maggie's blog

hey, i've just discovered the spell-checker! this should help my blogging (especially in situations like now when i have two cats in my lap, along with my laptop).

another big tuesday night--glee club and walgreens! (notice a pattern here?) i volunteered to be responsible for the glee-club phone messages we get on a designated line (goes right to voicemail). i'm also going to post notices around seattle advertising the glee club. i love the glee club, so it's easy for me to be enthusiastic about it when people ask me for details. in fact, i think i scare people a bit because i'm so enthusiastic and *really really really* want *everyone* to join glee club and be as happy as i am!

well, i'm blogging on dan's lovely little mac laptop. my laptop has been very temperamental recently. it behaved yesterday, but for the last several weeks it has been turning itself off without warning. dan took it in to a laptop repair shop, and they tried for two days to duplicate the problem (to no avail).

dan takes his laptop all over seattle. it travels quite well. it is much smaller and lighter than mine, and has an amazing amount of battery power. he takes it, via bicycle, to cafes a lot and surfs the internet, just like everyone else in the cafes.

monday was a great day for this kind of activity, had dan not been tied up with plumbing matters and piano lessons (new song: "in a sentimental mood," one of my favorites). we hit a record temperature monday: 78. today's high is supposed to be in the mid- to low 50s.

as for our rental house's leaky bathtub, the evening before dan was to call the plumber, i remembered that when i had done the rental-house walkthrough several weeks ago, the caulking had looked quite bad. lumpy in some places and barely there in other places. so i suggested caulking before calling a plumber. dan dutifully caulked and waited a day for everything to dry. the renters used the bathtub on sunday, and water poured out from the tub and into the basement again. so, dan called a plumber who came monday morning. the problem turned out to be that dan had not caulked around the soap holder in the wall! it had looked fine to him, but that little area turned out to be the problem spot. dan caulked that area on monday, and we shall see what happens when the renters use the bathtub on tuesday!

our garbage disposal broke over the weekend, so we had the plumber take a lot at that, too. he agreed it was dead. i believe i got it in 1990, so it had a pretty good lifespan, as garbage disposals go.

ever since penny left our house ten days ago, i've been trying to continue to declutter and organize. i just set aside a bit of time every evening. i've got a long way to go, but at least i've started!

saturday night dan and i missed the twisted flick we were planning on seeing. i was running late (moi?), so he left in his car. i followed in mine a bit later. it turned out the theater had sold out, which has never happened in the five or so years we've been going there. dan had already gone home by the time i got there, so i called him and said i was going to try to make the 9pm show at the little theater across town.

i did make it (i did a lot of clumping around in the rain on my big ankle boot that night--parking was scarce at both locations), and had a great time. the theater was showing all the academy-award nominated short films for 2004, including the winner. some were animated and some were live action, but each one was quite interesting.

sunday night dan and i watched "law and order: criminal intent." i mention this minutiae only because i realized this is the only tv show we watch together. we used to watch a nice sunday line-up of "futurama," "the simpsons," "king of the hill," and "the x-files." those shows are either off the air or have lost their luster (at least for us). so, while i watch rather a lot of tv (all over-the-air), dan watches just the one hour a week. when i met him, he didn't have a tv, so i'm happy to realize that i haven't corrupted him too much over the years!

well, i had a big day yesterday! off to band practice (just a tad late). before band i was thinking about how lovely rehearsal had been thursday evening. then i felt the night-time ankle brace on my leg and realized i was still in bed. oooops! i rushed to get ready and only missed rehearsing one piece of music. it's starting to feel normal to go to rehearsals again, after missing several of them, along with missing two concerts.

then on the way home, i stopped at walgreens to pick up odds and ends and medications for me and one of our cats (aka "the huline," because he's half human, half cat). actually, i think he believes he's all human, and his body is a result of a bad day at the factory. i was miffed when the pharmacist refused to sell me needles for my various injections. store policy is to sell them, no questions asked (as it is at other pharmacies). this pharmacist is somehow allowed to not follow store policy. i got home and tried to send an email to walgreens, but their web page wouldn't send my complaint. i called the company's 800 number, and the message box was full. grrrr!

i just sent an email to the seattle parks board, which is soliciting opinions on whether or not to keep a skateboard park in ballard. even though i'm too old and decrepit to skate, a lot of people of all ages have a lot of fun at that park. a community of skaters has been formed, and they took it upon themselves to maintain the area on their own. there's only one other skate park in all of seattle.

it's been raining for the last couple of days, and our newly cleaned basement is taking on water from three different sources. so we moved stuff around as best we could. we're considering consulting with someone who seals basements, but fear the sealing would be very costly.

lastly, as i was leaving for band, our new renters called. they had just moved all their furniture in and had taken their first shower. unfortunately, the shower leaked through the floor and into the basement, right onto some nice rugs they'd just put down. we've never had any problem with this before, and it sure is bad timing. so in a few hours dan will be calling a plumber (we've had such bad luck with the last several that we're always trying someone new).

when it rains, it pours--especially when you live in seattle!

wednesday? what was that? i slept the whole day (and most of the evening) away, as is my wont after an evening of activity the day before. i recover from the podiatrist visit and glee club, and rest up for symphonic band on thursday. i'll sleep pretty much through friday, and then on saturday, dan and i will go see twisted flix, which are shown the last weekend of every month. a local improv group gets its mitts on a baaaad movie, shows it with the sound off, and improvises the dialogue. some efforts are better than others, but they're always worth taking a chance on.

it rained last night, which means we need to get serious about waterproofing our basement, which will not be an inexpensive undertaking. now that so much stuff from the basement is gone, we need to make sure the remaining items don't have water damage/mold (as did a lot of the items we threw out). we have several different leaks to find fixes for.

yesterday, dan and i saw our new renters moving in next door. today we got a check from them for the month of april (a week early!). as nice as our previous tenants were, they rarely paid before the fifth of the month, which is when our contract states we will start assessing late fees.

the teenager dan tutors every wednesday is from somalia. when she was born, her mother killed a goat to signify the importance of the occasion. she asked dan what we do here. nothing that can compare to that--i mean, cigars aren't even passed out anymore!

well, i took a few days off from blogging. on sunday, we had penny (aka "a force of nature") from clutter cleaners come to our house to declutter our basement and garage. i'd seen her declutter a garage on a segment of the tv show "dateline" a few months ago, and was impressed with her energy, no-nonsense approach, and her understanding of the psyche of a clutterer (yes, that would be moi).

after the show, i googled on clutter cleaners and found her web site. she mailed back that she'd gotten about 30,000 hits after the show aired. organized woman that she is, she emailed everybody back in two days with her schedule of cross-country travel to accommodate the 5,000 of us who followed through and requested her services. i think she'd only worked in california before, which is where she lives. (she's also started writing a book: "House of CHAOS," with "CHAOS" standing for "can't have anyone over syndrome.")

since i have a back injury and torn ligaments in my ankle (and an apparent sinus infection), i wasn't able to do anything physical. penny wisely gave me box after box of papers that i've stored over the years. she provided me with a chair and a light, and i doggedly sifted through those boxes. that kept me busy while penny, dan, and penny's helper, charles, dragged pretty much everything out of the basement. had i not been sifting my boxes, i would have stopped them and wanted to keep everything.

the next day, penny and charles came back for another eight hours of work. dan and penny managed to find someone to haul *two dump trucks* of former basement contents away. penny and charles took almost everything in our small "give-away" pile, so we didn't even have to deal with giving things away.

after the basement (about 1,000 sq. feet) was purged, penny artfully arranged the remaining contents, even strategically placing throw rugs on the floor. i was sick that day, so i just stayed in bed and slept (i did hear lots of loud thuds, though!). anyway, dan's been wanting an exercise room in the basement, and now there's ample room for one.

i still was feeling a bit weak on tuesday, so dan very kindly drove me to my podiatrist appointment (i now have an ankle boot, a neoprene ankle brace, and another, more lightweight, ankle boot to wear at night!) he then took my sick laptop computer to the repair shop, then picked me up and drove me home. i managed to make it to the second half of glee club rehearsal, which was nice. most of our program for this season is madrigals, but now we're doing some gilbert and sullivan pieces--very fun!

last but not least, a shout-out to dan for letting me borrow his laptop computer while mine is in the shop. (i had to promise not to eat any food near it, or allow any cats in its vicinity. a small price to pay for such a lovely loaner computer.)

this weekend, dan and i saw two classic movies on tv. friday we saw 1939's "love affair" with charles boyer and the incomparable irene dunne. it was filmed in strikingly beautiful black and white, and was full of art deco images. saturday night, we watched the original "a star is born," from 1937, starring janet gaynor and fredric march. it, too, was filled with an amazing amount of art deco scenery. and it was filmed in color so lush that every image seemed heightened.

when i was in college, i took a course on film. students took it because it seemed like an easy credit to watch movies and then answer periodic multiple-choice tests to prove you had, indeed, seen the films. for me, the class was so much more than that. the instructor had access to a wealth of classic movies. many classic american movies of all genres, and a lot of rare foreign films. (one film he'd found while fighting in WWII, in an abandoned projector. it was an american film dubbed into another language--i've now forgotten which one.)

that class is largely responsible for the love of movies i've had all my adult life. the more obscure, the better. i also developed my life-long love of movie trivia because of that class. the instructor had resigned himself to the class being something that students took for easy credit, but for me it was so much more. i have always been grateful for the difference the class made in my life, but also always somewhat saddened that it wasn't treated with the proper respect by other students or, out of sad necessity, by the teacher himself.

last night was my first night back at symphonic band practice after missing several rehearsals (and two concerts). i ran out of breath a lot, but did manage to remain in an upright and locked position for the entire evening. one of the band members (named neil) had written a three-page symphonic band piece, and wanted us to play it so he could have a recording of it. almost every measure was in a different time signature than the measure before and after it. after some initial difficulties, the band was able, in about 45 minutes, to play it well enough so that neil had two recordings of it. that's a pretty amazing group of musicians.

an article i just read in vanity fair was about the popularity and prevalence of blogs (mainly political, and mainly left-wing). i was surprised at how many of the blogs i've read, either on an occasional or a regular basis. this just confirms what i already knew--i spend an awful lot of time on the computer. and, there are an awful lot of really literate and informative blogs out there.

also in vanity fair (it's a big magazine, even with the perfumed inserts removed!): a chilling article on how easy voter fraud is on the new electronic voting machines. there's no paper trail, it's extremely easy to fix voting totals in any number of ways, and it's suspected that some elections have already been affected by people illiegally manipulating the voting machine totals. a freelance writer in seattle was surfing the internet and just happened to stumble across some information that led to all kinds of subsequent discoveries. and even as the states are being informed of the major flaws in these machines, they are rushing to order millions of dollars of machines for upcoming elections.

last night i finally did the walkthrough on our rental house. it took almost two hours! dan had made up a very detailed checklist for each room. i just hope i can read all my notes when it comes time for our new tenants to move out! we just had the hardwood floors redone with a swedish finish. they are absolutely beautiful. the house is really in good shape--much better shape than our house. but our house has lots of character, which is important.

i was reading an article in vanity fair on disgraced financier conrad black. one of the people quoted in the interview was named "sir peregrine worsthorne." is he an englishman, or what? love that name.

some notes on my current snuggle-partner, navvy, our one-eyed cat ("yar"), who has long, white hair and a predilection for what we call rasta knots on his soft, white underbelly. fortunately, he likes having his rasta knots trimmed occasionally. yesterday i decided that he is a man of several strong, distinct emotional categories: loving, angry, and crazy. kind of covers it for a lot of the rest of us, too.