You're Doing It Wrong

Did you read that Americans only clean their refrigerators once or twice a year?

If they meant, take out the crisper and cheese drawer and shelves and scrub out everything with water and baking soda, then yeah I only do that once or twice a year.

But they mean throw out all the old ooky stuff that no one ate.

I do that every week. There is nothing past date in my refrigerator, ever. There is no container in the back with an unidentified substance covered with mold.

The food lives in there. Why wouldn’t you want it sparkling clean?

Right now it’s almost empty and I scrubbed it out this evening. You could do heart surgery in there.

* * *

Our dryer has been broken for a long time. If there’s any time on the dial and the dryer door is closed then it would be on. So you had to turn it off using the dial.

Today I threw some stuff in and turned the dial and it didn’t work. I was opening and closing the door and turning the dial around and around. I thought it was broken.

Finally I hit the “push to start” button and it worked. So now broken is fixed.

* * *

I’m all packed. I’ve been working on traveling with smaller bags. On this trip I’m not even taking a backpack in addition to my main bag. Just one bag small enough to carry-on. Eventually I’m going to get it so that all I travel with is my ID and a ziploc bag with a single tube of moisturizer.

Scan of crappy 1990 photo of me and my sister at Berlin Wall

My computer has been acting like a jerk lately. I did extensive research (3 seconds of googling) and apparently have a kernel panic problem. Am in the process of providing my kernel with some sedatives. Relax and be cool, kernel.

I read that Blogger isn’t pulling the plug on FTP until May 1st now. Yay! One more thing I can put off for later.

Scan of crappy 1990 photo of me and Tante Hilla on the bank of the Elbe River.

I hate this part of trip preparation. The part where everything is still all chaotic and unconfirmed. Travel arrangements that I thought were solid have fallen apart and solving the problem is a huge time suck. I’m anxious and leaving myself notes everywhere.

Bob bought me a new bag and I’m doing a trial run on packing but then half the stuff I wanted to take was dirty so now I have laundry in. What I really want to do is crawl in bed and try to finish this paperback that I foolishly started last week thinking I could finish it quickly. I don’t want to take a half read book on the trip but I hate to leave it sitting here for two weeks.

I already picked my books for the trip. I’m only taking 2. Both have been sitting around here forever. A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe, 787pp. mass market paperback and A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin, 807 pp. mass market. The Martin one is part of a series and it would probably be smarter to bring the second one of these but I’m not doing it that way.

Bathroom prices in what was then Yugoslavia but is now Slovenia.

I was going to do a whole week of old trip photos and travel notebook snippets but I think I’d better use my time for getting organized.

The photos in this post are from a 1990 trip to celebrate my cousin’s wedding. I don’t think I have a travel notebook from that trip. Hard to believe but if I have one I don’t know where it is.

I found my notebook from my 1997 trip which was a one year anniversary trip with my sweetheart and I’m going to include an excerpt below.

At this point, I’m looking forward to the actual trip part, when you get on the plane and everything is in motion. You can’t worry about it any more.

Meanwhile, I need to try to fix a hotel reservation.

Menu in Postojna. We went to these caves. I remember thinking that Yugoslavia must not have tort law because the caves were a giant lawsuit waiting to happen. There was this roller coaster-like ride through the caves and I swear if you sat up too much your head would have been taken off.

Excerpt from 1997 travel journal. I chose a boatface related item.

Backstory: we took a tour from Hamburg, Germany to a resort island called Sylt and then took a ferry to Denmark. (Aug 21, 1997, as in original)

We get on the ferry and it’s like this cramped packed dining room — hot with people smoking and eating meat. Is that a recipe for vomit or what?

I don’t know how to find things and walk around the boat which can I bitch? Why the f#@!!ing hell are there no maps. I’ve yet to see a map of our ferry route — not like I’m driving — but I’d like to know. Anyway. I’ve found a great seat on the top level outside. Fresh air, cool breeze, view of the wake. I am happy.

It is unfortunately very gray. Sky and water meet in a blue-gray blur at the horizon. I can’t see what would not doubt be a fabulous view of Denmark. … I can now glimpse a tiny stretch of dune. [note: am I writing this on the ferry out on the deck?] A narrow bit of sand and shrubs.

We go to Sonderberg-captirol, I think, and then to another ferry and then 2 hrs. home. Then I hope that’s the last of the boats on this trip.

There are some great photos of this trip but they’re downstairs somewhere and I can’t go dig around right now.

Today I visited the food cart pod up at PSU. Everything I know about food carts I learned at Food Carts Portland. They are my go-to for lunch planning.

I’ve only eaten two meatloaf sandwiches in my life. The first one I said should have its own national holiday.

This one was even better. This one should be President of the United Nations. Are meatloaf sandwiches an exceptional food? Or have I just been lucky?

It was from Buddha Bites. Doesn’t that sound like a place that should serve free-range soy bean pie? I know. In fact, after I ordered it I thought maybe it was going to be soy-loaf thing.

I bought a brownie, too, but I was too full so I brought it home. I also couldn’t finish my sandwich and there were only two bites left but I brought them home. I’m going to arm-wrestle Bob for them later.

To all the people who live in places that aren’t conducive to food cart culture: I am very sorry for your loss.

This guy showed up on Monday but I got home too late to take a photo and yesterday it was raining sideways. The first daffodil is always my favorite.

There are two buses I can take between the park-n-ride to downtown Portland.

One is direct and one stops in downtown Vancouver before it goes over the river.

In the morning I almost always take the longer ride. It’s always less crowded and because of the schedule arrives in Portland only a few minutes after the non-stop bus.

In the afternoon, I usually take the non-stop bus. Also because of the schedule.

However, I’ve learned to take whichever bus shows up first. No matter what. Because there have been too many times that I thought the next bus would arrive any minute and it did not.

I’ve never been here but I love the front. Barfly makes it sound good, if I were 20 years younger.

Yesterday, my regular bus was late. In fact, for 15 minutes not one single bus stopped at my stop. Even the Portland buses that come every few minutes. I thought we were part of some sort-of experiment in human behavior. I was ready to start lighting things on fire.

Also it was raining sideways.

My bus showed up 20 minutes late. The bus is supposed to run every 15 minutes during rush hour.

It was completely packed to the rafters. I said, “Fork it, I’m not getting on this bus.”

And the next bus came 30 seconds later. It only had 5 people on it.

When the door opened I said, “I KNEW IT!”

I’m not a huge fan of the Winter Olympics. Once you’ve seen a few people strap themselves to something and fling themselves down a mountain, you’ve seen practically the whole thing.

I’ve tried to get into the spirit of things and I sat down with a sandwich over the weekend and fired up the tube just in time to see commercials and two guys talking. Later I tried again and it was commercials and some athlete who was such a weenie I wanted to punch him in the face. I’m not sure which sport but I think he did something with a snowboard. I tried again the next day and it was commercials and then this lady who went and saw polar bears.

I don’t remember polar bear watching being an Olympic sport.

Then last night I wanted to watch the figure skating because I like that event and I’m a recently converted Johnny Weir fan. No one is more surprised than I am.

My DVR wouldn’t tape Lost and Olympics at the same time. I thought those gadgets were supposed to be able to do two at once but my machine is old and crotchety and is doing a weird popping thing which means it’s going to break the minute I need it to record something I’ll die without. Time for another trip to my favorite to swap it out again.

Of course I wasn’t going to skip Lost so that got DVRd and I sat in front of the TV and watched more commercials and hoped for skating. I finally got a magazine to read during the commercials. The whole time I tried I saw one skater and the TV said I could watch more skating in 27 minutes and I said screw it and went to bed. This morning I found Johnny’s short program online. The Internet wins again.

This is at the elementary school near our house. I was trying to get the camera as high as I could. You can see the shadows of my arms

Bob started sabbatical in January and doesn’t go back to teaching until September.

I almost wrote “doesn’t go back to work” until September but it’s not like he’s sitting around the couch ordering me to bring him another sandwich.

He’s got a bunch of projects he’s working on and he’s taking classes. And he’s also way more involved in domestic contributions. My favorite is that he’s doing most of the laundry.

During the first couple of weeks while we were transitioning to the new routine, I never thought I’d make it.

He was there when I left. He was there when I got home. He spent most of the day without a lot of contact with other people. The minute I hit the door he wanted to tell me all! about! his! day!

We had a couple of major shouting matches where I said I need to put down my purse and change into my sweatpants and enjoy 15 minutes of peace and quiet when I get home from work. And he would be all defensive about just wanting to connect with me when I got home.

Now that we’re settled in, I like having him on sabbatical. He’s way more relaxed and doing all kinds of things that feed his hungry mind. Last week he went to MacWorld in San Francisco for a few days. Normally I look forward to a few days with the house to myself but not this time.

I always give Bob a hard time because he has no concept of how much I eat. Whenever he makes my plate I say: think of how much you think I would eat and then cut it in half. And he still hands me plates mounded with pasta or giant blobs of meat and sauce. Most of the time I insist on fixing my own plate.

I guess I have no concept about how much I eat either because I had all these menu plans. I thawed out some tomato soup that I made last summer. And I had a few potatoes and leeks that were in their last days so I made a pot of potato leek soup. And I a few other plans but it took me the entire time to finish the potato leek soup.

This morning we divided into A and B Teams and worked on trip planning. He did trains. I did accommodations. I’m finally feeling like we’re really going somewhere.

This is part two to the photo I posted here. I don’t love boats. There are times when I will get on a boat without drama but generally I’d rather just not get on a boat. We have a whole series of photos of me on boats doing my boatface which I will have to post someday. Boatface is an uphappy face.

My father grew-up in a huge port city and he does love boats. And his family. I don’t think we ever did anything in our visits to Hamburg that didn’t include a harbor cruise, a ferry trip, a river taxi or whathaveyouonaboat.

The photo above is from a ferry we took to an island called Föhr. It was windy and cold and August. We went to visit my cousin who was at a summer camp. My note on the back of the photo says: “Notice the windswept seas.”

Here’s a quote from the travel journal [as in original]:

There was a nice beach and lots of little beach seats. Unfortunatly it was very, very cold with and icey wind blowing. We had a nice lunch and we walked around through the shops. This island is like Denmark – kinda. There are windmills and some of the roofs of the houses are thatched with this straw stuff.
The ferry journey home was very rough and it rained all afternoon.

I uploaded a bunch of photos earlier this week thinking I’d have them when I posted and then I never had enough time to post them all.

Here’s my other main story:

I started my personal webpage in 1996. Back in those days you got a website from your Internet provider. My url was: www.teleport.com/~prentz. And you had to learn some basic HTML and FTP your files where you were instructed to.

You can see early versions on archive.org.

Try this.

I started with blogger in 2001 and got my own domain in there somewhere.

A couple weeks ago I got a message from blogger that they weren’t supporting FTP any more.

I spent at least half a day thinking: “I didn’t even know there were other choices.”

I re-read the stuff a million times and I think I get it know and I did some homework and I think what’s going to happen is that I’m going to find a new host and change platforms. I’m not asking for technical advice, I’m covered.

This is something I’ve thought about for the past several years but to paraphrase Kenman I never wanted to spend a day-and-a-half staring at my computer and saying, “Shit.”

I might possibly get to it this weekend although I have a chore stack that I intend to tackle. I get Monday off and I think I’m going to make it a not writing day and prioritize all these other things that I’ve been putting off.

So, if you try to find my site and it’s a hopeless mess. That’s what’s going on.

North Sea in Summer 78. I don’t know why I’m putting this photo with this post.

Back in the eighties I had a job in Hollywood at a film camera rental place. Every morning, I think at about 10am, a food truck would come.

Maria, the receptionist, would announce the arrival of the truck but for some reason, the big boss didn’t want her to make the broadcast over the system intercom. She had to go to each individual extension.

My desk was near hers and every morning I’d get to hear it. Maria was (is?) an actress and she’d have to say it about 30 times often with great enthusiasm:

The truck is here.
THE TRUCK IS HERE.
The TRUCK is here.
The truck IS here.
The truck IS HEEEEE-RRRREEEEE.

And so forth. I’ve been out of touch with her for eons but if I had her phone number I’d call her right now and holler: The truck is here.

The truck food was pretty good. One of my favorites was the quesadilla which had a cilantro-y salsa folded inside and was the perfect combination of outer crunch and inside melty cheese. I don’t think I ate any other food from the truck.

One of my Clarion West instructors Connie Willis signs her latest book for me.

Since the beginning of the year I’ve been trying to get this story revised and ready to submit. It’s a long one and has given me an extra amount of headache since the very first draft.

That one was set aside for a little rest and I started preparing a different story for submitting. This one was a lot more fun which was a refreshing surprise. I thought maybe I was always going to find revisions agonizing.

My point is that I’ve been putting almost all of my free time into these stories and I’m starting to feel a bit frazzled on everything else. As soon I get them both submitted I’m taking a day to do maintenance which includes house things, yard work, errands and probably the taxes, also the millions of photos and duplicates I have in various unlabled folders and the 50 URLs I have saved in a folder in my desktop to look at later. Why do I do this to myself?

I can’t help it. I saved them, now I have to look.

I did finally get a few more of those old photos scanned and will share later this week.