May 2, 2008
For the two people left following this blog, here’s a short run-down on what I’ve been doing for the past few months:
Rehearsing and preparing the role of Margot in a community theater production of The Diary of Anne Frank. This is actually our closing weekend. I auditioned way back in February, the first time I’ve auditioned for a play in about ten years and was absolutely convinced that I would be cast in the role of Miep Gies, one of the friends/office workers who helped hide the Frank and Van Daan families.
Imagine my surprise when I got the phone call from the director asking me if I would like to play the role of Margot Frank, the elder sister to Anne. My first reaction was WOO! Bigger part! Yay! Then I was rather bummed that I didn’t get Miep because Miep has been a personal hero of mine since junior high, when I actually met her while she was on a lecture tour of the States.
But the role of Margot has turned out to be just perfect for me. I get to cry a lot and, in the second act, I have a scene where I get to gag and, considering all of the practice I’ve had as a Sick Kid, my gagging is alarmingly realistic. (There’s always one or two people in the audience who exclaim about how real my gagging sounded. I can hear them from inside the little Water Closet that is part of our set.)
It’s been a grueling few months. I don’t have many lines but my character is NEVER off-stage. And I do mean NEVER. Our small Frank family opens the play by walking through the audience to the secret bookcase, the man playing Otto Frank opens the bookcase to let us all in and, once onstage, I only leave it for intermission and at the very end, when the Nazis chase us out in to the Lobby.
The production is truly fantastic. I’m constantly impressed by the level of sophistication of all aspects of the production, from the set design (spectactular! I’m hoping to take some pictures of it tonight), the costumes (I’m in love with one of my costumes–but more about the costumes in the next paragraph), the casting (we are a DAMN GOOD CAST) to the incredible detail given to every single prop used in the show.
But as wonderful as the costuming is, it’s been a huge thorn in all of our sides for the past month. Once we are inside the Secret Annex we do NOT LEAVE, which means that all but one of us (Peter, who has his own room and can disappear into it for his costume changes) have to make of our costume changes on-stage in partial darkness. We had to rehearse with costumes for two weeks before the show opened just to get used to the many, many costume changes (and I made quite an amusing gaffe during one of our last dress rehearsals).
To start with, the entire Frank family enters the Annex covered in layers of clothes. My character is wearing: A white slip (since all costume changes are done on-stage, we all have to wear slips to maintain some semblance of modesty), a gorgeous ivory blouse that I want to take home, a plaid skirt, a striped red-and-white dress layered over the first outfit, a white cardigan over the dress, a brown jacked over the cardigan, dress, and first outfit and THEN a gorgeous blue jacket that I also want to steal. Not to mention the purse and hat, of course. And the damned umbrella that I have to carry since it’s supposedly raining when we make our trek to the Annex.
The four of us climb onto the stage while Otto holds the bookcase open, and then we proceed to huddle in a small clutch of people around the dining table while we divest ourselves of our layers of clothes. The Frank family was forced to go into hiding two weeks earlier than expected because my character, Margot, had been served papers telling her to report to the Westerbork Transit Camp, from which she would be sent to either a concentration, or death camp. So, the entire family entered into hiding earlier than expected and had to bundle up with layers of clothes because they hadn’t had the time to sneak them into the Annex before-hand.
As we all peel off our layers of clothes, the three ladies drape their clothes over the chairs and table and it’s my job to collect ALL of the clothes, sort them (since they are a jumble of my clothes, Anne’s clothes and our Mother’s clothes), get Anne’s and my clothes into our small bedroom, Mother’s clothes on her bed and the jackets laid out on her bed, upon which I collapse while Anne’s first voice-over (V-O) plays over the audience.
Once the V-O ends, I have little time to hang up mine and Anne’s coats and hats, before I have to deliver my first line (”I am too!” Told you I didn’t have many lines) and start helping Otto unpack all of our dishes while Anne runs around the stage being Anne.
From there it’s off to the room Margot and Anne share and I have to sort and fold both of our clothes and place the in boxes under each of our beds and THEN I have to make both beds, which I barely have enough time to do and one night I didn’t even finish making my bed so poor Mr. Dussel (the dentist who arrives at the Annex a few months after the Franks and Van Daans went into hiding) had a completely un-made bed (Mr. Dussel takes over my bed and, for the rest of the play, my character is forced to live in a frakkin’ CAVE).
Our first costume change comes upon us very quickly and last night was the first time I made the change and got to my place before the full lights went up on the stage. You would think it’d be an easy change since all I have to do is change skirts (from the ugly plaid skirt to this GORGEOUS pleated wool, brown skirt that I also want to take home with me) but I actually have to strike (clear) two empty boxes from our bedroom (the ones that held our bedding and the few items of clothing that we couldn’t wear as layers, like the brown skirt and our nightgowns), change skirts, gather up my props (notebook, pencil case, small pad of paper, and three grammar books), take off my shoes and rush to my place at the table, so that I’m sitting at the table with my shoes on the floor and an open book in front of me, apparently studying. The hook closure on the skirt wasn’t fastened properly, so it was keeping me from getting to my mark on-time but that was fixed and now I can actually make that second costume change with a bit of time to spare.
Which leaves me in my absolute favorite costume. The gorgeous ivory blouse and the beautiful pleated, wool skirt. A few small scenes play out and then Miep comes to the Annex to tell us about a dentist, a Mr. Dussel, who is desperate for a safe hiding place and it’s declared that Dussel will have my bed and that I’ll be moving in with my parents.
That’s when the frakkin’ cave becomes my home. It’s four feet off the ground (yes, FOUR FEET OFF THE GROUND) and has a small bed and just enough room for my clothing boxes. The cage is where I live for the remaining three-quarters of the play. After three weeks of performances, I’ve gotten used to the cage and hardly ever complain about it anymore.
Our final performance is tomorrow night and I’m more than ready for it. It’s a great show, we’ve all been working our asses off on it but we’re completely burnt out and ready for a break (and I think I might have a sinus infection but I’m ignoring it until next week). We have FIVE performances last weekend alone (one Friday evening show, a Saturday matinee and Saturday evening show, a Sunday matinee and a Sunday evening show) and it was grueling. Half of the cast is sick this week and we’re making it through these last few performances on sheer will-power. And cold medicine. I also managed to twist and sprain my ankle about two weeks ago (only two days before opening night) and thankfully it was just a sprain but it still hurts and it looks pretty gross. My shins are also banged up from bumping into things in the semi-darkness during costume changes.
I’d write more but I have no time. My Aunt passed away a few weeks ago, and then my Dad fractured his pelvic bone, so between the play and the family drama, it’s been an exhausting few months. Now I’ve got this lovely sinus infection to deal with but at least we only have two more performances.
Time to go and get ready to put on a great show tonight. Never-mind the bruised ankle, the sinus infection, the banged up shins or the floaty head, THE SHOW MUST GO ON!
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January 29, 2008
Yes, I am shamelessly stealing A Daily Show feature but I can’t help myself. Our VP is an unbelievably frightening moron.
One of my favorite weekly rituals is sitting down for a few hours and reading the latest Newsweek. I read the cover story about Bush’s legacy (who would have thought that he would have made his father look so much better in comparison?). (By the way, how sad is it that the only thing I want from this last year of his presidency is to have him not engage us in a war with Iran? It seems really, really sad to me. I’ve given up all hope that he will even begin to bring our troops home, that he can help our ailing economy, and all I want from the man is to not have him drag this country into another war. He cannot leave office fast enough for me.)
After the cover story, there was a book excerpt from Jacob Weisberg’s The Bush Tragedy and I thought hey, why not read this even though I have no idea what “Unipolar Realism” means since it seems like a contradiction in terms. But the excerpt did indeed prove to be very interesting.
Remember the 2001 Anthrax Attacks? Dick Cheney sure does.
In the book excerpt (Fishing For A Way To Change The World), Weisberg recounts the fear that permeated the White House after the anthrax attacks.
According to a source close to Bush, Cheney swiftly reported back to the Oval Office with a sobering message: the United States was essentially defenseless against the most likely form of assault, a biological attack. “I sat through the most gruesome briefing in the Oval Office about anthrax, how it could spread, and how we had no defenses,” Bush’s first press secretary, Ari Fleischer, told me in the summer of 2007. “Dick Cheney was the strongest advocate of the possibility of attack and need to prepare for it.”–(Fishing For A Way…)
As a few more anthrax attacks occurred, Cheney and Libby (according to Weisberg) started to spend a great deal of time at the Health and Human Services Department. They had somehow made the leap from anthrax attacks to… smallpox attacks.
The greatest fear of officials there[the Department of Health and Human Services] was an attack involving smallpox. The smallpox virus killed an estimated 300 million people in the 20th century. It was still taking 2 million lives a year as late as 1967, when the World Health Organization began the massive campaign that wiped out the disease a decade later. After smallpox was eradicated in 1977, only the United States and Russia were permitted to retain research samples of the virus, under closely monitored, secure conditions. But an intelligence review ordered by Cheney determined that Iraq, North Korea, and Russia were all likely to possess undeclared stocks.
Their speculation about a possible smallpox attack lead to this very frightening development:
Cheney and Libby believed that Iraq’s potential to produce a smallpox weapon necessitated universal vaccination of the general population, something that hadn’t happened in the United States since 1972.–(Fishing For A Way…)
When I read about how serious Cheney was about vaccinating EVERY SINGLE AMERICAN AGAINST SMALLPOX I completely freaked out. Hence the caps and boldness. According to the sources Weisberg spoke with, Cheney was absolutely dead-set on the nation-wide vaccination. Which makes Dick Cheney a more crazy, and evil person than I had ever thought possible. It’s one thing to shoot your friend in the face, it’s another thing to bring back smallpox.
Since I desperately wanted to be a Virologist when I grew up, I know quite a bit about smallpox and vaccines in general. Most of us know that a vaccine is simply a live strain of a virus that has been created to cause little damage to the person being vaccinated, but to introduce enough live virus into their system for their body to build up an immunity to it. (Dick Cheney obviously does not know this.) This is why vaccinations can sometimes be dangerous–you’re dealing with a live virus.
In school, we were taught about controlled burns and how they actually help mature the Sequoia trees and how essential they are to the tree’s survival. Vaccines are like controlled burns–you use them when you need them, and blast them into the people who are most at-risk. Vaccinating the entire country against smallpox would be like setting an uncontrolled burn. A forest fire. A complete and absolute disaster.
According to Weisberg:
On the other side of the argument was Donald Henderson, the heroic epidemiologist who led the WHO smallpox eradication program and later became Bush 41’s science adviser. After the anthrax attacks, HHS brought Henderson in as a consultant to help develop emergency plans.–(Fishing For A Way…)
I LOVE Donald Henderson. He wrote a really nifty Bioterrorism book. I’ve also read a great deal about him and his work with the WHO Smallpox Eradication Program. We should all thank our lucky stars that Dr. Henderson jumped on a plane as soon as he heard that Cheney had talked Bush into issuing a press announcement about having all of America vaccinated against smallpox.
Dr. Henderson explained to Bush and Cheney that they are total morons (okay, he probably didn’t say it quite that way) and that it was a terrible idea. He explained that you are introducing a live virus into the public and that some people will inevitably contract smallpox, with all of the lovely pustules and lesions and scabs and other symptoms, and that some people would die from it. Others could suffer a bad reaction and have their body ruined by it, probably making them wish they HAD died. Nevermind the fact that you are introducing smallpox back into the general public. After briefing Bush and Cheney about the seroiusness and total futility of a mass vaccination, Dr. Henderson felt that he had convinced them to not go through with the press release. The fact that he had brochures and pictures of people who suffered horribly from smallpox vaccinations probably had something to do with the sudden change of heart.
But! Dick Cheney has NO HEART. Even after being told by the doctor who helped eradicate smallpox that mass vaccinations was insane, Cheney was determined to go through with it.
When he [Dr. Henderson] reached his home in Baltimore two hours later, Henderson’s wife was waiting with an urgent message to call the office. “They were going to have a press release the next morning announcing that they were going to vaccinate the entire country immediately,” Henderson said. “I couldn’t believe it.” But after girding for battle and taking a 5:00 a.m. train to HHS the next morning, Henderson was relieved to be told that the vaccination plan was off after all. Bush had overruled Cheney.–(Fishing For A Way…)
I’d never thought I’d say this but: Way to go, Dubya. Who would have thought that you, of all people, would EVER be the Voice Of Questionable Reason? Bush’s compromise with Cheney involved vaccinating the military and some health/medical personnel, and anyone in and close to the White House.
But the vaccine wasn’t ready for use until 2004, by which time all of the panic about a bioterrorism attack had burned away.
Then comes my absolute favorite part of the excerpt. I sincerely hope that some of you read this far because it will, undoubtedly, become your favorite part, too.
But by the time the vaccine was ready for use, in early 2004, the panic was over. Saddam didn’t have a smallpox weapon after all. Bush was vaccinated at the White House, but decided that members of his family and the White House staff didn’t need to run the risk. Cheney himself chose not to be vaccinated.–(Fishing For A Way…)
Cheney chose to not be vaccinated! He was going to throw ALL of us under the bus but, when faced with the horrible complications that could arise from receiving the smallpox vaccine, he decided he didn’t want to do it. Dick Cheney is EVIL. He needs to get out of office and go back to shooting his friends in the face.
(Since this is already an overly long entry, I will not even begin to broach the topic of bioterrorism and how woefully under-prepared we are for a large scale bioterror attack. No one is taught what to do in the event of a biological attack, no one has a kit at home with a face mask and other items that would protect them from a biological attack, everyone just seems to think that vaccines will save us. They won’t. They’ll save some of us… maybe. If we’re lucky enough that the vaccines we have stockpiled will vaccinate against whatever strain of smallpox is used as a bioterror weapon. But this will obviously have to an entry later on… sometime. Someday. Hopefully.)
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January 7, 2008
Luckily, I got over the worst of my cold by resting all weekend. Devin, on the other hand, just started feeling sick yesterday and is recuperating at home, today. Ever since I read all of His Dark Materials right after Christmas (I had previously read Northern Lights, which I refuse to call The Golden Compass, which is it’s US title, because it makes no sense, since the only time the alethiometer is referred to as a “compass” is before Lyra even knows it’s real name) I have been trying to get Devin to read them. Normally I wouldn’t even try to push such a heavy tome on him (the three-book compendium is damn near a thousand pages) but since he barreled through all of the Harry Potter books over a single week in June (before the last one came out), I figure that he can manage His Dark Materials.
And he is managing it, and enjoying it, which is far more important. He’s already half-way through The Subtle Knife and I’m positive that he’ll have them all done by the time I get home today. I have successfully turned my husband into a reader!! Imagine me consumed with paroxysms of joy.
One of the many posts that I have started, and not finished, talks about everything that I have going on right now. All of which was put on hold when I came down with this flu/cold/cough bug. The bets news of all is that today is Day 14 and I’m absurdly proud of myself. We went to quite a few holiday parties, including a New Year’s Eve party, and I didn’t touch a drop of alcohol. Yay me.
I felt well enough yesterday to go to Target and was reminded why Target is a bad, bad place for me. Apparently, our Target is competing with a neighboring town’s Super Target that just opened, so our Target has clearance items in every section of the store. Clearance sales are my form of crack. Although I have gotten better since I used to be one of those die-hard clearance junkies–the person who will buy any worthless thing on clearance because it was just too damn cheap to pass up. Even though when I came home with two new purses and two new tote bags (all under $14 a piece!), Devin had a bit of a fit because he’s under the impression that I already have enough purses and bags. He should just be grateful that I’m addicted to purses and bags on clearance and not expensive shoes (or shoes of any kind, really… I hate buying shoes).
Randomness: If you are bored and want to read about a minor scandal in the Romance Novel World (yes, we Romance Novel Readers have our own World), check out Smart Bitches Who Read Trashy Books. The Two Bitches who run the site (Sarah and Candy) have uncovered signs of plagiarism in the wretchedly awful books by Cassie Edwards. Apparently, the woman lifted entire paragraphs and sentences from research materials and used them mostly as dialogue in her novels. Edwards writes awful Historicals based on the lives of the Native Americans. (Can you tell that I hate her books? I hope so because they are bad. Native American Historical Romance has never been an interest of mine but, even if it were, I would not stoop to reading Cassie Edwards. I tried to slog through the first chapters of one of her books while I was still working at the bookstore because I wanted to see if she was as bad as everyone says and yes, she is a horrible writer. And an even worse plagiarist, apparently, since the Bitches only had to plug some of Edwards’ “writing” into Google and they immediately discovered the source materials for many of Edwards’ passages. Idiot plagiarist doesn’t even understand the Power of Google. The Bitches have contacted Edwards’ publishers and I cannot wait to see how they explain this one away.
And you’re very welcome for giving you a scandal that doesn’t have the name “Spears” anywhere in it.
I’m hoping to do a massive update to my Now Reading sidebar/plug-in thing because I really need to log the insane amount of books that I read over the holidays. I also need to just suck it up and list all of the romance novels I read because, let’s face it, I read a heck of a lot of romance novels. I’m really into British-based Historicals right now. Full of Dukes and Viscounts and what-not.
And I’ve taken so much cold medicine that my brain is slowly beginning to shut down and I need to get some work done before it deserts me completely.
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December 19, 2007
Two entries in the same week. Wow.
I’m in the mood for random anecdotes, which means that I hope you are also in the mood for random anecdotes.
On the day of wild, horizontal rain in Hawaii, the company throwing the trip decided they needed to schedule some rainy-day activities. But for adults. And Karaoke Night was born. My love for karaoke is well-known (especially amongst those poor souls who’ve had to listen to me sing karaoke) and I had to drag Devin to Karaoke Night at the hotel. Early, so I could get a good spot close to the stage.
I opened Karaoke Night with “I Want You To Want Me” and was given mad applause if only because I was the foolish, but courageous, person who was willing to be the first Karaoke Night victim. (After my fourth song of the night, the drunken crowd learned that there was nothing courageous about my choice to be first–it was all about being a Karaoke Whore.) Suffice it to say, the night was all sorts of fun.
Besides myself, there were three other girls who also sang multiple songs, but their songs were Sarah McLachlan songs or country songs and mine were “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend,” and “These Boots Are Made For Walking.” After “Diamonds” the Karaoke Maestro asked me if I knew what movie that song was from and I shouted “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes!” into the mike and got a smattering of applause from the old-timers who think that all twenty-somethings are clueless about movies made before they were born. A belief that was proven somewhat valid when some twenty-something tried to correct me with, “No! It’s from Moulin Rouge.” Which was just sad.
When I wasn’t singing, I was dancing because I love dancing as much as I love singing (and am inarguably a better dancer than I am a singer). Since Karaoke Night had two open bars, the need for me to sing to fill the time was lessened as the night went on and the people got progressively more drunk. I also love drunk karaoke because it’s so damned funny. It always reminds me of going to a local karaoke bar one night with a bunch of friends, during the holiday season, and watching a stumbling, slurring drunkard fuck up ALL of the words to “Frosty The Snowman.” You have no idea how much joy I still derive from that memory.
So, being pushed aside for drunkard karaoke only made the night that much better, as far as I was concerned. Even though I had to listen to a slew of country songs, which lead to me starting the line-dancing to a drunken rendition of “Boot-Scooting Boogie” because yes, I know how to line dance. And square-dance, for that matter. I’ve got more country in me than you think. I was line-dancing by myself for a while before some other drunk girls came stumbling up, “I don’t really know how to do this but you make it look so much fun!!” And it was so much fun.
Since line-dancing eventually became a success by the end of the song, Karaoke Maestro decided to play the Electric Slide and oh, my lord, I had no idea how many women hold the Electric Slide near and dear to their hearts. There was a stampede to the dance floor and, since I didn’t know the Electric Slide, I stuck to the back of the three lines of Electric Sliding women. The girls that I taught how to Boot-Scoot took it upon themselves to teach me how to Slide, and they kept laughing because I (unintentionally) put a country-western flair on the Electric Slide and was basically doing a modified Boot-Scoot. Which wasn’t a surprise to me because I line-danced for years. I had the tight jeans and the cowboy boots and everything… and I was good. I’m an abysmal ballerina but I kick country-western dancing ass. Even though I gave up the competitive square dancing (yes, that does read competitive square dancing) upon entering high school because I just liked to dance and had no aspirations to raise sheep and pigs, and being a 4-H member was an unspoken requirement of being a square-dancer.
Back to the random anecdote at hand, though. So, when I wasn’t singing karaoke, I was dancing along to someone else’s not-too-bad karaoke and generally having a hell of a good time. Another of my favorite moments was when a group of parents conspired to get their little kids to go up and sing a few songs. The eldest child was 9 and the youngest was a toddler–three girls, two boys and all cute as hell. Their names are called and their parents cheer them on as they take the stage, which prompted the rest of us to cheer them on because they were obviously mortified. We were all expecting some cutesy song–maybe even a Christmas carol.
And instead we heard the opening to Poison’s “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn.” I seriously fell off my chair because I was laughing so hard. Devin looked at me sprawled out on the floor, “Isn’t this the Rock of Love song?!”
“It IS! It’s the Rock of Love song! OHMIGOD. Someone needs to videotape this and send it to Bret Michaels. He would LOVE it.”
Those kids singing “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn” is now one of my most treasured karaoke memories, right up there with the drunken guy who ruined “Frosty the Snowman.” Even though Devin kept kicking me because I was laughing so hard, which I realized could easily be taken the wrong way (even though the children’s parents were laughing much louder than I was) and I managed to turn my laughter into cheers. Hell. I’m laughing right now just thinking about it. Because I learned from “Rock Of Love” that Bret wrote that song about a stripper who had broken his heart and I couldn’t get that out of my mind while those kids were singing, which sent me into further convulsions of laughter. It was wonderful.
THEN some guy sang “Friends in Low Places,” which reminded me of the first time I heard that song. I was in the third grade and some sixth-grade boys sang it for the elementary school talent show and, of course, that memory sent me back to the land of inappropriate raucous laughter. But the guy singing didn’t give a damn and actually encouraged the audience to laugh, cheer, boo, sing along, dance… basically do anything they wanted while he sang and drank his beer. So, of course, it turned into a “Friends in Low Places” sing-along that ROCKED.
But once the open bar shut down at 10 pm, the party was over. We all trudged back to our rooms to sleep off the wild karaoke night and to write down treasured memories into our journals.
The next morning I woke up early, hangover-free (Devin and I had agreed on a two-drinks per night for me and I faithfully stuck to that rule) and headed down to the fabulous buffet breakfast that was put out for us every morning. Since kicking most of the drugs, I’ve gone back to not sleeping much at all, so I was always waking up before Devin and heading down to breakfast insanely early.
I enjoyed picking at my food, drinking vats of tea (all of the wait staff knew me and kept bringing me huge carafes of hot water so I wouldn’t have to keep going back to the beverage station every time I wanted another cup of tea) and either reading a book, or just watching the ocean.
While I was drinking tea and watching the ocean, a man from a near-by table asked if I was the girl who sang “These Boots Are Made For Walking” last night.
“Yup. That was me. So, you were there last night? Wasn’t it fun?”
“No, we weren’t there,” the man replies while gesturing towards his wife.
L o n g p a u s e. “Then how did you….” I didn’t complete the question because I was beginning to realize that I would probably not like the answer.
“We saw you on the TV.” I really hate it when people say “the TV,” and so it took me a moment to fully process his statement.
“WHAT?! I was on TELEVISION? SINGING?!“
“And dancing. They showed more of you dancing, actually.”
Not many things leave me speechless but this lovely revelation managed to do just that. At this point, I think the wife could tell that I was freaking out a bit, so she jumped in to explain. And I really wish she hadn’t because it only made things worse.
“You know Channel 2 on the TV? The one that is only for the hotel and stuff? They’ve been running video from last night all morning long on that channel. You’re in it a lot.”
“Please tell me that you are kidding.” Or that this is really just a nightmare and I’m still asleep in my hotel room.
“Oh, no, they’re not kidding. I saw it too! You were really good!” Says a perky blonde woman from the table next to mine.
“Oh. Dear. Lord. Well… thank you for the compliments. I need to go get more tea.”
Of course I didn’t need more tea and fleeing in-doors turned out to be a bad idea because most everyone had seen the video footage and I was recognized quite a few more times. By the time Devin showed up, I was absolutely mortified and told him that, apparently, I had become some sort of star on closed-circuit hotel TV and Devin laughed… and laughed… and laughed. He might’ve said something about how I deserved what I got for being a dancing, karaoke fool.
As soon as he was done with his breakfast, I dragged him back to the hotel room and… sure enough, there I was on Channel 2. Along with the “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn” Poison kids, a girl who absolutely killed “Black Velvet,” and a whole lot of drunks singing country music. Along with the dancing. Me and my lonely Boot-Scooting and oh yeah, there I am in the mass of girls doing the Electric Slide.
Once I got over the mortification and was able to laugh at myself (didn’t take very long), Devin and I got our swimsuits on and headed down to spend the entire day on the beach, in anticipation of the big Beach Party in the evening. Which meant that, for the rest of the day, random people would come up to me and tell me that they had seen me on TV.
Thankfully, footage of drunken dancing at the Beach Party that night replaced the karaoke video the next day and, since I knew now to stay away from random men with video cameras, my fifteen-minutes were over.
But it didn’t stop me from making an even bigger fool out of myself when they brought back Karaoke Night By Popular Demand! Karaoke Night #2 started much earlier than the first night and I seriously sang four or five songs in the first hour-and-a-half because there was practically no one there. And the few people who were there had absolutely no sense of humor because I managed to clear the room with my rendition of “Because I Got High.” Which was damned hilarious, although Karaoke Maestro was a bit pissed that I’d scared away the few people who had also shown up early. Until I reminded him that they were only there for the free liquor, anyway, and that it wasn’t my fault that they had no sense of humor. Since my version of “Because I Got High” (which is a song I actually have on my karaoke machine at home and I do a damn good version of it because I sing it like I’m completely stoned, which is how it’s meant to be sung) had the wait staff screaming with laughter. A few of the male waiters came up to me afterwards and said that, “When the stong started, we thought the Karaoke Guy had made a mistake because no way was this sweet, pretty girl going to sing that song… and then you sang that song! It was AWESOME.”
And it was.
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December 17, 2007
I cannot write a decent journal entry to save my life. I’m too distracted to concentrate and a rather sucky writer (lately). Our marriage hit the skids about a month and a half ago and most of my spare time has gone into saving it. It’s a long story. I’ve also gone to some meetings (yes, those kinds of meetings, the ones with steps) and am looking into some out-patient drug addiction therapy. I figure that addressing my addiction issues will help me salvage my marriage. At least, that is what I am hoping will happen. We shall see.
Devin, his parents, and I went to Hawaii for a week. We went to The Big Island and I introduced Devin to the wonders of Kona coffee. (It’s amazing how much coffee knowledge I soaked up from those years at Starbucks… even though I still hate coffee and am thrilled that I am no longer forced to drink it.) When we were away from the in-laws, the trip was fantastic. There isn’t much to do in Kona (where we were staying) and The Big Island itself is gorgeous, forged by volcanic ash and great for site-seeing but not much else. Mother-in-Law spent the entire time complaining about everything. (I kept track of how many complaints she made because it the was the only way I could preserve my sanity–she complained an average of three-to-four times per hour. I was ready to gag her with a dirty sock by the end of our stay. She also spent every single day shopping, and she dragged us all to Costco on our last day in Hawaii. Who the hell goes to Hawaii to go to frakkin’ Costco?)
(Aside: A major pool equipment manufacturer always throws a week-long trip in an exotic location every December for pool builders who sold a lot of their equipment that year. Pool builders earn points for every piece of their equipment that we sell and, at the end of the year, we can redeem those points for the exotic trip. So, besides getting a free week in Hawaii in a really expensive resort with swanky rooms and bathrooms done entirely in marble, they also throw all sorts of parties and dinners. There were only two nights where we had to buy ourselves dinner. And all of the dinner parties thrown by the pool equipment people? They all had open bars. I fell off the wagon big-time because of the constant open bars. Fun time.)
On our third day there, the island was slammed by a huge rainstorm, with lovely thunder, lightning and horizontal rain due to the amazingly gusty winds. It was glorious. But it rained on and off for the rest of our stay (except for the day we left, of course) and M-i-L complained about the rain every time she opened her mouth. Even though it was beautifully warm and, you know, it was just rain, not the apocalypse, and, more importantly, it was rain in Hawaii but she did not care. Although it gave her a fantastic excuse to make three trips to Macy’s (”It’s raining! The shops are dry!”) and I went along on a shopping trip and she bought me a lovely black top and I bought myself a gorgeous dress. It was actually a fun shopping trip because the guys showed up towards the end of it and I got to model clothes for them. Devin has very definite opinions about what I should wear (basically anything other than my daily uniform of jeans and a t-shirt) and kept insisting that I should get the dress that was incredibly low-cut, to the point where it damn near showed my bra. Because he likes my cleavage.
The only male Macy’s employee also liked the super-cleavage bearing dress, although the look on Father-in-Law’s face when he saw me in it was hilarious. It helped that it was also sleeveless (some Mormons believe that sleeveless clothes are indecent and the in-laws subscribe to that belief) because that just doubled it’s indecency. F-i-L took one look in my in it, tried to hide his horrified reaction, and mumbled that he couldn’t believe Devin would let me buy that dress. While the male Macy’s employee drooled in the background.
I ended up getting a non-sleeveless dress that showed a decent amount of cleavage (hell, anything with even a hint of a v-neck shows off some of my cleavage because I have enough cleavage to hide entire paperback books and yes, I have tested that theory). Devin didn’t think it would be indecent enough and I explained that it would be plenty indecent with enough plumping. I wore it to the big luau on our last night there and I plumped my cleavage so much that lefty was trying to make a run for it by the end of the night. At least Devin agreed that yes, with enough plumping, the dress was delightfully indecent. There are pictures somewhere. And someday those pictures might actually get uploaded to Gallery. Someday.
We also went to the Volcanic National Park (probably not it’s official name) but it was raining, and M-i-L refused to get out of the car. She was also determined to get us back to the hotel with enough time for her to get ready for the dinner that night, so we weren’t allowed to spend more than an hour in the park, which really, really made me mad. My family might not take many trips but, when we do, we do not drive for three and half hours (one way) to spend only an hour in a cool National Park. But at least we went and we walked through a huge tube carved by lava, which was nifty-keeno.
If I ever get my act together, I’ll write a more in-depth Hawaii entry (with possible pictures! wow!) but there’s a lot of stuff going on right now. Something about the trip triggered my Crohn’s and I’m very, very sick (might have had something to do with all of those open bars) and am fighting my docs because they want me on steroids and, as I’ve said many times, I’d rather be hospitalized than go back on oral steroids. Especially when I’m trying to kick a drug addiction because the last thing I need right now is steroid-induced psychosis. But if I don’t start getting better soon, my docs are going to gang up on me and force the damn drugs on me. So, I am also trying to get healthy, in addition to saving my marriage and getting treatment for my drug addiction. And, oh yeah, Christmas shopping.
There is also the alarming amount of housework that needs to be done (why in the world do I have stacks of magazines from 2006?) and the last season of Gilmore Girls to watch on DVD (I just bought it over the weekend). Along with the holiday ritual of Love Actually, and I might even join Devin in his holiday ritual of Die Hard. We are strange people.
So, until we meet here again, why don’t you all ready about The New Strain Of Ebola!. Because it is SO cool. I am quite excited about it (and I also recorded a show this weekend on the History Channel called “The Plague,” which I am also very excited about). I can’t believe that Santa gave me a new strain of Ebola to obsess over for Christmas. And he even gave it to me early because he’s such a nice guy. He obviously knew that I needed something to take my mind off my Crohn’s.
(Although the new Ebola strain over-shadowed Jack, of the current Project Runway season, having a staph infection on his face and subsequently leaving the show for medical reasons. I’m horrible because all I could think about when he told the other designers that he was leaving and they all crowded around to give him a hug was, “Ohmigod, they are hugging the guy with the staph infection on his face. Do they not care at all about highly communicable diseases? EW.” When perhaps I should have been feeling sorry for the poor HIV, staph-afflicted man who was being forced to leave the show even though he was quite a good designer. And even while I was admonishing myself for not being appropriately sorry for the guy, I was more concerned about how easy it is to spread staph bacteria and, had I been on the show, I would have spent the entire day sterilizing everything Jack had ever touched.)
Posted in Medical Melodrama, Ebola 1 Comment »
November 6, 2007
Quite a lot of medical melodrama has gone down in the past few weeks. As expected, I’ve contributed to the drama with some sickness of my own but, for once, my extended family is out-doing me with their illnesses. Which isn’t a good thing for any of us.
Almost two weeks ago, I had an emergency doctor appointment with my Internal Medicine doc and it did not go well. At all. After I explained all of my symptoms–none of which were new to me and was stuff that I’ve been dealing with since I was 12, he jumped on the “It’s HERPES” train.
Then he took off to go grab swab kits and I freaked out in the little exam room. Now, being a budding epidemiologist and virologist, I know that there are many, many different strains of herpes. Herpes causes chicken pox among other non-STD problems. My brother had shingles a few years ago and that’s also herpes. In fact, my Internal Medicine doc meant the shingles form of herpes (Herpes Zoster).
But no one likes to hear that they might have herpes. Especially when your doc is pretty adamant that your strange rash is herpes and is only testing it just to confirm the diagnosis. So, as I’m freaking out over the “I’ve been monogamous with my husband for five years how do I tell him HERPES?” thing, the nurse is shooting my ass full of antibiotics, which I hate. I haven’t gotten that shot in ages and it still hurts like a mother-frakker. The doc comes back in and shoves a fistful of prescriptions at me, including Valtrex, which is used to treat shingles but shingles is NOT the first thing you think of when you hear “Valtrex.” At least, it wasn’t the first thing I thought of when he handed the prescription to me. I thought of the ubiquitous TV ads with gorgeous young people talking about how Valtrex took care of their herpes and now they can stop feeling ashamed of their herpes outbreaks. With the disclaimer that they still have to wear condoms. Love the disclaimer. I also got some antibiotics (since it could have been an infection) and that meant that I’ve hit my limit for antibiotics this year.
Skip The Aside
(Aside: Newsweek finally published an article telling the world everything I’ve been telling it FOR YEARS. The world simply does not listen to me. Our over-sterilized environments, combined with our over-prescription of anti-virals and antibiotics, has created not only many different strains of Super Bugs–the drug-resistant TB and the staph infection that is known as the Flesh Eating Bacteria that is now eating it’s way through the East Coast are only two recent examples–but has raised the occurrence of autoimmune diseases like asthma, and Crohn’s. Seriously, people, this is something I’ve known about for over a decade and the problem is getting worse. When I started reading about the strain of staph (mainly known for the common ailment of “strep throat”) that had been dubbed the Flesh Eating Bacteria, it was a decade ago. People kept trying to ask me why I was more into Ebola than the Flesh Eating Bacteria and I foolishly believed that no one would be stupid enough to allow Flesh Eating Bacteria to reach outbreak levels. I was wrong. Check out the search results for “staph” in Yahoo! News: it’s definitely a problem. Now they have a “screening” test for it which… DUH. You can screen for anything, ya morons. PLUS they are saying that this not-new staph superbug could kill more Americans than AIDS and that really pisses me off. The only reason AIDS killed so many Americans is because Reagan refused to acknowledge it as more than GRID–Gay Related Immune Deficiency–and early AIDS docs had to steal funding for it from other health programs since Reagan refused to fund research for it. Apparently, we did not learn our lesson from that monumental mistake because the same damn thing is happening with Flesh Eating Bacteria. And just in case anyone is wondering why I’m calling it Flesh Eating Bacteria when the press is using the more appropriate medical term of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. It’s because I have been reading about this particular strain of staph for years. In high school, I would have my Ebola pictures in my binder and one of the Flesh Eating Bacteria. Because I’m utterly bizarre. In any case, I’ve got more documentation for the curious: Group A Streptococcal Infection on Wikipedia and the Group A Streptococcal Infection Fact Sheet from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a branch of the National Institutes of Health. I am nothing if not thorough in my research.)
I don’t blame you for skipping it. It was a really long aside.
Enough about me and my obsessions. My Mother-in-Law is having surgery next week to repair a torn rotator cuff (although no one, including her, has any idea how she tore her rotator cuff) and will have her left arm in a sling for quite a few weeks. The surgery is simple and fairly easy but she’s already complaining about having to wear it in a sling, and I don’t blame her because I would be complaining if it were me. I’ve promised to help prepare Thanksgiving for her, since she’ll be unable to do most everything. Devin’s thrilled that I’m going to learn how to cook a proper Thanksgiving meal. I’m rather dreading it.
One of Devin’s uncles is having a quintuple by-pass today. We’re not sure if he had a heart attack, or aneurism, but he certainly suffered from a very serious heart problem. Most of the family has gone up to San Ramon to be there for the surgery. Devin and I stayed home because I know from experience that our presence would only annoy and frustrate hospital personnel. Only very close family members are allowed in the private waiting rooms, which is where they would be for such a serious surgery.
Since my Dad has had three heart attacks, and two by-passes (the last one being a quintuple, not a quadruple, like I had thought), everyone is asking my Mom and I all sorts of questions about Dad’s last by-pass. I have a pretty good memory of it since I was in the fifth grade when it happened but it’s strange to be the one everyone is coming to with their questions, since I’m filtering through the memories of a child. Of course, I remember a great deal of fear and then blinding hope that everyone would be alright.
I was able to tell everyone about Dad’s recovery from the by-pass. The family was worried that Devin’s Uncle C. would be unable to come down for Thanksgiving as the had planned and I assured everyone that he’ll definitely be able to come down for the event. The thing about a by-pass is that the procedure itself is not very difficult to recover from–the heart doesn’t sustain much damage from the procedure and mends quickly. It’s getting to the heart that creates such a painful and difficult recovery. Cutting through the ribs and then stapling them back together is inconceivably painful, and recovering from it takes months.
But the doctors and nurses will have Uncle C. on his feet and walking hospital hallways by Thursday, at the latest. If the procedure goes well then they’ll keep him completely sedated tomorrow and bombed with pain meds but, after a day of complete sedation, they’ll wake him up and get him moving. They did the same with my Dad and that was over a decade ago. In fact, the nurses gave my brother and I the job of walking him up and down the hallway every few hours while he was still in the hospital. He was released less than a week after the surgery, which is also very common as long as no complications arise from the post-op, and was sent home.
Of course, he had daily rehab appointments and was certainly not considered recovered by any stretch of the imagination, but he was home with us, and that’s all that mattered. He was also given a Hug-A-Bear, which is a large, rather flat and hard teddy bear that he hugged to his chest while coughing, which was meant to help rehabilitate his ribs and lungs. He was told to hug it and cough at least once an hour, and Johnny and I took turns bugging him to hug that bear and cough because he hated doing it (it was very, very painful but necessary).
I’m sure Uncle C. will get his own Hug-A-Bear and he’ll have just as difficult, and painful, a recovery but he will recover, for which we are all grateful.
Posted in Medical Melodrama No Comments »
November 2, 2007
Bruce. What more can I say about Bruce that I haven’t already said? After the concert, even Devin admitted that it was better than the 2003 Stadium Tour. Our seats were incredible, even though I didn’t spend much time actually sitting in mine. I’m crazy sore from dancing like a maniac, and I did so much screaming, and singing along that I’ve lost my voice.
He played some of my absolute favorite songs. The set list has already been posted on BruceSpringsteen.net. Of course, he played a lot of songs (eight of them) from Magic (new album). Luckily I love the new album, even though I’m not enamored with all of the songs (“Girls In Their Summer Clothes” is one that I could do without), and my absolute favorite is “Livin’ In The Future.” I’ve been listening to that one non-stop for days.
I had a conniption fit when “Lonesome Day” started. It’s from The Rising and is easily in my top ten favorite Bruce songs. The entire arena had a collective conniption fit when the band launched into “Adam Raised A Cain” from Darkness on the Edge of Town and after each refrain of “Adam raised a Cain!” there’s a big YEAH! and that was so much fun. Everybody was pounding their fists into the air “YEAH!” Even Devin got in on the fun.
From that same album (which was Bruce’s 4th album and it came out in 1978), he also played “The Promised Land”. The last part of it’s chorus is “Mister I ain’t a boy, no I’m a man / And I believe in a promised land,” and I love the song (I love that whole damn album), so I was screaming at the top of my lungs that “No, Mister, I ain’t a boy, I’m a MAN!”. At the end of the song, the girl in front of me, who was having just as much as I was, turned around and said, “High five for being men!” Which was just so damned cool to me.
When the band launched into “Backstreets” (from Born to Run), I thought some people were going to pass out they were so hysterical. It’s a nice enough song but it’s become the annals of Bruce Fandom. Then they played four more songs from the new album with “The Rising” (from the album of the same name), another song that I love and one that is especially good for audience participation.
But it was “Badlands” that drove me absolutely wild. It’s my all-time favorite Bruce song and I’m not the only one. The entire arena went completely bonkers when he launched into it.
I know I’ve mentioned this particular verse from that song many times but it still energizes me, and it is still one of the anthems of my life.
For the ones who had a notion,
a notion deep inside
That it ain’t no sin
to be glad you’re alive
I think it’s a pretty good anthem for one’s life. It’s certainly worked for mine.
The encore was amazing and everyone was screaming, and dancing, and chanting “BRUUUUUUUUUUUCE” over and over. He kicked off the encore with “Girls In Their Summer Clothes” from the new album, and I’ve already said that I don’t like it very much. Although I was still dancing to it and having a great time.
But it was the next song that sent the entire arena into a paroxysm of glee. It was Thunder Road and oh, how I love that song. It’s the first song on his Born To Run album, and it was the song that made me fall completely in love with Bruce. So, of course, I went absolutely nuts when the band started playing the opening chords. I think it was at this point that I accidentally whacked the guy next to me because I was frantically flailing my arms all over the place.
After “Thunder Road,” they launched into “Born To Run and I didn’t think it could get any crazier in that arena but “Born To Run” proved me wrong. It was absolute madness at that point.
(Aside: I bought two shirts at the concert, one of which had the words “Tramps Like Us, Baby We Were Born To Run” on the front. I wore it earlier this week and people kept asking me if I was a marathon runner. It was hard to keep the scorn out of my voice when I told them no, I’m just a Bruce Springsteen fan.)
Then it was “Dancing In The Dark, a fairly reviled song on many levels, and definitely one of my lease favorite Bruce songs. BUT I do love it when it’s played during a concert. Since it’s fun to be dancing in the dark with a bunch of crazed Bruce fanatics. (Although they turned on the arena lights for the song, which made Devin a bit peeved. He felt that since it’s called “Dancing In The DARK,” it should be played in the dark. Which I thought was hilarious because Devin doesn’t really like Bruce all that much and yet he was so indignant about the lights being on during that song.)
The concert ended with “American Land” from his Seeger Sessions album. I don’t know the song very well, but they had the lyrics streaming on the huge TV’s so everyone in the arena could sing along (they didn’t do this for any other song). Except my eyesight is not so great, and I couldn’t read the lyrics at all. But that certainly didn’t stop me from enjoying the song.
We were all hoping for a second encore (of course) but it didn’t happen. We’d parked in the BART parking lot not very far from the arena, so we headed back to our truck with a whole lot of people who were going to take BART to their homes. There were police officers everywhere, and Devin said he was surprised there were so many cops out for just one concert, and I told him that it wasn’t because of the concert, it was because it’s Oakland. And Oakland is a scary, scary place. Although we did pass a bum with a most amusing sign that read “Family killed by ninjas. Need money for karate lessons.” I wanted to stop and take a picture but I had enough common sense to know that Oakland was not the place to be taking pictures of bums.
So, the concert was awesome, of course, and I think Devin is a bit closer to being a Bruce fan.
Posted in Bruce! No Comments »
October 26, 2007
Alberto Gonzales’ legal troubles may just be beginning. - By Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine
“John McKay, one of the U.S. attorneys allegedly fired for improper political reasons, suggested just this in a speech last week before the Federal Bar Association. McKay claimed that Gonzales may be facing criminal prosecution, and soon. Describing an eight-hour meeting he had last June with investigators from the DoJ’s Office of the Inspector General, which may file its report to Congress before Thanksgiving, McKay predicted that the investigators will recommend criminal prosecution of Gonzales for lying under oath.
The article goes on to mention that this might just be wishful thinking on the part of McKay, who is undoubtedly bitter about his dismissal from the DoJ.
It’s definitely wishful thinking for me. I would love, love, to see Gonzales charged with lying under oath. If the Republicans could get Clinton charged with lying under oath in order to commence with his impeachment, and all he lied about was a sexual assignation in his office, then we should at least hold the frakkin’ Attorney General just as accountable for his actions.
I just can’t believe it took this long for people to start talking about Gonzales being charged with perjury. It was obvious that he committed perjury. His testimony (when he was saying something other than “I don’t know” or “I don’t recall”) constantly contradicted the testimony of other witnesses during the whole US Attorney scandal. He should be charged with perjury if only because he was so grossly stupid enough to think that he was above the law.
And then, of course, there is this idiot. Good ol’ Senator Larry Craig. I don’t begrudge him his chance to fight the Constitutionality of his arrest, but I don’t think he’s doing himself any favors in the court of public opinion by refusing to let the matter just die.
My initial reaction to the Sen. Craig scandal was the same as most intelligent people–the evidence was alarmingly circumstantial and would have been very difficult to prove a case against him in court. My opinion was that he didn’t want to take the matter to trial because all sorts of skeletons come out of the closet during such trials, and I’ll bet he’s got all sorts of skeletons hidden away (some of which have already started to come out).
But he chose to enter the guilty plea. His petition to have it reversed was correctly shot down in Appeals (no way was he under duress, or unable to understand what he was doing when he wrote and submitted that plea). Now he wants to challenge the Constitutionality of his arrest. Which should be interesting, since the AP article discusses the fact that the ACLU has already stated that Craig’s arrest violated his First Amendment rights.
I just don’t understand how two people can be so incredibly stupid. One would assume that the Attorney General would have enough brains to not perjure himself before Congress. One would also assume that a Senator would understand what it means to file a guilty plea rather than going to trial.
I obviously make far too many assumptions regarding the intelligence of our elected, and appointed, officials.
(PS: I have a Bruce concert entry almost ready to post. Along with another entry about how I might have shingles and how much fun it was to tell Devin that I was being tested for herpes. The bizarreness of my life never ceases to amaze me.)
Posted in Dispatch No Comments »
October 22, 2007
Wildfires rage in Southern Calif. - Yahoo! News
Most everyone has heard about the latest CA wildfires. I’ve been reading about them all weekend, marveling at how some of the press only wrote about the celebrities who live in Malibu, and the many rehabs, rather than the extent of the damage. I didn’t know until this morning that the wildfires had spread beyond Malibu and that’s very disheartening. I can’t remember the last time we had so many devastating wildfires in a single year.
Our Tahoe trip in August landed only a few days after the majority of the fires has been contained. Devin and I drove up much later than the rest of the family and, just as we were nearing Truckee, we were distracted by some strange lights off the side of the road. Then we realized that lights don’t move and, as we got closer, it was obvious that it was a fire, and that it was alarmingly close to the highway.
When we met up with the family at the condo in Tahoe, they asked us if we had any trouble driving since the highway had been closed off down by Truckee because of the fires. It had only been re-opened for less than an hour by the time we got there and Devin I were surprised that it had been re-opened at all since the fires were practically kissing the road.
A few days later, Devin’s brother Ryan decided to drive us around his neighborhood and give us a tour of charred homes. We stopped in front of a group of homes that were completely gone, and Ryan told us about how he’d been hanging out with his friend at his home (he gestured towards one of the blackened piles of rubble) before heading off to work and less than forty minutes after Ryan left his friend, the friend’s house was burned to the ground. Along with many of the homes surrounding it. I started crying a bit, and silently berated myself for being such a wimp until I remembered that there is nothing wrong with crying over such loss, even though I’ve lost nothing.
We’ve had a rough year in California. Governor Schwarzenegger (that is always going to sound strange to me) has declared a State of Emergency 18 times this year, already two more than last year. In October alone, we’ve had three States of Emergency. There was the landslide in San Diego, the I-5 truck tunnel collision and now more fires.
You can see the list of all State of Emergency Declarations from Nov. 2003 to the present (although they don’t have the latest fire one up, yet) here. The area I live in was responsible for most of the Freeze emergencies, although out of the five of them in January, I’m not sure how many were directly related to the Central Valley.
The list is fairly interesting. Last year was plagued with floods, the same way this year has been plagued with fires. There was also an Emergency Prison Overcrowding situation that I’d forgotten about and two Fish Emergencies, as well.
My poor, beleaguered state. Maybe the rest of the year will be relatively calm, since California is a fantastic place to live and I’m tired of seeing it besieged with disasters.
Posted in Dispatch No Comments »
October 19, 2007
I love that I’m writing in this blog even though I haven’t technically launched it and currently have about five readers. For some reason, I am having a very difficult time staying awake at work today, even though I got more than enough sleep last night. It’s probably my meds. I keep mucking with my meds schedule because they either make me nauseous, or drowsy (or both) and I get tired of feeling faintly ill all of the time. Especially since I seem to have lost an alarming amount of weight in a matter of days. By the end of the summer, I had finally packed on an extra 10 lbs that made me look rather nice and healthy. Now, of course, they are practically gone. Since one needs to eat more than a single meal per day if they do not want to lose weight. Stupid meds that make me not want to eat.
I babysat last night for a friend which is something that I haven’t done in over a decade. The kids and I got into an argument over “Winnie The Pooh,” which speaks volumes about my maturity level. “Winnie” was my favorite movie when I was young and, as it turns out, I still know all of the words to it. So, I’m singing along with the “Heffalumps and Woozles” song and one of the girls kept trying to correct me, “It’s elephants and weasels, Katie.” By the way, this girl is only in kindergarten, so she’s unbelievably smart for her age.
“Heffalumps are like elephants, and woozles are like weasels, but it’s still heffalumps and woozles,” I told her. Which set off the argument between myself and a kindergartner because, apparently, no one is allowed to mess with my sacred childhood memories.
I also kept shushing them during the movie and, by the end, I’m pretty sure they thought that I was insane. They kept giving me these eerie looks that clearly stated that I needed to calm down. Otherwise though, I was a fantastic babysitter because I let them have two snacks and didn’t make them go to bed. In fact, watching “Winnie” was my alternative to putting them to bed (they wouldn’t have stayed in bed, anyway and this way, they fell asleep with me on the couch after I got them to stop interrupting the damn movie).
I am going to make one hell of a strange mother someday.
My throat is a bit sore today, which is bothersome because friday night is my Wine and Karaoke Night. The only thing that ever trumped friday night karaoke was Intervention and it’s on hiatus and will not be returning to fridays when it comes back (it’s moving to monday, which is going to be a weird way to start the week).
Devin’s gotten me addicted to Chuck, a very funny and cool new show on NBC (I think). It has Jayne from Firefly on it and I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed Adam Baldwin (of no relation to the slew of other Baldwins). We’re also watching Reaper on the CW but it’s becoming progressively less funny with each new episode and that has us both worried, since we have really been enjoying the show.
We gave up on Bionic Woman after two episodes, despite the kick-ass appearance of Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica). I had Viva Laughlin recording while I babysat because I am dying to see if it is as bad as everyone is saying.
And yes, we both watch way too much TV. At least we are also equally obsessed with shows on the History and Discovery channels. Devin loves all of the engineering/mechanical shows, I love the ancient history shows, and we both love Cities of the Underworld. I think my favorite episode was the one about American bootleggers and the shady underbelly of Portland, OR. Although the Freemasons episode was unbelievably interesting.
I finally got Devin excited about seeing Bruce again when I showed him where we would be sitting. I’m actually going to be able to see the entire stage this time! I also reminded Devin about the valuable lesson he learned at The Who concert earlier this year–Do not attempt to talk to me while I am singing and dancing, otherwise you will be clocked with a wayward elbow. I told him that, once Bruce is on-stage, the only thing he is allowed to say is “BRUCE!” And, really, this is for his own good. Since the other Bruce fans are just as likely to smack him for talking during the concert.
When we went to the Bruce concert at Giants Stadium, I about died laughing when Devin asked me why everyone was booing Bruce. But he quickly realized that an arena full of rabid fans screaming “BRUCE!” sounds like massive amounts of booing. And I guarantee you that, by the end of the concert, he will be up on his feet and dancing like the rest of us. It is impossible to attend a Bruce concert and not be sucked in by the insane amounts of energy pounding through the arena.
This is not helping to keep me awake, at all. Time for desperate measures. Must put on some Bruce and commence with dancing around my office.
Posted in My So-Called Life 1 Comment »
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