You're Doing It Wrong

So, my desktop computer died earlier this week. Well I don’t know for sure that it’s dead. It’s now in the hands of male people with minimal social skills so I’m not sure where we’re at right now. I’m about 99% backed up and I have a laptop so it’s not like I’m not covered. But I only use my laptop for travel. Word processing and basic Internet stuff. My desktop is all set up for my regular stuff. Like making my photos look pretty and FTPing them to Screamhost.

I knew the desktop was not feeling well and buying new computers is on our list, just not for a month or two. I decided that this weekend I’d make sure that I had all my desktop stuff on my laptop to limp along until we got the new desktop systems. But the thing died before I could do that.

I have photos to go with this but I can’t remember how my FTP works and don’t want to spend even 3 minutes figuring it out right now. And I don’t want these photos on Flickr. Argh. Everything is stupid.

I’m still coughing. I looked up my souvenir cough from last spring and apparently the cold lasts a week and then the cough two weeks. I thought I was almost finished but i guess I have another week of this crap.

It was sunny today but otherwise I’m grumpy. The good news is I did a bunch of garden stuff.

I didn’t document it because it was too depressing but my tomato sproutlets had serious declines in health. I thought it was because they were cold and the sun never shines but I think they may have been over-watered, too. I was going to put them all in the ground anyway. I figured I could yank them and get bigger, taller, healthier stuff at the Farmer’s Market later.

One of them broke when I was planting it and the other I knocked all the leaves off putting the walls-of-water on it. My sweetheart took his Mom to the garden show this weekend and brought me three healthy tomatoes so I put those in. I also made a sort of greenhouse thing using a tip from the Internet and wrapped saranwrap around my tomato cage. So I have four plants in the ground. I planted a bunch of seeds. My usual: peas, beets, turnips, greens and carrots. Some of the stuff was planted two weeks ago so I have some sprouts.

My tulips mostly look doody. I had a nice yard full of daffodils. More bulbs this fall. I’ve been weeding and cleaning up like crazy. My next big project is to rig up a better trellis for my berries.

Busy week. Three home Timbers games in seven days. It’s like the best week ever. Except for the coughing.

My computer is acting like a butt and every time I open Photoshop it freaks out so I’m not able to get to the photo I want at the moment.

And now I’ve wasted most of my posting time wrestling with the computer so another fast update. Maybe I should just stop announcing that and accept that it’s my posting style.

The cough is hanging on. I tried to exercise but every time I tried to do something I doubled over coughing so I finally gave up. I also bought another gallon of cough syrup. I didn’t understand what a big jug I was buying but I am well stocked if this thing lasts awhile. The box says “new improved taste” and I’m here to tell you that is NOT true. It tastes like burned cherry diet satan’s diaper.

One of the photos on my camera is of my broken office chair. One day I was sitting in my office chair and I leaned forward and one of the wheels shattered. This was in January and I thought, “Okay, I have eaten a lot of Christmas cookies but I can’t possibly have crossed some threshold that makes me heavy enough to break an office chair.”

I thought you just went to the office supply store and said, “I need a new wheel,” and they’d open a drawer and hand you one.

No, that’s not how it works. I had to do some homework. Turns out there are different kinds of wheels and there is no universal system to make it easy to figure out what kind you need.

Here are actual instructions from a website I found:

If you have a caliper, measure the Grip Ring Stem in the section below the ring toward the caster body using your caliper. If it measures .437 + or – you have a 7/16″ diameter. If it measures .375 + or – you have a 3/8″ diameter.

I didn’t have a caliper.

I used one method which involved a ruler and me squinting so hard I sprained my eyes. This gave me precisely one of the measurements on their chart. Then I used the second method to check. The second method involved a piece of tape. That gave me precisely a different measurement on their chart.

Another part involved a calculation using pi. I’m not afraid of pi but who ever thought you’d end up using that to order office supplies?

I finally decided I’d just guess and if I got the wrong wheel I’d order a different one. Oh, they only sell them in 5-packs.

I finally found a 5-pack that includes all the different stems so I ordered that one. We’ll see how I do. Maybe I can put up a sign in the elevator and make extra money selling the other wheels.

This is co-worker’s yellow pad collection. I think that represents his career since I’ve known him because I found pads in there from 2000 and I started working with him in 1999. I thought there were three boxes but two is still pretty impressive.

I got the crud. I guess all the standing out in the rain with cold feet screaming at Timbers finally caught up with me. It’s lucky we don’t have a home game this weekend but I still wish we did.

I now must make amends to all the people I have mocked for being babies about having a cold. It’s been awhile since I had a bad cold. I’ve just had the modest, fun kind.

This thing has laid me out. I spent yesterday traveling between the couch and the bed, whining and using a ridiculous number of tissues. I’m apparently assigned a certain number of coughs per hour, let’s say 10,000. If I do anything to suppress that then at the very end of the hour I have to do all 10,000 at once. Then I have to use a pair of tongs to stuff my lungs back where they belong. Last night I woke up to do that every hour. My sweetheart is sleeping downstairs.

I’ve bathed and eaten a bowl of canned peaches and feel ready for either more TV or more reading. Sitting in front of the computer is not feeling good.

I’m rating kind-of high on the anxiety scale at the moment. Just can’t seem to reel myself back in.

I’m not even going to get started on the details.

The photo above shows the cheap, crappy attachments that came with the last hair dryer I bought.

My old one had been falling apart for awhile. Finally the two halves of plastic separated. I thought about duct taping it back together but then I thought, this is a device that shoots hot air and I aim it at my head.

So I ran out and got a new one.

It was a choice of about 6 models all about the same price.

The first time I used it I tried that diffuser attachment and it kept falling off and hurt when it hit me in the head. (Which I guess technically isn’t the dryer’s fault.)

I don’t know why I don’t just throw them away. But I have them in the drawer, all handy just in case I want to try them again.

One time I had some lotion on my hands when I used it and wiped off the writing that says high-low-off. I already can’t remember what the top one said.

Maybe they should save the 16 cents they used to make the crappy attachments and use some sort of label that lasts.

Isn’t this pencil mislabeled?

Doesn’t self-sharpening mean that it sharpens itself? It doesn’t. I left it sitting there on the counter and when I came back it hadn’t moved. That’s a lame crop because you can hardly tell there’s a pencil sharpener on top.

But it’s hard to think of a better name. “Sharpener-in-One Pencil.” That’s pretty unwieldy.

Yesterday co-worker and I went to the supply store to look for pens. We don’t like any of our pens. Well, we sort-of like one kind but it seems like it goes bad 3 days after you start using it and they’re like $15 a box so we expect a little more.

Remember when you used to be able to try out the pens? They would be in little bins and there would be a pad of paper sitting there. I remember spending a lot of time in college testing all the pens in the campus bookstore and I’m really not sure why. What was I doing that was so important that I needed the perfect pen?

This store didn’t have a substantial pen testing area but it’s also downtown so they probably have problems with shop-lifting.

We picked four different kinds to try for a total of thirty bucks worth of pens. Co-worker only liked one. I thought they were all okay. I haven’t picked a favorite yet.

I also bought a new pencil sharpener (for my non self-sharpening pencils) for home. I’ll take a photo when I have it installed. I have to put it up in the shop. It’s the kind like you had in the back of your second grade classroom where you crank the little handle. Our old one was damaged when that giant shelf covered with junk fell and clipped it on the way down. I never did finish fixing that shelf.

Bob and I used to walk on the nature trail all the time. (If you click on the link, that’s not a great photo. It’s more nature-y than that.)

We went over the weekend to see if we could find trillium and hit the jackpot. Lots of pretty flowers.

Still too cold and muddy to make yard work enjoyable. Weeds love the rain. Every time I go out there I want to pass out from anxiety about how weedy it is.

Last week when we were walking around downtown, some kids gave us a handful of snack bars as a promotion.

I opened the banana one and said, “Ew, this is nasty. Try it.”

Co-worker said, “Uh, no?” but I convinced him to try a bite. He agreed it was nasty.

I hate to throw away food with all the panhandlers downtown. When I suggested we give the rest away co-worker said, “That would be mean.”