You know when you’re a yuppy geek when…
you’re spending a Thursday evening in the Apple store, picking up an iPod nano as a Christmas gift and you ask the guy behind the counter if the Jack Spade messenger bag will fit your 17” MacBook Pro and your 17” Dell laptop.

posted by paula 4:52 AM

The Definition of Love (in Alpine Rain)
Two weeks ago, I had to come to grips with the fact that it was time for a new car. The car I so dearly loved, the car that moved me from Wisconsin to Minneapolis, the car that saw me through numerous trips to Wisconsin, Wyoming and North Dakota, the car that I spent hours and 123,000 miles in was costing me more than a new car payment.

It took me two weeks to prepare to say goodbye before I could even walk on a dealer’s lot. I thought that I’d never be able to bid farewell to my trusty first love, until I fell in love with something else. Something in Alpine Rain.

posted by paula 4:55 PM

A quickening addiction
For the first time a banner ad on a Web site paid off. Recently I was surfing when I saw a banner ad for HBOVoyeur.com. If you go to this site, you’ll see the beginning of HBO’s newest hyper-media project, which satisfies everyone’s interest in watching others when they don’t know they’re being watched.

Save some time before you go the site. Some of the videos are several minutes long and watching them takes some concentration. Then, if you’re lucky enough to have HBO on Demand, you can check out videos there. If not, try reading the blog at TheStoryGetsDeeper.com and you’ll slowly figure out that this blitz is much bigger than the Internet or cable TV. It includes e-mails, live videos in New York City and phone numbers you can call to learn more about the people you watch on the Web sites. I’m not quite sure what the destination is of this whole thing, but I’m certainly intrigued by the ride.

posted by paula 2:00 PM

You know it’s time to go on a diet when…
Shortly after we returned from our fabulous Vegas vacation, I noticed some charges on my debit card that weren’t from me. The story is long, which I’ll save for another post, but the short story is: although my card never left my possession, the information from it was stolen. So I reported it as such.

Needless to say, I’ve been on the cautious side of credit card info security since then, and although I got my new debit card days ago, I haven’t activated it. Now I regularly check my balance online and review recent debits to the account with more frequency – say, every day instead of every week.

Think this is tiresome? Maybe. But after hearing horror stories of identity theft and US Bank making the resolution of the issue so easy, I’m still a little gun-shy, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Tonight I logged in and noticed six debits from the account, all of which were completed yesterday. My heart was in my stomach again, fearing the worst and I was on the phone to US Bank before Daniel Baldwin could find his next line of coke. The customer service agent at USB confirmed they were charges that took place before my card was cancelled, but were not processed before I cancelled it. She verified the vendors:

Agent: Krispy Kreme?
Me: Uh…yup. That’s mine.
Agent: Pannekoeken Huis?
Me: Yeah. Me, too.
Agent: Burger King?
Me: Mmhm.

She read through the remaining charges, all of which were just as incriminating as the first three. Fast food, take out and a happy hour at Maynards.

Is it wrong that I feel dirty?

posted by paula 10:32 PM

Thank you, HBO, for making boxing entertaining
“The sand ran out of his hour glass, Jim. But that was some hour glass, for a long time. I happen to collect glass art and hour glasses are not among them. But if there was one that had Gatti’s signature on it, I would want it.

You don’t make many like Gatti. If you could, other fighters would try to do what he did. But they couldn’t. He left us with some sand in that hour glass. That we’ll never forget.”
- Larry Merchant, HBO boxing commentator, on Gatti’s defeat by Alfonzo Gomez

posted by paula 10:26 PM

Hey Neighbor lady, that’s a 20-year old evergreen, not a bonsai
Ever since she moved in more than a year ago, we’ve realized the neighbor lady was not your typical neighbor. For starters, she’s terrified of the dogs. Two basset hounds.

Her first encounter with them was when Amos was no more than six months old. She noticed the two on the other side of the fence, grabbed the two children in the yard and ran as if wild wolves would bust through the fence and tear them limb from limb.

We haven’t seen much of her since then, aside from the grown son that lives with her and some scattered friends that occasionally appear in the yard. In fact, until last week, we thought she had grown ill; too ill to maintain her yard, as she hadn’t mowed the lawn in more than six weeks. Then one day this week, a neighbor boy appeared and mowed down the field.

Since then, she’s taken to daily naps in the yard, which take place on a large woven rug and may include the eating of seeds and spitting of shells, which continues for hours until the carpet looks like it’s been repeatedly splattered with tan paint. I suspect they’re sunflower seeds.

Today Ryan worked from home and said her nap went on from approximately 1:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. The entire time she slept completely under the blanket, causing me to think that my theory on her illness may not be so far off.

We left for dinner after that and returned around 8:30 p.m. to find that she not only rose from her slumber, but decided to do a little pruning of the shrubs, too. The three evergreens that are in prime view of our house, were hacked at, in a circular fashion from ground to almost six feet above the ground. And now we have this:



Arborists are crying everywhere.

posted by paula 9:20 PM

Happy New Year (four months late) and my post-Katrina voyage to NOLA
So it’s been a while since I blogged. Yep. That’s about all I can say about that, since looking back, I’m not quite sure what’s kept me away from the computer.

Shortly after returning from our Christmas in the Dominican, I launched a Web site at work, did some convention travel and we made a long-overdue visit to the finally-finished house of my parents in Wyoming. Then Ryan traveled for work, I hosted the party for our FCL league playoffs, Ryan traveled again, Ry’s parents made visits to shop for houses, I turned the big three-oh, traveled to New Orleans for work and suddenly, before I knew it, it was April Fool’s Day. By the way, it’s nearing the end of the day and I have yet to be fooled.

It seems like we’re deep in the throws of spring this week. We haven’t seen the sun since Wednesday and it’s been a constant rain ever since, which has deposited some puddles in our laundry room and basement. Thankfully, the rain subsided sometime today, though we’re not in the clear yet; rumor has it we’ll have snow by the end of the week.

I’ve been spending the day wondering why I go through such periods extremes with this blog – from frequent posting to long periods of neglect. Sometimes I feel like I’m that way with just about anything in my life – from personal relationships, to work and personal hobbies. I’m still debating whether this is a normal fact of anyone’s life or a severe character flaw.

posted by paula 9:18 PM

Lost in translation (otherwise known as “The Trouble with Asian Takeout” Part Two)
We recently spent our Christmas at an all-inclusive resort in the Dominican Republic. All six of us (Ryan’s mother, father, Lynsey, Roger, Ryan and me) crammed into a commuter plane with the most eclectic bunch of Minnesotans and Wisconsinites we’ve ever seen and headed to warmer climates to soak up the sun, rather than the rain. But more on those specific details later.

Although it’s been years since I’ used fluent Spanish, I still know enough to get by and make simple conversation. What we did notice, however, is that sometimes, Spanish speaking or not, some things just don’t translate from one language to another, no matter how hard you try. This may be in part because an item doesn’t literally translate or accents are so thick that people don’t pronounce things correctly. Whatever the case, it usually ends up in one of the conversationalists dropping the pursuit of the item and surrendering to a compromise.

Take for example, alcoholic drinks. Since it was my first travel to southern areas since my travel in Thailand, and seeing the numerous amounts of drinks the bar was ready to prepare for us, I thought I’d try foregoing the traditional margarita or daiquiri and see if the bartender could make me a Mai Thai.

"You want drink? Banana Royale? Tropical Princess? Mar-gar-ee-ta or Mud-sly? You want Mud sly?"

"Can you make a Mai Thai?"

"Yes, Mud-sly."

"No. Mai Thai."

(slower and more emphasis) "Mud-sly."

"Mai. Thai."

"MUD. SLY."

"I’ll take a strawberry daiquiri."



The good news is, I’m not the only one who’s been in this predicament.

posted by paula 11:42 AM

Amos the Awful
When we first brought Amos home, he was a godsend. He slept and slept and slept, as puppies usually do and the boy had a little adjustment to do to his crate. I’m sure I blogged about this at one point and I am swallowing my pride now.

A week or two later he developed kennel cough, which ravaged his little lungs and stirred up our household for a week or so. Since then, things were never the same. He is a demon puppy of sorts, by my standards. He’s the high-strung, high-energy, loudly-barking aggressor of the two bassets, who is obsessed with mouthing anything carrying our scent and has left crate training a very clear, distinct nightmare. We’ve consulted all spectrums of obedience, from organized puppy classes to the Dog Whisperer and those who think his techniques are barbaric (although in personal experience, his methods have certainly worked the best), however, at nearly three-weeks shy of his one-year birthday, he cries every night in his kennel.

There are any number of issues that need to be resolved, but pinpointing and correcting them is a task in and of itself. We exercise him, but probably not regularly enough due to the increasingly cold weather. Who knows if we’ve both accurately asserted ourselves as alpha dogs over him and although we try to retain a regular schedule in the evenings, it’s probably nothing rigid enough as Ryan can head to bed anytime within a four hour span.

As a result, I am woken up every two to three hours, when my brain can no longer shut out his painful cries. I blog about this at 3 a.m. because, this week especially, this is what my life has been like: I am lying awake thinking of ways to solve this problem, stopping short of sending the poor pup to a glue factory, while Ryan eventually rolls over and says something like, “Oh, has he been crying?” I can only hope for such fatherly deafness.

More often than not, I find myself thinking of my boss, who must be sitting up on the other side of the twin cities, cradling her own newborn and although I’m sure I’ll piss off a few parents in the process by saying this, I have to ponder why parents think that human parenting is such a glorious endeavor above this experience.

Although many parents would argue that dog parenting and human parenting are nothing alike, I’m starting to think otherwise. Yes, while I can write this while my little one sits in a box downstairs and those conditions would never be acceptable for humans, there are several parallels. Sleeplessness for one. Frustration is another. Irritation at spousal deafness is yet another. The knowing of when to follow the rules and when to show compassion and striving to maintain balance and regularity while keeping one’s prized personal possessions intact and free of drool.

Until Amos, I prided myself on dog parenting skills (having produced a six-year old who is the model of dog-civility and sweetness) and now, at 3 a.m. I am seriously questioning them. So why on earth would I try to practice these skills with an actual human baby? Sure, I’ve heard the reasons spew from parents’ mouths about how babies are different, children change your lives, they’re the best and worst things you’ll ever do and I simply can’t understand until I have one. I get that. Or maybe I don’t. But although I don’t love him any less, I do admit that I have occasional pangs of regret for bringing this little crap-storm into our household and it just seems terribly irresponsible for me to convince myself I might think differently about a human being. As my coworker said, "Who ever wants to grow up knowing they were the kid that was just too much for mom and dad?"

posted by paula 4:33 AM

A Little Death: the Photo iPod Disaster of 2006
Let me start by exclaiming how much I love my iPod. One might not immediately know this, but for someone who’s in the gym six days a week and recently made the transition from a loud, lively, music-filled workplace to one you could hear a pin drop in, my iPod is certainly responsible for the maintenance of my sanity at times.

And being a PC user, I’ll even admit that I love Apple. I love their clean, white wrapper, icon, and their witty little TV ads, and while you won’t find one sitting on my desk anytime soon, I’m certainly willing to admit that they have their advantages over PCs at times.

But I must caution other iPod owners: no matter how sturdily you think your iPod is made, it is not, under any circumstances, meant to be dropped on the floor. Nor is it designed to take such an impact twice within 24 hours. It is not meant to withstand the force of hitting the pavement, while dropped from one’s gym bag sliding out of the back of an SUV, even if it is cuddled in an iPod sock. Nor is it designed to ward off the weight of one’s laptop dropped from a bench, even if the laptop is in its bag, surrounded by the squishy contents of the day’s snacks, magazines, a sweater and other assorted items.

Yes, these types of jolts – especially two in one day – will definitely render even the heartiest iPod useless, despite the valiant efforts of your husband, iTunes and the uber-hip associate at the Apple Store.

Such a disaster will require you to recycle your iPod – while receiving the 10 percent discount, of course – to purchase a newer, blacker, shinier, video iPod, with 80 GB of memory. You may shed a small tear during the transaction, but the kind associates at the Apple Store will assure you that "this sort of thing" is quite normal – most of them have one, if not three stories of friends or family members who have done the same. After which, you will return home, to spend your Saturday evening reloading the photos, charging the iPod, happy with your new acquisition, but lamenting your stupidity.

How I loved thee, my Photo iPod. RIP.

posted by paula 10:09 PM