Life in the Slow Lane

If only all addresses were as easy! Who on earth thought it was a good idea to have addresses like this ( A ny reference to a real address is purely accidental. These addresses have been approximated for illustration purposes only) : 956 Hwy TT (Double "T"? Doesn't the number line offer better choices of names than the alphabet chart?) or 5 S. 124 1/2 St. #G Really, what is with that 1/2 ? One person actually laughed, embarrassed, when relaying his address to me. Who on earth, indeed. Hey... maybe those half streets are like the back of Narnia's wardrobe or Alice's rabbit hole. Too bad that doesn't provide an excuse for a Hwy TT.

In stories about neighborhood life, there always seems to be one eccentric. One is just about as much as any neighborhood can handle. But then again, that's usually fiction. Non-fiction aparently has room for many more. How else do you explain the number of eccentric people we hear from? A woman with 85 cats (How do you get 85 cats?) who feeds the neighborhood rats in the backyard of a friend A woman whose dirty clothes pile reaches the ceiling A man who sends a letter to someone he has never met on the other side of the globe to ask if she would send him a meal (His letter was torn and mangled and took a week and a half to arrive. Can you imagine what a meal would look like?) A woman who feeds mice in her apartment and then insists that her neighbors use only critter-friendly traps so that, once "trapped", the mice crawl around dragging their hindquarters which are stuck to the trap A man who asks if you have "other dimensions" that you need to get off to a...

The first sentences of my blog posts are alarmingly boring. I realized this after stealing another idea from blogs I read for post ideas. I intended to see if taking the first sentence in the first blog post of each month would make a suitable entry, such as here or here , but I fell asleep -- mine was so boring. So I decided to take the last sentence in the first blog post of each month. Would you believe that those sentences combined makes almost as much sense as my usual posts? Frightening, but observe: I guess I have some bad habits that I need to cure in a hurry. Oh, the horrors. But I can just imagine the truth behind Chicken Little's tale... one too many dryer sheets. It also proved to be a most opportune time to get lost on the way to the bathroom. But I don't regret not correcting the giver's assumption, because a queen size bedspread and matching pillow cases from Pakistan is a thousand times better than a proposal from Pakistan. Yes, being able to turn on...

I've noticed recently that several blogs occasionally post menu plans for the week or recipes. Since I don't feel like admitting to how many times my menu plan for this week included microwave popcorn, I will share my recipe for delicious Pineapple Apple Pepper Apple Chicken. Pineapple Apple Pepper Apple Chicken Serves 1 three times Place two boneless skinless chicken breasts top side down in a toaster oven set on "broil". Meanwhile, for sauce: Cut up a pineapple and put whatever fits into a plastic container. Place in fridge. Chop the pieces that didn't fit into the container and put them in a cereal bowl. Add the last of the bottle of red wine vinaigrette. Add pepper until it looks aesthetically pleasing. Add a dollop of oil. Turn tray in toaster oven so that each side gets a chance under the only half of the heating filament that works. Meanwhile, back for the sauce: Add an "oops" of Oregano without a shaker lid. Add some Worcestershire sauce... stop...

Excitement is making a long distance call to rave about the features on a new mattress. Excitement is forgetting to even say "hello" or identifying yourself before launching into the details. Excitement is not saying good-bye before hanging up when the bed arrives. Excitement is telephoning a friend, in your pajamas and under the covers, at 6:30 pm and promising to call again the next day to tell you how great the night was. Cute kid, I wonder if he will even be able to sleep because of his excitement. At least there won't be any arguments about whether he is allowed to sleep with his new gift or not.

If I knew all of the answers to the questions I am asked, I would have to hire someone just to carry my head around. But even though I know that there is no possible way that I know all of the answers, and even though the person contacting me would say there is no possible way that I know all of the answers, there is still a weighty expectation. Rehabilitation centers in Asia. Homeless shelters in Southern California. The name of a woman who called me four months ago. And the cell phone number of someone I never had contact with. That was just this afternoon. But with my hi-tech friends Google , Freetranslation.com , and Zabasearch ; my old-fashioned friends Dictation Pad, Filing Cabinet, and Exploding 3-ring Binder; my company-issued friends Database, Outlook Files, and Boss: I feel that any answer should be at the tip of my fingers. I just wish that I could find which fingers.

One previously unmentioned feature of the location of my desk is it's proximity to the company's server. There are approximately ten feet between my desk and the source of sounds not unlike a generator attached to a helicopter about to take off in a tornado. About 15 feet from my desk is the company's paper shredder which sounds remarkably like a bad day at the dentist while installing new cabinets. And can we forget about the monstro-copier that clangs metal against metal once for every page of a 15 page training manual for 60 people? Now it is most wonderful that rarely do all of these chime in together. But sometimes this drilling, clanging, grinding, rumbling garage style band gets started and then, dear readers, I understand why a tree can fall in the middle of a forest and not make a sound.

Sometimes I'm not sure whether I'm allowed to laugh or not. The following is excerpted from an email that I had trouble deciding about. Maybe you can let me know after you read it whether you want to laugh or whether you want to send money to help. He is very laborious to make them know that during these days we are receiving the flagellum of the nature and the floods are devastating with our houses, small farms and smaller animal raising is as well as the nature shows no mercy with which we are poor. We wished to promote of integral way in the following aspects: To impel to the small artisan mining with direct participation of the woman. Qualification and gratuitous and permanent technical attendance for productive projects. To stimulate the development of micro and the small company of production in the Andean zones High, Eyebrow of Forest, and Forest.

Have you ever noticed the complete lack of fitting rooms available for trying on a bathroom scale? It really can be quite embarassing. I mean really, do I want the whole world to be able to see me when I try a scale to see if it suits me? And you can't just walk in and buy a scale without making sure that it flatters your figure. Because the first scale on the rack just might be the one that makes you look ten pounds heavier.

At some point, the best answer to this question is not "Here I am! Here I am!" Really, after a blood blister, two cuts, a burn and some accidental bonding with super glue, Pointer might just deserve a nice, relaxing soak in the tub. Wait... that sounds kind of like washing dishes... I'd keep quiet, if I were you, Pointer. And don't let Thumbkin do any more volunteering for you.

Sometimes I get a glimpse of foreshadowing. For instance, I am fairly certain that some day, while backing out of my parking spot at my apartment, I will go a wee bit too far and hit the yellow post positioned to keep people from hitting the fire hydrant. This suspicion was heightened when someone else knocked it over. The good news being that now that it has already been knocked over once, it will do less damage to my car when I hit it. You may think that this is unsightly pessimism rearing its ugly head, but there is a hole in the wall at work to prove otherwise. And really, what good does optimism do in situations like this? Answer: It gives you a dislocated side mirror.

Today I translated a letter from German into English. Well actually, I'm not sure that it actually qualifies as English. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I took one year of high school German, in which we learned "O tannenbaum, O tannenbaum", how to make gingerbread houses, oh yeah, and a bit of German vocabulary and grammar. As you know, the first step in translating anything after having only one year of high school language, is to visit freetranslation.com . There you can input the text selection and hope that you are given something that looks vaguely more familiar. But one thing about German is that it uses liberal use of vowels with umlauts. And one thing about many email systems is that any special punctuation is replaced with an odd assortment of letters and symbols. And one thing about freetranslation.com is that they don't translate odd assortments of letters and symbols. And so, like a child decoding a message on the back of a cereal box, I had to gu...

I think it is time for me to cut my hair super short, die it pink, and spike it. Not once, but twice recently I have been confused for someone else. Not your normal, garden variety "Oh, I only saw the back of you". No, this is "I sat right next to you, spoke to you, and I thought you, who I have known for months, were someone I have known years." Or, "I was in the middle of a hug with you when I realized you weren't who I thought you were." The weird thing is, that I have met the two different women who I have been confused with. The only way we look similar, in my opinion, is that we have curly hair and glasses. It really makes me doubt to new depths that we are at all very observant. So like I say, maybe I should make it easier for people to see that I am me and not anybody else. But then I guess I wouldn't really be me if I had pink spiked hair.

Several weeks ago at work, I switched from using Google as my first line of search to Good Search . I ran across an organization that I wanted to support, but never would actually give money to, and decided to donate my searches to their noble work. But truth be known, I've grown accustomed to the way that Google organizes its results, and so when, after a couple of tries to verify an address, Good Search wasn't doing it for me, I brought up the Google page. And boy did I feel like they had discovered my traitorous ways. They had created a logo just for people who switched to another search engine! (It took me awhile to realize what occasion they were celebrating.) It didn't help that the next day my Google search still brought up the screaming logo, and my neighbor's search brought up the classic four color logo. And now, a dilemma... when I need to search online, I type "g" and Good Search always fills the browser window, since it comes alphabetically b...

Groom's Coat at Getty Villa Originally uploaded by biukalee . I finally figured out how to use my scanner, so now I can respond to the request for a photo of my Kazakh coat.

When I was in third grade I rebelled. I got sick and tired of tracing letters on a page, because I knew how to draw my letters, and it was so terribly boring to follow the tiny arrows up, around, in, and down. Sure, I never managed to copy the line exactly, because after all, I never colored in the lines, but close was good enough, right? Now I have great respect for those who teach hand-writing. There are days when I can't decide whether a letter is an A, P, T, S or G... times when I hold the letter at every angle possible to see if I can just manage to make out whether a particular word has seven letters or three... letters that we pass around the department, each person contributing the decoding of a handful of words. There are some words that never rise from obscurity to convey the meaning locked inside. When it comes to hand-writing, boring is just fine.

10. Blogs are so last year. 9. Your fingers have frozen around the remote control and you can't operate a hair dryer to defrost them. 8. Your New Year's resolution involves avoiding all modern technology. 7. Your brain is fried and the funniest thing you can come up with is an elephant joke involving peanuts. 6. You adopted six Foodle puppies and they make it impossible for you to move. 5. You live in a tree with your wife Jane. 4. Blogging is against your religious and political beliefs. 3. Your acrylic fingernails make it impossible to type. 2. Your prison sentence forbids you the use of the internet. 1. You've decided there is no better way to annoy me.