I See What You Meme

I will admit that I have been distracted. It has been WAY too long since I've blogged and the writing aspect of my life has been swept under the rug, placed on the back burner, pushed to the side, and every other procrastinatory metaphor you might imagine.    Procrastinatory. I thought I had just made that up but apparently some online dictionaries actually recognize it. Who knew? It's not that I haven't thought about writing. I get ideas almost every day.  Some go in my notebook. Some just get locked away into my brain for later use.   In my constant pursuit of balance , I have realized that I can't, unfortunately, do everything I might like in a 24 hour period and that I do need some opportunities to relax or my head will probably explode.   So to recap, here are a few things that have been taking up space in my brain in my life recently. Becoming a parent. Again. Our process towards becoming a Resource Parent with UMFS continues.  We hav...

There has been a lot of emotion in my most recentposts .  I thought it was time for a change of pace.  With that in mind, today’s post is a list. Who doesn’t love a list? It’s easy to read, straight to the point, and all the hip kids are making lists these days.  Today I’m going to share my top five celebrity BFFs.  Admit it.  You’ve made this list in your head before.  No, I’m not talking about “The List” .  That’s different.  We might share that on another day.  So, in no particular order, these are the five celebrities who I wish were on my speed dial.  If the agents or publicists of these celebrities (or the lovely ladies themselves) are reading this, I promise that I’m not a crazy stalker.  I’d just love to grab a cup of coffee with them someday.  Mindy Kaling I just finished reading Mindy Kaling’s Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?  It was a refreshing celebrity memoir.  It’s almost an anti-me...

While strolling ( not  trolling) through some of my favorite blogs, I found a fun new meme on Avitable's website.  It seems he got the idea from The Verdant Dude . The gist of the meme is to put each letter of the alphabet into your browser and see what website comes up. If you're working in Chrome or Firefox, you will get a pretty accurate collection of your most frequently visited websites.  As I type this, I haven't even tried it yet so I have no idea  what is going to come up. I promise to share my results just as I find them. Drum roll please... A - The official ABC website .  I will admit that I have been catching up on Desperate Housewives lately. How is it all going to end? B - The CJSTUF blog  (since the official web address is blog.cjstuf.org) C - The CJSTUF website . No surprise there.   D -Google Docs.  I use it a lot for work.  E -My Eagle Rare Life entry . All that daily voting certainly paid off! F -Th...

This Sunday, the finale for Season 2 of Downton Abbey will air on PBS.  If you haven't yet discovered this work of historical fiction from across the pond, go watch Season 1 on Netflix right now.  Then you will be ready to catch up with Season 2.  There are a few episodes available streaming on the PBS website but you can't find the whole season there.  (Interestingly, Season 2 is already available on DVD so I guess some chaps already know how the finale will play out...) I love it when a story completely captures your attention like Downton Abbey  has for me.  It's got everything I love about Mad Men set 45 years earlier...in England.  In fact, if you ever watched Mad Men and thought, "Wow! We sure have come a long way since the 1960s!" your mind will be completely  blown by the class structure and social hierarchy of English society in the early 20th century.  They were just so darn...proper.    Even though it is a proper B...

I can't believe it's been over three weeks since I've blogged.  Admittedly, my life has been a bit busy. Aside from the job that pays the bills, CJSTUF has been gearing up for our next big event (next Saturday!) so I've been busy collecting items for our silent auction and tying up loose ends for the whole she-bang.  I'm still writing, too.  I wrote another piece or two for Insert Eyeroll and covered a story about the Ringling Bros. circus coming to town for Richmond Mom .   The problem is, at the end of the day, I'm tired. I have plenty of things to write about and there is no lack of source material. But I also love curling up with a good book or watching a movie or TV show as the day winds down. My latest obsession is old episodes of Monk  on Netflix.   A few of you have asked recently about my book: Four Seasons for Charlotte .  We are, indeed, working on a Spring 2012 publication date. I'm hoping for May.  I am in the process of working...

The vacation is officially over. Roger and I had a wonderful and relaxing time.  A few lessons learned: Lesson #1: Air Tran provides excellent customer service. The weather in Richmond delayed our departure and we missed our connection in Atlanta.  Fortunately, Air Tran put us up in a local hotel with a meal voucher and a flight out the very next morning. Unfortunately, we didn't get to the hotel until almost midnight and needed to leave  the hotel at 6 AM to make our shuttle. We didn't get a lot of sleep and the hotel had some bizarre issues with the room: the remote control for the television just advanced the channel regardless of which button was pressed (including volume).  Plus, the telephones were disconnected from the wall jack. When we connected them, the dial tone didn't seem to work. Good thing we had our phones and didn't need a wake-up call.  It was clean, though, and it was better than sleeping in an airport terminal.   Lesson #2: Social ...

One of my never-ending sources of inspiration is Miss Britt .  After discovering her blog, we were fortunate enough to meet her and her family in real life  during the first leg of their cross-country RV adventure.   This past week, she wrote a piece for TLC Parentables  about the things her family has learned to live without. I am constantly grateful for all that we have. More and more, I have been feeling this pull to minimize and scale back. While there are some things that I love and can't seem to live without (more on that later), I find myself asking the question, "Do I really need that?" quite a bit lately. Britt shared the things that her family has eliminated from their life (without much sacrifice) so I thought I would share my own list: 1. Cable TV   We dropped our cable in July and I haven't missed it. There are times when I wish I could watch something on NBC (our antenna doesn't seem to get a good signal for the local affiliate). I'm sure ...

In an effort to lighten the mood after that last post , this week's Follow Friday is going to focus on the funny side. We're not, however, going to talk about slapstick or dry wit or Smurfs.  No, folks, we're going to the darker side of funny. These bits of pop culture are most definitely Not Suitable for Work .  But they're hilarious. At least, I think they are. Roger and I recently discovered the cartoon Archer . It airs on FX and is currently in its second season. The first season is now streaming on Netflix. What is Archer? Imagine if a James Bond movie and The Office had a baby. Sterling Archer is secret agent for Isis. He's suave, handsome, and a bit of a letch. Ok, he's a HUGE letch. He's also not that great at his job. While he's off trying to save the world, the rest of the office crew from the comptroller to the tech geeks to the HR director get into the kind of office hi-jinks that only a spy agency could procure. There's sex, dru...

For this week's Follow Friday, my first inclination was to talk about Harry Potter.  Because...well...it's time for THE END. Then I changed my mind because if you're not already a fan of Harry at this point, I have 3 things to say: 1. What planet have you been living on for the past decade? 2. What's wrong with you? 3. If you haven't become a fan by now, there is no hope. Unless you're under the age of 10. So...moving on. The Emmy nominations were announced to day and I am beyond excited that my favorite TV show, Mad Men , has received 19 nominations! If you haven't checked out this show, now is your chance to catch up on 4 seasons of fabulous television. All 4 seasons are currently available on DVD. In addition, you can catch selected reruns on AMC or on many OnDemand cable systems. It's also available on iTunes. Season 5 should have started this month but some contract negotiations delayed the plans for the upcoming season. We'll get more Mad ...

This week, we are getting rid of our cable and I couldn't be happier. Of all the amenities of life, cable is one that I can certainly live without. In fact, out of the last 14 years, we've only had cable for about half of that time. We never got cable when we lived in Boone, NC. In fact, we weren't able to get any TV.  We lived in the mountains and the closest television stations were over 100 miles away so if you didn't have cable or a strong roof-top aerial, TV was not an option. I was in graduate school so I didn't have much time for television anyway. If I wanted to watch something, I went to a friend's house or had them tape it. Yeah, on a VCR. Remember those? When we moved back to Fredericksburg, we made do for a while with a basic antenna but reception was (again) spotty so at some point we bought the bullet and had basic cable for about a year or so.  Then we bought our house in Ashland and local channels again became an available option. As new home...

For those of you who actually follow my blog, you may have noticed that things were a bit quiet after last Monday's post. I actually did get a comment from someone wondering why my regular Friday blog was missing.  Ok. So the comment was a text message from my mother. Does that count?  I told you that she reads my blog . Anyway...I suppose I could offer many excuses about why I didn't write much last week. I did have an additional post out there in the blog-o-sphere. (Thanks to Hey! That's My Hummus for publishing my guest-post.) I could tell you that I was busy.  I could tell you that I was tired.  I was feeling uninspired. ( wow. that's almost poetic.) In truth, it was all of those things. And none of them. In truth, television was my time-suck this weekend.  Oh, I did get some things done. I exercised and visited the Ashland Strawberry Faire . Roger and I attended a neighbor's graduation party on Saturday as well as a wine tasting at The Caboose on...

I've been a fan of the ABC show Desperate Housewives since its premiere in 2004. Admittedly, my interest in the show has waxed and waned over the years and I have a feeling that 7 years in, the plot playlist is edging towards shuffle/repeat. I mean, has anyone on Wisteria Lane NOT been a victim of attempted murder, a life threatening illness, marriage infidelity, or financial problems?  It is, after all, a soap opera.  But it's still one of my guilty pleasures.  A few years into watching the show, I realized there was one character with whom I could really relate. As the show has continued, I've sometimes wondered if Wisteria Lane isn't just some alternative parallel universe of my life...at least as far as this one person was concerned. Maybe Marc Cherry had some secret portal into my cul de sac, using my life as his muse (but amping up the juicy details, making me look a million times more glamorous, and giving me a tummy tuck).  So who is my Desperate Housewi...

I make it a point to stay up to date on current events and international affairs. It just seems like the right thing to do as a citizen of the world. That's why this next blog post is devoted to one of the most important international events in our recent history. Yes, it's all over the news but I think that we can't really devote enough attention to a subject that impacts so many people in our country (not to mention the rest of the world).  Many people have their own opinions so let's take some time to analyze the facts.  What are we going to talk about today? The Royal Wedding!   Yes, that's right. The world is facing major earthquakes, radiation fallout, wars in the Middle East, a global economic crisis, civil wars in Africa, and a host of other issues but all that seems to be important in the mass media is Kate and William's pending nuptials.  To be fair, I love a fairy tale wedding as much as the next person and I think that William and Kate make an...

Tonight is the Series Finale of Big Love .  Since I don't have HBO, I will have to wait for the DVDs to see the finale myself. I became a fan of the show after hearing the series' creators discuss it on the NPR show Fresh Air in 2007.  I'm currently halfway through season 4.   Personally, I think Big Love is one of the most underrated series on television.  If you've never watched, the premise is that Bill Henrickson (played by Bill Paxton) is a Mormon in Utah who was raised at a fictional polygamist compound called Juniper Creek. At the tender age of 18, he is cast out of the compound (as all boys are) and starts a new life, intending to rid himself of the questionable ethics he found in his upbringing within the cult at Juniper Creek.  He finds success running a chain of home improvement stores and somehow, through a series of life-changing events, finds himself living a polygamist lifestyle, married to three women as he practices what the LDS church ca...