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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Merry Xmas everyone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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