You're Doing It Wrong

This is a true story. I had to wait for my computer cart to be delivered before I could run a couple of errands. The delivery came around noon and I wrapped up what I was doing here and headed out. I am driving the Toyota, still not fixed and engine light still twinkling merrily on the dash. First stop Bank of America in downtown Vancouver. As I turn onto Main Street my car starts making a horrible racket which feels like it’s coming from the tires: ‘you’ve got to be kidding me,’ I think to myself as I pull into an all reserved dinky parking lot to see what’s going on. Can this be true that now I get to have a flat tire? Tires look fine so I get back in the car and as I sit down my cell rings and it’s Toyota: they’re offering to split the fix with me. I say we’re willing to pay for the labor but we don’t think we should pay for the parts and she says she can’t make that deal so I have to go back to Toyota HQ. Meanwhile, I tell her about this new noise and she says maybe something is stuck in the tire and as I pull out the racket continues so I park illegally, check the tires again and sure enough there is an industrial sized razor thing stuck in the rear, driver’s side tire. I yank it out and prepare to go to Les Schwab. When I get back in the car: I KID YOU NOT. The engine light was out. And it hasn’t come back on since.

I went to Les Schwab and he said the tire was fine. So then I was stuck going to the BofA on Hwy 99 which is the purgatory BofA. There was a man standing in the middle of the driveway and I politely waved thinking he would get out of the way, but no. He wanted to stand there blocking the way and being a pain in the ass. (He was probably a few beers short of a 6-pack but he looked halfway normal, although a little sweaty). I had to drive over the curb to get into the bank parking lot. And when I say bank parking lot, I’m being generous because it’s this postage stamp sized plot with one entrance and about 10 parking spaces 1 inch smaller than any actual car. Inside was even more fun.There were about 10 people in line and all the people at the tellers were engaged in complex transactions like exchanging pesos for yen and depositing their tips in singles and change in some sort of complicated arrangement so that took forever. Then I had to get a few things at Freddie’s and I didn’t realize that I needed to turn in the first entrance because the second one was blocked by a left turn lane so I had to go through the intersection at 72nd and turn around but the parking lot I chose to turn around in had some guy in the driveway that was trying to cross Hwy 99 not make a right so it took another 10 minutes. So basically it took me about 1 hr and 1/2 to go the bank and buy 3 things at Freddies. Now it’s not even three o’clock and I feel like I need to lay down with a washcloth on my forehead. Luckily, my netflix arrived: 2 Angel disks with 8 episodes. So, I’m breaking out a refreshing adult beverage or two and putting my feet up.

In other news, I was going to bake a rhubarb strawberry pie but I found a recipe for rhubarb strawberry crisp aka rhubarb strawberry brown betty and brown betty is my middle name so screw the pie.

You know when I saw the engine light on in my car I expected the very worst and then chided myself for overreacting. Any number of things can cause that light to go on. It doesn’t have to spell doom. Generally if I have to take my car in for a problem I expect it to cost $800. That way if it actually does cost $800 I can think: “I knew it.” And if it’s less, I can be relieved: “at least it’s not $800.” Also I bought an extended warranty so even in a worst case scenario, I figured I’d probably only have to pay the deductible and/or the testing fee. So after my initial panic attack I realized that really there was very little chance that this was going to be a disaster, which I why I did one of those laughs that sounds like crying when I found out that it was a $2,000 repair, only half of which was covered under warranty. The other half wasn’t even covered under the extended warranty. I won’t get into all the details of the doohickeys and whatsits that are haywire and all the phone calls that went back and forth between service-Pam-husband-service-husband-Pam. Toyota may still come through for me. The excellent folks at Broadway Toyota are helping me plead my case to Toyota to see if they will pick up the rest of the repair as a good faith gesture. The car only has 50K on it and it’s a known service issue. At the moment it’s unresolved but I think it’s all going to work out okay.

Meanwhile, I ordered a very cool Anthro computer cart for my eMac which I have needed since forever and never dealt with and finally decided that being miserably uncomfortable while doing something that I often do for hours a day was not a good thing. Here’s a picture close to what I ordered. I have to assemble it myself and it’s being delivered tomorrow so phone tomorrow afternoon if you want to hear me say bad words. ‘Easy to assemble’ is a euphemism for ‘will cause frustration and despair.’ Anthro sent me their print catalog and I noticed this in the photo and later found the picture on line. There’s a Karuk basket on the right side of the cart. Cool, eh?

I noticed the car dummy engine light was on when I was about 4 blocks from the office and I remember being flogged without mercy when I drove with the engine light on once as a teenager so I turned around and went back and after doing some basic diagnostic stuff (you know, looking for the book that comes with the car) I decided to leave the car at the office and take MAX to the Expo Center and have Bob pick me up and deal with it tomorrow.

Bob knew a place close by so we got fairly bad Mexican takeout and when we got home VH1 had the 50 most awesomely bad songs on. We both agreed with most of them but the Bette Midler song got the loudest howls of agreement.

Yesterday started the 100 most metal moments and this is probably the greatest show on TV. I’m taping part 2 (80-61) tonight.

As regular readers may or may not have picked up, there are about 3 bands in the last 10 years that I have expressed a remote interest in. And Velvet Revolver is a band I’m interested in although they may qualify before the last 10 years … . Among the modern age bands that I like is (are?) : 3 Doors Down, Puddle of Mudd and Nickelback. AND HOOBASTANK. And Bob informs me, via Rolling Stone magazine, that they hail from my old stomping grounds and I looked it up and its true:

"Formed in the mid-1990s in the Los Angeles suburb of Agoura Hills, while the quartet was still in high school, Hoobastank has since grown into a songwriting machine."

How cool is that? AppleStore … here I come.

I have a bunch of notes of things — I’m just going to cram it into one theme-less entry. (ha ha)

I’m thinking of making a coconut cream pie. Does that sound Gilligan or what? I’ve never made anything like that but I like coconut and it sounds good and there’s a recipe in Cooks Illustrated last month. I don’t know. The writers group is coming over on Saturday but I already decided to make a different recipe: cream cheese brownies. I haven’t had those in forever and it sounds good. I’m also making chocolate chip cookies. I was going to make them the weekend I got sick and I don’t like any cookies except homemade anymore and in the afternoon I am always craving a few cookies. Today I had to settle for saltines.

Yesterday at the office we had a postage due package so I sat in the lobby with the postman while he sorted the mail so I could wait for our stuff. He asked what we did and I told him federal Indian law and he was interested and wanted to know what tribe I was and what sort of stuff that entailed. He asked if my tribe had a casino and I said no but they were working on one in the I-5 corridor and he said: so I guess you’ll be rich then. Is that really where we’re at? That the rest of the world assumes that Indians are rich from gaming? If interested, the National Indian Gaming Association has excellent statistics on Indian Gaming. Please check your stereotype. Thanks.

So Sopranos this week. aiee! We knew it was coming but it still hurt. I won’t post any spoilers here, but if you’ve seen it you know what I mean.

Finally, I went to breakfast this am with my college friend Woodward and I drank real grown-up coffee (about half a pot) and I can see why this is so addictive. I was on fire until about noon when I crashed big time.

I went down with some gruesome gastro-type virus on Sunday. The previous weekend we were in Seattle to see Spike Lee at the Paramount and to have Mothers Day with Bob’s family. I guess I never wrote about that. When we returned from Seattle, Bob went down with some crud and later we heard Steve and LeRoy (Denise’s dad LeRoy, not Uncle/Boss LeRoy) had gone down with it, too. Almost a whole week went by. I thought I’d ducked it but no. I did not. I won’t horrify you with the details but I’d miss this one if you can. I stayed home from work yesterday and seemed like a perfect time to watch the commentary track on my Lord of the Rings DVDs since I’ve never had the time to do that. Well, it’s not that I don’t have the time but if I’m going to spend time in front of the TV, generally I watch something that I haven’t already seen numerous times. Turns out there are FOUR (4!) commentary tracks on the DVD (FOTR). I picked the cast one and it was hilarious. I don’t see myself getting through all of them in this lifetime although I would like to hear Peter Jackson’s commentary. And then there are still another 2 movies. I haven’t even looked at the special features on Two Towers yet.

I’m feeling a lot better but my appetite is still wonky and not much sounds good. I’ve eaten two bowls of soup and a half an apple. I’m a little wobbly, to say the least. I brought my yoga clothes to the office and assumed I’d be going to class after work but then I was stapling some documents and had to sit down to rest and figured that would be my workout today.

I read something about poor old krispy crud can’t sell all the donuts from here to eternity because the “low carb” marketers are so successful with their stupid trend and people would rather gorge themselves on red meat and bacon. Thank God Indians LOVE carbs. For our working lunches at CDA casino Day #1 – we had 3 kinds of pasta with marinara and about 4 kinds of meat and I think a few bell peppers and mushrooms and super buttery bread — the early folks all took two or three pieces so I missed out — my flat ass is bummed. Day #2 if you guessed deli tray you are wrong! It was about 4 different variations on tortilla: actual steaming hot tortillas, tortilla chips, taco shells or taco salad shells with about 3 kinds of meat and some lettuce and stuff. And lots of cookies for dessert. And the bottomless glass of pop. Too bad I don’t drink it anymore.

I found this old post where I tried to make manapua. It’s hilarious. Recently, some random stranger emailed me for a bao bun recipe – apparently finding me via this post. Did he not read the whole thing?