Talking Turkey

This is me checking my ridiculously large Costco turkey on Thanksgiving. As usual, my face is red because I keep forgetting to let the steam escape from the oven before I stick my head in there to check on things.

I've been under a lot of stress recently, mostly financial. Lately, though, I've tried to put it in perspective. I mean, seriously, how bad do I really have it? Some things I am thankful for (in no particular order):
1) A loving family, both nuclear and extended.
2) I have enough to eat. I have more than enough to eat. I am a little fat right now.
3) I have somewhere to live.
4) I still love my husband after 11 years together. He appears to love me :)
5) Sometimes it doesn't rain in Portland.
6) I am pretty healthy. My family is pretty healthy.
7) The Internet is awesome.
8) I don't have to worry about bombs or terrorists in my daily life.
9) My fat cat loves me.

Sister City

Last week, I was in Austin, TX for a conference. This is a picture of the capital building that was near my hotel. Although I was incredibly busy while I was there, it was a nice change of pace. It was good to see my colleagues and to be immersed in a crowd of 11,000 people who care about what I do. As a graduate student, it's very easy to sink into a lonely place where you think you're the only one in the world that thinks your dissertation is interesting. It was also nice, because the sun came up about 1 hour earlier and went down 1 hour later than it does here in Portland, and it didn't rain one single drop while I was there, and the temperatures were (for the most part) in the 70's.

Let's just say that my hotel wasn't the nicest place I ever stayed, but, thankfully, it wasn't the worst place, either. This is a picture of a gecko (at least I think that's the kind of lizard this is) in the stairwell of my hotel. We're not in Oregon anymore, Dorothy!

This picture is a sign posted by the 4th floor elevators in the convention center in Austin. I think it must be a typo :)

So, did you know that Austin and Portland are sister cities? I didn't either. Several independent Austin locals told me that this was true. Here, by independent, I mean that I met them independently at random locations and times throughout my visit. Even my good friend Billee told me this was the case. I asked him if anyone had told Portland about this and he said he wasn't sure. Anyway, Austin has a nice, friendly feeling about it like Portland does. However, the drivers in Austin are jerks to pedestrians. It's like they are trying to hit you. I am a total nerd (duh) and I pretty much always follow the pedestrian traffic lights (exceptions include Sunday mornings when there are absolutely no cars in sight and it seems silly to wait 3 minutes for nothing). I had about 3 close calls until I realized that they were trying to kill me and that I needed to be on the defensive. My mantra when stepping of the curb was "please don't kill me; please don't kill me." Here, in Portland, people are almost over-polite to pedestrians. It's really refreshing. Pretty much, if you see someone blow through a crosswalk with a pedestrian at the corner, the odds that they are from Washington are about 90%.

Sweetie

Dear Barack Obama,

Please reconsider your potential appointment of Larry Summers to your administration. Imagine that his remarks about women being inherently inferior in math and science were made about African Americans. Even if he had apologized, would you still be considering him?

Thank you,
me

Stupid Daylight Savings

I took this picture outside my back door a little after 5:00 PM yesterday. It's so dark so early! Boy, I can't wait until December when it starts getting dark at 4:00.

Inspired by Christmas

I have been thinking lately about the winter holidays and trying to figure out what I want to do. This is my first year without kids in the house (hopefully none of them will show up on the doorstep homeless any time soon!), so I wondered if I would even want to go to the trouble to put up a Christmas tree. Then, I thought about how wonderful the tree smells and how it makes my vacuum cleaner smell better when I vacuum up the pine needles. You see, if you have dogs, inevitably, your vacuum cleaner spews out smells of dog butt, wet dog, and dog drool whenever you vacuum because of all the dog butt, wet dog hair, and dog drool you have vacuumed up in the past. It really dampens the "fresh" feeling that you're supposed to get from cleaning.

Then, it dawned on me. Rosemary leaves look sort of like pine needles. I like the smell of rosemary. I have rosemary in my garden. So, I went and cut a sprig of rosemary and stripped off the leaves and vacuumed them up. Oh, it smelled so much better! But, then, as I kept vacuuming, it really smelled like rosemary in my house. For a long time. Don't get me wrong, the overly strong rosemary was definitely preferable to dog smells. However, next time, I will just use a little bit of rosemary. Oh! or possibly, I could vacuum up some lavender. I bet that would smell nice. Or maybe sage. And, it dawns on me. I do have douglas fir pine trees in my yard. I could just use those for the real scent I was craving in the first place...

For the Mechanically Challenged

So, for the first time in my adult life, one of my blinkers went out on my car. I didn't want to pay someone to change it for me, since it seemed like it should be a really simple fix. However, I had no idea how to go about it. I asked Mick and he said, "I'm not good at lights." I think what he meant by that was, "I don't want do it. Go figure it out for yourself."

Did you know that the owner's manual for the 1994 Ford Taurus wagon has absolutely no information in it about how to change the bulbs? It doesn't! It does, however, give you the model number of the bulb you should buy, so I went to get one of those. Also, did you know that if you google "how to change tail turn signal taurus wagon" (and variations) you get absolutely no helpful information at all? It's true!

So, I went out to my car with my tool kit and the bulb and figured I would mess around until I figured it out. First, I opened the hatch to see if I was supposed to come at it from the inside. There was a thing with some knobs near it that looked like it would come off, so I turned the knobs and pulled the panel off, and, guess what! I have a spare tire. Who knew? I put that panel back on, because there was no way to access the bulbs from there. Then I looked at the back of the car and noticed that there were two screws that looked like they were holding the colored thing that the lights are behind on. I figured I would unscrew them and see what happened.

See them there? (And, yes, I know my car is dirty. Shut up.) Well, I unscrewed them and the thing came off and there were some white things with wires coming out of the back of them. Hmm. Not knowing what to do, I tried to turn one of the white things, and it turned and came out. There was a bulb on the other side of it. Yes!

I changed the bulb. My turn signal still didn't work, though, because I changed the wrong bulb! I switched out the other bulb and it worked!

If you do not understand the feeling of accomplishment I got from this, you must not realize the depth of my mechanical ineptitude.

P.S. I forgot to say that Mick bought me this car a year ago at a police seizure auction. The door panels were all broken off when I got it, so I wonder if it was searched for drugs and seized. Whatever its history, we paid about 1/3 of the blue book value for it and it's been a great car. Anyway, as I was pulling off the tail light thing, I wondered just what I would do if I found drugs that the police had missed. What are you supposed to do? Call 911? "Hi, 911? I just found a lot of cocaine in my car." I wonder how that would go down...