Friday, January 28, 2005

I should have listened to Glen and Foil

So it wasn't mayonaise from last May, but I think it may have been cream cheese from last July that caused my innards to feel as though they had been streched in every direction farther then humanly possible, then squeezed back into a too small container. Never ending terrible shooting pain the middle of the night are always fun.

So I blame the cream cheese - cause I don't want to blame the wine.


Speaking of whine, UPS rocks and FedEx sucks. I had some wine being delivered UPS, Noland had some computer parts being sent FedEx - both required signatures - and of a live human, not the "you can sign this and leave on the door knob and we'll leave the box on the porch kind." The FedEx guy shows up at our house three days in a row while we're at work leaving nothing more then a note saying he'd try again tomorrow. I left a note back saying we'd rather pick it up, we won't be home in the day, but of course we can't do that if he has it on his truck - so when he stops trying to deliver it and we can finally go pick it up - they had already returned it to the sender because we hadn't picked it up the next day.


And the wine coming UPS - he leaves us a note with his pager number and says to let him know when we'll be around so that if he's in the area still he can come back. Noland gets home, gets the note, pages him and within 15 minutes we have wine.

Much more important then computer parts anyhow.

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

I’ve gotta get out of the house more

Jaws 3 just isn’t the same without the 3D. Of course the dialogue of those fleeing the toothy menace is as exciting as ever…

arrruuuuuwwwww…..blurrrllllbbbbbbb……urggghhhhaaaaaaa……
allllbbbbbbbbuurrrr……ddarrrrruuuhhhhhh.

That’s some snappy conversation amongst our hero and heroine divers. The writers obviously spent hours agonizing how to script what exactly someone would say through their mask and tank when face to face with this pissed off momma, but I think in the end they just let the actors ad lib…I could really feel their terror. And that was before the climatic slo-mo ending of screaming, the beast crashing into the control room and subsequently exploding.

Whhheeeeeeee!!!!

With American Idol prior and Queer Eye after my culture is now complete.

I'm frightening myself.

Sunday, January 23, 2005

liberal media my ass

This week according to some moronic NY Times columnist and Time Magazine the best thing for this country and society in general would be for women to "make a greater effort to marry early and have children...raise children from age 25 to 35. Then at 35, now that she knows herself better...select a flexible graduate program specifically designed for parents." The reason for this throwback to the 50s is of course that this is what they did in the 50s, so they had lots of children and now they want us to have kids to take care of them. According to this moron David Brooks, if we did this, "...fertility rates would rise. That would be good for the country. We don't have enough young people to support our old people."


So instead of the normal experience of college, we should have spent that time getting our MRS degree so that we could get married right after graduation. We then need to get busy having children so that we can support the old people who didn't plan ahead when they were young. And it doesn't matter if we have goals or ambitions related to a career, we should put those on hold until after we're through raising our children. We'll know ourselves better then and can go to special mommy graduate school to get that degree. Of course we'll then be entering a workforce where we're 10 years older then the men who are also looking for entry level jobs (because they of course don't need to wait 10 years to know themselves well enough to choose a career.) Our children will be older by then but they'll still be at home and we wont' want to put in the longer hours some bosses demand, so they'll be hesitant about hiring these "older women" instead of the young men eager and willing to please. Sound familiar? Oh yes - that's what it was like when women tried to seriously start entering the workforce decades ago. It's good to know we're moving forward.


And then in a cover story so patronizingly titled 'They Just Won't Grow Up' the good folks at Time are lovely enough to be concerned about both men AND women not marrying and having babies soon enough. "Society defines an adult as a person who is financially stable with a spouse, children and a home....we're going to think about those people getting married at 18 and forming a family at 19 or 20 as an odd historical pattern rather then the norm."


Now if you want to get married right after college and start having kids - fine, swell, go for it - both my brothers did, a few of my friends did, and they're all fine and happy. But for the majority of people I know who are now in their 30s and have been married just a few years or are still single, are childless or just having fresh ones, bought their first home in the past few years or are still renting - I'd say they still considered themselves quite grown up before they hit these stringent definitions.


I love being married to Noland and I'm really looking forward to us getting our own house this year, but I wouldn't have traded in my single days, new apartment every year, and lame part time jobs (where I met many of the friends I still have to this day) for anything. And I think that (for the most part) I was a grown up most of the time. I think doing things like moving halfway across the country to an unknown city with no job and just one friend in tow, and doing so successfully, is a rather grown up thing to do. I think learning how to love living by yourself for a while is a very grown up thing to do. I think knowing that at 25 your not ready to settle down rather then doing it just because your "supposed to" is a rather grown up thing to do.


Twice random people I dated in my 20s brought up marriage to me – I think I laughed at one and just tried to ignore the conversation with the other. But imagine if I would have continued that conversation – I would have never moved to Oregon, I would have never met Noland, and I would have never had this wonderful life I have now. I may not have know then exactly why those weren’t the right moves for me, but I knew there was something, and someone, better for me out there….and that is definitely grown up.


Friday, January 21, 2005

sleeping with the fan on

Why we decided to do RAGBRAI I have no idea, getting back in shape is one thing, but neither of us is ready for a 7 day bike ride across Iowa in the middle of July with 90+ temps and 90%+ humidity? I left that crazy place for a reason you know! But either way, there we were.

We didn’t have to leave right away, we could actually start at any point during the day so we figured as long as we were there we’d take in some sights real quick (not that there are a lot of sights to take in in Iowa, but I did live there for nearly 10 years, and Noland has never been there, so I figured I’d show him around a bit anyhow.

First we went to the statue lady’s house – she has more lawn art then you have ever seen in one place outside one of those yard fountain and lawn art stores. There have to be a dozen or more cement fountains, half a dozen statues of cherubs and angels and cute little girls lifting there skirts, those colored balls that go on pedestals – I think there was one of every available size and color, then there are the random one off’s - deer statues, the gargoyles, the squirrels…..throw in some Edward Scissorhands style bushes and a Koi pond and I think you’ve got the picture. It was pretty amazing. Midwest art at it’s finest!

We were just leaving there when a whole herd of cyclists went past us telling that we’d better get going or they were going to disqualify us, so we headed back to the station. By this time of course it was starting to rain – and for my friends in the NW – rain when it’s 90+ outside and in the Midwest is NOT the pleasant cooling rain that we get in Oregon. No, when it rains in the summer time it doesn’t cool things down, it makes them worse – the rain itself is warm and it just hangs in the air like a thick warm fog making everything heavy and slow.

I think that’s one of the reasons that people from other place don’t get how wonderful the weather here in the NW really is. It never really gets hot, never really gets cold (if it does do either it’s a week max, more likely a day) and while it rains a fair numbers of days, it’s usually just that nice refreshing cool mist – when people in the Midwest, south or east here that it rained every day from Dec 1 – March 1 they think of their rain. Heavy downpours flooding roads and freezing into ice, or when they hear that it doesn’t stop raining until Fourth of July (although in the 8 years I’ve been here the summers have always been nicer then that) they think of that sticky, hot heavy rain that they get, not the (again) nice, cool refreshing mist that you can walk in for 30 minutes before you can even tell that you’re wet.

Ok – so enough weather analysis – we go to start the ride and remember that we left our sleeping bags, backpacks and the rest of our gear someplace else – so now it’s a scavenger hunt for our stuff – at least that’s more interesting way to ride! We get our first clue from the guy with the started gun, but he doesn’t warn us that there are already other teams out there – and they’re looking for our stuff too! We take off and thin that we probably have a pretty good lead since it’s our stuff so we’re more likely to know where it’s ended up – but just when we’re hitting our stride ready to really jump into action – the buzzer sounds and it’s all over.

Thursday, January 20, 2005

such the drama

I’m late for work, the only problem is I don’t know it yet. Noland is dropping me off out front and gives me a kiss. Two guys from the office are coming back from a coffee run. They come in super early, so they’ve already been there more then an hour. I can’t believe they’re actually going to tell on me that I’m late! I let them know that if they go through with it - Noland’s gonna beat their asses – so glad we carpooled today.

There’s a bunch of bottles of water and soda and beer in cases in the hallway as I walk in – I see other people taking some, but I’m not sure of the rules, so I just grab a bottle of water and go to my place on the bench. For some reason instead of offices or cubicles we all sit at long school-cafeteria like tables with benches.

Mark Megibow, an old friend from high school that I really lost touch with before we even graduated, comes and sits down next to me. Mark was my brother’s pledge son in their music fraternity at Northwestern and I recently saw in one of those emails that Classmates.com is always sending out that he “recently updated his profile – become a Gold Member to read all about what Mark is doing” so maybe that’s why he showed up at my office. But he was cool – we were really more just friends of friends then actually friends with each other back in the TWHS days – so I’m glad he didn’t turn out to be an ass.

I have to get going and get home, as soon as possible, this storm is coming in and if I don’t get on the next plane out of here I may never make it. My boss tells me I’ve got until 5:19 – plenty of time – I thought I was only going to have an hour or even less. I need to pack. Quickly.
Why haven’t I been keeping up on cleaning my room? I can’t find anything I need to pack. I only have this one suitcase and this is not all going to fit. Plus I have all these he notebooks full of papers and documents from work – maybe I can put all those in one and just carry it. Nope, no zipper pockets. Everything is falling out. Am I really going to wear those shoes? Maybe I can leave them here – I will be back someday. I can get things then – besides if I leave the place a mess it will look more lived in.

We’re never going to get this show off the ground. Learn all our lines. Get all the staging set. There’s just not enough time. They’re calling me from the airport – it’s 5:20 – they’re going to leave without me. I wasted too much time. Why did I fall asleep?!

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

when dogs chase you always carry a backpack

So I totally forgot to ask for time off at my new job for this weekend trip that we were taking and I was going to be coming in late one day and leaving early another. I was gonna send an email cause it's not that big a deal as long as I let 'em know - but we were at my folks house and while I'm impressed that my dad has figured as much out about computers as he has (fer an old guy you know) it's still a slow system, not to mention the fact that's dial-up and he has it all set up to use an AOL browser which is just irritating, so needless to say the message took much longer then it should have. In fact by the time I got around to sending it, it was nearly 3 in the afternoon - and if I'd been there as I should have been I would have been going home in less then an hour. So I decided I need to just book it out of there - it was kinda hard to leave. Dad, being retired and all, has lots of time to tinker and he had a new gadget he wanted Noland to take a look at, so I abandon my poor husband with my dad and take off. Crap. I forgot the dogs in the back yard - not really friendly puppys. I have to scramble across the yard and then jump a fence to get out - but now I don't have my car so I have to walk - this is gonna take forever. Not to mention the fact that I have to stop and get all my stuff - sleeping bag, clothes, flashlight, all kinds of crap. My bag isn't very full right now - I can put some stuff in it - but I wish I had a backpack - then I wouldn't have dropped everything running from the dogs. What a pain in the ass this trip has turned out to be.