A Sad Week for Celebrities

I remember that when Lucille Ball died, I cut her obituary out of our local paper and saved it for quite awhile. She was the first Hollywood loss I felt deeply. She was followed, among others, by John Ritter, Estelle Getty, and more recently Bea Arthur, all people whom I admired and whom I mourned.

This week was over the top. First, we hear of the loss of Ed McMahon. A gifted TV personality and larger-than-life figure, he will certainly be missed.

Yesterday morning comes the news that Farrah Fawcett has lost her battle with cancer...a battle she fought with spirit and determination. She was taken too soon and leaves a legacy behind.

Finally, on my way to work last night, the DJ on my local country station announces that TMZ is breaking the news that the King of Pop himself has died. Madness. I remember watching the "Thriller" video at my friend Lori's house...we were perhaps in fourth grade. I remember being jealous of my friends who owned one silver glove and REALLY wanting a pair of parachute pants. My sister was the proud owner of a Michael Jackson record player. "We Are the World" still makes me cry.

Today, a local station was playing a lot of MJ's songs, some that I had forgotten about. And I found myself getting surprisingly emotional, especially considering how many years it has been since I considered myself a fan. I am sad for his children. I am sad for his fans. But most of all, I am sad for old school MJ, who veered off the path many years ago but was recently trying to find his way back on it. Now, he will not have that chance.

Rest in peace, you three. You will not be forgotten!


-- Posted from my iPod touch

As Seen on TV!

I bought a Ped-Egg today. After months of "EEEEW! GROSS!"-ing the commercials, in which we watch a woman pour her foot shavings (!!!) into the trash, I was told by my friend Jess that she loved it. True to my nature, I ran right to CVS to buy one.

The verdict? Well, I used it for the first time today, and while I didn't get all the needed work done on my heels, it was alarming the volume of shavings my Ped-Egg collected. I managed NOT to gag when I emptied it, and I would declare it a successful purchase.

So, what's next? Sham-Wow?


-- Posted from my iPod touch

Motivation

My get up and go has got up and went, which is a shame since I have only achieved one thing on my multi-entry to-do list today! The dishwasher is chugging away, and I am fixin' to fold some laundry. My other accomplishment was the watching of FOUR HOURS of SYTYCD, along with an episode of The Duel II and one of No Reservations.

Of course, I go back to work tomorrow as the rest of you start your weekends...so I think we're even!

-- Posted from my iPod touch

Tee-Vee

I try not to blog about TV much because, well, I watch a LOT of it, and I don't want to TV to take over the (admittedly minimal) content of this blog. However, I just watched the House (I found out HTML does work on here!) season finale, and I was shocked and awed by it. I was left completely slack-jawed by the last three-ish minutes of the episode. Amazing.

Hugh Laurie is amazing, and I love the play between House and Cuddy (although not as much, I suppose, as the people creating "Huddy" tribute videos on YouTube). I can't wait to see what happens in the fall...but I don't want to wish the summer away. Such is the story of the season finale...

-- Posted from my iPod touch

Courtesy

After my week-ish of vacation, I find myself with some residual feelings about the way we treat each other in this country. I was at Disney World for five days. It is, to me, the happiest place on earth. What can go wrong there? You sleep in a hotel, get up, eat, go to a great amusement park, eat, go to another great amusement park, eat, get back to your hotel, sleep, get up, and do it all over again. My family and I have it down to a science.

One of the rules on many of the rides and in many of the shows is that you are not permitted to use flash photography. Now, to me, that seems completely fair. Even without taking pictures on such attractions, I came home with over 200 photos saved on my camera's memory card. That is plenty of material to make my way through in Flickr and Snapfish and Facebook and wherever else I will be publishing my vacation pics. However, while at Disney World, people persist in ignoring these rules and take pictures anyway! The worst infraction was on the Great Movie Ride in Disney's Hollywood Studios, when a woman was told FOUR TIMES by the ride operator (while still in character, I might add, which I found to be amazing) not to take pictures with her flash on. FOUR TIMES! After the first time, I would have been apologetic and sort of slumped down in my seat because getting yelled at as an adult on a ride SHOULD BE embarrassing. However, this lady had the nerve to ignore this request the first three times...thereby kind of ruining the ride for everyone.

The other stuff I saw was more run-of-the-mill. There were people who were "excuse-me"-ing their way up the line to where the rest of their party was (we prefer the less-convenient-for-us-but-nicer-for-everyone-else method of letting others go in front of us until the rest of our party catches up), people stopping in the middle of a thoroughfare and creating a traffic jam, and people on scotters driving around like it was the Indy 500 and they were vying for the top prize. This is not to say that all people were doing these things...but I did see more than my fair share. There were also many, many children whose carefully crafted schedules were so out of whack that they were in continual meltdown mode. I saw two specific children who were having such complete and total tantrums that I thought that if I were their parents, I would think of leaving them there, just doing their thing. Note that I am not a parent. Perhaps there is a reason for that!

For the most part, however, we got plenty of doses of that Disney World magic and that amazing customer service that they have down to a science. The happiness that was shining out of most people's faces (with the notable exception of the man we overheard say to his wife, "You are RUINING this for me." Ouch.) made the entire time there feel like a fabulous holiday. I don't know when I will get to go back to Disney World, but I am so happy to have had this time with my parents and my sister, enjoying each other's company in a place we love so much.

Now, the airport experience? That's a whole different story...

DEP DELAY

I sit now in the airport in Orlando with what is being reported on-line to be a three-hour flight delay, which means we will be departing sometime after 9PM for our triumphant return to the northeast. I am multi-tasking right now, using my iPod touch both to blog and to listen to this damned audiobook. I have officially come down off my vacay high and find myself just annoyed that my schedule is being messed up this way.

Our vacation was fantastic, I am happy to report. We spent two days with my grandparents at The Villages (Florida's friendliest hometown), followed by two days with my grandmother in the Largo area. And after that, as chronicled in my Facebook updates, we headed to Walt Disney World, at which point wireless internet service became a thing of my past. I had to use my cell phone for updates instead...I figure it will take me weeks to catch up on all that happened while I was away!

This trip was me, my sister, and my parents, setting off on an adventure I called the Thomas Family Rides Again. We used to visit Disney World quite often throughout my childhood amd teenage years, and it was so great to revisit one of our favorite places on earth! We stayed at the Pop Century resort, which was delightful in its tackiness!

We were able to see all four of the major parks, and we were able to ride all our favorites...save Space Mountain, which was closed for refurbishing. We got to hit some great new rides as well, such as Expedition Everest (a fantastic roller coaster), Soarin' (awesome), and Toy Story Midway Mania, which may be my new favorite. We also got to see old favorites, such as Peter Pan's Flight, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, It's a Small World, the Rock 'n Roller Coaster, Spaceship Earth, Test Track, and Dinosaur. It was awesome.

And now, the gate has given a departure time...9:30PM. It's going to be a long night!


-- Posted from my iPod touch

Fancy pants

This will be my first blog post that is NOT coming from a computer! While browsing Apple's App Store this morning, I found some blogging apps. Therefore, I am currently listening to an audiobook and blogging at the same...perfect for my love of multi-tasking. And I figure I can't blog any less frequently than I already do!

So let's talk about audiobooks. This is my first one, and I am not sure that I am a fan. I am a VERY fast reader, and when on vacation, I can often read more than one book per day. However, one of the categories for my book challenge I am doing requires me to listen to an audiobook. I searched on iTunes for a book to listen, which was good because that helped me eliminate some contendors. Listening to the previews of some good-sounding books made me realize I couldn't imagine listening to a British reader for multiple hours. And searching through the choices made me question why so many of the books were abridged. I finally chose Swimming Lessons (no idea if HTML works in this App...we shall see!) by Mary Alice Monroe...the reader's voice was gentle and not annoying, and the book was unabridged.

Well, I have figured out why so many of the books are abridged. I have been trying to listen to this for days, and I can't help but think that I could have read it three times over by now, and I am only on chapter ten! I really think I will have to read the actual book when I am done listening to the audiobook...just to make sure I don't miss anything!

Unless I get an adapter for my iPod touch to allow me to listen to audiobooks on my commute, I don't see a lot of these in my future...I prefer the written word!

-- Posted from my iPod touch

So this is more than a little twisted...

As I have mentioned before, I spend time on The Nest, which is an online community made up mostly of women. I was looking around on that site today when I came across a story that just makes me shake my head in disbelief.

A woman named "Lindsay" apparently posted a story about the loss of her young daughter, I believe from some sort of cancer. Her daughter's name was Avigail, and she had a blog here on Blogger that was called "Remembering Avigail." I remember reading her blog and being touched by her story.

Well, it turns out the entire thing was a lie. Some very impressive sleuths on The Nest were able to discover that her entire story was made up. And if you do a search on Google of the name of her blog, you can find that she was all over the Internet, leaving comments on other people's blogs (including some people who actually lost children, as well as Matt Logelin's blog,which has the story of the loss of his wife the day after his daughter was born just over a year ago). She also did some posting on iVillage, about her supposed loss, but luckily, the women there, who had in fact lost children, found out about the fact that she was lying as well.

I find it hard to believe that someone could be so callous and make something like this up. I guess it just shows that there are some sick people in the world.