You ever had one of those days when you need a little Mark Darcy in your life? Well, I’ve had a few lately. Last night I decided I wanted a little Darcy staring me in the face every day, so I used this tutorial as a template and made myself a little reminder of my awesome.
Our big plans this weekend call for lots of cleaning! Yay! Wait, can sarcasm be transmitted via blog post? No? Ok, then. Let’s try this again…
Our big plans this weekend call for lots of cleaning. Ugh.
Seriously though, we have several new appliances being delivered first thing Monday, so in order to make room, the General (husband) has ordered all of us to clean our bunks. Not really, but he is getting a little pissy about climbing over bins of old clothes in our basement. What did he expect? I come from hoarders! He’s lucky there aren’t 30 cats down there!
Anywho, this weekend will be spent cleaning and purging, along with a good amount of lawn care and mulch. Should be fabulous. We also have a friend’s St. Patrick’s Day BBQ to attend, which should at least fill us with beer and last us through the rest of the cleaning spree. Oh, and there are basketball games to watch…so many basketball games.
During the evenings I assume there will be a couple episodes of Doctor Who to catch up on, since I’ve made it my mission to watch all the Doctor Who’s from the most recent reboot of the series. I just finished season 1 (actually season 5 if you count the ones from the 1960s-80s) and there was a.) a Britney Spears song cameo; b.) a reminder of how much mascara we all wore in the early/mid 2000s; c.) at least four occasions where I said “What the hell does ‘fink’ mean?!” (answer: “think”); and d.) one full body rejuvenation by one Doctor Who causing him to look like that one snakey guy from Harry Potter (not Snape, the other one). Season 2, here I come!
Happy weekending, everyone!
I admit it, I’m a sucker for the holiday season. I am one of those jerks playing Christmas music in October and squealing with delight when Target and Costco put out their holiday decorations before Halloween. I love everything about the season: lights, trees, decorations, Starbucks Peppermint Lattes, Bailey’s in some hot cocoa and even snow.
But one of my personal favorite parts of the season is snuggling in with a good holiday movie. I have already spent a ton of time this year bedazzling stockings and addressing cards, and these films are the best to have playing in the background during these mindless tasks. Now, as has been previous stated around here, I’m a bit of a nerd, so these movies may be a bit off for some of you Christmas purists. But for me, it’s not really Christmastime until I’ve watched each and every one.
Home Alone
Every kid of my generation remembers watching this movie and thinking Macaulay Culkin was the coolest kid on the planet. We all cheered as those idiot robbers got smacked in the face with a paint can or iron, and all wished we could camp out in our parents’ bed with a gallon of ice cream and late night television.
While You Were Sleeping
I know, I know…this one is pretty bad. But I had this movie on VHS and watched it so much I had to buy a new one. I thought Sandra Bullock’s character was adorable (Random Sidenote: Her character’s name in the movie is Lucy) and asked for approximately one million beige sweaters for Christmas that year. Note to self, pale, blond, 14-year-olds do not look good in beige sweaters. Bonus points for a dreamy Bill Pullman. (Yes, I just said that.)
The Grinch/Charlie Brown Christmas Double Feature
These cartoon features are a total must see at my house, and have been for years, even before we had kids. Now, I should point out, I’m talking about the original Grinch, not the crappy live action version they made a few years back. Charlie Brown is always awesome, not only because of the snarky Lucy (who we love around here), but the fact that in the last few weeks, my son has become a real life Linus, carrying his blanky everywhere he goes. Halloween costumes for 2012, anyone?!
Elf
C’mon, you gotta love Elf! “I LOVE SMILING, SMILING’S MY FAVORITE!” Also, I will watch anything with Zooey Dechanel, so help me god.
Love Actually
This is by far my FAVORITE holiday movie of all time. I watch it every year, sometimes more than once, and every time I find myself smiling. They keep trying to recreate this movie in the U.S. (New Years Eve, Valentine’s Day) and it’s never even close to as good as the original. My favorite storyline is a three way tie between the prime minister/girl in the amazing red coat, the little boy/girl with the incredible voice, and Mr. Darcy/the Portugese cleaning lady. So good.
Happy watching!
It was late, hours after we put her to bed. I snuck into her room and shook her quietly. “Get up.” She rubbed her eyes and looked fairly confused, but smiled and put her arms up to be lifted out of her blankets. I took her out on the deck, where we had set up the telescope to gaze at the stars above. She pointed at planets and satellites and constellations. We oooh’d and ahhh’d at how many of those bright balls of gas you could actually see, away from the city lights, by the quiet of the lake. Then she said to me, “I’m ready to go back to bed now.” And off she went, hopefully with a memory she’ll dream about when she’d old enough to remember her crazy nerd mother, who woke her up in the middle of the night to stare at the sky.
I remember my first shuttle launch. I was 7 years old, in 1st grade, October. I remember everyone being jealous that I got to take a week off school to go to Florida. I remember staying in a condo at Coco Beach, just about 30 minutes from Cape Canaveral, where the shuttle launches from. I remember getting up before dawn and piling in my family’s blue Ford van to head to the launch site. I remember my brother and I falling asleep in the backseat and then waking up as we parked in the swamp area around the viewing space. We set up lawn chairs and got out our cooler of refreshments. My dad walked with us to the concession stand where we bought t-shirts and tiny shuttle replicas and ice cream. We waited for hours. We avoided the “Beware of Alligator” signs (the place where the public watches shuttle launches is also a nature reserve).
And then they called the launch. Bad weather was headed our way, so they’d try again in a few days.
I remember being sad, but knowing I was heading back to a condo on the ocean helped a bit. We spent the next few days playing in the surf and collecting sea shells. Then, once again, we headed back to the Cape, to see what we could see.
The strangest part of a shuttle launch is that you see it before you hear it. The little light climbs higher and higher, and then the rumbling begins. It starts out quiet, and before you know it your hands are clapped over your ears and the ground trembles beneath your feet. If there was ever anything that deserved the descriptor, awesome, this is it.
I was lucky enough to see every shuttle vehicle launch in my lifetime (save Challenger, which was destroyed before my dad’s grant with NASA began). The first one was Atlantis, then Discovery, Columbia, and Endeavour. I was there for Endeavour’s first flight. Today it began its final ascent.
I know many people are talking about the negatives of the shuttle program right now. What it was meant to do, what it didn’t accomplish…but the strides that we have made in terms of human spaceflight, experiments, the delivery of so many important pieces of equipment to outer space (Hubble telescope, International Space Station, numerous probes to other planets in our solar system) far outweigh the negatives in my mind.
Plus, we as a species are creatures that long for discovery and adventure. “Space, the final frontier…” yes, dorky, I know. But true. I hope with all of my heart that we continue manned space flight in a way that is productive and intelligent, and not just let politicians decide NASA’s fate. Almost every great mistake in NASA’s history can be traced back to bad government pressure to make it cheaper, faster, more popular (Columbia, Challenger, Apollo 1 and Apollo 13 to name a few), and going down that path again will only lead to more disasters.
Here’s to the future, full of science, discovery, knowledge and awe…Godspeed, Endeavour.
