You're Doing It Wrong

The Comcast Experience
On Friday I went to Comcast to swap out for a new DVR. It actually wasn’t that bad but I’m going to complain about it anyway.

First, the parking lot was obviously the prize winning entry in a challenge to build America’s stupidest parking lot. It didn’t win first prize because that honor went to the Bank of America on Hwy 99 in Hazel Dell across from Fred Meyer which only has 8 spots, all slightly smaller than any normal car and only one entry/exit so that there are 8 cars trying to get out and 8 cars trying to get in at the same time. It’s the Rubik’s Cube of parking lots.

At Comcast I missed the first spot where I was supposed to turn into the customer parking area and the second spot said DO NOT ENTER which meant that I had to drive all the way back around where the vans are and into what must have been the employee parking lot and then make an 150 point turn to get back out because it all dead ends right there.

Once I got myself parked, I went in and it was basically the DMV except smaller and with better technology. Way better technology. They spent big on the electronic signs and digital announcement to let you know it’s your turn and there was nothing left for the waiting area. There’s a gizmo where you get your ticket and you have to pick TV, Internet and I can’t remember what the third thing is, phone service? It prints you out a ticket and you can go sit down on the 4 padded cubes (they couldn’t even pony up for chairs with backs) which were all full so I had to stand there in the middle of the room holding my DVR.

Of course there was a giant flat screen TV cranking out CNN, strategically placed BEHIND the seats so that the only people who could conveniently watch were the joyless clerks who were a tad overqualified for the DMV so they got this job instead, and me standing in the middle of the room and hating all forms of televised news. (Except the Daily Show.)

I didn’t wait long and they got me set up and were polite to all the crazy customers who were demanding extra receipts and asking nutty questions such as holding up their modems and asking if it could be tested for how fast it worked. I guess under these circumstances, I’d be joyless too.

Now I’ve got my TV back.

Fall Colors?
Yesterday I went for a walk with my camera and this is what I ended up with. H’ep! (Although does look cool.)

Could we just go for 3 weeks without something breaking around here? I’m going to fiddle with it this afternoon. Maybe this is just a freak anomaly and the camera is just fine.

Last entry on the Potter adverb watch: sychophantically.

I finished the book this morning and the last 300 pages redeem the tome. Great set up for last book.

I thought I had more to report but I’m drawing a blank and don’t see any scraps of paper with hints around.

This is the last of my tomato crop, taken before the camera died, in case that wasn’t clear.

Camera Update: I tried swapping cards and jiggling the handle. Still looks kaput to me. Crap.

At last, a good night’s sleep last night. I feel 100% better.

The DVR gave up the ghost this week which means that I missed almost all my shows, which is fine. I like my shows but I get along fine without them. However, it’s amazing how dependent one can become on this kind of technology. I don’t even know when my shows are on or what channel. If I want some TV, I tune in to the DVR and see what’s waiting.

This afternoon after class I’m going to Comcast to swap out for a new box. I should be up and running in time for Battlestar Galactica tonight.

I’ve decided to take a 24 hour computer break this weekend. Between work and the Illustrator class, I think I ruined my neck. Or it could be this yoga pose that I did for the first time these past two weeks. Mine looks a lot more free style than this photo, which I borrowed without permission from Bill.

I’m going to do crafts tomorrow and organize my spice cupboard. See ya.

Hey look, someone else has my theory.

Humanity may split into two sub-species in 100,000 years' time as predicted by HG Wells, an expert has said.

Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics expects a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass to emerge.

The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the “underclass” humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.

The only difference is, I don’t think we’re going to be on the planet that long.

Favorite headline from a small town paper we get at the office.

Written Clickingly
Yesterday I woke up at 4am and couldn’t get back to sleep. I went to bed early the night before so I had a pretty decent night’s sleep and didn’t notice feeling tired until last night.

The teacher for my Illustrator class told us it would be frustrating sometimes and we’d want to throw our computers out the window. Last night I finally hit the wall and I didn’t want to throw my computer out the window but I did want to throw something at someone.

The lesson was to design a graphic for a website and it was all this: “Double click the endpoints and anchor points, copy and paste behind. Then, clicking the bottom layer, click on the clicks you just made and click them. Once you’ve clicked, drag, release and re-click the point and the clicks. Click the clicks and click them until you can click no more.”

Seriously, no one needs a website that badly.

Since I was tired, I went to bed. (Also, my DVR is broken and I had to try to remember how to use a VCR again, but that’s another tale.) And I couldn’t fall asleep. And I woke up today at 4am again. At the moment I’m feeling a wee bit groggy.

Also, I write this only because WKB will be horrified. Yesterday I had my leftover smoked salmon enchilada from Monday, for lunch and I ate it cold. I don’t know how the office microwave works and anyway, it smells like ass and I don’t want to put food in there. I’ll admit, the cold enchilada was not the most appetizing thing I’ve ever eaten.

Update: I’m a moron. Turns out the clickety click thing was not part of the homework. I wondered what that random sticky note was doing in there. It meant, “skip this part.”

Something Stinks
And it’s me.

Last night I put on my yoga outfit before class and it smelled like something died in it. Yuck.

I’m super sensitive of smells (ask my husband, I believe he called me a Terrier although that might have had to do with my Jaime Sommers hearing). I could hardly enjoy class because all I could smell was myself and I was all self-conscious that other people were growing light-headed in the vapor of my stench.

If you’ve been to many yoga classes, you might be snickering about now because there’s almost always someone in class who has elastic ideas about bathing, use of deodorant and/or wearing freshly laundered yoga clothes.

I couldn’t wait to get home, fling the clothes into the wash and fire up the spin cycle with extra pretty smelling essential oils (just a few drops, I buy my stash here.)

I figure what happened is that I tossed them to the floor last time I wore them. And then seeing them on the floor picked them up and put them on the dresser. Then seeing them on the dresser thought, “Oh these must be magically clean, I’ll put them back in the drawer.”

I’ll have to develop a whole system to prevent this from happening again.

Meanwhile, Potter adverb watch: reminiscently.

Thanksgiving Security
I found this at boingboing.net. You can see the entire illustration here. The artist credited is Erik Johnson.

I think it’s a classic.

Adverb Reform School. STAT!
I’m reading Harry Potter #6. I’m not a diehard HP lover but I’ve enjoyed the books and movies.

So far, this book sucks ass. I read 225 pages and nothing happened. Nothing. It was the equivalent of reading about Harry flossing his teeth for 225 pages. I felt sorry for the kids who stayed up until midnight and paid $30 for a hardcover of this book. I’m now about halfway in (it’s about 800 pages) and a few things that might indicate some sort of plot have happened, so maybe the book will make up for it in the second half.

Along with the crime of writing pages and pages of plotless fiction, J.K. has never met an adverb she didn’t like. Bracingly. Quellingly. Warmingly. Are those even words? Are you allowed to put “ly” at the end of any word that you feel like? Another gem was when someone said something with a “significantly dark tone.” Marc said that he had to negotiate with his editor because he likes to invent verbs. (Just in case it’s not clear here, I know that bracingly isn’t a verb. I’m suggesting that Marc was inventing fun words and had to negotiate with his editor while J.K. makes up adverbs which any basic writing lesson will tell you to use sparingly.)(HA HA, I used an ingly word.) Yeah, yeah, I know if you sell a gabillion copies, you can do whatever you want. And at least people are reading.

And while I’m bitching about popular entertainment, I also watched Flightplan. I’ve been sitting on the DVD for two weeks. Kathy said she was disappointed with it, but I like Jodie Foster and thought it would be an entertaining thriller for a rainy afternoon. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s about a woman who goes on an overseas flight with her daughter and falls asleep. When she wakes up, her daughter is gone. There is no record of the daughter on the passenger list. Sound a bit intriguing? You’d think.

Turns out, it’s pretty stupid. Jodie’s character goes so completely batshit crazy, like climbing around in the ceiling of this plane which is the size of a cruise liner (I kept waiting to see the room with the pool) that it’s hard to sympathize with her. I’m not going to spoil it but the huge money shot at the very end is so completely contrived and ridiculous that I laughed, nay, I cackled while slapping my knee and stomping the floor. I can just see the writer at his writers group and creating this moment, the whole reason to have the movie, and the others chiming in, “Yeah, and she can emerge from the smoke. Yeah, and there can be emergency lights flashing in the background. Yeah, and … .”

Also the movie barely has 90 minutes worth of story so there’s some padding going on.

Final tidbit of the day, I made this epic casserole last night. I had to ask Bob to stop eating so we’d have some leftovers for this week. On Weds I bought a pound of roasted Poblanos at the farmers market. They have a guy there with a rig to roast them while you watch. For the casserole I took half that and diced them and stirred them with sour cream. I used a bunch of cooked rice and layered the rice with the sour cream mix, a diced Mexican style cheese that I can’t remember the name of, and diced cooked chicken. You do that for 2 layers and then top with rice and a sprinkle of cheese. Bake for about 30 minutes. Enjoy.

Be A Good Worker
This morning I procrastinated for a bit and then worked on the illustration for my project. I think I made it more complicated than it had to be but I felt like I was learning something so I stuck with it.

I finally decided I was fried and checked the clock and saw it was after 1pm and since the news is that it’s going to rain tomorrow, I thought I should try to put in a little more time in the yard. I cleaned up some general stuff and dug out the roots of this lavender thing I cut back to the nub since it looked bad. Then I cleaned up the rosebed and then, finally, after having it for eons, I took out the hedge master and went to town on the front hedge.

If I wasn’t so tired I’d tell a better story, but basically it’s this stupid box hedge that was randomly placed out front and a couple of years ago we had a bunch of snow on the roof and it all slid off at once and did some major damage to the hedge. We chopped it back and intended to pull it out but never did and it’s been growing and growing until it looked like a spiky space alien out there.

I finally took the hedge cutters to it and smoothed out the edges. I considered taking pictures but it doesn’t look that special now that it’s done and I could see you guys thinking: Why the hell did she put a photo of her hedge on her blog? It looks like it was trimmed by a blind person.

[Aside: don’t you hate when your software checks for updates all by itself and randomly interrupts you when you’re doing something to say, “Hey, I have an update, do you want it right now?” and I want to say, “No, do I interrupt you when you’re in the middle of doing something and say, “Hey, it’s my birthday, do you want to bake me a cake?”]

My confidence boosted by how easy it is to use that mother, I went to the side of the house to chop at that hedge. That’s another story I can’t get into right now, but basically I chopped until I felt like my arms were falling off and they still feel like they’re falling off and my forearms are throbbing and typing does not feel good.

Tomorrow I’m making something with those roasted Poblanos I bought and doing some serious couch surfing.