You're Doing It Wrong

Kelly and Dan enjoyed an excellent vacation except the part where their daughter was sick most of the time. Then it was time to go home. When they checked in at the airport they made the sorry discovery that Kelly’s driver’s license expired during the trip. Oregon is doing some new ID thing starting this month so in Kelly’s mind she had until October. Needless to say the airport hadn’t the slightest interest in Oregon’s new program or the fact that Kelly hadn’t substantially changed during the course of the trip other than brutally destroying her diaper bag.

Everything gets stamped: NO ID. Airline personnel offer to escort her through security. Her in-laws have dropped them off before parking. She asks, “Can I just say good-bye?”

The ever understanding Security Lady says, “I can take you now otherwise you can wait for my convenience.” Kelly gets ready to go. Just then her Mother-in-law comes in and says, “Oh no, not again.” Security Lady visibly flinches. Kelly gets extra special treatment one click this side of a strip search.

When she arrives back in Portland, the car has a flat tire. She needs a vacation from her vacation.

Stay tuned for the last chapter of Kelly’s vacation.

The horror began when Kelly, Dan and their two adorable children were rushing through airport security to catch a flight to AZ. Security performed its random explosives test on their diaper bag and next thing they knew, lights were flashing, alarms were blasting and the $9/hour, high school educated folks protecting our safety and welfare sprung into action. Kelly took credit for the bag, since someone needed to care for the kids. Security gave Dan the boarding passes and pulled Kelly aside and began pounding her with questions while answering none of hers. Does she work on a farm? Has she ever worked on a farm? Is she sure she’s never worked on a farm? The investigation steamed ahead.

Meanwhile, the plane began boarding.

Dan returned to security to consult with Kelly about what to do. They asked if they were almost done. NO! They asked if the plane could be delayed. NO! They asked how long she would be delayed. Security wouldn’t say.

They decided Dan would go ahead and take the flight and the children, sans diaper bag, and Kelly would try to get another flight later.

Then Kelly saw someone she knew working security. “I know him. Can he vouch for me?” NO! The man came over to check the problem. He searched the bag and confirmed, nothing bad in there. At some point around this time the inquest lightened. The security hard-ass had nothing. They delayed the plane. They completed their procedure and allowed Kelly and her diaper bag to board.

Upon arriving at their destination the family destroyed the bag without mercy and switched to paper grocery bags (which they highly recommend for carry-on). Moments later, their daughter colorfully notified them that she had the stomach flu.

Stay tuned for more adventures from Kelly’s vacation.

There is no limit to how naive we can be when we want to avoid an unpleasant experience, such as purchasing a vehicle. Bob has been doing homework to replace his 1990 Accord with 160K miles and permanent stale coffee smell for some time and this kicked up a notch last weekend when he saw an ad for Hertz used sales (where I purchased my Camry and we had a no hassle experience). He had his eye on a Mazda 6 but was disappointed with the test drive. When he went to the credit union to get financing the gal there mentioned the credit union’s special auto sale this weekend with supposedly special pricing and pre-priced cars so you don’t have get into that demoralizing haggling thing.

This morning we were up bright and early and driving off at 9am to go to a car event and serious about coming home with a new car.

I kid you not: it was worse than a regular car lot. There were freshly showered, smiling dockers/oxford shirt guys, standing at the edge of the lot, ready to talk the minute you set foot on that gravel walkway. The ratio of sales people to shoppers was about 5 to 1. I wandered two cars away from Bob a couple of times and within moments faux-cheery salespeople were making a beeline to meet me. We could hardly browse and check out the inventory because every three steps there was someone bugging us. Our first guy, Yuri, was very nice and about as non-greasy as a car saleman could be. We later found out that he used to be a computer programmer and Bob said every other car saleman he meets was formerly in technology.

Yuri walked with us to the other side of the sale to look at some other cars and apparently crossed over the magic line into another dealer’s territory. He was new, his company probably should have prepped him better but there was no excuse for this total THUG to dash over and kick him off with rude words and a hostile sneer, looking as though he could barely keep himself from punching the guy. Yeah: like I’m in the mood to buy a car from Vancouver Mazda now. At this point, (we’d been on the lot less than an hour) we’d already had enough and that little skirmish put a permanent bad taste in our mouths. We checked a couple more models and scooted out of there as fast as we could. (Also the no-haggle thing was partly a myth.)

We went to the new Costco to get a new DVD player (Angel-hooray!) and as we pulled into the parking lot we were still checking out cars: “Oh, there’s a Honda … that Subaru looks nice.” And then as we were inside, we were about 6 feet from the Verizon booth and we both physically cringed and dodged the salesguys, a knee jerk reaction after our experience at the car lot.

We may be returning to Hertz.

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.