Category Archives: personal

It’s Not Thursday, Either

During my lunch time at work today, I sat and wrote in a letter to a friend (YES, I still hand write and snail mail letters, we’ve been over this before) about all the things I wanted to get done after work.  I did not even remember my blog post until the next paragraph.  I wrote, “Crap! I’ll never get all this stuff done!”  Boy, was I right!  I got a few things done, some working out better than others, of course.  Now I am hurrying to get my blog post done before Steven gets home.

You probably guessed this is going to be a Tired Tuesday post.

Yes, I use this one a lot. It is one of my favorites, featuring two of my favorites.

Unlike Bela, I never thought it was Friday today.  I never even got my hopes up for Wednesday!  At times like these, I remind myself that I am the one who wanted a job with weekends off.  Well, I do like my weekends off, so I will put up with Tired Tuesday and all the rest.  I only hope my blog readers will put up with me.

I am sitting on my couch, freshly showered and in sweats, half looking at my local news.  Some schools are closing for tomorrow ALREADY!  They never did that when I was a kid!  Oh dear, now I sound like a tiresome old-timer.  In the first place, who cares what I didn’t have?  Even I shouldn’t care any more, because that was then and this is now.  Times change, me, get used to it or die.

“I bid you velcome.”

And here is a picture of Bela looking decidedly more cheerful.  I see he is holding a candle.  Perhaps the winter storm heading this way hit his area first and they lost power.  Oh, I hope that does not happen to us.

This is turning into a kind of a non-sequitur post.  I am supposed to save those for Thursday.  My only excuse is, you guessed it, I’m tired!  Happy Tuesday, though.

 

Home is Where the Hearts Are

I heart my husband.

Today’s post will be long on pictures, short on words, because, well, I’m short on brain power.  I know, what a surprise.  I hope nobody has a heart attack, falls over and dies not not surprised.

Be that as it may, I thought I would share photos of the lovely Valentine’s Day decorations my dear husband, Steven, put up.  Ah, Valentine’s Day.  For years it was a sad day for me.  No card, no flowers, no candy, no love.  Poor, pitiful me.  Now I have a nice husband who decorates for the occasion.  Here is our mantle.

The photos are year round, as are a few other pieces.

As regular readers know, Halloween lasts all year at my house.

First I zoom into the center, on Stevens juke box and our dancing skeletons.  That reminds me, I need to lose some weight.  And take dancing lessons.

Doesn’t everybody have a Valentine Dinosaur?

Peewee Herman is always on our mantle.  I guess the lizard is his date.  The ghosts are also year-round friends, with different seasonal accessories.  They do make good snowmen at Christmas.

And this is the other end.

The awesome wine glass was custom painted for me by a cast member of Leading Ladies, the play I directed at Ilion Little Theatre a couple of years ago.

And isn’t this a sweet couple?

The stool usually stands near our fireplace, unless we need it for human seating.  The gorilla is a Valentine decoration I purchased at half price at Winn Dixie in Georgia.  The occasion was Steven’s birthday, so we named him Bert the Birtday Gorilla.

Dr. Seuss is good for every holiday!

Steven bought a box of Valentines to add the the festivities.  I don’t know if you can tell in the pictures that he put some on the wall.  He said most of the Valentines available had superheroes.  I’m glad he picked Dr. Seuss.

In case I forget to say it next week, Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody.

 

 

I Felt Super!

Ah ha ha!  (that was a triumphant laugh)  I went running again!  I took two days off, because it was just too cold for me, but this morning it was 30 degrees when we got up, so I said, “Hey!”

I waited a couple of hours first and ate a banana with peanut butter not quite one hour before I actually went.  It was not much above 30 by then, but I thought I could rock it.  I was right.  I ran on the sidewalk instead of the road for the most part, because it was covered with enough snow to give traction.  Sometimes I thought I saw ice underneath the snow, so I exercised caution.  My middle-aged shuffle is good for that.

I had run for a half a block before I realized it was snowing. Snow?  Oh well, I could still rock it (but not rocket, if you see what I mean).  I had on leggings, a long sleeved t-shirt, a hat and gloves.  I wished I had also worn a scarf, especially when the wind picked up.  Then again, running without a scarf, I think, “Oh, if I had a scarf to cover my cold face, how nice that would be!”  Running with a scarf, it’s, “I can’t get this damn scarf to cover my face right and now I’m fogging my glasses!”

As I ran, I thought about the blog post I would write, especially the title.  It is Superbowl Sunday.  Could I work that in?  How about alliteration on Sunday?  Then I looked around at houses, feeling happy when I saw the occasional Christmas decoration still up.  I don’t really get over my post-Christmas let-down till spring.  Sometimes it lasts till it’s time to start thinking about Halloween.  When I wasn’t looking for greenery and wreaths, I was hoping the cold air would not give me a headache.

Regarding that last sentence, it was a forlorn hope. As I type this, I’m afraid I got one and it is getting worse (remember, the more you complain, the longer God lets you live). However, I see that I am over 300 words.  Short for a Running Commentary but long enough for a Wrist to Forehead Sunday.  I shall stop blogging and nurse my headache.  But I ran for 26 minutes, the same as I ran on Thursday, and I felt pretty damn good about it. Happy Sunday, everybody.

 

Severed Head Saturday?

What can I say, I like movies where somebody loses his head.  Not ALL movies where that happens, of course.  I don’t need to see the blood spurting out or anything really disgusting like that.  I am not a fan of the graphic violence.  And I like people to get their heads chopped off for a good reason, like greed, jealousy or being blackmailed.  Come to think of it, I always prefer murder for a reason, be it a movie, novel or true crime show.  You know, not some psycho, weirdo serial killer.  But I digress.

I had started to write a cooking post for tonight, and I have a couple of local business shout-outs I could write.  But I let it go too late in the day, and I’m tired.  We are looking at a Forensic Files right now (murder for the reason of greed, but not by losing a head).  Then we will put in a movie.  My vote is for Strait Jacket. I am in a William Castle kind of a mood, and, as I said to begin with, I like movies with severed heads.

Of course, it isn’t all severed heads with Mr. Castle.

And here’s the showman himself.  I never heard what kind of lobby gimmick if any he included with this flick.  That might be a good thing to research sometime.  I wonder if anybody has written a definitive biography of William Castle.  I’ll have to check.

The caption is not a line from the movie, or even anything to do with the movie, but I kind of like it.

Of course another reason to watch Strait Jacket is the wonderful Joan Crawford.  She is very good in the part, and I have to respect an actress who takes parts in cheesy horror movies in order to keep working.  And what’s wrong with cheesy horror movies anyways?  I find them more entertaining than a lot of Oscar bait.  But that’s a whole other blog post.  Happy Saturday, everybody.

Running Away From My Health Problems

I think it is an impressive structure.

As I approached Herkimer’s Historic Four Corners on my run this afternoon, I remembered I had pictures in my Media Library I could include in today’s Running Commentary.  Lacking a really catchy lead, I decided to open with the Courthouse.

Yes, after almost two months, I returned to running today.  My tiresome health problems continue to dog me, but I figured taking it easy was not helping me, I might as well try a little exertion.  For another reason, I miss running, and I thought I saw a 10K going on somewhere nearby in April.  I can be ready to run a 10K in April.  Or I can run it anyways, if I’m not ready for it.  But I could be partially ready for it if I started running today.

It was 39 degrees according to my thermostat.  Not too warm for leggings and long sleeves.  I wore a new sports bra I bought some weeks ago.  Ooh, it was soft.  I must purchase more new sports bras.  I put a sweatshirt and bottle of water on the deck rail, ready for my cool-down walk, and got started.

Regular readers know I prefer to run on the sidewalk.  It is safer, and I find it more pleasant.  However, winter sidewalks, especially when things have been thawing and re-freezing, can be treacherous.  I chose the road, left side facing traffic, as we are supposed to do but many do not.  I regretted my choice when I turned onto German Street.  Too much traffic!  And mud puddles.  I decided to only go one block and turn down Henry, a quieter street.

Ah, much better.  I noticed the sidewalk did not look too bad and decided to try it.  Long stretches were bare and dry, some were merely wet.  I shuffled carefully over some icy patches.  There were sections of the road that looked worse than the sidewalk, but you’ll have that.  I alternated sidewalk and road, avoiding ice and icy puddles whenever possible.  I ran up Main Street, which in the downtown area had lovely stretches of bare, dry sidewalk.

I used to go to this church.

It was as I ran by Christ Episcopal Church, narrating in my head, that I remembered about the pictures.  There is nothing like pictures to pep up a blog post.  I was able to stay on the sidewalk till the 1834 Jail.

Is the picture less effective because you can see green lawn and leaves? Sorry if I have ruined the mood.

Continuing up Main Street in the road got a little scary, because traffic picked up and I had to go around parked cars.  Still, every time I looked at the sidewalk, I felt no inclination to go there.  German Street was no better, and traffic there was worse.  Yikes!  I only went one block on German then turned down Prospect.  Phew!

I had planned to run for 20 minutes, my usual goal when I have not been running in a while.  However, I made it for 26 minutes.  As I walked my cool-down, my legs felt TERRIFIC!  I kept repeating to myself, I must run or walk every day.  We’ll see how that goes tomorrow, when the temperature is supposed to drop, abruptly and considerably.  At least it will be Friday!

 

Don’t Despair: Just Write the Post!

This is the kind of nonsense in which I indulge on Facebook lately.  The first I originally typed into this space, then thought, “I can’t start a blog post with this!”  So I moved it to Facebook.  Now I put it back here, just to be that way:

I can’t do it.  I can’t write a blog post about Why I Can’t Write a Blog Post.  And, I can’t write a blog post.

Then I remembered something I had meant to post in my pun group, Punmanship: A Salute to Bennett Cerf and other inveterate punsters.  It is a true story:

I said I would throw my hands up in despair, and my husband said he would like to see that. When I did, he said it did not look like despair. I said, “It was dis pair of hands!” The fact that he laughed explains our long and happy marriage.

Well, that got me up to 15o words anyways.  My choices now are:  (1) make a really short post; (2) throw in a picture or two and get silly; (3) never mind what choice #3 is, I’m going to add pictures and get silly.

Alas, Frangelica, we never knew ya!

Never mind what this originally represented:  these are all players in the murder mystery I am writing for a fundraiser for the Herkimer County Historical Society on March 31.  I worked a little more on it today but have far to go.  I shall give further updates as events warrant.

The Suiter House, home of the Herkimer County Historical Society.

Since the plot of the murder mystery centers around an upcoming exhibit at the Historical Society, I include a picture of The Suiter House. The mystery’s title is Secrets at Suiter House.  I believe I wrote a blog post about that.

Ooh, look at that:  I am up to 300 words.  I guess I could write a blog post after all.

 

Not Tired, Tingler!

So there I was, watching The Tingler with my dear husband Steven, because I thought I could write a post about a cheesy movie instead about how tired I am (it is Tired Tuesday, after all) (oh, it really, truly IS).  I opened my laptop to look for some photos to pep up the post (since apparently pepping myself up is beyond possibility), and on searching “The Tingler” on Facebook discovered that I have already written a blog post about it!

I was in a Vincent Price kind of mood.

I had been thinking about Vincent Price during the day, probably because of the picture I put in yesterday’s post.  Then again, any day is a good day for Vincent Price.  I did manage to find a couple of photos from the movie.

He ought to be looking so hangdog because the science in this movie is so spurious.

If you look in the background of that picture, you can see the skeleton that I believe was also featured in House on Haunted Hill, another favorite of ours.  Steven pointed out a couple other similarities in the movies, namely the un-loving, sneaky wife.

This looks a little racier than it actually is in the film.

Does the evil wife get her comeuppance? I shall not say, regarding either movie.  For one reason, I did not include a spoiler alert.  For anther reason, watch the movie yourself!  Either movie!  Any Vincent Price movie!  Any William Castle movie!  Comment what you watched.  I love it when I get comments.

 

I’ll Always Have Snapped

At the risk of stating the obvious.

This will be a brief combination of Monday Mental Meanderings and Blogger’s Sick Day.  I’m still sick with my cold or virus or whatever it is, but I made it through the day at work (I tried to avoid my co-workers and keep my germs to myself).  Now I am sitting here, looking at Snapped and wondering if I ought to attempt some chicken soup.

The Price is right.

Often I insert a monster picture at these times, but I thought a horror icon would do just as well.  My sister Vicki pointed this photo out to me on a page I had not encountered yet, Halloween (All Hallows Eve).  I immediately Liked it.

Full Disclosure:  I am not up to 200 words.  I’ll throw in the Snapped logo for a third picture and hit Publish.  Sorry, folks.

 

Only it’s not Sunday, and it is not no new. Hey, any Snapped in a storm.

 

The Lengths to which a Sweet Tooth Will Go

It is kind of a long headline, but I like it.  The sweet tooth in question belongs to my sweetie.  He is in the kitchen, baking with wine.

We have eaten all the candy we gave each other for Christmas.  OK, we ate all that a long time ago.  I never did as much baking for Christmas as I had planned, so we still have a few bags of chocolate chips.  Steven wanted cookies.  What to do?

I remembered once using a recipe for sugar cookies I found on a box of Jiffy Baking Mix.  I looked at our Hannaford store brand box.  No luck.  BUT, I have gotten better at finding things on the computer.  I opened the laptop and typed in “Bisquick sugar cookies.”  Bingo!

I wrote down the recipe.  Steven is putting it together, forgoing the granulated sugar they suggest you roll the cookies in but adding chocolate chips.  IT! COULD! WORK!

Wouldn’t that be a nice end to a Wrist to Forehead Sunday?  Chocolate chip cookies and some semblance of a blog post.

It was not until I got thus far in the blog post when I realized: I looked for a Bisquick recipe.  Why did I not look for a Jiffy Baking Mix recipe?  So just now I opened a new tab and did.  Ooh, lots more ingredients.  Forget that!

I will let you know in tomorrow’s blog post how the cookies turn out.  Happy Sunday, everybody.