smg01: (Default)
I haven't posted in forever, but I do read my flist more than daily and even comment some. I do miss the days of a swiftly moving flist and the days when I had the wherewithal to post regularly. I love twitter and tolerate facebook, but it's just not the same. Someday I'll get the posting mojo back.

In the meantime, here's a fun little vid that a friend posted on fb. The Guide to Trading Candy.
smg01: (book)
I finally got around to making one of my sporadic wordpress blog posts: Smelly Books.
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I feel like I should post something just to at least sort stay in practice. I read regularly every day, just haven't seemed to have the energy to do posts of my own. So, how about something brief and not terribly significant.

I remain intrigued by Revenge and am anxious to see how they wrap things up for the season. [livejournal.com profile] aurora_novarum: Did you catch the monte cristos reference in this week's episode? :) (if you're still watching).

It's amazing how I can go back and forth from sympathy to, uh, non-sympathy for so many characters. I'm kind of back to rooting Emily/Amanda on again after this last episode.
smg01: (Jayhawk)
Being a sports fan is not for the faint of heart. Every time my team goes into big games, I wish I didn't care so much. But winning a close game that you really have no business winning is sweet.

Survive and advance and my Jayhawks will get at least one more game.


*whew*
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No new episodes of Revenge until April?

I do not approve!
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I loved Revenge last night. Wild cards galore now. I can't wait to see what happens next. I have a bad feeling that things are not ultimately going to end well for Jack, Charlotte, or Declan.

And to say it non-spoilery: I had a feeling as things went on that the person who was killed would wind up being someone other than originally implied. And just who did do the killing, hmmm? And did "Amanda" step into further trouble by accepting that ride? Conrad's dad seemed pretty cool last week. He definitely dropped in my estimation this week.
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I made a brief reference to this on FB, but decided to mention it here too, where it's easier to go into greater detail.

So, thus far, the premise of Once Upon a Time that a curse has taken away the characters' happily ever afters and banished them to Storeybrook and said curse must be broken. Presumably, the final breaking of the curse will be the final resolution for the series.

But where will the characters be once the curse is broken once and for all? Will they go back to the land of fairy tales? Will they pursue their lives in this universe (within and beyond the confines of Storeybrook)? Will they get to choose whether to remain in Storeybrook or go back to their former lives? If, say, Snow and Charming reunite here and decide to go back to the old country, can/would Emma and Henry go with them?

This is one of the things that interests me. It seems to me that ultimately the show might be about much more than ending a curse and going back to the way things were. Maybe it will also be about the choices that characters make and how they choose to write their own destinies.

Possibly I'm over thinking. But I'm extremely interested in seeing how it shakes out.

And I'm eager to see how mysterious, new-arrival writer guy affects things.
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A Dogs New Year's Resolutions:

10. I will not lick my human's face after eating animal poop.

9. I do not need to suddenly stand straight up when I'm lying under the coffee table.

8. I will no longer be beholden to the sound of the can opener.

7. Take time from busy schedule to stop and smell the behinds.

6. Get a bite in on that freak who gives me that shot every year.

5. Grow opposable thumb; break into pantry; decide for MYSELF how much food is *too* much.

4. January 1st: Kill the sock! Must kill the sock!

3. January 2nd - December 31: Re-live victory over the sock.

2. The garbage collector is NOT stealing our stuff.

1. I will NOT chase the stick until I see it LEAVE THE IDIOT'S HAND!
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After going back and forth on it for a couple of days, I went ahead and bought a Soda Stream. With the gift card that I had, it was only about $60.00. Plus a few more dollars for a package of soda flavor.

I have to admit that it's a pretty neat little device. Very easy to use. No electricity required. None of the flavorings use High Fructose Corn Syrup which makes me happy. Even the non-diet flavors use Splenda to some degree along with sugar. I'm not super thrilled about that because I have a distrust of artificial sweeteners, but in the end it wasn't a deal breaker for me. So far, no buyer's remorse. (Actually, if I had more in the way of discretionary funds I'd consider getting one to have at the office too.)

In case anyone's interested, here's one review site that I read while I was thinking about making the purchase.
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I mentioned the other day that one of my Christmas gifts was a nice little check. Primarily it's going into a reserve fund to help in my ongoing quest to help in my quest to pay down debt. However, it's also always tempting to spend some when I have cash in hand.

1. I'm extremely tempted by the Soda Stream. There's a model available for @ $80.00 at Best Buy. Plus I have a $25.00 gift card for BB. I'm intrigued by the idea of making soda at home and buying a little less of it. But I've not tasted what the the Soda Stream makes, so I'm a little hesitant.

2. Or, I also saw the Wii at BB for @ $150.00. Plus the aforementioned gift card. I'm sorely, sorely tempted by this one. I'm feeling reluctance to break the $100.00 threshold on any "for fun" purchase these days. I would not be surprised if I can talk myself into it, though.

3. The prudent (and most boring) option, of course, is to be an adult and just bank that money. Hey, it could happen.

Being an adult with on a budget is not nearly as fun as being an adult without budget concerns would be...

ouch

Dec. 27th, 2011 03:23 pm
smg01: (panther)
One of the presents under the tree this year was a nice check from mom and dad. It's winding up being a little more immediately useful than i had hoped.

I took my car in for an oil change today. Among the things discovered when they did a once over: some belts needed tightening (expected, there was some squealing that was starting up), a leaky valve cap, and a rear strut that is beginning to fail. (The latter would explain why I was starting to feel like the car wasn't riding as smoothly as it should.) So, I get to take it back to the shop next week for the struts and a alignment.

Plus a couple of new, or newer--tires are in my near future too.

*heavy sigh*
smg01: (jackbreathe)
I took the day off, using up my use or lose it day of vacation. It was actually pretty productive. In advance of a technician coming by for scheduled maintenance on the furnace I cleaned up the top couple of layers of filth in the house. (Oh yeah, that's what the top of the coffee table looks like!). I finished up the Christmas shopping and wrapped the presents.

The above, of course, leads into Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, which should be pretty laid back time-with-the-folks kind of days.

That will lead into my annual between Christmas and New Year's time of Week of Sloth. This week is marked by planned activities such as:

-Sleeping late
-Eating food that's bad for me
-My annual rewatch of The Lord of the Rings
-Napping

(In truth, the not going into the office and the watching of LoTR is the main thing that differentiates this week from most other weeks. Still, I look forward to it every year.)
smg01: (Default)
I frequently have to remind myself that I have a Dreamwidth account. However, as things continue to evolve I can see the possibility of activity increasing there. If you're friended here and want to friend me there, my DW user name is smg01.
smg01: (Default)
I may or may not have told the story about how Tom has trained--and trained well--two of the women that we see regularly on our respective dog walks to give him a treat whenever we meet. You should see how guilty they feel if they don't have something to give him. He goes into a very nice sit and looks up winningly at them. Sometimes he gives barks of encouragement if they're not quick enough to get the treat out.

Last night I picked him up at daycare. I came in at the same time as another client while a third client was already checking out. The person that came in at the same time as me had a covered tray of treats that she was bringing for the staff. Tom was the first to be released from behind the counter. Other woman was immediately taken with his looks. Tom was immediately taken with the smell of brownies and went into his very best sit in front of her. I explained to him that no matter how pretty of a sit he did, he wasn't going to get any brownies out of it. Other woman held for maybe 15 seconds before reaching to the counter for a little baggie of complimentary dog treats and feeding them to him one by one. I was explaining his skill at staring people down until he gets food and was amused to see one of staff people nodding along.

You'd think he never gets any food at home. Poor starving puppy. ;)
smg01: (book)
I had some really great teachers in school. Last night I was remembering a story about my high school Shakespeare teacher. Mrs. Fambrough was short, a little stocky. Tended to wear semi-dramatic jewelry. A classmate once mentioned how you would look at her outfits and think that they shouldn't work, but somehow they did and they looked fantastic. She had kind of a flat, nasal voice. A sly sense of humor. And complete control of a class.

One day, as we were doing Henry IV, part one, she related this story. It'll be obvious fairly quickly, at least in part, where it's going to go, but I don't think it suffers for.

She described the day a number of years previous that she was teaching a freshman class. They were in either new or temporary classrooms--I can't remember the exact circumstances, but the upshot was that there were no clocks in the rooms. (I bet you can guess where this might be going.)

On that day, she gave a rousing lesson on subject-verb agreement. At the end, she asked if anyone had questions. One boy's hand immediately shot up:

"Yes?"

"What time is it?"

Mrs. Fambrough shook her head and then told us what happened next:

"So I fixed him with my Fambrough eye and I said:

What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the
day? Unless hours were cups of sack and minutes
capons and clocks the tongues of bawds and dials the
signs of leaping-houses and the blessed sun himself
a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta, I see no
reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand
the time of the day."

"Nobody ever asked me what time it was again."

She went on: "He probably went home that night and said that his teacher didn't let people ask questions. The truth is, we love questions. It's just stupid questions that we don't like."

It's been well over twenty years and that story still makes me smile. Mrs. Fambrough was a hell of a teacher.
smg01: (Default)
If The Closer people wanted to do a spinoff about Brenda's attorney, I would totally watch that.

Also, a friend and I were debating yesterday whether Taylor or Pope is the leak. We think it's one of those two. I suppose it could be one of Brenda's team since they all seem to have heard from Taylor the news that Raydor planted, but I don't want to believe that.

oops

Nov. 21st, 2011 03:35 pm
smg01: (book)
Quite some time ago, when the local Border's was closing down, I picked up--among other things--a copy of The Hunger Games. There are two approaches one can take with a series: 1) Buy all of the books so you can seamlessly go from one to the next, or 2) Buy the first, see if you like it and go from there. This time I went with option 2.

I finally got around to reading The Hunger Games past week. It took me approximately three pages to be completely hooked. By the one quarter point, I was realizing I should have gone ahead and gotten all three books. On Sunday, when I found book three but had to have book two ordered for me, the failure to buy all three at once took on the look of strategic error.

I flirted with the idea of slowing down my reading to try to stretch out HG until I have a copy of Catching Fire. Since I'm not constitutionally capable voluntarily leaving off a book that I've become invested in, that was a no go from the start. So here I sit, waiting for CF to arrive later this week and reminding myself that I don't want to read Mockingjay out of order.

I'm such an instant gratification person when it comes to books.

By the way, I wasn't sure if I was going to like Hunger Games. The plot description didn't quite seem like my kind of thing. But so many people that I trust loved it that I gave it a try. I thought it was utterly engrossing and I can't wait to find out what happens next.
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This week at genially meandering I wax rhapsodic about Diana Wynn Jones.

In other news, I'm still enjoying Revenge. New twists come fast and furious every week. I don't know if that's going to become tiresome eventually, but for now I'm enjoying the ride. It looks like Miss Emily/Amanda is about to have an awful lot of balls in air to juggle. And I have a feeling there's still more to the story regarding Tyler.

Also, two episodes in, I continue to be intrigued by Once Upon a Time. It's another one that I'm curious as to how long term a series it can be, but for now I'll enjoy this ride too. It occurred to me that in some ways it's a flip side to Revenge when it comes to, well, revenge. In Revenge you more or less root for the avenger. OUat seems to me to paint a darker, more outwardly sinister side of revenge. (I do leave open the possibility of the Queen turning into a sympathetic character. Though overcoming the events regarding her father is a pretty big hurdle to that I think.)
smg01: (Default)
1. I've been working on a blog post about my phone fear (among other things), but it seemed a little early expose my neuroses like that. Instead I posted something about life with a finnish spitz

2.Revenge continues to intrigue.


speculation )

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