Dahlias, again

We've had limited success with our dahlias this year. They had a rough start with a serious slug invasion and only one of the plants really got going. But it is rewarding us for giving it a chance - very satisfying.

Background checks and identity theft

The huge corporate affiliate of the little independent company I work for has decided that they need to do background checks on everyone hired within the last 3 years. That means me. And, probably a whole bunch of other people, but that's THEIR problem. MY problem is that I hate any rippling of the waters of my 'personal information pool' in the data world.

Maybe it's just me, but I think that any time an inquiry is posted and a data file is sent there is a possibility for something to get mucked up. Data transmissions can be hijacked. New paper files can be left, available for pinching, on someone's desk. Data can be corrupted. Errors happen. All the time.

We are so vulnerable. Our personal information is splattered all over the backup disks of thousands of companies. The Big Three - name, birthdate and social security number - are plenty easy to get. Mother's maiden name - simple. When I applied for a passport a few years ago they wouldn't accept my original birth certificate. It was the one that ONLY I could have had - original signatures on it, hospital seal... No, they wanted to have an 'official' copy that I had to order from the state - a copy that literally ANYONE could have obtained online. The only requirement was to pay the small fee.

Literally everyone in your business and professional world taps into your credit history. You have to give permission to your dentist and doctor right along with your mortgage company and bank to check your credit. Employers do it. Stores do it. Utility companies do it. We get mail all the time from people claiming that 'according to our records, your insurance is about to expire' or our home owners protection plan or our appliance warranties - or that our mortgage rate 'may be too high' or that the prescription drugs we use might have a generic substitute. Why do they have such 'records?' All of this information has been sold, by someone, to the highest bidder so they can hound us for more business.

When Mark started working for Microsoft they did a 'background' check. Actually they didn't do it themselves, they 'outsourced' it to some other company. So someone we know nothing about and didn't give our permission to, started collecting information and storing it. They had to check on former employers, one of which also 'outsources' all their employee files. They ran a credit check. When they put us in corporate housing, THOSE people ran a credit check, even though they were being paid by Microsoft, not us. When we opened a checking and savings account, when we rented our own apartment, when we rented storage space, when we applied for a mortgage, when we signed up for utilities at our new house - all caused new credit checks. (Even a Microsoft Corporate Move affiliate, Wells Fargo, ran a credit check on us without our knowledge just in case they would have an opportunity to serve our mortgage needs.) By the time they were done our own credit score had decrease by 50 points because there had been too many credit inquiries in the past 6 months. As if we had been applying for credit cards and going on a spending spree. I was appalled.

I don't apply for store credit cards in order to 'save 10% on all your purchases today.' I don't enter sweepstakes anymore (except, of course, for the HGTV Dream House... oh well.) I don't have a debit card, don't authorize direct deductions from my checking account, don't allow internet sales sites to keep my credit card information (if I can help it - sometimes you can't.) We use cash at most small or independent businesses and restaurants to avoid the possibility of credit card theft. I don't even do online banking or bill paying.

At every point in which someone was accessing our data, there was the possibility that something would get messed up. And that was a lot of 'points.'

I'm getting paranoid. And I don't appreciate letting loose another authorized background check.

But in today's world, if you want to work, you give them permission to check you out. If you want to travel, you give them permission to look through your things and feel you up. If you want to buy things, get medical help, drive, use electricity, call people on the phone... you give 'them' permission.

Your car, your cell phone, your Easy Pass automatic toll payer - all give people ways to track you. Every street corner, every business, every building has security cameras.

Think you aren't at risk because you are honest and transparent in your dealings with the world?

Think again.

Agreement

I've been trying to read the political commentary in preparation for the next big election. I've always complained that the stuff you get in the news really has nothing to do with the issues - but that is mostly because the 'issues' are talked about earlier in the campaigns - before I start paying attention. By the time I get interested we're usually down to mudslinging and hairdo's.

Anyway, I've been finding that I agree with a lot of what is being said. I even found common ground with Hillary, of all things - when she said Obama's lack of experience is showing.

Which leads to me to the conclusion that what is said to get elected is very different from what is done afterwards. Who didn't already know that?

Maybe it's not worth paying attention to after all.

Blueberry Pie

It's blueberry season - time for pie! And I made one this afternoon, which turned out just perfectly and which we enjoyed after dinner. Mark had to ask, though - "Can you make a blueberry pie without thinking of your father?"

No, of course not. My father was ALL about blueberry pie.

In Southeast Alaska there are wild blueberries galore. And of course my parents' visits to us there coincided with berry season. (Had to.) Blueberry bushes thrive in clearcuts - one of the first things to come back after logging. And the berries are small and tart and far more tasty than the commercial berries you can get in the lower 48. They make wonderful pies. (The secret to a great blueberry pie? A little salt, a little lemon juice and some cinnamon.)

My dad loved them.

He had to work to get them though. Sacrificed a day of fishing. Fought off bears. Stained his fingers and clothes. (Teeth too, but that was later and didn't involve work exactly.) Climbing through an old clearcut to get to the best, most productive bushes is no easy task.

Alaskan berries - wild berries - are very wormy. He was philosophical about this though, as he was about most things. "Could always use a little more protein in the diet" he'd say, thoughtfully peering into his berry bucket as hundreds of tiny worms crawled up the sides. Undaunted, he was. (We soaked them in salt water to get the worms out - so it wasn't like we ate TOO many of them, but I'm sure a pie did, indeed, involve some extra protein.)

He was always happy to have a piece of leftover pie for breakfast too - "Fresh fruit for breakfast. Very nutritious! Good way to start the day!!"

My mother will be embarrassed when I say this, but he would even lick the plate clean. Any cook would appreciate such high praise. I did.

And I wish I could share this pie with him.

Chronicling accomplishments

One of the things I like about blogging is the 'diary' aspect of it - the opportunity to put out little markers of things you've accomplished or memories you want to celebrate so that you have them recorded, more for yourself than anyone else. And today we just finished another big project and decided we needed to look back a little to see how far we've come.

Almost a year ago we bought a 'fixer-upper.' And, as I've said before, we are "fixing 'er up." We've had some help along the way - our son came to work with us for a week last fall, my sister and brother-in-law helped us with some digging and planting when they visited, my mother bought us some beautiful pots to put on our back deck, and we hired out part of our recent project - but mostly we've just plugged along with steady work and a little inspiration. We've also had some setbacks - major ones like the storm in December that felled two of our wonderful trees and destroyed our roof, or minor ones like putting up drapery rod brackets too far apart for the length of the rod. We've probably spent more money than would be prudent to tally. We've had our share of sore muscles and back pain. And we've spent an alarming amount of time repairing walls and schlepping junk and debris to various charitable organizations and refuse transfer sites. But we're happy with our progress. So far we have:

• Replaced all the kitchen appliances


• Repainted all the walls, trim, doors and closets


• Replaced light fixtures in the entryway and the two dining areas


• Swapped out locks, doorknobs, outlet covers and other fixtures


• Sanded and treated kitchen cabinets and caulked


• Installed 'closet systems' to maximize space


• Hung new decorative shelving in the family room, office and hallway


• Installed hardwood flooring in about 1/4 of the house


• Put in new window shades, blinds, rods and curtains


• Replaced half of the windows - the other half to be done this fall


• Put on a new roof


• Replaced the furniture in the family room, so it is more scaled to the size of the room


• Installed a mantle over the fireplace


• Rototilled the front garden to plant daffodils


• Put up an outdoor storage shed - twice (The first one was destroyed in The Storm and had to be replaced.)


• And finally - FINALLY! - took care of the drainage problem in our backyard.

This last bit is the part we are celebrating this weekend. The excavation team installed french drains around the back of the house and put in a 'dry creekbed' to cover them last week. We also planted pumpkins in our side yard - which will serve, in the future, as raised-bed vegetable gardening space. And we put down grass seed - which is actually starting to grow! This weekend, we put the new shed together and put barkdust down, over what seemed like vast spaces, to cover the bare ground until next spring when we might actually be able to terrace the yard and plant a few things. We're so proud.

I've got blisters.

Harry Potter buzz

So, when the book finally does come out this weekend, how many people will read the ending first?

I might.

Naming

We were at our local True Value Hardware store, looking for polishes the other day. Mark is obsessed with polishes for some reason, and can be often found perusing the isles of miscellaneous stores looking through their selections. He looks at the names, the chemical properties, the directions for use, the suggestions of products to polish, the packaging, and maybe even the applicator. He has some favorites, of course, but there is always the potential thrill of a new find. There is, obviously, no accounting for the recreation activities of some.

So, seeking to amuse myself there among the polishes (and, truth to tell, other cleaning products as well) I did the only thing I could do with a LOT of time to kill - read the labels myself. What a hidden gem of advertising genius! Who wouldn't know exactly what this stuff is for:

• Krud Kutter
• Never Dull
• Tarn-X
• DampRid
• Endust
• Dri-Z-air

I'm telling you - sheer genius.

Going to great lengths

We are, once again, trying to stay cool. Remember our struggle last summer with the heat? It was awful. And with summer in the throes of it, here we are again.

We have a precise temperature point at which we open the windows in the house. We have fans in strategic places with carefully calibrated settings. We leave our cars to cool down in the driveway before putting them into the garage, carefully not introducing more heat to the house. We sleep with the windows open in spite of allergy problems, and constantly shove hot cats off our bodies, poor things. Our activities are governed by when we need to leave the house, and when we need to be home to attend to Coolness Creation Activities. This heat dictates our attire, our bedtime, our meal choices. It's even interfered with Mark's beloved early-evening nap.

And today, with a bit of a respite from it, I pause to reflect. Wouldn't air conditioning be easier? Why is that concept so difficult for Seattle-ites to get? It would be SO much nicer if they just built their houses with A/C right from the beginning. I hate having to make this expensive decision. But, really!

Dreamin' on the cheap

I was completely captivated by a story in the news about a guy who tied a bunch of big helium balloons to his lawn chair and flew to Idaho. Almost. He didn't get quite that far (from Oregon) but he flew almost 200 miles.

Maybe he couldn't afford a hot air balloon ride?

He was copying a guy in LA who managed to get 3 miles up in the air in a similar conveyance - and got fined by the FAA when an airline pilot reported to air traffic control that he'd just passed a guy flying a lawn chair.

Or, remember the story of the grandpa who drove his lawn tractor across country because he wanted to visit his brother and that was the only means at his disposal?

I am just in awe at the determination and ingenuity of John Q Public - to reach the most amazingly conceived goals on next to nothing.

People astonish me.

Musical Fun

Mark has what could only be called eclectic taste in music, his favorites running from KISS to Moody Blues, from Frank Sinatra to Frank Zappa, to the old time country music (“All my ex-es live in Texas” or “My Wife Thinks You’re Dead” by Junior Brown, for example.) The Frank Zappa tends to focus on the “Mammy nuns / Thingfish” opera while the Sinatra is the “Duets” album and the Moody Blues is simply everything – but particularly “I know you’re out there somewhere” for what might be obvious reasons.

Lately he’s been singing “Beauty School Dropout” from the musical “Grease.”

He is hopelessly attracted to the ridiculous in lyrics – did you know there is a song about “puppy wee-wee blindin’ me?” Well, maybe not ‘about’ that, but that is, in fact, one of the lines. (Unless he is completely pulling my leg, which I can never quite tell.) The old standard ‘mystery lyrics’ of “someone left a cake out in the rain, and I don’t think that I can take it” has nothing on the stuff he can come up with.

I tend to pick up the tunes really easily but don’t attend to the words at all when I listen to music – so I can hum anything but can’t sing very much. Mark, on the other hand, zeroes in on the words. He remembers them; he can resurrect them at appropriate times; he can sing along with almost anything the world can throw at him.

So I shouldn’t have been surprised that he was able to launch right into “Lydia the Tattooed Lady*” along with Kermit the Frog when he brought home the first season DVD of the Muppet Show last week. (We’ll leave it to another day to talk about why he would have thought he needed to buy the first season DVD of the Muppet Show – another day when I figure it out myself.) The song is, evidently, a favorite of Jim Henson, and an old Groucho Marx song (from At the Circus, for those of you who always want the Straight Scoop. It also appeared in the 1940’s version of “The Philadelphia Story.”) Who knew? Anyway, just for laughs, some excerpts:

Lydia, oh Lydia, that encyclo-pidia.
Oh Lydia The Queen of Tattoo.
On her back is The Battle of Waterloo.
Beside it, The Wreck of the Hesperus too.
And proudly above waves the red, white, and blue.
You can learn a lot from Lydia!

OR

When her muscles start relaxin',
up the hill comes Andrew Jackson.

OR

She once swept an Admiral clear off his feet.
The ships on her hips made his heart skip a beat.
And now the old boy’s in command of the fleet,
For he went and married Lydia.

At least it's never dull at my house...

(*Written by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg)

Sporting Events

We were trolling for something to watch on TV late this afternoon when we came upon a new sporting event on ESPN - broadcast from Las Vegas, no less:

Rock, Paper, Scissors Championships.

I kid you not. The old game is taking odds in Vegas. Oh yes. Rock crushes scissors, scissors cuts paper or paper covers rock for the win. You can see that training, strategy, and stamina (there is considerable discussion about the possibility of the favorite coming up with 'wrist cramps') are critical and there is much to be gleaned from pre-competition interviews and past match reviews toward improving your odds of backing the winner. Trying to ignore the announcer's inevitable comments about going "mano a mano" we just had to scoff at the bookies and the groupies.

Good grief.

Evidently there is a World RPS Society (serving the needs of decision-makers everywhere.) On their website they explain the rules, give the niceties of 'good form' and even have a legal disclaimer about how, yes, it is a decision-making tool but no, they are not legally responsible for the actual Decision.

All this is going on while the all-important, ultimate "awareness" gambit is happening on other channels - Live Earth concerts. Who ya gonna go with?

Talk about 'decisions.'

Howling at the dawn

Our cat Frik woke us up at the crack of dawn this morning (which in the northwest is pretty early at this time of year.) He was howling. Long and loud. He put heart and soul into it too. Gave it his all, he did.

Now Frik has a voice only a mother could love. It is low and harsh and a little gravelly. He produces sound from the very back of his head somehow, making it round and full and well-projected. And when he puts that much effort behind it, he can really deliver the goods. The 'delivery' lasted an impressively long time. Over and over he howled. It echoed in the hallway. It rang in the rafters.

Well, we woke up alright. If that was the desired response - mission accomplished. Mark leaped out of bed - at once armed and ready.

Of course figuring out what the problem was proved difficult. What Frik has in volume he lacks in specificity. He just sat there, wide-eyed, and looked at us. His location proved the only clue: he was sitting right in the doorway to the laundry. The litter box is in the laundry.

He was announcing that he was going potty.

Special Days, record-setting milestones

Today is our wedding anniversary. "Eleven years," we said to each other. "Imagine." (Mark says it is a record for him!)

It's a success. We learned how to be partners. To build each other up; to treasure each other and our time together. To remember and practice the actions and words that made us fall so hopelessly in love with each other in the first place.

So to my wonderful Mark, thank you. Happy Anniversary.

Happy July 4th!

We are celebrating by trying to stay cool - which seems like what everyone is doing. (And, of course, by charring some burgers on the grill and splurging on 'fruit pizza' but that's pretty much a given for the 4th.)

My son celebrated over the weekend by entering a 10k race - for which he received a trophy which he was embarrassed about.

My Arizona family is staying inside (and maybe being outside splashing in the pool) because it is supposed to be an amazing 112 degrees!

Which brings me back to reminiscences of Independence Days past. We used to live in small town, rural Alaska - and NOBODY does July 4th like small town, rural Alaska. For the whole month of June local high school girls launch a fundraising campaign to pay for it all - and for the honor of 'Queen' of the festivities. They run raffles, sponsor rummage sales, sell cookies door to door and, mostly, make and sell lunches at street-side booths set up in the town. This is a big deal. Everyone donates foodstuffs, the cable TV company posts the daily menus, friends and family work the booth - and the whole town 'does lunch' with the Queens. There is usually something like $30,000 raised - so you can believe me when I say the whole town does lunch.

The 4th dawned every year with a race, of course, which we always slept through. But we always went out for the parade! It started with the volunteer fire department guys running every vehicle they had down Main Street with sirens blaring. Not to be outdone, the police department followed suit. Kids marched in costume, the VFW marched in formation with the flag, the local grocery store brought together a Boom Box Band and marched in force with help from the local radio station who broadcast the Boom Box music. One year a big cruise ship was in port for the day and they added their dancing girls (costumed and plumed appropriately - or maybe, actually, just slightly in-appropriately!) and their uniformed waiters. Some townspeople made floats on their pick-up trucks; the Little League All Star Team rode on one, as did the Head Start kids. The Klingit Indian tribe put forth costumed dancers. For some years there was actually a small horse on the island - and the little guy was decked out every year to march in the parade. One of the construction workers was good on stilts - and dressed up in a long-legged Uncle Sam costume every year. The Queen and her court had a 'float' and if anyone in town had a fancy convertible, it was pressed into service to carry some poor sheepish-looking Grand Master.

The biggest thing was to march in the parade and throw candy to the crowd.

After the parade there were food booths to visit - much fundraising happens on this holiday. We had to have Catholic Hamburgers and Sorority Pie and Nurse's Root Beer. When Todd was young - but not too young - he would run around with his friends to the food and games booths and we'd dole out a dollar at a time so he had to keep coming back to us to 'check in' with us. There were bottle-tossing booths and balloons and trinkets to buy. One year the teachers put on a dunking booth - which was, as you can imagine, very popular. Great stuff.

And in the afternoon were the races. The toddler races were the most fun - and the boat races were the most dangerous. There was log-rolling in the harbor, egg tossing in the streets, toilet paper relaying on City Hall lawn.

And then in the evening (LATE in the evening - it being so far north) there were fireworks. Big booming ones. Lots of them.

Wonderful.

Hope you have a great holiday!