Author Archives: Pamela

Here’s Bob’s write-up on Michael Pollan.

As it turns out we’re going to another lecture tonight. Dr. Terence Love. Bob got these tickets at school so the content will be a big surprise for me. Here’s a quick quote:

Holistic Design: A Philosophical Framework

Holistic design of products, services, systems, and organizations depends on the objective material opportunities but even more on our inner subjective, emotional life. We are both the creative designers and aesthetic participants in those designs.

I don’t even understand what that means. Usually when I have low expectations I end up enjoying the lecture. We shall see.

It’s nice to get out and do stuff but all this getting home late coupled with an intensive work project all week has me feeling a bit fried.

The newsletter is 10 minutes away from being finished. I just need to proofread and check some links and I can cross that off my list. I want to make tomorrow a computer free day because I really need it. So unless I’m feeling spunky when I get home tonight: Saturday the dang newsletter will be finished.

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Equal Opportunity for Humiliation

In the past several years I’ve talked to a number of women my age who participate in adult women soccer leagues. It’s come up twice in the past month. They all insist it’s super fun and since I’m such a soccer fan I should try it.

When I protest that I’m not athletic they say no one is, it doesn’t matter. When I suggest my overachiever will kick in and I will want to train. They say, no you won’t, no one does. It’s a good workout. It’s fun.

I have never enjoyed playing team sports. I’m not good at kicking, hitting, aiming or catching. I prefer to beat people by being smart, mean and better organized, not by knocking them out of the way.

I never liked P.E. I remember starting sixth grade middle school a few years after that Title IX Equal Education whatever passed and we had to do P.E. with boys. Thanks a lot Patsy Mink. I dreaded that hour. Let’s take someone timid and uncoordinated and make them play with boys. It seems like we did sports with just girls, too, which I also didn’t like. I’ve lost a lot of brain cells since then. It’s hard to remember.

I did like gymnastics. And I have this memory of spending week after week in the gym during the Saturday Night Fever era and doing The Hustle (my new favorite wikipedia entry. I hurt my chin when I fell on the floor laughing). Could that be possible?

Back to team sports. It’s hard for me to get past those memories and think that all this time later I could try playing soccer and I’d have fun doing it. I have to admit I’m curious in a “doing something outside my comfort zone” way and I could use the exercise but I don’t need to add any more activities to my roster at the moment.

Here’s Bob’s review of bluegrass. He got some wonderful photos, too.

I swear I blogged about this a long time ago but where did all the old doctors go?

I had the same primary care doctor for at least 12-14 years. She moved on this summer but since my health insurance was changing with the new job I waited until now to deal with it. I’m looking at the clinic physicians and they’re all fresh-faced children. Aren’t there any doctors over 40?

This is a photo of my Dad’s workshop. I took a bunch of great ones over Thanksgiving but realize I neglected to post. More to come.

Bluegrass was super fun today and I will link to Bob’s review when he does it because he took photos and knows more about bluegrass than I do.

I loved all the music but my favorite band of the day was Steep Canyon Rangers. I’d love to make a joke about names of bluegrass bands but I’m tired and need to get to bed. I leave it to someone else.

But here’s a quick story. The Steep Canyon guys introduced a number like this: “We got any NASCAR fans out there?” Dead silence. Then maybe two people politely clapping. “Oh, great. Well, you’re going to love this one. I can tell.”

For the record, it was a great song and we all loved it.

Two super long days ahead.

But remember the holiday newsletter? You know, the one from Christmas 08? Yeah, it’s at about 98 percent. Don’t fret. This week. I promise.

The bunny showed up in the backyard again this morning. I haven’t seen him since the first of the year and assumed he’d moved on. I’ve decided to call him Bunny Carlos (in case you don’t get the reference). Our weed-choked lawn must be delicious. If he eats slugs, I will encourage him to breed.

For my one loyal reader who isn’t near the PAC NW, it might interest you to know that our state is completely ruined with flooding and mudslides. Washington Department of Transportation has a blog , Twitter and Flickr. Go WSDOT with the technology.

This photo set shows where Interstate 5 was shut down. I guess it’s open now for truck traffic and will open for passenger traffic later. Yikes. At Trader Joe’s this morning they said their truck couldn’t get through and I noticed the produce and meat sections were pretty scanty. Have I ever mentioned my fear of food riots? Just as a conceivable scenario. I’m not worried about it at the moment. No need to go into it now.

It’s my goal to get the holiday newsletter (you know, the Presidents’ Day holiday) done today. We’ll see how I do. I’m feeling pretty squirrely.

Tomorrow is writers group at my house and Sunday is bluegrass.

For a very long time I was adamant that I had a blog and I had Flickr. I wasn’t going to join any more online things. Then after CW I thought I should do that Live Journal thing – but 99.9% of the time I just cross-post what I post here.

Then succumbed to more peer pressure and joined Facebook. It’s a fine idea but at the end of the day, it’s just one more thing to log into and fritter away my time.

So now I’m looking at Twitter. I can see the appeal. Bob and I want to switch to iPhones next year so maybe I’ll do it then.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking I should open a Twitter page for Roger the guy in the office next door.

Sample posts:

“Wow, what a cough. Someone give Roger a cough drop.”

“Smells like Dinty Moore for Roger again today.”

“Just signed for Roger’s office supplies. Looks like a giant box of tape.”

I’m on new benefits plans as of the first. They sent me my cards in October and I very carefully put them in a safe place so I could find them at the first of the year.

I bet you can see where this story is going.

I’m not sure where else to look and I’m paranoid that, NOW, I’m going to keel over in the street and since I don’t have a current insurance card they’re going to leave me in the gutter. And everyone will see me with my mouth hanging open.

For many, many years of my life I wished to work from home or be independently wealthy. I thought that sitting around the house all day would be fantastic. Especially if I could make a living writing.

For my first job out of college, I actually liked the work but the owner was an unreasonable jerkwad which made the environment awful.

I’ve never written about my second main job out of college and the short version is that while I liked most of the people I worked with, I generally didn’t enjoy the job or clients. That job I would sometimes feel like weeping on Sunday nights thinking about the work week.

The paralegal thing took awhile but I really like my job and working with tribes and these days, I rarely think that I’d be happier sitting around the house all day long.

I just finished an epic holiday that I was greatly looking forward to. Between weather and holiday office closure, I think I only worked two days in the last three weeks. That’s a lot of time.

And I had grand plans for all these amazing things I was going to be doing. To be clear, I completely enjoyed the time and I did accomplish a huge pile of stuff. But I was dismayed by how quickly the time passed and how often the day would be coming to an end, and I’d barely gotten into one project. With endless piles of time, I still struggled to get my stuff done.

I thought this post would be more interesting when I started it. No time to go back and sweeten it up, now. But I think my point is that I’ve never been happier about getting back to work than I was this morning.

Today’s post is dedicated to Kira and Shane and if you want the inside scoop you should read this story.

Today I did my writing stuff first thing in the morning. I’m still working on the holiday letter. I know, whatever. I’m sorry. Yesterday I got all bogged down making my 2009 bookpage. So bogged down I did a totally half-assed review of Book #1 (Bridge of Sighs) and it was a FABULOUS book. I’m doing online book group with Kim (we just invented it) and we’ve both been discussing like nobody’s business.

Then I baked a loaf of no knead bread. I added a big plop of sourdough from my sourdough feeding and I’m not sure if this is a brick or not. It wasn’t as big as other loaves I’ve made. But we didn’t cut into it tonight. I’m betting it will be decent but a tad heavy. Not sure which part went wrong. I’ll watch the sourdough addage more closely next time.

At noon I stripped the turkey carcass from Xmas dinner. It’s been waiting for me in the freezer and I haven’t had time until now. I used the meat to make a turkey pot pie using the same recipe from last month. This time I used filo because I had one in the fridge and I’d already made a pie.

And I put the carcass in a pot and made turkey soup using a Cook’s Illustrated recipe.

I actually enjoyed the extended day in the kitchen. I had a bunch of Firefly’s on the TV. I’ve said this before but I’m not a big fan of TV on just for noise but during big kitchen projects, I like something familiar in the background. Everything smelled delicious. And it started snowing around 4pm. (I know, seriously, enough already. If I wanted to live in a snowy place I would have moved to SnowLand.)

I’ve been saving up some photo printing and I finally finished my stack and took them in for processing this weekend. Fred Meyer had a coupon and I thought what great timing. So I used the coupon for my order of 300+ prints. The computer discounted each print individually. We had to wait about fifteen minutes for the register to process this. And then print out this receipt.

The snow is supposed to change over into rain and I hope it does because I’ve enjoyed this time off but I’m ready to get back to work. Seriously.

So, does Toyota think we’ll be less pissed if we know nothing of the status of our car instead of calling us and telling us they still don’t have the part? I don’t understand why they wait for us to call them. Do they think I have nothing better to do with my car than park it across town?

This has not been the most optimal holiday season.