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.

We finally got our stove all fixed again. We have a Jenn Air with one side 2 burners and one side this grill thing that we've never used. We've always talked about buying a new insert with 2 more burners but we never did. Last week one of our burners crapped out and so we were a one burner family and this was quite the challenge.

We ordered the insert and had the broken one fixed and as of today we have 4 burners. We're going to try to make something that involves using all 4 at once. You know you're a grown up when you're this excited about your stove.

Yesterday I left work early [story about Morrison bridge closure omitted] and I detour by backtracking and getting on I-5 at the Marquam and because of the mess of people getting over to get on I-84 I ended up in the fast lane. So I NEVER drive home before 6pm and I NEVER drive in the fast lane but [story about a jerk with a baseball hat and red pickup with "redneck" sticker omitted] yesterday I was speeding along very happily in the fast lane. And a car honked at me and I'm like "whats his problem" and then I see a cop car and I'm like "holy sh*tf*#k it's carpool lane hour!" I think the ticket is insane like a $170 or something. I quickly pull into the traffic lane, two cars from the cop. whew! About 2 minutes later a pickup got nailed and it was like 10 minutes to 6, I bet he was pissed.

WHAT ARE PEOPLE THINKING? Billy's computer went down at the office and after making some calls, I talked to a computer repair place that told me it sounded like a hardware problem and that I could buy a new harddrive and replace the drive myself. "I'm not very techno," I explained, honestly, "Do you think I could do it?" "Oh sure," he said. "It's not that hard." The guy who sold me the drive also said it would be easy to install. What rope are these guys smoking? It took me half the morning to figure out how to get the old drive out and now I still can't get the thing to work. Something's screwy with the IDE cables and I tried numerous configurations and basically the computer won't recognize the cd drive and the new drive at the same time. A friend said that I have a master/slave problem and the [expletive] documentation, of course, doesn't match anything in reality.

Can you imagine if someone called me and said, "I'm not much of a cook but I can heat up a can of soup, do you think I could make ravioli from scratch, and sauce from scratch and apple pie from scratch?" And me going, "Oh yeah, sure no problem, it's a snap."

This morning we went on our normal walk on the Discovery Trail. This weekend is a big international Volkswalk event in Vancouver (WA, not BC, in case there is anyone reading this who doesn't know me) and it turned out they were on the same trail -- only we were going the opposite way. We said good morning to about 300 people from all over the world. It was a pretty fun way to start the day.

Yesterday I read Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason. For the first 50 pages or so, I was just thinking Bridget is the world's biggest idiot and how can I even finish this book. But once I got to the part with the interview with Colin Firth, it was too damn funny. And it was a nice break before I crack the next sword and dragon book, Stone of Farewell, which is the shortest book in the series weighing in at a scant 727 pages.

This was my week: Sunday night U2, got in bed after midnight. Went to work early on Monday and then left early to see Memento. Got home after 8. Tuesday is yoga - got home after 9. Wednesday I did grocery shopping and by the time I got everything put away it was after 8. Thursday was a family dinner and I got home after 11. This morning I got up early to take my car in. This situation has also led to poor eating so when I got home today I could barely hold my head up I was so tired. I took a nap at 2:30 and I slept so hard I had scary dreams that had to do with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and it was like I could not move. But after I woke up I started feeling relatively normal again. I think a good nights sleep tonight and I'll in good shape.

We've been talking about replacing my car. I've been driving a Honda CRX since 1986. This is my second one -- I bought it in May 1990. It's got 113,000 miles on it and is sort of beat up but a decent car and well maintained and, key: paid for. I need about $800 of random maintenance and was trying to talk myself into just getting something new (used, but new for me) now but since the car place tells me its in mechanically great shape, I don't drive that much and it gets great gas mileage, it seems foolish to replace it. Why not just put the money that I'd use for a car payment into savings? If the car disintigrates, I'll have a stash for a new one, and in the meantime, I'm driving a healthy car. So I think I've talked myself out of a new car. Maybe I'll put a cheap CD player in as a consolation prize.

Today was such an absurdly bad day, I couldn't even begin to write about it. It was like every possible thing that could break, did, everything that could go wrong, did, every person that could hassle me, did. At first I wanted to cry but finally it was just funny.

Sunday night was U2 - they played I Will Follow! That made me happy. There were complete idiots sitting behind us, but I guess that's part of the large crowd phenomenon. I loved the show -- probably the best show I'll ever see in my life because it was old history and new stuff and super fun. I'm not inspired for details right now. Oh, and I'm an instant PJ Harvey convert.

Yesterday I saw Memento, intense, mind-bender film. As soon as it's over I was like, "No talking, I have to think about this for a minute." Then once we started talking about it we could see a lot of different angles to it and what was *really* going on. I need to see it again.

Tonight is yoga class and Holiday in on vacation and we have Luciana, whose specialty is the very challenging practice.

We went to Olympia today so I could go to a planning meeting for RTG XI which is going to be at Evergreen in 02. It turned out to be a great day -- no rain on the drive. We got to campus a little early and cruised around the library and bookstore. The meeting was in the Longhouse.

After the meeting we went downtown -- first driving by Auntie and Uncle's old house which looked exactly the same -- just no cars we knew out front. I went to Radiance and then to Orcas books and found 2! books that I've been looking for -- both used and in good shape. Orcas has never let me down which is more than I can say for a couple of local bookstores that I used to live for. Later we found me a winter hat on clearance for $9 and bought cookies for the drive home.

Today we bought LeRoy a new computer for the office. We went to Costco and I'm glad I asked Billy to come with me because the thing came in a box the size of a small apartment. We wrestled it out to the parking lot and it wouldn't fit in the car. This woman in the parking lot says, "Need a bigger car?" So we had to open the box and we could get the tower box in there (the big box had 2 smaller boxes in it) but the monitor box wouldn't fit either so we had to wrestle that out of the box. It's, of course, raining. We got it back to the office.

Then I had to set the thing up. I feel sorry for the random computer illiterates who have no idea what they are doing. On a scale of 1 - 10 with 1 being stone age never seen a computer before and 10 being programs a computer you built out of handy things laying around the house -- I'd put myself at a solid 6 and it took me all frickin day just to get the mail, Internet and word processor set up and all the little "we can do this for you automatically" nightmare switches turned off. The true test will be when LeRoy powers up and tries to work with it. You could get email, surf, word process and print when I left.

I'm learning a lot about buttermilk. Yesterday I was making some pancakes and my freshly purchased buttermilk with an April 23 pull date had little white grainy blobs in it -- which after my last experience with questionable buttermilk -- made me quite nervous. So I called my cooking consultant, Auntie Janet to ask her (after the last time she said I had a family malady called IFOSM ("intense fear of sour milk") and her answer was basically, not sure about the lumps but there should be no problem with it.

I decided to call the dairy. Phil, in the lab, had almost the same answer which didn't increase my confidence. "How do you know if buttermilk is bad?" I asked. "The same way you can tell if other foods are bad, taste and smell," he says, helpfully. I pointed out that buttermilk was a little funky to begin with not to mention that people with IFOSM are not about to be drinking buttermilk. He agreed that most people use buttermilk in cooking and don't know what it's supposed to taste like.

I made the pancakes anyway. We ate them and they tasted great.

I am crabby again today and now I'm wondering if I am just crabbier than the average person or am I just more up front with it like, "Look here, I'm crabby." Or do I just have an unrealistic expectation of how joyful I am supposed to feel and being disappointed, label it as crabby when instead it might just simply be less than being content..

I'd also like to know why people let their dogs take a big dump in the middle of the street and just leave it there. I'm talking about a friendly and quiet residential neighborhood where lots of people like to walk. It seems like if you're a dog owner, you'd be acquainted and prepared for your dog's doodies, so why do you leave them in the street and who do you think is going to pick them up?

I remembered what I was going to say, yesterday, about something that didn't work -- my bangs. If I don't do something with them the first 5 minutes out of the shower -- they develop a mind of their own and no amount of products or cruel, intense hair-blowing will convince them to change their ways. Normally, it's a big split in the middle and some flippy stuff going on. How come the beauty magazines don't address this problem?

Today it is insanely sunny and I felt like I should be at home weeding. Except it wasn't as warm as it looked. Yesterday it was downright cold (by my lizardy standards) and I didn't wear enough clothes or bring a proper coat so I was cold all day. Today I brought a big hurkin coat and was stuck carrying it around.

When I logged in I intended to complain about something that wasn't working but now can't remember for the life of me what that was.

Right now I am reading this book called The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams. My sister-in-law gave me the entire set for xmas and it consists of 4 brick books -- except the last two are actually one volume. When I saw them I said, "What, is Tad Williams an insomniac?" I am about 300 pages in (only about 600 more to go in this volume!) and I like it okay, but it's hard to read in dribs and drabs. I need to devote an entire, butt-aching afternoon so I can really get into it. Maybe if the weather is crappy this weekend.

I was wrong about the traffic -- maybe that's when we change the other way. My on/off ramps from I5 to the Morrison Bridge were closed today due to bridge construction so I have to remember to take an alternate route -- this is particularly important when I go home, otherwise, I'll be stuck in traffic hell with everyone else and we'll all be trying to figure out how to get on the freeway.

So I have a question -- do we have the past few years of booming economy to thank for every friggin roadway being ripped up and "improved"? I figure, government, once they get the money together they have to push the whole project through a bureaucratic nightmare, so it would make sense that they are just now getting around to all the work. Downtown Portland is currently a haven for orange cones.

Today I talked to my Auntie about my sourdough bread disaster this weekend. The first rising was HUGE - out of control. The second rising, not as impressive and the final proof the loaves didn't do squat. I don't get it. My lovely shaped hearth loaves looked like then melted into a flat beetle thing. I baked them anyway and the crust came out crunchier than you might enjoy and it tastes too salty. I am disappointed, but I guess that's how you learn. Auntie said her sourdough wasn't perfect either but she said her tasted good.

We just got the new MacAddict so I'm going to play.

Switching to daylight savings always feels strange. It's already almost 2pm and it's like I'm worried about being behind. Then at 6pm you look at the clock and it's light outside and you think, "dang, it's already 6 o'clock." It's just bizarre how your mind gets all psyched out when the time changes. Also, it seems like the day after the time changes the traffic (commute) is always hideous -- why would that be?