You're Doing It Wrong

Nice view looking upriver at the Siuslaw in Mapleton, Oregon.

Walker zipped through town this weekend and hung out with us. We went to see Jerry Rig on Saturday night and saw the whole High Sierra gang which I only know via Bob and Walker. I tried music festival-ing in 2002 and 2004 and my favorite part was when it was over.

Just kidding. It wasn’t that bad but it’s not my thing. I’m perfectly happy to see one band every 3 months, not 137 bands in 4 days.

But Saturday night was fun and I stayed up until a record breaking 1:30am.

Sunday morning we headed down to Mapleton to deposit Walker with her Dad for a weeklong visit.

We hung out at their fabulous quiet house near the river and wandered through the rhodies in the yard. Later we took off for a stroll around Florence and had dinner, went for a short walk on the beach and then stopped by the Three Rivers Casino.

Bob and I drove home this afternoon and we’re trying to get organized for the week.

I just started my garden photo set which hopefully I’ll keep updating until I leave in June. I hope I get to harvest at least one thing before I leave.

If it looks windy and cold, that’s because it is. Behind us the sky is scary storm-grey.

Holiday Weekend

This is an old photo of the dragon boats in the marina by the old office.

Company in town and we’re off to look at the ocean.

Mid-Week Wrap-Up

Just in case you’ve been wondering, here’s the 08 pumpkin crop. (07 crop here). I planted them late which wasn’t a problem since it wasn’t warm enough for them. I put out two sets last night just in time for the night time temps to go back into the 40’s. The other one will go out front this weekend.

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Yesterday I totally ditched a completed post because I didn’t like it. Normally once I’ve gone through the trouble of typing I go ahead and post whether I like it or not. I don’t know what my problem was. But the gist was that we went to see Was (Not Was) on Saturday night and Bob’s review is here.

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Several weeks ago I spent an embarrassing amount of money on what I call shower gel but is apparently called body wash these days. It probably wasn’t an embarrassing amount to your average person who ranks smelling good as a high priority but I generally use whatever big jug of shower gel is on sale at the grocery store and wish that it smelled yummier. Then we got a coupon and I ran in on my lunch hour to look around and I tried this ginger stuff and this Jumpstart stuff that I was going to describe as citrus-y but the product description doesn’t seem to support that claim. I am very fond of the non-citrus-y stuff but I LOVED the ginger stuff. Now I’m feeling an urge to explore all sorts of wonderful smelling bath stuff which conflicts with my over-arching but sometimes easy-to-supress frugality.

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I’m started watching Bones because Angel is in it but I have come to really love the show. I think the investigation aspect tends to go for the gross-out or hard-to-believe but I love the characters and their relationships. The season finale was a major, mouth hanging open disaster. I don’t mind if a show surprises me, or does terrible things to characters I love. (See e.g. Lost.) But the finale had a plot twist that felt invented at the last minute, stupid and completely untrue to the character. I stewed about it all day. And I suppose you could argue that the writer’s strike contributed to the problem but they created this ultimate bad guy and then we had this huge hiatus and then they resolved it with this plot twist and a 30 second montage of the bad guy discovered and offed — before the audience knew anything about him. Huge fumble. Boo.

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Finally, I cringed when I saw this article in the Daily Telegraph (UK!):

With the discovery of gold there in 1848, the California Gold Rush brought 300,000 people into the state, transforming what was then a backwater into the embodiment of the American Dream.

Fewer in number, “new 49ers” may have swapped picks and covered wagons for suction dredges and mobile homes but many are just as confident they will strike it rich.

Bob went to the Obama rally. Coverage here. I stayed home.

Update: Wow, 75,000 record breaking crowd.

Here’s the second half of the filing, plus that box in the left has filing in it. I somehow need to get all of this done before June 20. Wouldn’t it be great it filing was like moving and you could buy a bunch of pizza and beer and get all your friends to help you?

Wardrobe

This week’s episode of Battlestar Galactica was fabulous but I’m having a hard time with capri pants?

Welcome to the Broiler
This is the scene outside right now. Every time I go into the kitchen I can see it’s gone up another notch so now I’m avoiding going in there. Yesterday was supposed to be the horrible day and today hot but not horrible. It’s hotter today than yesterday. I guess the weatherman lied so as not to totally demoralize us. All the poor little plants that have been shivering out in the yard are now burned to a crisp. But then by Tuesday, 55 degrees and raining again. Oh Mother Nature: how may we appease you?

Lucy For A Day
If I could ever live the life of a fictional character, without hesitation, my answer would be Lucy Pevensie. I’m an ancient old lady and I love her stories as much now as I did the first time I read them.

Yesterday, I went to see Prince Caspian. I expected the world to be filled with nerds rushing to see it so I made sure to get there early. Then I did a gymnastics routine in the lobby of the empty theater so the popcorn clerk would have something to look at. More people came in closer to show time including the lady with nice talking child who sat right behind me. Interesting all-ages crowd, starting with some very young kids and up to older people of retirement age.

The movie was fabulous. I loved it. Ten minutes in I was hugging my knees, thinking, “Omigod, I can’t wait to see it again.” At one point the High King was fighting in chain mail while Prince Hottie was running around in leather pants. I was just wishing every day for the rest of my life could be exactly like that moment.

**Warning: small spoilers ahead … but it’s only the 2nd book in the series so you can probably guess that everyone isn’t going to die.**

Having said all that, it was a teeny bit like diet Lord of the Rings. And I love Lord of the Rings like nobody’s business but the Battle of Helm’s Deep is my favorite nerd battle of all time (even beating out many prime Star Wars battles like Yavin IV and that really sad one that makes me cry every time in Revenge of the Sith where they kill all the Jedi) and the big battle in this story felt very Helm’s Deep-y. I loved it once. I love it again. But I at one point (LOTR II spoiler ahead) I fully expected to see Gandalf galloping in to save the day. And it sorta happened except that instead of Gandalf we had Aslan and instead of the Riders of the Rohirrim people it was Ents. Oops. I mean, the trees.

Have I ever mentioned that the Ents are my favorite characters in all literature?

I recommend the movie. Another one of my favorite characters of all time is Reepicheep who I’d totally forgotten appears in this story and makes an incredible entrance. One Million Stars for Narnia lovers. Probably less than that for non-Narnians.

I Can’t Wait to Stay Home
I’m having a hard time playing with others lately. I got into a thing with my eye doctor’s office and the charmless, witless staff that run the place. This morning I got into a thing with a surly young person at the farmer’s market over some tomatoes. If I tell you the story it will only be to make me look good and right and them wrong and stupid and I don’t know what’s stopping me but I’ll let it go and we can all try to be better human beings from this day forward.

Meanwhile, Bob told me that there’s an Obama rally tomorrow at Waterfront park and he might go check it out. Then later he told me the Decemberists will be playing.

“Sounds like it will be nuts,” I said. “I can’t wait to stay home.”

This is part one of my filing at the office. There are four more piles almost equal to this on a table behind the photographer.

I have confidence that some day, maybe this weekend, I will come up with a decent post.

After another long busy week, today is a major goof-off day. I’m going to have a massage and then I’m going to see the new Narnia movie.

Someone Else’s Bad News
I’m apparently trapped in some sort of time warp since I’ve been on the wrong date since Saturday. On Monday there was a moment where I had to whack my head against the desk trying to clarify which day we were on. Usually on Mondays I have it together.

I just got back from the restroom and noticed I have terrible VPL today. (There’s a giant mirror in there.) I’m celebrating by finishing off this box of Wheat Thins (Big).

A couple of weeks ago (at home) we received some mail addressed to 2 names we’ve never heard of but with our address hand written on the envelope. It was from a property management company and the best I could tell without opening it, it was an eviction notice. I assumed they’d written the address wrong and marked return to sender.

I didn’t think too much about it except last week we got a piece of mail addressed to someone else (I don’t know if it’s the same person because I didn’t pay attention the first time) and from what I could tell by shaking it around and trying to see in that window on the front, it was about a returned check. There was a return address but no business name. Maybe the bank? I made a note of the name this time before returning to sender.

It’s hard to imagine the two items aren’t related and I’m wondering if this is the beginning of some sort of pain in the ass for us or just a random data misfire.

This is a plant that’s in the backyard. It’s ugly all year round except for a few weeks in the spring.

The spring around here has been pretty bad. 50 degrees and rain. I’ve been whining that we weren’t going to get any of those gorgeous 75 degree days where you walk around hugging yourself and wiping tears from your eyes because you feel so fortunate to live in such a gorgeous place. I cried that we’d go from 50 to 90.

You know what? It was 50 today and raining and the weather people say it’s going to be 90 on Friday. I bet about 5000% humidity, too.

A couple years ago for Administrative Professional’s Day (Whatever. If you type “Administrative Assistant” into Wikipedia’s search engine you get shuffled right in to Secretary. Thanks, Wikipedia. Why not shuffle woman into “domestic slave,” too.) colleague gave me a plant which I later planted in my yard. I’m not a plant expert but whatever this is, a bulb or rhizome or something, it keeps spreading. It used to be 3 little stalks and now there’s almost a dozen and they’re about two feet tall.