HP vs. me - I win

Projector is fixed. Terrorist attack averted. Even after half a bottle of wine I'm a pretty good engineer.

Will have to look into that "mercury" thing tomorrow. The old bulb exploded. Apparently I might have been exposed to mercury. I used gloves. I think I'll be okay.

If not, I'll give the mad hatter a run for his money.

HP launches a terrorist attack against me

Fuck you movie projector. You are the largest asshole on the planet.

I was watching Wings Of Desire and couldn't take it anymore (1 hour into it - movie sucks - and I like weird french films) so I put another movie in. Then I heard an explosion. I lost the picture. And my house started to smell like melted plastic and smoke.

WTF? I looked at my projector. Uh oh. Red lights are bad.

So, of course I decided to take my projector apart (after consulting the internet first). With my trusty tools.

This little tool kit, which you can't buy, can fix pretty much anything.

Except, apparently, my projector. Thanks for the useful graphic. Er, or not useful.

I hate my projector. It's supposed to be my friend. How am I supposed to block out the real world with exploding bulbs and stinking burnt plastic? I can't even begin to figure out what tool to use to remove the bottom screw.

Done and done. I'm going to bed. Will deal with this tomorrow. What else is going to go wrong this month?

BTW, projector, I can run you over with my car. Just so you know. Did I mention I hate you?

smiley face counter top

A few weeks ago I picked out a counter top for my kitchen remodel. I started calling it the smiley face counter because it has a bunch of faces in it:

When Christine went to order it she found out it's no longer being made (it's recycled quartz). Tres depressing. She called all over the place and then I did a search. The only place that still has the counter top is Vancouver, BC. I contemplated a drive there but don't have any vacation at work yet.

So then Christine found this for me. It's called Spring Blossom. No faces, but it's colorful:

And how about that fake clam!

She told me to go to Stone Collection to get a sample that I could take home. Stone Collection is the largest granite/stone warehouse in Denver. I went there and met a very cute guy who immediately informed met that Spring Blossom is also discontinued.

FUCK!

Sensing my angst, or perhaps because he saw me trip over a granite sample and cut my foot so badly it started bleeding, he offered to walk me through the granite warehouse. They have loads and loads of granite. It was overwhelming. Every time I saw something I liked he marked it on a little checklist.

When we got done he asked my price point. Then he complimented me on my good taste. Granite is rated from 1 (cheap) to 7 (costs more than God). I had picked out 2 7s and 2 slabs that weren't even priced (the rating said "exotic"). I had wasted an hour and a half for NOTHING.

Then I saw some Vettrazo counter tops. There's one made out of recycled skyscraper bits, one made from traffic lights, and this one, Alehouse Amber, made from recycled beer bottles:

I was like "I love that!" and the guy was like "um, that's going to cost four times your budget per square foot".

Wah.

Christine had also given me some miniature samples of quartz. I wasn't crazy about them until I got home and realized that my kitchen is being demolished in two weeks and I have no fucking counter top and I've been to the largest stone dealer in Colorado and hated everything but the stuff I can't afford and couldn't afford unless I was a multi-multi millionaire.

I looked at one of the samples...and noticed:

Smiley face counter top the sequel!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And men with sunglasses!!!!!!!

Yeah, it's a shitty picture. Do I look like someone competent enough to operate a camera? Trust me, the sample is SMALL.

Anyway, I think I'm going to order smiley face the sequel on Monday. If it's out of stock I will scream. And then cry.

I'm sure my writer friends will weigh in with their opinions, which I will ignore, because tomorrow Kevin invited everyone over to my house for dinner and a reading. We have a new member in our group, another woman to even things out a bit.

highlights from the weekend

• I was reading a magazine while waiting for Pascal at the airport. He walked right in front of me and made a scary noise, causing me to almost have heart failure. I thought that was kind of mean considering I had brought him banana pudding and a glass of wine to enjoy on the ride home.
• Pascal said I was under watering one of my plants and then criticized the way I watered it. Apparently you are supposed to put the plants in the sink and pretend to make it rain on them, and then leave them soaking in water for a few minutes. I stand corrected on my bad watering.
• We got into an argument about the difference between a capability, a service, and a product. I won.
• I showed Pascal a very cool spreadsheet I created using pivot table to determine a project's risk. He likes talking about pivot tables.
• We went hiking at Roxborough. It was over cast when we got there but I was like "it never rains in Colorado". Then it started raining. So I said "well, at least it's not a storm." Then we heard thunder. So I said "as long as there's no lightning we're okay." It started lightning. Luckily we made it back to the car safe and the sun came out at the end of the hike so Pasc got some really good pictures. We saw a ton of deer.
• Pasc suggested we go to a grocery store. He likes those places. Then he wanted to walk down all the aisles (up until our trip I've never been down most of the aisle in my grocery store). He knows how to fart in a way that sounds like a duck, so when I was trying to decide which dishwashing soap I wanted he started making duck farts. People in the aisle were looking at us. Pasc was staring off into space as if I was the one who was farting and he was just an innocent bystander.
• He made a stew with a full bottle of wine in it and some other stuff. He put it in the oven and we went to the british pub. For some reason the taps weren't working. We subsequently went to three more bars and encountered the same problem. I drank a british beer called...something...and after I took a swig of it Pasc said "the best thing about that beer is it will make you fart". Great. We accidentally stayed out two hours longer than we had planned having beers at different bars in LoDo. That's how the stew got a little over cooked. Pasc had insisted I buy flour because he thought the stew would be too watery. By the time we got home almost all the liquid was cooked out of it so he added more water just so he could use the flour that I had been carrying around LoDo in my backpack. It was heavy. I was like "I've been carrying this damn thing around for 3 hours, you better fucking use it".
• We got into an argument about spring rolls and egg rolls. It turns out that an egg roll is a subset of a spring roll. I never knew that. I lost the argument. But kicked Pasc's ass at spinjas so it didn't matter because spinjas are way more important than egg rolls.
• I showed Pasc the godfather, the city of lost children, and rosencratz and guildenstern are dead. They are some of my favorite movies. He fell asleep during them. I also introduced him to David Chappelle. 
• Pasc ate potato chips on my leather sofa and managed to get more of them on the sofa than in his mouth. He also got potato chip crumbs, inexplicably, on his shoulders and back. When he got up off the sofa there were crumbs everywhere except where he had been sitting. I eat potato chips on my sofa all the time and never get crumbs on it.
• I took Pasc to Wahoo's. He now likes fish tacos.
• We got carded at every bar we went to. Go us. Though, most of the time they couldn't find Pasc's birthday on his jacked up driver's license. But he was served anyway because he exaggerates his accent and is very flirty. Apparently most american women find a british accent very sexy.
• We spent 3 hours at the Denver Botanic Gardens and had lunch there. Pasc ordered chicken curry samosas and then spent 30 minutes explaining to me how they weren't really samosas and that they were made wrong.
• He introduced me to Eddie Izzard. We spent Sunday night laughing our asses off listening to him.

If you ever have the chance to host a brit I highly recommend it. Though, full disclosure, they tend to fart a lot.

british invasion

I haven't been writing lately because the brit came back again on Friday night. He left last night.

We had many adventures involving searching for breweries where the tap was actually working, going to the british pub in my neighborhood only to find out Pascal couldn't drink for free there (rather than letting brits drink free the bartender said they charge twice as much because brits are so rowdy), hiking in a storm (between Pascal and I we are probably the most likely people on the planet to be struck by lightning), eating stew that we overcooked because we were drinking and lost track of time (it was still really good), shopping for flour at the slum mart down the street (turns out we didn't need it because the stew was over cooked - also, the flour almost got rained on), and running amok at the Denver Botanical Gardens.

Details to follow.

Tomorrow my friend Neil arrives. He's coming for a Vietnam Vet reunion. I'm a popular hostess these past few weeks.

And I made the banana pudding. It was good. I am awesome at cooking. Er, cooking desserts. That don't require actual cooking.

my broken mirror

we are experiencing technical difficulties...

What a fucking day. First, I was all packed up and ready to head to the office when I realized I couldn't find my rental car keys. I've never lost my keys before. I madly searched my room, backpack, suitcase, and the backpack again when I remembered I had put my keys in a plastic grocery bag with my nectarines and blueberries when returning from the grocery last night.

I pulled the bag out of the trash and discovered a huge hole in the plastic bag.

Fuck.

So I went down to the front desk and asked if anyone had turned in rental car keys. They had. Happy day. But then the woman at the front desk refused to give me the keys.

Grrr.

Surprisingly I was able to remember the make and color of the car. I never remember that. I usually just head for the area where I know I parked and click the unlock button until I see the tail lights of the car blinking.

After much wrangling with the front desk and signing of papers saying I was the rightful owner (3 different docs the front desk woman typed up - really????) I was given my keys.

A half hour later, in the office, I get a call from Merry Maids. They managed to break a large mirror in my bedroom. A mirror they aren't even supposed to dust since they've broken so many other things in my house. Guess I'll get that sorted when I get home Friday.

A new hire was in the office across from mine. He belched all day like he was at a fraternity party and made grunting noises that sounded like he was giving birth. Even with my door closed I could hear him.

Then I spent 5 1/2 hours in a meeting with two "EA consultants" that were big on academic bullshit and small on "okay, how are we going to fucking do that in real life????"

And today I answered 3 emails about the old software tool I used to support since my customers from my previous job can't seem to get anyone at my old company to answer their questions. Gotta stop doing that. One of my customers also called me at 8 PM today and left a 5 minute message.

People. I don't work there anymore. Stop. Calling. Me.

an englishman in Colorado

This weekend I entertained a work colleague who is from Britain, Pascal. We have worked together for 6 years.

He is still on UK time even though he had been in the US for a week. So we ended up staying up until 3 am on Friday talking about Archimate. Saturday morning, early, like around 8 am, he lectured me for an hour on the style of brick laying used in my house. Apparently in the UK they use Flemish style for their brickwork. I forget what my house was. He also said I did the worst job ever patching the mortar in the bricks and pointed out to me the patch I used was not meant for patching mortar made in the 1880s because it's made of....something...and the patch I used is made of...something else...so they don't bond. I was kind of hung over and sleep deprived so that conversation was a blur.

To distract him from the bricks, for fear he would start removing my patches, I showed him a silver cigarette case that my friend Arthur gave me. He immediately looked up the symbols and established that the case was made in 1893 (I think that's what he said) and that it's good sterling silver. There was something about the lion stamp on the case (the raging lion? the up paw lion? the mad lion? it was the something lion) which established where the case was made (Birmingham, in UK).

At one point he said "I always yawn too when people are lecturing me and I'm bored".

I took him on Sunday to buy an iPad. I really wonder if that was a good idea. He looked up the stuff about the bricks and my cigarette case on his phone. Giving him a larger display may be the biggest disaster ever.

He comes back next weekend. He was eyeing my movie projector after talking about how he loves to take things apart. I think I'll take him out for some exercise so he won't damage any of the electronics in my house.

And, mad props to Pascie for his cooking. He made omelets (though he said my frying pan was "inadequate"), scrambled eggs, filet mignon, and he sharpened all of my kitchen knives after making disdainful comments about how I needed to sharpen them every week (I've never sharpened them and have owned most of them for over 5 years - hm, may get him to sharpen my ice axes and crampons so I can sleep in).

While drinking on Saturday night, around 2 am, I may have promised to make him banana pudding. Help, please.

Pascal, if you are reading this, you are NOT going to take apart my projector or my stereo. Ever. Comprende?

man pulls, part 2

I talked to my parents and my friends about buying the man pulls for my kitchen since they are ridiculously expensive.

And everyone, including my dad who is possibly the cheapest person on the planet, was like "you idiot, of course you should buy them".

So I did. Though, I can't believe I just paid $600 for three cabinet pulls. I'm never moving, and if I do I'm taking my man pulls with me.

hummingbirds

My cousin was on NPR talking about hummingbirds.

Which is cool because I love hummingbirds ever since I almost killed one who buzzed me when I was out on a balcony smoking (my dad and I were doing some 14ers and staying in a hotel in the mountains and I had a coconut gel in my hair - I thought the hummingbird was a big mosquito - I live in the city dudes and had never seen a hummingbird before).

I had a hummingbird feeder in my yard, hung from my neighbor's tree which used to be in my yard until it fell and crushed my butterfly bushes. He's a major dick and pulled the feeder out of the tree and smashed it on my patio. I haven't seen any hummingbirds in my yard since but I think maybe they'll come back next year.

oakland food bank

My company paid me to spend the afternoon sorting food at the Oakland food bank. My company is a rock star (since companies apparently are people).

Forty volunteers sorted 19 tons of food.

And to the person who donated a popped bag of popcorn that expired in 2003, you are an asshole. As is the person who donated spices that expired in 1991.

The most important thing I learned today is donate money, not food. And don't empty your expired food at a food bank. We throw it away.

It was pretty fun working at the food bank. I hope we get to go back there. I'm really good at sorting food. And I saw a bunch of food that must be at the grocery that I've never seen before because I don't actually go down aisles to shop for food. I'm not a big fan of the grocery store because I'm afraid something might fall on my zombie knee. I just buy the food that's on the borders of the store.

One bin was full of food that went totally bad and it smelled like a dead body. Gross.

We moved all the food from the empty bins on the right to the bins on the left.

Barrels to collect more food. Oakland food bank feeds 40,000 people a week. Yes, a week.

manpulls

Christine at Colorado Kitchen Designs is SO AWESOME. I went in on Friday to pick out my cabinet pulls and counter tops and she found these cabinet pulls. I'm doing three of them. My friend Pascal, who will be coming to visit on Friday, helped me name them.

Herbert Posselthwaite. He's a working class dude who eats fish and chips when not climbing. He's secretly saving money to buy CDs with singing lessons from Amazon. He has a dog named Barth.

Montague Forbes-Herringbone. Soloed the Petit Gripon during a thunderstorm. For fun. Finds women insanely attracted to his long wingspan. As a child, he wanted to be a dancer in Riverdance.

J. Coedish Longsworth. Supports his climbing habit by writing Perl scripts and making porns. Hates Eclipse. Has two gay ducks for pets.

pics from bierstat

To give you an idea of what the easiest 14er is like...to quote my dad "even the easiest 14er isn't easy."

Attempting to demonstrate how to use the emergency beacon at 5:55 am.

After 2 3/4 miles and a lot of elevation gain Kevin discovers the last 1/4 mile is a rock scramble. A steep rock scramble.

At the summit. Me, Kevin, Peter, and Leon.

Smoking my fake cigarette and texting my dad from the summit.

In the talus field leaving the summit. Leon, me, and Kevin. The air behind us is filled with smoke from the fires.

1/3 of the way down Bierstat. We can barely see the parking lot.

Discussion in the last flat place on Bierstat before descending on the trail. Me, Peter, and Leon.

Kevin, as usual, between a rock and a hard place.

I can't wait to do Torey's/Gray's in a few weeks!!!!!!!!!!!!

14er fever

I had no idea, a year ago, when I gave my friend Cam's son a book to read on Hugh Herr that he would decide he really wanted to be a climber. He's funding his own trip next year to climb Kilimanjaro. And he's spent the summer bagging 14ers out here in Colorado.

I was feeling a bit depressed that I hadn't done one 14er this summer due to switching jobs and still traveling. So when my friend Kevin asked me this week if I wanted to escort himself and his two room mates, Leon and Peter, up a 14er (their first) of course I said yes.

We were supposed to do Quandry peak this morning. But at 8 PM last night someone finally figured out that Quandry was farther away than anticipated. I suggested Bierstat instead. It's more scenic and closer.

I sent detailed instructions on what to pack, most of which were ignored by Kevin. Including the first thing on the list, a spare set of socks. The beginning of the bierstat trail can be muddy and wet. About 10 minutes into our hike Kevin fell into a creek. Luckily Peter had an extra pair of socks for Kevin to use. I should probably not mention another detail, which is that Kevin was farting like freight train the whole hike up.

It was a great day even with all the crowds. When we summitted there must have been at least 50 other people on top. We took quick pictures and then I suggested we head down. The weather on Bierstat can change quickly, and I didn't want to have to haul ass down the rock pile/talus field that is Bierstat's peak with 50 other people and their badly behaved dogs.

Peter had me laughing with his impromptu singing. He would sing two lines of a song and then stop. He got one 80s song stuck in my head for most of the hike though. That was kind of annoying. Then he and Kevin had an argument because Peter thought he was singing The Final Countdown and Kevin was like "no, that's a Stix song."

When we arrived back at the car everyone was like "that was only 7 miles???? that was hard!" We ran into a guy with Tennessee license plates who was not hiking but who was drinking red wine in the Bierstat parking lot. He was like "You hiked all the way up here? That looks tiring. We're drinking."

Point taken :)

I hope that Leon and Peter invite me on some more of their adventures. I dubbed Peter the mountain lion because for a smoker he had a great pace and was good at route finding through the talus field. I think he's also been bitten by the 14er bug. He was googling 14ers the whole ride home and wants to do Torey's/Gray's in a few weeks.

Rock on. Hiking partners!

When I was saying goodbye to them at their house at the end of our little adventure Peter was like "Thank you so much for guiding us up Bierstat." I was like "I didn't do anything except laugh when Kevin farted." Peter said "But you encouraged us up when we wanted to turn around."

I was like "I don't remember doing that." And he said "Well, we figured if someone with a knee built from dead body parts could get up Bierstat so could we."

It's the best compliment I've received in a while.

why I will not eat at mici's again

Last Friday night I ordered a pizza from Mici's to be delivered. They have really good pizza. The wait time is usually long, but more so on Friday (1 1/2 hours).

The pizza was $24, $27 including the tip. I should have looked at the pizza BEFORE I tipped the asshole who delivered it. I guess he had been holding the box sideways. All the toppings were slopped on one side of the pizza and all over the box. And they had left off the basil topping (which cost $2.50).

I sent an email to Mici's complaining about my pizza (calling there on a Friday night is ridiculous - you sit on hold forever). They responded in an hour apologizing. If I had asked for a new pizza it would have been 11 PM before I got it. They said they would send me a gift certificate instead. I sent them a picture of the pizza in response so they could see I wasn't making the story up.

A few days later I got the "gift certificate". It was for a free personal pizza. What????? I paid $27 for a pizza that only had 2 edible slices (the other topping covered slices were so soaked with sauce and melted cheese that I couldn't even get them off the bottom of the pizza box and the ones that were just crust...well why would I eat crust?). And they send me an $8 coupon? I order from them at least once a week, sometimes more if people are over. A few times they've accidentally undercharged me and I always corrected them and paid the right price.

Further, because I order from them so much I get free personal pizzas every few months. I always give them away because those tiny pizzas turn out to be half crust and half toppings (not a big fan of crust in and of itself).

What they SHOULD have done is refunded my money for the pizza, or at least given me a gift certificate for the size of pizza I ordered and fine, I'd pay for toppings.

Fuck you Mici's. In this economy screwing your customers is a bad idea.

Anyway, a new sushi place just opened that delivers to my house. Guess what I'm having for dinner tonight.

and about my new book

At dinner on Saturday I was talking to the writer's group inner circle about my dreams (can't remember how it came up). I initially wanted to make them into a book but people thought it was a stupid idea. But Jeff thought it was a good idea. He asked me to send him links to some of my dreams, but said he was too busy rewriting a play that's in a contest to read them until August 25th.

Me:

Jeff, you aren't THAT god damn busy that you can't take five minutes to read these:

The dream about a comedy show with a great white (forgot about the jewish jokes in this, you'll enjoy it)
http://blonstar40.blogspot.com/2009/02/shark-ha-ha-show.html

The dream about being in a show where Drew Barrymore gets killed:
http://blonstar40.blogspot.com/2009/07/broken-vase.html

This is about finding out the secrets of the universe. You will laugh, I promise:
http://blonstar40.blogspot.com/2011/04/secret-of-universerevealed-here.html

Can't find the monster dream right now, but this is a dream I had about magic clay and farts:
http://blonstar40.blogspot.com/2008/12/if-only-there-were-such-thing-as-magic.html

So, maybe this could be my next book...

Jeff:

These are all pretty great.  I think each would make a good short story.  Start with that and then worry about making them into a book.  

Me:

"Dear New Yorker Magazine:

I am submitting for your consideration a short story I've written based on a dream I had about magic clay. Tea Leoni also farts into a vat of tuna salad and makes Elizabeth Taylor eat it. I apologize for not being able to figure out how to make a squiggle over the "e" in Tea's name.

Sincerely,

Franki Flowers"

I'll be published in no time!

Jonathan (who's only 21):

I feel utterly hopeless about being able to write anything half as interesting as everything I've just read.

Me:

Jonathan,

The secret to life is that you're going to die. So do shit assuming it's going to kill you but you're going to die anyway so who cares.

Then laugh about it. And write it down. Including any resulting nightmares or dreams.

"Oh shit, I just stepped on a rusty nail and will die of tetanus! Remember when Kevin made farting noises? Haha! Oh, was that a dream or was I really abducted by aliens?"

Fade to black.

 

middle earth

Yesterday evening I was catching up on the XCKD comics and I came across one titled "cirith ungol" that had a person entering a cave that was full of webs. One of the webs said "some pig!" I didn't get it.

So I emailed the inner writer's group.

Me:

Do any of you fags know anything about middle earth? I don't get this comic and it's driving me crazy.

http://www.xckd.com/1087/

Kevin:

Sorry. I've had sex during this millennium so I'm unqualified to answer.

Jeff:

Kevin you suck.  I know the answer. 

 

It’s at the end of the second book of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Sam uses a magic light in a cave with a really large spider.  The cave is the way to get around Cirith Ungol, which is a really bad fortress. 

 

Kevin:

All that Lord of the Rings knowledge, and you still can't get laid. How is that possible?

 

Jeff:

Me:

Thanks Jeffy.

But.

Why is the comic funny? Why does the web say "some pig"?

I need to know. I might not be able to sleep tonight if I don't find out. I can't keep googling shit forever. I have to watch Diva.

I just need someone to tell me why this comic is funny.

Jeff:

The some pig is a reference to Charlotte’s Web.  It’s a children’s book (actually quite good) about a spider that makes friends with a pig.  To keep the pig from becoming bacon she starts to make words in her webs.  Since people are stupid, they think the pig is doing it and not the spider.  So the spider keeps the pig alive.  One of the things she writes is “some pig.”  It’s a clever comic, but not hilarious.

Kevin (obviously on a different page than the rest of us):

It's a bad pun, Franki. His name is Malcom Jamal WARNER. From the Cosby Show. Warner-Warning? Get it?

Me:

I'm blond and don't own a tv.

I didn't get it.

 

Jeff:

Franki, just make a list of all the jokes and we’ll help you.

 

 

Everyone should join a writer's group. Even if you don't write.

 

 

 

shows that need more sharks!

NPR just put up the best article ever, in celebration of shark week, about TV shows that could use a shark to enhance the plot.

I don't have a TV and I've never seen any of the shows but the article was fucking hilarious anyway.

My additions to the article, but for movies:

Crazy Heart - Instead of meeting Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jeff Bridges is thrown into the ocean and eaten by a shark. The movie ends in less than 15 minutes, leaving me time to watch another episode of my Chaos class.

Happy-Go-Lucky - Five minutes into the movie a genetically engineered shark that can survive on land eats Poppy. Then the director splices in Casablanca.

Citizen Kane - At the end of the movie Kane goes bankrupt building a giant salt water tank. It is uncovered, after he dies, that rosebud was his pet shark.

Life Aquatic - That already has a shark in it, which makes it one of the best movies ever.

mother nature is a bitch

I awoke this morning with anticipation of finally filling my newly rubberized swamp cooler pan with water and enjoying the comforts of cool air in the house again.

My project worked perfectly (I highly recommend rubberizeit for any project). Though, after I got the swamp cooler turned on the temperature dropped to 69 degrees. I had to turn it off. Maybe tomorrow.

And then my writer's group got hailed and rained on as we were finishing dinner on the upstairs outdoor patio of Merle's. As soon as we all got inside the rain and hail stopped.

Hail fell in my wine but I drank it anyway.

the joys of rubber

UPS finally showed up at 1130 with my rubberize stuff. So far the project is going well. It looks like it's going to rain but...it always looks like it's going to rain...

Swamp cooler pan after cleaning. I had to scrape it and then sand it. That was the day I stepped on the nail. You can see the hole in the pan...

After rubberizing. Looks pretty cool in a bondage kind of way.

The hole patched with a fabric called reinforceit.