This morning I walked to the mailbox to toss our stuff in so I took a different route for my walk and I got bit three times by a dog. I wasn't even in the dog's yard -- he ran out of his yard, fangs bared to come get me. Of course I started freaking out while trying to remember what to do when attacked by a dog and I was pretty sure you weren't supposed to start freaking out. It's hard to stand still (advice) when something is jumping on you and biting you and growling at you. Some little girl calls him back and takes him in the house and shuts the door. No "sorry," no "are you okay?" which makes me even more pissed. Since it's cold I had on several layers so none of the bites broke the skin and two of them didn't even make a red mark. There's a tiny red mark on my hand so I suppose I'll survive but I'm still feeling sorry for myself and vindictive towards these people and their mean dog Charlie.

THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT MY BIRTHDAY
1. It rained all day. Bucket after bucket. We went for a walk in the morning but good thing because that was the last chance. The gutter on the front of the house is screwed up and creating a large gully in my flowerbed.
2. OMSI: We saw Attack of the Clones on IMAX at OMSI. It was so cool I thought I would cry.
3. MINT: We tried a new restaurant in North Portland industrial area (sorta?). I tried a Splash: tequilla, mandarin puree, lemon lime juice and a float of amaretto. I could imagine drinking a bucket of these. We tried a bunch of stuff, I wish I was better at names. I had a spicy soup with lobster broth and mussels and prawns that was fabulous and we shared a dessert of spiced apple flan. It was a fantastic birthday.

Well, starting in on 24 wasn't such a great idea. All I want to do is glue my butt to the couch and keep watching. I'm doling it out to myself. I watch an episode, then I do something from my list. I just answered back all my snail mail correspondence so now it's time for another episode.

I'm still coughing and gagging but I got a decent night's sleep and exercised this morning. I think I'm about 48 hours away from optimum health.

Bob gave me Collected Screenplays 1 by Ethan and Joel Coen for xmas printed by Faber and Faber Ltd in the UK -- one of our favorite publishers. The intro by Roderick Jaynes is hilarious (yes, I'm in on the joke). My favorite line is when he describes the explanation of Barton Fink as "crushingly tedious." You have to read the whole essay to get the full flavor.

Joe Strummer died. How tragic and unfair is that?

We're back from Cali and a fantastic time was had by all. I ate roughly 100 times my body weight in a matter of several days and my exercise program went out the window between the rush for writing class, the weather, and the travel. Once you let that momentum go, inertia rushes in. I think that's an oxymoron and probably defies principles of physics, but it happens to be true. I made the Cook's Illustrated shrimp Creole gumbo recipe and it rocked on 10 planets. Everyone thought so. I can't wait to make it again. I also made a big breakfast strata and brought up a basket of lunch meat and wurst from the German deli. Mom made 4 kinds of cookies, all my favorites and any time there was tasting to be done, I had to eat one of each. Let me just emphasize that no one went hungry.

The drive down was perfect weather: clear and sunny. The drive home consisted of grey, hard rain continuously from Happy Camp to Albany but no snow on the pass which was nice. We were prepared for the worst.

I'm recovering from a nasty cold. I have zero patience when other people complain about their colds, but man, a cold is so rotten. And I couldn't sleep because of all the gagging, phlegmy coughing so yesterday we bought a cough suppressant which had something in it that kept me awake. At least I wasn’t coughing. I managed to finish all the reading in the drawer and half of Lee Maracle’s book Will’s Garden. We’re still unpacking stuff and cleaning up, doing laundry, restocking the fridge, etc. We got the boxed set of 24 for xmas and I broke that open. I suspect I will be glued to the screen for some time.

Pam Newsletter 2002 is up.

It could probably use some editing and tweaking but I don't have the energy right now so this is what you get. Enjoy.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog -- sometimes when I'm feeling challenged by life and I want something to make me feel better I think about a bucket of chocolate chip cookie dough and a bottle of chardonney. Well, this led to a discussion with my co-worker and we thought about other cookie doughs and the logical wine pairing. An oatmeal and raisin cookie dough would probably call for a red, maybe a pinot noir. For snickerdoodle maybe a riesling. A sugar cookie perhaps a zinfandel. But what about a peanut butter cookie? We didn't come up for one with that. I'd lean towards a red but I'm anxious to hear what you'd recommend.

Okay -- PamNewsletter STILL isn't done. I keep saying I'm going to finish it tonight and never seem to get to it. Tonight I can't find the pictures I picked out. I'm afraid I stuck them in a book and probably returned it to the library or stuck it in my bookshelves which means I'll never find it. I am drinking wine from my Strider goblet from Fellowship of the Ring last year. Saw Two Towers on Wednesday (I keep wanting to call it "Episode 2") and it was completely awesome. I liked it so much that I was half way through watching it and I was already excited about seeing it again. Really.

I think this is my record since I started this -- two weeks and no blog. It was one of those weeks where all kinds of things went wrong at more or less the same time. I've had a small leak in the window in my room (the one that those rocket scientists at Home Despot installed for me) on and off ever since it was installed but it was minor and stopped right away so I never felt any urgency about dealing with it. Of course this week it's raining like crazy and I woke up and the window was leaking and I put a towel on the window sill and I could wring it out a half hour later. So now I'm concerned and I tried to fix it myself and found something in the shop that said you could use it to seal things and I found something called a caulking gun but after wrestling with it for 15 minutes the stuff game out in giant non-spreadable gobs and I had to give up. St. Alan of Alan and Crystal was kind enough to come over at 9am to get on a ladder in the rain and look at it and came up with a temporary fix.

I got home that night and there had been a power surge and the VCR was fried. That didn't stop me from plugging in the VCR and trying again every half hour, just in case it randomly became unfried. I was taping TAKEN which I thought I would watch after I finished my class but with no VCR I was screwed. I don't know what we're going to do -- we had the same VCR for over 10 years and now seem to go through one a year. I just dropped a big pile of cash on a new vacuum and it's the holidays so I'm not in the mood to buy another VCR at the moment.

I turned in my final project for my class on Saturday Dec 14. I didn't think I could get it done since I only had 48 pages on Dec 7 and the minimum would be around 90 but I was extremely motivated and managed to get to 86. It's not pretty but it has a beginning, a middle and an end and it's just a first draft so I'm happy. But meanwhile I basically abandoned the rest of my life while I was working on it so I have a lot to do right now. I spent yesterday being a total slacker -- read my book: Leslie Marmon Silko, Garden in the Dunes and went to see Harry Potter. I caught up on about 1/2 of the emails I had lounging around collecting electronic dust in my email box. I still have plenty of other projects sitting around here that need attention.

I forgot the main thing I wanted to blog about which is the inane and endless commercials we have to sit through when we go to the movies. I swear there are 20 minutes of commercials and trailers which should not be allowed. What I learned from these commercials is that apparently the world is waiting for a Volvo SUV -- like there's a big shortage of oversized cars available to the Amercian consumer and in this commercial, when you drive in your shiny silver Volvo SUV you get to see mythical things like Loch Ness and unicorns and Elvis. The Dad didn't get to see anything or did I miss that part. What does that mean? The even more annoying commercial is for Diet Coke and has all these too-pretty yuppie geeks skipping around saying stuff like "flirt" "giggle" "canoodle" which sound stupid even when pretty people are saying it and the slogan is "do what feels great" and then the commercial glaringly omits things that feel great like eating a bucket of chocolate chip cookie dough and drinking a bottle of chardonnay.

Nice weekend. We kept Thanksgiving dinner simple. Priscilla came over. We had salmon and pumpkin pie (yes, punky) and some other things. It was all delicious.

I spent most of the weekend hunched over the computer working on my project for my writing class. The idea is to have a first draft by the end of class (Dec 14) and I was a little misdirected when I started so I had to backtrack and scrap about 10 pages and before that I was tweaking with the outline forever so I was already way behind but I cranked all weekend and I'm on page 51 which might be only halfway but I feel pretty good about it -- not that it's brilliant writing. It's very first drafty - but I feel like I'm moving forward. I started my writing the minute I got up (at 6am) and I didn't stop to eat or make a hot drink or any other distraction until after Noon each day. Yesterday I didn't even eat until 3:30pm. Not wildly fun but the method works for me. By the afternoon I was fried and tried to do things that didn't involve computers or reading.

We saw two movies: Frida which was fabulous -- I liked it a lot more than I expected to. I thought the story was more of a bummer and it was going to a long tortured artist movie with her throwing crockery at her self-absorbed husband. She was tortured and things were thrown but really, it was good. We also saw Solaris which I didn't hate. I'm not sure what I think about it. It was an interesting movie and which dealt with some heavy topics but I'm not sure the ending worked for me. I also watched my tape of Skinwalkers which was fabulous.

I'm going to try to crank out a quick Holiday Newletter this week -- we'll see if I can cram in the time.

Still very busy. Yesterday I took a short break from the writing routine to rake leaves -- my 15 minute gardener routine. It would have been nice to do more out there but, oh well, can't do everything. I also tried to discourage the lovely grass that's growing up in my planting beds. Our "lawn" is a patch of weeds and moss and our planting beds are nice healthy grass. I don't understand.

Very quiet, simple Thanksgiving planned. We're going non-traditional and Bob has been telling people it's the "anti-Thanksgiving" and I have nothing against Thanksgiving. I love Thanksgiving and will miss having all my favorite holiday foods. However, I do not want to spend the entire day in the kitchen so I opted for the alternate menu: salmon, wilted spinach salad, wild rice and Priscilla fruit salad thing. Plus I'm making a pumpkin pie.

Weekend WrapUp
This weekend we had a group here for Walker's birthday and for the two night Yonder run. Everybody had a great time. Walker arrived on Friday and she and Bob checked out the show the first night. On Saturday Sherwood, Collette, Erin and Eddie came down from Seattle and we had snacks and then took off for Ringlers where we met a big group of Walker's festival friends. We had food and refreshing adult beverages and then went to the show at the Crystal. We left in shifts -- first Sherwood, Collette and Eddie who didn't even make it through the first set. Erin and I left at the set break and had a wild adventure on the Fremont Bridge coming home when some SUV going about 70 mph couldn't decide whether he wanted I5 South or I5 North and lost control and skidded all they way across 5 lanes ending up facing us in the hazard lane right next to us. Amazingly, no one was hurt and no other cars were hit. The SUV got a little crunch on the passenger side front bumper but he drove off, presumably needing a fresh pair of underwear, and the rest of the us drove off too. In the morning I made this Breakfast Strata from a Cooks Illustrated recipe -- it had eggs and spinach and bread and it was incredibly yummy. I also made pumpkin scones which everybody liked. A super fun weekend.

New Breakfast Drink
I invented a new breakfast drink. In a blender you put milk, pumpkin, honey, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and ground cloves -- whip it up and then pour into a saucepan and heat. Pour into mug, drink. I'm sure it's nutritious too -- I had it two days in a row (because I had pumpkin left over from the scones) and both days it gave me a sort of rush.

Other
I started my Xmas shopping yesterday and got a big headstart and it was nice because it wasn't cold and it wasn't raining while I was running around back and forth to the car. I also FINALLY got myself a pair of new shoes -- my old ones were completely worn down. The furnace isn't working this morning. I'm not sure how long it's been out . I guess since sometime last night. Not good. I'm back to my writing project starting tomorrow so will be scarce.

This writing class I'm taking is killing me. It's causing me a great deal of aggravation -- not the writing itself but the endless negotiating to carve writing time out of my regular life. My days off I do okay -- except that none of the usual "day off" chores and projects get done -- but during the week it's like pulling teeth to get an hour here or 45 minutes there. So on the one hand I feel like all the non-writing stuff is piling up and/or falling through the cracks while on the writing I can't build any momentum and get any feeling of accomplishment. I get frustrated with all people who rely on what I do for them. It's not the best way to live and I don't have any solutions right now.

Today I cooked the pumpkin. Bob took pictures of me with it in the backyard and then we made of movie of me procesing it into pumpkin food. My soup recipe called for 4 cups and my bread recipe called for 1 1/2 cups so I was a little worried that I'd get a least 6 cups out of the thing. Turns out I got about 26 cups. I am set for pumpkin for this lifetime and the next. The cinderella pumpkin smelled great inside -- not that gaggy smell of carving pumpkins. It had a sort of honey smell. And it tasted great just cooked -- while I was pureeing it -- and it took about 7 batches to run it all through -- I was licking pumpkin off my fingers and it was yummy. The soup came out delicious -- you saute and then puree onion and ginger and season with cinnamon and nutmeg and lemon zest -- there are other ingredients too -- some broth and milk and tomatoes. I'm making the bread tomorrow. The recipe says 5 hours so I figure it will take me all day. It's a yeasted bread. Then I'll make pumpkin scones for the girls next weekend and a pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving and I'll still have more pumpkin in the freezer waiting for some other pumpkin thing.

Hi there all you loyal blog readers, and I think there are almost 3 of you, but I'm afraid my postings are going to be even more scarce for awhile. I'm taking this writing class and I need to use my computer time to work on my writing project and not fritter it away on email and newsgroups and blogging -- which is a great time suck in case you haven't noticed. ahem.

I've been taking notes and thinking I'd get over here all week except I'd always be getting "five last minutes" in on my project and would run out of time. One thing I wanted to do was a Maddox inspired rant on some entities that were really giving me a major rash last week -- those being federal agencies and banks -- but my rage has passed and I don't see how it would advance my position to put all this hostility and bad energy on my blogsite. I'll just give you the short version which is that a majority of employees of such entities have large logs stuffed up their butts. I do happen to know personally of federal employees who actually give a crap and yay for them. And the people at BofA where we do our business banking are all super nice and friendly but I think some people get a little high on a teensy bit of power and then they don't want to do anything except tell people that they are wrong and or invent ways to waste time and energy. Or just act like it's a major imposition when you call and ask for some information. Another tactic at federal agencies is to tell you to call someone else. And that person is out of the office for the rest of the week. And finally they get some intern to call you back and this person is young and confident and heady with power from working at a federal agency and also as clueless as you could possibly be and still be breathing.

I can't remember if I put anything here about my beautiful pumpkin I got at the farmer's market a couple of weeks ago. It's a cinderella pumpkin and so beautiful it should be in a museum. I'm trying to get Bob to take a picture of me with it. I was going to do it this weekend but ran out of time so next weekend I'm going to eat it. We're going to have pumpkin soup and pumpkin bread and other pumpkin things -- depending on how much pumpkin comes out of it when it's been cooked.

Finally, new Simpsons tonight.

I was the total domestic queen today -- where's my blue ribbon? I wrote in the morning and then did the 30 minute gardener routine and then I spent hours on kitchen projects. I cleaned out the various spices and made a Penzey's list. I also cleaned out the cupboards and threw out old stuff. I processed the last of my tomatoes into two big jugs of pasta sauce. I made a big bucket of cran-applesauce and stuck half in the freezer. I made an apple pie and tried a new crust recipe and still came out with crumbling pastry. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. I also cleaned out the fridge and made a jar of salsa verde with the tomatillos. I've used my extra hour well.

I thought there was a big gas war going on in our neighborhood since that new 76 station opened up across from the Arco station. It seemed like every week the Arco station dropped another two cents and then the 76 station dropped another two cents. 76 never meets Arco prices, but it always seems to stay within 2 cents. Last night I noticed Arco dropped down to $1.15 and I thought, wow, this price war should be on the news or something. But I got my oil changed today and on my way back across town I drove by another Arco with $1.15 so at least in Vancouver, Arco has cheap gas.

When I got my hair done last time I looked at Vegetarian Times while I was sitting under the dryer and there were about 4 articles I wanted to read more carefully so I picked one up at the newsstand. It's amazing (in an irritating way) how organic and soy foods are so heavily marketed now. I thought about subscribing to the magazine because I like a steady flow of new recipes coming in all the time, but this magazine is written as if for 1st graders and people returning from a long trip off planet who have never heard of vegetarians before. And I tried a recipe tonight that said took 30 minutes or less to make and actually took 60 minutes or more to make and I'm not too impressed and not sure we're even going to eat the leftovers much less try the recipe again.

My new hero is Maddox of The Best Page in the Universe which I discovered as the result of someone forwarding me an email with "I am better than your kids" attached which I thought was completely hilarious. I'm going to put the page in the link box next time I do updates.

Another busy weekend, two in a row. Mom came up on Thursday and we spent Friday running out to Bob's Redmill Store and Powell's Books and then came home and cooked to get ready for a family gathering. On Saturday I took her to Lillian Pitt's Gallery and Trader Joes.

Saturday night Mom went out with Priscilla and Bob and I saw Cheese at University of Portland. It was an awesome show. I had a great time and danced my socks off and I would love to provide a more comprehsive review except I never know the names of the songs and I don't have time to track down someone else's review right now. I can tell you that it was a way more rockin' show than I've ever heard (in my measly 5 engagements) -- but they played a song called "Howard" which apparently was one of the ones I liked.

I'm working on stuff for my class this Saturday and trying not to get too distracted (ha!). For your entertainment, please check out these Weird New Zealand Dog Food Ads.

I saw that Anne Lamott was at the Jantzen Beach bookstore while I was in Tacoma -- figures.

I noticed one of the buttons on my Ann Taylor sweater was broken. You know when you buy certain kinds of clothes and they come with spare thread or buttons and it seems like such a great idea except where do you put them so when you need them you can find them? I have one main button area but could not find an Ann Taylor button and I looked in two alternate spots and decided to settle for a different button, same size, rationalizing that you would never really notice. Wrong, it looks totally stupid and then this morning I found the Ann Taylor extra button area, so I do have the right button. Now I have to get motivated to take off the wrong one and sew the right one on.

And while I'm avoiding sewing projects, I finally decided to re-hem these black pants I have (aren't they all black? I can hear you asking) because they have always been a wee bit too short and that old sixth grade "are you expecting a flood" humiliation would come back to me whenever I put them on and I would find something else to wear.

While I was looking at my notes for today's blog, I found some old notes that I think are from Wintergrass (Jan or Feb 02) which was in Tacoma at the Sheraton, the scene of this writers conference I just endured. The first note says "great food is a Fife landmark -- you get the feeling Fife is stretching for landmarks." (Fife is an aesthetically weak strip of highway lined with rundown motels with weekly rates not far from downtown Tacoma). The second note says "your bluegrass musician has two kinds of outfits: the sharp-dressed man and variations of the oversized Hawaiian shirt and jeans."

I'm collecting notes for an eventual bio overhaul. This weekend I wrote that I don't like to drink hot drinks out of small cups and I don't like being asked questions I don't have the answer too. Like when my Dad visits and he asks me things like, "Why is the doorknob broken?" "Why does your neighbor have a cement mixer on his lawn?" "Who's motorcycle is that racing up and down the block?" This weekend it was things like "what's going to be served at the banquet?" "what happened to the poetry workshop?" and "has anyone seen ______?" (Fill in the name of a person we really need to find.)

I guess I skipped blogging about the conference this weekend. Let's just say the organization was pretty loose and everyone had ample opportunity to adapt in the moment. It was a huge personal growth weekend.

I left Tacoma about noon and had a fabulous smooth ride with bright sunshine and blue sky. I think this is only the 2nd time in the history of me living up here that I've done that drive without using my windshield wipers. I saw at least three hawks (hawk? -- too lazy to look up) along the way too.

Returning the Gift was an adventure and a half but everyone who made it seemed to have a great time, including me, so I guess it was a success. I'm beat now and plan to lay low and get my act together.

Yesterday we went to see Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner. This is an Inuit movie based on an Inuit legend and it's incredible. Bob and I kept looking at each other afterwards and saying, "I can't believe what I just saw." There's another website Atanarjuat which is great and has maps and cast and crew information. It's long and at times feels long but it's worth it.

In other news, I'm going to be insanely busy here for the next week. We're going to see Seamus Heaney on Tuesday night and then first thing Wednesday morning I'm driving up to Tacoma for Returning the Gift and I won't be back home until Sunday night. It's going to be an adventure I'm sure.

The real theme of this morning is: cold. Our furnace kicked on this morning -- how depressing is that? I've been tempted to fire it up a couple of times but didn't want to be wimpy but this morning the outside thermometer said it was 48 degrees and I heard the big basement rumble that means warm air is coming upstairs. When I was in the shower Bob did some sort of water activity that gave me a nice cold splash and then he came in to say sorry and let all the cold air from the entire house pour into my nice steamy bathroom. Now I'm sitting here with wet hair typing so I guess I'm not suffering that much.

There used to be this toy for sale -- or maybe it was a hoax, I don't know but it was this Harry Potter Nimbus 2000 vibrating broom that you could buy for kids. ahem. The link is dead now and nothing comes up on a search. Well, here's a link to the thread so you can see where I'm coming from. Meanwhile I found another toy that y'all can get me for Christmas: a light saber.

Yesterday in the Oregonian there was this etiquette and entertaining type article -- well I think the point had to do with why the knife is placed where it is in a table setting and I didn't pay attention to that part as much seeing as how I don't think inconsistent utensil placement signals the end of western civilization -- but the part of the article that made me stop was when she was talking about how when people are using a knife to cut something on their plate, they use their right hand then put the knife down and pick up their fork to eat the food with their right hand -- so they have to do this crossing back and forth thing. I never paid a lot of attention so now I'm taking an informal poll -- is this how you eat your steak (or tofu, depending on your preference)? I'm a lefty and I keep the fork in my left hand and use my right hand to cut. This method is so much more efficient and logical.

Last week I read an interview in Bust Magazine -- it was Pamela des Barres (has there ever been a boring person named Pamela?) interviewing Beck (very cool website). They're talking about the music business right now and Beck says, "It's like there are so many good records, you don't need to make one." And PdB says, "Oh, don't say that! Tell me, what have you listened to more than five times that's come out inthe last couple years?" and Beck says, "Hmmmm. Five times? Well, you got me there."

So my reaction to this is: what a concept. Why would you even buy something if you weren't going to listen to it at least five times? Or in my case: at least a hundred and five times? This is a major realization -- that people, like say my husband with his bazillion cds downstairs, wouldn't mind having music in their house that they would listen to less than five times. Really, my whole world view changed in an instant thanks to Beck.

Today's rant: Bath and Body Works gargantuan franchise that sells gallons of products to make you smell beautiful. I don't know why I even go in there but today is the last time. First of all, they are super aggressive ride-your-ass hard sell -- *on bath products.* I mean, come on. I remember the first time I went to one it was in Santa Barbara and the gal comes over and shoves a basket in my hands -- like I'm going to buy a basket-load of bath products. I put it down on the display.

All I want is some bath gel that makes me smell good all day. Last time I bought my bath stuff at one those kiosks at the mall in Vancouver where they were trying to sell me some contraption that would make my nails magically pretty. I garden, cook, wash dishes, type -- these are working hands, not pretty hands. Anyway, the bath gel was supposed to be peach smell and it was nothing smell. It was $14 worth of pink stuff that lathered.

So today I'm browsing the shelves, trying to find something that sounds good. And the gals are offering to help me about every 30 seconds, because apparently it takes a lot of assistance to find a smell that you like. They have all these goofy specials like: buy a gallon jug of oregano banana spice bath gel and you can get a free anise papaya mist hand creme or cardamom cucumber breeze body spray. And all the stuff smells like jello.

I found a lavender palmfrond bath thing that I liked and when I paid the surly teenager asked for my phone number. "What do you need my phone number for?" "So we can send you coupons and things." "With my phone number?" "They look you up on the Internet." As if.

Where do food cravings come from? Some seem logical -- like when you've been eating pizza and drinking beer in Las Vegas all weekend and you get home and all you want is some salad and fruit. But other random foods have been floating into my head this week -- like memory cravings.

Foods craved this week:
French Fries (had some on Thursday at Pilsner Room, thanks wkb)
Bisquick Coffee Cake (made some today and ate 1 big piece and 1 little piece)
Red Licorice -- not Red Vines which are my favorite but the very skinny kind like spaghetti (did not have yet).

This morning when we went on our walk it was still dark. When we were heading down the hill by the park we saw a big flash of blue-white light down over the hill -- we think by the train tracks. Then there was a kind-of fire-cracker sound and then another flash of light. We have no idea what it was. It gave me the heebiejeebies and I kept hearing things rustling in the bushes for the rest of the walk.

AIMLESS BUMMER

We saw Lynda Barry at Powell's Books on Thursday night. She is so completely amazing. The new book is called One Hundred Demons and she tells great stories but she also wants to inspire you to paint your own demons.

I actually took notes because she was saying so many things I didn't want to forget. I think I'm going to transcribe my notes for you:

She talked about writing the story of your life and mentioned this friend she had who was all excited when he found his old high school journals so he could read these long forgotten details. He was all depressed to find out that all he wrote about were feelings. He said it was like finding a movie of the Battle of Waterloo but the movie had been made by monkeys and all you got were pictures of bananas and none of Napoleon. So her suggestion for a writing exercise is to take an object e.g. cars. As soon as you hear "cars" you immediately form a memory in your head of car from your past. Time of day? Colors? Are you inside or out? What's going on? Here you're bringing it into the concrete. She said she has a stack of words on cards and she picks one and starts writing.

She talked about dreams and said when we're dreaming we're aware of our dreamself but our dreamself is not aware of us. It doesn't say, "I had the weirdest reality the other night."

She said she used to sing this song "Groovin" and there's a line in there that goes "life would be ecstasy, you and me and Leslie." It wasn't until much later that she realized that the song was actually "you and me endlessly." But she thinks that the "and Leslie" version sounds more interesting so when you're writing, be sure to bring in Leslie.

She also talked about being on the dance floor getting into the groove and then losing the rhythm so just moving around, trying to look like she knew what she was doing until she found the rhythm again. She said she never knew this happened to everyone. She suggests that writing is like that and to not worry about losing the rhythm, just stick with it until you find it again. Everybody is faking it. She said the creative process for adults is like playing is for kids. When you see a kid playing with a truck you think "kid playing with truck." But to the kid, the truck is playing with him or her. So when you're writing/painting or whatever creative thing you're doing -- you should let it play you.

Final quote and I hope I get this right -- she said she was talking to her husband about something she was working on and wondering if she was doing it right. And he said: as well you should because fascism is what doing it right is all about.

I made another apple pie last night and once again I had a mega-crust disaster. This has been an ongoing problem for the last two summers and I've been trying all these different tricks including three different brands of flour and I chill my water and chill the shortening and a bunch of slight variations on how I do it and every time is worse than the time before. Last night for the top crust I was -- purely by force of will -- patting together blobs of "dough" and dropping them onto the apples in the form of a top crust -- but it was a mess. It tasted fine so it's not a big deal but it finally occured to me that maybe I should try a different recipe. Maybe the old Betty Crocker standby was not meant for me.

Last night we saw Nickelcreek and this was one of the best shows I have ever seen in my life. Keep in mind that I am, at best, a lukewarm Nickelcreek fan and when I heard their 2nd cd for the first time, about halfway through, I told Bob that if there was a song about a unicorn I was throwing the thing out the window. But last night's show was spectacular. They played for three hours. They played two encores and then for the last two songs they played completely unplugged. They invited the remaining audience to scooch up towards the front and the audience was very quiet and they played two songs (sorry I never know the names of songs) -- I thought I was going to cry. Completely amazing.

I thought I was going to Tacoma today to work on stuff for RTG but Phil said he doesn't need me today so I'm going to continue to work on this stuff from home. But meanwhile, I now have all day to work on my various projects. So what do I find myself doing but completely wasting my time sitting here catching up on WWW reading.

You can read the short name analysis for Pamela which is scarily right on. I should read some other names of people I know well and see if they match. You can look up your own name here: http://www.kabalarians.com/gkh/your.htm.

Robert sent me this story: Urban Death Match by a bike messenger -- stressed me out just reading it.

At some point during my blogging travels, I found Davezilla and bookmarked it and this morning I actually spent a very short time there and managed to dig up some very entertaining URLs.

Check out the Chronicles of George who was "the worst helpdesk technician ever." And for the all time waste of time, and I sat here laughing for quite some time check out these flash movies -- I recommend pepper v. banana. And I checked out this guy's main page and he's my birthday twin -- except born the year I graduated from high school.

Tonight we went to a lecture at PSU called The Shamans of Prehistory: New Perspectives on World Rock Art. This was my idea because I have this fascination with petroglyphs. I did not expect this to be a popular event so you can imagine my surprise when we arrived and the ballroom was packed to the gills mainly with retired age couples in L.L. Bean-wear who were very passionate about the subject matter. The lights were on in back when they started the slide presentation and I thought we were going to have a riot. The ballroom was completely full so we ended up in the adjacent room -- the equivalent of the nosebleed seats, except no elevation. Jean Clottes, from France and David Whitley from the US. They talked about rock art at sites in France, South Africa and California and in particular about the role of the shaman in creating some of this art. It was a lot more interesting than I'm making it sound.

I took another look. The actual plant of eggplants is very pretty -- I would grow them again. I found a small eggplant the size of a ping pong ball and something had pulled it off and gnawed on it. We must have some hungry critters back there because everything gets nibbled on and I found an apple in the front yard with teeth marks in it. I think I'm going to go ahead and pull up most of the garden.

I'm thinking about putting the garden to bed this weekend. This is about 4 weeks earlier than usual and I think a couple of years ago I didn't do it until November. But it's been such a big disappointment this year and it's not doing much. If I took care of it now it would be one less thing to deal with out in the yard. I'll have to go out there and take another look. Maybe I'll pull up everything except the two biggest tomatoes.

A brand new 76 station opened on the corner of 39th and Main St, right across from this gigantic Arco station. I detest that Arco station. I don't understand how Arco can sell its gas so much cheaper than everyone else. But the station is virtually ALWAYS super crowded and it's a huge corner so there are always people zipping around at 180 mph to get the most recently vacated pump or to zip into the convenience market for a beef stick or 82 oz. pop. Also when I used to go there and I'd go inside to pay the people that worked there could never be bothered to look up or make eye contact or return my "Good Morning." I'm sure working at a gas station isn't the dream job of most people but you can make your little corner of misery a wee bit brighter by enjoying friendly people. So I switched to the Chevron station on Mill Plain which was more expensive but less crowded and the people who work there much nicer.

Now there's this new 76 station. When they opened their regular gas was $1.29 to Arco's $1.24. I noticed Arco would still be packed while there was no one at 76 and I couldn't believe that people would want to wait in line to save .05 cents on gas. Let's say your tank needs 20 gallons. You mean saving some time and aggravation isn't worth a buck? I have noticed more people at the new station in the last week or so. Yesterday I saw that Arco had dropped down to $1.21 and can't help but wonder if this is a reaction to the new station.

Last night I had this really depressing dream. It was like I was an old woman and I was in an assisted living place. I think this comes from watching the The Sopranos and Tony's whole thing with his mom. The woman who assists me keeps telling me what I'm doing. I'm standing there and she says, "You just got home. Would you like to go to bed?" And I say yeah. I get in bed and it has this depressing worn pink quilt on it and as I'm getting in bed I'm thinking that I don't feel so old. I get up again and I'm standing there and the woman says, "You just got up," and it annoys me because I'm not daft. I don't need her to tell me what I'm doing.

I've finally been cleaning up some stuff on pamrentz.com. I deleted the old stuff and updated a bunch of files so the directories are semi-normal. I think it's pretty much up to speed right now.

Today has been hideously lazy. We woke up at 5:30am (not on purpose) and got up and went through a whole waking up routine and then ended up going back to bed. I did a little work in the yard and have enjoyed a few refreshing adult beverages. Now I'm going to watch those last two episodes of The Sopranos (1st season).

I am feeling a lot better this weekend. Last week I felt like my head was going to explode -- long story, no need to go into it here.

On Thursday I left work early and we went to Salem to see Jamgrass at the Oregon Garden. The show started at 6pm and we got there at about 6:10pm. The venue is a beautiful grassy bowl and when we arrived the full family scene was out with lawn chairs and picnics and all kinds of people kicking back enjoying the music. I heard someone say they ran out of beer before 8pm -- I don't know for sure but a new act came on each hour and by 8pm the family scene was slowly clearing out and "the tribe" was bouncing around and dancing along the fringes. By 9pm when Yonder came on, the lawn chairs were gone and the area in front of the stage was crammed with dancing fans. My first Yonder show -- finally after several close calls -- and I can see why Bob and Walker are such huge fans. They're whacky, funny, talented and very cute.

Yesterday I had the day off and for the most part I kicked back and caught up on some odds and ends and then watched several more episodes of the Sopranos. I'm almost done with Season 1.

Today we went to the Farmers Market early and I'm about to go to the kitchen to get the stuff cleaned up and put away and start making some fun food for the weekend. Tonight I'm making peach ice cream. Other ideas for the weekend are grilled vegetable sandwiches on homemade foccacia (too lazy to look up proper spelling), hummus and salsa. We'll see how far I get.

Yesterday I checked my page and noticed that it's all goofy and there are dead links. Funny, because those links weren't dead when I put them up. I checked my directories and the stuff was gone. How does this happen? Actually there is a whole bunch of stuff in there that looks goofy -- duplicate files and stuff that I don't remember putting back up there. So a project for the next week will be to get that all cleaned up and reorganized. I've been spending all day on the computer at work so when I get home I don't even want to look at a computer.

My latest thing is The Sopranos. Am I the last person on the bandwagon or what? Auntie bought the first season and it's been traveling around the family and finally made it to our house and Bob already zoomed through it and so it's been sitting here. Last Saturday I wanted to watch a movie so I started watching Kiss of the Dragon and about 20 minutes into it I decided it was too violent. So then I was going to finish watching Phantom Menace since the DVD player is back upstairs -- but the cables to attach it to the TV were not so I was like, "Hm, what should I watch? Hey, here's this box with the Sopranos." And ever since I run home from work every night and park my butt on the couch to watch some more. I LOVE Tony Soprano.

Earlier this week I made some fabulous pizza sauce. I roasted a huge tray of tomatoes along with a big red onion and about 8 cloves of garlic. I ground the whole thing up in the food processor and then ran it through the ricer. That ricer is handy -- I need to find a better place to put it so I can grab it more often. When I was ready to make my pizza I put the sauce in a pan and added several teaspoons of Penzey's pizza spice and let the thing cook down for over an hour. For the crust I used the Cook's Illustrated recipe for deep dish -- the one with a potato. And for my topping I roasted a bunch of squash and zucchini with Italian spices and then stirred in some marinated artichoke hearts - spread that on the pizza and sprinkled the whole thing with parmesan cheese. Came out excellent.

This weekend I finally fixed my One Click -- I don't know what I did to it but it was all goofy so I reinstalled it and invested a teeny bit of attention and know have advanced from a basic user to an intermediate basic user. For my power hour yesterday (in the yard) I hacked back Rhodies. I don't know how healthy these plants are. The one out front looks mighty peaked and the super tall one in back -- I'm trying to whack it down to my height which means I'm going to have nothing but sticks when I'm done. Yesterday was our 6 yr. anniversary and Bob took me to see Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast and we had a nice dinner.

So can you tell that I have these major dry periods where I can't think of a thing to blog about?

Well first, I think this opinion column from The Onion says it all: "while watching The Empire Strikes Back, the second act of which is practically all Yoda, not once did you wonder what he looked like naked?" And even though I think the article is hilarious -- I have to admit, in all my endless wondering about Star Wars things, I never once wondered about Yoda naked.

In other news, Bob bought a digital camera this week. He's already made a couple of movies which he showed me yesterday. One was "Bobman makes iced tea" and featured music by Topaz from High Sierra. Another one was called something like, "What my kitchen looks like, blurry." Tonight he went to the Jazz Fest and train tracks for more footage. Yay.

My garden has finally kicked into gear -- better late than never. Last weekend was my first tomato harvest -- I got 6. (My early girl remained a single stick all summer long until I finally pulled it out to save it from complete embarassment.) Today I got about 46. Last weekend when I saw Mom she gave me about 10 lbs. so yesterday I made pasta sauce and today I made minestrone with the leftovers. I think I'm going to make some pizza sauce and some salsa and get caught up for the rest of the weekend. Gardens have a way of making you hate them.

Finally, my cousin Kathy gave me an Obi-Wan Kenobi bank. You put money in (or press a button) and it lurches around with a light saber and says stuff about the Jedi. Then you can wave your hand in front of it and it will keep going. Now I have a Darth Vader phone (rings like the Darth Vader theme), an interactive Yoda with light saber, the Obi-Wan *and* and Darth Maul action figure. I take everything out of the box and actually play with it. Screw this collector stuff.

Oh, also we saw Great Big Sea, The Young Dubliners and Seven Nations on Tuesday night and it was super fabulous.

We went camping at Crater Lake this weekend. We met a whole bunch of the family there. The camping part was super fun -- we had a great campsite with lots of room for everybody. But the smoke from the fires was bad and when we drove to see the Lake on Saturday, it was too smokey and we couldn't see it. And the drive home today seemed to take forever and I'm unspeakably tired and will have to fill in more later.

Go to Trader Joes and buy the chili-lime mayo -- then use it on everything. It will change your life.

I screwed up the configurations on my newsreader and now I can't read news. I thought about emailing support but I've been trying to give up my gossip group for years now and thought perhaps this would be a good time. I could add 1/2 hour+ a day to my life and use that time for writing. But I'm completely addicted and actively resisting. It's been 4 days now, but yesterday I cheated and looked at a few items using Google. This is sad to admit but I got about 90% of my news from that group.

This morning I saw Tiger on my walk for the first time in at least 2 months. Tiger is one of the coolest cats alive. I saw him sitting on a rock and I called to him and he looked at me and yawned and turned his head. Snotty little cat.

Bob and I ate dinner outside tonight and when Bob was carrying his dinner out - when he got to the door of the shop I heard some loud expletives and he stomped back into the house. I ran into the shop to see what happened, looking for salad strewn across the floor or a drink dumped onto his plate. All I saw were a few drips on the floor. He came out of the house and said, "I almost lost it all." "Oh," I said, "I ran in here. I thought it would be funnier."

I slept better last night yay. But the beastly heat is moving in so it's a lot to hope for that the whole week will be filled with good sleeping. I screwed up my newsreader yesterday and now I can't log in. I'm wondering if this might be a good thing. I can probably add a couple of hours a week to my life by ignoring that stuff. But I'm so addicted. H'ep.

In the meantime, you can find out All About Coffee.

Last night I could not fall asleep. It's not like this doesn't happen fairly regularly and usually I just stay there in pre-doze and try to think sleepy thoughts. Last night it was making me mad so I finally got up and finished watching The Claim that I taped off of Sundance. I've wanted to see it for a long time and for the most part I loved it but the story is pretty grim. Did Thomas Hardy hate his readers or what? After the movie I crawled back in bed and it still took another hour or so to fall asleep -- I think I got to sleep at 2am.

Also last night I watched Rock Star. Was that movie made for me or what? I loved it except for the totally lame story. But the soundtrack was fabulous -- I think I own every non-original on it already. And seeing all the rockers made me very happy.

Who invented conference room chairs and tables? Because somehow they managed to figure out a way that no matter what, you're straddling a table leg. That would seem to be impossible. If they can do that why can't they solve other impossible problems?

I'm off to the Willamette Writers Conference. I'm not hungry but I'm trying to eat since I figure I won't eat again until this afternoon.

Last night I had another dream about working at Jack-in-the-Box. That was my job in high school. That's the second Jack-in-the-Box dream this week. I think my subconscious is trying to tell me something.

The new taste treat: toasted cinnamon raisin English muffins with tahini.

So, do I not get tables or what? I thought I could throw something up in a big fat hurry and this is what I end up with. Isn't it pretty? I'll get it together but I'm warning you this is a minimum computer weekend. My wrists/forearms/elbows/shoulders are very unhappy and need a break.

Let me be the person to tell you about Great Big Sea a super fabulous band from beautiful metropolitan Newfoundland. We're seeing them in a couple of weeks and I'm listening to them right now and this is the first time in a Very Long Time that I have been won over by a band in less than 10 notes

Today I got out the box of new letterhead at the office and was depressed to notice that it said #10 instead of #6. We bought it over two months ago and I didn't see how the printers were going to muster up any sympathy for us after all this time. I'm pretty sure it came in when I wasn't there but I'm not sure I would have noticed anyway. I brought it in and re-ordered, asked them to make sure our file had all #6 in it and gave them the box and asked them to make scratch pads out of it. What a giant waste of money and paper.

Tonight I went to my first yoga class since April. I dropped into Bill's new place at the Galleria which should probably be called the Ghost town (The Galleria = ghost town. The yoga studio is fabulous.) This was not the power yoga class and thank God because I'm not quite as strong as I used to be. I need to get my practice back up to speed. Tomorrow I bet I am going to be sore.

My garden is pretty pathetic this year. I picked tomato number 3 today -- not counting two tiny romas about the size of my thumb. There's one puny cucumber out there and it looks like 2 turnips and a whole bunch of beets. My most successful crop is something you don't want to eat by the bushel. It rained a bit yesterday so I used that and the mild weather as an excuse to not water. The watering is getting very tedious. I hate to complain. I mean, what if I had to depend on my garden to survive and I had to haul buckets of water uphill? That would suck.

This week I got a thing in the mail from my reunion for "Keepsake Photos" -- for $89.95 plus $6 shipping I can get 2-8x10, 4-5x7, 4-4x5 and 16 wallets of this faboo picture that I'm going to scan and stick up here eventually. What the hell am I going to do with all these pictures of my mug? I'm not sure I would even want to see it in an 8x10 -- why would anyone else? Does anyone reading this keep pictures of adults, other than a spouse, in their wallet? (For the record, I don't have any pictures in my wallet except ID photos.)

The squirrels have completely destroyed the sunflowers. I think there are 3 left plus one big one that they've completely eaten around the edges but left on the stalk. Yesterday when I cleaned up the yard I pulled a bunch out and thoughtfully piled them against the fence, hoping to encourage them to continue snacking on the ones that are already ruined. About an hour later I looked out in the yard and here the last pretty one was just a tall stalk with some leaves dangling and the remains of the flower sat under the rose bush. I need someone to loan me a very big dog with sharp teeth.

In a shocking development -- I'm still trying to get organized and going nowhere fast. This seems to be the lesson of my entire life and I seem to be incapable of learning from it. Oh well, maybe in my next life. I ran some errands this morning and the city of Vancouver has managed to destroy just about every street you'd ever want to drive on. There is no easy way to get anywhere.

For you entertainment I suggest checking out the trailer for Episode III. High speed connection strongly recommended.

This was the most unproductive weekend ever. I didn't finish any of my projects. I have no idea what I did but it took all weekend. Okay -- I did clean up the massive pile on the floor and turn it into 5 small piles. This morning I found a Delta page response email from a random stranger and this was quite a surprise since when the pampage went down a few months ago and I did the remodel and thought I removed a lot of that stuff. Turns out I took it off the links but both Delta Sucks and Southwest Sucks are still floating out there and you can bring them up in the search engines.

I forgot to mention that I finished White Teeth by Zadie Smith this morning. I don't know. I gobbled up the first 350 pages on the trip to LA and thought it was a pretty cool book but for the last 100 pages I've been thinking, "when is this book going to get over?" I'm not sure I even understand what happened at the end and I'm not about to go back and read it again. Also we got *another* copy of The Week today -- I am now 3 issues behind. This is why you should never subscribe to a weekly.

The plan for this afternoon is to do a bit of tweaks and start building the new pages for High Sierra and the trip to L.A. We'll see how far I get. I just did today's "15 minute gardener" routine. I finished chopping down the other dead rhodie and managed to dig up the stump or root ball or whatever you'd call it and I cleared a bunch more ivy and started chipping away at the tall rhodie on the side of the house. It's about 10 feet tall now and I think I want to make it more my height. Someday this area will be ivy free and I'm going to plant hostas and maybe some calla lillies if they're easy to grow. I also harvested more beets. Beets are my best crop after tomatoes. And what a bummer because Bob won't eat them. Billy won't eat the beets anymore either.

Last night we went to the Lillian Pitt Gallery on NE Alberta to see the premiere of a documentary about the Plateau People - art, culture and history of some local Indians. The documentary is very well done and the gallery is fabulous. I pointed out many ideas for potential gifts to my husband. Next weekend is the Wy-Kan-Ush-Pum at Waterfront park which is the Indian Art Northwest artist's market and also fun outdoor music. I think we're going to check it out.

I got back from LA Monday afternoon and I have a ton of stories -- I think this weekend will be tune-up website and post High Sierra and 20 Yr. Reunion stories -- I say that now, we'll see how I feel then. The condensed version is: I had a super fabulous time and would do it again in a hot second. But now I'm slogging through post-vacation bitchy-ass mode and trying to get my act together while not being in the mood to do anything except time wasting activities. Bob subscribed us to emusic.com so I see a major time suck getting to know that site.

Meanwhile, here are two helpful law enforcement oriented URLs. You can educate yourself on speedtraps in your area and you can use this handy calculator to compute your blood alcohol content. Like you're going to be anywhere near a computer when you need this information.

I think I'm pulling it together. It's 7:30pm now and I've already done my last store run and got my cash and although I haven't actually packed, I've been packing in my head for several days so it's just a matter of pulling the stuff together. I leave for LA at the crack of dawn and pick up the car (a groovy Pontiac Grand Am -- stylin') around 9am and then zoom off to Santa Barbara -- I don't think I've done that drive since the last SB Gal reunion in SB which was ... I can't remember. Probably before I got married so at least 6 years ago. I'm going to go to campus for the nostalgia stroll and visit Maria at the library. The whole weekend is going to be the nostalgia stroll because I'm going to visit Agoura High and drive past my old houses.

There are still a few loose ends I hope to tie up tonight but whatever, I can amuse myself in LA any number of ways.

I'll be offline until Monday. Until then, enjoy the Microsith (Star Wars ref) site until my return.

I am unglued. How do people go on trips all the time and here I am coming apart at the seams? I think it's the preparations and taking off and then returning and cleaning up over and over for the past several weeks. We just got back from High Sierra last Sunday and Weds I am leaving for LA. I went to the mall over the weekend to try to pick up a last few things and struck out so tonight I went to downtown Portland to do the same. I had a bit of luck but just got home at 9:15pm and I haven't eaten and the yard should be watered and all I want to do is guzzle some refreshing adult beverages and then lay down (which is what I will end up doing.) I still have people to call and lose ends that need to be tied up. I still haven't gotten my reimbursement from the EEOC/Quinault travel way back in May (9 weeks later -- how come the US Treasury can seemingly cash my tax check mere moments after I've mailed it -- yet it takes this long to get my travel reimubursement?) and we just got our first Verizon bill and it looks totally screwed up unless I totally misunderstood what we signed up for. argh. I just made my Avis car rental reservation -- it was going to cost $70 more to do it over the phone than it cost online. I don't understand how things work.

Yesterday I went to Lloyd Cinema to see Episode II again (#4 if you're counting). Turns out I-5 was closed between the 405 split and ... I don't know, somewhere after that. So I had to get off and Portland Ave. and take MLK to get there -- there may have been a faster way but I did not know it then. So I was totally late and now that the movie is only playing on about 4 screens in town, I guess there is no need for the 20 minutes of trailers so we ended up missing the first 10 minutes of the movie.

Then again today I went to Lloyd Center only today I was meeting Bob during a break from this conference he's attending. We had a yummy lunch at Yuki and finally bought a new strainer thing at Kitchen Kaboodle. We use our strainer at least once a day and I broke the handle off the old one not to mention it is sort of falling apart so we were in dire need. The cashiers at KK were out to lunch. Then we went to the bakery on Broadway and I thought I should apologize to the woman who waited on us for disturbing her -- I don't know what else she needed to do, but helping us with our damn loaf of bread seemed to cause her a great deal of inconvenience. The guy at the bookstore who took our money was quite friendly and chatty.

In the past week I came across 3 different people on phone customer service who were completely chatty and had a sense of humor and helped me with my reservation or whatever my problem was. Also I've noticed people at the bank(s) (work=BofA, personal=WAMU) that I go to are almost always friendly and ask me about my day and what I'm up to. You never know what you're going to get and I’d like to point out that it doesn’t take any longer to be nice than it does to be an auto-matron, or a surly bastard.

I’m going to take Zadie Smith, White Teeth, to LA with me this weekend. I’ve wanted to read it for a long time. I’ve got to drag my sorry ass to bed now, I’m tired. I was the human weed-eater this morning and cleaned out a huge patch of weeds plus the whole area along the fence and I tidied up the garden and harvested some peas, beans, raspberries plus I cleaned vegetables for salad AND I have identified the mystery item in the garden: tomatillos. I guess I must have composted some of the ones Mom gave me last summer.

I still haven't gotten my act together. You should see my room -- there are papers and doodads and reading material and recipes, notes, whatever spread from one side of the room to the other. And I still haven't gotten the whole LA trip sorted out yet -- I need to get on the phone. But first, my semi annual trip to the mall where I buy enough clothes to limp through another 6 months. Why do I hate shopping? My horoscope said it's a good day to buy clothes so hopefully I will like the first two things I try on and be done with it.

For those of you seeking to improve your literary background try Classic Novels.

Well, I've just now stirred my "spicy thai big soup noodle bowl" after eating over half the noodles and turns out all the spice has been stuck in the bottom in a spice cube. cough cough.

I've been putting off checking in b/c I was waiting for my big High Sierra Music Festival post except I realized I will be doing a whole separate page w/ pics for that so I'd better get my ass in gear and put something up so my regular readers (all 3 of you) don't drop off the radar.

For now I have a couple of URLs for you. First, you can learn all about safe sex by playing SuperShagLand. I just played and when I finally got to the end my prince told me I was too drunk or too tired to shag properly and to come back later. Like some guy would ever tell you that ... . The other one is Bible Lego stories. My friend Robert sent it to me with this quote, "I heard about it on NPR, searched 'lego' and 'gomorrah' and it came right up."

I'll have more very soon.

ug. I have *no* energy. I wanted to take a nap all day. Am I still recovering from World Cup fever? Or is it the flux of the weather - miserable rain to warm and sunny? I don't know but I've got some music to attend to this weekend so I'd better pull it together.

Tonight I went to the bookstore to find some stuff for the long weekend. I didn't have a lot of luck but I did get Phantom Menace in paperback because I am hung up on Star Wars at the moment. While I was at the bookstore I looked through the sale books -- doesn't it hack you off when you see all these books piled in the sales area for about $6 that you paid full price for?

I think if there are any awards for World Cup devotion, I should at least be a nominee. This morning I got up at 4am to watch the Third Place game live and the only station showing it live was Univision. About 5 minutes after I got up I was like, "what am I doing?" but by then there was a score on the board and I was too awake to go back to bed. The upside is that it's only 8:30a and I've already done my exercise, read the paper, wrote in my notebook, finished my coffee and caught up on email.

We're getting close to the High Sierra Music Festival. When I bought Bob the tickets, I was pretty optimistic about it -- I mean about me enjoying this experience of several days of camping and music. But as we get closer to the actual event I am dreading it. Walker called yesterday and we were chatting and she's telling me about the line up early Thursday for the key camping places and how we can jockey with cars closer up who can throw down our tarps for us and I say, "I hate it already." Walker assures me I can stay at the motel until this part is over. "So I'm just the window dressing?" I ask. "You are our Vanna White," she tells me.

The Wisconsin Report
We flew into Madison on Saturday night and picked up our fun rental car, a Pontiac Bonneville. As Luke Skywalker once said, "What a piece of junk." I think it's supposed to be a luxury car but it rode bumpy and seemed noisy. We drove up to Baraboo to the Ho-Chunk Casino and Convention Center where my event was being held.

Sunday was a free during the day so we went to the Circus World Musuem which was fabulously cheesy. My family is, among other things, circus people and I went to Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus pretty much every year from tot to teen. We parked the car and could see the park across the river and the "big top" and I thought it was the coolest sight ever. There is a museum with endless historical artifacts and the out buildings from where the circus wintered way back at the turn of the century (1900) and then the park has a parade and various shows like the juggling workshop and then we saw the big top show. We ended up spending almost the whole day there.

In the evening the Ho-Chunks hosted a welcome feast and we tasted traditional foods and enjoyed traditional dancing. Monday the convention began. Bob went back to Circus World to visit the research library and pull up some stuff on Circus Renz and I attended rah-rah sessions on Tribal Employment. Bob got the slot machine fever -- he needed some change to buy a paper and I suggested he put a few bills in a machine and he came back upstairs a half hour later and said, "I won $18." I, of course, lost everything I put in the machines in about 2 seconds.

Meanwhile, the World Cup Soccer freak was hoping to see the USA v. Mexico game in an ideal setting, hopefully in the bar on one of the numerous screens they had devoted to sports. "What game?" was the reply to my inquiry. They didn't know about the game -- they were planning on being closed. The Casino main floor wasn't much help either, "The TVs stay on the channel they're on," I was told. "But it's the World Cup," I repeated several times. No World Cup Fever in Wisconsin. I ended up waking up at 1:40am courtesy of the unusual traditional feast foods and thought "well, I'll just check the score," and USA was up 1-0 and I was glued to the screen until 3:40am. Then I had to try to sleep after the win.

Tuesday I attended more sessions while Bob went off to the Frank Lloyd Wright Taliesin all day tour. He could not stop talking about this tour. "We put on little booties and walked around the house!" he gushed. Tuesday night there was social dance in the bar in the casino and we ended up sitting next to these ladies. "Where are you from?" one of them asked. "Washington," I said. "Oh, we're from a little town in Northern California on the Klamath River," she told me. "Um, I'm Karuk," I said. We were sitting with three members of the Karuk tribe. We had a fun time partying with them.

Wednesday I left the convention early and we headed into Wisconsin Dells which, unless you're from around there, must be seen to be believed. It's an endless strip of gigantic water parks, indoor and out, go-karts, miniature golf, upper River tours, lower River tours, water shows, salt water taffy outlets -- it goes on and on. We were driving along and I kept saying, "I can't friggin believe this place." We ended up visiting the H.H. Bennett Historical Museum -- he was a photographer in the late 1800's. We talked about going to a water park but those places cost $30 for day pass and I wasn't up for it.

From there we drove back to Madison and wandered around the University district with shops and some atmosphere and also the State Capitol. Our flight home left at 6am Thursday which means a 4am wake up call which means 2am Pacific Time -- it took me two days to get my clock back on schedule. But overall, I can't say enough nice things about Wisconsin. It is pretty with lots of green and nice people and easy to get around. And lots of cheese.

I think I have the archives almost fixed. Still a few snafus but I can live with this for now.

I'm starting to get the archive fixed. Not quite all there yet.

This afternoon I started dividing my irises. I thought this would be an easy job -- I'm working on the big patch next to the rhodie. I barely made a dent in it and it took a couple of hours. I was hoping to get that job done so I could tackle the other side of the yard which is badly neglected. Oh well. I just keep chipping away at it.

We saw Minority Report tonight and while I didn't hate it, I didn't love it either. I should probably give a better review but I don't have the energy at the moment. There is a lot of great visual stuff and the story is mildly interesting -- but at the end of the day it's pretty typical Hollywood fare.

Stay tuned for the Wisconsin story.

World Cup World Cup World Cup

I am pretty much watching a game before work and a game after work. This first round is really sucking up every second of my spare time. Last night there was a bridge lift so I didn't get home until 7pm. Then I had a tape of Sweden v. Argentina to watch (aiee! I can't believe Argentina is going home, I am so bummed) plus I had to eat and it's been hotter than hot so I had to water the yard -- and cram all this in and then to bed early so I could get up at 4:30a to watch the Italy v. Mexico game. This is a fulltime job.

Meanwhile check out this really cool book read and release program.

Where have I been? A little low energy this week, we don't need to go into that, but then the World Cup started so I've been caught up in that. I have been taping usually 2 games a night and I'm already behind but, you know, the weekend is coming. I feel like I am disconnected from everyone. Also I had a completely aggravating situation related to work which leads me to ask: does anyone care about doing a good job anymore? In this case "anyone" being a person employed by a government entity? Do people want to be helpful and competent? Because if they do, I've never met them. But aside from all that, things are decent. I got a shave ice (watermelon and green apple) at the Rose Festival yesterday and then a 25 ¢ foot massage -- which is this plastic easy chair where you put in a quarter and set your feet on this metal platform and it vibrates like a jack hammer for a couple of minutes. I wouldn't call it relaxing. I, of course, wondered if anyone would mind if I sat on it.

Meanwhile, read this hilarious story: Star Wars II Cereal: General Mills Gets It All Wrong. My favorite quote: "I realize it's not always easy to produce a reasonable facsimile of a person or object when you're reducing them to a tiny morsel of corn starch and gelatin, but it doesn't look like General Mills was even trying."

Last night I kept talking about Star Wars because I'm still trying to figure it all out and I remembered there was something I wanted to look at in one of my Star Wars books with the annotated screenplays. It answered my question but I also found a bunch of information that I wasn't looking for and I decided I'd better read this entire book again. So I say to Bob "Star Wars is a full-time job." And Bob replies, "Yeah and so is the Dead and Cheese."

Also last night I was looking for a CD and I started pawing through my CD collection which is unfortunately still displayed in a very college dorm type set up of several boxes side by side in this entertainment cabinet thing that looks nice but is not designed to be especially useful. (I have decided that before my 40th bday I will come up with a more elegant solution.) Anyway, as I start to look I see some goofy Bob book and I'm like, "why is there a book in my area?" and then I see the Sopranos season one box set also crammed down there and then I realize all the boxes are out of order (I put my CDs in general, not militant, alphabetical order but also group by artist so Paul Westerberg solo CDs are grouped together with Replacements in the "R" area; Bob Mould solo CDs are grouped together with a Hüsker Dü under "S" for Sugar {not a completely logical choice to anyone but me.} You get the idea ...) Another part of my "system" is when I take discs out to put in the car I leave the jewel boxes piled in a stack and I notice that the stack has been crammed in with the rest of the CDs. "REM doesn't go by Def Leppard," I said. Meanwhile, Bob is laughing. When Debbie cleaned last time I guess she got super organized in a manner which is in conflict with my super organization leading to the above amusing scene.

Last story of today. When we were in Orleans, Fred was talking about living in Corvallis and wondering if this was going to be a good place to meet a future wife and mother of his children and Joey and Curt started in with "whoa, what do you want to do that for?" meaning why would you want to get married when you're young and can have a good time. I pointed out that Bob liked being married and Joey said, "Bob has it fat. I'd marry a girl too if she let me have my own room."

I just returned from viewing #2 of Attack of the Clones and I'm happy to report that I *LOVED* it the second time. Schedule permitting I will see it as much as possible as long as it remains on big screen. I won't do any spoilers except one microscopic one. I'm sure this wasn't intended, but did anyone else ever do CPR where the CPR dummy [is that considered un-PC? you can never be sure these days] was called Annie and you were supposed to run up to the unconscious victim and rub your knuckles on her sternum and say "Annie! Annie! Are you all right?" Well during the "meadow romp" scene of ATOC Ani falls off some bovine-ish Naboo beast and Padme runs to him and says: "Ani! Ani! Are you all right?" I thought it was hilarious.

I have started out what is going to be a very relaxed yet wildly productive day by catching up on email which has been collecting since I returned from Orleans. In my email was an update announcement and I offer for your great amusement The Mike Und Pat Reader. Next I need to tidy up the kitchen and check on the progress of the outside freezer I'm defrosting. Then I'm off to run a couple of errands and see Attack of the Clones again so I can give a better review.

I still haven't fully gotten my act together yet. I have no excuse. I just don't feel like sitting at the computer long enough to organize my thoughts. Tonight I was sitting out in the backyard and looking at the rhodies. The purple one is starting to fade and the pink one never did much -- I think the ivy is choking it out. I guess I'll hack back some ivy this weekend as a project. But ivy is so yicky and you never know what's taken up residence in there. The thing is, I thought rhodies were close to indestructible. After the nuclear war there'd be cockroaches and rhodies. I have another rhodie in front -- this was the one trying to bloom in October. It practically collapsed under the blooms so I guess it's still among the living. I'm going to deadhead and give it a good hack this weekend.

I have a lot of ideas for projects this weekend, I'm going to have to prioritize otherwise I'm going to do that thing where I have so many things to do that I can't start anything and end up in the house eating cheese and crackers and watching movies.

I just back from Orleans yesterday and I'm still trying to get my act together. It's that post-out of town frazzle/ ungrounded feeling. I don't think there's a cure except getting back into the routine.

I'm on this quest to make my yard look better -- but I'm not really making the time commitment. I'm on the half-assed quest to make my yard look better. I call myself "the 15 minute gardener" and see an infomercial on this sometime soon. On Friday I went and bought some more plants and various support materials. I put it all in except for one plant that I wanted to put in the backyard and sort of forgot about. (I was emphasizing front yard this weekend.) So at the end of the day yesterday I put the last plant in and during XFiles I realized I didn't splash any water on the poor thing and even though I heard it was going to rain, you never know what that forecast means around here, so I ran out in the dark and watered it. About 1/2 hour later I heard the sky open up and it started pouring. The entire yard was swimming downstream.

All my shows are winding down for the season. I watched the XFiles finale last night and while I won't ask for 2 hours of my life back, I'm not sure I was left satisfied. They supposedly explained everything and I couldn't follow it to save my life. And I know they want to do movies, so I knew the end would have to leave the door at least halfway open. I have Angel tonight and Buffy tomorrow and then I'm done. I like having the summer off although usually I'm glad again in the fall when my shows come back. I think I'll use summer for catching up on movies and HBO shows.

Last week when I was checking out of the Quinault Beach Resort I noticed they had flat screen terminals and it occurred to me that this is going to be one of those things someday very soon where we say, "remember when computer screens and TV screens used to be fat and gigantic?" Bob and talked about other things that are almost completely gone like black and white TV and record players. I can already talk like an old timer.

Attack of the Clones
I bought my ticket for the Thursday 10 am show the weekend before and Wednesday night I had this dream that I woke up and it was 11 am. I was SO BUMMED. I was walking around going, "I can't believe I missed the movie." I was trying to figure out if I should just take the whole day off and see an afternoon show or maybe go to an evening show. I was relieved when I woke up even though it was like, 4 am and a wee bit too early to get up.

Here are some Star Wars cartoons. Some of them are funny.

I got to the theater a little less than an hour early and there was a line but nothing crazy. The guy in front of me had already seen the midnight show. I thought about it but that's way past my bed time and I can't sit in the dark in the middle of the night and not think about sleeping -- even for Star Wars. Inside, the theater was full but not packed. For the most part, everyone looked like completely normal people, about my age, and a few brought kids. The guy sitting next to me did have his light saber and I wished I'd brought mine.

I was going to do a review with spoilers but I changed my mind. I have avoided everything -- I saw a couple of trailers but that's it. I didn't read anything or watch anything discussing the movie and I'm glad because there are some cool surprises and afterwards when I read the reviews they talk about a lot of that stuff.

From a fan perspective I loved it or even LOVED it but I didn't *LOVE* it. The Star Wars geeks online say it gets better when you've seen it a few times and I plan to test this theory. I did *LOVE* the entire last half battle scenes and left the movie pretty amped.

I thought about seeing the movie again today but I have a soccer game (US v. Holland) starting in a little while and have 2 hours of XFiles tonight so my watching day is completely filled up. But soon, very soon.

I keep getting these direct mail things about my domain registration and I am completely clueless as to how I should proceed. I wanted to send a query to my webhosting but they've managed to create a system for support so as to completely discourage anyone asking any questions. I had to register for the support desk (another username and password, yay!) then check the knowledge base to see if my questions could be answered that way (my search pulled up completely unintelligible items) and then I was supposed to fill out another online form with a full blown bio -- all this to ask a stupid question about my domain. I'll do something about it later.

Well, here's the news on Salinger. There isn't as much as I thought there would be and that's because Mr. Salinger hasn't given the world much to work with - and not that I didn't know that beforehand -- I just didn't understand how meager it was. Salinger.org is pretty good as is this one except for the popup ads.

I also found a Salinger piece on neumu.net [art + music + words] which I'd never seen before and has some other good stuff on it.

Having a slow day here -- catching up on odds and ends. I think we're going to dinner and a movie tonight. Oh -- yesterday I saw My Big Fat Greek Wedding which was hilarious and had a happy ending which was what I needed yesterday. While I was at the theater, I bought my ticket for Thursday morning: 10am. Be thinking of me then.

I've just returned from a couple of days in Ocean Shores at the Quinault Beach Resort & Casino (and I hesitate to even type that URL due to a long story which I don't want to go into right now) which turned out to be very fabulous but with some David Lynch movie moments. The sun shone the whole time I was there -- Kimberlee told me that the sun only shines there about 3 days a year (she grew up around there) but luckily, I was there those three days. I was there to do some training related to work which I don't really need to go into here but it was all perfectly tolerable and it turns out it was nice to get out of the office and out of the house for a few days and break my routine and learn new things and talk to new people.

J.D.SALINGER
You're not going to believe this but, I just read for the first time, Salinger's Nine Stories. I stole my Mom's copy about 100 years ago and have carried it around with me to Sherman Oaks, up to Sacramento, to West Linn, to Lake Oswego and two moves in Vancouver -- all these many years and I never read it. I think it was because I thought it would be so fabulous that I would gobble it up and then never have it to read for the first time again OR I was worried that it would be drudgery to get through. It turns out #1 -- I gobbled it up. I am completely infatuated with Salinger at the moment. As soon as I finish the blog I'm going to troll all over the Internet and see what I can find and I bet it's voluminous. I thought my favorite story was The Laughing Man until I got to De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period and that until I got to Teddy. And for some reason I remember the title: Teddy attracting my attention when it was still my Mom's book and I was very young. If I had to pick, I'd pick De Daumier. This is a truly fabulous book and if you've never read it I'd recommend: run, don't walk.

THE LATEST REVELATION
I spent most of the first 35 years of my life thinking everyone else was smarter than me. I've gotten a clue since then. I'm understanding that just because a person is standing in front of a room talking to me doesn't mean he has the slightest clue what he's talking about.

LATEST REVELATION #2
When a woman is in her 20's sometimes she notices, to her great horror, that she's acting like her mother, something she's always sworn would never happen to her. But now I'm getting fairly close to 40 and I'm realizing that I do things like my Mother and I'm pretty proud of that.

FOOD HORROR
Something I don't understand, even though I am determined to be understanding of all people to be who they are: butter on pasteries. ew!

ohmy. I just had a blogging disaster because I completely screwed up the way I put in the Panda link in such a way that I could not edit it and have just been going through a gigantic headache to try to fix. Turns out blogger anticipates such stupidity and has a "safe mode" for precisely these types of incidents. yay.

I can't fall asleep after watching television. Don't most people fall asleep while watching tv? I have two shows that go from 9-10pm (Alias and Angel) and I can never fall asleep afterwards. TV season is almost over so I won't have to worry about it again until September.

How about this item? You can't see the National Zoo's Pandas' medical records. The Smithsonian Institution's National Zoo has taken the position that viewing animal medical records would violate the animal's right to privacy and be an intrusion into the zookeeper-animal relationship.

I am crabby this week and wishing that buying a one way plane ticket to some tropical paradise was a valid way of dealing with problems, real or imagined. I just took the How Long To Live quiz -- 95 years old for me, isn't that good news? (sarcasm) I can make it to 103 with dietary modifications. What do they base this on? I'm sure they're optimistic so people will visit their site and not get bummed out. I only want to live to be 80 (well, I say that now) and have planned my retirement saving accordingly. I think 80 is long enough.

"Part of the whole point" -- can you even say that?

I don't know what's happening with the blog -- I think the archives are goofed up again. As usual, standby until I can get into problem solving mode.

Yesterday I "finished" a story I've been working on for I think a couple of years at least. I felt good about finishing it -- except it's not really finished finished. The ending is tacked on and cheezy and I am waiting for the brilliant moment of insight that will help me write that last critical sentence that pulls the whole story together. Not sure how long I will be waiting. This brings up a whole issue of how do you know when something is finished? Or is this the part of the whole point?

This online stuff sucks up so much time. I going on a 48 hour no computer kick this weekend. I'm going to put a blanket over it and not even look at it.

Meanwhile, Bob Mould was fabulous last night. It's just Bob and guitar and gadgets and a screen behind him with different arty clips. And he hammered through a ton of music in 90 minutes. I loved it. And we got two new discs so I have new music all over the place that I get to dig into.

Last item: hilarious story about what happens when people collect too much music.

Still more Paul
I've got to get over this Paul thing at least for now because I'm seeing Bob tonight. But here's a good article/interview by Bill Holdship(!) with Paul that talks about new business and old business. And this is a pretty decent interview from the SF Chronicle.

Right now it feels like I've got about 600 pieces of paper with notes of things I don't want to forget: "plane tickets to Wisconsin," "return library books," "buy yellow highlighter," "use cranberries." Isn't there some law of physics or other scientific principle that measures the limit of how many things can be listed and remembered before there are too many things thus nullifying all efforts?

Still On Paul
Bob wasn't wildly impressed with Paul. He said it's the third time he's seem him and it's the same schtick every time: half assed. I defended Paul by saying that I've seen Cheese three times and they only played one song. Bob said, "At least they finished it."

I forgot to mention that Paul played a song written by Bob Mould who is going to be in town next week. Unfortunately I don't know what the song was or if I've heard it before or whether it's on Paul's record and I wish someone would tell me. Someone has posted a comprehensive report on the Seattle show but I haven't seen a fanatical report on Portland. Maybe I should have taken notes. Also I realized yesterday that I don't own Pleased to Meet Me on disc which is a crime. I need to take care of that.

I MARRIED PAUL

Not really but I just got back from seeing him tonight at Millenium. (To recap: we're talking about Paul Westerberg.) IT WAS SO COOL. The thing started at 7pm and I got there a little after 5pm and brought a book and was pretty close to the beginning of the line. I have no idea how many people they fit in that record store -- it's not a huge place but they crammed everyone in and I don't think anyone got turned away.

I got a great place to stand, I could see him completely from the guitar up -- a very rare privilege for a height impaired person like myself. I can barely remember anything that he played -- I'm not good at that. He played "I Will Dare"! Other songs I remember: "It's a Wonderful Lie" and a song from the Singles soundtrack, "Waiting for Somebody," "Achin' to Be," and part of "Skyway" and part of the Portland song. Skyway is one of my favorite songs and he couldn't remember the words to save his life and it kinda bummed me. He holds up the guitar pick and complains "This is like an angel hair" so they find him a stronger pick and he goes, "Oh, now I'll remember the words."

But he looked fabulous: sort of fresh out of the shower rosy and rumpled and he was wearing this goofy suit like leather that looked liked someone spray painted it with gold, and then a pink pin-striped button down shirt with a sweater vest. Not a lot of men can get away with that look. I love him.

We brought home a couple of bags of Doritos on out last grocery outing (Bob's idea). This is not something we normally have in the house. We opened the first bag and I devoured about 3/4ths of it before I even sat down to eat dinner. This is why we don't have this kind of food in the house. The rest of the bag sat there talking to me the rest of the weekend. I'd be sitting here at the computer working on a story I'm writing and I could here those chips talking to me, begging me to eat them. I resisted until Bob opened the bag and then I ate a couple of chips and let him finish the bag. There's is still one more bag sitting there.

In other news, I'm thinking about doing a full-on facelift on the pampage. I have a bunch of ideas floating around my head (graphical creativity is not my strong suit) and I've been marking pages I like to use for ideas. I'd also like to move the blog to the main page and rearrange some stuff and maybe finally take down the whole airline saga -- I don't know. I'm still thinking about it and have like zero free time for a project like that.

What is the etiquette when someone else's pet follows you on a walk? Yesterday I went for a walk after dinner and this big yellow lab found me and decided to tag along. I never saw him before and don't know where he came from. He was the kind of dog who runs up to other dogs and barks, and runs into people's flower beds and runs in front of cars -- not the kind of dog I want to be associated with. I tried to ignore him. I tried to shoo him off and send him home. Meanwhile, people are saying things to me about "my dog." I just kept walking. I didn't feel like it was my duty to figure out where this dog belonged and take him home

Why is it so cold? I put away all my cold weather stuff a couple of weeks ago. Most of my tights were rags so I threw those out. Tax Day has come and gone -- I don't mind if it rains but I mind if it's less than 50 degrees. I saw in the paper it was like 90 everywhere else yesterday. I suppose I'll take 50 over 90 but my first choice would be a sunny 70.

Last night Linda talked me into signing up for the Baron Baptiste workshop in a couple of weeks. We'll see how I handle that. I'm not an athletic yogi - at least I don't think of myself that way.

I can't believe I've been running around like crazy since 8am (it's 5 now) on my day off and I can only cross one or two things off my list. I'm trying to psych myself into a quick hour of garden work -- perhaps cleaning up that last little patch in the corner and getting the front ready for the new plants I bought. But I really want to sit on the couch for a while. I think I've earned it and there's got to be something stupid on cable. Someday I'll be able to combine my workout with my TV watching. Billy is bound to think this is great news.