Brianne Blogs?

for some football?

Yes I Am!

August 30th was the first Saturday of college football and I enjoyed every minute of it. (Except for the Michigan loss, but at least we made a comeback at the end).

I set my alarm for 9:58am (early for me) and walked out to the living room and sat down just in time to see the beginning of College Game Day!

Oh how I missed you Kirk, Lee and Chris!

The analysis!

The picks!

The warm-fuzzy story!

The awesome upsets and the great football action!

Seeing the scores for schools I’ve never heard of scroll across the bottom of the screen.

Seeing Arkansas Peanut Butter win their game!

All good sporting action all the time!

Even though we had a guest in the house, I still watched football and made the guest and Meghan watch as well.

That’s right, there’s no excuse for missing first Saturday action!

Bring on the rest of the season! Brianne is ready!

A funny thing about Southampton is that the town seems to think that it is Plymouth, Massachusettes. Yes, Southampton, New York seems to think that it’s the oldest town in America.

Exhibit A: The oldest house in America

Exhibit B: The oldest one room school house in America

Exhibit C: The oldest outhouses in America

Everyday, Erica and I would take Ezra out for marathon walks around the town and did things with him that would have made his parents freak out had we mentioned them.

Exhibit A: Our trip to the historical museum where we put Ezra in:

The Pillory

The Stocks

A nook in a tree

Americas Oldest Cemetery

Erica and I really like cemeteries and so we took Ezra on a little tour of this one. We saw the graves of the original owners of the oldest house shown above:

Ezra had a great time entertaining himself while we wandered around.

We also let him go on the big boy swings for the first time

In addition, we made him push his own stroller when he was acting up

We had a really great time on our day trips. (Aside from the sunburns that Erica and I picked up and Ezra managed to avoid).

On the next Hamptons post, precious moments with Ezra and the woo button.

Yesssss! (insert fist of triumph here!) Brianne is back from Southampton and could not be more excited. I don’t do homesick when I’m away from home, never have, but this week I yearned hard core for 316 west 75th #2d.

Now,  before I start telling you about my trip, I’d like to start with a heartfelt apology to my grandmother and who was quite disappointed about my not blogging everyday. The internet situation there was not ideal for daily blogging, so it got neglected. Again, so sorry grandma and any other daily visitors to the ole blog. I promise to once again resume my daily posting.

Erica, Lisa and I left on Sunday and took the Jitney bus to Southampton. I haven’t been on a bus in years and I must say this one, complete with rainbow upholstered seats was a far cry from the school buses of my past. It has wireless internet access! Fancy!

Then we commenced our week in the Hamptons. Southampton is a nice little town, but just a bit too fancy for the likes of Brianne, Lisa and Erica. I think that you’re probably not supposed to be there if you make less than 6 figure a year, so we tried to keep a low profile. All you need to know to fully understand this is that there was a J. Crew and a Tiffanys on main street. Yes, these people buy diamonds on their beach vacations. And in case you were wondering, we did not.

So, we did a lot, and I have lots to tell, but I’m tired and have to do my football picks for the first Saturday of football! Woo hoo!

Mini preview of things to come:

1. near death experience involving fire

2. interesting historical tours

3. ezra in odd places that his parents wouldn’t approve of

4. the woo button

I’ll give you time to mentally prepare and then the posts will come!

A big big giant thank you to Erica and Lisa for our group trip! We wouldn’t have survived alone!

Okay, so still with the Ezras, but wanted to give you all something to enjoy in my absence. Many stories and photos to follow when I get home Friday!

I have long been a fan of the Mannings. From their days in college football and now to their back to back Super Bowl MVP’s.

By far the best thing about the Mannings is their ability to make a fantastic commercial.

Lisa and I have been loving these NBC commercials lately.

And there’s this classic Sportscenter one:

Lately it’s been just Peyton and Eli, but sometimes Archie gets involved and it’s good stuff as well:

Don’t tell Eli, but I think the best commercials were the solo Peyton mastercard commercials:

Okay, sorry for the video overload, but each one is better than the last and it’s hard to stop.

Thanks Mannings, you rock!

If you’ve never watched TV with Lisa, then you have never experienced one of my favorite things about her: her all-consuming love for commercials. yes, what the rest of us would fast forward through, Lisa will rewind to watch again.

This is one of our favorites from a few years ago that I recently found again and wanted to share it with the person I know will enjoy it most: LBRN. Enjoy!

Lisa, Erica and I are in the Hamptons with the Ezra’s right now. I will try my best to blog about it as I go but it will most likely be when I get back It’s busy here.

I only have one complaint about the Olympics this year. Oh, crap-it! Just as I was typing that I realized that I have two.

1. all of the standing around before a track event they make us watch. why do you make me watch the runners shake out their arms and straighten their numbers and look around for several minutes before they even take their starting positions? I do not like it, Sam I am.

2. Mary Carillo! She has been doing the cute little China stories that would be cute with anyone else, but she manages to be stupid and come across as insulting to the people she’s interviewing and China as a whole.

To say that I dislike this woman is a strong understatement. Now, in case you are thinking this is a sudden dislike developed over the short time of the Olympics, it is not. This is a dislike that has been brewing for many years. As many years as I’ve been watching tennis. She is a frequent tennis commentator and I want to hit her in the face every time I am forced to hear her voice.

First, she has the voice of a man. Second, she’s irritating. Third, she’s one of those people who wasn’t that great in the sport she now does the commentary for but acts like an expert on all things tennis. Fourth, she is quite rude to the Williams sisters. (well, probaby not to their faces- cuz they could and should kick her ass!- but on tv). She’s always talking about how they don’t play or practice enough and how Serena is fat. You know what, Mary Carillo, I think you are a big fat dummy! That’s right, strong words for a strong dislike! I don’t know whose idea it was to replace the awesome Jimmy Roberts with Mary Carillo, but it was a bad move, NBC, a bad move.

Other than these two points of irritation, I have loved every minute of the Olymics. Bela Karolyi has been wonderful to watch. I have cried more times than one should while watching sports. It’s been awesome! I heart the Olympics! Can’t wait for Vancouver 2010!

Thursday night we had a Happy Late Birthday Meghan/End of the Olympics gathering.

There were Chinese lanterns, streamers, American flags, international appetizers, and gold medals for all.

But don’t think that we just handed out the golds. No, you had to perform or win at something to get your medal. As I told Lisa before she attempted this balance beam routine, “there’s no A for Effort medal in the Olympics”.

Most importantly, I got to see Erica for the first time in almost a month. It was poor planning of vacations on our parts that created this bad bad situation. I think it’s safe to say that we barely survived our separation and won’t be doing it again any time soon if we can help it.

I’d like to tell you about the fun times we all had, but I made the mistake (or correct choice) of drinking Southern Comfort straight from the bottle and thus the rest of the evening is fuzzy.

Check Meghans blog in a few days as I’m sure she’ll have more details for you all.

Thanks to all who came, what I remember was fun. And a big round of applause to Meghan for wearing her Chinese birthday hat that Lisa and I bought for her all night long. You’re a champ, poopie!

No, not the back to school Meghan and I dread every year when the Manhattan Day School that we live next to begins, but back to school for Amber Rae Turley.

I am not referring to her job as a school teacher, but her return to college as a future nurse. Yes, that’s right, she and I will one day in the future be living the dream of doing the same job. In a perfect world, we would live together and work together in Weatherford, but as yet, we’ll just have to imagine that glory!

She’s currently taking Chemistry (yuck!) and Nutrition. So, here’s a pre-nursing requirements good luck wish to my friend, Charlie. If you need help, Meghan, Lisa and I are here to help. In a few years, Amber can be in this all-nurse photo! Alas, we do not have cake at work every night, only when it’s Brianne’s last day of work. And yes, those are vomit bowls we are eating out of. Only nurses. Welcome to the club, Berta!

We will do our best to diagram electrons for you and anything else you may need.

Congrats on living the dream and going back to school. I am so jealous of your new backpack!

I don’t know what’s come over me the last few days, but I’ve been sadly homesick in the worst way. What way is that? I’m homesick for homes that no longer exist. Yearning for people and places and situations that I couldn’t get to even if I tried really hard and spent all of my money. That just sucks. If this is what being an adult is all about, then I must say that I think it’s for the birds.

It all started a few days ago when someone asked me about my ring that I wear. It’s my Great Aunt Barb’s wedding band and I’ve been wearing it since I was 18. That’s 8 years of wearing this ring and I still don’t think of it as mine. I think of it as Aunt Barb’s. But for some reason when someone asked me about it for the millionth time, I realized that it’s not her ring. It’s mine. It belongs to me and when I die, it will get passed along to someone who never even met Aunt Barb. That just made me a little sad. But I bucked up and it didn’t bother me for too long.

Then the next day Lisa and I were in the grocery store and I walked by a bin of fresh green beans and was hit with a waft of that smell and was suddenly thrown back in time 20 years to a summer when I was 6 when I spent some time in Michigan all by myself with my Grandma Genow (oh how cool did I think I was that I got to go there all by myself? so super cool! Maren didn’t get to go by herself, but I did!). Grandma had a garden out back and more than one night during my stay we would snap the ends off of the fresh picked green beans. There I was standing in the grocery store while Lisa was reading the list of things we needed, and trying my best not to let on that I was missing my grandmother something fierce.

This isn’t something that happens to me often, as she died 13 years ago, but there I was, wishing I was snapping the ends off of green beans, or playing UNO (which she and I did every night before I went to bed) or going to Lukes (the grocery store) or riding in her big giant green car with the plastic virgin mary taped to the dashboard. Life was good and I was missing it. But, I calloused up and went about my grocery shopping business.

And then the kicker. I was talking to my friend from nursing school, Autumn, and I was sitting on the couch, watching some Olympic coverage and was suddenly hit with such a desire to be in Weatherford, Oklahoma that I almost couldn’t take it. Now, this desire to be back in college, living with my best friend (Amber) and having the best time ever, is a constant, but this day it was overwhelming. Usually when I’m missing Amber and college, I will give her a call and we’ll reminisce for a few minutes and I’ll feel better. However, this time I felt that if I called Amber and started talking about all of the things I was yearning for I might actually cry. What!? Brianne working up tears for something that is not a sports-related-warm-fuzzy or General Hospital or a good book? Inconcievable! And yet, that is where I was. I then made the mistake of looking at pictures from college and that made it ever so much worse. The worlds greatest apartment on Huber. Living next door to John and Young Dan. All of the crazy stupid things that Amber and I did that we can’t tell anyone about because you really really did have to be there. Oh, Berta, why did we leave college after only 4 years? That was the biggest mistake we ever made. Damn our stupid smart life plan. Boo!

This is just a really crappy feeling to have. It’s not like when you’re at camp as a kid and can go to the home you miss at the end of the week. These are people and places that I can’t ever see again and while this is not new information to me, it’s been unusually upsetting the last few days. I don’t like it.

As if she could sense my distress from afar, Amber called as I was just finishing this blog and she could understand and identify with my need for a place that we can’t get back to. Thanks, Berta, for your timely call and for being the best roomie ever!

[sort of but not really related-does anyone know of a good way to get my old photo prints that aren't digital onto a digital disk? the only way i know of is to take them all to a duane reade or the like and scan them all in one at a time to one of those kodak scanner things. this is so time consuming that i'm hoping that there is an easier way. perhaps a place i can send my photos where they will do it for me? does anyone have any suggestions?]

Yes, it’s official, Lady is planning a break-out. She has tried in the past to stand on the rocks and look around, but has never come this close. Lisa even saw her get up higher and kind of teter on her shell before falling back into the water.

As is usual with Brianne and Meghan co-parenting, we disagree on how to deal with this problem. Meghan gets nervous and tries to stop her from getting out. I say, let her fall and then she’ll learn not to do it again. Lisa’s concern is that she’ll fall out and die. But, that just proves my point. She certainly won’t do it again after that. I like to parent with tough love.

Much like when she was younger and would flip over and be upside down and unable to flip back over. Meghan would flip her back and I had to convince her to parent with tough love so lady would learn to do it herself. I want our turtle to be an indepedant woman and be able to take care of her self. It’s imporant for turtles, don’t you think?

I’ll be sure and keep you posted on Lady’s attempted escape.