You're Doing It Wrong

I did a good deed yesterday.

I tend to be suspicious when strangers want something from me. I realize we all have moments when our cars fail in inconvenient locations or we realize our wallet is gone when we need money and we have no choice but to rely on the kindness of strangers.

But then how many stories have you read about the nice people who stop to help someone and end up being clubbed over the head and robbed? Or how those people who stand by the freeway with their phony sad sack signs make $10-20 an hour, tax free?

On the way home on the train a woman sat behind me and asked where she should exit. Her truck had been impounded downtown and she needed to get to Jubitz truck stop. I wasn’t completely sure but I told her what I knew.

A few moments later she offered to give me money if she could use my cellphone. (Have you heard the stories about people kindly lending their cellphones only to have the person run off with it?) I let her use it and refused her money.

She eventually told me her tale which goes something like this: she’s a truck driver and she’s gotten a citation related to her load a some time ago and the company she worked for never took care of it so technically, she’s not licensed to drive in Oregon. She was pulled over in Portland because of something with her trailer and when they discovered the license problem, they impounded the truck.

She had moments to get her stuff out — when she’s on the road she lives in the truck. The company she worked for fired her on the spot. So she’s basically stuck with whatever she can carry and no transportation or friends or family near by to help out.

She had gone to the truck stop and offered to clean some people’s truck in exchange for some cash and they asked her what was going on and she told her story and they were going to help her out and let her ride with them and help her get a job with their firm. (I guess hiring a truck driver isn’t like hiring a surgeon or investment banker.)

We chatted about truck driving and so forth. She seemed like a decent human being. She said she loved books on tapes. Who lies about liking books? It came time for me to exit at the park and ride. I knew offering a ride would be the right thing to do but I was still a teeny bit nervous about misreading her and also it was a long day and I wanted to get home and get something to eat.

I wasn’t sure how far the truck stop was from the train exit but I thought it might be a long walk so I went ahead and offered her a ride. And she was grateful and offered gas money, which I refused and I dropped her off without incident. A little plus offering in my karma bucket.

If you’re finding yourself with a shortage of ideas on books to read this summer, check out Rebecca’s Pocket with zillions of links to different summer reading lists. Then tell me what you find.

This is an article about how the paparazzi sell their pictures. Odd business.

Here is the URL for Oceanic Airlines which is the airline in LOST. I haven’t time to check it out much but if you’re a fan of the show, it will keep you busy this summer.

This is an abridged version of the Revenge of the Sith screenplay. And in this case abridged means parody. It’s funnier if you’ve already seen the movie.

I’m off for another busy day at work.

I had heard about this but not the details and Bob sent this to me yesterday. These guys did an elaborate U2 hoax. It’s hilarious.

One thing I love in the new office is the production room. Its where all the supplies are plus the giant copy machine. There’s also a big table to spread out the work and it holds staplers for small, medium and large sized stapling, small and large staple removers and machines for punching either two or three holes. Plus all kinds of stuff I haven’t needed to use yet. It’s awesome.

Yesterday I had my first run in with the giant copier. I had paper jammed in every flap and crevice and had to open doors and pull levers and twist knobs. Not as sexy as it sounds.

After it happened the second time I took my copying back to my office and reeled it off on the small machine in my office and sorted it on the floor, like the old days.

I’d offer a weekend wrap up but not a lot to see here.

If you’ve ever wondered about some of the bit players in the Star Wars movies, you can find an excellent reference at Wikipedia. Like that Jedi with the ginormous forehead’s name is Ki-Adi-Mundi from the planet Cerea. I learned a lot of other things but I won’t scare you with that right now.

I’m in the middle of a new writing project. “New” is a relative term since I’ve been talking about it for probably over a year and taking notes and doing research for the past couple of months. I’ve got about 25 pages so far but I’m jumping around as the images and ideas come and it’s a slow go getting it put together in a way that I like.

Meanwhile, most of my spare time is focused on that which means that the yard is 2/3rds abandoned. The weather has turned downright cold and I never did get the walls of water on the two tomatoes that Priscilla gave me — I never even went out and bought my own vegetables. I put a row of greens out there several weeks ago and I planted a zillion cucumber seeds and looks like I’ve got one sprout unless the slugs ate it. It’s a poor effort.

A good thing is that all my programs are over for now and I am catching up on movies. We watched Jersey Girl which didn’t do so well at least in part because of the whole Bennifer thing. It’s a very sweet movie. Bob and I both enjoyed it. We also watched Kinsey which is well written and well directed and fantastic acting — it’s a good movie. But the story itself is nothing you wrap your heart around. Bob said something to the effect that it was more for history than entertainment.

In terms of reading, I missed a week on my 50 book challenge but at the moment I’m reading Field of Honor by D.L. Birchfield. I met Don at Returning the Gift in … 1994 I think. It was in Neah Bay and he gave me the first chapters of this book to read back then. He was one of the first people to encourage me to write. He has other books published but I’ve been looking forward to this one for a long time. I’m about 80 pages in and it’s hilarious.

I was planning on doing Noon Yoga today but I’m running late and can’t bear the thought of schlepping a change of clothes along with all the other crap I have to take to the office today. And now I’m running late, as usual. See ya.

I saw Revenge of the Sith time this afternoon. For the third time, if anyone is counting. I can find all the easter eggs like any geek worth her salt. Here’s my question. (Possible spoilers if you’ve lived the past 20 years under a rock.) Wasn’t there a lot of gossip and snickering about the Senator from Naboo becoming pregnant, her belly growing radically scene to scene and she wasn’t married? Yet that dreamy Jedi Anikan Skywalker hanging about?

Bob had a party with his posse tonight. The posse is his academic geeks from school. It’s like my dream team of guys to hang out with. I got home around 6:30 and they were still here and we talked about politics and academia and pop culture and drank lots of booze. It was great.

I forgot to tell you earlier but I found a version of Prinzenrolle at Fred Meyer, Salmon Creek.

They aren’t actual Prinzenrolle. They’re like Knave-rolle or whatever. They’re from Holland, not Germany and the cookie is a wee bit crunchier and the filling is a microclick off but hey, not complaining. I ate the whole roll within 4 days. They’re a decent substitute when you can’ t get the real thing.

Last night was the third night in a row that I woke up at 3am.

The night before last I got back to sleep and two nights ago I managed to drift in that cozy half-sleep space for a couple of hours which I figure is close to sleeping.

Last night the brain went on high-grind and I tossed back and forth. Now I’m tired and cranky.

When I take the train I’ve learned that sitting in the seats on either end of the car is the best spot. Less riff raff and out of the way of the flux of people getting on and off.

Yesterday the riff raff took up the end of the car. I have no idea what was going on and if I’d had a little more energy I might have asked because why would he go to all that trouble if he didn’t want everybody to notice?

He had a tattered blanket spread across the floor between the seats and was meticulously measuring, cutting and taping strips of aluminum foil to the blanket. This operation blocked about 6 seats.

At the last stop out of downtown before the bridge he shouts for someone to hold the door (you can do that?) and exclaims that he’s behind schedule. He hurries to pick up his box of aluminum foil, roll of tape, foiled blanket. Shouts about the door again. Still ends up missing it.

A couple of months ago I wrote an entry for a bad ex-boyfriend contest for a website.

Originally I was going to post the links and my entry here but I can’t do it. I’m too embarrassed.

I’ve been happy with Bob for 10 years now, why did I even feel the urge to type out an old burn that happened in the 80’s?

My entry scenario, while completely traumatic to me, turned out to be nothing compared to the finalists. At least I never had a boyfriend who impregnated a friend’s mother or burned down my apartment. Getting called in the middle of the night to pick the guy who dumped me, and his date at the police station because she got a DUI and then later being accused of being rude to her, is small potatoes next to the gal whose guy totaled her car in the process of crashing into several parked cars.

Anyway, turns out the judges of this contest totally mocked the entrants so just as well that they paid my entry no mind. And if I might gripe (because, you know, a contest on a web-page is so official) — they called for a 200 word limit and some of the finalists had 3x that many. I might have made my story sound more pathetic if I’d had more words. They never did pick a winner.

Last week we were sitting at dinner one night when Bob says: “Guess what I bought on the Internet?”

After you’ve lived with someone for 10 years, you can tell how badly you don’t want to know the answer to a question like this just by the expression on his face.

“I can’t guess.”

“A Jam Band Salute to the Talking Heads.”

You can’t even make this stuff up. But that’s not all. He also bought the 2004 High Sierra Music Festival DVD.

After he got it, he told me how great it was and how it really set the scene. I said, I was there and I still remembered the scene. I didn’t need to see a DVD.

On a different note: we taped the season finale of CSI because Quentin Tarantino directed it. It was worth watching but a word those like us, who aren’t regular CSI watchers: Don’t Watch While You’re Eating.

All my old jeans are disintigrating at the same time. Do Levi’s have an expiration date?

I had 3 or 4 pairs that I used for gardening. Knees ripped open, crotch frayed. I put on one pair a few weekends ago and did some work and then ran some errands and noticed a nice breeze on my bottom. Turns out the place where the back pocket meets the pants had sprung loose and my butt was flapping in the wind.

Put that pair in the trash and the following weekend put on another old pair. Falling apart in the same place. That’s two pairs of garden pants to go into the bin.

What if they’re all bad? What will I wear for gardening? I should buy some more Levi’s now so I have something for gardening a few years from now.

I didn’t get home until 7:35pm tonight. Theoretically, work is done at 6:00pm.

Traffic was hideous. I kinda expected it, being that a 3 day weekend is coming up and probably lots of people take Friday to make it a 4.

I left the office at 6:15pm, thinking that this would allow time for the worst of the traffic to pass through. I waited at the train stop for almost 10 minutes before I had a vague sense that I didn’t have my keys. I checked my bags and sure enough, no keys.

At the office, the cleaning guy locks all the doors when he comes in. I used the restroom while he was there, so I carried my keys with me so I could get back in. As I walked into my office I realized that I never watered the plants so I put my keys down and took care of that, then waltzed out without them.

By the time I caught the next train and made to the park-n-ride it was 7:15pm but I-5 was still backed up.

I got turned for the on-ramp and immediately stopped in the backup just to get on the freeway. During metered time this on-ramp takes 2 lines of cars, but the meter was off and we very politely made a single file line to get on the freeway.

At the top of the ramp we have to merge with the people coming off Interstate. I was behind an aged Buick with an emblem on the back that said: Whiptastic Handling.

I wonder if that means, stalls every three minutes. Two girls were in the car. I kept a respectful distance, edging toward the shoulder because I figured if they stalled for long, and I was stuck too close behind, the other cars would smell the blood on the water and swoop around us, thus completely eff-ing me.

For some reason, the folks coming off Interstate seemed to think that us folks coming from Delta Park were cheating or something but several cars spontaneously decided to break from their single file line and block us from merging, thus forcing them to re-merge with themselves.

A gold colored Navigator cut me off and got behind the gasping Buick and I ungenerously hoped that it died in front of her.

It ended up taking me 20 minutes just to get on the freeway and I didn’t get home until 7:35 pm. I told Bob that if that was going to be my commute all summer, I was going to kill myself. Historically, the evening commute on I-5 during summer is consistently hideous.

He made an encouraging argument for the three day weekend and whisked me off to Trader Joes for shopping.