Friday Randomness

Happy Friday, Everyone! A 3-day weekend is upon us, so let’s celebrate Labor, the Labor movement and all that it’s given us, and a bit of rest from our own Labor.

I signed up for a free trial of AmazonPrime last month, and one nice thing that you get for your annual fee of $79 is free streaming of a lot of TV and movies. Not the new good stuff, but a lot of other things. I won’t renew past the 1 month free trial, because we already pay for OnDemand and Netflix, and I suspect there’s a lot of crossover. One show that they have on AmazonPrime that they don’t have on the other services is Season 4 of thirtysomething.

I was hooked on this show back when it was in its first run on TV, and I watched the episodes again when they were on Lifetime for a few years after that.  I think it was the first TV show that I fell in love with as an adult, outside of my mother’s house.  It feels different, right?  It felt very grown up to watch something that my mom may or may not have even known about, but certainly didn’t care about.  The first 3 seasons are available via DVD through Netflix, but season 4 was produced for DVD in an Amazon exclusive, I think. For a little while, you could watch SOME of the episodes on Netflix streaming, but many were not available, and now they’re all gone. I just realized that I could watch them here the other day, and my free trial ends on Monday, so I’m watching episodes back to back. It’s a good season. I had forgotten how innovative the show in general was at the time. Gay men in bed together (considered so racy that the episode in question wasn’t ever shown on repeats, and 5 advertisers pulled from the show, even though they didn’t even kiss or touch). The trials of working women. The trials of stay at home women.  The trials of being successful in your work, and in not being so successful.  The stress of providing for your family.  I don’t remember seeing these issues on TV much before this.  I love it, and I love the late 80s clothes and hair.  The big earrings.  Melissa with her one earring and her asymmetric hair (a look I loved, and tried a few times, but I didn’t have the curls, so it wasn’t just right for me.)  So fun.

I’m trying to teach my brother-in-law how to cook a few dishes. He tends to eat the same 3 or 4 dishes, and he’s bored to tears of them, but isn’t really comfortable in the kitchen. So far we’ve covered Chicken Piccata and Rib Eye Steak with Tomato Basil Relish, which is basically a bruschetta with steak instead of toasted bread. Delicious. It’s fun to show him, and I hope he begins to feel more comfortable with cooking.

I saw this article, and I can’t help but think that, unlike a real astronomical sight, a blue moon is purely a matter of human timekeeping. Mars, Venus, and Mercury lined up? A meteor shower? Those are pretty special. And any full moon is indeed beautiful (and they wake me up in the morning, shining brightly through my window), but they’re just a figment of our imagination, a matter of how we keep time. This full moon looks the same as the one earlier this month, and the same as the one next month. If we kept time from one moon to another (every 28 days), they wouldn’t occur at all. But then, there’s the poetry in the fact that Neil Armstrong was laid to rest today, on the date of a full moon, the day every month when we see more of the moon than any other time. That’s touching, and makes this blue moon a bit more special to me.

I got the DVD of The Grapes of Wrath from the library. I think we’ll watch it one day this weekend. I want Maya to watch with us, but she’s not so sure, because she didn’t really enjoy the book. I’m not sure if it’s because she’s young, or if it’s the writing. I hated Steinbeck at her age, though to be fair, all I’d read was The Red Pony. Wait, no, I also read, Of Mice and Men, which I liked OK, and she hated. I’m guessing she’ll bail. Maybe she’ll be more interested when she’s older. I didn’t read The Grapes of Wrath until I was in my late 30s or early 40s (within the last 5-8 years), and I loved it.

I’m looking forward to the elections being OVER this fall. I hate the phone calls. We have caller ID on our phones downstairs, but the one in our bedroom (aka, my office, where I sit all day) is circa 1988. So the only way to avoid the political calls is to not answer the phone, which is an option I’m not happy about. I’m glad we don’t watch a lot of network TV, at least not live. We do watch shows on OnDemand, which sometimes has no commercials, and even when there are commercials, there aren’t as many. I’m hoping no political commercials that I can’t fast forward through. Ted watched more of the Republican Convention than I did, and he paid for it in the form of nightmares of Romney being elected. I felt superior in my decision to go to bed early. 😉

There’s a wasp nest in our parking lot. Technically in the rocks to the side. They’re kind of swarming around, and yesterday 2 kids and one adult were stung. I hope that an exterminator gets out here soon.

There’s a handyman coming to work here next week. We need his help for a few little jobs that have been sitting there, bugging us. Ted and I can fix some things, but not others, and these are beyond our skills, sadly.

Giving blood tomorrow morning. Gross.*

I went to lunch today with my coworkers. We all work from home, at least those of us who live in California. We don’t get together very often, so it was nice to see everyone and catch up on our more personal stuff. I’m stuffed with Mexican food, though, so I’m thinking dinner will be nada for me. It was nice.

That’s it for me. Have a lovely weekend. Take a minute to stop and think of the labor movement, and what it means to you. I’m thankful for all that the unions and the movement fight for…workers rights, safe workplace, 40 hour workweek, etc.

*Updated on Sunday afternoon to tell you that my issue with giving blood is basically that I hate needles, I hate blood, and I’ve had  a couple of uncomfortable experiences with it that psyche me out for future donations.  So this time, I decided to use the power of positive thinking, not let myself get so freaked out by it, and breathe more.  Know what?  It worked.  The needle going in stung a bit, but not for long.  The needle BEING in was gross, as always (that thought in my head that there’s a big needle in my arm, draining out my blood, which is powered by the pumping of my heart…it’s almost enough to make me faint…so I tried to not think about it), but it wasn’t painful.  I got a good seat, which means right next to the radio, which was distracting, and made me think that maybe next time I’ll bring my iPod.  It was over quickly, and I had that great feeling of having helped people, REALLY helped.  Plus, they have teen volunteers in the cantina area, who will bring you OJ or whatever, which is sweet.  Overall, a positive experience.  You know, except for the blood part.