You're Doing It Wrong

Am I the only person that loathes classmates.com? (won’t even give them the smug satisfaction of a link) It’s all about pop unders and clicking. There is no real information unless you sign up for $30 a year or whatever the price is now. I would possibly pay $10-$12. But the servers are slow and the pages are set up for maximum clickage — life isn’t *that* long. Actually I wouldn’t pay at any price. I don’t pay for web content. I generally won’t registier for web content. And I for sure won’t pay for pop unders.

I went and saw The Hours today. It was between that and About Schmidt. It was a great movie — the acting was incredible but it was heavy. I told Bob I left there and I just wanted to come home and see him and tell him how much I appreciate him. I think I’m having the anti-7 year itch. Instead of looking around I’m grateful to be settled down with him. I don’t think I could live with anyone else.

My favorite part of the Oregonian is Food Day (Tuesday). Now that we’re getting the New York Times delivered at home I have another food section “Dining Out” to enjoy on Wednesday and after only a few weeks I am a huge fan of William Grimes the Restaurants columnist. This week he reviews Agave. He finds the menu “a dizzy document” but “[t]he basket of blue corn tortilla chips that arrives as soon as you sit down provides badly needed reassurance. They are warm, feather-light, superlatively crunchy and sweet with blue-corn flavor. They come with a pleasant, mildly spiced bean dip and an unconvincing salsa … .” He admires the pork in a spicy sauce. “[The chef] Mr. Pang understands spices. He doesn’t use them to traumatize the tonsils or boost the beer sales. He treats them as valued supporting players … .” He appreciates the pile on. “[Mr. Pang] knows how to deploy gobs of molten cheese.” In the end, he found the wait for his check long but noted, “[p]erhaps it seems longer because the restaurant’s Mission chairs, although beautiful to look at, are cruel, although not as diabolical as the backless banquettes, which will either straighten your spine or kill you in the course of an evening.” Isn’t this great stuff? I love this guy.

Haven’t been very inspired lately. If you need to inject some fear into your cyberlife — try Google Watch. And if you have any kind of phone paranoia here’s some info on phone fraud. Several weeks ago Bob and I were eating with Doni and LeRoy and we talked about some sort of fraud scheme where you get a phone message and return a call and it ends up being at some insane rate like $5 a minute and you get screwed. Shortly thereafter my sister was locked out of her house and placed an collect call to see if we could tape ALIAS for her. When the call came through Bob couldn’t hear who it was from so he hung up and we were all creeped out about someone trying to defraud us. Later we found out it was Erin and we felt bad.

I did some research for work and was scanning some bulletin boards on the topic and I ran across some guy who said something to the effect that he’d heard people in Oregon use the word “pop” to refer to soft drinks and he was always sure to correct them to use “soda” — like he’s been appointed the vocabulary police. Anyway, turns out there is a whole controversy about this. Can this be true that people have nothing better to worry about than whether sugar water is referred to as “pop” or “soda?” Check the map for yourself.

I used to get Premiere Magazine at the office but then the subscription rate got high so I decided to wait until they sent me those begging cards, “we want you back!” and would let me subscribe for some cheapo rate again only the begging card never came. They sent me two subscription renewals and then gave up. I guess they showed me. Last Fall I decided to give Movieline a try. I sent my check in November, it cleared in December and I got my first issue (February) during the third week of February. Isn’t this kind of lame? And I decided after reading one issue that I don’t like it At least it’s very thin and I can zip through it quick.

I stayed up late last night finishing the world’s dumbest book. I don’t know where I got it — Mom or Priscilla. It’s a Patricia Cornwell who I haven’t read in a very long time — I think the last one I read was The Body Farm. The book I read last night was Black Notice. Sometimes I’ll read a scene in a book and say, “only a man would write this” because it’s some sort of fantasy scenario where the woman is beautiful and great in bed can meet all the man’s needs, whatever the situation but at the same time, doesn’t want anything from him. I’m not explaining this very well but I’m in a hurry so oh, well.

This PC book was like a woman’s fantasy because the protagonist is this cold, humorless woman who is a brilliant medical examiner and in the middle of the book at this completely random moment she initiates sex with this gorgeous successful and younger man who immediately rips at her clothes and tells her how hot he is for her and after sex he is apparently in love with her and wants to hold her hand and take her out to dinner. I swear I re-read these pages a couple of times, thinking I had missed something. Like this would ever happen. The whole book was doo-doo — I don’t know why I had to finish it except there was this werewolf thing going on and I wanted to know what it was all about. Also, this brilliant doctor’s name is Kay Scarpetta and as I said earlier, I’ve read a couple other books with her and in virtually every one, the bad guy showed up at the end, in her house and attacked her but she was saved at the last minute by convenient appearances by other characters. So last night, I’m reading the last few pages and here comes the bad guy knocking on the door and here is the world’s most brilliant medical examiner answering the door. I’m going, “Kay, what are you thinking? Even *I* know it’s the bad guy.” I don’t recommend it unless you are on a beach with an umbrella drink in your hands and nothing else to read.

I always think of lots of things to blog when I’m trying to fall asleep and I often draw a big blank when I’m sitting here.

My sister sent me this URL: Be Kind to Introverts. “Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice? … It has been learned, by means of brain scans, that introverts process information differently from other people … .” Now, in writing, something I’ve known about myself for a long time.

I also found a good URL with earth satellite pictures from NASA where I managed to waste a lot of time downloading images.

I finally saw Rabbit Proof Fence this weekend. An amazing film, really well done — I’m trying to write a quick review and keep erasing my words so I’ll just say this: it’s a very sad story about assimilating aborigines into white society — it happened in the US and Canada too — but the filmmakers managed to keep it from being all tragedy. It’s worth seeing — just trust me.

And last item, I was doing some research online related to this writing project I’m working on and I found one of my favorite Hollywood days guitarists Paul Gilbert online. I gotta go back and look at all the stuff. It looks like Racer X is still around too. I still have Second Heat on vinyl — although I couldn’t tell you the last time I listened to it.

I often see people blog personal things or diss on people at work — things that you would think might be more private and not in a public forum. I normally edit myself more than that.

But I decided to write about what happened yesterday since it ended up being a strange and draining day.

I felt something, I’m not sure that you’d call it a lump, but something lumpy in my breast and since I hadn’t been to the dr. in a couple years I made an appointment and the dr. agreed it felt lumpy and scheduled a mammogram. I wasn’t particularly upset by all this and felt confident that it would be nothing but I am a writer with an overactive imagination so I was able to concoct some pretty grim “but what if” scenarios.

Yesterday I had the mammogram in the morning and even during all that I felt okay about everything but there was this moment when I was done and going back to the changing room and here I am with this little flimsy gown, tied in the front, and my sweater over my shoulders because it was cold in the test room and I’m holding my purse and I come face to face with another woman in a flimsy gown, tied in front, with her sweater over her shoulders and holding her purse and we exchanged a flat smile and I suddenly felt completely overwhelmed with sadness and a sense of how vulnerable we all are.

They couldn’t get a good look at the lumpiness from the mam so I had to go back for an ultrasound at lunchtime and repeat the drill–so, great, extending my unease.

In the end I got a clean bill of health and I just have to regularly monitor the lumpiness in case it changes. But by the end of the day I was exhausted. It’s amazing how something can completely knock you off balance.