You're Doing It Wrong

My horrible face rash has not improved so I called Georgia and gratefully she recommended some products which I was HAPPY to buy and for the first time in days I feel actual relief. My face still looks like hell but at least it feels better. I’m going in for a regular appointment on Friday so hopefully she can do something with this.

So this guy just woke up after 19 years in a coma. He’s the same age as me. I can’t imagine missing all the years since I graduated from H.S. What a trauma. I mean, great, he woke up, but culture shock-o-rama.

Oh, and guilty pleasure: Big Brother 4. I’m generally a sporadic reality TV viewer, but when I heard the twist, introducing “ex’s” into the house, I at least had to watch the first episode and I’m hooked for now …

I have no idea why it’s so hard to get here on a daily basis. I think about it.

I don’t know what it is — my current theory is that it’s a violent reaction between some of my products but yet again I have a giant rash/pizza face all over my face. This time it seemed to be triggered by a sunscreen and some suntime — but I used this sunscreen before without incident. My face looks really hideous — we’re talking nose, cheeks, chin and forehead (so the whole thing). It was just clearing up from the last time. Last time I thought it was from drinking herbal tea and thinking bad thoughts (seriously.) I don’t know but it’s kind of depressing feeling so supremely hag-like.

Fantastic relaxing weekend. I cleaned the shop, top to bottom, bought some shelving, defrosted the freezer, swept, organized, tossed. It’s a whole new world out there. Bob claims the large stack of dead electronics is going away which will help even more. I also made major headway cleaning up the yard and planted a bunch of new stuff. The tomatoes, esp. the Roma are looking good.

I’m reading Empire Falls by Richard Russo and loving it. Plus I’m mostly caught up on the magazines and newspapers – oh, except that new Entertainment Weekly that came on Saturday — I actually don’t even know where it is right now.

Bob will be back tomorrow. I baked cookies and stocked the fridge with some of his favorite stuff and bought some flowers. Looking forward to having him hanging around here fulltime again. Rock on High Sierra!

Tonight Margaret taught our yoga class and again she enviously admired my Fred Flintstone feet. Lucky me.

How’s your google paranoia lately? The backlash has begun.

So, you know what ads AdSense thinks would be good for my website? : John Naber: Olympian, Available for your meetings!; Quiet Gypsum Wallboard; Cats in Your Yard/Garden; Sound Blocking Materials; Truth About Your Neighbor Find out with [name omitted] software.

pamrentz.com apparently has issues with sound/quiet. I remember writing about cats in the garden at some point. But Jim Naber?

We did more today than we normally do in a month. This morning we met Kelly, Dan, Maggie and Quinn for breakfast at Old Wives Tales — I had almond crepes with marionberry compote — excellent but filling. We tried to organize a get together with the other XO people in town but didn’t work out so it was just the 6 of us and worked out perfect. From there we went to Hawthorn Powell’s and looked at books and I didn’t find anything I couldn’t live without — unbelievable. Then we went and checked out Matt’s new place off of 39th. He bought this giant funky house and he only moved in a couple weeks ago and he’s already looking pretty settled. He and Bob are getting their plan ready for their festival run. Then we went to the Delta Park Pow Wow which was fantastic except rainy and chilly. We watched the dancers for a couple hours and I won $26 in 50-50. Bob bought an Indian taco and a buffalo burger and I spent my winnings at the vendors and got a really cool pair of beaded earrings. Great day. Now we’re curling up on the couch with a fire in the fireplace and some stuff to read.

Yesterday I did my summer clothes shopping in about 15 minutes at The Rack. I found 2 pairs of generic shorts and one pair that’s a sort of peach color that normally I would never wear. I also got a shirt with a fairy tale theme and all kinds of sequins on it. I got 6 things for $75 so I thought I did pretty good.

This morning I got up early and did a 3 hr. yoga workshop with Bob Smith and Ki McGraw which was excellent and just what I needed. There was an accident on the freeway this morning and it took me about 25 minutes to just get on the freeway — during that time I almost changed my mind and went home so I’m glad I stuck it out.

We just got back from seeing The Hulk. Boy, I don’t know what to tell you. This is an odd one. The film-making is great and I liked the special effects — esp. that stuff in San Francisco. But, I don’t know. It’s worth checking out just keep an open mind.

Here, learn about Cross Border Fraud. You know telemarketing scams and stuff like that. Some lady called the office and told me about all these outrageous fees I’m paying on my phone bill and I said, “How do you know?” and she said it was her job to know and did I want to hear about it or was she wasting her time. Can you guess what I told her?

I forgot to mention earlier that we finally saw The Man Who Wasn’t There which is strange even by Coen brothers standards. It’s — well — I’m trying to figure out how to sum it up in a few words and can’t quite come up with it. It’s filmed in black and white and looks amazing and the performances are excellent but the story is a big downer with this guy making one mistake that takes down everybody and along with that a UFO micro-subplot. I asked Bob “what are they trying to say?” and he said we’d probably never know.

My email went crap! yesterday — sorry to everyone who got rejected as spam — as near as I can tell, my ISP thinks that my domain host is a spammer. The way I’m set up is you send me email at my domain and my domain forwards the mail to my ISP address and I get all my mail in one place. So when my ISP thinks my domain is spam — it rejects all the mail. Large pain in the butt, eh? So for now I have the forwarding disabled — so you should be able to use the pamrentz.com address. And I’ve disabled spamcop so I can get all the viagra and super low mortgage rate ads and hopefully I can get this thing cleared up.

We went to see Sherman Alexie last night, reading from his new book: Ten Little Indians. He read for almost an hour. The story was called something like “Looking for a Witness” and the highpoints were fantastic, some parts hilarious, some challenging — fiction about 9/11. But it dragged in some parts and lost me. He did a long Q&A too. I’ve seen him read at least 5 times and judging by last night he’s softened around the edges — and I mean that in the best possible way.

It’s supposed to be a scorcher today so I’ve got to dig the hoses out. I have been meaning to take care of that for days.

Here are some fun Matrix Essays for you. This is geek stuff. People who dissect every arcane detail for multiple meanings. I think the alleged intelligence of this movie has been wildly inflated but hey, great car chase.

Check out these excellent cat outfits — seriously. The gentleman’s package was not what I expected. ahem.