Category Archives: doing it wrong

Warm Days Ahead

Home!

Great long weekend. Terrific weather. Lots of good food and great company.

I always wish I had one more day.

I can’t think of one good story to tell right now. It seems like every single trip we sleep like the dead all weekend with fun naps in between and the night before we go home we can’t sleep more than a few hours. I’m a little crossed eyed at the moment and trying to get organized for my work week.

I’m sure I’ll think of something brilliant later.

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Best of Traffic

I thought of a great story while I was pumping gas but now I can’t remember what it was.

It seems like every time I am getting ready to go out of town and I have a million things to do, there is some sort of traffic meltdown and I get home late from work.

This happened again tonight.

Here’s a quick story about carrots.

I love carrots and eat them almost every day. But mostly I only like raw carrots.

I don’t mind carrots cooked, but if I see a recipe that’s for just carrots, like glazed carrots, it would never occur to me to make that.

We had cooked carrots at Priscilla’s for St. Patrick’s Day. They were perfectly fine.

I just never think to cook carrots.

Behave. See you in a few days.

(Also more tulip photos to come. The light was poop when I got home tonight so most of the photos I took look like deer-in-the headlights flowers. I’ll try again.)

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Quick Tulip Update

On Sunday night on the way home from the match I was able to witness the powder blue Cadillac from hell.

At my freeway off-ramp I wait for a light to make a left. The right going traffic has a yield sign.

Blue came off the freeway at high speed going right and did not yield. Horns honking. He then made an illegal u-turn and came back the way I was going.

My light turned green. I waited. He blew through a completely red light at high speed.

I made my left. At the intersection ahead of me, he passed the car waiting at the light on the left. He pulled into the gas station.

I wondered if I should do something. He had his window down and was talking to someone at the gas station.

I’m not the type to do something type plus my team had blown a lead in the 93rd minute so I was moping.

This is just a preview of the tulips. They have barely started coming in.

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The Crud

We have had the crud here. Bob went down on Tuesday night and I went down on Thursday night. Mostly just achy, fevery and no energy. Bob finally put on pants and left the house yesterday. He went to the grocery store and said he pushed his cart around, not sure what to get. At one point he looked down and saw that all he had was different kinds of meat and yogurt and felt like it was a window into a sad life he might have had.

I feel back to 90% and am taking it slow but am trying to follow my usual routine.

It’s been a long time since we were sick like that. And even longer both at the same time. I was too tired to even watch TV. Usually if I’m sick I would rather watch TV than read but the only time I felt okay was when I was sitting up in bed reading. In fact, I felt okay enough that I kept thinking maybe I wasn’t that sick. Then I’d get up and walk around and head straight back to bed.

I’m sure it will surprise few that know me that I actually have a list of things to do for when I’m sick. That list is pretty much: watch Wes Anderson movies. I think I own almost everything on DVD. But since I didn’t feel like watching TV, no Wes Anderson movies were seen. I read In the Woods by Tana French cover to cover on Friday and almost all of The Magician’s Land yesterday. Finished it this morning. Both are excellent if you like murder mysteries (ITW) and urban fantasy (TML).

I had to miss the last preseason match – but if you’re going to miss soccer because you’re sick. Better to get it over with during the preseason.

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Everything is Awesome!

OOPS. I think I clicked publish when I meant save draft. Oh well. Maybe refresh?

Because EVERYTHING IS NOT AWESOME.

Yes, we’re back. Pre-season. Our first MLS match is on March 7.

I got to see all my Timbers related friends like our cashier at Hot Lips Pizza, our section usher Louisa, our fellow season ticket holders in our section. It wasn’t raining sideways. I didn’t have my plastic pants. I did have layers because I am afraid of being too cold.

It’s a 4 team tournament including Chicago, Vancouver and Norway’s Stabaeck, coached by Bill Bradley. If you’re a soccer nerd you know what that means.

If you know what Smartfish is, leave a note in the comments.

Section 117!

Nanchoff, Nagbe, Adi, Jeanderson, Wallace !!!!

Yes, our hands were cold. We better buy new gloves!

It was lovely getting back to matches in February and not freezing our butts off, but the match was not pretty. Not even a tiny bit pretty.

Stay tuned. Maybe next week will be better.

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Windshield Wipers Academy

A couple of years ago we were hiking in the woods and my sister said she was going to go hug a fatty. I thought maybe it was a euphemism (for?) but nope, she needed to hug a giant tree.

Unlike most people, I hate taking my car in for service.

Just kidding, is there anyone that says, “Yay! It’s time to take the car in.”

The service place is conveniently located as long as I do some planning so I figured out a scheme where I could drop the car off, take the train into work and then pick up the car later and meet a friend (and not have to drive home at rush hour). The plan worked perfectly.

One of the things I asked them to do is replace the windshield wipers.

One morning there was mist on the windshield and when I fired up the wipers, they seemed not quite right. They scraped the mist off but they sort-of stuttered along the windshield and I would say smeared more than wiped. Since I did not want to come up with another scheme so I could return to the service place, I decided that maybe they needed to break in and perhaps there wasn’t enough moisture.

A week later: mist, stutter, smear.

I called and they said bring it in whenever I could.

I really didn’t want to drop everything to do it right away. However, I didn’t see many days in the near future where it would be more convenient and I didn’t want to get stuck in the rain and be crossing my fingers since I couldn’t see.

The next morning I sat in the car, watching the wipers clear the mist and I was uncertain. Was there really a problem or was I being a fussy old lady? It wasn’t like they were a complete failure, just not my usual experience with brand new wipers.

I decided to ease my mind and take it in. A very nice young man helped me and he was patient, but in placating way. He said they were definitely new and he cleaned them off. Then he sat in the car and did a few rounds of the wiper fluid and also seemed uncertain. He said he would go ahead and replace the parts.

He returned from parts with another guy who took one look and said: they’re on backwards. The left and right were swapped.

They went ahead and replaced the parts anyway and even though I was annoyed that they screwed up and I had to make a special trip, I was also relieved that the problem was real and not just fussy old lady syndrome.

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The Great Snail Massacre of 2015 (part 1)

The other night we had an event after work and didn’t get home until 10pm. As soon as we drove up I saw the blooms and jumped out of the car to take a closer look.

Then I noticed that the entire flower bed and wall of my house was covered with snails. I have been seeing a few when it’s damp out but this was crazy.

I went into the house and changed in my garden clothes and got a flashlight and a bucket and picked 133 snails. Plus I stepped on two by accident.

Here is a simulation. There’s a wall on the left that faces away from the photo that was also snail land although many of these snails were too high for me to reach and are probably desperately reproducing right now while we sit at our computers.

Why can’t I have more dollars than I need and be wishing I had extra snails?

Gross, huh?

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Sci Fi Movies For Everyone

These are from our trip to Canada last summer. Bob wanted me to sit in the giant yellow chair and I said, “That’s so stupid.” Then this random stander-by encouraged me so I crawled in. I stuck them together for our xmas cards and this was photo 1.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve seen Jupiter Ascending (the Wachowskis’ bright and loud space opera), Edge of Tomorrow (Tom Cruise time travel-Groundhog Day-ish), and finally, Guardians of the Galaxy (Marvel movie, but funny and I was hugely resistant to but finally bowed to pressure, not sorry.)

Then we ran out of xmas cards so I made more and I wanted to try to improve the photo and I did this one. Just so you know, there are 2 versions if you’re collecting.

The main things these movies have in common is major set pieces in the middle where it’s hard to tell what exactly is happening. Also, stories that don’t really make sense.

At the same time, they are very entertaining and satisfying. Especially, Galaxy. I’ve been humming “I’m Not in Love,” non-stop. I love hearing songs that I haven’t thought about for eons and then finding I can remember all the words.

That happened last week with The Eagles, “Life in the Fast Lane.” “He was a hard-headed man/ he was brutally handsome, and she was terminally pretty …”

I don’t think I was won over to 10cc until “The Things We Do For Love.” I bet my sister still has the cassette.

But back to the movies, what is the lesson? If you know what you like and you’re entertained, who cares?

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Valentine’s Day Miracle

I finally retrieved my wedding ring. I dropped it in the couch last weekend and I either haven’t had time or haven’t been in the mood to deal with it. I had all my tools assembled in the living room.

Sheesh. I feel like MacGyver. The crevice where it was stuck was too narrow for almost anything. It was so tight that once I got my flashlight in there so I could see what I was doing, I couldn’t do anything else. I tried a piece of sturdy wire. I tried the vacuum. I tried feeling all long every corner of the couch to see if there was a way in. I finally moved it from the wall and tried tilting it back and forth.

Did I mention it’s a giant heavy couch that dual reclines using a motor? When the kids delivered it they told us it was the heaviest thing they had to deliver. I unplugged the motor so it wouldn’t turn into a sad Darwin award story. But then I started rocking a heavy couch back and forth to tip it on its side. Then I crawled underneath it. Apparently it wasn’t my day to die from something completely stupid.

I’ll omit the long boring details but I finally found that it had dropped to another couch level underneath but still no way to stick a hand in and grab it. Also, because of the angle I could either point a flashlight at it, or try some tool to grab it, but not both at the same time. There were a couple more rounds of couch rocking. I eventually used my sturdy wire wrapped around an extra long chopstick (I have no idea why I have these and what they would be used for — maybe a wok? Which I don’t own) I managed to scrape the ring to a corner where I could grab it. Yay!

I have not learned my lesson and will continue to fiddle with my ring.

I also found my glasses! But first: I used advanced Google search to find the post so I could link to it and got this:

HA! It’s like Google knows me. Here’s the post where I lost my glasses in a wind storm.

But probably I didn’t lose them in the wind. There’s one area of the yard that gets very little rain or sun and has lovely dry soil that the cats can’t keep out of. I had raked up a bunch of leaves and debris around that area and I checked it yesterday to see if it was working and I found my glasses. I was probably leaning over the debris and they fell off my head or I sometimes wear them with one arm stuck in my shirt. I washed them off and happy to have them back.

And my plot against the cats appears to be mostly successful. There is one little area where it looks like they found a work around. Cats are evil.

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Chocolate Expert

I think this is a tomatillo skeleton. I saw it when I was taking out the compost.

We received a giant Whitman’s sampler box for Christmas.

My spouse is a choco-fiend and I sometimes get after him for eating all my See’s Candy or in the alternative, eating it all except 3 little crummy pieces. The most recent box I bought still had a few pieces in it that he’d left for me. I thought I would be clever and consolidated it all into the Whitman’s box.

I kid you not less than 48 hours the See’s were all gone. Just the wrinkled paper wrappers left amongst the Whitman’s chocolates.

(I still have a box of See’s stashed away. I also still have Christmas candy including a box of Harry and David’s truffles. I’m not hurting.)

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