On Sunday, we helped some friends move into their new condo. Since they had a one-bedroom apartment, we didn't think it would take too long--little did we know that with Tetris-master skills, they had packed enough stuff into that small apartment to adequately furnish and FILL the palace at Versailles! Plus, the apartment was on the second floor, so the move meant carrying everything down a flight of stairs, then running back up them to get more stuff--and boy was there more stuff! Now I consider myself in pretty good shape--I try to work out everyday during lunch--but I'm still sore from the move! Either the move was particularly strenuous or I'm not working out as hard as I think I am. By the way, does getting your heart rate up by being overheated in the jacuzzi count as exercise? I'm just wondering--a... friend... asked me about that. Anyway, we accomplished the move--and all I know is that I'm glad it was only our task to get the stuff through the front door of their new condo! I don't know how long it's going to take to put away all their stuff since they don't have the space of Buckingham Palace.

This weekend we finally got to a lacrosse game and it turned out to be a lot of hyper-violent fun. I brought the camera, and I'm glad I did, because it makes it ever so much easier to tell you about our evening.

Portland was one of the expansion cities for the Indoor Lacrosse League. Our team is the Lumberjax--I know, stupid name, plus Portland doesn't even DO forestry products anymore, we cut down all our trees ages ago! The arena is a ice hockey arena with astroturf instead of ice and bare legs instead of protective leg coverings. That fact will be more significant when I get to the fighting picture.

Here's a completely unflattering picture of me (how in the world do you hold your head when you're also holding your arm out to take your own picture--it's impossible I tell you! Although at least I held my head a little lower than I usually do--with most of my self-portraits, doctors could diagnose any sinus problems I have since the picture looks right up my nose!) At least Margaret and Stacey look ok in the shot!

This is the mascot for the Lumberjax. His name is "Jax" and the program said his favorite tv show is "Lost," his favorite movie is "Napolean Dynomite," his favorite color is plaid, and his favorite dry cleaner to get out the stubborn stains in his face is Jeffe's Out-Damn-Spot Cleaners downtown. While he was in front of our section, we learned that he was a one-trick pony--every kid who came up to get their picture taken was treated with the same exact pose--a pistol finger aimed at the camera. Brother--I'd expect more chopping and killing spotted owls than POINTING from a self-respecting OREGON lumberjack!

The charm of this game--at least to my brother, would be that there are ABSOLUTELY NO RULES AGAINST VIOLENCE. Hitting with sticks, elbows, fists, or helmets is completely legal. A player that joins a fight in-progress gets in trouble, though, so if someone gets hyped up from a teammember who is in a fight, he'd be better served to just start a new fight. We didn't see any good fights at this game--a fact that was pointed out by someone we overheard talking to a friend on the phone while we were on the train home. Needless to say, he was VERY disappointed.

Here's a picture of Margaret at the half-time show of a local highschool girls lacrosse team. Margaret normally has a lot more color, but she went absolutely pale when she found out that a Diet Coke cost $4.75--yes FOUR DOLLARS AND SEVENTY-FIVE FRICKIN' CENTS! For that much, she would have bought a half case and smuggled it in under her Lady Lumberjack Oversize Tree-killin' cap©!

A couple of rows below us, I spotted this woman in the crowd and couldn't help but take a picture. I wonder if her husband asked her "Honey, wanna go to lacrosse? Ward's meetin' us there." And thought she heard "crossword" and thought her prayers at her husband finally taking an interest in more intellectual pursuits had finally been answered. Alas, she was stuck at some game trying to get a crossword done while her drunk husband was making a fool of himself. I'm sure she cried herself to sleep THAT night!

Here's a picture of someone getting a goal. Unfortunately Portland didn't win--Calgary beat us. Man, those Canadians! First they have universal health care, and now this? Well, at least we can own semi-automatic weapons and have health care providers that rake in MILLIONS--that TOTALLY makes up for it!

All in all, it was a fun evening. And it was much more enjoyable to watch lacrosse than basketball--I really don't like basketball, anyway, and that coupled with the fact that I'm watching guys who get paid millions of dollars to be so self-absorbed and spoiled makes me question our priorities. With the lacrosse players, they seemed a lot more down to earth--A LOT--one of them had "Frito Lays sales representative" listed as his day job! You don't get much more down to earth than selling Cheetos!

Yesterday at lunch (at Taco Bell, of course), Brent and I were standing in a LONG line waiting to place our orders. When we finally realized that the line wasn't moving, we started looking around to see what the delay was from--unfortunately it was all too easy to spot. There was a woman talking on her cell phone while she was ordering--and not just trying to do two things at one time--the person on the other end was giving the woman her food order! The one would read the menu items to the person on the phone, and then she'd wait for a response. The cashier was totally frustrated, because of the huge delay. At one point, the woman yelled into the phone--"they don't HAVE Mexi-fries any more!" ...then a response on the other end... then, "Well put her on!" After she finally got through with the phone order, she proceeded to make three other separate transactions. Even though we were about 6 or 7 people from the end when we got in the restaurant, she was still ordering when I reached the other cashier! Then of course when her food came out, there was some problem with it that she could complain about. I swear lady--it's $3 worth of food and you just sacrificed 2 years of your life worth of stress over it!

I remember one time, Margaret and I were eating at Taco Bell in the evening and someone came in with a taco they had bought at lunch that wasn't made right--it had sour cream or something on it--and he wanted them to fix it. We couldn't believe someone would drive around with a cold taco for half a day and then bother to come in an complain about it--it was 79 frickin' cents! I wonder if these kinds of dramas happen in fancy restaurants?

Well, once again the goddess Fortuna failed to bestow us with the winning lottery numbers--and the jackpot was up to $115 million! Last night, I told Margaret that if we won that, she'd just turn into a complete raunch and I'd turn into a complete bastard. She said "I'd never let you become a bastard, and if you did I'll beat you with a yardstick--a diamond-encrusted yardstick!" So as you can see, we had big plans for that money and now they're dashed.

Speaking of diamond encrusting, one year for Christmas, someone gave my brother and me a stud and rhinestone machine. We had so much fun with that--we put studs on every conceivable article of clothing (well, not EVERY conceivable--studded underwear would probably chafe). The coup de grâce, however, were the bathrobes that our aunt had made us--we put so many studs along the seams and pockets of them that they would hang open from the weight of all that metal. We thought we were so cool (it WAS the early 80's, and it surely WASN'T cool, but how were two boys from rural Idaho supposed to know that we should be wearing alligator-embroidered pastel polo shirts and not Hell's Angels-inspired bathwear?)

For Christmas, a friend of ours gave us the most random present that at first we thought was an ordering mistake. From the friend who gave us a high-class serving tray with spaces for four photos that we just love gave us Moon Shoes! If you've never heard of them, they're these things you strap to your feet that have all these rubber bands that put a bounce in your step. We finally put them together last night. When we first opened the box, we saw a whole bunch of rubber bands--like 100! And there are only six slots for the bands. We put the bands on and they didn't do much, so Margaret actually read the instructions and found out that we needed to put multiple bands on for different weights. Evidently a 350 lb. person would require all 100 bands, but for our purposes, we only needed three per peg. When we finally got the things put together (with plenty of snapped and bruised fingers to show for it) they were hilariously fun. Brent and Janis were over, and we all had a crack at them. We took them outside and Margaret pointed out that the instructions specifically state that they are not to be used in roadways due to the danger of being hit by a car. I guess that means they're SO fun that you won't even notice large vehicles hurtling toward you. Leave it to Brent to strap on the Moon Shoes and HEAD STRAIGHT FOR THE ROAD! Always one to break the rules, that Brent. Fortunately we live on a quiet street, so the only thing that was injured was our reputation with the neighbors. I'm sure they all thought we were crazy, laughing and screaming out on the street in the middle of the night bouncing in our Moon Shoes. Actually, Margaret really liked them because they didn't hurt her knee, which has given her problems ever since that horrific polo accident in college. Maybe she'll start using them to go jogging--as long as she does it under the cover of darkness, because if anyone saw her jogging around in them, I'm sure they'd report her. Well, maybe not--in our neighborhood, people can run around naked without people even raising an eyebrow (however if some unwitting suburbanite makes the mistake of parking a Hummer there, they shouldn't be surprised to come back and find that it's been keyed or had paint dumped on it--we're fine with nudity, not fine with needless environmental destruction and phallic compensation.) Anyway, thanks for the random Christma-hannu-kwanzaa gift, Leslie!

Last night, Margaret and I were painfully reminded of the old adage: "Just because A-list stars are in a movie doesn't mean the movie is A-list." I think that adage was coined after Shakespeare appeared in that bomb of a play "Get Thee to a Nunnery," universally panned as the worst play in the Elizabethan era--Queen Elizabeth even had the producer beheaded! Anyway, we rented a movie with Sean Penn, Claire Danes, and Joachin Phoenix called "It's All About Love." It was so disjointed and impossible to follow that it was almost comical. I don't know what the actors were thinking! Plus it wasted two hours of our lives that we'll never get back! How do you get a refund for THAT?

Speaking of which, I remember one time a friend invited us to see a Winona Ryder movie called "Lost Souls." It was so bad that the people who hadn't walked out by the end of the movie actually booed over the credits! Now THAT'S bad--when someone is willing to expend energy booing moving names at the end of a movie with no chance of the people involved hearing it whatsoever. I guess it is more catharsis for the viewer. Afterward, our friend EB kept showering us with apologies for how awful the movie was and that she was so sorry for suggesting it. In fact she was so mortified that soon after she and her family moved to Africa to escape the shame! (Well, at least I THINK that was the reason--that or her husband got a job with Mercy Corps there--it was one of the two.)

Wow! This morning, while casually enjoying my morning bagel at Noah's, who should I see eating there but SUPERMAN! A little boy, who couldn't have been more than 6, was having a bagel and juice with his red cape on. When I got closer, I noticed that he was wearing blue lycra running pants and over those, had on a pair of tighty-whitey underwear. It cracked me up that neither he nor his father acted as if anything were out of the ordinary. Maybe that's what I need to get myself going in the morning--although I think I'd dress up as Tarzan, because it would be a lot easier to put that costume together. (Although I'll wait until summer--not only is it too cold, but I'm so pale being that it's the middle of winter that people would think I was dressed up as Casper the Friendly Ghost.

Speaking of the King of the Apes, I remember one summer my brother and I were totally into pretending we were Tarzan. We ran around all summer in nothing more than running shorts. We would even wear them under our church clothes and one the way home unbutton our shirts and pants so the second we hopped out of the car we could fling our vestments of civilization to the ground and continue playing like we were Tarzan. One time, my brother and I were supposed to be helping doing some yardwork and we concocted a plan to impress our parents. Jarrod would hide, waiting for my signal, while I went to help mom and dad. When dad asked me where Jarrod was, since he was supposed to be helping, I said I didn't know, but would get him--at which point I cupped my hands to my mouth and gave a Tarzan yell. Hearing the signal, Jarrod ran out from behind some bushes. We thought that was pretty impressive, but dad just told us to stop horsing around and get to work. I wouldn't be surprised if he had to go "get something" afterward and have a good laugh, because now that I look back on the incident as an adult, I can't help but think how I wouldn't have been able to stop laughing.

I just found out which hit of 2005 I am:

Your 2005 Song Is

Beverly Hills by Weezer "My automobile is a piece of crap My fashion sense is a little whack And my friends are just as screwy as me" You breezed through 2005 in your own funky style!

What Hit Song of 2005 Are You?

This afternoon, Margaret and I are meeting with a financial planner. In light of current events, we're anxious to get our things in order. I just hope he doesn't recommend some off-the-wall investment like a limited partnership or shares of milk produced by an organic cow. What he'll probably say is that our nest egg is best served stuffed in a piggy bank. I have no idea how this works, so I don't know at all what to expect.

Speaking of not knowing what to expect, I remember one time, soon after we'd gotten married, that we got this official-looking envelope in the mail saying that we'd won some prize and to show up to a certain place at a certain time. Margaret and I looked over the potential prizes and couldn't wait to go! (Hey, we were young and inexperienced!) When we got there, it felt like the inside of a 70's homemade porn basement and there were about 15 other couples there--anxiously waiting to find out what their prize was. Finally someone came out and started a presentation on a travel club talking up how much it saves and how often he gets to travel, etc, etc. Margaret and I just rolled our eyes and realized one thing: "we're TRAPPED!" We had to sit through this inane presentation that lasted what felt like six hours, but was more likely one, and after it was over, a flock of sleazy salespeople swooped down on the unsuspecting couples to give them the hard sell one-on-one. Everytime our salesman tried to get us to commit, we would tell him that we have a hard and fast rule that we wouldn't make any big decisions regarding money without spending a couple of days thinking about it. This frustrated him to no end. He called in his "manager," who tried the same technique--even trying to split us up and convince us seperately! They tried to play up the "do you let your spouse make your decisions for you" schtick, and I'm sure they used the same line with Margaret. (At that point, though, I just thought that even if I wanted to say yes, Margaret would KILL me.) During the hard sell phase, several couples had already decided to commit--and everyone in the room was painfully aware of it. Each time a couple signed up for The Program, their salesperson would ring a bell to get everyone's attention, then announce to the room that Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so had just joined, crack open a bottle of champagne and give one of those plastic champagne glasses to each of them for a toast, then escort the new cult members program members into another room. Once this started, people started dropping like flies--nothing like a herd mentality to empty a room. Finally our salesman was about to give up--he offered to take our credit card then, but not process it until the next day. We told him that we'd think about it overnight and if it was something that we wanted, we'd call back tomorrow. He was not happy, but couldn't really do anything else. He escorted us through a back hallway, where we checked our number on the prize sheet and shock of shocks, had won the "other prize" that's always listed at the end of a prize list. In this case, it was a fanny pack. A FRICKIN' FANNY PACK was all we got. Well, we also got hours of torture mixed with amusement at watching those zombie-like couples carry their plastic glasses of champagne into the "other room" like they were European aristocracy. And I'm sure that when they actually used their travel benefits, the hotels and resorts would treat them more like Eurotrash--so I guess it all works out. As for us, we've NEVER regretted not caving in--we just regret actually falling for the scam. Although we do still use that fanny pack, so it wasn't ALL for naught.

Okay, you all remember the Indian money that I found out totalled a whopping TWENTY-NINE CENTS? Well, the plot thickens! I just got my packet of forms to complete so the Bureau of Indian Affairs can send me a check. This is wrong on so many levels, and I'll walk you through each and every one, since I know you all love to hear about government efficiency and bureaucratic heroism. First, the packet was so thick that it took extra postage--60 cents to be exact. Sixty cents is more than TWICE AS MUCH as the total amount of money they're looking to send me! When I opened it up, there was a letter from the Office of Trust Funds Management:

(I'll leave out the gratuitous niceties that the officer included and jump to the good stuff)

I have enclosed the necessary documents for your signature, highlighting them where your signature is necessary in yellow and where a witness' signature is necessary in pink.

Can you believe that? A stack of forms AND signed in front of witnesses!!! I can see it if it was for the fabled Nez Perce gold fortune, but a little more than a QUARTER?

Would you please enclose a copy of your photo identification, such as a driver's license and a copy of your social security card, if available? Also, if you have easy access to your birth certificate, a copy of it would also be appreciated.

Driver's license? Social Security card! A frickin' BIRTH CERTIFICATE! It's easier to get PLUTONIUM than my 29 cents! Do they even THINK about how ridiculous this is?

After reading the letter, I looked over the forms that they included. One of them is a W-9 (the IRS form so the BIA can report my 29 cents to the IRS to make sure that I include it as income on my taxes! Wouldn't want to screw the government out of its fair share!) The next form asks if I would like the 29 cents issued by check or direct deposit. Yes, taking the time to set up the transfer is TOTALLY worth it--in terms of personnel time, it only costs, what? Twelve dollars? Then, at the bottom, to add insult to injury, on the line for a signature, they include a space for a thumbprint in case you can't read or write! And while they're at it, they might as well give us some fire water and smallpox infested blankets and send us back to our tipi! Also, both the signature and the thumbprint must be witnessed and the witness has to complete his OWN form!

Lastly, the envelope they included in the packet was prestamped, adding an additional 37 cents to the cost of getting me my 29 cents!

I am blown away by the waste both of my time and government money. If they had told me that since my account was under a dollar, it had been used to help feed hungry children on the Navajo reservation, I would have been fine with that. Heck, if they said since it was under TEN dollars, I still would have been fine with that. But to spend 100 times the value of the account in order to close it is just plain stupid. There's no way I'm going to take the time to fill out all these forms and get them witnessed--and by doing so, I've cost the government even MORE money--no wonder we can't afford national health care! (I sincerely apologize to any of my readers who are in the ranks of the working poor.)