Monthly Archives: June 2007

I’ll start with people who aren’t doing it wrong. The yummy deli in downtown Vancouver is called La Bottega and right this moment I am full with treats from their delicious lunch menu. (That website could use just a teeny bit of cleaning up. Maybe I can offer to trade for food!) It’s a deli, it’s a wine shop, it’s a sit down restaurant that was SRO today for lunch. We shared a grilled pesto salmon salad and a large serving of smoked mushroom ravioli and I picked up a couple pounds of ravioli to take when I visit my Mom and Dad. It’s located on Main in the old Hank’s Tavern.

So in the category of people are assholes item # 1430. On Wednesday as I took my yoga clothes out of the trunk I noticed that there was some peeling paint on the rear bumper. Remember back in April I took the car in and got all this body work taken care of and it was three different claims. Someone hit me, someone hit-and-run and I, uh, scraped something. I’m not obsessive but I like to take care of my things and the car was starting to feel like a dented tuna can so I finally took care of it and after all the deductibles and taxes and charges and extra charges, let’s just say it cost about the same as one paycheck on a bi-monthly payday schedule.

I drove by the bodyshop today to have them check out the peeling paint and turns out my car was hit again. He showed me where you can see on the bumper how something hit it hard enough to make the bumper (plastic) bend and crack the paint. Then I remember that when I pulled out on Wednesday, the car behind me (remember we have tandem parking) was a Hummer. Probably didn’t even feel hitting my car. Thanks guy! Or gal!

I hate to ignore it because what’s a small bit of peeling paint now is no doubt going to be a crap looking bumper three months from now. I asked the body shop if there was a temporary fix so it wouldn’t get worse. I know zero about car bodies but there must be some sort of something they could seal it with. If there is, there was nothing they were willing to do for me without a claim and an estimate. So there you go. I don’t want to spend any more money the bumper of a 2001 car with 75,000 miles on it.

Next item. My dear husband turned 50 in March and one of his relatives thought it would be funny to get him a membership in AARP. As a spouse, I’m a member, too. I’m still in the process of owning the whole middle age thing. I don’t want to be a member of a retired people club. Especially since the retired people club has been blitzing us with piles of unsolicited mail for insurance and crap like that.

I’m hardcore on not getting junk mail and catalogs and we get very little. This afternoon I decided to log into their webpage and drop them a note opting out of all these mailings. And of course there are only two ways you can contact AARP: mail and phone. Evolve or die, AARP!

So I phoned and here’s where they invested their technology dollars: a phonebot to answer the phone. Remember how much I loved the Sears phonebot? It was awful. It was like reading my request one letter at a time. I got tired of dicking around and pressed the magic zero and my bot said, “I’m sorry. You didn’t answer my question about what you had for lunch. If you had baloney and cheese, say: baloney and cheese.”

I screamed: “I want to talk to a person!” (I really did shriek very loud so imagine a cat in a blender type voice when you read the above.) And the bot said, “Would you like to speak to a customer service representative?” And I said “Yes!” and she said, “I’ll get someone to help us.” And that is not a typo or error, the robot said she’d get someone to help us.

Aside, and I wish I could find the URL, but recently I saw an article online said that often phonebots are programmed to recognize swear words so if you tell the phonebot to f-off, it will transfer you to a person.

Dimitri came on the line and was happy to help me out with my request and supposedly, that problem solved. So what you learned here is that if you don’t want to talk to a phonebot try screaming and swearing. The laugh you get when it works will diffuse your frustration.

Final item of the day. You know how there are stereotypical categories of certain types of cars and driving behavior? The aggro pick-up truck that can’t go less than 25 MPH over the posted limit who zooms up on your bumper and terrorizes you and giving you about three seconds to change lanes before swerving around you and then flipping you the bird like you’re the bad guy? Also the driver is a guy wearing a baseball cap. The pushy Subaru that absolutely has to get in front of you even if you’ve already let a car in or have to slam on your brakes but then gives you a wave like we’re all so friendly driven by a woman with bobbed hair and a Labrador in the back? The luxury sedan with the person on the cellphone drifting around in the lane and not aware of the concept of turn signals? I have a new one to add: the lame Prius driver. Hello! You aren’t going to save the planet by ignoring your accelerator. (It’s not getting any greener! ha!) Or hey, I’m giving you close to three car lengths, go ahead and change lanes. You’re safe. Jeez.

On the way to lunch the elevator stopped and the UPS man *and* the Fed Ex man got on. “Whoa!” I said. “Isn’t this like when Superman goes back into the past and he can’t be in the same room with past Superman or the Universe will implode?” And the UPS man said: “It’s not that bad.”

Research show people who worry a lot are more likely to develop memory problems than happy, shiny people. Great. One more thing to worry about.

Hey, remember the half price rose I bought? I didn’t have huge hope for it but it is the source of the peachy looking rose. The bush is about 3 feet shorter than the other roses but it’s blooming and no other roses are close to that color. Ah. Personal satisfaction from gardening.

Meanwhile, I think I’ve wrung all the entertainment I can get out of that dahlia. Now that it’s here, I have to say, it’s not my favorite. It looks like a carnival rather than something based in nature. But the pink one. Gorgeous. I’m calling it the lotus dahlia.

I’ve had this funny little bump on my left foot on the outer part of the heel. Just like a very faint blister and whenever I have bare feet and my left foot is folded in my lap, I rub it.

Today I noticed that it was bigger and possibly a bit hard and even hurt a teeny bit. I think it’s a plantar wart.

As soon as I realized that I thought, “Great, a blogging story,” because one time I had a horrific plantar wart, partly my fault because I was young and didn’t really clue in there was a problem until it was very advanced and it hurt to put my shoe on. This was back in the 80’s and we couldn’t diagnose things on the Internet. And I should clarify the treatment was horrific, the plantar wart was just big and painful.

But just out of curiousity, I did a little search and already wrote about this in 2001 when apparently I had a plantar wart outbreak. Also on the left foot. Funny, I have zero recollection of this. Is this what getting old is like? Thank God for blogging. I got rid of them back then, I can do it again. No cause for alarm. I wish I wrote what I did to cure it. Hopefully that stuff you buy at the grocery store because that’s what I’m going to do this time.

It Doesn’t Look Like It Knows What It’s Doing
I can’t blame it though, we’ve had some fairly violent rain today. Who’d want to bloom in that? I’m glad I wasn’t out watching a soccer match.

I spent the past two days working on a writing project and I’m reminded how much time this sucks up. And, now my brain feels like mush. There were rewarding moments, too, but I’m not close to finished so I’m going to shower and see if I can grind at it until dinner.

Last night we had two giant salmon steaks from Alaska courtesy of coworker. I made Auntie’s secret barbecue sauce which includes butter, lemon juice, garlic, butter and a few flavorings. The main ingredient is two cubes of butter. The sauce smelled fantastic and should be made into perfume or room spray. I told Bob we could dip our shoes in it and they would taste terrific.

I expected my digestive system to revolt terribly after the butter assault but nope, we did fine. There’s a utensil in the dishwasher that still smells delicious so I can pull it out and close my eyes and dream of yummy salmon.

Dahlia Watch Continues
Look, there’s a purply-pink dahlia in the background that’s kicking its ass. I think when this thing finally blooms it’s going to be as big as my head.

The other day I wrote that when people say they don’t read, I can’t understand what that means.

I recently read an interview with an up-and-coming young singer and she said she never eats vegetables. I find this equally alarming. What does she mean? She won’t eat Brussels sprouts or boiled cabbage? Or never. Like, not even salad? Does she eat fruit? I can’t imagine not eating vegetables. I finely dice carrots and turnips and add them to my chili.

[That sound that you hear is 3/4s of the population of Texas keeling over at my blasphemy with chili.]

You know when you’re on a road trip and you’ve been eating pizza and burritos for a few days and when you finally find a decent salad somewhere you’re practically weeping with relief? Sometimes if I’m eating a lot of junk food and feel sort of blucky I eat a carrot and feel about 90% better.

—

There’s a wildly popular online retailer that I’m not going to mention by name but I have made it a point of pride to avoid doing business with them. Then my local retail situation changed and online retailer bailed me out in a pinch once so I’ve turned to them a couple of times.

God, they’re lame.

Let’s say you find an item you might want, you’ll see a little highlighted area where they tell you if you buy in the next few hours, it could be in your hands two days later. Then you order stuff and find out that super fast delivery costs about 150% of what you’re saving by using this online store. So you figure on regular delivery and you do your order. Then at the last minute they say something about how this order can’t ship for a few days. Huh? Well, you think you’ve lived this long without it, a few more days don’t matter.

Then comes the day when you buy a gift over TWO WEEKS in advance, you do your checkout and all is well except that today, close to a week later, you get a notice that part of your order has shipped — just part, not even the whole thing but don’t worry, they won’t charge you for extra shipping — and that they expect it to arrive about a week after the date you need it for your gift. WTF?

If I use these people again, please beat me with a stick.

—

Finally, our neighborhood does an annual yard sale day and zillions of families have a yard sale at the same time so people can troll the neighborhood and stop and find sales on every street corner. I’m not sure how it’s organized because I was never aware of this until last year when a friend who lives in the neighborhood adjacent asked me what date the big neighborhood sale was and I said, “Huh?”

This weekend is the weekend and I only know this because on the way back from the Farmer’s Market this morning we passed about 15 yard sales. Our neighbors across the street had one going.

I’m not a garage sale person. Give or visit. No specific reason, just not my thing. I was surprised by the constant stream of cars all day long. I sat outside and read my book for awhile so I could study it up close.

More than half the cars were super nice, new, expensive cars. Yeah, I realize that garage sales are for everybody I was just surprised by the giant shiny SUVs and pickups and the tuna boat sized Cadillac. The other observation I have is that the average visitor didn’t seem to take much effort in parking. They’d just stop about 4 feet from the curb, often blocking our driveway or the driveway across the street and get out and start looking around. It wasn’t like they were there for very long but still, how hard is it to park at the curb?

I love to get rid of stuff. Maybe we can do this next time.

The Plumber Saved Our Lives

Look at this stinker, holding on for dear life as if blooming was a crime. If I was a flower and my person ran out into the yard twice a day and looked at me and pleaded with me to bloom, I’d go for it. I wouldn’t linger in this stunted phase. I bet there’s some sort of lesson here like I’m supposed to ask myself: where am I holding on instead of blooming? Come on already, flower. We all want to see you in all your glory.

There’s a new deli in Vancouver and I’d love to link to an URL but I only know the name phonetically: La Bottega. It was Bob’s idea to pick up dinner there and he gets 100 gold stars. This place is fantastic! He got a sampler of tons of lunch meats. But that’s not all. They have soups — which you can buy frozen. I like to make soup and don’t think it’s a big burden and find most purchased soup to range from icky to works-in-a-pinch. Bob brought home a frozen jug and then a sampler for tonight.

It was called something like hot portabella mushroom and it was lick the bowl without embarrassment fabulous. He says they also have frozen entrees. I’m so excited about this place. I don’t mind if it costs a bit if you can have something delicious to eat when you’re too tired or busy to cook yourself. I’ll find out their name and address so that just in case one of my three loyal readers is passing through Vancouver, WA one day, they can support this fabulous business.

Today the plumber came to fix the leak under the sink. I can’t remember if I wrote about this already. One day I noticed that all my cleaning materials under the kitchen sink were floating in a little lake. This happened the same day as my alarm was on the fritz and I was all worried that venus was transiting uranus and all my mechanical stuff was going to hell.

This was cool plumber guy who replaced our faucet. It’s all shiny now. We had a bad O-ring or something like that. Maybe multiple O-rings. And we got a new squirty thing. Then I wiped underneath the sink and put all my cleaning stuff back and it’s all good.

When you have someone coming to your house to install or fix something, do you worry about making an impression? I don’t worry about having a spotless house because on the worst of days my house is still a B+ but I worry about looking lazy. Isn’t this crazy? I always want to look busy, like I’m in the middle of an important project. Sweeping the garage or revising the Magna Carta.

This is so sad to admit but I even worry what the mailman thinks. Like I’m so sure he’s walking around keeping tabs on what people are doing. I think watching TV in the middle of the day is egregiously lazy. Unless you’re sick. Then guilt free TV for days! But it’s like I’m really getting away with something if I turn on the TV in the afternoon and if I hear the mailman, I mute the TV so when he puts the mail through the slot he doesn’t hear the TV and think, “Swine!” Especially if it’s sunny out.

Hot Italians
Look at my potatoes. And turnips although the turnips aren’t too wonderful at this point. They get wormy and woody and have a weird tang.

On Tuesday night we went to an exhibition soccer game between the Portland Timbers and AC Milan Primavera AC Milan’s under 21 team. I love to watch cute Italian boys playing soccer and these did not disappoint, although they were all born around the time I running around the Sunset Strip chasing after hair bands. The Timbers are cute, too and some of them were even born in the 70’s so I can oogle without feeling like dirty old grandma.

When we planned to go to this game, we invited Priscilla and Aunt Betty. Then it turned out Bob had a work thing in Spokane and wouldn’t be home until 7pm the night of the game. We asked at least a half dozen people and couldn’t find anyone to take the ticket so Bob decided he would take the train from the airport to the stadium, find my car and dump his bag, and meet up with us late.

I killed time at the office until 5:30 and then moved my car closer to the stadium. It was still early so I went in the park and figured I have something to eat and drink and kick back and watch the boys warm up. I had what had to be the nastiest bratwurst on the planet. I’ve been spoiled by the farmer’s market sausage sandwich of the millennium. This thing had a soft squishy bun like the kind that sticks to the top of your mouth and the only choice was regular yellow mustard which, to use a new expression that I learned, tastes like Satan in my mouth. I like spicy brown. And the sausage itself was greasy and texturally challenged. I almost chucked it after one bite except I paid $5 for it and I wanted a cold beer and I am finally old enough to have figured out that drinking and not eating = bad. I picked around the mushy bread and ate most of it and then got a $7 Italian beer that was featured at the park.

I had about two sips and then there was this tragic thing that happened that would take too long to explain but I fell (completely and totally sober) and a large splash of beer went up into the air. And of course this happens when we’re sitting in the front row so I turned to the fans and say, “Wait ’til you see what I have planned for the half.” The bad weenie and fall/beer spray set an off tone for the evening.

I did enjoy the game. The Timbers’ mascot is Timber Jim a lumberjack who runs around with a chainsaw. I’m not making this up. It seemed to amuse the Italians. Our seats were over the dugout where there’s a wide concrete ledge (with a puddle of my spilled beer) so Timber Jim came up and did his thing right in front of us. Is it safe to wave around a chainsaw over people’s heads? It was so close we could smell the gasoline. Then he did his drum thing about 2 feet from my face. And damn I didn’t have my camera with me. Timbers won on penalty kicks. I’m not clear why an exhibition match needed to go to a penalty shootout, but it was fun to watch.

Questions Answered

1. There must have been a power incident on Sunday because the answering machine and the computer for the digital cable were screwed up. I think this is why my alarm didn’t work yesterday.

2. I talked to my neighbors last night and they said it’s fennel and it’s taking over.

3. Last fall I emptied my compost bin into the garden and dug it under. Unexpectedly, I’m growing potatoes. Coincidence?

4. I wrote this whole thing about not writing stuff about people that might make them feel bad and then yesterday wrote an uncomplimentary post about my ex. boyfriend the Amway actor with the crap car. Perhaps I lied.

5. That dahlia is hanging on for dear life. Last night I went out there and one tiny petal had come loose. It’s supposed to be 80’s today and there better be a flower when I get home.