Author Archives: Pamela

Atlanta, Part 2

Luna, Arky in front, Millie.

Which one do you think barks the most?

Arky, Clover, Millie.

Answer: ALL OF THEM! (But if we were forced to choose, Arky.)

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Atlanta, Part I

MARTA – West End Station.

Beltline — anyone take a look at this and think they would have done it differently? Or differentic?

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Future Apple Pies

This is the last of the Orleans apples mixed with apples from the farmer’s market.

I peel and slice into pie sized bits, mix with sugar and cinnamon and then gracefully fill the freezer bags.

Then I flatten and use a straw to get out extra air and freeze them on a baking sheet.

Then they are in flat, easier to store packets. And this January when we want a pie all I have to do is make a crust, dump, and voila!

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New Critter Alert

One morning I ran into the kitchen to do a step on my bread and I saw 2 deer in my backyard.

!!!

I froze and then moved as smoothly as possible, tiptoeing to grab my phone from my desk. I was afraid motion from the house might scare them off. Sometimes the birds fly away if we’re moving around in the kitchen.

They noodled around out there for almost a half hour — nibbling apple peelings from where I “composted” them in the middle of the garden. They sniffed around the bird feeders.

Then they started chewing on the apple tree.

I don’t care how cute you are or how beautiful your brown eyes are: don’t chew on my apple tree.

I ran out in the yard.

And they stood there and stared at me. They did not flee the yard.

They did stop eating the apple tree.

They finally jumped in the yard next door to nuzzle the fig tree before eventually moving on.

My yard is magical.

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Another Destructor At Work

Hey, what else can I tear apart?

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Too Smart

The little monster in the back has torn a chunk of insulation off our A/C unit and is now wrestling with it.

I recently ran across an article about raccoons — they are smart and learn quick.

There was a study in Wyoming, Wyoming Raccoon Project — Animal Behavior & Cognition Lab where they trapped wild raccoons (And skunks! If they were in this area they would certainly have used my backyard in their study).

Raccoons have adapted well to humans and do fine in an urban environment.

I encourage you to visit the website. There are photos of groggy raccoons and their names. Molasses is particularly cute.

“Molasses was captured in the backyard of a Laramie resident. She is the oldest raccoon we have captured to date! We can age raccoons by the amount of wear on their teeth, and Molasses had very worn teeth. Not to worry- she also had swollen teats which indicates that she bred that summer, so she’s still fit enough to produce offspring!”

I think I’ve said it before but I don’t feed the raccoons. I only put out the water bucket and even that sometimes seems like too much.

My big observation from the trail cam is that our lawn is a delight of earthworms. They walk back and forth pouncing on it which must be the secret to finding the yummiest worms.

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Muscle Car

Completely inappropriate rental car for work trip to N. Idaho. Colleague was so frustrated with the poor service at the rental counter he didn’t want to deal with getting it swapped for something else.

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Sando

Pickle plate and eggplant sando at Tanaka.

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Typeface?

I took these photos at the local Fred Meyer. I thought it was an unusual typeface for a stop sign.

Maybe not. What do I know?

I made it to the 10th. The rest of the month is really busy. I’m going to try to at least schedule posts for Sundays – more if I can.

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Downtown Friends

Why yes, this photo was taken in Portland, Or.

We’ve had a shredding service at the office for a number of years.

At some point during The Plague the shredding company stopped making pick-ups but still billed us.

I probably wrote about this before since it was a giant pain in my boodeenie and caused me endless amounts of rage.

The only way to deal with customer service was to call and the wait times were usually close to an hour. Then the person who answered would pull up your account and try to argue with you that a pick-up occurred. The call center seemed to be located on another continent and nothing like someone on another continent trying to tell you that you had a shredding pick up when you spent the entire day in the office so you wouldn’t miss the pick up and get billed for nothing.

They never offered to reschedule the pick up.

They would credit you. Then maybe the next pick up would show up and you’d think the problem was solved. Until it happened all over again.

The bill wasn’t that much so sometimes I would decide it wasn’t worth my time and energy to call and get credited.

Eventually I cancelled the service and of course then they got a retention person on the phone to find out if there was anything they could do to get me to change my mind.

(Yes, I actually said this.) “Invent a time machine and go back in time and make the pick ups that you billed me for.”

For some reason this banner is still up for the championship match back in December that I am still salty about.

This is a very long prologue to a story about our regular driver from the shredding company who I chit-chatted with whenever he was the pick up driver.

I ran inhto him when I was out and about downtown and he recognized me and asked me if we cancelled. He was always super nice and friendly and clearly as nothing to do with the administrative side. He said a lot of the every-other month customers said their pick-ups were dropped.

We have a new company. They cost more but I don’t care because they are locally owned and they show up when they say they will.

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