How Jen Ran Screaming from Her Birthday Vacation

This year for my birthday, I decided to rent a cabin in the Blue Mountains. (Actually, the plan was to rent this cabin for Memorial Day weekend, but there was still so much snow I couldn't get up there, so I moved the reservation.)

We did the six and a half hour drive and got to the cabin around 1 pm on Sunday, the 21st. It's a nice little cabin, around 600 square feet, with a bedroom, kitchen, and living room. There's an outhouse, no bathroom. There's a propane stove, heater, fridge, and lights, but no electricity. It sits at about 6,200 feet on a knoll overlooking Oregon and Idaho. The view is awesome.

The first day went as expected. It was hot, the sky was clear, I sat around eating Otter Pops and reading a book. Sometimes I sat outside, sometimes inside. Duncan peed on a lot of things. I grilled a steak and corn on the cob for dinner. Duncan ate bees. Someone left a box of hamburger patties in the freezer, so I cooked one of those up for Duncan. Some people came up to look for a geocache that sits on top of the flagpole. We watched a small herd of cattle pass through a field below us.

When it started to get dark, I closed up all of the curtains and flopped down on the couch with my book, then eventually went to sleep.

Here's a quick sketch of the layout of the cabin.

At about 3:30 a.m., I was woken up by a truck pulling into the driveway. Duncan started barking, so I focused on shutting him up. I figured they were there to use the outhouse, since I couldn't think of any other reason for them to be there. They came up the driveway from the west, passed my car, circled the flagpole, and stopped in front of the shed. I didn't look out the window at that point because I was trying to keep Duncan quiet. I heard a truck door close. Didn't hear anything for a minute, then I heard another truck door close. I figured they'd leave, but they didn't.

I heard voices, then another door close. More voices, some clanking. Duncan had gone back to sleep. I sat for a while, listening. More voices, more clanking. I'm not sure how long this went on, maybe fifteen minutes.

I went into the kitchen to look out the window. It was two guys in a pickup truck. They looked like hunters. They had the hood of the truck up, and they had flashlights. One of them was messing with the engine, the other was just standing there. I went back into the living room, figuring they'd get it worked out eventually. After a few minutes, I looked at the south wall of the cabin and saw that someone was behind the cabin, shining a flashlight through the shutter of the back door.

I was sitting in the living room, completely visible to anyone who might choose to look through the east door or any of the north or east windows. I walked into the kitchen and stood next to the door that someone was trying to shine the flashlight through. I couldn't hear anything but one creak, someone shifting their weight on the back deck. They were being sneaky. They knew I was there, they saw the car.

I could see the truck from that angle, where the other guy was under the truck. I thought maybe the guy not working in the truck was just curious about the cabin. The geocachers had asked me what the place was, maybe this guy was curious, too.

After a few seconds, the light disappeared and the guy walked back to the truck. I continued watching them from as far away from the window as I could get so that they couldn't see me.

I was really uncomfortable with the idea of these guys knowing that the only person in the cabin was me. The cabin would be very easy to break into. One kick to the door, a quick pry bar to a window, and you're in. Maybe they did know I was there alone, maybe the guy with the flashlight looked in the front windows while I was in the living room and I didn't notice. I really don't know. But once I saw him trying to see through the shutter over the back door, I was determined not to be seen.

Henceforth, we shall call Guy Working on Truck "Guy #1" and the other guy "Guy #2."

Guy #2 went back to the truck, stood around. Guy #1 did stuff in the engine, did stuff under the engine, did stuff in the cab. Guy #2 started shining his flashlight around - at the trees, at the cabin, at the kitchen window. I ducked every time the beam swung my way. Then he did something really interesting. He put the flashlight down and walked west, down the driveway.

Have you ever noticed that if someone has a flashlight, you can't see anything outside of the beam because the light distracts your eyes so much that it seems darker than it is? I managed to see him go west without the flashlight because he had a light colored coat. But once he was a few feet away, he disappeared. Then he reappeared, flashlightless, a few feet from the kitchen window.

There's a difference to me between curiously examining a cabin with a flashlight in hand and leaving your flashlight 50 feet away while examining a cabin. Having the flashlight kind of says, "hey, here I am, looking at stuff, no big deal." Coming up to a cabin to look in windows with no flashlight kind of screams, "hey, I'm doing something I shouldn't be doing and I don't want to be noticed doing it. Please keep your eyes on the two lights over there which suggest that there are still two people over there."

So when he suddenly showed up by the window, I ducked so that he couldn't see me. The window is higher than 6 feet off the ground, so you can't just look in. However, you can reach the window to see if it is unlocked, which he did. Then he started around the cabin, checking each of the windows and doors to see if they were unlocked. After he checked the kitchen door, I went into the bedroom, which had the shutters closed and locked from the inside, so he couldn't see me in there. I saw him go to each of the windows all the way around, including a tug on the east screen door of the living room. The door was closed and locked, but the door has windows, so you can see right in. Then he went back to the truck.

At that point, I figured I was kind of screwed if they decided to actually break in. I had no weapons to speak of, just a kitchen knife. I decided to just sit on the couch and wait to see what happened. I figured they were just there to use the outhouse and got curious, especially since Guy #1 was working on the truck this whole time, but it still seemed very suspicious to me.

Another half hour or so later, they started rolling the truck down the driveway, and it started at the bottom of the driveway. I walked over to the east window and saw them driving down the road. I could see both guys in the truck. I waited until I couldn't see them anymore, then tried to go back to sleep. It took a while, because I was afraid they were going to come back. It was just after 4:30 a.m. when they left, and probably almost 5:30 before I went back to sleep.

I spent all day wondering if they were going to come back that night. I read my book, ate breakfast, cleaned stuff, packed things I wouldn't need for the rest of the trip. Duncan ate bees and barked every time a truck went by. I found a flag buried in a box of stuff on the table, so I took it out and ran it up the flagpole. In the early afternoon, a truck going west stopped just out of sight of the cabin and then couldn't start again for about 15 minutes. I could hear them trying to turn the engine over. I don't know if it was the same people. Later in the afternoon, we saw a cowboy with a border collie herding about 20 head of cattle down the road, moving east.

Around 4:30, I went out to take the flag down, folded it correctly, put it in a giant Zip-Loc bag to protect it and put it on a shelf instead of burying it a dusty box of crap. That's when I realized that I was essentially packed to leave. I had it in my mind all day that these guys might come back, and had cleaned up the cabin and gotten ready to leave. It occurred to me that all I was going to do was go to sleep and then get up and leave in the morning, so I wouldn't be missing anything if I just left instead. Around 5:30, I started packing up the car and by 6:30 I was on the road home. Potential crisis avoided.

Maybe I was just being paranoid, but that was some seriously creepy shit. You have to admit that.

The Scarlet Letter Treatment

My bosses have a fantastic new way to motivate the team: public humiliation.

We have a 5-day close, meaning that we need to be ready to file financial statements five working days after the end of the month. Each of us has a task list with due dates. These tasks are all posted on our SharePoint site. Every day until we close, the list of incomplete tasks is mailed out to the entire team and anyone with an overdue task is called out publicly.

Our bonuses are dependent upon making our deadlines. We already have incentive to stay on track.

Fun fact! I had one task overdue on day 2. The task is described in the list as "Receive, review, and post cash journal entries from EMEA." I did not receive the journal entries by the end of the day yesterday, the due date. I received them at 4:16 this morning. They were reviewed and posted by 8:00, but they were still technically late, and somehow this is MY fault.

Let me rephrase this in case you missed anything pertinent. The Controller of Europe, the Middle East and Asia did not send me his six journal entries from his office in London. And I got bitched out for it.

"Golly gee, Jen, it's only day 2 and you're already behind? What can we do to help you get your job done on time?"

Um... what?

First of all, why is it not on their task list to send me the journal entries on time? Wouldn't that be the proactive way to put it?

Second, how is the behavior of the EMEA controller my responsibility? I have no authority over anything at all, so how am I supposed to tell someone 8 time zones away to get off his ass and send me his cash entries?

Third, and I think most importantly, I closed more than a dozen of my tasks early and the rest of them on time, but nobody sees that, they only see that I was late waiting for EMEA to send me work, which was done 20 minutes after I booted up my computer.

The only thing that this tactic will accomplish is that it will give more ammunition to people who want to have issues with other "team" members.

My home town

1. Santa Clara, California
2. Key West, Florida
3. Summerville, South Carolina
4. Great Lakes, Illinois
5. Groton, Connecticut
6. New London, Connecticut
7. Back to Groton, Connecticut
8. Yorktown, Virginia
9. Back to Groton, Connecticut
10. Back to Yorktown, Virgina
11. Crestview, Florida
12. Back to Groton, Connecticut
13. Poulsbo, Washington
14. Bremerton, Washington
15. Silverdale, Washington
16. Bremerton, Washington again
17. Port Orchard, Washington
18. Vashon Island, Washington
19. West Seattle, Washington
20. Back to Vashon Island, Washington
21. Back to West Seattle, Washington
22. Queen Anne Hill in Seattle, Washington
23. Renton, Washington
24. Maple Valley, Washington

Accounting and office politics.

Two people that I used to work with gave me the same warning when they left the company. Both told me that if a particular coworker gave me a journal entry to upload, not to do it. This coworker tries to hand off journal entries to other people if she isn't absolutely certain that they're correct. That way, if the entry is questioned, she's out of the loop.

So this very coworker has done exactly that twice this month. In both cases, I couldn't understand what exactly she was trying to do. Basically, she knew that a particular account balance was wrong and what it should be, but she didn't know why it was incorrect or how to fix it. She asked me both times to correct her account and post the offset to one of my accounts. That way, my account would be wrong and hers would be correct.

The first time, I took the entry to the controller and he asked what it was. I immediately pointed to the coworker and dragged her in to explain it. She couldn't do it, so the entry was changed to only what I needed to post to my accounts. 

The second time, I asked the assistant controller why this was being sent to me to post. My coworker can post her own entries, so there's no reason for me to post them for her. I pointed out that I couldn't see where she was getting the number that she was getting and I didn't know where the offset was. (That was a lie. I know exactly what the offset is. That's beside the point. I wanted this little drama to play out to see what she would say.) I told the assistant controller that I didn't want to be responsible for an entry that I didn't understand. He agreed and told me to ask the coworker for more information and if I still couldn't understand it to talk to him. I sent her email back to her, asking her what the entry was supposed to be and where she was getting her number. I even suggested the correct offset account. Several hours later, she replied that she didn't know the offset and suggested an account that was completely incorrect and would have thrown off my OCI account, which is a high profile account in audits.(The correct offset is actually an intercompany P&L account that gets eliminated in consolidation, and is NEVER looked at by the auditors.) 

What this says to me is that my coworker has twice tried to dump work on me that would have corrected her accounts and thrown mine off. I think she knows that. I'm wondering if she knows I know what she's up to. 

This could get unpleasant. Well, you know. More unpleasant.

Visiting another world

Friday was good.

The weather was perfect. Traffic was mostly light. Duncan and I started out early and headed east on I-90. There's still an amazing amount of snow up at Snoqualmie Pass. I pulled over at a gas station for a moment just to see how deep it was, and I think it was over 15 feet.

We headed from there down to Vantage. I didn't really have a reason to pull over in Vantage other than to let Duncan have a break and to find a restroom for myself. I pulled over right by the Vantage bridge where there's a boat launch so that he could oogle the geese and have a quick wade in the water, since it was already quite warm. From there we went up to the interpretive center for the petrified forest where to my surprise I found out that they have petroglyphs that were moved from another Columbia River site to keep them safe. I took pictures of those and some of the petrified tree stumps before we headed off to "Grandfather Cuts Loose the Ponies." I stop there every time I am in the neighborhood (get it? NEIGH-borhood?) and climb up the hill and wander amongst the ponies. Every one of them is different, and you can't see that from the parking area. The view from the top is fantastic.

From there we headed to The Feathers, a popular rock climbing area. I was just there to take pictures of the purty rocks. I know next to nothing about geology, but I do like columnar basalt and other distinctive rock formations. The colors were fantastic, the way they break and erode is really interesting, and watching people climb these things like monkeys was really interesting. But I can hang around in a rock climbing area for only so long before I decide that it is time to see something else.

It was still early when we left The Feathers, so I headed east again with the intention of just following signs until I saw something interesting. There was a sign for Grand Cooley Dam, so that's where I headed. It was a pretty nice drive, though at first it was just flat and straight, though farmland with nothing to look at. Once we got past Ephrata the scenery changed into something more resembling the Southwest than what I think of as Washington.

On the way to Grand Cooley Dam we passed a couple of places that I'm going to spend more time in later this year. One was Sun Lakes and Dry Falls. Dry Falls was originally a waterfall. Looking at the cliffs and to Sun Lakes below, it is really hard to imagine that there could ever have been enough water in the area for it to be a waterfall, but at the end of the last ice age, it was. I'm going to read up about it before I go for real. I think I'll camp there for a weekend. Nearby was the Lenore Lake Caves. I have no idea what's in the caves or how deep they are, but from the bottom they looked interesting. I didn't go up because another carload of people arrived at the same time. They were kinda freaking me out and I didn't feel safe, so off I went.

From there the drive up to the dam was really nice. The scenery is interesting and constantly changing. There's a town called Electric City. From there, there's no phone service, I can tell you that much. The dam was pretty much a dam, so we used that as a turnaround point.

The drive home was fine, until we hit the traffic. Holy crap, the traffic. I-90 is having some work done, so they have one lane shut down for maybe a mile. It took me about 3.5 hours to get through from Cle Elum to just below Snoqualmie Pass. It was miserable. We were sitting for up to 15 minutes at a time. People were getting out of their cars, walking their dogs, hanging out in the last of the sun.

I got off the freeway at the Roslyn exit, drove in to town, got gas, let Duncan pee on a few trees, found a restroom for myself and then headed back out to the highway. That took about half an hour. By the time I got back to the freeway, the people that I had been near when I left the freeway were the same people I merged into at the end of the offramp. Gah! It was disheartening, to say the least.

So aside from the 5 hour portion of the drive that should have taken two hours, it was a very nice, relaxing, enjoyable day that gave me a few ideas for things I'd like to do this summer.

Pictures are here.

Greener grass does not mean better pastures.

I was thinking earlier today about stupid old sayings. "The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence" went through my head, followed immediately by, "The grass is always greener here because this is where all the damn rain is."

It is the second half of April. That means it is cold and raining and windy most of the time. That isn't really any different than it has been for the last 6 months, but after 6 months it wears me out. I'm dying to get out of Western Washington. This happens to me every year. I had a trip to Texas for work one year. Another year I bailed out to Death Valley for a weekend just to get away from the moss and the ferns and the damp and the grey. I drove to Smith Rock State Park in Oregon one day in May a few years ago, which I hope to do again soon. I can't really afford to do any serious travel, so I have to keep it local.

Luckily, Western Washington has this interesting thing called Eastern Washington next to it. Let's compare and contrast, shall we?
Western Washington: usually cold and wet. Ferns, moss, evergreen trees. Slugs. Hilly. Metropolitan.
Eastern Washington: hot in summer, almost always dry. Sagebrush, tumbleweeds, prickly pears. Rattlesnakes. Flat. Agricultural.

On Friday, I'm packing up the mutt and we're heading out to a place called Frenchman Coulee. It's a very popular rock climbing area near the Columbia River. I'm not a rock climber, but the rocks are really pretty, so I'm going to wander and take pictures for a while. It will be a nice break from the greener side of the mountains. I'll pass from rain on this side to snow at the passes and down to high desert when I get off the eastern slope. That progression will be enough to make me feel better. The weather will be great, but more to the point, it will be better than over here.

And it is a great way to spend a day that everyone else will be in the office.

This is shaping up to be a really crappy year.

At the end of every year, I get a little spark of hope that the next year will be better. I never learn.

Work is generally the same. I've taken on more work again, without extra pay or respect from the "team." I have more work and responsibility than ever, along with shorter deadlines that I struggle to make. My new bosses are better than the one they replaced, but I'm still thinking of hunting for something new. I'm still hoping my last good boss who quit will call me with an opening in her company. If she makes me an offer, I'll probably take it. I'm tired of not being paid what my predecessor was paid. I'm tired of the snottiness from the people in my group. I'm tired of never having free time during the work week. I'm tired of bringing work home with me. I'm tired.

Duncan has decided that he doesn't want to sleep in the house with me anymore. Instead, he sleeps in the garage by himself in the cold. I'm taking it personally. I probably shouldn't. He probably just likes the cold. He comes in later in the night and sleeps in his dog bed in my room. But it still feels like a personal slight, and it reminds me of my ex-husband's asshole behavior.

Bagheera is almost 19. I doubt she'll make it through the year.

Chloe is a nice little cat, but she likes Duncan more than she likes me.

That crushing sensation is back. Most of the time I can just ignore it and plow through my day. Sometimes I can't. I'm guessing I'm going to have to give in and go back on the antidepressants.

My left knee has been acting up. I'm in physical therapy for it, but I don't know if I'll get to hike this year. Hiking is pretty much all I have that makes me feel like anything is worth anything. I wait all year to get out to do the hikes I want to do. If I can't go hiking this year, I can't imagine how bad things will get for me by this time next year. I'll probably just do what I've always done: put my head down, focus, and go. It wouldn't be the first time.

I do have a few things to look forward to. I'm taking a week off in May. I want to get some work done in my yard. The fence needs some maintenance. I want to strip the popcorn off of my bedroom ceiling and redo the molding. I need to clean up the grout in the kitchen. These are all things I just don't have time to do on a standard weekend, and I definitely can't do it during the week. It'll be a decent, productive way to kill a week of my vacation time. Then I have a cabin rented in the mountains for Memorial Day weekend, but with the looming government shutdown, that may be cancelled. I've got a week off in July and another in August for hiking, but if the knee is still in fail mode, that's not going to happen. I've got another weekend booked in July at another cabin near a hike I've wanted to do for years. I'm hoping all of these things go reasonably well, because other than those things, I really don't have anything to look forward to for the rest of the year.

Getting out of bed every day knowing that work is going to suck the life out of me doesn't help me. Fearing that my vacation time may not pan out helps me even less.

So I'll keep working on my knee. I'll gather what I need to do the yard work. I'll get together everything I need for my trip to the cabin. I'll get a new pair of hiking boots. I'll organize my hiking gear before my hiking season starts. If all goes well, great, I'm ready for it. If it all falls through, I'll find a way to get by.

Head down, focus, and go.

Hey, pot. I'm the kettle.

I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business, when I overhead the tax director of my company complaining to the controller about his kids’ attitudes. He was saying that he watches family TV his 12-year-old girl and 9-year-old boy each night, and has noticed that they have nothing good to say about anyone. And that it makes him “kinda sad.” He went on to say that we have the same problem in this office. I snorted coffee up into my sinuses when I heard that.


Why do people have so little to say about others in this office that isn’t negative? Let me break it down for you.

There are eight executives, all men. There are five women. Of those, six of the executives (the “highest” of them) never say a negative thing about anyone in this office that I’ve ever overheard. Of the rest of them, two of the men and four of the women are all bitchy gossips who take great joy in saying nasty things about everyone that isn’t part of their little clique. Do the math. Where do I stand? I’m not one of the Big Six and I’m not part of the clique. I am, however, often the target of the clique.

I’ve learned many things about myself from the all-knowing clique. For example, I’m a lesbian. That was a big shock to me. I am simultaneously a lesbian and have several boyfriends, which was also quite a shock to learn. I am also too fat or too skinny, depending on what purpose it serves. I dress badly. I have bad skin and bad hair. I walk too loudly. I have weird fingernails. I eat bizarre food. I drink too much coffee (at a whopping one cup a day that they know of). I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m too tall. I have a funny accent. (I have an accent?) I don’t often take lunch breaks, which apparently makes them look bad. I wear colors that don’t go with my skin tone. I don’t spend enough money on shoes.

One of the more telling things is that all of the women have complained that I’m single. The married ones complain about the responsibilities and stresses that they deal with that I get to avoid. The single ones are apparently angry that I’m single and not attempting to “remedy” that. After all, they feel that their life isn’t complete because they aren’t married. So why am I not trying as hard as they are to get married? Could it be that (gasp!) their goal is one that I don’t feel is worth reaching for? Is it that (gasp again!) I am not validating their issues for them by claiming solidarity?

So yeah, I have nothing nice to say about my coworkers because they treat me like garbage. I like my bosses. In fact, they are the reason I’m not job hunting. My “team” is certainly not what will keep me here.

My coworkers are very fortunate that I am not even more unbalanced than I am already.

I’m baffled.

I have a job. I’ve been in my current company for four years. I’ve been in multiple types of accounting jobs since 1996. I have a degree. I get stellar performance reviews.

And yet…

My coworkers treat me like I’m an idiot. They’re constantly telling me things I need to do – which I have typically already done. They’re constantly telling me (and my boss) that I’ve made mistakes – which someone else made or that I made because the person tattling on me gave me bad information. They tell lies about me behind my back that they don’t realize get back to me. They “explain” things to me that I actually explained to them first. They insult me to my face, or whisper loudly to one another so that I can hear what they say about me.

And yet…

When they have a problem with one of the programs we use, especially Excel, they ask me how to fix it. When an unidentified payment comes in, they ask me what it is. When they don’t know how to send a payment out, they ask me. When they need foreign exchange rates, they ask me. When their computer does something wonky, they ask me how to fix it before calling IT. When they need coding on a transaction, they ask me. When they can’t figure out how to reconcile an account, they ask me.

And yet…

They congratulated me when I took over my former boss’s job two years ago, but they complained to the controller that I didn’t deserve it. When I was moved into a window office, they went en masse into the boss to try to get me removed. They don’t finish tasks that I need to complete my work on time, but they complain when I can’t make my deadlines. They won’t give me information I need, but I drop everything when they have a question. They don’t ask me to go to lunch or coffee or to get bagels, but complain to my boss that I won’t socialize with them. They whine that I don’t contribute, but ignore me when I do.

Would someone like to explain this to me? Because I am clearly not understanding something.

Ongoing crap

About 2 years ago, my boss quit his job and moved to a new company. Before leaving, my boss specified that I should be the one to take his job, that nobody else would understand it. I was given most of his work, all of the international accounting. People in the department complained that I got his work in spite of the fact that they didn't want it and didn't know how to do it.

It was a huge amount of work that I'd never done and for which I received no training. It was all related to intercompany transfers and foreign exchange. If this work was not done correctly and on time, my company could not file their financial statements correctly and on time. I learned on the job. I did it right and I did it on time in spite of the lack of training and the fact that I was still doing my old job at the same time.

I got no raise and no promotion for doing this, which was by all accounts a monumental feat. People expected me to fail. I disappointed them.

They said that they were going to hire a new person who would be taking some of my work off my hands to get my workload down to that of one person. That never happened.

A few months after I took on my boss's job, we hired a new person. He took one account reconciliation off my hands, but that was it. The rest of what he took on was offloading work from a woman who was going to be taking maternity leave. She went on leave and came back, but she never took back any of the work that was offloaded from her.

At the end of last year, my new boss left the company. She arranged for me to move into her old window office. Everyone had a fit. They went en masse to the tax director to complain, and he went to the controller on behalf of everyone else to say that I shouldn't be allowed to have the office. The controller told them to get over it and that it was the right thing to do. You see, none of them wanted the office, but they didn't want me to have it, either. See a pattern here?

I've "fixed" most of the processes I handle and pared down the work from a two-person job to a one-person job, automating a huge number of things that used to be manual. I rarely make mistakes, and the rework that I end up doing is usually because I'm fixing someone else's errors.

It is now two years later and I still haven't gotten a raise or a promotion. I didn't get a raise the year I took on the job, and last year they "didn't give raises" - except that I know they did give them to some people. They seem to forget that I have access to that information. In spite of a stellar performance review, I got nothing.

Now, the guy that they hired to take some of my work (and who never did, through no fault of his own) has been promoted to an analyst position (which they never mentioned to me). I'll be taking work on from him, probably including what I offloaded to him a year and a half ago. They aren't hiring a replacement for him.

I was told that this could work out to my benefit, but what I see happening is exactly what happened two years ago - a ton of work will get dumped on me and I won't be compensated for it, and my co-workers will still hate me and treat me like garbage no matter what I do.

I'm a little tired of this crap.

Lake Susan Jane, Josephine Lake, Chain Lakes hike - August 23-26, 2010

Day 1 - Trail from Stevens Pass parking lot to Josephine Lake, about 4.5 miles.

Gain about 750 feet in 1.5 miles to the Cascade Crest on a steady grade. You can see the Bulls Tooth from this vantage point.

Decend about 400 feet with views of the valley and power lines, then regain about 300 feet to Lake Susan Jane at about 3.5 miles.

Lake Susan Jane is a small C-shaped lake that sits in a cirque of talus falling from the surrounding peaks. I noticed at least two decent campsites, one of which was out on a little peninsula in the lake. The trail gets a little steeper after Lake Susan Jane as it approaches the junction with the Icicle Creek trail. There's a reedy pond with a small campsite just after the switchbacks up from Lake Susan Jane.

When you reach the Icicle Creek junction, hang a left. There are a few small ponds surrounding the north end of the lake, and there's a great viewpoint looking down a sheer cliff to Josephine Lake. There were no campsites that I noticed, but I wasn't looking for one there. The trail gains a little altitude before falling to the far lake shore at the south end of the lake. There are two campsites on the south shore before reaching the outlet. If you follow the trail to the toilet, go straight up instead of turning left to the toilet. There's a large site that could easily accomodate two tents. Further down, directly up from the day-use area of the lake is a second smaller campsite that has only one level area for a tent. After crossing the outlet (the source of Icicle Creek) you can find at least three campsites along the southwest shore of the lake, at about 4.5 miles.

Josephine Lake is a very pretty, nearly round lake surrounded by very steep shores. There weren't many people there when I was there, but it was mid-week in late August, which generally has very unpredictable and unpleasant weather. It was in the mid-70s in the daytime and upper 40s at night while I was there, so I was very lucky.

I took the first campsite that I found, the one behind the toilet. Unfortunately, someone before me didn't have much respect for the site. There was a large amount of garbage piled in an illegal fire ring - campfires are not allowed within 1/2 mile of the lake. I camped there anyway because I liked the location, I liked the log with two seats carved into it, and I liked the breeze passing through the site that kept the bugs down. There were some raccoons sifting though the garbage in the fire ring while I was trying to sleep, but otherwise it was a quiet night.

Day 2 - Josephine Lake to Chain Lakes

I left Josephine Lake fairly early. I reached the junction with Whitepine Creek junction very shortly, about .4 miles down from Josephine. Two more miles of easy downhill hiking and I reached the junction with the Chain Lakes trail. There are two campsites near the Icicle Creek/Whitepine Creek junction and one about 100 yards north of the Icicle Creek/Chain Lakes junction, so I could have camped at any one of these if the sites at Josephine Lake had all been occupied.

The trail from Icicle Creek to Chain Lakes starts out very steep, gaining 1,000 feet in 1 mile. Luckily, the tread is good. It isn't rocky or muddy, just a bit of loose dirt and duff. At about the 4,800 foot contour, the trail levels off for a while. You gain another 800 feet in about 1.5 miles, but most of the gain is at the end, so you get a bit of a break. You enter the lake basin after about 11 miles from the car, about 5,600 feet.

As I entered the lake basin, I saw the first of the Chain Lakes. Then I saw the Bulls Tooth. Then a Red-Tailed Hawk flew past me, then I saw a fish jump. It was a nice beginning. I walked along the shore of the first lake, looking for a campsite, but I saw none. The first site I saw was occupied, but I never saw anyone in it - just their tent. I took the second site I saw, about half-way down the second lake, just below the face of the Bulls Tooth.

After I set up camp, I took all of my water bottles and my water filter, and Duncan and I went exploring. We went a little way up the trail to Doelle Lakes and then came back and went down to the third lake. Then we went back to the second lake to filter enough water for the evening and the trip back on the next day. We had dinner and retired for the night.

Day 3 - Chain Lakes to Josephine Lake

The intent upon waking was to hike all the way out to the car, but my left knee decided it didn't want to play anymore after the steep hike down from Chain Lakes, so I stopped at Josephine Lake for another night. I wanted the same site that I'd had two nights before, but someone had taken a huge shit in the middle of the site and left several wads of toilet paper behind, so I took the site down from it, near the outlet.

There were only four other people at the lake, a group of fishermen camped in one of the sites on the southwest shore. I ate lunch and played with Duncan for a while. The fishermen left at about 4:00 pm, so I had the lake to myself. I decided to finally explore the rest of the lakeshore, since I wouldn't be disturbing anyone. Duncan wanted to take his tennis ball, but I made him put it down before we left. When we got to the fishermen's camp, I found their illegal campfire still burning. I put it out with several bottles of water from the lake, dismantled the fire ring, and threw fresh dirt over the burned area to hide it, and so that it wouldn't be so easy for the next people to build a fire.

After looking around that shore, I headed back to the site above mine and cleaned it up. I used Duncan's poop bags to clean up some douchebag's pile of shit and toilet paper. Then I removed that fire ring and tried to make it look like there'd never been a campfire there. I bagged up all of the garbage, but I couldn't pack it out - I didn't have room in my pack - so I hung it like a bear bag near the toilet in hopes that a ranger would see it and remove it.

When we got back to camp, Duncan couldn't find his tennis ball. We looked everywhere but couldn't come up with it.

I spent the night at Josephine Lake totally alone. It was fantastic.

Day 4 - Josephine Lake to Stevens Pass

There were a few clouds when I woke up, but it was essentially nice weather. While I was packing, Duncan suddenly lifted his head. He looked around, then bolted off into the underbrush. I thought he was going after a chipmunk. A few seconds later, he came back with his tennis ball. He apparently finally remembered where he left it. He's a very smart boy.

We did the 4.5 mile hike out in about 3 hours.

Half an hour down from Stevens Pass, it started to rain.

Pictures of this hike can be seen here.

Camping

I left home Sunday morning and headed for the Salmon La Sac campground north of Roslyn. Its a very nice campground. My site was near the Cooper River. It was big and had lots of trees. I set up my tent and proceeded to do nothing but read a book and eat and occasionally take Duncan down to the river for two days. I fell asleep in my hammock. I had smores. It was camping. Most of the other campers left on Sunday afternoon so it was nice and quiet, especially after the people with the whiny naked argumentative kids left.

This morning, I got up and packed up my campsite and drove up to the Deep Lake trailhead. We got about two miles up the trail and I vomited off the side of the trail. No idea why. So since vomiting while hiking is contraindicated, I came home without finishing the hike. I couldn't even stop and drink some water and see if I felt better because of the hideous bugs on the trail. I was getting eaten alive even though I kept moving. It was pretty miserable.

That now makes three times in a row that I've felt sick while hiking. On the Navajo Pass trail, I laid on my backpack next to the trail for about three hours waiting for my stomach to settle down and trying to decide if I should leave. I woke up nauseated at Hyas Lake and bagged out on continuing up to Marmot Lake. And now I'm puking in creeks that run down to the Cle Elum River. People drink that water. I hope they filter it first.

The So-Called Vacation So Far

I was supposed to be gone right now, but as usual things didn't work out as planned.

I left work Friday and went hiking. I found a nice campsite by Hyas Lake. So far, so good. Duncan ran like a crazy dog in the shallow water, barking at a rock that was sticking up out of the water. (It may have been an alligator. He just wanted to be sure.) We went to bed. Duncan kept seeing or hearing or imagining monsters in the woods, leaping up and growling at the trees while pushing me away from the tent flap (to protect me?). I went to sleep eventually. I woke up sweating in a 49 degree tent. Not good. I don't sweat noticably unless I'm exerting myself or it is over 80 degrees. I was nauseated and had a terrible headache.

On Friday I had a brief chat with the couple staying at the Fish Lake campground guard shack. They said that the trail to Marmot Lake was partially gone because of an avalanche. The idea of crossing avalanche debris with a crazy dog on a leash and a 45 pound pack on a very steep slope with no room for error while feeling less than reasonable didn't appeal to me at all, so I made an executive decision and decided to go home.

I still feel a little queasy, but otherwise I seem fine. I'm heading back to the area today. I have a campsite booked. I'm going to camp at the campground tonight and have a campfire and smores and Buffalo Trail Bourbon read a book in a hammock or listen to my iPod or play a Zelda game on my DS. Duncan's going to play in the river and roll in the dirt and eat a rawhide bone and threaten the squirrels. We're going to find a geocache or two. I'm going to continue feeding the bugs with the remainder of my blood. I'll probably renew my sunburn. It'll be like heaven, except for the itching.

Tomorrow we're doing the Deep Lake hike, which is a 14.5 mile hike. I've done it before, but somehow I thought it was only about 10 miles. I was in better shape back then, I think. Depending on how I feel when we get to the lake, we may continue on up to Lake Vicente. I have all day, so I'm not terribly worried about time. After the hike, we're staying at the campground again, so I don't have to worry about driving home after doing that to myself. Another campfire, more smores, more Bourbon, maybe some Cheezy Poofs. Like heaven again, but with even more itching and possibly even more scratched-open bug bites.

When I go backpacking, I take as little as I think I can get away with. For car camping, my only limit is car space. I'm taking TWO chairs, as if I need two chairs! Actually, one of them is a chaise that I can sleep on. Camping without sleeping on the ground! Who knew it could be done! I have a giant tarp to put down as a floor to keep from tracking dirt into the tent. I'm taking a bed for Duncan. I've got my hammock, just in case. A pillow, for gods' sake! I get a pillow! I've got a case of water, a full bottle of Bourbon, two bundles of firewood, and a couple of changes of clothes. Extra food, snacks, a book. I wouldn't have taken any of this on a backpacking trip. I may do this more often - car camping with day hikes more and backpacking less.

My trunk is packed solid and I still might be forgetting something.

252 Days Later

On October 26th, 2009, I got my two right-hand wisdom teeth removed.

My first wisdom tooth extraction was back in the olden days. I was still living in Port Orchard, which puts it sometime between 1992 and 1996. I was getting a crown on the tooth right in front of my top left wisdom tooth. It was a fully erupted wisdom tooth. They yanked it while I was numbed up from the crown work. No big deal. Didn’t feel a thing. However, I reacted as though they were trying to kill me. In the few seconds that they were pulling on it, I apparently tried to escape up over the back of the chair. I swear, I heard it pulling out. There was popping and squealing. It did not make me happy. It didn’t need stitches, I didn’t need painkillers, and it didn’t have any complications. Still, it freaked me out a little. The idea of having a tooth casually pulled with your consent is a little disturbing.

The second extraction went nowhere near as smoothly. The lower left wisdom tooth was impacted; the root was fused to the bone and curved backward. They gave me tranquilizers to take before the extraction. They told me that on that dose, most men just sleep though it. No such luck for me. I metabolize medications pretty quickly, and the tranquilizer wore off before they even started. It took them an hour to get the tooth out. There was crunching and drilling and pulling. I had tears running down into my ears. The doctor’s hands hurt by the time it was over. I had to throw away the shirt I wore because I couldn’t get the blood stains out of the neckline. Two days later I was fine, but I decided that I was never going to be conscious for another wisdom tooth removal.

I put off the final two wisdom teeth extractions for nearly 5 years. I was a bit traumatized.

Did you know that if you have impacted wisdom teeth, sinus pressure can make your gums bleed? Yes indeed.

Did you know that if you have one cusp of a wisdom tooth showing through your gums, you can get infections down in there? Yes indeed again.

So in October, I started having problems with my head. New problems. You know, because I didn’t already have enough problems in my head. I had a horrible pain in the back of my jaw. The top right wisdom tooth was so far impacted I couldn’t feel it with my tongue. It was essentially in my sinuses. The bottom one was infected. I went to the dentist, picked up a prescription for antibiotics, and scheduled the surgery.

Two weeks later, I went in for the extractions. They won’t let you drive after you’ve come out of general anesthetic, so I had to recruit a friend to skip out of work and drive me to and from the clinic. I hate asking people to do things for me, so that was nearly enough to make me put off the whole thing, but I knew I had to get it done. Repeat infections like that can cause bone loss. I didn’t really want to risk that.

I love general anesthetic. It is like magic. I don’t respond badly to it like some people. I go in, I chat with people doing stuff around me, and then I suddenly wake up and it is time to go. I don’t get queasy, and it took me maybe a minute to stop being wobbly on my feet. My friend drove me home. We sat around for a while, chatting while I changed the bloody gauze pads every few minutes. I felt fine. I didn’t feel any real discomfort, but I could tell that my lip was a little torn up. I’m guessing it got stuck between my teeth and a tool or someone’s hand and got pinched. I was unconcerned.

I had taken a week off to recover, thinking that I’d be fine in a day or two, then I’d have a couple of days to kill before going back to work. It didn’t quite work out that way.

Day one, I was fine. I had plenty of soft food in the house, and plenty of Percocet. Sleepy time, doggy attention, cats in my face.

Day two, I was wondering why I still couldn’t feel that side of my lip or chin. I was warned in advance about how close the bottom tooth was to the nerve that runs down my chin, and decided it was probably related. Maybe the tissue was swollen and putting pressure on the nerve. Whatever.

Day three, I was getting a little worried. I started doing the warm salt water swishing thing they tell you to do when your mouth is torn up and I made a startling discovery. If I closed my mouth and put a little pressure on the salt water, it would come put my nose. The upper wisdom tooth socket went directly into my sinus. I couldn’t create a vacuum in my mouth. It made swallowing interesting, too. It didn’t hurt, and it was kind of amusing, so I figured it would heal. My real concern was the bottom socket. It was starting to hurt, and the Percocet wasn’t working anymore. I wasn’t sure if I was just being a big baby or if there was a real issue. I decided to wait until morning and call the doctor.

Day four, I was in agony. I called and told them that I couldn’t wait another day for a follow-up appointment. Something was wrong. They told me to come in immediately. It turns out I had dry socket. When you have a tooth extracted, a blood clot should form in the socket to protect your nerve and bone, and to guide the growth of new bone and gum tissue. If you have no clot, it is called dry socket. I had exposed nerve and bone in my mouth. There’s only one thing they can do for dry socket. They shoot you full of local painkillers and then pack the socket with clove-oil soaked gauze. Clove oil is apparently one of the only things that will kill nerve pain. It is very effective and tastes wonderful. (No, really. It reminded me of Christmas ham.)

For the next several days, I was in every day or two to have the packing removed and replaced. It kills the pain, but it also keeps the hole from closing up as quickly as it should.

After about a week, the socket developed… a flavor. It didn’t taste like cloves, and it had a texture to it. I went in for the usual replacement packing, and they determined that I had an infection in the bone. They gave me more antibiotics and painkillers and sent me on my way.

At this point, I still couldn’t feel my lower lip or chin, and I was still eating soft food. I couldn’t open my mouth all the way. I couldn’t chew anything. I lost about 15 pounds over the next few weeks.

At the end of three weeks of pain killers and dry socket treatment, my doctor recommended taking another week off of work to get extra sleep and help me heal a little faster. Luckily I had a ton of sick time racked up and a great boss who had no issues with me doing that. After another week off and more changing of the packing, we finally got the socket to where I could do without painkillers and without the packing. I was left with a giant hole in the back of my jaw that I had to rinse out with a syringe after each meal. The hole was still so big four weeks after the extraction that shining a flashlight into my mouth cast shadows of the edge of the socket onto the bottom of the socket. It was a very big tooth, and it left a very big hole.

The socket was finally healing and I was off the painkillers, but I still couldn’t chew solid food. I went to a jaw specialist, who told me that I had a lot of swelling from the wrenching they gave my jaw while I was unconscious. He prescribed Dexamethasone (a steroid to reduce swelling) and a tranquilizer to help me sleep. Two weeks later, I could eat normally again.

It has been 252 days since the extraction. I still have a hole in my gums big enough to stuff a grain of rice. I still can’t entirely feel my right-hand bottom lip or chin. If I touch my chin, I feel it in my lip. If I run a finger across my chin, it tickles horrendously all over the bottom half of my face. If I get something cool on my lip, it feels like something freezing is on my chin. The same thing happens with warm things; I get an over-inflated sense of heat. My nerves are still rewiring, so they exaggerate what they feel, if they feel anything at all. My chin constantly feels like I’m pressing two very cold fingers to it. The lip feels paralyzed, but it isn’t. Sometimes when I’m talking I’ll talk as though it really doesn’t move, and I have to catch myself and try to talk normally. I can’t really feel my upper or lower gums, which makes chewing, brushing, and flossing that side a little weird. I’m told that all of this could have been avoided if I had gotten my wisdom teeth removed when I was in my teens, when my bones and the roots of the teeth were softer, and the healing process would have been faster. Too bad nobody mentioned that to my parents at the time.

My doctor says that there’s a possibility that I’ll eventually get all of the feeling back. It could be years. On the other hand, maybe my brain will just give up trying to get it back together and I won’t notice that I don’t feel it anymore.

Either way, I’m happy that all of my wisdom teeth are finally gone. Hopefully I won’t have to have anything else extracted. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to start this whole process again.

What up, dog?

Duncan is refusing to go to the bathroom in his own yard. I have a theory about this. His urine is tainted with the smell of antibiotics. Maybe he doesn't like it, or maybe he views this as a sign of weakness and doesn't want to advertise that he is in a weakened state to the local rabbits, squirrel, and crows. If they knew, they might gang up on him and retaliate for chasing them out of his yard.

I know he can catch rabbits, I've seen him do it twice. I've never seen him catch a squirrel, but he's gotten close enough to panic them and me. I have no idea what his issue is with the crows. He chases them and barks at them. He knows about the birds that are nesting on the ground in his yard, but all he does is check the nests every day and leave them alone. That suggests that it isn't birds that he objects to, but specifically to crows. I found a very large chunk of his hair in the middle of the yard one day that could have been torn out of him by a crow. Maybe that explains it. Who knows.

The upshot of this is that I have to take him for a walk every three or four hours to get him to pee. He's got a quarter of an acre but won't use it.

I took him out this morning for a circuit around the 'hood. On the way home there was a yard full of kids. One of the girls saw Duncan and said, "Oh, look at the dog!" and they all started to come to Duncan. Duncan, of course, was very happy for the attention. All four of the kids were petting him and saying how cute and pretty and fluffy and happy he is. The smallest of them, a little boy maybe four or five years old, was at eye level with Duncan, a few inches away, running his hands down Duncan's face and jaw and saying what a nice dog he is. The oldest girl said that Colin, the little boy, had only touched one other dog in his life because he's afraid of dogs. As we walked away, I heard her running into the house, yelling to her mom that Colin had just petted a dog. Duncan seems to have this effect on people who are afraid of dogs. They just can't resist his cuteness.

A little further on along a trail outside of the neighborhood, he stopped to smell at something next to the trail. I wasn't paying much attention, but I did notice that he was very intently smelling whatever it was, not casually sniffing at it. He was taking very deep breaths and seemed a little tense. Then it hopped out from under his nose. It was a baby bird that didn't seem to be able to fly. It hopped fine, and its wings seemed fine, but it obviously couldn't fly. I couldn't catch it and I wouldn't have known what to do with it if I could have caught it. Chloe would probably have killed it. Duncan would probably have let it clean his teeth. It hopped off into some underbrush. Hopefully it will be OK, but I doubt I'll ever know for sure.

Lessons in canine first aid

Duncan got bitten by a dog at the dog park on Monday.

On Tuesday, I took him to the vet. They shaved the area, gave me antibiotics, and told me to keep the area clean and use Neosporin on it.

On Wednesday, I went to work and came home to find that he had been out all day. The shaved area was sunburned and looked terrible. I put aloe on it and some topical anesthetic on it to keep it from bothering him.

It didn't work, of course.

I woke up Thursday morning to find that he had licked the area raw, and it was infected. I sent an email to my boss telling him I was going to work from home that day, then called the vet and made an appointment. That visit resulted in a bottle of antiseptic wash, a tube of antibiotic cream, and an Elizabethan collar for Duncan. I'm working from home until I can leave Duncan without worrying about the collar or him licking his wound open again.

Duncan is a great dog. I have to clean this raw scabby area twice a day, which I know hurts him because he shakes the whole time, but he doesn't try to get away. When I hold up the cone to put it on him, he just sticks his head right in and lets me tie it to his collar. He acts like this is nothing new. It's amazing. He does get a little anxious after the wound cleaning, probably because it hurts, so I give him a Benedryl and he calms down.

Poor Duncan has a hard time navigating around the house with the collar on. He runs into things and catches the edge of it, then has to work out how to get un-caught. He has a hard time catching and picking up his toys, but he's gotten very good at flicking them at me with the edge of the collar. It's kind of sad watching him flick the collar up to put his head down and pick up a toy before the edge of the collar comes back down and blocks him. But it's kind of funny, too. I feel bad for laughing. He also can't seem to catch his toys if I toss them to him, so they just land in his cone. When I take him out, I have to put a T-shirt on him to keep dirt off the wound and keep it from getting sunburned more. I have to tie the waist of the shirt up in a little knot to keep him from peeing on it, and it makes him look like that gay guy on skates in Reno 911. He lets me put the shirt on, and he never tries to take it off. My poor doggy.

One of Duncan's favorite things to do is scratch his muzzle on my leg or the couch, and he can't do that with the cone on. I do it for him.

I'm going to rearrange my furniture in my bedroom tonight so that he can get around more easily in there. He got stuck on a bedside table last night and got a little panicky before I could get him unhooked. The last thing I want is to stress him more than he already is.

Renton Off-Leash Dog Park - Some dogs bite

On June 21st, 2010, at about 6:15 pm, I arrived at the Renton Off-Leash Dog Park. I entered the gate and let my dog, Duncan, off his leash. While he ran up to the group of dogs standing with the group of people, I walked over to the people. Duncan stopped in front of two dogs, an elderly Norwegian Elk Hound and some kind of a hound mix. Duncan’s posture was his normal greeting posture with a dog he didn’t know: leaning backward on his hind legs, slightly crouched to show submission, head up to show curiosity, fast wagging lowered tail, flattened ears, averting his gaze to be non-threatening. They were all sniffing each other for about 2 seconds when the Elk Hound lunged and snarled at Duncan, biting him on the side.


I was still walking toward the people and I was watching Duncan, so I saw it happen. Melissa, owner of Zoey the Black Lab, also saw it. The owner of Bruiser heard Duncan yelp but didn’t see it happen. The owner of the Elk Hound neither saw nor heard this happen. The dogs were out of his line of sight, behind him to his left, about 15 feet away. He was chatting up Jax’s owner and was totally oblivious to his dog’s behavior. Melissa turned to me with wide eyes and covered her mouth in an “oh my god, did you just see that?” kind of move. I said to Melissa, “Why is my dog limping?” She replied, “Maybe he stepped on something?” She sounded doubtful.

This entire exchange took place in about 15 seconds after letting Duncan off his leash.

Duncan’s movement, which wasn’t really a limp, was caused by the bite on his side. He was clenching in pain, but since he walked it off a few seconds later I didn’t check it out immediately.

About five minutes later, the owner of the Elk Hound commented, “sometimes he growls at other dogs, but it doesn’t mean anything.” Yes, it means something. It means his dog is aggressive. The owner is either blissfully unaware of this or he likes that his dog is aggressive and won’t address it. The ASPCA website describes his dog's behavior this way: “Dogs can display an “aggressive pucker.” They move their lips forward over their teeth and exhale air so that their lips look puffy and large. You can sometimes even hear them breathing heavily. This display is often accompanied by a wrinkled forehead. A dog who looks like this is saying, “Don’t come any closer.”” Source Duncan didn’t have time to get this signal from the dog.

Just before we left the park, Duncan was playing fetch with Mickey and Georgia’s owner. I noticed that when the man tried to scratch Duncan’s sides, he’d try to avoid being touched on that side by dancing away and curving his body to that side to shield it and showing anxiety behavior: panting, head down, ears down, and wagging his entire body back and forth. After we got out of the park, I looked over his side and found the bite mark. The vet was closed, so I cleaned up the wound with hydrogen peroxide and Neosporin.

In the morning, I made an appointment with the vet and took Duncan in to be checked out. They shaved the wound to look for punctures, then prescribed Amoxicillin and more topical Neosporin. Puncture wounds associated with dog bites are very dangerous. Canine teeth can push bacteria deep within the tissue and cause life-threatening infections. The wound clearly shows five teeth marks: the left canine made the worst part of the wound, but you can also clearly see where the four front teeth gouged his skin. The area around it is noticeably bruised. Only one canine tooth made contact, which shows that the dog came at Duncan from an angle – behind him to his right. Duncan was bitten from behind while trying to escape and he didn’t retaliate.

The next day, I went back to the dog park to talk to the owner. His reaction was predictable. He got very hostile and unreasonable. He was too busy formulating defenses to hear anything I tried to say to him. He tried to intimidate me, shouting at me. He just went on and on, making excuses, denying it, and blaming Duncan.

1. He said it didn’t happen. Clearly it happened; there are witnesses and an obvious bite wound.

2. He said his dog didn’t do it. Again, there were witnesses. Two dogs were near Duncan when this happened, the Elk Hound and the hound mix. The hound mix was on Duncan's opposite side, and also backed away when the Elk Hound lunged forward. Incidentally, both dogs belong to the same man.

3. He said he’s been coming to this park for years and never had a problem. That’s a lie, and if it was true it would be irrelevant. The park was established last year. It isn’t even two years old. Regardless of how long you’ve been frequenting a dog park, it does not justify your dog biting another. In addition, “never having a problem” does not correlate exactly with “there will never be a problem.”

4. He pointed out that I haven’t been coming to this park for very long. True, it is possible that I’ve been frequenting the park for a month or two less than him. This is also irrelevant. If it had been my first time at this dog park, it would still be irrelevant.

5. He said his dog has never bitten a child. First, this isn’t a child. Second, that’s irrelevant. He’s never bitten a lot of things. There’s a first time for everything.

6. He said his dog has never bitten another dog. How does he know that? He didn’t know his dog had bitten my dog right behind him because he wasn’t watching his dog. Maybe this has happened before and the other owner didn’t notice or chose not to mention it, knowing that this owner would be irrational about it. And again, the “first time for everything” rule applies.

7. He said Duncan must have provoked it. My dog ran up to the group of dogs and stopped to greet them, and got bitten for it. If that is enough of a provocation to his dog to get bitten, his dog clearly has an aggression issue, which should be treated with training.

8. He said that this is something that dogs “just do.” So if it is something that dogs “just do,” why hasn’t it happened more often? The answer is simple: dogs don’t just bite each other to draw blood and cause deep bruising. They might nip and snarl for whatever reasons, but biting is a big leap from no-contact demonstrations. Normally dogs signal their intention first. Duncan got enough of a signal to turn and try to escape the bite, but it wasn’t enough of a signal.

9. He said, “What am I supposed to do, stop bringing him to the park?” I never suggested any such thing. I suggested that he pay attention to his dog and try to understand and address bad behavior. (The fact that his dog snarled and bit a dog 15 feet from him and the other dog yelped in pain and he heard nothing indicates that he is not paying attention to his dog.) I believe this was a perfectly reasonable request, which he did not hear because he was too busy being defensive and angry that someone would speak to him of this. He was clearly indifferent that his dog had bitten another dog; his focus was on reducing my concern to insignificance. I did not suggest muzzling the dog, keeping the dog under control on a leash, or refraining from bringing the dog to the park – all of which would have been considerations for me if our positions had been reversed. I also did not demand a reimbursement for the vet bill, which was fully half of what remained in my checking account, the balance of which has to last me another week and a half. If my dog had bitten another dog, I would have immediately offered to pay the vet bills. I believe that is what good people do – they hold themselves accountable and accept responsibility for their actions and by extension the actions of their dogs.

I tried to point out to him that he needs to be aware of his dog’s behavior so that he knows he needs to deal with it, but he was too busy arguing with what he thought I was saying to hear or understand what I was actually saying. Here’s the reasoning:

1. You need to be aware of your dog’s behavior. If you don’t know what your dog is doing, you can’t take care of the dog properly. If your dog was “provoked” to bite another dog by being submissively greeted, you need to know this so that you can question why it happened. You’re not going to know this if you’re too busy chatting with the other people. You can watch your dog and still talk to other people.

2. You need to understand your dog’s behavior. Why would this happen? Duncan is known around this park and other parks as a very friendly, well behaved, polite dog. He doesn’t bark, he doesn’t growl, he doesn’t chase aggressively, he doesn’t fight over toys, he doesn’t jump on people. He runs to each dog and person in the park in turn and greets everyone, looking for someone to play with. A dog trainer of nearly 50 years has repeatedly told people in my presence that if their dog doesn’t get along with Duncan, it is because there is something wrong with their dog. So why would this dog bite him? It could be several things. Perhaps the dog is going blind or deaf on his left side and he’s defensive when approached from that side. Perhaps he’s in pain from arthritis. Perhaps he has an infection or wound. Perhaps (and this is my guess) the dog is simply an aggressive dog.

From the RUFF website (found at http://www.rentonoffleash.org/Dog_Park_FAQs.html), his dog qualifies as aggressive: “An "aggressive" dog, as RUFF defines it, is a dog that causes physical injury to another dog or human, or consistently threatens, bullies, or intimidates dogs or people, and whose behavior cannot be controlled by its owner.”

3. You need to address your dog’s behavior. Assuming that this is a new behavior for the Elk Hound, the owner should question what could trigger such a huge change in behavior. The best way to find out is to take him to the vet. Most health issues are treatable. Some, like deafness or blindness, are not medically treatable in all circumstances, but a dog can be conditioned to be less defensive of their weak side if the owner is aware of the problem and works with the dog.
If it isn’t a health issue, it is a training issue. Aggression can be trained out of dogs. I’ve seen it done, repeatedly and successfully. If he doesn’t know how to do it, he needs to find someone who does and get some training of his own. The first step is, of course, for him to be aware of and objective about his dog’s behavior so that he can acknowledge that there is an issue to be addressed. Blaming the other person’s dog won’t solve anything.

Even if Duncan had legitimately provoked this dog, the bite was an extreme reaction that would be addressed by a responsible dog owner. This man dismissed the incident out of hand. Dogs provoke each other all the time at the park, but they don’t get bitten for it. A friendly greeting is not a provocation. If the problem is not addressed it could happen again, and it may not turn out so well. Chances are that Duncan will be fine. What if my dog had been a smaller or slower-moving dog that couldn’t escape? A bite from an Elk Hound is a very big bite to a smaller dog. Now that this has happened one time, the owner should know that it can happen again, especially if he chooses to ignore the issue out of misplaced pride, arrogance, and machismo.

BP, the oil spill, and the liability cap

So, I'm wondering.

The oil spill is now up to... what? About 60,000 barrels a day? Sure, they're collecting a bit of the oil, and setting fire to some of the oil, but the rest of it is ending up killing wildlife, habitats, and jobs. BP makes more money than God, so why is there a cap on their liability? Doesn't a cap just push the company to make the cheapest decision?

More to the point, what's cheaper - letting the oil spill run its course and doing the cleanup, knowing what it will cost them? Or fixing it? What if fixing it will cost more than the liability cap on the cleanup?

Considering that they've made decisions in the past that were the cheaper, not better, decisions, I'd be afraid to let them make a choice on this. (I'm sure we've all heard about the Three Little Pigs analogy and how it was used in a meeting discussing a decision they made.)

What? You again? Yeah, me again.

I was trying to log in to MapleStory today with an account that I haven't used in some time, and it wouldn't let me. I tried to reactivate the account, and it said a reactivation link had been sent to my email address. I tried to log into the email address and I couldn't remember the password. It eventually let me in, and I found an email referencing this blog. I had forgotten it.

See what happens when you have too many login IDs and passwords in your life?

Anyway, I haven't blogged in ages because I've been busy and didn't care much. Not much to say, really, and Twitter generally provides enough space for any passing thoughts I have, but it is nice to have this option. Woo, options.

Things haven't changed much since the last entry. Got my degree, still with the same company, still living where I was living. I was seeing someone for a short time before I decided that was a mistake. I got a dog, which was entirely not a mistake. I also got another cat, which was yet another not a mistake. Clearly, I do better with my relationships with animals than I do with people. Shock and surprise.

As for what's going on... well, I'm stressed out over the BP oil spill. I'm stressed out over money. I'm stressed out over my increasing migraines and sinus headaches. I'm stressed out that the kitten stresses out the older cat. I'm stressed out about my mom's health. I'm stressed out over the whole wisdom teeth debacle that took place in October 2009 and from which I have yet to recover. I can't decide if I want to change jobs. I can't decide if I want to change careers. I can't decide if I want to go back to school. I can barely motivate myself to get out and go hiking. I'm sick of hearing about the World Cup. I rarely geocache. Is geocache a verb? Should I say "I rarely go geocaching"? Whatever. So to escape, I play MapleStory and take Duncan, my fantastic dog, out for walks and to the dog park. He makes me happier.

Yeah, I think that covers things for now.

Past history: 2003-2005 blog from another location

I suddenly remembered that I had another blog (at Diaryland) before I had my Blogger blog. Due to the technical difficulties that MySpace seems to be having, I may go back to the Blogger blog. It looks as though the Diaryland entries are slowly being deleted, so I'm moving them all here.

If you can wade through them, you'll see that not much has changed in the last four years.

This is everything I posted from 2003-2005 in Diaryland.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2003 - 5:27 p.m.

Yeah, I'm still alive.

Baby needed a new 4.0-megapixel digital camera.

I've been very bad. My mom is gonna kill me.

I was sitting around one day being unproductive, cleaning my camera, when my brain piped up, "You know, you need to either get this thing serviced or replace it. Your pictures have little... things... in them that are inside the lens. You have moisture in the casing from taking it out in the rain. It isn't going to last much longer."

My brain replied, "Oh yeah? Well, you suck!"

But then I got to thinking about it. I did a little research and found what I want. Choking back tears, I decided to wait.

My brain contributed this: "If only you got paid every other Friday instead of on the 15th and the last day of every month, you'd get an extra pay check some month and you could afford it."

My brain replied, "Oh yeah? Well, you still suck!"

Then my payroll administrator called me and told me that I have been being paid two weeks behind everyone else and they want to catch me up. Essentially, "Here, have an extra paycheck! And have a super fantastic day!" I kid you not. He says that.

So I get my big ol' paycheck, which is essentially a full month. I call him Gigantor.

And then I promptly went out and depleted my checking account by blowing the vast majority of it on a digital camera.

It gets better...

I then got a business license and my own domain name. I am the proud new owner of my own failing small business. You know what that means? The camera and all associated items are a tax write-off! Woo hoo! Even if I only try to sell pictures for a year, it could pay off. People at work are wigging out over my pictures. Everyone likes them. People bring their spouses over to see them.

Photographically, I rock.

That is all for now.

Saturday, Feb. 08, 2003 - 12:10 a.m.

Hi!

So, how you doin? I'm pretty good. Exhausted, but hey, I finally finished!

HA! I'm done! Woo hoo!

At least for now.

You wanna know what the heck I'm talking about, don't you?

Heh heh heh...

Here's my other website. [Edit: This used to be a link to the other website, but it no longer exists.]

That's what I'm talking about.

I just can't stop giggling and snickering.

And while I'm in a confessional mood...

In December, I went to Vegas with Bill and James. We did a lot of wandering up and down the strip and eating at buffets. We all had a really great time, unlike the previous time I went. And I found that even if I am blind drunk, Bill is too decent a guy to take advantage of the fact that he knows I like him. Which also means to me that he's not interested in me, which doesn't surprise me because decent men are simply not interested in me. Ever. World without end, amen. I mean, come on, it's been two years since I even had a date. I am apparently too boring, stupid, fat and ugly to be a prospect. I'm just fun enough to hang out with occasionally when nobody else is available, but not to date. But that also means that he's that much more appealing to me, because I have a nasty tendency to like trustworthy guys--contrary to popular belief about women and "nice guys." Does that not suck or what?

And on a final note, I think that we need one more law. I think everyone will agree with this one. It isn't the least bit controversial. Not like my personal beliefs that:

A.) People should have to qualify to have children, much like you have to qualify to adopt a dog from the Humane Society.
B.) If you are a murderer, child molester or rapist, you should be executed without appeal if there is no question of guilt. I mean, really, think in terms of Wesley Allen Dodd and Jeffrey Dahmer. Both were guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt, they were both beyond help, both knew it, both admitted that if left to their own devices they would commit more crimes because they dug it. In spite of that, and in spite of the fact that Dodd himself begged for the death penalty it took forever for us to do it at the cost of $40,000.00 a year to the taxpayers of his (read: MY) state. I figure if they want to die, that's their right, even though I also tend to think that people that commit that sort of crime have forfeited their rights. I'll let 'em have that right.

So there are my big controversial beliefs, among others.

Anyway, new law, not just American, not just Earth-wide. I'm thinking this one needs to be UNIVERSAL.

It should be against the law of the universe for astronauts to die in fiery, explosive, painful, ripping-apart-without-saying-goodbye-to-their-families kinds of deaths. I think we need a law that says they are required by law to die after the age of 75, peacefully in their sleep, free of pain or disease. No exceptions. I figure that if we put it in writing, we'll be OK. The reason I bring this up is that this most recent Columbia mission was the very first one that I actually paid attention to. Every day, I turned on the UW2 channel that had the satellite feed, and I'd watch for a while to see how they were doing and what was happening. I actually got up early on a Saturday morning in winter without having plans to leave the house to watch the shuttle land, and it tore itself apart on the way in while I was sitting innocently in my chair, watching it live. Needless to say, I was upset. All I could think of was stupid, weak crap like, "I just hope they didn't feel it happen" and "It's a good thing that it broke apart at a high altitude rather than on the runway with the families watching." So I think we need a law. I'm sure the universe will agree. Why wouldn't it? It is for the benefit of everyone.

Monday, Feb. 10, 2003 - 6:16 p.m.

I'm a little baffled by the response that my pictures hung up in Starbucks have gotten. People are acting like I'm showing at the Met, not just at the local coffee shop where everyone knows me.

I have actually heard people gasp when they look at the pictures. Overwhelmingly, it is the picture of my cat that gets them. After that, its a pretty even toss-up of the Seattle Lighting picture, the Waikiki Beach picture, and the Lone Maple picture. You wanna see the pictures, you'll have to go to my other web site. [Edit: Again, it no longer exists.]

One of the people I heard commenting said, "This is great! I've been looking for pictures for my house!" That, of course, doesn't mean that they'll actually buy them. Oh well. They've got my card.

On top of that, I'm being "interviewed" by one of the marketing guys at work and they're going to put an article about me on the company website.

Hee hee!

No, it isn't the Met, but it sure is generating a lot of interest.

Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2003 - 7:25 p.m.

My company has a hiring freeze on.

My company hasn't given raises in almost two years.

My company is finally announcing raises tomorrow. Most are token amounts - four percent.
Except for me. And, like, a dozen other people.

I get eighteen percent. That is 18%. Not a typo. 18. Almost 20.

Cuz I rock.

And now I get to pay my property taxes without dipping into my savings!

I've also had several inquiries about my pictures. One of the marketing people came over to talk to me about them. She bowed to me. She may buy several.

And my company is going to buy one of them to put in the reception area.

See? I rock.

Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2003 - 6:49 p.m.

It is that time of the year. You know the one. Conversation hearts season. I have a bag in front of me and I will show it no mercy. The real problem with this is that not only will I eat every last one of them, I have to read each one first. Its a sickness, really.

And I sold three pictures today! Woo hoo!

And my boss won't be in the office again until Monday! Yay!

And Girl Scout cookie season is nearly upon us! Gah!

The diet starts later.

Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2003 - 4:58 p.m.

So, I had this fish. It was an Opaline Gourami.

On Friday night, I was sitting in my comfy chair with the cat, innocently watching some chick flick about love and romance and bunnies and rainbows and flowers--I think it was "Frailty"--when I heard a commotion from my fish tank. I looked over just in time to see my gourami fly out of the tank and land on the area rug next to the door.

I jumped up--terminally pissing off the cat in the process, who managed to swipe at me on the way to the floor--and grabbed her (the fish) and threw her back in the tank. She had a huge chunk missing out of her abdomen. Some other fish--I suspect the evil Red Tailed Black Shark, who killed his tank mate of the same species a few years ago--had taken a bite out of her. She curled up into a U-shape and sank to the bottom of the tank.

I was pissed off and a little disturbed about this little turn of events. Poor little innocent gourami! Never did nothin' to nobody! I went to get the net to remove her from the tank.
When I put the net in the tank, she livened up. Surprise, surprise! So I kept her in the net but floated her at the top of the tank to keep her from jumping out again or to keep from getting attacked again. I went to the garage to get my small tank. Luckily, I keep a spare of everything for the tank, so I just used all of my spare equipment to set up the small tank and I moved her and the other three gouramis into the tank. I have one other Opaline and two Pearls.
I got the small tank set up and went to bed.

When I got up on Saturday, there was a dead Khuli Loach on the floor in front of the big tank. It was missing a few chunks. The killer was still on the loose.

Nothing happened on Sunday.

When I got up on Monday, the injured Opaline wasn't in the tank. I looked everywhere (I thought), but couldn't find her. I figured that she had either gotten eaten by the other fish, or she had jumped out and gotten eaten by the cat.

I went to work.

I came home.

I went to bed.

At about 9 p.m., there was a terrific splashing from the big tank. I leaped out of bed--again, terminally pissing off the cat--and ran out to the living room to find out what was going on. I checked the big tank. Nothing. Everyone was there, everyone was fine, big mystery.

So I walked over to the little tank. The little tank is now residing on the coffee table behind my comfy chair. It was the only place I could put it. I checked all of my fish. All there, all fine. But for some reason, I looked under the table.

And there she was. The Opaline. I reached under and touched her. She was bone dry. I pulled her out and picked her up.

And she gasped.

And I gasped. And then I threw her back into the tank. She went back into the U-shape that she went into the first time, then after a moment livened up and started swimming with the other fish.

I figure she was under that table for 18 hours or more. Good thing she's an anabantoid, or she'd be dead.

It occurred to me that I now have a fish that is dead set (har har) on suicide. I decided to name her Lane Meyer. I then taped plastic wrap all the way around the openings on the back of the tank so that she couldn't get out again. And then I went back to bed.

I got up Tuesday morning. I went to work. I came home. And she was gone again.

I looked under the table. I looked around the table. I looked on the couch. I looked under the couch. I looked in the comfy chair. I looked in the windowsill. I looked in the cat's dishes. I looked in the cat's litter box. I looked in the cat's mouth. No Opaline.

I sat down to watch another movie--"Charlie's Angels"--and at about 9 p.m. I heard a noise that I couldn't identify coming from the little tank. I went to look at the pump.

And there she was. In the pump. I took the pump apart to let her out, and she was swimming a little sideways and one of her eyes looked off. I then lowered the water level in the tank about an inch and a half, re-taped all of the plastic around the back of the tank, finished the movie and went to bed.

When I got up this morning, she was dead. Her suicide attempts finally did her in. I think the pump episode was a little much for her.

So how are you?

Sunday, Mar. 09, 2003 - 4:52 p.m.

I found a way to save the company somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000.00 each month. Yes, that's ten thousand dollars each month. But I'm told that though I have saved the company ever so much money, I can't have a performance based bonus because this isn't "quantifiable."

Uh... What?

How much more can I quantify ten thousand dollars each month? Do I have to call it one hundred and twenty thousand dollars each year? Do I have to figure out how far ten thousand one-dollar bills will stretch around the earth if laid end to end? Do I have to figure out how many atoms are in ten thousand one dollar bills? Do I have to find out how much ink it would take to print ten thousand one dollar bills? How many hands have touched them? How many cotton fibers are in them? How many of them may be counterfeit? How many angels can dance on the dot of the eye of George Washington? What percentage that would be of the CEO's monthly pay?

I have just one word for this.

Shit.

So anyway... Michelle, my new boss, is gently insisting that I go on a blind date with a cop friend of hers named Darrin. If she likes him so much, I'm not sure why she'd sick me on him, but hey, its a free dinner. I'll just follow my usual pattern--go out, have fun, never see or hear from the guy again. No sweat.

I have another photo show lined up in May. And another in November. Now, if I can just sell enough to quit my job...

By the way, I sold 6 of my pictures at $125 each. Not bad, eh? Yeah, but it barely pays for all of the mats and frames I had to buy. And I haven't gotten all of the money yet. All of these sales will be complete by April 15.

Speaking of money, that big raise of mine is all going to taxes. I had to change my withholding rate to guarantee that next year I get enough of a tax return to pay for my property taxes, so I am actually getting less per paycheck than I was before. See what I get for getting a raise?

Sunday, Mar. 09, 2003 - 5:02 p.m.

And on top of the getting-a-raise-but-getting-smaller-paychecks situation, it is raining.

"Oh, really? Raining? In Washington? How fascinating..." Yeah, I can hear that rolling around in your brain. But think about this.

If you rate the states from 1 to 50 in order of how much rain they get, we are a lowly, piteous number 41.

On the other hand, we are overcast 260 to 280 days each year. Except last year. But anyway.
What we generally have is grey, wet air. Like if you clean out the lint catcher in your dryer and spritz it with your plant mister. Its just like that. You can only tell it is raining by sticking your hand out, letting it hang expectantly in the air for a minute, then rubbing your fingers together to see if they are wet. Dave Barry called Washington "the incessant, nagging drizzle state," and he hit that banana slug right on the head. Or perhaps it was a geoduck. But I digress.

Today, it was raining. Yesterday, it was raining. This is rain that you can hear hitting your roof. It is rain that falls hard enough that you can see the raindrops bounce when they hit the pavement. It is rain that makes you turn on your windshield wipers higher than the interval setting. It is rain that makes you wish you owned an umbrella, but you never bothered to buy one because it just doesn't rain hard enough to justify it. That's unusually hard rain for Western Washington. It is rain that people will be talking about around the water cooler tomorrow.

(As an aside, the sky must be reading this over my shoulder because the sun is now shining prettily on my fence and lovely pink flowering crab trees, making a liar out of me.)

There is standing water in my yard. It is just weird.

But back to the statistics. We have the highest rates of suicide and depression in the nation. We have the highest number of serial killers per capita. Most of the population is on Prozac. Moss grows all the way around the trees, not just on the north side. Coincidence? I think not.

And yet people still don't know how to drive when the roads are wet.

Speaking of moss, I have moss growing on my cement slab in my back yard. The slab used to have a hot tub on it. I use it as a patio and place to put my barbecue in the summer. It is in full exposure to the sky on the south side of the house. Anywhere else in America, we would call that full sun exposure, but here it is just full sky exposure. Moss is not supposed to grow in full exposure on the South side of anything! Ack. It has been a very cloudy winter. But at least I haven't had to deal with snow this year.

Yet.

It could still happen.

Tuesday, Mar. 11, 2003 - 6:10 p.m.

I was driving to work at 2:30 this morning when I heard on the radio that Seattle needs mentors for its children.

Uh... OK. But here's the thing.

I think mentoring is a good idea if you're inclined in that general direction--I'm so not--but why do we need them? Aren't the parents supposed to be mentors? I thought that was kinda the definition of parenting?

Argh.

So anyway.

The controller of my company is very cool. Bob is good people. He got a bonus because the accounting department came through with flying colors on the latest audit and SEC reporting. He spent it on the rest of the department on boxes of Godiva chocolates for everyone.

Yeah, except that I am on a rather restrictive diet. See, I had to buy new pants because I couldn't pack my fat ass into my size 8 jeans anymore. Then I almost had to go to 12s because the 10s started to be too tight. Thank you, Christmas season and its assorted bins of junk food provided to us all at work by various vendors and customers. I decided that instead of just succumbing to buying new jeans, I'd just lose weight. I'm down to 160--not bad for someone 5'10"--but I still desperately need exercise. Can't get much exercise while working 12 hours at a time and suffering the squalls of rain that we keep getting, so I'm praying for an early spring so I can start hiking again.

My Starbucks show is over. I sold enough to reimburse myself the cost of prints, frames and mats, so I essentially broke even. And I'm still selling unframed prints, so I could even be operating in the black by the end of the year. Never can tell. And I got some great new pictures that people seriously dig. I will have even more after hiking season. When, oh when will it get here? Aaaauuuugh!

Monday, Mar. 24, 2003 - 7:05 p.m.

My brilliant (NOT!) boss tried to tell me yesterday that we installed Saddam Hussein. Say what? No, we did not. After WWI, Britain installed a king who was ousted by a general who was ousted by a president who stepped down to let Hussein officially run the country, since he was more or less doing it anyway and would probably have had the president publicly shot in the head if he hadn't stepped down. And when he did step down, Hussein got all of the government folk into one room and started picking which ones were taken out to be shot. No, we didn't install him. We did send him weapons to fight Iran after (AFTER!) he mustard gassed some of his own people (Northern Kurds) because he thought they were turning on him, but we didn't install him.

I'm so proud. Only twenty or so miles from my home, one of the largest mountain lions in recorded history was shot by a hunter. It makes my lil' heart go pitty pat. It would have gone pitty pat a lot more if I had gotten to see it alive--preferably not leaping at me, I confess--but of course, it is too much to ask for people not to kill stuff.

And speaking of killing stuff.

This thing with Iraq…

Let me just say that I support the publicly touted goals of freeing the Iraqi people and dismantling weapons of mass destruction. I can pretend that there are no ulterior motives if we can achieve better living conditions for millions of people. But I have a better idea than war.
Howzabout we all just grow up and stop killing each other and trying to tell everyone else how to live?

I agree that Hussein is a freak and he needs killin', as do so very many of his own people agree. I'm not objecting to that. Nor am I objecting to the violent deaths of his sons.

Wouldn't it be cool if we could get someone into power there that would actually act as a public servant and not use his position to treat people like crap in order to get his jollies? But wouldn't it be better if it wasn't even necessary?

Why do so many people have to be such assholes? I already know the answer to that. They dig it. Evolutionarily speaking, we haven't fallen far from the tree. We are still just mean little monkeys. Some of the little monkeys are a lot meaner than the others, and they have the means to beat up the smaller monkeys, and they do it because they can, and they like it.

I just hope that things work out on all sides.

Monday, Apr. 07, 2003 - 8:02 p.m.

I got up this morning and got ready for work as usual. I was ready about 15 minutes faster than usual, and I thought I'd get a jump on traffic.

At the first intersection, I thought, "Wow, awful lot of traffic for 4:45 a.m. on a Monday."

A few moments later, I thought, "Wow, its really light for 4:45 a.m."

Then I heard on the radio that it is daylight savings time.

And then I realized I was an hour late for work.

Happy Monday.

And stranger still, I got an e-mail containing, among much else, this text: "Your father most likely will be going in for surgery this summer, to get fixed. There's a chance that he will have "difficulties" as the doctors say. Some artery is very close and they advise him to get his affairs in order. So I guess this is the reason why I write." My father's current wife wrote it. Never met the woman. She found my e-mail through my shockingly successful small business. (I'm in the black! Woo hoo! Not enough to quit the day job, but still...) Wonders never cease. Haven't spoken to the man in 15 years, but his wife (5 years my junior, thanks muchly) feels compelled to contact me. Oddly, I haven't written back. I'm a little baffled. And somewhat speechless.

Because you see, my father had a vasectomy right after I was born. I wonder who fathered "his" 4 children with his current wife?

Wednesday, Jul. 16, 2003 - 10:58 p.m.

Not much going on, so here's the short list.

In August, I have my next photo show. It will be at the Starbucks in the building in which I work. They couldn't get a real artist on such short notice, so they asked me if I could do a photo show on short notice. I have nothing better to do. I said yes.

In October, my owners... ahem, I mean, my bosses are sending me to Las Vegas for a convention. An accounting convention. Must I say it for all of us? Yah. Hoo.

In November, I have another photo show. I planned that one.

Yeah, that pretty much covers it all.

See why I never do entries anymore?

Friday, Jul. 18, 2003 - 10:20 p.m.

So, you wanna know why I haven't updated in, like, 7 months? OK. Here we go. Pull up a chair.

About a week and a half ago I heard that the Washington Park Arboretum was having a photo contest. We had a nice weekend, so I went down to Mt. Rainier to take sunrise pictures, then went to the arboretum to take early morning pictures. I was setting up my tripod when I heard a noise behind me. I was startled. I turned and saw a jogger. I made eye contact. I said, "Oh, good morning!" Smiled. No response. I went back to extending the legs of my tripod. The jogger replied with a good morning of his own, after several paces. I didn't mind; I know I can't talk if I'm running. I figured the delay was due to fatigue or exertion. I looked up again, smiled again to acknowledge him, went back to the tripod. Then, the punchline. As he passed me, he looked over his shoulder and fired this parting shot: "I'm sad for you." My reply: "What?" I didn't talk to anyone else for the rest of the day unless spoken to first, and because of that experience I will probably never speak to another stranger again. I believe that response has probably always been my worst nightmare, and it finally happened, as I knew it would. And, of course, I blame myself. I was just trying to be friendly, but apparently, I am not allowed.

I seem to have Seasonal Affective Disorder. I think I may also be generally clinically depressed all year, but since I hate doctors and won't breach this subject with one because I assume that they will just tell me to take some Tylenol and ice the affected area, I haven't been diagnosed. I know that in the rainy season, I get even more depressed than normal, and I have headaches that only two hours of direct sunlight and a six-pack will cure, and I just have no energy beyond getting up, going to work, coming home, and going to sleep. I sleep 10 or 12 hours every chance I get--which is weekends--then I get up and take a nap because I'm still tired. Then I go to bed and sleep another 10 or 12 hours.

The person that I thought was my best friend is no longer speaking to me. Julie. You may have heard of her. She came over for three days/two nights for my birthday last year. We goofed around, went hiking, had a great time. The last night she was here, she asked me how I would handle it if I had a person in my life that I no longer wanted to be friends with. I said I would tell them, because if they felt like they were a part of her life, they deserved some kind of an explanation and closure. She left the next day and never spoke to me again, in person or in writing. She sent me a couple of books that she borrowed without even a note to say "hi." She didn't even respect me enough to give me a reason, even a half-assed one. Seventeen years. Gone. My father disposed of me, my ex-husband disposed of me, the last guy I thought I was seriously dating disposed of me, people I know that I think are my friends dispose of me, jobs dispose of me without a backward glance or a regret. Sometimes I feel like nothing good has ever happened to me.

The last thing I did socially with anyone other than my parents was the trip to Las Vegas in December of 2002. James and Bill are still my friends, unlike my first Vegas trip with Michelle and Megan in 2001, which ended up with Michelle calling me names because I wouldn't get puking-drunk with the group on Fremont Street. I dared to stand up for myself and refuse to start doing shots. Someone slap me. How dare I?

So what it boils down to is that I have no actual friends. I am in touch with James and Ken and Max by e-mail and phone, I see people like Leah and Michelle at work that I get along fine with and chat with all the time, I see Bill 2 or 3 days a week and chat with him on my way into the office, everyone at Starbucks talks to me every morning (even some of the customers), but I have nobody in my life other than my cat. I have nobody that I can call up and say, "Hey, wanna go to a movie?" because I feel like I would be imposing on them and I would just be setting myself up for rejection.

So today I finished a book I bought yesterday called "Why Girls are Weird", by Pamela Ribon. If you ever read Weetabix's page or Pamie's page, then you have read her writing. She, the author of the book, is Pamie. I had no idea who I was reading until page 311 of the 312 page book. I found a link to her page on Weetabix's page and started reading back when I was still doing something on the Internet besides deleting SPAM about Viagra and porn. I finished her book, literally laughing and crying at the same time in by back yard, and wondering why I have no Becca or Dale or god-forbid a Kurt/LDobler in my life. I just have an Ian, and that sucks out loud. (Admit it, women: we all want a Lloyd Dobler. I may have met one, but they never met me.) Great book, very funny, very touching, but damn, it has screwed me up even more than I already was. I was depressed before, but now I feel totally worthless--as if I didn't before. I associate entirely too much with bits of it. So if you get a chance, read it. It might give you a little insight.

Wednesday, Sept. 03, 2003 - 8:19 p.m.

I am such a doormat.

I locked my diary for a while because I figured nobody was going to miss is it, and because I was afraid my mom would freak and think I was on the verge of suicide or something. I'm now unlocking it because exactly one person asked what happened to it.

See how easy I am?

On the news front, my second photo show is ending tomorrow. I sold a few pictures, but not enough to break even. Luckily, I can reuse the mats and frames for the show in November.
I also have a new domain for my "business" website. My photos are now on view at Photos by Jen.[Edit: Site is dead.] I even have a business license. I'm totally legit. I pay taxes on my sales and everything. I have business cards to prove it. Well, I suppose they prove nothing, but the next batch I order will prove something - they'll have my UBI number on them. So there. I'm making enough money off of photo sales to keep me in my day job.

Speaking of which, there are several people in my department who are planning to leave because of the new accounting manager. Remember Irina? She's one of the people who has such a problem with Michelle that she's willing to quit her job to get out of the situation. That may be changing now that everyone in the department has gone to the HR folks with issues with her, but frankly I can't see much changing. I'm just trying to keep my head down, do my job, keep my mouth shut and pay my mortgage. While on the side, casually updating my resume and speaking monthly with my recruiter, just to see how the market is doing.

I am going to Las Vegas in a month. I have to say it...

VEGAS, BABY!

And this time, I'm not only going alone, I'm going ON THE COMPANY TAB! I have a conference to go to for the software that we use for expense reports. So you see why I'm not in a hurry to leave my job just yet? They're paying for me to go to Vegas! I'm thinking photo ops galore. I took my camera last time, but the most I did was take a picture of the strip from my hotel room. Ironically, the only thing you can see in the picture is Ceasar's Palace. This time, I have a day and a half of free time, I'm staying at Ceasar's Palace, and I have the option of renting a car and going to Red Rocks for a few hours. I'm going to see how the weather is before I plan that.

I took a week off in August for my birthday. I've been doing that for a couple of years now. I sat around the house and read, cleaned, harassed the cat, ate more cheese puffs (Bakes are my brand) than should be allowed by law, and didn't go hiking as I had planned. I actually did go hiking, but about 1/2 mile from the end of the trail to Rachel Lake, my stomach decided that it was damn well going no further, and I ended up turning back. I didn't get enough sleep the night before, I didn't eat enough, I had too much coffee, and that was too much. I used to have a cast iron stomach. Now I'm lucky if it qualifies as fish net. I got a couple of interesting pictures of trees and waterfalls and Hibox Mountain, but nothing spectacular. The really fantastic pictures are in the weekends ahead.

I have set a goal for myself. Are you ready for this? Next year, I'm going to hike up into the Enchantments. I can hear the gasps from the crowd already. Yes, I'm going to work out regularly and get my hiking gear together in preparation for the hike next summer. The ultimate goal is not just to see the Enchantments, but to get pictures of Prusik Peak at sunset. You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you? Well, check back in a year. That's all I'm saying.

I think that's about all there is, so I'm outta here. Maybe I'll update again some day.

Sunday, Sept. 14, 2003 - 2:25 p.m.

1.) The big part of the tunnel at Pioneer Square Station looks like that big bee hangar in the X-Files movie.
2.) You will rarely smell anything good on the bus. In the couple hundred times I have ridden on the bus, I have sat next to exactly two people that smelled good. Both were men. One was my age, one was middle-aged. The younger smelled like a very nice, light cologne. The older man smelled like he had just stepped out of a waterfall in the South Pacific. Everyone else that I have been able to smell on the bus smelled bad. Various classifiable smells I've been forced to tolerate: too much cologne, too much perfume, no shower, too many cigarettes, bad breath, dog poo on shoe, vomit, rotting fish.
People, please, if you're going to ride a bus, please be as unobtrusive as possible.
3.) Overheard in the tunnel: "So, is this, like, underground or something?"

Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2003 - 4:44 p.m.

I have a new work slogan. Microsoft's little slogan at some point (if you can truly use "little" to describe anything involving Microsoft) was "Where do you want to go today?" My new slogan is "What can I do today that, though I am following my instructions to the letter, will piss people off and make them run crying to their supervisor?"

Here's a little background. We have a new accounting manager. We'll just call her the Mangler. (Irina changed positions because I was too difficult for her. Hee!) The Mangler is also a micromanager, but she is more covert about it than Irina was. We have to cc her on all of our e-mail. Can you believe that? So I'm not doing it. I cc her on it when I feel that she needs information, but not for anything else. In addition to that, we have a so called Purchasing Specialist. Her actual specialty is not purchasing. It is surfing the Net and saying things like "I'm not gonna do that!" and "Does the word "approval" mean anything to you?" and wandering around the office, with a piece of paper in her hand, cornering anyone who crosses her path and chatting at them about crap they don't care to hear about. (I was subjected to half an hour of her water heater thermostat story, which consisted mostly of the phrases "but anyway" and "et cetera, et cetera".) If they try to escape by saying that they have work to do, she says, "But I'm not finished yet!" and keeps talking. If you still try to escape, she goes crying to the Mangler, who the reprimands them for hurting Roadkill's feelings. (Roadkill is the so-called purchasing specialist.)

Everyone in earshot of her cube (23 people) have complained to HR about her, but her boss (the Mangler) apparently is convinced that Roadkill walks on water. I think the Mangler must be very gullible. Other than one person (the Mangler), nobody likes her, nobody thinks she is pulling her weight, nobody things she actually does a reasonable job. Even Golden Boy and Mr. Niceguy, the most grown-up, rational, sensible, mellow people in the building, hate her. They don't just dislike her, they use the word "hate" when they talk about her. (I feel quite vindicated by that. If they hate her, I know I'm not being unreasonable.)

So anyway, I was making corrections to large numbers of Roadkill's transactions and data entries, and not telling her. If you tell her, she argues. If you can show her proof of her mistake, she blames everyone but herself. (Nobody told her that, you don't have the authority to tell her to do that, she was distracted, she had 6 whole purchase orders to enter that week and was just so shagged out, she doesn't have time to do that, she'll just talk to her manager about that.) I don't want to deal with her, so I just fix things and move on. Eventually, I was told that when I change something, I have to tell her. And of course, that means I have to tell the Mangler as well because of the whole cc'ing the Mangler to hell and back on everything in the department. So every time I find a mistake, I have to send e-mail to both of them. What this adds up to is that I am sending up to 10 e-mails a day, detailing Roadkill's inability to transcribe simple English from paper to screen.

I have adopted this as my mission in life.

As goals go, it is pretty lame, since I can't pick up a piece of paper from Roadkill without finding an issue, but that makes it a reachable goal. Apparently, someone higher up got their head out of their butt long enough to put the Mangler on notice if Roadkill doesn't straighten up. I just want Roadkill out and someone who can do the job to get in. Why is good help so hard to find in a market where people are nearly falling all over themselves to get jobs? There must be someone more qualified out there!

Hey, want a purchasing job? Please?

Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2003 - 4:48 p.m.

So guess what I did this weekend? I went hiking! Guess where I went! C'mon, guess! What's my favorite hike ever?

Gothic Basin!

Gothic Basin can be described two ways.

Number 1: Heh heh… Heh heh heh heh… Hee hee! Wheeee! Oooh! Aaah! Wow! Hey, cool!
Number 2: What the hell happened to my feet?!

I set out intending to go to Three Fingers, but I couldn't find the damn turnoff. I decided to go to Gothic Basin again because last time I went, the weather sucked and there was too much snow to get to Foggy Lake, and I wanted to get digital pictures to replace the crappy scanned film images of yore. So off I went, parked at Barlow Pass, laced up the boots, threw on the pack and set off down the Monte Cristo Road.

Weather was perfect. Sun was rising. Not too cool, not too hot. Not many people. Got to Foggy Lake in 4.5 hours (my best time yet – I'm a serious wimp, and I stop to take a lot of pictures). Sat around talking to a guy named Jeff for 2 hours. Started back. Oops. First of all, I was dehydrated – got nauseated and headachy, and I didn't have the sense to fill up on water at the lake. Second, I had no Chapstick. Third, the boots I was wearing were good for Three Fingers, not for Gothic Basin. I have seven blisters, one toenail that's about to fall off, the balls of my feet won't take more than a few minutes of pressure, my heels ache, and just about every muscle in my body is having issues with me being conscious and mobile.

But dude, you should see the pictures! Woo hoo!

Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2003 - 10:19 p.m.

This week has been something of a personal nightmare.

Monday, I missed work because I couldn't wear shoes because I destroyed my feet hiking on Sunday.

Tuesday, on the way to work, I saw a deer. Normally, this is a good thing. This day, it was not. The deer was lying in the middle of northbound highway 169. It had been hit by a car. It was trying to get up but couldn't, because it could move only its head and one front leg. This morning, the deer was on the side of the road. It has no head.

This morning, I got up as usual, fed the cat, checked out the fish, fed them and went to work. Thirteen hours later I arrived at home. The first thing I noticed was that my bala sharks did not meet me at the corner of their tank as they always have. They were odd little fish. Actually, they were all in the range of 6 inches long, not small at all. But anyway, they would follow me. If they could see where I was at any given time, they would be gathered in the corner of the tank nearest me. If I put my hand up to them and waggled my fingers, they would follow them. So when they didn't greet me as I came in today, I knew there was a problem. I walked over to the tank, dropping my mail on the floor on the way over to them. They were listless, their skin covered with a fungus or bacterial infection, their slime coats peeling off. I took pictures of them with my digital camera and ran to the pet store. The pet store guy told me what he thought it was and gave me the medication. I came back home and put the medication in the tank. And the first bala shark died. Immediately. He swam near where I had dropped the pellet and literally went belly up. I kept trying to keep him moving, but after about half an hour, he died. I took him back to the pet store to show them, and to ask them to look at him and tell me if perhaps the original diagnosis was wrong. They couldn't offer me anything else. Nobody had any idea what could have done this to a healthy tank in 13 hours. I came back, and the other two were dead.

So I'm really not happy right now.

Saturday, Oct. 11, 2003 - 5:45 p.m.

Woo hoo! I had only one question to answer on this month's flux analysis! Yay, me! (See, this is what I get for being in accounting. I get excited that I have only one flux question.) Shock and surprise, I got another raise. I was the ony one in my department to get a raise this year, and I got the maximum. Apparently, Bob, the controller, likes me best. Word on the street is that they are afraid that I am looking for a new job. See what dressing better can do for you?

So, how you doing? I have been doing nothing. The last weekend of September I hiked up to Goat Flats. I even got the obligatory flat tire on the 18-mile dirt/rock road to the trailhead. I drove on the rim so long without noticing it that I had to replace the tire, which cost me nothing because Les Schwab rocks and so do their warranties. That's the last thing I did that wasn't work related. I was going to go hiking this weekend, but the lovely weather seems to have crapped out, more or less literally. It was totally overcast all weekend, but it still didn't rain enough to keep me from needing to water my trees and shrubs, but it was cold enough to turn on the furnace - which thankfully is not making any interesting noises.

Question of the day: If you are driving in the right-hand lane and you have a right-hand turn signal which is green, and the right-hand turn lane does not merge with oncoming traffic from the left (of which there should be none regarless because you have a green right-turn signal), why the heck would you stop to turn right on a green right-hand turn signal into your own lane? I see this every day at two different intersections. Car after car after car stops at this green turn signal before going through. I don't get it. Am I misunderstanding the whole right-hand green arrow into non-merging lane situation? Or is everyone else stupid?

My chiropractor appointments are down to once a week. I have some actual curve in my neck and I can turn my head nearly as far as it is supposed to go. And it doesn't make those noises any more! Woo hoo! I'm also sleeping better, which is tré cool. As a bonus, the button on my pants actually lines up with my navel, which hasn't been the case for years, and I can feel my left big toe and my right big toe doesn't hurt when I bend it while walking. Amazing, non?

Saturday, Oct. 18, 2003 - 10:14 a.m.

My drive to work was as usual. Dark, rainy, dodging idiots who cut me off and then slow down or take a left. I got to work, parked, got out of my car, and what did I see next to my rear tire? A used Tampon. Welcome to the big city.

Work is as usual. My supervisor comes in 45 minutes late every day and takes hour-and-a-half lunches and leaves at three, complaining about how hard her job is and how many hours she is in the office. Her first hour in the office every day is spent complaining about how she spends her time outside of work and sighing heavily over her e-mail and muttering. She processes a whole dozen or so invoices a day. I, on the other hand, am in the office 11 or 12 hours a day with no lunch break and I process 70 invoices and up to 250 miscellaneous transactions (wire fees, foreign exchange losses, wire payments, journal entries) every day, yet I don't feel particularly challenged. It is no wonder that her supervisor told me last week that she is really just a figurehead and they are closing the pay gap between the two of us. How's this for office politics: my own supervisor doesn't know I got a raise, and I was asked not to tell her.

Next week: Vegas, baby! I'm going to a users' conference for the software that we use to process expense reports. Could be interesting--a couple hundred accounting clerk-types descending on Sin City to geek it up. There will be free food, and the weather is going to be perfect. And I get to stay at Caesar's Palace! And this is my first trip to Vegas that isn't going to cost me anything! Yay! The camera is, of course, going with me. I will have a bit of free time, and I intend to use it.
I don't know if you watch the weather reports, but we Western Washingtonians have regained our status as the dreariest place to live for the next 6 months. Summer is decidedly over. There are monsoon-like conditions predicted through Sunday. I think we are going to be paying heavily for the fabulous weather we had since last October. On the other hand, I don't have to wash my car now and there is already snow in the mountains! Snowboarding and snowshoeing are imminent. Mt. Rainier looks so much better - when you can see him. He was looking all bony and edgy and dark without the snow that we get so used to seeing. Now he's all cloaked in sparkly white.

And yes, Mt. Rainier is a "he," according to the legends. Mt. St. Helens is a "she" and Mt. Adams is a "he" also. Rainier and Adams fought over St. Helens and she blew up and threw them both away from her because she couldn't stand to see them fighting. Seriously, that is a legend. I am not making this up. No, really! Go look it up if you don't believe me. And read about Thunderbird while you're at it.

Monday, Oct. 27, 2003 - 5:47 p.m.

Notes on the trip to Vegas:

All of this crap was in my head at some point on Wednesday, October 22.

Sitting at Alaska Airlines gate D12 at Sea-Tac, I noticed that people tend to sit as close to the television as they can get, facing it, regardless of whether they are watching the television. Most of them do not.

Sunrise from the airplane was great. The horizon behind Mt. Rainier was a vivid red, and later there were streaks of gold.

Skies over Oregon were clear, as were those over Nevada. Washington skies were decidedly overcast in the Puget Sound region, but it was clear around Rainier.

The guys behind me on the plane were from Alaska. They had never been to Vegas. They were very loud and annoying. They were snorting, snoring, and sniffling. I wanted to turn around and offer them all breath mints and tissues, but I figured that would just result in even more kicking of the back of my seat, if that is at all possible.

Somewhere over Oregon, there were some very odd clouds. They may have been fires, I couldn't tell, but there were 8 of them that seemed to be forming in a rough line and blowing straight North.

As the sun was rising over Nevada, it made the low clouds glow pink, like a river of cotton candy over the hills. It lasted only a few minutes.

The word "triptych" finally came to me. I was having a conversation with someone about something and I needed that word, and all I could come up with was "triptophan" and "tracheotomy." Now I just need to remember who I was talking to about it and why.

Can flying give you gas?

The landscape loses its charm rapidly as the sun rises.

My neck was killing me from bending to look out the window. It makes interesting crunchy noises now. I hope this gets better as the trip progresses...

Some of the clouds over Nevada looked like Challah bread.

I parked in spot #1, level 4G. That is very important to remember. I can just see getting back to Seattle and not being able to find my car. Ack.

Next time I take a trip, I need to remember to bring a book to read on the plane. I actually brought one this time, but it was in the outer pocket of my suitcase and I forgot to take it out before I surrendered it to the security guerillas at the airport.

Do I have to record everything that goes through my head?

Was I as annoying as those Alaska guys the first time I went to Vegas? Or the second time?

I think there is a possibility that I was one of the 5 youngest, healthiest people on the flight down here. The rest of them? Half were guys from Alaska, here for the beer. The other half were obese bleached-blondes with doughy complexions and nicotine-stained fingers, toenails varnished Claret and packed into 20-year-old Candies who couldn't walk from security to the terminal.

So I get to Vegas, weather is perfect. Check in, come to my room. The bathroom is the size of my smallest bedroom at home. No, actually it is slightly larger. The bathtub is as big as my bathroom at home. Me likee very much.

I unpacked and headed out pretty much immediately. Walked up to Mandalay Bay, down to Treasure Island and back. My feet are a little touchy, but hey, whatever.

While I was walking, a guy came up to me and said, "You very beeyooteefull laydee. Where you from? Are you single?" And my brain screamed, "OH MY GOD, HE'S GOING TO TRY TO SELL ME A TIME SHARE!" And I was right. I also had a guy say "Ay yi yi" at me. So what is it? Is it because men in Seattle simply are attracted to a very different type of woman? Or are they just more repressed? Or is it because I was the only woman walking alone down the Las Vegas strip?

I popped into the MGM to see the lions, and they had a woman answering questions for the crowd. One guy asked if the lions minded the trainers being in the display with them. The answer kinda surprised me. Apparently, when the trainers leave, the lions get a little upset and look for them and have temper tantrums. A little while later, one of the trainers was in with them, and he was trying to get one of the lionesses to come up to him. She did, and they headbutted each other. It was an "Awwww!" moment. Then he tried to grab at her paw and she swiped at his head. My cat does that, too. I can relate. The only difference is that my cat draws blood when she does that.

I went into the Mirage for the first time. It was actually kind of sad. There's a big statue of Siegfried and Roy with a tiger in front of the hotel that has been turned into a shrine to Roy, with huge notepads that people can sign, get well cards, bouquets, stuffed animals, balloons, you name it. I went in to have a look around, and right inside the front doors is a white tiger display. Big purrrty kitty. I want one. Sorta. Well, not really. I can barely handle the one I have.

So after walking on the strip in 95 degree heat with no sunglasses and not so much as a glass of water for 5 hours, I finally came back to my room. The intention was to get the ice bucket, fill it, and drink all the water I could handle and go to bed. I walked in, put my stuff on the shelf overlooking Paris, and turned to the ice bucket on my right. My brain said, "I thought the ice bucket was in the vestibule." Then it said, "Hey, there's a bottle of wine in it. I didn't notice that earlier." After a moment's contemplation, it whispered, "I would have noticed a bottle of wine. That wasn't there earlier."

So I nonchalantly walked over to it (three whole steps) to avoid frightening it, not looking directly at it, whistling tunelessly, thinking it was one of those things that they leave in the room for you and let you think it is free, but the fine print says that if you use it, they charge you a fortune for it. There was a card with my name on it. I opened it up. It was a gift from Paul, my foreign currency transfer account manager in San Francisco! We talked right before I left work yesterday, and I had wondered why he was asking me if I had the room in my name and where I was staying. So that was a very nice surprise. Wow, a guy bought me a gift. First time for everything.

And the wine is fabulous.

And now the sirens have started.

And now it is bedtime.

October 23, 5:41 a.m.

I was up for 20 or so hours yesterday, but for some reason I couldn't sleep last night. I think I need my cat to sleep well.

I went to bed just after 9 so that I could get up at 5:30 to get ready for the first meeting I have at 7:30. I don't really need that much time, but since I tend to dawdle when I'm not at home, drinking coffee, hanging around in my jacuzzi tub, listening to the echo and admiring the crown molding in the bathroom, that sort of thing, I decided to give myself some playing time. I woke up at 1:30 this morning, and I may have been shouting something, but I may have dreamed it. Not sure. There was a lot of noise at my door. I shouted "Who is it?" Someone answered, but I shouted back, "I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you're saying." And only then was I totally awake. But I may have dreamed the whole thing. After that, I woke up every hour or 45 minutes. I finally gave up and got up half an hour early.

When I walked out to get more ice to keep the remains of my bottle of wine cold, I found a goody bag from Concur. Maybe that's what I heard.

When I got downstairs, I was talking to a Concur rep about the new release, and I saw a familiar face. It was someone I used to work with back at Purely Cotton. She is now with Concur, and she organized this convention. She's quite moved up in the world since I last saw her!

So I'm now finished with today's sessions, and I have about 2 hours to kill before dinner. I wasn't going to go, but a) it is free food and entertainment and b) lunch was really good but a bit sparse. I was hungry half an hour later. I almost went for a cheeseburger, but I took a nap instead. Good thing, too. That last session was geared more for IT people, not for accounting people. I took notes that would probably be useless for our IT group, so I am thankful that they provided a white paper at the end. That'll be going straight to the people that will understand it with minimal head scratching.

I seem to have brought the lousy weather with me. It is totally overcast. Yay.

I miss my cat. And I'm starving. Maybe I should go get a snack.

Later that day, about 4:30 p.m.

The balance of the day after the possibility that I shouted at a stranger in the hallway outside my room was pretty uneventful. The sessions were interesting and informative. That about covers the day.

After the sessions, there was a dinner. The entertainment was Frank, Marilyn and Elvis. The main course was, unfortunately, salmon. I ended up with vegetarian sushi, which consisted of 5 asparagus spears, two carrots, and a rice patty topped with mushrooms. I concentrated on the salad, the dessert, and all but the rice and mushrooms on the dinner plate.

When it was over, I retired to my jacuzzi tub, then tried to sleep. Once again, I woke up at 4:30 a.m. This time, it was because my emergency sprinkler had started to leak, and I was woken up by Chinese water torture. I tried to go back to sleep, but even with a towel on the floor to catch the water, I couldn't go back to sleep. I gave up trying after 3 hours. I got up, showered, packed and checked out.

After the day's sessions, I bailed out of Caesar's. I had three hours to kill before heading to the airport. I called Paul to thank him for the bottle of wine that he had sent to me, then took off for the Venetian.

I had walked past the Venetian at least 6 times in the last three years, once in each direction on each trip, but I had never gone in. Today, I did. It looks pretty much exactly like all of the other casinos once you get inside. Wow, shock and surprise. So I left.

I sat in a Denny's next to the Venetian, across from the Mirage, eating a grilled cheese sandwich and French fries while watching the guys trying to had out porn trading cards to the passers-by. I could have gone to Chinoise. I could have gone to Spago. I could have gone to Nero's. I chose Denny's. Think about that one for a while. And not just from a psychological perspective, but from a financial perspective. I could have claimed a $50 meal on my expense report and gotten reimbursed, but I chose to spend $6.83 instead. I am either weird or very responsible with my company's money.

I eventually went back to Caesar's and got my luggage. I had a few minutes to kill, so I popped a dollar into a nickel slot machine and won $12.75. Then I had to go. I got on the shuttle bus, got to the airport, checked in, found my gate, and plopped down with an Americano and "High Fidelity" to wait 2 hours for my plane. About 10 minutes before the first boarding call, I dropped a buck into a nickel slot machine and won $5.30.

As I walked to the gate to board, I found that I didn't have my driver's license. These days, for some bizarre, inexplicable reason, they won't let you on a plane without ID even though 347 other people saw it before the woman at the gate, so I had to call the last place I saw it - the security checkpoint - and it was there. I had to run - RUN - back to get it, and run back to the gate. I was the last one on the plane, and I had the last seat, 31F. I plopped down to wait for my heart to stop perpetually exploding. Shockingly, I didn't even break a sweat running a mile in 10 minutes. I think I was too dehydrated to sweat. And though I did it, and kinda liked the fact that I did it, I will not be taking up jogging.

I got home at 12:53 a.m. I fell into bed. I slept immediately, and didn't move until I woke up this morning. I definitely require my cat to get a good night's sleep.

Friday, Dec. 05, 2003 - 3:38 p.m.

Notes on the big storm.

1. Those 100-foot trees around your house are pretty, but they're also a threat to everything important to you. Don't be so in love with them that you can't thin them out for the sake of your house, your car, your fence, and your beautiful little Japanese maple tree.

1a. That neighbor to the South wasn't reliving his glory days as a lumberjack when he removed three of his Eastern border trees. He was protecting his investment.

1b. Those trees in your yard don't look nearly as tall as they really are, and you will know how big they really are only when they are lying across the street and through your neighbor's fence.

2. Electric can openers are the work of the devil.

3. Gas ovens and water heaters suck, right up until you have a power outage. You become very popular when you're the only one in the neighborhood who can provide a hot shower or a cup of coffee.

3a. French presses are a must for coffee drinkers.

3b. Extended power outages are a good excuse to eat all of your ice cream sandwiches, garlic cheese spread on crackers, and bacon. But not necessarily at the same time.

4. If that wood fence in your back yard doesn't have spaces between the boards, it isn't a fence - it is a sail.

4a. Lifting a 6-foot section of your cedar fence out of the street and into your back yard in 75-mph wind and rain in the dark is difficult.

4b. Lifting 3 more 6-foot sections of your cedar fence out of the street and into your back yard in 75-mph wind and rain is only slightly less difficult when it is not dark.

5. Natural disasters provide a good reason to meet your neighbors.

5a. If you neighbors offer you help fixing a fence, cleaning up your yard or removing a tree, accept the offer graciously and don't forget about it.

5b. If you can offer something to your neighbors that they need, do it. Allies are a good thing to have.

6. A 40-gallon fish tank is a good reason to take a day off if you lose power. You cannot sacrifice the lives of your lovely fish just to go to the office and push paper around. That's what PTO time is for! Stay home and circulate the water manually and heat it on your wonderful gas stove to keep them happy and healthy. Your co-workers will understand.

6a. Cats get tetchy when the floor gets really cold.

7. Puget Sound Energy guys rock! Nearly 180,000 people were without power at one point, and now almost all of them are back on. They worked through the night cleaning up the damage, with the help of crews from Oregon, BC and Eastern Washington. Sure, we were without power for about 36 hours, but they worked themselves hard, in the dark, in the rain, in the horrible gusting winds, doing dangerous, nasty work to get us back on-line and watching our stupid TV shows. I doubt that most people are that dedicated to their work.

7a. Those guys driving the snow plows to clear the roads of branches and trees also deserve some props.

Tuesday, Dec. 09, 2003 - 6:31 p.m.

Maple Valley and Enumclaw have been declared disaster areas! My 'hood was on CNN! Woo hoo! We so rock! I've never lived in a disaster area before.

The tree fairies are coming this week to take away the tree that is threatening to destroy my house. If it falls, it will surgically remove the entire front wall of my house. Since it is so close to my house and has nowhere to fall, they have to use their happy fun spurs and jauntily climb the tree with their magical chainsaws and cut it into wee pieces and lower them to the ground, where they will rend them into tiny woodstove-bite sized pieces. Wanna guess what that's gonna cost me? A mere $800.00. And it will be another $1,000.00 to get the work done on the rest of the trees in that part of my yard to make them safer for future minor hurricanes. And the fence will probably cost me another $1,000.00 to replace.

Homeownership is the best.

Thursday, Jan. 22, 2004 - 5:38 p.m.

For probably the first time in my life, I have set a goal and I am working toward achieving something.

About 15 years ago, I saw a picture of a mountain called Prusik Peak. I wanted to see it. I found out what it would take to see it. I decided I didn't want to see it that badly.

But last weekend, I was sitting on my couch on my big fat ass eating truffles that I got for Christmas and my brain piped up, "Hey, let's hike The Enchantments this summer!"

And so it begins.

The Enchantments are legendary. If you mention them to local hikers, their eyes glaze over, they drool, they murmur, "Mmmmm... Enchantment Peaks... Gnome Tarn... Leprechaun Lake... The Temple... Dragontail... Aasgard Paaaaassss... (gurgle gurgle)." Its just that good. Merely 50 years ago, the area was still the Snow Creek Glacier. It is a valley full of tiny trees, lakes, ponds, tarns, and glacier-carved rocks surrounded by towering, spikey peaks. Alpiney goodness!

Unfortunately, they are also very popular. There's a permit system in place to keep the population down. You have to apply for a permit to get in for any overnight trips during hiking season, July 15 to October 15. It costs $3.00 a day to hike in the area. If your permit request arrives early they toss it in the garbage. The first day your request for a permit can arrive is February 21, and you had better believe that mine will be in that day, along with probably a hundred others. Do you think the forest service would accept a bribe? If I offer them cookies, will I get the permit for the week I want it? Perhaps REI gift cards would be preferred?

The plan: Hike up to Upper Snow Lake, camp. Hike up to the area around Sprite Lake, camp. Hike up to Prusik Pass, decend to the Sprite Lake camp, and camp. Hike up to Aasgard Pass, decend to Sprite Lake and camp again. Hike out on the last day.

I have a feeling that the pictures I take on this hike will be some of my best to date.

It is about 13.5 miles to Aasgard Pass. The entire hike is about 6500 feet of elevation gain, but broken out to 4 days - two days just getting to the Upper Enchantments, a day for Prusik Pass, a day for Aasgard Pass, a day to get out. I think that is more than reasonable. I can totally do this. I've done harder hikes in one day.

I am in training. Three days a week at the gym, one day of hiking a week every week until early hiking season, then two weekend camping trips a month until the big one. Drinking more water, eating more veggies and fruit and chicken, eating less of the cinnamon toast and mini muffins and praline ice cream, stairs instead of elevators.

I still need some gear. What I have is old and heavier than would be ideal, not to mention falling apart.

REI gift cards will be gratefully accepted.

Tuesday, Mar. 23, 2004 - 7:02 p.m.
Just a few things...

I got my permit to hike the Enchantments this summer. Woo hoo!

I caught my manager falsifying expense reports, and I'm now trying to get her in trouble. Woo hoo!

My new car has a light in the trunk. Woo hoo!

That's about it. Aren't you happy you don't have my so-called life?

Sunday, Jul. 25, 2004 - 6:52 p.m.

First of all, I am still alive. I have no life to write about, so I don't. I've been spending all of my time training for my big hike in the Enchantments in August. When I'm not hiking, I'm working or trying to get my house and yard cleaned up. So much to do, so little time. The last several weeks can be summed up by viewing my hiking pictures here.

Sunday, Sept. 05, 2004 - 3:56 p.m.

So I think the last time I did an entry it was about a big 5-day hike in the Enchantments. I did that hike. Actually, I just walked up steep creekbeds for 3 days in an outdoor shower somewhere out in the mountains. I couldn't actually see anything that was around me, so I could have been anywhere. According to the map, compass and GPS locator, I was there, but who the heck really knows.

It didn't rain for 6 months over there. Then they got 6 months worth of rain in the three days that I was there. No more Washington birthday vacations for me. It always rains, and that sucks. Next year I'm going somewhere in the Southwest: Red Rocks, the Grand Canyon, Death Valley, somewhere practically guaranteed not to rain.

In other news, I just started back to school to work on my bachelor's degree in accounting. Hopefully in two years I can get a better job with a competent boss who actually works for a living. We shall see. My program is supposed to be numerous classes, 5 class sessions per class, the first and fifth class held in person on Saturdays and the rest online.

At the last minute, they changed my first class so that it is on Tuesday nights. Naturally, this coincided with the only concert I've wanted to go to in years. Keane is going to be at the Showbox on Tuesday and I can't go because I have a team project to present that night. Dammit. They better come back to Seattle someday or I'm going to have to go to the UK to see them.

Other than that, nothing has changed. Same old boring life. Maybe school will change that.

Friday, Mar. 04, 2005 - 10:04 p.m.

So. Hi. Wanna guess why I haven't updated in 6 months? It is because I have had:

1. Nothing really to write about.
2. No time to write about anything.

This may seem to be a contradiction. How, you may ask, can I be so busy that I can't babble on and on, yet have nothing about which to babble on and on? Well, the fact is that the things keeping me busy aren't that terribly interesting.

Work is about the same. I no longer drive to work. I take the train. I get to read for pleasure on the train. That's my only substantial free time. I've cut work down to 8 hour days, and I take lunch breaks now. I am sick to death of certain aspects of my work situation, and part of the reason that I have cut my hours is just to spite my "supervisor". The other half of the reason is that I use my lunch breaks to do homework.

I am now working on my Bachelor's Degree in Accounting, something I should have done half my life ago but was too stupid to know it at the time. It must be going well, because I have a 4.0 GPA.

After I get home every day, I do more homework. During free moments, I harass my cat. On Tuesday, I watch "Scrubs" and "Committed".

On weekends, I go to class, do homework, clean my house, do laundry, do a little yard work, and do more homework.

I have no social life. A lot of people say that, but it truly applies to me. No. Social. Life. In September, I went to the Puyallup Fair with a classmate. In December of 2003, I went to a Sonics game. Those are the only two social events I have had in the last 13 months. Unless you count the visit to Mom and Hugh over Christmas last year, and the visits for her birthday and Mother's Day. Why no social life? No friends. That pretty much sums it up. I keep in touch with a few people by e-mail, and we talk about getting together but never do.

Since I started school in August, I haven't even had time to go hiking or get any photo shows together. I haven't updated the photo web site since August, either. Frankly, I'm surprised this one still exists.

So as you can see, there's not much to write about.

And yet, here I am again.

Thursday, Mar. 10, 2005 - 7:57 p.m.

This weekend was the social event of the season in Maple Valley. The streamers were strung, the crowds out in force, enjoying a bright, sunny, unseasonably warm winter day to witness the grand opening of the newly remodeled Safeway. I didn't realize that it was the date of the grand event when I went to buy kitty litter after school on Saturday and I couldn't find a parking spot. I went home and waited for 5:00 a.m. on Sunday to go back. It looks just like it did before they closed for remodeling. I have to admit, the two grocery carts of discounted Conversation Hearts just inside the door made it very inviting. I stocked up, of course, because I can get this particular brand of candy-flavored sugar patties only once each year. I should be set through about mid-April. It takes me that long to eat them because I have to read every single one before I can eat it.

Open letter to the @$$hole who broke into my car: The joke's on you. You didn't get the Platinum Visa out of the glove compartment, nor did you get the treasure trove of 76 CDs in the trunk, and insurance paid for all of the damage. And, oh, by the way, you suck.

So, are migraines supposed to make the left side of your face go numb? … Maybe I should see a doctor.

Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Guess whom I finally get to see in concert! Keane is coming back in May, and they will be at the Paramount, and so will I. I ordered tickets already. Woo hoo! May is going to be a very difficult month, so this is my treat to myself in advance for not killing anyone. I am taking two classes in May, I still have to work full time, and just for giggles, I will be helping our IT group to implement our new expense reporting software. Yay, fun. I so cannot wait for May.

Monday, Apr. 04, 2005 - 7:10 p.m.

My (ahem) supervisor tried to file something today. Filing is not her forté. If she was a singer and the alphabet was a song, Simon Cowell could be digging his own grave so that he could shoot himself in the head in order to roll in it.

Now that I take the train to work, I surreptitiously watch people while standing on the platform. Most people do the same thing every day. They stand around, alone or in groups, talking to one another or minding their own business. When we hear the train whistle from the other side of Kent-Kangley road, they stop, step toward the tracks, and look to see the train. Um… Why? Do they not know where it will come from? About half of them plug their ears as the train brakes, rather than just stepping back 5 feet, which cuts the noise level drastically. In protest of this ludicrous behavior, I make a point of just waiting until the train stops to acknowledge its existence.

This weekend, my plans consist of the following activities: fun, fun, and fun! I get to go drop off books at the library, gas up my lawn mower, have my septic tank pumped out, do homework, wash laundry, wash my car, clean my bathroom, cook, some real food that will provide leftovers for a few days, and a bunch of other fabulous time killers that I have written down in a notebook on my dining room table. I so cannot wait. I actually ache with anticipation. Alternatively, perhaps that is dread. Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference.

I have peeked at a few of the local hiking resources lately such as http://www.nwhikers.net/ to check out the hiking conditions. I do this to torture myself, knowing that I do not have time for the next 19 months to go hiking. Apparently, there is almost no snow left anywhere, and hiking season will begin very early this year. That also means that wildfire season will begin early. I feel for the firefighters who will have to deal with it. In addition to the high number of fires we will probably have, there will not be much water to use for fire fighting because of our unusually dry winter (see http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html). It will be interesting to see what happens with that.

And now, I'm off to harass my cat and/or do homework. I have to depreciate a truck over two years using the straight-line method. Yay!