You're Doing It Wrong

Man, netflix burped.

I have a Wonderfalls disc (super fantastic show that only aired 4 episodes. It’s hilarious and worth your time and effort), a Buffy disc which includes one of the best episodes ever, Hush which includes Joss commentary track. The very last Angel disc which is concurrently tragic and a relief. Gotta get on with my life.

Then we have household hero Almodovar film Bad Education which we’ve been sitting on. Tonight we finished Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle. So basically every single disc in the house is something for me to watch.

I just went through the queue and fixed it so the next 6 movies are Bob things. I have to get caught up and I need to do other things. I ditched the last 2 episodes of Alias (no big loss there) but we’ve got season finales coming up next month and I don’t want a bunch of discs piled up as well.

RE: Harold and Kumar

We watched about 30 minutes of this the other night and although we chuckled out loud a couple of times we were tempted to stick it back in the envelope. We finished watching it tonight and I have to say, it’s really stupid, but it’s really hilarious. Probably not for everyone, but seriously, after a long day and a couple glasses of refreshing adult beverages. You’ll laugh out loud.

You know I’m trying to be a good sport about this public transportation thing and I keep telling myself I don’t really hate it but it majorly sucks ass.

This morning I could see the train coming up as I pulled into the parking lot (this after some nightmare from hell clog getting on the freeway — it took 20 minutes to just get on the freeway) so I flung away my dignity and ran up to the platform. And nothing makes a girl feel sexier than running to catch a train with a backpack filled with yoga clothes bouncing off her shoulder and a sack filled with plastic cartons holding lunch bumping off her knees.

I made it but only because I didn’t validate my ticket. So at the next stop I looked for the ticket validator and didn’t see it so I stayed on the train. At the next stop I got off, found the validator and by the time I was ready to get back on, doors closing. SOL. Sit there for 10 minutes.

It sucks. It’s almost worth paying the $500+ for the annual pass just so I don’t have to dick with the tickets. The reason I don’t go for the monthly or annual pass is because with the 4-day work week, doesn’t make $en$e.

Tomorrow I’m taking a writing workshop with goddess and personal heroine Lynda Barry at Lewis and Clark College. It starts at 9am and I did the homework on the Trimet website and looks like a holy mothereffer pain in the ass journey. Car to park-n-ride, train to downtown, bus #1 to whatever then get off and find other bus to L&C. And according to the schedule they come only like once, every other lifetime.

Public transportation makes me cranky.

I’ve been taking the light rail to work for almost 2 months now.

I thought I would get a better idea of the rhythm of the thing, but so far, not so much. Twice recently there was a train sitting there as I drove up which means there is no way I will make it. If I notice a lot of people on the platform as I drive up, that’s my clue to hurry because there will probably be a train any moment. If the platform’s empty then I take my time since I probably just missed one.

The platform has a digital sign and a recorded voice that says things like “yellow train to city center expected to arrive in 7 minutes.” I’ve learned that this has little basis in reality and is almost never correct. Also sometimes when a train comes in it sets off an alarm that warns “You have violated a secure area. Leave immediately. Authorities have been called.” I’m sure.

Once I’m on the train it’s about 25 minutes. I use the time to read and found that magazines make the best material. I can get through The Week in one round trip. Novels are harder because of the stop and start and my not-optimal concentration. I just read House Made of Dawn and struggled with it a bit and ended up reading the cheat notes online because my comprehension wasn’t all there.

The crowd on the train is commuters, lots of kids going to school and some sketchy types. Especially when I’m riding home later on yoga night. I’ve been fare checked twice, witnessed a scary domestic dispute, smelled more than a few folks that I would encourage to try out bathing and heard a lot of really inane 1-sided cellphone blather.

I don’t hate it but I don’t love it either. I have more to say but as usual, running late. Bye.

I was inspired by Marc’s Museum of Hair so I’ve been saving Pam hair pictures hoping to put together my own bad hair on parade. I pulled together what I have for now and threw something together here. Obviously I need to fix it and attach stories plus I’m missing some primo bad hair like the Farrah type doo from 7th grade and I don’t have many red hair pictures and I can’t find even a black hair picture. Plenty more to come but at least a little entertainment for today.

Yesterday Bob and I went up to Evergreen to an art event at the Longhouse. The event wasn’t actually at the Longhouse but at the Gallery and the card I got in the mail said that Lillian Pitt, Larry McNeil and Jim Jackson were going to be speaking plus other Indian art in the exhibit.

We drove up in the afternoon and when we got there we saw cousin Bari’s (BG) art was part of the exhibit. BG had done an artist residency up at Evergreen last year and gave us one of her pieces on her way home. We have it hanging in our living room. We didn’t even clue-in that this exhibit was including her work until we got there so we were pretty excited to see it. All the speakers were fantastic, too. Very talented, amazing artists. I left quite inspired.

Also this week I started reading these books I was talking about. I started Hotel World by Ali Smith which I have wanted to read forever and almost bought more than once and geez, I didn’t even make 10 pages. I swear I read multiple great reviews which said things like “luminous first novel.” Well if that means: unreadable, okay. It’s another one of those Lovely Bones, dead person telling you about something except in this case without benefit of the complete sentences and coherent thoughts that I prefer in my reading material. I can’t believe we live in a world where Little Friday can barely get read and this book gets rave reviews.

My final whine of the evening will be about this article I read in The Week that talked about women CEOs and why more women aren’t in top coporate/leadership/power positions and if there is any hope that this will change in the future. Turns out, a lot of women end up out of the work place because they’re taking care of their families, as if this might be a bad thing. Why don’t we read more articles about male CEOs who want to spend more time with their families?

I’m going to go eat that last piece of coconut cream pie.

(Yes loyal readers, I know. I barely posted anything for two weeks and now I post about 10 things in one day and change the dates so it looks like I’m keeping up on a regular basis. It’s not you, it’s me.)

This morning I caught up on my Neal Pollack. I would provide links to earlier mentions of him but that search item on the top bar of this blog is a fiction and I can’t remember when I talked about him. He’s the one that inspired me to take on the 50 book challenge. (If you haven’t been keeping up, I’m reading book #15 now. I’ve been meaning to annotate my book list but can’t seem to get that far.)

Neal writes:

It depresses me, as I’ve taken on this 50 Book Challenge for no good reason, to look at, say, Bookslut, who’s on something like her 35th book, and most of those books are actually current and interesting and haven’t been sitting in a pile by her desk since the winter of 2003. link

My general sentiment, except the books in my pile have been crammed on the shelves sometimes since winter of oh, 1997. I’m clearing out a lot of old stuff.

On Friday I sort of cheated and did a library run for some fresh stuff and checked out books that have been on my list since oh, 1997.

I like prunes. I buy them plain in big tubs or flavored in foil bags — but not the cherry essence. Those taste like cough syrup. I like my prunes after dinner for something sweet.

Apparently, America isn’t consuming enough prunes. Perhaps the youth of today thinks of this a food for old people who need to keep their digestive systems moving.

Recently they (you know, “they” in this case probably some Prune Association of America) decided to rename them “dried plums.” Also if you look at the picture of the fruit on the bag, it shaped less round and more pear-like, but juicy fresh (because of course they can’t put the dried prune looking picture on the bag.)

The other night I read the bag for some reason and looks like the expert marketing committee behind this great re-imaging of the prune has been working overtime. These are actual quotes (and punctuation, but I’m too proud to recreate the bold, extra large fonts for you) from the bag:

“Way, way, way more nutritious! Using the Nutrition Density Index (NDX™) you can compare “apples to oranges”, and Dried Plums to all other fruits. When you do, you’ll find that compared to fresh fruit: Dried Plums Rule!”

“Dried Plums are so nutritious, people send us amazing testimonials! Read these remarkable accounts at Amazing Testimonials.com” [Hey, I checked the link and they’re under construction. Not too late to send in your testimonials.]

“Tuck some in your purse, briefcase, lunch box, or even your pocket (try that with fresh fruit); [ ] Dried Plums won’t ever bruise! Dried Plums are “the ultimate fruit” for today’s on-the-go lifestyles.”

Doesn’t it sound like they’re trying too hard?

I’ve read about this once in Cooks Illustrated and once in FoodDay in the Oregonian.

Both sources said that if you had leftover red wine that you wouldn’t be drinking, you could put it in ice cube trays in your freezer and then transfer the cubes into a ziplock bag and these would be handy for flavoring when you made sauce or soups. (This isn’t an April Fool’s joke.)

I recently had some red wine that I didn’t finish and thought I’d try this trick. I appropriated a couple of ice cube trays and left a big note on the freezer so Bob wouldn’t freak out when he found them.

I had some stuff going on so I didn’t get to them for a couple of days but when I finally got ready to transfer them I found that they were a wee bit slushy. Well, that’s to be expected, right? Alcohol doesn’t freeze like water.

As I transferred them to the bag they disintegrated further and now I have a ziplock bag filled with winey slush in my freezer.

I forgot to tell you about this blonde girl dressed in pink on the plane on the way home from Denver. We were in row 19 — so, close to the back of the plane. Generally when a flight is deboarding, people are civilized and file out in an orderly way row by row front to back.

I got ready to exit my row during my turn and the little brat, maybe 4 years old, barrels through from the back, elbows my leg out of her way, bellows, “Excuse us,” and takes off down the aisle.

Me, finding this not even a tiny bit charming, did my best sarcastic, “Yeah, well I guess so.” And here comes Mom behind her and I figured she’d give me one of those embarrassed smiles and possibly even a muttered apology but no, she’s barreling past me out of turn as well. Then comes bratty slightly older son given the responsibility of carrying some sort of seat-contraption which he transported by kicking it down the aisle with his feet. Neat-o.

The next person, who might have been Dad was kind enough to stop and let me edge in but I had to endure kick-the-seat kid who made slow progress through the plane.

Hey people: not everyone is as patient as you are with the kids and, never too early to teach them some manners.

And slightly related: if you haven’t tried this yet, I highly recommend earplugs for public travel. This is a new discovery and it’s been fabulous. I’m thinking I’ll start wearing them when I take the train to work as well.

There was an article in the NY Times recently talking about commuters and iPods and how the iPod isolates people from each other. Yeah, right. Because public transportation has always been the hotspot for casual conversation with random strangers. You could argue that I’m also isolating myself by sticking my nose in a book the moment I get on the train. 25 minutes twice a day I could be building communities but instead I’m consuming media.

I also sometimes bring the iPod, mainly to drown out the people who use the train ride for inane chatty cellphone time.

Today it was high strung passive-aggressive woman: “Have you thought about my refrigerator? … Do you know when you’ll be thinking about it? … No, no hurry. … What? … I don’t know. … How much would you be willing to pay? … I don’t know. … What do you think?”

Earplugs. iPod. The choice is yours.

I bought some perfume (I guess they call it fragrance now) from a catalog because, you know, smelling good is a big priority for me. This source appealed because not only do they have the usual jug-size that would last me 12 lifetimes, but also a perfect tiny size which doesn’t cost much and will only last as long as I still enjoy it.

Ordering fragrance from a catalog is sketchy because how accurately can you describe a smell? This catalog says things like, a delicate scent wrapped in veil of dew-covered grass, rich moonlit evening and citrus. Oh. Okay.

I picked 4 and tried them all and then annotated the list. The one I liked best I put a star next to. Another one I wrote “rainy” because it reminds me of a fragrance I used a long time ago that was called something about rain. For the other two I wrote “whorehouse” and “bugspray.”