William Shatner Reads Sarah Palin's Farewell Speech

Conan O'Brien - a flash of genius right here.

What I Did This Weekend

I harvested green beans, peas, and blueberries from the garden.

I watched Coco the Basement Cat get stuck in the handle of a paper bag.

Scotty and I, once again, rebelliously trespassed upon the nearby McMansionland walking trails. We are scofflaws.

What I Didn't Do This Weekend

The Seattle-area Marymoor FSA Grand Prix started this past Friday morning and went all weekend. Drew and Dean drove up Thursday evening. I stayed home to work. But here are some pictures that Drew took.

Dean and National Championship Team Sprint partner Kelyn Akuna National Pez Eating Champion Jamie Carney talking about chicks mapping out strategy.

The Thunderdrome Cycle of Violence? Why yes, it belongs to me.

The sprint podium. The second place guy had to get back to Portland for his job. (Jobs. Lame.)

Dean behind the motor and atop the Thunderdrome Cycle of Violence. It's metal.

Thighs that size take more rest than normal size thighs. And extra caffeine.

8 MILES WIDE

ALERT: Not suitable to blast at high volume at work. Or near my mom.

Storm Large makes me want to go on a diet and grow 8 inches taller. Oh, and laugh. She also makes me laugh. Sing along, everybody!

Summer Photo Dump July 2009

Drew and Tessa jumping up the stairs. It's totally fun, from what I hear.

The Great AVC Weekend of 2009 is in the bag. More friends and family than I knew we had. As usual, I worried so much I forgot to enjoy most of it, but I'm sure I'll look back on it fondly.

I also took some pictures during our Hopkins family reunion late in June. But most of them turned out to be of either Drew or scenery. You don't have to tell me what that means. I know.

Homey lake front cabin, needs some TLC, comes furnished with outdoor sofa and indoor raccoons.

Drew demonstrates the proper pointing technique for the beach.

Triathlon numbers. It turns out they don't wash off easily.

No, he didn't do the whole thing - he just did the bike leg of a team effort.

The TV in our room at the Sunriver condo was totally Space Age. This is going to sell for big, ironic bucks some day.

Join me next time for exciting garden shots!

Strippers in the Wild and Wine in the Hood on the Fruit Loop

So we cashed in our raincheck yesterday from the weekend when I got sick and we took off for the Fruit Loop, the Chamber of Commerce name for a scenic loop of highway through the Hood River Valley, which has beautiful views of Mt. Hood and miles and miles of adorable orchards. Pears, peaches, apples, and these days, ripe cherries.

It was one of those days. The sky was blue, the sailboards were shoulder-to-shoulder on the Columbia, the mountain was doing its best Majestic Cascade Lifestyle Magazine pose, the windows were rolled down, and the cherries were ripe.

But, um, practically speaking, with a back yard full of blueberries, rhubarb, zucchinis, salad, and baby green beans and peas, how much fruit do two people need? Luckily for all of us, there is also a healthy sprinkling of wineries on the Fruit Loop as well.

We stopped at four tasting rooms and managed to find something worthy at each one.

The White House, a multi-winery tasting room and fruit stand, is a little museum display its own self, as it was built in 19-oh-something and has the photographs to prove how a century ago the Hood River Valley was cleared from virgin primeval forest to the Disneyland of Fruit that it is today. Our choice (and here I must make a note to you red wine snobs that red wine gives me screaming headaches): White Salmon Vineyard 2004 Spicy White (a mix of mostly Chardonnay with a touch of Gevurtztraminer for spice).

We stopped at Mt. Hood Winery's new tasting room on the first day it was open. So firsties! It's quite a showroom of a tasting room. Beautiful carved multi-wood bar and Mt. Hood practically barging in the windows, somehow bigger and more impressive inside the room than outside. I hope the wedding they had planned for that afternoon went off okay. (Really? A wedding on the first day you're open for business? Ballsy.) Our choice: Mt. Hood Winery Estate Grown and Bottled 2008 Pinot Gris (grapes enjoy mountain views as well, so the label implies).

Cathedral Ridge Winery also has a lovely bar in their tasting room, a very nice pourer (pouresse?), glasses that reputedly explode upon onset of a peevish mood, and actual grapes on site. Important, I think, for credibility, if not for actual use. They will be honored to know they are this year's winner of Most Pretentious Yet Unintentionally Funny Back Label Sentence ("We are rich in fruit orchards, wild game and fish, and we vinify our wines to embrace these flavors of the region, and to be enjoyed with family and friends.") Mmmmmm, wild and fishy. Our choice: Cathedral Ridge 2007 Pinot Gris.

And finally, we come to the smallest and ugliest of the tasting rooms, one lovingly crafted from the corner of their tin shed, that of Hood River Vineyards. And yet, here we meet most of the characters from my next screenplay, Sideways and Upside Down On a Pole, the story of a young, tanned, surgically-enhanced-to-the-point-where-I-doubt-that-she-could-swing-a-golf-club stripper in a crocheted dress with enhanced boob-viewing capabilities, who meets a gullible young Hummer driver with daddy cash, who finds herself, implausibly, in a tiny wine tasting room with a veteran oenophile at the pour, who is tasked with finding a wine that she can learn to enjoy. I'm sorry we didn't stay long enough to see if the final option, the bing cherry dessert wine, was to her liking. But it was getting crowded in there. Oh, and our wine choice? a Hood River Vineyards 2005 dry Oregon Riesling (only they spell it "Reisling" on the label - for reals. This is backyard wine making at its best).

Oh, yes, I am writing that baby up and mailing it to myself, so don't think about ripping it off, bitches. It's got everything. Alcohol, sex and spelling. See you in Hollywood.

There's a Word For It!

Reason #2 Why I'm Not Signing My Dogs Up for Any IQ Tests

Annie is walking like she is walking on a carpet of Legos, which is how she walks when her arthritis acts up, which is what it does when she goes on a bender, running like a happy fool through the neighborhood. Scotty, the beta-dog jester, followed loyally behind, as always.

The fence gate was left open this morning. I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure that it was closed last night, evidenced by the fact that the dogs did not get out last night. So some time during the night, the gate was opened.

Thinking of someone fiddling with our gate in the night and the aftermath of Annie's flight-or-more-flight tendencies makes me simultaneously glad that I have big dogs while wanting to drive them straight back to the reject bin I rescued them out of for putting me through this every time the gate is left open.

They were found maybe two miles away (as the collie flies), at the neighborhood sewage treatment plant. Luckily not IN the sewage treatment plant, but at the administration building, where a nice man tracked me down by their dog tags.

So Annie is a big hurt burger, and Scotty came back so hot he was unable for a while even to chew on some ice, which is his usual treat on a warm day, and with burrs clumping up his ruff, his tail, his hindquarters, and his front leg hairs. I got most of the burrs out, but I keep finding more, so this may be an ongoing clean-up job.

I'm not sure whether this means I have to check the damn gate every morning, but I will be for a while. And checking the locks on the doors and windows.

UPDATE (INCLUDES CONFESSION!): Drew says he's pretty sure that he left the gate open the day before while he was loading some yard waste into his truck. The dogs are just so, um, brainily challenged that they did not notice until the next morning.

Notes On Birthday XLVII

I've been away for a while. It was in your best interest. You don't want to read thoughts that are either jumbled, vacant, or snide. Why? Pick a reason. My pants were tight. The lawn needed to be mowed. The grapevines needed to be cut back. My eyes itched. I was in NO MOOD. The air felt soggy.

Do I have something to say now? Not really. But here are some thoughts on my birthday back on June 22 that I didn't get around to posting at the time.

• I got an iPhone 3GS for my birthday. Yeah, it IS that cool.
• Not only did Drew buy me the iPhone, he gave up HIS upgrade so we could get it at the discounted price. I gave him the Blackberry I bought last year. He's having much more fun with it than I ever did, so it's all working out.
• Most under-appreciated birthday gift this year: we still have the Prius. Drew, who still gets a little discombobulated driving around in a robot car, left it running (maybe running is the wrong word since it runs on battery when parked) on street parking in downtown Portland while we stood in line at the Apple store. Ironically, Drew worried about somebody stealing his cell phone out of the car while we were gone. When we got back to the car, the radio was still playing and the battery was on red. But it was still there! Thank you Portland, for not stumbling upon our doofy mistake! (We're still not sure whether it could have been driven off. There were no keys in the car. That's the weird thing about this car - the keys do not have to be in the ignition. They just have to be in the vicinity of the sensor in the dashboard.) I'm not sure whether the car was supposed to stay running like that but it did. Maybe I should re-peruse that owner's manual.
• While waiting in line at the Apple Store (while our car was patiently playing its radio and waiting for us to return), I saw somebody shake someone's bike helmet, like they were shaking their hand, because the bike helmet person didn't have a free hand. Very awkward moment when the hand-shaker realized that he had actually just shook someone's helmet, and he couldn't really get that moment back.
• Did we go out to a fancy restaurant on my birthday? Um, no. I got a craving for Burgerville at lunch time, and had no room for fancy food at dinner. So we had birthday cake for dinner. Hey, we're adults.
• I'm pretty sure I don't look a day over 50 (which is a relief, since I'm not 50).

Coco the Death Cat Takes Advantage

You know that nursing home cat who would sleep on the beds of the next-to-die? I have been under the weather since Saturday morning with a particularly nasty nausea-and-body-aches brand of bug, and Coco, who is not known to be particularly cuddly, has been on my lap pretty much 24-7. It's making me a little nervous.

Of course, it could be the fact that I have been stationary, under a comfy blanky, not a thing I'm used to doing on a summer weekend. But still. Does she know something?

Note This on your Calendars

By proclamation of me, tomorrow is National Nobody Needs Me to Do Anything For Them Day. 

I plan on spending it flouncing about, consuming internet entertainment, and eating sweet things. I may be dressed as a 17th century poet. Or a 300-pound disability defrauder. That part is still up in the air. 

Everyone is welcome to join the festivities, as long as I don't have to assist in any way.

I plan on making it an annual holiday, held on the third Wednesday in June. Years from now, you will be asking yourselves, what did you do on the first NNNMTDAFT Day? You may want to plan your day accordingly.

Explanation Would Ruin the Magic

Flight of the Conchords, Hard and Phirm, and Todd Barry from the Future. Just Believe.

"Man Cold" from Man Stroke Woman

Found this series on Netflix so I went to You Tube to see if it would be worth it to watch the whole season. Netflix that, baby!

Whose Son Is This? And How Is His Driving Record?

Dean's in town. It's a great way to clear the fridge and pantry of leftovers. It's usually also a great way to make Drew fume over missing and misplaced parts and tools in the garage. Bike maintenance takes a lot of tools and parts, and two bike maintainers using the same space with different concepts of orderliness means that high jinks shall surely ensue.

But so far, at least in the house, he has shown us a new, you know, responsible form of Dean. He cleans up after himself in the kitchen, the bathroom is clean, and I can see most of the spare room floor. 

And he seems to be taking his training more seriously too. When I have called him in Colorado Springs lately, he talks of going to "work," both when he has to work at the bike shop AND when he has a training session. AND he has put beer drinking on hold. THAT's when you know he's serious.

And he looks like an oak tree with two trunks. 

I'm writing all this because he borrowed my car tonight and I'm hoping all this responsibility has made its way down to his accelerator foot.

Update:  car's back in the garage in one piece.

Being Awesome: I Can Do That.

So there we were sitting in the audience waiting for Tom Robbins to come out and entertain us and complaining about being in our 40s and putting on weight for no good reason. We hadn't changed our behaviors. We hadn't begun to enjoy nightly milkshakes before bed. We hadn't developed cravings for fried cheese appetizers.

I was telling Drew how I had tried my usual cutting-down here-and-there behaviors, and had actually gained weight, and how we had gone on a particularly active vacation - hiking, walking, sightseeing so much our feet were aching at the end of each day - and had still gained weight.

Drew, being the kind of guy (meaning like most guys), who when he hears of a problem, feels compelled to solve it (instead of the kind - like most women - who merely commiserate and share your whine), ventured a plan. Why don't I try one of Dean's coach's regimens for bumping up one's metabolism: doing 20 minutes of highly aerobic activity first thing in the morning, before you go about your day. Don't count it as your workout. Just add it as your 20-minute furnace boost.

I hadn't been running on a regular basis for maybe two years, choosing instead to follow Scotty's lead, who prefers a fast walking pace, so he doesn't miss any good sniffs, and so he doesn't overheat with his ridiculous collie coat on. Although we do an hour to an hour-and-a-half of this fast walking at least four times a week (with half-hours on the other three days), I had pretty much given up on my running career.  After all, running with a dog is complicated, and leaving the house in my running gear without the dog is heart rending.

Uh-oh, Coco the Basement Cat has decided to help me type. This may slow things down.

Drew said, no, do not feel sorry for the dogs. This is about you. Get on the treadmill and go for 20 minutes. Nobody gets hurt. Nobody feels left out. And if they do, the hell with them.

So I did. In practice, they end up as 30-minutes sessions: a quick five-minute warm up and a five-minute cool down sandwiches the 20 minutes of running. It was hard at first. The minutes ticked by so slow I doubted my grasp of the concept of time. But the 20-minute mark would always show up eventually. It has been a month now, and I have kept it up long enough now that it (almost) feels like a habit.  I call my sessions "being awesome." That also helps me to keep it up. I don't want to not be awesome. And it has not precluded me from taking the dogs out for their walks after breakfast. 

And the weather has been so nice lately that I have been able to get outside and see something beside the sun room walls.  Luckily there are few other runners at the park when I go, because sometimes it seems like I am going so slowly that I must be on a hidden treadmill, but no matter. I'm not out there to impress anyone (which should be obvious from my outfit, which usually fails to match three different shades of blue, some black, some occasional hot pink or purple, all topped off with a red baseball cap).

It's easy to do anything for 20 minutes. It's easier to do something first thing in the morning before the excuse lobe in your brain kicks into gear.  And 20 minutes is not nothing - a concept which is difficult to grasp after so many years of living amongst those for whom three-hour workouts are commonplace. It makes a difference. The pounds may not be melting away, but I can notice small changes. And that gives me hope. Hope that it's not all down hill from here. Hope that the next birthday doesn't mean more ballooning gut and arm flab. I may have lost a little of whatever it is inside our cells that make us firm and fresh, and may have more of the stuff that allows "ripe" to turn into "soft and squishy," but if 20 minutes a day can help slow that change, then I'm willing to run.

Air! Just What I Ordered!

Hey, we got a shipment of air today at work.

Office Depot has really stepped up their air delivery.  To be fair, this box wasn't completely filled with air. It also held six binders and some binder tabs, which took up less than a quarter of the space in the box. They shipped a separate box, about the same size, with two ten-roll packs of toilet paper. 

Efficiency at its peak, ladies and gentlemen.

The Kind of Courage That I Deal In

I have had some painter's block these last few weeks due to the fact that I left the painting-in-progress at an awkward moment. You know, the underpainting is done, the next layer is half done, and the product, if I stopped now, would either be bad art or good velvet art.

Unfortunately, since it's difficult to transport the paint from canvas onto velvet at this point, I have no choice now but to use the next layer of paint to turn bad art into art. Can I do it?

If not, it must mean that I'm a bad artist. So to approach the painting today took some piglet style courage.

I approached it. I applied paint to it. Is it better? I never know until the next day. There's still another, crucial layer to be applied. Stay tuned.

Weather note: thunder storm after a week of unseasonably hot weather. Aaahhh.

Testosterone Makes Men Crazy, Part MCCXXVi

Ever been to Palouse Falls in Washington? You know, the ones where the Palouse River falls 186 feet off of basalt cliffs into a bathtub shaped pool? Ever thought about riding them in a dinky little kayak? Me neither.

Weakened Further by Technology

Behold the pygmy jerboa and weep.

In Which I Soften The Frak Up

The high temperature today, freakishly, was something like 89 degrees.

I work at a home-based business. I share a room with a server, a computer, a copier, two printers and a scanner. The air conditioner in said home-based home went out this morning. At first, I just thought I had done a superb job at boosting my metabolism this morning with my little run. Then I was sure that I had a raging fever. I was finally told that it wasn't me, that the house was the one with the fever.

It was hot! I was sweating! And if there had been anyone there to complain to, I would have whined like an orange Ford Fiesta on a hill. Instead, I suffered in silence. And even though I kept telling myself that humans lived and flourished without air conditioning for 50,000 years before this particularly warmish afternoon in this particularly technologically superheated room, I still felt like a mini-martyr.

Luckily, our own famously tetchy heat pump is working today, so when I got home, I was able to relax and watch an episode of House that I missed when our cable went out by logging on to Hulu.com. 

So I went from trying to channel our hard-bodied ancestors who once stalked the sun-scorched plains on the hunt for a scrawny gazelle, to snuggling on the plushy couch with my MacBook and my Nalgene water bottle, watching entertainment on demand and trying on my new Saucony running shoes.

All of a sudden, I felt pretty squishy.  But I'm not going back outside for a quick gazelle hunt.