Category Archives: doing it wrong

I Catch Up With My Senses
I’m not going to do NaNoWriMo (the novel one). It would be too much and amount to a typing contest and I would make myself crazy because I’m just the kind of person to make myself crazy over some self-imposed radical discipline. I made this decision during my Illustrator class when I realized that I have only the faintest hint of a clue what’s going on and need to go back and review the homework and should be using my spare time to learn this program.

I felt so good about this decision that I celebrated by going to see The Prestige the first movie I’ve seen on big screen in months. It’s one of those movies that the less you know going in, the better, so I’m not going to say much except: I enjoyed it a great deal and would love to talk about it so if someone I know could go see it, that would be grand.

I’ve also decided that I’m going to buy a new camera and use the broken one as a special effects camera. The above was taken this afternoon as I pointed my camera straight into the shiny sky. I’ve done some very preliminary research and things aren’t set up so that one can purchase a camera based on the handful of memory cards plus card reader that one already owns. That’s my main criteria at this point. I’m looking for something on the low end because I like to carry it everywhere which means it bounces around in my purse and backpack and the car.

I’m not sure what my next step is. Maybe a trip to Costco. I can’t figure it all out right now.

Enforcement Overkill
One of my missions in life is to lead a campaign to end the high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane on I-5 northbound to Vancouver. I’m going to write more about this next month. (Can you believe Wikipedia has an I-5 entry?)

Last night, as I sat in the bumper to bumper scramble that occurs where people who need to be out of the HOV lane try to merge right while the people who want to be in the HOV lane very purposefully “ooh-look-at-me-with-two-people-in-my-car-everyone-out-of-my-way-so-I-can-get-over” try to merge left, I was trying to remember the last time I saw any police enforcement. At least one out of every five cars in the HOV lane has a single occupant zooming along at 60 MPH neener-neenering those of us following the rules and rolling along at lawn mower speeds.

A short moment later, I spot flashing red and blue lights. Someone was pulled over. And, oh look, another. And another.

THIRTEEN Cops between Alberta and Delta Park where the HOV ends.

Who Woke Up the Long Dormant Overachiever?
On Friday we have our first test in my Illustrator class. When I originally talked about taking the class, I asked Bob if I could take it pass/no pass. Maybe I’m high here but I seem to remember when I went to college, this was a choice you could make by checking a box on a form and getting your instructor to sign off on it. You could only use it in certain circumstances, such as when I realized I wasn’t going to make it as an engineering major and was never going to pass second quarter calculus. I converted my grading option to P/NP and my failure to understand whatever second quarter calculus is all about, did not tank my GPA.

This seemed the perfect option for the Illustrator class because I want to learn Illustrator and I’m confident I can pass the class by showing up and doing the homework. I don’t want to worry about it any more than that.

I guess there’s a failure to communicate or maybe I’m triggering Bob’s harried department-head personality but whenever I bring this up he gets this sort of vague look on his face and waves his arms around and makes it sound harder than a box on a form.

So now I’m taking this class for a grade and I have a test and I really don’t want to study for it. I keep saying, “I don’t care what kind of grade I get but I don’t want to do badly,” which sounds suspiciously like I care. And I do. But I don’t want to study. On the plus side, I was so busy procrastinating on studying that I got epic amounts of yardwork done this weekend.

Meanwhile, as you may already know, next month is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). You write a 50,000 word novel during the month. Of course I wouldn’t do that and decided to sign up for the much less punishing National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) where you write a post a day and no cheating with the dates. I figured I could do this and already have a list of about 12 post ideas to reach for when I get stuck.

I’ve been talking about writing another novel but haven’t gotten too far. I have a vague idea who and where and peripheral stuff but not a clear idea of what is going to be the thing that hangs the whole masterpiece together. When I wrote Little Friday before I wrote the first word I knew exactly where I was going to start and where was going to end up so at least I had a direction when I started to type.

Monday night as I drove home thinking about how badly I didn’t want to study for my test, I got the what. The whole thing started to flood my head. I came home and told Bob I couldn’t eat dinner right then because I had to scratch it all out while it was fresh in my mind.

So now I’m thinking, maybe I should just do this NaNoWriMo (the novel one) and go for it. It’s about 1600 words a day. I probably can’t do that every weekday, but if I wrote 1000 on weekdays and made the rest up on weekends … . But I already signed up for NaBloPoMo (the blog one) and I’m still taking the Illustrator class and the final project and another test are happening the first week of December. Thank God I didn’t sign up for that knitting class.

It’s not like they’re going to take my birthday away if I fail at any of the above. Or to stop me from writing my novel during the month of December, instead. But my inner schoolgirl wants to follow the rules and wants to do good.

I’m gonna think about it.

The Comcast Experience
On Friday I went to Comcast to swap out for a new DVR. It actually wasn’t that bad but I’m going to complain about it anyway.

First, the parking lot was obviously the prize winning entry in a challenge to build America’s stupidest parking lot. It didn’t win first prize because that honor went to the Bank of America on Hwy 99 in Hazel Dell across from Fred Meyer which only has 8 spots, all slightly smaller than any normal car and only one entry/exit so that there are 8 cars trying to get out and 8 cars trying to get in at the same time. It’s the Rubik’s Cube of parking lots.

At Comcast I missed the first spot where I was supposed to turn into the customer parking area and the second spot said DO NOT ENTER which meant that I had to drive all the way back around where the vans are and into what must have been the employee parking lot and then make an 150 point turn to get back out because it all dead ends right there.

Once I got myself parked, I went in and it was basically the DMV except smaller and with better technology. Way better technology. They spent big on the electronic signs and digital announcement to let you know it’s your turn and there was nothing left for the waiting area. There’s a gizmo where you get your ticket and you have to pick TV, Internet and I can’t remember what the third thing is, phone service? It prints you out a ticket and you can go sit down on the 4 padded cubes (they couldn’t even pony up for chairs with backs) which were all full so I had to stand there in the middle of the room holding my DVR.

Of course there was a giant flat screen TV cranking out CNN, strategically placed BEHIND the seats so that the only people who could conveniently watch were the joyless clerks who were a tad overqualified for the DMV so they got this job instead, and me standing in the middle of the room and hating all forms of televised news. (Except the Daily Show.)

I didn’t wait long and they got me set up and were polite to all the crazy customers who were demanding extra receipts and asking nutty questions such as holding up their modems and asking if it could be tested for how fast it worked. I guess under these circumstances, I’d be joyless too.

Now I’ve got my TV back.

Fall Colors?
Yesterday I went for a walk with my camera and this is what I ended up with. H’ep! (Although does look cool.)

Could we just go for 3 weeks without something breaking around here? I’m going to fiddle with it this afternoon. Maybe this is just a freak anomaly and the camera is just fine.

Last entry on the Potter adverb watch: sychophantically.

I finished the book this morning and the last 300 pages redeem the tome. Great set up for last book.

I thought I had more to report but I’m drawing a blank and don’t see any scraps of paper with hints around.

This is the last of my tomato crop, taken before the camera died, in case that wasn’t clear.

Camera Update: I tried swapping cards and jiggling the handle. Still looks kaput to me. Crap.

At last, a good night’s sleep last night. I feel 100% better.

The DVR gave up the ghost this week which means that I missed almost all my shows, which is fine. I like my shows but I get along fine without them. However, it’s amazing how dependent one can become on this kind of technology. I don’t even know when my shows are on or what channel. If I want some TV, I tune in to the DVR and see what’s waiting.

This afternoon after class I’m going to Comcast to swap out for a new box. I should be up and running in time for Battlestar Galactica tonight.

I’ve decided to take a 24 hour computer break this weekend. Between work and the Illustrator class, I think I ruined my neck. Or it could be this yoga pose that I did for the first time these past two weeks. Mine looks a lot more free style than this photo, which I borrowed without permission from Bill.

I’m going to do crafts tomorrow and organize my spice cupboard. See ya.

Hey look, someone else has my theory.

Humanity may split into two sub-species in 100,000 years' time as predicted by HG Wells, an expert has said.

Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics expects a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass to emerge.

The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the “underclass” humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.

The only difference is, I don’t think we’re going to be on the planet that long.

Favorite headline from a small town paper we get at the office.

Written Clickingly
Yesterday I woke up at 4am and couldn’t get back to sleep. I went to bed early the night before so I had a pretty decent night’s sleep and didn’t notice feeling tired until last night.

The teacher for my Illustrator class told us it would be frustrating sometimes and we’d want to throw our computers out the window. Last night I finally hit the wall and I didn’t want to throw my computer out the window but I did want to throw something at someone.

The lesson was to design a graphic for a website and it was all this: “Double click the endpoints and anchor points, copy and paste behind. Then, clicking the bottom layer, click on the clicks you just made and click them. Once you’ve clicked, drag, release and re-click the point and the clicks. Click the clicks and click them until you can click no more.”

Seriously, no one needs a website that badly.

Since I was tired, I went to bed. (Also, my DVR is broken and I had to try to remember how to use a VCR again, but that’s another tale.) And I couldn’t fall asleep. And I woke up today at 4am again. At the moment I’m feeling a wee bit groggy.

Also, I write this only because WKB will be horrified. Yesterday I had my leftover smoked salmon enchilada from Monday, for lunch and I ate it cold. I don’t know how the office microwave works and anyway, it smells like ass and I don’t want to put food in there. I’ll admit, the cold enchilada was not the most appetizing thing I’ve ever eaten.

Update: I’m a moron. Turns out the clickety click thing was not part of the homework. I wondered what that random sticky note was doing in there. It meant, “skip this part.”

Something Stinks
And it’s me.

Last night I put on my yoga outfit before class and it smelled like something died in it. Yuck.

I’m super sensitive of smells (ask my husband, I believe he called me a Terrier although that might have had to do with my Jaime Sommers hearing). I could hardly enjoy class because all I could smell was myself and I was all self-conscious that other people were growing light-headed in the vapor of my stench.

If you’ve been to many yoga classes, you might be snickering about now because there’s almost always someone in class who has elastic ideas about bathing, use of deodorant and/or wearing freshly laundered yoga clothes.

I couldn’t wait to get home, fling the clothes into the wash and fire up the spin cycle with extra pretty smelling essential oils (just a few drops, I buy my stash here.)

I figure what happened is that I tossed them to the floor last time I wore them. And then seeing them on the floor picked them up and put them on the dresser. Then seeing them on the dresser thought, “Oh these must be magically clean, I’ll put them back in the drawer.”

I’ll have to develop a whole system to prevent this from happening again.

Meanwhile, Potter adverb watch: reminiscently.