Category: Daily Life

Now that the regular TV season is over, I no longer have quite so much trouble keeping up with the TiVo’s offerings.  I’ve also discovered how convenient it is to take advantage of summer reruns and catch shows that didn’t quite make the cut when they were originally pitted against other shows I like.

Case in point, Veronica Mars.  I recently watched last season’s pilot and it was just as good as I’d heard:  well written, smart and intriguing.  My husband got sucked in, too, so we’ll definitely get caught up by the end of the summer.  If we’re lucky, it’ll stay on Wednesdays and not compete with anything else next season.

All our other TV show faves this summer are on cable.  We’re greatly enjoying the second season of The 4400 on the SciFi Channel.  We also watched the premiere episode of Morgan Spurlock’s new series 30 Days on FX last week and thought it was a great premise.  I’m looking forward to seeing the other installments played out by different people.

We finally saw the final Star Wars movie last night.  Great special effects, predictably tragic storyline.  I couldn’t help but agree with reviewers who have pointed out that Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke’s aunt and uncle seemed to have aged way more between Episode III and Episode IV than one might reasonably expect in 16 years.  As for the critique that Obi-Wan should have recognized R2D2 when he saw him in Episode IV, my thought is that he’s more of an appliance than a character, quirky whistles notwithstanding.

My husband and I both had an impulse to watch the original trilogy now that we’ve seen the prequels.  If only we weren’t on the bad list at Blockbuster…

I haven’t even touched on my summer reading.  I just faked my way (not too convincingly, I imagine) through a book club discussion  about a book that I haven’t read in about five years and didn’t get around to revisiting.  I did a lot of cooking and baking this weekend, which gave me the chance to alternate articles from Archaeology Magazine and Entertainment Weekly while I waited for the timer to ring.  Leaping from Chumash canoes to brownie recipes to entertainment reviews is not for the faint of heart!

Tomorrow:  a book review.  Have a great Monday!

When I talked about kid-safe cuss words last week, Rozanne pointed out that some of the ones I picked up from my grandparents are more commonly heard in Great Britain.  Thanks to my maternal grandmother’s faithful recording of family history, I know that her paternal grandparents were from Pancras, England, so I suppose it’s possible that the family has carried forward some words and phrases from them all these generations.  How else would you explain the prevalence of the phrase "…and Bob’s your uncle" within an American family?

On my father’s side of the family, the biggest geneaology buff is a monk in Luxembourg who has traced many branches of the family tree all over Scandinavia and across to the United States.  My paternal grandfather and grandmother (whom I never met), emigrated to the United States from Sweden in the early part of the last century. 

Of course, when you take two sides of the family into account, it can be difficult to tell where various influences come into play.  You’d think that my excessively round pronunciation of the letter "o" might come from the Swedes on my dad’s side, but I think it’s really from all of my mother’s folks who settled in South Dakota.

I’m always surprised when someone I meet doesn’t know the origin of his or her last name or ancestors.  I’m pleased to know little tidbits about the various English, Dutch, Swedish and German people whose genes I share.

Do you know much about your geneaology?  What have you carried forward from your ancestors’ traditions, speech patterns, etc.?

On Wednesday, I’m being installed as local president-elect of a community service organization.  It’s a club that’s been around since the 1920s, so you can imagine that it’s fairly traditional.  When I go to meetings, I try to dress in business attire even though my work dress code is very casual…and when I say "casual" I mean "stops short of requiring shoes."

Last weekend I went to a going-away party for one of the club members who is moving out of the country and I decided not to change out of my weekend jeans, t-shirt and sandals.  One of the new club members introduced herself and said I looked very familiar.  Apparently I have Superman-like powers of disguise when I’m dressed down!

I can clean up pretty well when I put my mind to it, but I’m pretty happy being able to sit cross-legged in my office chair while I work, and I don’t think that’s possible in a suit and pantyhose.

Now that I’m starting to audition for rock bands again, there’s a strong possibility that I’ll soon add another category of surprising fashion to the mix.  I won’t be able to resurrect my stage clothes from days gone by (I doubt I’ll ever wear that size again), but if I end up singing heavy metal I’ll probably have some distinctive wardrobe pieces.

For the most part, I keep my sartorially opposite lifestyle segments separate from one another.  The businesswomen probably won’t ever see me wearing leather stage clothes, and I’m unlikely to wear a suit and high heels to band practice.

The most memorable "worlds colliding" moment I’ve ever had was when I in my late teens and played a gig at a science fiction convention.  Everyone in the band was dressed as a movie or TV character – I was Valeria from "Conan the Barbarian," complete with sword and body paint.

On the way home from the gig, the keyboard player got in a traffic accident and had to be bailed out of jail.  Mad Max, an alien from "V", an Apollo XIII astronaut and I dug through the seat cushions of our cars to come up with the cash.  Naturally, the police didn’t blink an eye.

It’s always seemed to me that women have an easier time making dramatic changes to their looks from one situation to another.   Do you agree?

As I’m amassing an ever-growing collection of del.icio.us links, I can’t help noticing how many of them fall under the keyword "snark."  All of a sudden I’m the shallow girl who likes to make fun of celebrities.  I have no desire to jump into the celebrity-mocking arena personally; it’s easier to sit back and read the work of the masters:

• Conversations about Famous People
• The Superficial
• Go Fug Yourself
• Fametracker
• Snarkywood

I actually feel kind of sorry for people who are so famous that they can’t set foot outside without being hassled by fans and paparazzi.  I suppose millions of dollars would make up for a lot of that, but it would still be unpleasant. 

Heaven knows I wouldn’t want my frequent fashion miscalculations dissected on the Internet.  Fortunately (or is it unfortunately?) that’s unlikely to ever happen.  I just hope I never end up in the back of a women’s magazine with a black bar over my face, illustrating a "fashion don’t".

Have any of you had enough of a brush with fame to gain some inside perspective?  Tell us about it!

Pharmgirl reports that her daughter is starting to repeat bad words she hears from her dad.  Apparently Pharmgirl’s husband lacks a ready list of substitute curse words upon which he can draw as needed.  As a public service, I’m presenting my list of all the kid-friendly expletives I can think of.

• Shoot
• Darn or darnit
• Dang or dangit
• Dagnabit (if you don’t mind sounding like Yosemite Sam)
• Horse pucky or horse hockey (bull may be substituted for horse)
• Blast (my grandfather used this one around us a lot, "Oh, blast!")
• Bother (another one from the grandparents)
• Heck
• Ticked off

I would argue against introducing any F-word variations to the kiddies, but if you’re on a roll and you need to halt yourself before the bomb drops, there’s always:

• Fudge
• Frickin’, Freakin’, Friggin’ or Flippin’ (the last "g" makes them far too formal, I think).
• Effing (but you kind of had to be planning that one)

Then there are the lengthier phrases that you’ll feel stupid saying, but may save you if you need them:

• What in the Sam Hill?
• Son of a biscuit (or biscuit-eater)
• Son of a gun

Some truly ridiculous curse word substitutions come into play as dubbed-over dialogue when movies are aired on network television.  Carlo says, "Possibly my favorite curse, after translation for TV, comes from Bruce Willis in ‘Die Hard’ where the TV version, says, ‘Yippee Ki Yeah – Kemo Sabe!’"

My all-time favorite was from a Richard Pryor movie where the same oft-used compound word was dubbed repeatedly as "melon picker." 

Did I leave anything out?  What are your toothless cuss words of choice around the little ones?  What are your favorite dubbed substitutions on TV?

Here are a few of the lessons I took away from last weekend’s camping trip:

• It’s good to be away from cell phones and e-mail for a few days.  It allows you to go out into the woods and think about…being in the woods.
• Everything cooked over a campfire is delicious.  (Well, except for the dessicated can of pork and beans that’s apparently a tradition for the group I accompanied, but nobody actually ate any of the beans.)
• The campground owner/canoe outfitter on people shouting and ‘yahoo’ing in the woods, "I’ve been to the city a few times and if I had to live there, I’d need to come out here and yell, too."
• Sleeping in a tent is more comfortable than you’d think, but going back to a bed with a real mattress and sheets afterward is heavenly.

I spend a lot of time outdoors when it’s warm out, particularly on my back deck.  From there I can watch the visitors to the bird feeder and birdbath under a big oak tree in the middle of my back yard. 

Our bird variety is a little lacking:  grackles, starlings, sparrows and the occasional cardinal or blue jay.  We have one woodpecker that doesn’t care for the bird feeder but will go for popcorn or bread.  The squirrels have found the feeder, too, and I’ve seen as many as five underneath it at once.  Sometimes a chipmunk will join in as well.

It’s fun to watch the starlings with their huge, fledgling babies.  The young ones don’t have the adults’ smooth, slightly spotted feathers yet but they’re fully as big as the parents.  They follow the older birds around squawking piteously and opening their yellow-rimmed beaks to be fed.  I’ve noticed that the parents will eat their fill first before feeding their demanding young ‘uns.

They were making themselves scarce earlier in the spring, but lately I’m seeing plenty of rabbits in the yard.  I think I’ve glimpsed one of the ginger-colored rabbits, but most are the common brown variety.  So far they haven’t discovered my lettuce garden, but I should probably step up my harvest just in case.

Our back yard is very park-like because there are no fences between the large, wide yards.  We often see foxes and woodchucks near the woods, and the raccoons and possums will come right up to the house at night.  We have to have very secure trash can lids to keep the raccoons from festooning the yard with garbage the night before trash day.

I grew up on a 13-acre lot in a more rural suburb where we’d see deer in the pasture with the horses and wild turkeys in the woods.  Even though I live closer to the city now, I’m glad to have this much wildlife to watch.   Maybe I’ll work on growing a butterfly garden next…

Today’s the last day of my three-day weekend and so far I’m having a lovely and relaxing time.

On Saturday, I finally got a haircut.  My bangs were so long that I was starting to look like Jane Ramone, the heretofore unknown female member of The Ramones.  (Have I mentioned that my hair is dark brown these days?  Well it is.)

Yesterday, my husband and I spent the afternoon at the zoo, burned through all our weekend cash eating out, and finished up the evening watching a DVD of Supersize Me.  I don’t think I’m likely to want a fast food meal again anytime soon.

I’m headed to another yoga class this morning now that my shoulders aren’t so sore anymore.  This afternoon we’re going to the military cemetary where my husband’s mother and stepfather are buried.  After that, I’ll probably head to my dad’s house to take care of an office project or two for his business.  At some point, I also need to plant the flat of impatiens I bought two weeks ago.

The rest of this week promises to be exceedingly busy, so I’m happy to have had the time to kick back and relax a bit.  If I’m very lucky, maybe I’ll even manage a nap this afternoon…

When I woke up this morning, I was greeted by some muscles that had been in hibernation until yesterday’s yoga session.  My shoulders and triceps were particularly sore.  I think all my time at the computer keyboard had been turning me into Bloggasaurus Rex, with shriveled, vestigial arms capable only of typing and shoving food into my mouth.

I’ve barely laid eyes on my husband all week long.  He’s left behind his yuppie lifestyle and gone back to being a professional drummer and studio guy.  He’s had gigs with various bands almost every night this week and a recording session or two as well.  Our sleeping schedule only overlaps by a few hours now, so he’s always asleep when I leave for work (unless he happens to still be up from the night before) and I’m almost always asleep when he gets home. 

This weekend, though, he only has one gig tonight and then he’s available to hang out with me.  We’re planning on going to the zoo on Sunday and we’ll probably see the latest Star Wars movie sometime, too.

I went to a meetup of local bloggers last night and we had a discussion of how people who grew up with the Star Wars series speak of attending the last movie as more of an obligation than a treat.  It’s as if we feel we must view the final chapter, close the book on that part of our lives and finally move on.  That’s probably not the way most moviemakers would prefer to bring in big box office numbers, but whatever works!

I’ll post on Monday, even though it’s not a workday for me (hooray!).  Okay, it might be a partial workday whether I like it or not, but at least I’ll be at home.  I hope you all have a lovely weekend, too.

I had my 6:15 to 7:45 yoga class this morning and it went better than I expected considering that I haven’t taken a class in years.  I made it through most of the poses and so far I feel pretty good and energized.  And also very hungry.

There was the whole "seeing my rolls of fat in the full-length mirror" thing to contend with, but let’s hope that problem will start to go away once I establish my new class routine (I’m shooting for twice a week to start).

All of this leaves me running behind this morning so I’ll keep this brief.  Perhaps it’s time I started writing my blog entries the night before.

Enjoy your Thursday…two more workdays before the three-day weekend that I almost completely forgot about.