You're Doing It Wrong

Look what I did yesterday. I rolled coins. That’s not even half of our collection. I emptied the laundry coins and rounded up the bureau coins. Plus we both have our own coin cans and I made a pile from both.

I put back all the quarters and we still have tons for poker.

That’s $50.50 in coins and it’s all going into the orange Mini account. (Orange is my online savings. I probably want a grey or silver Mini.)

The money on the counter reminded me of some advice I saw on a website. Do you ever see advice on a website that is so beyond stupid that you want to call your Congressman and have the Internet repealed? I just looked for it to make sure I didn’t make this up in my head and I couldn’t find it so this could also be the product of an overactive imagination.

The article had to do with your home being robbed and they said that every criminal knows that everyone has a big wad of cash hidden somewhere in their house and no matter where you hide it, that criminal will find it. So they suggested that you “hide” a decoy wad of cash. A smaller amount and not so deeply hidden so that the criminal will think he found your money and be on his way leaving your real stash safe.

We don’t have a big wad of cash hidden in our house. I didn’t even know “everyone” did this. There is about $50 in coins not hidden and if the criminal is in such dire straits that he’s willing to cart off 10 lbs of change I wish him well.

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In addition to my busy day yesterday rolling coins, I also made a pie and worked on my myriad of never-ending projects which generally refers to organizing things, and I watched a movie called Half Nelson. It was very well reviewed and Ryan Gosling got an Academy Award nomination for his performance. I enjoyed it a great deal but I don’t know how to describe it. It’s about this teacher who’s an addict and his friendship with one of his students who’s also having a hard time and how they help each other out. But it’s a quiet movie. Worth tracking down.

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I think our next door neighbors are moving. (Have moved?) The house next door is a rental and the first tenants lasted about 3 years and were completely invisible. I talked to them two times. Once when our netflix was delivered to their house and they brought it over and once the day they were moving. For the record, I’m not the friendliest person in the world. Not to say that I’m unfriendly. I wave and say, Hi and recognize lots of neighbors but I very rarely run over and stand in the street and visit, and organize block parties and have neighbors over for BBQ.

The invisible people moved and a man moved in with his son. We introduced ourselves and said hello when we were watering the yard or whatever. At some point man’s girlfriend moved in and then it got weird and I’m not sure what went on. I think the son had a girlfriend there for awhile. Then another girl moved in who I think is a daughter. (And never have you come across a more charmless young woman.) And then another younger guy moved in.

And the original man disappeared. I actually was worried that maybe he had a terrible illness. A couple of weeks ago I saw him in the wee hours of the morning hitching the boat from the yard and driving off.

The main reason we pay any attention is the large collection of cars they have. If four people live there (girlfriend, son, daughter and other young guy) that means there are four cars. I’m not sure what any of the individuals does for work but I’m guessing restaurant or something involving shift work because cars come and go at all hours.

I’m not trying to say this was a bother because they aren’t noisy nor do they do any other anti-neighborly things. I wonder how they manage because these are awfully small houses for 4 adults. Also there is no sign of anything resembling air conditioning and I’ve never seen an open window.

On Saturday they had a truck with a trailer and they loaded up boxes and then the truck and all four cars disappeared. For the first time in 3 or 4 years there isn’t a single vehicle next door.

Photo: Bob waits his turn at the drive through coffee place.

This was not at all the day I wanted to have. Bob and I got up early and went for a walk and I did a good yoga practice. But I’ve had a persistent headache all day long. Just enough to be annoying and/or distracting.

My energy went plotz and I ended up taking a nap even though I thought I was well rested.

I spent the day reading including much time outside. I thought the sun would cure me. I puttered around the house and baked some bread.

Oh well. A nice relaxing day. Tomorrow will be the no computer day.

Photo: Vancouver trainyards at Fourth Plain overpass.

Last night we went to dinner with some friends. It’s kinda a long story but I ended up being in charge of picking the place.

Bob and I don’t go to dinner much in Portland and when we do, it’s usually in connection with a downtown event and between lunches and our events, I know downtown restaurants pretty well. I wanted to try something different not located downtown.

We have the Oregonian diner guide and I went through that cover to cover and ended up choosing Podnah’s Pit Texas Style Barbecue which is a strange choice seeing as how I eat about 8 oz. of meat a week.

I had a plate of beef which I cleaned off and a beer and we split a piece of the best pecan pie on the planet. I was too full, but happy full and I slept 10 hours and woke up feeling like a million bucks so I think this beef has miraculous powers.

Of course, today I felt my need to eat meat sated until the next millenium. Bob said there were sausages in the fridge and I said: GAK!

1. Let your Verizon contract lapse. You will never get more attention from Verizon than when you are not locked into a contract with them. I get email and snail mail from them every couple of days. Everybody wants to talk to me and give me a deal. Sometimes a girl needs to feel special.

2. White Vinegar. I’ve always had a big jug of plain cheapie white vinegar in my cupboard but I don’t use it much because it smells sort of nasty or like Easter egg dye. But really, that nasty stuff can leach the bad smell out of anything. (That I’ve tried so far.) We have two coolers we use for trips and both of them were getting gamy. The red one smelled like old socks. I poured in a little white vinegar, swabbed the entire thing with a washcloth and now: normal plastic-y smelling coolers.

3. In order to follow the rule of three I need one more tip here but haven’t come up with anything great. During the summer you can freeze berries to put in your breakfast yogurt during the rest of the year. The frozen berries will keep your yogurt cold until you eat it. Of course, here you could duct tape your breakfast container onto the roof of the car in December and it would keep plenty cold while you drive to work.

Another idea for a tip is if you make your lunch and it’s in the fridge and you don’t want to forget it. Put your keys in the fridge next to it.

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I thought it was a parody at first. I saw a commercial for a new Halloween movie. But it’s not Halloween, Episode 157, it’s a remake of the original. And rather than wait two months for Halloween, it’s coming out at the end of August.

Speaking of movies, did I ever say that we went and saw The Bourne Ultimatum for our anniversary date? Followed by a fabulous meal. It’s not really Bob’s favorite kind of movie but we both enjoyed it. I think Jason Bourne is my new boyfriend. He’s a great driver, he can keep you from getting assassinated in a train station and he can beat people up.

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Last night we watched an episode of the Henry Rollins show and he featured a guest who he said was known for the Obey the Giant images that virtually everyone has seen before or something like that. I should pay better attention when I’m going to write about it later. Anyway, I had no idea what he was talking about and even after seeing the images and reading the story – it says it was created in 1986 – I was not familiar. I guess my point being that (a) I’m not as dialed in to pop culture as I thought I was (I didn’t even know what High School Musical was) and (b) Henry, the images are not ubiquitous in the PAC NW.

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I want to buy a new work outfit for Fall and I’ve been waffling what store to go to. I decided to go to Nordstrom Rack on my lunch hour and I have no idea why I ever go into that store. For every 35 things I try on, I find one thing to buy. And of the things I buy, they are never my favorite things that I reach for over and over. I tried on one pair of pants that was skin tight in the thighs, gaping in the waist and would have needed a 14 inch hem. A women shaped like a pencil, take note.

I woke up at about quarter to 3:00 last night, as per usual. I knew there was a total lunar eclipse going on so I woke myself up all the way and found some binoculars and went to the living room window. There was a little sliver left when I sat down and I sat up almost a half hour until it was complete.

Of course I couldn’t fall back asleep right away and I kept thinking, I wonder what it looks like now? And I’d sit up and peek out the window again.

It did look pretty cool like a glowing orange ball in the sky. To me, the regular moon looks flat but the eclipsed moon had a shape. Every once in awhile a car would come by and I wanted to wave out the window to make sure they saw it. Also at one point I heard what sounded like a small plane. I always wonder what people are doing out and about at 3am.

You know you’re old married people when you’re thinking, “I can’t wait for my sweetheart to get home so we can go to bed.” And what that means is, “I can’t wait for my sweetheart to get home so I can get some sleep.”

I read a Johnny Depp quote somewhere which went something like: you know you’ve grown up when you talk about sleep the way you used to talk about partying when you were younger.

I’m going to make tomorrow a no computer day. It’s our 11 year anniversary and we’re going to spend the day hanging out. Probably the Farmer’s Market and visit some friends and later dinner and a movie.

Photostream on Sunday.

I just read in the paper that there’s going to be a Macaroni and Cheese cookoff in September. How I can be a judge for this contest?

Last night I sat on the DVR remote and accidentally hit the “lock” button. I didn’t even know a lock button existed and there was much frantic pressing of buttons, buttons in combination, power on/off-ing and changing of batteries and changing of batteries again while pulling my hair out because all I wanted to do was have a quiet relaxing evening and catch up on a few shows and not get into some sort of problem solving with a broken remote. Also I couldn’t control my DVR in any way and I hate the sound of the television unless I am sitting in front of it watching it. I had to turn it off with my show (The 4400) still running. Several wads of hair later, I learned of the existence of a lock button. Press and unlock and rewind. All was well with the world again.

I never learn anything more about technology than what I need to get the job done. No doubt there are all kinds of short cuts and tricks to make technology more useful that I’m too lazy or too stupid to learn. Even if someone says, “hey, look at this great feature” I will be, “That’s so handy. Thanks for showing me,” then five seconds later I can’t remember how to do it.

In the last post before the trip I mentioned that waterers had disappeared. They turned up about a half hour before we left for our get together. And they did a great job. Just in case you were worried.

Also right before we left we saw Patti Smith at The Bite of Portland which was fabulous. There are some good photos, not by me, here. The bummer was that we arrived a wee bit late and had eaten before we got there (because of the get together) so we totally missed out on the food which looked great. We took a quick tour through the booths before making our way to the stage. I’m sure you will drop your teeth when I tell you that, yet again, we were right next to a huge group of people talking loudly, over the music, during Patti’s set. What is wrong with people? This was a huge event. There were beer gardens and tables all over the place. Why would you park your butt 10 feet from the stage to talk? I think it should be legal to assault these people.

A lady did chew them out and they rolled their eyes and then wandered off for a bit although they did return later but didn’t talk as loud. I bet they spent the next day bragging about how awesome Patti was at the Bite. And she was. Favorite quote, “I ate 6 tacos today. Anything could happen.”