 Nostalgia, DVDs, old movies, television, OTR, fandom, good news and bad, picks, pans, cute budgie stories, cute terrier stories, and anything else I can think of. Contact me at theyoungfamily (at) earthlink (dot) net . . . . . . . . . .
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» Saturday, November 30, 2002
Thursday Threesome (Late as always)
Onesome. Game- What's your favorite game? Jeopardy. Oh, wait, you mean one not on TV. :-) May I have two? Scrabble and Uno. Twosome. Set- Do you collect anything? Is there anything you've worked to get a full set of? The Jonny Quest and Quantum Leap comics. I'm presently working on getting almost all of the bound volumes of the old children's magazine, St. Nicholas. I don't want all of them because after they changed publishers in 1930, the quality went waaaaaay downhill. (Oh, yeah, the old Bobbsey twins books, back when they used to ride in carriages and not solve mysteries. I like the oldest ones; the 1930s ones are simply so stupid using Dinah as comic relief.) Threesome. and Match- Have you ever broken something belonging to someone else and tried to replace it with a perfect match? Nope.  » Wednesday, November 27, 2002
How ironic that the last "Thursday Threesome" I filled out had the following question and my honest answer: Q. When you run up against an unexpected challenge, do you adapt and roll with it or scrap your original plan and go with Plan B? A. Where's Option C--hide until it goes away?
Which is why it’s taken me until now to acknowledge the loss of a friend. We weren’t close friends of Tom Fuller. He wasn’t a frequent dinner guest or someone we visited often. We usually saw him at group gatherings, Bill Ritch’s New Year’s Eve bash, Atlanta Radio Theatre Company rehearsals back when we could still hack our way cross town during rush hour. And of course at ARTC performances. Tom was a grand performer. With his deep rumbling voice, he could portray everything from a villainous demon to a friendly department store Santa. And he was the consummate storyteller. At parties, the thing to do was to sit down next to Tom and let him talk. We remember sitting nearby at one gathering as he waxed eloquent about the folly of writers who wrote about a certain culture or region without knowing about the area and/or doing much research. His example was a romance novelist whose heroine, a Southern belle, is about to make her debut. Our deb descends the graceful curving staircase, he described--with 12 magnolia blossoms in her hair. If the poor girl’s visual impairment predicament wasn’t funny enough to his already laughing audience, Tom added the capper with a dry, “Her mamma didn’t like her very much.” Thomas’ crowning achievement was his writing. He wrote adult fantasy, horror, children’s stories, poetry, and radio drama all with consummate skill. I suppose given the chance I would have sold my soul to the devil to write like Thomas Fuller. Still, what I will miss most is his presence and his voice, and the wonderful tales he told while just sitting around with friends. » Wednesday, November 20, 2002
Typical of life, as February Callendar would comment...
Four big pizza chains in Atlanta, one of them goes away in the area, which one is it? Is it Domino's, who wouldn't know a good pizza if one hit them in the face, or Pizza Hut, which is marginally better than Domino's, but that isn't much of a compliment. No, of course it's Donato's, who will make me a pizza the way I like it without blinking an eye and with a tomato sauce that isn't overloaded with spices and pepper. Figures. Sigh. » Monday, November 18, 2002
As I was driving home from work on Friday, I was enjoying the autumn leaves. They certainly have had more color this year than I expected for having such a hot, dry summer. The colors are so brilliant that even in the constant rainstorms this fall they have managed to glow against the grey. I have been trying to drink in the color as much as possible.
Which gave me an amusing thought: what would the seasons taste like? Autumn would be the best. It would taste of apple cider and spiced wine, gingerbread and cinnamon toast and pumpkin pie. Winter would have the sting of cold and mint: peppermint drops and candy canes, mint ice cream and frozen custard and spearmint gum. Spring would be overly sweetened fruit juices, the mix overloaded with mangoes and strawberries, and sugary fruit pies. Summer. Eh. Lukewarm lemonade and dry toast. » Thursday, November 14, 2002
Thursday Threesome (on time, for heaven's sake)
Shake- Is there anything that makes you shake in your shoes? Any phobias you'd like to share? The usual things that bug me: Worms, snakes, palmetto bugs, ants getting into the house. The worst: small, enclosed places. I couldn't even play hide and seek by hiding in a closet as a kid. And like everyone else, fires. Rattle- What's rattling around in your mental trunk that you need to take care of? Losing weight. And getting the wooden rocking chairs polyurethaned and out of the living room by the time the Christmas tree goes up. (They've only been there since February...) and Roll- When you run up against an unexpected challenge, do you adapt and roll with it or scrap your original plan and go with Plan B? Where's Option C--hide until it goes away? » Tuesday, November 12, 2002
Calling All Cows...
a.k.a. "Till the Cows Come Home" If you read a long post I made back early this year, you’ll know as styles of decorating go, I like “country” best. Not the cute frills, flowers, ruffles, and Mary Engelbreit stuff, but gingham, Shaker lines, country farmhouse, comfy stuff. Way back when I wanted to dress up the light/ceiling fan fixtures I bought inexpensive decorative pull handles for the chains: geese to match the geese on the light cover in the master bedroom, etc. For the kitchen, I found a affable-looking black-and-white cartoon cow with a little bird fluttering over it; it made sense as much as I liked milk! It was cute but not overbearingly so. Later the kitchen began to take on an apple motif that we both liked, as eventually we are planning to paint it a Granny Smith apple green that a red apple motif would go well with it. But I wanted something else there, a secondary motif, and some cows seemed perfect: I painted a Holstein-like cow and some apples on the top of a cookie jar and made a cow toothpick holder. Last November at the “Christmas in Lithia” craft fair we came upon a woman selling ceramic kitchen accessories; one of her themes was cute cartoon cows. We bought a lidless jar to put on the stove to keep wooden spoons in and discovered that the cows on it matched the one on our ceiling fan pull. We could have “cowed out” on her stuff at this year’s craft fair, but got only what we needed: a measuring spoon holder and a spoon rest for the stove. We didn’t need a creamer or sugar bowl or napkin holder, yet the little cow design is quite appealing. Since we had found this same cow motif in two different places, was it possible that it is copyright free or sold somewhere for use on ceramics, wallpapers, etc? Just for the heck of it, I searched for +cartoon +cow in Google and came up with more of these same cartoon cows--on piece of china being sold in Great Britain! Here they are. And again. So evidently this motif is available somehow to be used on ceramic items. I wonder how and where one would find it. There doesn’t seem to be any artist’s name associated with them. Anyone know whose design this is or where it comes from? Feedback appreciated. » Saturday, November 09, 2002
Late, late, late:
Thursday Threesome Onesome: Starbucks. Are you a coffee drinker? Yeah? What's your favorite brew? Not? Then what gets you going each day? Regular coffee gives me palpitations. Decaf gives me indigestion. My beverage of choice: Milk! Twosome: Christmas. Are you ready? ...or is it still a little early? Naw. I've been wishing for Christmas since July...mostly so it would get cool. Threesome: Blend. Is autumn blending into winter for you? ...or are you already there? Still not cool enough! BTW, is the Thursday Threesome lady a Trixie Belden fan? » Wednesday, November 06, 2002
I'm a little puzzled and appalled by an article on CNN's website this morning. Entitled "Blind Preschool Kids Embrace Braille," it talks about--well, just what the headline implies.
The "puzzled and appalled" came from these two paragraphs:
So these poor kids have gone through school not learning how to read just because audio material was available? What kind of nonsense is this? » Saturday, November 02, 2002
Okay, who's glad there are only three more mail days until the election?
You know, every candidate claims to be in favor of helping the environment. Just how many damn trees have they killed with the relentless junk mail we've been getting from them since this summer????? » Friday, November 01, 2002
“Trick or Treat, Smell My Feet, Give Me Something Good to Eat”
I have a love-hate relationship with Halloween. Most of the time I love to hate it. :-) Okay, I’m not trying to sound like the All Hallow’s version of Scrooge. Halloween is great fun when you’re a kid. You have to decide on a costume--and it’s your decision. If Mom and Dad can’t afford a store-bought costume, you might be stopped right there, but otherwise it’s your choice on what to wear, an especially heady thought back when you’re seven or eight and your parents dictate what sort of clothes are appropriate for school, church, and going places. Adults have parties, too. I didn’t grow up in the type of society where adults had costume parties, but I know people now who attend them and have seen them in movies. It looks like fun. There’s a great deal to be said about occasionally pretending to be what you’d like to be, rather than the mundane person you are. On the other hand, I simply don’t get the furor surrounding the entire holiday. A couple of bat decorations, a carved pumpkin, some of that spiderweb stuff--okay. But Halloween lights? Halloween cards? Yards decorated to look like graveyards? And hundreds of adults going berserk over this (I left work an hour early last night and it still took me 80 minutes to get home!)? My usual outside Halloween decorations used to be two foam jack’o lanterns on the glass doors. After Halloween 1999 I thawed a bit and bought on discount a small light-up pumpkin and a small beanbag ghost and scarecrow, then a week before Halloween covered the little table on the front porch with a dark plastic disposable tablecloth and put Mr. Pumpkin out, flanked with the beanbags. On November 1 it comes in and is banished to the closet again. After last year’s rest (we didn’t do Halloween because of 9/11), we had quite a glut of kids this year. I got two small bags of candy, 46 pieces in all, because the most kids we’ve ever had was about 40. In the last half hour (I’m “open for business” between six and eight), I had to break out the bag of York peppermint patties stashed in the fridge. The final total was between 58-60. It was pretty chilly (one girl who came up on the porch was complaining vociferously about the cold) and I was able to light the fire and have it all cozy-looking. The library/living room is our “quiet room” and there’s no TV; I followed the usual tradition by listening to episodes of The Shadow. The spooky organ music is always good for atmosphere. There were tall kids and kids barely old enough to get up the steps. Lots of what James told me were “Scream” masks, some princesses, a gypsy, lots of generic fantasy characters (and probably TV characters I don’t recognize), and one adorable little toddler in a Blue’s Clues outfit. I’d had two complaints in previous years. One was that if you’re going to go out trick or treating you ought to at least put on a bit of a show for the candy distributors and try for some type of costume, even if it’s a Groucho mask or painting your face and wearing Dad’s old jacket. It bugged me two years ago at the number of older boys who just grabbed a plastic Kroger bag and went around trolling candy (especially since I think 12 and up is too old for trick or treating anyway). The other beef--and maybe I'm just being old-fashioned--was that almost none of the kids, especially the older ones, ever said “Thank you.” This year all the kids had made an attempt at some type of costume. In a couple of cases it was pretty thin, but they at least tried. I also noticed that all of the kids who were verbally able said “thank you,” even the couple of rangy older boys, the type who usually don’t think saying “thank you” is cool. Moms prompted the smaller ones and occasionally they made it. It was a bit much for one dazed little fella, though. He wouldn’t let me put the candy in his pumpkin container; he had to take it from my hand, eyes wide and gaping all the while. :-) Wonder if Dad will have to explain to him today that some miracle hasn’t occurred and he can’t go out every night getting candy from neighbors? |
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