new job I waited until now to deal with it. I'm looking at the clinic physicians and they're all fresh-faced children. Aren't there any doctors over 40?

This is a photo of my Dad's workshop. I took a bunch of great ones over Thanksgiving but realize I neglected to post. More to come.

Bluegrass was super fun today and I will link to Bob's review when he does it because he took photos and knows more about bluegrass than I do.

I loved all the music but my favorite band of the day was Steep Canyon Rangers. I'd love to make a joke about names of bluegrass bands but I'm tired and need to get to bed. I leave it to someone else.

But here's a quick story. The Steep Canyon guys introduced a number like this: "We got any NASCAR fans out there?" Dead silence. Then maybe two people politely clapping. "Oh, great. Well, you're going to love this one. I can tell."

For the record, it was a great song and we all loved it.

Two super long days ahead.

But remember the holiday newsletter? You know, the one from Christmas 08? Yeah, it's at about 98 percent. Don't fret. This week. I promise.

Friday Wrap Up

The bunny showed up in the backyard again this morning. I haven't seen him since the first of the year and assumed he'd moved on. I've decided to call him Bunny Carlos (in case you don't get the reference). Our weed-choked lawn must be delicious. If he eats slugs, I will encourage him to breed.

For my one loyal reader who isn't near the PAC NW, it might interest you to know that our state is completely ruined with flooding and mudslides. Washington Department of Transportation has a blog , Twitter and Flickr. Go WSDOT with the technology.

This photo set shows where Interstate 5 was shut down. I guess it's open now for truck traffic and will open for passenger traffic later. Yikes. At Trader Joe's this morning they said their truck couldn't get through and I noticed the produce and meat sections were pretty scanty. Have I ever mentioned my fear of food riots? Just as a conceivable scenario. I'm not worried about it at the moment. No need to go into it now.

It's my goal to get the holiday newsletter (you know, the Presidents' Day holiday) done today. We'll see how I do. I'm feeling pretty squirrely.

Tomorrow is writers group at my house and Sunday is bluegrass.

Fake Twitter

For a very long time I was adamant that I had a blog and I had Flickr. I wasn't going to join any more online things. Then after CW I thought I should do that Live Journal thing – but 99.9% of the time I just cross-post what I post here.

Then succumbed to more peer pressure and joined Facebook. It's a fine idea but at the end of the day, it's just one more thing to log into and fritter away my time.

So now I'm looking at Twitter. I can see the appeal. Bob and I want to switch to iPhones next year so maybe I'll do it then.

Meanwhile, I'm thinking I should open a Twitter page for Roger the guy in the office next door.

Sample posts:

"Wow, what a cough. Someone give Roger a cough drop."

"Smells like Dinty Moore for Roger again today."

"Just signed for Roger's office supplies. Looks like a giant box of tape."

Benefits of the Damned

I'm on a new benefits plans as of the first. They sent me my cards in October and I very carefully put them in a safe place so I could find them at the first of the year.

I bet you can see where this story is going.

I'm not sure where else to look and I'm paranoid that, NOW, I'm going to keel over in the street and since I don't have a current insurance card they're going to leave me in the gutter. And everyone will see me with my mouth hanging open.

Sitting Around At Home

For many, many years of my life I wished to work from home or be independently wealthy. I thought that sitting around the house all day would be fantastic. Especially if I could make a living writing.

For my first job out of college, I actually liked the work but the owner was an unreasonable jerkwad which made the environment awful.

I've never written about my second main job out of college and the short version is that while I liked most of the people I worked with, I generally didn't enjoy the job or clients. That job I would sometimes feel like weeping on Sunday nights thinking about the work week.

The paralegal thing took awhile but I really like my job and working with tribes and these days, I rarely think that I'd be happier sitting around the house all day long.

I just finished an epic holiday that I was greatly looking forward to. Between weather and holiday office closure, I think I only worked two days in the last three weeks. That's a lot of time.

And I had grand plans for all these amazing things I was going to be doing. To be clear, I completely enjoyed the time and I did accomplish a huge pile of stuff. But I was dismayed by how quickly the time passed and how often the day would be coming to an end, and I'd barely gotten into one project. With endless piles of time, I still struggled to get my stuff done.

I thought this post would be more interesting when I started it. No time to go back and sweeten it up, now. But I think my point is that I've never been happier about getting back to work than I was this morning.

Pam's Pies



Today's post is dedicated to Kira and Shane and if you want the inside scoop you should read this story.



Today I did my writing stuff first thing in the morning. I'm still working on the holiday letter. I know, whatever. I'm sorry. Yesterday I got all bogged down making my 2009 bookpage. So bogged down I did a totally half-assed review of Book #1 (Bridge of Sighs) and it was a FABULOUS book. I'm doing online book group with Kim (we just invented it) and we've both been discussing like nobody's business.

Then I baked a loaf of no knead bread. I added a big plop of sourdough from my sourdough feeding and I'm not sure if this is a brick or not. It wasn't as big as other loaves I've made. But we didn't cut into it tonight. I'm betting it will be decent but a tad heavy. Not sure which part went wrong. I'll watch the sourdough addage more closely next time.



At noon I stripped the turkey carcass from Xmas dinner. It's been waiting for me in the freezer and I haven't had time until now. I used the meat to make a turkey pot pie using the same recipe from last month. This time I used filo because I had one in the fridge and I'd already made a pie.

And I put the carcass in a pot and made turkey soup using a Cook's Illustrated recipe.

I actually enjoyed the extended day in the kitchen. I had a bunch of Firefly's on the TV. I've said this before but I'm not a big fan of TV on just for noise but during big kitchen projects, I like something familiar in the background. Everything smelled delicious. And it started snowing around 4pm. (I know, seriously, enough already. If I wanted to live in a snowy place I would have moved to SnowLand.)



I've been saving up some photo printing and I finally finished my stack and took them in for processing this weekend. Fred Meyer had a coupon and I thought what great timing. So I used the coupon for my order of 300+ prints. The computer discounted each print individually. We had to wait about fifteen minutes for the register to process this. And then print out this receipt.

The snow is supposed to change over into rain and I hope it does because I've enjoyed this time off but I'm ready to get back to work. Seriously.

So, does Toyota think we'll be less pissed if we know nothing of the status of our car instead of calling us and telling us they still don't have the part? I don't understand why they wait for us to call them. Do they think I have nothing better to do with my car than park it across town?

This has not been the most optimal holiday season.