You're Doing It Wrong

Today is the greatest day ever and I will hit Sam Goody’s on my lunch hour so no need to buy it for me.

I spent this afternoon updating my other pages for bio, and stories and I’m putting the books page back on the side menu rather than just tacking it on the end of the stories page. What can I say? My readers demand it. (That was a smartass remark in case you couldn’t tell.) Please check out the updates b/c I put a bunch of new photos up and as I explain below, it was a large pain in the rectum. I’m starting to suspect that updating my webpage is the new crack. It keeps me totally absorbed and distracted and once I start, it’s hard to tear myself away. I always want to try one more thing.

I brought back a photo album from Orleans so I could scan some old photos. When I was working on the page updates I decided it was a great time to start that project and I haven’t used the scanner since I switched to the eMac and OSX. First I couldn’t find the USB cable for the scanner. I tore apart my room trying to figure out where it could be and meanwhile found cables for firewire and for the camera and for my digital voice recorder and the zip drive. Jeez, does the world really need so many cables? Can we just have one cable for everything? (Isn’t that what “USB” is all about?) After pulling my hair out for awhile, I figured out that I could use the cable that’s currently on the printer which I guess sort of answers my question.) I’m not sure if the scanner cable IS the cable on the printer or if it’s just “lucky” that I can use it for both but I got my cables set up and then, I needed a driver.

I went to the Astra Umax page and entered my info into their handy driver menu and guess what? They don’t have a compatible driver for my OS. Then I dug around to find the cd that came with the scanner and I started Mac Classic and installed the driver and luckily I have an old version of Photoshop on this machine so I could import the photos in old Photoshop using the old operating system. Sure, it worked, but what a huge detour in my little project to update my page with a few more photos. Be sure to check the bio and books to see some of the new scanned shots.

Meanwhile, I’m going to tear myself away and use the next couple of hours to work in the yard while the rain has stopped.

It seems like there are two types of emailers. The type who return your email seemingly moments after you send it and the type who rarely return email. Both irritate me. Often during the week I don’t want to devote a lot of time to email so often I’ll spend Friday morning reading whatever newsletters or updates I subscribe to and answering the email that’s accumulated and send it all off and enjoy the sight of an empty email box and moments later a half dozen replies will come to me. What, is everyone just sitting at their computers waiting for email to come in and dropping everything to answer right away?

And the never answerers I don’t get either. How long does it take to respond to the note, say “Hi, how’s it going?” and punch send. They probably don’t do it because their afraid I’ll immediately write back — you know, moments later. The ball will always be in their court.

Also our DVD player seems to have died. Remember the olden days when things were more expensive but lasted longer? The first VCR player my parents bought me lasted for about 11 years. This is now the 4th machine we’ve had in the last 2 or 3 years. One was fried by a power surge. The rest seem to crap out about 2 weeks after the year warranty expires.

Bob showed me the Wayback Machine where you can look up old versions of the PamPage. You can check my current URL:

https://www.pamrentz.com

OR you can check my old URL:

http://www.teleport.com/~prentz/index.html.

Last night we went to the Candlelight Tour at Fort Vancouver. It’s only about 7 minutes from our house but I’ve never seen it. (I’ve seen the Fort, but only during the day.) The whole place is lit only in candlelight and there are tons of volunteers dressed in period costumes who act like it’s late 1800’s and you can watch them in the carpentry shop or at the blacksmith’s or baling up the furs and counting them for sale. You don’t interact with them but there are other volunteers around to offer more details and you can ask them questions. The night was clear and a little bit cool – it was the first time I’ve had my sweatshirt out since Spring. I was impressed that they had so many people who wanted to spend their weekend evenings dressed in those costumes talking about the British and fur traders in the low light. Didn’t see any Indians though. Where were they?

Yesterday I went to talk to a guy about my dog phobia. I can’t remember how much I’ve blogged about this. I do remember writing about the inciting incident. The gist of it is, in December 02 I was walking by myself in my neighborhood and this dog ran out of nowhere and bit me. It didn’t happen all at once but gradually I grew afraid to walk around my neighborhood, you know, part of my exercise routine, because I was afraid a dog would run out and bite me. I know this sounds funny, it’s funny to me too, but it’s also real and sort of a pain in the ass. I’m not afraid of dogs that I know or dogs on a leash or really small dogs although if they run out and surprise me barking, it does make me feel like I’m having a cardiac episode. Usually I’m not too afraid if Bob is with me. I’m a tiny bit uneasy around dogs that I know but I don’t have to leave the room or anything.

Here’s the thing. My rational mind totally gets it. I realize dogs haven’t changed, just the way I think about them. I see all kinds of people including elderly ladies looking like a strong breeze would wipe them out, all walking alone in my neighborhood, not being knocked over or bitten by dogs. But that hasn’t changed my anxiety about walking around my neighborhood.

I finally called this guy who deals with phobias and I honestly didn’t expect much but was willing to try anything. I’m thinking what can this guy do? It’s not like he has a magic wand or some sort of magic voodoo and I’m going to miraculously be cured of my dog fear. So I met with him yesterday and you know what? It was exactly like magic voodoo.

I’m having a hard time believing it myself. We visited a short time about the origin of the fear. He helped me realize that I’m not really afraid of dogs, I’m afraid of walking around my neighborhood by myself because a dog might come out and bite me. Then we went through a series of visualizations where I pictured exactly what happened, then I pictured it happening backwards really fast. Then I pictured it like a movie of myself, slightly in the future walking around my neighborhood totally relaxed and worry-free and then I pictured it as if I was in the movie, as this person in the future, walking around the neighborhood totally relaxed and worry-free. This is a simplified version but by the time we went through all this (about 1/2 hour), I didn’t feel so anxious when I thought about it.

When I got home I walked around the neighborhood by myself — and not the short easy walk, I went on the long scary walk and I wasn’t scared at all. I kept checking in, thinking, “come on, aren’t you still scared?” and I totally wasn’t.

Magic voodoo.

Today I finally went to pick up the police report I had to make for the fraudulent charges on my VISA. I originally went there on Tuesday but I didn’t have my case # with me so that didn’t work. I would be tempted to complain except these are all new buildings and I’ve never been down there (I never saw the old one either). When I made the report she told me I could pick it up, “next to the Courthouse,” and I don’t know why I was too embarrassed to ask for a more detailed explanation … I assumed I’d figure it out when I was down there. I did have to walk around a bit. I saw the Clark County Public Services building and the Clark County Juvenile Court building and then I saw the Law Enforcement building and that looked promising so I went over there.

I entered on an upper level that had a lot of signs talking about visiting hours and what visitors needed to do which didn’t seem right but I figured someone there could tell me where to go. I found a sort-of information desk and eventually a guy in uniform, who was probably born after I graduated from high school, wearing plastic gloves, pointed me down the stairs and there I found a huge sign that said “Police Reports” so I figured I was in the right place. I was supposed to take a number, (which reminded me of going to Baskin Robbins in the Valley on the way home from Zuma beach 100 years ago when I was a small child – my favorite flavor was bubble gum) which I didn’t do because I saw the form I was supposed to fill out and there was only 1 other guy there so I grabbed one of those and used a small desk with a computer terminal that said something about sex offender check in. (“What an adventure,” I thought.)

I filled out my sheet and by this time another guy with a handle bar mustache and wearing a suit had arrived and taken a number so I had to wait until after him. Apparently he was picking up someone to be released that way because he was informed that it probably wouldn’t happen until after 6pm (It was about Noon). He took it like a man. Oh, and the man before him, also with handlebar mustache and Harley-Davidson shirt had to talk about getting his papers for his parole officer and there was some snafu and he was trying to do the right thing and it looked like it was not going well.

When it was finally my turn the lady said, “Oh good, you have your case number,” and quickly found what I needed. She was very nice and suggested I keep copies as credit card fraud things can come back to haunt you. (Hopefully worst case scenario.) I told her I was having quite the adventure and at first she thought I meant the credit card fraud but I said, “I’ve never been down here before,” and she announced very professionally: “You’re in the basement of the jail.”