You're Doing It Wrong

All photos : downtown Portland.

I don’t have any good stories to tell, I just don’t want the story about my caveman photo to be at the top.

There’s a waterpark north of here called Great Wolf Lodge and I heard a commercial for it last week and it was like a parody of a radio commercial.

A bunch of chiming voices in a ridiculous chorus.

In the process of seeing if I could find it online using “terrible radio commercial” I pulled up what is apparently a terrible commercial for an Indian casino with such horribly racist comments it’s taken me a moment to catch my breath. What is wrong with people?

We saw Tracy Kidder for our lecture series last week. I enjoyed it but I’ve never read one of his books so I’m not sure I got the full meal deal.

Cadbury eggs are in the stores. I sprinted across the holiday promotional aisles on Friday so I could load up my cart. That’s a lot of sugar in one treat, even for me. But I still love them.

I can’t find the link right now and I can’t remember the exact details. Last week my food site was talking about dumbest questions about food which isn’t really what I want to talk about.

What I wanted to mention is that somehow everyone got fixated on lentils and tons of people mentioned that they’d never heard of lentils until deep into their lives.

I can’t believe there was a time when I didn’t eat lentils. But it doesn’t seem like a food Mom would have made. I bet I started eating them when I was a vegetarian way back in the 90’s. I still love them but my husband is not a huge fan so I mostly make them when he’s not going to be around.

Wow. I really failed at turning that into a post.

Sorry.

Today I finalized a story which is way different than just finishing and that used up about 99% of my brain juice so I’m just coasting until bedtime.

If you’re looking for Yamhill near PGE park. Follow the signs.

For the past several years, every time our vacuum cleaner has needed new bags, I always put off buying them.

Our vacuum is an inexpensive Kenmore canister Sears special. We’ve had it forever and really put it through the paces. I keep expecting it to fall apart. It’s all scuffed and pieces falling off. Duct taped. Every other time I take it out of the closet it seems to groan and not want to do its job. And I fiddle with it and jiggle all the cables. And it works.

I’m probably totally jinxing us by writing this.

That thing just keeps sucking. I’m not sure how old it is, but it’s already put in many good years of service.

I worry that the vacuum will die while I have a cupboard full of bags. I ate throwing away perfectly good stuff so I’d save the bags and then every time I cleaned out that closet I get all fretful about keeping stuff I don’t need or throwing away something that could be used. And then trying to donate it somewhere.

As if this entire exercise is a good use of my time.

This is on the sign for the Portland lightrail and it cracks me up every time I see it. We are Portlandia.

Our crevice tool splintered awhile back. It makes a high pitched whistle and does a terrible job of picking up the crud in my crevices. I really miss it. I looked around in a few stores, thinking that there must be bags of crevice tools available but I didn’t have much luck and didn’t feel like researching it further for the same reasons I hesitate to buy vacuum bags.

We need vacuum bags now. I’ve been putting off the purchase mission. But I’m getting low on See’s Candy and need to go to the mall anyway.

I have my priorities straight.

These photos are still from Thursday. It was pretty when the sun came out. The snow is about half gone now. The weather service says we might get more tonight and I will keeps my thoughts on that to myself this time.

Several weeks ago I found a reality TV show about soccer players trying out for a spot on a professional soccer team.

I don’t have a lot of patience for reality TV but I wanted to check out the show to see if would help me with a writing project. What I wanted to see was how the guys interact with each other.

Turns out its completely worthless for that. I think it’s a weakness of the show but I got sucked into it anyway.

Its an Australian show which I didn’t know until I started watching it. The players are young, I think the oldest is 19. They are so funny. Half of them are total smartasses and the other half are completely earnest and hardworking. We started with 15 and we’re down to 5. Guess which ones are left?

It is a very padded one hour. They do a lot of stupid challenges (drawing a topless model {can you imagine trying to do that on a US show?}, pole dancing, cheerleading) but they do intense training stuff and play tough games. A couple of them won a trip to meet Tim Cahill who is a really amazing Australian soccer player. When they were waiting they were really nervous and one of them said, “This is worse than waiting for a date.”

Now I’m stuck with it because I want to see who wins. I like all the last five but I have a couple of favorites.

Well I guess that shows me.

Mt. St. Helens

A couple of weeks ago I was driving around in a part of town I don’t know very well. It was night and rainy.

All my windshield wipers did was spread the water back and forth across the windshield.

“How did my windshield wipers go to hell so badly without me noticing?” is what I was thinking as I white-knuckled it home, following a red smear of taillights.

I checked my service records and it’s been almost a year since I took my car in. I don’t drive much and mostly short daytime trips so it would make sense that I didn’t notice the wipers were failing.

Signs of Spring

I figured I’d get the oil changed along with the windshield wipers and by the time I drove out they’d also replaced every possible thing they didn’t replace during the 90K service last year.

$600 windshield wipers.

I did a little bit of homework to see if I wanted to get a newer car this year but I like not having a car payment. Plus dealing with car salespeople takes about 10 years off my life.

I had to walk through the new car lot when I went back to the dealer to pick up my car. When they pulled mine up, I had to admit, it looked a little dingy next to the new shiny cars.

But now I can see when it rains. I love my new windshield wipers.

I have so many notes sitting on my desk for things I wanted to write about. And photos. I am simply not able to bring my intentions into being.

Last week we tried The Peoples’ Pig food cart for the first time. When he handed over the sandwiches to the guys before us, one of them looked so deliriously enraptured I almost took his picture. It’s that kind of pork sandwich.

I got the arugula and lemon porchetta sandwich.

I was a little nervous because I have the digestive system of a woman twice my age and it generally does not embrace much pork product. The sandwich smelled incredible. I wish I could post smells.

It tasted amazing but was pretty greasy and I took my time and quit before I finished it. My digestive system cleared its throat once but otherwise did not complain so I wil be back to try it again.

The building where I work. (The pink one.)

Here’s a random collection of stories.

We were upgraded to Office 2010 at work which made me really grumpy. We’d previously used Office 1988 and at home I use Office 1972 for Mac. This was not a fun transition.

I have a lot to do at work and didn’t really want to take a time out for learning. I wanted to be able to just figure it out and I’m here to tell you that wasn’t always possible.

At home we have a subscription to lynda.com which I have mostly used for Photoshop and Illustrator. They had a 1 hour transitioning from Office 1988 to Office 2010 which was awesome and fixed about 90% of my frustration.

*

I was telling co-worker a story and made a side remark about people who save and reuse aluminum foil. He asked: Do you save foil? I said: uh, uh, uh.

He gave me a scornful look that could cut marble.

I don’t save it all the time but if it’s a big flat piece that could easily be reused, why not?

*

I’ve written before about my renewed interest in gymnastics, even collegiate. This week I taped Florida (#1) at Georgia (#4). I made Bob watch the opening of it because I wanted him to see how crazy it is. The Gym Dogs came bursting out in a dazzle of light. Attendance was 9,800. They have cheerleaders. It is insane.

Bob agreed it was insane. And he even watched the first two rotations with me and thought it was fun to watch.

Yes, I am the same person who wrote a couple of days ago about making more time to write. Whatever. Go ahead, judge me.

*

There are so many ads for ab machines during gymnastics. Some of those gadgets are so ridiculous. There’s one where you make a circle that looks crazy. During gymnastics all the machines were crunch machines. I thought crunches were out and the new thing is planks and crazy variations like on a stability ball. Also does anyone really think rippled veiny abs are so great? Fortunately, not a problem for me.

I have the abs of a person who eats pork sandwiches.

Korean Twist lunch. Yes, that is supposed to be a single serving burrito. I only ate half.

I am way behind on my stories but I don’t think anyone wants to read a 2000 word post so I’ll just tell the banking story. And a quick Hannah story.

For at least a month, maybe longer, after I sought help for my neck pain issues I got incomprehensible statements from the clinic and my insurance. The clinic statements say stuff like: ex; prohs, escp, 2 units, prox. et.

Next to each item there are random dollar amounts that were never consistent on any bill.

Then my insurance sends me a statement that says: services billed $371. Our rate: $117.50. Percentage not covered 35.75. You owe: $17.63.

Every time I got a bill I took out all the medical statements and all the insurance reports and I could never figure it out and just paid them all.

Then I got a refund check from the doctor which crossed in the mail with another payment I made from a statement they sent.

Oh, I use billpay. That’s the key part of the story.

After that final payment they returned the billpay check marked VOID to me with a letter telling me they didn’t know why I kept paying since I didn’t owe anything.

Dryer vents on an apartment building in NE Portland.

I took the check to the bank and asked if there was anything I needed to do.

First they told me it wasn’t from their bank and did I have any other bank accounts?

I carefully kept my head from imploding and said I didn’t do billpay with any other banks, it was their check and that’s why I was there.

They said that normally I would just deposit it but since it said VOID there was nothing they could do and I should call the phone number on the check and ask them what to do.

I don’t feel like I can make the whole exchange interesting but understand that it went on a lot longer and the bank people never said anything that made sense. That can’t be the first billpay in history that wasn’t cashed by the recipient. It says right on the check that it’s void after 90 days. I’m guessing in 90 days the money is going to be back in my account but the girl in the bank didn’t seem hopeful. At the conclusion of this, she wanted to know, “Does that help?”

No, why would she even ask that? She wasn’t even a tiny bit helpful.

It’s a small amount that’s already wasted way too much of my time so I’m not going to worry about it.

On Thursday night we got a survey call to quiz me about my recent visit to this branch. Bob was trying to screen the call and I grabbed the receiver out of his hand.

YES! I said, I want to do the customer service survey.

And you’ve heard me moan and groan about this before but customer service questions aren’t designed to let you give feedback on a problem. The questions were like: 5 you agree, 1 you don’t agree, did the teller try to be helpful?

Yes, she was nice and intended to solve my problem but the service she provided was completely worthless. Why wasn’t there a question about that?

And also: is that were we are now? We rate people on the basis of how much they tried?

If the Doctor says he tried to remove your appendix but only managed to take out a wedge of your spleen, are we supposed to say: Yay, you tried. At least you removed something.

Urgh.

And speaking of lame service Hannah came to hang out with us this weekend. Yay.

Amtrak phoned a couple hours before she was supposed to leave to inform her that there was a mudslide on the tracks and no trains were getting through.
Hannah said: Okay. I need to get home. What are my options?
Amtrak said: Maybe we’ll get people through tomorrow.
Hannah said: I have to work tomorrow. I have to get home.
Hand poorly placed over receiver, Amtrak to co-worker: She says she has to get to Seattle.
Amtrak: You could try Greyhound.
Hannah: You don’t have any options?
Amtrak: We’d reimburse your ticket.
Hannah: You’re telling me I have no way to get home tonight. Amtrak isn’t organizing a bus?
Long pause.
Amtrak: Uh, well. We have a bus coming in from California. You might be able to get on it.

We went down there and there was a nice bus and they were loading everyone on it. I wonder if she’ll get a customer service survey.