Michael: [Long ramble about Giant Eagle and gift cards and the gasoline discount.] But you don’t really care.
Michelle: I care deeply. Just not about whatever the hell it is you’re going on about.

Yeah. I need more chocolate in my diet.

I have to admit that I secretly take great enjoyment from the subjects of some spam messages.

I mean, how can you not wonder what “Girlfriend Plagarism” is?

Been talking about “The Wild Wild West” recently. Last night at dinner with Gina and Erin, and today with Kim.

Gina was saying last night that she wanted to borrow by DVDs when we were done, because she and her husband were debating how old Robert Conrad was during “The Wild Wild West”. Gina thought he was much older–because she watched the show as a child. (She’s wrong, he wasn’t very old at all. See here; be sure to click on the Robert Conrad link.)

Now, in case you haven’t seen it, the first season is in black and white. The remaining three seasons were in color. Today as I was talking about this with Kim, I realized that I think I only ever saw the show in black and white–my parents didn’t get a color TV until 1980, and I don’t remember if I saw the show after we got our new TV.

This is also why, as a child, I wondered why Mister Rogers had a closet full of gray sweaters.

And here you go Gina, is this old?
(more…)

Saturday evening we left the hospital for awhile so my grandmother could eat in peace, and we could find dinner. Driving around, things went pretty much like this:

Michelle: Where are we going?
Brian: There’s a red light ahead.
Michelle: Look out for that car over there!
Brian: Isn’t the way back to Grandmom’s in the opposite direction?
Michelle: Where are we going? I’m hungry! That car up there is stopped!
Brian: The light changed.
Michelle: Green light means GO!
Dad: What did I do to deserve all this abuse?
Michelle: You got into a car with both your kids?

Just got back from Baltimore. My grandmother is still in this hospital, but will hopefully be discharged tomorrow. She has ulcerative colitis (the name is on a piece of paper in one of the bags I brought home, so I won’t guarantee I have it correct.) Short of it is that her colon is inflamed.

We were all highly amused by the following conversation.

Grandmom: They’re giving me some medicine for the colon.
Dad: Do you remember what it is?
Grandmom: It starts with an “A” I think it’s something like “a-s-s-o”
Everyone: You think your colon medication is called “asso”?!

Mind you, my family is such that we kept closing the door to her room, so we wouldn’t disturb the other patients with our noise and laughing.

Ah, West Virginia has the BEST criminals.

A West Virginia man claiming he was Osama Bin Laden led police on a high-speed chase before he ultimately crashed into other vehicles, police said.

The terrorist act of choice for Tena Bergeno, 26, of Charleston, W.Va., was threatening by drink blender

You just have to love the phrase, “allegedly brandished a blender.”

(via S)

Here’s a five minute slice of my evening.

I’m sitting trying to relax, when the land line rings. It’s my brother, looking for updates on my grandmother. While I’m talking to him, my cell phone rings. I manage to wrest it out of my pocket and toss it to Michael. It’s my aunt calling from the hospital to give us the updates on my grandmother. Then Michael’s cell phone rings. I find it and pitch it to Michael. It’s his mother. Michael gives me back me my cell phone (my aunt) and I hang up the land line (my brother). Almost immediately, the phone in my grandmother’s room rings, and as my grandmother is out of the room (ahem), my aunt has to answer it. It’s my brother.

I’m doing the Wellness Programs “Pedometer Challenge.”

We’re supposed to keep track of how many steps we take per day, and everyone who completes the challenge gets put in a drawing for a gift certificate.

The goal is to get between 5000 and 10,000 steps a day, which sounds like a lot, but really isn’t.

I can tell that today has been rough, but the fact that I already have 10,649 steps and it’s not even noon.

I really do hate talking on the phone. So that must be why I’ve been on one phone or another since we got home from work.

But we were talking about (and to) my grandmother, so it wasn’t bad. Especially since she’s feeling better today.

What I don’t understand, however, is how I call my parents to give them the latest updates on my grandmother, and end up trying to explain to my father how to check the voice mail on his cell phone.

Of all the technical support I’ve provided, I have to say that qualifies as an all time low. Of course, I did get to imagine my father with a phone to each ear, listening to the voice mail prompts and me at the same time.

“What should I choose?”
“What are your choices?”
“Call voice mail.”
“Choose that one.”

And people wonder why I hate to talk on the phone.

Came home with the intention of reading and relaxing.

We had a total failure on that front, as we came home to a message that my grandmother was being put in the hospital.

Now I have to admit that in the grand scheme of things, it could be worse. Most likely she has some sort of food poisoning that she can’t kick. (We won’t discuss the fact that it took her a week to tell anyone about this. No, we won’t.) So she actually feels pretty good, but she’s lost significant weight, and she’s dehydrated.

But hopefully they’ll be able to give her something to knock out whatever bugs are attacking, so she can get back home, because the hospital simply isn’t restful.

And speaking of restful, this seems like a good time to watch another episode of “The Wild Wild West”, so I’m off.

It’s the first day of classes!

Gridlock everywhere! Woo! Woo!

Which reminds me…

Last Thursday we went to Target because I foolishly thought we’d get one last shopping excursion before things got busy.

Silly me.

It pretty much looked like locusts had descended upon the store.

The highlight was going by two women speaking EXTREMELY LOUDLY. They were pretty much YELLING EVERYTHING THEY SAID, so I could hear most of their conversation–despite the fact that we were moving to another part of the story as quickly as possible. Most of it was along the lines of:

First Woman: “I REALLY MISS NEW JERSEY!”
Second Woman: “ME TOO! IT’S SO BEAUTIFUL THERE!”
First Woman: “I JUST CAN’T GET COMFORTABLE HERE!”

And so on and so forth.

I resisted the urge to walk over and say, “If you miss it so much, then why don’t you go back, because I swear y’all from New Jersey can’t drive for shit.”

Please note, I don’t generally mind the people from New Jersey (with the exception of loud and obnoxious women dissing my home). I mind the fact that cars from New Jersey contain the rudest and most obnoxious drivers in town.

Just a note, S has expanded into food pr0n on her weblog! Check it out!

Unlike last summer, there have been very few movies this summer that I’ve been interested in seeing. (With the notable exceptions of X-Men 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean, both of which I found… okay.)

So how come when there is finally a movie I want to see, it’s not showing in Morgantown?

We still haven’t decided about “A Scanner Darkly” but that is already at the Warner, which is not the best place to watch a movie.

I’m still undecided about “Invincible”. Not only am I not sure I can sit through two(?) hours of seventies hair and clothing (shudder) but I’d have to find someone to go with, because I really can’t see Michael being at all interested in a football movie.

And we’ll just have to see if “Fearless” is an option. I’d think it would be, but then I thought the same about “The Illusionist”.

ADDENDUM the First:
Let me clarify a bit why I’m frustrated. We now have three theaters. One small, old, three screen theater, and two mega-plexes, each with 12 screens (at least I think it’s 12).

BOTH of the mega-plexes are showing:
“Accepted”
“Barnyard”
“Material Girls”
“Pulse”
“Snakes on a Plane” (two screens in each theater)
“Step Up”
“Talladega Nights” (two screens in one theater)
“The Descent”
“World Trade Center”
“Zoom”

So there is complete overlap on ten screens (eleven if you count Snakes on a Place twice)

No one is showing “Little Miss Sunshine”, “Factotum”, or “The Illusionist”–all three of which are positively rated on Rotten Tomatoes, while “Step Up”, “Barnyard”, “Material Girls”, and “Pulse” all are rated under 25%.

And that’s why I’m bitter.

I want this.

I’ve already tried to beat Michael with the clue stick. We’ll see if it takes.

The Little Country (1991) Charles de Lint

Yesterday I must have picked up half a dozen book, read the first couple of paragraphs, and then put them back down with the thought, “this isn’t what I’m in the mood for.”

Read More about The Little Country

I’m one of those people who loves to watch and read things I love, over and over.

I’ve read The Hobbit more times than I can count, and the same goes for The Complete Sherlock Holmes

But I’m even worse about movies and TV episodes. I can recite most of the dialog from The Princess Bride and Lost Boys. Watching something that is guaranteed to make me laugh is comforting–and also guaranteed only to take a set period of time. It used to be that my default TV episodes for those times were DS9: “Looking for Par’Mach in All the Wrong Places“, and “The Magnificent Ferengi“. (I think Armin Shimerman is underrated.)

However, after we discovered Firefly, I’ve hardly looked back. And the more times we watch, the more Jayne becomes my favorite character, thanks to Adam Baldwin. Yes, a lot of it does have to do with great writing, but still. I watch “Our Mrs Reynolds” and almost every line Jayne speaks has me laughing out loud. I mean really, “This is my very favorite gun.” You read that and it doesnt seem all that funny. But when we watch it, I cackle.

Every time.

And every time we watch it, it still boggles my mind that this show got cancelled.

Anyway. I’m still trying to convert others into Firefly fans. Not because I think they’ll ever make another show (and after Serenity, it just wouldn’t be the same anyway) but because it makes me happy.

And everyone needs more happy in their lives.

ADDENDUM the First:
“Quaint!”

Staying Dead (2005) Laura Anne Gilman
A Retrievers Novel

I found this book disappointing.

I’ve come to expect a lot from books published by Luna, so it’s almost a shock for me to read one of their books that I don’t absolutely love. And the thing is I really should have loved this book.

Read More about Staying Dead

Seventy-Seven Clocks (2005) Christopher Fowler
A Bryant and May Mystery

I picked this up at The Bookshelf’s Clarence sale. The name intrigued me, and the back cover sounded interesting, although I wasn’t quite sure what London’s Peculiar Crimes unit was, other than something that sounded fascinating.

Read More about Seventy-Seven Clocks

It’s always tempting to say something like, “the worst thing about getting sick is…”

Except that if I stop and really think about it, everything about getting sick is the worst.

So perhaps it would be better to say that the most disconcerting thing about being sick is how it brings on a minor bout of depression.

By late yesterday afternoon, I was convinced that I has screwed up everything in my life: that I had no friends, and that I should just close down my website, never attempt to write another word, etc.

Then my back started to ache and I felt the need to curl up under a quilt to get warm, and I realized that I had a fever.

It was a relief to know that taking a pain killer and curling up with a good book to ignore the voices in my head would alleviate the worst of it.

And today, beside the lingering aches, I’m feeling worlds better; ready to get out and do all the things I thought I was incapable of yesterday.

However, part of me is still considering the things my brain came up with yesterday, and wondering whether there is a grain of truth in them. Whether the feelings we get at times like that are a reality check of sorts.

Okay, is it just me, or is something not quite right here?

The US Department of Homeland Security has urged Windows users to install the latest patches from Microsoft as quickly as possible.

I can’t decide is this is a good thing or a bad thing, that Homeland Security is warning us about Windows.

Wolf Moon (1988) Charles de Lint

Wolf Moon is one of Charles de Lint’s earlier books. It’s quite short–only 245 pages. In tone, it reminds me very much of The Harp of the Grey Rose. A fantasy world that similar to, but not quite the same as, ours.

Read More about Wolf Moon

The Red Tent (1997) Anita Diamant

A co-worker who also loves to read loaned me this book. She said she enjoyed it, and thought I might as well. Of course my problem was that my “to read” list is pretty much ridiculous, so I had to force myself to put aside some of the lighter reading I’ve been doing, so that I wouldn’t keep this book forever.

Read More about The Red Tent

We finished the 5th season of Babylon 5 today. Michael and I agreed that we feel let down. Someone suggested watching through Season 4 and stopping, and I’m not sure I disagree too much, except maybe I’d say watch through Season 4 except the last episode of season 4, and then watch the final episode of season 5.

Erin said that after time when she went back to watch some of the Season 5 episodes she thought they were pretty good, but as a whole, I found it disappointing. And the final episode probably reinforced that, because Ivanova was back, and it reminded me how much I’d missed her character throughout season 5.

So, to make up for our feeling of mild disappointment, we watched the pilot for Wild Wild West.

I have to admit that I was a little bit worried. I absolutely adored this show as a kid, and I was afraid that it might not live up to my memories of it.

Amazingly, it was just as I remembered it. Although I have to admit that I think that Artemus was less cool in the pilot than I remember him being (he was my favorite character on the show). But this was the pilot, and they were still working things out.

If you–like Michael–somehow managed to have never seen Wild Wild West–I highly recommend it. If you remember loving the show years ago, I highly recommend checking out the DVDs. They seem to have done an excellent job cleaning up the film (I didn’t realize this until we watched the promo for the show–that was as grainy and blurry as I remember the show being when we saw the re-runs) I won’t know if the video quality of the rest of the episodes is as high, but I’m really hoping it is.

Because this show really is a lot of fun to watch.

erl-king
noun (in Germanic mythology) a bearded giant or goblin believed to lure little children to the land of death.
—origin late 18th cent.: from German Erlkönig ‘alder-king’, a mistranslation of Danish ellerkonge ‘king of the elves’.

I was highly amused by this week’s e-mail from US News and World Report.

This is not a real ad indeed!