Category Archives: doing it wrong

Moving Part 1

Posted on February 23, 2005 by Pamela

I know, I STILL haven’t had a chance to update all this stuff. It’s becoming like my writing notebook on a trip. I’m so behind I don’t even want to start. I’m going to try to give you a brief version.

I have had the same job for 13 years. In fact, tomorrow is the 13 year anniversary. We’ve always worked out of a small residential condo on the river and the entire staff has ranged between 2 and 3 people, including me. There were lots of days when I was all by myself.

In the very beginning, I wasn’t always pleased with this as I had just moved here and had no friends and lived alone and then went to work alone and I felt like loner hermit girl. But eventually I grew to like it — turns out I thrive on alone time.

About 3 years ago there was discussion about merging with a larger law firm. I didn’t hate the idea but to be honest, I didn’t really want to do it. Since then we’ve been on and off whether this was going to happen culiminating last month with a “this is absolutely happening in February” and when I’d finally gotten used to the idea there was a day or two period of “this is absolutely off” followed by a “it’s on and we’re moving this Saturday.”

So to sum: a lot of change being swung back and forth.

We didn’t move that Saturday but we looked at the calendar and February wasn’t a good month for me to move since I had weekend activities so we finally decided on Mon Feb 21 since our clients take the federal holiday and it would be minimally disruptive to them and we could get the move done before March.

So I made a bunch of phones calls: movers, phones (there were additional complications with moving the phones which I won’t go into but required at least 10 phone calls), their office, our building management. Everything was set.

On Weds of last week, I was informed that the building didn’t permit move-ins on the weekdays. (For the record I did ask MORE THAN ONCE if there were any special rules about moving in I should know about.) Since the movers were still available Sunday I decided to cancel my plans and try to do the move on Sunday. I made all my phone calls to reschedule everything and then learned that the building we were in would not schedule a move out on a Sunday. (It’s a residential place, apparently the residents don’t want people moving on Sunday — I don’t know.) As of Thursday night we had phone calls into both managers hoping to plea for some sort of exception.

There’s more to this story which I will get to later but I’ve got to get moving now if I have a hope of getting to work on time.

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Paul Fans

Posted on February 20, 2005 by Pamela

Hi.

I know I said I was going to tell you about my rotten day. You know how when you’re in a rotten mood, you want to tell everyone about it, but it seems like too much energy?

And it seems like too much energy now, but I promise, I will bitch about it later.

Meanwhile, I’m doing hours and hours of yoga this weekend for a workshop which is helping me keep my head together.

And tonight is the giant Paul Westerberg love fest. We’re leaving in a few minutes.

You can find tour data here including the setlist which looks super fantastic, yay. And there’s a Seattle Times article. The tour only just started. Also there’s this blog and this guy also did an interview with Paul for the LA Weekly which I biffed on the link so you’ll have to find it yourself. Read it, Paul fans. Finally, Twintone has some classic vintage Replacements video worth it if you have the time to view a few bits.

Tomorrow yoga is only 3 hours (I know some of you are thinking, “only 3 hours?” but I did about 5 1/2 hours yesterday and another 5 1/2 today) so I can update you on the show AND bitch and whine about the rotten stuff.

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Dr. Zaius Dr. Zaius

Posted on February 17, 2005 by Pamela

I told Bob I wasn’t even going to power up the computer tonight so he said he would so he could download some Cheese which he is doing as we blog.

I had a super rotten day which I will tell you about later. You will agree it was rotten.

One thing that cheered me up was a rerun of the Simpsons. It was the one where Selma married Troy McClure and they have the bit with the Planet of the Apes musical and “Dr. Zaius Dr. Zaius.” If you know what I’m talking about, you are cracking up right now. If you don’t, you wish you did.

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Amazing Ability

Posted on February 14, 2005 by Pamela

It’s a shame I haven’t found a way to capitalize on this amazing ability I have to make it rain. Way back when I lived in Lake Oswego and was a runner, I could get the clouds to give way simply by lacing on my running shoes. (I should probably qualify my “running” as an activity that looked more like fast walking. I think, back then, if chased by blood thirsty wolves, I could possibly run a whole mile in under 8 minutes. But only 1. Then I’d keel over. Now, I don’t know what would happen.)

This weekend the sun was out Friday and I thought what a great opportunity to get out in the yard seeing as how last weekend when I tried to go out there, it started raining. But Friday I had a zillion other activities going on. (A guy came over to give us an estimate on air conditioning and we’re going for it, yay! I know it sounds unimportant now, but wait until August.) But in my mind I was thinking we’d have sun all weekend so I’d have plenty of opportunities.

Saturday was drippy but yesterday I noticed sun. By the time I finished my chores and put on my work clothes and stepped into the yard, the sky had clouded over and as I walked out there with my tools, the drops started to fall. At first I ignored it but that lasted about 2 minutes and I had to run back inside.

I started doing something else and then Bob came home and we noticed the sun was out again so we decided to go for a walk. We put our shoes on and bam, rain again.

Meanwhile, I put out a medal consideration cooking performance this weekend. Friday I did my rosemary roasted chicken with vegetables. Saturday I made a Russian style soup with potatoes, greenbeans and sour cream and sauerkraut. Yesterday I made my gumbo with cornbread. I bobbled on the dessert.

I like to make Bob a special chocolate thing every Valentines Day and this year I saved a recipe from the Oregonian for Flourless Lavender Chocolate Torte using this designer chocolate that wasn’t cheap. I don’t know what went wrong but the thing didn’t set up in the oven. It just boiled in the pan. I left it in 10 minutes longer than the recipe called for and finally took it out and figured we’d have choco-blobs. As long as it tasted good.

It did harden in the fridge and I put it on a plate and it wasn’t pretty. I generously sprinkled powdered sugar. It tasted decent. I don’t think brilliant, but it was okay.

Between that and the gumbo I woke up at 1:30am and nothing would get me back to sleep. I did finish book #6 hypocrite in a poufy white dress by Susan Jane Gilman which is a memoir written by a woman my age who grew up in New York and had all kinds of funny adventures. But now I have to get through the day on about 4 hours of sleep.

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What I Live For

Posted on February 10, 2005 by Pamela

Earlier this week I found all this great stuff about this book called Getting Things Done (Here is the author’s website.) I think there’s a software tie-in which is why all these internet geeks so excited about the system and improving their own personal productivity. And who wouldn’t be? This book must be great.

I checked it out and found some site (sorry, can’t find the link now, probably could if I was working the system) with a basic summary the principles of the book and basically what he’s telling you to do is make lists, stay organized, toss worthless stuff, file stuff to do later and keep your “to do now” stuff in a pile. Only he uses different words: you “capture” the stuff you need to do and put it in “buckets.”

I don’t know what I was expecting, maybe a magic wand, because my whole life is about making lists and being organized but the things don’t get done unless you actually do them. That’s the part someone should write a book about. (I’m being a smart ass in case there are dimwits reading this who don’t know the difference.)

If I learned anything it was that I should be writing books about being organized. I didn’t know this was salable information. I thought it was common sense.

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Master of Puppets

Posted on February 9, 2005 by Pamela

#1 – I just checked my gmail account — which I never use for anything other than a typepad blog I was playing around with for about 3 weeks and then pulled the plug on. I had 18 spam. Where could they possibly come from? Those 3 weeks? Geez. Also I have a few gmail invites if you want one. What a genius approach to make something available only by invite so it seems so special and then flooding the market with invites.

#2 – I went to yoga last night which means I was downtown on Fat Tuesday which means there were lots of people and even more police everywhere you looked. The thing is, all the masses of people I saw were young — barely drinking age, if that. They looked like high schoolers. And they hung out in packs and pretty much every guy was wearing dark knit hat. Is this some kind of uniform?

#3 – Bob and I watched Some Kind of Monster this weekend which is the documentary about Metallica. This film is unbelievably riveting. True, I am a fan of the band. (I own Ride the Lightning on vinyl.) I can’t believe they filmed some of this stuff. It’s an intense look at these super successful people trying to hold it together and it’s fascinating. And, not too much music for the metal non-lovers although I’ve had Seek & Destroy stuck in my head all week.

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Wizard

Posted on February 9, 2005 by Pamela

Hey, put your name in the Baby Name Wizard.

The Baby Name Wizard's NameVoyager is an interactive portrait of America's name choices.

It makes a graph of the name you type in — showing its popularity over the years. It’s really cool.

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Books!

Posted on February 8, 2005 by Pamela

I am reading Nick Hornby’s The Polysyllabic Spree which I mentioned before. It’s a collection of his columns from The Believer magazine and every column starts off with a list of books bought and a list of books read. The lists generally aren’t the same.

For the most part, he writes about books I’ve never heard of and even after hearing about them, most would not make it to my list. My list is extensive, trust me. I appreciate hearing about them in this book, thus my data field is expanded without me having to take action.

In one essay (Oct 04), Hornby talks about Gabriel Zaid’s book So Many Books (Jesus Christ it’s hard to find a link to a book that isn’t pure commerce, that’s what the Internet has reduced us to: lumps of meat that buy things.) Hornby sets forth Zaid’s basic question as “Why bother?” Zaid estimates it would take 15 yrs. to read a list of all the books ever published. And while a person like me would despair at this. I despair walking through Powell’s — just the fiction section — Hornby says, “I was actually rather heartened.”

Getting back to the books bought v. books read. I find I am always wanting to pick up huge collected story volumes such as the Mavis Gallant and Alice Munro books both sitting in my “to read” annex. (The main “to read” pile is by the bed. The annex is specific shelf in the bookcase.) I think I have flipped through both books a half dozen times but don’t think I’ve ever finished a story in either one.

Today, I read the NYT book reviews and saw the review on Carol Shields Collected Stories (593 pages!) and quickly jotted it down for my list. This in addition to the Paul Bowles collection and the Kate Chopin collection and the Mary McCarthy collection (actually essays) that I expect to add to the pile some day.

Because, yes, I completely intend to read them.

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Tante Irmgard Story

Posted on February 6, 2005 by Pamela

As you might have heard, boxing great Max Schmeling died.

There is a fantastic Tante Irmgard story about Schmeling and I’ll be damned if I can find it in my notebooks. I got out the whole collection this morning, even crap I didn’t even know I still had. (You know that dreadful juvenile crap that should be burned but for some reason you save, just in case you run out of reasons to feel humiliated?) I have 39 pages of notes from that trip but nothing on that story.

I think the event occured in the 80’s and something about Irmgard talking to him on the phone and I think he was a cranky old man. If he died at 99 then he was old twenty years ago which jives with the vague recollection of the story I think I heard. Since I don’t have an actual satisfying narrative for you, I’m going to substitute a different Tante Irmgard story that I found while searching for Max Boxer.

Tante Irmgard Rolls

In 1951 Irmgard got a license to drive a motorcycle. According to her, she was the first woman to get a license to drive a big motorbike in Hamburg (Germany). I see no reason not to believe her. According to my notes it was a 500 HP BMW with a sidecar with a dog in it and if that isn’t a true description of a motorbike, keep it to yourself. You get the idea.

When she went for her test, the Prüfer (tester guy) took one look at her and said, “I have a wife and 2 children.” He had to ride in the sidecar with his leg hanging out.

In 1954 Germany was in the World Cup which was going on in Switzerland. Irmgard rode her motorcycle all over Germany and was pulled over 5 times and and asked to show her license. She was with a group in Switzerland watching the final match between Germany and Hungary. (I’d love to give you more informative links but sometimes search engines suck big cheese.) I have an additional note about how Irmgard had a big crush on the German goalie (“ah, looks so good”) which my notes cryptically name as “Tony Toureck” and I can’t find reference to this dude anywhere so if you know his actual name and want to sent it to me, cool.

I guess Irmgard was watching the game with some Turks and Tony dreamboat made a save and Irmgard had her sunglasses in a plastic case and hit one of the guys with her case. They were rooting for Hungary. German won: a major upset.

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I Explain Nature

Posted on February 5, 2005 by Pamela

This morning was nice and sunny and I thought it might be a good day to do some garden stuff. We had our trees pruned this week. Chuck normally comes in January to do the apple tree in the backyard but last year he had a back injury and somehow we fell through the cracks. Meanwhile, there was that 10 star ice storm last winter and as I understand nature, our apple tree panicked, thinking its days might be numbered it produced about 10 trillion apples which meant sagging branches. A major one broke and has dangled ever since because we are too lame to deal with it. (I even said this on the message I left for Chuck so that when he arrived, he’d know we know we’re lame. I did mention that we’re good at other things.)

I also asked him to check out the tree in front, which I, based on my limited botanical knowledge (read: none), have designated as an “ornamental cherry.” I thought it could use some shaping. He worked on them both and they look fantastic (as much as a pruned tree in winter can look.)

We need to put the debris into the bins for garden waste pick up and if you go at the pruning waste with clippers you can fit a lot more in. Plus I need to whack back my roses b/c the lady in the Oregonian said you should so that around now.

These were the things I had planned for the day. HOWEVER, I needed to finish reading my book (Straight Man, thanks Hannah) and of course, it always takes longer to read the last 100 pages than you think it will so at 12:30 pm I was still in bed reading, my yoga practice long abandoned.

At some point the sun disappeared. I opened the shades so I could read better. When I was about 10 pages from the end I heard the rain fall. I looked out to make sure that’s what was happening and yup, cold drippy rain.

I’m dressed now in my garden clothes, just in case things clear up and I can work out there later. But Bob already has been out there AND I have fresh Buffy in the DVD so you take your bets on how this afternoon is going to turn out.

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