Elaine Nelson - Plinky Answers

Would you ever get an e-book reader?

2010-12-16T10:13:08-06:00

I've been thinking about that, actually, and I'm really interested. The Kindle is particularly tempting. It seems like they've got the form factor (mostly) worked out, and it ought to work for me most of the time.

Here's the thing, though: 99% of the books I read now come from the library. I almost certainly wouldn't buy as many books as I want to read. Most of the time, these days, I read a book just once and don't see any particular need to have it around to read again. Of the (80+?) books I've read in the last year, I can see owning less than 10 of them, including cookbooks & how-to books. The library meets my needs perfectly that way.

Yes, my library has e-books. Unfortunately, they use @%&#*ing Overdrive, which has a meager selection and doesn't support Kindle. (Or at least it didn't the last time I checked, which was probably a month ago.)

So until I can check out library books (or there's a good cheap rental solution), I just can't justify it. Alas.

A gracious gesture

2010-12-01T12:29:16-06:00

In March 1997, my job at the Children's Museum was going to end; for whatever reason, there just wasn't the money there to fund it. I'd been doing some job-hunting, but nothing had turned up yet. I was about to go on vacation*, and before I left, I decided to apply to the temp agency up the hill.

It was raining. I didn't own an umbrella or a rainhat; if I remember it right, all I had was a long London Fog raincoat that had once belonged to my father, and that looked a bit Colombo-esque. Back then, I just didn't care that much about getting wet. I often showed up at work looking a bit drowned-rat, but I always dried off pretty quickly, so it didn't matter.

But I was going for an interview, so I was a little nervous, hoping for a break in the rain for those few blocks uphill.

Instead, a guy who had just started working there, doing something with the point of sale system, came over and offered his umbrella. It was a plain little black folding umbrella, and it kept me dry going up the hill to my interview and testing. (I typed hella fast. I still type pretty fast.) Back down again, too, where I gave it back to him, and thought, "how sweet." It was the first time I really noticed him.

When I came back from my vacation, it was to the very good news that my job had been extended a few more months. I would end up working until the end of June, which meant I got to spend more time around that sweet guy. We started dating in late March, with an outing to see Hamlet, and that was basically that.

So yeah, the first time I noticed C, he loaned me an umbrella, and I always smile when I think of that little gesture.

* The vacation itself turned out to be a pivotal moment. I'd originally planned on a week in Austin and a week in SF, and cancelled the Austin leg at the very last minute for complicated emotional reasons. (It was almost a decade before I finally went there, under radically different circumstances, but still visiting the same person!) Ended up spending a few days at a cabin near Mt Rainier, which had its own strangeness. SF, on the other hand, was glorious. Also, for some reason I'd gotten the impression that my boss had finagled a way to get me a paid vacation...and that wasn't so...and that was the beginning of some really hairy experiences with that job....

Don't go changing

2010-10-20T13:14:31-06:00

When I was a teenager, I thought about this often. My father died when I was eight, and so in the chaos of my home life after that, I would daydream about what things would have been like. I've mused about that one often, turning it over in my head, especially as I've gotten older and learned more about my father and more about the world in general.

And then later, I was full of regrets about dumb things I had done, ways I had behaved poorly to others, and so forth.

I'm trying to remember what specific event triggered it, but at some point in college I decided that it was worthless to regret past choices. I want to say that it was related to the long-term drama of my friendship with K. Something about realizing that even really shitty times contributed to things that turned out pretty good, considering. (Oh, that's not vague AT ALL.) And in fact, that long-term drama is probably my personal touchstone for "that thing that you thought you understood? nope, it's going to be different than that." (Which reminds me that I need to figure out a present for a great kid's 13th (!!!!) birthday.)

With that went a decision that trying to work out alternate personal histories was an exercise in futility. Not that it's not entertaining sometimes: I'm firmly convinced that there's an alternate reality in which I am an adjunct English prof in Arizona or something. But it can also be wrenchingly painful, and quite possibly wrong.

Curiously enough, I tend to tie myself up in knots thinking about my personal politics of all things, when musing about "if Dad hadn't died." I'm pretty lefty, and not just with my handwriting. Dad, on the other hand, was not just 20 years Air Force, but according to other family members, fairly conservative. (He converted TO Catholicism, although I'm not entirely sure of the circumstances. And an uncle told me several years ago that he was passionate about utility deregulation. I've occasionally wondered what he would have thought of Enron.) On top of that, he and Mom always disagreed about politics, to the point that they had an agreement not to talk about politics at all.

Whereas when I was a teen and preteen, Mom watched the Sunday morning politics shows, and argued loudly with the TV, and we watched a lot of news, read the paper, etc. I registered voters for the Dukakis campaign when I was only 13. I was passionate about nuclear disarmament at about the same age, and a little earlier. Would I have had those opinions then -- or my current ones now -- if he'd been around as an influence? If so, would we have fought about it? Because my memories of Dad don't include the struggles for independence that I fought with Mom later -- and there were some doozies -- so they've got a bit of rose-tinting to them. That's the dark side of the alternate personal history: not just good things that might never have been, but bad things that might have happened.

I swear I've written about this before, because it's something I've definitely (obviously!) thought about, but I have no idea when or what keywords to go searching with.

Other alternative history turning points that I've mused on: going to UPS. not going to library school. dating Raul (or yes, C). not going to Austin in '97 to visit HA, and a few other things in relation to her. learning to bike later in life. All of which reinforces the idea that it's all interconnected in really complicated ways. (Cue It's a Wonderful Life.)

Scars of childhood, the non-figurative kind

2010-10-07T14:12:30-06:00

I have two scars of note, both of which involve being somewhat more adventurous than I think my parents appreciated.

The first I don't remember getting. The way I understand it, I was a toddler, and rather curious in the way that toddlers are. And somehow I managed to get into the garage, which in that house my father used as a shop, and it had a great many sharp or powered tools. I can visualize the little ranch house, that we lived in until I was seven, and the pressboard door between the main house and the garage. I don't know if I'm making this up, but I swear I remember it being kept closed with a hook high up on the door. I imagine that the hook was a new innovation after I got into the garage.

According to mom, I went directly from dragging myself around on my belly like a seal to walking, without a crawling phase in the middle. So I would have been walking by then, and I was always a tall kid. Perhaps even tall enough to open the door by myself. But I don't remember any of this, so I couldn't have been much older than three, maybe three and a half? (My very first memory is of being at preschool with my "boyfriend.")

In any case, somehow I got into the shop, and wandered about, and somehow (oh, somehow!) turned on a saw? I think mom said once that it was a band saw. How the hell I got high up enough to turn on a band saw boggles the mind. The toddler mind sees "ooh, moving stuff!" and reaches out to touch....

Did I scream? Considering the second story, I'm really wondering if I did. I definitely sliced my finger, maybe two fingers. The doctor told mom and dad that I was lucky: if I'd cut my finger slightly differently, I'd have completely lost the tip. How's that for scary? Mom says she can never remember exactly which finger, but when I look at my right hand, two of the fingers have odd divots/lines on them, nearly perpendicular to the rest of the lines, one more than the other. So when I look at those fingers, I can almost visualize the angle at which I grabbed the blade.

It seems strange to me that I should have very nearly lost a fingertip, and yet I can't remember it. (This is also true for another toddler-era accident, one that didn't leave a scar: allegedly I jumped off of the sofa right into the coffeetable, and broke one of my front teeth. I had a silver tooth until I was seven years old.)

I do remember getting the other scar: we were still living in that house, and I was seven years old, so it must have been sometime between September 1981 and February 1982. My bedroom in that house was tiny, just barely big enough for my bed and my toy chest. "Chest" is a misnomer: it was a shelving unit which I think must have previously been some sort of store display: dark wood, just a bit taller than the bed. I wish I could remember what the painting on the back of the top shelf said, as that would probably explain what it was before it was my toy chest. All my dolls sat leaning up against each other, both the handmade dolls and my beloved plastic-headed Mandy, whose clothes were folded (or piled) in the shelves below. (I imagine, although I'm not sure, along with stacks of books.)

The fun thing about the shelf was that bit about being just a bit taller than the bed, and its position right at the foot of the bed, with just enough space between the two for a tall skinny 7-year-old to slip between to get out toys or books. That also being enough space, or rather distance, for jumping off of onto the bouncy bed.

Of course I was not supposed to jump from the shelf onto the bed. I had been warned about that, more than once. But I loved the springy bouncy flying feeling of that jump, so I kept doing it when I didn't think anyone would see me.

Here's the other half of the equation: a white wooden headboard, with a few stickers on it. That was where my forehead ended up, finally, when I jumped just a bit too vigorously. What I remember now is not the actual strike, but putting my hand to my head and feeling it wet. Then I snuck out of my room to the bathroom: for the better part of thirty years, I've described the image in the mirror as "like V8 dripping down the side of my face" -- I'd put a gash in my forehead, just above my right eyebrow. I don't remember any pain, just anxiety about getting in trouble, both because I'd been up past my bedtime and because I'd been doing something I wasn't supposed to do.

There was an emergency room visit, and stitches, and both are just vague blurs of memory now. I still have a tiny scar, more like a dent; some of the glasses I've worn over the years hide it entirely, like the prescription sunglasses I have now. I sometimes rub at it when I'm thinking.

(While writing all this, I realized I have a third scar, on my left hand between the thumb and first finger, where I gashed it with a pruning saw a few years ago, getting a bit too vigorous trying to prune an apple tree that comes out over the fence into our yard. Wear your gloves.)

The thing that strikes me about both of these childhood accidents is an adventuresomeness (?!) that feels surprising and unfamiliar. Somewhere I became physically cautious, nervy about climbing or jumping, anxious about falling. It wasn't very long after the bed incident: I was terrified learning how to rollerskate, for example, and remember Dad coming home from work one day, after we'd moved to the new house, and taking the stick I was using to balance with, so I'd do it on my own. Similarly with early attempts to learn to ride a bike, which I think I've written about before. I was often terrified of diving boards and of roller coasters.

What is it, exactly? A little bit the fear of hurting myself. A little bit the fear of UR DOIN IT RONG. Or that I'm doing something I oughtn't. (Jumping off a log over the swimming hole at the river this last summer hit all those points something fearsome, and I never did manage it, though C said it was a lot of fun. Then the flow of the river changed, and it definitely wasn't deep enough to be safe.) The getting in trouble bothered me more than the pain, when I hit my head.

There's a separate thing about awkwardness and teasing, I think, but that may be something for another time.

And yet: every time I finally got up the nerve to do those things: to go on Space Mountain in junior high, to jump off the rocks in the Apostle Islands on vacation with C, and yes, to finally learn how to ride a bike, I've loved it, same as I always loved going on the swings. It's getting up the nerve that's the hard part. Maybe when I look at the scars on my fingers, or worry at the one on my forehead, I'll try to think of the adventuresomeness, and how very small those scars are, really.

Sailoresque, alas

2010-08-12T11:47:22-06:00

"Some people love to swear. For others it makes them cringe. Where do you stand, and why?"

Oh, goodness. I don't know at what point I started swearing; high school, maybe? But once I started swearing, I never really stopped.

I am sort of curious how that happened: all my life I've picked up on other people's slang and absorbed it into my own. When I was close to a couple of Texans in college, "y'all" weaseled into my vocabulary, and that one stuck. I happen to like it as a concise second-person plural, which doesn't have a distinct word in formal English. When I was friends with an English guy with an odd vocabulary, and we worked together, a lot of it slipped into my regular speech. And life with C: well, his group of friends has their own complex slang evolved over 25 years or so, and after more than a decade, it's just part of how I talk now.

So who was it that I hung out with in my mid-teens who swore so much? My first thought is to blame my high school and college boyfriend, the guy who introduced me to a lot of interesting and shady experiences, whose weirdness shaped my persona in my late teens and early 20s. But I don't remember him being much for swearing, so who knows.

Because I certainly didn't pick it up at home. I don't think I've ever heard my mother utter a curse word, and both of my sisters are much the same way. Me, on the other hand? I've been described as "swearing like a sailor."

It amused me when Dylan said in the comments on the CSS Squirrel post that he'd never heard me swear. I guess he knows me better from my writing -- in which I rarely swear, and when I do it's a big deal -- than in person. When I'm relaxed and in friendly company -- or conversely when I'm upset -- I swear a LOT. Like Dennis Leary quality a LOT.

Hm. We started watching Comedy Central when I was a teenager, and Edith and I loved his early stand-up. That would be weird (ironic?) if I picked up swearing from TV.

And it's just casual and natural for me; I have to consciously think about it to NOT swear. The words just slip in between other words. When I exclaim, when I stub my toe or forget a semi-colon in my code, I exclaim with honest-to-god swear words, most of the time, rather than the fraks and darns that a more careful person might use.

I don't know how I feel about it, really; or rather, I'm a bit conflicted. It's not particularly classy, but on the other hand, it's a tiny bit of unexpectedness in my personal presentation, and I cherish that. (Contrariness?) And my thoughts flip back and forth along that axis, with the occasional stop at what's the big fucking deal? So I try to be a professional when that's appropriate, and to not mortify C in public, and other than that: whatever is, is.

My Favorite Comfort Food

2010-07-29T11:56:22-06:00

A light and pointless (?) blog post from a prompt, while I muse on posting some other stuff....

It's odd, the first thing I think of is something I haven't eaten in many months, but it is THE comfort food for me: macaroni & cheese.

Not any old macaroni & cheese*, but precisely the one that we ate every single Friday (go Catholics!) of my childhood, my mother's version of a Good Housekeeping recipe from 1963. That recipe book fell open to that page; that or the hamburger stroganoff recipe. It took me at least a year after I was living on my own before I figured out mom's exact modifications, which involve making it even MORE mid-century American than it was to start with. Velveeta FTW!

As a food, it's simple: fat and starch, creamy and hot, which makes it an ideal wintertime comfort food. It's easy to make and is done reasonably fast, but has enough steps to feel like you're actually cooking something. It doesn't microwave especially well, and that gives it a certain immediacy that's oddly comforting.

But beyond that, because of "every Friday" and "mom's modifications," it has all this resonance emotionally as well, of the good parts of childhood, eating together. The ritual of making mac & cheese has all these particular touchstones: the double-boiler in particular, since that was the only thing it was ever used for when I was growing up. (True story: when I moved out in college and relatives gave me dishes for Christmas, my sister gave me a double-boiler specifically so I could make myself mac & cheese.)

So there it is, the platonic ideal of a comfort food, at least for me.

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* I did not eat the stuff in a box until I was in college, when (alas) I ate quite a bit of it: box mac & cheese was in the imagery of a poem I had published when I was younger.

Two quotes from my morning tea

2010-07-15T08:25:19-06:00

One of the teas I really like has this incredibly pretentious flourish in their design: pithy quotes on the bag tags. Some of them are obvious or dull, but I do have one on my desk at work:

"Fortune favors the brave." (Virgil, the Aeneid, 70BC - 19BC)

It's one of those semi-cheesy quotes that just strikes a chord with me. Because I need to remember -- often! -- to be "brave" or bold or whatever. Also, that fortune is what we make of it, and that sometimes action, any action, can bend fate in the right direction.

There's another one that I had on the fridge at home for a while, until it fell off and got lost, so I can only paraphrase: "it's easier to stand up for your beliefs than it is to live them." (or live up to them, can't remember which.) It's a fancy way of saying "talk is cheap" -- I'm not entirely sure why it appealed to me so much, I suppose that it's something of a hard-nosed alternative to most "inspirational" quotes.

Interesting: both quotes favor action over talking or planning. I think they're both ways of reminding myself not to fall into my personal bad habit of dithering and over-planning.

These three things, every day.

2010-03-23T19:41:42-06:00

Take a shower
I really don't feel awake or human until I've had my shower. I also like my shower for thinking time, something about being alone with nothing to distract? In college, I sometimes took showers in the middle of the afternoon, in between classes, just to get the thinking time.

My adolescence coincided with the then-worst-ever drought in southern California. (I gather it's been surpassed since then.) So water stinginess was the order of the day. One of the things that blew me away when I got to Washington was the water: the rain, the rivers, everything. I used to joke that I moved here to be able to take a really long shower.

Which was one of the reasons we got a tankless water heater, by the way. Our old water heater was awful. Couldn't even muster enough hot water to fill the bathtub. The tankless just keeps going and going and going. Delightful.

Weigh myself
It's a big part of how I lost 60 pounds: weighing myself every morning and tracking it on a graph. I don't do the graphing anymore, but the daily weigh-in keeps me honest. (I've gained some back, honestly, but at least I'm 100% aware of it, and can track upticks and downticks based on hormones, biking, and eating habits.) The morning routine in generally is really important to me. If I follow my usual pattern, I feel like I've got enough of my bearings to get the day rolling properly.

Write in a journal
I've kept a journal since I was nine years old, but this specific daily habit came from an assignment from a therapist. She had me write every day "what worked" that day right before bed. That way my last thought was always of a success or a pleasurable experience, rather than whatever horrid thing I'd been thinking about before that. It worked wonders; still does.

Now I have a lovely moleskine datebook: in the morning I record my weight (see above), and at night I record my bike miles/time if any, as well as "what worked." Occasionally I add some details about the weather, since there's a cute spot to do that at the bottom of each page.

(I'm such a cheapskate that I didn't buy 2010's book until March. :\ Until then I was writing in another micro notebook!)

I enthusiastically recommend the journaling habit, by the way, especially if one is prone to see the glass as half-empty!

Old School knows pizza pie

2010-03-11T10:51:20-06:00

It's the perfect Olympia place: delicious food in a funky/surly atmosphere. I can't imagine any Olympians who have NOT been there, so for the out-of-towners:

A brick storefront between a vintage store & a beat-up parking lot; on the parking lot side, a mural of superheros (mostly). Inside, the walls are covered with posters & other random flat things from the late 70s and 80s, many with specific northwest significance; but it doesn't have that "crazy crap on the walls" feel of a TGIFriday's, because it's genuinely shabby & time-worn, as are the vinyl booths & stools, the vintage video games, etc. Curiously, there's an enormous aquarium in the front window. The queuing space is cramped and awkward, and sometimes splits off towards both of the two doors. Staff tends towards the usual Oly-style punks, so some tattoos, some oddball hair, a little short/surly but not excessively so.

The pizza itself is mostly of the thin enormous slice variety. (They added a "Sicilian style" pizza a while ago, but I don't ever get it.) Great crust, a bit of a crunch but not too crispy. The basic varieties are rock solid, but I have a fondness for some of the oddball versions, particularly anything without sauce: the Greek (iirc), which includes spinach & feta -- we usually add sausage if getting a whole pie, and the Al Green, just cheeses and broccoli. No, seriously, the broccoli is really good. Eating there, a single slice is enough to fill me up most of the time. When we get a pizza to go, I have to be careful not to scarf down WAY too much.

I just wish they delivered. (I did once bring home a pizza on the Xtracycle. In the rain. It was AWESOME.)

The bike trail is lovely in the spring

2010-03-08T16:04:22-06:00

Everything wakes up after the long dark of winter.

I think this is my third spring commuting on the bike trail, and I'm getting to know the rhythm of the seasons. Right now the Indian Plums are blooming & leafing out and the flowering cherries (?) are in bloom. There's one with astonishing white flowers that will start covering the trail in petals like snowfall or a ticker-tape parade.

Later this month and next month, nearly every other plant starts bursting into leaf, turning the trail into a glorious green tunnel -- with breaks to vistas of open fields and the expanse of Chambers Lake. The lake, too, comes alive with water lilies.

Already the frogs and the birds are starting up their chatter, the birds shouting down at me from the tops of the trees now that I'm out in daylight instead of darkness. In this little sliver of time right before the switch to DST, I'm catching sunrises and sunsets both; next week morning will be back in mostly darkness, but the evening will be entirely light, and gradually the sunrise will come back.

I have yet to see any bunnies, but they'll be back soon as well, along with the aforementioned frogs, lizards, little snakes, house cats and the occasional raccoon.

After the long dark, I find the arrival of spring an immense relief, even if it comes in fits and starts. (There's a very slim chance of snow overnight!)

What if I'd been biking earlier?

2010-02-25T14:06:28-06:00

When I was a teenager, in college, and a young adult fresh out of school, I didn't know how to drive. Oddly enough, that's not the thing I wish I'd learned earlier in my life. Between the bus, walking, and friends, I got around pretty well, and I have a life-long comfort with getting around without a car.

But....

I really wish I'd learned how to ride a bike before age 30! So many places I could've gotten to so much more quickly, for one thing. It's an interesting hypothetical question to wonder what would've happened to my weight if I'd been able to bike to UWPC, at least some of the year, when we lived in East Tacoma. (Altho that would have been a sketchy 'hood to bike through.) And it would've been fun to have a bike handy when we lived in Lakewood. Not that biking to work would have been that big a deal, but it would have been nice to bike from work through Fort Steilacoom Park and out to the grocery store.

I also wonder if a lot of late night walks would have been late night bike rides, and if that would have been a better thing. Yes, I was probably insane in my younger years; I took a lot of really long walks quite late a night, particularly during my time in Tacoma. But it was how kept what I had of my sanity back in the day: thinking by walking, plus the time alone that I often needed. What would those times have been like if I'd had the extra speed, range, and exercise intensity of a bike?

It also seems entirely possible to me that riding a bike earlier in my life would have made it easier for me to finally learn how to drive. These last 5+ years I've increased my sense of balance, my ability to judge traffic, and my understanding of gear ratios. :) Not that I'm all that as it is by any means! Still, I can imagine what it would have meant to have gotten all that earlier.

All that said, I try not to indulge in that sort of wishful thinking too often. It happened when it happened, and that turned out to be a good moment in my life to have begun bicycling. The Townie had just come out, I was living somewhere with good places to bike, C was there to encourage me. As I said on the day I got it, "suffice it to say that I am very happy I finally got a bike, and oddly enough, happy I waited until C discovered this one."

on the sparkling beach

2010-01-24T21:00:53-06:00

I used to be in a writer's group, about 10 years ago. One fall we decided to have our own little writers' retreat and rented a suite in a rundown motel in Long Beach. There were eight of us, IIRC, crammed into the two rooms (plus kitchenette) for a long weekend of lots and lots of writing. We did some exercises and some reading. It was all great fun.

But at night Kat, Joe and I walked out to the beach, which really is a "long beach" -- an amazing expanse of long flat sand. It was a clear night, and the sky was glittering with stars. Strangely, the sand was glittering as well: lit up with some sort of luminescent something.

We stayed up late, walking and talking, but what I remember most is the feeling of a vast and fascinating universe. I don't think I really have words for it. I'm not even remotely a religious person. But this was an ineffable experience.

to help a headache

2010-01-24T19:42:20-06:00

I tend to get the occasional sinus headache, and in the main it seems to be an issue of hydration. Counter-intuitively, headache formulas that include caffeine seem to be the only thing that works. And even better on top of that is a coffee-based beverage, like a mocha. Just opens my head right up again.

Several years ago, I suffered from excruciating and frequent headaches, including the worst of my entire life, one that sent me home from work in a freaking cab. I was given some medication that knocked out the headaches, but knocked me out too. Massage helped, chiropractic not so much.

And then they went away. I don't really know what happened. (Well, I have a reasonably good idea, but it's just a wild hunch.)

So I'm happy to just get ordinary headaches that I can deal with in ordinary ways.

The road from Tacoma, WA to Altadena, CA is scary

2009-11-19T17:32:25-06:00

Meet Kelly, the van.

I've gone between Tacoma and Altadena a bunch of times, mostly in college when I still went home for Christmas.

In the early 90s, my boyfriend had a 1974 Volkswagen van that was held together with hope and duct tape. The mechanic down the street from mom's had gotten it running; hilariously, it had a starter button back by the engine...someone had to stand in the back and press the button before you could go. He drove us on that trip in that van several times, and every time was white-knuckle in a slightly different way!

When we drove up to move in together, he learned how to drive while driving north. That trip was more of a caravan, we had not only us and all our stuff, but the aforementioned mechanic, his wife, and a random hippie kid who was a friend of my boyfriend's (and who had nothing better to do that summer). We mostly took 101 that time, in order to have a slightly more leisurely journey. The most memorable bit: we were somewhere in central CA, I was dozing in the back seat, and he took an offramp a little...no, make that way too fast, and tipped the van up onto the right two wheels. I woke up to the view of the pavement, terrified. Amazingly enough, the van righted itself, and we stopped by the side of some random country road, while R ran out into a field screaming at the top of his lungs FREAKING OUT.

That Christmas, he just barely managed to have it repaired by a friend (which leads to its own VERY long story) right before we headed south. For some reason, I suggested not just Hwy 101, but Hwy 1. In December. What was I thinking?! (I think I was remembering a childhood vacation in a Volkswagen van, going to SF then up 1 for a bit.) In Oregon, we did a 180 on the icy highway on a Sunday morning: one moment we were burbling along, singing along to a Beatles tape, the next we were facing the other way, having gently bounced against the railing...that led down into an icy slough. We didn't go into the slough, and there wasn't anyone else on the road. (Hmmmm, I wonder why...)

Further south, when we headed off to Hwy 1, that whole section -- hours and hours of driving -- was white-knuckle, taking that van up around crazy turns, staring down at cliffs that broke directly into the sea. And have I mentioned that R was not exactly a great driver? Enthusiastic, certainly, but somewhat hair-raising.

On the way back, we decided to take I5 and at the Gorman Pass, some belt or another broke, and we were broken down on the side of the road. I was so freaked out that I don't remember exactly how that got resolved, but we did have to come back home briefly, which I found mortifying beyond belief. Finally we got back on the road, to drive slower than pretty much everything else in the under-powered van, shivering under blankets because the heat went kaput.

About a week later, one of the highways we'd driven on collapsed in the Northridge earthquake. Something about that seemed appropriate somehow.

Flourescent orange

2009-05-15T13:29:09-06:00

I wrote a poem, years ago, about being broke & eating cheap mac & cheese. (Hilariously, a coupon for the high-end version is displaying on the Plinky site right next to this box.)

We never ate that stuff when I was growing up...Mom made hers from scratch, albeit with Velveeta, and it's still one of my favorite foods. But generic mac & cheese was cheap and filling, the classic starving-student food. Splurging would involve adding peas and/or tuna fish.

I don't eat that stuff anymore, although once in a VERY LONG while I'll get the extra-creamy (don't remember the exact type), not "deluxe" but a little nicer than generic, sometimes the "easy mac" version to eat at work.

I should go track down that poem; IIRC, either it was published in the UPS lit journal or I won an award for it.

My house has the best dessert

2009-05-15T13:22:22-06:00

(Approximate location added for obfuscation.)

I like making dessert! Every few months, I have a new favorite recipe; in the past that's been pinwheel cookies, chocolate cupcakes, and chocolate chocolate chip cookies. Right now, my faves are Cooks Illustrated improved toll house recipe (which I've blogged about before) and oatmeal chocolate chip pan cookies (which C loves).

Of course, I have to work to moderate my baking, because it's hard for me to control my eating with baked goods, ESPECIALLY my own. The first year that I was losing weight I basically gave up baking entirely, unless I was immediately giving them away, because I could not. stop. eating.

I'm doing a lot better now, which is at least partially an attitude thing. I have this hang-up about getting my fair share, particularly of desserts. And of course C has 4+ inches and 50+ pounds on me, so splitting 50-50 just doesn't work. Over the course of losing and then maintaining the extra weight (almost a year & a half now!), I've worked on that particular issue.

So yeah, I like baking, and I think I do a pretty good job at it.

Writing with whatever's handy

2009-05-15T13:11:30-06:00

Do you prefer writing on paper or a keyboard?

Ah, trick question! I have a blog, a twitter account, a top seekrit blog, a moleskine that stays in my purse, a bedside journal, a daily micro-diary (as prescribed by my therapist!) that's currently an adorable red daily calendar (also moleskine).

I type pretty fast, which is why I'm Secretary for two entirely different organizations, and sometimes it's just easier to get my thoughts rambling out when they can get there really fast. Editing is certainly easier, which matters more with things I intend to go out into the world. Plus my increasingly cranky hands take to the keyboard better than my cramped-up left pen-holding style.

But I still love paper. I love creamy ink in blue or dark black. (Pilot G2, 07 size) I like sketching quasi-3d boxes and 5-petal flowers in the margins. Paper is easier for complicated non-linear thinking, lists that point back to each other, and oddly enough, editing poetry.

At work, I mix the two. I always have a pad of paper near my left hand, so I can jot things down, sketch out a design idea, what have you. And then I transfer to computer (or recycling bin) as appropriate.

I started writing on the computer in a serious way when I was in college; I got my first computer my sophomore year, plus I had almost continuous access to the school computer labs. However...that first computer was stolen in the Christmas Eve heist at the Hell House, and I lost a huge electronic journal with it. So I switched back to paper, at least until blogging came along.

And as far as that goes: I have two plastic storage containers under my bed, both just about full with journals going back to 1984. (or maybe '85) I've hauled all that around since then, which C thinks is kinda nutty, but I'd sooner chop off my own foot than get rid of them.

Maybe it's that place where I sit generationally, maybe it's just a personal quirk, but I don't see a reason to pick one over the other.

Happy Teriyaki has good cheap eats

2009-05-01T12:08:37-06:00

Officially known in our office as "the new teriyaki," it's in the (mostly empty) new strip mall with the Lowe's. Not only is it a shorter walk than "the old teriyaki" (in the strip mall by Safeway) but I think they make a tastier chicken. Plus if I'm eating the way I usually do, a $7 lunch lasts me for two lunches. A seat by the window gets a pretty decent view. And finally, it's right by Starbucks if I want to get a mocha before heading back to work.

Wow, all of that makes me feel like a middle-aged office lady. Which I guess I am, truth be told.

Abandoned on my birthday

2009-03-21T14:30:19-06:00

I was nuts about J...as was my roommate. I think we'd worked out a reasonable accommodation. ;) They and another friend organized a "surprise" birthday party for my 19th birthday. I got home from my awful, awful job to what was supposed to be a fun evening, with cake. But J never showed up. Never.

And I never heard what happened; neither did my roommate. J was never heard from again.

That turned out to be the start of a really. complicated. year.

(There is, of course, a lot more detail than that, but most of it isn't suitable for the intertubes.)

various stuff that travels with me

2009-03-02T11:59:59-06:00

Here's what I happen to be carting around today, not counting my bike clothes.

SXSW '08 bag
That's what I use to haul all my stuff when I bike. It's startlingly sturdy and roomy for something that was essentially a giveaway, plus it fits quite nicely into my panniers. It has a gnarly mocha stain from an incompletely closed travel mug.

purse
For takeaway when I don't want to haul everything around. It's adorable, IMHO, too; made by a gal here in Oly who sells stuff at the farmer's market. (Tenderroni!) Red vinyl with a white dogwood flower, the zipper area is a little mungy from my fidgeting, and the strap has a crack in it.

book on Community Gardens
I need to read this before it has to go back to the library! I still have hopes of helping with a neighborhood push to get a community garden in Madison Scenic Overlook Park.

spiral notebook
For thoughts that need a little more space than what's in a moleskin. It was a freebie for participating in an alternate commuting contest last fall.

umbrella
In case it rains when I want to go for a walk; I couldn't find my much loved Outdoor Research rain hat when I was getting ready to go, so tossed in the Old Navy umbrella instead. I'm not much for umbrellas, although they are sort of a sentimental thing with me & C. (Something about when we first got to know one another.)

travel mug
In case I succumb to temptation and get mocha/chai: at least I'll be using a reusable mug.

pill case
I have a little-old-lady pill case with the days of the week marked on it, because I'm forgetful.

phone
talking to C, lunchtime tweets. :) I keep the headset in my coat pocket or on my desk. I can't believe I waited so long to get a BT headset, since my big brick phone is pretty much useless for actually talking on the phone.

moleskin notebook & g2 pens
for recording quick ideas, haiku, doodling, plotting, etc. I try to keep one of the tiny cahiers notebooks on me at all times. It's exactly the right size for my little purse, and it makes me feel stylish. Same with the pens.

keychain
not just my house key, but also my library card and Fred Meyers reward card, plus a little copper token that was a gift from a friend who's now far away. (Teaching English in the Czech Republic!) And a tiny penknife that I found in the desk of a job long ago. I need to remember to take that off before I leave for SXSW next week. I would be PISSED to lose it to the damn TSA.

lip balm
It's winter, so my lips get dry, and I love the Burt's Bees stuff. The one I have in my purse now is the "pomegranate oil" version that was part of a gift pack I got from my boss for Xmas.

"wallet"
I really really really need a real wallet. What I have instead is a WaMu business card case that was a giveaway at the business expo in Tacoma some years back, which fits about 4 or 5 cards, plus loose cards/bills/change floating around in my wallet. It's very annoying, but I haven't found anything I prefer. :(

hair clip
I need a haircut, and while I procrastinate, I keep a little clip in my purse to hold back my bangs so they don't make me crazy.

On having a nickname, or not

2009-02-13T13:56:11-06:00

On Mom's side, nobody really does nicknames.* I think it's because Grandma didn't like being called "Little Helen" when she was a girl. The aunt who raised her was named Helen as well. Then again, my grandfather, William, was never Will or Bill or Billy or any other variant. There was something utterly formal about them, and that trickled down through the generations. My mother and her siblings all got short names that would be hard to shorten. (Mary, Jane, Paul, and John. Why yes, they were Irish Catholic, for the most part.)

So I never took to nicknames myself, plus my name doesn't necessarily lend itself to abbreviation. I've been more or less adamant that no, I don't have a nickname, dammit!

But I have had two nicknames over the years.

My two very oldest friends both called me Laney, both came up with it independently some years apart. Stacy I first knew in 3rd grade, and we were very close then, less so later, but close enough that it was okay by me if she called me by a short name. Thao was my best friend in junior high, and very close in high school; since then we've been in touch intermittently but always very good friends. And besides, Thao's the kind of person that if she's decided that was my nickname, then that was my nickname. :)

C's group of friends has known each other since elementary and junior high school, and they all have nicknames for each other, sometimes two or three of them. So there was no way, as I became part of the gang, that I was going to avoid a nickname. (B once called me "Mrs. Turbo," using one of C's nicknames, but that didn't really count.)

Funnily enough, the one that stuck is the one that would've been absolutely impossible when I was living at home: E. Just the letter "E" all by itself; at home, I was the oldest of three "E" girls, and I never even just used two initials for anything, always all three to tell my initials apart from my sisters'.

But I find I like it, at least with that group. It's a sign that I've been absorbed into the gang, and I appreciate it.

* Dad's side, by contrast, is all shortened names: Jim, Mel, Susie/Beth, Bill, Billy, etc., etc. But I spent most of my childhood around Mom's side of the family.