So it's California or bust for me in a few weeks to visit my dearest but not nearest friend Teagen (insert the O.C. theme song by Phantom Planet here...which coincidentally I'm listening to at this very moment. Well, not that song per se, actually the fourth as California is the first track on the "The Guest" disc which is worth way more than the $1.00 I paid for it at Goodwill). "Yeah, this world needs an anthem and I hopin' the whole world will sing along."

It's another out of state trip (yay for not being so poor any longer) and I might be visiting you and the lovely city of Austin, Maggie (the same for B.C. and you Greg), in March, if work allows it AND if I can find a dog sitter. Which brings me to today's point.

Twinky, the wonder corgi, needs a sitter for a few days in February. The lucky person can either stay at my famously decorated house or take her to theirs. She is super sweet and is sure to delight friends, family members, the postal carrier, other pets, etc. She is pretty good about telling you when she needs to go out and extremely well practiced in telling you when she is hungry or wants to go for a walk. She only weighs 22 pounds so she doesn't take up much space in the bed either. Let me know if you or someone you know might be interested. I promise to be generous to the citizen willing to do a good deed. I did a ton of pet sitting in my 20's but apparently despite my efforts, my karma with that kinda thing isn't very good.

I don't get Mr. Show

My current Netflix disc is the first season of Mr. Show. I don't get it. I couldn't even make it through the first episode. I'm considering just sending it back but that seems like a failure. A good friend of mine worships David Cross. I just don't get it.

What I am getting however are these veggie "chicken" nuggets from Food Fight. The David Cross look alike guy who works there (and is named Dave) said they are his favorite fake meat and that they can't keep 'em on the shelves. Now I know why. Apparently cats like it too because my cat Max just jumped up here with me and has no interest in his food but is going nuts smelling something (my breath no doubt, as the nuggets are gone).

http://www.foodfightgrocery.com/about.html

Bring on the night.

It appears that my favorite band of all time, The Police, are going to reunite and go on tour. My affection for this band is equaled by no other band, with perhaps the exception being R.E.M. who run a close 2nd. I love The Police. I've listened to them since the early 80's when some girls I rode horses with introduced me to them by allowing me to borrow their cassette Walkmans while we cleaned stalls. It was at this same time that I was also introduced to The Talking Heads and U2's War album (these were very influential girls in my life as you can imagine). I would never be the same after that. I spent hours replicating the bands name on my school desk, I listened to their recordings over and over and over and over, I wore thin the Police t-shirt I bought on clearance at Spencer Gift's for 49 cents (I was thrifty even in my teens). I loved (and still love) all of their songs. Unfortunately I was never able to see them play live. For those of you who didn't grow up in Portland you might not realize that the Northwest was not always the hotbed for music that it is now. Before the explosion of grunge and the erection of the Rose Quarter, Portland rarely had big bands come here to play. The coliseum was just too small to make it worth their time and being that The Police broke up in 1986 when I was only 17, it wasn't as if I was able to travel out of state to see them.

In the mid to late 80's, after The Police had broken up, I became absolutely obsessed with Sting (consider yourself unique if I haven't forced you to watch Brimstone and Treacle with me giving audio commentary throughout). I must have listened to Dream of the Blue Turtles more than I've listened to any other recording (other than perhaps Berlin's Love Life when I was 15 or maybe Billy Joel's Glass Houses when I was a pre-teen). To this day I still think that the most amazing concert experience I ever had was seeing Sting during the Blue Turtle tour at a sold out concert in the Memorial Coliseum. The crowd was filled with more devout fans than I've ever seen (or heard) replicated since. When Sting would start to sing the crowd just took off in an amazing group chorus to the point where Sting would just quit singing and let the crowd continue for the duration of the song. It wasn't just for the "one" pop single kinda thing which happens at concerts all the time, it was for every damn Sting and Police song! It was absolutely amazing. Not too long after though it seemed that Sting did the whole Bono thing and let his ego get way too inflated. I prefer humble musicians, the introspective, wounded, soulful, tortured artist is what I enjoy...not the cocky, bare chested, sunglasses wearing rock star. So my fondness for Sting waned and I moved on.

Despite my lack of appreciation for Sting's new demeanor I never lost my affection for The Police. For the year and a half that I took drum lessons (with my dream of someday being a rock drummer permanently squashed by my lack of rhythm) my instructor and I poured over the talents of Stewart Copeland. I've owned the box set for years which has their entire catalog for years (one of only two box sets I own, the other being Nirvana). You can probably now imagine that I am more than enthusiastic about the idea of finally being able to see the entire band perform.

"There's a hole in my life. There's a hole in my life. Yeah."

"I can't stand losing, I can't, I can't, I can't stand losing you."

Check this out for giggles...if the link doesn't work, go to www.youtube.com and search for "colbert wizard oz".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd_lJ33nEck


Thanks for the link Greg!

Arizona

I came back from my trip to Tucson, Arizona last Tuesday evening. I left the desert and flew into a snowstorm. Quite the homecoming! Thankfully my dad picked me up at the airport with Twinky so I got home okay (Max was only running intermittently) but my kitties ended up being snowed in with my mom until Thursday night!

My trip was great. For four days I was able to completely forget about my job, the feral cat living in my garage (I just figured that out the morning that I was leaving), the dirty dishes in my kitchen sink, the fact that I'm not supposed to be driving and consequently feel stuck at home much of the time...

This trip reminding me that I'm a card carrying Northwesterner. While I'm super thankful I made the trip and got to visit with friends and see amazing sites, it really made me appreciate home (even if it was covered with four inches of snow when I returned).

While in Arizona I got to eat at a 100% vegan restaurant that was in the middle of a strip mall (stroganoff and a brownie special with ice cream, whip cream, chocolate sauce and walnuts), go to a swap meet (I purchased a vintage Arizona license plate to use as a postcard, 70's era religious girl's club badges for collage purposes and a photo album of 1940's photographs),
visit the Saguaro National forest (yes, it does hurt when you get pricked from a cactus), tour the multi-million dollar Biosphere 2 project, listen to local music at Hotel Congress, eat brunch (vegan Shepherd's pie with salad and a fantastic chocolate malt shake!) under a tent at The Casbah with birds landing all around searching for crumbs, take many walks and sleep with Maxine the most laid back dog I've ever met, enjoy a home cooked vegan meal of curry eggplant with peanut sauce, laugh my ass off numerous times, tour the University of Arizona campus, test out my new digital camera and even get a little color on my face. The trip was a perfect blend of sightseeing and homeyness for me and I had a fantastic time.

You gotta have friends...

Wow, I've been laying in bed, surfing the web for the last five hours...shopping for art made by indie crafty people on Etsy, searching for books on Biosphere 2 (I'm more fascinated than ever since visiting), gathering ideas for Valentine projects and looking for CDs (Dashboard Confessional and the new Smithereens disc that covers an entire Beatles album). I knew I should be posting something on this blog but frankly just didn't have the energy. Cuz you know logging in and typing requires so much energy. The last two days have been completely decadent. I'm eating pizza, watching movies (The Break Up and The OH in Ohio), reading, looking through photos, opening mail (great envelope Kathy!), cuddling kitties. The good life. But then I finally starting browsing the blogs of my friends to see what was new and entertaining in their lives when all of a sudden I found myself reading about me. Sigh. One of my personal cheerleaders (everyone should have a set), Norma, paid tribute to one of my New Year's crafts. The ultimate compliment. I'm honored. And proud. http://www.simplepleasuresforme.blogspot.com

Now, I just need to get out of bed, take down the frickin' Christmas ornaments, do the dishes and walk the dog so I can start my February projects.

He's not fat, he's fluffy!

Dang, that is a big kitty!

http://www.kptv.com/news/10717499/detail.html

Friends in other places.

This weekend I'm flying to Tucson, Arizona to visit my friend Jeff. I first met Jeff about ten years ago at an animal rights protest in Seattle and we have managed to stay in touch ever since. Jeff stood by me as I blocked the entrance to a fur pelt auction, yelled at a cop for hurting me while I was being arrested at Saks Fifth Avenue, encouraged me to dye my hair green when we were snowed in Seattle for a week when we were supposed to be camping, made me cry while pushing me around on a merry-go-round in Gas Works Park, played his guitar and sang R.E.M. songs in my living room with his friend Ian, drank pints of beer and discussed the "amber" qualities of Portland music, walked through Forest Park with me, eaten at many of the vegan friendly restaurants in Seattle, canoed through Lake Washington laughing at all of the Canadian Geese that mooned us and best of all Jeff and I have spent hours and hours talking. He is perhaps one of the only people I know that can talk as much as me and in as much detail about sometimes seemingly meaningless things. If Linklater was to remake the movie Slacker, Jeff and I would be perfectly cast as the college students who are sitting in the pub discussing the behavior of Smurfs! So, I'm flying to see him (and his charming girlfriend, Heather and adorable dog, Maxine) in Tucson before he graduates with a Phd in Sociology and moves to yet another place to accept a kick ass research position.

Oh my god!

http://www.lordsgymfitness.com

So I saw an infommercial the other day that talked about The Lord's Gym. They were promoting the theory that your body is a vessel for the spirit and it is disrespectful to God to not be attractive and fit. Really it was totally something that I would have thought was a Simpson's gag but it wasn't animated. Apparently God doesn't mind them marketing his whey, however. Gave me yet another reason to not be religious.

Lazy Sunday

Turns out we accomplished enough at work yesterday that I didn't have to work today. But I am so burned out I hardly accomplished anything. I'm also not supposed to be driving so I have a tendency to stay home a lot more on my days off now. I should have taken down the Christmas tree but I didn't. I should have done the dishes, but I didn't. I should have swept the floor, but I didn't. I did however finish the craft project I started last weekend and didn't get a chance to work on all week. Which means I should have cleaned the aftermath of the process off of my kitchen counter, but I didn't. As you can tell by the picture Jingles the cat didn't do much either.

Oh well.

It's days like today when I really have to work at not noticing how ridiculous our culture is. Why are we forced to lock ourselves inside buildings with people that are not our chosen companions for hours on end just to make enough money to feed ourselves and our pets and provide shelter? This is ridiculous. I'm burned out and I want some time off. Problem is, today is Friday and all day today I will look at folks and sigh and they will say, "Well, at least it's Friday." And in fact, it is. Tomorrow is Saturday and the day after that is Sunday...the days when I normally catch up on me time and do crafts and walk the dog extra long distances, and go thrift shopping and do the things that I enjoy. But this weekend I have to work. Saturday and my boss is now threatening Sunday as well. And it is a threat. Work super duper harder than you've ever worked before, ("Somehow unlike what I've been doing for the last week?" I mutter under my breath) or else we'll all have to be in here Sunday too she says. To which I say a bad word. She has pushed too far and our entire team is wilting and ready to stage a coup. It's only a matter of days. I'm sure I would have told her off and stormed out earlier this week except for the fact that my boss lives in cubicleland with us drones so there isn't a private place to do so and I'm way too professional to do it out in the open. As it stands now I won't have a day off until January 13th, the day I actually get on a plane to leave state to go on vacation. Frankly, it's really not the workload that bothers me so much. It's the nasty attitude my boss is demonstrating. The honeymoon phase with her is over and now I'm seeing the true personality. And I don't like it. I feel like a prostitute allowing her to act the way she does around me. I don't tolerate that treatment from my family, from friends, from lovers but because I get paid to spend my day there somehow I am expected to tolerate it from her. I hate that. I've heard it said that "It's only work, don't take it personal." But when people treat you like crap how is it you don't take it personal? Don't you become less of a person when that happens? Is it really too much to ask that people be decent, even at work, even under stress? If I were to talk like she does I would fired in a second. But then I think of the multitude of jobs I've had over the years and wonder at which point I will stay for longer than 6 months to a year at a company. Previously when I've left a job it's been because of how the company was run or how the distribution of funds was distributed (the problem with doing accounting is you often know more than you wish about the nitty gritty). That isn't the case where I'm at now. I like the way the company is run, I like my co-workers, I like the work, I don't even mind the amount of work. I just can't stand the bitch that my boss can be. In a matter of a few weeks I'll offically be able to transfer within the company to another position and that shouldn't be hard to do at all. Maybe that is the solution. We'll see. But now, now I'm off to work...on a Friday and I can't even where jeans on Friday anymore because I don't like the charity they've chosen for the year (if we donate a certain amount of money to the chosen charity we get a jeans day once a week for a year, which generally I applaud as a fabulous idea). Last year the charity was an alternative school that I happened to know changed the life of a once homeless teenager. The new charity is the Make a Wish Foundation which seems like a good idea but they fund kids last wishes that include offing animals in hunts, etc. and there is no way in hell I'm going to fund that. Grrr.