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
Author Archives: Pamela
More Puzzles
Bob didn’t come to California with me due to another family obligation.
He mentioned on the phone that I’d gotten a box he thought was books. I’d ordered something else that was shaped nothing like a book but you never know how stuff is going to be shipped so I didn’t think too much about it.
When I got home there was a huge book-like box and opened it with great curiosity and this is what I found inside.
A ginormous stack of puzzle books.
I definitely didn’t buy these on purpose so I tried to come up with a logical explanation.
This is the same publisher that published my story so my first conclusion was that they were clearing out the warehouse and decided to send their authors puzzle books.
I know. There is nothing logical about that. I was tired yesterday when I got home.
This morning I realized that I just sent Asimov’s money to renew my subscription so now I’m thinking I have a stupid problem to unravel.
I got another puzzle book in the mail today!
Luckily, I come from a family of puzzle-fiends. (No, I’m not kidding.) Too bad these didn’t show up before I went to California.
Vacation Had to Get Away
I’m home.
I had a fabulous trip. Everything about it was perfect except for the last 25 miles of the drive home. There were two car accidents plus tons of road work and it took over an hour. Even the exit to my house was all orange cones for re-paving.
But before that there was awesome company, perfect weather, great swimming, tons of good food, delicious adult beverages, my favorite hike and probably lots I’m forgetting. I wished I had one more day but I was glad I was leaving while I was still having a great time.
I was so busy having fun I didn’t even finish one book.
Now I’m here. I harvested 5 tomatoes. I got green beans, cucumbers and squash from Mom. I’ve got the closest thing to suntan I’ve had in years. (The glare is off.)
And I’ve got a long weekend to enjoy before vacation is really over.
I have tons of email to go through. I probably owe you.
Also I have about 400 photos from this trip plus I’m way behind on Timbers photos. (I’m sure you’ve been concerned.)
Possibly more catch up later or I’ll sit on my butt tomorrow and enjoy goofing off. I’ll see how I feel when I wake up.
Did You Hear That Screaming?
This is the plant that I grew from a seed I saved last year and knocked all the leaves off when I planted it.
Not now. It was last night.
I’m setting this to post after I hit the road on Friday.
This is the Early Girl.
I was doing a major watering so my sweetie doesn’t have to worry about it while I’m gone. I was crawling around because tomatoes like to be watered from the bottom and some pink caught my eye.
This is the German Lunchbox. And you know what? I had lunch at the German Deli today. Babe the pig added for perspective.
Then I took a closer look at all my tomatoes. The ripe ones are in the very middle and tough to spot. The same thing happened last year.
Yeah, home grown tomatoes. Stay tuned for me bitching and moaning about how I have too many tomatoes.
Hitting the Road
When we were in Grants Pass last month we went to this giant kitchen store. The kind of place you could wander around in for hours (if you’re a kitchen store type of person like me and a huge part of my extended family) and find tons of things you want. The kind of place you can’t leave unless you buy something.
I bought this strawberry corer because we didn’t have hours that day so I didn’t have enough time to do more damage.
It took these photos because of the instructions which if you can’t read say: Insert teeth of corer at stem and twist out.
Just in case you weren’t sure how it worked.
I am hitting the road tomorrow for California. The plan is to hang out with family, drink adult beverages, eat yummy food and do some swimming in the river.
I will offline until next week. Don’t do anything crazy while I’m gone.
Posted in doing it wrong, Orleans, pamily
1 Comment
The Alarm: 68 Guns
A corner of Bob’s office.
Yesterday morning I had to catch an early flight that meant I had to get up before 5am. I have a psychological barrier for waking before 5am. 5am is fine but 4:45a sounds horrific.
I set my regular bedside alarm plus I set my cellphone alarm. Then when I got in bed I wondered why I worry so much about missing an alarm.
I don’t think I’ve ever slept through an alarm in my life.
I’ve never missed a plane or been seriously late to school or work because of oversleeping.
I’ve had a couple of incidents where I set the alarm incorrectly or power went off or something like that but I usually wake up myself with enough time to get wherever I have to be.
I suspect my paranoia about oversleeping keeps me from sleeping at all. I don’t think I put together 3 hours of sleep on Sunday night. I made to the airport just fine. (Goodness there are a lot of people running around at 5:30a.)
I spent the rest of the day in meetings trying to stay awake. My method was to be fidgety. I thought there were some voodoo tricks like pinching your earlobes or biting your pinky but those didn’t help. I’m not a caffeine person but at lunch I ordered the smallest possible Coke they would offer me. The server stared at me, then looked at her pad then looked back at me. “You threw me off for a second,” she said.
Because NO ONE in America orders the smallest Coke. I was afraid if I drank too much caffeine I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night and I didn’t want one of those gallon tumblers where most would be thrown away.
The Coke didn’t help much but since I never drink it, it was a delicious treat.
Shut out the light at 8:45p and slept like the dead. Woke up at 5:00 without an alarm.
Posted in doing it wrong, sleepless in Vancouver
2 Comments
Wild Kingdom
It’s been animal kingdom in the backyard tonight.
Toes has been spending so much time back there I should start charging him rent. Every time I go out there I hear his whiny meows and he takes his time crawling out from a shady spot and stretching a bit before coming over and demanding attention. On Friday he got bitey when I wanted to stop.
Also tonight we had squirrely squirrels, Mr. Oranges and Bunny. Bunny lives next door but I think it has a crush on Mr. Oranges because it followed him around my yard and gave me the stink eye when I pet Oranges. Oranges was frisky tonight, too, and doing the bitey thing.
Then there was a dog running around.
I keep hoping I’ll look back there and see something exotic like a white stag or a capybara.
I lost one of my spare pairs of glasses. I have several cheapo pairs that I leave around the house in the kitchen or on the nightstand so I never have to look too far to find glasses. I misplace them all the time and normally I find them right away, usually under my butt. But this pair seemed to have wandered off.
I needed to use advanced search methods. The first thing I did was take apart the bed and while I was at it I vacuumed in all the nooks and crannies. Sure enough it was wedged down between the bedframe and the nightstand and tangled up in the cord for the alarm clock.
My sweetheart is gone for a couple of days and I have the house to myself. Usually when he’s gone, I sleep on my side of the bed out of habit. Last night I decided to sleep in the middle. I woke up in the middle of the night and I was almost horizontal and taking up pretty much the whole space.
Best not make that a habit.
Those are the updates. Thrill a minute around here.
Garden Update
I still have plants that haven’t bloomed and I keep finding dahlias I’ve never seen before. I think I say that every year.
Yesterday I noticed that one of my tomatoes (the German lunchbox) was growing so crazy it was pushing its cage over. I propped it up with another cage. We’ll see how that works. I should probably whack back some of the floppy branches on these plants but I’m so greedy I don’t want to.
The cucumbers seem to be major failure. Again. I started about 12 seeds in the house and half sprouted. Then I put them in the ground and half shriveled up. So I started another batch of seeds in the house with similar results. I put them outside last weekend and they are aggressively turning yellow and sad. Next year I’m going to find turbo cucumber seeds and try that.
What Do You Have to Do To Get A Lamb Burger Around Here?
Pumpkin recipe booklet from the High Desert Museum. Or should that be High Dessert Museum? I’m going to give it a workout if my pumpkin patch works out. It’s not looking very promising at the moment.
Last week co-worker and I went to a lunch restaurant that we haven’t been to in a long time. They served a lamb burger that peeled your face off. They took the lamb burger off the menu and we stopped going there.
One of the food carts made a great lamb burger but then it closed.
We randomly checked the old restaurant last week and lamb burger was back on the menu. We phoned and asked specifically about the lamb burger and they said they were serving it.
Then we got there, ordered the burger and drinks and five minutes later the server returned to tell us there were no lamb burgers.
The server was very apologetic. I would say even too apologetic. We’re not the kind of people to fly into a rage about a dumb burger but she apologized a million times and blamed herself, she should have asked the chef, etc.
Meanwhile we ordered something else and got on with our lives. Except she forgot our drinks . The thing is *we* were embarrassed about bringing it up after the excessive burger apologies. We mentioned it to the busboy who then brought us the wrong drinks. And then she came over to tell us the drinks were on her because of the burger mistake and we clarified what we’d actually ordered and then she just brought one. And never came to our table again until it was time to pay.
It was like this minor thing that didn’t have to be a big deal turned into a weird awkwardville exercise. I don’t think we’ll be going back any time soon which means we still haven’t got our lamb burger fix.
Posted in doing it wrong
4 Comments
Clarion West Write-A-Thon Wrap Up
In honor of the Timbers match tonight, these are sunflowers in my garden. (Here’s the link if you want to get the reference.
Week #6 words: 3099
Stories submitted: 0
Total words written for the entire WAT: 25,020
Total stories submitted: 2
I exceeded my goals.
And, now that I’ve signed the contract, I can announce that I sold one of the stories I submitted.
Yay, the 19 month sales-free drought is finished. (Yes, technically I sold 2 reprints of one of my stories during that time. But, come on, does Limahl call his Mom every time “Too Shy” makes into another 80’s compilation?)
My story “Lottie Versus The Moon Hopper” was accepted into the anthology Future Lovecraft to be published by Innsmouth Free Press at the end of the year. Don’t worry, I’ll announce it a million times when it comes out.
Huge thanks to everyone involved with the write-a-thon, especially my sponsors. I will send you all personal love notes thanking you soon.
It’s never too late to donate. There’s info here and my donation page is here.
Posted in Clarion West
4 Comments
Future Pumpkins
Whenever I’m running around I always think of a ton of things I want to post about. Then when I’m sitting here I can’t remember. I also have tons of notes but then when I sit here I don’t understand them.
Like this one: “white space”
I have no idea.
Also, I finally posted my photos from the Portland Timbers v. Seattle Sounders game.
