You're Doing It Wrong

I Want My System Font Back
This morning I arrived at the office to find that the last person on my computer was an administrator and that my display settings were all screwed up. The system font is stupid and all my desktop icons are smaller and so on like that. The sad part is that this majorly aggravated me and I stomped into someone’s office to bitch about it.

I have become that woman in the office whose head spins around and who loudly whines about her system fonts. Get over it already.

Also in today’s ramblings, I just read my Wednesday NYT Dining Out and on the cover is a super interesting article about a guy who studies how outside influences affect how much a person eats. Try this link.

The article starts out saying people will swear they aren’t influenced by the size of the package or how much variety is on the buffet table, or fancy names on the label.

Nuh-uh. I’m TOTALLY influenced by portion sizes. I’m the queen of eating junk food just because it’s there on the table. I will run out a buy a goofy product because of advertising or pick the prettier label if deciding between two brands. This is exactly why I don’t like to buy a lot of chips or any food I know I will eat in absurd quantities. This is also why I don’t like for my husband to fix my plate because he loads it up with so much stuff and I’ll eat it because it’s there. My serving guideline for him is: “Think about how much you think I would eat. Then cut it in half.”

Finally, did you know rebates are a total scam? I’ve always thought they were an excuse to collect your personal data for direct mailing/telemarketing. Turns out it’s more insidious than that AND a company was recently granted a patent for their business practice that takes pride in denying you your rebate. Their mothers must be proud.

Crazy Man with Red Ponytail
This morning I walked down Main Street near a young guy smoking a cigarette and wearing green pants with a green bag slung over his shoulder and sporting a red ponytail. He looked like a character in Dazed and Confused but time does not permit me to find a photo. Sorry.

I stopped at the red light on 2nd. He continued across. There was no traffic. He made a production of looking to the left and then to the right and then looking back over his shoulder at me standing on the corner and giving me something between an irritated sigh and the stink-eye. (And it’s a one way street so the right glance was superfluous Mr. He-Who-Thinks-He’s-So-Great.)

So you chose to go, I chose to wait. Let’s agree not to judge each other.

Then my light turned green and I crossed and caught up with him at the next corner which was red and the intersection filled with cars. We stood waiting. Traffic thinned out. One car remained but paused in front of us so that the driver would not block the intersection.

Mr. Green Jeans opens his arms to the sides in a big impatient “what’s the matter with you lady” gesture and as she drives through the intersection he does a big high karate kick at the car.

I was terrified he was going to go into my building because there was no way I was getting on the elevator with that bundle of crazy. I suppose we should be grateful he wasn’t driving.

Three Unrelated Items
1 – On Saturday morning I went out to the kitchen to refill my tea. My husband sat at the kitchen table with his headphones on, eyes closed. The paper was spread-out before him and his head tilted forward as he gently snored.

He sat up a bit when I came in the room.

ME: Hey Hon, whatcha doing?

Him: Sleeping and reading the paper.

2 – This weekend I read three reviews of Cormac McCarthy’s new book The Road. (The URL takes you to the website of the Official Cormac McCarthy Society. Who knew that even existed? Also, they don’t have the new book on their site. For shame.) I like McCarthy’s writing a lot. However, one of the reviews I read characterized this as his bleakest book yet which doesn’t put me in a big hurry. If you recall, I read Suttree earlier this year (see book #9) and the words I used were grim and joyless.

3 – My text book for my Illustrator class starts each chapter with a section called, “Why Would I Do This?” Why, indeed.

A Conversation that took place on Tuesday evening, the day the cleaning person came, one minute after arriving home and putting my things on the kitchen counter.

Me: Omigod, the counter’s all sticky.
Bob: That’s where I made my lunch.
Me: You mean we paid someone to clean today and I don’t even get to enjoy it for 5 minutes?
Bob: I can wipe it off if you want.
Me: No. I want it sticky.

Real Electrician
Actual electricans came to our house to look at our problem and turns out, portions of our electrical system are totally mickey mouse. I had noticed, as early as shortly after we bought the house that there were signs of people without a clue doing projects on the house. And we’ve had other clues that things were a bit off so this wasn’t a huge surprise.

I suppose I can see why some people would cut corners and have a nephew do a shitty paint job OR reinstall only part of the kitchen floor OR wallpaper right over the old wallpaper.

But why would you mess with the electricity? Why would you do the cheapo, I have a friend who read a book about wires and breakers once and took shop in high school do the electrical work?

We’re still not clear what we’re in for but we’d like to get it right so some dollars will be going into electrical fixing. And here’s a shout out to LeRoy who mentioned when we bought the house that it was a good idea to set money aside every month for a house fund for just these types of situations.

Meanwhile, my class is taking up more of my free time than expected so the blog lags. I never told you about the food article that paired wine with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or FoodDay Martha on another bender about things in the east that are better than the west. She mentions this family farm where they get their better apples and how this farm has been in the same family since 1700-something when King George (or whatever) gave them the land and isn’t that cool? Yeah, sure if you conveniently forget that other people were using that land first.

Bitty Booties
I made these with a pattern from Heather Baily which you can find here. I wish I knew how to take better pictures of things and I’ll invest some time and energy into that at some point.

The star booties were the test pair and the heart booties I gave to Katie. The hearts are a picture of the cast of Beverly Hills 90210 and came from some earrings Katie’s mother gave me years ago.

The booties weren’t too hard to make but the test pair took forever. I’ve got two more pairs for gifts sitting by the TV about 50% finished. Just an hour or two of hand stitching and they’ll be done, too. They aren’t practical for wearing. At least not the way I made them. But they are cute and a fun little gift.

Groaning Shelf
I’ve been meaning to take a picture of the “to read” shelf to show you. At first I was going to make it more organized. Then I was going to leave exactly as it normally is. Then I moved stuff around just a little so you can see more books. You can click on the photo for a bigger version if you want to see the titles better.

This is by no means the complete stack of books to read. This is just the main stacking area and where I look first when I’m ready for a new book.

You can barely see The Grapes of Wrath behind the middle stack between the Argonath bookends that came with one of my DVD purchases. There’s another paperback in there called something like Fire in the Morning which I’ve been carrying around for years and have moved to the bedside table more than once but still haven’t managed to read. Wrath I bought a couple of years ago thinking I wanted to read it again to see how my perspective has changed after reading it 20 some odd years ago. Every time I pick it up it seems so hefty and the print so small I resolve to read it again later.

The Anne Rice is also ancient. Around the time I got it, I read about 3 stinkers of hers in a row and could never bring myself to start that one. But I can’t bring myself to chuck it without at least trying the first 20 pages just in case it isn’t another stinker.

On the left buried at the bottom is an Alice Munro collection of stories. I’m easily drawn to chubby short story collections but rarely seem to read them. I suppose I should drop in and out, reading a story here and there. But that upsets my yearning to approach a book as a single project to be read from beginning to end. Alice Munro writes wonderful stories.

Under Alice is a book you can’t see called Daughters are Forever by Lee Maracle, who I used to see at Wordcraft Circle events but haven’t seen in a number of years.

Hopefully I can finish a book today and get started on that pound of Potter.

Breaker Moron
Last weekend our garbage disposal gave its last gasp just as my parents were driving up. We gave Dad a hard time like it waited until he was here to give up the ghost. Dad checked it out and confirmed: ding dong, the garbage disposal is dead.

Bob bought a new one at Sears and made arrangements for it to be installed because we don’t know how to install things and Dad has gone home and Uncle Joey is in Arizona or Texas or whatever, same thing.

The installer person was signed up to come today after 1pm. For some reason I didn’t want to be sitting around on my ass when this person came over so I decided this afternoon would be a good time to sweep out the garage. So there I was sweeping spiders with my hair full of dust when the truck drove up.

I had the new disposal set out and the area under the sink all cleared out and the guys got to work and things moved quickly from fine to disastrous.

I’m not an electrical professional and when I describe the problem, I know you’re going to be thinking, “That it doesn’t sound right. Those wrench jockeys didn’t know what they were doing. You’re hopelessly screwed and the electrical integrity of your entire house is broken beyond all reckoning. You might as well turn your wallet upside down and empty it out because it’s going to take jillions of dollars to fix this.” So in advance, thanks for the input.

Apparently the garbage disposal and the dishwasher have some wires crossed and even if you turn the disposal off from the switch it’s still on. And there’s some sort of mickey-mouse thing going on under the sink. And they couldn’t believe no one has gotten shocked or the house hasn’t burned down. The disposal can’t be wired up until an electrician looks at it. And we can’t use the dishwasher now either. And the breaker attached to the dishwasher also controls most of the lights in the rear end of the house (the house’s ass) so now our kitchen is a dark and godless place where we have no disposal and must wash dishes by hand.

As of now, an electrician has been called. The garage has been swept clean. AND the drainer is full of sparkling dishes which can be viewed using the light in the dining room.

Hitching Post in Northwest Portland

You’re So Inane
This is my post about reading Cosmopolitan magazine but first I wanted to mention that originally I was going to rename this site: Your Doing It Wrong. I thought the intentional “your” with “doing it wrong” would be funny. But I figured the 3 people who end up here by accident and don’t know me would assume I was an idiot and maybe I am but I don’t want someone to think I’m an idiot because of bad grammer.

Just kidding. Grammar.

Back to Cosmo and this is going to be short because sadly, I don’t have enough time to tell you about each of the zillions of goofy articles.

For some reason we get bales of stupid magazines at the office addressed to “Strategy Event Manager.” If you’re thinking to yourself: what the hell is that? Join the club. What is a strategy event? What functions would this manager perform? Do other law firms or companies have strategy event managers? Is it a fulltime position? And even if so, why would this person need Cosmopolitan or other fashion magazines that are actually barely veiled catalogs pimping stuff to buy with some filler that consists of advice that makes you stupider after you read it?

I don’t have any answers but last time a fresh Cosmo showed up in the lunch room, I grabbed it. It has Christina Aguilera on the cover and teases us with a new column, “sexy v. skanky, ” the promise of 30 sex boosters to make sex even sexier and Patrick Dempsey (Dr. McDreamy) photos that “could cause cardiac arrest.” Let’s look inside, shall we?

Geez, I don’t even know where to start. Tons of ads. That’s nothing new. Boy, they use green tea to sell anything now, don’t they? Shampoo. Bath gel. I was at a restaurant that had green tea liquor and you could get a martini with all the benefits of green tea. If it’s not green tea, products are stuffed with fruit, vegetables, herbs, nuts, aloe or soy. Bamboo shampoo. Cherry almond body crème. Soy aloe nail stuff. Poor me with a bathroom full of foodless products.

When it comes to make up you want anything radiant, glowing, shimmery, luminescent, sparkly, glossy. You get the idea. You clothes can be glittery, too. All the celebrities are doing it.

Lots of ads for diamonds. I guess the diamond backlash hasn’t hit the glamour circuit yet. (ha ha)

They claim there’s a fashion craze for boy shorts panties because they don’t uncomfortably crawl up your cheek crease. That was not my personal experience.

Finally we get to the content. Of course I lingered in the Man Manual to make sure I’m up on the latest research findings. I learned “what his affection style says.” If he caresses my head, that let’s me know he cares. If he kisses my forehead he’s sweet, loving, and perceptive. Perceptive? From a forehead kiss? Personally, if he kissed my forehead I’d think he was treating me like a little girl. The article is accompanied by beefcake guys with their shirts off and their pants unbuttoned smirking at the camera and not looking at the women that they care about and are so perceptive around.

Another great article has tips of things to say after sex. I had no idea this was an area for which tips are needed. If you need to lighten the mood you can make a joke and say, “So, what’s your name again?” Write that down. It might come in handy some time.

For couples, there’s a “how to” article on stroking his ego. Are you kidding me? Gush over tiny tasks? Flatter his fighting style? Tailor complements for him? I’m not sure what upsets me more the idea that there’s a “how to” article or that someone thinks women need to pander to the male ego. How about this couples tip from me: be kind to each other. As much as possible. Just because.

Finally, there’s a huge article on what men want in bed. I always thought they pretty much just wanted you to go to bed with them. So here’s my tip for getting a man into bed: agree to go to bed with him.

I did find one product to try since I’m still a sucker for products. It promises to make me thinner, shinier, younger, sexier and it won’t ride up my ass. Also, I’ll be able to walk on water.