You're Doing It Wrong

I added a few more tornado damage photos. This should fulfill all your damaged tree photo needs for the time being.

The guy across the street had this cool old truck so I had to visit with him and take a few photos. He’s a treesmith and does hazardous tree removal. I’m sure this will be a good month for him.

Today’s a lazy day here. My spouse came home with the crud on Wednesday night. He was standing the kitchen when I got home and started whining before I even put my purse down. I wasn’t too sympathetic until I felt his burning forehead. For the record: when I’m really sick I get whiny, too. He also skipped dinner. He’s had a couple achy, fevery days but today he’s perked up a bit. Still, we’re going to lay low and stay close to home this weekend.

I was planning to go to yoga tonight so I drove this morning.

There was an accident on the bridge and the backup to get on the freeway was bad enough that I considered taking a day off from work. I just didn’t have the stomach to sit in my car and roll forward in painful six-inch increments while cars coming in from all angles want to merge and then when finally arriving within sight of the freeway, fending off all the Lexus (plural: Lexi?) who bypass the line and drive to the front and turn on their turn signal, like they had no idea there was a line and can’t they just sneak in right there because they drive a Lexus and don’t care that you’ve been trying to get on the freeway for the past 45 minutes.

And I couldn’t find a traffic report to save my life. Does AM radio still exist? At one point I had all the local news channels programmed in for just these types of mornings. “Traffic on the 9s” “Traffic on the 7s” you just kept hitting the buttons until you found the traffic report for the current minute. This morning all I could raise was static and churchy programs.

So I drove all the way back to the transit center thinking, at least I won’t be stressed and I can read my book (The Guns of Avalon Fabulous) while we crawl over the bridge. Of course I couldn’t find my book when I got on the bus. It didn’t take as long as I thought (including driving back and forth being a wuss about the gridlock: 1 hr 20 minutes.) I guess the accident cleared quickly but, whatever. I’m here.

Last night we saw Colson Whitehead at Arts & Lectures. I remember when The Intuitionist came out it sounded like a book I’d want to read and it was on the list for a long time before I picked it up at the library. As I recall, I didn’t try very hard, but I didn’t get into it. Bob read a different one of his books last weekend and hated it.

When we walked out of the lecture last night we laughed because of all the authors so far, this is the one whose books we liked the least but it was our favorite lecture. He was really funny and doesn’t take himself too seriously. How often do you ever hear of a writer who likes television and puts in his bio that as a kid he loved Stephen King and Stan Lee? I’m going to try another one of his books.

Temp
Shortly before I graduated from college I met a woman who worked as an office temp. I don’t remember her living situation but it was either with tolerant parents or in a series of rundown hovels. Actually, she may have been one of those scary people who asks if they can crash on your couch for a weekend and never leaves. She didn’t do that to me.

She would do temp jobs until she saved a pile of money, then she’d travel until it ran out. Then she’d return to the temping until she had enough for the next trip.

I thought this sounded fabulous except I did not have tolerant parents and was not the sort of person who would be happy moving from hovel to hovel. Also, when I graduated from college I had only very minor office skills, I could type, but not fast enough to impress anyone, and even with fast, my accuracy was doodoo. I never did any temp work.

Now that I work in an office that employs temp workers on a regular basis, I cannot help but think that it would be a horrible job.

Imagine: every new job would be like your first day at work. You don’t know anyone’s name or where anything is or how anything works or the weird obsessive quirks of the person you have to work for. At least if it’s your new job people might talk to you but no one pays attention to the temp, unless she’s screwing up. (I say “she” because I can’t remember ever seeing a male temp.) Plus either everyone would be foisting the worst busy work on you or else you’d only be called because there was some giant project and you’d be working a deadline under a learning curve. Or else you’d just be sitting there watching the clock and waiting for the day to end.

I always try to talk to the temps and at least find out their names. At the end of one day I asked a temp if it was the longest day of her life and she very cheerfully said, “Oh no, everyone is really nice at this office.” Geez, what would a bad office be like? I think you need to be of a certain personality, unflinching and confident, to succeed as a temp.

I never would have been good at it.

Foods You Don’t Eat
I forgot to mention that with my potato soup recipe, I threw a couple of parsnips in there. My husband came back from the market once, a bit confused and he had parsnips. I think he grabbed them thinking they were turnips. Which we do eat. Or maybe some other vegetable that we do not. They’ve been taking up room in the crisper ever since.

Since I’m trying to clear the fridge and cupboards of the odds and ends, and since I saw a recipe with mashed potatoes and parsnips, I figured I could add the parsnips to the potato soup. Some cooks call this creative. I usually think of it as lame.

My Mom hates parsnips. If you drove within 20 miles of the vegetable factory on the day they were dicing parsnips my Mom would gag if she was in the car. I once went to a family meal that my Mom wasn’t even attending and the cook informed me very carefully that there were parsnips in the roasted vegetables in case there was a problem.

As a result I’ve eaten very few parsnips in my life and although I am personally ambivalent, I don’t really eat them because she wouldn’t. I put them in this soup and I think they knocked it down from a solid A- to a B. They have a sharpness that’s just not necessary.

Another food I used to not eat because of my sister is mangos. She’s violently allergic. I hope she’s not reading this because her eyes are probably swelling up just by seeing the word. But then I learned that mangos are like the food of the gods. So I eat them at home where she can’t be harmed. Giant carbon footprint be damned.

My Dad hates tuna and I hate tuna, too. It’s nasty. My husband likes it and if he makes it, he has to eat it outside. Or in his car.

I can’t think of anything my husband hates. Most tomato heavy dishes disagree with him, as do melons which is a major bummer. He also isn’t fond of lentils or chard so whenever I know he’s going to be out of town, that’s the menu.

I hate swiss cheese. I think it smells like throw-up. I also don’t like most pork products because the fat disagrees with me.

Tornados are rare around here. The guy on the news says that Washington averages one tornado a year somewhere in the state.

My mother-in-law is one of the people that was injured in 1972 in the deadliest tornado ever to hit the West Coast.

Yesterday, the tornado touched down in her next door neighbor’s yard.

You’ve got to wonder what the Universe is trying to tell her.

Is it: “Don’t worry, you’re not going to go in a tornado.”

Or: “Damn! Missed again.”

NOAA has a map of the tornado path here. If you divide the map into quarters vertically, her house is around the 1st quarter mark.

Bob went over there as soon as he knew what was going on, within two hours of the event. She was a model of calm. She had already talked to insurance and scheduled her yard crew. Also, an army of people were already papering the neighborhood with business cards and fliers offering services. There has never been a better time to own a chipper and a chainsaw in SW Washington.

Last night, my drive from the park-n-ride took me across the storm path but it was dark and I didn’t see much except a lot of debris and a few signs that blew over.

This morning I went to Priscilla’s neighborhood and wow, kind-of took my breath away. Chunks of limbs and debris are everywhere. Giant trees tipped over or their tops snapped off. You’ve got to wonder what it sounded like. Everywhere you look along her street there’s some kind of crew cleaning up limbs, sawing up stumps. Also all kinds of utility people and cherry-pickers. Quite a sight.

I arrived around 11am and one of the guys helping in her yard (they had 6 people) said they already had most of the backyard cleaned up. It still looked like a mess to me.

Priscilla said she heard loud booms and crashing against her skylight. As she backed away she heard crashing against her second skylight. She decided to hightail it to the basement and was grateful to see no trees in her living room when she finally emerged.

I talked to another guy who said that one of the neighbors saw the tornado touch down in the next door neighbor’s yard and said it was instant violence like the trees were stuck in a blender.

Photoset of tornado damage here.

Here’s the stuff from behind my desk. No favorite red pen. The only logical conclusion is that someone stole it. Also no gum. What I thought was gum was a lens cleaning tissue.

On Monday night I jammed one of my toes at yoga. Basically it was the equivalent of kicking a wall and my toe swelled a tiny bit and I took a photo of that because what could be more fascinating? Sadly, my feet are not photogenic and instead of looking so cute like they look in real life, they look like frankenfeet so I’m keeping close-ups of my feet private. It’s still hard to curl my toes but I think I’ll make it. I have this shoulder thing too so Monday might it was like a 100 year old lady just trying to get through it.

This is my desk. I had to take everything off of it and then lay down with my tongs and jam my hand between the edge of the desk and the wall to rescue my lens cleaning tissue. I really thought I could make a better post out of this when I sat down but now I’m out of time.

Today I remembered to bring the tongs in.

Yikes, in my search for a photo illustration I found this: www.tongs.com your resource for snake handling equipment. I had no idea there was enough snake handling going on that we needed a resource. Now I’m too distracted to find a photo.

They’re regular old spring-loaded cheap-metal tongs. The kind you use in the kitchen for grabbing and flipping hot things.

I brought them to the office because I’ve dropped a whole bunch of stuff – including the office tongs I bought specifically for this purpose – behind my desk and my arms are too short to reach the stuff and the desk is too big and covered with crap for me to move.

Besides tongs, there are some tissues, a pack of gum, paper clips (unlikely I can pick them up with the tongs, but I will try), rubberband (ditto), my favorite red pen, and no doubt some wonderful surprises.

Big Wednesday here.

Warning: this is a total nerdcore post. You might just quit reading right now.

If I could marry a show, I would marry Dr. Who.

I am a total Dr. Who newbie. Me sitting here talking about Dr. Who is like someone watching 10 episodes of Buffy from season 5, and then trying to explain the Buffy-Xander-Willow dynamic.

If you’re as interested as I am, you can do what I did and take a day off of work and read the Wikipedia entry and related links. It says there are 738 episodes. 738!

I think I’ve seen 14.

Dr. Who is kind-of like James Bond, in that different actors come along and play the same character. Except in Dr. Who they acknowledge that they look different and there’s an explanation which is in the article. I’m still not completely clear on it, myself.

My first Dr. Who was with the Ninth Doctor played by Christopher Eccleston whose name I always want to make much harder to pronounce that it is. I loved this Doctor very much and was greatly dismayed when after one season he changed into the Tenth Doctor. Two episodes later I was in love with the new one.

I also love all the guest stars like this weekend we had Giles (Buffy), Beth from Moonlight and one of the Doctor’s earlier companions which I’m sure would have been more meaningful if I wasn’t such a newbie, sort of like when Faith turned up again in the last season of Buffy.

There’s a Doctor Who marathon coming up and I expect to see smoke coming out of my DVR by the time it’s over.

In other nerd news, I spent most of yesterday morning on the couch under a blanket reading a book about dragons and the Napolenic wars. No, I’m not making this up.

One last tidbit, they must be really hurting over there on the SciFi Wire since today’s headlines include something about a trailer for the new Star Trek movie (A remake of the old series. If anyone can think of a compelling reason why this remake should happen that doesn’t include a dollar sign, please let me know.) Another announcement that Governor Arnold will not be appearing or in anyway connected to the Terminator 4 movie like anyone cares.

And finally an announcement that Patricia Arquette won’t cross the picket line to attend the Golden Globes. I thought nobody was attending the Golden Globes. The Golden Globes are stupid. It would be like if a bunch of nerds at school started their own prom and elected their own prom queen and everybody acted like it was just as important as the real prom even though they knew it was just a pretend prom.