techSanctuary

Yes, I'm back.

The pilot light has gone out on my Nice & Patient. This has shorted out the Mental Editor subsystem and now I am saying things on the phone like, "I prefer to put you through to his voicemail, because then I won't write your name down wrong or anything."

Clearly the Competence Complex is also endangered.

This couldn't possibly have anything to do with staying up till three-thirty on Saturday night, could it? Perish the thought! It's probably the infamous Humboldt black mold. One of these days I am going to reach up to scratch my nose and my whole head is going to collapse.

See? the Mental Editor is definitely down for the count.

I couldn't help it. My birthday is coming up and books are a traditional gift; it was already on my Amazon wishlist; but it was right there in Borders, real and solid, and I had to pick it up. (Then I had to restrain myself from clobbering an overzealous Borders flunky with it--don't they have those terminals so we can type in title and author searches all by our own selves?--but that's beside the point.)

I also couldn't help reading the first thirteen pages today over my breakfast tea. The book is slim and as a McKinley glutton I couldn't help being a little sad about that. When one of my favorite authors publishes a short book, it's difficult to read normally, without rolling every word in the mind like a drop of...well, honey...and the grand sweep of it can be lost, as if it were a ball-gown and I were examining threads. I never did manage to get all the way through The California Feeling because of the threads.

(Stash green tea is better than Bigelow green. Even--and I'm very fond of it--the one with lemon.)

Not sure what to think yet. The main gripe of reviewers who had any was that McKinley spends too much time discussing beekeeping in Chalice as she did with baking in Sunshine, but I liked all the baking, so maybe it's going to be hitchless enjoyment. Here's hoping!

So I've been sitting here numbing my brain with the 17854 jpegs this poor little Dell has accumulated over the past five years, looking for one particular picture of one particular yellow office building, and suddenly I wanted to get up and practice the Texas dip in the empty office. This is partly caused by boredom, and partly, I think, by the urge to impose sense and order on the world. (The jpegs contain neither, for the most part.) To perform a little ceremony to straighten out and get back on track. I could just stand up and stretch for a moment, but no, I had to think of a ridiculous curtsy.

I love ritual. This was probably made all too clear during my Bridezilla phase, during which I tried to incorporate anything that might be Meaningful into our pseudo-wedding. I stopped short of the broom-jumping because that seemed a little tacky, but there were plenty of things in there that weren't natural or obvious choices. It just all seemed like it would impart some special blessing on our directionless, traditionless lives. And I search for that daily, seeking out trivia and instructions that won't do a bit of practical good. Redacted recipes from medieval to Victorian times; weaving and braiding techniques; curtsies; orders of procession among the British nobility; dances; mythology; the meanings behind superstitions. I'd probably study the Japanese tea ceremony if I wasn't afraid of being told, extremely politely, to fuck off; it seems to exist at a higher level of decorum than mere Western etiquette.

What's your favorite ritual--traditional, personal, or other? I'll just be over here practicing my curtsies.

Today he and I have been married for two years, or 2.83 years, depending on if you're counting in California or Nevada.

It is bright and sunny.

It's Tuesday the 23rd.

He has a good job, and I have a job where I feel appreciated and necessary.

We have two cats we adore, and who seem to adore us. Especially lately, because they're not allowed out till the fence damage from our latest raccoon invasion is repaired, so they spend all their time fawning on us just in case we might be persuaded to let them into the crisp September sunshine.

We're planning to go to Australia and New Zealand in March - the only time I will ever have left the country, barring one very lovely trip to British Columbia.

The next year looks bright.

And I can't get this goofy Tony Toni Tone song out of my head!

Listen close, ye lily-livered lubber, and hear the call of the Stan...er, I means sea.

YYEEAAAARRRRRGHHH! ALL HANDS!

Arr, that be a mite better. 'Tis a long dry spell atween Talk Like a Pirate Days, eh lads? An' ye know yer Cap'n Penny hates a dry spell. Let's have a round o' rum, Smee.

WHAT? THE RUM IS GONE?

Why is the rum always gone?

Oh, I was a-sittin' on the last barrel, was I? I'd harrrdly noticed. Ye know me bum's made o' teak since that little spat wi' them scurvy frogs o' Calais, aye? Can't feel a thing, listen here! But bum o' teak or no, I find meself drawn to this barrel, Smee...I loves this barrel. I'm a-thinkin' it's because the blighter's full o' me favorite drink--ye reckon? Let's tap 'er an' wet our sorry whistles! ARR!

This be a very special piratical holiday, me hearties, me own lads. Indeed, it do. Draw yer poxy, listin' arses in close, ye dogs, an' yer Cap'n Penny'll tell ye why.

Some years agone now, while no doubt some o' ye scrogs was still a-clingin' to yer mammy's skirts, one fierce an' mighty Cap'n Beatrice Pegleg did engage wi' the dreaded Filthy Dave Cutty. Nay, nay, lads, 'twere no battle o' cannon an' steel--'twere love what brought these scallywags to heel!

Lads, if ye could see yer faces...I know ye was hopin' fer blood, but be sure, any whoreson so unlucky as to cross one o' these blaggards would be knowin' the color o' his own! 'Tis a weddin' they're havin', me mallocks, an' ye're all to be on yer best behavior an' do yer Cap'n Penny proud, ye hear? Sink me if we won't be there to celebrate along with 'em, and sink me twice if we miss the pre-party a-happenin' tonight! So polish yer boots, comb yer hair, an' do somethin' about them stains--Jones bein' on galley duty ain't no excuse fer the food-fight last night, an' I'll keel-haul the lot o' ye if I must to make ye presentable!

Step lively now! We sail tonight for Orick!

ARRRRRRRRR!

I'm sorry. I can't help myself. When did civil servants acquire glamor? Why is "Coldest State, Hottest Governor" a selling point? Somebody help me out here.

Could this be the most damning headline ever? Please, any supernatural entity which may be listening, make it so.

I'm not usually one to speak out on politics, Hillary fan, but this is important.

Please don't support Sarah Palin, or the Republican ticket because of her presence aboard it.

I'm not going to tell you what I think of her. But I am going to say this: her politics are nothing like Hillary Clinton's. Essentially, if you support John McCain because of Mrs. Palin, you are doing a complete 180-degree turn on your own political stance. You could be endorsing, not a step forward for women in America, but several steps back. Honestly, do a little research.

It doesn't matter if the best candidate for leadership of the United States has a penis, a vagina, or an ovipositor, for crying out loud. Vote for the person who, based on his or her track record, is most likely to do the most good for the most people. It's that simple. It has absolutely nothing to do with gender, and shame on you for neglecting to examine your own political convictions objectively enough to see that.

In closing, Hillary fan, it is my devout hope that there is actually only one of you, and that one has been the selfsame individual leaving gender-blindered comments on a dismaying number of articles I have recently read concerning this election.

Thank you.

Raven knows me really well. She's one of the top five for sure. That, and she has a history of dragging me to activities to which I am only too willing to be dragged, but too spineless to intrude upon on my own. So when she invited me to come to last night's practice session of her choir, she knew what she was doing.

Though I hear there are usually more, there were only six of us gathered in the echoing old Grange hall: the choir leader, who reminded me disconcertingly of my MIL; four of the usual ladies including Raven; and me. We did some vocal warmups, and the leader listened keenly to each of our voices, correcting us when we went flat, encouraging us to push our voices a little higher or lower than we usually go. I was riveted and terrified. These people knew what they were doing. They were hitting the notes and the rhythm. There was a tuning fork involved, for Pete's sake.

We sang several songs, rounds and harmonies, Raven coaching me on the part we shared. The synergy of the music was a wild rush, a beautiful sound winding out of our throats and filling our ears, rising to the high cold ceiling. For a few moments I forgot the litany of Sorry it's been so long I'm rusty it's been forever sorry on the verge of bursting forth, and simply sang.

They gather once a week to sing, and they do performances when they feel like it, and they carol at Christmas. There's so much to look forward to.

Thank goodness for friends who know our secret hearts.

I have so much to do today. SO MUCH. I have two bosses hopping like fleas and showering me with projects. The homeowner's association bills need to be paid, and I need to cajole one boss or another into bringing me a new ink cartridge because the color prints are getting fairly leprous, and it's tax time, and there are all these reports to print. (Not TPS reports, but they might as well be.) I was going to get going the moment my butt hit the seat.

Until I walked out to my car and noticed my little coin purse--where I keep my credit and debit cards, my driver license, and some other cards--lying empty in the gutter. It had fallen out of my purse when I got out of the car yesterday, and at some point in the ensuing sixteen hours one of the local derelicts had noticed and emptied it.

NICE!

It could have been worse. No activity had taken place on either the credit or debit cards; DMV gave me a temporary license; the coin purse itself, worth more than all the cash that hadn't fallen out of my purse, was undamaged. It could have been worse.

But still.

Observations:

1. There are a surprising number of people who can't remember their own address when asked.
2. MY NAME IS NOT LAURA.
3. Earth shoe negative heels are awesome, but I would really like to know if they are some kind of wacky unisex thing...these ones have "mens 9 womens 11" on the tongue and they look kind of like what Frankenstein would wear on casual Friday, so I am confused. (And the heels are too wide, which is weird, because I have wide feet, and do they only have women with pancake-flipper feet in mind?)
4. I made my first political campaign contribution today. I am certain that that ten bucks will go down in history.
5. It is fall now. Since Tuesday that intangible, indefinable AUTUMNAL quality has saturated the air. Other signs: Pumpkin Spice lattes, Hallowe'en candy, increased RV population on the highway.
6. I love Staples. I looooooooove Staples. They are open till ten every night this week to accommodate the back-to-school rush and I am tempted to go hang out there tonight to fondle pencil boxes and typewriter key pushpins.
7. Kate Beaton is hilarious. Pope Action Comics!
8. Someone has nicked my three-hole punch.
9. I have eaten the last Lacey, because no one else would and it was sitting there all forlorn. Between Laceys and FPM's cookies, I'm pretty much never going to leave this job. Possibly because after a few more years of this I will not be able to leave my chair.
10. Kyanite comes in the same color as my eyes. (I bought a chunk last weekend.) So now when a person or form or whatever asks for my eye color, I will say, "Kyanite". What a relief to have that resolved.

Happy weekend folks!

It's Ramadan, which, if I observed it, would mean I'd be fasting all day. That would be a terrible fate, or possibly a more worthwhile holy observance than most, because FPM made cookies...and the woman puts Mrs. Fields to shame. YUMMMMM.

Speaking of yum, this in charcoal. YUM. It's a real wrap dress, none of this fake detail stuff, and it feels so good I didn't want to take it off, and it's so, so, so delicious to look at. Right length, right color, right material--for once, I picked a good one. I'm forgetting the Violent Purple Incident already. I want to buy everything Tammy Mars makes.

And that would both encourage and make up for not eating all day. If I observed Ramadan.

MMMMmmmMMMMMM.

I have three pairs of shoes under my desk right now. One of them is on my feet.

These (approximately) are my Tevas. They are good for walking here and home and practically anywhere else.

These are my trusty old standby Danskos. They are good for surviving over two years of daily wear while remaining classy and comfortable.

These are The New Hotness. They are good for absolutely nothing, and yet they are the ones on my feet.

In fact, they are so completely, uselessly sexy that I think I will wear them to Raven's wedding and try to spend as much time sitting down as possible. I wonder if these orthographically-challenged items work...has anyone got an opinion? Because otherwise my feet may never be the same. I can't take off the Red Shoes! Help!

Dutch's Eastern Market haul made me remember the fun we had at our local Farmer's Market this Saturday. I'm just starting to appreciate it and in just weeks it will end for the year. No fair, no fair, no fair!

German Grey shallots to try in the zucchini farfalle instead of onions. Nettle tea. Beefsteak tomatoes grown in the eastern hills, weighty wholesomeness in the hand. Blackberries the size of a spool of thread. Zucchini, green and yellow. Lemon cucumbers to be sliced and doused in balsamic vinegar. Perfect, unbruised basil. Sugar snap peas by the pound (good with Larrupin sauce). Garlic. Artichokes. Bundles of dried lavender. Mixed cherry tomatoes like autumn-colored pearls. Just what we needed, no more, fifty bucks' worth of produce unmatched by even the snooty Co-Op and its secret organic Ewok-run farms. The apples looked great and the peaches had attracted quite a crowd, but we're still taking baby steps integrating unprocessed foods into our diet, and I didn't want to bite off more than we could chew, so to speak.

When I was a kid, my dad used to kind of graze off of the suburban landscape in a way no one else seemed to imagine. He'd cure the olives off the trees in the park, and he'd send us out to cut sprigs of fresh rosemary from bushes planted by city landscapers concerned only with their appearance and deer-resistance. He also collected acorns when we went to Rockville Park, and planted them in the once-forested hills around his lab, spending his lunch hours walking and planting like a modern Johnny Appleseed. He saw the world around us in a way no one else seemed to, and he made me see the same things. I wonder how many backyards in Eureka harbor trees no one will harvest, bushes seen as nuisances instead of sources of fresh berries? (I admit I did my part to discourage the blackberries in my own backyard this weekend.) I'm glad the Farmer's Market kind of condenses all this small local growth for schmucks like me to enjoy, but I hope I'll do my dad proud someday when I have my own yard and can grow some stuff for my family to eat.

I don't know what I knew before
But now I know I wanna win the war

Why do government documents arriving in the mail give me such palpitations? I would love to know. Is it because I believe stone-faced men in suits and dark glasses will remove me to a secret torture chamber and make me do algebra if I don't fill out the forms correctly? Am I afraid that a mistake I make will come back to haunt my boss, who is really a dear, charming man, in twenty years? Do I fear it will affect my credit score, my job, my firstborn child? Are they analyzing my handwriting for hidden criminal urges? All I know is, my heart races when I see that EDD or IRS logo, my palms sweat, my face gets hot, and I have an uncontrollable desire to hide under this oaken fortress they call a desk.

And therefore, when I screw up the courage to call after receiving an unseasonable notice (double palpitations), and I'm told that the check crossed it in the mail and yes, they have their money, and no one's kneecaps are in danger, and everything is fine, can I be blamed for hanging up the phone and yelling, Good night Philadelphia! We love you!

I am fascinated by small regional variations in pronunciation. Having been in California most of my life, I have been surrounded by the blandest accent on earth, and so its tiniest nuances sometimes please me disproportionately.

Leaseman: Hey, could you bring up property reports for the Stanley building on Booner Street?
Cranky Desk Monkey: Booner eh? How do you spell that?

(Note: I know perfectly well how to spell that. I just love tormenting people who add imaginary sounds onto words, because I am a wretched person. Just ask Poppy how many times I have coaxed her to say "orange" or "wash" in our fifteen years of friendship. If I dared, I would torment football fans who pronounce it FARV instead of the correct, nancy-Francy, way not manly FAHHHVRRH.)

Leaseman: B-U-H-N-E.
CDM: No R?
Leaseman: No...but that's the way I pronounce it.
CDM: GLEE!

(To be fair, I have blundered on names around here too--"Burre Center" is BURRAY Center, and locals will look at you like you've grown another head if you say Burr.)

Sometimes after a hard week, or month, or year, or decade, or what have you, of misery and bitching and generally being a pill, it's helpful to me to remember that there is beauty in the world, too...


Like these hydrangeas FPM picked from a property and brought to me today.


And this, a gift from a tenant. (I couldn't find any other containers on short notice.)


I love it when people bring me flowers...especially my favorite shade of hydrangea. The ones in my backyard bloom palest pink and hinted blue, probably because they are growing in soil that hasn't been cared for in decades.


The blue of the flowers, the blue of the vase...nicely accented by sturdy green leaves. Looks good enough to eat. (Are hydrangeas poisonous?) Note reflection of noob photographer who didn't know better than to take backlit photos at first.


I only ever manage to upload photos at work because I am the Official Keeper of the Cord Thingy Which Makes The Pictures Go Onto The Computer. (We are not highly computer-literate around here.)


Each blossom perfect...delicate veins, shadowed petals, little button centers, all the color of the deepest curve of a summer sky.

We live in a beautiful world...

(yeah we do, yeah we do)

Last night we went to dinner in the next town over. There was food, fun, and [Wii] fitness. A good time was had by all.

In the meantime, our home was being invaded by the neighborhood punks.

We live upstairs behind a Plexiglas-paneled door, and I've taken care to ensure that there is no trace of our living there visible from the street, not wishing to entice the curiosity of the sort of person who wanders our down-at-the-heels neighborhood. Our backyard is completely enclosed by buildings, and though there had been evidence of people climbing those buildings before--the Dunkeldeutsch had scared the hell out of one climbing near our front window one night--we thought we were safe, because nothing untoward had happened in nearly a year.

The punk or punks scrunched down the chickenwire fences we'd built to keep the cats in the backyard, and snuck up the stairs, then ambled through the kitchen, grazing. A box of raisin bran was savaged open and stripped of its raisins. A bag of tortilla chips was gleefully devoured. As a final touch, at least one invader went partway down the front stairs and shat on them. We didn't know anything was wrong until we got home and trotted up the stairs in the dark as usual (one of the DIY electrical system's quirks is that the stairwell light can only be turned on at the top of the stairs), then turned on a light to discover that we'd tracked raccoon shit all the way from the landing to the back door.

Time to rent that steam-cleaner like I've been meaning to...

One of our cats has major separation anxiety, surprising considering his general non-cuddliness. When we return from a trip, he likes to spend a couple of nights sleeping on my head, apparently to reassure his butt that I'm still there and will be feeding it in the morning.

So last night I dreamed, brokenly, he had arranged to set up a local branch of a minimum-security prison in our apartment, in order to keep my head where he could drape himself over it. He had been certified as the warden, and he'd even ordered a beige jumpsuit (with a white collar) for me to wear.

Maybe he's smarter than we've been crediting...maybe I'm only here on a work-release program.

Maybe I need some coffee, because I sure didn't get much sleep last night.

I have lovely teeth. I have fantastic teeth. They are a little yellow but hey, human teeth are yellow. The white ones are lying. Dentists have told me that people would kill to have teeth as nice as mine. I could probably chew rocks with them. One of them was always chipped--the left front one--it came in that way in fourth grade and had never been any less stalwart than its fellows.

Then I fell down the stairs and landed on my face, about five years ago. I broke two of my perfect, wonderful teeth. They were replaced with crowns, very soon, but I will never forget the feeling of the jagged broken edges. Horrible. Horrible.

Yesterday evening I discovered that one of my bottom teeth has slightly chipped. There again is that delicate, ragged edge, that tiny rough corner that fills me with fear. Is it cracked? Will it have to be sanded down like my poor top teeth into a useless little nub, and covered with a sheath made out of porcelain, gold, diamonds, platinum, and the dreams of innocent virgins? ACK! ACK ACK ACK.

I need to stop chewing rocks.