Tag Archives: revisiting old things

Pastoral

Does anyone remember the Battle of the Network Stars?

It was this TV show in the 70s where they had the stars of all the big TV shows like Love Boat and Charlie’s Angels, organized by network and competing against each other for, I don’t know, glory? They must have paid them. I know there was more than one version and I watched them all.

Can you imagine that now? Getting the Modern Family stars to race against the NCIS cast — taking turns getting in a raft and paddling back and forth across a swimming pool at UCLA? And since it’s 2018 they could bring in the Game of Thrones cast and Downton Abbey.

I just did a search to check the dates and guess what? They made a version of this show in 2017 and it looks like the same old stars from Love Boat and that lifeguard show and other mature stars you haven’t heard about in decades were on it. I’m at a loss for words.

13635 / 50000 words. 27% done!

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Hair and Other Concerns

If in all my endless methods of flogging and self-promotion, if you didn’t hear, Book #2 of Crooked Rock is out in the world. All the details and links are here.

Today I’m going to write about a somewhat recent re-watch of the movie: Bull Durham. It came out in 1988 and starred Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon, if you’re scratching your head and trying to remember.

This movie did not hold up as well as I expected. I thought Sarandon was kinda shrill and didn’t think they had as much chemistry as they were trying to sell us on. Tim Robbins was good. I had other thoughts, too, and I remember taking notes. Except the only note I can find says “hair on chest.”

There’s a locker room scene and I was struck by all the chest hair. Remember the days when it was totally okay to grow hair below the neck? I am not onboard for all this depilatorization. Is that a word? Well it should be. If impactful gets to be a word than depilatorization can be a word, too.

So, back when I watched the movie I researched when this idea that men had to have hairless chests started and the google blamed it on Marky Mark when he was doing those Calvin Klien ads. Then I found articles where men complained about what a pain it was to do all this hair removal.

Tell me about it.

I think the moment has passed because I’ve seen men with chest hair again — on Supernatural and probably something else I can’t remember right now.

In other news, Comcast made us upgrade all our gear which was a large pain in the ass that Bob bore the brunt of. (Thank you, dear!) But while we’re still tweaking everything, something is wrong so it kicks me off the wireless once every 24 hours so I have to enter passwords on everything I own and/or use, every day. I’m tired of passwords. And PIN numbers. And secret words. And special questions. I don’t really want anyone to scan my retina but it that will save me all this other crapola, I will reluctantly sign up.

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The Queen of All Over Achievers

Look, here I am with the Portland Timbers, standing in a place that makes no sense.

HA! I posted today. Bet you didn’t think I would.

Just wanted to say that I found my bus pass! It *was* in my backpack only all tangled up with foil-wrapped wet wipes and tissues in a pocket I don’t normally use.

I also did a ton of things today, like writing and xmas shopping and working on my giant book to learn about iTunes. I’m only on page 34 and I’ve already learned a ton. I was doing pretty much everything wrong.

But now I’m tired of looking at the computer my eyeballs are two hardened lumps, perfect since I’m going to the eye doctor tomorrow.

Here is a terrific photo essay of the world in 1963. The countdown continues.

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30 Day Countdown to 50

I’m going to guess that this photo is from 2000 on this trip at Filmpark Babelsberg.

When I was looking for an image to use today I found a ginormous folder filled with more folders of random scanned images. Of the items that are labeled, they are called things like: “family scans” “more family scans” and “miscellaneous scans” and it goes on forever. I have no idea how I managed to hide this from myself.

I’m equally itching to start organizing and wanting to drag the whole thing to the trash.

I mentioned before I have a major birthday this year and today the final countdown begins. In the waning days of my 40’s I will be drinking hot cocoa, watching mystery shows and going to bed early. Don’t worry, I’m not going to post about it.

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Cranky Doodle

I’ve had this exact expression on my face all week.

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Sixteen Years!

Here Bob is pretending to drop cake in my face. He didn’t really. And there was no cake smushing.

Guess what I’m doing for my wedding anniversary?

Going to a Timbers game. My honey gets to sit in general admission while I sit in my reserved seats with ticket partner. Romantic, huh? This is a huge game against our rivals the Vancouver Whitecaps.

You might be wondering why I haven’t been talking about the Timbers as much as I used to. You might have thought I’d grown bored with it or moved on to other interests.

Nope. I’ve got a post in draft talking all about the Timbers. You’ll know it all soon.

Last night we went through our photo album and guestbook. Lots of terrific memories but we’ve lost a lot of people. Every time we turned a page we were reminded of someone else. Here we are with our Grandmas. Both gone.

Here’s how I found my car when we left the wedding site. As I recall I went back to work that week and then we left for our honeymoon at Labor Day. We went to Bumbershoot and then to the San Juan Islands and Victoria, BC.

This is the guestbook. For the inside we took Polaroids of all the guests and had them sign.

My cousin Jennifer (she’s the one in this photo) was very persistent and walked around during the reception to make sure she got everyone in there.

This is us on the first page.

It fun was fun to go through it. People we don’t see very often. Little kids who are in college now. All our favorite people together.

Great day. Now let’s go Timbers!

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Pump It Up

This guy called. Strong accent. He had Bob’s name and tacked a Mrs. on it for me and then told me he was calling because of our Windows computer system. He sounded like he was phoning from a cafeteria in Outer Mongolia using a tin can and a long piece of string. I could barely understand him.

He said since we were authorized users and he could see that we’d being going online he knew we had a virus.

Normally I would have shut this call down before we even got this far except I was curious where he was going with this. I knew he wanted to rip me off but how was he going to do it?

But he just kept reading off his card with long pauses and this terrible connection. I finally asked him what exactly he was going to do and said he was going to walk me through a check for viruses.

I’m not filled with patience today and that was enough for me so I told him we don’t have even have a Windows machine in this house and buh-bye.

So I guess he wanted to get usernames and passwords? It’s hard to imagine this would be successful.

* * *

Last weekend I made a Sweet Potato Pie for Easter dessert. I haven’t made one in a long time and I thought I’d used this recipe before but maybe not. It’s from Cook’s Illustrated. As per always I was trying to do 1000 things at once and I started my pie late and then I had to hurry so rather than mashing my potatoes by hand, I tossed it all in the food processor so that filling was smooth.

When we ate it after dinner it was still warm and it was very good. But the next day after it was completely chilled it was AMAZING.

Ten stars for this recipe.

We’re going to see Elvis Costello. The last time we saw him was in 1996 in Seattle during our honeymoon. You can find the setlist here. (The Internet is so awesome when it isn’t awful.) I remember that. 4 encores. I was like, OMG, another encore?

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2000! 2000! 2000!

This is a Karuk-style basket start that’s on the wall at basket class. I should probably put a photo of a finished basket up so you can see where this is going. Try this.

Hey! Great news. This is my 2000th post since I started blogger which was February 2001 if my archives are to be believed. This is going to be a rambling post filled with history and random tidbits that I have scrawled on little pieces of paper and post-its all over my desk. I was going to wait until I had time to write a really good 2000th post, but then we’ll never get to it because my entire life is on hold until I have time to do it better and who knows when that will be?

I started a website in April 1996 (check out the Wayback machine) and some of that stuff survives in the ancient archives and some of it is stashed in a folder on my harddrive.

I’ve always wanted to bring back the Delta Sucks post and the responses including the one from the crazy lady who told me: “Your stupid!”

If I ever have money to burn I’m going to hire an assistant and that person’s job is going to be to surf the Internet and visit comment threads and any time a person posts some version of “your stupid” or “your a moron” my assistant will reply with: I think you mean “you’re stupid.”

But I’m getting away from my planned rambling. I actually have a huge page of notes for a different post to be titled “The Internet is Ruined” which I thought would be perfect as a 2000th post but I’m not in the mood today. Someday.

Last weekend I went to California to hang out with the family. This is Minky.

Does anyone ever intentionally set out to get a cat or are cats something that people just end up with? It seems like every person I’ve ever known with a cat(s) ended up with them.

Minky’s original name was Wink and Wink lived at the house next door where they already had bigger cats and also dogs. Wink was small and timid and a little overwhelmed trying to get a good meal with these other critters around. So Wink wandered the neighborhood and found my parents house. I’m not sure if she was nibbling on Shy Boy’s food or what but Dad fed her and that was the beginning of the end.

The owner retrieved her cat from my parents’ house several times but she always snuck back in. One night my Mom got up in the middle of the night and there was Wink hanging out in the hallway. She found the cat door. When the owner moved, she left Wink to live with Mom and Dad.

Wink became Winky and because she has such soft fur: Minky. But it’s a great name. You can say: inky, stinky, rinky dinky, finky, pinky, drinky. I made up some limericks for her but she just gave me this same bug-eyed stare so I stopped.

In this photo she has made a nice nest in my big warm coat. She was able to spread her fur around to all of my clothes. She’s a very sweet kitty.

I have a follow up to the Verizon story. They sent me a response to my customer service email that starts off by saying that they’d call me to walk me through my problem except that they received my email too late and due to industry regulations they can’t call me.

Because it would be a shame if any of this wasn’t all my fault. Why not have your workers on the job during the time that industry regulations allow you to call?

But that doesn’t matter because I already fixed the problem myself by doing the simple steps of canceling my autopay and then restarting it with the new credit card number. They also mailed me a notice thanking me for enrolling in autopay and welcoming me.

Your welcome. (intentional mistake because I think its funny)(that was intentional to)(that too).

I had another milestone last week — it was 20 years since I started working as a paralegal in Indian Affairs. I don’t know what to say except its nice to feel competent at a job. I did not feel that way for a very long time. I remember reading legal cases and it would take all day and then I’d read them again and again. It’s like you have to train your brain how to think a certain way and I was not a natural. 20 more years and I can retire! (sigh, geez)

Watercress harvesting. I’m sure my family is thrilled that their butts are on my website. That was the angle I had.

I have one of those dinky iPods that’s as big as a postage stamp. I have a gadget so I can listen to it in the car but I’ve only used it a couple of times because normally the only places I drive are the park-n-ride or the grocery store and those trips aren’t worth plugging in the iPod.

If you’ve ever used one of those tiny ones, you know that you can’t work it while you drive. Well, you could but you’d probably crash into something. So I had it all set up with mega-long playlists and I would get it set up and then pause and then once I got going I could listen. I had a 100 favorite song playlist that I could shuffle and an audio course and a bunch of podcasts.

The ride down worked great. I’m not sure what I did on the way home but somehow I managed to make it so it would repeat the item. After I heard the same song 3 times I realized there was a problem. I had a pitstop and I fiddled with it and thought I fixed it but I did not so it was completely aggravating. Then I tried tapping on it a bunch of times so then I was skipping all around which made the audio course a bit confusing. I’ve got it sitting here so I can figure it out when I’m feeling frisky.

Another funny technology story is that I always forget some cable that I wish I had so this trip I put every single cable and charger that I have into a plastic bag and threw it in with my stuff.

Then I forgot my laptop.

I very carefully made sure it was charged and I use Dropbox and I made sure it was synced. Bob said I left it on the couch which is pretty random because why would I put it on the couch? I think it was all subconscious. But, I had my notebook with me and wrote longhand every day so the streak (which has been going since Oct 31 2011) lives!

Goodness, are you still reading? That’s enough of that. Signing off Post 2000!

Get excited because Monday starts Timbers pre-season!

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Poolside

Look at my adorable sister! 1968? I bet this is at the Alyn’s pool. Possibly not how you spell their name – I can’t remember and haven’t talked to any of them for over 20 years. But if one of them sees this I’m sure they’ll let me know.

I’m on the last few boxes of slides. Scanning is tedious work so I try to do a little bit every week. I think I have about 40 slides left with this batch. I’m sure there are stacks more at the homestead.

Yesterday’s dinner turned out fantastic which is a relief because I’ve been blooping-up most of my big cooking projects lately. I was losing confidence in myself.

And while I’ve been making faces at the oodles of emails I’ve been getting begging me to buy things, I have to admit the coupons work! I bought a ton of books, new shoes and an audio course I’ve had my eye on for ages. Once I download it I can put it on my list and never get around to listening to it. It’s so refreshing to be in touch with your shortcomings.

Yesterday my magazine advised me that there was no shame in sitting around with a book and a hot toddy. To which I replied, “Gee thanks for permission.” But what makes it funny is the lady in the picture is looking at a book about guns.

I’m off. Bob and I have a movie date to see the new Pedro.

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I Can Remember Lots of Things

Not long ago Jezebel had a thread and endless comments about Sixteen Candles v. Pretty in Pink.

As if.

I love my Pretty in Pink and my Duckie and my Iona and Andie with her drawer full of pink beads. But if I’m forced to choose, Sixteen Candles is going to win every time.

The movie was on cable last week and I taped it and watched it yesterday.

I love this movie.

Every time Bob came into the room I said, “Honey, come here. This is the best scene in 80’s cinema.” If you know his taste in films you’re laughing right now because he likes weird old foreign stuff with like, one guy in a room playing the accordion while a monkey tap dances. He would think that was the best scene in cinema. He also claims I’ve already made him watch 16 Candles with me at least 4 times which I find very hard to believe. Or not.

One thing that struck me about the film during this viewing was how much stuff you could NEVER put in a mainstream teen movie these days. Homosexual slurs. Terrible Italian stereotypes. Horrifically racist Asian stuff. Drunk teenagers driving, mixing drinks and doing it with no mention of protection whatsoever.

I have a million favorite moments in this movie but I will mention two. The first is when Farmer Ted is mixing martinis for himself and Jake Ryan and handing him peanuts and giving him girl advice. Classic.

The other is probably my favorite movie scene in history beating out when Luke destroys the death star, “nobody puts baby in a corner” and that moment in the Battle Of Helm’s Deep when Gandalf comes galloping down the hill.

It’s at the very end when Samantha is leaving the church and people are taking off and all the cars pull away and there’s Jake Ryan leaning on his red Porsche waiting for her! And even better, her Dad lets her drive off with him instead of going to her sister’s wedding reception. On what planet does that happen?

The best.

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