Ripped

What's the proper burial procedure for a pair of jean? Not just any pair of jeans, but jeans you plain wore out? Jeans that look like this:

I don't remember the exact moment when this last event happened but if you look very closely, there are five holes in the back of this pair of jeans. Two on the left, an obvious opening on the right, a small tear just below the right pocket, and a one on the right below the largest of holes. This one was professionally repaired some years ago.

No kidding. I sent them to Denim Therapy for repair. I remember when I sent them the guy at the Post Office wondered what kind of problems my pants could have that might require that I ship them to New York for therapy. That repair job gave me several more years in this pair of jeans.

But the end was near. I knew I couldn't send them to New York for therapy every time they fell apart. So I did what I could to keep it all together, uncomfortable as it could be at times.

My homemade remedies made things difficult. To walk, especially, or sit. This is what it was like for my jeans. On the inside:

Clearly, they needed therapy.

Now that it's over, how does one pay proper respect? I have one vote for Daisy Dukes but that's not fair to anyone, imo, although it might fuel a fantasy or two.

Maybe I can salvage parts. Harvest the pockets for a pair of jeans incapable of carrying items. Donate the zipper to one who needs closure, rivets to another who needs strength. My jeans could live on through others.

I'm having trouble letting go.

Maybe I'm the one who needs therapy.

Someone Left a Cat Out in the Rain

That's the lyric, isn't it? Because, otherwise, it wouldn't make any sense.

But, in fact, that's exactly what happened today. I was doing laundry (one might think that's all I ever do) and it was raining. As I was coming out of the laundry room in the next building over, a striped cat decided it was coming in. It headed straight for a second floor apartment and mewed to be let it.

Except no one was home. What was I to do? Leave it in the hallway of the apartment building? I encouraged it to leave only it darted for the basement. I wasn't about to chase it. It was already wet and angry at not being let into its apartment. Instead, I opened the exterior door and called to it sweetly.

It peered at me from around the corner of the down staircase with a look of "Are you kidding?" My return stare said, "Come play with me. I have string."

The unnamed cat's eyes queried, "Really? Don't mess with me." In reply, I tapped my fingernails on the tile floor with "Yes, and so much more."

The cat believed me and, after a time, left the building of its own accord but of course that's where it ended. It looked at me with expectation in the rain and all I could say was, "I'm sorry."

In and out of the laundry room I went but I was wise to the cat now and didn't let it in. And it rained all day. Each time I came and went - whether it was to the laundry or elsewhere - the cat gave me a look of "You betrayed me."

And it's true. I left the cat out in the rain.

Tied Up

Locks

Travelling home from Port Ludlow, we necessarily needed to pass through the locks to get to our home port. It was an ebb tide as we tied up under the Salmon Bay Bridge and waited in the rain for our chance to lock through. About an hour passed before the light on the small locks turned green at which precise moment our fearless Captain noticed the boat was listing.

The water level had dropped, by my estimation, a foot while we were waiting. We were hung up on our lines which, by the way, were sopping wet and holding fast. Fortunately, we were able to loosen the lines without losing any fingers or having to cut them away (the lines, not our fingers) - and before our cleats tore away. However, the barnacles encrusting the wall to which we were fastened did a pretty good number slicing through our blue gel coat.

Everything worked out fine but I was surprised at how quickly the water level dropped in such a short period of time. It could have been worse.

Apartment Update

The unit for which we had hoped to apply got rented before we got our application in. Still looking....

Three Sheets

Someone mentioned to me over the weekend I should write a gossip column for the yacht club. I'm thinking about calling it Three Sheets.

Oh, Wait.

I think we found a place. It will definitely be bigger but, of course, it would be difficult to find anything smaller. And, it will be more expensive but, again, it would be hard to find something as inexpensive. It'll be nice to have a kitchen big enough that I can't touch all four walls all at the same time. There's a pool and a workout room and I won't have to lug my laundry in the rain anymore. There's also a half-mile walking trail but it doesn't go anywhere. In fact, the new place isn't close to anything, except work. Oh, wait. Maybe we should rethink this.

Location, Location, Location

We have to move. The guy who owns the condo that we're renting in Vancouver wants his place back so he's asked us to move out by July 1. It's exhausting looking for new digs, especially when we're only here for a few days per week and somewhere in there I'm also supposed to be getting some work done. This weekend is Memorial Day Weekend so I'm also trying to get ready for that. We're boating to Port Ludlow and I'm trying to get some of the food prepared in advanced.

The good news is that we really don't have to make a speedy decision. We can always spend a month or two in a hotel until we find something we really like. The problem is that absolutely every other place is bigger (which is a good thing) but it's also more expensive and less desirably situated. Vancouver has lots of apartment inventory to choose from but there are very limited options in the downtown area where we are now.

Now, I can walk to more coffee shops than I can count, two of which are Starbucks. There are two movie theaters (one of the blockbuster variety, the other of the historical artsy-fartsy variety), plenty of restaurant choices, a Red Box, a national park, the library, and the Columbia River - all within walking distance. The grocery store is just out of walking range but there's a nice store nearby. The location is unrivaled, and absolutely unavailable at the rent we are currently paying.

Bigger might be nicer, but that means we have to buy or rent more furniture and there's more to take care of. I'll get laundry in my new apartment which will be a huge bonus, but I have stacks of quarters that have been amassed and are all queued up and ready to go. What will become of those?

Perhaps, in our new place, my socks will be less likely to defect.

Another Narrow Escape

Is it me? Or, did my shoes raise a stink? Because, my socks want out. Recently, and I'm talking in the last year or so, my socks have been making increasingly more daring attempts at escaping the laundry cycle and I'm left to wonder why. This trend commenced when I started using a coin-op for laundry (which may be my answer right there). I can certainly understand my undergarment's distaste for a poor man's laundry facility, snooty undergarments that they are, but I don't always use coin-op. Indeed, I only use it half the time. That being said, I have never witnessed such brazen attempts at home where pocket change comes out of the laundry and is not required, in fact, to operate it.

Until today. I found a blue-striped sock hanging outside the cuff of Hubby's blue-striped shirt. (Maybe they were in cahoots.) And then, for reasons I can't possibly explain, I checked the other sleeve and there I found the blue-striped mate, no less, hiding completely out of sight in the other sleeve, laid flat along the length of it.

Something is definitely afoot.

Get It?

Fire

Obama

Civil Liberties

H/T 76003.1414

They must not be that much fun.

Spam!

Spam is a big deal in Hawaii. So big, they shut down a stretch of a busy retail-fronted street and have a festival devoted to the canned meat.

The Waikiki Spam® Jam is a street festival that celebrates the people of Hawaii’s love for Spam®, a canned meat from Hormel Foods. In Hawaii, you will find Spam® at all grocery and convenience stores, many restaurants and in most homes in Hawaii.

This street festival is great for all ages, as the event includes Hawaii’s top restaurants, two stages with free entertainment, and a variety of Hawaiian crafters. This is also a special event that benefits the Hawaii Foodbank, the largest non-profit in Hawaii that feeds the needy.

So big, the Waikiki Spam Jam offers air and hotel packages.

We sampled Spam Yakisoba for dinner.

Comparing Tax Day to running a marathon suddenly seems wholly inappropriate. It's nothing like running the Boston Marathon this April 15th. It was just after my last post that I learned of the news of the horrific events that were unfolding in Boston.

Finish last tax return. Check.

Post to Chocolate Chip Mint about finishing last tax return. Check.

Post to Facebook. Wait... what's this? A friend posted that someone had bombed the Boston Marathon and urged people to search news sources for more information. A quick search resulted in an article. It had pictures. I was staring at my screen in disbelief when my office manager came around the corner with another tax return. (We weren't nearly as close to finishing as I thought.)

I spun around in my chair to face her and she laughed at the blank look on my face. She had very good reason to think my expression was simply the glazed over look of the overworked and overtired. I tried to correct her. I told her someone bombed the Boston Marathon. I had to say it twice before she looked past me to the images on my computer screen.

Unbelievable.

Of course, my first thought was for the Grump and the offices of the Internet's Most Exclusive Blog. But it only took me a moment to consider that it was highly unlikely the Grump was a participant although there was a very slight possibility he was an onlooker. Staying in touch with the site assured me that everyone affiliated with 76003.1414 was safe.

How crazy was this week for Boston and it's neighbors? Other worldly. I am six time zones away watching the events unfold with everyone else from every place in the nation (and well beyond). I feel so far away but still feel the nationalism such a tragedy inspires.

How can preparing 200 tax returns in a few compressed weeks compare to that? I have my legs. I have my life. We, here at Chocolate Chip Mint, wish to express our sorrow for the people of Boston and Massachusetts, for the participants of the marathon who traveled great distances and fervently chased their aspirations just to get there, the onlookers, the organizers of the marathon, runners as a community, people all over the world who were connected to the Marathon in one way or another, and  people who had nothing to do with the Marathon but were caught up in its events nonetheless. Above all, we express our condolences to the victims and their families.

What do such tragedies inspire? Where do we go from here? The purest moment is already gone. The media frenzy will dissolve into politics. Politics will dissolve into passivity. We'll all move on and forget. There will be movies, eventually.

Just for now, we are together, united somehow. That's all we have and we should embrace that, if nothing else.

Hey, look at me! I'm avoiding work! Woo hoo!

It's 4 pm on the Left. Waiting for one more client to come in but then I'm outta here!

It's all just ones and zeros now.

Battle Day!

...as my Office Manager calls it.

March 31st was my last day off. Tomorrow is my next day off.

Today is like running the last mile of a marathon. Exhausting and exhilarating, all at the same time. Dazed, fazed, derelict in avoiding work. Charged up, worn out. Confused and focused. Hopeful and hopeless.

Kellie is already at the office doing battle. She bought a latte for me and put in on my desk to lure me in.

It's working.

1 . . .

This week was a bitch. Thursday, I put in 13 hours at the office and would have stayed all night but my boss made me go home. Friday was only 12 hours which felt like child's play after Thursday and made me feel slightly guilty for only having put in 11 hours a day for most of the last few weeks.

Yesterday, (Saturday, I remind you) I put in another seven but came home to a house full of grand kids which was totally awesome.

Today, I'll go in for a few hours just to touch base with people we haven't heard from yet. (There's a list and we just have to work through it.) But, I slept until 8:30 this morning (with only one 2 am OMG! moment) and I've turned off my alarm clock for tomorrow. 

I still have to file my return but that's it. I'm almost done.

Happy place, here I come!

3 . . .

I'm a beach bum reaching the end of her sabbatical.

Do I Look Worried?

Four days left....

This Page Is Blank

If those words weren't written, would you be unable to recognize a blank page? I wonder.

This Page is Blank will be the title of my next unpublished book. Or, it will be the ending to all my previously unpublished books. Or, I could publish a book of blank pages. That would be awesome.

Meanwhile, there are seven days left until April 15th and I was finding it hard to breath this morning. We always make it to the 15th with room to spare, but every year I can't believe it's possible to get it all done.

I was feeling grateful that no one had been to the Emergency Room this year. Or, last year, for that matter. But there has to be a statistic somewhere about the number of accountants that go to the hospital between March 15th and April 15th.

And, then, I got to the office and couldn't log in. One week to go and I am literally forced to goof off. I have to laugh, really. I could jump off the roof of our building but it's only two stories and I would merely break my ankle. I would have to land on my calculator hand if I wanted to get out of any more tax returns.

Maybe when this is all over, I'll tell you who our cloud server is so you can avoid ever doing business with them.

My hands are tired and my elbow is sore. My eyes are bloodshot at the end of they day. I have something like 30 tax returns left to do (I'd tell you exactly how many but I can't log in, remember?) and I don't know how many extensions. The shops across the street don't open for another hour but, I swear to god, if I still can't log in by then, I'm going to buy myself a pair of kick ass red patent leather pumps.

I mean seriously. Goofing off is to working as lighting a cigarette is to dinner being ready. One almost guarantees the other. As I write (and write and write), I expect someone to shout out We're back in! I would be doing the office a favor by buying shoes - expensive ones - because the cloud server would be the only thing to stop me. It has to work.

So, if you see me this Friday with some kick ass shoes you'll know what happened. And, if you don't see me at all Friday night, it's because I'm still at work.

Huh?

I'm at the age when I get offers from AARP. Heck, I'm a card carrying member now! Today, I got an offer from Costco to get hearing aids. To be fair, it was really addressed to Hubby.

There are some days I think he could use them.

Eleven Days Left

The result is an abbreviated tax season with just 75 days. The filing deadline for your U.S. individual income tax returns remains April 15, 2013.

Tax Day Remains April 15, 2013, Despite Holidays And Hopes For Extensions

(Don't forget to feed your accountant.)

Or Is It?