You're Doing It Wrong

Looking upriver. Klamath River at Dolans Bar.

Last night I dreamed I was visiting this pie making class.

I was telling the pie makers about this recipe I wanted to try. It’s a pumpkin pie but you put chunks of dark chocolate onto the pie crust before you pour the filling in. I have this recipe in real life and, for reasons unknown, I still haven’t tried it.

In the dream one of the pie makers made a pumpkin pie with two handfuls of candy corn.

When I woke up I kinda wanted to look online and see if there was such a recipe. But I’m not sure how I would feel if there was.

My only other comment of the day: is the “tips to a flat belly” ad financing the Internet? Almost every single site I read has these ads for the secrets to a flat belly. I clicked on it and right now it’s on sale, for a limited time (heh heh) for $40. I guess it’s a book and secrets? I spent about 20 years of my life as a professional dieter and I can say with a great deal of confidence FOR FREE that it’s how much you eat vs. how active you are. There is no magical formula because believe me, I would have found it. I guess I should keep my thoughts to myself because otherwise who is going to pay for the Internet?

I finally fixed my template so I can have blog titles. One thing off my list.

I still want to fix the archives so there isn’t a list a half-mile long but one thing at a time.

The major announcement for now is that the books page has been spruced up and rearranged.

My most recent books posts are here.

If you use a feed reader you can try one of these:

https://www.pamrentz.com/pampage/bks/atom.xml

https://www.pamrentz.com/pampage/bks/rss.xml

I’m still goofing around with templates and stuff and hopefully will not screw it up beyond recognition.

Did you know there is such a thing as irregular jelly beans? And that you can buy them for a screaming discount? Me either. Until my husband surprised me earlier this week.

Welcome Back and Let’s Light Your Hair On Fire

What a crazy week. Actually it wasn’t really crazy just much busier than I was prepared for and toss in just enough of a head-cold to make sleeping difficult and you’ve got a week that pretty much wiped out all the rest and relaxation that I’d stockpiled from December. The headcold thing wasn’t too nasty as far as winter colds go although I have an awesome nose-callus now.

Last night I got into bed at 8:30 to read and after spending 5 minutes reading the same sentence I put the book away and turned out the light and passed out immediately. Bob said he could tell I was really tired because I left his iPod and book sitting on the bed and normally I move all that stuff before I go to sleep. I slept like the dead and feel human again today.

We saw Christopher Hitchens on Tuesday night. Here’s Bob’s review. I didn’t know much about him before the lecture and he’s my new hero. I’m tempted to say I’m going to run out and read his latest book. But I’m about five years backlogged on reading. My goal for 2010 is to add fewer books than I read. (Ha! Wish me luck.)

Remember my problem with my plane ticket? Part I, Part II. So where we last left it was the airline said not to worry about it.

I haven’t been able to get our seat assignments online so I called the Airline and figured while I had them on the phone maybe I should clarify the name on the ticket problem seeing as how there was a security issue last month. [Long rant about this omitted.]

After being transferred around a few times I get a very nice man who is confident that this is a ginormous problem. I told him the airline had said there was no problem. And he said, sure, the airline doesn’t care. But TSA cares. He said that people who showed up with tickets where there wasn’t a space between their first and middle names were having problems. [At least people on the actual no fly list are getting through — See omitted long rant above.]

What do I do?

Well, you can cancel your ticket and buy a new one.

And kiss my screaming good deal good-bye.

Or I can ask them to reissue the ticket and pay a fee.

I’m going on the trip. I need ticket. So I guess I’ll suck up. I made a mistake. I’ll pay $75 to fix it.

$250. He says it’s $250 dollars to reissue the ticket.

Would you think poorly of me if I said that I practically cried?

He transferred me over to yet another person who was happy to help me with my problem. She was super nice and sane sounding like the person who lives next door and has no problem bringing in your garbage can when you’re on vacation.

And after all that she didn’t charge me. Whew! I would have hugged her and cleaned her bathrooms if that was an option. Also I can’t call them LameAss Airlines any more.

So airline ticket fixed. Seat assignments procured. The plane tickets are to Amsterdam but the bulk of the trip is visiting family in Germany. Previous trips: 1997, 2000, 40th bday 03 and xmas 2004.

Also the guys came back and took another run at the leaking problem and that seems to be fixed.

So mood at the moment: cautious optimism.

Mushrooming: Mom said this is called witch’s butter. I call it cheezewiz.

I like the idea of video games (is that what they’re called?) but I’ve always resisted the urge because I already have a tough time doing all the things I want to do. I don’t need any new distractions.

Co-worker bought an Xbox so I went to his house to play Left4Dead2.

I thought it was super fun but I was terrible at it. Since I’ve never played games like that I have zero coordination with the controls. I’d always be shooting my feet or the other characters. They kept yelling at me to stop shooting them. The rest of the time I was running into the walls and it took me about 2 hours to figure out that I can jump over things.

Even when I understood what I was supposed to do by the time I figured out how to work the controls I was already being dragged away by zombies. After awhile that got frustrating.

Also after each level when we got the statistics it would always say: Character X killed 987 zombies. Character Y killed 642 zombies. Pam killed 11 zombies.

You’re probably thinking I’m exaggerating to make it funnier but sadly, I’m not. I guess just pointing the gun in the general direction of the zombies and shooting like crazy doesn’t accomplish much and my teammates were doing all the hard labor. Plus sometimes I just stood behind them on purpose. Why use up all my ammo or get splashed by the noxious whatever?

In sum, I thought it was fun but I’m not running out to buy my own.

More Mushrooms.

One of those consumer studies groups brought us a survey. If I had fully understood what was involved, I never would have done it. She was talking about TV shows and I desperately wanted to pimp all our nerd television so I agreed to participate.

She asked a bunch of questions at the house. Like she wanted to know all the live television I watched in the last week. I don’t watch live television. Ever. I DVR everything or use OnDemand. She also wanted to know what radio I listen to and I only listen when I drive and I only drive about 100 miles a week. And I have 5 stations programmed in and I punch buttons until I hear a song I like. I don’t know the call numbers or letters.

Then she left this booklet with about 2000 questions about everything I buy and brands and then other questions that are about opinions or attitudes.

I’m a terrible consumer because I don’t know what anything I buy is called. I also don’t buy enough new things. Everything was “how many TVs have you bought in the last 12 months?” We haven’t bought a TV in the last 12 years. We are the only people left in the western world who don’t have big giant flat TVs.

The booklet took hours to complete (they pay you $60 and I earned it). It was kind of interesting to see the attitude questions because they had a lot to do with brands and owning things and caring what other people think. But overall, by page 75 of 155 I was sick of the whole thing.

My main point is that when you look at survey results you have to think about the kind of person who is willing to deal with the survey. I generally don’t participate in polls or surveys because I think the data is manipulated and it is a waste of my time.

At least I got to pimp my nerd TV.

Klamath River

Before you do anything else, check out Bob’s post on Hanukkah Night at the Blazers.

For New Years Even 1999 we had friends in town and went to see String Cheese Incident at the convention center in Portland. I thought I did a webpage about it but I’m not finding it now and can’t find any scanned images from the night. I’m too lazy to go through my old school prints and set up the scanner. That probably says a lot about the last 10 years right there.

As I recall we had a fantastic time.

Last night Bob went out and I watched an hour of Dollhouse then went to bed early. It was perfect. Well, Dollhouse is terrible but it’s almost over so I’m going to stick it out until the end.

I used to make all these grand plans for how I was going to magically transform my life in the New Year. Now I try to re-commit to the things I want to accomplish as I go along. This seems to work much better.

The last few years I’ve resolved to gain 30 pounds, stay up late, drink hard liquor, smoke unfiltered cigarettes and hang out with unsavory characters. I haven’t succeeded at that either.

Today I have a super busy day. I’m going for a massage then to a party that consist of tables filled with traditional southern foods. Then I’m going to learn how to kill zombies. Don’t wait up for me.

Holiday newsletter is as close to complete as it’s going to get.

You can find it here: PamNewsletter v19

It includes a holiday story that you can find here: The Pie Maker’s Curse.

I’m going to go offline for a few days enjoying the holidays. Back soon.

Bob and I got to go to a Christmas party (work related) in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho a couple of nights ago. We flew from Portland to Spokane and the Resort picked us up and brought us to town.

Lake Coeur d’Alene

We arrived starving. We threw our bags down and set off for a little walking tour.

Fifth and Sherman

One of our super powers is finding great little restaurants in new places we visit and we did great on this visit. We found Scratch where we had a huge lunch and rank it in our top ten restaurant meals of all time. Even factoring in that we didn’t eat much all day until then. Smoked trout appetizer with some sort of cheesy-heaven dip, smoked lamb French dip sandwiches and signature salad with spinach, brie, candied cashews and pepper bacon.

We did a bit more walking around and then returned to our room for a quick nap before the big event of the evening.

The boat trip though the Christmas lights to the North Pole. I liked the sea monster. I also liked the Grinch but we need to wait for Bob’s photos.

We saw both Mr. and Mrs. Claus who greeted all the kids by name. Then they made it snow and then lit the largest living Christmas Tree in the world. They had a ton more lights but by then my hands were cold and I didn’t want to take them out of my pockets for more photos.

The music was a super dramatic version of Carol of the Bells.

We cruised back to the hotel and had a fabulous dinner which I could only eat about 7 bites of because of the giant meal earlier. Remember when I was young and could eat two pizzas, a loaf of bread with peanut butter, a carton of ice cream and a package of Oreo cookies? Sometimes I miss those days.

Not really.

We have a quiet weekend at home to get geared up for the rest of the holidays.