Category Archives: TV

Nerd Alert

Luke had a sleepover with a friend, and the three kids watched the original Tron movie for the first time. I hadn’t seen it either, and I watched it over my laptop screen while I worked last Thursday. It was was better than I thought it would be, and I wondered how it would have affected my future career in IT if I had seen it as a kid. Dave said, “Huh. I guess this movie is a little confusing.” He was exhausted from answered questions from all of us. I started off this blog post with the intention of making fun of the boys for being so into sci-fi, and then I glanced down at my super-awesome R2D2 shirt, and reread this blog post and realized a few things. I am as cool as an 8 year old boy. OK, 7 year old boy, since Luke ditched me at the bike park the other day and he is actually a lot cooler than I am. But I did buy my shirt in the boys department of Target. (Before I swore off Target wardrobe shopping, obviously.)

I always knew I was a straight -A student type of nerd, but I didn’t realize until recently that I was a “discussing the finer points of jedi training” type of nerd.

Happy 4th of July to everyone, nerd or otherwise!

>Hendricks

>I had the most delicious Gin and Tonic of my life last weekend when we were camping. I enjoyed it so much, I had to take this picture. Turns out, it was made with Hendrick’s gin. Slightly above my normal price point. I went to Liquor Mart and asked, “If I normally think gin is yucky, but I loved this, what can I get that is almost as good?” The answer was, “Just look for this on sale. You are going to be disappointed with everything else.”

But since it was mere hours before the season premiere of Mad Men, I didn’t have time to wait for a sale. And it was a special occasion…

I made my gin and tonic and then realize the upstairs TV no longer had AMC. So I tried to switch out the cable box from the basement with unfortunate results. Long story short, I poured my G&T into a jelly jar, screwed on the lid and biked to a friends house to watch Mad Men.

I felt like my Grandma, who always brought a pre-mixed martini to our house in a Lawry’s spice jar. Turning into my Grandma is a good thing. Totally worth the price of that bottle of gin.

>Omar Little/Genghis Khan

>Photo from HBO.

I was thinking about taking a meta moment of silence to commemorate the last episode of The Wire, watched here last night at Casa De MetaMegan. But I think we can all agree that there have been many, many moments of blog silence since we started watching The Wire 3 months ago. It’s hard work getting through 5 seasons of a television show in just 3 months. Hard, but rewarding work. Sigh.

Back to blogging, working, getting to bed before midnight and maybe I’ll even get those thank you notes in the mail soon!

In other news, I am way behind on all the precious things Jack has been saying and doing. We went to see the Genghis Khan exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science the week after Christmas. There was a 60 second (or so) movie reenactment of the life of Genghis Khan, and Jack was very interested in the crying baby at the beginning. He watched it several (20) times. Days later, we were in the car amongst the museum ephemera and Jack recognized the hat we made at the end of the exhibit. He said,

“Baby crying, grew up: Genghis Khan.”
Laughter ensued.
“Baby crying, grew up Genghis Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaan.”
Laughter.
“Baby crying, grew up Genghis Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaan.”
Laughter.
“Baby crying, grew up Genghis Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaan.”
Sighing.
“Baby crying, grew up Genghis Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaan.”
Yes, he sure did Jack.
“Baby crying, grew up Jason Khaaaaaaan.”
No, Genghis.
“Jason Khaaaaaan.”
Genghis.
“Baby crying, grew up Genghis Faaaaaaaaaaaawwwn.”
Ugh.

We got home eventually, but it was the longest conversation I’ve ever had with a two year old about a 13th century warrior/statesmen.

Photo from wikipedia.

>Smarty Pants Revisited

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I already mentioned how I did some dumb things while making my smarty pants outfit. I mentioned ruining the shirt and the end table. But did I mention that at one point I sewed the front and back of the pants together? I did do that. But it still turned out to be a cute outfit. Dave thought I was going to sew the smarties on individually, like sequins. That may have been cool, but I never could have done it while watching our new TV obsession, The Wire.

>The World’s Saddest Vacation Picture

>Poor, poor, poor Dave. Working through his vacation. And by that I mean, my vacation. And by, “poor Dave” I mean, “poor me.”
Jack was just about as much fun as his daddy. But he’s a baby, so it’s OK.

At least Grandmom and Luke were having a good time. I entertained myself by taking pictures of my foot.

In a nutshell, Dave works too much, and I am not only saying that because his business trip, for which he left at 2:00 pm on LABOR DAY has been extended another day. OK, I sound annoyed but really, I came up with the subject of this post when I was thinking about how awesome it is that I filled up Dave’s netflix queue with the first season of Gossip Girl and I can watch it without any sarcastic “XOXO’s” from the office where Dave would normally be working while I watch TV. (Love you, honey!) It’s sort of hard to come up with exactly the right intro for a post about Gossip Girl though. I suppose I could have segued somehow from Sparkly Vampires right into Gossip Girl. Too late now. I need to power through the GG marathon and get this DVD back in the mail before Dave gets home. You may be wondering why I didn’t just put GG in my own netflix queue. And for that I have one word. And that word is Twilight. Boo yeah. Did I mention that I put Sleeping Beauty in Luke’s queue? Netflix trifecta.

And now I fight the urge to explain that I am watching/reading all this pop culture trash ironically. I am really an intellectual. For reals.

XOXO
MetaMegan

>Mr. Noonle

>I spent a good part of Friday complaining to various people that Jack was suddenly afraid of Mr. Noodle and how this was a huge problem because I count on an hour of Sesame Street on Fridays to get through my work from home day. Probably, if I had spent that time working, instead of complaining, I wouldn’t be procrastinating working right now on this sunny end of summer holiday weekend. But then I wouldn’t be blogging as a way of procrastinating, and not everyone would get to hear/read about Mr. Noodle.

Did I just blow your mind?

So it used to be that as soon as Mr. Noodle came on, during Elmo’s world, in the last 15 minutes of Sesame Street, I had to turn off the TV. No big deal. But Friday, I turned on the TV at the very beginning of Sesame Street, and as soon as the first non muppet appeared on screen, Jack said, “No! No Noonle. T.B. OFF!” Sigh. I turned off the T.V. and started complaining.

I was still complaining 9 hours later when we sat down to dinner and had this conversation.

Me: Luke, Jack is afraid of Mr. Noodle.
Jack: No Noonle!
Luke: Who’s Mr. Noodle?
Me: You know Mr. Noodle, he’s sort of a vaudeville type of old fashioned clown? He’s on Elmo’s world.
Luke: Never heard of him. Jack, do you like Mr. Noodle?
Jack: Yesh.
Me: Argh! I know you know who he is!
Luke: Nope.
Jack: T.B. Off. No Noonle.
Dave: Luke, you know Mr. Noodle. He’s the one who has the brother, Mr. Noodle
Luke: (Lightbulb!) Oh yeaaaaaah.

>Panic Attack Magazine: A Thousand and One Ways That Christmas Can Kill You

>This month Dave got to enjoy Panic Attack Magazine because I read it to Dave, Luke and Grandad on the way to Eldora last weekend. Luke loves it because of all the recipes for sweets and pictures of junk food and toys. Dave mostly ignored me, but I think some of the message sunk in.

We learned that you need to bleach your tree trunk, let it dry out in the driveway, clean off mold and allergens, never let your tree dry out, put your tree up immediately, and don’t leave it for more than a month.

Inspect each ornament for dust, dirt, wear, tear, frayed edges, and allergens.

Call ahead to ask your hostess not to use scented candles that can inflame airways. Call ahead, people.

Also, know that your baby could pull on the stockings and get clocked in the head by a clunky ornament holder. And once again, a little bit of panic crept in. Dave busted me when he saw the naked stocking holders, with the stockings limply laying on the chair, homeless. “Yup. Good job avoiding a head injury.”

In other news, posting once a day for the entire month of November caused me to get burned out, hardly write anything, post only pictures, and take Dec 1 off. Then the cable was out on the 2nd. When I got home from the PTA meeting on the 3rd, I had to do a whole days worth of work due to the cable outage, plus watch the last two episodes of Band Of Brothers. See, I bet I never even said anything about how our latest TV obsession was Band Of Brothers, and now it’s all over.

So, now I have to ease back into the posting thing, and after writing about how ornaments and trees can kill you, I don’t even have time to cover the fact that your children will have holiday meltdowns, and be afraid of Santa, and I am not even going to touch the fire safety. Sigh.

If I can find the memory card reader, I should have cute pictures for tomorrow though!

>Pre/Post Mad Men Musings

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Welcome to the, “I’m Back! And I’m going to start posting again! And using a lot of extra punctuation, (mainly parenthess!) post!”

I told Dave that I sort of feel as if I have been a zombie for the last month and I am finally back to being myself again. (ie: Toast as a side dish.) This weekend I was cleaning closets and organizing rooms and crossing things off my to do list – and this is a to do list that is so old and neglected that it has stuff on it from early September. (Sorry Katie – I never bought that baptism gift!) (Dave pointed out that I stopped looking at my to do list right around the time my blog output completely dropped off to hardly anything.) I don’t know if it was beginning of school stress, end of Bean’s life stress, or the changing seasons, but I have shed my zombie inclinations, just in time for Halloween! (Braaaains!)

Speaking of Bean, Dave and I were at a party on Friday and I was overheard saying, “Oh, plans for tomorrow? I am taking the boys to get a flu shot and then we are picking up the dog’s ashes.”

Another mom said, “Um, you might want to throw in a trip to the ice cream store or something.”

Good advice. We had a nice weekend, and the weather was perfect for a little backyard ceremony.

In other news: Jack is looking like he wants to start walking. Perfect timing because the memory on my camera is full and I can’t find the card thingy. (When Luke was about to start walking there was a smudge on my camera (birthday cake from his party) and I freaked out and ran to the camera store. They dipped a Q tip in windex and wiped off the lens.)

Moving on… ***Mad Men Spoiler*** Who watches? And do we think Don is the father of Betty’s baby? I think not. Thoughts? Just six short months until next season.

>B is for Bowling

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Most people already know this, but just to get everyone up to speed, I am sort of type A, and I used to be obsessed with my GPA. When I was in school, that is. I don’t care about it now, obviously. Or maybe not so obviously since that is what I am writing about. But back to high school. I am not going to put any dates on in, but I can guarantee this: when I was a junior in high school, and our gym class was held at the local bowling alley, Rob Base was definitely playing on the radio. (Parenting Aside: We went through a long phase of counting to 3 to give Luke a chance to follow orders without getting a time out. Once I couldn’t stop myself from following “1, 2, 3” with “get loose now.” Luke cried and said, “‘ ‘Cept I don’t want to get loose.” ANYWAY, I was not very good at bowling. And by “was” I mean, “as recently as two months ago, I took Luke bowling and got the bumpers for both of us, and he beat me.” In high school I was even worse. In order to get an A in bowling you had to bowl 100. It quickly became apparent that I would not be bowling 100. What to do? Was I to get a B for the first time since grades were invented? A B? In bowling? Well, there were easy two options for getting an A. The first would be to cheat and give myself a score of 100. Aside from the moral and ethical dilemma of debasing myself by cheating at bowling, there is a slight problem that I have with arithmetic. Geometry? No problem! Algebra? Calculus? I love you! Arithmetic? Hmm, not so much. I am not sure that I had both the understanding of how to keep score and the ability to make the numbers add up to something resembling 101. In retrospect, it is entirely possible that I was bowling A caliber frames, but not adding up the score correctly. But based on my scores at forced, work-related team functions over the years, that’s probably not the case. But I digress, I would never cheat, especially not at bowling. That left me with option 2: Bowl during my free time and bring in my score sheet for extra credit. Almost as bad as cheating, was having to bowl a terrible game in my free time and then turn the results in for extra credit. I have done many extra credit, brown nosing projects over the years, (I wrote a paper on the catalytic converter before I switched majors from engineering to the more employable field of botany) but I couldn’t make myself be a big enough geek. Sure, my friends would have been happy to go bowling with me! Sure, I told my parents I was bowling half the time anyway! (Hi Mom and Dad!). But I had to draw the line somewhere. I had to take a stand and plan to enter my senior year without a 4.0 in order to relieve to pressure and survive. I didn’t cheat, I didn’t do extra credit, I got a B and it was the healthiest thing I could have done.The point of this story is that in my first two games of wii bowling, I bowled a 144 and a 177, beating everyone. Because I am awesome at wii bowling. Or everyone else is really bad. But probably because I am awesome. I stole the picture from here.