Christina recently moved out of my parents' house and took the downstairs TV cabinet with her. Yesterday, Gabe found the treasure trove of remotes that had been gathering there for years:
I believe Gabe considered it a very, very good day.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Jackpot
Gabe has a fondness for remote controls and we have learned to keep them out of reach or risk have the channel changed at crucial moments (i.e. middle of a football game, 3rd down, pass thrown, breath held to see if the catch will be made...and suddenly we are watching a golf tournament instead).
Christina recently moved out of my parents' house and took the downstairs TV cabinet with her. Yesterday, Gabe found the treasure trove of remotes that had been gathering there for years:
I believe Gabe considered it a very, very good day.
Christina recently moved out of my parents' house and took the downstairs TV cabinet with her. Yesterday, Gabe found the treasure trove of remotes that had been gathering there for years:
I believe Gabe considered it a very, very good day.
Monday, February 7, 2011
"Limited Cable Service"
At the end of December, in an act of money-saving anticipation due to the pending arrival of this little gem,
we decided to take ourselves down to the basics of television entertainment. Remember in the 80's when there were only 6 channels and you had to (gasp!) get up off the couch to change the channel? Well we can still be lazy and use the remote, and we actually have about 15 channels, but we are definitely experiencing the "limited" part of what Comcast calls our new level of cable service.
(incidentally, our BABY (apparently they need to label the picture so I don't mistakenly think I'm having an inkblot) does not have two heads...one of those round things is the yolk sac, soon to be the placenta)
So, I have watched more Little House on the Praire, Golden Girls, random PBS shows, and Hallmark Channel movies in the last 6 weeks than in my entire 36 years up until now. Gone are the days of channel surfing and getting sucked into an episode of Real Housewives of a-city-in-the-US-that-you-didn't-used-to-have-any-opinion-of-but-now-you're-embarrased-for-the-people-who-also-live-there-and-whose-town-is-being-sullied-by-women-on-a-reality-show-acting-ridiculous. Farewell to the hours spent watching You've Got Mail for the thirtieth time simply because it was on TBS and I don't have a good book to read as an alternative. No longer will I stumble across Bret Michaels from Poison in his second, third, (fourth?) attempt to find love with a former groupie who swears she's deeply emotionally really and truly connected to the real man behind the rock star and not just the idea of being a rock star wife. And perhaps most disappointingly, gone is Top Chef...the one Bravo reality TV show I have never been embarassed to admit having seen.
Life sure gets a lot simpler when you're a chronic channel surfer who only has a few channels to choose from.
So here is what I've learned and/or pondered in the last month and a half during my pre-bedtime channel flipping:
1) How did Laura Ingalls get to the nickname "Manly" for her husband from his given name of Almonso? I would think that Al would be a more natural conclusion to have reached.
2) Well if it's good enough for Laura Ingalls, perhaps I should try it. I don't think Bret would mind being referred to as "Manly". I think people (including me and Bret) would snicker at this nickname, but I just might try it.
3) How did Laura's older sister Mary go blind? (This was actually Bret's question...he guessed that she had Scarlet Fever. I had no guesses since I was too busy wondering if the actress that played Mary went blind in real life and maybe that's why they wrote that story line. But then I remembered that the show was based on books by the real Laura Ingalls Wilder so it probably was an illness or something like Bret thought.)
4) Which one of the Golden Girls owned the house they all lived in? Was it Dorothy or Blanche?
5) Are any of the Golden Girls besides Betty White still alive?
6) Didn't someone know that the shoulder pads they all wore made them look like linebackers? Why were shoulder pads ever a fashion trend?
7) Some guy named Larry Levinson is the producer or creator or something warranting screen credit on every Hallmark Channel movie. Who *is* this guy?
8) The story line of every Hallmark Channel movie is a variation on the same theme: a strong independent woman discovers that something is missing in her life and inevitably it can only be provided by the unexpected suitor who enters her life. This often happens when the strong independent woman goes to a small town - possibly for work, or possibly to take care of business in the small town she grew up in. And often the unexpected suitor is an old boyfriend/husband who the new boyfriend/fiance just can't seem to replace.
9) The sole purpose of the Hallmark Channel is to make the viewer feel warm, fuzzy, and possibly even tearful at the beauty that is relationships. Forget thought provoking programming, forget current events, forget it all...Hallmark's only goal is ooey-gooey-smooshy-squishy-hearts-and-flowers LOVE. A couple weeks ago I watched the new Hallmark movie with Betty White in it, and they were showing classic Hallmark card commercials throughout. Two daughters finding all the cards from them that their father saved, two little girls playing tea party with a handmade Hallmark invitation...I spent a good portion of the commercial breaks teary-eyed and sniffling and by the end of the movie, when Betty White's missing-in-action husband who was shot down during WWII comes home in a casket with the American flag draped over it, I was choking back sobs because I didn't want to be a complete ridiculous blubbering mess in front of Bret, who was watching the end of the movie with me.
That's right Hallmark Channel, you sucked my husband in too. Oh you're a clever one, Larry Levinson.
10) I will be very glad when the new season of Amazing Race starts in a couple of weeks.
we decided to take ourselves down to the basics of television entertainment. Remember in the 80's when there were only 6 channels and you had to (gasp!) get up off the couch to change the channel? Well we can still be lazy and use the remote, and we actually have about 15 channels, but we are definitely experiencing the "limited" part of what Comcast calls our new level of cable service.
(incidentally, our BABY (apparently they need to label the picture so I don't mistakenly think I'm having an inkblot) does not have two heads...one of those round things is the yolk sac, soon to be the placenta)
So, I have watched more Little House on the Praire, Golden Girls, random PBS shows, and Hallmark Channel movies in the last 6 weeks than in my entire 36 years up until now. Gone are the days of channel surfing and getting sucked into an episode of Real Housewives of a-city-in-the-US-that-you-didn't-used-to-have-any-opinion-of-but-now-you're-embarrased-for-the-people-who-also-live-there-and-whose-town-is-being-sullied-by-women-on-a-reality-show-acting-ridiculous. Farewell to the hours spent watching You've Got Mail for the thirtieth time simply because it was on TBS and I don't have a good book to read as an alternative. No longer will I stumble across Bret Michaels from Poison in his second, third, (fourth?) attempt to find love with a former groupie who swears she's deeply emotionally really and truly connected to the real man behind the rock star and not just the idea of being a rock star wife. And perhaps most disappointingly, gone is Top Chef...the one Bravo reality TV show I have never been embarassed to admit having seen.
Life sure gets a lot simpler when you're a chronic channel surfer who only has a few channels to choose from.
So here is what I've learned and/or pondered in the last month and a half during my pre-bedtime channel flipping:
1) How did Laura Ingalls get to the nickname "Manly" for her husband from his given name of Almonso? I would think that Al would be a more natural conclusion to have reached.
2) Well if it's good enough for Laura Ingalls, perhaps I should try it. I don't think Bret would mind being referred to as "Manly". I think people (including me and Bret) would snicker at this nickname, but I just might try it.
3) How did Laura's older sister Mary go blind? (This was actually Bret's question...he guessed that she had Scarlet Fever. I had no guesses since I was too busy wondering if the actress that played Mary went blind in real life and maybe that's why they wrote that story line. But then I remembered that the show was based on books by the real Laura Ingalls Wilder so it probably was an illness or something like Bret thought.)
4) Which one of the Golden Girls owned the house they all lived in? Was it Dorothy or Blanche?
5) Are any of the Golden Girls besides Betty White still alive?
6) Didn't someone know that the shoulder pads they all wore made them look like linebackers? Why were shoulder pads ever a fashion trend?
7) Some guy named Larry Levinson is the producer or creator or something warranting screen credit on every Hallmark Channel movie. Who *is* this guy?
8) The story line of every Hallmark Channel movie is a variation on the same theme: a strong independent woman discovers that something is missing in her life and inevitably it can only be provided by the unexpected suitor who enters her life. This often happens when the strong independent woman goes to a small town - possibly for work, or possibly to take care of business in the small town she grew up in. And often the unexpected suitor is an old boyfriend/husband who the new boyfriend/fiance just can't seem to replace.
9) The sole purpose of the Hallmark Channel is to make the viewer feel warm, fuzzy, and possibly even tearful at the beauty that is relationships. Forget thought provoking programming, forget current events, forget it all...Hallmark's only goal is ooey-gooey-smooshy-squishy-hearts-and-flowers LOVE. A couple weeks ago I watched the new Hallmark movie with Betty White in it, and they were showing classic Hallmark card commercials throughout. Two daughters finding all the cards from them that their father saved, two little girls playing tea party with a handmade Hallmark invitation...I spent a good portion of the commercial breaks teary-eyed and sniffling and by the end of the movie, when Betty White's missing-in-action husband who was shot down during WWII comes home in a casket with the American flag draped over it, I was choking back sobs because I didn't want to be a complete ridiculous blubbering mess in front of Bret, who was watching the end of the movie with me.
That's right Hallmark Channel, you sucked my husband in too. Oh you're a clever one, Larry Levinson.
10) I will be very glad when the new season of Amazing Race starts in a couple of weeks.
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