Category Archives: doing it wrong

Time Travel: Seaworld 1972

Posted on November 15, 2011 by Pamela

Dig those ponchos!

Shamu!

So what is that thing? A seal?

Those dressed up characters always used to scare me. There must be some photos in the vault of me standing in the vicinity of Tigger, crying.

Posted in doing it wrong, goofy face | 2 Comments

Shopping Cart Filled With Food

Posted on November 14, 2011 by Pamela

Seattle Public Library

The following should not be considered complete and is subject to change without notice:

Favorite foods: wine, soup (almost any kind), perfectly grilled piece of red meat, apple pie, See’s candy, fiber

Hated foods: papaya, Swiss cheese, tuna, tarragon (not a food but a flavor, I still don’t like it) scallops, grape jelly, yellow mustard

Used to hate but now I don’t: maple syrup, bleu cheese

Used to like but now prefer to avoid: coffee, hearty breakfast

Don’t like as much as I used to: bananas

Foods I don’t like for no clear reason: cooked carrots as the main part of a dish.

Posted in doing it wrong | 3 Comments

Standby

Posted on November 13, 2011 by Pamela

I have an aging list of things I intended to post. Here is an item from the list:

“Clatsop County Dive Team members pulled two persons from the vehicle as bystanders stood nearby. Both were deceased. No identities have been released.”

This was a quote from a newspaper.

I think I was offended by the “as bystanders stood nearby.”

Posted in doing it wrong | 2 Comments

Special Events

Posted on November 12, 2011 by Pamela

Last night was our annual auction for NAYA. Awesome event as always. The bidding is too rich for us so we buy golden raffle tickets. If you win the raffle you can pick one of the auction items. Bob and I always argue about which prize we’d take. This year I would have wanted the button blanket and paddle or the antique squash blossom necklace. He wanted the trip to Maine.

Luckily, we didn’t win so we didn’t have to duke it out.

Posted in doing it wrong | Tagged | 1 Comment

Real People in the Big Trucks

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Pamela

Fall garden and Photographer

I can’t remember how much about then next door neighbor saga I’ve written about here.

The house next door to us turned into a rental maybe ten years ago. I think we’re on our fifth set of renters.

Of the five times, this is now the third time we had a couple of nice people move in, introduce themselves and then the situation changed. Once it was a man and his teenaged son. Once it was a woman and her ill mother and this most recent time it was a newly separated woman and her two small children.

Shortly after we meet the renters there are all sorts of cars all the time. Different people coming and going, moving stuff in and out.

It’s never been a big problem. It’s not like the people are noisy or do the things that terrible neighbors do, but often these extra people aren’t friendly and we live in a neighborhood. You’d like to have an idea who is living in the house next door to you.

It was hard to believe it when it started happening again. And this lastest tenant and her friends have an amazing number of vehicles, many of them huge. I’ve counted at least 5 different sedan type cars that are parked over there regularly. They had an RV for awhile. Then this cargo truck took over the driveway. There’s a regular heavy duty pick-up truck and then just recently another huge utility type truck showed up.

It seemed to be escalating with no end in sight and I was wondering what next. A tour bus? A bulldozer? A jumbo jet? Bob thought we should complain to the rental agent, who is also a neighbor. I thought we should talk to the neighbor but I’m always afraid that’s going to make it worse.

We’ve become acquainted with the neighbor on the other side of the rental house and we’ve commiserated back and forth. She told us she complained and now all the trucks are gone except for pick-up truck. Yay. Hopefully there won’t be some new crazy development.

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Pam Against the Machine, Part 627

Posted on November 10, 2011 by Pamela

I finally found the picture of the cucumber plant. It did nothing all summer and then blew up at the very end when summer was winding down. Still, it didn’t make any cucumbers. Then when summer was finished, it finally made cucumbers. So when I was pulling everything out I found two full grown lemon cucumbers and another half dozen that were like grapes. I picked and ate them all while I was standing there.

There’s this service we subscribe to at work. On our most recent invoice they advised that their billing would be changing and we’d only be getting a simplified paper bill. If we wanted a complete bill we’d have to do it via electronic delivery. I do not have a problem with that. The notice said you could sign up for this billing via a URL or by calling customer service and picking #X on the phone tree.

I went to the URL and could not login. I called the customer service number and pressed X and was told that choice didn’t exist and to please hold for customer service which was a multi-level tree where nothing related to my question.

I finally got a customer service person on the phone who seemed a little taken aback by my question. I had to wait on hold and finally she comes back and says we have to set up an electronic invoicing account and can continue to hold while we do this?

What? NO! Are you kidding me?

“This is stupid,” I told her. “I just want to get a complete bill. Now I have to set up another account? Forget it. I won’t do the electronic delivery.”

She was very nice and assured me she’d pass on my feedback. I’m sure “This is stupid,” is written in on a whiteboard in the lunchroom so that they can get right to work making it less stupid.

Posted in doing it wrong, garden | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Pumpkin Crop

Posted on November 9, 2011 by Pamela

This is the single Baby Pam pumpkin that I managed to grow this year. It didn’t even get orange until mid-October. Bob brought it in for me over Halloween weekend because he was afraid some kids might smash it.

I’m going to whack it and use it to make the Serious Eats pumpkin pie recipe. Last time I made a Cooks Illustrated recipe and I wrote an angry note in the margin that says, “Takes all day!”

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The Speaking Clock

Posted on November 8, 2011 by Pamela

Downtown Portland. This photo has nothing to do with the post.

There’s a Facebook group for people who grew up where I grew up. This is another source of endless nostalgia that keeps clubbing me on the side of the head.

People have brought up a number of “do you remember …” places and things that I haven’t thought about in years.

One thing was: the party line.

I’m not even sure I can remember exactly how we did it.

This is how I think it worked. It was back when we only had landlines and there was a phone number to call for local time. Oh wow, look here’s an article about when the service was discontinued in SoCal in 2007. The phone number was 853-1212. I remember that.

“At the tone the time will be, 8 o’clock. Beep.”

I can hear the exact tone of the recording. Here’s a little bit about it.

When you called the local time number while the phone was ringing but before the local time lady picked up you could shout out your phone number, or you could write down a phone number that you heard. There would be lots of voices shouting out stuff but you had enough time to get or give a number.

I know it sounds crazy but we didn’t have any sort of computer-derived entertainment. We couldn’t stalk boys on Facebook (which I give thanks for on a regular basis because that would have made me miserable.) Another version of this game was we knew the phone number of the pay phones at the mall and we would call and try to get people to talk to us.

I had several friends that I called the partyline with and we successfully talked to people. Now that I’ve typed this all out I don’t have much for a dramatic finish. At the time we thought this was a fun game we were too young to drive so we never could meet anyone and never invited anyone to come meet us.

I remember doing this in high school while I was babysitting. (So much for exercising good judgment.) I ended up talking to a guy that I didn’t know who went to my high school and as I recall it was a really nice talk. But he was related to one of the popular kids who much have filled him in on my status between the night we talked and the next day we went to school because I never talked to him again.

Posted in doing it wrong | Tagged | 2 Comments

California Dreamin’

Posted on November 6, 2011 by Pamela

I managed to bring back a souvenir cough from San Diego. Last weekend I had people coughing all over me in on the plane.

This weekend it was my turn to cough all over everyone. Usually once I get a cough I’m stuck with it for three weeks but this one seems to be on the fast track. It’s barely started and already my abs are sore and I’m doing that gagging cough that sounds like I’m puking up my stomach.

It’s neat. But if means I’ll be done faster, I’ll take it.

That was what was going on at the airport this morning. Unlike some people, I feel bad about coughing on people and was trying to hold it in and chain-eating Fisherman’s Friend. It was a long morning.

I had another reunion in California this weekend. This one was college friends and mostly people I haven’t seen for 25+ years. It was a somewhat spontaneous event. I think they came up with it barely a month ago.

I didn’t really want to jump back on a plane after being gone all last weekend but there were too many people I wanted to see.

It was awesome although my life seems to be exceptionally nostalgia heavy at the moment which is great but also killing me and probably worthy of a longer post if I’m ever in the mood for it.

The flight in this morning was amazing. Mostly sunny and clear. The flight path went over downtown which I can’t remember doing before. Ladd’s Addition really stood out with those giant trees all turning yellow. I could pick out the park blocks and my office and my beloved Jeld-Wenn field.

It’s a good day to get outside and chop down dead dahlias.

Posted in doing it wrong | 1 Comment

Fallout

Posted on November 5, 2011 by Pamela

Every time I walk by this sign I want to take a picture. I finally had my camera with me. Now I wish I could remember where it is. SW 6th, maybe near Columbia? I can see it in my mind’s eye.

Last weekend I was at a rented beach house.

I severely underestimated how difficult it would be to cook in a kitchen that I’m not familiar with and that was woefully under-equipped. There are things that I could make at home blindfolded that were giving me fits in this place. Plus the stores didn’t sell the exact things I usually buy.

At one store I asked about something and he said they don’t stock it because no one will buy it. What is wrong with these people?

I already knew I was a knife-snob but I had no idea such sorry excuses for knives even existed in the world. I had considered bringing my knives (checked bags) but it seemed like a ridiculous idea. I regretted it the entire time.

I’ll know for next time.

Posted in doing it wrong | 1 Comment