You're Doing It Wrong

Something that The Scorpions are up to.

I’ve been reading a ton of short fiction, especially different magazines. I’m trying to get a sense of markets and a sense of what’s being published.

I bought a magazine earlier in the week and when I was reading it on the bus, the pages were screwed up and I couldn’t finish the story. I switched to another story but the pages were still screwed up and I couldn’t finish that one either.

Today I went back to the store. I wasn’t a jerk at all. I showed them it was a printing error and asked if I could get another copy that wasn’t screwed up.

Further examination showed that every copy in the store was screwed up.

They weren’t exactly jerks but they weren’t apologetic either. I know it wasn’t their fault but I didn’t want a magazine where I couldn’t even read the stories.

They were like: well do you have the receipt? I guess we can process it as a return.

They gave me my money back. And that wasn’t even my goal. I would have taken a different fiction magazine at the same cost.

I was a little perplexed by their attitude. But I’d still go there again.

March 2010, Garmisch-Partenkirchen

Hey cool. I did something different and now I have a big giant window for my post. I can’t wait until I have oodles of time to kill and learn my way around this thing. Lynda.com here I come. Except I’m not going to have oodles of time probably ever but especially not in the next few weeks. I am so overwhelmed by my calendar I could weep. Bob mentioned one more thing we could do and I had to leave the room.

March 2010, Garmisch-Partenkirchen

On Sunday I tweaked my back. Doing yoga. Not even doing anything fun. Just easy things to get warmed up. I’m not even sure what I did.

It seems like I do a major back tweak every couple of years but this one is uniquely horrible. If I move in the just the right combination I can barely breathe. Getting around during the day isn’t too bad but at night it gets all stiff and I have to psych myself up just to roll over. This morning I walked down the hall hunched over like a woman twice my age, grunting instead of exhaling.

March 2010, Garmisch-Partenkirchen. A man with a beard saw me taking pictures and kindly introduced himself and told me he was a local tour guide. He wanted to make sure I didn’t miss the “golden roof” and then went on his way.

Meanwhile I can’t seem to cross one single thing off my list.

Our kitchen sink faucet was screwy so I bought a new doohickey and it didn’t work so then I bought another one that did work. But it eventually broke so I bought another one and it didn’t work and then I bought another one and it works but it makes a really annoying sound. And my mother’s day present is going to be late. And how come I can’t find regular brown socks at Target? The one pair in a pack of 6 different colors does not count. I don’t want black, grey, purple, blue or yellow. I want brown socks.

When I sat down I thought I was going to be able to weave all this whining into something but I seem to have failed and I really need to get to work.

Look gross or look good? It’s like a trainwreck. You can’t stop eating even though you know you should. My digestive system wasn’t sure what to think.

I have scribbled notes all over my desk that I can’t understand. One item says “side window mark”. I have no idea what that means.

Timbers friendly game last night with a Costa Rican club team. There were louder cheers for the Puntarenas goals than there were last week when the Vancouver Whitecaps were in town.

Now I’m finally got this thing back up and I’m too preoccupied to post.

I have a vague memory of someone talking about wanting to read Lynda Barry, Cruddy. I remember thinking, I used to have that book. Well, I found it. If you want to read this book you can have my copy, Drop me a note at pam(at)pamrentz(dot)com.

For the record: I am a huge Lynda Barry fan. She can do no wrong but I violently hated this book and was surprised to find I still had a copy. In fact I found a whole box of books I didn’t know I had when I did the garage cleaning.

Timber Joey talking to a kid with a green mohawk with Timber Army in the background.

Why does WordPress give me this eeny teeny box to type my post in and then cram the rest of the screen with a bunch of worthless crap?

Looks like the feeds are working and whew! because I’m already bald and can’t afford to pull out anymore hair.

It’s hard not to suspect Saint Max is fixing it behind the scene somewhere because he doesn’t want one more hysterical email with the words “I don’t understand what XXX means” about 10 times.

In my follow up survey I told them to increase his ration of Mountain Dew and Twizzlers. I hope they listen.

As far as I can tell the feeds don’t show up and I don’t have 3 seconds of patience left to figure it out.

Cheapo tulips — looking good.

Bob and I had a relatively low maintenance wedding celebration. When were were setting up the deal at the wedding location, one of the choices had to do with the outdoor chairs where the ceremony was going to be.

They could provide and set-up the chairs for a steep price — off the top of my head I’ll guess it would add 20% to the cost of the whole thing. OR you could rent chairs and have them delivered and set them up yourself.

Even the most low key wedding is a giant wallet drain. Add “wedding” to normal stuff and the price inflates. A cake? $50. Oh, wedding cake: $350. Multiply that by invitations, flowers and clothes.

This chair thing would be a really tempting way to save some money.

Except now we’d have to make sure the chairs were delivered at the right day and the right time and the right place. The wedding location was not an empty lot with nothing to do but wait for us – this place had all kinds of events going.

So I insisted that this was one of those times where what you are really paying for is peace of mind and it would be worth it to cough up the money for the chairs. And so we did.

Portland Timbers season is underway

Had I had any idea what I was getting into when I had to do this giant blog to wordpress to new host clusterfart I would have hired a person from the beginning. But I didn’t and every time I got gummed up I kept thinking: well, as soon as I solve this problem, I’ll be home free. Except that I got gummed up on every single step. I’m not going to bore you or get myself all worked up again explaining the whole thing. Let’s just say if I had the choice between doing this again and getting a colonoscopy, I would cheerfully pick the colonoscopy every time.

Thanks go to An (read An’s story: Year of the Rabbit) and Saint Max at the webhost for helping me out. Mostly Max. He seemed to grasp the shrill desperation in my emails and finally just started doing it for me and then sending me the link to the wikis rather than telling me what I could do and sending me the link to the wikis.

So far I don’t love WordPress. It’s kinda control-freaky for me but I still have about 100,000 pages of wiki to read so I perhaps I can unlock the secrets for myself. There are wonky links and the archives are goofy, I hate the way it looks, I’m still figuring out what I want to do with the book section and my “blogroll” (I hate that word) but I can post and get comments so I’m going to be happy with it like it is for at least the next few hours.

Oh — and if you use a feed reader you have to start all over again and there’s a magic button down on the left so you can add it that way.

Hamburg, Germany. Still TONS of Europe photos to share.

So: I’m back. FINALLY.

Some of the things you’ve missed while I couldn’t post:

Gardening: I hauled in a bunch of manure, compost, soil amendment and pam-o-tiller’d the whole thing and planted a bunch of seeds and prepared the pumpkin patch area.

I got in a snit one night when I got home from work when I saw the world’s biggest snail sliming across one of my plants so I grabbed a bucket and ran through the yard in the rain in my work clothes picking snails. They’re all still floating around in the bucket in the backyard. I wish Max would come over and dispose of them for me.

Portland Timbers — already been to two games. And mark your calendar because World Cup starts on what should be a national holiday: June 11 and this will be soccer blog until July 11.

Beg-a-thon is coming up. I’d link to the old one but see comment above about how archives are still poop.

I jammed my toe at yoga and it’s purple and chubby.

And now my dear husband is sick. He has a Man Cold — it’s terrible. (Sorry Orleans people, it’s a YouTube clip and you’d love it if it didn’t take 3 days to download.)

I’ve been spending so much time on my technology horror plus a half-dozen minor crises that I’m omitting, I haven’t even been drinking adult beverages or watching TV. And while I’m tempted to spend the entire day today on the couch with a bowl of cookie dough, a bottle of Baileys and my DVR, I have a ton of administrivia to catch up on plus I have a story that is one uninterrupted hour away from going out the door.

That’s it for now.

If you’re reading this it hopefully means that the changeover worked or at least worked a little bit.

There are still lots of bits I don’t like –like how it looks — and need to change but I’ve already burned up too much time on this project so it’s going to be wonky for awhile.

I still need to check stuff and I have no idea if comments are working. This seems unnecessarily complicated but we’re going to go for it.

If you’re still there, keep standing by.

These are my favorite pink tulips last year.

Last week I answered a solicitation call at home. It sounded like a call I usually get at the office. “This isn’t a sales call we just want to confirm your business information.”

I stopped her right there and told her it was wrong. This isn’t a business, it’s a private residence.

Last night Bob said somewhere on the Internet our phone number is connected to something “Insane Genius” because he kept getting these solicitation calls.

Uh, remember this? (It’s in the fourth paragraph.) I can’t figure out what’s going on because I’ve never connected my domain to my home phone number but it seems like a spectacular coincidence.

This year I have tulip rot. Or something. I haven’t done any homework to figure out the problem. The cheapo tulips on the other side of the yard look fine.

The good news is that the plumber was only $115. Did I mention we needed a plumber? We’ve been limping along on several issues for quite some time and over last weekend the bathtub decided that draining was too much effort and it would take all the time it needed. All day.

I figured since we just paid a vat of money in federal and property taxes this week, plus a vat to Toyota two weeks ago, that the plumber would probably need whatever was left so $115 sounded practically like free.

Let’s just hope all the rest of our stuff can hold together for awhile.

Here’s the shop last fall when I bought those new shelves and couldn’t get them to go together

Sheesh — I’m not even finished typing this post and already the next stupid problem rolls in. It’s probably not cool to blog about so I’ll be kinda vague.

We’ve just been informed that a government agency investigation into our alleged illegal activity has resulting in a finding of unfounded. There was a weird phone call but they say they sent the notice to the wrong people. Which duh, because we’re the most boring legal people ever. But it’s worrisome because somehow now we’re in the system. Supposedly the agency who was smart enough to send the notice to the wrong people is fixing it all and will update us next week.

Please: no more hassles.

Shop with new shelves. There are a few more things I’d like to get rid of but already 100% better.

I have to run out the door but this is the official notice that the giant website overhaul is happening this weekend. I figure it will be all screwed up and probably the feeds screwed up and probably other things I haven’t thought of.

Cigarette machine in Bad Kissingen.

1. Dahlia bulbs are on the way. It’s supposed to be nice this weekend. I will be a digging machine.

2. Taxes are out the door and two days to spare.

3. Today is 14 years since I started a personal website. This month is also 14 years since I took my first yoga class and 14 years since I moved to Vancouver to live with Bob. I don’t think of those things as being related but I guess they are.

Ski jump in Garmisch-Partenkirchen

Well that wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected. But I was expecting it to be a horrendous nightmare so your results may vary.

I was advised that the prep would be a lot easier if I ate lightly the days before the procedure. I started cutting way back on Monday and mostly ate canned fruit and vegetables and rice. Except when I got a hamburger for lunch on Tuesday because I wanted to be one of those people who says. “No lettuce or tomatoes. None of that vegetable stuff.”

By Thursday morning I was all shaky and insane-feeling from not eating but since I took the day off, I had the brilliant idea that we should run a few errands before I had to start my thing. I followed Bob around stores half-weeping asking why it was taking so long. When it’s your turn just stay home and watch movies.

For my prep I had to start with 4 little pills and they made me feel queasy.

Bob came upstairs and asked how I was doing.

Me: Go away.

Bob: (laughs in a sympathetic “I’ve been there” way)

Me: Stop laughing at me. When you had to do this did I go downstairs and laugh at you?

Bob: I’m not laughing at you.

Me: You’re looking at me and you’re laughing so it feels like you’re laughing at me.

Bob: (backing slowly from the room) There’s nothing I can say right, is there?

Me: No!

After an hour I had to drink a half gallon of Gatorade with a 14 day supply of laxatives in it. I’m not exaggerating for the purpose of story-telling. This is really the recipe. Oh, and you have to drink it in 2 hours.

This part caused me a lot of anxiety because I didn’t think it was possible for me to drink that much of anything in 2 hours.

Because I have a doctorate in Following The Instructions I sat at the kitchen table with a stack of magazines, a timer and a measuring cup and every 15 minutes I poured my 8 oz and sipped it through a straw. Since I hadn’t eaten in so long, it tasted great and made me feel sane again.

It did the trick and a few hours later it was mostly finished and felt fine so I cleaned the house.

The procedure was this morning. The doctor told me I could be out cold if I wanted but they prefer to do conscious sedation. I was awake during the procedure and could watch on this monitor by the bed. I thought it would be fun if there was an alien in there and first we’d see the claws and then the teeth and beady eyes. But no luck. My colon is completely healthy and I don’t have to go back for 10 years.

I ate toast and soup when I got home and watched TV and took a nap. Other than being a little sleepy, I feel like normal. As soon as I post this I’m going to finish the taxes.

And one more thing: since all that my souvenir cough is gone.