Home life

Hopefully I won't need therapy after what just happened to me. But I'm married to a (retired) psychotherapist, so it'll be easy to get treatment for Post Fairy Disillusionment Disorder if the shock of last week doesn't fade away. The interesting thing is, my potential therapist is closely connected with my trauma. This could produce some sort of transference issues, but that's the least of my worries right now. Because what I'm trying to deal with is a wholesale upsetting of my world view – as it pertains to our household, at least. I've having to adjust to losing a…

Who says money can't buy happiness? Not me, for sure. Because $179.99 just bought me some considerable gadget-fueled joy in the person (or rather, plastic and metal) of a Flip Video Ultra. My good karma was kicked off by a recent Mark Morford column. He started off his rant about a bizarre Tom Cruise video with: Here is something you can do. Set up that nifty little Flip Video camera you got for Christmas just over there next to your couch. I didn't read the rest of the column. Instead I thought, "Hey! I didn't get a nifty little Flip…

Thank God, or Tao, for Oregon's "Buyer's Right to Cancel" law. It just saved us from a pushy Penguin Windows salesman, who somehow talked us into signing a contract for some vastly overpriced (though seemingly high-quality) replacement windows. I wasn't going to mention the company's name in this buyer beware post. But after reading a bunch of comments from people who had remarkably similar bad sales experiences, I decided to say it like it is: Penguin Windows engages in annoyingly high-pressure sales tactics. Which, unfortunately, are pretty damn effective. Laurel and I generally are resistant to salesman B.S. But the…

Step aside, Leonardo DiCaprio. I'm the new king of the world – unashamed to appropriate one of the cheesiest movie lines ever. Because I deserve it. I, me, myself, Brian the Hines, was responsible for bringing Qwest DSL to our rural south Salem neighborhood after many would-be kings (including moi ) had tried and failed for years. At this very moment I am praising myself in a blog post that will be uploaded via wireless DSL, a vast improvement over our dreadfully unreliable Wild Blue broadband satellite service, which never saw a raindrop that it wasn't afraid to send a…

Last year we slowed down the Christmas machine, but it still had quite a bit of leftover energy. Now we're going to further unplug this monster. No Christmas tree for us. This is a pretty big decision, given that our extra-large artificial tree has been a dominating feature of our living room for quite a few years. Too dominating, we've decided. It's a pain to set up. Just about as big a pain as driving to a real tree lot, agreeing on a suitable choice, tying it to the roof rack so it has a minimal chance of falling off…

Thanks to a visitor on my other blog I learned about the Gratitude Dance. It's super easy to do. And perfect for today. But maybe not advised after eating a big Thanksgiving dinner. The Gratitude Dance is considerably kinder and gentler than the haka -- a traditional Polynesian dance that the Jefferson High School football team in Portland has taken up before each game. YouTube, naturally, has many haka videos. I especially liked this one, a Hakan vs. Tongan face off at a rugby match.

My wife is being driven crazy by a male. Par for the course, but this time he isn't me. It's a male deer, a buck. Or bucks. She doesn't know how many are doing what comes naturally to them this time of year. Marking their territory. Which, unfortunately for Laurel, includes our ten acres in rural Oregon. She's planted countless native trees on our property, protectively watering them during dry spells, netting them when they're young, spraying Deer Off in the fall in an effort to divert bucks' attention away from the enticing trunks. After all, the bucks should have…

I always figured that I'd be the last human on Earth to own an iPod. But here I am, two days into an increasingly intimate relationship with an iPod Touch, and I'm wondering: Baby, what kept us apart for so long? The strange thing is, I hardly ever listen to music. Mostly I tune to talk radio and OPB/PBS when I'm driving around. At home, the Internet has been my closest inanimate communicative companion. Yet I was drawn to the Touch as soon as it was released. It's got the look and feel of an iPhone without the expensive AT&T…

I took ten years off of my age today. To be precise, 10.3 years. So says RealAge, which offers a nifty calculation of the difference between your calendar age and your "real" age. Like a lot of baby boomers, I've never felt that I really was 58 years old. Physically, I'm just about in as good a shape as I've ever been. Mentally, I'm still an adolescent in many ways. But, hey, that's par for the course if you're a man. I decided to look for a real age online test after I came across a story on CNN called…

This cartoon reveals how it all began. How men became hunters and women gatherers. Naturally, the guy was told to do it by his woman. I don't know which sex ended up with the better deal. However, I do know that this goes a long way toward explaining why Laurel, my wife, was bewildered when my Garmin GPSMap 60CSx Handheld GPS Navigator arrived in its Amazon box. "Don't you already have a GPS receiver?," she asked. "Sure I do," I told her. "But it's ancient. This one has a color display and does a lot more than the old one."…

I should frame my March 18 Fred Meyer receipt in case I ever doubt my insanity. That was the day I impulsively decided to grow strawberries on our deck. We've lived in rural south Salem for seventeen years. We've always gotten all of our food from grocery stores, not our property. That's worked just fine. But a strawberry pot displayed in the garden center caught my eye. I pictured myself going out and picking handfuls of super-sweet Oregon berries every day. I'd slice them for my cereal. I'd savor my strawberry self-sufficiency. If I couldn't eat them all myself, I'd…

Two days ago I had no idea that the Toyota Prius came in a "Touring" model. Now one sits in our driveway, a replacement for our 2004 Prius. We were early adopters, ordering Prius 1 in September 2003 and getting her in November. It's been a great car, virtually glitch free and a steady 45 mpg performer. But Prius 1 had some downsides that were beginning to seriously bug me. We also have a Toyota Highlander Hybrid, a midsize SUV. This more macho car was supposed to be my main ride. However, Laurel commandeered it about six months ago because…

A month ago I never would have believed that I'd ever blog enthusiastically about our remodeled kitchen. Yet here I am, posting before and after photos with caffeine-fueled delight. Here's an "after" that doesn't have a matching "before." We've got an open house, early '70s vintage, completely woodified—no white walls. We wanted to stay as natural as possible. Bisque appliances, not stainless steel, retro though it may be. Granite countertops, because after considering various possibilities we realized that nothing looks as stone-like as real stone. You couldn't call our tastes sophisticated. Hey, we live on ten acres in the south…

At 3:30 pm Laurel and I got home from her LASIK surgery. For five and a half hours, and counting, I have been her compassionate care giver as she lies quietly in bed or a recliner, dark goggles on, popping her pain pills, listening to PBS and CNN (no TV watching until tomorrow, so says the Casey Eye Institute post-operation patient instructions). So, yes, I'm looking forward to being nominated for sainthood. Or better, Buddha-hood. Already I have brought her several glasses of juice, set up a radio by her bed, cooked a Gardenburger, made a salad, and fetched some…

Jet lag has been melatonin'd away. Scarily tall grass has been cut. Piled up mail has been sorted to manageable proportions. It's time for a Maui vacation post-mortem. First, and most importantly, I know that somewhere in the blogosphere there's a number of people—maybe as many as two or three, if I count relatives—who are deeply concerned about how Serena the Wonder Dog made it through eleven days at the Shaggy Dog Kennel in Dallas. Oregon, not Texas. However, it still is about a half hour drive each way, since we live in Salem. We take Serena all the way…

Class-action attorneys, I'm waiting for your emails. I'm a representative of a significant Easter-oppressed group: non-Christians who worship Sunday gadget shopping and latte sipping. My "religion," though which I derive deep meaning and satisfaction, may be non-traditional. But I should be free to practice it without interference. And today, I can't. Thumbing through the Sunday paper ads, I just realized that Best Buy is closed today. Outrageous! I woke up this morning filled with a gloriously uplifting thought: "In a few hours I'll rejoice in the buying of a new high-tech wall phone that we need for our soon-to-be-remodeled kitchen."…

Thank god, I made it through this morning's storm. Bojack.org's Storm Center 9000 has been ably reporting on how the Portland area has been surviving this wintry mix of rain and snow, with temperatures plunging to the high 30s and winds peaking in the 'teens (Bojack says there was a gust of 14 mph at the airport. Wow!) Here's how it went in south Salem. I woke up, rubbed my eyes, and looked out the window. Whiteout. Everything was blurred together, indistinguishable. Then I remembered to put on my glasses. The storm came into focus. A chill went up my…

You just never know what the day will bring. Especially if you’re a squirrel. Who must have heard our front door open,and sensed a dog begin to come out. Who made a fatal choice: to run up a power pole instead of an oak tree. Life. Death. Not much separates them. One moment you’re frisky and bushy-tailed. The next instant you’re popping, crackling, and smoking on top of a power pole. Flaming too. Or maybe it was the pole that was briefly on fire. Regardless, it was exciting enough to warrant calling 911. I was told that if a power…

Here’s what I learned today about taking photos of snow: don’t wait. Especially if you live in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. By the time I roused myself to pick up my camera and venture outside, melting had made an appearance. You’ll have to trust me. The trees were beautiful. All white, instead of green. I’d compose a haiku in lieu of the missing photos, but I never can remember how many syllables go on each line. Anyway, there's something else the snow told me. You can’t stop things from changing. Snow, or anything else. But you can get on board the…