archives
categories
story collection
tags
- 12 Days of Christmas
- balls flying in my face
- Beg-A-Thon
- Bob
- book pile
- cats
- clip art
- dahlias
- digestive system
- enough about the roof already
- eternal overachiever
- everyone is stupid
- fukoladola
- getting stuff done
- Have you got a bad back?
- how to
- I hate shopping
- I made this
- leave me alone
- movies
- Ndns
- neighbors
- New Yorker
- nostalgia
- not writing
- other people's kids
- Percy
- pie
- plogic
- Priscilla Recipes
- pumpkins
- recipes
- revisiting old things
- soccer
- squirrels
- Star Wars
- things I hate
- things that aren't really free
- tomatoes
- tragedy
- travel
- wildlife
- wildlife cam
- World Cup
- writing
Monthly Archives: July 2005
Bob’s Secret
We got a coupon in the mail for free panties from Victoria’s Secret and it was addressed to Bob. Should I be worried?
Conversion
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.
Posted in doing it wrong
Comments Off on Conversion
Smells Like Rock Swings
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.
Better Photos
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?)
Personal Belief System
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.
Posted in doing it wrong
Comments Off on Personal Belief System
Movie Geeks
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.
Random Round-Up
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.)
Posted in baking disasters, doing it wrong
Tagged movies, pie crust disaster
Comments Off on Random Round-Up
Nothing Is Free, Ever
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.
Posted in doing it wrong
Tagged killing time, things that aren't really free
Comments Off on Nothing Is Free, Ever
Search Strings
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)
