You're Doing It Wrong

My First Ever Embedded YouTube Clip

Bob and I went to Wordstock today.

The first thing I’d like to mention is that the parking situation was clusterfuk 2008. Apparently there were two other events at the Convention Center. Oblivious, I got in line, took my ticket and circled the tiny lot — who planned this thing? No one thought such a giant convention center could use more than — well, the website says 800 spaces with 2500 in the vicinity with street parking and such. I think they lie. Regardless, me and 100 other cars circled the parking lot for a half hour before I gave up and left. The overflow lot was full. By now my wonderful positive attitude was trashed and I decided, screw it, I’m going home. But then I got to the park-n-ride right before the bridge so I decided to park and get on the train and was in the venue 20 minutes later.

So I spent more time looking for parking at the convention center, than I did driving most of the way home and taking the train back in and walking up to the venue. While I walked to my event I passed two storm troopers and Darth Vader cruising down the hall. I have no idea what they were doing there but my inner geek squealed a teeny bit.

We saw Spain Rodriguez who does cartoon stories and then were in perfect seats to see John Hodgeman with Jonathan Coulton.

John Hodgeman is at the same time, nerdier in person, but a lot cuter. He has the best smile. The room was SRO and one of the organizers got on the mic and asked if anyone had empty seats near them to skootch in and then raise their hand since lots of people were looking for seats. “This is Portland, Oregon,” he said. “We’re friendly here.” I’ve never seen anyone do that before and I thought it was a good idea.

John is completely hilarious and really quick. He was a scream during the Q&A. He joked about how his books are bunches of made up facts. But then he told this fabulous and heart-twisting story about how when you’re young you dream about being famous and what that would be like. But eventually you get older and have a family and start doing something and you forget about the famous thing and if you’re smart, you’re happy with what you’re doing. But then, what if one day after you’ve forgotten about fame, someone knocks on your door and throws you out there with no preparation whatsoever. He told it a lot better than I am. He refered to himself as a very famous minor television personality.

Jonathan Coultan is a longtime friend of his who is a musician and sang some songs. During the Q&A a little girl in the audience asked if he (Jonathan) would do the zombie song and that’s how we ended the show. (See above clip.)

Things that Should Come in Pumpkin Flavor

• Jello
• Cough Syrup
• Licorice
• vitamin water

Things That I Put on the List Above and Then Found Out Really Exist

• Instant Pudding mix
• Toothpaste and Mouthwash
• Vodka
• Gelato
• See’s Candy

I sometimes make fun of Bob because he has so many jackets/coats. A casual lightweight waterproof rain jacket. A heavy weight long dress coat. A mid-length medium weight sherpa shell. Every time he comes back from an outlet store he has a jacket to fit a unique niche circumstance.

I have: a raincoat with broken zipper, a heavy wool coat with torn pockets that I got at a garage sale for $1, a nice synthetic-something coat with leopard print collar that my Auntie bought me in Germany, and my new coat from last year, the power goose-down arctic expedition weight like-wearing-a-bed super coat.

I wore the super coat today. It’s not really cold enough but I’ve been chilly in the plain old raincoat. I guess I can understand an in-between coat. But I can get by without it.

(Historical aside: yesterday was post #1500. Woo!)

I walk three blocks from my office to reach the bus stop. On the way I pass the courthouse and I leave work at the same time they take the prisoners back to jail.

Here’s how it works based on my extensive experience walking by while they do this.

Two shiny, windowless green trucks idle in the street. Two portable flashing lights on plastic stands are set in the middle of the street. One where I cross and one by the trucks. I guess you aren’t allowed to drive right there while they’re loading up.

Several well-fed men with mustaches and sheriff’s uniforms stand around in strategic pairs, visiting. One well-fed man with a mustache and sheriff’s uniform stands by the flashing light where I cross the street. One time, while I was waiting for the light to change, he held up his hand as if to tell me to stop or keep back. I guess he was assuring me he was relevant.

I wasn’t going anywhere near his prisoners and his gesture was not going to stop me from going my way. Several prisoners (Inmates? Is there a PC term I’m supposed to be using?) were brought out and got into the truck. None of them looked like George Clooney in Brother Where Art Thou?

I think my sweetheart’s dream job would be spending the entire day putting things into Ziploc baggies. He loves those baggies.

When we travel, we set a box out on the counter and use them for our electronics, bathroom supplies, vitamins or anything we’re in the mood to segregate into its own Ziploc sealed pouch.

We have the following sizes in our home right now: snack, sandwich, freezer quart, freezer gallon, and I think 2 gallon storage bags.

The other day I dumped the leftover Halloween candy into a box and saw him come running with a baggie. I said we’d just leave it in the box but later I moved it into two small bowls that I set out on the counter.

When I got home from work I noticed the bowls were gone. “You put that candy in a Ziploc bag, didn’t you?” I accused. He did.

Last week we had about 2 tablespoons of grated cheese leftover from dinner and he wanted to put that in a snack sized baggie. I thought he should just put a piece of plastic wrap over the container it was already in. The compromise was he put it in the baggie where the hunk of cheese was.

I once saw super-giant bags that were big enough for a sleeping bag or a barrel of leftover Halloween candy. I thought those would come in handy for something but since I couldn’t think of anything right then, I didn’t buy them.

Then we got that fish from Alaska which could really benefit from a giant Ziploc bag but I haven’t seen them in the store since.

Last week I met a friend for lunch downtown. As long as I’ve worked downtown, I’ve walked all over but I do tend to eat at the same lunch spots over and over. The new office is in proximity to a number of restaurants I’ve never tried so I’m trying to branch out.

I suggested a Greek place that I’d never been to. My friend said she’d been there and it was okay.

It was not okay.

It was tragically awful.

I guess it’s a franchise which from their website appears to be growing. I’m not going to link since I have nothing nice to say.

This place was to Greek food what Chipotle is to Mexican food. Generically mass produced food that can be served quickly and cheaply.

You could practically see marks on the falafel nuggets from where they were punched out of the machine. I ordered some sort of lunch plate which looked exactly like a picture right down to the decoratively piped swirl of sauce.

As we were leaving I said, “Well, I never have to come here again.”

Last night we went to a Day of the Dead party which goes on the list of the ten best parties of my life so far.

Tons of fantastic, amazing food. People brought stuff and no one just showed up with a bag of Cheeto’s. I had this fish stew that would peel your face off and apparently others liked it because the entire giant vat was scraped clean in an hour. There were traditional Mexican foods that I don’t know the names of and there was a tub of tamales that I didn’t see until it was time to go. And they served a fabulous hot punch that’s like apple cider only you add tequila.

At about nine a Mariachi band showed up complete with outfits covered with silver-bits and shiny boots. The party was in a tiny house packed to the rafters with tequila-infused people and next thing you know everyone was dancing and singing and carrying-on.

Super fun.

This movie is going to be huge. Even if it’s only a 2 1/2 star movie, it’s still going to be huge.

It’s going to be a phenomenon. And the talking heads on TV and journalists who need to fill column inches are all going to talk about it endlessly. And they’re going to interview groups of mothers and daughters in Team Edward t-shirts creaming their jeans over this movie.

Here’s why. If you look at a list of top earning films most of them are movies that primarily boys would go to.

Except what’s on the top of the list? Titanic. What drove that movie’s numbers through the roof? Women. Because of Rose and Jack.

And women are going to flock to this movie, too. It’s the ultimate romantic wishfulfillment story and dopey as it is, it’s appealing to women of all ages. Plus from the trailer it looks like they’ve amped up the violence so boys won’t mind being dragged to see it.

Remember Dirty Dancing? The hot guy went for plain, ordinary Baby. All the plain ordinary women of the world wanted to be Baby. I remember loving that movie for exactly that reason, the plain girl got the guy.

In Twilight, (spoiler alert, ha ha) the hot guy falls for plain ordinary Bella. But he’s not any ordinary hot guy. He’s the most amazing, super-power hot guy of all time plus he has never been in love with a girl until he meets Bella and tells her, “You are my life now.” No one has ever turned his head until he meets Bella and once he’s met her, he doesn’t look at anyone else. Wow. He watches over her. He protects her. He rescues her.

Who wouldn’t be in love with this guy?

And the actor playing Edward, Robert Pattinson can kiss his old life goodbye after November 21. Nothing is ever going to be the same.

Also: I will be at the first showing on Friday, November 21. You can’t even tempt me with the midnight showing because I can’t stay up that late. But after that the line forms behind me.

Here I am back in my equestrian days. I believe that’s my (late) Great Uncle Alton.

Yesterday I had drinks with co-worker after work. My car was parked by his house and as I went to get in my car to go home, this man came over and asked if I could help him find his glasses. He’d been walking home with his head down and a low hanging branch had swiped his glasses off his face and he couldn’t find them.

Co-worker hadn’t made it all the way into his house yet and I gave him a wave to indicate, “Please come over here just in case this turns out to be a creepy man who wants to club me over the head and toss my body into a ravine.” It was almost dark and the grass and walkway were covered with leaves. Co-worker got a flashlight and we proceeded to crawl around on the sidewalk with no luck trying to figure out how this man’s glasses could have vanished.

After a few minutes he thanked us for trying to help but he didn’t want to keep us. He was going to go home and return with his wife and see if they could find them. As he left another neighbor appeared with a giant flashlight. The light part was the size of a dinner plate.

This neighbor introduced himself as Joseph and he was a character in the best possible way. He was chatty and waved his spotlight around while telling us how he was cleaning his gutters before dark when he noticed glasses man lurking about. He’d been approached by some nutters recently so he wasn’t 100% convinced that lost glasses guy was legit. But he thought he’d at least bring a light over now that we’d joined the search.

There was a strip between the sidewalk and the street with big rosemary bushes growing on it. (How come my rosemary doesn’t grow like a bush? It just flops over. Is there such thing as a weeping rosemary?) Joseph decided that the glasses must have gotten stuck in the bushes and that’s why we weren’t finding them. He swept the flashlight back and forth through the rosemary and I saw a little glint and we found them.

But now glasses guy had gone home. Since he said he was returning we decided to wait for him. Joseph broke off the branch that started this whole adventure and told us a series of stories which included his gutters, the apple tree at his house and various things about the election that irritated him.

We finally decided that we’d waited long enough and Joseph thought he’d get a piece of string and some paper so we could leave the glasses and a note for the man. Joseph returned with a plastic bag that newspapers are delivered in and thought we could put the glasses in there and tie that in the tree. That way glasses man would find them and they would be safe.

Just about the time we’re rigging this thing, we see a series of flashlights coming down the block. It was glasses man with his wife and two little kids all waving their flashlights. Maybe this isn’t making the greatest story but it seemed pretty cool at the time. He was thankful we’d waited and we all had one of those neighborly moments that make you feel better about people when the election coverage makes people all seem like crazy jerks.

* * *

In other news, in case anyone is paying attention. I’m not going to do National Blog Posting Month this year. Mainly because I’m so busy this month I am preemptively weeping and pulling my hair out about it. We have something planned every weekend day in November except tomorrow. Plus I am doing an informal version of National Novel Writing Month which I’m sure I will be freaking out about by Wednesday. My inner overachiever makes me miserable sometimes. Also Twilight starts this month and I will probably have to see it at least 3 times the weekend it opens. Unless it totally sucks and then I’ll only have to see it 2 times. This reminds me I haven’t written my Twilight predictions post yet. Maybe tomorrow.

I’m confident I could type something and click “post” every day in November but I think (and I actually have a rant about this which I decided not to type out) the blog posting thing is not only about posting but also about participating in the community and visiting new blogs and leaving comments. And there is no way I will have time for that this month.

* * *

I have a piece of paper on my desk in my handwriting that says, “Bears are the new zombies.” Any ideas what I might have meant by that?

I don’t have time to organize my thoughts so I’m just dumping a bunch of stuff into one thematically unlinked post.

* * *

I got to the office early this morning and I’ve been sitting here drinking my tea and reading. A few moments ago an announcement came through (this building has an announcement system?) informing me that the alarm had been investigated, it was a false alarm and it was safe for me to return to my work station.

What alarm?

* * *

One thing about setting up a new office is we are bright shiny sales target. Everybody wants to set up an account or sell us furniture or sign us up for some sort of service. I loathe being sold to.

We need to subscribe to an electronic database for legal research. Co-worker got a card at NCAI for Westlaw and I called them and Lexis to see what they had to offer. Jeez, it’s like buying a used car. I had these raspy voiced Tony Soprano characters wooing me with great offers and special discounts. One guy came in and co-worker mentioned a set of statutes that we might look at in the future and he was whipping out his computer because if we decided by the end of the week we could get it for half off. I’m sure we’re talking thousands of dollars of books here which we don’t have the budget for, no place to put and we can access for free online or in a pinch, walk over to the law library and look at. If we’ve got three thousand dollars to throw away, here’s my wallet.

The whole process made me feel icky. Lexis has a better deal and I say Whew! because we used both at the old office (long story) and Westlaw’s interface is so horrific that I complained and they got some guy on the phone to “train me” which didn’t make the interface any less horrific.

* * *

Today’s community service announcement comes via my new favorite blog Open Congress.

Free database for researching campaign contributions in local elections .

The National Institute on Money in State Politics is the only nonpartisan, nonprofit organization revealing the influence of campaign money on state-level elections and public policy in all 50 states. Our comprehensive and verifiable campaign-finance database and relevant issue analyses are available for free through our Web site FollowTheMoney.org. We encourage transparency and promote independent investigation of state-level campaign contributions by journalists, academic researchers, public-interest groups, government agencies, policymakers, students and the public at large.

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The stupid article of the day, again, comes from the NYT Dining Section. (For the record, I love the NYT, especially the dining section.) Apparently calorie counting is back in. Sure, “[c]ounting calories is so 1980s” a brainiac interviewed for the piece says, but turns out: “[e]vidence of the calorie’s resurgence is everywhere.”

People want some fun sexy way to eat as much as they can and still stay trim but after 20 years of fun-filled faddish formula diets, it turns out counting calories is the most reliable way.

Duh.

Read the article because every paragraph adds a new layer of stupid. A bunch of people filed a class action lawsuit against Applebee’s because its calorie content was more than advertised. I know when I think of having a delicious healthful meal, I think Applebee’s. Bob got their take out dinner once and the only thing good about it was I didn’t have to cook.

I could rant about this article all day but have been informed it’s time to get to work.