Let's Talk About Our High School Life !

This idea came from me surfing Ryan Adams on YouTube and he was singing one of his more youthful angsty songs Come Pick Me Up (which i love and i believe was in Cameron Crowe's movie Elizabethtown).

Accompanying him was Neil Finn and Janis Ian. Remember her? Anyway that song of hers which i have linked above At Seventeen came out when i was seventeen years old. I related to that song SO much and made it my teenage anthem. (Especially the "clear skinned smiles" lyric because i had terrible acne and was so self conscious about it.) .

So it got me to thinking that we should all share stuff from our high school years. But first be sure to tell us what year you graduated so we get a feeling for the times.

1. I graduated in 1975 as a new senior student in Tacoma, having just moved here from Colorado Springs. I never ate lunch once in the cafeteria that whole senior year. It was awful being a new senior so i talked to a school counselor, and shortly after with her help, enrolled in Vocational School so i didn't have to stay on the high school campus except for two periods a day. (I took a library assistant voc tech class that was nearly a whole year course.)

2. I attended three high schools - (Get out the violins! Poor me, right?) I was a  junior in Colorado Springs (we lived there only one year) and a sophomore and freshman in Zama, Japan.

3. We were military and my dad was a low ranking E-5, non-comissioned Air Force sargeant - so with four kids and a non-working mother, we were poor, (like free and reduced lunch kid poor), only too proud to apply.

4. With my babysitting money i bought vinyl records at the PX on base. I wore out Cat Stevens Tea for The Tillerman and Neil Young's After the Gold Rush, (which incidentally is still some of my favorite music today).

5. I dated an African American football player for nearly my whole sophomore year. He was my first real boyfriend. This was when we lived in Japan.

His name? ....Michael Jordan. He was a senior. His dad was a West Pointer army officer. The year was 1973, which was a pretty turbulent time for blacks and whites to be dating, but on base in Japan it was different. My parents tried to stop it at first, but then my dad relented and Mike spent a lot of time with my family, even visiting me in Colorado when we moved away. Mike was super polite, raised with class, a very cute and sweet man. All the teachers loved him and he was popular for the right reasons.

6. I used to dye my hair blonde myself with Clairol's Midnight Sun and it was just terrible (and why i don't mind spending lots of money today to pay a professional.) When i was a junior i tried to dye it back to it's normal brown shade and it turned khaki green. And it was like that for awhile before i could fix it again by dying it more red.  I also used to iron it with a real iron.

7. I never got below a "B" grade in all of high school (but i have to admit to taking the easier classes: Spanish instead of French; no harder math class than algebra, etc.) and i never missed turning in my homework. Not even once.

8. My favorite movie was (I hate to admit this because it's so cheesy).....was.....Love Story. And as I have mentioned here before, I had a girl crush on Ali MacGraw.

9. My favorite book was Catcher in the Rye and Gone with the Wind. (I read them both twice.)

10. My favorite class was Creative Writing. I still remember my junior year teacher Miss Tarver and how pretty she was with her super long straight hair. The reason i remember her is because one time when she handed back one of my stories she told me that I was too young to write so well and that she had liked my story so much she had given it to a friend of hers to read. (I remember being most fascinated by her sharing it with a friend!)  She encouraged me to send it to a magazine for publication. (I did, of course, and saved all the rejection letters.)

I also liked math and had some excellent math teachers, but i don't remember their names.

11. I never went to the prom my senior year. I did go to one junior dance in Colorado that was not prom. I sewed my own dress and went with a guy I knew from Japan who had moved to Colorado before us. He wasn't cute, but he was in college so i thought that was cool.

12. I had a babysitting job for four kids from 3-6 pm nearly my whole junior year in Colorado.  I made 50 cents an hour. The year was 1973. I think that job is the reason i never had kids. I used that money to buy records and Clearasil.

13. I never drank in high school, but my parents once let me have some pink champagne when i was a junior and i was so sick the next day. I never smoked pot either. I was a goody-goody and spent a lot of time in libraries, probably had something to do with not having that many friends since we moved a lot. I was a senior before a lifeguard asked me out to a kegger. I didn't know what a kegger was, i thought beer only came in cans! (I went to that kegger, but didn't drink anything.)

OK, so what were your high school years like? My school years weren't really all THAT terrible, at least i was never bullied or beat up, but my clothes and hair were always wrong and i always felt out of place, especially my last two years. And like most people i know, there is not enough money in the world to make me want to relive them, even knowing what i know now.


Notes to Self:                                                              
Sunrise: 6:48 am
Sunset: 7:22 pm
High temp: 65 degrees
All time blog posts: 48,261
Last iTunes purchase: Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits
Last Book read: Brewster
Longest run this week: 45 minutes

Why I don't own a cell phone....& stuff.

And NO....this is not the reason, though i have to admit,being around folks who do this when I am with them make me crazy!

So many people are incredulous that i don't own a cell phone. And I don't miss it. I can't remember a time when i thought to myself, damn if only i had a cell phone.

I am not making this up.

And i realized just very recently how much the phone has affected me because of my job in the union office. I've worked in this job for 25 years (not to mention the previous 10 years in the school district where i was a secretary).

I am now retired but temporarily working part-time in the union office and one thing i no longer have to do is answer the phone.

It's only been two days post retirement, but i realized how much more i like going to work just knowing the phone is no longer my duty.... I feel lighter... I feel happier! Just knowing when that phone rings i don't have to have some conversation with the person on the other line has freed me up to be more positive and ready to get to work.

Here's the deal: nobody calling the union office ever does so with positive news. They call crying, venting, whining, griping, yelling, and i am not kidding, even suicidal (That has actually happened to me four times. One time...  months later i read the member's obituary and that's where i found out she was really serious....And on that call i actually had access to the mental health place next door who I had a colleague summon to come over and take the call.)

They have even called drunk.

It was SO rare to receive a good phone call that i actually started to save any voice mails i received that were nice messages. I had calls from a few members or colleagues who liked what i wrote in a newsletter, or what i said in a meeting,  three of those calls were from my friend Julie (jj here) who had her little kindergarten or first grader kids in her music class sing happy birthday to me.

Because of retirement and cleaning up my office,  I also recently cleared them off my voice mail. There were 9 messages in all.

And sometimes when i had a particularly negative experience at work i would play all 9 messages and listen to them again. (Julie's kids singing were the best.)

So now i'm thinking maybe after i de-program myself from this union job there are a few things that I think will change me. 

#1. I will be a more positive person.

#2. My house is going to be in much better order because i actually like doing things like putting things where they belong - for example my next project now that the refrigerator is done is to put up new shelf paper and reorganize my kitchen cabinets.

(I don't have THAT many kitchen cabinets so this is not that arduous a chore really.)

#3.  I will like being around people more.

#4. My health will be improved. Already i have been able to quit the blood pressure meds. Going on two months now and my blood pressure has been just great.

#5.  Hell, I might end up getting a cell phone. (Not saying i will really use it, but i might get one.)

How do you think YOU would change if you weren't working at your current job? What do YOU think you would be doing differently? How might you feel differently?


Notes to Self:                                           
High temp today: WOW! it hit 90 degrees at 4:05 pm. That might be the record high all summer. We have had the most fabulous summer ever in the history of Washington State summers. (However, next week it changes and goes back to 62 degrees for the high.)
Sunrise: 6:42 am (right now as i type at 7:46 pm it is 83 degrees outside! That's amazing!
Sunset: 7:32 pm ...
it's going SO fast now! :(
Longest run this week: 51 minutes
All time blog posts: 48,081
Blog posts last month: 1084

First Day of Non-Vacation Retirement

Here's what i did today.

• Got up at 7:30. 
• Found out i didn't win Thug Kitchen's contest. :(
• Called the furnace guy to come out and fix it. 
• While waiting for him to fix it I decided to tackle cleaning the refrigerator. 
• Changed this blog.

Damn, the refrigerator took two hours but the furnace guy took only a half hour to add a part. (Yay! We have air conditioning again! ) Plus I found an old diet pepsi way in the back that had an expiration date of 2006. (Makes sense since i don't drink it!)

So it was a good first day.

Cleaning the frig was also a great way to procrastinate going running. Now i think I'm too exhausted, all that bending hurt my knees. 

Maybe it's time to settle in and watch some Matlock and Murder She Wrote on the retro cable channels. Tomorrow I might see what time those quilting ladies are on! 

Dear Thug Kitchen

Thug Kitchen's recent recipe for blueberries muddled with basil and lime

As i write you from my vacation in Manzanita Beach, Oregon (a very hip vegan kind of place, you would love vacationing here in this quiet beach town i am sure) I am trying to decide which red i like better as i write you to plead with you one last time to choose me for your contest.

One is Three Rocks Red and the other is Three Rivers Red. (The threes was a happy accident.) They are both Washington, one from Zillah, one from Walla Walla. (I'm leaning Walla Walla).

(Thug Kitchen must approve of wine, i am sure.)

I hope you were so entertained by my blog entry for the contest from May 31 this year ripping off your voice to post a recipe for my bacon wrapped tator tots that you continue to check in.

I really need that knife because i got suckered into spending good money on Cutco knives, first from my ex-stepchild and then from my friend's son who i really like a lot. And not one of them is a good everyday knife.

I hope you are not offended that i tried to mimic you. I actually think i did a pretty good job of it, considering i am not as well versed in cussing.

(Ok, that's a lie. I work in a union office and the F-word is my friend.)

From what i can tell, Thug Kitchen does not take itself seriously and the bacon is pretty funny you have to admit. (The tator tots were just an added plus as i am sure you have very strong opinions, as you should, about tator tots.)

And no lie, these are the first things to go at a party and i know you have lots of carnivore readers who would really appreciate this recipe. It shouldn't be a copyright thing either because i changed it up on the measurements.

Not only that, i'm certain that Thug Kitchen is also about breaking rules too!

So i hope you choose me. My blog actually reaches more people than it seems, which is an added bonus for you! My readers are shy, they lurk, but don't always post. According to my stats they are checking in, OK, maybe not like Huffington Post, who plugged your blog and probably helped you win Best New Blog, but my readers are resourceful and sharing and smart AND they too all eat like they give a fuck.

So on the chance that you continue to check back here or Google your name and my blog pops up, here is one last plug for the thug.

I hope to hear from you on Friday.

happy eating,

jo

P.S. I really need that knife. I promise not to use it inappropriately in any way, as one of my Facebook friends inferred.  When she saw the knife that i copied and pasted from your blog link, she laughingly referred to me as applying for a job as a serial killer.

note: for y'all reading in case you missed it: Click here for Thug Kitchen's website

Winging it...Wine-ing ...Miley-ing it.. MLKing it....

I have not been watching TV at all for about a week, though i did watch my DVR of Project Runway, so this is going to be very random and i might be missing some important shit. Here we go. Maybe y'all can fill in some blanks for me.  Wine tonight: Fume Blanc by Ferrari Carneros... 

1. Oh-Em-Gee... are we going to war with Syria? If not for Comcast i would be living under a rock. Things go through my mind...like the end of the world, at the very least, reinstatement of the draft..... scary. i want to know more, but i almost don't want to know more.

2. Oh and on the other side of the news spectrum.... we have ...Miley Cyrus. Are we really going to keep talking about this? I hope not. I watched the YouTube of her wack performance. The creepiest thing about it for me was the stuffed animal people, bears or whatever they were. She is 20 years old. She's not a virgin. And helllllloooo, it's MTV!

3. Having said all that. I am so freaking glad she is not MY daughter. The dude who made a hit out of that stupid ass song Achy Breaky Heart deserves this as payback for the year 1992 when i had to hear that song ad nauseam.

4. Who here watches Project Runway? louie i know does because she turned ME on to it. It's a great season so far but they got it wrong trying to kick off the deaf dude. The black bow tie dude is freaking me out and might be the reason i have to go back on my blood pressure meds!

5. I entered Thug Kitchen's contest to win a super cool knife. I sent him/her/them the link to my blog post May 31st of how TK might write out a recipe for Bacon Wrapped Tator Tots. (Sorry for the redundancy for you Facebookers). I thought it would be funny that Thug Kitchen writes a vegan blog and was asking for an entry about cooking and in their own words 'whatever' to win these prizes. Oh and it had to be 300 words or less because TK doesn't want to read a bunch of essays but i figure if anyone breaks the rules it would be Thug Kitchen. I am so sure my blog post is something like 900 words! Y'all know how verbose i can be here! The contest ends Sept. 6th.

6. Google has got to be one of the coolest places to work! Especially the employee who gets to do the graphics on the Google daily logo. Today is the 50th anniversary of MLK's I have a Dream Speech and i just had to put this up.

7. I've been thinking about my post-retirement work lately. I think if i win the Thug Kitchen knife then maybe i could maybe apply for a job there. I don't believe for one second that Thug Kitchen is written by one dude anyway. It's by a team. I think they need me! Even if i am a carnivore. (Did i spell that correctly?)

9. I am going to misnumber this one in honor of ummagumma. Are you still reading here miss Robin?

Sort of an honor of the 50th anniversary:This photos is from a couple of days ago. I ordered this t-shirt for both of my nephews,  (my sister's son, Chris) who had a baby girl a few weeks ago, (and my brother Troy's son, Brian) who is having a baby boy in October.

Notes to Self: 
Sunrise: 6:23 am.
Sunset: 7:59 am .... so sad... first time under 8:00 pm for awhile!
All time blog views: 47,556
Page views last month: 1053
Shout Out: amulbunny and Swiss!

Random Summer's Waning Post...

Posting this photo will make sense if you read through

I have no idea what to write about, but it's been TWO WHOLE WEEKS since i have changed this blog and it's time, even if i bore all of y'all. (i don't think I have ever gone that long this year.)

I'm just going to wing it....

1. My new favorite musical artist i've just discovered is Nick Waterhouse. (Best Song: Say I Wanna Know). If Amy Winehouse and Dan Auerbach (sp?) from the Black Keys had a baby, he would sound like Nick Waterhouse.

2. I really like my music kind of stripped and raw and not with a lot of synthesized sounds, or background strings or horns or chorus-y singing. Nick Waterhouse sounds like he recorded this in his mom's basement. Maybe he did. (He only has one cd/record or whatever we call them these days.)

3. I just read Bad Monkey by Carl Hiassen. Hiassen cracks me up. A woman in the novel responds to the main character Yancey this way when she feels he is hitting on her at their first introduction: She casually drops it that she is married to a sniper on the SWAT team. (She isn't.) I thought what a great way to deflect a come on from someone you want to get away from.

4. Not that i need to use any lines like that anymore, but they might have come in handy when i was a waitress in a sports bar back in 1986.

5. Which is incidentally where i met Brian, my husband today. He used to come in after the photography class that he taught at the college where he is still working. He asked me out. I said no. And he never came in again. We finally hooked up again 6 years later after my divorce from my second ex husband.

6. Next week is my last week at work. At least full-time and no longer with benefits and my regular salary. I do go back, working on a time sheet in mid-September . I will work 18 hours a week, 3 days a week (Yay! FOUR DAY WEEKENDS!)  They need me temporarily while they figure out what to do in our office. We are considering merging with another office but that could take up to a year. So i might be there for awhile, but then again i could be done by December.

7. We're a union office and like the Democrats we have too many players and everyone has a say and it just slows down the whole damn process. I keep saying that sometimes we just need a good despot to get things done. I have a feeling i could be there awhile but  I feel fortunate that i have this opportunity to ease into retirement and hope by the end of this gig that i will have it figured out what i want to do.

8. I'm leaning towards working in a wine bar and forgetting about going back to work in the schools, though i do plan to volunteer again.

9. For ummagumma. Saw her on Facebook. Wonder if she still reads here!

10. Over vacation I stopped taking my blood pressure (July 19).  Since then I've checked it every day and it's remained normal and it was normal at my doctor's office yesterday too and on record there. So it's official : Work actually made me sick. That's all i can think of. Retirement, just the thought of it,  is making me healthy! (It could also have something to do that i've upped my average mileage on my runs.)

11. Let me bore you with my latest scary dream, it's a recurring one and i put it here for history, just in case it happens:  I'm in the car and my niece Kylee is driving and we are on a freeway bridge going into a sharp turn and as she turns the corner i start to tell her to slow down  but i'm too late and we go off the bridge and as we are going down i say out loud very calmly, "I always knew this would happen someday." and i wake up. (I was never so glad to wake up at 3:00 am.)

12. Sometimes i think that water will be involved somehow when i finally do die. Or a car. Or both. Personally i liked the idea of a heart attack, one of those kind that you die before you hit the floor.

13. Speaking of my second ex-husband: I saw him the other day and it was just perfect. (I worry i will run into my exes at Albertson's after i've been running and looking straggley, they don't mean anything to me and i know i shouldn't care, but i do...really who wouldn't?)  Anyway i was sitting at the bar watching my now husband's band play at this waterfront restaurant/bar. He came in and we saw each other at the same time. (I haven't seen him in probably 8 years, we've been divorced since 1992  and i was the one who wanted out.)

And i went over and gave him a hug. He asked why i was there and i got to say "I'm with the band." hahahaha... I have ALWAYS wanted to say that since i was a teenager!... And i pointed to Brian and said 'my husband is the one playing the drums." And did i mention he was alone? He even had to make a disclaimer that he was just popping in on his way to something bigger. (I'm sure that's why he left quickly after his only drink.)

14. Oh yeah, and i had just had my hair done by my stylist the day before and it looked better than i can ever make it look by myself. He looked okay i guess. Not as bad as i thought he would since he is 11 years older, (which would make him 67 years old).

15. It's been a great summer in our Pacific Northwest. The very best on record! Everybody's talking about it. I don't even mind that autumn is starting to come because we were treated with so much sun these past months that i almost miss the rain.

OMG, i can't believe i really have nothing to say and yet here i am on #15, but not exactly riveting stuff for so many points.

Oh yeah and i almost forgot... How about that John Oliver?  He did an awesome job on The Daily Show! My prediction: I think Jon Stewart is going to replace David Letterman any day now and John Oliver is going to take over The Daily Show and i told my husband that i bet that it's already in the works between the networks and this was a test run. I'm sure David Letterman must be getting close.

Notes to Self: 
Sunrise: 6:17 am
Sunset: 8:08 pm
High temp: 83 degrees
Total page views last month: 1053
Total all time: 47,387

Stuff i give a shit about

The other night when my husband Brian and i were outside on the patio playing cards, enjoying the summertime and drinking wine we were talking about work because we were both back to work after our vacation. And he brought up something about a meeting he had to attend where they talked about quote core values unquote. (He is communications and marketing director for a small college where we live.)

In the union office where i work we use that term often too. And i have always hated terms like that.

And so  i said, "I HATE those kinds of academic professional termages.... (I can make up words like 'termages' because it is MY blog.)

I added, " they should quit calling it 'core values' and instead call it  "Stuff i Give a Shit About and i am Ready to Kick Somebody's Ass If They Don't Feel the Same Way".

Isn't that a more provocative way to get somebody's attention about quote core values unquote?

And i made a quick note to make this my next blog post.

So here it is. Let's talk about Stuff We Give A Shit About. (And i really don't know what i am getting ready to say, but here i go:)

1. I give a shit about having enough money to save for my future, to make my small home nice, and getting my hair done, and eating well, and helping out family members to some extent.

2. I want to be able to keep running, at least until i am 60 years old. That is my goal. But in truth, i hope to be able to run longer than that, and i say that even as i HATE running. But it makes me feel younger.

3. I give a shit about feeling younger than i am.

4. I give a shit about looking and feeling and thinking younger than my age, and i think that is not going to last much longer, maybe two years.

5. I give a shit about my family being people i love hanging out with.

6. I give a shit about people i work with who are ethical, strong, healthy minded and fun.

7. I give a shit about good TV like Newsroom. The Daily Show. Parenthood.

8. I give a shit about great music. Van Morrison never disappoints me EVER. (He is playing right now as i type.)

9. I give a shit about being married to a man who gets me. Who finds the good in me when others don't and tells me about the times he sees that in me, even if it is a small thing.

10. I give a shit about have a lot of unencumbered time to do what i want.

11. I give a shit about electing the right person in the political world.

12. I give a shit about being around generous people who aren't self absorbed and who don't always talk about themselves.

13. I give a shit about a great bottle of wine that i've never had before.

14. I give a shit about that first cup (and only cup of the day) of really strong coffee that my husband brings me in the morning when i first wake up.

15. I give a shit that right now, as of this moment, every person i love and care about is healthy. As far as i know... at this moment.