Getting too old for this, part 1

It's been busy as usual lately - our group has a big presentation on the 14th, and in the lead-up time to this, we have been having daily meetings and pre-presentations to talk about the presentation, which cuts into the time needed to actually EDIT the presentation. I have four pages of notes on changes I need to make (or look into) for my part, but haven't made most of those yet. Because these meetings are scheduled for 60-90 minutes and end up taking 3-4 hours. Grrrrrr.

Anyway, it's also officially the Holiday Season. We are in the midst of back to back parties in the evenings; on Thursday I went to a girls' gift exchange party (where I lost a nice clutch, but scored some nice lip balm and lotion. I was happy that the handheld blender I brought was popular), last night we had a casual dinner party at the house with about 12 people including a very good friend in town from Perth Australia (Hi, Lisa, we miss you!) followed by meeting other friends at a bar and more time at the house after the bar closed and going to sleep at 4 am, and tonight we have a potluck to go to.

I went to breakfast at Home with Lisa today (I'll have to order the brisket hash next time over the cornflake-coated french toast, note to self), then came home and cleaned up the remaining bits from last night's party (including putting the 3-liter wine bottle in recycling), and then promptly napped on the couch. I slept for about 2 hours and now feel jet lagged.

I think we'll be pulling the plug early tonight after the potluck. I'm curious to see how a potluck with 70 people and one turkey is going to work out, though!

Kent gave me an early Christmas present today: a manual water cannon for flushing pigeons out of the tree from the little balcony. Oh pigeons, move somewhere else while you've got the chance.

At the party last night, a lot of discussion centered around people's past marital problems. Most everybody has had long term relationships (except me) and now I'm a little worried, since many of the problems seemed so difficult and common. Eek.

TWBD

Tired, whiny, and brain dead.

I spent today at the house in SF - my last furniture was moved from my East Bay house today, and I was here to meet the movers (my realtor handled the other end - yay!). I did some work before they got here, got through the move, started working after (so distracted by wanting to put things away - I guess I am grown up), and got caught up in an extremely frustrating afternoon of digging through several project files (there is not room to segregate the papers when working at home, and the electronic files look the same and there are several versions of each), while people KEPT PINGING ME asking for data I kept telling them I did not have.

GRRR.

I did break for dinner, but I kept messing with work until about 10:30, and I don't know what I was thinking because I didn't have even a glass of wine during that time. Ridiculous.

Tomorrow, I have two presentations to do (not ready for either). And am I preparing? No. Am I sleeping? No. Am I watching a show dedicated to critiques of the hairstyles of the "New Moon" stars? Well, yes, kind of, but I don't remember how that came to happen. I refuse to read or see any of the Twilight series.

At least the house looks nice with all the furniture here. Hopefully I'll perk up a bit later this week. All I need is some free time! (WANT)

Valet girl, she's a valet girl (like Oh. Mah. Gawd!)

Another busy week on the West Coast! I'm starting to mix up my weeks - I was asking a co-worker about our presentation on Wednesday and scared him, because it's next Wednesday, not tomorrow. Oops. And WHEW, because now I don't have to cram for that on top of my other work this week.

The last contingency was removed on my house sale yesterday (everything with inspections and financing went swimmingly), so now I have to make arrangements to move the rest of my stuff. I guess I'll be spending at least a day this weekend over there, packing up what's left in the pantry and the garage, and priming the wall patch by the breaker panel. I'll have to see when the mover is available but this move will be a lot smaller than the last one. It will be a bed, two dressers, a dining set, a console table, a floor mirror and a sofa. Shoot, I bet that can all fit in a van rather than a 32-foot truck!

Kent and I went to Spokane last weekend for his nephew's wedding. It was relatively quiet - we were not in the maelstrom of the activities, but left to our own devices in downtown Spokane most of the time.

The wedding was fun - I had to behave as the preacher was going through the long list of wifely and husbandly duties - but it shows that we have a lot of planning still to do. At least I now know the trick, if there is a back room where there is beer, have a two-way radio to alert people in there they need to come out for pictures.

The future in laws were all very interested in my ring, and in hearing how our wedding planning is going. We have booked a site now and have a date (March 19!), but that's as far as it goes. I still tell anyone who asks that our colors are chartreuse and fuchsia (they're not really, I haven't sorted that detail out yet, but it gets a good reaction). We'll also be dispensing with several of the traditional parts of the ceremony, but we'll work out which ones as we go forward.

Our hotel in Spokane was the Davenport Towers. It was a nice hotel, although the decor reminded me a lot of a natural history museum in the 1970s, plus gilding. Interesting... The hotel also had a town car service which was usually very nice. We got a ride out to the wedding, but getting back from the wedding was a different story. I called first:

me: Hi, I'm at the Lincoln Center, and wanted to book a car.
Valet girl: please hold
(10-minute hold)
Valet girl: I don't have any drivers, but can call you a cab if you need a ride.
me: OK, let me check around here to see if anyone else is going. I'll call back if we need a cab. Thanks.

No one else is going, so Kent calls the valet.

Kent: Hi, we need a cab from the Lincoln Center to the hotel.
Valet girl: Please hold
(5-minute hold)
line is disconnected.

I call next, but no one is picking up at the valet desk.

I call again a few minutes later and the phone is answered.

me: Hi, I'd like to get a cab from Lincoln Center to the hotel.
Valet girl: I'm sorry, we don't have any drivers. I can get you a cab if you need a ride.
(pause)
me: Uh - yes, that's why I'm calling, I need a cab.
Valet girl: please hold
(5-minute hold, then we hear that Bryant is leaving and we can ride with him. We hang up)

Bryant is not leaving. The bride is worried about their town car, since it's 10 minutes past the time it was expected. She has a friend call the valet desk with predictable results. Five minutes later, a town car from our hotel shows up for the bride and groom, who invite us to share the ride back to the hotel. When we're out and tipping the driver, we hear there's a new girl working the valet desk that night. She's definitely having a rough night, but hopefully will get the hang of the job soon.

5318008*

One of the joys of getting older is getting onto new medical procedures. Yay. Since I hit the magical age of 40, I was sent to get my first mammogram.

I've read and heard a few accounts of mammograms, so I wasn't looking forward to it. From everything I heard, it involved refrigerated plates that would clamp down on a captive boob until the thickness was taken down to about half an inch. Gah.

When I was escorted into the room, I didn't notice that the room wasn't particularly cold, since I was too focused on looking at the device. It had cranks on the side. Like the ones on vice grips in a workshop. Uh....

I'm happy to report that after all that buildup, it really wasn't bad. It's true that each boob is placed and flattened, but nowhere near to the degree I had heard - it wasn't too uncomfortable. Then again, I was staying very still - I hate to think what would have happened if a sneeze had come on when everything was clamped in.

The films were developed immediately, so I got to see them on the light cell (whatever that thing on the wall is called). That was weird, too - it looked like unfocused pictures of galaxies. The reports are already back, all is clear, so all is good!

If you're due and haven't gone in yet, go ahead and make the appointment. It's just about the easiest procedure you can get.

* middle school humor! Enter this number in an old calculator and turn it upside down. Heh heh.

Confrontation!

Spent the day at Kent's today, helping with some of the projects needed to wrap the place up and get it rented. Unfortunately the first thing that happened when we got there was that Crazy came out and started yelling at Kent before I even got in the front door. But do you know what? For the first time, it was kind of fun!

The entertainment started immediately, since when I'm not around, she usually taunts, "Where's the girl? Huh? Where is she?", like I'm the one that he needs to protect him from her evil powers. Yeah, I know. Lots of people feel freer to act like jerks when there are no witnesses. Anyway, I have long pictured suddenly appearing in a doorway sometime when this is going on. So I hear something strident that sounds like "Blah blah blah tree", and I come to the edge of the patio and in her direct line of sight, which startled her. Heh heh heh.

Then we had a conversation. She went first.

Crazy: Oh, there you are.
me: Yes, of course.
C: Of course. Where else would you be?
me: Home, of course.
C: Home??
me: Home.
(confused pause)
C: Whose home?
me: Whose do you think?
C: (mumble mumble) free (mumble)
me: Free what?
C: [walking away, now out of sight] (mumble mumble) free (mumble)
me: I'm sorry, free what?
C: You get freebees.
me: You know nothing.
C: I know enough!

Huh. Guess she told me. I should have said "my home", I guess, and really blown her mind.

I can only hope that "you know nothing" was really dripping with the contempt that a line like that requires. Afterwards my hands were twitching, the ready-for-a-fight adrenaline, I'm sure, but after a couple of minutes it went away, and I went about my tasks, for once not having internal arguments with her, going over and over what I would have said. I guess having an actual confrontation took care of it. I am not sure if that's a good thing to know or not.

Not a peep from her for the rest of the day, despite us digging a trench in the front yard (so close to the fence!) and sweeping sand into a large section of pavers (dust galore!). No pictures, no hovering, no police, no threats, nothing. Hmm.

So, we got a lot done today at the house:

• most of the kitchen is packed and in the new dining room (which gets to be more of a mess every day)
• bathroom is packed and in the new dining room (did I mention the mess?)
• sump outlet has been moved down by the sidewalk to prevent washing out soil all the way down the side of the property.
• all pavers have had polymer sand swept in the cracks to keep them in place
• lawn was cut (mulching Crazy's yard trash) and
• stone walkways swept (BTW, one of Crazy's trees dropped an impressive amount of huge leathery leaves - perhaps this was the tree she was first complaining about. I wish she had called the cops so we could explain that yes, trees tend to lose their leaves in the autumn) (BTW2, I resisted the urge to just throw those leaves over the fence - high road FTW!)

A few things remain:

• planting bamboo by the fence (not the kind that spreads around - tempting thought though)
• covering the loose soil with landscaping fabric and covering with river rocks
• packing up the rest of the kitchen, workroom, garage, and closets.

With any luck I won't be needed in Berkeley again, although it would be interesting to see how long it takes her to figure out that we don't live there any more. It's 4 weeks this Wednesday and she hasn't caught on yet. Then again, if you know enough, who needs new information?

Crazy steps it up a notch

OK, so I think I mentioned earlier, it's started raining lately, which makes Crazy's behavior move closer to the "batshit crazy" end of the spectrum. Kent had told me that she hovered over him all last Friday, telling the helper (in Spanish, which Kent speaks) he'd go to jail because there was no permit, taking pictures all day, etc. (before anyone worries, no permit is required for doing walkway work, especially when it's all on your own property)

This was after last week's storm but before another storm hit on Monday. Keep in mind that more storms equals more crazy.

We stopped by his house today to drop something off and check around, and the parking strip where my car usually goes? I kid you not, the whole thing is 3-5 inches deep in rotting yard trash. Nice. I got a couple of pics and we went to dinner.

When we got back from dinner, she was out there raking on asphalt like her life was at stake. Ugh, the sounds of those tines. We almost managed to get to the car without her noticing (I am still not sure how that happened, other than that she was focused on the leaves, the leaves, THE LEAVES!!!). But then, we were spotted. And that's when the latest new event happened.

I was already in the car, wondering what Kent was waiting for in getting in (turns out he didn't see that the door was unlocked). As he was getting in and I was starting the car, she came running up, yelling something (I couldn't make out a word). and then stomps around in front of my car and blocks the way. What. The. Fuck. Are you serious???

I immediately told her she had to move. Kent told her to move, too, in more colorful terms. She came around to yell at him through the window (tactical error) and we pulled away from the curb. While we waited to turn, she yelled various things, but the only thing I could make out was "It's nice having a chauffeur, isn't it?" And then we were gone.

The main thing I regret (besides parking by the house before going to dinner) is that I was so intent on just getting out that I completely forgot that I had a camera with movie function in my bag. What a pity, that would have been a good youtube addition to the oevre, in addition to something interesting to show the police the next time they show up.

Anyone have any ideas how to defuse something like this with someone who is delusional? She is already convinced that Kent puts chemicals on the fence to dissolve it, and also that these chemicals get into their basement to poison them all. Imagine what she would think if she knew that I actually have chemical training. The LEDs in trees to make her think there are cameras everywhere is a favorite, but since we don't live there it's a lot of work for little visible effect. Anything else?

Time lapse FTW!

Fabulous time lapse videos!

Burning Man 2009:


Bay Bridge work, Labor Day weekend 2009: