What is on My NetFlix Queue

My own Netflix choices are pretty eclectic, but when you consider the ones my kids have added, the list seems a schizophrenic (not in the accurate DSM-VI definition of mental illness, but in the cheesy horror story split-personality definition -- probably not pc, but I'm just saying. . .)

Movies we have at home:

1. Hetty Wainthrop, disc 2 (BBC Mystery) starring Patricia Routledge (she of "Keeping up Appearances" fame) and Dominic Monahan (Lost, Lord of the Rings -- Merry)

2. La Sylphide -- a ballet. Guess who put this one on the list.

3. Mockingbird Don't Sing -- added by Robbie, about a abused girl who has to learn to communicate.

4. The Muppet Show -- the original 70's version.

The Next 10 on the Queue:

1. Cadfael: The Potter's field (again BBC Mystery)
2. A Good Year -- Russell Crowe's latest critical flop.
3. Jean de Florette -- I have waited forever for this to finally show up.
4. Mississippi Burning
5. Ghosts of Missippi
6. Amistad -- are you seeing a trend here?
7. Millenium Season 2 (disc 3)
8. Millenium Season 3 (disc 4) these are a bonding moment for Robbie and I.
9. Longitude Part 1 -- Masterpiece Theatre
10. Dinner at 8.

I have 276 movies in my queue. I will be 100 years old before I ever get through them all.

Halloweenie

I thought I was a Halloweenie because I just can’t seem to make my Halloween decorations look anything more than an old woman trying to hard to be festive. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I just don’t do "themes". Not parties, not YW programs, etc. I am just too pragmatic for all of that. Alas, probably makes it too boring for my YW.

However, I was taking a picture of my Halloween decorations to show you how lame I am and Presto!! A Ghost!! Ranks right up there with the headless man, doesn’t it?

I also tried to take pictures of Otto, but he just kept running away

Confessional

Please do not feel sorry for me. I am not fishing for sympathy. I know that this will sound pathetic, but it is true.

Like Emily Jones, I also have a confession to make. I never verbalized it until I was talking to Aunty Kate on Saturday night. Here goes: Everyone tells me that if I lose weight, I will feel better. Well, I know that, but secretly, I don’t want to feel better because then I am afraid I will be expected to do more. There, I’ve said it. Now it is no longer a secret wish/desire/inner thought–whatever.

What I really need to do is lose the weight, feel better, and learn to say no!!

I lost 3.6 more pounds at WW this week. Hurray for me!!

The Headless Man

I was listening to NPR’s "All Things Considered" today (only because it comes on before "Prairie Home Companion." And yes, I do listen to that tax-payer funded, left-leaning, radio station with the liberal, progressive agenda. I like it; it’s interesting even if I don’t always agree with them, and I help pay for it. (The grammatical structure of that sentence is challenged. I know.) In keeping with the season, they had asked their readers to send in stories of scariest things that had ever happened to them. This made me think of the scariest time I remember as a child.

When I was a kid (about age 6) in Ogden, Utah, we truly lived on the wrong side of the tracks. We were on west 31st street, down by the grain silos where the train cars were loaded. About a block away, was our church, the 19th Ward of the LDS Mt. Ogden Stake. The building is still there, but it was sold many years ago to another denomination. I would love to go in and see if it is still the same as I remember. There was a huge mural of the Last Supper on the wall behind the pulpit. Mormons don’t put murals in their buildings anymore. We all use the same correlated art work. Right now it is Carl Bloch. I personally sort of like a little iconography in my house of worship. That is one of the many reason I love the Temple. But I digress.

We had a ward Halloween party that my older sister, Fran, and I attended. My mom did not go to church with us very often, and this was no exception. This was back in the day when kids could wander unfettered after dark and we did only live across the street and 2 houses away.
It was a wonderful, fall evening, as I remember. The air was crisp and the leaves were, too. Just outside the cultural hall (gym to the non-Mormons), was a bush. As Fran and I walked home, I saw a shape behind the bush. It was a man; but not just any man. It was a headless man!! His shoulders were broad, his coat was dark, and he had a small light between his fingers as though he and his missing head had needed to go outside for a smoke. In a few seconds, I saw the light nearer the ground. I was sure that cigarette had found its missing home. We ran, screaming, as fast as we could to the safety of our own front porch. Mom just laughed it off, certain that some one had really needed a cigarette, and being a Mormon, had to hide it.

I asked Fran about it a few years ago. Her memory was vivid, also. But not as vivid as mine. Somehow, that shape had shed it cloak, skins and all its tissues and resided in her memory as a smoking skeleton.

Driving by the area recently, I saw that the church is still there. Even the bush is still where I remember it; about the same size. Our house is gone. It is the garage and yard for the Ogden City School District buses.

There was no sign of the missing head.

A List of Musings

1. Why do the CSI’s in CSI: Miami drive Hummers? Are the Miami streets that rugged?

2. Why do the CSI’s in Las Vegas work in the dark? And never pull their hair back when they are working a crime scene? Honestly, I must watch too much TV.

3. What is all the hubbub about? I just finished Twilight and think it is a nice enough book, but am not all that eager to read the next two. I must be old and have forgotten what true, young love is like. Which leads me to #4.

4. Why are vampires suddenly the hot new thing? Aren’t they creatures of the night? Don’t they bite people? Why are there romance novels and TV shows about them? I’m just saying.

5. Why is it that when I click the box on blogspot to remember me when I log in, it never does. It is starting to effect my self esteem.

6. Why does every place that has a credit card machine have to have those silly flowers tied to the pens and then stuck in a flower pot of beans? I never recognize them as pens. I always assume that everyone has the same dumb flower arrangements.

A Weigh

This is my Monday outfit. Robbie asked me why I get dressed up to go to Weight Watchers. I think he thought it was a dress up kind of place. In actuality, this is the outfit I wore when I first joined, so as a control, I wear the same outfit every time I weigh in and know that the loss (or gain – heaven forbid) is not attributable to what I wear.

This is just one of the tricks of the diet junkie – control what you wear even if you can’t seem to control what you eat. Today, a young woman showed up in flip-flops, very short shorts, and a tank top. It was 45 dang degrees outside. But her clothes weighed next to nothing. I think she must have over indulged on the weekend.

This is not a great picture, but it's not a great outfit.

Any weigh (hee hee), I am down an additional 2.2 lbs for a grand total of 10.2!!!

Good, Better, Best

There must be a message in recent general conference talks out there just for me. Elder Dallin Oaks talked about all the good things there are to do out there in the world, but there are things that are better, and things that are best. It reminded me a little bit of the Berenstain Bears Ready Set Go where the bears compete. Some are good, some are better and some are best. Poor Papa bear is only best at napping. I think Papa bear and I have something in common. Sister Julie Beck, in General Women’s Conference urged us/me to focus on the essentials and forgo the frivolous. I knew in an instant what she was talking about. All the frivolous things I do came clearly to mind. Now, generally, these talks leave me with a great feeling of inadequacy. (Thank goodness for spell-check. I could never have done that on my own.) You know the feeling – not good enough, house not clean enough, not thin enough, don’t get my visiting teaching done early enough, blah, blah blah. On and on goes the voice in my head. Anyway, I decided to list all the frivolous things I do and decide if they are good, better or best – or not in the running. This is by no means a complete list:

1. Play Jewel Quest II. Not even in the running. I spend way to much time on this ridiculous game. It is sort of addicting; I even see it in my sleep. I start out thinking that I’ll only play a minute or two and then discover that my entire morning is gone.

2. Nap. Good, but better or best if I were in bed at a decent hour so that I didn’t have to go back to bed – which I sometimes do instead of play #1 above.

3. Sew. Better, or maybe even best if I forwent (I believe that is the past tense of forgo) #1 and #2 above. I would like to get Aunty Fran’s quilt done since I didn’t finish it before she died’ didn’t finish before her son’s birthday, and didn’t finish it before he graduated from high school. Maybe I’ll finish it before he goes/comes home from his mission.

4. Read. I actually haven’t read anything but Twilight in ages. And that took me 3 months to read. I used to read all the time, though some of the choices were only good – and actually some of them weren’t even that high on the list. I need to work on this one. Reading has always been my passion. It’s funny; I can read a novel (silly ones, especially) and can’t seem to get into a good/better/best regimen of reading my scriptures.

5. TV. Unfortunately, because I haven’t slept long enough, and then spend too much time at the office (not awful), by the time I come home and get dinner started, I am too tired to do much else. So I just sit and surf the channels until I discover that I have been through all the channels at least 12 times and there is nothing on worth watching.

So, I resolve to give up Jewel Quest II, drop 2 shows from my DVR schedule (it is amazing how much sleep I lose over the likes of Law & Order:SVU, Without a Trace, and Las Vegas. I am not quite ready to give up Ugly Betty or Bones). I also resolve to quit saying how busy I am because we all know that it is only 1, 2, and 5 that are really using up my time. I think I’ll also give going to bed before midnight a try. Maybe that will actually take care of #2.

PS – Latest report from Weight Watchers –down an additional 3 lbs.!! I have many to go to be at a healthy weight, but I am on my way.

Awful

It has been a really long time since I wrote this entry on my WordPerfect program. So I will just send it the way I wrote it and then will do an update sooner than this.

I picked the world’s worst day to go to Weight Watchers!! Granted, any day would be better than not going at all, but it couldn’t have been more poorly planned on my part. As background, I need to lose a lot of weight for the sake of my health. I have developed some very bad habits since I grew up (maybe I never had any good ones to begin with.) Anyway, I eat too much, eat out too much, drink too much Diet Coke (elixir from the gods), and don’t get enough sleep – because I am staying up too late playing on the computer or watching TV. That all adds up to no energy, a messy house, no exercise, and a whole bunch of unfinished projects because a) I am too tired, and/or b) I must be too busy. You choose.

So, we are in the middle of an office move. I promised Bob I would not call it the awful anymore because it bothers him. That was really only a slip of the tongue one day when I said "awful" instead of "office." Must be Freudian. Well moving is hell, whether it is 20 feet, or 20 blocks. We are moving into the office space next door to us. Last Thursday, we got about 85% of everything moved. It is the last 15% that kills you. We are still moving the last 15% 5 days later, and seem to have made little dent in it, although Bob thinks we only have 8% more. On move day, I don’t think I actually moved anything, I just spent my time answering everybody’s request for furniture placement and picture hanging advice. And yet, I was strangely exhausted. I think it was from just the sheer number of miles I walked in circles between the two offices.

So, Monday, I decided to go to Weight Watchers. I stopped at McDonald’s for breakfast on my way there. That is 15 points right off the bat of my 31 allowed points for the day. I went straight to the office, where we ordered lunch from a Greek restaurant. That took another 15 points. I now have only 1 point for the rest of the day. It is only 3 pm. I then eat 2 Hershey’s minis and another Diet Coke. It is now 6 pm and I have had no water (need 6 glasses - Diet Coke doesn’t count), no dairy (3 servings) and no vegetables. Did I tell you the woman who joined ahead of me was 5'4"and weighed only 115 lbs.!! She only needs to lose 5 lbs!! I could beat myself (or maybe her).

So, I went home, scrambled eggs, threw on some cheese, drank 2 glasses of milk (the three dairy’s), chugged down 4 glasses of water and some spinach. I then went to bed and dreamed I was in a Hannibal Lecter movie. I’ve never even seen one. Go figure. It must have been all that eating. I used up 16 of my 35 extra allowable points for the week. There will be no movie popcorn this weekend. Thank goodness it is fast Sunday coming up.

Anyway, the office is looking great. We will actually be able to get back into helping clients again soon. I had a better Weight Watchers day today. Only ate 21 of my 31 points. I think that is a no-no, also. Maybe I can add 10 back to my weekly overage.

PS - On my first week at WW, I (not WWI) lost 4.4 lbs. It may have been a lot more if I hadn’t eaten all of the leftovers the Sunday night before my weigh-in.