GetSheila

Lookie! Lookie! A New Masthead!

Before I talk about BlogHer06, and I will...at length...with no prompting whatsoever, let's talk about MY NEW MASTHEAD! (That's the banner across the top of this blog page, for those of you who don't know what a masthead is. If you still see the same old one, refresh your browser a few times until the new one shows up.)

TA DA! It is a thing of beauty, is it not? A million thanks to my friend Natalie for all her hard work. (I LOVE IT, NAT! THANKS BUNCHES!) I'd say "Props to Nat!" or "Shout out to you, girlfriend!" but pasty white girls should never try to use the lingo, especially when they actually refer to it as "the lingo" and dance to hip-hop music like an automaton on crack.

Okay, maybe one comment about BlogHer: if you hear about a woman who ran naked through The Pavilion at 1:00AM, it wasn't me. That is all.

Technorati Tags: Masthead

Festrogen

I leave tonight for the Blogher conference in San Jose, where I will spend two blissful days increasing my blogging capabilities and bonding with 400 of my fellow bloggers - all girls. Well, mostly.  There will also be BlogHims, but they will be vastly outnumbered by the BlogHers. Fun! Oh, and there are an additional 350 showing up on day two for a whopping 750 females all in one place. Wheeeeeee!

Many thanks to Shaunna who sold me her ticket. (Good luck to your sis, Shauna! Hang in there.)

My goal for this conference is to cram as much new information as will fit into my head (and laptop) so I can make my blog prettier and funnier and interesting-er. You know, better. My secondary goal is to meet some of the really cool bloggers I read every day. I hope I don't spaz out and scream their names from across a crowded room like some teenage groupie: HEATHER! MAGGIE! MELIIISSAAAAAA!. That would be so uncool.

Did I mention it's a two-day, all inclusive, yes I get to go to both cocktail parties, ticket?

LET THE FESTROGEN CELEBRATION BEGIN!

Technorati Tags: Blogher, Blogher06

PG&E I Stab At Thee

These are trying times in California, with scorching temperatures causing a strain on the state's power grid. PG&E has urged its customers to set their thermostats to 85 degrees when away from home to help conserve energy, so of course I do. It is right and prudent and maybe even a bit patriotic. I am proud to make the sacrifice.

Until I get home at the end of a long and tiring day, that is. It is not that the house is unbearably hot, no. I can live with that. I know it will cool down shortly once I reset the thermostat to 78. Now I could set it to 75 but I am not a greedy person. I am a responsible citizen, conserving energy even when I am at home, fulfilling my noble quest to prevent power outages and spare my fellow man from Mother Nature's wrath.

So I reset the thermostat to 78...and ten minutes later the power goes out. Wrath not avoided, apparently. The power does not come back on for two hours. Now two hours may not seem like a long time to you, and it is not a long time compared to...well, anything longer than two hours...but two hours in 110 degree weather with no air conditioning in a house that is already 85 degrees before the power outage is an eternity.

Not only is it hot and stuffy, but I have to drink the pond scum that comes out of my faucet disguised as water because the fridge requires electricity to not only keep the food cool but also apparently to work the automatic ice and water dispenser. Sheesh. It took me the better part of an hour to figure out how to open the ice bin manually so I could actually have ice. Not until after the power came back on did it occur to me I could have set my glass of ice on the counter and it would have melted into pure filtered water in a matter of minutes, thereby avoiding the pond scum altogether. I would never make it in the wild.

But my point, and I do have one, is this: I was punished for following the rules. Had I ruthlessly kept my house at a lower temperature all day, I would not have been so uncomfortable during the outage. Where is my reward for "Flexing My Power," oh gods of PG&E? Do you not have the technology to identify the do-gooders like me versus the evil power wasters? You bill your customers based on usage so you must be able to measure it by individual household. Why do you not have sophisticated computerized switching equipment that cuts the power of the wasters when you need to lighten the load yet leaves the rule-followers alone? Is this beyond today's technology? Do I watch too much Star Trek?

Or here's a thought, why don't you upgrade your antiquated equipment, you Hinkley-poisoning morons? It's not like there isn't enough power to go around. The problem is the delivery system through which you are trying to push all that energy.

As we sat around sweating in the dark last night, my sister recalled water and energy conservation efforts when she lived in San Francisco during the nineties. My favorite house rule: "Flush the toilet only if you go number two. Otherwise, don't flush until it's so full you can't close the lid."

She said she learned back then to ignore any and all conservation pleas after she and her roommates proudly met the call to cut back 25% one year. At the end of their arduous year of effort, the City pronounced it had not met the 25% goal overall so everyone now had to cut back an additional 10% or suffer fines. That's 10% of the current year's usage, which means if you were greedy and didn't cut back at all that first year, not only were you not fined for disregarding the rules but you only had to cut back 10% now. Meanwhile, if you scrimped and suffered to meet the 25% goal in year one, you were still expected to come up with another 10% somehow. That amounts to cutting your consumption three times more than your greedy neighbor. How unfair is that?

So the moral of the story is to use as much energy as you like because 1) you will not be rewarded for conserving energy, and 2) you will inevitably end up without power at some point this summer anyway. If it gets bad enough, maybe PG&E will be forced to finally take some action, like dip into its billions to make sure they have equipment that works properly.

Hey, it could happen.

Technorati Tags: PG&E, Heat

Heat Stupor

It is 110 degrees.

At 8:00 PM.

The power is finally back on.

Too late.

I am sweaty.

And cranky.

I forget, why do I live here?

Technorati Tags: Heat

An American Family

I have updated my "About Me" page. Check it out here.

In it, I call my step-mother a "harlot" and my half-sister "evil spawn." I am sure they aren't really those things. Not anymore.

I was too young to understand what was going on when my parents divorced. In fact, I don't have any memories of my dad at home in Canada at all. All I do know is my half-sister is a mere three years younger than me. I can only assume from this evidence that my dad took a brief moment to welcome shiny new me into the world, then promptly fell into the arms of the harlot and GOT BUSY.

Actually, I don't think he rejected me like that, but it cracked me up when I wrote it so there it is. Be sure to pronounce "got busy" as "got biz-ay" when you read it. It's much funnier that way.

I have mixed feelings about the evil spawn, although I'm pretty sure you can tell which way I'm leaning on that one. We were so close in age it didn't occur to me to reach out and keep in touch as we were growing up. Most of that is due to the fact that she was a spoiled, snotty baby the last time I saw her at age four. Until she came along, I had been the spoiled, snotty baby and I was not happy about being usurped. By the time I was mature enough to realize she was effectively an only child and might enjoy having siblings, I was almost thirty.

About that time, she contacted my mother asking for pictures of my dad when he was a young man. She contacted my mom through her mom because, of course, the two of them keep in touch.

Yeah.

Perhaps this is a good time to tell you a little bit about my mother. My mother worships at the altar of History, drinks from the cup of Genealogy, and holds all things Family sacred (regardless of how far removed the relationship may be). She keeps in touch for the sake of her children, so we won't lose track of our half-sister.

At my mother's prompting (always humor the crazy people), I wrote the evil spawn a letter updating her on my life so far and asking what she was up to. I didn't think of her as the evil spawn then. I was excited at the prospect of getting to know my little sister. So I sent the standard getting back in touch fare and received...no response. A month or so later, I followed up with a humorous greeting card saying I'd love to hear from her. Response? Nada. Zip. Nothin'.

What is UP with that? I tried again several years later using an email address I got from her mother. No reply and yet no bounce. OKAY. I GET IT. YOU DON'T WANT ANYTHING TO DO WITH ME. FINE. I made the effort. My conscience is clear. But here is what I want to know: why didn't she contact our father's side of the family for pictures of him? If you had a choice between contacting your blood relatives (aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents) or the woman your father cheated on and then dumped after nineteen years of marriage to be with your mother, which would you choose? To date, the workings of the evil spawn's mind remain a mystery to me.

Family: I do so love the dysfunction.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

Traveling seems to bring out the stupid in me. My latest trip to Orcas Island for a friend's wedding, for example. Let's review:

1. Slammed my head in the rental car door

   How is it that I can be standing completely outside of the car, yet my head remains within the trajectory of the slamming door? I am the only person I know who has ever done this. 

2. Wasn't paying attention at the ferry so the attendant had to run up and bang on my windshield to get me to board

   I arrived what I thought was an hour early for the afternoon ferry to the island, but it turned out I had the wrong schedule so I was only thirty minutes early and missed boarding by FOUR CARS. But I came prepared with a book, which was good because the hour I had to wait for the next ferry turned into two because...well, I'm not sure. They didn't say.
   
   Meanwhile, it started to rain so I rolled up my windows as my windshield became a dirt-smeared, opaque mess. I heard the boarding call, but it was for the walk-ons and I assumed (you know, Ass-U-Me'd) there would be another big announcement that the vehicle boarding was starting. I don't know what finally made me look up from my book, but it was just in time to see a rain-slicker clad woman hurrying towards my car, gesturing furiously.
   
   I only got about twenty yards before the line stopped again so, technically, my inattention did not hold anything up. I still felt bad, though. I hate being the cause of thoughts like "Goddam tourist!" and "What does she think this is, a vacation?"

3. Returned my rental car without checking it in

   The sign said "Pull forward. Leave keys in car." I followed the instructions. There was no one about. I left.

4. Waited until ten minutes before my plane boarded to panic about the rental car

   I arrived three hours early for my flight and spent two of them on my computer without a care in the world. Thirty minutes before my flight was to board, it occurred to me perhaps I should make sure the car had been checked in and the meter stopped on my credit card charges. I didn't want to leave the gate because then I would have to go through security again and THAT takes forever and I don't have time for that! So I spent the next twenty minutes on the phone alternating between a recording from the rental car desk two floors below and a live customer service rep in another state who was a tad light in the "service" area. 
   
   Ten minutes before I was supposed to board I finally gave up the Ma Bell route and raced out of the gate area, down two flights of escalators to the rental car desk where two nice ladies told me no, I was not stupid (They were just being polite. I know that!), and promised to get it sorted out. They said they would call me on my cell phone when they located the car, which had probably been washed and rented again (since it had been two hours!), but they did not want me to miss my flight so I should go. Which I did, but not before running into someone from the wedding and trying to make both polite chit-chat and my escape at the same time.
   
   The security line was, of course, twice as long as it was the first time around but I had eighteen minutes before the plane was scheduled to depart and it seemed to be moving pretty fast. Halfway through, the rental car agency called to say they located the car and I was off the hook. THANK GOD. I got through security (I have to take my hiking boots off AGAIN?) with five minutes to spare and RAN (I never run) to the gate, only to discover boarding had not yet started because they were running just a teensy bit behind.

In retrospect, nothing horrible happened. And feeling stupid isn't so bad. If I never did anything stupid, I would have no stories to tell. How boring life would be if we all behaved perfectly, followed the rules, and never made a mistake.

LONG LIVE THE STUPID PEOPLE!

Misery Loves Company

Hey, wanna see my bug bites?

Gross, huh? What is it about the revolting that makes us want to share? And lookey-loo? My bites don't actually look too bad, but they itch like crazy and you missed the part where they resembled giant pimples with heads full of puss. Euw.

In case you missed my Here Be Monsters post, I woke my first morning on Orcas Island covered in these. I assumed it was a bed bug, or rather a herd of them, or whatever the term is for a bunch of bed bugs gathered in one place besides "icky." (Bed bug infestations are on the rise in the U.S., by the way. Just so you know.)

My ex's grandfather liked sharing the revolting, too. He relished telling the story about when something hard and calcified came out his nose. He especially liked sharing all the gory details. When he finished he would say, "Want to see it?" He kept it in a small glass jar so he could scare the great-grandkids. I think he was secretly proud something so big came out his nose and he lived to tell the tale.

Are you immune? How many times have you taken a whiff of the milk, found it spoiled and said, "That's DISGUSTING! Here, smell this"?

And the other guy did, didn't he? Are we all brain damaged? 

Sailing

Sailing is hard.

Left equals port equals red. Right equals starboard equals green. A white light means the other boat is mooning you. It’s all so technical. And that is just the tiniest sliver of information you need to know to sail a boat.

Last Saturday I went sailing on a trimaran, which has a large hull in the center and two smaller ones on either side. Trampoline decking stretches between the hulls and provides additional walking/lounging/flailing areas. Walking on the springy trampoline takes a little getting used to, ergo the flailing, but once I realized it wasn't going to give way due to my vast bulk and fling me into the sound, it wasn't so bad.

I neglected to get a photo of the actual boat I was on, but here are a few from a random website (Farrier Marine Inc) that show the basic structure. The first has all three of its hulls full of water to prove that it won't sink; the second is a big'un, bigger than the boat I was on, but shows a good aerial view.

The weather could not have been more perfect. Sunny, but not too hot. Breezy, but not too windy. Breeze is kinda important when your boat is powered by sails, or so I'm told.

We were eight and three quarters in total: eight adults, one small child (1/2), and one cat (1/4). Spook-the-cat made an unfortunate appearance right before a technical maneuver that involved lots of clanking rigging and flapping of the sails. That was it for Spook sightings until we docked.

If you have never been on a sailboat, all I can say is...go. And if you can do it on a trimaran or catamaran, even better. They are more stable than single hull boats, just as a tricycle is more stable than a bicycle. (Ooh, the sailing gods are gonna get me for that comparison.) They also have a much lower heel angle, which means you don't have to hang on for dear life as the boat tilts at a 45 degree angle because the multi-hull boat will only tilt 12-15 degrees.

I felt so alive out on that tiny boat in the middle of the big, bad ocean. Okay, not the ocean but rather the sound and the channels between islands. It was still big and wet and hawesome*. I realized many things that day:

1. Yes, you are still alive even though beloved friends, family, and pets are dropping dead all around you.


2. You will likely remain alive for another 40 years or so, fast-moving buses and poisonous reptiles notwithstanding, so get off your ass and leave the house for something besides work you moron.


3. Until this weekend, you hadn't met any new people, much less cool new people, for ages. (Refer to the "you moron" part at #2 above.)


4. You really enjoy meeting new people. If you just act like a normal person, they won't know you were a painfully shy kid, a bitchy teen, or any of that other stuff from childhood you insist on dragging around with you wherever you go.

I learned lots of cool stuff about sailing, too, but the details escape me and I'd probably get half the terminology wrong anyway. Here is a tip from my hosts Ron and Kelly: if you are serious about sailing, take a class to learn the basics and then start racing. They learned more from racing their boat every week than anything they ever learned in a class.

So to Captain Ron, First Mate Kelly, and First Cat Spook: many thanks for a wonderful adventure, guys. You are H..HAWESOME.

- - - - - - - - - -

*If it's better than awesome, it's hawesome...sometimes with two h's. Watch a hilarious vlog on hawesome from the guy who popularized the term. (Note the cow print baby seat cover in the background. You gotta love this guy.)

Washington: The Law-Abiding State

Washington state takes its speed limits very seriously. I don’t mean the highway patrol is out there pulling people over left and right to enforce the limits. They don’t have to. Drivers in Washington do not speed. If you are from a state where drivers regularly exceed the limit, as I am, it is at first unsettling, then oddly quaint, and then it gets downright annoying.

Not that I think everyone should be out there breaking the law and exceeding the speed limit willy nilly…but aren’t they? Aren't you? I mean really, who goes the speed limit? Old people and teenagers just getting their permits, that’s who. And what is the motivating factor in those cases? Fear.

I took I-5 north from the Seattle/Tacoma airport, which took me right past downtown Seattle. You would think that at least there, those crazy city folk would be speeding around while also talking on their cell phones and drinking coffee or smoking or some other city-fied third activity sure to cause an accident at least once per day. But no. Everyone drove at a safe speed, kept a safe distance from other cars, and nobody cut anybody off. 

Past the city where traffic thinned out and sped up, still no one exceeded the limit and many went 60 to 65 in a 70mph zone. And then...THEN...when I approached a car from behind in the fast lane...Oh, how do I put this? I'm not quite sure how to word it...Okay, let me see if I can explain it in a way that you will understand...they moved over to the slow lane and let me pass.

FREAK. ME. OUT.

I drove the speed limit the remainder of my stay in Washington. I mean, wouldn't you? They obviously have some sort of invisible, all-seeing detection system, right? And I don't have confirmation on this, but I'm pretty sure they are one of those states where the penalty for breaking the law, any law, is death. Kill another human being? Death. Steal a car? Death. Drunk in public? Litter? Exceed the speed limit? Death. Death. Death.

Think about it: why else would Every Single Person obey the law? Because the penalty is DEATH. It's the only explanation that makes any sense.

One Wedding and No Funerals

I thought about wearing a big floppy hat to my friend Jennifer’s wedding, but I figured I would just feel silly. Or upstage the bride. NOT good manners.

It turns out I could have worn just about anything. The women ranged from casual cotton sundresses to elegant sparkly pantsuits and little black cocktail dresses; the men, from business suits to khakis and shorts. Yes, one guy came in shorts and loafers with no socks, but he fit right in. It was the Ellis Island of wedding attire.

Did you know you can be ordained as a minister with just a few clicks of your mouse? Jennifer and Toby’s ceremony concluded with the words, “By the power vested in me by…the Internet, I now pronounce you man and wife.” The rest of the service was equally humorous, in a happy, respectful, “let’s all have fun” kind of way. For a newly ordained Internet minister, this guy was a natural. He was articulate and gregarious, with the added bonus of having unruly salt-and-pepper hair and a matching beard. He just looked like someone who should be marrying people.

The ceremony took place on the warm, sunny grounds at the Inn at Ship Bay overlooking Eastsound on Orcas Island. Jennifer seemed to float across the wooden footbridge in her elegant strapless gown. No big meringues here, but rather a lovely vision in cream. As she made her way down the aisle, her expression behind the veil alternated between happy excitement and dogged determination not to cry. She lost that battle, but only intermittently. It was cute. And besides, what’s a wedding without all the crying?

Toby looked equally dapper in his brown pinstriped suit. The color offset both his red hair and Jennifer’s cream gown beautifully. I may be shortchanging Toby here, but I am guessing Jennifer chose his ensemble. I mean, what guy 1) chooses his own wedding clothes, and 2) gets it so perfectly right? Example: my ex chose his own suit for our wedding. He wore a white tuxedo.

Yeah.

I must say this was the best wedding I have ever been to, hands down. I think that’s because Jennifer and Toby made everything feel so personal. Jennifer made gift baskets for her friends and family. She assembled goodie bags for all of the children, with books and games to keep them occupied if they got bored during the reception. And as if her choice of wedding attire did not convey her excellent taste, she also designed the exquisite table settings. In fact, I think she would have assembled them herself, as she did the goodie bags and gift baskets, if Toby had not stepped in and said, “Why don’t we pay someone to do that for you?” God I love him. I don’t think I have mentioned what a great guy Toby is. (Excellent choice, Jennifer!)

The ceremony was beautiful, the dinner excellent, and the reception a dancing/karaoke success. Which brings me to the guests: I have never been around so many people who utilize their brains in my life. It was intimidating and yet not, if that makes any sense…which I’m sure it doesn’t. These people are witty, kind, creative, easy-going, and have excellent work/life balance. I felt like I fell into a vat of Stepford people. And then I realized I was a Stepford people, too! Sweeeeet.

The moral of this story is to have your wedding in a remote location. If it's hard to get to, only people who REALLY like you will come. Odds are they are the same people who you REALLY like back, so everybody wins.