You're Doing It Wrong

A few years ago I decided to round up all the little dishes and boxes of coins we have around here and roll them and take them to the bank.

The bank said: you don’t have to roll coin.

They emptied out all my rolls, brought me the empty papers and then put my coins in a machine.

We have accumulated a lot of coins again so I threw them in a bag so I could take them to the bank. I told colleague what I was up to and he, too, brought in a giant bag of coins. More than that even.

We merrily took off for the bank with giant heavy bags of coins. When we arrived, the bank said: we were the last [of this] bank in the country to have coin machines but we got rid of them a couple of weeks ago. You can roll them and bring them back.

We brought our heavy bags of money to lunch and then carried them back to the office and rolled our coin. We ran out and I went back to the bank and announced we needed more rolling papers.

In the end colleague turned in $124 and we had $71.

I posted this photo on Instagram.

This has been my desk lamp since my Dad bought it for me in approximately 1978. I’ve moved it to every place I’ve ever lived since I left home. I still used it up until the day that it died last month.

I have never loved it. The shade part heats up really hot so unless it’s winter, you bake your face while you use it. It will burn your skin if you accidentally touch it when it’s been on for more than fifteen seconds.

That is a long time to keep a lamp you don’t like. And it never occurred to me to find a replacement.

It’s like there are two kinds of people in this world: People who want what they like and people who will deal with whatever they have as long as it works okay.

I was at Target and found an equally unpleasing desk lamp for $7 and I almost threw it in the cart. Except if the new one lasts as long as the old one, I’ll have it until I die. I should pick something I like.

(But also that’s a joke because nothing is made to last long anymore.)

Now I’m thinking of trying to fix it. There’s got to be a youtube tutorial on lamp fixing I could use.

Longtime readers might recall numerous trips where my attempts to listen to podcasts in the car have failed.

I tried a different podcasting app and yesterday I loaded up my podcasts and got them in the order I wanted to listen. When I got in the car, the gadget I use to play my phone through the car stereo was gone. Remember when my car was broken into last month?

They must have taken that gadget — who knows why — and since I never use it except on long car trips I didn’t notice until yesterday. I could just listen through the iPhone but I decided to listen to CDs instead.

This is one of our neighbors who often has “great” free stuff.

I’ve always been a morning shower person and I’m trying to convert to an evening shower person. I catch the bus so early and I can’t bear to wake up any earlier than I already do. When we had freezing temperatures I didn’t want to stand out there waiting for the bus with wet hair. I’ve got a lot of hair and getting it thoroughly dry is a project. But I’m not used to taking showers at night so I’ll be settling down to watch my show and think: oh shit, I need to bathe.

I don’t notice the absence of bird noise until the birds return. That one nice day we had last weekend they were so loud outside my window. Not a complaint!

I am on my way to California for a week to visit the folks. They have wifi now so I’m not as cut-off as I used to be when I go down there but I like to minimize my online time when I’m there. Which now that I type that I realize is ridiculous since I’m rarely here anyway.

I’m trying a new podcasting app for this trip and trying to set it up right now while also packing and organizing to me gone for a week. I’m sure this will go well.

Bob has finals next week. I have good timing on this.

Have I done a romance novel progress update lately? My due date to my beta readers was in a week. I guess it was last weekend I was staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night with my heart racing, panicked because I’ve been struggling with this one and the closer I got to the deadline the more freaked out I was getting because it has not come together and my brain has been too worn out for the task. I asked myself: When did this stop being fun?

When I got up the next morning I emailed the editor and rescheduled for July. WHEW. So if you’re anxious to find out what happens next, you have to wait until August.

Best place to look for me while I’m gone is Instagram.

Look what I saw when we pulled up in the driveway this afternoon!!!

My sweetie has his 60th birthday tomorrow.

Today, to celebrate, we had an amazing day.

We started with breakfast at what I called a “secret restaurant” which was a very traditional Polish restaurant in the Polish Library of Portland. It was *amazing*. Small room. Few tables. Not many people there that weren’t Polish. What a great meal.

From there we went to the Expo Center to the Lego convention. It was awesome. I love seeing high nerd culture in its environment. I love seeing kids and adults having fun doing something together. This was a big room filled with people having a great time.

I will admit I rolled my eyes a little when Bob said this was what he wanted to do, but it’s his day. We should do what he wants. It was fun.

From there we went downtown. For any readers who don’t live around here, today was something like the 8th day since OCTOBER with lots of sunshine. Bob found some clothes and it was fun just walking around.

I can’t remember what all I planted but this is a future tulip. Maybe I just planted tulips. The daffodils aren’t impressive but looks like lots of tulips coming in.

On the way home our Max train was in an accident. It was a thrill. I guess the truck tried to rush in front or maybe was trying to make a yielding left when the train had the right of way. The train braked — you could tell something was wrong. Then a black truck with a sorry looking back end bounced back into the intersection and took off.

Since we hit a vehicle the train had to stop and do a report.

Fire trucks came! Fireman came on the train. They asked if anyone was hurt. We all laughed. They asked if there was a fire or anything they could do.

The Transit Police came and told us they had to take a report and asked if anyone had a good view of the guy.

They told us the train was not damaged and we would be on our way soon.

I told Bob if you’re going to be in a train accident, that was the way to do it.

Great day!! When I got home I worked in the yard for the first time since October. The sunshine was heavenly. One of my neighbors came over and said, “Excuse me, do you know what that giant glowing thing in the sky is?”

I had terrible insomnia last night so this is going to have to do it.

I haven’t even taken any new pictures lately. My folks celebrated 56 years yesterday. “That’s longer than I’ve been alive,” I told them. This photo is about 1982, I think. Sorry my Mom looks like she’s in pain. This is the house I grew up in and I looked it up on Zillow a couple of weeks ago and the yard looked mostly the same and there was this entry table that my Dad made that was still there. The orange carpet is gone.

I read this story online about this kid who had a streaming music service and somehow someone had hacked it and was messing with his playlists. I didn’t understand most of what his problem was about but he ended up changing his password so the person couldn’t make changes to the app, but the person was still logged in with their device.

In order to get this person to log out he started picking terrible music and you know what he picked? Bon Jovi.

That was the best he could do?

It’s a good thing I wasn’t the hacker.

I am fried, fried, fried. Writing book #2 is killing me. I’m going to call this the first draft. It’s spectacularly terrible and if I die tomorrow you can’t look at it. I changed course a couple of times in the middle and things need to be fixed. I am a very linear thinker/writer and it drives me nuts when things in the beginning don’t match the end.

I’ve got a month to whip it into shape for the beta readers. Wish me luck.