30 years ago today, February 28, 1983, the final episode of M*A*S*H aired.

YaYa and Junie

 

Hot dog! In light of the current blizzard, Marquette canceled Smiley's speech therapy session, saving me a trip across town. Whew!

Silver Linings Playbook

 Watched Silver Linings Playbook. Great cast, strong story, a little rom-com-y in the last half hour. Grade A

Amazing Race

 We just finished watching Season 12 of the Amazing Race! Congrats (5 years later) to TK and Rachel on their win! What a great team, and what a special couple. I hope they're still together.

C Everett Koop

 RIP C Everett Koop, the famous bearded Surgeon General 

 Big congrats to Jennifer Lawrence (best actress) and Argo for Best Picture!

Fell today - again. On the back porch - again. Landed on my right hip - again. The pain and swelling - doubled. This winter is so mild, but I'm stumbling around like a drunk with blinders on. Ridonculous

 Beautiful night and morning w/ my baby.

Melting Pot was awesome, great first time, will go again! - Lisa

Bad News for the Yanks

Yankee Curtis Granderson is out 10 weeks with fractured forearm suffered on a HBP. Damn.

And a court has ruled that the New York Yankees are "The Evil Empire" - at least when it comes to using that phrase in merchandising. Quoting the Wall Street Journal "The panel of judges sided with the Yankees, ruling that the Yankees are strongly associated with the phrase. Allowing anyone else to use the phrase exclusively would likely cause confusion, ruled the judges." You go boyz!

Free

 I have a 50" Toshiba flat-screen projection TV that I'm looking to part with; I offered it to my parents but they inexplicably turned it down. It's too big and passe for most modern living rooms, but it's a fully working HD capable TV that would be perfect for a den or a basement rec room (won't fit down our stairs). Years ago one of the kids damaged one of the built in speakers, so we hard-wired a much better pair of speakers to it, and I'll include those too. If you're interested, comment here. Thanks!

As I just tweeted (you *do* follow me on Twitter, dontcha?) we're about to step out for our 18th anniversary. It - well Feb 22nd - is the anniversary of the day we met. I'm not one of the hippie-dippie posers who demean marriage as a mere 'slip of paper', but I do value this date more than that of our wedding. There is faint difference between life on Oct 25th, '96 and all the days that followed it; but there is no end to the difference that Feb 22nd 1995 made in my life. Thanks for putting up with me Lisa

My Thoughts - The Oscars

I'm getting really sick of the Oscar hype. I love movies (obviously) and I adore the Oscars, but in the end it's just a bunch of pretty millionaires arguing over which pretty millionaire gets a gold statue for doing the job they're paid to do. It's not worth as much ink as it generates.

Truth right There

 

 The Hilton has announced they are closing their Paradise Landing waterpark 

Tomorrow will be 18 years to the day that I met my soul mate.

A few months after that I will have been with him longer then being alive, lol. Yikes. Time flies. Hope everyone has or finds their lifelong love! I had to post this today, just to beat him to the punch...ha! I got to it first Danny! Also: in person job interview tomorrow morning, wish me luck...phone interview was intense! - Lisa

So Far

 So far in 2013: 9 books, 47 movies. I'm behind the curve :(

Rise of the Guardians

 Rise of the Guardians was OK, but a little on the dark side for an animated movie. Lauren insisted on sitting on my lap, and once tracked me down when I wandered away. From an adult perspective I thought it was ho-hum, just another variation on the tired super hero them, but props to the bad guy: the Boogeyman was wickedly done.

A Health Update

First of all, the picture I posted yesterday was taken weeks ago, so to all of you who said how awful I looked and how I must be in pain to look like that: [redacted] you.

Second, I wound up getting the hip ck'd out, and it was diagnosed as a 5"x 7" hematoma (a pool of standing blood outside a blood vessel). They're giving it til Friday to dissipate on it's own, otherwise it'll have to be lanced and drained. I'll have to deal with it 'til then.

Me

 

 During the snowstorm a week ago last Thursday I slipped and fell down the back stairs and landed on my right hip. It's been bruised and painful since then, but I'm fully mobile, even taking long walks with the kids. But at around 11 this morning it all but exploded; intense pain followed by a raised bump the size of a pair of softballs on my hip. No idea why - I was just watching TV when it happened. As loathe as I am to see a doctor, I went over to Urgent Care but they couldn't see me for hours so I said F it and returned home to ice it and pop some Advil. Not a great way to spend an afternoon.

Mindy McCready

Country music star Mindy McCready, perhaps best known for her reported affair with Roger Clemens, has reportedly committed suicide at age 37. RIP.

Zoinks

 Yesterday, in our standard Saturday evening post-Mass dinner out, we stopped into Hamburger Mary's. If you're not familiar, Hamburger Mary's is a kitschy, gay-themed eatery here in Bay View. During dinner one of the TV's was playing the movie "My Best Friend's Girl".

When asked how everything was, I told the waiter "The foods fine, but how can you play a Dane Cook movie and expect people to want to eat?" The table was suddenly quiet. Apparently, Lisa (and possibly the waiter) heard it as "How can you pay a gay cook and expect people to eat", which is just a weeeeee bit of a different thing.

Zoinks!

Today in History

Today is the 70th anniversary of Joseph Goebbels's Sportpalast speech, which warned Germany that dire days were ahead and that victory was in jeopardy.

Congratulations to Danica Patrick

 Congrats! "Danica Patrick became the first woman to win the pole position for the Daytona 500, posting a lap of 196.434 mph Sunday. In doing so, she also became the first woman to win a pole at any NASCAR top-division race."

Life Choices

LuLu says she wants to be a marriage counselor when she grows up. I'm not sure what this says about her childhood . . . .

'Tis True

 I am, I admit, a bit of an acquired taste

The Eisenhower Years

I’ve finished 3 books on President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Mandate for Change and  Waging Peace are Ike’s memoirs of his first and second Presidential terms, respectively.  Going Home to Glory is the story of Ike’s final eight years of life, as told by his grandson David Eisenhower, along with his wife Julie Nixon Eisenhower. 

The two White House memoirs are very dry and told in a strictly factual, unemotional fashion. I still adored them, and finished with a great appreciation for a President overshadowed by the unwarranted adoration for his successor (JFK). Kennedy and his supporters campaigned on the idea that the Eisenhower era was stagnant and parochial, an erroneous assertion that survives to this day.  The truth is far different.

Here was a President who kept the peace in the face of near constant Soviet and Chinese provocation, while simultaneously expanding the ring of ‘containment’ that would eventually break the USSR;  a President who balanced the budget multiple times, at times refusing to cut taxes to do so, and led America to unparalleled prosperity ; a President who included women in his Cabinet and sent federal troops in to desegregate Little Rock schools; a President who warned that any dollar spent on defense above the level of military adequacy was a dollar misspent, and had the military reputation to enforce that doctrine; a President who refused to intervene in Vietnam barring a coalition effort; a President convinced that aiding Latin America and Africa was not only moral but a means of fighting the Cold War; a President who valued bipartisanship and the UN, advocated for a “United States of Europe”, and expanded the reach of social security; but also a President who believed in self-determination, the value of duty, limited Federal intervention, free markets and the moral greatness of America.

His Presidency deserves a second look.

Their contents deserve an A, but given the dull style I can only grade these two a B.

Going Home to Glory begins with the conclusion of his administration and ends with his death in 1969. book is the opposite of his Grandfather’s stylistically; it is warm and endearing and a joy to read. Grade: A.

Also read so far this year: Belles on their Toes by Frank B Gilbreth Jr and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey

 and The Rise of Ransom City by Felix Gilman.

I’d rate the former a B- and the latter a well served A. 

Argo

 Argo is a fine movie, just about as good as advertised, and I hope it does well at the Oscars.

Kudos to Ben Affleck, who never deserved all the hate the media piled on him over the last decade. I will say I thought the final airport scene was a little much, and the opening montage (which seeks to explain the political situation) is horribly skewed to favor a Democrat's rationale of events.

Excusing those two miscues, I’d rate this as well deserved A+

No Z

 Total sleep on Thursday: 2 hr 45 min. Total sleep so far today: Zip. This is gonna hurt.

Coming to Summerfest!

 

My Thoughts - Hypocrisy

 Hypocrisy doesn't necessarily falsify a premise

Ash Wednesday

 

Has anyone ever told you, that for a guy with such dashing good looks and a well developed sense of humor, you have eyebrows designed and engineered by nature to make people fear for their lives? - Fred Bryan

A Friend's Van was stolen!

Last night around midnight my friend Erv came over to visit for half an hour. During that brief stay someone STOLE his van from directly in front of my house, in the middle of bleeping Bay View! 

We spent the next three hours either talking with police or driving around the neighborhood looking for the punks. The van was recovered this morning - where else? - at Bay View High School.

Nothing was stolen from it; not his ladders, his radio equipment, or the three laptops he had in the back. Apparently someone just wanted a joyride in a 2003 Chevy work van.

Tee-Hee

 Walked PD and OJ home from school today, while GC and LK drove home with Mom (da wimps)

Stache's for Team Slap

 

House Hockey

Junie is rollerskating around the house wearing a skateboarding helmet and using a broom as a hockey stick; her Mom's pumice stone is the puck and the net is the space below the ottoman.

Fred Bryan: 

Any sweeter, and I'd need supplemental insulin

At the Dentist

 

2 Facts

1. 70 years ago today Guadalcanal was declared secure by US forces.

2. The world needs a new biography of Nelson Rockefeller

Thrift Shop

According to Energy 106.9's FB page, Macklemore's Thrift Shop" has gone double platinum, with digital sales at 2.3 million copies and counting.

Beautiful Work

 A sampling of the arrangements Lisa has made at Michaels Craft Store!

Mean Ol' Junie

My five year old who looks like the sweetest blue eyed angel thinks she's gangsta. I cleaned out her folder, and apparently took out her "words"...I don't recall any flash cards this go-round. Anyway....this morning when I couldn't find "her words" she gets in my face w/ her little pointing finger and whispers (so daddy can't hear her trying to bully her mama) with a gritty threatening tone "you BETTER find my words or..." and she let it trail off like that....lol...or what lil mama? OR WHAT? - Lisa

 Fox 6 is reporting that the nut who held that boy hostage in an underground bunker for days is dead and the boy is safe . . . .

A Favorite Moment

One of my favorite pics of all time.

 

King Richard III has been Found!

CNN is confirming that the skeletal remains found under an English parking lot belong to King Richard III. I first read of the discovery months ago in Archaeology magazine, and I'm ecstatic that DNA tests have now validated the discovery. Well done!

A few reviews

Total Recall is a remake of the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie of the same name, and in my opinion its far inferior to the original. I won’t argue that Quaid’s angst was much more believable in Farrell’s hands up to the point where he visited ‘Rekall’, but from that point on it was your standard-issue shoot ‘em up.  The greatest gaffe, in my opinion (other than Jessica Biel’s stilted ‘acting’) was their complete abandonment of the “is it real, or is it recall?” idea that permeated the original right up to the finish. In this one, the ambiguity was all but ignored from the moment he sat in the chair. The way they played it, I’d say it was pretty darn obvious this was all just a little vacation in Quaid’s head (a few friends thought the opposite, so maybe I’m full of it.)

Grade: C-

DC Cupcakes was a reality show centered on the two sisters who run Georgetown Cupcakes in the nation’s capitol. It is mindless fluff, and worst of all the acting is so terrible you lose all pretense of this being a ‘reality show’.

Katherine is hot tho’.

Grade : C-

On the other hand, Mindy Kaling’s new sitcom The Mindy Project is smart, funny, and a pleasure to watch.  Tune in Tuesday’s on Fox.

Grade: A

Frankenweenie is a stop motion animation movie by Tim Burton.  When I saw this with the family I was worried the kids would rebel because it’s in black and white, but happily they loved it. It’s the story of a boy whose beloved dog dies and is brought back to life ala Frankenstein’s monster, but there’s nothing monstrous about this pooch.  Soon the secret is out, however, and the safety of the entire town is threatened.

I loved the movie. Sweet and funny, with plenty of nods to Mary Shelley’s novel and the film adaptations of it, this was a hoot.

Grade: A

Pay Your Electric Bill New Orleans

I'm not watching the game itself, because I could give a rats ass, but I am watching the dull, barely intelligible CBS crew fill time during the power outage at the Super Dome. Way to go New Orleans/NFL - way to represent.

update: Justin F sez: 6 kids by five women, a murder he got away with and now his second Super Bowl ring. Congrats Ray Lewis, nobody deserves it more.

Dinner with my Godmother

Last night we saw my Aunt Jackie and Uncle George at Mass and invited them to eat dinner with us afterwards. What followed was a very nice dinner and conversation at Denny's. Thanks go to them for accepting, and for the kids (LuLu and Junie) for being good throughout a long dinner dominated by adult conversation!

Also, before I forget; when I complimented LK on being good in church she said she 'had to be' because she didn't want to get "left behind like last time" - meaning when she was a terror in church and we left her with Entourage and took the other kids out to eat. Huh. Whaddaya know, a punishment/deterrent that WORKED. Maybe we'll get the hang of this parenting thing yet.

Cookie Booth

This morning, for the 3rd of 4th year in the row, LuLu and I manned the Girl Scout cookie booth at the early mass at St. Paul's.  I'm kinda proud of that.

On a small side note, having listened now to the sermon at both St. Paul's and Immaculate Conception this weekend, I can say that Father Ron had a deeper grasp of the week's readings and formed it into a great, inspiring sermon. He gets the 'W' this week.

RIP Buddy

RIP Buddy, 54 yrs gone.Wish you were still here.

Dinner with my Godmother

Last night we saw my Aunt Jackie and Uncle George at Mass and invited them to eat dinner with us afterwards. What followed was a very nice dinner and conversation at Denny's. Thanks to them for accepting, and for the kids (Lu and Junie) for being good throughout a long dinner dominated by adult conversation!

Also, before I forget; when I complimented Junie on being good in church she said she 'had to be' because she didn't want to get "left behind like last time" - meaning when she was a terror in church and we left her with Entourage and took the other kids out to eat. Huh. Whaddaya know, a punishment/deterrent that WORKED. Maybe we'll get the hang of this parenting thing yet.

So Far This Year:

As of Feb 2nd: 6 books, 33 movies.

Columbia: 10 Years On

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the loss of the space shuttle Columbia.

Ed Koch

 RIP former NY Mayor Ed Koch. Growing up, he was synonymous with New York City. 

Quote

 "When two grudges conflict, drop the older one that doesn't sell papers anymore."