Category Archives: doing it wrong

I used a tiny sticky note to jot down some ideas for today’s post and now, shocker, I can’t find it. Oh well.

I know one of the topics was this rain we’re having. I’m guessing another 8 feet since I last mentioned it. I know PAC NW rain is legend but normal rain is like a steady grey drizzle. The kind of weather where you can still go for a walk or do sports or possibly even have a barbeque if you’re so inclined. Half the time you don’t even need an umbrella.

The rain we’re having has me permanently strapped into a life vest and scanning Craigslist for a message from Noah. Oh good and look, today’s forecast is for heavy rains. Fortunately tomorrow the chance of rain plummets to 80%. Cross your fingers!

With all this rain I’m surprised that instead of flooding stories, I keep hearing people talking about an earthquake we had the other night. They discussed it on the radio and in the lunch room and at yoga class. One guy on the radio moved to the west coast recently and was disappointed that he was in the car and missed it as he cannot wait to experience an earthquake. (Insert Jon Stewart HUH? here.) Careful what you wish for guy because waking up to shaking walls and tumbling furniture is not really a good time.

You can imagine my surprise to see in the paper that this “earthquake” was a 2.6. That’s not an earthquake, that’s a fire truck passing by. This is sort of like when Los Angeles gets a quarter inch of rain and the whole city shuts down and people up here sneer about how they can’t handle the rain. Or like what Minnesota thinks about us when we get a quarter inch of accumulated snow and the city shuts down. We need to reserve our excitement for the real deal.

Another item I wanted to mention is that I finished watching Lemony Snicket last night and LOVED it. I haven’t read the books, although I want to, but I’m too much of a tightwad to pay $10 for a book I can read in 45 minutes. I thought the movie got lukewarm reviews but Erin liked it so I got it from Netflix. I liked the story and the characters but I loved the way it looked and I was mesmerized by the closing credits and saved the disk so I can watch that part again. They should make a show out of that.

Finally, I’m sad to report that I heard on the radio this morning that String Cheese Incident is disbanding, I think at the end of next summer. I’m not sad for me, but sad for my spouse. I wrote a review of one of their shows here and I can’t find it to save my life but I thought their shows were fun enough to attend one per year. I had a one show Cheese limit.

When I was a kid, my hobby was writing letters. I collected pen-pals.

My first pen-pal was my friend Julie Kaufer. Her family lived on our street in Encino, CA and they moved to Malibu. This was back in the elementary school era and, not having cars to travel that 30 or so miles, we started writing letters.

For a long time I saved all my letters but this eventually became ridiculous so I tossed most but I’m pretty sure I have a pile of Julie’s letters in a box somewhere. I think the last time I saw her was her Bat Mitzvah or possibly a high school graduation party, but by then we’d grown apart and the letter writing was long finished.

I also wrote letters to my cousins and sometime around middle school, I started writing to people looking for pen-pals who had their names and addresses in magazines. It’s hard to imagine now that there was ever a good time for a 13 year old girl to list her name and home address in a magazine, but there you go.

Turns out, it was a thriving subculture. There were networks of kids who shared addresses and put together these little handmade booklets called slam books that had variations but usually listed a different question on each page and you’d fill it in and send it on and ideally, it would eventually go back to the person who made the book. You could also write to other people listed in the book. Then there were these labels you could have printed up with your favorite band or a saying and you could get these with a friend and stick them in the slam book or trade them with people. Mine had Journey and Def Leppard sayings on them.

I have no sense of how much time I spent doing this, I don’t think it was ridiculous. And I have no idea how many pen-pals I had because there were always new one and old ones dropping off. Let’s say never more than 20 at one time.

There was one girl, Tami from Georgia, who got pregnant at 16. She moved to a special class at her school with the other girls who were pregnant where the school hoped to at least get these girls a diploma. She eventually married the guy and then had another kid before we lost touch. I had another pal from Tennessee who got married right out of high school with a big fancy wedding. She sent me pictures that I admired with a twinge of jealousy. It seemed so romantic.

Every once in awhile I wonder how these women’s lives turned out. They’re both probably grandmothers right now.

Somewhere along the way I also began corresponding with men in prison. My parents must have been clueless, although I don’t remember trying to hide it. I do remember more than one of my friends telling me that their parents though it was a bad idea. It’s hard for me to have any perspective now on the appropriateness of the situation. I wrote about being a high school student. They wrote about their lives. It didn’t seem weird at the time. I never worried that one of them was going to try to find me and none of them ever did.

Only one of these pals lasted for any length of time. Bill was in prison on the east coast and now that I think of it, I think he was busted for assaulting a woman. Okay, so this entire post is evidence of what a moron I am. At least nothing bad happened.

Bill and I wrote for a number of years and I occasionally sent him stationery, I think this was one of the few gifts he could receive, and we even exchanged a few cassette letters. He was not very bright but harmless enough. When he got out of prison he hooked up with another of his pen-pals. I’m sure her parents were thrilled. And the last letter I got from him he was having a tough time and had been working at Pizza Hut until he accidentally almost cut his finger off. I guess life was not easy for poor Bill.

By the time I got to college I didn’t have as much time. I still corresponded with friends that had moved or relatives but I dropped the pen-pal thing. Although it’s pretty much email now, I still have a few people in Germany that I send paper letters to and I still like to write a letter in a birthday card.

I’m still in touch with two of my pen-pals from back in the day. I met Debbie from a gymnastics magazine. She lived in Maspeth NY and came to visit me once when I lived in L.A. She now lives in Florida and we usually check-in during the holidays. Darren and I met from a guitar magazine and he lived in Wichita until he recently moved to S. Cal. We email on a fairly regular basis.

By all of this I guess I’m explaining that I have a long, long history of writing about what I’m up to for other people. You can see how this blogging thing would be natural for me.

I think we need to start a movement to get Kenny Loggins back to writing movie soundtrack hits. He is responsible for three of the most spectacular cheezy movie hits ever: “I’m Alright” from Caddyshack, “Footloose” from duh, and probably the best movie pop hit ever: “Danger Zone” from Top Gun.

Don’t you sometimes make a list in your head of artists you would love to hear cover that song? Can you imagine Bono singing:

Headin' into twilight
Spreadin' out her wings tonight
She got you jumpin' off the deck
And shovin' into overdrive

Highway to the Danger Zone
I'll take you
Right into the Danger Zone

Or Stevie Nicks belting out:

Revvin' up your engine
Listen to her howlin' roar
Metal under tension
Beggin' you to touch and go.

That would be awesome. Too bad the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame doesn’t honor songs because I would make it my life’s mission to get this song inducted. Imagine the jam session they could put together.

You could make a good argument that Bryan Adams is the king of movie soundtrack hits. (e.g. “Heaven” from “A Night in Heaven” {Does anyone remember that movie?} and “Everything I Do (I Do It For You)” from the Robin Hood movie with Kevin Costner.) (While I’m here, I encourage you to check out BA’s bio. He’s been up to a lot since the summer of ’69. He also lives in England and supports a team I like, Chelsea.) But BA’s hits are mostly variations of the same sappy love song and don’t have the thematic range or rhythmic depth that Loggins covers in his superstar three.

When I went to UCSB Kenny lived in Santa Barbara or more likely, Montecito. I don’t know if he lives there now as we’ve lost touch over the years, but I suspect he does because no one would ever leave there if they didn’t have to. I worked at the Santa Barbara Zoo on the weekends and one Sunday afternoon Kenny showed up with his family. I didn’t actually see him but I heard about it and immediately had to go find a telephone (this was way before the days of cellphones, kiddies) and call my friend Jenny, because she was a Kenny Loggins fanatic.

She brought fellow fan, Gina (who you can see in a Kenny Loggins special going on stage and kissing him before gently being removed by security) and they stalked him from afar, taking photos. Last night I ransacked my old photo albums thinking I had one of these photos which consist of some people in the distance standing around on the grass. Sadly, I couldn’t find one.

According to Wikipedia, Kenny is still keeping busy including, and I’m so bummed that I just found out about this, participating in some sort of “Singing with Celebrities” TV show where he sang some of his hits with Lucy Lawless AKA Xena and super badass cylon lady. That would have been the best night of TV ever. Just the photos on Kenny’s website make me feel a bit tingly.

If you see Kenny, tell him I’m thinking of him and hoping for more hits.

I bought Shadow a Halloween costume. Every woman I mentioned this to said, “How cute.” Every man that heard about it said, “Poor dog.” I guess Shadow, who was once a he but now suffers the indignities of being an it, wasn’t excited about being Batman.

Halloween was uneventful at our house. I think the doorbell rang 10 times. Bob is the door answerer because he likes to do it and says dopey things like, “Ooh, what a scary ghost.” For some reason I hate doing this. Yeah, opening the door to strangers who knock and want something. I don’t like it. Especially around 8:00 there’s always a group of teenagers who aren’t remotely ashamed when you suggest that maybe they’re a little old for this.

I distinctly remember my last year trick-or-treating, which was probably 8th grade, and we got a lot of grief for being too old. I’m trying to come up with some epic Halloween tale from my youth but I’ve got nothing. My only remark is that the candy was bigger. For real, not some idealistic memory like “When I was a girl the weather was better and people were nicer and unicorns frolicked on the back lawn.” A mini candy bar was at least three good bites. Sweet tarts came with 4 nickel sized candies (possible exaggeration). Even the Tootsie rolls were bigger and I think there was more variety.

Okay, on the variety thing, I’m full of crap. I have no idea what kind of loot the kids are raking in. But from the person shopping for candy point of view: it all looks like chocolate to me.

In honor of NaBloPoMo, I’ve turned comments on. I think. I’m too lazy to read the directions and not sure how it works so I suspect I’ll get nothing but porn spam. But at least I’m trying. If you’re not a NaBloPoMo blogger you can also participate by leaving a comment a day.

You See Your Gypsy
Here’s what my Halloween costume looks like except without the bird. They told me I couldn’t bring a pigeon into the building. (That was the only bird I could find.) And my outfit looks different because I was afraid all that swirly stuff might slow me down when I’m running back and forth from the copy room. I’m Stevie on the inside.

Yesterday I had two panic attacks.

The first one had to do with our property taxes which are due today. I am brand new to online billpay and I paid this bill two weeks ago but the trusty Clark County treasurer’s office webpage where they tell you to check indicated that they were still waiting for the payment.

It took a couple of phone calls before I found help. The guy at Wells filled me in that generally they recommend that you not use online billpay to pay government agencies because if there’s a problem you’re stuck with their bureaucracy. When they say that they recommend this, apparently that means when there’s a potential problem, they’ll bring it up.

Then I went through the Clark County phone menu until I got a person who told me that my payment had cleared but it takes 3 days to update the website. How handy. So panic averted. Taxes paid.

The second panic session had to do when I tried to post here and blogger gave me an error message. I’m not a technical person but as I understood it, it thought my domain didn’t exist. I could access my page and email so I’m not sure what the problem was, but I had my panties all in a bunch because tomorrow starts NaBloPoMo and how was I going to do it if blogger thinks my domain doesn’t exist. Later in the day it worked, so hopefully this isn’t foreshadowing some new technological research project.

Three Things for Monday
1. Yesterday I saw XMen 3 on DVD and thought it was a major stinker. Possibly part of the problem could be watching it at home on little screen with interruptions. I saw 1 and 2 on big screen and thought both were great. This one was just another big dumb action movie with a particular fondness for tossing cars around or smushing them.

2. Everyone I’ve told this to has been fairly horrified: I don’t hate the new Justin Timberlake. I’m not going to run out and buy it or put it on my iPod or beg the DJ to play it over and over when I’m dancing on my barstool. I’m just saying when it comes on the radio, I don’t hate it. I listen to the whole song and even hum a few bars quietly to myself later on.

3. Did anyone else get this class action suit settlement against Verizon? It’s a bunch of tiny writing so I’m still not sure what it’s all about but what I do get is: Verizon will be punished by giving me $15 off when I add another year onto my contract. Wow, way to stick it to Verizon. That’s not the only choice. There are about 6 others. They have to give me $30 if I extend my contract 2 more years. Seriously, attorneys made money negotiating this settlement?

This Year’s Harvest
I was going to have a pumpkin picture with the special effects camera and then draw a picture of my pumpkin crop using my amazing Illustrator skills. But look, the camera worked fine. What do you think this means? Maybe the outdoor light makes it tweak? Maybe there was a hoozit loose and I bumped it back in? My guess is that it’s still broken and this is the anomaly.

Last night I got rid of a door-to-door salesman by whining. It’s not such a great story but the gist of it is, he was a nice guy and I didn’t want to be an ass but I really didn’t want to deal with him, especially at that moment because I had food on the stove. He did his script where no matter what I said, he had a response and he wanted to make an appointment and if I’ve learned anything in this life, it’s that if you put your name and phone number on a piece of paper, you will be tormented without mercy until the end of time. Don’t do it.

He kept doing his thing and I finally interrupted him with my whiniest whine and said, “I know you’re trying to do your job but I don’t want to deal with this.” He thanked me for hearing him out and left.

The power of WHINE.