You're Doing It Wrong

I thought this week would be a lot more productive than it ended up being. I have no idea what I did but it kept me busy. I did manage to clear one or two things off my desk so I’ll just be happy for that. On Monday I had lunch with Liz and suggested we go to Abou Karims. She agreed and we had the Mezza for two. On Wednesday I had lunch with Don for his birthday. I thought about AK’s but then thought, no, I can’t go to the same place twice in one week. So I tried to think of other foods that sounded good but the only thing was hummus so we went Abou Karims and had the Mezza for two. I have no regrets.

Bob is at Shasta seeing String Cheese Incident. In a possibly related story, I woke up a 3am and couldn’t get back to sleep. I tossed and turned for an hour. I have been having all kinds of problems with my various email addresses and domain and so forth and as I tossed and turned, I had an idea and decided to go ahead and get up and try it.

Once I get on the computer, I’m history in terms of getting back to sleep.

So I somewhat resolved my computer problems and I read a bunch of The English Patient and at 5am I decided to try and nap a little. I think I dozed but then I thought I heard someone in the garage so I jumped up with my heart pounding and then figure out it’s just people packing a moving van on the street. So now it’s 5:30am and what’s the point of even trying to sleep? So I threw in laundry and looked at the paper and did a nice long jog/walk.

Hi: I was cranky today. Am I crankier than most? Or just more honest about it?

I’m feeling much better now but then, there is about a gallon of beer involved. Well, whatever works, I say.

So Little Friday— I’m taking a day long workshop next week to work on this. I have all kinds of homework to do but the biggie was re-reading the manuscript. I was expecting to cringe a lot more. There are a couple of chapters that need a lot of work but overall I think it still works. The homework is definitely opening up some ideas — it’s just how much work do I really want to do on it at this point? And the answer is, I’m not sure.

Tomorrow is errand day and Saturday we go to Seattle for a party. More on these stories as they develop.

I usually like to be a little bit prepared before I start typing the blog but tonight I thought I’d go by the seat of my pants. Not like I’m trying out for the Olympics or anything.

Today we saw Shrek which I thought was hilarious. Yesterday we watched Oscar & Lucinda on tape and I’d advise missing it if you haven’t already. It’s a well made movie and the acting is fabulous but the story had some problems which might work in a book but didn’t work in a movie and I won’t go into the whole thing now. On Friday we saw Planet of the Apes in a theater with me and 50 guys Bob’s age. I LOVED it. I would see it again. I’m not in the mood to explain why I liked it, let’s just say it entertained me and there was fighting and apes and Helena Bonham Carter with the most swell ape-doo you’ve ever seen and Marky Wahlberg dreamy air force guy.

Last week I tried to get all my various emails organized. I finally have a separate email for work: pam(at)lwilder.com and that is aliased to another address (I’m not sure if my terminology is right so bear with me) and then I have my domain and my alias that goes with that and then I have my yahoo mail so all together I have all these addresses I am juggling around and trying to keep all the passwords straight and pay attention to my sig files because last week I wrote an email to the webmaster about the gov’t site I complained about in my last blog post and then realized I had my personal sig file with my blog.html URL right there. How professional. My little struggle with technology.

Oh, also, we just started watching Jiminy Glick. I am not a Martin Short fan but I am telling you, this show is HILARIOUS.

I also finished re-reading Little Friday this weekend which I will write more about later.

Keeping up with the blog is much harder than you might guess. It’s not even my intention to post every day.

I’m going to Norman, Oklahoma in October for Returning the Gift X. Just this week I decided to do some homework and check airfare, etc. So guess what 2 of the 3 airlines that fly into Oklahoma City are? Yes, Delta and Southwest. How unlucky is that? It’s not even that I have too much pride to give the two suckiest airlines another try — but I’ve been getting contacted by their shills since I posted those stories — how do I know they don’t have my name in their systems and will torture me on purpose, just to get me? I guess that’s a little paranoid. I’m guessing I will take Delta over SW since I haven’t been to Salt Lake City for awhile (ahem) and because I would happily pay an extra $20 to get an assigned seat. What some people are willing to put up with to save a buck, I do not understand. Oh, and the 3rd airline is American and maybe I just didn’t understand how their webpage worked but when I check on a fare it was $1100 — I’d rather walk.

Baking update — made a Cooks Illustrated recipe for biscotti yesterday and I think both Bob and I will require extensive dental work. These things are like little rocks. They taste good though.

I came back from basket camp on June 9 and I’ve been on an anti-domestic chore kick ever since. Especially cooking. I just don’t have the energy or motivation to get fancy. I can’t explain it except to say that I’m overwhelmed with the care and feeding of this other person and yah, he does take care of it himself sometimes, but mainly it seems up to me and I just get sick of it. Lately we’ve been having a lot of things that can be defrosted and heated up and served with a green salad which I’ve been making by the bale since the farmers market started. Last Thursday I bought a bunch of spreads and dips and a baguette and crackers and some vegan chicken mcnuggets and Annie’s BBQ sauce and that was dinner. It worked.

Today I was coming back from my errands just as I turned into the courtyard right by our office I saw this large bird on the sidewalk clutching a flapping sparrow under its feet. It took me a second to register what was happening, it was so out of place. I realized it was a hawk — that close to me. Sometimes when I see a hawk, it looks sort of shabby, but this one looked dangerously beautiful. I stopped and tried to blend into the scenery because I wanted to watch. The hawk took the flapping sparrow and flew to a nearby tree.

I very slowly walked to where I could see up into the tree and the hawk gave me the stink eye — it was a little unsettling. The poor sparrow continued to flap in vain. Finally the hawk took off again and I didn’t see where it went.