You're Doing It Wrong

Last night Bob and I went to John’s retirement party. Or rather, one of John’s retirement parties. This one was at the bar at the Quay. John and Alice were our across the street neighbors until sometime in July when they snuck out in the middle of the night without saying goodbye. Their youngest daughter, Olivia, did our watering and stuff when we were on vacation. She started at University of Washington this Fall. I gave them a hard time about moving out so quickly because I remember hearing the moving truck and thinking, “Oh no, John and Alice must be moving today,” and it was already the new people moving in. J and A are going to be driving around seeing stuff around the country and having a good time. We’re hoping maybe we see them again in the Spring.

After the party we headed up north to find some dinner and hopefully see some of the action at Mt. St. Helens. By that point, the sky was murky and any ash or steam that might have been hanging around had already drifted off. We went to Ridgefield to find some Italian place Bob knew about but of course we couldn’t find it (or perhaps it doesn’t exist because downtown Ridgefield consists of only 2 or 3 blocks) so we ended up at El Rancho Viejo Your Family Mexican Restaurant which was packed to the rafters except for one table, which we got. And it was super-fantastic. Great menu. Super nice people working there. Excellent meal. I had a seafood soup with shrimp and scallops and had to be rolled out the door and to the car because I was so full.

1 – I ate food from McDonalds.

2 – I heard a new U2 song and I didn’t like it.

The McDonalds thing is hard to explain. Not the part about how I *never* eat there. The part how I managed to eat there this morning. I was starving and forgot all of my breakfast foods. I had 2 sips of a fruit smoothy and a peach at the office which I inhaled with no noticiable effect on my hunger. Slummy food sounded good. WKB was on his way in from the airport from a business trip so I called his cellphone and enthusiastically suggested that he stop at McD’s and get me an egg mcmuffin. First he asked me specifically what mouth-watering entree I wanted, and being unfamiliar with the menu, he had to run me through it. I stuck with my original choice and he arrived at the office a short time later with a piping hot mcmuffin and hash browns.

“You’re a prince,” I said. It was so yummy I could suddenly understand why America loves this food.

About 15 minutes later I felt sick. I had a watery mouth and lurching digestive system for the rest of the day. I tasted that stuff FOR HOURS. I could feel it work it’s way through every step of the digestive cycle. My innards groaned unhappily while processing the greasy, salty sludge. I couldn’t eat my lunch. I did not feel normal until after 4pm. Why does America love this food? I told WKB if I ever ask for McD’s again, not to bring it to me.

The U2 thing may be an anomaly. I sometimes hate a radio single the first time I hear it, and later I hear the whole album and it grows on me and I love it. So this may not be the end of this story. But the last time I hated a new U2 song was something from that dreadful Hum and Drum album that was also a movie. I think I might have owned it at one point but it’s gone now. U2 did a couple of things in the 90’s that I didn’t bother buying but I don’t remember disliking singles. This new thing was … I don’t know why I didn’t like it. I want to say it sounded too derivative. Can a band be too derivative of itself? But also it sounded a little manic carnival Sgt. Pepper that wasn’t working for me. Like I said, maybe after I hear it again or hear the entire album, I’ll feel differently.

I’m ready for sleep so I’m going to make this quick.

1 – you should be watching LOST. It’s a great new show. ABC is rebroadcasting the first two episodes on Saturday so set your VCR. (For those who might doubt my taste: there are no vampires. that we know of. so far.)

2 – the federal government is completely incompetent. It’s scary to think they are out there trying to help other countries organize their governments. On September 16 I ordered some Code of Federal Regulations books (“25 CFRs”) for the office. I haven’t heard anything so I called so follow up on my order. “Ma’am, that’s not in the system. It takes 4 weeks to process an order.” I said, “That’s really lame.” I mean come on. What, do they have only one guy with index cards running around the warehouse — when he’s not on vacation or on break or training? Kind of ironic that the government can manage to clear your check to the IRS the same day you mail it.

3 – sleeping. Falling asleep. Staying asleep. Remaining not asleep during the afternoon after lunch. All challenging at the moment.

4 – I finished Marc’s book last night: How I Paid for College: A Tale of Sex, Theft, Friendship and Musical Theater. It is HILARIOUS. I’m serious, laugh outloud, gasp ‘omigod’ hysterically funny. You should seek out this book.

I have all kinds of blogger notes sitting here and I’ve been intending to so some sort of organized update but screw it. I’m just going to type it all out and not worry about it. Title is explained later in this post.

Last week my stupid show Big Brother finally ended. Next year I’m not even going to pretend not to watch the show. I’m just going to watch it and enjoy it and maybe even subscribe to the 24/7 live feeds in the house since I hopefully will have more time to kill since I won’t be writing a worthless screenplay. Actually, that’s not true, I’m going to write another worthless screenplay, but it’s not going to be worthless and it’s not going to interfere with me wasting time on Big Brother. I was relieved that Drew won, although I would have been happier with Jennifer or Diane. But Cowboy’s strategy was based entirely on low braincell count and needing the money wasn’t a good enough reason to win. Making it to the final two was fairly stunning. For a final comment: nice eyebrows, Jace.

Also last week Star Wars came out on DVD and I went to the DVD store to buy it on the first day. The same day a boxed set of John Cassavetes films came out which Bob had his eye on so while in the store I asked about that set as well. Four, no joke, FOUR employees there, all male under the age of 30 had NO IDEA what I was talking about. Zero. How lame is that? I’m not wildly familiar with Cassavetes and admit, I identified him as Nick Cassavetes who is his son although I correctly idenified his wife, super fantastic actress Gena Rowlands. But still, you’d think since they work in the business of selling DVDs that one of them would at least have a crumb of a clue what I was talking about. Back to Star Wars, we had that dead DVD problem so I have not even broken open the box yet. But the first crap weather weekend and I’m a sofa surfing bunny with the entire set.

This past week we also got our last Freaks and Geeks DVD (replacement after the tragic ruin of the last one) and watched the final two episodes. Can you believe in the final episode, Lindsay turns into a Dead Head? Bob practically had tears in his eyes as he said again, “This is the best show ever.”

Also on Friday I started my first of 3 classes of Photoshop bookcamp with Kristl Honda. This is my first class at Clark College after living in Vancouver for how long? I’ve been married 8 years so at least that long. The class is continuing ed and EXACTLY what I’ve been looking for. We have 3 4 hour sessions and Kristl just grinds us through all the basics with an emphasis on things the class is interested in. I’ve had Photoshop on my machine and I’ve played with it a little but I’ve never been able to figure out how to do much. Ken also sent me a tutorial and I’ve been playing with this stuff all weekend.

So, the cascading chores. Have you ever started to do one simple chore and found that in order to do it, you need to do this other chore, and if you’re going to be doing that you might as well do this other thing at the same times — so that you originally start out to empty the trash in the bathroom and end up tiling the ceiling by the end of the day? Yes? Then you know what my day was like. I’ve been desperate to vacuum out my car and while I was doing that I decided that I might as well sweep out the garage but in order to do that I needed to move those bags of bark dust and why not just put them in the garden, but first I had to whack back an ugly plant and use a shovel in the planting bed. It was about 4:30pm before I was done with all those things. On the bright side, these are all immediate gratification chores. I can enjoy the improved plant area and nice clean garage and I LOVE when my car is freshly vacuumed. I can’t believe I am mocked for having a nice clean car. As if having a car like a trashcan that smells like week old coffee is the way the world should be.

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.