What were you expecting?
Hey, guys? The Hobbit was disappointing. I won’t ruin it for anyone with details, but…hm. I can’t say a whole lot more without ruining it. Here’s the thing, though – once I get past it not being what I hoped, it was still entertaining. It just wasn’t what I expected from Peter Jackson, after he took such care with The Lord of the Rings movies (with one major exception for which I haven’t forgiven him). So see it, by all means, but lower your expectations.
What do you do with one diamond earring? Sounds rhetorical, but I really need an answer. John bought me a pair (little diamond studs) last Christmas, and I love them. They’re exactly what I wanted, and I wore them every day, with everything. Then, out at dinner the evening after we spent the day at the Maryland Renaissance Festival (more on that later), I reached up to my earlobes and noticed that one of them was bare. How do you lose just one earring? Clearly, it’s not that hard. And since the earring wasn’t in my immediate vicinity in the restaurant, and it wasn’t in the car, it was most likely lost on the ground in 16th century England (otherwise known as some woods not too far from Annapolis). Maybe I can get my remaining earring turned into a necklace or something.
Guess who we ran into while we were there?
We don’t know what Captain America was doing at a 16th century renaissance festival, but his was the best costume we saw all day. Other than the Doctor’s, of course. His being there made more sense, what with all the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff (speaking of that, I totally want these). I wasn’t able to get a picture of him, but his costume was fantastic.
I look like a lizard. Like a salamander. Or maybe a newt. It’s awful. Apparently, I’ve found another antibiotic I’m allergic to. Sure, that’s only two now, but one of them is amoxicillin, and that rules out everything in the -cillin family, which I think includes penicillin. (So someday I’m going to die because I need medication I can’t take because I’m allergic to it. Yay for me.) At least with that one, the reaction I have isn’t visible to anyone. With this one (bactrim), I turn into a lizard. A lizard on fire. Ooh, like a salamander! (I knew there was a reason I went for that one.) Seriously, though, I look scary. The doctor said I shouldn’t exercise for a few days (because I shouldn’t sweat – weird, right?), so I’ll be fat and scary. Good combination. Too bad it didn’t happen right before Halloween instead of right after. Built-in costume.
Roxy is still wearing her lampshade, but she’s doing much better. We gave her a break from it for a lot of yesterday (because we were home and could watch her), and we only had to stop her from licking her paw a couple of times. I’ll probably be home with her a lot this week. I don’t want to go out in public like this, so I will most likely work from home. Today is a sick day. Morning with the doctor, home for now, another appointment this afternoon – too disjointed to be productive at work.
Man, if I have to look like a mutant (and I totally do), I should at least get some cool superpower.
Unfortunately, I don’t make the rules. We’ve had some major drama at the gym over the last week, and the end result is that I have lost my yoga instructor. And my Wednesday night yoga class. Sucks. Stupid drama.
Sure, I had a nice long walk with the dogs, an even nicer long talk with someone I haven’t talked to in forever, a healthy dinner (French Country Salad FTW!), and an evening bike ride with John. You’d think that would be enough for one evening, but you’d be wrong. No, I didn’t leave enough time to make banana bread, and so I must hang my head in shame. I’m a failure. Also, those bananas aren’t gonna make it much longer. Double failure.
I don’t think I have to tell any of you how little I care about sports. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy watching a game of whatever here and there (I’d rather go to a game than watch one on TV, not that that happens very often), but for the most part I don’t care who wins. The other day was different, though. UK playing Louisville in the Final Four – hell, yeah, I had to watch that one. (Let’s ignore that I don’t care even a little when they play each other during the rest of the year. The NCAA tournament is different. It is.)
So even though I didn’t go to UK or U of L, even though I haven’t lived in Kentucky since 1997, even though I’ve only been to ONE college basketball game in my life (and that was at GW, not either UK or U of L), I HAD to watch this game, and, like I have during every game I’ve watched since 1987, I cheered (and gasped and yelled) for UK. (Are you thinking that that last clause sounds like I root for UK even when they’re not playing? Well, maybe I do. Even though it makes no sense. I’m loyal that way.)
Why 1987? It’s more complicated than just that that’s the year we moved to Kentucky. That’s the year I had to pick a side. Or else. Picture 8-year-old me. I was in third grade, brand new school, brand new state. One of the first things I remember somebody saying to me at school was completely unintelligible. “Yookay or Yoovell?” “What?” More insistently, “Yookay or Yoovell?” I had NO idea what they were saying to me, and they couldn’t understand what was so hard about the question. (I don’t even know why it mattered right then. It was too early for basketball season, and football doesn’t really count in Kentucky.) Somehow it got through to me what they were asking, but I still had NO idea what the right answer was, or why anyone cared which one I picked, and why won’t they stop asking and leave me alone? I remember asking them which one they were for, getting more Yookays then Yoovells, and going with the Yookay kids. (It was the right answer for several reasons.) Somewhere along the line I made the mental switch from Yookay and Yoovell to the actual school names, and then Allison introduced me to Travis Ford and his three-pointers (Not literally, of course. She didn’t know him, but he was only 5’6″ and rarely missed, and she had a crush on him. We were 14.), and I started watching games. Just in time, too, since that was 1993-94, and the championship wins were ’96 and ’98.
I fell off the wagon after that, though. I watched the ’98 tournament by myself in college (I couldn’t believe I knew so many people who didn’t know what March Madness was) and then paid very little attention to basketball except for the occasional UK game (and that one UNC game we watched the night of Jess and Chuck’s wedding). Even though I enjoy the games when I watch them, the paying very little attention part is still true and unlikely to change.
Still, UK playing UofL in the Final Four is pretty awesome (especially with Rick Pitino (the UK coach during the years I cared) coaching UofL now), and I didn’t want to miss it. And considering what a good game it was, I’m glad I didn’t. Even John watched it, although he was rooting for UofL (For reasons unknown. Out of a sense of balance? An appreciation of how well they were playing? Solidarity with Mark? Sheer orneriness?) UK won, I cheered, and the championship game is tonight. I could watch it. I might watch it. What time does it start?
Whoa, whoa, whoa. The game doesn’t start until nearly 9:30?
Yeah…I’m going to bed. UK, you’re on your own.
Every so often we get a flyer in the mail from Purple Heart that lets us know when they’ll be in our neighborhood picking up donations. We try to always have something, but not as hard as we used to. They used to call ahead to see if we had anything to donate, and if we did, they’d come to the neighborhood. I always said yes and then made sure I had something ready that morning. I certainly don’t want to have them come all the way to our house only to find we forgot. That would suck. Now that they’re mailing us a flyer that says they’re coming no matter what, we’re not as diligent. But still, we do try. Anyway, AmVets still calls ahead, and they called us the day before we got a Purple Heart flyer, so I figured that this month, our donation would go to AmVets instead (and we didn’t have enough to get rid of this time to give to both). Both places have the same process: put your stuff in a bag or a box or whatever and LABEL it very CLEARLY with LARGE letters. It has to say AMVETS (or PURPLE HEART) or they won’t pick it up. You can leave it on the curb or on the front porch – anywhere that’s clearly visible from the street. I always leave mine on the edge of the front porch with LABEL facing the STREET. (Got a little carried away there.) Which is what I did the other morning. I was working from home that day, and I made sure that my big bag of clothes was out on the front porch by 8am with AMVETS written across it on two sides in really big letters. Around lunchtime, the dogs started barking, and when I looked out the front window, I saw a guy walking back to his big truck (like a small moving van, white sides) with the bag. Pickup completed. EXCEPT. A couple of hours later, the dogs started to go nuts again. I went to the door this time and saw a guy walking back to HIS big white truck. There was a “sorry we missed you” AmVets receipt in the door, and I realized what had happened. I ran back outside to catch the guy and apologize. He was really nice about it, but STILL. Purple Heart stole my donation! And he came all the way out here, and I didn’t have anything else ready to give away. I’m sorry, AmVets. I’ll have twice as much next time.
Wouldn’t it be great if someone at Purple Heart noticed the AmVets label on the bag and donated it to them anyway? I wonder if they do that.