One thing you should never do is brag about yoga voodoo on your webblog because guaranteed you'll wake up with some weird new back pain the next day. The tightness fell into my lower back. Pretend I never mentioned it.

Last night I woke up at 3:30am and started the big head grind. What is it about the darkest hours of the night that makes the head churn into worlds beyond reality? I'm awfulizing about unbelievable end of the world, Bob leaves me and I have no money and no food type anxiety which even if it happens, worrying about it in the middle of the night isn't going to help. Finally, at 5am I said "screw it" and got up and I wrote for about 1/2 hour and then felt like I could barely keep my eyes open so I shut off the light and ended up falling back asleep and then woke up at 6am tired. I was tired almost all day.

I went and saw Million Dollar Baby on Friday. One of the main reasons I made it a priority was spoilers. I HATE HATE HATE spoilers. I hate when a movie reviewer tells you "I don't want to give anything away but ... the ending will SURPRISE AND AMAZE YOU" or whatever. I knew about The Crying Game because someone let it slip. I knew about The Sixth Sense because a reviewer referred to it as an homage to another movie where the protagonist was in a similar condition. (I'm being purposefully vague in case you haven't seen it.)

I started to see items on Million Dollar Baby that were giving something away and I didn't read them so I didn't know exactly what would happen or what characters were involved. Some people can't resist a secret. What is it? An ego thing? A power thing? An "ooh look how special and important I am" thing?

So as soon as the movie went wide I dropped everything to go see it. I'm not a huge Clint Eastwood fan. I find his directing cold. I didn't think Unforgiven was worthy of nomination much less an Oscar and Mystic River didn't impress me either. But I liked this movie. Way more than I expected. You can see the formula showing through but it's a good story and I think Hillary Swank makes the whole thing. Clint and Morgan Freeman are great too, but Swank makes the picture. It's worth seeing.

I'll also mention that I am totally opposed to women boxing. I think it's a crime against nature for women to be violent for competition. But let me tell you, I LOVED watching Maggie (Swank's character) kick the living crap out of her opponents. I'm surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

Sometime last year I tweaked my back. I think it was Fall, possibly earlier. It wasn't a big thing. I even remember when it happened. I leaned into the car to grab a bag -- groceries or the junk I cart back and forth to work -- and I felt a little twinge. Nothing to make me gasp in pain. Just a twinge right between my shoulder blades. (My "wings" as Holiday would say.)

I would wake up every morning with a stiff, slightly painful back. It didn't impact my life in any sort of major way except for minor discomfort, mainly in the morning. The biggie was yoga practice which had to be modified immediately. I stopped doing all the more advanced stuff I'd been working on and invested a lot of time in very basic stuff, trying to loosen that scrambled up part.

This wasn't such a big deal except it seemed to take FOREVER to feel better. In December I was still modifying my practice, skipping advanced poses, spending 3/4ths of my time just trying to loosen up.

On December 31 I did a workshop with Holiday and she talked about impatience with our practice (greatly simplified for the purpose of this post) and I thought about it and finally came to the conclusion that: maybe this is my body now. Maybe I am going to be stiff when I wake up. Maybe I'm going to have to invest a lot of time each day just trying to loosen up.

Very shortly thereafter, it dramatically improved. Is it yoga-voodoo? You decide. All I know is, my back feels 99% better and I can get into all sorts of crazy bendy stuff that I haven't been able to do for months and it is fun. This morning I didn't even want to stop but I had the writers coming over and had to cut it short.

I publicly express gratitude that my body feels better.

I only have a couple of minutes for some short ends here as a show I may or may not be getting into is about to start. The show is Point Pleasant and someone who worked on Buffy is connected. I watched an episode last week and my basic conclusion was that it was a shame because the show worked about 90% -- it's almost there but not quite. It's almost original but yet it all feels done before. The lead actress is charming, but not quite charismatic enough. I'm giving it another try, that's how close.

Some jackass loser smacked my car last weekend. Not just a scuff -- there's paint chipped and the bumper will probably have to be replaced. This person knew s/he hit and ran. Bob did a work related trip to Corvallis and there were many government vehicles around so we suspect this was the location and reason for someone's bad behavior. I'm trying not to get exercised about it because it's only a car and no one died but I would never be that big of an asshole so it bothers me that someone else felt okay about driving off and leaving it.

We did a Trader Joe's run tonight and bought this triple cream blue cheese that should probably be illegal. It's too yummy.

Finally, sometimes I feel like a loser because I can become overwhelmed so easily and my life is relatively stress free. It only takes one or two little things to be unpredictable or veer off course and I start to feel undone. That's the kind of week I had. I feel undone.

There's No Standing Still in Ska
We went to see General Public last night. They played at a place called Barracuda which is a enormous meat-barn off Burnside with a fakey beachy-island type theme and huge aquarium behind the bar. Well, the bar in the part we were in. It was a huge place, there was another downstairs half with another bar and an upstairs and pool tables. The women's room had 12 stalls - I counted. There may have been more than one women's room. I didn't check.

It's the kind of place with drinks served in giant fishbowls and lots of room to see and be seen. I would have *loved* this place when I was 21 but at this point in my life, I felt like I was getting away with something just by being there. And on a work night.

Bob had called in advance to get our tickets and was informed the band would go on at 9pm and we arrived at 9pm and were not thrilled when at 10:30pm the band still hadn't started. Come on, people. There are grownups in the audience. It's way past our bedtime. The $2 Rolling Rock (sponsoring the event) was only mildly placating as the basis for my agitation was a desire to be fully functional on Friday. Drinking a bunch of cheap beer would not further my cause.

The crowd, which was modest, is impossible to categorize. I saw a little bit of everything but at least 1/4 of the room was people our age. Just about the time I was preparing to incite a riot, the band came out and after about three bars of "Tenderness" all was forgiven. I loved every minute of the show and when the main set ended I looked at Bob with a hint of outrage and demanded to know how long they had played.

Almost an hour and a half. They came back out and played more and ended with "Save it for Later." Perfect.

On the way back to the car there was this young woman standing in front of a glass door and she had a dog and recall I have this adult onset irrational fear of dogs thing and I assumed it was some sort of blood-thirsty deathhound and as we got closer it looked like some sort of goofy cartoon dog with a sweet face and batboy ears which he flapped a little as we walked by. We saw the sign for the shop and it was Voodoo Donut (The Magic is in the Hole) which we'd heard about at the Neal Pollack reading.

Next thing I know, Bob is charging in there. It's a cramped space with a counter and a bench and while we were there, some mad professor type guy who was talking loudly something about a bicycle and a ditch. Bob bought a lemon cruller and a maple bar thing and I had a bit of each and it was awesome. I think they use extra fat and sugar.

We were in bed, lights out a 1am (ouch!). Totally worth it.

Dietary Guidelines for Americans

The Guidelines provide authoritative advice for people two years and older about how good dietary habits can promote health and reduce risk for major chronic diseases.  They serve as the basis for Federal food and nutrition education programs.

Yeah. Because if I'm looking for information on taking care of my health, the government is where I would turn. (dripping sarcasm if you can't tell.)

It's almost bedtime and I shouldn't even start this as there is never such thing as a "quick post." I'll hammer a bunch of stuff out and then notice that it's somewhat incoherent and riddled with typos and a few words need spell check and then some grammar will look sketchy and then I'll elaborate more and next thing you know, 45 minutes have gone by.

This weekend was movie binge weekend although we ended up pooping out, partially influenced by the weather. On Friday I saw Finding Neverland (warning: non-specific spoiler on this one) which NO ONE warned me was a 10 hankie film. I expected at least a 2 hankie film. Why make a drama if you don't want your audience sniffling before the end? But this was much more tragic than I'd expected, mainly due to a scene with a small child capable of holding a heartbreaking expression for what seemed like ever. All this aside, it's an excellent film. Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet are fantastic.

Last that night, Bob and I went to a double feature at the Kiggins of Closer and I♥Huckabees - which is an odd bill. Closer was intense, but I knew it was about people being wretched in relationships, I expected it to be more repellent and really, the characters were quite human in that they made selfish choices and reacted poorly when things didn't go their way. Excellent acting all around. I don't know what to say about Huckabees. It's an odd picture, somewhat funny, far-reaching. It doesn't succeed but was fun to watch anyway.

The weather people had made dire forecasts for Saturday that we'd be getting snow and ice so when we woke up Saturday morning and saw perhaps a teeny sheen of ice on the world outside our window, we scoffed and continued our day without incident. Later I saw on TV that Portland had more than a teeny sheen so perhaps we should be more grateful.

Saturday afternoon we went to see The Aviator and I was pleased to see the theater was fairly full. Yay, people going to see a good movie. Of course I would quickly regret this as a couple of bucketheads with their not-too-swift buckethead kid sat next to us and proceeded to talk as though in their own livingroom for a goodly portion of the movie. As soon the film started the kid started in, "Why are they doing that?" and I gaped at them in astonishment as they chattered away explaining to Forkwit what we were watching.

We beat them into unconsciousness and then turned our attention to the movie which is quite good, again, with fantastic acting but Howard Hughes was a grade A nutjob and held our sympathy by the skin of his teeth. Also, no movie, barring those with elves and hobbits OR Jedi and stormtroopers, needs to be 2 hr 45 min long.

When we exited the theater, the freezing rain was falling and we had to tiptoe along the sidewalk to get to our car. (I touched down once for a slight deduction.) Bob drove slowly and we made it home without incident. We intended to see Bad Education (Pedro Almodóvar) on Sunday which was only playing in Portland, but when we woke up there was more ice and we decided to cocoon it for the day and watched Kill Bill v. 2 on DVD instead. Excellent and entertaining in every way. I didn't know what to expect and I was surprised by what I got. Wish I'd re-watched v. 1 before we saw it

Finally, we'd intended to see House of Flying Daggers today but instead ended up doing chores and so forth. The temp. warmed up and the ice disappeared but we never got it together. I started reading Three Junes which Doni loaned me a month or 2 ago and as usual, I read the first 20 pages and didn't think I would get into and found myself still reading 100 pages later. I'm back to it. Good Night.

Today there was a story in the A&E about Nick Hornby's new book. It sounds like a must own classic.

Excerpt:

Hornby divides every month into two categories, "Books Bought" and "Books Read." There's not always a lot of overlap -- he's forever buying books he intends someday to read and not getting around to it, and defends himself by saying, "And I'll bet you do it, too."

(Jeff Baker Jan 14 05 Oregonian)

Yes, I do. I have a half dozen Signet Classics like Crime and Punishment and Madame Bovery that I bought years ago that don't even have bookmarks in. (Sometimes I pile up a bunch of books to read next to the bed and I'll start a few and read about 7 pages, stick in a bookmark and put back in the pile. Then I get tired of feeling overwhelmed by this huge pile of books by the bed and put them back on the shelf to read later.) I also have a bunch of ratty used paperbacks that I always think I'm going to get to like an Edward Hoagland book of essays and some Joyce Carol Oates shorts stories. The only time I look at these books is when I'm tidying the bookshelf or going on a trip and think that traveling will produce the optimum environment to finally dive into these books. Then I read everything else I brought with me and bring them back home and put them on the shelf.

This week I finished Harry Potter #5. I thought that HP #4 was mediocre except she really pulled it out of her ass at the end for a nice emotional payoff that redeemed the book. #5 I thought was a much better story that totally lost it in the 3rd act -- like she suddenly realized she'd been droning on for 900+ pages and had to wrap it up quick. I could reduce 50 pp. from the book by taking out unnecessary adverbs. One time she uses "sycophantically" -- is that even a real word? (dictionary.com says it is -- okay, I don't think it should be.) Also, don't you think it's weak story telling to get your hero into a terrible fix and then at the critical moment, have him rescued by some character(s) that have been off-stage for awhile, showing up to save the day. I think you can get away with doing this once. But this happens several times. Finally, in the writer's favor, I will say that Harry's 15 year old angst where he's angry and doesn't think anyone can understand how he feels is spot on teenage behavior. Don't misunderstand, I liked the book but I don't think it held up for 956 pages.

A couple of weeks ago Bob set a piece of the NYT aside for me and said it was "Pam porn." I've been carrying it around with me and finally looked at it this week and he was right. It's all about organizing your home. (If you're checking the NYT archives, it's from Dec 30 04 the House/Home section).

The article focuses on NY apartments with space issues and how the owners created more space using all sorts of clever cupboards and shelves and cabinets. So cool.

Right now we're battling a kitchen space problem. If you've ever seen our house, you're probably choking on your coffee about now because we have what would seem to be a gigantic kitchen area for a home our size. But the cabinets, in addition to being shoddily made and even more shoddily painted, were built by crazy people who never used a kitchen before and it's like tons of space where nothing fits. We're looking into a quick fix (since we don't have $7K-$20K for cabinets like in the NYT article) and are rearranging stuff in the utility room to make room for more shelving. It's the $100 plan.

Would anyone like to join me in publicly flogging the person or persons responsible for the low flush toilet?

I was at the Oregon Convention Center on Saturday for the RiverCity Bluegrass Festival (Del McCoury Band rocks 10 planets!) and used the facility and both times I had to flush twice for what was essentially a wad of tissue. Come on. How lame is that? And then I washed my hands at the sink. You know, where you press the button and the water stays on automatically for about 10 times longer than you actually need to wash your hands. What are people thinking?

I think I've explained my note taking system before, but I'll review. I keep a pocket sized notebook and pen with me, not all the time, but at times when I think I'll need it, like traveling, and I jot notes as I go along. The kind of details that would otherwise be forgotten. This is a critical step if you want to remember details and can easily be done when you sit and rest in the restaurant, bar or cafe. I used the jotted notes to write the stories in my spiral notebook and I pick through that stuff to write here.

Pretty much every trip I've ever gone on, my writing in the spiral notebook doesn't keep up with the trip. So I'll still be writing about what happened in the airport getting on the plane when I'm Day 2 into the trip. Usually at some point I get tired of trying to catch up and scrawl a few nouns and verbs to capture the general flavor of what we did, and usually the last days of the trip are not recorded at all. I always think I'm going to do it when I get home but I never do.

This trip was no different although Friday I sat in the kitchen with some hot tea and my notebooks and caught up some Nürnberg notes and saw this story that I forgot to tell you.

The second day we were there, we ended a very long day by going to a restaurant up by Dürer's house. We approached the door and there was a sign that I believe said that we should enter the restaurant around the corner. We went around the corner and there was another sign that I believe said that we should enter the restaurant back the way we came. We went back to the first door and entered and they immediately sent us down the stairs into the Alte Keller (Old Cellar).

And this was not a Las Vegas phony old cellar but a real, genuine old cellar. But it was cozy and not crowded and soon we had tall beers and hot food (me: mushrooms and dumplngs, him: mixed grill with hare, venison and pheasant) in front of us.

Not far from our table, a sort of Pirates of the Caribbean mannequin hung on the wall, shackled in stocks and wearing a nightshirt. During our meal, the servers brought a trio of young women through the restaurant, shackled in stocks and laughing. They exited, I believe to the kitchen and returned a few minutes later. The server paused at the nightshirt guy and did something and then a um, large, stiff appendage swung out from under the nightshirt. Everyone in the restaurant laughed. I was thinking: you'll never see that in America.

In the NY Times this week Nigella had a recipe for beet soup for one. It had beets, broth, ginger and lemon and you put it in the blender.

Other than being very pink, I think beets are the perfect food and I was dying to try out this simple recipe.

When I was at the market I focused on: "Don't get pickled beets. Don't get pickled beets."

This apparently backfired as when I went to prepare the soup, I had a can of pickled beets. "Well, I love pickled beets," I reasoned and made the soup anyway.

I think I used too much ginger and the ginger and pickled part blended to create a ultra-tangey and basically inedible blend of brilliant red soup. I tried. I ate about half a bowl. But it was really yicky.

You know, I never write about stuff like this.

But this terrible thing happened with the tsunami and it's been bothering me because whenever something bad happens I never know what to do and I feel weird doing what everyone else is doing and I end up doing nothing and it feels bad.

So with the tsunami it seems that the logical thing, since it's not realistic for me to go to Thailand or Sri Lanka and build roads, or dig irrigation ditches, or pass out food, would be to donate money. And I don't want to go into a long thing about why I'm uncomfortable donating to the "big" relief organizations -- who I am sure do a lot of good. I have my reasons. And I've been driving around in quiet moments, feeling like a loser because we have so much, like a warm, dry place to live and good food to eat--yet I've done nothing to help this disaster.

I subscribe to a fisherman type mailing list at the office and they sent out a notice about helping this organization. It was covered in the Juneau Empire here. And here's a quote:

AMSEA is taking donations for the relief effort in this area and wiring money directly to NAFSO. This aid will get to fishermen's families sooner than large relief organizations can. NAFSO will be able to spend it on what their needs actually are on the ground, and there will be no indirect costs. Every dollar donated will be forwarded to NAFSO for their relief work.

I did a bit of checking up and felt good about donating here and mailed my check off right away. At least I did something.

Something terrible happened the other night. I was keeping both eyes on the road while I pressed buttons on the stereo attempting to find a remotely decent song.

I somehow managed to press the wrong buttoms in some sort of special sequence and now the music and radio sound like it they are being broadcast from an abandoned cistern. It's unlistenable. (Why would this feature even be offered?) I tried to recreate the button pushing sequence and now I think the balance is off as well.

Does anyone have a small child I can borrow who can figure out how the stereo works?

We have this one file at the office. It's a tiny matter which produced an endless blizzard of paper. Actually I should say it still produces a blizzard of paper.

When the matter first started, I kept shoving the filing in one file, expecting that any moment we would be done with this matter. It became this giant, awkward thing that I began to loathe the sight of. Finally, in summer of 2003, I relented and opened a new file and I've actually opened a third file since then and I archived the stupid fat file.

For some reason, every time this matter comes up again, my colleague digs the stupid fat file out of the archives and then puts the new papers in it and puts it on my desk as if to say, "Hey, make a new file."

I found it in filing again yesterday. I put it back in the archive with a note that said: "We've had a new file on this since July, 2003. If I find this on my desk again I'm poking your eyes out."

Never say I'm not clear in my communications.

I study yoga with two different teachers at two different studios. I alternate buying a classcard from one and then the other. One I like because we focus on deepening our practice and the other I like because we focus on a more challenging practice. In a perfect world it would be fun to do one of each class every week but coming home so late twice a week is a little much. Each yoga studio has a slightly different routine, location, parking, time, etc. The studio I'm going to right now asks me to bring my own mat.

Normally, I keep my extra mat in my car. (You know you're a real yogini when you keep a mat in your car.) However, for whatever reason I didn't have it in the car and during the first half of December between holiday and trip preparations, I totally forgot my mat twice.

The second time I borrowed a mat that smelled like something died on it.

I will not be forgetting my mat tonight.

Prinzen Rolle are awesome.

Bob says they're like chocolate frosting spread on graham crackers. He doesn't understand my fixation. I don't either. They're cheap, junky cookies. Like 1,30€ for a giant tube. But they're so yummy. I had two for breakfast.

There are other fans (Jul 22, 04).

Looks like I can buy them online

The product description says it's not perishable. That should scare me more than it does.

Just in case there's anyone left who didn't get the memo:

PamNewsletter 2004 is ready. Well, I never fixed the problems with the way it displays in other browsers but hard cheese. I'm not going to worry about it now.

Stories and photos from our recent trip are here.

I had an excellent birthday. Thanks for all the birthday love.

We also had a great New Years and actually went out. To a bar. And saw a band. Although to be completely honest, we left before midnight. Come on, we have jetlag.

I was going to try to assemble some thoughts summarizing the year we just finished and make optimistic pronouncements about the year to come but the only note I made was about learning a short cut for changing the fonts on my computer because I only like to use verdana and it's a "v" which means I have to scroll through all the fonts every time to change and I'm sure there's some easy way to do this but so far nothing I've tried has worked. But this isn't such a grand thing to talk about in a year end/year beginning treatise.

Instead, I leave you with my current mantra: everything is going smoothly and easily.