2001 Archive

2001 Archive – 47,422 words.

January 1st 2001

Well, happy new year. All the idiots in our development are hell-bent to blow up everything they can get their hands onto. I really don’t like this holiday for this reason.

WS: “I hate new year’s eve. With the clear revelation that I state too strongly that which I hate, I can still clearly state that I hate new year’s eve. This day more than any other makes me feel the passing of years and the relentless drudgery of time. I don’t know that a new year’s eve has ever been enjoyable and every year I get to look forward to a new misadventure in relationship deconstruction. I can only hope that this, being the last new year’s eve of the purist’s millennium will be the end of an extraordinarily shitty track record. Welcome to 2001 – it’s about fuckin’ time.”

End of line.

January 2nd 2001

What I did on my vacation: I woke up. The house was freezing. It was 6 AM and our heater is no longer working. It is 60 degrees inside. Our one-year new-home warranty expired 5 months ago. Everything that we can do has been done and still no heat. The heater is dead. A technician will be out sometime this afternoon. This is going to be expensive.

Welcome to home ownership and the exact reason I didn’t want to buy a house.

But while we are sitting here freezing our asses, let’s enjoy an email I just received from a neighbor of mine. It was written immediately following the festive new year’s eve explosions and firefighting the other night in response to several ear shattering booms and near-fatal collisions with flying, flaming objects. After watching several fireworks zoom within a foot of my office window and land still burning on my roof, I found this amusing:

TO THE EDITORS OF THE COLOMBIAN
(our local newspaper)

“Dear Editor and fellow Clark County neighbors,

Over the past few days, with all the fireworks going off at all hours of the night, I have become concerned that we don’t have enough holidays where we can take to our yards and streets and make noise. Surely there must have been citizens that were ill, tired, or who had newborn babies to take care of, that were not able to let the whole neighborhood know how happy they were that the new year was coming. I have some new holiday ideas, considering (as most of you do) that your neighbors won’t mind one bit:

Paul Revere Day: An hour before midnight on April 18, everyone take to the streets wearing tri-corner hats and riding broomstick horses, banging pots and pans and shouting “The British are Coming! The British are Coming!”

National “Wake the Trees” Day: In an effort to proactively jumpstart Spring (because Puxatawney Phil just isn’t cutting it anymore), on the evening of February 2, everyone find your favorite tree, park your car and your family in front of it and at the stroke of midnight, start honking your horns and twirling your noisemakers and shouting “WAKE UP!!! WAAAAKE UUUUUUP!!!”

National Car Alarm Safety Night: We are all concerned that our auto alarms won’t work when we need them to. Therefore during the night of September 5, in the early morning hours when car thefts occur the most, gather your families around, bounce on your car bumpers and set your own car alarms off, again and again and again! The more you do it, the safer your neighbors will feel, knowing that you are out there showing support for the well-being of their automobiles.

And remember folks, just because these holidays occur on just one day each, that doesn’t mean you can’t start celebrating three days before! After all, these are national holidays, and your neighbors should support the fact that you are entitled to disturb as many people as you dang well please.”

Name included for the editors. Removed for this journal entry.

Too bad the sarcasm will go over most people’s heads. Too bad most people will think the writer is a stick-in-the-mud. Trust me. This guy is anything BUT a stick-in-the-mud.

Reading: The Last Dive by Bernie Chowdhury
Books out on loan: The Perfect Storm

January 4th 2001

This past Monday night, we watched my latest DVD purchase, the Collector’s Edition of Fast Times at Ridgemont High. It was a HUGE disappointment because it did not include all the extra scenes that can be found in most television versions.

Seems there are 4 or 5 versions of Fast Times at Ridgemont High floating around. Channels WTBS, WGN, USA, and TNT all have their own version and the released VHS and DVD versions do not, for some reason, include these extra scenes. On the other hand, the television versions exclude scenes like the “How to learn blow-job technique using an ordinary carrot”, the infamous “You DICK!” scene and various blurred graffiti and centerfold pics. Back when Amy Heckerling and Cameron Crowe directed and created Fast Times at Ridgemont High, they purposely filmed extra footage with the intent of supplying various big-name television stations with a different version of the movie and in the coming years, this produced twice the revenue. It also pissed off hardcore Fast Times fans because no one version contains ALL the scenes. It is unbelievable but true. There is no complete version of Fast Times at Ridgemont High available on the planet for purchase.

So why am I bantering on about this? Because I feel that when someone sees something labeled as “The Collector’s Edition” there should be something collectible about it, like all the chopped out scenes. Especially if they are asking for a bit more than the regular DVD price. In case you haven’t caught on by now, DON’T BUY THE COLLECTOR’S EDITION OF FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH and expect to get the whole movie because you won’t. WS and I watched it and by the end, had counted 10 completely deleted scenes. A quick search on the Internet verified what was missing and added 4 more deleted scenes. In short, I feel ripped off and went to bed fairly angry.

Tuesday morning, I had all but forgotten about it until CNN reported that Ray Walston, the guy who played Mr. Hand in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, had died at age 86 of natural causes. His death brought it all back, the bad DVD purchase the day before..and the good: Seeing Fast Times way back at a movie theatre in AZ and countless times on TV since. Fast Times reunions will never be the same and frankly, I don’t see the point. I think I’m finally over my Fast Times at Ridgemont High addiction thanks in part to a dead guy.

Aloha, Mr. Hand. I’ll miss you.

January 7th 2001

Week 2 of my vacation is now upon me. Since I never seem to relax on my days off or any previous vacation time I’ve taken, I’m forcing myself to relax and decompress from work this time around. I think I just learn to like this whole relaxing thing. Oh sure, I got a ton of things accomplished in my first week, none of which was on my list of things to do, but I still feel pretty good about it. I’m sure if I really worked hard, I’d get everything done in 2 days. But that wouldn’t be relaxing, would it?

Earlier last week we discovered a place in Portland called Classic Antiques. This huge place is crammed with so much antique and reproduction furniture, artwork and stuff in general, it made our eyes ache and our heads feel like they wanted to explode. Serious system overload. And their prices are outrageously cheap. It turns out that Classic Antique buys up whole estate and yard sales, auction houses and bankrupt cases in Europe and ships entire households back here to sell. Someone else’s loss is our gain and all that American commerce thing. So we went back yesterday and bought a 96-inch long 1940′s Belgium buffet table for our kitchen. It’ll finally give us the storage we don’t have and look great too. It’s mahogany (probably endangered or something) and bird’s eye maple and has neo-classical/empire styling. The exciting thing about it, now that I’ve bored you all to tears, is that WS found it and liked it. I’m not sure what to think of WS anymore. He seems to be liking a lot of things lately and I’m not sure why that is happening.

We also dropped by Restoration Hardware and paid for our first piece of furniture to sit on. Won’t get it for a couple of weeks. It’s both a leather ottoman and the sacrificial lamb. If the cats rip it up, we won’t be buying anymore furniture until they all die off. If they don’t touch it, and most cats hate leather, we just might work our fingers to the bone this year to afford the leather chairs that go with the ottoman. Then we’ll finally have something to sit on. What will the world be coming to?

Reading: Don’t Jump! The Northwest Winter Blues Survival Guide by Novella Capenter and Traci Vogel.
Also: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Dealing with Difficult Employees by Robert Bacal. Who knows? It may help.
Books out on loan: The Perfect Storm

January 10th 2001

I’m working on getting back into the normal non-vacation schedule deal since my vacation ends this coming Saturday. I’ve gone through a hundred work-related emails, started the next QA report for January and get my work eval today over at KiMiE’s. You might see me there in an hour. In a small way, I’m actually looking forward to going back to work, but only because it looks like a number of co-workers aren’t doing their jobs very well and things are very, very behind.

Santa came through for us yesterday, most likely because we were good in that we paid off our tax bill 2 years early and because we, or more accurately, I, was whiny about not getting each other anything. Yes, we did get a DVD player just before christmas, but only because what we were using to view DVDs died. It wouldn’t have mattered if it had died during christmas week or in the middle of July, we would have finally bought a dedicated DVD player. So that didn’t really count. It’s like running out of coffee. Do you wait for christmas to buy another bag or can? Most of us don’t.

WS received new speakers for the living room and a subwoofer. He’s in heaven and I must admit, the T-Rex scenes in Jurassic Park sound spectacular at 9 am. He also got his first pair of 501 levis (he’s never been able to fit into them before). After 5 washings and dryings, they fit him like a glove. No more FatMan pants for him.
I got something I’ve wanted since seeing the movie “Excalibur” in 1982 – a sword. Not exactly sharp enough to whack off any arms or heads, but it’s pretty cool hefting around nonetheless. Most women want children or diamonds. I wanted a sword. Before that, I wanted a BBS. Before that, I wanted a motorcycle. I am so weird.

January 11th 2001

I just rented and watched “The Talented Mr. Ripley”. And I don’t like how it made me feel. I feel…soiled somehow. I feel like I’m living a fake life and not really meant to be where I am. I was born a poor black child in reality and now I live in a fairly nice house surrounded with nice things with a nice husband and holding a nice job. I think I’m supposed to be living under a bridge with a shopping cart filled with wads of newspapers as my only friends. I have an ex-husband who told me I’d be living on the street someday, eating lettuce and food out of trash cans. Of course, that was immediately after I found out about him and my sister. Nope, I don’t like this feeling.

Tomorrow, I’ll be watching Bicentennial Man, Mission To Mars, The World is Not Enough, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It frightens me a little to think how I might feel after that group.

Of course it could all be related to needing to get some sleep. The cats in the neighborhood have been fighting outside our bedroom window for the past 6 mornings between 4 and 6 am. I can never get back to sleep after a cat fight.

January 12th 2001

My vacation is winding down. I can’t remember when I ever took an entire 2 weeks off and enjoyed it. I didn’t even catch a cold or get sick during vacation and that’s a first. I feel like I’ve been gone a long time from work. That’s good, right?

There are bird-bits all over both sides of our backyard. The cat across the street has been eating the bird visitors again, on top of fighting with a neighbor cat every morning on our back porch. This morning was no exception. They are horrible to listen to, especially since the cat he fights with has no claws and has a nervous disorder that causes her to shake uncontrollably. We either have to listen to it for a half an hour or get up, go out there and chase them both away. Hopefully, the house construction that is supposed to begin soon behind us will put an end to it and we’ll be awaken by earthmoving equipment and the Spanish polka music of the drywallers.

We’ll be losing our view of Mt. St. Helens from our downstairs windows when construction begins in the empty lot behind us but nothing short of the mountain blowing up the rest of the way will take away our view from upstairs. The joys of living on a slight hill. Another good thing is the ability to look down on your neighbors. Unfortunately, this includes the ability to see inside bathrooms and trust me, it’s not a sight worth seeing.

We ran into one of the real estate women for our development the other night while shopping and she told us a little about our soon-to-be new neighbors. Couple in their late 30′s – early 40′s with teenagers (1 or 2 – she wasn’t sure) and the father wears an eye patch. (Arrrggh, matey, don’t fuck with me parrot!) I hope they plan on putting up a fence or don’t mind looking at our rock retaining wall (and stay OFF it). I also hope they won’t mind the mudslides that living on the downside of a hill can cause. But that’s what homeowner’s insurance is for.

Watching: Mission to Mars (Dumb and Stupid), Bicentennial Man (It’s amazing that it was neither stupid or cliché’) and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (I am almost certain I will not like this movie).
Reading: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Dealing with Difficult Employees by Robert Bacal. Who knows? It may help.
Books out on loan: The Perfect Storm

January 14th 2001

Back to work for me feeling refreshed. 300+ internal emails to go through and a vastly improved email QA system to work with. What fun! Until I get caught up on work issues, I’ll be taking a break from journal writing.

Reading: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Dealing with Difficult Employees by Robert Bacal.
Books out on loan: The Perfect Storm

January 17th 2001

I think the camera is dead. This evening, around 9:30, I was using Nicholas, the laptop downstairs, looking for something on the Internet. The camera, also known as Nevada Bob, is connected to Nicholas because Nicholas is the only computer in the house still running Windows 98. Nevada Bob, being very old and crotchety, wants nothing to do with progress or Windows 2000 and would love nothing more than to remain firmly entrenched within the arms of old technology.

While net surfing, I checked out the online camera image. It sucked! Thinking that Nevada Bob just needed bumped or nudged, in an appropriate place mind you, I touched him. And burnt the shit outta my fingers. Either Bob was doing some net surfing of his own for the past few days and discovered some porn sites or he was in trouble. At that point, I was worried about him eventually catching the wood shelf on fire and frying Nicholas and felt I had no choice. With my unfried hand, I shut him down and pulled the plug. Think of it as my electrical power contribution to all those Californians without enough power to keep Disneyland up and running day after day. We should all be this generous.

Over the past 5 months, I’ve babied him, coddled him, whispered sweet nothings into his socket and tenderly swapped his eyeball free of dust and lint. I’ve screamed at him, dropped him onto my foot once and nearly took him out into the field and pumped 6 rounds of hollow-point ammunition into him. (THAT I’m saving for Merlin, my EX-scanner.)

Nevada Bob has responded by teasing me, working beautifully one day, refusing to have anything to do with anything the next. On and on, day after day, it’s been a pain in the butt yet a labor of love. I like web cams. I like looking at other people’s images on web cams. I don’t like looking at my image on a web cam but that may just be me. Nevada Bob taught me a lot. He taught me to buy a REAL web cam next time around. And I will. But not for a few months. This is my third piece of electronic equipment to fail in the last 7 months and dammit, I’m taking it a bit personal now. Look for a new camera in a few months.

January 20th 2001

I just heard that the American Red Cross will no longer accept blood donations from anyone who has lived in Western Europe for 6 months or longer because of Mad Cow disease. Yep, the disease has crossed over from bovine to human. The really scary part is that cases of human Mad Cow disease are bursting up all over England and Europe and the countries most affected have done everything possible to keep this news from leaking out. They predict widespread outbreaks of the disease. There is no cure and it isn’t pretty. But the good thing is no one here has confirmed if the disease is here in the U.S. C’mon now. Everyone knows it’s here since we imported English and French cattle for a long, long time up until just a year or so ago. It’s just a matter of time. All those Jack burgers and rare filet mignons are going to come back to haunt me.

For the record, the moment I am diagnosed with Mad Cow disease, I’m flying to a city that has both a Whataburger and a Der Wienerschnitzel and ordering up a few 1/2 pound burgers and a half a dozen chili dogs.

I better stop salivating over the mention of food. It’s 2 am and there’s nothing in the house to eat other than miso soup and some wasabi peanuts <-- don't ask.
But talking about food some more, but in a more positive way, January 28th, immediately following the Super Bowl will be the first episode of the second Survivor series and yes, I'll be there. It's the only reality TV show I will watch. I just think it sucks less.

What does some stupid survivor show have to do with food? Well, if you recall or even if you don't, the participants of the Survivor game get very little to eat for 39 days. 3 cups of white rice a day and whatever "snacks" they can either round up or win in various challenges. I've thought about this all winter and I've decided to play along, meaning I'll be limiting myself to 3 cups of white rice a day and whatever "snacks" are the same equivalent to what the Survivor group will eat. No, I won't be eating grubs, beetles or lizards but the Internet is an amazing thing. A person can find the calorie, protein and carbohydrate content of nearly anything on the planet, edible or not. I'll do my best to stick with something around the same calorie count for 39 fun-filled days and nights.

As for the physical aspect, the Survivor group will be roughing it in the hot Australian desert, sweating it out, learning to get along with others just long enough to win. I'll be going to the gym for several hours 4-5 times a week, sweating to death, learning to not think about food and hoping not to bite everyone's head off for 39 days. I also work a full time job, something the contestants don't have to worry about. To prepare myself, I've been going to the gym 4-5 days a week and although I don't look anywhere near as buff as most of the 2nd episode contestants do, I think I'll be able to hang in there okay.

My prize in this will be shedding at between 20 to 30 pounds of body fat that I have to lose before any serious muscle can be built back on my frame. It's something I would have to do anyway and I could use a bit of discipline after the holidays.

Visiting: Survivor Sucks.com These guys are a riot.
Reading: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Dealing with Difficult Employees by Robert Bacal.
Books out on loan: The Perfect Storm

January 21st 2001

Nothing new today. No wait. We did finally get something to sit on today. It’s a leather ottoman, that sacrificial lamb I was babbling on about a couple of weeks ago. If the cats rip it up, we’ll know not to spend $3000 for the matching chairs or any other upholstered furniture for the house until all the cats die off. So far, after 9 hours in the house, not a scratch on it. Maybe all that lecturing I did last week about how they may find themselves in a future life as a cat-leather ottoman did some good.

That eliminates one item on our items-back-ordered-from-holiday-shopping list. Still on the list: A Christmas Carol (1958 version) on DVD, 2 framed food prints for the kitchen, 1 bottle of 1997 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon from Sterling Winery (one of the best years ever for Cabernets and rated 96 out of a 100 by Wine Enthusiast in case you’re into all that snobby wine critic stuff), and something else that I can’t remember right now. I’ll think of it later.

In two weeks, the flooring in our house should be on it’s way to being finished once and for all. The entire first week of February has been dedicated to finishing up (read: FIXING) all the problems and screw-ups the flooring people did while putting in our pergo-like floor back when the house was being built in 1999. The new materials have been ordered and delivered here at the house. It has been sitting here since before christmas becoming acclimated to the temperature changes over the course of 6 weeks (as is required by all wood flooring products) and personally, I just want them to fix the damn stuff and get it over with. We’ve looked at chips, cracks, dents, scrapes and discoloration for over a year and a half and being as we paid 13K for the stuff, it’s about time it was finished and finished the right way this time. It’s one of the other reasons we don’t own any furniture. No sense bringing any in furniture only to be told to remove it so they can do the job they were supposed to do 19 months ago. Thank you, Carpet USA and New Traditions, for putting our lives on hold for nearly 2 years.

January 25th 2001

Nothing much going on today. WS is home from work taking a sick day due to exhaustion. I think he is having a MS-related thing, personally. He’s downstairs now, watching Spinal Tap. Why do guys find this movie funny? It bores me to tears. Yes, I find it stupid, but not enough to be considered funny.

We’re trying to get ready for the flooring company to come next week and start ripping up parts of our pergo-like flooring to fix it once and for all. They may have to remove the kitchen island and will definitely be ripping up all the boards in front of the stove. No cooking for at least a week. Just as long as I can get to the fridge for my daily 3 cups of rice and the microwave to warm it up, I could care less. I just want the floor done completely this time.

The flooring people promised me back in November they would contact me in early January regarding painting the foyer, since they can do that too. No one has called. Typical.

I’m trying to get WS to update more of his own web page. He’s finally got his DVD list up and updated his CD list (now at 863). If I could get him to peck out a few words on his money and large-and-in-charge site, I’d be happy and so would a few readers out there who have been waiting 2 years to read something new.

Gotta go. Sounds like another cat fight outside…

January 26th 2001

My cable connection is going up and down today so I’m hoping I’ll be able to upload this sometime today. Yesterday, my phone was out. There’s a lot of construction going on in our area this week and I think people are ripping up lines left and right. The AT&T people has already been out at the cable box twice today but the situation doesn’t seem to be improving yet.

I realized today for certain that a majority of the people I work with don’t like their jobs. No, I’m not dense. I knew before that some of them didn’t like their job. I just didn’t realize until today how much some of them don’t like their job. Doing technical support isn’t a glamour job by any means. Mostly we hear from people who are very angry and upset because the software they’re trying to run isn’t working for one reason or another. It can be difficult to maintain a good attitude for a long period of time and that is considered normal if you talk to people who study behaviors of customer and technical support workers.

The thing that makes this job different is that literally everything is done via email and email alone. While there are a few companies who have technical support positions that operate strictly with email alone, there aren’t that many of them. It’s like, there aren’t all the limitations and problems with working face-to-face in an office environment. There aren’t the same confining rules. My co-workers and I have the unique opportunity to make this job be the coolest job around. We depend on each other, or should be able to depend on each other without being distracted by hair color or body weight or t-shirt slogan or expelled bodily aromas.

But some of us are using the opportunity to slack at our jobs or to smack down each other. Now, I know people will be people, but there comes a time when everyone has to do something they don’t want to do. Work usually falls into that category and I have been no better than some of my less-than-enthused co-workers from time to time. But as with working and not wanting to do it, there has to come a time when people need to shit or get off the pot. If I didn’t like my job at all, I’d look for a new one. If I didn’t like parts of my job, I’d bitch about it, realize that bitching isn’t going to accomplish anything that I’d feel good about later, then try to figure out how I could change the way I thought about those parts of my job I didn’t like. If I didn’t like one or more of my co-workers, I wouldn’t go out to see them in person if I didn’t have to and I definitely wouldn’t send out emails addressed to those people (including everyone else so everyone can see how much of a badass I was) ragging on them for their behavior, personality, hair type, or whatever.

But that’s just me. No one really thinks the same and no one looks at any given situation the same. I just think it is sad that a small group of people who don’t even have to see each other if they don’t want to can’t seem to even pretend to get along for 8 hours a day and do a job that affects each of the rest of us.

January 29th 2001

Last night, right after the Super Bowl (and a great time spent at KiMiE and RokrNed’s place watching Super Bowl commercials), I began my 39 day Survivor diet while watching episode one of Survivor II. The last real meal I had was chicken teriyaki over white rice and sautéed Australian shrimp. Today, I’ve had 1 cup of plain rice so far. It’s not a real hungry day for me today because mother nature had to step in and hand out my period this morning. But I’m sure after my workout this evening, I’ll feel like scarfing down my remaining 2 cups of plain rice. I thought about setting a piece of fruit outside for a couple of days so that bugs could infest it just like the figs the survivors found and found mostly inedible in one of the camps, but I didn’t want to start this eating adventure off with a health risk. Too bad about those figs though. If they had fire at that point, they could have boiled them, bugs and all, and they wouldn’t have been half bad. I know. I grew up with fig trees in my backyard. Bugs and all.

So, I’ll keep this up for 39 (or 42 days depending on who you talk to), and doing evaluations on my progress every 10 days. If it doesn’t work out and I’m starving and unable to function, I’ll consider myself voted off. I’m hoping I’ll make it and I’m really hoping to lose some of this body fat.

February 2nd 2001

Well, that was fun. My ISP, @home, strung me along pretty good there for a while. Nearly 3 days to be exact. Their server went down around midnight Monday night. At the same time, our IP address was renewing itself. So when @home came back on line, our IP address got wiped out. Gone. Vanished. No IP, no connection to the Internet.

Of course, we didn’t know this is what happened and like good little lemmings, we call @home Tuesday afternoon to report the problem. They say a widespread outage has occurred and has affected Montana, Washington, Oregon and Northern California. Okay, we can wait. This usually doesn’t take long. Tuesday was my day off anyway.

Wednesday morning and still no service. Phone calls still report the same widespread outage. Wednesday afternoon, our phone service goes out. WTF?? Now we’ve got no way to stay in contact with @home to see why and when we’ll be back up. I’m supposed to work on Wednesday! But no dice. Phone goes on and off every 20-40 minutes and my back up modem quit trying to stay connected after the first 2 hours.

Thursday morning, still no service. Phone continues to cut in and out. @home still down. Around noon, phone service is restored and I place a frantic call to my boss hoping that since no one has heard from me in nearly 3 days, that I still have a job. After the call, phone service goes out again! But only for about 5 minutes. Backup modem is toasted and smells bad now. Amazingly, the little red light still works. It was the only thing working in this room at the time.

Thursday afternoon, my neighbors finally came home from parts unknown and I asked them to check their @home service to see if they were down. Nope, everything is working great. Has been all week Okay, now I’m REALLY PISSED and @home is going to pay for this.

To finally cut to the chase, @home lied. They kind of admitted they lied and they will be crediting us for the time we were down. Our trust with them has been broken and I’m here to tell you not to trust them as far as you could throw their building. But most of you already know that and in that case, this rant was pointless. I’m back up now. Things are fine. I’m getting a credit for downtime on my bill. Life is good again.

Day 5 of my self-appointed Survivor diet:

This isn’t going as badly as I thought it might. I think I can really do this. I’m averaging around 1000 calories a day, never more than 1300. Tuesday night at the gym, I felt good and felt I looked good (considering I’m a fat toad).

Wednesday I felt hungry most of the second half of the day but made it through the day just fine.

Yesterday, Thursday, I was so bent out of shape over @home’s blatant lying that I wasn’t hungry in the least and only consumed 600 calories in rice all day. Last night at the gym, I still felt strong, not weak, but I felt again like a fat toad and it seemed that there were a number of people whom I didn’t know looking at me strangely. Probably my imagination working overtime. After workout, I finally felt like eating and had more rice and 120 calories of tuna in keeping with the gooey worms, cow parts and bugs the real Survivor II contestants had to eat for Immunity. Damn me for throwing out all the dead mango worms we had in the house last week…

Today, thus far, I feel only a slight bit thinner but my weight is down from 170 to 163. Numbers do not interest me in the least. A weight number is not what I’m shooting for but I thought it would be interesting to weigh in every so many weeks in case I accidentally got down to 63 pounds of something without noticing.

Thanks huge amounts to everyone (and you know who you are) who sends me encouragement email. It keeps me going.

February 4th 2001

I had to do something this weekend that I really didn’t want to do and it turned out worse than I thought it would. In addition, it totally drained me emotionally and I hope to not find myself in that situation again for a very, very long time.

Now for a weekend recap:

Worked all day Friday trying to catch up work due to @home’s screw up earlier in the week. Friday night I hit the gym feeling once more like a toad. Leg and calf workout night and was able to leg press 295 lbs total for 4 sets of 12. Some monstrous black guy was watching me on and off while I was doing it so I tried to look like I knew what I was doing. In another life, I might have even sure my perky, large breasts were squeezed together and popping out of my blouse like all the other bimbos that saunter around in there. WS wasn’t impressed with me at all. On the calf press machine, I can easily push out 3 sets of 10 reps at 210 lbs. WS can easily do the same at 310 lbs. Bastard. He nearly killed himself on the leg press machine doing 410 lbs though.

Saturday, I spent the day preparing for visitors and literally didn’t have time to eat anything until after 5 pm. I stuck to my self-imposed dietary restrictions and didn’t have any problems. In fact, I really wasn’t hungry much all day or night. And it was a long evening.

Sunday I woke up feeling shredded. My legs are killing me. So much for trying to show off my leg press ability. I had a hard time waking up and a harder time literally getting out of bed. But today is the day I swore to myself that I was going to catch up at work so I can go into the week fresh. And I finally accomplished that a short time ago.

I also ripped off most of my right thumb nail somehow doing something I don’t remember doing.

Day 7 of the survivor diet. Today I felt thin, tired, and somewhat weak. Weight is sitting at 161 down from the 163 of Friday. But I’m not quitting yet. I just need some sleep.

Things I forgot to mention last week (and WS wanted to see):

The 2 framed prints we purchased after the new year finally came in and we picked those up and hung them in the kitchen. They look GREAT! One is a artsy print about Italian pasta originally released in 1922 and the other is about French coffee originally released around the same time. Now a person really wants to eat when they walk into our kitchen. Currently, I’m ignoring them.

The ultrasonic devices for the annoying bird-killer cat came in as well and we’ve got those installed in the backyard under the bird feeder. They work…as long as the cat doesn’t walk real S-L-O-W and somehow not trigger them. The sensors are not supposed to be able to be heard by humans but my ears feel tight and like they want to bleed whenever I go out there and trigger them myself. Meow.

I didn’t really mention what it was exactly that I didn’t want to do, did it?

Visiting: Survivor Sucks.com I think we all want Kimie, Jeri and Jeff gone.
Reading: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Dealing with Difficult Employees by Robert Bacal. S-L-O-W reading. SO much information.
Books out on loan: The Perfect Storm.
The Millionaire Next Door.

February 5th 2001

Well, today was the day the flooring people, Carpet USA, was supposed to come and fix our floor. Naturally, they didn’t. In fact, they told WS on the phone after he called them that they were still waiting for materials to be shipped. That’s funny because they hand delivered the materials to our house well before Thanksgiving. No, these are different materials.

Yeah, right. Whatever. New date was scheduled for February 16th. Later in the evening they called back and said they have scheduled us for the entire week of February 21st thru 23rd. They must use that old fashioned druid-ese calendar system where an entire week consists of 2 or 3 days.

Either way, this is their last shot. I didn’t want to smell a lawsuit around the corner but I think I’m getting distinct whiffs of one now.

A co-worker of mine is taking my emails to them too personally. Now there’s a switch. That’s what I’m usually accused of.

Day 8 of my Survivor diet:

I felt mildly hungry today. Nothing I couldn’t live with. I was feeling thin earlier in the day, but now as it gets closer to gym workout time, I’m feeling pudgy again. I’m actually impatient for time to pass and for it to be Day 25 or something so I hopefully I’ll see some real results. The upper part of my stomach area is thinning up but this makes my pot belly look like it sticks out even worse than usual. I’ve had this gut since I was 15 years old. This area has always been the last thing to be affected by diet or exercise. Probably the result of genetics. My mother had one of those stomachs with absolutely no muscle control and her lower stomach overhung onto her upper knees. I’m not kidding.

February 7th 2001

Day 10: Evaluation day for my Survivor diet:

Up until around noon today, I had no problems whatsoever feeling like I could stick to my self-imposed Survivor diet of rice and protein staying well under 1500 calories a day. For some reason, today was tough. I inflicted a bit of stress onto myself last night with hitting a tanning booth for the first time in nearly 8 years and crisped myself a little too much. I then slept badly and had a headache all day and evening. I took a walk around the development before dark with WS and got chilled to the bone (I couldn’t feel my face after the first 5 minutes) and was never able to get warmed up afterwards. Even now, I sit here in my overly warm office with a coat on over my clothes. Earlier in the evening, WS and I visited a bodybuilding shop called MaxMuscle and picked WS up some strawberry protein powder, protein pancake mix and a couple of protein bars. I bought a t-shirt; one of those skimpy little ones and as long as I suck everything in and push out my lats, I don’t look that bad in it.

It’s the knowledge that the protein bars are in the house that is really getting to me. I’ve had these things before and they taste G-R-E-A-T!! Good, high protein source and relatively low calories. The problem is….my Survivor diet only consists of rice, fish, limited canned beans, and flour; just like in the series. I haven’t found anything appetizing about having flour around so I’ve eliminated it for now but I am very certain they don’t have access to any yummy protein bars. So they’ll have to sit in the cupboard and I’ll have to force myself to forget about them for at least the next 10 days. Even though today was not fun in the least, I did not give up.

Mentally, I’ve been having my moments where my brain doesn’t feel that sharp. Immediately, I wonder if lack of food is causing it, which is probably proof that it isn’t since I can still reason that it could be. Emotionally, I’m doing great and can’t wait to continue. Physically, other than my tanning experience last night, I just need to get a little more sleep. I’m sitting at 160 lbs and am starting to see the difference in my face ever so slightly.

I’ll be entering the next phase of my Survivor diet tomorrow and hope to hang on for another 10 days.

As a side note:

We hit the gym late Monday night. Surprisingly, there were still quite a few people there including 11 other women. I was proud to see that I was definitely the most muscular woman there that night, which is really not saying that much since all the other women there were model Kate Moss wannabees all lifting nothing more than the girlie 3 lb dumbbell weights. Somehow, it gave me some inspiration.

Last night at the gym, I was doing Arnold presses (twisting shoulder presses) using 25 lb dumbbells when two skinny guys sat down on a bench next to me and tried to repeat what I was doing. They were both using 15 lb dumbbells and couldn’t press out more than 5 repetitions before they gave up and then picked on each other because I was using 25 lb weights and they couldn’t lift 15 lbs. Yeah, I felt buff.

February 10th 2001

Survivor diet Day 13:

Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m hungry. More often I think about food than I usually do. I feel hungry. Not starving by any means, but I do feel somewhat hungry. The rice is not looking all that appealing most of the time but I still do like rice so I haven’t had that much trouble eating my 2 cups a day. From time to time I feel somewhat weak and I wonder how I’m going to workout at the gym but in the evening, my strength returns and I do great at workout.

Today I noticed a cheekbone. Yesterday I could faintly make out a hipbone. It’s these little things that make it all worthwhile.

I sent off an apology and explanation today to a coworker who may have been misinterpreting my emails to them. It took nearly an hour to write, mainly because I didn’t want that email to be misinterpreted as well and I like this person. I really don’t want them upset over a misunderstanding. Gawd knows I’ve done enough of that in my life to know that it can be a horrible thing to live with.
Valentine’s Day is right around the corner. We don’t do anything for Valentine’s Day, probably because either we don’t have any money or one of us is watching what we’re eating/spending. This year will be the same. Oh well. Perhaps in another life..

Yesterday, the land developers measured out the lot behind our house in preparation for a house to be built. We’ll miss the field and the view of the trees down by Lacamas creek but we’re ready for the lot to be filled and just want it done and over with. Today, all the stakes they put out yesterday were gone! Nothing is there. Perhaps the lot sale fell through? Strange.

February 11th 2001

Today is a frustrating day. I can’t put my finger exactly on any one thing without getting into some big long boring rant so I’ll just leave it at that.
This month has also been a month of misinterpretations. Misinterpretations at work, misinterpretations at home, misterpretations online. All along I thought some people were enjoying hearing about the diet I am on because I was getting what I interpreted as support email. Oops! My mistake. I’ll just say two weeks in and hanging there. I’ll make it.

We’ve finally picked out paint for the last room of the house, WS’s office (someday to be the theatre). I’ll be color washing the walls over the next few weeks with 3 different shades of dark blue-ish teal to match the carpet and then we can work our asses off to find someway to perhaps afford our first piece of sit-down furniture. My butt can hardly wait.

February 14th 2001

Today was a perfect example how life can be fickle to some, frustrating to others. Case in point:

Last week, WS, who has successfully been trying to not be such a pain in the ass and show some real affection toward me, walked into what was once known as an upscale florist shop in our area and ordered one hundred dollars worth of flowers for delivery to me today, Valentine’s Day. He chose a $36 dollar vase in which the flowers could be arranged and even picked out a few of the exotic flower types he wished the arrangement to contain. The women at the florist ooo-ed and gushed over him having the guts to walk in and spend such an extravagant amount on his wife for the holiday. He was pleased with himself even though internally, he questioned all the gushing comments.

Late yesterday afternoon, I called the exact same upscale florist, without knowledge that WS had ordered flowers for me the week before, and ordered around a hundred dollars worth of tropical flowers for WS for delivery on Valentine’s Day. I asked what kind of flowers they would be able to use and the gentleman, sounding a bit annoyed, told me it that tropical flowers were expensive this time of year (they always say that, no matter what time of year it is) and he would probably be able to use some protea, ginger, antheriums, orchids and exotic greenery. Great, I said and it’s not too late to get these delivered tomorrow, on Valentine’s Day. No problem, he assured me and on that, with flowers and basic looks of the arrangement unseen, I handed over the credit card number.

Today, Valentine’s Day, WS called at 4:30 pm and asked if I had any visitors today. No, I replied, was I supposed to? (knowing full well I was expecting the florist to deliver WS’s flower arrangement here at home sometime today.) WS suddenly sounded not too happy and said he would be home soon.

Just before 6 pm and becoming concerned about WS’s flower arrangement delivery which was nowhere to be seen yet, I called the upscale florist and asked how late they would be delivering today. “Oh, we’re still delivering now and have several more loads to go.” Okay, great. No problem.

Just after 6, WS gets home and is upset. After a bit of tooth-pulling, I finally get out of him that he ordered flowers from the upscale florist and he was upset because the day was nearly over and the flowers weren’t here yet. I didn’t confess yet that I was still waiting for his to be delivered as well and tried to smooth over the situation and calm him down…

…which really did little to do anything. All through dinner, he continued to bitch and complain, no matter how I tried to make light of the situation. Finally, I confessed that I too was waiting for a flower delivery. His flowers, from me. At first, he seemed to feel better but that was fairly short lived.

Around 7, WS called the florist and asked about our arrangements. “Oh, they are both sitting right here and are getting ready to be delivered.” Gee, it’s a good thing I confessed that WS was getting flowers as well or else he would be very confused and even more angry.

Finally after 8 pm, our arrangements were delivered. WS’s tropical arrangement is spectacular. Everything and more than the annoyed florist guy said it would be. The money was well spent.

My arrangement from WS was a little less spectacular. In fact, it looks like it was thrown together from leftover bits and pieces of flowers. Brown, dead looking orchids, purple carnations, 3 very sad looking yellow roses and lots of common florist greenery. Not anywhere near what nearly one hundred dollars of flowers should look like. (but the vase is BEAUTIFUL – he’s got good taste!)

Needless to say, WS was crushed and really pissed off. He orders a week in advance, in person, spends the same amount of money, hand picks the flowers and he gets something that looks like it came from the WinCo Foods parking lot. I, on the other hand, make a last minute phone call to an annoyed gentleman, don’t have any idea what I’ll be getting, spend the same amount of money and get something that looks like it’s straight out of Architectural Digest.

Life is funny that way, I guess…

February 16th 2001

That upscale florist made good on that crappy, dead flower bouquet I got last Wednesday. Much nicer. I’d really like to get used to having fresh flowers in the house year-round but just can’t afford the expense, especially if the U.S. economy takes the shit everyone says will happen soon. Gee, maybe Prez Bush’s bombing of Iraq will help boost things. Whadda moron.

Is there any foreign country that willingly takes disgruntled U.S. citizens into it’s arms and allows us to maintain the lifestyle we’ve all become accustom to? Probably not. To live this kind of lifestyle ensures we’re disgruntled about something that only we think is a major inconvenience. Like not having fresh flowers or not being able to shower a few times a day or not having cream sauce with our roast beef. I’ll stop with that line of thinking now before I mentally hurt myself.

WS is having major fits at work. People are not cooperating and he can’t get anything done without getting tons of email asking for everything under the sun within a 36 hour timeframe. It is physically impossible to do everything that everyone is requesting and no one will budge on their timeframe. He sounded near to a nervous breakdown on the phone just now and I told him to come home. He wasn’t feeling at all well yesterday and I don’t think he is quite over what he had then. He also hasn’t been eating all that great because he’s gotten it into his head that if I can eat nothing but rice and fish, he can do the same (only larger portions).

Stupid idea. His body isn’t made for self-starvation, nor is his mental state.

My diet hasn’t been all that tough so far. Sure, I have hungry episodes and have to look away when burger commercials are shown on TV. I don’t daydream about food yet, nor do I think that I’ll start anytime soon. This morning I tried on a new pair of levis and was completely surprised how nicely they fit. I couldn’t have said that a year ago or even 6 months ago. I’m really liking how I look in pants right now and it goes to show how much I’ve bought into the “over-the-hill old woman” stereotype. I had no idea that I could look this way at my age. Now I can’t wait to lose this double chin and the flab on my back and shoulders.

February 18th 2001

So WS and I went to a bowling alley late last night in a non-sanctioned work party with my co-workers. No, I didn’t bowl but I had much more fun than I thought I would. I think WS even had fun but probably won’t admit it (no, he didn’t bowl either). Afterward, we briefly, very briefly visited Dodge City, Camas’ hotspot and witnessed a co-worker exchange shirts with some woman. Now there’s something you just don’t see everyday.

Today is the halfway point in my self-imposed survivor diet. Immediately after March 11th (day 42 and the official end of my participation), I’ll shut up about eating nothing but rice, protein and surviving on limited calories. I’ll be having pork tonight with my rice and have included limited amounts of chicken for the last couple of days. While I’m still hungry, I’m not starving by any means, nor delirious. The extra protein has helped clear my head and increase my desire to see this thing through to the end.

Side note: The Survivor Outback series officially ends in April, not on March 11th which is technically my day 42. CBS doesn’t follow day-by-day coverage and strings the series along for 7-8 weeks for viewer fun and profit.

I finished painting WS’s room (future home theatre room). The upstairs looks somewhat finished now (color-wise) and the rooms don’t appear so disconnected. I might put a second coat on the west wall just because I had to switch paint cans halfway through and it ended up looking a little streaky. Or I might just say “fuck it.” The paint wasn’t terribly stinky, unlike the library paint was, but the fresh paint odor seems to be hanging around a lot longer.

ICQ Update: Regrettably, I had to completely uninstall ICQ last week and delete it from my work system (Rasputin). Seems it majorly causes page fault illegal operation errors with the software I need to run for work purposes and I got tired of having to reboot every time anyone tried to ICQ me. Since this was the exact same problem I had when I was using Deiter, the other computer, I have to assume that something in the way WS originally sets up the systems causes the two programs to conflict with each other and we don’t have the time to tear things apart to figure out what’s going on. To continue getting paid, I need to be able to run the other program for work and the conflicting application had to go. I apologize for this
inconvenience.

February 19th 2001

I feel crappy today. Bored, overly tired, bloated (thanks Mother Nature), cranky, headachy and hungry. I should have taken a nap or something but that would screw up my already screwed up sleep schedule. So I didn’t and that didn’t make things any better.

Just learned that Yahoo/Geocities has changed their HTML version recognition protocol and some of the NK pages are no longer recognized or recognized correctly. Yesterday, I had a bitch of a time trying to get a new page uploaded only to have characters throughout the page become corrupted once it was online. Double letters appearing everywhere, carrot symbols scattered here and there, some HTML code not even being recognized. Each time I cleaned up the corruption and re-uploaded the page, the page would become recorrupted in a completely different way. Twelve times I cleaned up the mess and twelve times I re-uploaded the page before WS figured out that new HTML protocols were in effect. All pages now have to have some DOC type line in the page header specifying what HTML version you are using. I don’t know what HTML version I’m using. I do it by hand and don’t use any of those lame-ass HTML web page creator programs that are the scruuge of Internet society.

Just what I don’t have time to do – relearn HTML to appease Geocities.

Reading: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Dealing with Difficult Employees by Robert Bacal. Wish I was reading The NK Guide to the Complete Idiots at Geocities.
Books out on loan: The Perfect Storm.
The Millionaire Next Door.

February 22nd 2001

Today is not a fun day and I’m feeling a little stressed, but I’m sure I’ll get over it.
Some shakedown is most likely going to occur at my place of employment beginning tomorrow because some of my co-workers are being very irresponsible. Worst case scenario: The company dumps everyone working up here in the Pacific Northwest and hires all new replacement employees in San Diego at company headquarters. I’ll be out of a job.

Semi-worse case scenario: Some of my co-workers will be fired or let go, work will double, even triple or higher, until replacements can be hired and trained down in San Diego at the company headquarters. Then the rest of us may be let go.

Least-case scenario: Everyone will be talked to and warned about productivity in the company conference call tomorrow morning, everyone will begin taking things seriously and get to work and everything will be hunky-dorey.

I didn’t have good dreams last night.

My eating, or lack thereof, is affecting my period. I hate periods. Period.

The flooring people are here working on correcting the floor chips and dents that occurred before we moved in. Finally, after over a year and a half of living here, it looks like things will be completely fixed shortly. The repairs are going well so far. They plan on finishing up tomorrow.

WS is having one of his MS things and is on heavy steroid medication. The most noticeable side effect from the meds are extreme irritability. He’s aware of this potential problem and is bending over backwards to not bite my head off today. So far, so good.

Back to work…

February 23rd 2001

My immediate supervisor is in San Diego getting ready to attend a company anniversary party and I wish I was there with her. I was told today by one of the CEOs that my newly-created job of Email QA is a job luxury that the company couldn’t afford for me to do right now because email is 6000+ behind, so I’m back to answering email full-time for a while. They probably shouldn’t have mentioned the kegger party they’re having tonight in the same conversation but I’m sure I’m just being over-sensitive, tired of listening to construction workers fix our flooring and overly-tired of watching a spouse deal with a disease today.

Besides, going to a party would only mean food and drink, neither of which I’m indulging in for the next 16 days. This evening, out of the blue, I decided to try on my wedding dress from 12 years back and was surprised to find it still fit just fine. WS was pretty surprised over that and congratulated me. I felt all warm and fuzzy but still HUNGRY.

Speaking again about WS, he’s working hard not to snap at me since being on extra medication this weekend. The problem is, he’s trying TOO hard and it’s obvious and that ends up being irritating in itself.

Our floor has been fixed. The workers are gone now. The floor is beautiful, no more chips or dents and my ears can stop bleeding anytime now…

Well, that’s all I had to bitch about today. I’m tired, I’m hungry and depressed, not to mention worried about keeping my job. Does it ever end? Or does that only come with death?

February 24th 2001

I’ve got a mountain of errands to run today and little time to do them in because I worked early into the morning and got up late. I am so tired lately and sleeping like crap. I keep dreaming about my job, or the loss thereof. Last night (or more correctly, this morning) I dreamt my bosses all encouraged me to take a short vacation, to go someplace nice and really indulge myself for once. Naturally, I was suspicious and wondered why anyone would push me to go on a plush vacation when work was so backed up. But eventually, I gave in and spent one night at a luxury hotel at a $1000 a night where I had everything at my beck and call.
The next day, I found out I was laid off work. Typical. I really need to stop worrying about this.

My scalp aches for some reason. Probably slept weird on top of having stupid dreams.
I’ve been trying to get to the Virtual Model program on Landsend.com’s site without success. I want to see what my body shape looks like to everyone else and if there are actual clothes out there that look good on it. If I’ve learned anything in my 44 years, it’s that I look dumpy in clothes, any kind of clothes. If I look good in anything, will I buy any? Fat chance. We’re back to hunkering down for the upcoming U.S. economic collapse. I’m not buying anything.

February 25th 2001

We bought a newspaper today. That in itself is strange, but the really strange thing was that in the Parade cheesy-little-magazine that comes with the newspaper was a big article on what people make for a living. Included was 150 peewee-sized photos of people, their occupations and their yearly salary. On page 5, is a woman by the name of Laura Gentry, my sister’s name…or at least one of her a.k.a. names and originally her maiden name.

Is the photo of my sister? I couldn’t really tell you. My sister could stop me in the street and ask for a cigarette and I wouldn’t know if it were her. I haven’t seen her for over 12 years, nor do I want to see her anytime soon. She’s a thief, a liar, a hard-core druggie and sometimes prostitute, and at one time that I know of, a fugitive from a northern Arizona city.

The photo shows her hair is brown and short. Nope. My sister loves her long blonde hair and always made it a point to belittle my own scraggly brown rat’s nest. She wouldn’t cut it or dye it brown.

The caption lists her age as 30 years old. If it’s my sister, she lying. Again. My sister was born in 1961, 5 years and 21 days after me. That make her 39 right now. But she’s fibbed before.

Ms. Gentry’s occupation is that of a Pastor. Okay, now I’m CERTAIN it isn’t my sister. Pastor of what? Our Lady of Holy Heroin Dealers maybe. Could she have cleaned up and changed her ways? Not according to my one brother whom I talk to every once in a while. My sister’s just as strung out as ever.

It says she lives in Burbank, California. Yes, reportedly, my sister once lived, or maybe it was visited California, but she didn’t stay. Or perhaps it was the L.A. police department that insisted she leave. Immediately.

Says her yearly salary is $35,000. Yeah, right. My sister makes more fencing stolen property. NOTHING, and I do mean NOTHING, short of death, would make her accept a salary cut down to 35K a year. Like she always said, “I don’t need a job. Anything I want is out there for me to take. And I will take anything I want.”

She always did.

In summary, do I think this woman is my sister? I’m 99.8 percent certain she isn’t. Her name isn’t that uncommon. A search on the Internet using any number of search engines will bring up a minimum of 30 Laura Gentrys. But it was still strange for a minute or two.

February 27th 2001

Yippee! Day 30 on my self-imposed Survivor diet and I think I’ve done exceptionally well. I’ve lost a total of 13 lbs of body fat and gained 3 lbs of solid muscle. So what did I do for it? Treated myself to a challenge reward. Chips and salsa followed up with 3 scoops of ice cream. My first real food in 30 days.

That was a few hours ago and to be honest, it wasn’t worth it. I feel pretty bloated and crappy. I can’t hold my gut in and am now drinking LOTS of extra water to flush it out of my system. I just don’t like how I feel. I think it was the ice cream in particular that really sent me over the edge. I don’t know what I was thinking and I won’t be doing this again anytime soon.

I’ve learned a couple of things throughout this ordeal:

A person can get hungry enough to eat anything when on 1200 calories or less a day for an extended period of time, even those people who swear they will never eat __(fill in the blank)__. For example, I refuse to eat black olives. I can’t stand them and can’t stand to eat food that has even touched black olives (black olive juice is just disgusting to me). Yet, yesterday, I was hungry enough to eat black olives. Had any been in the house and had been put on my rice, I would have eaten then. Gladly. In fact, had something gone horribly wrong at Baskin-Robbins and they accidentally put black olives on my 3 scoops of ice cream, I would have eaten it anyway. I had become that hungry. But for some strange reason of which I don’t understand, it felt good to feel this way.

I’ve also learned that some foods can make a person feel as complacent as a sheep and I don’t like that feeling. Before I ate this first real meal in 30 days, which consisted of processed foods no doubt loaded with chemicals, I felt I could kick the llama’s ass (no offense to any particular llama out there that may be reading this). After eating ice cream, I couldn’t care less if the fore-mentioned llama kicked my ass all over the Portland/Vancouver metro area. In fact, I’d personally beg the llama to kick my ass and then help the llama in the ass kicking process. I suppose it’s possible that Baskin-Robbins knows what their ice cream make some people feel like and has llama employees standing around specifically waiting to kick customer’s asses, but then again, I may just be thinking way much more about this than I should be…

Lessons learned:

Hunger = Will eat most anything.
Extreme hunger = Will gladly eat everything.
Ice Cream = Getting ass kicked by llamas.
I need to remember these.

February 28th 2001

I have a toothache. The earliest I can get into the dentist is Friday at 7:30 am. I am not happy but at least my new dentist is better than my last one, who would have made me wait a week or more before seeing me. That man was a sadist.

A home appraiser was supposed to come by today at 3 in the afternoon. We’re trying to take advantage of a lower interest rate and need a new house appraisal since we’ve been here less than 2 years. Due to the earthquake today (don’t feel bad if you missed it; I did too and I live here), he ran out of time and can’t make it here until the crack of dawn tomorrow. All that cleaning and preparation today for nothing and now I have to greet him at daybreak with a toothache after re-vacuuming the house. I should introduce our cats to Nair.

March 1st 2001

Welcome to the month of March and the Official Revenge of The Man Damned month around here. Did you remember to Damn The Man last month? I’m sure there was some authority figurehead out there that you bitched about in February and if so, well now is his turn to Damn you back.

I’ve always wholeheartedly participated in Damn The Man month, until my cats started dying off throughout Revenge of The Man Damned month. One particularly vicious year and after a hugely successful Damn The Man month when I found reason to Damn The Man at least once a day throughout, I lost 2 cats, nearly a 3rd, and half the fish in the fish tank. The next year I got smart, got rid of the fish tank and kept The Man Damning to a minimum, but still lost another cat. Last year was the same. No fish to lose, I barely Damned The Man but I lost yet another cat. This year, I don’t believe I Damned The Man once. Oh sure, there was that time that I was whining about the election results and how incredibly stupid Bush was to bomb Iraq and the other time when I was bitching about The Man over at Carpet USA who obviously didn’t want to fix our floor, but I don’t think The Man will hold those against me seeing how mild that Damning really was compared to previous years. Let’s just hope that the little death I experienced this morning will be the end of it.

What little death thing, you ask? Well, let me tell you. It was weird.

This morning, before it finally started raining, I noticed a bird sitting outside on the cement under the bird feeder. No big deal there. Then the house appraiser came and went through the place and we chatted for a half an hour or so. Then WS left for work and I warmed up some rice for breakfast. I noticed the bird still sitting out on the cement and that’s when I also noticed a neighbor cat getting ready to pounce on it. I opened the back door, rushed out and chased the cat away. The bird didn’t move. So I went up to it slowly, expecting it to fly away but it just sat there, looking up at me. I bent down, put my hand out and still it just looked at me. So I touched it lightly and then decided to pick it up gently and place it in the bird feeder, up out of reach of the cat. The bird seemed to like that and started pecking at the seed in the feeder. I went back inside, washed my hands and ate my rice. About 10 minutes later, I noticed a few other birds flying off from the feeder and didn’t see the bird I put in there and figured he flew off as well. But I knew, if for some reason, he flew back down to the ground, the cat would most likely find him and I had to be certain the bird wasn’t just sitting out there waiting to become a snack.

I looked all around the ground outside but no bird. Cool, he flew off, I thought. Then I looked in the bird feeder. There he was. Slumped over on his beak, dead.

Now I’m figuring that by touching him and putting him into the bird feeder, I caused him to have a heart attack or something. If I hadn’t put him there, the cat, who was back sitting under the feeder, would have gotten him. No winners this round. And there I stood, with a rapidly-cooling bird in my hand that was alive not more than 10 minutes previously, not knowing how to do CPR on a house finch. Revenge of The Man Damned, thank you very much.

March 8th 2001

This week hasn’t been fun in the least. Worst of the mess is a cracked tooth that I’ve been living with for the past week. The pain meds they gave me only make me puke and after a while, a person feels a little strange about taking a dozen or more aspirin a day to numb their mouth. It doesn’t work for very long anyway. Misery is a good word right now. Luckily, tomorrow is my last dental appointment and when I get another crown put in. That should end the pain for a while.

My supervisor had to go out of town for most of the week and naturally, half my co-workers decided to take some serious slack-time. We’re behind again on email by about a thousand and nothing short of everyone working 20 hours days will catch us up anytime soon. The problem is, no one wants to or is authorized to work 20 hour days. So we’ll just be behind for a while. Things won’t be any better next week when my supervisor goes on a week vacation. If I thought my co-workers slacked off this week, something tells me I ain’t seen nothing yet. The problem is, no one is really left in charge (not that anyone listens to) and if anyone was, there is absolutely nothing they could do about it. If people don’t want to work, we can’t force them. And they know it.

I worked a 14 hour day yesterday trying to get us caught up. A couple of other workers really worked hard too but it barely made a dent. Unfortunately, some of them are talking again about the company getting rid of all of us and hiring replacements down in San Diego. I hear this about once a month anymore and it really doesn’t bother me too much. What does bother me is when I hear that some of those people are already talking to people working in San Diego and getting serious information on the San Diego cost-of-living. This is where it starts to get scary.
So, we have the stress of work piling up, people looking into moving so they won’t lose their jobs, a cracked tooth, oh and don’t forget the daily ritual catfights taking place in our backyard at 5:30 am…Have I forgotten anything? Well, there is that neighbor who is hammering, pounding and sawing wood and stuff next door since..um, last summer (he’s in construction if you couldn’t tell), the screaming kids in the neighborhood taking full advantage of the nice weather we were having earlier in the week, a neighbor’s dog that barks constantly and sounds like it’s being run over slowly by a truck, and the backhoe clearing the lot behind up in preparation for the new house to be built.

No, I don’t think I forgot anything.

Oh yeah…

I’M STARVING!

2 days to go. I’ve had 3 challenge reward meals in the past 2 weeks where I ate something other than plain white rice and plain cooked chicken. I nearly lost it this week and nearly voted myself off yesterday. I only hung on by the skin of my teeth (which unfortunately doesn’t contain any calories). Saturday is day 41 and the end of my Survivor diet. Will I go back to eating everything under the sun? Hardly. I STILL like white rice. I still like chicken and fish. I’ll still watch my calorie intake and try to keep myself at or under 2000 calories a day (up from 1200) and I will try very, very hard not to gain back any body fat. I like what I look like now way too much. It’s been worth it.

Books out on loan: The Perfect Storm.

March 10th 2001

I had originally typed out a long, boring tirade on my dental experience today, of WS getting sick later on in the evening (most likely from something he ate), and how my jaw still ached badly but I had to go to work. Some of the highlights included “visual” words and phrases like “Searing pain”, “bullets”, “seeing-red”, “puke” and “baby-cheese”. After reading the 1500 words or more, it just made me angrier than I already was so I deleted them all and am entering this pathetic entry instead. I’m dealing with it and so should you.

March 12th 2001

Yesterday was the last day of my self-imposed Survivor diet. 41 days of eating under 1200 calories a day, mostly consisting of plain white rice, some fish, some chicken, some protein supplements and lots of St. John’s Wort. As promised, this will be the last I speak of this here.

The last week was murder and I nearly gave up several times. It wasn’t so much being ravenous as much as it was that I was fatigued and tired of not being able to eat half the food in the house. I gave myself 3 challenge reward meals throughout the 41 day ordeal and it was that which got me through the whole thing.

I’ll be very aware of what I’m eating for the rest of my life. That is one thing I’ve been thinking about since the beginning of this whole thing and something that I am very aware of. That is just how I am. That is just how much this is important to me. I’m what is called an anorexic fat person. My genes say I’m supposed to weigh over 200 lbs. I refuse to accept this.

Would I recommend this kind of diet to anyone else? If you have any willpower at all, yes. If you’d like to see how much willpower and/or mental strength you have, definitely. Everyone should know what their brain is capable of handling. And really, this diet was not about starving. It was about how much your brain controls what and how much you put in your mouth.

Things accomplished:

Lost 13 pounds, 10 of pure body fat.
Gained more respect for my strong will and a very strong sense of pride.
Didn’t lose my love of plain white rice.
Learned what good, plain, unprocessed food can do for a person (well, as much as white rice, commercially processed chicken and fish can be). My skin has never been clearer. My pants have never fit better.

Lessons learned:

Keep careful watch of calorie intake in the early portion of the day. Eat too much early on guarantees you’ll be starving by evening and you’ll be too tempted to stray from the diet. Not paying attention to this caused me to want to chew off my own arm by day 37. Again, eat small meals throughout the day and save the biggest calorie portion for evening. Small meals can mean just a forkful of rice if need be. You won’t faint or anything.

Don’t watch TV commercials. Don’t listen to the significant other talk about off-limit foods (tell ‘em to shut up if need be).

Do regularly try on clothes that previously didn’t fit. It can be depressing but helps keep you focused.

Don’t tell your neighbors what you are doing. They will expect to see you lose half your entire body weight in one week and then will rag you about it if that isn’t what they see (tell ‘em to shut up if need be).

If you are female and your period is closely tied to your eating habits, expect to see a change in your normal period cycle. I skipped mine entirely last month.
Be aware that at some point you will feel tired and downright crabby and snappish. After chewing your significant other’s head off for the fifth time that day, try to muster up enough strength for an apology. You’ll go back to being your usual lovable self after you’re done with the diet.

Don’t dwell on all the foods you’ll be eating once you quit. Mental torture should never be part of the game and it is self-defeating.

Do be aware of what you eat after you quit. Don’t go off on a 3 day eating binge because you WILL regret it later. Besides, you’ll get all bloated and feel like crap.

March 13th 2001

I’ve been sick with the flu for the last 4 days and trying desperately to get over it before my supervisor goes on vacation to Mexico tomorrow morning. I feel much better today and my temperature is finally down to normal and so I am actually using my day off today as a real day off (I’ve been trying to get used to working 5-6 days a week on a regular basis since going on salary) in hopes that I’ll whip this thing in plenty of time for all hell to break loose at work beginning tomorrow, when all my co-workers decide not to work and things get piled up even worse than they are already. It’s the old “When the cat’s away, the mice will play” syndrome and I feel responsible for the mess my boss has to come back to. Nothing short of working 18 hours a day myself for the next 6 days will get all the email caught up to a reasonable amount left. We are getting over a thousand emails in daily and are currently 1600+ in the hole. We just fired one co-worker and a couple of others are walking the very thin line. The company can’t hire enough qualified people down in San Diego fast enough and if I have to continue listening to some of my co-workers about the possibility of losing my job up here to a new hire down there, I think I’m going to scream! Or it could be that I’m not feeling quite well just yet. But just to be on the safe side, “Shut up, unless you know positively what you’re yaking about!”

One a lighter note, I might be heading down to San Diego for a couple of days at the end of the month on company business. I miss going anywhere sometimes. When I was younger, I would dream of traveling on business all the time and tried to find a career that would allow me to do so. Then I met WS and found that we don’t do that well when we’re apart from each other. Too co-dependent or something. But still, sometimes I think about it….

WS bought more 501 levis today. I still can’t believe he can fit into them now. He also bought two more pair of shoes. You’d think he was going to San Diego at the end of the month. I’ll probably buy a new pair of levis. I’m pathetic when it comes to shopping for clothes. I don’t know what I’m doing because I’ve never done it before in my entire life. I don’t even know what size I am. In a woman’s world, that is REALLY pathetic. Or so I’m told.

Finally got the movie posters I ordered last month. Now I need to find frames for them. The Matrix, Braveheart, Back to the Future and Excalibur are what I picked out. We’re thinking of getting a dozen posters all together and periodically rotating them in WS’s office when it finally becomes the theatre room. The plan is to hang 4 on the walls, 2 on each side. I found a web site that offers posters of movies that aren’t even out yet like The Mummy, part 2 and Hannibal back a month before it was released but until we are actually using the room as a theatre, meaning when we finally have a TV and furniture in there, it doesn’t make any sense to buy any more.

I’m going to try to hit the gym tonight but it’ll probably be a light workout, mostly cardio. I don’t want to puke on anything and had I gone anytime in the last few days, I definitely would have.

March 14th 2001

…and so begins my supervisor’s vacation along with a couple of other co-worker’s vacations as well. We’re currently 2000 emails in the hole and I’m looking at the worker report as I type this (yes Kim, I’m offline and on break). Jayson, a decent worker, has done 224 emails today, well over the required 100-120 emails per 8-hour workday load, I’ve done 185, but no one else working today has even touched 100 and it’s nearly 10 pm. Yep, I weep for some people’s futures when the bigger boss starts making phone inquires later in the week.

I was hoping my supervisor was going to be able to update her journal from Mexico. They have the Internet down in Cabo, don’t they? Or does it even matter down there? Most likely, no one even cares.

I found another bird out in the backyard yesterday with a broken wing. There was nothing I could do about it because try as I may, I can’t care for birds. They ALWAYS die on me. My brothers used to climb trees and bring home entire nests full of birds, in various stages of development, on a daily basis throughout the spring and summer. Of course to them, the fun part was bringing them home alive. They had no intention of caring for them. That’s where I would step in. And fail miserably. To date, I have never been able to raise or care for a bird that didn’t die within 24 hours and believe me, I’ve tried everything.

So I left the bird outside, under the shelter of bushes and trees in the backyard and made sure there was food to peck at around on the ground close by. He got around on the ground okay and spent the rest of the day pecking at the food just fine. This morning, however, it looks like the neighbor cat got him. That makes number 34 or something. I don’t know. I stopped counting the cat’s bird carnage at number 28. The field mice total is in the 20′s, moles are at 16 and baby rabbits are in the teens. It’s disgusting really. There is an entire animal graveyard building up in the lot behind us. And speaking of that lot, the first floor of the new house being built there is nearly finished. I suspect as of late tomorrow or Friday, we will be officially losing our downstairs view of Mt. St. Helens forever.

March 17th 2001

I answered so many emails for work yesterday (ending at midnight less than an hour ago) that my head is literally spinning and my eyeballs want to fall out. 305 emails. A personal record with the crappy email program that we have to use now. I can’t even think straight anymore. I need some sleep.

I found another bird in our back yard yesterday. It too seemed unable to fly but it’s wings looked to be fine. He was very wet from all the rain. Once again, I couldn’t resist the urge to pick it up and place it up in the covered bird feeder, both to get it up out of any neighborhood cat’s reach and to get it out of the rain and dry off a little. It’s kind of scary how I can walk right up to a large portion of the birds that visit our yard. No wonder the cat gets them. Naturally, after my 2 previous bird rescue/then death disasters earlier in the week, I kept my eye on this one and about 15 minutes later, he had cleaned himself a bit, shook a lot of water off, pecked at some food and flew off just perfectly fine. Finally! I was able to be of some help to some dinky little bird without it dying on me. Mark your calendars.

I really hate birds.

I’ve discovered Xenadrine. I swear this stuff is legal speed. I am not joking.

March 20th 2001

It’s been WORK, WORK, WORK so far this week since my supervisor is on vacation in Mexico. Some days, we all have kicked the email-toting llama’s ass; other days, well, my co-workers started feeling sorry for the llama (they have big, soft eyes, you know) and let the llama nibble on their nether-regions for a while and the email piles back up again when they aren’t looking. So it goes…

Don’t think it’s been ALL work though. It’s just taken me this long to recover from everything else that’s been going on.

Friday, I cranked out over 300 emails. I worked my ass off. Did anyone care? Nope. No one said a word. I felt unloved, unappreciated. I felt cantankerous, bad-tempered and ornery. Then my eyeballs fell out, the cats snagged them, batted them all over the floor where they got all linty before I could grab them and put them back in. Now I really felt testy.

By then, it was nearing 3 am Saturday morning and I decided to Spy on Paul Mathis. Celestina aka Cosmic Hammer was over there and we got to chatting with Mr. Mathis which turned into a game of Strip-Trivia over the web cam. We really gave him a hard time, Celestina and I. We were both in very surly moods and merciless, and finally, after nearly 2 hours, he stripped down to, well, nothing. Bare ass naked. Mathis Junior and the Jizz Twins dangling in the breeze live, over the Internet. I may have been scarred for life…but that didn’t prevent me from grabbing images as fast as I could save them. It was certainly interesting to say the least and something I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life.

Later, after only 3 hours of sleep, I got a phone call inviting me to a St. Patrick’s Day party with lots of alcohol guaranteed. Yes, I went. Yes, it was fun. Yes, I drank. Lots. Not enough to puke and not enough to wipe the memory of watching the party host insult most of his guests and his wife nearly the entire evening. Then he crashed on one of his daughter’s beds and one of the guests had to stick around to see if he would have to put him in the bathtub in case he puked (he didn’t). Another interesting event.

After the party, neighbors come over and we stayed up talking until well after 2 am. It’s nearly 4 before I get to bed, having to check on work status. Sunday morning, and WS comes down with a nasty cold from somewhere. Right now, it’s like there’s always something that has to be going on and I don’t feel like I’m getting a break. He is still getting over his last MS thing, only having a week’s reprieve from the last MS thing. Now he has a cold and is dripping snot everywhere. I bought him some peeps to cheer him up.

No work for WS today. He’s sniffing and snorting all over the place and generally feeling miserable. I, on the other hand, having just got over the flu last week, am taking lots of zinc but unfortunately, I’m not getting lots of sleep. Work email numbers are not pretty in the least right now and I can only imagine what my supervisor will have to say about it when she comes back Wednesday.

March 21st 2001

All day I listened to construction hammering, pounding, sawing and grading from 3 different sides. Mingled with children screaming, ringing bicycle bells, making dogs bark. I had to work through this and I’ll be the first to admit that today, I am burnt out in the most major way.

Late in the afternoon, coming home from picking WS up from work, I turn onto our street and there are 9 kids spraying hoses and high-powered squirt guns across the street at each other. Cars driving by are getting soaked. I witnessed one kid aiming for and squirting water INSIDE a construction truck as it drove by. Things were out of control and of course, not a parental unit or any supervision was to be found. No, this ain’t gonna fly with us.

So I brake hard and get out of the car. In the middle of the street. And start screaming that if one drop of water hits our vehicle, “I will have your asses and there will be hell to pay! Drop everything NOW” Faucets were never shut off faster than right then. Squirt guns were dropped to the pavement and I’m POSITIVE that they’re all calling me a royal bitch. In fact, I’m sitting here waiting for some parents to come by, because I know eventually some will, if for nothing else, because I said “asses” and “hell” in front of their little one’s ears.

Where are the parents when all this is going on? Where is anyone willing to step up and let them know that spraying a hose onto a car’s windshield when driving down a narrow street into the sun can cause a serious accident? Where is anyone who can let a kid know that it is disrespectful to purposely squirt water into a car full of people? The parents were all where they always seem to be – somewhere else and can’t be bothered to know what is going on in front of their own noses. Yet I’ll be the one called a bitch.

We had our taxes done professionally this year to prevent the fiasco that was last year where we ended up paying 11K to the IRS. This year, I was promised a refund. Actually, last year I was promised a refund but because I always bring up the fact that I didn’t I won’t say anything more about it in this particular paragraph.
Around 6, we go pick up our paperwork. This year, even with the correct withholding and all that, we owe a fuckin’ another $2003. All because WS thought he was going to have a business once, then when things didn’t go that direction, he took all the business deductions last year so we wouldn’t have to pay 26K (or some other equally ridiculous figure), leaving us to have to reclaim part of them this year. What a cluster-fuck.

So, we’re sitting in the tax preparer’s office and WS is saying “fricking” this and “fricking” that, and some woman is behind us letting her toddler run all over the place like it’s a playground and not a place of business and you just know what is going to happen. The kid falls down. Hard. And starts screaming at the top of their lungs, making WS more and more angry. And we can’t hear what the tax guy is saying it’s so loud. And then everyone starts running around like chickens with their heads cut off saying they need ice for the kid’s head. It was a delightful drive home. I couldn’t begin to tell you…

Right before we left, WS asks about next year’s taxes and what we’ll need to do to prevent having to pay anything. And the guy enters the figures and if we don’t have a minimum of $250 more taken out of our paychecks, each payday, we’ll owe between $1000 and $5000 next year. What a crock of shit! And all because we don’t have children, or as the IRS and the government sees it, we don’t have any future tax payers in our family. “Let’s penalize them for not breeding! Oh, and thanks for buying into that whole “Get yourself a better education” scam. The more you make because you choose to educate yourself above and beyond high school dropout status, the more we, the government makes! Hey! Is this a great country or what?”

March 25th 2001

I’ll bet you think I’ve been slacking on updating this journal. Well, I haven’t. I’ve just been working my ass off at work and getting ready for my possible trip to San Diego this coming Thursday.

Yesterday, I spent some quality time talking over work related stuff with WS. Probably too much quality time. It gave me little time to get other stuff done that I need to accomplish before the trip. Later in the afternoon, I needed to pick up a few things to take with me so I headed over to one of the area’s dying shopping malls and hit Old Navy.

I know what you’re thinking now. “Old Navy? B, you swore you’d never go to Old Navy! Besides, aren’t you a little too old to be shopping at Old Navy?”
Okay, you got me on the first count. Yes, I swore I’d never go to Old Navy. But, if you recall, that was back when they used those horrid commercials with that old New York bat and Morgan Fairchild. *shudder* Trust me, I still would never step foot into one of those stores…had I not caught a commercial on TV (which I NEVER get to watch anymore) and saw exactly the kind of t-shirt I’d been looking for since 1995. I bought 6 of them. Just so I don’t have to go back anytime soon.

As for being a little too old for Old Navy clothes, from the merchandise I saw and from the people I see wearing Old Navy outfits, Old Navy clothing itself is making people look old. As with any clothing line, there will be some cute and sassy micro short shorts or skirts, some glitzy, glittery t-shirts that would look downright stupid on anyone over the age of 22, but most of their clothes are cut for average people with average bodies. If you think they only look good on models, you need to pull your nose out of Cosmopolitan, Glamour or Playboy magazine and look around.
This morning, I finished shopping for those little travel-sized bottles of shampoo, hand lotion, toothpaste and the like and found a big purse that I can carry even more stuff in. Last time I flew, I noticed a sneaky little trick women used. You get one carry-on bag. It has to be the right size and fit in the standardized slot on the conveyor belt. So you buy a standardized bag and don’t overstuff it so it fits. But if you’re a woman, it’s likely you’ll have a purse as well. A purse doesn’t count as a carry-on. So, technically, as a woman, you get two carry-ons; your regulation size carry-on and your purse.

Last year when I flew, I noticed some women had huge purses, in some cases, bigger than their carry-ons. You know the kind of purse I’m talking about. They hold everything and anything: a make up kit…..for 82 of her closest friends, snacks and water bottles…for 16, several small dogs, etc. There I was, carrying my purse, a 5 inch by 4 inch by 2 inch minuscule flap of fake leather, with everything I could ever want crammed into it and these women, hordes of women, were packing in a nice, neat regulation carry on and a purse big enough to hold a kitchen sink. So I found a reasonable-sized large purse, nothing like the gigantic monstrosities I’ve seen, but something sizably bigger than my usual and I plan on going in comfort, without having to cram everything I own in one measly little carry-on. I might not even get wrinkly this time.

March 26th 2001

I’ve got a stomach ache this evening so I’ll just ramble on about a few things that have been bouncing around in my head for a few weeks:

Is it just me, or does the new Mothers Cookie commercials just make you want to vomit? Please, Mothers Cookie Company, please fire your advertising firm.
Mad Cow disease. You know the first report of it being here is coming. It’s just a matter of time. You eat infected meat. You get it and die. So….what happens when you drink milk from infected cows? Oh, you don’t drink milk? Okay, what happens when you eat that candy bar, or have some cheese on your salad, or eat the salad dressing or eat a slice or two of bread or eat a can of tuna fish or chew gum or eat a hotdog or order chicken in a restaurant or eat pasta or donuts or ice cream? All these things and more have milk or milk products in them. Can you get Mad Cow disease from the milk from infected cows? My guess would be….yes, but who am I?

I bought purple Peeps the other day. Not to eat. I’m seriously thinking of shellacking them. Or just poking a hole in the package and leaving them in the far back of the pantry for an entire year. I’m betting that Peeps have a longer half-life than Twinkies. I found some blue Peeps for sale too, but WS wouldn’t let me buy them. You’ll have to ask him about that. He just looked frightened when I got all excited about finding them in the first place. What frightens me is that there is an official Peeps Fan Club.

I really think I want the economy to take a downturn. Everywhere I look anymore are signs of TOO good of an economy. These are not just happy faces. I’m talking about strange things that just wouldn’t happen normally had someone not had too much money to throw away. Here are a few examples:

Standing in line at a local Starbucks, a farmer with clouds of dirt still on his overalls, straight off the tractor (parked in the field next to the coffee shop) ordering a Grande Latte w/ extra whip.

A brand new, year 2001 corvette painted matte-red with yellow racing stripe stickers and every bolt-on accessory you can think of (most of them NOT for corvettes – corvettes don’t even have bolt-on accessories), all yellow in color, running around town being driven by what appears to be a 16 year old.

Babies, babies, babies! Everyone is having babies! Come to think of it, people feel the need to have babies whether the economy is good or not. “Hey! It’s a great economy! We can afford more children!” or “Well, crap. The economy sucks. All we can afford to do anymore is breed.”

Minivans and SUVs everywhere. So what if they only get 8 miles per gallon. “But I NEED to buy this SUV for my kids!” Since when do kids need a car? Are they making the payments?

Overheard on a L.A. news channel. A newscaster was interviewing a woman in a grocery store: “Yeah, this energy thing is bad. But we’re trying to conserve. Yesterday, we turned off all but 2 of our television sets…” I’m not joking.

March 27th 2001

If I thought I had a stomach ache last night, I’ll probably really have one tonight.
WS and I went out to eat at Chart House this evening. Chart House is probably the most expensive, yet casual place to dine up here. Our town has NOTHING in the way of good restaurants and lately, we’ve been getting less than decent service at any of the restaurants in our area. Chart House is known for it’s good service, regardless of what someone told me once about the salad bar servers who fight with each other to look down women’s blouses when making individual Caesar salads.
Tonight, everything was excellent. The lobster, the mahi-mahi, the caviar; all quite fresh….including the finger rubber that WS found in his artichoke salad that he helped himself to from the salad bar.

Now, if you’re like me, you’re asking 3 questions:

1. Do people really eat artichoke salad?
2. Is it really a finger rubber or does Chart House have any genital midgets working for them?
3. Exactly what is the correct etiquette for throwing a fit at an expensive, and otherwise wonderful, restaurant?
1. Yes, Apparently, people do eat the artichoke salad. WS claimed to love it up until that point.
2. The waiter assured us that they do not have any midgets working for them. I didn’t press and ask exactly how he knew this because it was quite possible that he had first-hand knowledge.
3. We discussed how much of a stink we wanted to throw before calling for the manager. Since we like Chart House and have never had a problem there in all the times we’ve gone, nearly 25 times now, we decided to be civil. The manager and waiter were extremely apologetic and gave us part of our meal for free. Yes, we probably could have pushed for the entire meal for free if we wanted to, but we chose to be civil and we will go back. Probably not anytime soon, but we will go back.

Had this been your local fast food joint or McGrath’s Fish House, where we seem to get notoriously bad service, we would have thrown a fit and them some. We’ve thrown some pretty good fits in the past and come just short of having people fired. There is no doubt that we’ll continue to throw fits in the future. But we chose not to tonight.

Unless we become deathly ill. Then people will be acquiring new assholes. We’ll see.
I just found out that one of WS’s co-workers who pulled a stupid, stupid, stupid stunt at work is now trying to blame WS for it. There was once a time in my life where I used to try to warn people not to do things like that but it seemed a waste of breath at the time. I cannot have any respect for this individual now.

March 29th 2001

I’m off to San Diego on business. Looks like I’ll get to see a bit of L.A. due to a 2 hour layover on the way back Saturday evening. Maybe they have a Der Weinerschnitzel in LAX.

April 2nd 2001

Back from San Diego.

On the way to San Diego Thursday morning, my right eardrum never popped and has been stopped up ever since. As of today, it’s still stopped up and I have no hearing out of it. I also feel like a cold is coming on, probably the result of flying back in an overly crowded plane while the tall man in the seat directly behind me sneezed WET snot down on my head every 15-20 minutes. I couldn’t wait to get home to take a shower but it was probably too late by then. I’m not kidding. My hair was actually damp.

Keeping in mind that I only got a 2-day snapshot of how things at the company I work for are run in San Diego, it was amazing to me how differently the working atmospheres are. I want to be able to go back to company headquarters often to help make support operations run smoothly. It’s also pretty pathetic that after working for them for 2 years, I had no idea that this company is a fun company to work for.
Back to matters here at home, I see little point in spending the money to have a deck built onto our house as I whined about before I left. All I can focus on right now is work, not spending gobs of money. With the possible exception of getting a new web cam and some furniture for WS’s office, which, by the way, is where I’ll be moving back to. It’s nice having my own office but with construction going on directly behind us and construction workers trampling all over our rock wall, it’s more convenient to be working out of WS’s office where I have a direct view of everything going on. My office, at the other end of the house, looks out onto the front street and nothing exciting is going on there.

Found a squirrel’s head and front arm in the backyard yesterday. Damn that neighbor cat.

Haven’t gone to the gym in 3 weeks due to slight colds and tons of work. Down to 158 pounds from 161. I’m losing muscle mass and have to decide if I want to weigh more but be muscular, or be a slave to a weight number and try to be thinner.

April 4th 2001

WE BOUGHT FURNITURE!!!!!!

Okay, to be perfectly honest, we still haven’t decided on a full sized couch and chair or the love seat (smaller couch) and chair and have to decide before 10 am in order to call in the order. Either way, the chair is a definite. Cool-looking fabric that will look sharp in WS’s office, which is where the furniture is going.

Why in WS’s office? Why not out in the main part of the house, where, you know, people can sit on it?

Well, I’m nearly moved back into WS’s office. We sit opposite each other and have the end part of the room by the window empty and bare. The cats aren’t allowed in this room since there is carpet in here. This way, the furniture is saved from certain destruction and we can enjoy it fully without worrying about sitting in piles of cat hair, poop marks or, heaven forbid, Zooot Puke.

We’re decided on off white for the couch or loveseat, whichever, the print for the chair previously mentioned and an ottoman in the same cool fabric. Once we decide, we can get the couch (or loveseat) and chair as soon as Friday (JOY!) and the ottoman in 4-5 weeks. Couple that with getting our movie posters framed up and we’ve got ourselves an actual room with actual functionality. Only in America!

Gawd, we need to get lives.

I ate more today than I did on my entire trip to San Diego. I’m blaming WS. He worked at home today and talked about food all day long. Naturally, I felt like a gun was to my head and stuffed my face several times. I feel pretty crappy right now but nothing that a good night’s sleep and a few days of eating little to nothing won’t fix. Now if my right eardrum would just open up and stop making crunchy sounds every few minutes….Next trip: Remember to chew gum on take offs and landings.

April 5th 2001

Finally got the furniture arranged in our shared office. I can’t believe we have a real, furnished room now! We picked the loveseat and chair up ourselves because we didn’t want to wait 3 weeks for Wickes to decide whether they wanted to drive to Vancouver to deliver anything. And apparently, when something is “In Stock” it doesn’t exactly mean you can load it up right then and there and whisk it home. No, no, no, you have to pick it up from a main warehouse somewhere by the waterfront. That is, if you have a way of getting it home. We rented a truck for a day. It was adventurous to find the warehouse, load the loveseat and chair, then fight rush hour traffic getting back home sometime before all the other stores closed. Mainly, an electronics store. Video Only, to be specific.

A few months ago, we picked up a DVD player and I drooled over a Wega TV. Anyone who knows us knows that we only have one TV, made in 1987, but might not know that it doesn’t have all the cool features that most modern TVs have like, a way to hook up a video or DVD player and only WS’s extensive comprehension of cables and all-things-audio/video has enabled us to enjoy different kinds of media. I didn’t think WS noticed me pawing that Sony TV in the least but apparently he did and we ended up picking one of those up as well. We did have a big truck, after all. I just wish we could have found time to go buy a TALL ladder too. That will have to wait until next time around.

My right eardrum is still closed up. I really don’t want to go to the doctor for this but if it starts hurting or oozing anything, I’ll have no choice. I am just so tired of not being able to hear out of it.

We nailed the stock market today and picked up a solid 12 percent on our money. Would have made 5 percent more had we NOT had our money in the market yesterday when we lost a bit. Not bad work for one day. We haven’t been playing the market in weeks and weeks. It’s just too scary right now and too hard to find that “sure thing.”

I’m babbling now because I’m tired. Haven’t got a good night’s sleep in 4 nights.

April 6th 2001

Work, work, work today. I’ve only working a few hours and already feel tired. I’m working in a more difficult tier level today, trying to help customers with problems that the average bear couldn’t easily answer. I’m reading some of these technical problems and wondering how the hell some people get themselves into such a mess.
“I click on this and that, then clicked on that too a couple more times. Then I decided to try downloading that and everything worked. So, just to check, I decided to uninstall everything, then reinstall everything, then click this and that again. Now your program won’t work. What’s wrong?”

Uh….why did you do that? Why couldn’t you leave well-enough alone?
I can’t say that. I can’t reply to the customer with that. I have to try to fix whatever it was that they screwed up via email. Too many people don’t check to make sure they are doing exactly what you ask them to do and they get upset because nothing continues to work. Of course, in their eyes at this point, it is all our fault. This happens upwards of a hundred times a day. Am I complaining? Nope. It can get frustrating sometimes, but I still like my job and I still like knowing that I am using everything I know to help people.

We have a friend from out of town visiting sometime this weekend. I thought he was supposed to be here last weekend in which I would have missed him, being in San Diego and all, but I was off a weekend. Actually, we miss seeing him often. He has family up here and you know how family obligations can eat up the time. We’re lucky to see him once every couple of years. We do have tickets to a National bodybuilding competition for tomorrow night so I hope things don’t conflict!

Still haven’t been to the gym since getting back from San Diego. Absolutely NO time. I have to work on this. I have to MAKE time.

I think my next door neighbors to the east are gone on vacation. Things are very, very quiet over there and the cars haven’t moved since before I left for CA. My neighbors to the west are gone on spring break vacation. It’s been a joy having the place quiet over the past week. Even the construction going on behind us has been subdued.

April 8th 2001

We went to the NPC West Coast Championship Bodybuilding competition last night held at Skyview High School and I got to meet Diana Dennis in personal. Got her autograph and a hug. You could tell that nearly everyone around her was either completely in awe or intimidated as hell but she is really pretty nice. I took my Women in Bodybuilding book to be autographed on her picture and she acted amazed to see that I had it. I felt it was a special moment, one of which I’m sure she completely forgot a nanosecond after she signed it. WS was pretty impressed though and that’s what really matters.

Bought some gardening stuff yesterday: Two tomato cages and 16 small-leaved ivy plants. I plan on putting the tomato cages upside down in a couple of large ceramic pots I have outside, clamping the tops of the cages, planting the ivy in the pots and training it to grow up and all over the upside cages. The result will be cone-shaped ivy topiaries that can stay outside year around. During the holiday season, I can string them with tiny white lights for that x-mas tree effect. Yeah, I get excited over the little things…

Hoping to see out out-of-state friend today so I’m getting as much work in now as I can. I’m completely moved into and working out of WS’s office, so I guess that makes this our office now. Don’t know what I’ll be using my old office for just yet. Since there’s a lot of cool Adventurer-Explorer stuff in there, most likely, it’ll be used as a den that can be closed off from the cats when they become a pain in the ass. Yes, cats can be a pain in the ass. Especially ones named Zooot. She hates it when she can’t be in the same room as me 24 hours a day. Spoiled, she is. If she tells you any differently, she’s lying.

April 11th 2001

Why do all grocery store Easter items have to do with bunnies, ducks and chickens? Why aren’t there any candy religious items? I’m not a religious person in the least but I might be more tempted to be if I could run up to the store and pick up a bag of malted milk chocolate Virgin Marys and a package of Jesus Peeps. I actually sent the Just Born company, the manufacturers of Peeps, an email asking them this very question but have yet to hear anything back.

We took a walk around our development this evening for the first time since last fall. It’s definitely deteriorating. Cars parked in side yards being overgrown with knee-high grass, entire yards enveloped in weeds and mud, a mis-mash of fence types (against development rules and restrictions), some of which are already falling down, skateboard ramps and Fisher Price plastic playhouses and basketball hoops every 4th house (you would think that people only buy/build houses for their kids), black plastic bags of yard debris or whatever thrown into the fields along with an assortment of pop bottles, disposable diapers and scraps of paper. It’s sad. The first house in this area was built less than 2 years ago and it looks like humans have been inhabiting this area for generations.

I am so craving pizza. Fortunately, no one delivers out here and neither of us feel like driving to go get any.

April 26th 2001

I’ve been working such long hours lately that I’ve lost track of some things like updating the journal here. I’m working on that. I’m also reading a book on the FISH! philosophy, a way to boost morale and improve results for businesses and employees, created around the work ethic of Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle. One of the four methods is called Be Present and it means paying complete and total attention to whatever is at hand, every waking minute. If you are dealing with a customer or patron, pay complete and total attention to that person or situation. If you are at home, pay complete and total attention to whatever it is that you are doing, be it watching TV, surfing the ‘net or just sitting outside. I’ve been so wrapped up in work that I haven’t thought of anything else outside of work and that includes refilling the bird feeders, planting shrubs that have been sitting in pots for over a month, doing laundry, grocery shopping, checking other’s journals and updating my own.

I’m sure there was something else I was going to mention here but I’ve forgotten it. I’m still working on being present.

Pathetic news item: A 14 year-old girl in Eugene, Oregon has created her own web site all by herself. Book reviews (those Potter books), cyber pets, animated GIFs…wow. I know I’m impressed. Don’t you just hate it when the media stumbles upon the World Wide Web every once in a while? I have half a mind to flood channel 6 news (KOIN TV in Portland, Oregon) with web links created by people over the age of 50, people with terminal illnesses, ordinary people who have good, clean looking sites that don’t have a bunch of huge, slow-loading images of satanic images, embedded midi tunes, and tacky backgrounds that only males between the ages of 12 and 17 find attractive (you people know who you are).

Naw, that wouldn’t interest anyone…

WS is being stupid today. He found out yesterday that someone he works with secretly signed him up a few weeks ago for a project that is due today. So he worked until 7pm yesterday, then came home, ate quickly and worked until 5am this morning. Then he showered and went back to work. I talked to him on the phone just a short while ago and he won’t be home until late tonight either. He’s looking at 48+ hours without sleep. He used to do stuff like this years ago when he was in stressful jobs he didn’t enjoy. Trust me. Getting no sleep for 2 or 3 days doesn’t make him like his job any better. I hate it when he pulls this crap.

Noteworthy Item: We still don’t like green eggs and ham, Sam I Am.

April 29th 2001

WS says: I ran across the Holy Grail of defects yesterday. Once you’ve located a bug that deletes all files from your hard drive, there’s not much more to find. I’m seriously thinking about retirement now.

B says: WooWee, have I had fun over the last couple of days with some kind of illness! I had been feeling extremely rundown over the course of the previous week, so rundown that I considered making a doctor’s appointment to make sure I wasn’t gearing up for a heart attack or anything. The level of exhaustion I felt just was not normal in the least for me. I think the last time I felt that tired during the day was back in ’75 when I had a job that required me to be at work at 2 am six days a week. I just don’t get overly-tired like this and was beginning to worry about a potential health problem.

Then Friday, I got up with a big time runny and sneezy nose. Over the course of the next six hours, a fever and pounding headache started and by 8 PM, I was pretty much wiped.

I hit the sack at 9:30 PM Friday night, woke up for a half an hour Saturday morning around 10:30 AM, then slept again until 6 PM, nearly 24 hours of sleep. Unfortunately, the pounding headache never left, even with so much aspirin, my stomach hurt.

Today, I slept until 10 AM. The headache is still here. The runny nose is nearly gone (you don’t want to know what I’m blowing out of my sinuses but I will say that it’s big and colorful), the coughing is down to once every 45 seconds or so, which isn’t helping the headache to abate, the wheezing is down to a minimum and my taste buds are non-existent. My head feels heavy, yet a bit lighter than yesterday and joy of joys! I’ve started a raging case of the poops which means that whatever I have is starting to make it’s way out of my system. Which reminds me…be right back.

Ah…much better. Thank you for your patience.

The neighbor cat got a huge robin out in the backyard sometime over the weekend and since I’ve been ill, I haven’t had the chance to go out and bury it. It’s bloating and I can only thank holy heyzeus that it’s not 100 degrees out there. I’ll have to drag myself out there sometime this evening and get rid of it. Such a waste.
Time to go lie down again.

Noteworthy Item: We still don’t like green eggs and ham, Sam I Am.

April 30th 2001

WS says: What would you spend six hours a week of free time on?

B says: I’m trying hard today to make up for not being able to work too much yesterday due to whatever illness I was suffering. A word of advisement: Coughing fits and loose bowels are very bad bedfellows

I finally was able to watch The Weakest Link tonight in it’s entirety. I could like this show if I wanted to. I hear that everyone thinks the hostess is too gruff so they’re going to get rid of her and put some comedian in her place. Yeah, let’s make the show as incredibly stupid and bad as Family Feud with that fat ex-comic whateverhisnameis.

WS wants me to go workout with him. I think it would be pushing things a little too fast for me although I desperately need to workout. It’s been 2 solid months!

May 3rd 2001

WS says: It’s amazing how unexpected events like this can draw a neighborhood closer together.

B says: WHAT A DAY IT’S BEEN! This is a LONG entry but worth it.

This morning, I found a bright orange bird with a leg band in our backyard. It was not a parakeet. By the time I called the bird shop and found out that it belonged to someone and that I should call the Humane Society, it flew off and never came back. I don’t know what the Humane Society could possibly do. I picture grown men with huge butterfly nets stomping all over the neighborhood trying to catch birds. That vision nearly happened before the day was over.

Around 11 a.m., I looked online for a weather report at http://www.kgw.com so I can plan out when I’ll be getting bark dust delivered and noticed a local news story titled: Vancouver Police Search for Stalker Suspect. It had a miniature pic of someone so I thought, “Hey, I live in Vancouver or thereabouts. I ought to look at the guy’s face. Was I in for a shock.

The guy I affectionately called [name withheld], who owns two homes in our development, who helped me build our rock wall out back, whom I shared plants with and tips on building my fountain, who WS and I dined with at a Portland sushi restaurant, who knew our house inside and out as well as we do was wanted on five felony warrants for failure to appear in count and had bolted out of the Clark County Courthouse Tuesday and out of police custody, prompting a police search. He’s also wanted on arson charges so they say.

At the end of March, he allegedly took his wife hostage right up the street from us in one of their homes for several hours before taking off. He owned weapons and was thought to be armed throughout his run from police.

I was shocked, printed out the story and went next door to ask if they knew anything about it. Nope. So I asked my other neighbor who prompted me to go with him to another neighbor who has a police connection and we discussed it. End of story….or so I thought.

At 5 p.m., our east coast TV feed of that survival show comes on. WS gets home from work and we close up the house and shut the blinds so we don’t get disturbed watching the last show in this series and finding out who the winner is. Last season, we did get disturbed by an anti-survivor neighbor coming over to visit just before the winner was announced and we learned our lesson from it. Because this final episode is two hours long, the commercial breaks are nearly 5 minutes in length. Around 6:05, during a commercial break, I step outside to check on a garter snake that I rescued from that pesky neighbor cat. The snake is gone from where I left it so I look around a little and hear someone come up behind me. No doubt, it’s WS telling me the show is back on but NO! It’s [name withheld], looking haggard and upset, there in my backyard, and he says, “Hey, how’s it going?”

I say back, “Hey, how’s it going with you?” And he says, “This has gotten all out of control. All these cops out there are for me!” And I reply, “What cops?” and turn around looking through the cracks in the fence and I don’t see anything. But….my ears finally open and I hear police car sirens, LOTS of police car sirens in the distance getting closer quickly.

And [name withheld] starts talking and talking fast. “This separation…it’s out of control…she’s blowing this out of proportion…I moved out…she just came back from Brazil for two weeks and I visited her and she said it was kidnapping…”

At that point, I said, “Let’s go sit down and I motioned him to sit in the lawn chairs a few feet away. But the chairs had water sitting on them so we crouched down on the cement and I said, “I’m sorry. I’m lost here. I don’t understand.” and he went on and said about his wife, “She left me on January 8th. We’ve getting a divorce. It’s out of control and they’re after me. If they catch me, I’ll do a year in prison…” then he stood up and said, “I have to get out of here.” and walked down our sidewalk toward that rock wall he helped build and I walked to the back door.
Next door, as I could see over the fence, was a uniformed cop with a police dog on a leash. The cop was looking down. Had he raised his head, he would have seen [name withheld] walking out of our backyard and hopping down the rock wall. But the cop didn’t look and I went back inside, shut and locked the door.

WS was lying on the floor in the living room watching that show and I knelt beside him and whispered, “[name withheld] is in our backyard.” Then I went out the front door. Cops cars were FLYING up and down our street. Sirens were wailing everywhere and my neighbor was standing out by their van watching. Then they turned to me and I just said, “Help. [name withheld] is in our backyard.” But by now, he wasn’t in our backyard.

The neighbor yelled over to another neighbor who yelled over to another neighbor and then WS yelled that the show was back on, so, being torn between the final episode and some wanted guy who wasn’t still around and nothing I could do anything about anyway, I choose to go back to the show, even though I knew my mind wouldn’t, couldn’t focus on it.

I quickly told WS what happened. During commercial breaks, we watched the police activity going on outside and less than an hour later, the show winner was finally announced. That one was a shocker too.

About an hour later, [name withheld] was caught. He had swum across the cold creek three times, both upstream and down, hiked across fields and forests, only to come up right in front of a cop who was in the right place at the right time I guess.

Later I learned that he originally walked into the next door neighbor’s house, whom I had originally talked to earlier today, and asked to use the phone. While he was using the phone, my neighbor was quietly freaking out and finally alerted some other neighbors. When he suspected that and saw he couldn’t go back out their front door because of police activity, he went out the back, hopped the fence into our yard and there I was, checking up on an injured garter snake.

It’s been a very, very strange day. I seem to go for months and months with absolutely NOTHING interesting happening to me, then I’ll have a day where everything happens. Today was one of those days and one I won’t forget for a long while. [name withheld], I still don’t understand and I’m sorry things went this way. We really liked you and your family and still do and we’re sorry we couldn’t go out for more sushi together. That was our fault completely and we’ll always second-guess whether we could have been part of keeping things on an even keel.
Noteworthy Item: We still don’t like green eggs and ham, Sam I Am.

May 5th 2001

WS says: I’m thinking lately how great it would be to be the Happy Gilmore of Software QA.

B says: Went to a Cinco de Mayo neighborhood party this evening. We left when a large majority of women started doing “blowjobs”, a shot of mixed alcohol in a shot glass placed between the legs of a seated man and drunk using no hands. It was interesting entertainment for a while. WS was ready to come home, so here we are at 9 p.m. on a Saturday night, bored to tears. Or maybe it’s just me.

I’ve been feeling very cooped up lately and wanted to go out and about all day today. Unfortunately, WS had just washed the car yesterday, it rained on and off most of the day today and I know he goes through spells where he likes it kept clean longer than others. Still….

WS says: In my own defense, I never once felt compelled to keep the car clean, but I did spend five hours this morning getting some work done because I did know we had this party to go to this evening and didn’t know we’d be returning home as early as we did when drunken women started seeking volunteers.

B says: WS would have left early no matter what. He just doesn’t like being around people, drunken people or not. He’s always been somewhat like this, but it has gotten much worse over the last five years.

WS says: Looking forward to going to Barnes & Noble tomorrow.

B says: The Fatboy Slim video with Christopher Walken is a car accident. You know you shouldn’t look, but something makes you take just a peek and then you can’t tear your eyes away.

See, I told you I was feeling cooped up lately.

Noteworthy Item: We still don’t like green eggs and ham, Sam I Am.

Items out on loan: Book – The Perfect Storm. Rodda Paint Color Chip kit.

May 11th 2001

WS says: I hope The Mummy Returns is a good movie. I hope it doesn’t suck.

B says: Sounds like WS is going to see a movie this weekend. Most likely, I won’t be going, most likely because I’m STILL recovering from a killer cold/sinus infection from Hell. I ended up having to waste some vacation time by taking 4 days off this week. I’m trying to get in as much sleep as possible. Even though I hate to admit it and I won’t testify in any court that I ever said it, I really need more sleep than I normally get. I love sleep. It’s the only chance I get to shut off my brain, or, that is, when I get a good night’s sleep, which is very rare. In an average week, I’m lucky to get 20 hours of somewhat decent sleep in. A person just can’t go for years this way and so it affects my morale.

Switch to different subject. Same babbling: I reinstalled The Sims the other day (now that I’m on a computer that allows me to play it for longer than an hour without crashing). The reason I revisited this silly game was to create an exact replica of our house, ourselves and our lives as closely as the game will allow.

The house took an hour or so to create in it’s entirety, including furnishings (lots of art on the walls, little-to-no furniture) and then I turned WS & B loose.

WS got a job right away, played on a computer for fun, ate constantly when at home (standing up – no kitchen table), got up every morning low on energy and basically ignored B.

B tried to avoid getting a job at first, ate constantly, even when not hungry, whined a lot about the toilet seat left up, got up every morning low on energy and basically ignored WS.

Other than the part about the toilet seat, it’s amazingly similar to our real lives.
Similarities: The reason they are low on energy all the time is because they have no furniture to sit on. The reason they both eat constantly is because other than the computer, they have nothing else to do. Yes, they have a couple of TVs, but without anything to sit on, they only watch them when I force them to and then, it’s standing up, further draining energy. They have zero social lives because they are too tired to invite people over. They maintain just enough of a relationship to enable them to sleep together in the same bed without one of them complaining but they won’t share a bathroom when the other is using it. They are both obsessively neat and tidy and both have annoying habits: WS whistles when sleeping (he’s happy for some reason) and B blows money on repainting the walls.

It’s so similar, it’s scary. Everyone should do this just once. Everyone probably already did back a year or so ago when the game was newish. I’m just out of the loop. Hey, at least I try occasionally to catch up.

Noteworthy Item: We still don’t like green eggs and ham, Sam I Am.

Items out on loan: Book – The Perfect Storm. Rodda Paint Color Chip kit.

May 14th 2001

WS says: Calgon, take me away…Oh, I guess I don’t have anything to say today.

Lots of work. Lots and lots of work.

B says: Back to work today. Yes, I feel better and will stay this way if I remember to get more sleep than I had been for the last two years. And stop eating so much. I’m feeling the itch to start back up on a modified survivor diet for some reason.

I dreamt last night that I started going religiously to the gym, got all buff and burly-looking and people, mostly women, would come up to me and ask if they could touch my arms, which were very muscle-y. Most guys, on the other hand, would seem to want to make things as difficult for me as possible (jealousy?) or call me a dike under their breaths. Gee, like that hasn’t happened most of my life anyway…

I think it’s time to start going back to the gym, even if I have to go alone every night.

Watched The Perfect Storm this evening during dinner on the downstairs TV. Much nicer than watching it on the 19″ we used to use. In fact, it was so much nicer, when I came back up here to work, my eyes were kind of rolling up and down over the sentences in the emails I was reading as if I were out to sea. Pretty cool, huh?

May 15th 2001

WS says: I wish I had a bunny. A fluffy bunny with little white feet. A cuddly bunny would be good right now. That’s all.

B says: Random thoughts throughout the day:
It’s Pesto season again! We love homemade pesto! Thanks to Squiggy who showed us how to make it years ago. So basil-y, so cheese-y, so yummy! We had it last night. Today, I have zits. Gawd, I hate eating anymore. Everything but protein shakes and rice gives me zits.

I went to the gym late last night and will be going tonight as well. I realize that if I want to get and stay in shape, I’ll have to do it alone. WS just doesn’t have time right now. It’s okay. I can do lots of stuff by myself.

No dead/half-eaten birds in the backyard for nearly a week now. A new record.
I bid and won my first eBay item today. A grail rubbing from the movie Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. Supposedly taken from a cast made from a mold from the original plaster cast used in the movie. One of those “I’m related to someone who’s related to someone who’s related to someone who’s related” sort of things. Anyway, I didn’t pay hardly anything for it so I think there are probably many more “related to someone who’s related” parts in there. Hopefully, I see it in the mail in the next couple of weeks and if it’s halfway decent looking, I’ll have it framed to go in my old office.

I’m beginning to see how much WS has influenced me to keep myself away from other people. Wanting to constantly please WS and make his life as comfortable as humanly possible, I’ve rearranged my entire life, or what I call my life. I’ve never really had my own life. It’s something my parents never allowed me to develop as a kid or a teenager and it’s not like they have classes on this for adults. As a result, people, relatives (related or by marriage) and “acquaintances” perceive me as strange because they just don’t understand why I am the way I am. I know nothing different and so, I’ve gotten labeled my whole life as difficult, blunt, not willing to embrace new technologies or change, ___you fill in the blank___.

So I’m not too hip on hanging around with other people and 100% of that reason is because of all the negative comments I get from people, most of them I never even know, received over the course of my entire life. How I look, how I dress, how I laugh or smile or don’t smile or think or speak or walk or stand or sit or you-name-it. As a result, I’m not comfortable around people and so when I really want to, need to, talk to someone, I have no one. *sob story mode on* And if I did at this point, since I’ve kept myself apart from people, I couldn’t just spill my guts without going through years of back story first before I could get to what I really want to yap about. Worse yet, WS doesn’t, wouldn’t, understand, without thinking that I need people all the time. For some reason, he thinks it’s all or none. Sometimes I just feel sorry for myself and want to whine to someone other than WS, who is usually too busy to listen. Or he can’t understand what I’m saying or why. *sob story mode off*

Noteworthy Item: We still don’t like green eggs and ham, Sam I Am.

Items out on loan: Book – The Perfect Storm. Rodda Paint Color Chip kit.

May 16th 2001

WS says: Nothing tonight.

B’s random thoughts of the day:
The weather today is Sun on. Sun off. Sun on. Sun off. I’d like to live somewhere where it’s like today all the time. Some place where it didn’t get above 79 degrees would be a big plus too.

I’m getting ready for when my supervisor takes 10 days off for medical reasons starting this coming weekend. Going through my notes, talking with her in work chat, email and on the phone. I’ve got lots of help from co-workers and other managers should anyone or anything go awry. I’m hoping that she feels much better when she gets back.

The neighbor with the REALLY LOUD radio-control helicopter still can’t fly the thing without crashing it.

A neighbor told me the other day that she was happy and surprised to see the large number of colorful birds hanging around the area since we put up the feeders.

We’ve got bright yellow goldfinches, red house finches, blue tree swallows and various Grosbeaks and Juncos which are orange-y brownish with black areas and white spots. That comment makes it all worthwhile.

I had to clean all the bird feeders today. They were a gooey mess after all the rain over the past few days. I read recently that feeders should be cleaned a minimum of once a week with a weak bleach and water solution to prevent disease from going through the entire bird population. Apparently, viruses are rampant in birds and spread by birds pooping on the seeds they and their friends then eat later. Other than the occasional dumping, I’ve never officially cleaned out the feeders. I plan on cleaning them once a week now on one of my off days since I usually have to refill them once or twice a week anyway. Sometimes, I think I’m feeding pigs with wings instead of birds.

May 17th 2001

WS says: Gawd I’m a geek. It’s amazing to me to realize how shielded I keep anything personal locked away but seemingly only under certain circumstances. Even though I can talk about all kinds of difficulty, frustration, feelings, etc with colleagues at work, I can’t do the same thing for a journal entry without trying to come up with a one-line zinger about bunnies.

Class at work is very cool. Ummm, but still don’t know whether this is really going to turn out to be what I want to do. Still searching for inspiration.

B says: I spent my entire day off today doing only things I wanted to do. I slept, I read, I played silly computer games. I cleaned up some paperwork, did some relaxing yard work and watched the birds. I drank chai and watched a show on an ancient civilization. Then, surprisingly, WS took me out to Pizzicato for dinner without me asking him to. I’ll have to do this again someday.

The house behind us is nearly finished being built. The carpet, lighting and fixtures are in. The construction company graded out the backyard today and did a good job of it, coming nowhere near our rock wall. No stress there for me. I need to sneak down there and check out the inside to see what the home buyers did and did not want to pay for before they move in.

My neighbor has a nest full of baby birds in her hanging basket right by her front door. While I was doing yard work, I heard them, then saw them getting fed by one of the parents. Too cute. As soon as the neighborhood cat hears them, they won’t be there for long. For this reason, I hate baby bird season.

Miss Columbia is on David Letterman tonight. Obviously, Columbia has bimbos too.
Don’t you just hate walking into a store that you think will have cool stuff in it and with all the intent of purchasing some of that cool stuff, only to find nothing but cheap, sleazy, ugly, WT crap and a store owner who’s desperate to sell anything? It’s really bad when the store owner recognizes you from the grocery store you shop at.

May 19th 2001

WS says:

I’m going to have to find another programming course to take. Going into a class without having the necessary prerequisites is a great way to quickly advance your skills because you have no fucking choice. I think I’ll have to do this more often. I wonder how that would work with an atomic physics course.

I really miss the days when computer technology was still obscure to the general public. Having computers bundled at Wal-Mart or as Kmart blue-light specials is truly a travesty. You know it’s become a joke when there is actually a book named America Online for Dummies that’s been published.

B has lots of stuff to rant about today:

Workout was wonderful. 11 PM and there were 7 other people there.

If I never see another car commercial on TV again, I would be the happiest person on the planet.

Are you annoyed by having to watch commercials before the movie begins at your local movie theatre? Well, it’s not getting any better. There’s a John McCain/anti-guns in school commercial heading to all major theatres now. Happy force-feeding! I wonder how long it will be before we see it added to DVDs?

Trader Joe’s opens a store here in Vancouver today. Trader Joe’s is one of those specialty grocery stores like Nature’s Northwest and Zupan’s and is generally seen as snooty and upity because they have different and strange things you can’t find just anywhere. We went to a Trader Joe’s a few months ago in Tigard, Oregon and whereas we did buy some of that different and strange stuff, in general, I found it a small, unorganized and dirty store with the most pathetic “produce” department I have ever seen. 6 kinds of soft apples displayed on two stacks of apple boxes and 3 heads of organically-grown lettuce is NOT a produce department. Let’s hope this Trader Joe’s is better and cleaner. If all fails, Zupan’s is opening a new store here in Vancouver in a few months over by HP.

It seems that nearly everyone is breeding this spring. There are so many pregnant or new human parents in our neighborhood, it’s positively frightening. If the economy turns really sour, do you suppose, with another mouth to feed, that they will all eat their young? No. For some reason, that isn’t allowed yet people clamber all over each other for veal and lamb. Don’t worry. The economy isn’t going sour anytime soon.

Why do people tell us they absolutely will not be having children, only to show up pregnant a few months later and all too happy to be so? We seem to running into a lot of people whom, at first glance, to be very aligned with our own beliefs and lifestyle and that includes being childless by choice. After we get to know them and feel that we have a lot in common and would like to spend more time developing a friendship, at just about that time, they inform us that they are expecting and aren’t we all happy and giddy for them? At no time have we minced words about how much we don’t enjoy children, the younger the more so. We strongly feel that there is no point in breeding given the world’s situation and population right now and the choice to have or not have children should be equally as respected, yet, if someone announces their dislike for children and/or their refusal at having children or even having children anywhere around them, that person is looked at as though they just announced to the world that they eat microwaved babies for dinner every night.

I’m just so tired right now of trying to develop friendships with people who seem like a perfect match to our personalities, after so many years of disappointment, only to be disappointed yet again. Does this make us shallow, that we choose not to continue a relationship with people who choose to breed? Yeah, it does. We’re just as shallow as everyone else. Everyone is shallow in one way or another and we’re no different than anyone else. We just have a different shallowness, that’s all. Some people choose to not shop at Norstrom’s. Some people choose to avoid eating peas. We choose to stay away from people with children.

If I thought WS would see any humor in it at all, I’d jokingly say, “Let’s have a baby because everyone else is doing it!” just to get a laugh. But we all know better. He wouldn’t laugh and I couldn’t stand to even say that anyway.

May 20th 2001

WS doesn’t have anything to say today. Too much work, too little time, way too little patience.

B has lots of stuff to rant about today:

Too many co-workers on vacation today. Nothing much is getting done by the ones who are supposed to be working. The cattle prod might have to make an appearance this coming work week and that doesn’t make me happy in the least.

If you were led to believe that you would become a world class surfer if only you purchased a $4000, one-of-a-kind surfboard from some guy in Hawaii, would you pay the price? I think I would. Even if I lived in Iowa.

Late spring in Washington state. It doesn’t get dark here until nearly 9:30 PM. I love it!

You would not believe how hard it is to find a grail to purchase online. Apparently, no one makes grails like they used to. I’ve been looking for months and I’m not looking for some fancy, metal, jewel-encrusted and dragon-laden goblet. I just want something plain and simple and preferably, wooden. Watch the end of Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade and you’ll get the idea of what I’m looking for. It should be so simple, it’s silly, but for some reason. It’s not.

Visited the new Trader Joe’s here in Vancouver. Aisles are too narrow, at an angle and the produce department, although bigger than Tigard Trader Joe’s we visited, not very interesting. Whereas I thought we would be the perfect demographic fit for this specialty market, we just don’t like the place. Weird vibe or something. C’mon, Zupan’s!

I’ve been getting a lot of positive email lately about my random thoughts and rants. It boggles the mind to think what kind of personality I’d have if I had received positive reinforcement like this growing up. Instead, it was always, “You’re ugly.” “You’re pathetic.” “You can’t do anything right.” “No one will ever like you.” “No one will ever listen to a thing you say.” and “If you live to grow up, you’ll never amount to anything. I should put you out of my misery now.” (I heard this one on a daily basis.) It all sounds soooo ho-hum now that I’ve been out of that environment for fifteen years. It helped tremendously that those awful people died.

It must be a horrible thought knowing that people, particularly your own offspring, fear and even hate you throughout all the days of your life and pray for your death every day just so they can live, sometimes, breathing the first real breath of freedom for the first time in their entire lives. I think that would be an awful thought at the moment of death. But then again, they’re dead and there’s nothing they can do at that point to reverse things or to heal the people left behind. Those people are left wondering their entries lives, “WTF?” and trying to get on in life, when in fact, every aspect of their daily existence is affected by the hell they lived through. Do those survivors ever really get over it? Can’t they just not think about it? Can’t they just get on with their lives? (Questions I’ve been asked repeatedly throughout the years…) Sadly, no. A human brain put through years of that kind of crap can’t just “get over it.” Believe me, that is what I pray for all too often.

May 23rd 2001

WS doesn’t have anything to say yet again today. Too much work, too little time, way too little patience.

B has lots of stuff to rant about today:

@home went down yesterday around 3 PM and stayed down throughout the evening. The really annoying part happened when both our phone and satellite dish went out! Seems the county fire department had a controlled burn about a half mile from our house and things briefly got out of control, burning lines, felling trees and creating a HUGE cloud of black smoke (which conveniently blocked our dish signal for nearly 3 hours). I finally went to bed at 12:41 this morning and only the TV was working. But this morning, everything appears to be working just fine again.

Speaking of our area, some of the older homeowners around our development have sold their land and now, the tree clearing has begun. Piles of chopped down trees and sawdust and angry red earth is all that remains of some of the area. Oh, and the assortment of squished forest animals who were so abruptly torn from the only homes they’ve known, fled onto the roadways and forced to learn about the physics of vehicles versus soft, warm flesh. Less than a mile from our house and the largest of the bunch, a dead deer lies off the side of the road. Yesterday, an osprey landed in one of the few remaining tall pines in our development and sat there for over an hour before taking off to parts unknown. I wish people in the surrounding areas would take a hard look at this and say, “This is a mess and I won’t be part of it.”

Instead, it seems like they all say, “Hey, he made some righteous bucks selling his land and timber. I’ll do that too!” Pathetic. But then again, we bought a house in a development that was once pasture, meadows and forest land. We’re just as much to blame.

I just saw a news story on what scientists are finding growing on mail that is delivered to homes and p.o. boxes. Germs and viruses such as staph, ecoli, fecal material (we are talking U.S. Postal workers here…), and some nasty things that can cause serious infections and health problems. Not only is this stuff growing on the envelopes, in most cases, the stuff is growing on what is IN the envelopes. On the actual billing and bank statements themselves. Gee, it looks like I’ll have to stop licking the bills we get in the mail and start going “Howard Hughes” on everything I touch. Society just isn’t getting any cleaner and obviously, we can’t stop wiping our butts with our bare hands.

Yesterday was 98 degrees here in Vancouver. I was just bragging to someone last week who lives where it is regularly 110 degrees that we hadn’t even hit 85 yet.
Serves me right. Of course, that person will have to work in 110+ degree weather everyday now through September, whereas we’ll only see 98+ degrees a few times throughout the same period.

The people behind us are finally moving in. First on the agenda: They installed blinds on all but two windows and have them tightly shut. They could be sacrificing goats in there for all we know now.

The Pet Police are on the prowl again in our area, looking for unlicensed pets, whether they live indoors or not. I’d be willing to bet more than half the dogs and cats in our development are unlicensed. While our own pets are licensed every year when they go for their yearly checkup, personally, I don’t see what the point is unless you let your animal run loose and it has a tendency to run away or bite someone. If your animal never leaves the house, what’s the point? Another way for the county to make money is how I see it. Just like red-light cameras…

May 24th 2001

WS still doesn’t have anything to say today. Too much work, too little time, way too little patience.

B has lots of stuff to rant about today:

Ad from a catalog I received yesterday in the mail:

“Hickory Syrup USA – To glaze a party ham or elevate breakfast sausage, a smoky-sweet syrup tapped from the bark of hickory trees. Old-time smokehouses prefer hickory to all other woods because nothing makes a pig taste better.”

Now, if you are having a problem making your pig taste better, maybe you should be finding something better to eat. Just a thought…

Yesterday, I talked a little about those wacky scientists who go around and check out all the nasty germs growing on things like playground equipment and public telephones. I love those guys! I’ve suspected that there was really bad stuff to be found all over commonly used items in most people’s houses, not to mention commonly used items in public. It probably had something to do with finding pubic hairs in a glass of punch at an 8th grade graduation party. But when those guys test stuff like daycare centers and schools, I have to say, “DUH!” What did they expect to find? When kids aren’t taught to cover their mouths and noses when they cough or sneeze, or to not wipe their snot on their hands and arms and then touch something or wash their hands after touching themselves and/or going to the bathroom and adults don’t either, did they expect to find a sterile environment?
And I don’t even understand why the new media reports such stories. Obviously, it doesn’t change anything. People still continue to spray germs or touch their noses, genital areas and assholes and then touch other things that other people will come along and touch later on. And for as long as people keep breeding more people, more bodily fluid germs will be found. C’mon people, we aren’t common animals. You can wash your hands and you can keep your germs to yourselves.

May 26th 2001

WS says B’s berry daiquiris kick ass. In addition to that, can’t wait to hit the tequila. Sammy’s Cabo Wabo tequila is at the low end of the list, I think.

B has lots of stuff to rant about today:

About a month ago, I smashed the middle finger on my left hand in a drawer and caused a dark bruise to form under that nail. Now, the nail is grown out to the point where the bruise, about one quarter inch in diameter, is nearly at the end of the nail bed. I suspect that in another month, the nail will be completely grown out and that part will be gone. For now however, there is a very dark, very noticeable spot on the end of the nail on that finger and twice already, I’ve had someone tell me that I had a booger or something on the end of my finger. Then, I have to quell my anger and tell them, “No. It’s not a booger. I smashed my finger a month ago and that is a bruise under my nail. Thank you for noticing and pointing out to everyone that you thought I had a booger on the end of my finger.”
In yet another wonderful big-mouth people moment, yesterday we upgraded our satellite dish service and had a serviceman out working on the dish hanging off our house. He brought his dog along and left him tied up to his van, thankfully, in the shade as it was 83+ degrees here yesterday afternoon. I thought I would be nice and took a dog dish (yes, I own an actual dog dish but not a dog) of cool water with a few ice cubes floating in it out to the dog, knowing it would be okay with the service guy.

As I was petting the dog as he was slurping away and out of the blue, a next door neighbor hollers over, “Hey! Are you poisoning another neighborhood dog? Because if you are, I want to stand here and watch it twitch all over!” and he shook himself all over to mimic what he was hoping to see.

The really swell part was that there were other neighbors outside with friends visiting, and several children, all within earshot and when this neighbor hollered that, they all looked my way like I was Satan himself.

Now, why would someone say something like that and say it loud enough for half the neighborhood to hear? Was he drunk? Probably, but that’s not my call to make. Was he trying to draw attention to himself? Most certainly. It’s a personality trait he seems to have. Was he trying to push buttons? Could be. Up until that point, half the neighborhood knew I went out of my way to care for animals, wild and domesticated, and some of them knew that animal abuse is a very touchy subject with me. Just talking about it is apt to bring me to tears.
Figuring he was purposely being an asshole and looking to draw attention to his big bad self, I stood up and called back, “Yeah. Right. But what’s it to you?!” He smartly replied again, that if I was, he was going to stand there and watch.

WHATEVER…

WS was NOT the happy camper over the entire exchange, but he was holding the service guy’s ladder around the other side of the house and couldn’t do anything at the time. Once the service guy got down from the ladder, the neighbor was nowhere to be found.

And people wonder why I am the way I am.

May 28th 2001

WS says: Days off are cool. I had kind of forgotten what one was like. While I must agree 100 percent with B’s A Knight’s Tale review below, I wasn’t quite as perturbed with The Mummy Returns though I was ready to grab the candy wrapper out of the fifteen-year old’s hands sitting behind me and shove it up his ass. I rather enjoyed the ancient back story elements which I thought were the strong point of the first movie as well. Now if we could just have two more weeks of paid holidays, I’d truly be ready to get back to the grindstone.

B says: Today, being a U.S. holiday glorifying death in the name of military sheepdom and being that we both had the day off together for the first time in nearly half a year, we spent the day carelessly and didn’t do anything of any worth whatsoever. It was befitting the purpose of the holiday in my eyes.
I started the day by sleeping late, or trying to sleep is more like it. A neighbor decided today was a good day to power-wash their house at 8:30 am. WS was good and got up even earlier, made coffee, worked a little (when he wasn’t supposed to ‘cuz of the holiday) and wanted us to go see a movie or two. We ended up seeing A Knight’s Tale and The Mummy Returns. Thank the undead gods of creamed corn, I didn’t pay money to see either movie. I used some movie gift certificates I received last xmas. Had I paid for either movie, I would have been pissed.

Nearly everyone knows that I just don’t go see movies. I like things that stimulate my brain and don’t insult my intelligence. Unfortunately, that rules out 93 percent of everything in the world today and 96 percent of it’s population. When I choose to go to a movie that I know will turn my brain to mush and will insult my intelligence, I would like to see it without listening to people talk, chatter, whisper, yell, shout back at the screen, holler, get and make calls on their cell phones and pagers, fart, sneak a smoke, munch loudly on their candy and popcorn, slurp their drinks or crackle their candy wrappers. I had the great opportunity once to watch an entire first-run movie in a theatre without hearing a peep other than the movie and it left a lasting impression on me. The fact that I was the only person in the theatre at that particular showing is beside the point. No one should PAY to listen to anything other than the movie they paid to see. No one should pay to sit in a theatre chair that is broken or falls apart when you sit in it. No one should pay to walk across a floor that is so sticky, it threatens to pull your hips out of joint. I guess it’s just my high standards getting in the way again. It couldn’t possibly be that no one gives a rat’s ass about anyone else.

A Knight’s Tale should only be seen when one is drunk. Or in the accompaniment of lots of drunk, rowdy, Wal-Mart shoppin’ buddies. There is just something wrong when within the first 2 minutes of the film, one is seriously questioning getting up and leaving. I’d wager it had something to do with the medieval townsfolk singing and clapping along with Queen’s We Will Rock You before a joisting match. I won’t even talk about the David Bowie dance scene. It was just wrong. Listening to the teenager behind us purposely beep her pager badly in tune to the music played throughout the movie was nearly more entertaining, but in the end just pissed us off.

The Mummy Returns wasn’t much better. If it wasn’t for all the violence, it would be a kids movie. In fact, the only reason it wasn’t advertised as a kids movie (according to the producer) was that there is so many fight scenes. But to say that the “special effects” are good and worth the ticket price would be pathetic because that’s what they are: Pathetic. Nearly everything had been done before in some other movie and in most cases, done better and the scorpion king? Nice plastic- and rubber-looking creature. All in all: a nicely done insult to my intelligence but I knew that going in. I had just hoped for a shred of entertainment. Didn’t find any. The fat woman and her two children farting behind us and forcing us to move to a different seating location didn’t help either.

So, we spent what was left of the day sitting around here, wondering what we should do with ourselves and ended up eating leftovers, reading old wine magazines and watching TV. So exciting, it was, I nearly peed myself. Another great holiday that I wouldn’t have any other way.

Oh, and I almost forgot. Had I remained in my first marriage (and looked the other way when my then-husband and sister copulated whenever they got the chance), I would be celebrating 25 years of unblissful marriage today. It’s like it was another life…

Noteworthy Item: We still don’t like green eggs and ham, Sam I Am.

Items out on loan: Book – The Perfect Storm. Rodda Paint Color Chip kit.

May 30th 2001

WS says: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZ ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz*snort* zzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

B says: Don’t look for a web cam around here anytime soon. You’ll be waiting a while. The one I want and the one I can afford are vastly different things and naturally, I don’t want the basic, boring, sit-in-one-place-all-the-time cam. I want one that moves…

Another reason for the cam delay: Our budget. We’re making some changes here and there and need to get a few things that have been sitting around far too long paid off. I’m just sick of seeing them month after month and they feel like a weight around my neck. Luckily, we don’t need or really want anything else for the house until the end of the year so getting these few items taken care of couldn’t be more perfect timing.

Why can’t some people just do their work and stop goofing around? As a result, work has implemented a neat little way of auto-feeding emails to everyone. No more sitting around on their butts, taking 5 hours to answer 20 emails like some of my co-workers seem to do. Naturally, no one likes it and I heard nothing but whining about it all day yesterday. Even when I wasn’t officially working, I heard about it. Seems no one understood what I was talking about a few months back when my supervisor was off for a few days and I casually mentioned that things could come to this if people goofed off. Bing! Now some of them are blaming me for it. It’s just been a WAY too fun few days at work trying to fill in for my supervisor who should be resting after surgery but she’s NOT! She’s on the phone, she’s on the computer, she’s talking to her significant other accourding to her camera.

Someday, some of the younger people I know will be my age and they will understand what’s it like to feel discriminated against and made to feel that if I can’t keep up, maybe I should find another place to go. Naw, those people don’t think I’m talking about them.

Making a few page adjustments here. Nothing exciting, nothing to see, move along…

Noteworthy Item: We still don’t like green eggs and ham, Sam I Am.

Items out on loan: Book – The Perfect Storm. Rodda Paint Color Chip kit.

June 1st 2001

WS says: (again) zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZ ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz*snort* zzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

B says: So after I said I wasn’t going to get a web cam, WS decides to go ahead and investigate further and order one. He ran into a fairly major problem when we discovered that the number one camera out there has been discontinued! 3Com has discontinued their web cam line completely and are out of the web cam business as of last week! I was just looking (and drooling) over their HomeConnect cam, printed out all the info from 3Com’s site and decided that was The One.

Sure, I could find them at computer shops all over town for sale, most of those shops probably won’t even mention that the company has discontinued the line and won’t have the cams’ prices discounted, but I can’t get any company support should I buy one and have problems now. Knowing me, I’d have problems just because I can’t get company support. Crap! Their cam was the only one that got excellent scores AND could handle low light situations. Low light is all I live in anymore. I need low light support! Serves me right. I am such a consumer!

I killed off about 2 dozen banana slugs out in the backyard this evening. I hate killing anything and I really do like big slugs (used to have a couple of “pet” slugs when we lived at The Pit) but these guys were just getting out of control. You can’t even walk around out back without stepping on one of them or their offspring ever since they bulldozed down all the weeds from the yard behind us and they are eating everything in sight. It’s like wading through hair mousse!
Had to install a new version of the software I need for work and have had nothing but problems with it. Eventually, we had to reinstall Windows 2K and still, I’ve having problems. Disconnects, my mouse wanders off the screen half the time, can’t log into the radio feature of the software program I work with. Even Outlook isn’t behaving quite like it used to and I keep getting script errors whenever I open something. Looks like a total and complete reinstall of everything will be coming up sometime soon. Ugh!

Terrible factoid of the day: Wal-Mart sells more wedding dresses than any other business in the world. “Honey? Why doncha run yer pretty little self down to Wal-Mart and pick up a weddin’ dress an’ we kin finally tie the knot!” How romantic, uh? A sign of the times.

I seem to be having a very low tolerance for crappy stuff on TV lately and WS seems hell-bent on turning to everything crappy on TV. Crappy free movies, crappy series shows and why, oh why, can’t the X-Files show just die??

I also just noticed that I’m an anti-ice person. I just never paid attention to it before. I don’t put ice in my water and I don’t put ice in my ice-tea. I drink it warm and it doesn’t bother me in the least. WS, on the other hand, put ice in everything but when it comes to ordering a soda at a restaurant, he’ll usually order it with no ice. Ice for him equates to less soda. Ice for me equates to life in Arizona and “floaties” in the ice. NO ONE drinks the water in Phoenix because it’s all rehashed sewer water. The “floaties” are bits of toilet paper too small to filter out. Appetizing, isn’t it?

Noteworthy Item: We still don’t like green eggs and ham, Sam I Am.

Items out on loan: Book – The Perfect Storm. Rodda Paint Color Chip kit.

June 6th 2001

WS says: I’m right in the middle of something that will take a while, so I don’t have anything to say right now. What a surprise, huh?

B says: There’s nothing like seeing your loved one falling four feet over a rock wall all in the name of trying to meet a new neighbor who was mistakenly weed-whacking down our flowers. Which is why I stayed in bed a little longer than I would have normally last weekend. I didn’t want to see him nose dive over the rock wall, so I didn’t. I had to hear about it second hand and see the damage a 300 lb person can do to oneself. Personally, I’m surprised he didn’t break an ankle or something worse. As it was, he sprained an ankle and most likely tore ligaments in a knee. The colors cropping up on his right leg is awfully pretty too. Once more, I can call him gimp-boy.

We’re less than a day away from paying off the Demon car. That only took long enough. I believe a rule of Life states: The moment a car is paid off in full, it will begin to fall apart in earnest. I drove it today. Everything is working great. Let’s see how much longer that lasts…

Don’t you just hate it when you are craving ice cream and your significant other, in trying to be nice, goes out and buys five different gallon cartons of ice cream? That’s a hell of a lot of ice cream and someone has to eat it. Naturally, feeling like a gun was put to my head, I did my part. My face is incredibly broken out now. I don’t think teens with raging hormones have as many zits and bumps as I do right now. Mental note to self: That was stupid. Don’t do that again!

June 7th 2001

WS says: Hey! I’m workin’ here!

B says: I woke up with a toothache again today. I had one last week but it only lasted an hour or so. Today, I wasn’t as lucky. Dentist appointment tomorrow ought to take care of it. I’ll live until then and until then, aspirin is my friend.
What are the ethics surrounding helping old computer and electronic equipment, some completely nonfunctional, become homeless, as in say…..loading up your car with all the old and broken electronic equipment and devices, then driving around town late, late, late at night and depositing a piece of old equipment in random spots just to get rid of it?

I have lots of old equipment that’s just taking up space. Once, I thought some of this stuff would be cool, but now that I’m older and live somewhere where I have very limited closet space, I see the error of my youth. It also doesn’t help that every few months, something else big and sizeable I own dies and it’s not like you can throw a 15-inch Commodore 64 monitor or a full size outdated HP scanner in the trash can for curbside pickup.

So I wonder, besides the obvious littering issue, what would be so wrong about dumping my non-functional scanner in the parking lot of the store I originally bought it at? Or leaving my old, also non-functional video camera on the doorstep of Camera World? Maybe a couple of monitors complete with all necessary cables and connections left along Highway 14, a few miles apart? A keyboard missing an F-4 key and the space bar left half-submerged in a Jack-In-The-Box toilet? A fried web cam and a couple of burnt out mice thrown up around some power line strung across a residential street, not too unlike tennis shoes dangling by their laces?

It could be a sign of the times, a trend even! Some day people will think back on a time when one could walk down a road and see cigarette butts, beer bottles and bits of trash here and there. Small change compared to what they could see: discarded monitors, keyboards, powerbook 140s and Apple Newtons, non-optical mice, car cassette players, laser disc, Betamax and VHS players, non-cable ready TVs and rotary-dial phones. Where is all this stuff going now? And maybe more importantly, how long before room runs out to hold it all and how long before a person finding piles of this kinds of stuff dumped at the end of their street is the standard?

I say, let’s not wait that long! Let’s be trendsetters! Let’s creatively dump our old and broken down stuff now, before everyone and their mother starts doing it!
Oh, well, there is that whole “getting caught” thing, isn’t there…

June 9th 2001

WS says: Change is good. Embrace the change, love the change, BE the change….ah, screw it! To Hell with the change!

This is B’s artsy-fartsy, creative journal entry for the year: I’m already looking forward to fall. Not that I don’t like summer weather. Okay, that’s a lie. I don’t like summer weather. I like spring weather and I really like late spring weather, but summer weather just means hot temperatures and sweatiness. I like those misty mornings, the cool not-quite-crisp feel to the air, the faint smell of ripe apples and wood smoke, the feel of snuggly warm sweaters, wool socks and the way a hot mug of spiced cider can warm up chilly fingers.

I love looking out the windows and barely being able to see any neighbors house for the drifting fog and hear the Canada geese that winter over close by flying overhead. I love walking through what’s left of the garden looking at a late blooming flower here and there, seeing heavy dew outlining every delicate strand of a spider’s web and wondering when the first frost will be.

For as much as I love fall, it’s also kind of a sad time for me, seeing all the flowers and most of the plants die back, knowing that if the winter is really cold, some of them won’t be back next spring. Winter is the time I worry most about animals in the wild and if they can find enough food and shelter. I didn’t grow up where it got cold like it does here so I was never really educated about how animals, domestic or wild, survive cold, really cold and possibly snowy winters. But some of them do so I tell myself not to think about it.

Fall just seems prettier to me than summer, although not as pretty here as spring is. Where I grew up, spring and fall weather last about one week. Blink and you’ll miss it. Fall weather here is full of colors and smells and they just suit me better than any other season. To think that if I had never moved here, I would have never known what a real fall season was.

Okay, enough of that crap. Let’s get back to the real world. Pirate Dan and his wench Sheila are working on getting a fence put up behind us. They had some guy out measuring and giving them an estimate today. It’ll be weird having a fence back there but nice to not have to see the entire family out there smoking like chimneys every evening after dinner. Pirate Dan has three children and all of them live at home: a 19-year old son who smokes, a 16-year old girl who smokes and a 14-year old son who probably can’t wait to start smoking. The Pirate parents smoke. They’ve lived in their house for less than two weeks and the ground outside of their backdoor is white with cigarette butts already. I think their yappy dog even smokes…

June 10th 2001

WS says: Change is good. Embrace the change, love the change, BE the change….ah, screw it! To Hell with the change!

B says:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! I am SOOOOOOOOO frustrated!!!!!!

NOTHING is working right this weekend! The software I have to run for work doesn’t work right and I’ve had to go back to an older version in order to do my work. The software the company I work for creates won’t install correctly now, giving me nothing but page fault errors and when it does install, it installs with all kinds of weird set ups in my system tray that WERE NOT there before. Of course, WS, being the fucking know-it-all that he is, insists that it always did that.

IT DID NOT FUCKING ALWAYS DO THIS!

WS found a 3Com web cam yesterday and spent a few hours late last night setting it up. Unfortunately, it won’t work right either and I’d be willing to bet that he’s ready to give up on trying to make it work. More money down the drain and even more frustration.

And finally, something is seriously fucked up at work. Our San Diego manager switched our email reply format Friday night and now the emails are just piling up. Everyone knew the switch was coming and it is supposed to make things easier. But now, no one can find correct responses without it taking 5 times longer than usual, everyone keeps chatting at me telling me how much they hate it (like I can do anything) and that manager won’t return any emails or chats asking him about anything to do with the switch. On top of that, this manager assured me that our co-workers in San Diego would be working overtime yesterday, yet no one worked down there in reality. Emails sent asking about that have, to date, gone unanswered.

I don’t know what is going on anymore and no one else seems to care. Co-workers are bitching, productivity is way down, emails are pouring in and going unanswered and half the stuff on my computer doesn’t work correctly or at all. Calgon, take me away!

June 11th 2001

WS says: nothing

B has a bad day: Don’t you hate it when you need to ask someone a question, a someone who always makes you feel stupid for asking the question or makes you feel like you are wasting their time for asking the question, and you hope that this time will be different…….but it ends up with you feeling just as stupid and wasting that person’s time? I hate my parents for using my head as a punching bag and helping my stupidity along early in life.

Don’t you also hate it when you ask someone really smart what you see as a simple question but no matter what, you can’t get a simple answer back and the answer just goes on and on and on and on and on and you wonder what the hell 98 percent of what they are saying has to do with anything?

Don’t you hate it when you hear some song on the radio (or elsewhere) and it transports you back to a happier time in your life until the song is over and you realize that life sucks now and there is nothing that will make it better short of inventing a time machine?

Don’t you just hate it when you can see an argument coming, for a L-O-N-G way off but nothing can stop it short of cutting out your own tongue?

Don’t you despise people who are assholes, who lived their entire lives as assholes, would give birth to assholes if they could, would have a picture of themselves in the dictionary next to the word and definition “Asshole”, but who seem to get everything in life handed to them on a silver platter, then to complain about it and get even more?

Don’t you hate it when someone acts all innocent and doesn’t seem to get what you’re saying no matter how many nice ways you say it and they just can’t read between the lines, so you end up pointedly pointing out the glaring facts to them and they get all put-out and act like they’ve been grievously wronged?

June 13th 2001

WS says: It’s only usability testing until someone loses an eye… then it’s accessibility testing.

B says: I had a really weird dream last night.

I dreamt that someone I used to talk to and see somewhat regularly a few years ago was going through some mid-life crisis and needed to talk to me. Like I would know what to do. But I went over to his place and he had changed himself and his lifestyle dramatically since the last time I saw him. He had tossed out his significant other and children, took up Zen budism and lived life as a minimalist. And for some reason, he thought that if he and I would have become briefly romantically involved a few years prior, I would have given him the direction he needed and wished he had now. There was lots of talking about obscure things like Crayola Volkswagen colors and the bio-rhythms of leafy pets and then it suddenly evolved into lots of breast rubbing and grappling on the rice-mat covered floor but not in a sexual way, if you can believe that. It ended with me noticing a bald spot starting in his hair and bursting out in laughter, not because I thought it was funny, but because it made him so human and likeable, and in response to my laughter, he wet himself.

Clearly, I don’t need to be eating vegetarian lasagna shortly before going to bed.
I can’t believe how fat I’ve felt in the last 3 weeks. Actually, the last 3 weeks have been a blur, filled with work. I’m having a hard time focusing even a teeny portion of my brain on anything else and what I badly need right now is to get motivated to go to the gym and keep going for the next 8 weeks straight. I’ve been going on and off and am having no problem whatsoever bulking up my arms and back but in order to do that, I’ve been foregoing the aerobic exercise. After seeing myself for the first time in a LONG time in the mirror yesterday, I REALLY NEED to work out on the elliptical machine for about the next 2 years straight. Gawd, don’t let me turn into my mom. Gawd, my body is looking just like my mom’s!
And in thinking that I’m fat(ter than usual), I’ve been noticing a lot of celebrities in the news lately that have seriously piled on the poundage. Sure, I understand that this is part of an aging thing but in the same vein, I’ve seen celebrities that have maintained their weight or even lost weight (not due to any known disease). There’s got to be a way to fight this battle and win and I think it’s as simple as eating less food than one can burn off daily. Which means since I burn about 1300 calories a day doing basically nothing but sitting on my butt and using my brain (and some would argue that I don’t do that part), I need to eat 1299 calories a day or less to keep my brain working yet still lose weight. It sounds all too easy…

My yearly depression cycle began last Friday when I experienced another bird death. We came home from somewhere and I saw a bright yellow blob at the base of the birdbath so I checked it out. It was a goldfinch lying there on it’s side, breathing heavily and cheeping softly. I didn’t want the ants to start eating it alive so I picked him up, held him in my hands to try to warm him up since he felt cold. I placed a drop of water in his beak in case he was trying to get to the birdbath and missed somehow but he just kept breathing hard and after a few minutes, his soft cheeping faded away and he stopped breathing altogether.

(Notice how I switched from calling the bird “it” to calling it “he” and “him” thus personalizing the bird and assuring that I would feel worse for his death than a person normally would. I’m clever that way.)

Later on in the evening, a work manager made some changes at work that seriously affected how our work gets done and then wouldn’t answer my chat requests or emails. Email began piling up and WS and I had an argument and have come to the conclusion that we can no longer communicate with each other.

Yup, it’s summer now.

June 15th 2001

WS says: Sorry, I’m too deep in some work I’m working on. Trust me. It would bore you to tears.

B says: Remember a few weeks back when I vented about a neighbor who asked me and world at the top of his lungs if I was poisoning another dog, when I was giving someone’s dog a drink of water? Well, I finally got to talk to that guy’s wife today to ask “WTF?” and she said she didn’t know why he would say that, blaming his sick sense of humor at someone’s else’s expense.

Whew! I’m glad that’s been settled.

I haven’t been dwelling on that incident all this time. I just wanted to make sure some rumour of me “poisoning” neighbor pets wasn’t getting around because some guy yelled it in his front yard while other neighbors were present. Call me ugly. Call me stupid. You can even call me late for dinner, but don’t call me someone who hurts animals ’cause I take extreme exception to that.

I broke down and made some purchases yesterday. We’re now the proud owners of…..even more trees! Newly delivered, we’ve added five 10-foot maples and one shrimp-y Fraiser fir. We’re determined to completely finish landscaping around here and after this, we’ll only have the main portion of the backyard (deck area) and one 20-foot section of the east yard left. Of course, it will be all TOO fun to dig six 3-foot holes in the mostly clay-and-rock dirt tomorrow to plant them, but I’m hoping I’ll discover some wonderful mind-altering drug between now and then and will end up not minding digging all those holes. It could happen…

The Pirate family behind us look like they’re getting a back fence. The only problem is, it looks like they’ll be building it themselves. To date, only one other person in this entire development has built a fence accourding to the specified neighborhood CC&R rules. I weep for what the Pirate fence will most likely look like and what we’ll have to look at. C’mon trees, GROW!

Ummmm….sushi for dinner!

June 16th 2001

WS says: Sorry, I’m too deep in some work I’m working on. Trust me. It would bore you to tears.

B says: Yeah, I’ve working on some changes here and spent way too much time on it fiddling with colors. For some reason, I don’t like anything today so this will just have to do for a while.

Oh yeah, the camera is back. Still working on placement and remote window stuff but right now, I MUST get out of this chair!

June 19th 2001

WS says: I’m drawing a blank. Um…Hypothetical question: How old is too old to begin your career path over again from scratch?

B says: Well, there always has to be some kind of crisis going around here. The latest one involves our backyard neighbors, the Pirates and a matter of inches.
Seems Pirate Dan thought that part of our retaining rock wall was on his property. I guess he estimated it with his one good eye so he allegedly paid the development construction surveyor to come out and survey his property and sure enough, two of our rocks, each one weighting several hundred pounds not to mention holding back several hundred cubit feet of dirt, trees and plants, are indeed overhanging the property line by about 4-6 inches and he wants them moved somehow someday because he’s afraid that someday, when he decides to sell his property for some vast treasure, the appraiser will notice (no doubt with his two good eyes) that two large rocks are sitting 4-6 inches on that property and that will prevent a true appraisal of said property.

Well, shiver me timbers, I’ll get right on moving them. Maybe even with my bare hands. Uh, Mr. Pirate, sir. Those rocks ain’t going anywhere in case you couldn’t see that. ARGHHH!

So, we’re left with A) going to a real estate lawyer and asking them what options we have, B) going with Pirate Dan and clan to a real estate lawyer to see if we can write up and pay for some sort of 4-6 inch property easement, C) paying Pacific Rock or the like to come out, stand on the Pirate’s property and chisel 4-6 inches of rock away and off his property, D) pay tons of money to have someone come out, crane in a bobcat (since there is NO way to get a bobcat in either backyard now any other way) and completely tear down and re-build the wall and re-plant 15 trees and countless bushes, or E) do nothing and wait to see if and when the Pirates scallywags sue us for being on their property without their consent.

Bummer, huh? Yeah, you could say it didn’t do wonders for my deepening summer depression. Shortly, before I found all this out, (Pirate Dan talked to WS Saturday), I was planning on going out to tackle planting those 10-foot trees I bought last Friday, but after hearing about all this, going outside and/or doing anything with landscaping was the last thing I cared to do. So I didn’t do anything and the trees are still sitting out there, in their huge pots, waiting to go in the ground. My luck, I’ll get off my ass and plant them and then another neighbor will take exception to the branches overhanging their property.

Sometimes I wonder if anything is worth anything.

June 21st 2001

WS says: I’m drawing a blank. Um…Hypothetical question: How old is too old to begin your career path over again from scratch?

B says: ah-HA! We just found a loophole regarding Pirate Dan and his clan and our overhanging rock problem (see yesterday’s post by clicking on the Monthly Journal entries for 2001 – June link.)

Sure. We’ve got two one-ton boulders overhanging our property line by all of 4-6 inches, a fact that Pirate Dan behind us isn’t all to happy about. The great part about this is these problem rocks are on the east side of the property. Since we built our west side wood fence several inches onto our own property, in order for the fence corners to match up correctly when Pirate Dan decides to build his, he’ll have to build his fence 4-6 inches onto our property. Looks like when he learns this, and provided he thinks clearly, we may just have an even deal here where one wrong cancels out the other and we might not end up with any problems at all.

WS measured and thought all this out so he gets all the credit. Damn, he’s smart.
In yet another Pirate Dan incident, (not involving us too much this time), our west-side neighbors put up a big 10×10 inflatable pool in a corner of their yard. Last night, they decided to drain it to add fresh water. Since we both live on a hill, where do you suppose the pool water went? It ran right down the steep slope of Pirate Dan’s backyard and pooled nice and deep-like around the patio frame he just built causing a huge mud pit.

Next thing you know, we look out the back window and Pirate Dan is standing in our backyard, on our cement walkway, trying to talk over the fence to the neighbors who dumped the pool.

So, I guess Pirate Dan needs to come onto our property anytime he feels he needs to yell at one of our neighbors. Yep, this is all adding up nicely, I think. A nice boost to my otherwise sorry depressive state.

This morning, I needed to get up at the crack of dawn to vacuum and straighten the house before a paint estimator came by at 9 am. At 8, he called to say he couldn’t make it, could he make it tomorrow or Friday. “No,” I say and after he made a smart-ass remark, I cancelled his visit all together. Depression takes another hit. Looks like we won’t be getting our entryway painted anytime this year. This is my third attempt to find a painter and every one of them has been F-L-A-K-E-Y.

So I get to work only to see our email backlog load ever still creeping toward the 3000 mark. Hey guys! Can we send out another 4 or 5 mass emailings to 6.3 million people before we get caught up again? I wanna make sure we don’t run out of work anytime before the year 2006. So much for my day off tomorrow.

June 26th 2001

WS says: Nothing. Too much work, too little time for thinking.

B says: I’ll steal a line here from Bette Davis: Getting old ain’t for pussies.

At 10 AM last Sunday, I finally accepted that I’m entering menopause. Finally. Joy of joys! Someday, I’ll never have to support Johnson & Johnson again with purchases of tampons. On the other hand, I may need to start supporting Proctor & Gamble with the purchase of shaving cream. I guess it’s a matter of trading a bodily function for an additional grooming necessity. I can live with that.
A co-worker quit over the weekend because they weren’t able to switch from full-time to part-time. Part-time help just doesn’t work out. It also doesn’t work out well to tell the manager they were switching themselves to part-time instead of asking to change to part-time. A slight workplace faux pas.

Work is a real bitch lately. We just can’t seem to get caught up on email no matter what! We’re 3200+ emails behind now. Not good. I’ve torn my hair out all weekend over it and all it got me was a few bald spots.

Spent the vast majority of Sunday and today trying to rebuild my system due to seriously corrupt sectors. The culprit, unfortunately, looks like the email software program I need to run for work. It basically ate my mouse drivers and I can only seem to get it to work on a part-time basis now. I also had to disconnect the camera to get it to work at all, as those drivers just installed last week, were already corrupt. I hate this email program. What’s really weird that in a search of the Internet, there does not exist a single page that complains about the evils of this program. That tells me either the people who have to use it are sucked of all their creativity and life itself, or the company that creates this blight of society sues people who publicly bitch about the program. Notice I didn’t say the software program’s name but I will say that @home uses it as well. That should explain a lot, especially if you use and run into any problems with @home’s service.

June 30th 2001

WS says: I thought I had something to add today but I can’t find where I put it. Right now, I just want to sleep. Man….

B says: I got 150 channels of shit on the TV to choose from….

Nothing on TV. I should be working anyway. Even on my day off. I have audits to do. It’s the end of the month and I have a few left to finish up. One of the audits I worked on until the wee hours of this morning really took a lot out of me. Not fun.
Today was sooooo blah. I slept badly, getting up late and dreading parking my butt back here in this chair. Outside, it was hazy most of the day and I had to force myself to go out and refill the bird bath and feeders. I sat out there for a while but just couldn’t perk myself up like I usually can. I think I just needed some more sleep but I know that a daytime nap would screw up my sleep cycle.

So here it is, nearly 11 PM already and I’ve wasted a partial day off. Poop! I should get to bed (early for me!) and look forward to getting a reasonably early start on work again tomorrow. Good-bye, month of June. Let’s get on with July and the rest of this summer so we can get to my favorite time of year – Fall.

July 2nd 2001

WS says: I want to say something, but I just finished eating, and I really don’t feel terribly well. And there’s work to do…

B says: I watched Unbreakable tonight. They could have named this film any number of things and it all would have meant the same thing: Superhero, Security Man, Strangle Man versus Glass Man featuring The Director Who Wanted to be an Actor and Another Pathetic Performance by Robin Wright Penn, and my personal favorite 107 Minutes of Your Life You’ll Never Get Back.

I whined Saturday about what a blah day it was. Well, it WAS a blah day…a day accentuated by the odd feeling within myself that I’m trying to overcome after going shopping at Nordstrom’s for the first time last week. I don’t know if that was really a good thing or a bad thing and because I can’t decide, and because of the negative person I tend to be from time to time, I’ll count it as a bad thing. Just trust me on one point: It wasn’t really my idea. My head just wasn’t functioning correctly that day!

It all began innocently enough with me going out for lunch with WS and one of his co-workers, someone I’ll call Jessica for the sake of this little story, but she might as well be called Ms. Nordstrom.

Jessica LIVES for shopping at Nordstrom’s, not because things are expense and snooty there, but because people treat her well there.

“oh yeah, I’ll bet they treat her well there,” you’ll snort. Go ahead. I did.

I would hear stories about how Jessica would go shopping at Nordstrom’s at least once a week, how she has her own people there, watching out for clothing, fragrances, shoes, purses and the like, specially for her, how her people would invite Jessica into the back warehouse to personally go through racks upon racks of clothing before any other human hand was laid upon any item, how sales were practically invented for Jessica and how she would receive personal, hand-written notes from the Nordstrom family themselves, thanking Jessica for shopping at their store.

Really, it was too much and after listening to the tales for years, I, in a moment of curiosity, decided to see for myself. So when the subject was brought up at lunch, I invited myself along. An hour later and I was walking through Nordstrom’s glass doors for only the second time in my life.

I don’t know what I was thinking.

The first time I walked into Nordstrom’s was three days before WS and I were married back in 1989. He wanted a tie to go with my apricot-colored wedding dress and Sears didn’t have anything. A flaming gentleman pounced on us immediately, I assumed at the time because we looked sooooo out of place, and asked if he could be of some help. We gave him the swatch of apricot-colored material and he instantly proclaimed LOUDLY, “This ISN’T apricot! THIS is coral. Definitely CORAL!”

We half-assed glanced at the ties he offered, more stunned at the $95+ price tags than anything else, mumbled about not seeing anything we liked and left. End of story. Other than we forgot to ask for our “coral” fabric swatch back. I think we wandered back to Sears and amazingly found a tie for three bucks.

I think Jessica sensed my immediate uncomfortableness as soon as we walked in because she stuck to me like glue, gently suggesting that I look here and there and how this or that would look good on me. I confessed I didn’t even know what size I wore, that if it didn’t say 501′s 36 waist and 36 length or Men’s medium on the shirt collar, it wasn’t my size. She prodded onward, saying I should take this and that and try them on. At that moment, a friendly and not-at-all snotty saleswoman asked if Jessica would like a room prepared for her. “What??” A room prepared?
WTF?!? Okay, okay…calm down. I calmly asked Jessica what that was all about and she explained that when people shop for clothes at Nordstrom’s, it is customary for salespeople to take interest and ask patrons if they would like a dressing room specifically prepared for them to try items on.

Okay…so this is how the other half lives…

To wrap things up, there’s no limit to the number of items you can take in to try on (I took 5 blouses), no one sneaks around watching you as you shop waiting for you to try to steal something while trying not to look like security personnel, beverages can be served while you are trying items on and personal fitters can be asked for if you are having trouble. In addition, if you see something you kind of like, but it’s not in your size, color or style, they will call their other stores throughout the Pacific Northwest and find it for you. Jessica gets stuff personally hand carried from a Seattle store often, I’m told. They’ll stretch shoes for you for free if they seem a bit too tight, they’ll stretch and alter clothes for you if they seem a bit too tight, they’ll steam a hat to your liking (if your head feels too tight), they’ll carry your purchases to your car for you, even if you just picked up a see-thru nylon mesh thong underpant that weighted all of .03 ounces, less than the tissue paper they wrapped it in. They are just those kinds of people.

I guess what really floored me was, even though this was a Saturday and anyone who’s anyone would rather be off work and doing their own thing, NO ONE at Nordstrom’s acted any less happy to wait on people. People seemed genuinely pleased to see me, even when I didn’t buy anything. They must pay their employees very well is all I can think.

So, would I go back? Well, I have to confess that I did take WS the next day and the experience, while personable, wasn’t quite the same. Obviously, Jessica had a lot to do with my treatment. The next day at work, WS mentioned our trip alone to the store…and talked him into going with her during lunch! He was given the royal treatment and came home with bags full of free fragrances and a free Drakkar Noir gym bag. If I don’t watch out, he’ll become the next darling at the Nordstrom fragrance counter! Obviously, this is a clear, straight-forward sign that the economy, currently, is too good.

Noteworthy Item: We still don’t like green eggs and ham, Sam I Am.

Items out on loan: Book – The Perfect Storm. Rodda Paint Color Chip kit. I really need to get these items back.

July 4th 2001

WS says: I want to say something, but I’m already in bed. Probably snoring and hogging the covers…

B says: Today, I realized exactly what I hate about the Fourth of July. The third of July and the second of July and the first of July and half of the month of June and nearly the entire rest of the month of July, part of August and even into September. Fireworks are for the Fourth of July, not all those other days.

Technically, it’s illegal to shoot off fireworks any other day than the Fourth of July, but the cops couldn’t possibly arrest every single person who wants to continue firing stuff off. They’d have to haul off half of Clark county! I guess I just don’t get it, but my cats sure do. Around this time of year, they are scared literally shitless by all the explosion. We clean up more poop around this holiday and New Year’s Eve than any human should ever have to do. Poor things.

Watched the movie American Beauty tonight (not to be confused with American Pie) and I can’t say whether I liked it or disliked it. I felt weird afterward and that’s about all I can say about it. No, we didn’t purchase this one. It was a loaner.

Looks like our DVD purchases will start to trickle off for a while along with our wine collection, PS & Company trips, Nordstrom’s fragrance buys, Zupan’s and QFC purchases. The economy is just too scary right now and I just don’t feel comfortable buying anything anymore. Yes, I know. My dollars saved instead of spent will only continue to hurt the U.S. economy, but the U.S. economy isn’t going to come personally knocking on my door to pay for my electricity bill in the coming months should it come down to that.

And speaking of crappy economies, I’m old enough to have gone through rough times like this before. I had just entered the work force back in the early 1970′s when cars were big and spending was bigger. Then, the gas “shortage” hit, companies left and right began downsizing (they just called it “laying off” back then) and the only jobs to be had were of the burger-flipping variety. During those awful years, I lost two jobs to layoffs and I intentionally left two others (no one knew what “sexual harassment” meant back then, neither did they care for someone who didn’t share their same religious views). Back then, the only way to survive was to drastically reduce spending and be willing to do things you wouldn’t normally do, like work a crappy job with crappy hours under a crappy boss for crappy pay. The secret was to not think of it as the end of life but to keep in mind that the situation won’t last forever. You just need to get through one hour at a time, one day at a time, one week at a time, and so on and don’t let anything overwhelm you. As I recall, crying my eyes out every night before going to sleep actually seemed to help. I would hate to go through this kind of period in time again, but I don’t know that sometime in the future I won’t and I need to prepare myself.

Noteworthy Item: We still don’t like green eggs and ham, Sam I Am.

Items out on loan: Book – The Perfect Storm. Rodda Paint Color Chip kit. I’m going to work on getting these items back this month.

July 5th 2001

WS says: So…if my employer wants me to take 8 days off to help them save money, wouldn’t I be REALLY helping out if I took 40 days off instead? It would seem to me that I would be doing 5 times as much as the average schmo who only did the bare minimum amount of flair but somehow, I doubt that I would then be given 5 times as much compensation at a later date. Employers are funny that way.
B says: If my father were still alive, he’d be 64 years old today. I’m certain that I wouldn’t be here to tell you this, either physically or otherwise. If I were living, I’d be in hiding or in witness “protection” for turning him in for all the crap he was guilty of. I’d live in a different city from where I grew up. I’d work in a different industry from how I was trained. I wouldn’t have many friends and definitely no close friends. I would distrust everyone. I would rarely, if ever, use my real name. I’d have an alias or two….

WS tried hard to plan a small vacation of sorts for the end of this month for us, but our reservation plans fell through. You wouldn’t know by the sheer numbers of people going on vacation this summer that the economy is in trouble. Or maybe that is why hotels, motels and bed & breakfast inns are booked solid: People are taking that last fling before the shit hits the fan. So, no vacation this summer for me. Strangely though, I feel okay with it. Maybe that St. John’s Wort is finally working.

I will be going to San Diego on business next week for a few days though. Work in bringing me down to headquarters. I offered to cancel my trip because of the work load but the ticket has already been paid for and is non-refundable. I tried, at least.

July 9th 2001

WS says: Webvan is history. I’m all broken up about it. Of course, it’s not as rich material as before they purchased Home Grocer, Inc. Home Grocer was a lot more fun. We kept hoping that they would start delivering groceries to our area but now those hopes are dashed on the rocks of despair. I guess I’m just doomed to continue generating obnoxious lyrics to that catchy little tune Home Grocer used to play on their commercials.

B says: For work early this week, I have a 293-page manual to read. Not fun. No pretty pictures. Small print. Nerdy computer stuff. Lots of how to do this and how to do that, click this and click that in which to ever do any of this stuff, you’d still need the manual in front of you to remember any of it. Then I need to come up with an outline of what is required to ask work customers so they can troubleshoot and solve their own problem, theoretically, saving my co-workers from getting an email. I can do that last part, no problem. It’s keeping up with my manager in San Diego that I might have a problem with. His head is stuffed with good ideas but getting them down on paper in any kind of sensible fashion is something completely different.

I’ve just officially worn through my first optical mouse. I feel very lucky that I had a spare otherwise, it’d be back to the old mouse ball kind that I tend to have problems with in a relatively short period of time. That makes nine mice I’ve worn out since my introduction to computer mice in 1988. Maybe I can get rid of this old one at the neighborhood yard sale this weekend – Free to good home. One dead optical mouse. Must be willing to dig out of trash can.

And IF I participate in the neighborhood garage sale, of which I will already miss Friday due to a business trip, I hope to get rid of my 111-year old sewing machine, a writing desk from 1930, a perfect working microwave (it’s white, our kitchen is black), a white microwave cart, 4 home speakers (2 large and heavy, 2 with cat-ripped cones), a dozen glass blocks, gardening pots and a huge basket of stuffed animals. If half of this stuff goes, I’ll be one happy person and yes, I will lower prices if it helps all of it to GO!

WS is working on the web cams setup. I never, in a million years, would have believed that he would care one iota enough to work on anything “web cam” oriented. Even for me. Even if I begged him. Even if I paid him. He is changing slightly, but alas! He still hates people and gatherings.

Yesterday, for some reason, I couldn’t get enough to eat at dinner. We had a very weak dinner. Trust me, nothing in the house sounded appealing so I didn’t eat much. Lots of salad-y kinds of things. Nothing with any substance. So I went to bed fairly hungry. Saturday night, after a lot of hard work in the yard most of the day, I was literally too tired to eat dinner and went to bed without any (you wouldn’t notice any difference to look at me). Today, I woke up so hungry I knew I could eat nearly anything that I wouldn’t normally touch with a 10-foot pole. Like black olives, for example. So, to prove to WS how hungry I was, I ate one. A black olive. It was awful but I proved my point and got a good Mexican food lunch for my trouble. Yums!

July 10th 2001

WS says: If I have to watch any more video tape, my eyes will literally explode out of my head. It’ll probably be a lot like the fourth of July fireworks. The initial charge will propel my eyes out of their sockets and across the room where they will then explode into a shower of eye-stuff. I don’t know if it’s made worse by the fact that it’s for work but it can’t help.

B says: I just love changed plans. They make for a much more interesting life than the same ol’ humdrum.

Today, the company I work for laid off 44 employees. Hardest hit were software engineering and support. Support is the department I work in.

http://www.fuckedcompany.com reports this to be about a third of our workforce. This is the first time in my entire life that I have survived a first-round of layoffs. Back in the mid-seventies, when the economy took a similar nosedive, I didn’t survive the wave of first-round layoffs but I found another job right away.

Unfortunately, when that second company had their layoffs, I got hit again. I’m feeling very, VERY fortunate this time around. My heart truly goes out to those who are gone.

This change of plans means work is doubled, tripled, quad- and quintupled for most of us left. For some of us, the upcoming business trip to San Diego company headquarters is cancelled. I’m glad now that I didn’t buy anything at Nordstrom’s with my friend “Jessica.” I would never be able to justify it. I will still be getting up at 4:30 AM to drive someone, who is still going, off at the airport. Hopefully, he’ll get a feel for the situation down there and fill us in when he returns next week.

I will be participating in this weekend’s neighborhood garage sale after all.

WS finally, finally, finally has paid off his student loan. His oldest debt. The one he started back in 1985 and eventually defaulted on in 1988 much to the dismay of the U.S. Government. Congrats, WS!

I’m making sun tea today, even though it’s not terribly sunny. It just seems like something comforting to do. Sun tea is comforting to me and frankly, I’m working in a bit of a haze today.

Noteworthy Item: I still haven’t planted those trees and we still don’t like green eggs and ham, Sam I Am.

Items out on loan: Book – The Perfect Storm. Rodda Paint Color Chip kit. I’m working on getting these items back this month.

July 12th 2001

WS says: Where to start?

It’s funny how it can always be brightest right before things go completely black. Following two years of intense pain adapting to a new role at work, I finally feel like I may get It. Now I get to wait for just two stinking weeks to find out whether I need to find a new job. How’s that for irony?

B says: I spent my day off today planting half of those big trees I bought last month and got a LOT of sun. I needed it. I also got lots of scrapes, cuts and blisters on my hands. I didn’t need this. My hands are my living. Even now it isn’t too fun to type but I’ll put bag balm on them overnight and they should be okay by tomorrow. Either that or they’ll have grown into nippled udders. Reportedly, you can milk anything with nipples…

The soil that these trees are going in was a real bitch to dig in today, even though I’ve been watering in that area for over a month. It’s called dry pan soil, which is dirt that is about 10 seconds away from turning into solid rock. All this had to be dug out of each 3-foot-in-diameter hole, the hole’s bottom had to be broken up and lots of peat moss and organic compost soil added when planting each 10-foot tree. As an added bonus, several larger than human head-sized rocks were found and had to be removed from the nearly rock-like soil before planting each tree. Fun. Good thing I like large rocks. My back is already in pain however.

I’ve been picking berries off my blueberry bushes for a week now. I couldn’t eat enough blueberries.

We stopped by Nature’s market a few days ago and noticed in their donut/roll/pastry case about dozen flies crawling all over the food items inside. Now, I know Nature’s is all about being natural and organic, but where do you draw the line? Flies are natural and organic. The shit the fly larvae eats that triggers the hormone that changes the maggot into a fly is undoubtedly natural and organic. But does anyone really want flies walking all over their natural and organic Danish roll? I think someone missed something there.

Woohoo! Rain forecast for Sunday. Let’s hope the weathermen get it right this time. We need the rain!

Remind me to never loan out books again. The person who has one of my books doesn’t even remember borrowing it, nor do they know where it is. How wonderful for me.

July 17th 2001

B says: Weekend review: Neighborhood garage sale, Things That Suck,

Forgetfulness and the dreadful-looking future.

Made over $200 at our own dinky sale and got rid of nearly everything we wanted to sell. Some of the neighbors didn’t like that we had a Free pile of stuff. I don’t think they sold very much either. One of the number one keys to a successful garage sale is that you HAVE to put prices on items. You can’t just wait for people to ask how much something is because most of them won’t.

We went into our sale not wanting to make money, although we knew we would, more so not wanting to haul stuff back into the house or garage. We succeeded and made money in the process. The point of a garage sale is to get rid of stuff, not necessarily to make gobs of money. That’s what a retail store is for. Additionally, if you price your items high, you won’t get rid of them OR make any money. Having personal attachments to items you are trying to sell won’t do you any good. If something “cost a lot” and you tell people this, trying to get them to buy it, they will most likely walk away empty-handed. People don’t care that something cost a lot. People are looking for low prices and good deals, not to hear about what your spending habit for that item was. Twice, I walked around the neighborhood and visited the others having their own garage sales and apparently, no one shared my thoughts and ideas here. No one I talked to made very much and morale sounded fairly low. Oh well.

Sunday, I woke up with a visit from Mother Nature and spent Sunday and Monday working and having severe cramps. Not happy days. WS, in trying to reproduce a few bugs some people were having with a software program, repeatedly crashed both his machines for hours on end and by the end of the day, around midnight or so, was yelling, banging desks and cursing. None of it helped me or his systems and as a result, I dreamt about it, thus getting yet another horrible night’s sleep. It’s a pretty stressful time right now for jobs, the stock market and stuff in general.

Tuesday and WS still can’t get one of his systems up and running. He may have really screwed Deiter up this time.

Another stress item: I need to remember to get my license renewed this month and I KEEP FORGETTING!

I need to find a painter to finish painting our entry way and I KEEP FORGETTING! Painters “claim” that work is backed up for 4 months. If I find one this month, the painting won’t be done until November. If I wait until August, just a couple of weeks away, it won’t be able to be done until December and then, xmas stuff will be in the way and it will have to wait until January. Of course, if either one of us loses our job anytime soon, painting will no longer be on the list of things to get done. HP announces lay-offs at the end of July. Too fun.

Finally, the second-to-last wooded area adjoining our development is in the process of being bulldozed flat. All the underbrush has been wiped out, nothing is left, including all those enormous ferns that I was hoping to save a few of and it looks like the trees will be gone by week’s end. This property was so heavily wooded, the ground surely hasn’t seen the light of day in half a century. I walked through there this evening and was only able to save an armful of moss that had fallen off one of the downed trees. Of course, I wanted to shout, “RUN AWAY, ALL YOU ANIMALS STILL LIVING HERE!” but I didn’t. Soon, looking out our front upstairs windows, few trees if any will be seen. Only row upon row upon asphalt canyons of houses and I am part of the problem. Oh, and the finally kicker? The development going in is to be called…Springer Estates. Delightful!

Again, remind me to never loan out books again. The person who has one of my books doesn’t even remember borrowing it, nor do they know where it is. How wonderful for me.

July 19th 2001

B says: The coyotes in the fields behind us are yapping and howling. Dozens of them. I am sitting here, wide awake at one A.M., listening to them, wondering who they are eating.

Albertson’s Stores are closing 165 locations around the country. Fine with me. I don’t like Albertson’s. Not fine with the economy. It doesn’t help things.

Mr. Greenspan spoke again today. Looks like yet interest rate cut will occur and he doesn’t expect W’s tax cut to do anything to help the country’s economy. These are also, not good. Repeated rate cuts will only come back to bite us all in the ass later on, if history continues to repeat itself as it has always done to date on this topic. Sure, we reap the rewards now with lower interest rates on this and that and the theory is that because of the lower interest rates, we’ll clamber all over ourselves in order to buy, buy, BUY things! Unfortunately, those businesses who have to cut their rates will only triple-charge for other things and services later on in order to make up for all the potential money they lost. BIG repeat of what happened in the 70′s. But no one listens to me, least of all, W. Why do I care about all this and perhaps, more importantly, why do I go on and on about it? Because it all affects me and our lives sooner or later. Some people whine about their significant others, or their manicures. I whine about the economy. So shoot me.

How do you tell a neighbor their cat is dying? Answer: You don’t. People aren’t generally designed to take news like that too well. As a result, I don’t like sitting outside in front anymore because I hate watching this sweet but feeble old cat die of old age.

I officially hit the middle of middle-age this month. If I had children, no doubt, I would feel like I was hitting the middle of old age. It’s amazing what not having children can do for a person. No one wants to hear this, however. It seems blasphemous somehow to most.

Again, remind me to never loan out books again. The person who has one of my books doesn’t even remember borrowing it, nor do they know where it is. How wonderful for me.

Still working on getting both new cameras up and running. Cam 1 should be stable now. Cam 2 still needs a cable and a good whack upside the head.

July 20th 2001

B says: After promising Jessica that I would go to Nordstrom’s with her today, I went, but had to tell her that I won’t be making anymore trips with her. Not that I have made very many to date, nor have I spent much money, it’s just that Jessica really, really loves Nordstrom’s and likes to invite me along sometimes, which is great and all, but I just can’t justify going anymore with all the job insecurity issues going on right now. I just don’t feel right going, like I’m leading her and her personal Nordstrom people on or something.

I generally don’t back out of things I’ve already committed myself to and I won’t start now. Other than gasoline and groceries, I won’t be buying anything until after the end of the year. I have a commitment to purchase one other item this summer that I also, won’t back out of, but honestly, the spending days are over. Time to sit back, enjoy all the cool stuff we already have and survive. I can do that.

Still have three tall trees to plant. Two green maples and one Fraiser fir. The fir will wait until the end of summer, but those maples should have been in the ground over a month ago. Gawd, I’m a lazy bitch sometimes…

WS had a really bad day at work. Unbelievably bad. Scary bad. As I had the car for the Jessica thing in the morning, he called me early this afternoon and asked that I come pick him up from work. On the way there, just around the corner from our development and where they are chopping down all the trees, I saw someone hit a baby raccoon with their car and keep driving. Technically, in the state of Washington, it is illegal to hit an animal and not stop to either render aid or move it off the road. They didn’t stop. In fact, it looked kind of like they aimed for it. I did stop. It was still alive but obviously not for long. Taking a heavy towel from the trunk, I carefully picked it up and moved it well off the road. It was all I could really do. No, I didn’t get a license number. No one would do anything about it anyway.

Our neighbors put their old, feeble cat to sleep this morning before heading out on vacation. I feel fortunate to have been able to spend a couple of hours with her Wednesday night.

The view out the front windows is looking awful. Nearly all the trees are gone and the few remaining are literally shaking because of all the earth-moving equipment rumbling around at their bases. Soon, the sound of more house construction will fill the air, mixed with the never-ending sawing, hammering and drilling our next door neighbor exudes nightly from his garage (for the past year and a half).

July 22nd 2001

WS says: I find myself thinking a lot lately about B’s rant about the special treatment of sports personalities. The problem with this is that I see people around me work their asses off without being recognized and rewarded while others get promoted not for working their asses off, but for licking the asses of others. Lap-dog employees who scramble to deliver the messages that others want to hear – not the messages that need to be heard. I know this has all been incredibly naive of me, but I always figured there was a way to be successful while bucking the natural law of ass-kissing. Yeah, right. I wonder how my perception of my areas for development would be received if I told my boss, “Well, I don’t think I kiss ass well enough…I could certainly use some coaching to develop this skill. How do you do it so well?” Do you think any of the bosses you have ever had would be pissed? Or do you think they would just drop their britches and expose their big hairy, smelly asses and begin coaching?

Even with that being the case, I don’t even see the “superstars” getting an opportunity to smack the coach around with the simple penalty of a day’s or week’s pay. What the hell good is it to lick all that crusty, dried crap from someone else’s sphincter if you don’t get to kick it every now and then. Certainly, this is something I do not understand and an area where the sports prima-donnas have figured out a critical need in the lives of us “real” people.

B says: A work day. It was nice outside. I ignored the niceness. It’s a work day.
The Summer of 2001. LOTS o’ Stress around here. Uncertain futures, decisions made for purely office-politic reasons, too much paperwork needed for the sake of paperwork alone, non-stop barking neighbor dogs, too many people crammed into too small of a development and no huge natural disaster on the horizon to thin out the population. I find solace in a new channel on satellite. VH1 Classics. All music videos. All the time. Most of them are actually good. I thought they burned all the good videos or maybe that press release that MTV released last year was just full of bs. Someday, I’ll post all my emotions of the day strictly in the titles of and the lyrics from 80′s rock music. I’m sure that would be annoying, but not as annoying as if I expressed myself completely in TV commercial jingles.

Don’t ask me where that thought came from…

One of our cats, who recently picked up the ability to sense when one of us are upset, can sense that something is upsetting us and won’t leave us alone. He insists on being within touching range all the time now. It is very unlike him. This is the cat who used to live outside at The Pit, our old residence, and was never very lovable or caring. Maybe he’s telling us that if things really get bad and we lose our jobs, we can always survive like he used to. Back before we found and adopted him, he was badly starved and literally ate his fur for nourishment. That’s a comforting thought.

Someone who said they would call WS to see how he was doing after Friday’s bad work day, didn’t call after all. I want to be pissed at this. WS won’t let me. He’s trying to be a nice guy but I know he doesn’t really feel this way inside.

I purchased a few clothing items Friday morning at Nordstrom’s with Jessica and I’m trying to figure out how to return them now because I don’t feel good about buying them in the first place. I don’t think they would take that as an excuse for returning merchandise, although they might.

“Hello! Nordstrom’s Customer Service. How can we help you?”
“Uh, yeah. Friday morning, at your big-ass sale, I purchased some clothing items that I would now like to return due to the uncertain economic financial future of my household. How do I go about doing so?”

Yeah, it sounds official enough, minus that big-ass part. If need be, I could throw in a sob story or two and they just might buy into it. After all, Jessica says they bend over backwards to please their customers.

Noteworthy Item: I still have three big trees to plant and we still don’t like green eggs and ham, Sam I Am.

Items out on loan: Book – The Perfect Storm. This book has been officially “lost” by the loanees.

July 24th 2001

WS says: Apologies are amazing things. A good heart-felt, sincere apology can probably stop a speeding bullet in it’s tracks, let alone the simple rage of a very large employee. End of misunderstanding. End of issue.

B says: Well, well. Things don’t look to be as bad as we thought they were going to end up. The relief level around here is thunderous and in celebration, we planted two of the last three trees we needed to get into the ground. The last tree, a fir, won’t be planted until fall, when it’s the best time to plant pines and firs.

I walked around the development today. Half of the trees are down over on the other street where the new development, Springer Estates, is going in. It’s not attractive. Perhaps I can make it over there this coming weekend and find a lonely fern to rescue.

There are some people we barely know who live around the corner, who are spending six weeks in Alaska selling the items in an old storage unit they used to have up there. Out of the blue before they left, they asked if we would like them to send us a postcard from Alaska. Sure! The only thing I’ve ever gotten from Alaska was Alaskan King Crab and a bite of whale blubber from a tin back in 1968. Whale meat and blubber used to be sold in the U.S. in sardine-type tins back before 1970-something. Environmentalists wisely put an end to that, but before all those tins were pulled from the market, my father bought one and made us all eat a piece. Not tasty in the least, however, if I was as hungry then as I am now, I’d seriously consider scarfing down the whole container and any that Bjork might have in her kitchen cabinets as well. All the stress over the weekend has left me ravenous!

Anyway, I got a postcard from Homer, Alaska the other day. Nice. No, I didn’t sniff it but I just might now since you thought about asking.

A bird, a plain-brown sparrow with a growth on his wing, is hanging around our bird feeder. We have a fair amount of birds now; sparrows, goldfinches, pine siskins, grosbeaks, a jay in the morning and a pair of doves in the late afternoon. This one bird is fairly easy to spot as he tends to not want to fly too much, although he can, but has to flap his wings twice as hard it seems, and he hangs out on the fence rather than the actual feeder most of the time. He pecks at his growth, which could be the result of a bad injury I suppose, and looking at it through the binoculars, it doesn’t look pretty in the least, being all pink, red, swollen and blobby. I really, really, REALLY wish injured and dying animals would quit finding their way to me. It is too draining on the emotions and I can’t afford to do anything about them anyway. How bad does that make me sound?

August 1st 2001

WS says: Kids playing in the street make great targets. It’s seems communities could add speed bumps to their streets a whole lot cheaper by using these convenient raw materials on hand.

Have a peachy day!

…oh and by the way, don’t EVER try to pass the buck my direction with a bullshit story to management. That’s your tip for the day.

B says: I’m officially well-seated in the middle of middle-age now and I’m okay with that. I actually look forward to getting older every year because it gets me that much closer to having REAL fun as a senior citizen. I look forward to getting my AARP card in ten years and getting discounts on my restaurant-purchased meals. I can hardly wait to raise all kinds of hell for not getting discounts on fast food such as French fries and Jack-In-The-Box tacos. I look forward to being “written off” because of my age and for causing a fuss in public by crying and babbling loudly about my Depends adult underwear, tripping others with my cane and playing deaf. Really, a person could play their age up quite a bit and get away with a lot. I suspect lots of old people already know this and practice it daily all in the name of fun. I’m going to have a blast.

Web cam number one has been pointed at my feet lately. I don’t know why but I’m comfortable with it for the time being. Web cam number two is still waiting for the right cable to arrive before it can be set up. It won’t be pointing at feet.

Dictionaraoke.org. Karaoke performed by online audio dictionary programs. Proof that people have too much time on their hands. I suspect the news media would jump all over this one if they didn’t have a version of Nine Inch Nails I WantTo Fuck You Like An Animal as the first listing. Bohemian Rhapsody and Another Brick in The Wall is pretty good though.

The new development just south of our place cut down a swath of trees today that opens up the view out of our office French doors to….nothingness. No longer will be we be able to sit here working on cold, snowy days and see the deep, thick, black forest of tall fir trees getting coated with snow. With the exception of a dozen straggler trees left, they are all but gone now. I sit here and read the original marketing sheet for our own development, written just over two years ago: “Nestled in the trees, in the foothills of the Cascades…” What a load of crap! Lessons learned.

August 4th 2001

WS says: Nothing tonight.

B says: Watching the Manfred Mann video for The Mighty Quinn should truly be reserved for one’s death bed. Preferably when one is old and feeble and has really bad eyesight so they can’t really see anything. I just couldn’t look away from the TV set and VH1′s Classic channel. It was like turning TV on to a broadcast of a horrible, ghastly car wreck. My thoughts quickly turned to gouging my eyes out but then I realized this would give Manfred Mann all the power. The truly awful part was that this video isn’t as bad as RomeoVoid’s Never Say Never. That video could be used to in place of biochemical weapons.

I want the movie Electric Dreams. I’ve wanted this movie since I first saw it back in the 80′s. Unfortunately, it was never released at a reasonable price and still, to this day, goes for between $60 and $70 bucks new. And it’s only on video tape so getting a used copy will, no doubt, obviously be used and full of video farts. Just as well. Don’t have a penny to my name right now.

I also want a holy orb but I think I can make one of those.

It smelled like tar outside all day today for some reason. I suspect new roads are going in at yet another housing development just west of us. It wasn’t a pleasant smell at all, but it sure beat the strong odor of dog poop that filled the air all day Tuesday. I don’t know what that was all about and I wasn’t going to go outside to find out either.

More trees downed just south of us. The view is getting worse every few days. I just feel glad, at this point, that we spent the extra money on the housing location, backed up to a tributary off Lacama Creek and dedicated green space, so our resale value will still be mostly intact. This definitely is NOT what the developers told us would happen, though, talking to quite a number of other residents over the last two years, it sounds like the developer out-and-out lied to most of us. Again, lessons learned for the next time around: Never buy a house from someone who looks like he sells used cars as a second job.

Hood notes: Watching – Adults teaching children how to throw dog and cat turds over the fences and into neighbor’s yards.

Listening To – The youngster of a military family telling everyone, “YOU drop and give me 20!”
Another family’s “precious little one” being told by his equally-precious older brother at a high decibel rate, “Watch out! I’m gonna buttfuck you when you’re sleeping tonight!” Nice talk.

August 8th 2001

WS says: People who try to feed cats to dogs are real shitheads. What’s worse is when they don’t see the wrong in it either.

B says: I just finished typing a big, boring tale about the hummingbirds who have claimed our backyard their territory and the thrill and fear they evoke in us when we sit out there (when we have time to sit anywhere other than in front of a computer screen working). But then Rasputin decided enough was enough today and crashed, taking that little story to wherever boring little tales go. Lucky you, but I’ll recap quickly. It’s thrilling to watch hummingbirds weave and rip in and out of the trees out back, playing hummingbird grab-ass, but it’s scary when they fly close enough to touch your hair. They do have 3-inch beaks, after all, and we have soft eyeballs…

I’ve had a headache since yesterday. Aspirin isn’t cutting it. I think I just need sleep. I haven’t slept well for 3 weeks.

August 16th 2001

WS says: Shut the hell up, cf. It’s tiring and your voice is too damned monotonous.
I honestly had no idea that you could build such a decent home gym so reasonable priced. Three hundred pound Olympic weight set, flat, incline and decline bench with squat rack, lat pulldown, low pulley, leg and preacher-curl attachment and a commercial rowing machine all for about the same price we paid for our gym memberships. Now I just get to find out what else I will just HAVE TO buy to go with it.

B says: Summer colds have got to be the worse to go through. It’s nice outside but you’re miserable inside not far from boxes of tissue and a trashcan. My head feels like it’s stuffed with pillow batting.

In other news, WS bought serious gym equipment over the weekend since he doesn’t have time to go to the real gym and feels bad not working out somehow. Today, with lots of tissue in one hand and a bottle of disinfectant in the other, I worked out for the first time on it. I had a raging headache as well and hoped that the aspirin would kick in sometime soon. When I lift too much weight, it feels like my head is going to pop.

Sitting there, resting in-between sets of hard arm and tricep workouts, I spied an insect leg on the floor. Someone’s missing a leg out there. It reminds me that people don’t think much about living things smaller than themselves. It also reminds me that too much Benadryl isn’t good for the thought process.

A second part of the gym equipment WS bought over the weekend, a rowing machine, will be delivered here sometime next week. This will give us a good aerobic workout, something we both need badly, and is something we both like doing. Rowing isn’t bad at all. I don’t know if I’ll be able to say that three months from now.

The rower will be set up in our living room since we’re not big on furniture. There will be just the rower, a small bistro table and a couple of plastic-covered chairs (usually occupied by cats) and the shelves housing the TV and stereo. Lots of room for an eight foot rowing machine. The important thing in the room to accompany the rower will be the stereo. Right now, the rest of the equipment is set up out in the garage and there are no tunes out there. We don’t own a boom box or radio of any kind and while it is nice and quiet out there during a workout, it’s somewhat uninspiring.

Well, back to bed for me. It’ll be a long workday tomorrow and I have to be up for it.

August 20th 2001

WS says: I’m working..

B says: I’m nearly over my cold. I think eating good and trying to work out has helped flush things out of my system. Eating bad Thai food yesterday probably helped too. The place was good, the Thai music a bit too loud, the service was excellent, but they just didn’t have anything good sounding on the menu. I just don’t like eggplant and mint leaves in my curry and they couldn’t make it the way I wanted it. Damn. Now I’m craving pizza. Isn’t that just typical?

My sister turns forty today. I’ll bet she’s bitching at everyone to treat her special (like she never did that any other minute of every day…yeah, right) and she’s probably got her day and night of drinking, snorting and shooting up all planned. After all, she reached forty. It’s much more than any of the rest of us thought she would accomplish.

The weather here is supposed to turn rainy tomorrow. Because I want this to happen so badly, it probably won’t. I refuse to get excited about the possibility today as I so often do. But I can’t help but get a little excited at the thought of being solidly in the fall season two months from now. I love this place in fall, but then, you all know that. I’ll shut up about it now.

I’m trying hard to concentrate on work but my head is still a little fuzzy. Or maybe it’s just that we are getting a larger-than-normal amount of bitchy customers lately. Demanding, bitchy customers. Complaining to us doesn’t help matters and insulting us with lots of colorful language doesn’t make us respect them any more either. Back to work…

August 22nd 2001

WS says: I’m working..

B says: First off: HB to WS.

Second: ‘grats, WS, 4 weathering B T. BAD day yesterday.

Yesterday, due to new construction and rain in our area, our power went on and off all day and into the evening hours. Now, we have to make up work time missed this week. Not fun, but it has to be done and we have no choice.

We didn’t get enough rain. Reportedly, Portland got tons. Because I didn’t witness it first-hand, I don’t believe it. All we got was drizzly rain, not the huge amounts forecasted. Typical.

I’ll be spending the next month canceling all the catalogs I receive in the mail. We literally get 4-8 catalogs a day, most of which neither one of us ever asked to receive. It’s just way out of control. Will this one little action from one person affect the economy? The economy is already affected.

Note to self: Watch for signs that stock market will crap out on October 31. Makes me wish I had transportation today to go to Oregon to buy a Powerball ticket.

September 2nd 2001

WS says: One toy down. One to go.

B says: Other than finally getting over a summer cold and a healthy sinus infection, we’ve been doing nothing more than working, working, working. Yes, over the holiday weekend.

Web cam number 1 has been pointing out the office window for the last few days so you can see Pirate Dan and his Smokin’ Clan behind us, build his deck. He nails in 7-8 boards a day and calls it quits. This is his second attempt at building the thing. Watching him, it becomes painfully obvious that he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Only his youngest son will help now. The other Smokin’ Clan members have given up and spend all their time sitting just inside the door, smoking. I think he’ll finish the thing today. He’s close. Then we’ll get to see it buckle and warp over the rainy winter.

Web cam number 2 is finally online. We’re still working on the Interactive, move-ability part that will make this cam fun for a while.

September 7th 2001

WS says: Working up a rant on screaming children…

Reading: The Ten Thousand by Michael Curtis Ford and WINE From Grape to Glass by Jens Priewe

B says: This is weird stuff – Logan Whitehurst and the Jr. Science Club and in particular Calculator Love.

Fall weather is definitely in the air. While it is still a little warm outside (high 70′s, low 80′s) but you can sense a difference. Usually, Septembers here don’t feel this way until deep into the month. I’m loving this. Unfortunately, the rain earlier predicted for early next week won’t be occurring after all but the temps are looking good so far. Low to mid-70′s. Nice. Nearly crisp fall apple and popcorn-ball weather.

I missed an opportunity to go to the beach today and tomorrow. We haven’t been anywhere together for nearly 3 years. Due to work uncertainties, we can’t justify going anywhere or doing anything other than the weekly P.O. Box and grocery shopping trips. I sure hope all this “work, work, work now” pays off later on in life. It would be a real bitch if all life amounted to was all work and then you die.

Reading: Coming Back Alive by Spike Walker and The Crystal Cave (Book 1 of 4, read in reverse-order) by Mary Stewart

September 11th 2001

WS says: Wow. What can you say? Today is clearly one of those days on which history turns. This was a horrible day but, REALLY, bad shit can happen from here out. Tomorrow’s financial news should be interesting to watch and it’s only a matter of time before the retaliation starts.

Intriguing look at human nature…

B says: Well. You just don’t wake up to a morning like today very often. September 11th. 9-11 day. Kind of like watching Independence Day without Will Smith. Amazing video. Horrible real-life stories from links from within the East/West site from people live on the scene. Things and places shutting down all over the country, but can someone explain to me why the New Mexico State Fair was shut down today? Was there any significance to this?

Oh wonderful. Now we’re bombing the shit outta Afghanistan. Geez, let me move to a different country where this You-smacked-me-now-I-get-to-smack-you mentality (combined with too much money to fund all the smacking) doesn’t exist…

September 16th 2001

WS says: I try not to be one to dull the impact of words by using them lightly. I avoid the use of words like “tragedy”, “hero”, “catastrophe” and “historic” as frequently as the press use them for just this reason. This week, however, I have seen all of these things and I have been using these words.

LIVING IN HISTORIC TIMES

Tuesday, September 11, 2001, was one of those pivotal points in history. While many are calling it a turning point, I like the term pivotal because a pivot can result in many things, including a straight line with no change at all. We are still at a point where we could follow our recent past with a short media-friendly U.S.-led military campaign that changes nothing. But this could also precipitate a radical change in the way the family of nations deals with each other. At the very least, we are now living in a time that our descendents will be reading about in their history books. Millions, likely billions, will remember exactly where they were on this date when they first heard the news.

The terrorist attack this week was a tragedy on the scale that happens only a few times in a lifetime. I would like to call it senseless and pointless, but only time will tell whether this is really the case. I can be pragmatic and think about the U.S. foreign policy decisions that have angered people enough to want to strike out like this against “Americans”, but I can also pragmatically counter this with the basic nature of fanatics and the fact that we could try to give any person in this world exactly what they wanted with the likely result of pissing off someone else enough to want to kill us for doing it. Keep in mind that many of these same fundamentalist groups do NOT want a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because it would only get them part of what they want and they feel as if they are making a deal with the devil.

Time will tell whether this attack alters U.S. policy and our impression of the world to the degree that there might have been a point to this tragedy after all.

HOW ON EARTH COULD THIS HAPPEN?

The next question many of us will ask is, “Who is to blame?” To answer this question, you can look in the mirror, at your colleague, at your neighbor, or at virtually any other person on the face of the planet – nearly anyone is partially to blame. In the United States, we expend a great deal of energy to ensure our comfort and convenience. Many times it is unclear exactly what the price paid by others for these comforts might be. While it sometimes crosses my mind, I certainly do not know the full impact on other nations and cultures of my day-to-day demands and expectations. As the global economy has become a reality, the impact of our daily expectations only grows. We would certainly like to believe that the global economy enables all to have more freedom and opportunity than in the past. This might even be the long-term result of this revolutionary change in our economic world.

However, right now, we must be conscious of the fact that companies move jobs overseas to compete for our dollars by offering us more convenience and comfort than their competitors while still making the maximum amount of profit. We are told that the countries we export these jobs to benefit from their presence and that they will grow and develop into societies of comfort like our own. This is a wonderful vision and I hope it is true, but we must hold some responsibility to resolve not to allow this to be a modern replacement for slavery.

Most of the time, the price for our culture of convenience is paid by others. However, we occasionally pay the price ourselves, as we did this week. The lax security in U.S. airports is the result of our desire for convenience and low prices. We feel safe and secure here – despite the combination of open borders and those who would like to see us all dead. There are at least two major realizations to come from the fact that this did not happen sooner:

1. There is a price to pay for the convenience we desire.
2. Our intelligence community does a damned fine job given the scope of the task.

PATRIOTISM OR IGNORANCE?

This is certainly not to excuse the organizers and perpetrators of this attack from the ignorance required to determine that all people of any particular group are to be killed for the actions of some. There is certainly no shortage of this particular ignorance as we are seeing it in the morons who are attacking people in this country who look like they may be of Arabic descent simply because of the way they look. These people should be treated in the same fashion as we decide we must treat those who had a part in the attack who did not die with the victims.

As for the terrorists, or anyone that sees this as a glorious strike against the Great Satan, I have to make it clear that I am a bit confused. How is it that we are supposed to take such a strike seriously as a heroic act of faith, when the “fighters” involved make use of the resources of the Great Satan for their training? Is this not making a pact with that which is evil and therefore corrupting the cause? If the ends justify the means, then anyone can easily justify any number of crimes against humanity. Any fanatical devotion that adopts this proposition walks a slippery slope that can not be successfully negotiated and is doomed to self-corruption and failure. I particularly like the eyewitness accounts of the wanna-be martyrs kicking it at a bar, wolfing down alcohol before their flight to paradise. I’m sorry, but they’re no different than our own disturbed citizens who go on a shooting rampage to get even and get on the news.

We have 14 year-olds that can attack civilian targets too, so forgive me if I am not overwhelmed by the purity of the motivations behind this week’s catastrophe.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED? MORE LIKELY NOT…

In the meantime, I would love to know if it crossed the minds of those who planned the assault that the result of their efforts could be to create thousands of martyrs for their opposition to rally around. The last attack of this scope on U.S. soil did not bode well for the attacker. As a people, the citizens of the United States are amazingly diverse – far beyond skin color or religious belief. We already have those who extol massive military revenge and those who promote peaceful resolution of the underlying issues that have caused people to hate us. The majority of citizens, including me, are somewhere in between these extremes. This week, we are much closer to the revenge extreme than we were last week.

The world is reacting as well. The invocation of article 5 of the NATO treaty, which has never happened before, should drive home the gravity of these actions. The scope of the destruction and loss of life is something that only the insane (or incredibly stupid) would support. I would like to see less talk of “leading the world” and more of “standing with the world”, but nations currently stand together and against terrorism. The nations of the world have been grieving over the loss of their people to fanatical attacks for years. This week holds the potential for galvanizing all people against terrorism through shared pain and outrage. The fanatics that want us to act now solidly have all of our attention, though we are probably not in a real giving mood. Congratulations, I guess.

B says: Random thoughts on the past week’s events and lots of use of the word “better”:

It’s funny how just a week ago tomorrow, Monday, I was talking to WS about the U.S. economy and how the only way I felt we could pull out of it would be to have a war. I guess the U.S. is going to do just that now. Sad.

Driving down Fourth Plain yesterday, I saw five separate reader-board signs outside of commercial businesses that all read: “God Bless America”. It seems to me that the very idea of god is what started this whole thing in the first place. I guess this means “our” god is better than “their” god.

It seems to me that the U.S. is going to do exactly what the hijackers (or terrorists, if that is what you want to call them) wanted us to do and retaliate. The U.S. is also going to do exactly what those people did. Does this make us any better?

I’m not for war. Yet, anyone I say this to disagrees and insists, including WS, that since I am against war, I should have a valid alternative to going to war. Why should I? Isn’t just being against war good enough? I am guessing not and I feel so isolated because of my feelings on this.

So, what is an alternative? I don’t have one and if that makes me unpatriotic, so be it. I just don’t see how war is going to solve anything and in fact, I strongly believe this will be a war the U.S. can’t win (and it seems that “winning” is everything to everyone in the U.S. be it in sports, business, family, etc.). “I kill some of your guys” begets “I’ll then kill some of your guys” begets “I’ll kill some more of your guys back” begets “Then I’ll really kill some more of your guys” is pointless other than it kills a bunch of people. It doesn’t solve anything. Where does it end?

I can’t help but wonder how many email responses I had sent out for work last Sunday and Monday went to computers that were destroyed in the World Trade Towers and surrounding buildings…along with their owners.

In past wars when soldiers died in battle, relatives and loved ones received telegrams beginning with, “We regret to inform you that (So-and-so) died…”. Will people still get telegrams, or will they receive them via email this time around? Maybe both?

Have you noticed how much Prez Bush uses the word “evil” in his speeches now? The word “evil” was said 5 times in his speeches on Tuesday, four times in a speech on Wednesday, no count on Thursday but I’ll bet he said it at least twice, six times in two speeches Friday, four times in his speech on Saturday, five times in his Sunday morning speech. At time point, I can’t help but count them every time I see him talking on TV. He really likes the word “evil”.

Bush says this war will last years. When will people I know start being drafted and how will all this change them? Will anyone ever be the same? Silly question.
How many new prescriptions for Prozac (or the like) will be written and filled in the coming months? Equally silly question.

Real or hoax? Did Satan rear his ugly face?

I am beginning to feel intimidated by people around me to fly a United States flag. Isn’t the fact that I legally live in the United States and can produce a birth certificate proving I was born in the United States enough to show that I am a United States citizen without having to fly a flag or wear a “patriotic” t-shirt or attach “patriotic” colored ribbons to a car antenna to prove it? Everyone says this is to show we are united. I thought that’s what the “United” part of United States stood for. I guess I just don’t see the connection between showing off a flag or flag colors and being helpful. In fact, it brings up visions of showing off gang colors for some weird reason. Is our gang the better gang?

And why does this country call everything America like we are the only “Americans” in this portion of the world? Are we including the South American countries? Central America? All of North America including Canada? Did some Brazilian country or Canadian providence have hijacked planes flown into some buildings too? Or did it just occur in the United States? Are we the better “Americans”? Aren’t we United States citizens, and technically not “Americans” simply because the Americas include South America, Central America and all of North America? And if this technically is true, shouldn’t those who chose so, fly a “United States” flag and not what is erroneously called an “American” flag, since technically, an “American” flag could be the Canadian flag or the Guatemalan flag? You could only guess at the venomous responses I get from bringing up this point alone.

September 20th 2001

WS says: Wait for it. Yes, I have more to say. Soon.

B says: Getting back to a normal life after last week’s events. Why? Because I can. I watched a deeply involved BBC satellite show last night on bin Laden and Muslims and terrorists and learned a thing or two. For example, there is no such thing as a Muslim terrorist. The Muslim religion is anti-terrorist. Osama bin Laden has twisted Muslim beliefs and corrupted others into thinking the way he does (not to mention paying poor people to “like” him and be part of his army). Osama bin Laden isn’t Muslim, but he is a terrorist. Whew! Glad that is all cleared up.

George is gonna speak on TV tonight. Rumors are he won’t be declaring war. Fine with me. But if he starts spouting off STUPID sound byte statements again, like hitting a camel in the butt in a 10 dollar tent with a 2 million dollar missile or, gawd forbid, repeating that horrid Wanted: Dead or Alive statement (someone please take away George’s copy of Wild, Wild West and all his Bon Jovi CDs!), I’m leaving the room.

Oh wait a minute. I can’t leave the room. I’m still doing the “evil” word count. Prediction? 4 mentions of the word “evil”.

On the work front, I run across a lot of technical support emails that contain a sentence or two from the customer saying that they are thinking of all of us here in the states and that they are praying for us. While the WTC disaster hasn’t affected me directly, it’s refreshing to see nice words typed out by someone somewhere else in the world that doesn’t have anything to do with some computer program problem. Or maybe I just get tired of reading often very-upset customer emails all day..I dunno.

Rashes of flag-stealing and flag-vandalism are cropping up around where we live. Duh! Like, I didn’t predict this would happen last week…

I’m hoping this week will be the end of summer weather. It’s really been nice the last few days. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind sunny skies. I just don’t like anything over 74 degrees and no, I can’t move somewhere where it never gets above 74 degrees. Before moving here, I was led to believe that it didn’t get much above 80 degrees here. I think that person just didn’t pay much attention to the weather when they lived up here previously and in fact, I know they spent a huge amount of time indoors in a darkened bedroom, sitting in front of a computer screen. Gee, who do you suppose that was?

Over the last few days, I was fighting off a cold or something. Today, I’m definitely getting over it. Unfortunately, as it is moving through my body, I am spending a lot of time in the bathroom. Too fun. In watching TV on and off over the last few days, I’ve noticed several news announcers up here in Portland, Oregon sound like they have colds as well. I’m not alone.

I am not looking forward to the U.S. war years ahead. I know they are coming. I have my own selfish personal reasons for this feeling but I’m not ready to whine about them just yet. No one wants to listen to a whiner, especially right now.
“Don’t unleash the dogs of war until you have milked the cow of reason and fed the chickens of common sense.” (Stolen from Jenniferb at WorldCrossing)

September 22nd 2001

WS says: Wait for it. Yes, I have more to say. Soon.

B says: I feel gypped. George spoke and only used the “evil” word twice. Only twice! I think someone tipped him off to my 4 evil prediction in my Thursday journal entry. So, he chose another word to over-use. “Terror”, pronounced “Terra” by Texan George. We were halfway through the televised speech before I understood that when he said the word “terra”, he really meant “terror.” He said terra 10 times in what was about a 5 minute speech after all the applause and standup/sit downs were over. Lots of stern looks too. Well, at least we didn’t have to watch his hands move like his dad was so fond of doing.

I went out about town today for the first time in many, many days and noticed this phenomenon of U.S. flags plastered all over car windows. Newspaper flags, print-out flags taped to windows, most of which were blocking the view of the rear-view mirror (like, anyone cares what’s behind them anyway…), cloth flags on antennas, propped up in the back of pickup trucks and in back windows, flag stickers and “Proud to be American” laminate signs. People must also be “Proud to be American” to be talking on their cell phones while cutting off people, holding up traffic and flicking cigarette butts out the windows. Or at least, that’s what I observed countless times today. I also saw a little old lady, driving some tuna-boat-sized car plastered with sparklely U.S. flag stickers, stuffed animals with sad faces crammed in the back window and two homemade flyers taped in the side windows saying “Wanted: Dead or Alive” and you can guess who’s picture in the crosshairs. It wasn’t Neil Diamond, you can be sure. Oh, and she cut off someone too. Me. Not once, but twice because she couldn’t see out those windows. I think people are taking this patriotism thing too far when it begins endangering lives.

But what am I complaining about? It’s not like someone flying a flag in the back of their pickup, drove up and shot me, mistaking me for a light-skinned middle eastern human, then proclaimed how “American” they are, like “Americans” are doing all over the rest of the country.

PATRIOT or SHEEP? Something I asked myself at least a hundred times today…baaaaa..

September 26th 2001

WS says: Wait for it. Yes, I have more to say. Soon.

B says: In the quest to get life around here back to normal, I’ve been recalling several things that I was going to write about here, but for whatever reason, forgot to. Spank me.

That rowing machine that WS bought a month ago, was delivered a few weeks ago. Rowing is fun. We both like it. It sits down in the living room since we have no furniture and looks rather artsy-fartsy like a long metallic sculpture. I just wish we had time to use it like we swore we would. But alas! We’re still fat and pathetic.

Also a few weeks ago, and after swearing for the last 4 years that we would never, NEVER take in another cat, we helped a good friend capture a feral cat family. (Feral = totally wild with no human contact whatsoever). After spaying and neutering the bunch, we decided to keep the wildest kitten, while our friend kept the other two kittens. Sadly, we had to re-release the mother but she was spayed first. We could find no home for her and we didn’t want to put her to sleep. Our kitten has been living in our bedroom since September 9th. His name is Cameron, he’s about 4 1/2 months old now and we can actually touch and pet him without drawing back a bloody stump for an arm. He even purrs and has learned how to play with fake mice and balls and the like. He’ll be staying put in that room for a solid month, getting used to us talking and walking around, human sounds and movements. It should be all kinds of fun and games introducing him to the rest of the cat bunch. Already, Ian, Crits and Skitters hate walking past the bedroom door because they know another one is in there.

Tonight, I did something kind of scary. On the noon news, I heard of a program that Oregon is setting up to fly people to New York cheap as goodwill ambassadors (and money-spenders to help the NY economy) and to prove to the rest of the country that it’s okay to make long distance flights again. I don’t know what I was thinking, but something about the story just spoke to me and I thought, “I can do this!” After talking to WS, who is not at all terribly enthused, I decided to sign up for more information. Most likely, since I’m NOT an Oregonian (I live just across the river from Oregon in Washington state), they won’t accept me. Which would be a pretty crappy, un-goodwill, un-ambassador-like thing to do, but it’s their game. Lots of top Oregon officials are going and they already have several planes booked. I just think it would be very educational and emotional to meet ordinary people who live there, both close to the scene and not, to offer emotional support to people still looking for and hoping to hear news of their missing loved ones, to see the recovery effort. Most likely, I will never see anything like this again, certainly not the first, initial attack against this country. I just want to help firsthand. I want to walk the NY streets and lend my tourist dollars. Writing out a check and sending it to a no-face organization just does nothing to me. But like I said, they probably won’t accept me and/or WS won’t want to do it and/or won’t let me go alone and/or I won’t be able to get the time off work and/or a million other things that could come up.

PATRIOT or SHEEP?

I’m sure there’s other stuff I’m forgetting but I’m tired and can’t think clearly. Unfortunately, I have a few more hours of work to do with an unclear head (fun!).

October 3rd 2001

WS says: Oh, you were waiting for me? Well, that was probably silly…

B says: As you may have noticed of late, our entries here have become a bit sporadic. We apologize for that. We’re working a lot of hours, eating a lot of bad food and sleeping horribly, when at all. We need a break. Mostly, we need a break from the continuous summer-like weather, which we do not like in the least as it saps our energy and creativity, and so, from here at least, we’ll be taking a bit of a writing vacation for a while and spend the few brain cells that we usually reserve for this space, pleading instead for rain, wind and cold weather.

If you are wondering where all the past months of journal entries have been going, well, we’ve had to remove them. You see, we have a bit of a stalker problem.

Someone who won’t leave us alone. Someone who reads our past journal entries and uses that information to send us and sign us up for all kinds of crap that we don’t want anything to do with. So we won’t be giving them any more information they can use. Some people just have way too much time on their hands and too little else in their lives.

Thank you for your patience.

November 1st 2001

[Editor’s note: Though my journal continued offline, the web address for the public 2001 journal ceased to exist for a short while.] The journal page normally found here no longer exists. We thank you very much for your support, links, and kind words over the years. It was time.