Best Weekend Ever (So Far)

Posted on May 30, 2011 by Pamela

I got home from Wisconsin last night and I’ve been playing catch up today.

Among, the things I’ve been trying to accomplish today, there’s an item that concerns my webhosting. I’m not even going to try to explain it because it would bore your face off but the net result is this question: is there any webhost that can walk and chew gum at the same time?

The first problem was that no one informed me there was a problem. The thing I’m trying to do wouldn’t work but I didn’t know why, only that nothing was happening. So I did some investigating and fixed the thing that made it not work. Then I tried to do my thing again but I got a new problem message.

It was like no matter how specifically I tried to articulate my question, they managed to dumb it down and answer with something completely worthless. Then I’d refine my question, and, of course, there’s no continuity, each time I lobbed it back at them I’d get a new person, who mangled my question into some other direction.

It’s like if you took your car in and said, “I’m having trouble starting my car, what’s going on with it?” And the reply was, “You’re having trouble because you bought a car,” and then you said, “I understand that I bought a car, but sometimes, in the morning it won’t start. Why won’t it start?” and then the reply was, “Many people use their cars in the morning. Your car can be used in the morning.”

I think on this last round, we’re getting somewhere but now I’m half bald from pulling my hair out in aggravation.

Meanwhile, check out the photos from my visit to Forevertron this weekend. I have a lot more good ones and I’ll post on Flickr next weekend. (Hopefully.)

Posted in Clarion West, pamily | 6 Comments

Hitting the Road

Posted on May 24, 2011 by Pamela

Remember these ancient devices? I still have a box or two in dusty archive cartons at the office.

All my technical devices are charged. I have spare batteries, charging cables and earbuds as applicable. I have a big fat book I haven’t started yet. I have warm socks. I am headed out to Wisconsin to hang out with friends and I won’t be back until Sunday.

Enjoy your weekend.

Posted in doing it wrong | 3 Comments

The Stuff That’s Hidden

Posted on May 22, 2011 by Pamela

I have a purse about the size of a mass market paperback book. It’s my going out purse when I don’t want to carry much except my money, ID, phone and keys. It’s the purse I use for soccer games.

Usually I stuff the bag into my jacket and skip bag check. I can’t remember the all the things you aren’t supposed to bring in. But the list is like weapons, sticks, offensive signs and outside food and drinks. Obviously I can’t fit any of those items into my dinky purse so it seems stupid to check the bag.

Last night I didn’t have my jacket zipped and I was right at the turnstile with the guy scanning my ticket when this security lady started screaming, “BAG CHECK! BAG CHECK! BAG CHECK!”

I realized she was pointing at me so I had to take my ticket out of the guy’s hand and go back to the security table where I unzipped my bag for a nice man and said, “That lady wants you to check my purse.”

He glanced in and laughed and said, “Hey, you could have dynamite in there.”

Meanwhile, my jacket had giant pockets which was where I stashed my plastic pants, my knit hat AND MY CONTRABAND COOKIES.

Remember my broken wheel from my chair at the office? Here’s the broken wheel.

Here’s the box from Master Caster. Is that the best name for a business or what?

Here’s the selection. None of them really fit my chair but I made do with one that’s close enough.

Posted in doing it wrong, TIMBERS! | 5 Comments

Fast Boring Update

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Pamela

This afternoon I wanted to send a friend a photo of Fonzie jumping the shark in response to the last episode of a show we both watch. When I did an image search, among the many Fonzie photos, it brought up a photo of the two stars of the show I was refering to. HA!

This morning I drove across town to pick up my mixer. It’s all fixed. Yay. And I already put it to work. Then I ran by Lowe’s to get garden stuff. There was a major accident on the freeway north of my off ramp. I didn’t realize what was going on until it was too late and it took a half hour to get off the freeway at my exit, the whole time watching all the cars and trucks smart enough to get off early.

I spent all afternoon in the yard. I still haven’t got the raspberry trellis fixed up. I couldn’t find what I wanted at Lowe’s and thought I could ad lib with something we already had at home but I couldn’t find that either. If I can get motivated I have another idea to try tomorrow.

I’ve got the entire easy side of the yard all put together. The tomatoes in the walls-of-water are doing fantastic. I found a cheeky snail in one of them gorging on the buffet. I put a stop to that. I’ve got peas coming up and lots of other sprouts.

The not-easy side of the yard is a complete disaster. I’ll chip away at it tomorrow.

I just updated my Flickr set with all the Timbers home games so far. Just in case you were missing that.

Posted in doing it wrong, garden | 2 Comments

Master of Disaster

Posted on May 18, 2011 by Pamela

The other day I saw Mr. Oranges up in the apple tree digging his little paw around top there. I figured there must be something birdlike in there that he was trying to get into. I tried to sneak out to get photos.

I’ve read a couple of Julia Child related books in the last year or so. I read My Life in France and just finished a book of correspondence.

I’m sure I’ve seen snippets of her shows before, but not for years and years.

In fact, I probably have a better memory of seeing Dan Akroyd do Julia Child.

As soon as he saw me he jumped down from the tree and came over to say, Hi. Later I saw a bird sitting up there looking forlorn. Sort of like, “My wife is going to kill me when she gets home and finds out I ruined the birdlets.”

As it turns out, PBS does repeats and I taped one and Bob and I watched it last night. (There are shows online, too.) It was hilarious.

I very rarely watch cooking shows. I don’t have a lot of excess time for TV and I find it tough for me to watch cooking. I want to be doing it. Or, as usually is the case for me, learn by doing it wrong.

The episode we watched is from 1971, La Tarte Tatin, and I was surprised by how awkward it was. Julia knocking over the utensils and then the Tarte coming out (spoiler alert!) a big mushy disaster which she waves off and tells us how we’re going to fix it. But there is a pause where she’s disappointed that she can’t show us how pretty it’s supposed to look. “What a shame.”

Mr. Oranges feels no shame. I still see the bird flying around there so either the cat was unsuccessful or the bird is trying again or I am completely misunderstanding what’s going on in my apple tree.

It’s nice to know you can still find her out there. I already learned something from that one clip which is that it’s possible to make pastry a lot more casually than the way I go about it.

Posted in cooking, doing it wrong | 1 Comment

Chocolate Haupia Pie

Posted on May 13, 2011 by Pamela

I read about this pie in a travel article a few months ago. It’s a specialty at a bakery in Hawaii. I’ve been trying to improve my pie making and I wanted to try it.

I found a recipe here.

I don’t have coconut extract and didn’t want to buy it and I’ve never seen a measurement for chocolate like that. At first I thought it meant powdered chocolate. It also calls for a regular pie crust which I didn’t think would cut it.

I used the crust from Cook’s Illustrated Chocolate Cream Pie recipe: 16 Oreo cookies zoomed in the food processor and then mixed with 2 Tbls of melted butter and pressed into the pie pan. You put it in the fridge for 20 minutes and then bake at 350 for 10 minutes.

For the chocolate I used 7 oz. of high cocoa content chocolate. I’ve read a million articles about chocolate but I still don’t completely get the cocoa content thing. I used Lindt Excellence, one bar of 90% and one bar of 70% because that’s what they had at Fred Meyer.

It came out fantastic. Pretty and good tasting. I didn’t even bother with the whipped cream topping.

Now I’m super full but happy. Highly recommend.

Posted in cooking, doing it wrong | 3 Comments

Old News

Posted on May 9, 2011 by Pamela

Remember how I was joking that THE PICTURE was probably going to end up in the stadium somewhere? See that upper right hand corner?

I wrote this post last week but then broken computer blah blah and I never got around to posting it so stale news but this is today’s program.

Status update #1: Yes, still coughing but it’s tapering off. I’ve gone through every pocket, drawer, car storage, backpack and purse and consumed every moldy cough drop and Fisherman’s Friend in this household. Now I have to run out and buy a bunch more to stash in every pocket, drawer, car storage, backpack and purse so it can get moldy and gummy for my next cough.

Status update #2: The last Cadbury egg in the stash has finally been consumed. The Timbers souvenir chest cold was at Mach 5 over Easter weekend and I was unable to consume any candy.

Here’s a crappy close up. I had to buy a cheap-ish pocket camera because I am so hard on them plus the concourse was completely busy so I couldn’t really take an artful shot. Also, you can buy this as a poster to take home. Mother’s Day gift solved! Just kidding. But I am going to buy one for my office.

Last week I had a minor meltdown because I kid you not, every thing we own is breaking. Not just like a broom falling off its handle or a favorite coffee mug cracking. But major stuff that costs money and/or is a pain in the butt to fix or replace.

During Easter Dinner dessert making my Kitchen Aid mixer broke. I thought those were supposed to be indestructible. A whole piece of it fell off into the (not)whipped cream. I hope you won’t think poorly of me when I tell you I said many bad words. I found one official Kitchen Aid mixer repair shop in the area and dropped it off.

While I was in the place a lady came up to me and pointed at the mixer and said, “What do you do with that?”

I kind of wanted to mess with her and say stuff like, “Oh, you know, lasagna, split pea soup, cat food.”

Then my computer died. I said to Bob, if we can just get through 24 hours with everybody healthy and nothing breaking.

Twenty four hours later he came in the house and announced that the lawn mower had died.

I wrote about the broken chairs on Facebook. Short version is I took these chair parts to be repaired and it was ridiculously expensive so I decided to buy new chairs. Then out of curiosity I did some Internet searching and there are replacement parts for the broken chairs that cost 1/2 of what he quoted me to fix it. Now I’m not sure what to do (except never go back to that repair shop). I have new chairs on the brain.

I’m not sure where I was going with this. Some things have been fixed. Others replaced. Others are back on the “list of things to deal with later.”

Meanwhile, our wallets are lighter.

Posted in doing it wrong, TIMBERS! | 5 Comments

Timbers Jet Roll-In

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Pamela

Long busy day. I need to do this quick because I need to get on the road for another home game tonight.

Guess what I did this morning?

Another Timbers dorktastic special event at the airport.

Everyone at the Alaska Airlines ticket counter had their green on.

Welcome!

Here’s everyone gathered at the gate.

Even the ground crew wears Timbers scarves.

Our fearless leader Merritt Paulson tells us the flight is going to be 30 minutes early. That balloon behind him makes it look like he has a halo.

The tail!

Timbers Jet.

We’re told it’s going (it went) to Las Vegas today. I said: Let’s go to Vegas.

Of course we couldn’t because we have a game tonight.

I just picked up my computer and it’s working like a dream so I feel like a regular person again. Lots more photos and updates later this weekend.

Posted in TIMBERS! | 3 Comments

Everything All Farked Up

Posted on May 1, 2011 by Pamela

So, my desktop computer died earlier this week. Well I don’t know for sure that it’s dead. It’s now in the hands of male people with minimal social skills so I’m not sure where we’re at right now. I’m about 99% backed up and I have a laptop so it’s not like I’m not covered. But I only use my laptop for travel. Word processing and basic Internet stuff. My desktop is all set up for my regular stuff. Like making my photos look pretty and FTPing them to Screamhost.

I knew the desktop was not feeling well and buying new computers is on our list, just not for a month or two. I decided that this weekend I’d make sure that I had all my desktop stuff on my laptop to limp along until we got the new desktop systems. But the thing died before I could do that.

I have photos to go with this but I can’t remember how my FTP works and don’t want to spend even 3 minutes figuring it out right now. And I don’t want these photos on Flickr. Argh. Everything is stupid.

I’m still coughing. I looked up my souvenir cough from last spring and apparently the cold lasts a week and then the cough two weeks. I thought I was almost finished but i guess I have another week of this crap.

It was sunny today but otherwise I’m grumpy. The good news is I did a bunch of garden stuff.

I didn’t document it because it was too depressing but my tomato sproutlets had serious declines in health. I thought it was because they were cold and the sun never shines but I think they may have been over-watered, too. I was going to put them all in the ground anyway. I figured I could yank them and get bigger, taller, healthier stuff at the Farmer’s Market later.

One of them broke when I was planting it and the other I knocked all the leaves off putting the walls-of-water on it. My sweetheart took his Mom to the garden show this weekend and brought me three healthy tomatoes so I put those in. I also made a sort of greenhouse thing using a tip from the Internet and wrapped saranwrap around my tomato cage. So I have four plants in the ground. I planted a bunch of seeds. My usual: peas, beets, turnips, greens and carrots. Some of the stuff was planted two weeks ago so I have some sprouts.

My tulips mostly look doody. I had a nice yard full of daffodils. More bulbs this fall. I’ve been weeding and cleaning up like crazy. My next big project is to rig up a better trellis for my berries.

Busy week. Three home Timbers games in seven days. It’s like the best week ever. Except for the coughing.

Posted in doing it wrong | 2 Comments

Plaster Casters

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Pamela

1000 Rolodex Cards

My computer is acting like a butt and every time I open Photoshop it freaks out so I’m not able to get to the photo I want at the moment.

And now I’ve wasted most of my posting time wrestling with the computer so another fast update. Maybe I should just stop announcing that and accept that it’s my posting style.

The cough is hanging on. I tried to exercise but every time I tried to do something I doubled over coughing so I finally gave up. I also bought another gallon of cough syrup. I didn’t understand what a big jug I was buying but I am well stocked if this thing lasts awhile. The box says “new improved taste” and I’m here to tell you that is NOT true. It tastes like burned cherry diet satan’s diaper.

One of the photos on my camera is of my broken office chair. One day I was sitting in my office chair and I leaned forward and one of the wheels shattered. This was in January and I thought, “Okay, I have eaten a lot of Christmas cookies but I can’t possibly have crossed some threshold that makes me heavy enough to break an office chair.”

I thought you just went to the office supply store and said, “I need a new wheel,” and they’d open a drawer and hand you one.

No, that’s not how it works. I had to do some homework. Turns out there are different kinds of wheels and there is no universal system to make it easy to figure out what kind you need.

Here are actual instructions from a website I found:

If you have a caliper, measure the Grip Ring Stem in the section below the ring toward the caster body using your caliper. If it measures .437 + or – you have a 7/16″ diameter. If it measures .375 + or – you have a 3/8″ diameter.

I didn’t have a caliper.

I used one method which involved a ruler and me squinting so hard I sprained my eyes. This gave me precisely one of the measurements on their chart. Then I used the second method to check. The second method involved a piece of tape. That gave me precisely a different measurement on their chart.

Another part involved a calculation using pi. I’m not afraid of pi but who ever thought you’d end up using that to order office supplies?

I finally decided I’d just guess and if I got the wrong wheel I’d order a different one. Oh, they only sell them in 5-packs.

I finally found a 5-pack that includes all the different stems so I ordered that one. We’ll see how I do. Maybe I can put up a sign in the elevator and make extra money selling the other wheels.

Posted in doing it wrong | 5 Comments