Crows

Posted on November 1, 2013 by Pamela

Last weekend there was a strange sound like scraping on the roof.

Bob called me and I went out to the shop.

There were crows partying on the skylight.

There’s a hazelnut tree between our house and the house next door.

At the end of every summer the squirrels go insane.

I find hazelnut husks and buried hazelnuts everywhere.

I’m guessing the crows maybe found a squirrel stash? Today I noticed a squirrel nest in the tree.

It was a little creepy having the crows trying to crack the nuts on the skylight.

After watching them from inside, I went through the house and out the front door to see if I could get a picture of them on the roof.

Meanwhile, Bob had done the same thing out the back door so right as I went outside, a bunch of crows came swooping off the roof.

I was traumatized by The Birds as a kid so I covered my eyes with my hands and stumbled back into the house as fast as I could.

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Department of Redundancy Department

Posted on October 23, 2013 by Pamela

Toes inspects the pumpkins

Remember the ongoing saga of the work copier? (I can’t even bear to go back and find the URLs to link to).

Once you get the equipment they register you online so you can order supplies and service.

They automatically registered us using colleague’s name. I have no idea why they would do that.

I logged into the system and requested that they change the username to my name.

This morning I got a reply email telling me to log into the system and request that they change the username.

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Too Many Squashy Things Coming From The Garden?

Posted on October 22, 2013 by Pamela

[Endless long rant about how technology has failed me and everyone is doing everything wrong, omitted.]

I am going to give you a terrific recipe for an overabundance of summer vegetables.

Yes, in late October when no one needs it. Save for later!

This is in a recipe book that my Mom has but I’m going to give you my variation because the recipe was a tad precious and even told you what shape dish to put it in.

Main ingredients are:

1-2 onions, thinly sliced
Tons of zucchini and/or squash that you’re trying to get rid of, thinly sliced. Toss with olive oil and thyme.
Tons of tomatoes that you’re trying to get rid, thinly sliced of OR 14 oz. can of fire-roasted tomatoes
7 oz. can of fire roasted green chiles
Half a loaf of cotija cheese or any cheese that turns your crank, grated or cubed or crumbled.

Cook in large lasagna type pan unless you’re making a small version. Then use small lasagna type pan.

First, saute onions in oil until limp and a little bit brown. Spread in the bottom of your dish.

Next, spread your squash product over the onions.

Next, layer your fresh tomatoes over the top. If you’re using the canned: combine with the green chiles, drain a little bit, and spread over the squash.

Finally, spread the cheese over the top. Bake at 375 for an hour to 75 minutes and let cool for a bit before you serve. I was worried because the cheese got pretty brown but it tasted amazing. Great as leftovers, too. Once you look at the recipe you can think of other variations – the original doesn’t use the green chiles and uses Parmesan. Probably a tough sell on hardcore vegetable haters, but everyone else will at least give it a try.

Posted in garden | Tagged | 1 Comment

I Can’t Do Technology Part 748

Posted on October 14, 2013 by Pamela

This post has been updated because Tina showed up in the comments! If you’ve already read it, I’m not sure how you will know this but read it again.

I have been meaning to write this post since my trip to California way back in March.

I think I’ve explained that while I like the idea of podcasts, I very rarely have time where I just want to sit and listen to things. I only drive about 50 miles a week which isn’t enough time in the car and when I’m on the bus, I usually read. For years I subscribed to EscapePod because I thought I’d eventually get into the habit of listening more.

Instead, I would log in a couple of times a year and pick a couple stories that I wanted to hear and delete the rest. I recently gave it up all together because even when I do get around to listening I rarely enjoy the stories enough that I wanted to keep up with this exercise.

Meanwhile, when I got my iPhone I started subscribing to Toasted Cake which is narrated by Tina Connolly. When I went to California in March, I listened to about 10 of them on the drive. These work for me because they are short, maybe 10-15 minutes, and I almost always like the stories.

I also love Tina’s narration. She recommends books or talks about what’s going on with her. I swear I wrote myself a note so I could link to the exact podcast but I couldn’t find it and I didn’t want to bug Tina because she’s having a baby any minute, not to mention she has a book that came out TODAY, and I didn’t want to be all, “Oh hey, can you remember some random podcast you did where you talked about precious cookware?”

It is Toasted Cake #74 Taking Care of Ma by Lee Hallison and it’s from June which means I’m mistaken about when I listened to it, but who cares? Tina talks about having a hand thrown mini-pie plate perfect for making a fruit crisp. The entire podcast is less than 10 minutes. The story is good and the fruit crisp recipe is a keeper, too.

Upon hearing Tina talk about her special pie plate I thought: I have got to tell the world about my dual pie plate that Kira gave me. You can use it to make two kinds of pie at the same time.

And while I’m here, let me pimp Tina’s new book, Copperhead that came out today. The timing of this post is a coincidence. Yesterday I realized I had that photo of my pie plate sitting on my desktop forever and it was time to do something about it. Here’s an interview where Tina talks about the book.

Meanwhile, in addition to Toasted Cake I did a bunch of searching and loaded a whole variety of podcasts onto my phone to listen to on the trip I took this month. I had an interview with Joss Whedon and an interview with George Saunders. I had a WGA panel on the best written tv shows. I had all kinds of stuff.

It worked great on the trip down except I didn’t know I had to do something to get them to play one after the other so I kept having to fiddle with my phone to get to the next podcast while I was driving. I know, safe.

I still have about 500 pages of tutorials relating to technology that I’m very sincerely trying to get to but then, I’ve got a lot of things I’m trying to get to. The minute I finish this I’m running to the backyard to do about 4 days worth of gardening in 2 hours.

When I got to Orleans, I plugged my phone into my laptop, thinking I’d delete what I already listened to and then set up a playlist with the podcasts I had left.

And my laptop was kind enough to sync up my phone with the podcasts on the laptop which were the 30 Escapepod stories that I decided I didn’t want to listen to and a bunch of Toasted Cakes I already listened to. All my cool interviews went away. I don’t have my laptop and desktop systems synced right now because I haven’t gotten to that tutorial yet. However, one of the stories was Flowing Shapes by my Clarion West classmate Rajan Khanna who just sold his first novel.

So it all worked out.

Posted in Clarion West, doing it wrong | Tagged | 2 Comments

I’m Home

Posted on October 7, 2013 by Pamela

I’m not sure what entity is responsible for how slow my dashboard for this site is right now but someone needs to get off their butt and feed the hamsters to make the wheels turn faster.

It’s taken me at least 10 minutes to get this far and as per my entire life I’m in a big hurry to get somewhere else. So I’m not going to preview this or anything. Typos, missing words, mis-sized photos be damned.

I had an amazing wonderful weekend. Gorgeous weather. Almost all my favorite people in the whole world. Amazing scenery. Terrific food. Great adventures.

I had anticipated being furloughed this week but turns out, we are not. Not complaining! I’m glad to be working. Busy week ahead.

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Brief and Wondrous

Posted on October 3, 2013 by Pamela

Remember the 150 bulbs from last year? Notice anything different for this year? Yeah, cheap bastards. I still haven’t put them in the ground yet. Maybe next weekend.

Anyway, I need to take a day off and devote it just to computery things like organizing photos and documents and writing a decent update for this website. I have saved URLs and more photos and notes and stuff that is so out of date that I’m going to post it anyway and you can relive 2013 through a single blog post.

If the government shut down continues for too much longer I may get my wish.

I had grand plans for this morning but I only had 60 pages left in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz and I could not stop reading. I kept thinking: you don’t have time to finish this. But I’d read a few more pages, look at the clock and read a few more pages. This won the Pulitzer in 2008 and because I’m in a rush I’m only going to say that it’s really, really good. Read it.

I am rushing out the door and headed to California to see my family. I’ll be offline for a few days which will look exactly when I’m not offline since I’m now barely posting once a week and I pretty much only tweet on Timbers match days. I did clean out a closet and boxes in the garage last week so it’s not like I’m sitting around painting my toenails all day. I’ve even behind on TV and am already planning on bailing on the new shows I was going to check out.

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Customer Service Wins

Posted on September 23, 2013 by Pamela

(BTW – the issues with the Good Ship Clusterfukatonia seem to be resolved as of today.)

I’ve had these photos sitting in here in a draft post forever. I was in Reno over a month ago.

I’m disappointed with the iPhone camera. I have a about 500 blurry Timbers photos from this season.

I worked through some of my new Photoshop stuff on these. Where is the miracle filter? I guess I’m not on that lesson yet.

My one story from Reno is when I went through security only one of my shoes came out of the scanner.

I said, “Oh no, I lost a shoe.”

The TSA lady said, “Yep. We’re keeping the other one.”

After a split second I said, “Well, I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.”

And the TSA lady cracked up. She said sometimes that joke doesn’t go over big. She gave me my shoe back.

Boy, when summer finished, it didn’t mess around. It was cold and gray and drippy today. I decided to swap over to the flannel sheets and turned my closet over so the sweaters are in the front. It might be too early for that but if I jinxed us in favor of some more warm days, I’m okay with that.

Remember my Internet pants? I returned them all. First, I went to the mall store to ask the best way to handle it and my helper was terrific. She told me it was better to send them back and repurchase online because in the store they would treat it as a return, but then I’d have to pay the prices in the store and lose any discounts from my online order. She also told me that they DID change the cut of the pants and many of their customers were having trouble with the fit.

She recommended that I wear them around the house a bit because they would give and I’d probably find them more comfortable. She was half-right. They did give a bit but I think the style is a bit more snug than I am comfortable with so I returned the whole lot and am going into the cooler season with the same ancient old clothes.

Pendleton has a new updated cut of pants that I haven’t tried yet. Cross your fingers.

Speaking good customer service, I had several amazing customer service experiences with Comcast. Isn’t that an anomaly? Didn’t Comcast get voted the worst company ever by some website?

I had to call for a work related thing and they helped me out. Then I decided to trade my DVR in.

Our cable bill recently went up by $30. I looked in my file and realized I’ve had my DVR for 6 years which I believe means I’ve paid for it 2x. I figured they owed me a new one so I ripped mine out of the wall and went to the new store in Vancouver. It was not terrible.

I still had to wait about 45 minutes but they gave me a new shiny one and a remote that isn’t caked with 6 years worth of ook. I installed it and of course it didn’t work. He told me I might have to call to get it activated so I called and they needed a ton of not-handy information like the serial number which at that point was on the back of the DVR and shoved back in entertainment center. Also there were at least 4 potential serial numbers and all with teeny tiny writing. AARP needs to rally Congress to make a law that nothing can be in teeny tiny writing.

The woman I talked to was overseas and completely charming. When I whooped yay, it’s working, she said she was happy that I was happy.

But then later I had more problems and I had to call again and that person was helpful, too. And she was funny. I’d write out the whole story but, snore!

I keep meaning to write shorter posts more often but can’t seem to manage.

Posted in doing it wrong | 3 Comments

Harvest

Posted on September 15, 2013 by Pamela

Yummy fruit fly salad dressing

Have you ever seen those tips for getting rid of fruit flies? Apple cider vinegar with a drop of dish soap. Totally works. When I got home yesterday there were tons of flies. 24 hours later, dead flies.

I spend most of this week visiting Kira in Atlanta.

In May, Alaska Airlines announced a direct flight to ATL and if you bought your ticket right then for certain dates, it was only $330 including all the taxes and extras. We went for it. All flights should be direct.

This is today’s haul – my biggest harvest to date. Hard not to think it might be the best harvest of the season. This week the forecast is all mild drizzly weather.

Our ideal time together involves some combination of writing, cooking, baking, eating, and watching girly movies. We were successful at all these things. Also, for some reason, I can sleep at Kira’s house better than any other place I know. I sleep through the night. I sleep in. It’s magical.

Here you can see the tomato split. About a week ago we had a deluge. I think it was about 1.5 inches of rain in 2 days. Tomatoes don’t like that.

Alaska Airlines is a sponsor of the Timbers. If you wear your jersey to the airport you get priority boarding.

When the gate agent started calling for early seating I stood near the podium to make sure she saw me.

It also had this butt rot. I had to compost about 1/3 of today’s harvest due to butt rot.

She called out all the gold people and platinum people and 1000 star people and preferred high flying people. And Timbers fans. I got to get on the plane first!

This is sort-of a joke because I think wanting to get on the plane first is stupid. Especially first class where you sit there with everyone’s butt in your face for a half hour.

But I enjoyed it this time.

Posted in garden | 2 Comments

On the Good Ship Clusterfukatonia

Posted on September 9, 2013 by Pamela

Early morning on Bainbridge Island ferry. Perfect way to start the day in Seattle.
 
Remember the story about the copier at the office?

We’re finally getting our new copier (different company) and it would be difficult to convey how stupid it’s been. I keep insisting to Colleague that we’re being punked.
 
I don’t have the heart to write the whole story so I’ll just do the today part.
 
We’ve been going back and forth on the delivery of our machine and we made arrangements to have it delivered today because it was one of the only days this month that both of would be in the office.
 
The delivery guy came (4.5 hours earlier than the time we’d scheduled) with the machine and when we asked if he was taking the old one he said he could, but then we wouldn’t have a working copier.
 
Because he was just delivering the machine.

They did not bring in anyone to install it, we were never informed it was a two step process and we had no information when it would be installed.
 
Naturally we were upset.
 

 
Remodeled King Street Station which looks amazing.

That’s always how it’s done, the guy said.
 
No, that’s not always how it’s done, I told him, when they installed the first machine they had a tech here.

He went off on a long story about how few techs they have and it probably has to do with our sales rep because the company merged with some other companies and on and on with a earful of excuses.
 
That shouldn’t be our problem, I said.
 
It’s not your problem, he said,
 
Colleague and I traded aghast looks at this blockhead so completely missing the point.
 
Colleague said while we weren’t blaming him individually we were really frustrated with the incompetence of his company.
 
All companies are incompetent, he told us.
 
No, I am not making that up. He said that.
 
If your company response to complaints of incompetence is that all companies are incompetent: you are the grand prize winner of You’re Doing It Wrong.
 
Meanwhile, our sales rep, who is burning center of our ire, had arranged to come in and train us on the machine. Colleague called to rage at him about when the hell is this tech going to be coming?
 
He’ll call you, our rep said. Then he asked if we still wanted him to come by to train us on the machine.

I’m zooming out of town tomorrow for a visit with Kira. Colleague is stuck with the problem for now.

Posted in doing it wrong | Tagged | 1 Comment

Lady Fancy Pants

Posted on September 2, 2013 by Pamela

I have started an online tutorial for an Adobe product at least a half dozen times. This weekend I thought I’d do the Photoshop one and finish it this time. 15 hours. If I did 3 hours a day (I took the day off THU as well) I could do the whole thing.

I am delusional because I worked at it very hard every day and I finished one hour a day. And my poor brain is full. I had to stop to try the various things and I repeated several sections. I enjoyed the work I did but I am a slow learner.

I’m really going to try to finish the entire course this time, ideally before the next version of the software comes out. Wish me luck.

In other news, I thought I’d try to buy some pants online again and met with total failure. I buy almost everything from the same store. I went through everything in my closet and tried it all on, made sure I still like how it fit, checked the size. They were all the same size.

It didn’t feel overly optimistic that I could buy from the website and be successful.

Nope. Three different styles. None fit. Now I’m not sure if I’m going to take the stuff to the store and see if I can find stuff that fits or just send it all back and wear my same old clothes until they disintegrate.

There was a post card in the box from the CEO thanking me for my loyalty and inviting me to share any thoughts I had with her via email. I was not delusional here. I knew there was no way this lady was responding to customer emails but I sent a note anyway begging for consistency in sizing.

The autoresponder thanked me and let me know she forwarded my email to the customer service team. How much you want to bet I get boilerplate instructions on how to return the clothes that didn’t fit.

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