Being Paul Westerberg
Also in all the activity this week, I never got around to my review of the show Saturday night so this will be a half-baked commentary.

The setlist is here.. He played pretty much everything I would have hoped for in the time space allotted. I could not have been more thrilled with any live show anywhere.

Paul's audience, I kid you not, was about 10 guys to 1 girl. No wonder he doesn't tour more. When I told Bob that Paul was coming to town he said, "Is he going to finish the songs?" and I chided him for slamming my guy. I sort of chuckled when Paul didn't finish a song the first time. I stopped counting at 7. So Bob was right, big deal. His bands play one song for like a whole hour. Why is that so much better?

At one point Paul says, "Do you want to hear a Dylan song or Kiss Me On the Bus?"

I'm drawing a blank here. Too much stuff for one week. It was a great show. Every minute of it.

Final Wrap-Up of Work Move
On Tuesday I slept in as best I could and dragged my sorry ass to the new office where it took me 6 hours to file some documents in tribal court because first I had to dig out of my temporary office so that I could move around and find things. Then I had to find the documents. Then I had to set up my old stand alone computer and printer. (We're not on the network yet and don't have voicemail -- this whole transition could probably have been handled better but we're there now so we're all dealing.) Then I had to find envelopes. Then I had to find a stapler. You know the aftermath of moving is always chaos until you can get everything organized.

I should also probably mention that, so far, the new firm is super fantastic and everyone has been friendly and helpful. And here's an advantage to the move: there are other people to take care of things. I don't have to do all the problem solving. This is fantastic.

I left early (4pm) because I was still so tired I couldn't think straight. I slept about 11 hours. Weds and Thurs were long days. I'm still adapting to it all.

I don't have paid parking downtown anymore so at present I'm driving to the park and ride and taking the light rail (yellow line). It's not a big deal but it's a major pain in the ass to get used to a whole new routine. The ride there has taken shorter than expected (usually 45 mins. door to door) but the ride home has taken longer than expected-- usually a full hour. I'm still figuring it all out.

It's amazing how a major disrupt to the routine has impacted my entire existence. A routine is something you don't have to think about. So all this new stuff is occupying more of my limited brain bandwidth so I ended up forgetting all sorts of loose end, misplacing things and flaking out on stuff. And having all these oddball anxieties like opening a drawer in the morning and thinking, "OMIGOD, I must replace all of my underwear."

Today is the first day in about 2 weeks where I don't have to do anything or be anywhere. (Well, I scheduled a massage, but that's hardly onerous.) I need to get my act together but the couch is so inviting and I have fresh Buffy...

Tomorrow. Tacoma. Wintergrass.

Moving Part 2
On Friday we decided to go ahead with the move on Sunday and give the bird to the oppressive rules of the condo association. There are reasons why this wasn't a great idea but we had to get this done.

Then, about midday, I was informed that the new building would let us move in on Monday I went back to all my phone calls to reschedule for Monday. The mover informed me that all his trucks were scheduled. Now what? He said we could pay a truck rental fee and he could put together a crew for us. Whew. Dodged that one. Everything was back on track for the Monday move.

Closer to the end of the day I was informed that we couldn't move into the new building until after 3pm. So AGAIN I have to call everyone and reschedule the move time. Keep in mind that I still had an actual job to do, other moving type arrangements to make and packing 13 years of a law practice. Also keep in mind that Friday is normally a day off for me.

Monday rolls around. I drove to the office at 7am to work on packing. The movers show up at 1pm. Moving always takes longer and is much worse than you expect and this time was no different.

We arrived at the new building at around 5pm and the loading dock was occupied by the people who are remodeling the office space that we're moving into. My office isn't ready yet. Also, when I entered the building the security officer informed me that the freight elevator was broken.

If I hadn't already vented considerably via my tear ducts at various points during the week, I probably would have lost it completely at this point.

A guy fiddled with the elevator and got it working again but we still had to wait for the remodel crew to finish up.

We were finally able to get in there and we worked like mad and I got out of there at 8pm. I can't remember the last time I was that tired.

Bob had a nice dinner waiting for me which I ate as quickly as I could, whining like a little kid, "I'm so tired." I staggered off to bed because Tuesday would be my first day of work at my new office.

More to come.

Moving Part 1
I know, I STILL haven't had a chance to update all this stuff. It's becoming like my writing notebook on a trip. I'm so behind I don't even want to start. I'm going to try to give you a brief version.

I have had the same job for 13 years. In fact, tomorrow is the 13 year anniversary. We've always worked out of a small residential condo on the river and the entire staff has ranged between 2 and 3 people, including me. There were lots of days when I was all by myself.

In the very beginning, I wasn't always pleased with this as I had just moved here and had no friends and lived alone and then went to work alone and I felt like loner hermit girl. But eventually I grew to like it -- turns out I thrive on alone time.

About 3 years ago there was discussion about merging with a larger law firm. I didn't hate the idea but to be honest, I didn't really want to do it. Since then we've been on and off whether this was going to happen culiminating last month with a "this is absolutely happening in February" and when I'd finally gotten used to the idea there was a day or two period of "this is absolutely off" followed by a "it's on and we're moving this Saturday."

So to sum: a lot of change being swung back and forth.

We didn't move that Saturday but we looked at the calendar and February wasn't a good month for me to move since I had weekend activities so we finally decided on Mon Feb 21 since our clients take the federal holiday and it would be minimally disruptive to them and we could get the move done before March.

So I made a bunch of phones calls: movers, phones (there were additional complications with moving the phones which I won't go into but required at least 10 phone calls), their office, our building management. Everything was set.

On Weds of last week, I was informed that the building didn't permit move-ins on the weekdays. (For the record I did ask MORE THAN ONCE if there were any special rules about moving in I should know about.) Since the movers were still available Sunday I decided to cancel my plans and try to do the move on Sunday. I made all my phone calls to reschedule everything and then learned that the building we were in would not schedule a move out on a Sunday. (It's a residential place, apparently the residents don't want people moving on Sunday -- I don't know.) As of Thursday night we had phone calls into both managers hoping to plea for some sort of exception.

There's more to this story which I will get to later but I've got to get moving now if I have a hope of getting to work on time.

Hi.

I know I said I was going to tell you about my rotten day. You know how when you're in a rotten mood, you want to tell everyone about it, but it seems like too much energy?

And it seems like too much energy now, but I promise, I will bitch about it later.

Meanwhile, I'm doing hours and hours of yoga this weekend for a workshop which is helping me keep my head together.

And tonight it the giant Paul Westerberg love fest. We're leaving in a few minutes.

You can find tour data here including the setlist which looks super fantastic, yay. And there's a Seattle Times article. The tour only just started. Also there's this blog and this guy also did an interview with Paul for the LA Weekly which I biffed on the link so you'll have to find it yourself. Read it, Paul fans. Finally, Twintone has some classic vintage Replacements video worth it if you have the time to view a few bits.

Tomorrow yoga is only 3 hours (I know some of you are thinking, "only 3 hours?" but I did about 5 1/2 hours yesterday and another 5 1/2 today) so I can update you on the show AND bitch and whine about the rotten stuff.

I told Bob I wasn't even going to power up the computer tonight so he said he would so he could download some Cheese which he is doing as we blog.

I had a super rotten day which I will tell you about later. You will agree it was rotten.

One thing that cheered me up was a rerun of the Simpsons. It was the one where Selma married Troy McClure and they have the bit with the Planet of the Apes musical and "Dr. Zaius Dr. Zaius." If you know what I'm talking about, you are cracking up right now. If you don't, you wish you did.

It's a shame I haven't found a way to capitalize on this amazing ability I have to make it rain. Way back when I lived in Lake Oswego and was a runner, I could get the clouds to give way simply by lacing on my running shoes. (I should probably qualify my "running" as an activity that looked more like fast walking. I think, back then, if chased by blood thirsty wolves, I could possibly run a whole mile in under 8 minutes. But only 1. Then I'd keel over. Now, I don't know what would happen.)

This weekend the sun was out Friday and I thought what a great opportunity to get out in the yard seeing as how last weekend when I tried to go out there, it started raining. But Friday I had a zillion other activities going on. (A guy came over to give us an estimate on air conditioning and we're going for it, yay! I know it sounds unimportant now, but wait until August.) But in my mind I was thinking we'd have sun all weekend so I'd have plenty of opportunities.

Saturday was drippy but yesterday I noticed sun. By the time I finished my chores and put on my work clothes and stepped into the yard, the sky had clouded over and as I walked out there with my tools, the drops started to fall. At first I ignored it but that lasted about 2 minutes and I had to run back inside.

I started doing something else and then Bob came home and we noticed the sun was out again so we decided to go for a walk. We put our shoes on and bam, rain again.

Meanwhile, I put out a medal consideration cooking performance this weekend. Friday I did my rosemary roasted chicken with vegetables. Saturday I made a Russian style soup with potatoes, greenbeans and sour cream and sauerkraut. Yesterday I made my gumbo with cornbread. I bobbled on the dessert.

I like to make Bob a special chocolate thing every Valentines Day and this year I saved a recipe from the Oregonian for Flourless Lavender Chocolate Torte using this designer chocolate that wasn't cheap. I don't know what went wrong but the thing didn't set up in the oven. It just boiled in the pan. I left it in 10 minutes longer than the recipe called for and finally took it out and figured we'd have choco-blobs. As long as it tasted good.

It did harden in the fridge and I put it on a plate and it wasn't pretty. I generously sprinkled powdered sugar. It tasted decent. I don't think brilliant, but it was okay.

Between that and the gumbo I woke up at 1:30am and nothing would get me back to sleep. I did finish book #6 hypocrite in a poufy white dress by Susan Jane Gilman which is a memoir written by a woman my age who grew up in New York and had all kinds of funny adventures. But now I have to get through the day on about 4 hours of sleep.

Earlier this week I found all this great stuff about this book called Getting Things Done (Here is the author's website.) I think there's a software tie-in which is why all these internet geeks so excited about the system and improving their own personal productivity. And who wouldn't be? This book must be great.

I checked it out and found some site (sorry, can't find the link now, probably could if I was working the system) with a basic summary the principles of the book and basically what he's telling you to do is make lists, stay organized, toss worthless stuff, file stuff to do later and keep your "to do now" stuff in a pile. Only he uses different words: you "capture" the stuff you need to do and put it in "buckets."

I don't know what I was expecting, maybe a magic wand, because my whole life is about making lists and being organized but the things don't get done unless you actually do them. That's the part someone should write a book about. (I'm being a smart ass in case there are dimwits reading this who don't know the difference.)

If I learned anything it was that I should be writing books about being organized. I didn't know this was salable information. I thought it was common sense.

#1 - I just checked my gmail account -- which I never use for anything other than a typepad blog I was playing around with for about 3 weeks and then pulled the plug on. I had 18 spam. Where could they possibly come from? Those 3 weeks? Geez. Also I have a few gmail invites if you want one. What a genius approach to make something available only by invite so it seems so special and then flooding the market with invites.

#2 - I went to yoga last night which means I was downtown on Fat Tuesday which means there were lots of people and even more police everywhere you looked. The thing is, all the masses of people I saw were young -- barely drinking age, if that. They looked like high schoolers. And they hung out in packs and pretty much every guy was wearing dark knit hat. Is this some kind of uniform?

#3 - Bob and I watched Some Kind of Monster this weekend which is the documentary about Metallica. This film is unbelievably riveting. True, I am a fan of the band. (I own Ride the Lightning on vinyl.) I can't believe they filmed some of this stuff. It's an intense look at these super successful people trying to hold it together and it's fascinating. And, not too much music for the metal non-lovers although I've had Seek & Destroy stuck in my head all week.

Hey, put your name in the Baby Name Wizard.

The Baby Name Wizard's NameVoyager is an interactive portrait of America's name choices.

It makes a graph of the name you type in -- showing its popularity over the years. It's really cool.

I am reading Nick Hornby's The Polysyllabic Spree which I mentioned before. It's a collection of his columns from The Believer magazine and every column starts off with a list of books bought and a list of books read. The lists generally aren't the same.

For the most part, he writes about books I've never heard of and even after hearing about them, most would not make it to my list. My list is extensive, trust me. I appreciate hearing about them in this book, thus my data field is expanded without me having to take action.

In one essay (Oct 04), Hornby talks about Gabriel Zaid's book So Many Books (Jesus Christ it's hard to find a link to a book that isn't pure commerce, that's what the Internet has reduced us to: lumps of meat that buy things.) Hornby sets forth Zaid's basic question as "Why bother?" Zaid estimates it would take 15 yrs. to read a list of all the books ever published. And while a person like me would despair at this. I despair walking through Powell's -- just the fiction section -- Hornby says, "I was actually rather heartened."

Getting back to the books bought v. books read. I find I am always wanting to pick up huge collected story volumes such as the Mavis Gallant and Alice Munro books both sitting in my "to read" annex. (The main "to read" pile is by the bed. The annex is specific shelf in the bookcase.) I think I have flipped through both books a half dozen times but don't think I've ever finished a story in either one.

Today, I read the NYT book reviews and saw the review on Carol Shields Collected Stories (593 pages!) and quickly jotted it down for my list. This in addition to the Paul Bowles collection and the Kate Chopin collection and the Mary McCarthy collection (actually essays) that I expect to add to the pile some day.

Because, yes, I completely intend to read them.

As you might have heard, boxing great Max Schmeling died.

There is a fantastic Tante Irmgard story about Schmeling and I'll be damned if I can find it in my notebooks. I got out the whole collection this morning, even crap I didn't even know I still had. (You know that dreadful juvenile crap that should be burned but for some reason you save, just in case you run out of reasons to feel humiliated?) I have 39 pages of notes from that trip but nothing on that story.

I think the event occured in the 80's and something about Irmgard talking to him on the phone and I think he was a cranky old man. If he died at 99 then he was old twenty years ago which jives with the vague recollection of the story I think I heard. Since I don't have an actual satisfying narrative for you, I'm going to substitute a different Tante Irmgard story that I found while searching for Max Boxer.

Tante Irmgard Rolls
In 1951 Irmgard got a license to drive a motorcycle. According to her, she was the first woman to get a license to drive a big motorbike in Hamburg (Germany). I see no reason not to believe her. According to my notes it was a 500 HP BMW with a sidecar with a dog in it and if that isn't a true description of a motorbike, keep it to yourself. You get the idea.

When she went for her test, the Prüfer (tester guy) took one look at her and said, "I have a wife and 2 children." He had to ride in the sidecar with his leg hanging out.

In 1954 Germany was in the World Cup which was going on in Switzerland. Irmgard rode her motorcycle all over Germany and was pulled over 5 times and and asked to show her license. She was with a group in Switzerland watching the final match between Germany and Hungary. (I'd love to give you more informative links but sometimes search engines suck big cheese.) I have an additional note about how Irmgard had a big crush on the German goalie ("ah, looks so good") which my notes cryptically name as "Tony Toureck" and I can't find reference to this dude anywhere so if you know his actual name and want to sent it to me, cool.

I guess Irmgard was watching the game with some Turks and Tony dreamboat made a save and Irmgard had her sunglasses in a plastic case and hit one of the guys with her case. They were rooting for Hungary. German won: a major upset.

This morning was nice and sunny and I thought it might be a good day to do some garden stuff. We had our trees pruned this week. Chuck normally comes in January to do the apple tree in the backyard but last year he had a back injury and somehow we fell through the cracks. Meanwhile, there was that 10 star ice storm last winter and as I understand nature, our apple tree panicked, thinking its days might be numbered it produced about 10 trillion apples which meant sagging branches. A major one broke and has dangled ever since because we are too lame to deal with it. (I even said this on the message I left for Chuck so that when he arrived, he'd know we know we're lame. I did mention that we're good at other things.)

I also asked him to check out the tree in front, which I, based on my limited botanical knowledge (read: none), have designated as an "ornamental cherry." I thought it could use some shaping. He worked on them both and they look fantastic (as much as a pruned tree in winter can look.)

We need to put the debris into the bins for garden waste pick up and if you go at the pruning waste with clippers you can fit a lot more in. Plus I need to whack back my roses b/c the lady in the Oregonian said you should so that around now.

These were the things I had planned for the day. HOWEVER, I needed to finish reading my book (Straight Man, thanks Hannah) and of course, it always takes longer to read the last 100 pages than you think it will so at 12:30 pm I was still in bed reading, my yoga practice long abandoned.

At some point the sun disappeared. I opened the shades so I could read better. When I was about 10 pages from the end I heard the rain fall. I looked out to make sure that's what was happening and yup, cold drippy rain.

I'm dressed now in my garden clothes, just in case things clear up and I can work out there later. But Bob already has been out there AND I have fresh Buffy in the DVD so you take your bets on how this afternoon is going to turn out.

TupperWoes
Bob brings his lunch to work in -- they actually aren't Tupperware -- they're Pyrex things with plastic covers. He tends to bring them home with food still in them and often doesn't tend to them immediately resulting in a stinkfest and if I haven't mentioned it before, I have the nose of the bloodhound and hate all things remotely smelly so he usually hides this from me.

Recently there was a situation ... either he left in the car a long time or else it was something that decomposed at an alarming rate. I came home from work and stepped into the room and immediately frowned: "Something stinks." This wasn't a light stink, this was like something died and crawled into our kitchen.

"Yeah, I'm working on it," he said. Bob ran the lid through the dishwasher and soaked it in a solution of baking soda and water. (On his own, no advice from me on this one.)

After dinner tonight he rinsed it off and took a big whiff and then there was a terrible gurgly gag, a pause and another full-body retch -- but he kept his dinner down.

We threw it away.

There was an article in the Oregonian living section recently that was so stupid you wished you had the 3 minutes it took to scan the article back. (And speaking of wishing you had time back, have you ever wished you could have the 5 minutes back that it took to watch the trailer of a movie? This happened to me recently when I saw the trailer for a movie that was something about Winn-Dixie, a lovable little scamp of a dog and a wide-eyed adorable child who bring joy back to their small town or some crap like that.)

But back to my curmudgeonly assessment of this stupid article. The article was about 20-somethings living downtown in the trendy district in condo-buildings with a lifestyle that's just like dorms only it's grownups. They run around between condos organizing happy hours, TV watching parties, dinner parties, and mocked if they don't open the door for social time. Those poor kids. What kind of fecking 20 somethings can afford to buy a $300K condo by themselves in the first place? That's what I want to know. Yeah, poor things, losing sleep because they're too busy socializing. Let me collect myself. I've got a tissue. Now I can continue.

The article mentions "observers" who see this lifestyle as an attempt to stave off adulthood (huh?) vs. others who view all this partying as a positive thing creating communities.

When I was in my 20's I went out about 6 nights a week, seeing bands on the Sunset Strip. Was I staving off adulthood? Was I building a community? Shit-howdy: I was having a good time. Who wouldn't? Where's the article about me? Oh yeah, we got a movie.

Do you ever find yourself liking an especially cheesy pop song?

There was a stupid Hillary Duff song something about the rain coming down that I would involuntarily hum along with when it came on the radio. And a generation earlier was a Backstreet Boys song about how I want it that way that I'd sing to in the car. And then the generation before that there was a Spice Girls song that I'd nod my head to. I like sugary, thumpy pop-songs, what can I say? 80's heavy metal and cheesy pop songs. I'm not even being ironic.

I like some good stuff too, like Paul Westerberg and Bob Mould.

Recently there's been a cheesy pop song on the radio and I was horrified to learn that it was by one of those dreadful American Idol people. After all I've admitted, I was ashamed by American Idol.

[Every time I run the blogger spell check it gives me one word: "undefined" I don't think it works. Why do none of bloggers special features work for me?]