Posts Tagged ‘having to do with television’

Back at it

Monday, July 11th, 2011

Well, I’m back from the vacation I’ve been on since June 30th.  Before going on vacation, if anyone asked me what I was going to do while on my break, my answer was simple:  “Sleep!”  Today was the first time in the last 10 days that I was awake before 8:00.  It turns out, when left to my own devices, I will sleep between 9-10 hours a night and be *really* happy doing it.  It’s a far cry from the 6 or so that I get on a regular basis while working.

It was a fantastic vacation.  I got to see my friends Becky and Julie a couple times – once at our place for cards and dinner on the 4th and again later in the week for pina coladas on the beach after Julie’s successful job interview.  We saw a bunch more of our friends on Friday at a going-away party for a friend who is moving to DC for work.  We spent a day by ourselves on the beach, enjoying some impressively high waves for this part of the coast, reading in the shade of our umbrellas, and getting sunburned. 

And the rest of the week was spent relaxing and not feeling pressured to do anything, which meant that I made it through 3½ seasons of Heroes.  I’m really enjoying season 4 more than I expected, even though the “Oooooh, AWKWARD!!” is happening a lot.  As well as the “No, no, no!  Don’t do that, stupid!”  I’d already watched up through most of season 3 so that was mostly review, but still really fun to see again.

So, my sunburn has faded (which is great because the burn on the front of my legs was really annoying) and my alarm rang this morning at 5:15 to get me out of bed, and I had coffee for the first time in a week and a half.  The office was quiet this morning and I’m not sure if anyone really knows what we’re supposed to be working on, but we’re at least physically present, coffee cups in hand, sharing stories about what we’ve done with the last several days.  Mine doesn’t take long:  “Slept, watched too much TV, went to the beach, spent time with friends.  It was great!”

A couple more days would have been fantastic.

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Shiny!

Monday, June 6th, 2011

I know I’ve been terribly remiss about updating lately but I’ve been distracted.  I heard an acronym the other day that fits it perfectly.  ADOS:  Attention Deficit OH SHINY!

 Justin and I determined that we don’t really watch TV.  So what was the point in paying for it to be delivered to our house?  Justin did a bunch of work chatting with our cable provider and for an additional $5/month, removed about $70 from our monthly bill, cleared space in our media cabinets by taking out the cable boxes, and removed live TV from our lives entirely.

Yay!

We then turned around and put some of that money into Hulu Plus, which will satisfy most of our television wants, along with the websites for those actual shows.  So, TV?  Fixed.

Then we went and ended our relationship with Verizon and started new terms with Sprint.  So far, it’s been a rocky relationship.  I haven’t been able to get access to the information I want on their website and their customer service has been *really* annoying.

On the other hand, I spent my whole weekend playing around with my very shiny new smart phone.  It’s an LG Optiumus S.  It’s purple.  It has things on there that tell me the weather and what movies are showing nearby and where to find cheap gas and MY CALENDAR and my to do list (though that one’s still a work in progress) and oh, my gosh, it’s SO AWESOME.  *cue the kid at the end of The Incredibles movie there*

Unfortunately, it turns out we don’t actually have cell service at our house.  So we’re looking at what we can do about that because phones that don’t actually work, while they’re very pretty, are kind of pointless.  And, since there’s no service, I haven’t set up my voicemail yet, so if you call and get a weird answer, that’d be why.

But it was fun and terribly distracting sitting there with my brand new phone going “Oh!  What does THAT do?!”  Plus, I couldn’t get my contacts list to transfer over so I had to do that all by hand.  The bonus there is that my whole physical address book just became obsolete because it’s all stored electronically now.

Oh!  Our phone numbers stayed the same, by the way.  So you don’t have to worry about that.

And my podcasts upload automatically!  I have so many stories to listen to now!!

Anyway, it’s my first Android phone, so I’m still stumbling my way though stuff.  If any of you more experienced users have any advice, I’d love to hear it.

We went to see the new X-Man movie over the weekend, too!  It was very good.  I enjoyed it a whole lot.  You have to ignore some continuity problems, if you’re the kind of person who notices that type of thing, but I thought it was a lot of fun.  It made me gasp in surprise and alarm and made me really sad in some spots and made me laugh at points and I thought it was an entirely enjoyable experience.

A very happy belated birthday to Amy and Isaac and belated happy anniversary to Mom and Dad!  I’m sorry I didn’t call any of you (or you, Erica, for our regular chat) but I figured you’d mostly be busy, plus, like I said, no cell service.  But I hope you all had a delightful day!!

Edited to add:  I just wanted to say how tickled I am right now about how my phone has improved my outlook for this afternoon.  This morning, while getting ready for work, I checked the weather on my phone.  And it told me that it would rain this afternoon.  So I brought my umbrella into the office, even though there were clear blue skies.  It’s been thundering for the last 30 minutes (I can’t see outside to know what else is happening) and I am SO HAPPY that I have my big umbrella for what sounds like a wet walk out to my car.

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Football vs Jane Austin

Tuesday, February 8th, 2011

On my way to work this morning, I caught part of a conversation between two DJs, both guys, on this station that plays fun music now and then, but predominately seems to be about sports.  They were doing a poll about how many people actually didn’t watch the Super Bowl, since it apparently was the most watched single program ever or something (111 million viewers).  And one of the emails they got said that the sender of the email did watch the game but a coworker of his didn’t watch because he was “enjoying a glass of white zinfandel and watching Jane Austin’s Emma.”

And the DJs thought that this was the most ridiculous thing ever.  “Watching what?” one asked.  “Well, Jane Austin is a writer, so I guess Emma was one of her books that they made into a movie?”  And then they made comments about how he must have been sitting in his mom’s basement doing this and so presumptuous with his “white zinfandel” and how he’s not the sort of man that either one of them would ever hang out with.

And I don’t know about you, but I figure that if a man has that much refined taste, there’s a strong chance that he was actually watching this movie snuggled up with his beautiful wife.  And there’s also a big chance that he “got lucky” before the end of the evening.  I mean, really!  It’s Jane Austin!  I can’t be the only girl who gets lovey-dovey after Jane Austin’s stories.

Anyway, by my figures, a guy who’ll watch a chic flic and, presumably, enjoy time with his wife, comes out ahead of the guy who talks down on that sort of thing.  But I guess it might just be my crazy female logic.

We didn’t watch the game.  Justin played video games and I curled up in the chair beside him reading a book.  Not one of Jane Austin’s – it’s by Jim Butcher.  But I still think it was a very enjoyable way to spend the evening.

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On barium and pancakes

Monday, January 24th, 2011

Friday morning, Justin and I drove to the hospital on Hilton Head, where we sat in the waiting room for, I don’t know, 45 minutes?  And then they took Justin away to make him drink a barium smoothie and barium smothered crackers and other barium flavored things for about 15 minutes, if that long, before telling him that there’s nothing wrong with his swallowing, so whatever the problem he’s having, it’s not because of that.

Wohoo.  What a way to spend a morning.

So we went back home and he went to bed because poisonous heavy metals and chemicals to which he’s allergic do not a happy husband make.  While he slept, I went shopping at thrift stores to find a bowl to replace the one I dropped Thursday afternoon.  That was the second such bowl I’ve destroyed at work and I’ve determined that if I’m going to go through them at this rate, then I’m going to stop paying any more than $1 for them.  I tried on some clothes while I was there, and then stopped trying on clothes and stuck to house wares because new clothes are so overrated.  And three hours, a delightful conversation with my sister, and $1.07 later, I’ve got a “brand new” bowl to take to work, microwave oatmeal in for a couple months, and then accidentally drop somewhere in the building.

Saturday was much more sedate, with a lot of sitting around and watching TV and poking at computers and letting Justin rest.  I did some organizing projects that I’d been meeting to get around to doing and watched too much “Ghost Whisperer” just because it was on TV.  And I got most of our movies inventoried on to the iTrackMine website. (Useful website, by the way, if a bit time extensive without a barcode scanner.)

Sunday, Justin was supposed to run the computer at church, but he woke up freezing with a fever and shaking, so I called the worship pastor and we both agreed that Justin should just stay in bed; so I tucked him back in, with a couple extra blankets and an electric hot pad and let him sleep away the morning, while I finished inventorying the movies and video games and tidied the house and organized the closet in my office a little better and started a loaf of bread in the bread maker and basically just puttered around the house for hours.  (Run-on sentence!)

Later in the afternoon, after Justin was up and showered and everything, a friend of ours stopped by to play card games and hang out.  It was so much fun!  The last time (which was also the first time), we met somewhere in town and ate dinner together and chatted, but it just wasn’t comfortable.  This time was so much better.  We laughed, we played card games, we introduced her to “Wonderfalls,” we played Wii games, and we watched Justin make pancakes for dinner.  It was great!

I enjoy so much having people over to the house.  Making friends and cooking them food and hanging out, relaxing and laughing.  It’s wonderful!

Today, Justin’s still not feeling tip-top, but he hasn’t been tip-top for months and months, so we’re used to this.  Hopefully we’ll hear back from his doctors soon to figure out what to do next.  Meanwhile, I’ve got a lot to accomplish at work because I’m going to be out of the office part or all of the day on Wednesday and all day Thursday because Mom and Dad are going to be here (YEA!!) and there’s a lot to do before then.

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Happy Birthday, Nathan!

Tuesday, November 9th, 2010

Another short post.  Yesterday, I just really didn’t feel like talking to anyone.  And I was going to log on and just say “I don’t feel like talking” but I couldn’t even type it.

Today, I had low-level anxiety about everything and nothing at all and it was so frustrating because it made no sense.  I made it until 4:00 and then the headache that had lingered all day started pounding and I went home and curled up in bed for a couple hours.

But I felt better after my nap and I finished the bizarre movie I started yesterday (Ink – it was actually quite good, but definitely bizarre (and the first few words are the F-bomb shouted really loud, so that was surprising, but it wasn’t a recurring thing)), ate dinner with Justin, watched NCIS, and had a really wonderful conversation with Nathan when I called to wish him a happy birthday.  And I made a surprisingly yummy dessert.

So apparently food pictures are the theme lately, but I didn’t take any photos.  I’ll tell you all about it through, and then I’m going to bed.

I took 2 apples, pealed, cored, and sliced (thin slices that I cut in half again) and two little 2-cup Pyrex bowls.  And then I followed the Apple Pie by Grandma Ople recipe from AllRecipes.com, cut down for 2 apples.  So I melted 2 tablespoons of sweet, unsalted butter in a pan, added 2 1/2 tablespoons of flour to that to make a paste, and then added 1 tablespoon of water, 2 tablespoons of white sugar, 2 packed tablespoons of brown sugar, and a dash of cinnamon and nutmeg.  I brought it to a boil, and then let it simmer while I took a package of Pillsbury crescent rolls and put them in the Pyrex bowls so the wide side of the triangle was at the bottom and the thin points folded over the side of the bowl like a flower.   I then put the apples in the crusts and, while the recipe says to pour the melted sugar mix over the lattice of the crust, I wasn’t sure that would work for rolls, so I spooned it right onto the apples and folded the crust over top.

The rolls say to cook them for, I think, 15 minutes at 350, so when I checked them at that time, the top of the pie-puffs were nice and brown, but I could see that the parts in the bowl were still not cooked.  So I put foil over the tops and let them cook for probably another 15 minutes.  I forget how long it was.  I just kept looking until the rolls inside the bowls were nice golden brown — putting the foil on top was definitely a good idea because they wouldn’t have gotten much too dark otherwise.  I took them out, gave them a poke to make sure the apples were done, and let them cool.  They were totally cool by the time we were ready to eat them, but a quick nuke took care of that.  We actually cut one in half, put the halves in bowls with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream, and ate it that way, just because we weren’t sure if the roll was going to work.  Also, because they’re huge.  (Still, can you guess who’s not on her diet?)

It was surprisingly good!  And not terribly difficult to put together.  I was surprised about melting the ingredients together on the stove, but it was really, really good.  I used my Pampered Chef spatula that resists heat and it worked excellently for that.  The Pyrex bowls were the prefect size, and obviously oven safe.  And while it just didn’t seem like crescent rolls were going to be the right choice for the crusts, they worked out really well.

So there you go!

Happy birthday, Nathan!

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