Where did I learn this?

Somewhere along the way in the past few months, I have miraculously gained the ability to parallel park. After 12 years of NOT having this skill, now I can do it consistently and beautifully! I have successfully done it about four times in the past month, and every time it happens I gasp in amazement. Where did this come from? Why can I suddenly do it now? It’s not like I’ve been practicing, nor do I have a different car. It’s like the Parallel Parking Fairy came and dusted me in my sleep one night and now I can do what before I couldn’t do to SAVE MY LIFE.

Granted, I haven’t tried it in a really tight space yet, or on a busy street. You gotta work up to these things. The day I can parallel park with success in NW Portland [shudder] is the day I know I’ve got it bagged.

I hate thin clients

Most of the libraries I work at use thin clients on their public computers. I have a basic understanding of how they work, but am not very good at explaining it. Click that link for more info, but basically, a thin client is like a dummy computer. It doesn’t have a hard drive or software; it just talks to the server where all that stuff is.

The problem is that they don’t work very well. I spend a significant amount of time dealing with the fallout from these crappy things. At one library, patrons routinely get dumped out of their session without warning, often losing all their work. At another library, patrons can’t open e-mail attachments, even if it’s something as simple as a picture or Word document. At still another library, they have to be continually restarted because they don’t recognize the installed printer and the only way to make it realize there’s a printer there is to restart the computer. It’s enough to make me want to pull my hair out.

Most people don’t really know what a librarian does all day. I suspect that the old stereotype continues to hold, and that people think we sit around all day reading books. Ha! If only! Half my time is spent dealing with computer problems of one sort or another. During the other half, I am most certainly NOT sitting around reading books. As awesome as that sounds, I think it would get old after awhile.

A good Monday

What a beautiful day yesterday! I hiked up 4,600-foot-high Chinidere Mountain and was treated to views of five mountains: Rainier, St. Helens, Adams, Hood and Jefferson. I watched sunset – or rather the effects of sunset, since I was facing east – at Lost Lake, the awesome light of the setting sun shining onto the fresh white snow on Mt. Hood. Fantastic!

Yesterday was play day; today is a productive day.  I went to my favorite coffee shop this morning and read some of the book for next month’s book club meeting at the library. Too bad I don’t get paid for time spent reading the book! That would rule. I spent the rest of the morning putting together the Excel class I’ll be teaching at the library. I don’t know much about Excel, so I’m learning a lot as I go along. In addition to several books I checked out, I also got a DVD of Excel basics, which was moderately helpful, if not a little boring.

I took several breaks from that to do some online shopping (bad Cheryl! very bad girl!). Victoria’s Secret is having a sale on my favorite bra, and then I saw they had panties on sale too, so I checked out some of those, and then I was just a few bucks short of $100, which would get me free shipping, so I added another pair to the cart. Holy moly! I do need these things though. And you can’t put a price on good quality underwear. Besides, I’ll be wearing this stuff in Phoenix for my friend’s wedding, and what if my dress flew up on a gust of wind like on America’s Funniest Home Videos? I have to be wearing nice panties if that happens. (I’m only half-kidding.)

And then I got sucked into the Apple web site. My four-year-old laptop is slow and heavy and I’m tired of Windows and I can’t wait to buy a Mac. But I don’t know what to get! I don’t know if I should get a MacBook or a MacBook Pro, or even if I really need a laptop. I’m not a student anymore and the need to carry around a computer is very limited. I’d still have this old Dell if I REALLY needed a portable computer. An iMac desktop model would be cheaper and more practical, but where the hell would I put it? I barely have room for a laptop on my desk. There is no floor room for the tower, nor any extra desktop space for a monitor and tower. And goodness knows I need a decent monitor regardless of what computer I get, because doing digital photography on a little laptop screen or crappy monitor doesn’t cut it. Sigh. I’m months away from being able to afford a new computer, but a girl’s gotta dream.

It’s a gloomy day out there, so I plan to stay in for the rest of the afternoon. I think I’ll curl up with the cat on my lap and the British Columbia Magazine that came last week and spend some happy time immersed in that beautiful world.

A peachy day

This week is shaping up so much better than last. First of all, my day off on Sunday was great. Not only was I thrilled to have some time off after so many days of working, but my friend Greg and I went hiking in the Table Rock Wilderness. While the fall color hadn’t yet peaked and the mountain views were non-existent, we did get to see what I like to call cloud dancing. It was such a windy day that the clouds were just all over the place, moving, swirling, towering, or just sailing across the sky. It was pretty neat to watch. The drive in and out was pretty gorgeous, with all the beautiful big leaf maples turning vivid and brilliant shades of yellow. And despite the damp feeling of the day, we did NOT get rained on!

Today turned out to be “heaven on Hood” day. I went up to Mt. Hood to see fall color and was rewarded beyond my wildest dreams. The drive up there on Highway 26 was gorgeous with golden autumn leaves. Not only that, I could SEE the mountain! It was an overcast day, but the clouds were really high, revealing the long-hidden mountain, which we haven’t seen in weeks. It’s now completely covered in snow after all the storms we’ve had.

I drove around the main roads and back roads taking pictures of the fiery red vine maple, then I went for a short hike to Tamanawas Falls on the east side of the mountain, a hike I’ve been meaning to do for a long time and have never gotten around to. Well, I felt like I’d died and gone to heaven. The entire route is lined with vine maple and every single leaf was BRIGHT YELLOW.  Because of the cloudy day, the leaves practically glowed. Plus, PLUS!, the majority of the trail follows Cold Spring Creek, which was an absolutely lovely creek in its own right, but was particularly beautiful with all the yellow vine maple overhanging it. It was a photographer’s paradise. Heck, it was paradise whether you’re a photographer or not. It was so beautiful, it was almost sensory overload.

Then I finally got to the waterfall, which was FANTASTIC. A 140-foot drop over a massive basalt cliff, coating everything around with spray. I ate a quick lunch, rapidly running short on time, but not wanting to tear myself away from the lovely view. But tear away I must, so I hot-footed it back to the car.

As if all that wasn’t enough, the drive back along Highway 35 was…well, beautiful. How many times can I use the word in this post? The big leaf maples were absolutely gorgeous, with that fantastic golden color they get. And there were SO many of them, plus this other yellow-leafed tree that I don’t know the name of. All that in addition to the abundant vine maple. It was like that the whole way to Hood River. I desperately wanted to stop and take pictures, but I had to get home and shower and go to work, so I just soaked it all in and tried not to get in an accident in the process.

I could hardly believe my luck today. The weather was just perfect for foliage viewing, and there was plenty to see. I was positively euphoric. I sang in the car nearly the whole way home. I LOVE WHERE I LIVE!

P.S. Pictures of all this coming soon!

A bust

My sister is working up on Mt. Hood this week, and told me where to see some spectacular fall color. Unfortunately, I’ve been working every day this week. But today I don’t work until 2:00, so I made my lunch last night, set my alarm early, and got up at the crack of dawn so I could go up to the mountain and take pictures before going to work. Well, I bagged it. The forecasts and weather cameras painted a pretty bleak picture: a rain/snow mix, cold, and windy. Terrible photography conditions, not to mention terrible driving conditions. (And I still haven’t bought new snow chains to replace the ones that were stole in March.)

There were some torrential downpours in town this morning, and I could feel a case of the winter blues barreling down on me, but I went out anyway, seeking colorful foliage to photograph around town. I ended up at the Hoyt Arboretum, where I found plenty of beautiful leaves. I spent a fleeting hour there taking pictures, only getting sprinkled on a few times. It was pretty and peaceful and just what I needed. I felt a little better after that.

Oooh, I hear thunder out there! The angels are belching…

Rubber arms

My goal this winter is to get in shape. Despite the pretty regular hiking I do, I wouldn’t consider myself to be in shape right now. But I’m not totally out of shape, either. Besides the hiking, I move around quite a lot at work, and until recently I was going on evening walks several times a week. (Now it’s dark by dinner time – waaaaa! – so the evening walks are done.)

Next summer I want to do more backpacking and I don’t want to feel like I’m dying when I’m traipsing around the backcountry with 30-40 pounds on my back. Physical exhaustion tends to detract somewhat from enjoyment of the landscape. And if I’m going to feel anything, I’d rather feel the adrenaline rush of seeing that beautiful backcountry scenery. That means I need to start getting in shape NOW. So every morning I go down to the little tiny exercise room in my apartment complex and spend some time with the stair master and the weights. So far, so good. Except the side effect of PAIN. Especially from the weights. After just two days, my arms and shoulders are sore and feel like rubber. When I try to lift them to dress myself or reach high for a book, they just kind of flop around and don’t do what I tell them to. Someone’s going to get hurt one of these days. I’m sure it’ll pass as I do this more, but for now you can just call me rubber arms.

Sweater season

As much as I love the feel of my one cashmere sweater, I really hate sweaters. I like that they keep me warm, but I hate that the need to be kept warm even exists in the first place. And around here, sweater season lasts about half of the year, from now until about April. Today was a very sad day. I packed up my fun summer tops and skirts for winter storage, and unpacked my heavy winter clothes. It’s been such a short time since I put them into storage that they didn’t even have time to acquire the musty storage smell.

I think I need to do a wardrobe weeding, especially amongst my winter clothes. There just isn’t enough room in my closet, even though I only keep one season of clothes in there!