TV

Someday I should be prepared for the Oscars

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It’s Oscar Night, so I might as well talk about it, right?  But first, I have to see who’s nominated and find out if I even saw any of these movies.  Last year, I hadn’t seen a single Oscar-nominated movie by the time the awards rolled around.

Okay, I’ve checked.  Of movies that were either nominated for themselves or had an actor nominated, I’ve seen Avatar (liked it, but for a technical category, not Best Picture.  I mean, come on, it was a 3D remake of Ferngully: The Last Rainforest!), Julie & Julia, and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.  Soooo, none of the really good ones.

We’ll watch the beginning for Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, but that’s about it.  I’ll check out the highlights online tomorrow.  We’re going to spend our evening finishing Batman Begins (we got too sleepy to finish it last night) with pizza (and maybe wine – classy, I know).

Oh, we caught up on Lost this morning over breakfast, so Mom, Dad, Mindy, call me tomorrow and we’ll chat.

Mmm. Wine.

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I love wineries.  Not just because you can get wine there.  I love the atmosphere, I love the tastings, I love the big rooms and the (almost always) friendly people.  I went to Hidden Brook Winery today to get more of the sweet rosé John loves, and even though I was only there for five minutes, it was such a nice five minutes.  And in an odd coincidence (considering the comments from the other day’s post), NPR’s “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me” played the Sesame Street theme song right after making George Stephanopoulos answer questions about Snuffleupagus.  But it sounded like Elmo was singing it.  Didn’t it used to be a bunch of kids singing?  Did they really change it to just Elmo?  ‘Cause I’m not okay with Elmo being the star of Sesame Street.

A list

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Things I Like (in no particular order):

  • Reading fiction, anywhere, anytime
  • my dogs
  • all dogs
  • PUPPIES!
  • And kittens
  • And cats that actually like people
  • chocolate
  • milk chocolate
  • white chocolate
  • Paul Reiser
  • Mad About You
  • Saturday mornings
  • sunny days (“sweeping the…”)
  • summer days
  • trees
  • books (and their smell)
  • big band music
  • lists
  • flowers
  • BIG bathtubs
  • showers with real water pressure
  • manicured lawns
  • manicured nails (my own, anyway – don’t much care for anyone else’s nails)
  • clean sheets
  • John’s clean, just-out-the-shower smell (much better than his just-came-back-from-a-long-run-sweaty smell)
  • John (duh)
  • everyone else I like (but won’t list here for fear I’ll leave someone I like off the list and that person (let’s call this person “H” for “hypothetical”)  will notice and be mad at me for leaving her (or him) off (even though it was an accident and I really do like H) and she will stop visiting my site, assuming  she was visiting and reading anyway, but if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t know I left her off and she wouldn’t get mad and stop reading, so I guess H was reading, which means, again, that I shouldn’t list anyone because I might leave someone off and she’ll get mad and stop reading)
  • decorating with books
  • my pretty new dining room table
  • Ellen DeGeneres
  • working from home
  • that relaxed feeling as you drift off to sleep

Speaking of that last one, it’s getting close to my bedtime.  More accurately, it’s getting close to that time when I should be in bed reading.

The ayes have it

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The #6’s, rather.  I’ll mess around with version #1 and shades of green later.

I ran this morning.  Okay, it was more like a shuffle that sometimes looked like a slow jog, but it was more than walking, and more than I’ve done in weeks.  I ran twice on a treadmill in San Francisco, but not for very long either time.   It suddenly became very important that we both get out and run, mostly because I signed John up for a 5-miler in two and a half weeks and he coaxed/supported/shamed me into registering myself, too.  Five miles.  In two and a half weeks.  I’m an idiot.  Especially since we don’t really have anywhere to run.  Today we ran in the streets of our neighborhood, and that’s what we’ll have to keep doing until the county clears the sidewalks and paths along the major roads.  We can run laps around the Bloom parking lot, too, since no one is in it early in the morning (nothing is open).  It felt good to get out again, though.

Then we had breakfast, watched Heroes, and I went to the grocery store.  It was supposed to be a short trip, but I was gone forever because I got in the line with the slowest checkout clerk ever.  EVER.  I waited 15 minutes before she was done with the lady in front of me (who didn’t have THAT many groceries), and I got all excited for a minute because a new cashier was waiting behind the slow one and they even went so far as to lift the tray out of the register, but then I looked away for a second and when I looked back, the new cashier was nowhere to be seen and the slow one was starting to ring me up.  Frustrating.  She was using my cloth bags instead of plastic bags, and she got to the last five items and opened a new bag.  No problem with that.  She put the bananas and the grapes in the bottom of the new bag.  I got ready to object if it seemed like she was going to put the lotion and soap on top of the grapes, but instead she reached for a new bag.  Really?  These bags are big.  Just put the grapes on top of that stuff!  Why load up another bag?  I don’t get baggers.

Back to work tomorrow.  Yay.

Snowmygod

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The snow just stopped.  Maybe 15 minutes ago.  And the sun is out.  Our total is somewhere around 30 inches, maybe a little more in places.  Definitely more in the corners of our yard.  When we were shoveling this morning, the sidewalks (which were a little lower than the yard) had 24″ of snow.  We spent a couple of hours shoveling the driveway and part of the sidewalk, mostly to make sure we could get the car out if we really had to.  Tomorrow we’ll tackle what fell after we quit, the rest of the sidewalk, and we’ll try to dig John’s car out.  If he can swing it, I really think he should work from home on Monday.  The roads will be terrible.  We had a plow come through sometime last night, maybe early this morning, but none since then.  Our street has at least a foot of snow.  Snow snow-snow, snow-snow-snow.  I’m tired of it.  And it’s way too deep for the dogs.  The first thing we did today was clear a path on the deck, clear the deck stairs, and shovel out an area in the yard so they could get around.  They can blaze their own paths from there, although they really haven’t this time.  They’ve stayed under the deck overhang, where the snow isn’t as deep.  Mark asked for pictures (apparently, he needs proof – Hi, Mark!), so here they are.  Maybe it’ll all disappear overnight.  I’m ready for spring!

Snow depth on the bench around 9:30 last night:

Snow depth on the bench as of about 9:30 this morning (through the sliding glass door with snow on it):

Snow depth on the bench around 4:45 this afternoon:

The back corner of the yard yesterday afternoon (3-ish, I think):

The back corner of the yard around 4:45 today:

My flower bed, buried:

An evergreen in the neighbor’s yard, yesterday:

Same evergreen, after the snow stopped today:

Out the front door this morning:

The driveway, before shoveling:

John shoveling the driveway:

The house, after shoveling (and the buried mailbox):

The neighbors, also shoveling:

And Roxy, peeing in the clearing we shoveled for her:

You’re welcome.  🙂

So yeah, we have lots of snow.  We came in from shoveling around 11:30 or so, showered, and then had breakfast even though it was after noon.  Hot chocolate (of course), cereal (Wegman’s version of Lucky Charms), and muffins.  And we watched a little TV.  Since then, I’ve been messing around on the internet, and John has been stealing cars and beating people up.  Seriously.  Oh, yeah, and we’re drinking champagne that’s been in the fridge since New Year’s.  It’s better aged.  🙂

What? I can’t hear you.

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Deafening silence.  Either no one had time to visit today, or you’re so underwhelmed by this change that you’ve all been drained of energy.  I’ve created apathetic zombies.  Who knew it was so easy?

We just watched a terrible new show.  I was ready to quit less than 20 minutes in, but John wanted to finish the episode in the hope that Clancy Brown would do something worth watching.  He didn’t.  We won’t be watching The Deep End again.

I still haven’t tried that new search engine, Bing, and after the latest creepy commercial (the one that calls on all the scary parts of The Shining), I don’t think I ever will.

Changes

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I spent several  hours today setting up 6 new versions of my website.  You’re looking at version #1 right now.  And I’m including a screen shot of it at the bottom of this post so we can all still see it when I switch to the next one.  I’m not even really tired of the original version, but I thought I’d test a few new ones and see if I (or we – you have some input) like them better.

So this is what I’ve been doing for the last 5 hours or so.  We slept in (’til about 10:30) ’cause we stayed up late.  We watched Adaptation and then had to follow it with Modern Family ’cause the movie was so weird we needed to cleanse our mental palates with something light and funny.  And easily understandable.  It was after one before we went to bed.  We got up late, watched the first two-hour episode of Caprica while eating breakfast, and then we set up on the dining room table with our laptops again.

I was supposed to go to the grocery store today, and when I have to stop there on my way home from work tomorrow, I’m going to be really annoyed I didn’t do it this afternoon.  But right now, I’m very happy I didn’t go.  All we have to have before dinner tomorrow is stuff for breakfast (we have plenty for lunch), so when I go out to pick up dinner for tonight (yeah, we don’t have tonight’s dinner here, either, so I guess what we really have to have is breakfast AND dinner), I’ll swing by the Giant right next to the Indian place (’cause we’re having Indian for dinner – yay!) and pick up some cereal.

Then we’re in for the night.  And I’m getting pretty hungry, so all of that is happening very soon.  After I shower.  We did one of those lazy Sunday things and rolled from bed to couch and breakfast, and from there to the dining room and our laptops.  Didn’t shower, didn’t get dressed.

And Roxy just threw herself at the sliding glass door, so I should go let her in.  Enjoy the new site (and let me know if something doesn’t work)!  I’ll leave it this way for a day or two and then switch to the next one.