Christmas!

Ten Things Christmas Would Be Better Off Without

There's really nothing to add.  I love holiday anger.

Dexter

bk got a new phone and he takes it everywhere.   The other night he went off to (in his words), "Release the Kraken!" and decided to use his phone to capture Dexter's bathroom behavior of breaking into the room and lavishly adoring whoever is sitting on the toilet.   I mean, he was going to be in there anyway. 

So the first two minutes of the video are aimed down towards the door, then bk apparently got bored of waiting for Dexter so he put the phone on the floor.   Then there's a lot of beeping and pinging electronic tones and about 3 and a half minutes into the video you see a handheld game come into the frame and bk whispers, "Look!  Yahtzee!"

Can your boyfriend do that?

p.s.  Dexter thinks it's a fountain.

Is It Me?

Am I the only one who looks at this and thinks, Really?  Another one?  Good christ that ship has sailed.

Cold

It was so cold today that when I ran out for an errand I came home and my face was so red and splotchy and scratched it look like I fell off of my bicycle.

Driving

I've never done much of it nor do I care to.   But I have loved this song since I heard it and -- like many songs -- the lyrics freak me out when I stop to think and I hope ... gee, she's okay, right?

Anyway, the sound is amazing.  And then you realize how much you missed.   As you would, of course. 

Next, I Gained 1000 Pounds!

Really.   A thousand pounds.

I gain it, I lose it, I gain back more.   (I'm not talking about a cumulative gain, I'm talking a total.)

I'm so fat that when I put on my big pajamas on Saturday night I took them right back off because they were too tight.  FAT.

I know that's not really enlightening in terms of what's been going on in my life but, to make a really bad pun, it's a heavy burden to carry around and it's all I can think of some days.  It makes bk insane.

I have an incredible battle ahead of me, but I'm going to make the attempt.   Dying of a heart attack at 52 is not in my future.

Let's Start With My Car!

I bought a car in June! 

OK, well, it's not a great car, but it's fine.  It's not luxurious or fast, but it wasn't expensive and it gets pretty good gas mileage. And it's cute. I get in it and just kind of floor it like it's some kind of golf cart and there's no kind of accelerating -- she's a goer.  

She's also small.   Probably another reason to lose weight (let's not go there right now) is just so that when people see me get out they don't think, huh, didn't see that coming.

Long Time Away

Wow, I've been away a long time.   I don't really have an excuse except I've been busy being lazy.

I've gained a thousand pounds.

I sold a house.   I bought a house. 

I bought a new car.


I've started my Christmas shopping.

I'm still working there.

I need to make some changes, but I think I'm just about ready.   More soon.

I'm Totally Bonding with Chris, the Cleaning Guy

And you know what he just told me?  

"Putting in hours like that?   No offense, but that's no way to live."

Exquisitely Funny Shorts -- Make Me Stop!

I busted a gut watching this one.    I may even change my blog template so you can watch all six minutes of it and see the whole thing on the screen.

(I promise this is the last one, assuming of course that I can't find links to the other nominees.  Actually, I found a link to The Lady and the Reaper, which is very good and very funny, just not as funny as this one.)

Shorts

My current obsession with short films started with this link to La Maison en Petit Cubes , last year's Oscar winner for best animated short film.   La Maison has a really familiar feel to it (NPR pointed out the opening sequence's similarity to Up, while my first impression was Babe).   But it's original as well.   Very pretty music.  Save it for when you have 12 minutes to spare. 

Then I was trying to find the Oscar nominees this year so I could at least feel like I have some skin in the game.   No luck, however, I did come across this video contest.

These links are from a contest called The Story Beyond the Still.   The first one starts out like a Hallmark card, and then not so much.   Each director took a different chapter of the same story but the second chapter is much darker than the first.   It's as if someone tried to make a continuous narrative from the Mysteries of Harris Burdick.


Chapter 1: The Cabbie from Vincent Laforet on Vimeo.



Job Security from Runner Runner on Vimeo.

Poor Madame LaFarge

I'm crushed that basiljaz cannot enjoy this show so I thought I would share just a small bit of it that I found on YouTube. A full episode only runs 21 minutes so you can watch this multiple times to get a feel for the show.

Kindle

My mom got me a ring for Christmas and when I opened it I took one look and said, "No." My mom goes for the unusual in gifts and occasionally she hits a home run (she once got me a 60-lb copy of Frank Lloyd Wright's The Boulder).

(Picture courtesy of Brewbooks flickr page.)

This ring, however, was definitely a strike but I thought, well, I'll wear it around her. Then I saw there was a price tag on it and I said, "Oh, no," (because you can't just not wear something when you know how much it cost). So I had to tell her and send it back and explain, hey, give this to her that wants it. She was very chagrined that she'd left the tag on there and that I didn't like it, but you can't win them all.

She called me on my birthday this year (which we all know comes just after Christmas) and asked if I had gotten her package yet. I said, "Ooooh, a package, what is it, I can't wait!?" She said, "Well, I can't tell you. You have to open it to see." And she was smug, you could hear, this one was going over the wall.



So we chatted, she asked if I had anything planned for my birthday. I told her, well, I was just sitting here working from home and then BAM, I remembered. "Oh, bk got me a Kindle. Do you know what that is?" and she said, Hmmm, yes. I started telling her how totally awesome a device it is. And she was quiet and I asked, "Well, I'm really excited about my package. No hints?" And she said, "It's a Kindle." I said, "What?"

"I got you a Kindle."

I could hear in her voice how disappointed she was so I started saying, "Well, I'm sorry bk stole your thunder but it's a really thoughtful gift. I have wanted one forever and I got so excited that I got online last night and started downloading free books and I ordered a cover for it... (blah blah blah)"

And she hesitated and said, "Did you get your sister's package yet?"

Funniest Thing On TV

OK, apparently this was on during the Superbowl, but I admit I did a lot of fast-forwarding and didn't see it until the middle of Lost the other night.

It's better than Modern Family (which, if you're not watching that, get thee to Hulu, watch some episodes online and it will be your new favorite show).

Sgt. Joe Montgomery

I was so impressed by the profile that I recommended in my last post that when the subject of it recommended another article by the same author I was happy to look it up and read it.

It's a really moving tribute to the men and women who bring home fallen soldiers from the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If you can read it without crying, you are made of stone.

The Things That Carried Him, by Chris Jones (Click this link)

Catching Up With the Interwebs

I sometimes feel like it is impossible for me to catch up with the internet. I have no idea where people find the time to blog, and cook italian, and make babies, and watch reality tv.

One of the things I found some time back was the Roget Ebert blog. I know I've mentioned this before, but I love Ebert's blog because he's so enthusiastic and has a wonderful wealth of experiences that he treasures and loves to share with people.

Of the entries he's blogged, my favorites are The Pot, his review of Ben Stein's terrible movie (I have a link, but there are so many comments it takes forever to load -- well worth it), and a very recent post about walking in London. They're all charming in their own way. He can be wordy at times, but you can forgive that for all his enthusiasm.

I came across an article today that is a profile of Ebert and -- although I knew he had some significant health issues (he doesn't shy from that in his blog) -- I guess I had come to mistake the vigor of his posts for the vigor of his body.

I liked it. It makes me sad, but it also made me a little bit proud to be a human, to know that there are kind and interesting people out there much deeper than me.

NASA is Older than Me

It celebrated this birthday in 2008.

AutoTune

AutoTune is the new thing that gets on my last nerve.

I mean, I find it unnerving how many young singers are incredibly attractive and are such great dancers and … HEY! Isn’t that AutoTune? Can you sing live?

I was just listening to a great song I used to really like called “Extraordinary” which appears to be about how this guy never notices this plain jane (singer) girl when she’s secretly awesome and with my headphones on I suddenly noticed how it is so excessively and obviously auto-tuned to within an inch of its ironic life.

(Heavy sigh.)

p.s. Oh, yeah, and for good or ill, the blogging is back. I’ll try to make it more grammatically coherent next time. With pictures.