Author Archives: Pamela

Two Tidbits

There is a fabulous article in the NYT today about urban farmers.

Over the past several days I’ve been getting phone calls from a family of Spanish speaking individuals who seem very disappointed that the person they’re looking for isn’t answering the phone. The reason I say family is because they’ve passed the phone around and I hear different voices speaking to me, which doesn’t change the fact that I don’t speak Spanish and cannot help them. I’m sorry they have the wrong number but I’m perplexed at why they keep talking to me when clearly I don’t understand. I eventually have to hang-up, after very politely saying again that I’m sorry and they have the wrong number and that I’m hanging up now.

Best Week Ever
It’s May 5 and I’m wearing open-toed shoes for the first time since October. Big day.

I knew I had a busy week coming up this month but didn’t clue in that it was here until I checked the calendar when I got to work this morning.

Besides slightly busier than normal work stuff, I have some sort of appointment or event every day up to and including Saturday. Friday is my usual catch-up day and that day I have two appointments and an event.

I better get busy.

Runday Sunday

There’s a new building going up next door to the office and I’ve been trying to get some good crane photos. There’s a guy who has to sit in there all day long. I can’t imagine climbing all those stairs just to get to work. My office is on the other side of the building but I check over there once or twice a day.

This morning, Bob took off for a few days in Toronto for a work-related conference. The flight was at the buttcrack of dawn and he said I didn’t have to take him if I didn’t want to get up that early but I don’t mind getting up early and it wasn’t that bad. Except I can’t believe how many people are driving around at 4:30am on a Sunday morning.

When I got home I made a cup of tea and worked on writing and by 9am I had already finished another draft and did a yoga practice. I did a quick trip to the garden store. And then at Noon I needed an epic nap so I could function the rest of the day.

I worked on my story for a couple more hours and then ran out for some quick yard work and now I need to bathe and figure out what I’m going to eat.

They Come From Below

This is the park-n-ride. I counted 14 manhole covers. Why so many?

First of all, last night I tried a Sunset recipe for Coconut-milk pudding rolls which turned out fantastic. They’re big fluffy yeast rolls baked with a giant bowl of sugar and coconut-milk poured over them. I think the healthiest part of these rolls is when you stop eating them. I was sad that I got full after three.

Second of all, fresh Doctor Who my ass. I’ve seen all but three shows from season 3 and I seem to be terminally cursed for catching those on TV. Is it possible that shows expire on the DVR? Can they do that without telling you? I swear I’ve had all three taped and waiting for me at one time or another and then they mysteriously disappeared. It’s possible I deleted them by accident but all three of them and at completely different times? The commercial said season three was coming out on DVD so I thought I’d just put the first two discs in the queue and that would cover it.

You know what disc 1 is? It’s the Xmas special and this dorky documentary of a dorky special they did where an orchestra played the music of Doctor Who while they showed clips and synchronized Daleks came out and spun around. Disc 1 also has outakes from the entire season and the Doctor and Martha’s set videos. Wouldn’t it make more sense for this to be disc 6? Or how about disc 4? The whole season had 13 episodes. 14 including the Xmas special. What do they need 6 discs for in the first place?

20. To Say Nothing of the Dog (493 pp.) by Connie Willis (May 3). I loved this book. I went to bed early last night because I didn’t sleep well the night before. I could barely keep my eyes open but I couldn’t stop reading wanting to finish it. I finally pooped out and had to finish the last chapter this morning. This is a time travel book set in Victorian times and it’s hilarious. Recommended. Even if you think you don’t like time travel books.

Argh. What a long stupid day. I’m not even going to get started otherwise this will be just one long whiny post.

It’s over now and I’m home and out of my work clothes, a delicious low-cost Trader Joe’s adult beverage option is at my side, fresh Doctor Who DVD arrived in netflix today. Time to relax.

Instead I bring you this photo from a house being built on my route between home and the park-n-ride.

Why-oh-why would you put your front door way up like that? Will they carry the groceries in through that door? What about the living room furniture?

There was a van by the house when I took the photo and it pulled right in behind me and rolled through two red lights so I thought maybe I was going to have to explain that I intended to mock the front door placement on my website. The van didn’t follow me home so I think I’m safe.

Stinging Workers

This weekend I did a bit of research on yellowjackets and I found the Schmidt Sting Pain Index. Is it real? Here is part of it:

2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.
2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.
2.x Honey bee and European hornet: Like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin.

I was stung by a yellowjacket a long time ago and it hurt really bad. I was a fully formed adult at the time and I’m not excessively wimpy about pain and I really wanted to sit down and cry. Even though the sound of wailing children is really annoying, don’t you sometimes envy them? Haven’t you ever been tired and rundown and nothing is going the way you want it to and wished you could just throw your head back and shriek in the middle of the grocery store? I know I have.

I’m glad adults don’t do this because the social boundaries that keep everyday life tolerable are disintegrating fast enough as it is. There was an article in the NYT on Sunday about how liberating young people find it to talk about how much money they make with each other. Good for them. I don’t talk about how much money I make with my husband. I think the world is just fine with things people don’t talk about. Have you ever had one of those awkward conversations where someone you met 5 minutes ago starts telling you about their cysts?

Hm, I’m getting off track here. Back to the stingy thing: for some reason I thought that honeybee stings were negligible. I guess I’ve never been stung by one.

I finished another story this weekend which was why I did the yellowjacket research. It’s hard to have a meal outside at my folks’ house because of the yellowjackets but the university extension had a great tip which involved hanging a fish over a tub of water. I can’t wait to try it.

This has nothing to do with my story. The story is one I’ve worked on and off on for quite some time and it’s not a terrible story but I’m not sure it’s especially creative or has a point but I’m trying to get in the habit of finishing things. Somewhere I have a quote from Ray Bradbury where he said he’d written at least 600 stories but only published 150 (made up numbers because I don’t know where the quote is and besides, it’s probably 20 years old and he’s probably written another 600 stories since then) and he was still learning. At the rate I’m going, it’ll take me 85 years to hit 600 stories.

Update: I found the Ray Bradbury quote and it’s from 1967 and it says he wrote 2,000 stories but published 300. At my rate it will take 200 years to write 2,000 stories.

I know this is a photo of carrots and doesn’t match my title but I usually never plant carrots and these were so cute that I had to try them.

Yesterday I put a garden in. I’m know I’m going to be gone for six weeks but I can’t do nothing. I did decide to skip the tomatoes, mostly because Sunset magazine reminded me that you aren’t supposed to plant them in the same place every year. I don’t plant them in the exact same spot but always in the same general plot so maybe a year off would be good for everyone.

The other reason I went ahead and planted is I bought a bunch of seeds before I knew I would be gone. Plus I found a stash from last year which included about 5 envelopes of beet seeds. I mixed a ton of beet, turnip, carrot, chard and lettuce green seeds in a little plastic dish and then scattered them over half the garden. Then I went to find a rake. When I came back there was already a cheeky bird, going to town. I raked everything around.

Then I went and found all my peas and lemon cucumbers. The past two or three years these have done nothing for me so I planted them all in the hope something will take. I used the same scatter method. I have cages but there are tons of wasps around the shed and I’m afraid to go in there right now so I haven’t set the cages out for the peas, should they decide to grow.

If you’ve arrived at this post looking for gardening advice, I’d suggest you move on. I don’t think you’ll find anything to help you here.

I raked the whole plot and shoved a few wayward seeds under with my fingers and went in the house and announced to Bob that just about the time I leave he will have all the turnips and beets he can handle. This is a joke because Bob will eat vegetables but the idea of him harvesting root vegetables from the backyard is ridiculous. At least the bugs will have something to eat.

Distractions
This is my new favorite snack. I keep a box in my desk at the office. I almost tried the cheese crackers, too, but it seemed like an absurd amount of money to spend on mini-crackers.

Trader Joe’s really let me down this weekend. I have a large number of Spanish wines in my rotation and they didn’t have squat. Not even my third tier choices for when my favorites aren’t available.

While I stood in front of the display, trying to figure out my next move, a lady who works there asked if she could help me. I said I couldn’t find any of my regulars and she asked what they were and since I don’t know my wines by name, I know them by the design on the label, I told her I usually get Spanish wines and she points to the place where I’m looking and says, “This where the Spanish wines are. We don’t have anything else. This is all we have.”

It reminded me of when your Mom and Dad yell at you for something your sibling did. It wasn’t like I was complaining. I tried all new things so it’s not like all was lost.

I [Heart] The Seventies
This is the piggy bank I got for my birthday around the 3rd grade from a kid named Kenny who lived two houses down from us on Aldea Avenue in Encino California. One time he got hit by a car on our street and had to wear a cast. I also remember there was a pool at his house and it was absurdly warm.

This sits next to my bed and I open it once every five years with the thought, “I wonder what’s in this thing.”

Lots of very old foreign coins from various adventures. My parents went to Greece when I was a small tot. My Dad did a job in Kuwait. Lots of European coins that have been replaced by the Euro.

I had some dollar coins and they wouldn’t fit so I made a slot so that you could fit them in. I’m sorry this sounds like an inappropriate euphemism. One of the dollar coins looks gold. Because it is.

Just kidding. It was a necklace which I guess was really bitchin in the 70’s. It had a heavy gold chain. I think I got this as a birthday gift as well.

We have some extended family on my Dad’s side in Virginia and we visted them once. They gave us some civil war bullets and buttons. A lot of those pennies have nothing interesting about them and I’m not sure why I saved them. Maybe for good luck?