You're Doing It Wrong

I actually finished it at the beginning of the week and I still haven’t sent out the word. I made paper copies and they sit in a folder on my desk. I’m chipping away at it. No holiday freaking out here. I’ll jet off the URL to my email address book and get the mail ones out tomorrow night.

You can find the online version of the latest holiday newsletter here.

Yesterday I was at the bookstore picking up a couple of last minute things and I found about 5 things I wanted for myself. I wonder how many people end up buying stuff for themselves during the holiday shopping frenzy. I always find lots of things I want.

I resisted the urge yesterday, barely, because I already have a ton of books to read and since books are my favorite gift to receive it would be dumb to buy something that might appear next week wrapped in green Santa paper.

I need to do a quick inventory on my holiday booty and see if I have any last minute errands. I think it’s all under control. I have a some wrapping to do and one gift thing that’s a small project that I need to do. But I’m ready. Bring it on.

I’ve mentioned that a new office building is going in on the block next to ours. Right now is the phase where huge steel beams two stories high are pounded into the ground around the perimeter. (I’m not a construction or engineering specialist and they might not be steel, beams or two stories high, I’m just explaining what it looks like from a non-pro point of view.)

This operation is happening on the opposite side of the building from my office and the noise is still unbearable. There is a machine that sounds like a giant pressure washer or a jackhammer of the gods sound that sometimes will vibrate the spoon in your coffee cup. Then there’s another device that sounds like: “swish clonk, swish clonk.” This goes on for maybe a half-hour at a time and then stops for a few minutes then starts up again from the time I come in the door in the morning. I don’t notice what time it stops in the afternoon because by then my brain is leaking out my ears. If you are standing outside the building you can’t hear a conversation with a person next to you.

How long does it take to build an office building? I have a sense this is just the beginning.

This is a parking lot across the street from our building. This was taken at the end of October and already the daily rate has gone up again. The daily parking rate around my building has gone up something like 50% in the last couple of years.

I’ve barely had time to pull up my socks today. I made 2 dozen tamales, processed 4 more pumpkins and I’m at about 80% on the holiday newsletter.

I tried something different this year and I’m doing one page at a time and doing the online page and then the for print page together. That way I have all the text and photos open at the same time. This probably sounds like crazy talk. Just trust me, I’m doing it in a more time-efficient way.

I keep seeing all the projects I haven’t touched yet. Ah! Panic. At least the purchasing of goods part is finished.

Our DVR has been on the fritz for eons. There would be times when you’d turn it on and if you chose a show you’d get a blank screen. You can phone Comcast and they do what I guess is the equivalent of a reboot and it would work again. But they advised us to swap it out when we could.

About 2 weeks ago the menu screen went wonky and it would be smudged black and dark green. You could just make out your show title and the show would play fine so again, I put off the swap.

Today I had time and since almost all my shows are on hiatus for the holidays or writers strike, the thing was cleaned out, I took it in. This is at least our 4th DVR. I always worry when people tell me they have a seasons worth of Show X that they’re saving. I’ve lost a lot of shows. I watch and delete as soon as possible.

Going to Comcast is sort of like going to the DMV. The parking lot is poorly paved. There’s a gadget when you walk in where you press a button depending on what you’re doing there and it prints out a ticket with a letter and number. You sit around with the masses, waiting. Then an automated voice announces your number.

The employees are also like the DMV. They don’t smile. They aren’t friendly. Anything you might have done to anticipate what they need to make their life easier, say, previous paperwork, if they don’t need it it’s like you’re trying to hand-off chicken guts or something. I’m sure they deal with moronic, frustrated people all day long. You’d think they’d appreciate a friendly face.

I got it home and all hooked up but there was no color. The online guide was worthless so I phoned for help and sorry, but I don’t speak TV. I don’t know a coaxial video output zebraphone from a deltawire fusebar high-def jiggiwonker. Turned out I had to take out the red, white and yellow things and then put the yellow thing in the green thing and put one red thing back. Hard to believe I didn’t figure that out on my own.

And I got my dead presto-log from last week to light. I guess it needed a week to cure in the fireplace. Probably the Sunday paper and kindling I added to the mix helped.

I have chewed a lot of gum in my lifetime. My Mom hates gum. She was also a librarian. I don’t know if these two things are related. There is nothing, with the possible exception of revealing she is really a man, that my Mom could do that would shock me more than if I saw her chewing gum.

I chewed a lot of gum when I wanted to eat less. I’m not sure if it worked.

Then I gave up gum for a long time and I got back into it when I discovered Glee Gum at Trader Joes. Not only is the gum “all natural,” they sell “educational kits” for kids. I wish I could see the expression on my Mom’s face when she reads this.

Glee gum is made with rainforest chicle, the way gum used to be made. I’m not really up-to-speed on the history of gum so I don’t know how gum used to be made but I really like this gum. It chews with less squish (more bite?) and the flavor isn’t too gnarly. (You can see why I would make a terrible food writer.)

I visited their website for the first time earlier this week and found out they have cinnamon and tangerine flavors, too. I had no idea and plan to buy a carton of each after the holidays.

Last month C-Tran did a major service change which included dismantling the 7th street transit center downtown and opening a new transit center at 99th street. We live almost exactly in the middle of these two locations.

The downtown transit center is now a series of bus stops and Bob has been dropping me off on his way to work and picking me up on his way home. That system has been working fine.

The 99th street transit center is a park and ride but I hadn’t tried it yet since it seemed counter-productive to drive further away from my intended destination. Bob has finals and grading and whatever end of the quarter/year stuff college instructors have to do and could not pick me up this week so I decided to give the park and ride a try.

Turns out: it’s fabulous. It only takes about 10 minutes from the house. Super easy access in and out. I don’t have to get on the freeway or deal with any gnarly intersections. And the best part is that the bus is every 10 minutes in the morning AND in the evening.

This is the giant drawback about the other bus. In the afternoons it comes only every 25 minutes. At rush hour even.

Yesterday by luck, I was able to board my bus as I stepped out of the office. There were no freeway snafus and I made it door to door in 40 minutes. Unheard of. Another good thing about the park and ride is that my way home takes me by Target and Safeway, perfect for quick errands.

There are certain foods I rarely buy because if they are in the house I will eat nothing else. Chips is one although we’ve had them around lately. Now that I’ve started this I’m drawing a complete blank. Generally I’m talking about certain junk foods that are delicious and also have that magic ingredient where you can’t stop shoving it into your mouth.

Several weeks ago we were doing our thing wandering through the grocery aisles and filling our cart when I spotted something I’d never seen before. It was Klondike Bar flavors. There was Heath Bar, Caramel & Pretzel, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. A bunch of yummy choices. (Klondike should be ashamed that Wikipedia is more informative on Klondike bars than their own site.)

I spied the Caramel & Pretzel and I did something that I do every once in awhile that I think is hilarious. I grabbed a pack and ran down the aisle waving it at Bob while hollering, “Dad! Can we get this?” This never gets old. Then he goes through the motion of looking at it and saying, “Sure. I don’t care.”

And this is funny because he does this to me now and then, asks me if it’s okay to get something. And I say, “Dude, you have money, a car, you know where the store is. You can get whatever you want.” It’s like a holdover from childhood, asking for permission to get something you want at the grocery store.

When I showed him the Klondike Bars he sort-of made a face like, “Look what crazy things she finds.”

I had to chuckle when I dug around the freezer to try one and two were already gone. The caramel and pretzel is in the chocolate coating and was really delicious. We tried the Reese’s too. But I said we had to stop buying them because basically I was hoovering my dinner in two minutes then running to the freezer to get my dessert. Also there was some bickering in the form of “You already ate yours. These are mine.”

Here’s another 70’s classic photo of me making my boat face. One of these days we’re going to have a whole photo page of Pam Boat Face. I hate being on boats and make this pained face like I’m trying to be a good sport but all I really want is to not be on the boat.

Bob has the most classic Pam boat face photo series of all time. I’ve probably written about this before. We were on this tour with my Auntie in northern Germany and I think we took a ferry from somewhere in Denmark to somewhere in Germany. We got on the boat and entered this hot, cramped little room where people were eating fried foods and SMOKING. I’m making boat face right now just thinking about it. It was cold and windy and I think even raining and I said I’d be standing on the deck and that’s where I remained for the entire ride. Bob has a photo of me jumping off the ferry and I look like I just won the lottery.

Last night I made gumbo which was fantastic but gave us both indigestion. I swear, we aren’t far from the day when we both eat a few spoonfuls of broth before we go to bed because everything fancy seems to gurgle the innards in the night. I got up and had a little ginger tea and my stomach settled right away. Then I couldn’t sleep for 3 hours and woke up every hour after that. I woke up feeling like I had a 3 star hangover with none of the fun to earn it.

I hung out with the Hobbit this afternoon while his Mom and Dad went to see The Golden Compass. When I got home I worked on my holiday newsletter which put me in a cranky mood. I’m still a C- on the Adobe skills. Also my firelog won’t light. Do those go bad? Is that why it was only $16 a box? I really didn’t want to spend my evening babysitting the firelog.

This is me and my cousin Lisa tubing on the Klamath River in the 70’s.

I decided tomorrow is going to be a no computer day. I actually have a ton of computer projects going but I need to give my neck, mouse arm and eyeballs a break.

Then I can get my Christmas stuff organized and maybe do some wrapping and list-checking.

Plus I have tons of cooking projects going although I decided to push the tamales back until next weekend. I’m making gumbo and I need to replenish my granola. I ran out of homemade granola and have been making do with store bought and yukola-dola. Too sweet and not close as yummy. I bought huge bags of nuts and raisins and oats and sadly, sweetened coconut because the only place I’ve ever seen unsweetened is Bob’s Red Mill and we haven’t managed to get out there yet and doesn’t look like it is going to happen any time soon. I’m also baking cookies (right now) and I need to process the rest of the pumpkin. I also might throw in a loaf of bread.

An afternoon of kitchen and Christmas stuff sounds perfect about now.

This morning I did a major Trader Joe’s run plus hit Freddie’s and Target. And I did it all in less than 3 hours door-to-door. How come that isn’t an Olympic sport? But I was on a tight schedule because I had to be at the theater for The Golden Compass at Noon. I love, love, love the books and I’ve been so excited about this movie. For fans it’s a must see but if you’ve never heard of the books, I predict you’d be bored and confused. Too many characters and plots going on to easily translate into a movie. When you check out the cast list — it’s amazing but most of those people have about 3 lines. It looks really cool and I loved the daemons and Iorek Byrnison is probably one of my top ten fictional characters of all time and the minute he showed up I was on the edge of my seat. I give it a solid 8 for fans.

There was a trailer for a Will Farrell movie with basketball in the 70’s (?) that looks hilarious. WF movie trailers always seem to be funnier than the movies but I almost had tears coming out of my eyes for the trailer so I bet the movie is good. There was also a trailer for Speed Racer and by all rights I should be slathering over this and I think it looks stupid. Well, it looks interesting but in an eye-candy-video-game-crazy way not I-want-to-sit-and-watch-these-bright-twirling-colors way. The interactions between the characters look stupid. “I want to change the world with my car racing.” Are you kidding me? I want to change the world with my pumpkin growing and I’m a speed demon in Trader Joe’s. Where’s my movie?

This was supposed to be my quick and easy post and it’s taking me forever to gather URLs so I’m going to go with what I have.

The more time I spend with Flickr the more I love it. It’s a great reference tool and a great place to get lost checking out photos of places I’ve been or places I want to go, or places I’d never go. (Aside: last night we watched the Iconoclasts with Jon Krakauer and Sean Penn and they talked a bit about Into Thin Air and I leaned over to Bob and said, “You know what I’m never going to do? Climb Mt. Everest.“)

My Flickr photos are here and not terribly exciting. Mostly photos of pumpkins, dahlias, Orleans and Portland/Vancouver.

But here are some fun photos I’ve found lately.

I read an article about all the bald eagles in Homer, Alaska. Punched it into the Flickr search engine and found these fabulous eagle photos. Awhile back I wrote a blog post that mentioned the neighborhood I lived in when I was a wee child. Just for kicks I put “Encino Village” into the Flickr search engine and found these. This week I wanted to see if there were any photos of the interstate highway where it’s shut down in Chehalis, about 80 miles north of here. The Oregonian has a photostream that is unbelievable. It goes way beyond the highway flooding. Amazing and heart-breaking photos of local storm damage and the people who are dealing with it.

My Dad was born in Hamburg, Germany and said there was flooding there not long ago. I found and subscribed to Hamburg Harbor group.

Also last week I saw a photo of a crane that fell over the Interstate in L.A. and found out that LA Fire Department has a photostream.

Now that you’ve looked at car wrecks, you can refresh your eyeballs with some photos from the Portland photostream. I subscribed to this for awhile and loved it because it was like a visual check on the city every day. But it’s high volume and got to be too much.