Self-Pitying Rant du Jour

Grr. Only with the help of a very strong latte on (top of two cups of strong drip coffee) have I been able to dig up my usual optimism today.

Let's just say there has been more than the usual amount of rejection lately, what with getting FIRED from my last band and getting SHUT DOWN by ye olde Geeksoft for a job for which I was way overqualified and only sort of wanted anyway, and by the way paid utter CRAP.

(P.S. Yes, that's my pug Snuffy. When you work at home, you take a lot of pictures of your pug wearing glasses.)

Oh, and the band? Let's call them "The Old White Guys" cause that's what they are - especially now without the younger, perkier additions of me, Dave, and the drummer, who also got fired because we "couldn't put music first in our lives." Seriously, everyone in that band is like 60+ and playing tired old classic rock covers. I AM MEANT FOR BETTER THINGS!!

So it's true, I was stretched way too thin and not putting any time into the music, even though I wanted to. Thus my rock star career is currently on hiatus as I do a little soul searching but never mind. I SHALL RISE AGAIN. SO EFF YOU OLD WHITE GUYS AND GEEKSOFT. JUST YOU WAIT.

There. I feel so much better. With another five lattes, I might feel even better.

SAY. You'll indulge me for a minute if I point you to an article about me and my book from 2006, when I was briefly FAMOUS. I just discovered in my so-called "files" the hard copy of an article from King County Journal that is no longer available online, and was thrilled to see myself not only a giant photo of myself on the cover of a pullout section of the but also to see a giant photo of myself on top of Mt. Rainier on the inside. Yay, me! Those were the days.

And, to top it all off (no pun intended), it was much bigger than the photo of Hannah Montana, who was the subject of the next article. Ha ha ha hahhahah. EFF YOU HANNAH MONTANA.

I just scanned this sucker and put it on my web site so that we can relive 2006 in all its glory! Enjoy! (But be warned. It's a PDF. You'll read it anyway. WON'T you?)

Getting Religion in the Goat Rocks Wilderness

Ugh. I have just moved. That's right, moved. Back to the condo in Queen Anne from whence I came.

I won't bore you with the details of why we moved out of our lovely Greenlake rental back to the condo I own, which is a great size for one person (and one small dog). We'll just have to see if Dave and I can apply the living-together skills we learned in the two-bedroom house with the huge-ass basement to the 650-square foot one bedroom condo with one tiny storage locker.

Luckily, nothing was thrown during this move. (See the previous blog entry for details on last year's throwing incident). Or not really, anyway. Late last week I did throw an ear of corn. And while it wasn't directly move-related I think it the fit of pique in which I threw it (oh the shame!) was related to stress brought on by the move.

Anyway, moving on. (Get it? MOVING on?) Last weekend, because of course, I had no PACKING to do or anything, I took a backpacking trip to the Goat Rocks Wilderness area south of Mount Rainier. And Oh! My! It was a high-altitude world filled with wildflower-washed meadows.

I've posted a few of my (amateurish) pictures here for your enjoyment. Let's just say that going to the mountains is never a mistake, even if you're up to your eyeballs in stressful sh*t to do. Especially this little corner of the Cascades. Unless, of course, you make get lost, die of hypothermia, or fall off a cliff.

xo

Rebecca

Return from Vacation Alive - Check!

I am back from a week of paddling in the Canadian wild! Tan, rested, raring to go. We kayaked for five days in 80-degree weather: lounging on white sand beaches, paddling protected aqua waters, drinking red wine from our beachfront campsites while watching the sun go down.

Oh, there was mouse poop and banana slugs and snakes, but compared to last summer's Alaskan grizzlies, they didn't disturb me at all. Starfish and sea lions were our main animal companions on this sun-dazzled journey in the Broken Group Islands off west Vancouver Island.

We did, however, have on exciting wildlife encounter. Here's a snippet from an article I'm writing about it; you'll just have to wait until it gets published to read it all! (And if you haven't ready my article about last year's Alaska paddle, you can download it in PDF format here).

I’d just put down my book and pulled my sleeping bag around me when a loud noise broke the silence of our coastal campsite. Crash! Snort!Indeterminate rustlings!

“What the--?” Dave sat up straight. He peered out into the night through the door of our tent but his headlamp didn’t make a dent in the blackness. My mind groped at possibilities. My heart launched into a rock and roll beat. Deer? Wolf? Escaped prisoner in a murderous rage? Bear?

Now it's back to the grind (granted my "grind" is rather slow these days) but also to the dreaded MOVE. Yes Dave and I are moving back to my condo in Queen Anne for long, boring reasons I shall not go into.

Just pray for us, that's all I can say. Hope that there is not a repeat of our dramatic meltdown of the last year's move, which involved me topless and sobbing in a heat wave throwing bottles of household cleaner at Dave. (Although if there is a repeat this year, we really hope to catch it on video).

xo, Rebecca

The Summer Sun Has Made Me Loopy

Greetings Earthlings!

I have been most busy being underemployed and enjoying Seattle's precious summer months in our beautiful Olympics and Cascade Mountains where I enjoy taking bad photos of wildlfowers and wandering knife-edged ridges.

Oh yes, sometimes summer bothers the h*ll out of me with all its demanding sunshine but lately I LIKE it. Maybe because Dave's mom has a house on Lake Washington and I get to lounge on the grassy beach watching the yachts go by, pretending like I'm rich and famous even though I'm a downwardly mobile professional, albeit one with a cleaning lady.

Or maybe it's because I'm currently not lonely and therefore not in one of my melancholy states of mind which is not to say I'm MENTALLY WELL-ADUSTED because then what kind of writer would I be? (Underneath that dorky "Seattle Sombrero" lies a tortured mind. I swear it.) But moving on...

Coming right up on Monday night at 5:30 p.m. is my long-awaited class at the Seattle Public Library called "Blogging for Beginners."

If you never saw me play the part of Helena in a "Midsummer Night's Dream" (sixth grade); if you didn't catch my small but pivotal role as the Russian duchess in "You Can't Take It With You" (eighth grade) if you failed to wintess my small but pivotal role as Amaryllis in "The Music Man" (senior year of high school) or God forbid failed to see any one of my million piano recitals when I was a kid or my rock debut at the Crossroads Mall or my on my SMASHINGLY SUCCESSFUL west coast book tour (all except for Bellingham, where no one laughed, and San Franciso where hardly anyone showed up, and - oh never mind), NOW IS YOUR CHANCE!

Or maybe you'd rather go have a pomegranate mojito at El Chupacabra on Greenwood. Cause if you did I would *totally* understand.

Monday Monday

Hello hello from work-at-home-never-leave-the-house-don't-talk-to-anyone-but-the-dog-land.

Things are peachy keen here! I'm getting supremely buffed by doing the workouts in Kathy Kaehler's Celebrity Workouts: How to Get a Hollywood Body in Just 30 Minutes a Day, which also does not require me to leave the house! OK, maybe "supremely buffed" is an exaggeration. "Slightly worked" might be more apt or "a teeny-tiny bit of defintion which I'm probably imagining" is more likely.

You can be the judge when I don my swimsuit for the Greenlake Open Water Swim next weekend! Oh hell. Maybe I'll do the Greenlake Open Water Swim. You know I have a fear of giant squid, even in freshwater lakes. No wait, that's Li'l Sis! Ha ha. She still manages to be a much better swimmer than than me, even though I beat her in that one impromptu swim race in Hawaii (not that I still gloat about that 10 years later). There are other things to be afraid of in Greenlake, like children's pee and goose poop. So we shall see.

It would actually require me to leave the house and "interface" with other people so I don't know if that will work. I have everything I need at home, like tofu, coffee, an Internet connection, and several Canon cameras circa 1980 that I can't bring myself to get rid of. Plus, of course, Yogi "Classic India Spice" tea. C'mon, buy some! I'll get like two cents if you do!



Just kidding. I get out a lot. I even went to a birthday party and band practice; led a hike at Mt. Rainier National Park, and went to a Mexican restaurant this weekend, where I drank a ridiculously huge margarita. (See, there I am at left in the mountains, fooling an unsuspecting member of the Mountaineers into thinking I am capable of reading a map, etc..)

On this gray Monday, however, it's back to the grind. Just me and the dog doing our celebrity workouts, drinking Classic India Spice tea, and simultaneously being annoyed and fascinated by stupid Twitter. Oh yeah - looking for a job too! (In case the unemployment office asks.)

A Walk in the Woods

Phew! I've been out of the blogosphere for a while, having spent last week taking a bunch of 7th graders into the wilderness. Yes, I know, very Lord of the Flies.

But in fact these kids were all sweet, well-adjusted, kind, friendly, and helpful to each other. There was nary an awkward teen among the bunch. No exclusionary cliques or power-mongering "popular" people out to destroy the "nerds." Oh, sure, they were fond of throwing rocks the size of coconuts and dancing around with their pocket knives in hand, and they often spilled dinner on the ground when cooking it (then threw it back into the pot, because after all, we had to eat).

Yet overall I was quite impressed with their group dynamics. They all go to a very small private middle school in Seattle, and I tell you, their seeming well-adjustedness was enough to make me want to send my future (hypothetical) kids to private school after being a lifelong, die-hard believer in public schools.

Anyway. It's all part of my plan to move into lower- and lower-paying work, which is going quite nicely, thank you very much.

"This is so much better than school!" yelled one kid as he plunged into the icy, sparkling Skokomish River on a 90-degree day after hiking for five hours. Insert the phrase "sitting in a windowless office doing work that makes me despise myself even though it pays a lot (though not as much as it used to)" for "school" and you have my sentiments exactly.

The Great Finnish Adventure, Part II

...Continued from last week

All right, I know you're wondering whether I made it out of the Turku Archipelago alive. But guess what? I did!! So, without further delay, the second installment.

Day 4, continued. When I arrive in the town of Turku I meet my second couchsurfing host, tall blonde Thomas, who kindly greets me at the train station. Next I venture into the center of Turku proper, where the only truly touristy thing I do is go to the grand 13th-century Turku Cathedral. Then I wander around the Turku Public Library, initially looking for Internet access but getting drawn in by how sparkling and hip the library is. Eventually I end up at the Turku Art Museum high on a hill, a stunning old building with a big photograph of a naked woman outside it advertising the latest exhibit (see photo below). I drink a glass of Hungarian wine in the hushed and relaxing museum cafe. (At left above: Turku public library)

The rest of the day speeds by; I meet with friendly Dafna from Saaritours who helps me plan my bike trip and arranges everything for me. Thomas and I eat dinner at a funky, delicious restaurant called Kerttu; I shop for supplies for my bike trip (1. bread 2. cheese 3. chocolate); then walk back to Thomas's place with a blister that's grown to half the size of my foot (thank God I'll be mostly biking, not walking, the next few days).

Day 5. At last I am on my rented bicyclette! I pedal out of Turku on a super-duper bike path that makes me feel as if I never want to bike in the U.S. again. I am doing part of what's known as the "Archipelago Ring Route," which takes you over several of the 20,000-some islands in the Turku Archipelago via a combination of bridges and ferries. Unfortunately it's early season so many of the ferries aren't running yet. Instead of doing a loop as cyclists normally do, I am doing an out and back route. But hey, it beats sitting at home in Seattle where it's undoubtedly raining. (Um, it's raining here too on this particular day but never mind that).

My first destination is the island of Nauvo, some 45 or so kilometers away. At first the scenery is dull and urban with a few too many cars. But when I take the ferry from the island of Pargas to the island of Nauvo, suddenly I am out in the country, surrounded by the placid Baltic sea and empty(ish) roads.

The ferry is nothing like the monstrosities we have here in Washington state that holds hundreds of cars and passengers. No, this bright yellow raft-like vehicle carries only about three cars and me. We scurry across the water in about 10 minutes. I'm glad it's sunny by this time because there's no place to go inside. Everyone stays in their cars and I stand by my bike. (At right, the ferry from a distance).

Because I fail to consult my map I end up riding almost 10 kilometers too far when I am already exhausted. Luckily a road sign confuses me and I take out the map to puzzle over it. I realize I've gone too far and missed the turnoff for my guesthouse. But just exactly where is it? (The map I have is somewhat less than stellar. Combine that with my less than stellar navigation skills and I have no idea where the h*ll I am.) Thank God for cell phones. In Finland, they actually work everywhere because that's all anyone uses.

A few calls and everything is cleared up. I backtrack, turn off the main road and find myself pedaling along incredibly tranquil roads. Leafy. Sun-dappled. With calm bays and red cottages around every corner. Finally I reach my lodging in a "town" called Gyttja. If you can call a few houses, one guesthouse, and a jetty a "town." (At left, the Gyttja guesthouse.)

To be continued! (I know, the tension is unbearable, isn't it?)