Omigod. Blogger just burped and lost my post. That hasn't happened in a long time. And I'm not too happy.

We took the train to Astoria on Friday and I just wrote you a damn good summary of the trip and now it's late and I'm mad and don't want to recreate it at the moment. [long string of bad words omitted.]

We got a coupon in the mail for free panties from Victoria's Secret and it was addressed to Bob. Should I be worried?

Regular Yoga Practice May Help Prevent Middle-Age Spread

SEATTLE — July 18, 2005 — A new study led by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has found that regular yoga practice may help prevent middle-age spread in normal-weight people and may promote weight loss in those who are overweight.

Perhaps I will have more success converting people now. In my 9 years of serious practice I've managed to get, I think 3 people, into a class.

Did you know Paul Anka has an album out called Rock Swings with covers of songs like Smells Like Teen Spirit, Wonderwall (one of my fave songs of all time), Jump and Eye of the Tiger? Yeah, I know. Eye of the Tiger. If you have iTunes, charge up the Apple Store and listen to some samples. I'm speechless. And not necessarily in a bad way.

I wasn't going to write about this but screw it. I did totally officially quit writing the weekend before last. And it was simultaneously heart-breaking and liberating. I'd also been in the process of a pretty determined run at law school and I gave that up too. See my touching story in [cheezy women's magazine] "I gave up all my dreams on the same day."

But you know what? This is great. It's all good.

You need to break it all down before you can build it up again and I need to figure out how to see myself in the world without writing or something intended to make up for it.

I've got a great life and work I like and I only have to be there 4 days a week and I don't have kids and I have an independent husband so I can more or less write my own ticket. And when I think of the things I want to do: garden, cook, yoga, draw, photography, learn German -- and so forth. It's all making things and learning. The other afternoon we had an afternoon rain shower and Bob and I were on the back porch inhaling that incredible fresh smell and I danced around like a little kid: "And I'm going to be an interpretive dancer, and an artist and a photographer, and master chef and a ... ."

I've spent so much time not doing things because I was preserving time to write -- which often, I did not do. So now I'm doing those things. Like yesterday I went to Araline's for the annual work party. I was berry vine woman. You could argue that I won, but I am covered from wrist to shoulder and knee to ankle in berry scratches. It looks nasty but I'm sure it's meaningful on some symbolic level.

In the meantime, if I get a yearning to tell a story, I can always drop everything and start writing again. And I do tons of other writing that I like so not like I'm really "quitting."

This past weekend I cleared off my bookshelves and dumped about 90% of my writing books and cleaned out some notebooks and files of saved articles. It's like breaking up with a worthless boyfriend. Toss all that shit. Good bye and good riddance.

Seriously. It's good. Chuck it all right now.

I'm learning to take better photos. I met Hal at a party and he gave me a few tips and then I thought, hey, why don't I actually read the book that came with the camera?

This evening while the sprinkler is going on the garden I took some flower photos which you can view here.

The TV is all effed up because between the dvr box and the tv itself and the combo video/dvd drive -- the magic buttons were not pressed in alignment and all we can do is view video/dvd or snow. Not optimal but hey, a night without TV is like a gift from the gods. Go take pictures of your dahlias.

When we were in Germany at Christmas time for some reason I brought 2 half-dead camera batteries instead of fresh ones so when my battery finally died I had to buy one in Garmisch, a tourist town, with the crappy dollar so it was like a $25 camera battery and I'm thrilled to report it's still going strong. I have two new batteries sitting here but haven't had to touch them yet because the $25 Bavarian battery is kicking ass.

The Tribes are going back to Scotland. BBC link here. (The BBC knows my tribe exists. How cool is that?)

May you be forever touched by his noodly appendage.

Excerpt of an open letter to the Kansas School Board:

I am writing you with much concern after having read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design should be taught along with the theory of Evolution. I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them. ... We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe.

This is what happened at the movies the other night. It's not nearly as interesting now as it seemed when I jotted down the notes.

I arrived at the theater early (planned) and sat on a bench in the shade, enjoying being outside and drawing in my notebook. I noticed some people sitting against the wall and wondered if there was some nerd thing opening that night.

You know the guys. They had lots of electronic gear: cords, earphones, things of various size they were tapping on. Bad skin, the quietly aggressive bearing that those with sketchy social skills possess. Serious faces. No sign of humor in this bunch.

They sat in the shade behind a single canvas band. A man from the theater wearing a mauve shirt and black slacks and a walkie-talkie clipped to his belt came out and told them the screening was canceled. In all theaters.

The guys hop up in passive outrage and get on their cellphones. They take their Suncoast bags and wander off, no doubt to go home and bitch about the situation in a chatroom.

More people arrive for the screening and 15 minutes later another guy comes out to dismiss them.

Turns out the screening for The Island and I immediately develop a theory that the movie stinks and this is damage control. I want the movie to be good. It stars Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson and the premise is fantastic - clones and stuff. "Please don't suck" I thought when I first got a whiff of the trailer. I hope I'm wrong.

None of the people from the canceled screening paid to see another movie. They left.

Later, when Kathy and I went to our movie, (Mr. & Mrs. Smith - very entertaining!) we saw them letting people into the screening which wasn't canceled after all and I felt bad for the filmgeeks who got in line before 5pm and were sent home for nothing.

The Oregonian did a big "any moron can make a pie" pep article with a completely foolproof crust recipe which I tried and had my biggest disaster to date and there was more of it. I was completely fearless about adding water because I read that it depends on how dry the flour is and given my long history of patching together sandy piles of flour, I figured this had to be it.

Nah. Super big pile of sand that I desperately patched together. And she said to use parchment paper when rolling it out and she's a crazy lady because everything that wasn't sand stuck to the parchment paper.

When done, it looked pretty and brown but also I sort of over-baked it because I was doing too many things in the kitchen at once. Have you ever done this? You hear your timer and you think, okay I'm just going to finish doing this — whatever and wash my hands and then grab that thing out of the oven then suddenly 10 minutes have gone buy and you're like: oh shit! That's what happened.

The crust was way too tough. I could tell the minute I tried to put a knife into to take out the first piece. It's perfectly edible, but still not right. My next tactic is to buy a kitchen scale and exactly measure my ingredients. Maybe that will help.

***

Also this week I dreamed that I read the new Harry Potter in paperback. It was a small throwaway book and I didn't know what all the fuss was about.

***

Last night Bob and I watched an incredible movie called The Sea Inside. It won the Oscar for best foreign film and I'm not going to lie, it's a tough one. But it's beautifully made and fantastic acting and an amazing trio of women characters supporting Javier Bardem. Worth the effort.

***

This is an item about movie theaters that is good food for thought. This guy suggests that theaters offer monthly passes so that for a flat rate, a person could see as many movies as he or she wants. The idea being that people will try more movies they wouldn't ordinarily see. For me, I'd be more likely to go to movies on weeknights because I'm too cheap to pay full movie price and usually go only to matinees. But here's why it wouldn't work. First I'm not sure how the box office would be reported and whether Hollywood would like that comingling of $$$). Second, when you went to the movies people would be more likely to go in and out and try different things which would severely diminish quality of experience. I personally go to less movies because I don't like dealing with parking, crowds and jackass people who talk and are noisy.

Here are some super cool pictures of clouds.

And finally, here is a HILARIOUS story about an illegal copy of Revenge of the Sith and the subtitles. (added: looks like this site might be down and I don't have the inclination for research right now, so good luck.)

I was going to tell you a funny story of something that happened at the movies last night but meanwhile, this other thing has happened that's got my panties in a twist so I'm going to tell you about that instead.

If you haven't already learned this, write it down now: NOTHING is free.

Earlier in the week I signed up for a "free" informational class on this thing I'm looking into and I figured it would give me a good overview and I could make a decision about taking other classes or whatever. They didn't tell me what room to go to so I used my online signup number to check the class listing but first I had to fill out a screen (data mining) and then they still didn't show a room number so I had to call. Now I'm on their marketing list (eff-me!) for taking classes. They called me at work (cell) to talk about it. I told the guy I had some thinking to do and calling me wasn't going to help me make up my mind. He said he'd make a note of it.

The other one is worse. The last two years I have been discretely obsessed with Big Brother which is a dreadful reality show that can suck up huge amounts of your summer. They have cameras in the house and you can subscribe for 24 hour access -- which I have never done.

This year I didn't even pretend I wasn't going to watch the show: I was looking forward to it and I decided to try the livefeeds to see what it was like. They had an offer for 14 days free and then $12.99 a month so I figured it wasn't too bad and I signed up. The feeds are hard to watch. They don't work that great on DSL -- perhaps higher speed is better. I can get audio but the picture is wonky and not like watching TV. And listening to people who are doing nothing but killing time grows boring fast. What's worse than being locked in a house doing nothing but plotting to get rid of everyone else? Watching people locked in a house doing nothing but plotting against each other.

It wasn't worth it so this morning I logged in to cancel my free pass before it expired.

But you can't cancel your pass online. You have to click through a couple of screens and they give you a phone number which immediately ticked me off but I marched to the phone to take care of it now.

This guy was NOT going to let me cancel my account. This is such an abhorrent business practice to hand out "free" things to your customers and then beat them up when they don't want to pay for them later. I went through the same thing with the phone company once.

The service that provides the Big Brother feeds provides other services as well: games and music and news. I don't really know because I don't need to pay $12.99 a month to spend more time sitting around my computer. The guy gave me the full sales pitch but I didn't really listen because I was canceling my account which is what I told him: again and again and again. I give him credit because he was flawlessly polite except WTF: I want to cancel my account. These people have my credit card number. What was I thinking?

He wanted to give me another month for free so I could check out their services which is again, a clever and sneaky business practice because most morons are going to forget to cancel and get dinged.

No, I said. I want to cancel my account now.

This went on and on. I finally began to yell into the phone: Cancel my account NOW. I want to cancel NOW. If you can't cancel my account NOW, transfer me to someone who can.

He seemed to get it after that and I received a cancel confirmation so I think I'm good.

A selected list of actual search strings that ended up at my website:

--quotes freaks and geeks farting in bed (oddly this one came up twice)

--arco gas station pay inside buy food (what was s/he looking for?)

--bang trim tip (can you learn to cut hair from a website?)

--big gollz (was this due to a funkz German kezboard?)

--billy barquin (stalker or ego surfing?)

--dropkick imac (wow, others want to dropkick their unruly technology)

--filmpark babelsberg berlin (yay, I hope they go there)

--how can i tell if buttermilk is bad (this one shows up every month)

On Sunday I went to the U.S. v. Ukraine soccer game at Univ. of Portland, with Aunt Margaret and Aunt Betty. A ball flew into the stands and I touched it. I watched this ball flying up and I'm thinking, please, please don't get near me (because I don't like large groups of strangers looking at me, especially if I have a bloody nose because a soccer ball hit me in the face). I didn't even want to have to deflect it but it became necessary -- although the people next to me did most of the work.

But that's not all the excitement because we got to see Tiffeny Milbrett (formerly of UOP) score her 100th goal and we got to see Tina Frimpong, from Vancouver, make her debut. The Ukraine did not play so hot and when we got home, Bob said that the TV said that they'd had a ton of delays and had only arrived in the US the night before and were playing on tiny fragments of sleep which is a shame.

Another shame is the terrible, terrible pep song that the stadium played when the U.S. scored a goal. It sounded like a cross between Bob Seger and an American truck commercial and went something like: "Goal! Goal! Goal! For the red white & blue."

Another major shame was the grey haired lady behind us who could not resist the urge to talk during the ENTIRE game. She talked about the game filling us all in on various details, it was just like being there. Except we were. She also was a well fed lady and I thought it was a little nervy of her to so loudly comment on the women who she viewed as being, "not very fit."

Overheard (after a whistle blows):
Boy:Why don't they stop?
Mom: Because this is a real sport. Not like baseball.

This is a simplified version of a long story of this thing I'm dealing with right now.

Several times in the last many years I have considered "quitting" writing. I'd still jot notes and keep a notebook and write things here. But I'd quit writing fictional stories with an intent for sale. Previously, this idea caused me a great deal of distress.

But I had this notion again a few months ago and I tell you it was like the promise of a monkey off my back. Imagine waking up Saturday morning and not thinking about sitting at my desk all morning trying to do something that other people will like. My best writing time is 6am to Noon so I prefer to avoid anything that will distract me during that time including not staying up too late the night before. I took this idea to the extreme: imagine getting rid of all these stupid writing books on my shelves and emptying out my files of articles and ideas. And all the things I could do with that time instead: cooking, actually gardening vs. just trying to keep things under control, watching sports, visiting with friends. The list goes on.

A big part of my issue is that, particularly in the last year or so, I have begun to loathe writing. It's like pulling teeth to get my butt in the chair every time. Only 1 out of 3 times do I even manage to produce anything or perhaps experience a moment or two of enjoyment. Who does things for recreation that she hates?

But it bothers me that I now hate something I used to love so much and I know at least partly why and I don't want to get into a 20 screens of my whole inner psychology, I'm trying to sort this whole thing out.

The point of this post, is that since I had this idea, that I might officially quit this exercise in humiliation and disappointment, I have had two new acquaintances ask to read my manuscript without any urging from me. This is almost as much interest as I had when I actively tried to market the stupid thing.

This morning I cleaned out my writing box -- archived stuff that sits in the garage -- tracking down the most recent versions and in the bundles of papers I found all kinds of notes of encouragement.

I don't know. I haven't made up my mind yet.

Have you ever looked at the washing instruction labels in your clothes and found only little symbols? Did you wonder WTF do these things mean? I know that big X means I'm not supposed to do something, but what does a triangle mean? Well, here is a guide. Triangle means bleach -- I don't think that's intuitive at all. My guess was dryer. Drying instructions are the square.

About a week ago we got a free promotional item in the mail, something called clothespin chopsticks which I had no idea what I was supposed to do with. Just now when I checked the website, I learned that they are "chopsticks with training wheels." But they're made out of cheap plastic and I can't imagine using them for eating. I thought it was a super big clothespin and couldn't imagine any scenario where I might use it. The website also says they are out of clear: probably because they mailed them to everyone in a 60 mile radius to invite them their "private preview party" for a store about to open in Bridgeport Village.

This is a store about storage and organization which is pretty much what I live for but I'm not going to drive 30 miles to go to a store. Especially a store in a giant complex of stores, restaurants and multiplex (isn't that a mall?) which really means giant parking lot crowd scene from hell. And note I assume this is what Bridgeport Village is. Honestly I don't know for sure since tracking retail developments is pretty much something I don't live for.

If you'd like clear clothespin chopsticks, contact me now. Supply limited.

This morning we went and picked up Margaret and went to the Farmer's Market. I bought too many things last week so I had to restrain myself. Just last night I finally cooked my beets. I have a beet soup recipe with ginger that I discussed on this site earlier but since the search function is worthless, I don't know when and can't link to it. The short version is that I made it with pickled beets and it was dreadful. I've been meaning to try it again. Too bad now I don't have ginger.

We stocked up on berries and cherries. Also we ended up at a booth with all kinds of weird fruit I got some regular peaches plus some donut peaches and apriums (not to be confused with a pluot). We also got crab for tomorrow night's dinner and I got apples to make a pie for a certain person who is having a birthday next week.

I checked the turnip guy but no turnips today. I asked him last week about turnip season because raw turnips are one of my favorite foods. Earlier this week on our way to the Portland downtown farmer's market with the law clerk I mentioned this and she said, "You don't hear that often." Turnip guy told me he has turnips year round which is fantastic news. He just didn't have them this week.

Another topic for discussion is this article from the paper yesterday about this baby boom in Florida, nine months after one of the hurricanes knocked out power for three days. Some guy was saying how, power is out, what else are you going to do? Well last time I checked, using birth control and having power are two completely independent operations. It's not like, oh darn, the fridge is out and the birth control is ruined. We'll just have to do without. Do these people normally never do it but with the power out, here was the perfect excuse? I don't get it. And I would provide you with a link but the damn AP had popup ads and registration. What is up with every Tom, Dick and Harry on the Internet wanting you to register to look at their crap? I have a card by my computer with about 35 usernames and passwords (not the important ones like the bank) so I can keep them straight. Every time I try to adopt a permanent password then a site limits me to 6 characters, no 8 characters, no 6 but 1 has to be a number. And so forth. I generally either don't visit the site, get a password from bugmenot.com or I make something up and use it only that once.

Here's an article about the new male infantilism and I'm not sure I get it. Is it really a thing, just because someone says so? Excerpt:

Where a Scotch-sozzled Big Bruiser once ran onto the fire escape with a roar, rolling up his or her sleeves to challenge the whole U.S. of A. to step outside, now a smallish fellow in a knit cap and woolen sweater sits in the corner with a box of chocolate milk, giggling at his own inadvertent burps.

Finally, in honor of Bob, here's a link to the Grateful Dead's last show, 10 years ago today.

I've been having intermittent problems with my email lately -- and little interest in problem solving. Some stuff is getting through so please try again.

Priscilla got a new knee last week. The surgery was on Thursday.

On Sunday night we visited with her at the hospital until visiting hours were over. The nursing staff was changing over and we never saw the replacement.

Yesterday Priscilla told me that shortly after we left a nice young man with big brown eyes and curly brown hair came into her room and announced that he was her nurse. (I think the appropriate term is certified nursing assistant.) He told her he was 24.

About an hour later he returned and told her it was time for a bath. Priscilla said, "Oh no it's not."

I told her I would have demanded a bath.

She went home yesterday morning and Bob's been the nurse (no bath). But he's been helping get her meals and with her physical therapy exercises and stuff like that. Tomorrow Margaret arrives and will take over for awhile.

I had dinner over there tonight and was hoping Pris might do a pirouette or something but she's not quite there yet.

I do not understand why I cannot make pie crust.

I made a pie yesterday and bravely rolled out crumbled flour and by sheer force of will strong-armed it into the pie plate and patted scraps onto the top.

I made another pie today and I used *a different recipe* and again, only my determination made the thing hold together.

I read every "secrets of pie crust" recipe, article, side bar and website I come across. I have watched numerous others make pie crust even in my own kitchen using my own stuff. I have this problem at all times of year whether it's cold or hot. I chill my water and fat within an inch of its life. I've used different kinds of flour.

I am possibly a bit timid with the water -- but I thought you were supposed to be careful with the water. And by timid, I mean when it says to add, say 4 tablespoons and then if you need more, add it one more at a time, I add at least 2 more. Shouldn't that be plenty? I guess not. Fat and/or water would seem to be what my pie dough lacks.

It's not like the pies don't taste good, but it's not a lot of fun, scraping up flour crumbs and trying to patch the whole thing together.

Do you ever do this? After you've been super busy and you finally have time to do all these things you've been wanting to do, but you can't seem to do anything except sit there and think about all these things?

That's where I'm at this weekend.

My horoscope told me that I would have good news about finance today. I just found my bank statements and realized I hadn't balanced my checkbook last month. If good news means finding a huge error to the tune of several hundred dollars not in my favor: then that horoscope was right on.

Fireworks were always illegal in the places I grew up and when I first got up here I thought it was fantastic all the cool stuff you could buy. Now, years later, when I've had time to grow older and crankier, I think fireworks should be banned everywhere except a special place where all the people who like the noise and mess can shoot them off at each other whenever they want, far away from civilization.

Also, random story from yesterday. On our way home we were behind a nondescript white Honda with a bright shiny bling bling gold chain linked license plate frame with an inscription: My Honda.

I said to Bob: Who would go through all the trouble to get that fancy thing and then put: My Honda.

He decided some 16 year old kid.