Monthly Archives: June 2008

Bob and I recently borrowed some money from a national lending institution. Before they gave us the loan we both had to provide all our information about our incomes and so forth and we both had to sign all the papers stating that we would be responsible for repaying the loan.

You can imagine my irritation when we received a survey about how satisfied we were with the loan process, addressed only to my husband. And in my usual award-winning way, I wrote exactly how I felt about that on the survey form.

Boy, won’t I be embarrassed if I receive another survey form today addressed only to me.

I arrived in Idaho this morning for a 2 day conference thing. Ideally Monday would have been a travel day except I didn’t want to miss a yoga class or take any more time away from the office and there’s a 6am flight from Portland to Boise which seemed ideal at the time and I suppose it was except for the part when my alarm went off at 4am. I am a total morning person and even I thought that was gruesome.

Plus sitting in a conference when you’re already tired is not an easy feat. I was very tempted to live-blog it because I could have made it very funny but unfortunately, it’s not cool to publicly make fun of work. I’ve done this conference before and let’s just say this time was unusually action-packed.

I did something I’ve never done before and I went out and had adventures. Usually when I travel for work, I’m the person sitting in my hotel room eating an apple and watching TV. Co-worker travels to Boise more frequently and said I should try to find the Basque blocks.

The gals at the hotel front desk said that there was a great greenway for walking and if I turned right I’d be on my way downtown. I set off with great optimism. I did grab my raincoat because it was grey, windy and spitting.

I walked for about 40 minutes and didn’t see anything that seemed like downtown. This tunnel said Main Street which sounded promising. And about every mile the greenway had a map and I thought I was gradually making my way toward something. But I was worried about getting lost and also worried about how safe the greenway was. The women at the hotel didn’t hint that I should be cautious but it was pretty isolated and there were a couple people that felt faintly sketchy.

I finally seemed to be making progress and I decided to screw it and keep going. I could take a cab back to the hotel. Once I knew I had a ride I didn’t have to be so concerned about where I ended up. The deeper I got into downtown the better it seemed.

Co-worker talked to me on the cellphone until I found the Basque blocks and the restaurant. This is something I never do: go to a nice restaurant by myself.

I put myself in the hands of the very capable and friendly staff and had a fabulous meal. Took a cab home and now I’m ready for bed.

Guess what started today?

If you guessed the UEFA European Football Championship, you are right.

Sadly, I don’t have time to really “get into” the tournament this year not to mention I’ll be in Seattle during the finals which means if either of my sweetheart teams: Germany or Spain is in the finals, I’m going to have to take dire measures to see the game.

I taped the tournament pre-show and one of today’s games plus one game tomorrow (Germany v. Poland, obvious) and added the daily highlight show to my DVR subscriptions. Also during today’s game they mentioned that there is a friendly between Argentina and the U.S. tomorrow which I also taped even though the idea of having time to watch two complete games tomorrow is out of the question. I still haven’t seen Doctor Who or Battlestar Galactica yet. Plus we have to do some household errands and we’re invited to a house-warming. And I have to finish my story.

It’s hard to be me. I’m going to set my alarm for tomorrow and get up early.

I’m working on a writing project for the writer’s meeting next weekend and since I’ve organized my time poorly PLUS been side-tracked by other obligations, I’m in a crunch so I held today’s game over my head as a big, juicy carrot on a stick to keep me on task. As it turns out, my story is about soccer so my entire day was immersed in soccer. But as usual, it took me way longer than expected just to get the first draft ground out so I didn’t give up until 6pm. That means I spent most of the day chained to the computer and didn’t work on any of the other things I need to do. Oh. Well.

A few brief notes about Euro Cup. The super-annoying Dave O’Brien is not involved. D’oh! I guess he doesn’t get out of bed for any soccer that doesn’t involve the U.S. No problem Dave — you do what you do best which I’m sure has nothing to do with soccer.

Instead we’ve got my favorite commentators ever: Adrian Healy and Tommy Smyth and some new guy named Andy Gray, who is new to me but has a colorful history in sports and looking at that bio, his personal life as well.

ESPN classic is airing the games live. Maybe my recollection is hazy but I don’t recall ever having the Euro Cup live and free on cable. It is obvious that the ad-selling team had a great start with a killer VW ad and another hilarious Honda Pilot ad. Car ads have got to be great coin. But at some point they must have lost steam leading to some desperate sales including something called FungiNail which the commercials tells me “women have trusted for years.” Really? So, men don’t get nail fungus? I don’t know. I’m just telling you what I learned from the ad.

There was also an ad for something called a Grill Daddy which is basically a grill brush with something inside that squirts water. So basically you can squirt some water on your grill and use a brush OR you can have it all in one handy device with the Grill Daddy. Be sure to tell them pamrentz.com sent you.

The game today was awesome. Portugal v. Turkey. I already knew Portugal was a bunch of hotties (hi Nuno Gomes!) but who knew that Turkey fit the bill, too? My favorite Turkish player is named Kazim Kazim. Hm, Wikipedia says his name is Colin Kazim-Richards. I don’t care. Kazim Kazim is one of the best names ever and Turkey lost so not like exaggerating his name gave the team an advantage. There were some slow moments but lots of highlights in this game. The first goal, by a guy named Pepe (see why soccer is so great?) was a particular classic making me wonder once again how anyone can think soccer is boring.

Another classic shot from the 60’s. I’m the one in the red dress.

Remember the Beverly Hills diet? I thought about it because I just peeled and ate an entire (huge carbon footprint) mango. It was delicious.

The Beverly Hills diet was where you ate only one fruit for a whole day. Like one day you’d eat only pineapple. But you could eat as much as you want. Do you have any idea what that does to the inside of your mouth?

I think other days you could eat different fruits for different meals. Like for breakfast as much mango as you want and for lunch as many strawberries as you want.

I’m doing this all from memory so this may not be a 100% correct representation of the diet. Do not begin without consulting your doctor.

If you’ve ever eaten nothing but fruit for a day you can imagine what this does to your digestive system. Nothing dawdles in there for long.

One other thing I remember was that the diet recommended air-popped popcorn as a “natural broom for the system.” Like your system needed a broom after eating pineapple all day. It’s hard to imagine that diet was ever appealing but as I recall it was all the rage and you’d see the book with its little gold pineapples on the cover in every bookstore window.

If you’re curious, abebooks.com has over 500 copies for cheap.

It’s Rose Festival in Portland and that means cold drippy weather and the ships come in.

And this is the best I have to offer.

Yesterday on the way home a Subaru pulled out in front of the bus in the HOV lane. I didn’t see what happened because I was reading my book but that’s what the other passengers said happened. The bus had to slam on its brakes and skidded for a long time and veered to one side and I fell on the floor with all my stuff. I wasn’t hurt but I was embarrassed. Plus I’ve always joked that if there’s ever an accident on the bus that I will probably die and now I’m sure of it. The bus driver stayed cool as a cucumber but the passengers were rioting to chase down that Subaru.

Then I got home and I’d barely put my purse down and the doorbell rang. It was Sierra Club. Whenever these people come to the door they always tell me that it’s important that we do something about the environment and apparently the most important thing that we can do is to hand them a check right then. They have nothing on paper that you can look over and decide later. Also his story waffled a bit because first he said when I joined I’d have all these benefits of membership like a magazine. Then when I objected to giving them money so they could send me tons of crap he said they wouldn’t mail me anything. I sent them on their way.

I don’t give money to people that come to my door except small children selling candy for ballet camp and baseball uniforms.

After dinner I watched an XFiles from the first season called Gender Bender that was good and creepy and included a bit part with Krycek before he became Krycek.

Old Brain

The last thing I did before I left the office last week was leave a note on the top of my desk that says “Inventory?”

I have no idea what that’s for.

I’ve had it sitting by my keyboard all day waiting for that moment of recognition so I could remember to find out about the inventory, or inventory something, or follow up on that pesky inventory question.

Still don’t know what it’s about.