Sunday, February 16, 2014

Random Thoughts for February

Random Thoughts for Feb 2014

I get the Summer Olympics.  They run, they jump, they lift heavy objects, they wrestle, they swim.  But the Winter Olympics?  These sports are crazy:  Slope style  something, the race on the sled where you essentially do a plank for the whole time?  Teams of snowboarders?  And 2-hours of cross-country skiing on a team?  Plus, they have so many decals and designs on their uniforms (thank you, curlers) and their helmets that I can not only not figure out what country they are from, I can’t tell who they are or even their gender in many cases.  I get Michael Phelps – little bathing suit, pair of headphones and bathing cap.  But the rest of these athletes confuse me even as they amaze me.  You have to be nuts to jump off a big hill of snow, flip around in the air, land BACKWARDS, and keep on going. 

I don't know what the fox says and I don't care.

I rarely make pasta anymore (too tempting and too hard to control the portions), but, when I do, I always use a jar of pasta sauce. Despite what the purists say about homemade, I figure Paul Newman subjected HIS sauce to great scrutiny and conducted extensive research to make it the best it could be. I can't say the same about mine.  And besides, his is good and FAST – you heat it for minutes instead of cooking for hours. Pass the Paul's, please.

My BFF and I had a serious discussion about the importance of eating healthy foods and getting regular exercise, and how hard we work – though we are far from perfect – at both of these aspects of our lives.  Then she raised a thought-provoking question:  At what age can you abandon those healthy practices and just eat whatever you damn please?  75?  80?  90?  At what point can I renounce my Weight Watchers membership and start ordering desserts, or bring home a box of Entenmanns’s donuts without life-threatening guilt?  Food for thought, huh?

Seriously, how is it that the throw rug next to my bed keeps slipping under the bed when it is on the carpet, not on a bare floor?  I just don’t understand it.

Don’t you hate it when you wake up from a particularly vivid dream – good or bad – and you are sure you will remember it because you will want to share it with someone, and then you go back to sleep and can’t remember it when you get up?

I am relatively new to Sirius radio since it came with my new car. I never thought I'd want it since most of my trips are short, but I now admit I am hooked.  But Sirius, like Pandora, has some questionable algorithms for what songs should be on various channels.  Frank Sinatra recorded thousands of songs, so if I go to "Siriusly Sinatra," I really only want to hear Frank, not Louis Armstrong or other singers.  But other than that, I really love it.  I especially love that the name of the artist and the name of the song come up on the screen.  It is amazing how many songs I know without ever having known their actual names and who sings them!

When I feel like eating clementines, I am forced to buy a box or a bag of them, which gives me way too many for one person to consume.  At least with a bunch of bananas, I can take only as many as I can eat before they spoil, but with clementines, it seems I always end up throwing some away.  I need to find someone with whom to split the box or bag.

I bought Cara Cara oranges the other day, though I had never heard of them.  They are the size of grapefruits and have an reddish/pinkish tinge, like a pink grapefruit.  Supposedly they are less acidic than a regular orange.  I'm just wondering where these have been or whether they just joined the orange family, and, if so, how that happened.  Too much time on my hands, right?

Among the life lessons I would like to impart to my nearly 21-year old nephew is this:  Never, ever slice an English muffin.  Always split it with a fork.  I wonder whether he knows this.  He's at the age where he thinks he knows everything.

And speaking of English muffins, don't you hate it when you are eating a burger – or, in my case, something on a light English muffin – and the bottom of the muffin or roll gets smaller and smaller as you eat it?  Eventually you are left with virtually no bottom and the meaty insides are in your hand.  Sometimes I flip the sandwich over halfway through to even things out.

Maybe it’s just me, but I really enjoy the music they play in the supermarket.  Within recent weeks, I have heard the old song “Jean” by Oliver twice.  I guarantee I would not have heard that forgotten oldie on Sirius radio or on Pandora.  Yeah, OK, it probably IS just me.

I'll say this for actress Melinda Dillon: She didn't work much, but she played the mother in two of the most widely-seen movies of all-time – "A Christmas Story" and "ET."

Don’t you feel stupid when someone stops you for directions and you can’t remember the names of the streets or tell them how to get there, even if it is a place you go or pass by routinely?  We tend to overlook the street names in favor of “make a right at Lisa’s house, then go straight until you hit Shop-Rite,” which doesn’t do the lost traveler much good.  Thank goodness for the GPS and SmartPhones with directions. 

I can kind of understand why TV weather people are forced to stand outside to report on extreme weather conditions (we like to see them almost blow away), but I don't get why they make the sportscasters report from the frozen tundra while there is no game going on.  If the reporter is talking on Tuesday about Sunday's game in Green Bay, can't he just tell us the forecast calls for ridiculously cold temperatures?  Watching his breath emerge as smoke doesn't persuade me to tune into the game.  Back to the comfort of the studio, I say!

Speaking of which, I now get more of my news, sports and weather via social media than I do by watching the news.  Just scrolling through Twitter or Facebook provides me with news and features that are more customized to my interests or that I can click on or scroll past.  That sound you hear is Walter Cronkite spinning in his grave.

The two most overused words in the English language are awesome and amazing.  I think our standards have been lowered, because everything these days is described as amazing.  "That was an amazing blog you wrote last month," someone will say.  Thanks, but does that mean all the rest of my entries are routine and this one was so much better that it surprised you?  Now I can understand the use of the word in some situations:  "Johnny got a perfect score on his SATs, and he cannot even count to 10."  THAT would be awesome and amazing.  But if I merely show up and do what is expected, why should anyone find that amazing?  Not that I don't appreciate or troll for compliments, mind you, but I am amazed by the awesomeness of them sometimes.

Among the things I hate to do is changing the sheets on my bed.  I love clean sheets, but getting that bottom, fitted sheet to fit is like a wrestling match, despite the fact that I buy sheets with really deep corners.  I guess they shrink over time.  I have to exert all the pressure I can to get the sheet to stretch over the bed.  By then I'm exhausted and ready to hit the sheets.

I can no longer tell black from blue.  I compare everything to the black suit hanging in my closet that I am sure is black because it said so on the label when I bought it.  But if I show up wearing black socks with blue pants, or a blue sweater with black pants, please let me know, assuming that this is not a universal affliction.

And why do I not have to us the word "an" in front of "universal" in the previous sentence.  English has some strange rules.

Why is it that I cannot fall asleep or stay asleep in my big, plush "Heavenly Bed," yet put me in a movie theater, sitting upright, and I can't keep my eyes open?

Don’t you hate it when you bite the inside of your cheek?  Every time you chew afterwards you end up biting it again.  It’s like when you have a toothache or lose a filling and you cannot keep your tongue from wandering over to the empty spot.

Recently I happened to watch a documentary on the planning and building of the George Washington Bridge.  I doubt the visionaries whose work made it possible could have imagined the GW becoming a tool used for retribution by politicians.  Is it any wonder why New Jersey is the butt of so many jokes? 

I am in a dilemma.  My lucky socks – that I always wore to Rutgers Women’s basketball games – were on hand for two losses recently, AND one of them got a hole in the toe, so I tossed it out.  The team won with the pair I wore the other day, so do they become my lucky socks now?  I might be better off just not having a lucky pair of anything, so I could just wear any pair of socks and not have to worry about keeping a particular pair clean.  Did I mention I was superstitious?  Believe me, it is never easy being me!
  

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