Book #7 of 52 – The Bachelor

The Bachelor by Carly Phillips

My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Ah, I should have known better than to pick up a romance book. These just are not me But it was in the pile given to me years ago and my compulsive nature would not let me skip it. Learned my lesson – again. I’ve just never been a romance gal. Even as a child my favorites were mysteries with perhaps a romance developing within the mystery, but certainly not the focal point. Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys – those kinds of things. Never did branch into the Harlequin Romance genre.

Hey, it was an easy read – often fun. Some witty dialogue for sure and the characters were pretty interesting & very likeable. But hey – you knew how it was going to end pretty much from the first chapter so…eh! Thankfully all the other books in my huge pile appear to be romance-free.

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Does your bathroom have a guard cat?

Chip has declared himself Guardian of the Bathroom. Every night when I go upstairs for bed, he is in there. I walk in, he scoots out. OK, correction, I walk in and I boot him out. I really don’t want him sniffing at the edge of my underwear while I am seated, you know? If I let him stay, he thinks it’s primo opportunity to nuzzle me for head scratches. After a good panty sniffing first of course. So, I boot him out. And he sits quietly, but I am sure quite indignantly on the other side. As soon as I open the door, he scoots past my legs back to HIS throne either on the rug, or in the tub. Yes, in the tub. Yes, I may have once or twice been truly evil and turned the water on him. Not anymore though. It’s clearly his safe place. And he keeps it safe from spiders and bugs. I just wish he’d figure out how to clean the dang thing for me. THEN he would really be King of the Porcelin Throne!

Super Bowl ad reactions on Twitter

I discovered a new element to twitter. It’s a great way to gauge reactions to big events. Kind of like a grand social science experiment. The Super Bowl was the perfect example. I think only about 5 of the 200+ who I follow did not watch it. All those who did were certainly tweeting about it! And it was not the game that was so interesting; it was the reactions to the ads. Of course, a large number of people who tune in ARE only tuning in to see the ads. It’s an annual commercial campaign launching platform as much as it is a sporting event. People want to be able to talk around the proverbial water cooler at work the next day about the hopefully funny commercials.

Well, I don’t need no stinking water cooler because I got my reactions in real time and it was fascinating!

First of all, I watched the game with another mom and her 13 year old son so what we had was two 40 something moms and the two 13 year old boys. In our situation I can tell we were pretty much ALL reacting more like 13 year olds J We laughed at just about *everything* and took offense to nothing too deeply. Oh sure, there was awkward silence at the GoDaddy ads and the Focus on the Family ads, quite a bit of bemused looks at the Budweiser commercials (Clydesdales excluded – we loved those), and we split on the Denny’s chicken ads (moms were turned off, boys rolled over laughing). Mostly though, we laughed out loud a lot. Especially at the Snickers ad with Betty White and Abe Vigoda. That was a real “hit” in many ways!

Certainly the company which overall did the best job at advertising their product was Doritos. At least all of their commercials centered on actually eating the chips (in very creative ways of course!) Many others (like GoDaddy) told you nothing much about what they were selling and were simply trying to generate a buzz so that you would check them out later. And yes, I did notice the overall trend in the ads making marriage out to be some horrible situation. Bridgestone sure pushed that one across with the “Your tires or you wife (life)!” add. I don’t have a hugely feminist way of reading into things, but even I cringed at that one! Yeah, women/wives are disposable. Nice.

On twitter, that feminist slant was rampant! People started calling it “woman hating CBS!” Well, I don’t blame CBS – they just accepted the nice payments on the ad time. And yes, they did insert themselves somewhat into that frame by rejecting an ad depicting gay men and then allowing the Focus on the Family ads (after adamantly stating they don’t allow ‘advocacy’ ads during the SuperBowl). Still, this was a Madison Avenue trend to bash women and marriage across all product lines. Media folks noticed it, political writers commented on it, and just everyday fans made note of it. I’d say of the folks I follow that close to 80% commented on the anti-marriage nature of the ads. Someone even said that they will make SURE their next sets of tires are anything BUT Bridgestone. I’d say that’s a pretty large “miss” in terms of that marketing strategy.

The funniest thing to see though was the one or two dissenting reactions. I’d see this whole slew of “oh, that was lame!” posts and then one “Hah! Funniest ad so far!”  I even noticed a pattern as it ended up being the same 2 people who were the outliers in their reactions and hysterically always ended up posting a little later than the ‘crowd’! It made for some fun reading for me as I started to try and predict how those two people would react to each ad And I honestly cannot think of anything, on the surface, that greatly differentiates those two people from everyone else in my twitter feed. It’s just one of those fascinating sides of humanity that some of us can see life from such a different perspective.

After all that though, you know what image really is stuck in my mind this morning?

Drew Brees with son after winning the Super Bowl

Oh yeah – Count me amongst the Who Dat nation Congratulations to the New Orleans Saints and to the city of New Orleans. You are back baby! In grand, championship style.

Book 6 of 52 – The Audacity to Win

The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama’s Historic Victory by David Plouffe

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A behind the scenes at what was an historic Presidential campaign as told by the fellow who put it all together. David Plouffe tells the story of putting his life on hold for two years to embark on a pretty remarkable journey of thinking outside the box, taking risks, and doing their best to not play dirty in a game where mud slinging skills had become critical. While a certain geeky passion for this topic is probably necessary to keep the reader engaged, Plouffe intersperses the dry details with plenty of personal glimpses.

It was really interesting reading this now a year into Obama’s presidency and to be able to see examples from the book which highlight the development of the man we’ve since seen in the Oval office. His calm demeanor, insistence on respect & civility at all times, his ability to study & weigh the benefits and downsides of the issues in front of him were all on display in 07 & 08. I was particularly struck by his ability and willingness to take responsibility when it was he who had a mis-step. No blaming and finger pointing and excusing.

Of course, the comparative stumbling & disorganization of the McCain campaign made Obama’s look even better. So too did Clinton’s. Both those campaigns were entrenched in the old ways of running things and were frequently caught off guard by the new ideas and quick reactions of a campaign whose staff were so young and filled with fresh ideas. As Plouffe points out at the end, over 95% of the volunteer staff were under 30 years old. Wow!

At the end, I have to admit that even after more than a year has passed, I still did tear up just reading the part when Obama is declared the winner. As someone who had watched this so closely from the spring of ‘07 when I saw all the candidates speak at the CA Dem convention, this was so much fun to relive with an insider.

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Up until last week, this was my pile of books To Be Read. I was alternating between fiction and non fiction. The paperbacks had originally been given to me in 2002 and there were a LOT of them. I was happy to have whittled it down to this manageable pile. The non fictions had been collected since 2005 (I have a tendency to read those more quickly since they tend to be topical. I’m sure reading Bill Clinton’s book now will be really weird!):

However, after helping to clean out Jacqueline’s house last weekend, in addition to the books above which I would have been done with by about mid-May, I now have these:

Yep, I think I am set for the entire 2010 reading challenge!!

Music Again!

In the middle of everything last weekend, I had a passing notion that someone had tweeted that Adam Lambert was doing a concert in Palm Springs at the end of February. Saturday morning after my workout I sat down at the computer to check that out. Found the link. Checked out prices. Hmm..not bad. It’s a 2.5 hour drive, but I can do that! Sat night, Feb 27th. Check calendar – SportsBoy is with his dad that weekend. Excellent (he wouldn’t want to go anyway, but I needed it to be *cheap*).  Check my bank account, yep, that’s my tax refund hitting the night before. I can do this! Just as I start clicking in to purchase a ticket, I get a text from my Adam-loving buddy from the American Idol concert “Hey, I’m going to see Adam on 2/27. Wanna go?” Talk about planets aligning!! So now I have a banzai run driving buddy for the event, two more friends are going out early Saturday & having dinner. Just found out today that a couple of other (very nice, normal) people I’ve met on one of the fan sites are flying out too and will be part of the pre-concert fun. Fantastic!

No sharing the stage with anyone else. Just a concert in an intimate (less than 4000 seats) venue by Adam for his fans. Hello – a ray of musical sunshine breaking through the clouds of January mourning.  Seems like he was a pretty big ray of sunshine last year too eh?

I hear there’s another season of that show again…you know the one that is keeping Glee off my tv…what’s it called again? Oh yeah Faux American Idol – because there IS no American Idol after Adam

More OCD and #questiontime!

I’ve talked before about how the internet has given all of us a tendency towards exhibiting ADD characteristics (Dare you to read an entire article from start to finish without a single click of a link or over to another browser tab!) Yesterday I was laughing at myself though at my latest little display of internet related neurosis – OCD.  I absolutely cannot click on to my google reader site without then reading every single feed in there! Even if I really don’t have time. But I simply cannot leave any blog unread. Same with email. I absolutely HAVE to read and sort every message that comes in, whether at work or in my personal in-box. Otherwise I think it is like brain clutter to me. And I hate clutter in any form. Someone tweeted yesterday that his email in-box was down to 24 unread messages which was the lowest total in 3 years – and that he hoped to actually clear it sometime today. Oh, that thought just floored me! Now, I realize that if you are someone (like he is) who received probably hundreds at a time that you MUST learn to walk away from it. And honestly that was my big challenge in order to block out some reading time every night – step away from the RSS feeds! What I really did was manage them better – reduced the numbers on twitter & google reader – because I still have not once sat down to read my books with anything unread online

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Something that brought me some really bright spots last week is my passion for politics. The State of the Union address and then the almost impromptu town hall style meeting that the President had with members of the congressional GOP caucus on Friday. If you’ve seen a hastag around the internet recently such as this: #questiontime – that refers to the Q & A session between Obama and the GOP. It was *really* compelling (I would think for anyone from either side of the aisle) and I personally would LOVE to see more. I’m not the only one either. This is actually modeled after Q&A sessions that are regularly scheduled in some parliamentary systems such as Great Britain and Canada when the Prime Minister has to go before Parliament and face questions from members from all parties. I love the idea of it. And I certainly thought that the law makers asked MUCH better questions than the media normally does in a standard press conference! So my plea to you is – if you’d like to see more #questiontime go to this website and sign the petition urging the White House and Congress to do more of it.

Memorial weekend & word to the un-wise

Members of class of '83 at memorial brunch

Memorial program, hat & gift bag

The hat is the one she is wearing in her photo which is her facebook profile picture. We bought it at the Del Mar Fair about 3…4? years ago? Can’t remember because we went every year and she *always* bought a new hat and we both often bought new sandals – sometimes fighting over them )

Curio chest that I always loved from Jax' house

The brunch was lovely. Waves crashing up against the restaurant windows, sunny & clear. Trina had places those little gift bags – 20 of them – in front of each place with one of Jacqueline’s bracelets in each one. We all shared our thoughts on our lost friend. Since I had nearly started sobbing just driving TO the brunch (perhaps taking the route which would take me past the place where Jax & I would meet for brunch on Sundays was not the wisest move!)..I knew I was not going to make it through talking about her and I didn’t. However, I had shared the eulogy I wrote with everyone so I felt like I had done my part already I was thrilled that so many of our classmates came and was having a truly lovely time catching up with them. One of the gals said “OK, now that you are not on all those sports league boards, I am tagging you as our social secretary! Plan something for us!” Oh…shiiiiit! But, it’s OK, and she’s right. I’ll kick off something at my house and hopefully we can all rotate around and start gathering more frequently than every five years for reunions and…well..for funerals.

After the brunch I went up to the house to help Trina go through more things. As you can see above, I took that lovely, colorful chest and that hat which was my favorite of hers. I also took a few tops and one dress and lots of jewelry and purses. Oh, the purses! I kept telling Trina they were the last thing I needed, but…I love them! Some women are shoe whore, I’m a purse whore. Cannot resist them. And just like her furniture, there was lots of colorful ones and I know I will love using every single one. We also loaded down Jax’ car and mine with things to take out to her dad.

Today Trina and I drove the car and those items out there to her dad’s house. The plan was to take him to lunch and then go to the Forrest Lawn cemetery out there to place the ashes. Now, all I ever heard was that we were placing her ashes next to her mom’s. We knew that Jacqueline’s ashes were sent directly there. So when we got to her dad’s and we were leaving for lunch he picks up a blue velvet bag with a walnut box in it and hands it to Trina. We lock eyes wondering…wha?? She says “Ted, um, didn’t they send the ashes to the cemetery?” Because I could tell that while Trina has been doing a damn good job of holding it together in her German-stoic way, that the idea of holding Jax in that box at that moment was about to freak her right out. “Oh yes, that’s Mary” says Ted. Oooooh boy! All these years of knowing Jax and I’d never met her mom, had only heard, well, some not always nice things about her as the two had a VERY rough relationship which was only marginally repaired as Mary lost her battle with breast cancer..and here she was…in the back of my car!!! Next to my lawn chair and grocery bags and umbrella. Oh my. Soooo bizarre.

Oh, but it got better. I swear I could hear Jax in my head as we pulled into Forrest Lawn after lunch. “Oh. My. GAWD…here??!! Next to HER?!” A very nice gentleman went in back and brought out Jacqueline’s box. Oh man…to see that just took my breath away. Meanwhile an old family friend who had known both ladies was there as was another friend of Jacqueline’s who lives out in Palm Desert too. So our motely crew of 6 walked solemnly with Trina carrying Mary and the cemetery agent carrying Jax. Her dad remained composed throughout. I stood behind he and Trina as they placed the two boxes in their little niches in the wall, then placed the marble over. The marble is not yet marked, but will be in a few weeks. I was started to have to wipe away tears again when I noticed the last name of the person placed directly above Jacqueline. Cheney. And her voice came into my head again “Oh, this is just fucking great. Placed for eternity next to my mom and under a Cheney! She’s probably related to that man too!! Just PERFECT!” And then I started giggling. Sigh…I expect that’s gonna happen a lot for awhile eh? She’s gonna pop into my head with her big big voice and set me off one way or the other.

Thus endeth my two days of somehow saying a proper good bye to my friend. Thank you so much so all of you who sent me your love and support. It really did help.

Oh, and one *teensy* rant, or an FYI if you will. If someone you once knew as a friend, who then broke off said friendship dies, and you are invited to a memorial brunch and are then asked to speak about the deceased – it would be best to either be mindful that everyone else there (who already spoke before you and are clearly quite broken up over this loss) is carrying love in their heart for this person and is there to help each other through the grieving by celebrating the life of said friend and find a way to dig into your memories and say only kind things about her, OR, just SHUT THE HELL UP! But whatever you do, do NOT make an ass of yourself by telling everyone WHY your friendship went sideways (blaming the deceased of course, because you are perfect) and basically ending on an “oh, everyone please feel sorry for ME” moment sucking all of the love out of the air. Because if you make an ass of yourself, all everyone at the table is thinking is “Ah, now I see why Jax ended that friendship!” Oh, and go ahead and take a nice one way trip to the moon while you are at it. Oh, and I also recommend NOT coming up to chat with me at the grocery store if you run into me because while I may have held my tongue at the brunch, I can promise you I wont hold it if I ever see you again. Nope. So be ready. Because that’s what Jax would do for me.

About that afterlife….

There is a brunch planned for Jax this Sunday since she didn’t want a formal service. Her other local friend Trina has been handling, really, everything when it comes to dealing the with the aftermath of an unexpected death with no will in place. Jax rented her place from Trina and Trina was in regular contact with her dad regarding a potential house purchase out in the desert (he wanted to move out of the house where his wife had been which was in a retirement community and get a house that he could more easily leave to Jax). Anyhoo, so she’s been the one dealing with the dirty details.  After the Sunday brunch, she and I will head out to the desert for the placement of Jax’ ashes next to her mom’s and to be with her dad (and drive Jax’ car out there). IOW, she and I have been in regular contact mostly via email since Friday.

Jacqueline used to call us at night. Both of us. Almost never in the day as she was more of a night owl. But there would be occasional mid-day calls. For me that would be at work or while I was home on a weekend. For Trina, the daytime calls apparently developed an odd pattern. We have *one* IKEA in the county and neither of us lives or works particularly close to it. However, whenever Trina would go to IKEA, inevitably Jax would call. It got to be a running joke with them.

I haven’t been to IKEA myself  in at least a year, maybe closer to two. I used to go when I had to pick up SportsBoy from his Swedish language classes since I would then be in the general area, but he finished those in 6th grade so yeah..two years maybe. I know it has been awhile since I had meatballs in the freezer (my main reason for going).

Last night I went to IKEA after dropping MusicMan off at one of his classes – first time at this location & I realized it was so close that I should take the opportunity to stop by there for some dinner and to pick up some bags of meatballs for a treat.

As I pulled into the parking lot, Trina called.

And wherever she is, we both knew Jax was laughing.

Book 5 of 52? – Forgotten

The Forgotten (Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus, #13) by Faye Kellerman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
As far as I can remember, I think this is the first of Faye Kellerman’s books I’ve read, but I will seek her out again. Very fun read, well well well developed and interesting characters. In fact, I like how it was the exploring of the characters that was really the meat of the story vs simply solving the mystery. Touched with humor too as I giggled a few times. It’s the 13th in a series – yikes, didn’t know that. I will say that her writing about the familial relationships and Jewish heritage was much stronger than the actual plot of the murder mystery itself. I never quite understood what motivated the killer to do what he did.

I also discovered a down side to being a devoted fan of the CSI and Criminal Minds shows – I was VERY frustrated at the lack of sophistication being used during the police work!! Granted this was published back in 2000 or so perhaps before the real rise in popularity of forensic science shows. Still, there was one part where the detectives all sat around throwing out ideas on possible murder suspects and motives and methods and I was thinking “Oh, come ON! Don’t be so cliche and naive! Build a profile!!” LOL. On second thought, since this IS #13 in series and it looks like the original dates back to 1986, maybe I shouldn’t backtrack due to that annoyance. I did like Decker & Lazarus though and wouldn’t mind finding out more about their earlier years.

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From Kindergarden to High School in 3.2 seconds

*** This was the post I was in the middle of writing last week before..well..stuff happened ***

This month began the High School open enrollment period in Sports Boy’s school district. Yep. High. School. Even though I am pretty sure that picture above was taken yesterday.

Or, the reality could be that all those visible teeth in that photo are long gone.

Since Music Man went to school, the district has grown by leaps and bounds and has made some significant changes to their enrollment process. For one thing, there are 4 schools, and for another, there is open enrollment. No forcing you into a school according to your address. Of course, the deep irony here is that while MM would have *greatly* benefited from such choices an originally out of boundary school, SB – with all of this opened up to him – has been laser focused since he had all those baby teeth to go to the very school we are geographically closest too anyway.  After all, his brother went there, and there is football. He’s spent every Aug-Nov since he was 7 on the practice and stadium fields. It’s what he knows.

Still, I tried to make sure HE was sure.

Me: “So do you want to visit the other schools?”

SB: “No. Just sign me up for TPHS & we’ll go to their night”

Me: “But you should probably check them out at least”

SB: “Do they have football?”

Me: “Just LCC”

SB: “That’s a dirty word! TPHS!”

Me: “Well, what about CCA? A lot of your friends will most likely go there because they can play baseball easier there since it’s so hard to break into the lineup at TPHS”

SB: “No football. TPHS!”

You get the gist of it. Even if it means never playing a down and battling guys 3 times his size…well..FOOTBALL!

So we only went on one night – TPHS. It’s changed a lot since MM went there. Added buildings and such. The gym looked the same though – tons and tons of athletic award flags streamed down from the banners crossing over all sports male & female that you could think of. Given that I am the one who tagged with the name Sports Boy, I guess it would seem appropriate for him to go there! After the initial assembly in the gym, there were break out sessions with the various academic departments and the athletic director. He chose to visit the Math, History and Language departments in addition to athletics. Another benefit to this school is that we know a couple of the teachers so again, familiarity is nice. Is it odd that I wanted to stay in the History room? Seriously I was listening to the description of the classes and I *really* want to take some of those classes! Art History, Government & yes, even AP European which I already took in high school but would LOVE to take again!! SB is developing a similar affinity for History – he was even reading his 8th grade US history book JUST FOR FUN the other night! For languages the little maniac wants to take Japanese! Not Spanish which is the norm around here and would provide ample opportunities for him to practice AND would be easy for him to learn…no..Japanese! I gotta admit the young lady teaching the classes was quite the spit fire and is very enthusiastic about her work. She grew up in Japan and has a heavy accent when she speaks English but she was quite funny and entertaining & quite clearly knows her stuff. She will blend in the culture and history as she teaches too. Academically he will be well served and they are on a block schedule similar to what he’s had in middle school which makes homework planning much easier.

Then there is sports. Now, just for a moment, let’s flash to a TV show shall we? As I’ve mentioned a few times, SB and I were fanatical about Glee. Well, MusicMan has recently discovered this gem and has been catching up on all the episodes online. We’ve even watched a couple of our favorites with him. Well, about 5 minutes into the athletic director’s little talk – at the moment when she was getting a wee bit puffed up and proud of the school’s accomplishments since she’s been there – just as she said “Well, I think we ARE the best in the county” my mind went right here:

Yep – she had just a wee bit of Sue Sylvester going on! Didn’t hurt that she is a middle aged lady with short hair either. She’s a much nicer lady though – I promise! And not the cheer coach, but the tennis coach instead.

I wonder if they’ll notice me stuffed into his backpack in history class?