You're Doing It Wrong

This week is the 10 year anniversary of my website.

Obviously, I’ve been aware of this for some time and have (had?) big plans for a site redesign and returning some archived stuff to the site. All this Photoshop learning was supposed to pay off. Geez, I am a slow learner. I vastly scaled back my ideas and then scaled them back some more.

I worked on the new design all day and it’s still completely farked up. I only have the faintest grasp of this CSS stuff and I can’t make anything look like like I want it to look. Plus FRODO (my computer) spent the past week in his “I don’t do colors correctly” mode) which has added an additional element of difficulty to the routine.

I got frustrated this afternoon and the sun was beckoning. I took a break and thought I’d pull some weeds and do some yard stuff as a nice brain cleanser. It must be spring because I had to do one of my most hated spring chores which is to attach the backyard hose to the faucet. The forktard who built the deck built it abutting the house so that the faucet is almost impossible to reach. Almost.

Last year I think I managed to do it in under a half hour but today I was not so lucky. I spent close to an hour on my belly on the deck trying to get that forking thing connected. If the man who built the deck ever shows up at my door I will first, chain him to the deck and force him to connect and unconnect a standard garden hose to the faucet until he begs for mercy. When he uses bad words I will flog him with the other end of the hose. Then I will rip his still-beating heart from his chest and eat it.

This ninja writer guy I saw at a writing conference (long story) said that it is impossible to do that and surgeons use saws and stuff to get to the heart and that all the aortas and stuff that are attached to it are tough cables — but that won’t stop me. I’ll go through the belly and root around though his entrails until I can grab the thing and I’ll be angry enough to tear it out. And it should be perfectly legal. No one should be allowed to build something with such complete stupidity and not have committed some sort of crime where heart extracting is acceptable punishment.

Once I got the hose on, since it was warm and sunny, I decided to prepare the walls-o-water so that when I get my tomatoes I’m ready to go. I didn’t even get the walls out last year because they were designed by a sadist and you can’t fill them without getting yourself wet and making a lot of mud. But I think they would have helped so I decided to buck up and do it anyway.

So now I have my hose attached, my walls up, my pants wet and muddy and I’ve said every bad word in the book at least 100 times. Time to go back and tackle CSS. Let’s open another bottle of wine. That’s always a good strategy when you’re trying to figure out a technical thing and have two web browsers and about 10 windows open.

I’m sure I could find one of these kids to take mercy on me and help me out but I can’t bear the idea of them sitting around guzzling Mountain Dew and playing Ghostbuster Dragonslayer Warfighter and laughing about some lady they’re helping who doesn’t know the difference between margins and padding (do you get it?) for her stupid website with pictures of pumpkins.

I’ll get it straightened out. I’ve got a lot of wine. Maybe next weekend.

Meanwhile, the rest of the weekend was decent. I made a killer gumbo on Saturday. I think I finally have the recipe down so it’s not an all day affair. I also made a pumpkin streusel cake which was excellent and I had a tiny blob of pumpkin left and I put it in the cornbread I made tonight.

Take THAT! Gameboy.

Last week when I was walking to my last Noon yoga class. I saw a flier for something called “Body & Brain Yoga” in downtown Portland. I vaguely remembered seeing this before and a conversation with Bob where we decided something about the place didn’t look quite right and maybe it was a cult.

I handed the flier over to Holiday to see if she knew anything about it and she said no and asked to hang on to the flier.

Since I REALLY want to find a Noon yoga class, I decided to do more homework. Maybe I’m just being judgmental because this yoga center is slightly different than what I’m used to and maybe these are really nice yoga people who don’t have a good handle on marketing.

For the past week I’ve been keeping my eye out for another flier and finally yesterday I saw one at the mini-mart. Now I could study it more closely.

Put “yoga classes” into any search engine and I guarantee that 99% of the yoga studios you pull up will be more or less the same. They describe the style of class, introduce the teachers, tell you what it will cost and usually have tips like arrive at class a little early, don’t wear shoes in the studio and practice on an empty stomach.

The way to get started at Body & Brain Yoga Center is to make an appointment for a private introductory session. Giant red flag there. They want to check up on your flexibility, breathing and “energy flow.” You mean the teacher can’t eyeball you at the first class? Also they say nothing about what the classes cost.

At this point I still really want Noon yoga and I want to give them the benefit of the doubt so I do a little poking online. Within three minutes I have a connection to something called Dahn Yoga and that leads me to a cult study organization that has an extensive page on this organization.

Comments from participants:

"I was looking for a yoga studio near my residence. A 'master' at Dahn performed a physical exam by tapping areas of my body. The exam was painful. The master said there were 'blockages' in my body that needed to be removed and then offered programs ranging from $3,000 to $10,0000. I went for a non-refundable three month membership. Most of the members were new to the center. I wondered why they had such poor retention. And what about all that paraphernalia and those expensive sessions? They sell everything from a 'Power Brain,' which is a small battery-operated device for $80, to healing sessions for $3,000.

In their defense I will mention that many participants liked the exercises, which apparently aren’t really yoga. But I don’t think I’ll go there.

I’m here mainly to report that I’ve had a bad attitude lately. I won’t go into all the details but having a bad attitude doesn’t fix anything and I’d like to have a better attitude and I make my intention to think good thoughts, and to get over it, and any other sort of cheerleading or scolding I can come up with but before you know it, that stinky bad attitude has returned.

I read a quote from Carrie Fisher once that went something like: resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.

Yes, I get this, yet here I am seething with resentment. I would describe some of the things I am doing to demonstrate my desperation because what I really want is to feel better, but you might think I’m a crazy person.

Contributing to the overall bad attitude is an amazingly ginormous and unexpected tax bill. At least I have that stupid task off my plate.

One good thing to look forward to is World Cup which starts on June 9. I have no idea how I’m going to work my schedule but I’ll figure out something.

Yesterday Bob and I went and saw Inside Man and I can not more highly recommend a movie. It’s everything you want in a movie. Great directing. Good story that keeps you guessing.

Great performances. Denzel is great. Chiwetel Ejiofor who played The Operative in personal favorite, Serenity, and you couldn’t imagine a more different performance. Jodie Foster is fantastic. You’re never a totally sure what is going on. Run, don’t walk.

Afterward Bob wanted to stop and have dinner and I was dressed like a slob and I like to look semi-decent if I’m out and about. I had a flash on this as we were going out. But he convinced me it was fine and sure, by PW standards I’m sure it was, but I still like to rise above.

I sucked it up and we had a super dinner. It was all good. A cheese sampler plate, an arugula salad and salmon special. Excellent. A good date.

Our building has 20 floors and we’re on the 18th and since my inquiries about a PamExpress elevator to 18 have been ignored, there are often stops. And I don’t care, just how big a hurry am I in and what’s the alternative? A rope ladder?

However yesterday I got on the elevator with 5 other people, all going to a different floor. Plus we stopped at an upper floor to let someone on, and he got off at a different floor. So now, including my stop, I would visit 8 floors, my world record.

Except, two floors below my stop, I stopped yet AGAIN for some people who needed to go up one floor. (Our building has the stairs locked which I’m sure has something to do with security and I think is a bad idea, not that anyone cares what I think.)

When the people got on I laughed and said, “You’re killing me. I’ve stopped on 10 floors. I just feel sorry for all the floors I didn’t stop on.” And they, being humorless and young and world-weary plus stuck with the task of delivering big books between floors (and apparently needing *2* people to do this) glanced at me snittily and said, “uh, hope your day goes better,” as they exited.

Yesterday was the big celebration of the end of Holiday’s Yoga Center downtown. This has been my yoga home for 10 years and I’m very sad to see it end.

The celebration was fantastic. A number of people had the opportunity to tell the story of how they came to find the center. The room was packed and we had a bunch of different teachers lead us.

After the practice we had a social time and music and snacks. More people came. A couple who met at the center arrived with their little girl. I ran into people I haven’t seen in a long time.

It was a good lesson in celebrating change.

Since I’m here, I’ll tell the story of how I ended up at the center. I had noodled with yoga for years and years and taken a few classes but never found anything I stuck with. I read a story about Power Yoga with Beryl Bender Birch and when I bought her book, the cashier at the bookstore asked if I was one of Holiday’s students. I didn’t know what he was talking about.

Later Beryl came to town and I went to see her at the bookstore and she mentioned Holiday’s name as a great teacher in town. Now I’d heard her name twice. This was also the time I was ending my independent life as a single person and moving in with my future husband and I wanted to have something that was just for me. So I told Bob I wanted to start taking a yoga class.

I’ve been at it ever since.

I briefly thought of doing a Wampa / muffin picture. Boy, put muffin into a search engine for images and see what you get.

The Oregonian hired a new food editor about a year ago, Martha. And although she’s never been my favorite I’ve warmed up from somewhat dissatisfied to neutral.

This week she wrote about rescuing the muffin and how the crap [my word] that you see in the coffee houses today is so abysmal. She doesn’t even touch Costco and I don’t know if they even still make those pallets of muffins but I can’t imagine why they’d stop. Ook. You could wring one out, add vinegar and use the output to dress your salad. Those things were (are) nasty. Martha complains about dry, crumbly and too sweet and she’s spot on but also add oily. Should a muffin be moisturizer?

She also touches on the scone, but that wasn’t the theme of her column but I’ll take it on. Jeez, coffee shops make shittyass scones, too. (Not Great Harvest, by the way.) I had one at a, ahem, popular coffee spot one time and it had this hard sugar glaze. Remember those Hostess fruit pies they used to sell at the grocery store? They probably still do. I haven’t eaten one in at least 10 years. I remember the chocolate one was pretty yummy in a slumming it sort of way. But remember that sugary glaze on those things? This scone had that, only hard. Why?

Martha had some recipes and a good idea which is that since muffins are best baked fresh, making the batter and leaving it in the fridge and then baking as many as you need. I’ll have to try that.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, that writing thing went pretty well. It wasn’t any easier and I’m not sure where I’m going with it, but I liked doing it. So there.

Here’s the Wampa checking out Devo at the Run Hit Wonder. You get him in the right shoes and he can run like nobody’s business.

Wampa helped Erin pack the van when she moved to Utah. She’s back in Cali now. I heard he wasn’t as helpful on the return trip.

Wampa loves hippie music. Here he searches for a hoop while checking out some grooving tunes at High Sierra Music Festival with Matt.

Wampa loves little sausage sandwiches at the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof.

Wampa lurks outside Billy’s office but nothing can distract Billy from the trusty handheld.

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Okay, I think I’ve wrung about all the fun and games we can get out of the Wampa. I’ve got a post to write about muffins and then I need to get a chicken a roasting. Wampa loves roast chicken.

Yesterday I had the Wampa visiting the Neuners in Partnachklamm Gorge. I decided to do a whole travel series on the Wampa.

Here he is at the Thanks For Not Buying Fur parade in Portland:

I have many more Wampa travel photos to show you, but it’s going to have to wait because I swore to myself that I wasn’t going to spend the whole day goofing around on the computer. I’m going to do some writing. Yes, you read correctly: writing. Then I’ll waste time goofing around on the computer this afternoon.