Happy New Year!

Good grief! It is the 31st already! A really, really bad year has come to an end.

I probably shouldn't say that. It hasn't been so bad for us actually. We are still happily married, both still employed... we have our health, as they say. We even still own our house. It's been a year for travel for us, and a year of taking some steps toward solving some problems. We squirreled retirement money away to the right place, fixed some things in the house that were annoying and hazardous, took action on various personal fronts. Yes, all around not as bad a year as it could have been.

And goodness knows at our age we shouldn't be wishing days away!

But Somali pirates, North Korean bluster, incredibly annoying celebrity 'news' (Jon and Kate, Octomom and Balloon Hoax Boy coupled with Tiger Woods, White House State Dinner party-crashers, Rod Blagojevich and that idiot governor who was 'hiking the Appalachian Trail') and the whole mess that TARP and bailouts and (coming incredibly fast on the heels of those monumental government disasters) the takeover of the health insurance industry are bringing down on our heads... Well, it just makes you want to go back to bed.

Honestly? Where is my motivation any more? The whole 'who's doing well vs. who isn't' is backwards.

(Ayn Rand once said that the greatest evil in the world - the worst 'story' of them all - was Robin Hood. Taking from the rich and giving to the poor takes from all of us not just our motivation, but our integrity, our drive, our ingenuity, our caring, our self respect and respect for others... our very 'human'-ness. Think of it, Nancy Pelosi, who, interestingly is one of the very rich who is not likely to have anything taken away from her.)

Yes, 2009 was a pretty sad year. I'm not sure I can muster a lot of enthusiasm for 2010.

I have a few suggestions though:

• Let's make sure we call it 'twenty ten' not 'two thousand ten' - I don't know if anyone else cares about that but I'm finding various media references to 'two thousand ten' to be incredibly out of step with our history. We all know that the Normans invaded the Saxons in 'ten sixty six' not 'one thousand sixty six' and that Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 'fourteen ninety two' and George Orwell wrote about 'nineteen eighty four.' Why let the first 9 years of this century throw that all out of the window? Try to pay attention people! It is Twenty Ten!!
• Let's all resolve not to 'click' on all the stupid internet news articles about stupid people doing stupid things in order to attract stupid attention to themselves. If we don't read this crap they won't keep trying to pawn it off on us as news.
• Let's also resolve to look for and shout out about all the 'unintended consequences' of laws, policies, lapses and 'change' that are threatening our society, our economy and our way of life. And we HAVE to find a way to get pork out of politics.
• Hmmmm... that's very grim.
• Let's laugh every day, in spite of it all.

Happy New Year!

Mail Order

We've had a bit of a challenge this year with mail order - well, internet ordering and mail delivery, to be precise. And it made me wonder why we still do it.

I started shopping from catalogs when I lived in rural Alaska and it was really the only choice (barring an expensive trip 'outside' to a suburban area with 'real' shopping) for getting almost anything besides groceries. And of course, once you've ordered from a catalog, your mailbox is forever stuffed with them. My son and I used to pour over the Penney's Christmas Toy Catalog for hours of entertainment - and marvelous things came from it! The back-to-school catalogs were well 'thumbed' and ordered from as well, and once we got on a roll it wasn't long before we were ordering everything - clothes, shoes, toys, coats, pots and pans, pillows, light fixtures, chairs, my Chevy Blazer... all from catalogs and 'phone shopping.' We had Vidalia onions coming in from Georgia, Lebanon Bologna coming from Pennsylvania, fresh oysters from Seattle, frozen mini-chimichangas coming from Tucson... Good grief.

I still order popcorn from South Dakota. And last year Mark got started on a Tastycake ordering binge from Pennsylvania (which I'm happy to say we finally got over, although we are still on their email address list for tempting ads... and a butterscotch krimpet ornament hangs somewhat more prominently on our Christmas tree than I'd like.)

So this year I got suckered in by Harry and David's - the place that is always trying to sell apples and pears for outrageous prices because their packaging is so beautiful. Who can resist their 'Tower of Treats?'

I can't, evidently.

So I ordered some for gifts back in November. They were having a sale, and the price made up for the shipping costs, and it just seemed like a good option, so I did it. And assumed that they were on their way. One more thing crossed off my 'to-do' list - I was happy.

But they didn't come. It seems that Harry and David decided that they'd get better shipping rates for themselves (savings not, evidently, passed on to the customer) if they held everything until the last minute and then shipped it all at once via Fed Ex. (It was a secret though - or at least I wasn't told.) Several weeks after I placed my order, Harry (or was it David?) informed me that it would be here 'by Christmas.' Fed Ex tracking finally declared that it had been shipped, but then it was stalled in Kent, WA... and there it stayed. Then it was supposed to be here on the 17th. But alas, it wasn't here on the 17th. Still isn't. (In fairness to H&D - they always 'make it right' and I'm sure they will, from an economic standpoint at least. Disappointing though.)

Mark had bad luck too. He ordered something - large, heavy - to be sent to his family and it seems to be 'lost.' And no one knows where or when it went astray. And no one even seems to know what to do about it now.

So. Quite honestly I live in a place where everything I need - from onions to toys to cars, and yes, even fairly reasonable substitutes for Tastycakes - are quite readily available.

One has to wonder why I can't adjust.

A Raccoon Update

Yes, we all knew this would end badly...

Our little troupe of raccoons - one mother/baby combo and 4 other renegades - has been showing up nightly for some time now. They knock on the door and we get out the bag of dog food and pour some into two dishes on the deck for them. It's been SO cold here - we are just sure they need "fuel" to survive. Who could resist? They gobble down what we've put out and ask for more. And more. And more. They finally go away when we turn out the lights and go to bed. All civilized, at least. Until recently.

First they started to fight among themselves. They'd all be there, peering in, at the glass door - sort of "cheerleader pyramid" style, so certainly cooperating with each other - but as soon as the food went out, there were 'access' issues - jockeying for position sort of thing.

And then, in spite of their differences, they seemed to have decided to band together to step up their 'demands.' One night I looked up from the sofa to see the broom handle waving around in the air. Battering ram? They rattled the dishes. Upset the bucket on the deck. Knocked pots around. And when I would try to open the door to feed them, instead of Mark, they would lunge at me - trying to be the first to the food, I think, although it really feels like they are attacking or "comin' through." Not good. The broom had to go into the garage instead, and the dishes came back in the house.

We finally decided to cut them off. We are closing the curtains and ignoring them. So far they've taken it pretty well.

But I'm sure glad we removed the broom!

Seattle Traffic

In the news last week was a report that put Seattle at the very top of the 'Worst Traffic in the Country' list. Worse than LA even, it said. We were surprised.

When we lived in Portland, traffic jams and parking lots that were supposed to be thruways were a fact of life. We spent hours stuck in traffic then - as we do NOW, when we go to visit! When we moved to the Bay area, San Francisco traffic was horrific and even little Santa Rosa - where we lived, just north of SF - had complete blockage for much of the day.

So here we are in the worst of the worst. But, in fact, we almost never see it.

My initial take on that is that we've learned to bypass most of the traffic, or simply avoid the worst times. We skirt around the edges on side streets. Or we stick to the more rural communities when we run errands. We never drive on I-5 between Seattle and Tacoma - possibly the worst stretch for stalled traffic - simply because we never need to.

Somehow the worst of the worst has turned into the best of the best.

We like it here.

Another Shopping Accident

After my shopping disaster with the coupon a while ago I should have just sworn off on the whole business, but the notion of getting me a 'shopping assistant' seems to have resonated with Mark and, well... I'm getting ahead of myself. Mark made a comment on a prior post at a later date, regarding an incident that happened afterwards... and this is all convoluted. But I thought I should explain.

We went into Seattle over the weekend - to get a long walk in, topped by a nice lunch someplace. Lovely. My favorite sort of day. We don't generally do much Christmas shopping (what with the internet and being, essentially, computer geeks) so it was nice to see some of the Christmas decorations in and on the big downtown stores as well. Nordstrom's, particularly, had a lovely display in their windows, so we wandered in to see more - and, of course, to listen to their piano player doing Christmas music on the big grand piano. Very lovely. We rode up and down the escalator a few times just to listen.

And then we were somehow in the women's department.

And somehow a very enthusiastic sales clerk latched on and we ended up in the dressing room with clothes coming out my ears and seamstresses marking pant legs and it all got very confusing and, ultimately, VERY expensive. Yes, I needed clothes. But I'm not sure I needed THESE clothes, exactly. Oh well.

Mark was grinning from ear to ear. The saleslady (who, of course, fell in love with Mark) is going to call me in the Spring to 'do' wedding attire. We have to go back this weekend for newly hemmed pants.

I'm sort of afraid to! Why can't I get this right?

A Masterful Bit of Futzing

Mark is always complaining about people at work who spend huge amounts of time futzing with their PowerPoint presentations, making sure the fonts are coordinated, the colors are right, the backgrounds are consistent and fresh, 'transitions' are catchy and, of course, that the animation, cartoons or other decorative fluff is entertaining. An audience is an audience, after all.

(I suspect it wouldn't bother him too much if there actually was some content to them; if they filled some business need or communicated an important idea somehow... but they seem to fall short in that department.)

Anyway, I am a closet futzer. Not really anxious to admit it to him, but there you have it. And I feel like I can futz with the best of them - particularly on my own time, as it were. And that's what I did yesterday. Oh, it was for a purpose alright - and a good one - but any non-futzer worth his salt wouldn't have bothered.

The purpose? I ran out of check register thingies. You know - the little booklet sort of thing that you use to record checks written and deposits made and cash withdrawn? (Yes, you young people, some of us still do checkbook balancing in a little book. Some of us actually DO checkbook balancing in the first place!) We write so few checks anymore - and evidently make so many more deposits and ATM withdrawals etc. that our check registers run out much faster than our supply of checks. So I ran out. And had to improvise. (Crisis calls for improvisation, you know.)

And after printing and rejecting dozens of drafts, I actually succeeded. I created an exact-duplicate check register - entirely faithful to the original, including shadings and spacings, and columns and rows, and sizing and back-to-back-folded-over-in-the-middle-to-get-stapled-and-inserted details. It was an amazing feat, even if I do say so myself (and I do.)

And I want everyone to know - just in case you ever experience a similar crisis - that you need just email me and ask - and I'll send my template right along.

It's the least I can do. We futzers need an audience, after all.