So-called real life

Maybe I’ve run out of things to write about? Or at least things to blog about?

Nah. I refuse to entertain the idea.

But it has been awhile since I posted anything. Since I just had to share what’s on my tiny mind with all of you out there on the innernets.

And I’m not entirely sure why.

Mostly I think it’s because of my so-called real life away from this keyboard. I endured a few weeks of energy-sucking, body-dragging and mind-impairing sickness, and recovery therefrom. Respiratory virus followed by sinus infection, all accompanied and survived by an annoying cough. Something like my normal energy level returned after New Year’s, and I’ve been playing catch-up since then. With work and also at home.

No worries, it hasn’t been all work and no play. I’ve been updating my television situation here at the condo. This time of year it’s so cold here that I stay indoors and watch a lot of TV, and anyone who watches much TV has known for a long time about the change next month to digital over-the-air signals.

On Saturday, I donated to Goodwill the 8 year old 27″ flat screen Sony CRT, in all its hulking wonder, thanks to a neighbor who helped me hoist it into the back of my car. Yesterday, I brought home from Costco a sleek new 37″ Vizio LCD HDTV. I easily set it up in the living room, hooked up to my trusty old digital cable (SD) box and also to the building rooftop master TV antenna. For more than week now, my little bedroom 20″ LCD TV has had a digital converter box buddy by its side, because it’s 4 or 5 years old and needs the box to get the digital over the air signals through the building antenna system. Soon I will have cable service added in the bedroom and upgraded in the living room to HDTV with DVR.

Of course the only part of all that hoo-hah that was at all necessary, was the converter box for the little bedroom TV. The other upgrades were just because I wanted to. And had accumulated the cash to do it.

The over-the-air HDTV programming I’m watching on the new big TV? Just amazed me. I got it working just in time for the AFC championship game. Wowzer. And more importantly, I have HDTV here in time for tomorrow’s inauguration of our next President. I plan to watch that here at home and go downtown afterwards.

Today, it’s unseasonably warm here. Not a time to pound a keyboard indoors. My wonderful dog needs a walk and so do I. Back to real life, the parts of it that don’t happen at the iMac.

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I take it back

I don’t really hate Christmas. Although I think I already said that it’s not Christmas I hate, just the gross commercialized culture of excess and frenzy that comes with it these days.

So, it happened again to me this year. The annual miracle of the Christmas spirit. Right on schedule, the morning of December 24. I had no more gifts to buy, but some left to wrap. And errands to run.

I cranked up some favorite Christmas music. My favorites change a little. This year the most played Christmas song on my iPod is this one:

Followed by “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas,” featured below.

With the music going, I felt my old cold grinchy heart start to warm and melt. Sang along to the iPod, practiced singing harmony to “Silent Night.”

Hopped into the car, with iPod music blasting, practically danced around Costco. Sang to the checkout staff and thanked them for working Christmas Eve. They must be trained to deal with crazy people; they were unfazed.

Was it me? Or were most people I saw in Costco on Christmas Eve *not* all stressing out this year?

Home again, had fun wrapping the presents, all for the little kids in the family. Was sure I wouldn’t make it in time to join the family at church, even called to say so. Figured as I headed out for their part of town that I’d hope to find a coffee shop nearby open, to sip and read for a while till they could get home and let me in. But the magic of Christmas slipped the old Subaru right down the freeways and into the church parking lot to a space across from the family’s van, and ushered me into the church two minutes before the service started. Everybody squished down and made room for me in the row.

So I got to have my annual misty-eyed Christmas Eve service experience at their church, which really piles it on and surpassed itself this year. I think the only thing left is to actually bring in live animals for the manger scene, so I wouldn’t miss next year’s service for the world. Despite the lingering cough from my recent sickness I sang pretty well, and cried during the final candle-lighting in the darkened church. And managed not to splash candle wax around when I blew out my candle afterward.

Nice eats and gift exchange back at the cousins’ after church. Four little kids, two sets of young parents, their grandparents on their dads’ side, two great-grandparents, and assorted loose cannon cousins. Including moi. So many gifts that expressed the love and involvement all these people have in each others’ lives, along with lots of giggles, laughs and squeals among the wrapping-ripping. Some of which was from the kids. A toy horse was the gift of the night for one of the girls, a toy rifle for one of the boys.

After the gifts, the electric Christmas tree lights were turned off, room lights doused, and the little candles in heirloom German silver holders on the tree branches were lit, for all of us to enjoy for a few minutes. That’s what trees looked like way back when.

Christmas day, after Jasper got a nice walk, I worked a morning shift as a volunteer hospitality ambassador at the airport. Lots of family reunions, Santa hats, people with antler headbands, hugs, smiles, even people thanking me for being there. Basically as a talking directional sign – yesterday I was mostly at the spot where people ask directions to their baggage claim carousels. There being 19 of them, I don’t have every single bit of info memorized but fortunately it’s not too hard to steer them the right way. And they give us a cheat sheet too.

Then it was home again, to rest my feet for a while. Then back out to the cousins’ for a nice dinner with most of the family. A quiet time to chat and laugh with the people who’ve known me all my life, or whom I’ve known all their lives, as the case may be. And they put up with me anyway. Bless them.

Long live Christmas. I hope you all had some miracles too, especially the miracles of comfort and joy.

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Today’s Stats

Total hours I have served to date in 2008 as a volunteer ambassador at the airport, according to the program’s scheduling/tracking system: 116:45.

My ranking as a customer reviewer on amazon.com under the new system unveiled this week: 784. Yikes, I am now a “Top 1000 Reviewer” on that site. 

My “classic reviewer rank” on amazon.com, which is the old system: 5,437.

Words I have yet to write for National Novel Writing Month 2008: 50,000.

Days left until my vacation trip to Thailand: 39.

Simple Thai phrases I can speak or understand: 0.

Edited to add: Estimated attendance at today’s downtown Denver campaign speech by Barack Obama, according to the Denver Police Department: 100,000.

Yes. 100,000 people went downtown to see and hear Sen. Obama, with only a few days notice. First photo from the Denver Post, second from the Rocky Mountain News.

 

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Random walk through my so-called mind on Saturday morning

Thought for the day from an email, attributed to Helen Keller:

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.

I am going to be optimistic that my puppy will someday be out of this stage of constantly finding things to chew on and EAT. Strange and inappropriate and possibly dangerous things.

Did you know that if you get 5 to 10 ml of hydrogen peroxide into a Shih Tzu puppy he will throw up whatever he just ate? I learned that a few weeks ago.  

My uncle is 89 years old today. Will I live that long? And if I do will I still have the quality of life that he does? Coolness doesn’t age, says the birthday card I found to give him this evening.

I wish we weren’t having such hot weather. Silly me  It’s the end of July in Denver, what do I expect? But I can’t get out on the lanai and use the citrus-based mastic remover in such high temps, because of basic comfort considerations and the instructions on the container. [Two weeks ago I finally tore out the aged crummy green indoor/outdoor carpeting and it left old dried adhesive crud on the concrete floor. I want to clean and then paint the floor, and finally turn the enclosed lanai into an outdoor living space instead of a dump for junk  Pictures may be posted of the project.]

I’ve been busy offline:  puppy-walking, working, volunteering at the Big Top, and now I’m on the board of our condo HOA. Maybe I should just mothball this blog.

Drama queens aren’t as entertaining when encountered in real life as one might think. 

Last night I finally ordered a couple of night stands. Well they are called file cabinets but they are walnut and the right size and have drawers so that an inquisitive puppy can’t grab stuff off the shabby wicker set of shelves (from the old Pier 1 clearance center, I think it was intended as a plant stand?) that’s now serving as my main nightstand.  And anyway isn’t it about time my bedroom wasn’t such a mess of oddball leftover and improvised furniture pieces?

Upside of living as a cliff dweller [in this condo building which is "high rise" style with doors opening onto interior hallways, elevators, underground parking]:  neighbors who take in your UPS packages from the lobby when it’s 7 pm on Friday and you obviously haven’t gotten home yet, and leave you a voice mail that they did it.  

I hope this package is my yoga toes thingie, and now it’s not too early to go down to Wanda’s and get it. Yay!

It really sucks that the toes on my right foot are just not quite right after my 2005-2006 orthopedic saga [broke right ankle June 05, broke 5th metatarsal in right foot April 2006]. But I won’t give up on trying to make them better if I can.

The teevee weather folks are saying that we’ve had a near-record string of days hotter than 90 degrees.  

Thank goodness for air conditioning.

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Genius

Okay, I know he’s not a genius.  But Jasper’s been busy this morning as I’ve been sitting here at the PC catching up on things.  (That little unhappiness-of-the-tummy on Sunday that I thought was just something I ate?  By Sunday night it was accompanied by a temp of 101.5F and overall achiness.  I’m better now but yesterday wasn’t very productive.)

I looked up a few minutes ago and saw that Jasper was in the living room.  And discovered that he had gathered his big soft toys into a group in the middle of the floor.  Honest.  The big toy was near that spot earlier, but the others were scattered around the room. 

I summoned Jasper over for a picture – by shaking the little triangle-thingie at him and dropping it near the big soft toy pile –  but he was more interested in asking me to pick him up than sitting still.  I finally got this shot of him near his pile of cuddly buddies.

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Furry scurry

Jasper and I have signed up for the Furry Scurry next weekend. We’re going to raise a few bucks for the Denver Dumb Friends League while enjoying a morning out in Washington Park with a few thousand old and new friends.

We’ve had quite the week, kind of a personal furry scurry. Little Jasper has had to adjust to a whole new world. Instead of living in a house on 10 acres in the country with lots of other dogs and a few people, he’s now living in a condo in Denver with one crazy old lady. Instead of hearing just birds and country sounds when he goes outdoors, he hears all the big city background noises that people can be so oblivious to. And he often rides in an elevator, which was a whole new experience too.

He’s met lots of new neighbors and visited his new vet and new groomers – all very pleasant experiences.

The worst thing, is that now and then he is left absolutely alone in the condo. Which causes him to yip and yap for quite awhile. Or so the neighbors tell me.

Ouch.

So far everyone I’ve spoken to is understanding, and I hope he eventually will mature and learn that the barking doesn’t help and that I will always come back. And when I come back I will free him from his “prison” – which is a room outfitted with his crate (into which he can come and go), toys, water and snacks, and a puppy pee pad, and a gate across the door which he can see through.

Early last week I had some kind of tummy upset bug, and now this morning don’t feel so good – again.

I think Jasper and I will go outdoors for a leisurely ramble and then come back indoors for a Sunday morning nap. The fajitas I ate last night, when we went out to celebrate the 23rd birthday of my nephew first cousin once removed? A good idea at the time. But perhaps not the best possible choice after all.

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Jasper and me

The puppy’s home. I’m calling him Jasper – a name with an interesting heritage* and also a nice mineral. We are both still resting up from yesterday’s epic travels, and I have things to do besides play on the innernets so this will be short.

Jasper is cute as can be, with beautiful markings, including a lot of white. The colored parts of his coat shade from a lovely red down to almost black such as at the tips of his ears.

He’s also sweet and friendly and amazingly poised. Yesterday he was driven by his humans down to a new place (SUX), where he was playing around on some grass outdoors when this new person walked up. Then eventually his mom and grandma left him with this lady.

And the day got stranger from there!

He was in and out of a new building with noisy big sliding doors, and got to ride around awhile in a rental car, and then back to that building.

Next, it was into a carrier that he didn’t like much but put up with. Ending up under a seat in a very noisy contraption in which he experienced very odd sensations.

(The Lynx turboprop planes are brand new and comfy and this flight was so sparsely passengered that the flight crew just *might* have looked the other way when I took him out of the carrier and let him snooze on my lap for a lot of the flight. But since that would be against the rules I must assume they just didn’t *see* me doing that.)

And then being carried in that carrier through a big noisy place (DEN) and onto something she called a “shuttle bus” and then into yet another car…

That’s a lot of excitement for a six pound 4-month-old fella to handle. But he took it all like a little champ! He’s well on his way to being housebroken and I will forever be grateful to his breeder for producing such well-socialized pups. He’s used to car rides and house noises and meeting strangers. He’s also cool with going into his crate at bedtime and just generally being sweet and adorable and busy keeping me wrapped around his little paw.

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*Derived from “Casper” who was one of the Three Wise Men (he brought the gold), it’s not all dignity and honor which would be boring anyway. A “jasper” in 19th and early 20th century British and US slang was variously a villain, a troublemaker, or a guy who brought bad luck.

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Must have been a hard day at the repair shop

A couple of months ago my fancy clock radio went on the fritz.  I blogged about it here. 

I sent it back to Cambridge Soundworks in Massachusetts for repair, via FedEx.  And waited. 

Finally, two days ago a box was delivered to me from Cambridge Soundworks, containing my radio.  Oddly, in the box with the radio was also a cardboard envelope with a CD of some kiddie music or something.   And when I plugged it in to check it out, none of the radio station presets were the same as they used to be.  But I didn’t have much time to spend messing with it, and it seemed to work OK.

A few minutes ago, intending to flatten the shipping box and take it out with the rest of the recyclables, I pulled the shipping document out of the plastic sleeve on the outside.  And read it.  I noticed that although I’d given them my correct phone number, they had garbled it on the paperwork. 

Then I read the description of the repair:  “removed and returned 1 CD unit”. 

Huh?  The CD and radio on my unit worked just fine; it was all the clock and timing functions that were haywire.  (I think that static electricity had fried those circuits.)

Uh-oh.  I fetched my records, which include the serial number of my radio, then looked at the back of this one.   Not a match.

They sent me somebody else’s radio.  One that had been sent in for repair with a broken CD player – which still had a CD in it, and which they carefully packed up and sent along with the radio.  To me.

I’ll call their customer service line tomorrow.  This could be a fun conversation.  Because I am *not* spending another dime to send anything to anybody after the co$t of shipping my radio by FedEx and the $65 repair fee. 

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Worst case scenario

Last night I thought I’d take my two currently checked-out Netflix DVDs from the living room to watch on the TV in the bedroom.  And couldn’t find them.

Anywhere.  Even after I went to bed, realized I was still worrying about where they could be, and got up to rummage around a couple more places.  In vain.

The good thing about living in a small-ish condo:  there aren’t all that many places to look for a lost item.  The bad thing:  once you’ve looked all over and not found it, you have to face the strong probability that it’s well and truly lost.

In the case of the DVDs, I suspect that in their mailing envelopes they got swept into a stack of newspapers on the dining room table, and then placed into the recycling box.  And duly dumped into our big recycling dumpster.

So I bravely went to Netflix to learn the worst.  I can’t get any more DVDs sent to me until I either return those two or fess up and pay for them, and I pay a flat monthly fee no matter how many - or few – DVDs I circulate in a month.   Procrastination will just waste more money.

It’s not as bad as I thought.  There’s a simple way to report that you’ve lost or damaged a DVD.  It costs you $20 (not cheap but not too outrageous – they do have to discourage people from reporting losses just to keep a DVD instead of sending it back). 

And the sweet part:  if you find it within a year, you can send it in and they will refund the $20. 

A $40 reminder that I need to be tidier around the house.  It hurts.  But I’m glad it wasn’t worse.

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Clutter and change and letting things slide

I mentioned here the other day that I’ve realized I pretty much hate almost all of my furniture.  I didn’t say so then, but the sad truth is, I’ve Allowed Things to Slide around the condo.  As Garrison Keillor explained in his recent newspaper column, they are at present working hard at cleaning over at his house because:

We are decent God-fearing people who somehow have Allowed Things To Slide and now we live among piles of books and paper, reams of driftage on the kitchen counter, boxes of mementos of a misspent life. Another month and we might go over the brink and become wild-eyed eccentrics living in rooms with narrow passages between the piles, cooking on a hotplate in the bathtub, the house reeking of cat dung.

At the Keillor house, they are having a fine time throwing out things.  At the condo, lately I’ve been having a fine time ignoring most of the mess while reading books, working on the computer to create the invoice which will get me paid for last month’s work, spending time with friends, and taking the trusty old Subaru in for its 105,000 mile mega-service.  To be fair, I’ve kept up with the laundry, and the kitchen and bathrooms are clean and presentable. 

Good old Garrison also explains I think why so many voters are excited about Senator Obama’s candidacy for the presidential nomination:

If the Democrats run on anger and the urge to pay back the God, Guns & Capital Gains Party, they’re likely to lose. Move on.  That’s my problem with Senator Clinton: If she becomes president, must we relive Renaissance Weekends and New Age narcissism, and then do we also get the return of Kenneth Starr and the Mellon man?

Heck, I’m a little excited too.  Although I sincerely believe that Senator Clinton is the better qualified candidate. 

Full column is below the fold if this link doesn’t work.

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Getting down to basics

A few weeks ago I finally realized what’s wrong with my condo.  Why I don’t feel happy when I’ve finished cleaning and tidying the rooms.

I don’t like my furniture.  I do like the large oriental area rug in my living room that cost more than a month’s salary two years ago.  I have some bits of art that I enjoy living with.   But I keep thinking, are there any pieces of actual furniture that I might really mourn if I came home to find the place cleaned out by thieves?  And coming up blank.  OK, except for the two clean-lined 1960′s modern walnut bedroom pieces – double dresser and chest of drawers – that I bought at a secondhand store and stripped of gunky varnish.  And my cute little CD cabinet.

Otherwise?  If I ever move more than ten miles away?  I’ll leave it all behind without an eyelash flicker.

I think it’s time I found my own style.  I think I was developing one many years ago, but haven’t worked at it in a long time. 

This could be fun. 

It could also cost a boatload of money.

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Oddments

Odd thoughts, thunk while sipping that last cuppa coffee before heading out the door this morning:

1. Why do I care that my amazon.com reviewer rank seems stuck in the 8200′s, after moving up sharply this month from around 10,000?
2. What ideas rambling around in my subconscious have caused me to go into one of my periodic phases of reviewing all my music CDs, importing a bunch of that music to iTunes and creating a stack of CDs to take to Cheapo Discs to sell?
3. Who invented the snooze button?
4. I’m looking at a picture of myself taken in my senior year in high school, wondering why that girl looks like a stranger.
5. I am so glad that I don’t have to take a doggie outdoors for relief, on this December morning with the temperature at 13°F and snow on the ground.

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Another bubble busted

I admitted here the other day that I’ve been watching too much TV.   But over the weekend I didn’t watch much TV.  Instead, when home (and I did go out and do things) I spent way too much time browsing the fora* over at Television without Pity, a site I found on Friday.  I had much snarky fun reading and contributing to discussions of some of the obscure shows I watch on HGTV, BBC America, TLC and the various Discovery channels.   And learned some things.

But with knowledge comes disillusionment. 

Thus with the HGTV show Freestyle - which according to the network website is “a no-cost design show where professional re-arrangers de-clutter, reorganize and move furniture and accessories around in a room, to give homeowners a dramatic new look without spending a dime!”

Nice idea.  But they lie. 

Last year Freestyle was busted in a Washington Post article by Jill Barshay, one of their makeover subjects.  The makeover cost her $1,000, thanks to a pre-show shopping trip with the show’s designer in which Barshay bought a daybed for $750.  She also had some original artwork framed for another $250 - the producer nixed the pieces.  Barshay muses:  “Apparently a Rodin-like nude is considered pornography. Who owns HGTV, I wondered, John Ashcroft?”

Among other revelations:  the TV crew rearranged Barshay’s furniture into a really bad layout before starting the shoot; the producer made Barshay repeatedly rehearse her “ad-libbed” introduction, then whined that it sounded too scripted; and: 

The crew, meantime, was peeling off price tags and planting $1,000 worth of newly purchased furniture and accessories in other rooms. Then later, we could conveniently “find” them, exclaiming how great this lamp, those pillows and that bamboo mat would work in the living room.

The whole article cracked me up and confirmed my suspicions about the veracity of all those “redo a room or three in your home for free/$500/$1000/$2000″ shows.   (Click on “continue reading” below if the WPost link doesn’t work and you want to read the story.)

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*I know, they call them “forums.”   But I took Latin in high school.  I just can’t.

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First snow of the season

It fell on Sunday morning.  By Monday afternoon - yesterday – it was going fast.  Solar snow removal – we’re good at that around here.

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I lost 106 pounds

Today. For twenty-five bucks.

At Curbside Data Control.   I drove there with four full boxes of papers to shred, the result of my Big Scan (and sort) project.

The nice folks at Curbside dumped all the paper into a locked bin, weighed it (106 pounds), rolled it off to the shredder and issued me a certificate of destruction. 

Meanwhile, back at the condo, I’ve reclaimed a corner in the study, which last week was stacked high with boxes of papers and books. 

Now it’s blessedly empty. 

I’m sure the feng shui is improved.

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Will I need a passport?

 The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

—– L. P. Hartley

No scanners, or shredders, not so many lawyers per capita, and identity theft not aided by computers. 

After three full days slogging away at The Big Scan, I’m down to the paydirt of old personal and family letters and pictures.  Including the one above – and I’m not in it.  I’m probably older than you, but not that old.  

The picture is of a tailoring course taught by the Home Ec teacher at a public high school in the late 1940′s “for anyone interested.”

Interesting picture.  There could be a story there.  Or stories.  No passport required.

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Hold the ice, the fire – and the paperwork

It isn’t necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice. There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia.

——-Frank Zappa

I have too many pieces of paper in my house. They are corralled into boxes or file folders, pending The Big Scan – a project I thought would be finished by now. TBS means I use my lovely little Fujitsu ScanSnap S500 scanner (pictured closed and opened – scroll down for the other photo) to scan all those documents I wish to retain, after which I can recycle or shred almost all of the hard copies. I will end up with only a storage box or two of paper – not bad for a lifetime as a middle-class American homeowner working in a paper-based profession.

But as we know, life is what happens while we’re making other plans. In this case:

• The new desktop PC was acquired in March and runs Windows Vista.
• The Fujitsu scanner – acquired in the days of Windows XP – wouldn’t work with the new PC without new Vista drivers and software.
• Fujitsu didn’t release the Vista updates until July.
• In July I downloaded and installed the ScanSnap Vista updates – just before the new PC suffered a hard drive failure.

Now the PC’s home with a new hard drive, the scanner is working, and yesterday

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Fourth of July

It’s been a hot sunny day here.

This DFD fire truck sported a flag.

Our extended family grilled burgers,

romped around the backyard

 

and enjoyed patriotic cake.  Tonight there are several fireworks displays to choose from.

I hope you have had a good day, too.

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I’m not much for holiday decorating, but

 . . . I want one of these wreaths to hang in the windows of my condo’s enclosed balcony.  More stories here and here.

Give peace a chance.

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100 people, 100 square feet each

I’m fascinated by photographer Michael Wolf’s “100 x 100″ project, just posted online here.

It consists of 100 photographs, each of a resident of Hong Kong’s oldest public housing estate. Each resident has a room that is 100 square feet in size.

Once I started clicking my way through the collection, I couldn’t stop until I was done. Amazing.

HT to Dawn at Frugal for Life.

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