Random Wrap-Up

Posted on March 4, 2012 by Pamela

We had another one of those stretches where the newspeople could not stop talking about snow. And breaking in with the Storm! Alert! and day after day nothing happened (at least not where I live and work). I was completely dressed for work and out the door before I even noticed this happened last week. It melted right away.

I have a folder where I keep all my Important Papers That Need Action along with my List To Rule Them All and I haven’t the slightest idea where it is. I’m hoping it’s on my desk when I get to the office tomorrow or I’m in big trouble.

Remember the hippie dippies that I ordered tooth powder from but they changed my order around and changed into a different company and I didn’t know so I canceled my credit card because I thought it was fraud? Well, before I realized what happened I contacted them asking what was going on with my order. This was about 5 weeks ago.

*Yesterday* I got an email from them letting me know that they received my inquiry and were hoping to get me an answer in the next 7-10 business days.

Now that’s customer service.

Remember two years ago when I forgot to renew my car tags and had to do it at the last minute? I actually did almost the same thing last year but apparently was too ashamed to blog about it because I don’t see the story in the archives.

I just got the notice and *I swear* I am not going to wait until the last minute this time. I wrote myself a giant note. But, of course, the paperwork is in the missing Important Papers That Need Action file. I’m getting dingy-er all the time. I’m not even 50 yet. It’s hard to be positive about the future.

Second pre-season exhibition game with Chivas USA. There was a third game today but I gave my ticket to my sweetheart which of course I will never hold over his head in future bargaining.

Last night I was reading this travel article that had a bunch of helpful “tips.” One of them was, if you see a lower airfare after you buy a ticket, call the airline and request a refund and buy the cheaper ticket. Please let me know in what Universe this tip works in because I thought the entire airline industry was designed to bleed money from us without mercy.

In the same magazine there was an ad for a fake diamond ring where the woman is quoted as saying she wished she’d seen the ad before she got her real diamond because the fake one was more clear and sparkly. I might buy that ring because clear and sparkly is what I live for.

Last tidbit: the NYT food section has been terrible lately. I haven’t cut out an article in months. A couple weeks ago there was a 1200 word article about how people in their 40’s would like to use granny carts because they’re useful but they don’t want to feel old.

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Build Your Tether

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Pamela

Apparently I was so excited about our first pre-season game at home, I forgot how to use my camera. When I went to download, this was the only photo. I know I took more than that.

But not many. Because it was cold. Above freezing, but just barely. Add that to my list of crazy love for the Timbers. Sitting outside wearing 200 layers and jumping around like the Pillsbury Doughboy in 30-something degrees. 16,500 people came out for a pre-season game. We played San Jose and see that #8? That’s Wondo. He has played for the US National team and he’s Kiowa and my hero.

But I love the Timbers more!

My favorite website is the Awl. About twice a year I go through a thing where I pare down all my Internet activity but the Awl always makes the cut.

Earlier this week they posted this video: http://www.theawl.com/2012/02/bon-iver-towers which they referred to as the new trailer for The Hobbit. And since I’m 1000 years old and don’t know the first thing about Bon Iver. I didn’t get the joke and I very happily clicked the link thinking: OOH! New Hobbit trailer.

Then I watched it unfold and I was thinking: huh, so is that a Hobbit? Oh. But he’s wearing shoes. And he has a fish net? That he’s throwing into his truck?

It’s sad how long it took me to get that it *wasn’t* a new Hobbit trailer. And I’m a regular of the website. D’oh!

The music made me want to stick forks in my ears.

Remember when all the music was Mötlëy Crüë and Dëf Lëppärd? Don’t you wish that would come back?

Meanwhile, Adrienne K took on the video in a whole different context today.

Apparently this video is a tribute to Native American preservation land.

Never heard of Native American preservation land?

No one has. Because there’s no such thing. And “a tribute” meaning what? Adrienne does a great job of breaking it all down.

Meanwhile, I’m going to clean my ears out with some Ratt.

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2000! 2000! 2000!

Posted on February 25, 2012 by Pamela

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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The River at the Center of the World

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Pamela

Klamath River, February 2012

Did I mention I was sneaking off to California for an extra long weekend to hang out with my family?

It was brilliant. Every bit of it was great except for the long drive home. And even that wasn’t so bad because the weather was decent.

No time for more comprehensive update until this weekend.

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Random Tidbits

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Pamela

I’m not kidding. Today I finished the last piece of Halloween candy in my stash. (Still working on Xmas) and I went to the store and Cadbury Eggs were out. It was a chocolate miracle.
– – –
I remember when I was a girl scout you actually had to go out and sell the cookies. You had to take a little paper form and go door-to-door in your dumb uniform and ask people if they wanted to buy any Girl Scout cookies. People would say no. And if they said yes you would have to collect the money and put in the order and then later deliver the cookies. I never sold any because going door-to-door to sell things is awful and I hated it. Last week I watched co-worker pull up a website and punch in his zipcode and then a list of stores came up with the times that the cookies would be available for sale out front. And he was in a panic whether he’d be able to get there before they sold all the good ones.
– – –
A long time ago I bought some bath sheets that I really liked. They were the perfect size with a nubby texture. I still have some of them although they’re getting frayed and see-through in the middle. A year or so ago I went and bought some new bath sheets and I guess America decided they wanted their bath sheets bigger or may it was just the brand but these things are like drying off with a bedspread. They are too big to be pleasant to use. I have to keep wrangling the ends so they don’t touch the floor. And it hangs all droopy on the rack. And the texture is sorta smooth in a way that would be nice for a bathrobe but worthless for a towel. I feel like I want to throw my towels away and start all over.
– – –
We’ve got new next door neighbors. Again. I saw them moving in and I felt bad because I don’t even know them but I wanted to dislike them. I saw a dog. I worked it out. The house has been a rental for 9 years and these are the 6th tenants. Bob remembers a couple that I don’t so possibly 7th tenants. The third in 14 months. So far they seem to have only two normal sized cars. They go to work at normal times. The dog hasn’t barked or bothered anyone. They haven’t had a whole group of people over that never leave. These may be the neighbors we’ve dreamed of.

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I’ll Stop the World and Melt With You

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Pamela

Last night I spent 20 minutes online trying to figure out how to update Verizon with my new credit card. I had to go through multiple security hoops again and again. I couldn’t find what I was supposed to do and it just kept kicking me back where I’d already been. I gave up.

I went to the Verizon store today and almost cried when she pointed me to the computer kiosk which she said was the only place I could do this. Seriously Verizon, how tough is it supposed to be for people to pay you?

She ran me through the same multiple security hoops. I entered my password at least 4 times and my fresh unfrauded credit card 4 times. She couldn’t get it to work either.

She was madly texting her the powers-that-be about what a pain-in-the-ass this was (or texting her Valentine’s date about how badly she couldn’t wait for this day to be over) and finally told me to try again at home and if it didn’t work to just call and do it over the phone.

I finally had to close my auto-bill pay and then reopen with the new card. Because if I were in charge, that’s exactly the way I would set it up.

Then I tried to update my Paypal and it would let me add the new card but not delete the old card. You know, the one that’s canceled. (Thanks for nothing hippiedippies.) I’m dreading updating anything else. Credit cards expire every few years, shouldn’t this be a simple process?

Finally, I made my sweetheart truffles today and I could not shape them to save my life. They were too cold and square and as I squeezed them in my hands they just melted on me. It was (surprisingly) not a satisfying experience. They taste great but I wish they were prettier. Luckily, he still loves me.

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Use Your Eyes Birds

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Pamela

At the end of last summer I found a sunflower filled with seeds that hadn’t been torn apart by the squirrels and birds and I stuck it in the shop to deal with later. My thought was that I’d have my very own sunflower seeds to snack on.

Like many things that I stick in the shop to deal with later, I never got around to dealing with this.

At the beginning of January when I was still fresh and optimistic about getting things done, I brought it in the house and looked for a YouTube tutorial that would tell me the easiest way to get the seeds out. The tutorial told me that when the sunflower was ready, I could just shake all the seeds out.

I wrapped the sunflower in an old bedsheet and shook it around like crazy and no seeds came out.

That was enough of that project. I threw the sunflower back out in the garden and figured the birds and squirrels would find it.

That was over a month ago.

No birds or squirrels ever paid any attention to it until this weekend when I saw all these creatures rioting over it and chasing each other off and taking turns dragging it around the yard.

So animals don’t notice food sitting around until another animal notices it? Which animal noticed it first? I wanted to go out and yell at them that they could have been gorging on sunflower seeds a month ago if they’d been paying attention.

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Unpack Your Adjectives

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Pamela

Lake Vancouver

Yesterday afternoon Bob came home and said: I’m a verb. I’m always in motion.

I said: I’m a noun. I like to sit still.

Bob said very pointedly: You’re an adjective because of the way you do things.

It is nice to have that settled.

Remember the pumpkins? The smallest two I used for Thanksgiving. I made a pie and put the rest in the freezer.

The big one has been sitting on the counter and I could tell it was getting a little hinky and was going to have to live out its days in the compost if I didn’t do something with it stat.

Last weekend I processed it and made a pie. (this one) and I got a bar of dark chocolate and chopped it up and sprinkled on my blind-baked crust. Before I poured the pumpkin in I used a spatula to spread the melty chocolate around. It was extremely delicious. If you haven’t before, try this.

I also made pumpkin chili and I had a recipe for pumpkin cornbread but at that point if I had to do any more dishes I was going to punch someone in the teeth so I skipped that one.

I still had plenty of pumpkin and I didn’t want to freeze it since I already have lots in the freezer. So I made Bob’s Red Mill 10 grain cereal and stirred a bunch into that. It was amazing. We added blueberries from our freezer and finished the whole pot.

I still had pumpkin leftover so I made a pot of lentil and coconut soup (substituting wuss peppers for the peppers in the recipe because really hot peppers frighten me) and stirring in the last of the … pumpkin! Also super delicious.

So the lesson is, you can be very creative with pureed pumpkin.

I have a ton of notes here for posts I want to write but I’m on a huge writing roll. I haven’t missed a day since October. So priorities in other places. Plus, things are going to be busy for the next few weeks and then guess what starts March 12, 2012? Did you guess Timbers? You win!

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I Have Never Eaten A Buffalo Wing

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Pamela

I had lunch at a place outside my normal circle and walked by this building. I feel like I’ve never seen it before.

Remember the fraudulent charge I found on my credit card last week? The one I found when I was looking up something I’d ordered that had never shown up? But I knew it wasn’t the same thing because it was the wrong amount and the wrong company?

Guess what?

I was wrong.

Apparently the hippie dippie company that sells my special tooth powder sold its brand to some “Leaders in Bad Customer Service” company. The LIBCS company couldn’t fill what I ordered, so they just filled what they wanted and charged me for that and charged my card to LIBCS which I’ve never heard of, all without any communication with me whatsoever.

Meanwhile the new credit cards arrived and I have to update approximately 1000 companies with my new number so they can load it onto laptop computers that their CEOs can leave on the front seats of rental cars to get stolen so I can do this all over again.

My packing slip is a sheet of paper that looks like it came out of a free printer and it doesn’t have the total on it. I’m afraid to do the math myself because I’m sure I got screwed.

The good part is that I ordered 7 bottles of tooth powder so I don’t have to worry about buying more for at least 2 years.

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The Miracle Dress

Posted on January 28, 2012 by Pamela

I can’t remember if I ever wrote about this before. This is the magic dress. I wish I could take a better picture but you get the idea.

This dress is at least 10 years old but it still looks great. No snags or pilling. Hasn’t faded a bit. Hasn’t stretched out all ugly.

It is a comfortable material that hangs just right. It can be worn in winter with wool tights and a sweater. It can be worn in summer with sandals. It can be dressed up with nice shoes and a fancy necklace.

It can be balled up at the bottom of the suitcase and then shook out and will look fine.

It goes in the washer and dryer.

Someone should find out what this material is and makes it in 30 colors and come up with some different dress styles and and then sit back and watch the money fly in. If you are a person who wears dresses, believe me, you want this.

I got it from Coldwater Creek. I was talking about it to someone and she said she had a similar dress from The Territory Ahead.

I wrote the above post yesterday and it was ready to go I just had bunch of things going in the kitchen so I didn’t get to it. Then we had this thing with our power that I don’t want to get into but it was dark in all the corners and I turned off the computer to deal with later. That problem is patched up for now and we’re keeping an eye on it.

Meanwhile, I found a strange charge on our credit card which a problem still in process. I found it yesterday and the only reason I did was because I actually did order something over 2 weeks ago and still haven’t seen it. I wanted to check and see if they charged me before I inquired about what the hold up was. They did not. But I found the fraudulent charge – so I guess lucky I spotted it before it turned into a hot tub or plane tickets to Peru. I know I feel lucky.

I waited to ask Bob about it just in case it was something he bought because it makes sense that my husband would buy something from a sports nutrition company in Florida. (What’s the deal with Florida? Last time we had credit card fraud the purchases were from companies in Florida.) It wouldn’t make sense at all. In fact, he uses a different card for his personal stuff. I’m ready to take care of it today and, of course, everything is closed. The credit card place has a phone thing you can use to block your card so hopefully that’s real and not just something to trick people like me into not being worked into an anxious frazzle.

Last time this happened was was about 7 years ago and the credit card place made me file a police report which I had to go pick up in person. What a fabulous use of taxpayer resources. I hope they have a new system now.

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