Category Archives: doing it wrong

Flowers

Posted on August 9, 2012 by Pamela

Real post coming soon.

Promise.

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Comfortably Numb

Posted on July 22, 2012 by Pamela

I’m trying to coordinate a trip to California to see my family. This is a photo of me and my cousin Jennifer just a few years ago on Waikiki. She’s one of the people I’m trying to see.

Did I really neglect to share my dental emergency right before vacation?

If you can’t whine about your dental emergency on your blog, where can you whine about it? (Answer: Everywhere else. But still.)

My last day in the office before vacation I had planned to the last minute. I was cranking through getting everything done. Plus, it was the last semi-final of the Eurocup so I came in early so I could take a long lunch to watch the game and still get all my work done. Extra plus, I skipped breakfast so I could order a bacon cheeseburger at the sportsbar where I was going to watch the game.

But … I had a fairly new filling and the night before I was brushing my teeth and I ran my brush across this tooth and then Bob had to peel me from the ceiling. I thought it would be a good idea to see if my dentist could take a peek. Maybe the new filling needed an adjustment. I didn’t want a broken tooth on vacation.

Cut to:

Me at the endodondist prepping for an emergency root canal, missing my game, missing my bacon cheeseburger, my stomach growling sadly while I stared at the ceiling. And if you know anything about root canals, you know that they fry your dental benefit to kingdom come in the first 3 seconds so all my vacation money ready for spending handed over to surfer endodondist.

“Hi! How’s your day going so far?” he asked when he came to examine me.

Me: Uh, I was hoping my day would go exactly like this.

The good news: my tooth felt better and gave me no trouble on vacation. And I got a pocketful of drugs for my troubles.

The bad news: I had to have soup and rush back to the office and try to finish my work since the root canal took longer than a soccer game. Additional bad news, my soccer team lost which I found out later when I watched it on my DVR.

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Super Weak Post Material

Posted on July 20, 2012 by Pamela

I’ve had this backpack about four years? I could probably search the archives but I’m not in the mood right now.

I like the backpack but the hardware has been falling off.

I’m an old lady who uses it to drag my purse, yogurt/granola and reading materials back and forth to work. Sometimes I throw a laptop in there and take it on an airplane with me. It really doesn’t know hard labor.

It has two compartments and the zipper handles on the upper compartment both broke off. (Photo shows the lower compartment.)

I knew there had to be some great idea of something to use as zipper handles.

I thought maybe some heavy duty ribbon and I tried a wimpy ribbon as a test and it was worthless.

Then, I got an idea.

Keychains! Which we have a million of around here. The REM one is a little flimsy so I might look for a stronger metal loop. But the Boba Fett is badass.

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Disjointed

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Pamela

Sheesh, I have been having the strangest dreams lately. Almost every night I wake up at about 3am wondering what the hell that was all about. For example, twice now I’ve dreamed that I was going to compete a gymnastics routine on the balance beam, with little concern that I haven’t even stood on a balance beam in over 30 years. Or I wake up in the morning nauseated by some bizarre thing I was eating in my dream. Once I was carving off thick slices of butter and chomping away.

I had to post this photo because what the hell am I doing with my feet?

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New York City

Posted on July 15, 2012 by Pamela

There’s not a lot to tell about this trip. It was pretty straight-forward NYC stuff with tons of walking around. We hit almost all the high points and had a terrific time.

Guess where this is.

Portland has a big food cart scene and recently a cart like this showed up. My thought was that they didn’t know what they were doing and didn’t understand their market. You really need a niche and you need to be good to succeed in place with something like 450 carts.

Then I saw these everywhere you look in NYC. They may know better than I do. I haven’t tried it yet, but I will.

Here I am on Mars.

At the Natural History Museum we went to the space exhibit. There was a bit about foods to take and foods to avoid in space. Things to avoid: foods that make lots of crumbs, stinky foods. Foods that are good in space: meat, vegetables, recycled urine.

Yes, it really said that. We did not agree that that sounded good. Also the sample food: chicken and pineapple salad looked nasty. Annie still wants to go to space. I still do not.

We discovered Steve’s Ice Cream. And it became our feverishly looked-forward-to snack each evening. We loved the Blackberry Honey and Salty Caramel. We also tried: Strawberry Ricotta and Sunday Morning. Here, Annie and I go through every single tub in the freezer to decide on a flavor.

Coney Island for 4th of July. Insane in the most perfect way. We loved it.

Not New York. There was a dumpster fire in Northwest Portland when Annie and I were waiting for the street car. The flames climbed up a utility pole. Exciting.

There is a brief photostream at flickr if you’re interested in more photos: NYC Trip 2012.

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Forget How To Sit Still

Posted on July 8, 2012 by Pamela

I am so far behind, it’s not even funny. Maybe I’ll get caught up this week.

But unlikely.

Just got back from an epic, fabulous trip to NYC. Photos and adventures to come. (Maybe)

This is the post that’s been sitting in draft for 2 weeks.

This is my purse.

I hate it. I’ve had it for three years + and I hate it. I saw a woman at the grocery store with this purse and I ran up and asked her if she liked it and she said, “Not really.”

I’ve been thinking about replacing it but it takes me forever to find a purse. (I’ve written about it more than once but this is all I can find right now.) And it does hold my crap so what’s the hurry?

I feel bad even writing this because it worked really great on the trip. Plus it looks nice in the photo. But now that I’m home I still hate it.

Here’s another travel tidbit. When I went to Atlanta in May, on the flight home, I had terrible jumpy legs. I’d say that they were unbearable, except I beared it, so it was almost unbearable.

I was worried about this trip so I searched it because there is nothing that the Internet has never heard of and sure enough, jumpy legs on a flight. Here were the helpful instructions: drink plenty of water, stand up and walk around every 20 minutes.

Have these people ever been on an airplane? What if everybody wanted to get up and walk around every 20 minutes? I got a few jumps but mostly no problem this trip so we’ll call the problem solved for now.

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Well, what if there is no tomorrow?

Posted on June 27, 2012 by Pamela


 
Stop me if you’ve heard this one:

I’ve had this post partially finished and saved in draft for days but haven’t had time to finish. The weekend got away from me and I’m behind on everything. My yard is out of control. The rain is destroying my will to live. I made *another* loaf of fail bread. I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.
 
It’s the same post every week.
 
I’m going to queue it up to post itself over and over and save myself from the existential despair of discovering that I am living some sort of twisted and ultimately unsatisfying version of Groundhog’s Day.
 

 
Here’s some news: I saw two movies in one week and neither one was The Avengers (which I’ve seen 3x and I would cheerfully go see it again tomorrow, if you asked).
 
First: Rock of Ages.
 
When I saw the trailer for this movie, I wanted my 3 minutes back. I thought it looked dreadful. I did not think I wanted to see Tom Cruise in that role.
 
I went on a movie date with my cousin and we saw this. It is totally off-the-rails crazy and also completely genius. Tom Cruise is amazing. If you enjoy 80’s hair band music, you should run to the nearest theater. If you hate 80’s hair band music, you might be happier if you stayed home.
 
The other movie I saw with my sweetie: Moonrise Kingdom
 
Wes Anderson is in danger of becoming a parody of himself but I loved loved loved it. This movie is brilliant. I loved all the acting. The kids, Bill Murray, Francis McDormand, Bruce Willis. Tilda Swinton plays a cold bitch — but it’s a different flavor of cold bitch than you’ve ever seen her do before. Bob already downloaded the soundtrack for me. I can’t quote my favorite line because it’s a spoiler so here’s one:
 
Watch out for turtles. They’ll bite you if you stick your finger in their mouths.

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Thoughtful People

Posted on June 15, 2012 by Pamela

So AARP was super nice to send me this. You know, in case I wanted to reinstate my membership which was purely because of a joke on my spouse. I’m not even 50 yet. And I’m not sure I’d join even then.

But, who wouldn’t want a free trunk organizer? My trunk is a disorganized mess. Just kidding. What is all this stuff that older people are keeping in their trunks? Right now mine has a bunch of spilled bark dust and a yoga mat.

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Walking in Place

Posted on June 10, 2012 by Pamela

Kira these are the raspberries. I found a few ripe ones today.

Since the beginning of the year I keep thinking I have one more big project to finish and then I’ll have a weekend where I can take it easy and catch up on all these loose ends that are getting looser by the minute.

This weekend didn’t work out with extra time either.

If I owe you a phone call or note or said I’d do something for you — maybe next weekend. I have one more big project to finish.

I haven’t even had time to watch all my soccer. One game a day is all I’ve managed to cram in. And none of the games I’ve seen so far has blown my socks off. Who should we root for in England v. France tomorrow?

Every time there’s a once in a lifetime astronomy event, I never pay much attention because it’s cloudy here 385 days a year. There was that venus across the sun thing happening and it was not cloudy so I went and did the homework to see how I could go about viewing it. The instructions said to go some place where they’re projecting it and watch it there.

I’m thinking: watch it projected or wait until tomorrow and look at it on the Internet, what’s the difference?

I also tried just looking at the sun even though the directions said not to. It just looked bright and hurt my eyes.

I baked another loaf of total fail bread. The crust is like crumpled concrete. The inside is dense and tasteless. I can’t understand what I’m doing wrong. I need to get out all my bread notes and see if I can troubleshoot it. Baking bread used to be my super power.

I can hardly keep my eyes open so I’m going to bed.

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Point of No Return

Posted on June 3, 2012 by Pamela

I’ve had a gift card for new exercise clothes since my birthday. I tried to use it at least a half dozen times but always seemed to get interrupted before I was finished or else when I finally found the perfect item it was only available in XXS or neon green.

I like to go through the comments where people describe the fit. If there are lots of comments that the clothes run small or that an item looks cute but is uncomfortable on, this is helpful information but it’s time consuming.

I finally sat down with all my notes and figured out what I wanted and placed my order. And then when it arrived the pants were too tight. I think they might have been doable but I don’t like skin tight pants and would never have wanted to wear them so I decided to do a return.

The invoice that came with the order exclaimed how easy returns were! Then proceeded with three paragraphs of tiny writing that made no sense. Use the pre-printed return label. There was no pre-printed return label. Use the same packaging the clothes came in. You mean this plastic bag that I had to rip open to get the clothes out?

This company has about 5 brands You had 45 days to make the return unless you only had 30 days to make the return although some clothes could be returned anytime. You could return them to an actual store unless you couldn’t. You could call and they would credit the return but charge your credit card and then credit it back and upgrade the shipping.

On and on it went. I seriously considered whether it might be easier to just lose weight so the pants fit.

Finally I called and navigated one of those phone trees that makes you say what you want to a robot. You can’t just press a button. I prefer to press a button. It also had no choices that fit my situation: “Doesn’t understand return procedures” and it took a few rounds to get it. But finally, Mitsy picked up the phone. She was super perky and ultimately very helpful. She ran me through an equally confusing thing about my credit and gift card. Something like it takes three weeks to get the gift card return because you have to get the credit in the same form you paid and I used a combo of gift card and credit card. But I could get the exercise pants now if I gave her my credit card and then use the new gift card on a future purchase. Or I could wait and call back. Or I can get one pair of pants now and one later. Let’s check how much we have in stock.

I was still confused but Mitsy’s over-powering confidence urged me to a decision. So I think I bought a pair of bigger pants and then will get a gift card in a few weeks and can start all over with a new order. And if I don’t like the new pants, I will keep them anyway.

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