Brianne Blogs?

Once again we are about to have a great sporting weekend. The Australian Open Womens Final is at 330am and then tomorrow night is the Mens’ Final. Saturday during the day are some great college basketball games and then Sunday is the SUPER BOWL. I am so pumped! All Ben all the time! I hope you are all ready for this. One can only hope it is a weekend with a Serena Williams, Rafa Nadal and Steelers (Ben) victory! Rock on, awesome sporting weekend. Oh, and for those of you into less intense sports, there is also some figure skating on later today on NBC.

I have been re-watching the Gilmore Girls and have been loving every minute. However, rather than list the many reasons this show is awesome, I am instead going to point out something a little freaky that I have noticed recently. The other day in an episode of season 2, Lorelai (the mom) goes on a rant about the drama going on on General Hospital. About how Lucky was thought dead but then came back and even though he was now played by a new guy she still couldn’t wait to see him kiss Liz. Of course, I remembered this moment in GH history and was so happy to hear them talk about it on Gilmore Girls. Also, it reminded me of the more than one mention that GH gets on Gilmore and how great I think that is that my favorite show mentions my other favorite show.

And then the next day Amber texted me and said “I love it that Dr. House watches General Hospital”. And then I remembered that on House, another favorite show of mine, Dr. House watches GH and loves it and talks about it all the time. And then I really got to thinking about how GH is connected to all of my other favorite shows and how funny that is. Obviously if you don’t mention GH or have actors from GH on your show, I am not going to like it.

For example, I love the show Heroes. There is a guy on there who was a major player on Gilmore and his mom on Heroes was a minor character on Gilmore and in a six degrees of Kevin Bacon kind of way, it is connected to GH. But don’t worry, I believe if I think long and hard enough, I will find the GH connection.

I am also going to look for the General Hospital connection to my favorite sitcom, How I Met Your Mother. Don’t you worry, I will find it. If I have to go back and watch every episode and take notes, I will find the connection. Self-challenge extended.

And the point of all this information? The point is that General Hospital is everywhere and thus it must be awesome. In your face, mockers of the soap!

Todays random info on our calendar is a real puzzler. “In Puritan times, being born on a Sunday was considered a sin”. Um, what? It is a sin? For the mother or for the child? Was there really a group of people who would blame the kid for being born on Sunday? Can you be forgiven for that or is it with you for life? Are you considered tainted or of the devil if that happens? Did your mom have to drown you in the river because you were clearly evil? Oh so many questions and oh so little information.

This also reminds me of the awesome childrens book, The Giver where they would kill the smaller of the twins because it was considered bad and unnecessary to have twins. And also of the book Things Fall Apart where they leave the twins on a rock to die since they are considered an evil. Geez…I guess being a baby can be harder than I originally thought (in Puritan times and in fictional settings).

Also speaking of babies, the other day I was perusing the upper reaches of our TV guide and realized that we get National Geographic On Demand for FREE! And so Meghan and I watched a show called “In The Womb: Elephants” and learned all about the mating process, fetal growth and development and birth of baby elephants. It was super-cool and a little horrifying since the dumbo’s gestate for 20 months and are around 250 pounds when the plop out of their mothers. Try not to imagine it, it hurts to do so.

Point being that our FREE On Demand channels are awesome. Maren, you will also be thrilled to know that we get Oxygen On Demand and can watch back episodes of Snapped at any time. (For the rest of you who don’t know and love this show, Snapped is a show about women who have snapped and killed their husbands, boyfriends, parents, etc and they interview family and friends and typically they interview the woman herself, sadly from her jail cell. It’s awesome and Maren and I love it.) There are so many cool free things to watch and I encourage you to check out your secretly free offerings from your cable provider.

And that, dear readers, concludes this edition of random babbling from yours truly. Tune in tomorrow. Maybe I’ll tell an interesting story, but probably not. I only have one day off this week so unless something interesting happens on the way to or from work, be prepared for a week of random babble. I know you can’t wait.

Yesterday our random information from our calendar was that Dr. Seuss invented the word “nerd” in 1950 in the book “If I Ran the Zoo”. Who knew that Dr. Seuss invented that word? And sure, he invented a lot of words like all the crazy words that no one knows to that song that the Who’s sing at the end of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, but who knew that he invented such an everyday word?

I am tempted to find the book and read it and see what the original connotation was on this new word. I mean, to me, nerd now means guy who loves sci-fi novels and has a pocket protector and large glasses. You know, Bill Gates or Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory. I wonder what it was originally supposed to mean. I’ll let you know if I find out.

In unrelated Tennis news, the Australian open live coverage on ESPN at 9:30pm has been rocking my world. It’s late enough to get to Ezra’s, give him his bath and get him easily to sleep, do my paperwork and then snuggle up on the leather couch and watch stupid stinky shoes wimp out against Andy Roddick in the 4th set and I got to watch it live. In your face you big giant baby. I am so happy for Roddick and can’t wait to see him play Federer in the semi-finals. A note to Djokovic-you play a professional sport. If you can’t last an entire match, then you shouldn’t play. In the 4 short years he has been playing on the pro level, he has left 4 major matches early. What? Who does that? You always talk about growing up in war torn Serbia and hearing the bombs fly overhead as a child, so man up and make it through a tennis match! Congrats Roddick!

Since recieving my diamond earrings for Christmas (thanks, Mom!) I have been a little stressed with my worry about losing them the way I lost the last pair. So, I have been wearing them constantly. I rarely take them off and when I do, I get nervous. I haven’t worn any other earrings and I’ve been missing them. So, I thought, Hey, why don’t I get a second hole put in my ears and then I can wear the diamonds all the time and not worry about losing them and still get to wear my other earrings?

And the thing is, I’ve wanted to get a second hole since I was 16 but Mom and Dad said No. And since I was such a good kid, I didn’t think to just go and do it. And for some reason have not gone to do it since. But Sunday, I went to do it at Claires.

Except that I didn’t actually get it done at Claires because there was an oddly long line for the ear piercing and a mom and daughter arguing about the daughters ear piercing. Grrr! So, I left. And remembered my theory about not paying someone to do for you what you can do yourself. Which is why I cut my own hair and why I pierced my own ears Sunday.

So, I sanitized with medical sanitizer stuff (chlorhexadine for you nurse readers) the needle, my earrings, and my ears. Then I used a sharpie to mark the spot where I wanted the holes to be. Then I used a sewing needle to poke holes in my ears and then pulled out the needle and put in my diamonds.

 (see the needle sticking out? cool, huh?)

It didn’t hurt. My left ear didn’t even bleed at all. The only strange thing was that when I pushed the diamonds through, both ears made a sound that can only be described as a “crunch”. Hmm…that’s weird, right?

 (see, lovely?)

Anyway, I’ve been rockin’ my own haircuts for 8 years. And now that I’ve taken on piercing, I think it might be time to give this nursing thing the boot and to open my own hair cutting/ear piercing salon. There’s big demand for that combination, right?

The useless information Meghan and I learned yesterday was:

“People didnt’ always say “hello” when they answered the phone. When the first regular phone service was established in 1878, people said “ahoy”.

Meghan and I think this is great and are going to start trying it out, as should you all.

In real life info, Meghan and I went to see Gran Torino with Clint Eastwood yesterday. It was great. Really. And I’m not a Clint Eastwood fan. You should see it. And be prepared for more racial slurs in two hours than you’ve heard in your life. It’s like when Zak, Maren and I went to see Shaft the Movie with Samuel L Jackson and they dropped the f-bomb so many times in the first minute that we started couting and I believe we hit 146 before we stopped counting. However, with that said, this movie was great.

So, I finished this book that Meghan got me for Christmas the other day. It’s by the lady who wrote Lovely Bones and was really really good. It’s about this lady who kills her mom and it all takes place in one day. And don’t worry, I only told you what the back cover and the first sentence of the book tell you. In keeping with my pledge to quote some of my favorite parts of the book, I marked some of my favorites and present them to you now:

1. The first sentence of the book- “When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily”. Good stuff! How could you not read a book that starts like that?

2. This sad but true fact about families- “When was it you realized the thread woven through your DNA carried the relationship deformities of your blood relatives as much as it did their diabetes or bone density?” This fact Maren and I noticed particularly at Christmas with our Mom, Aunt Tricia and Aunt Tracy. For as much as they think they are different, they are exactly the same down to the way they talk and think and act and the men that they married. It’s quite funny and true but I know all three of them would disagree vehemently if they read this. (Don’t tell them I said so, Grandma Sally)

3. This also true commentary on suburbia- “I walked to the center of my front lawn and lay down, spread-eagled. I looked up at the stars. How did I end up in a place where doing such a thing marked you for crazy, whily my neighbors dressed concrete ducks in bonnets at Easter and in striped stocking caps at Christmas but were considered sane?”

See, now you have some material from the book on which to base your decision about whether or not to read it. And while I’m almost positive that my Grandma is the only one who actually tries to read some of the books I talk about on here, I’d like to hope that if I talk about reading enough, some of you will start doing it more. I mean, look at how long I worked on Maren to start reading and now she’s such a big girl and does it all the time. Maren, you’re a reader, you’re a reader, you did it!

Okay, no I didn’t really post a blog that is only for Maren to read. A few months back, Maren mentioned how she never reads my blog and how I sometimes forget to tell her things I mention there. So, I casually mentioned that if she read it more often, then she wouldn’t be so behind. I also gave her added incentive when I told her that if she started reading the blog, I would occassinally write a post just to her. And since she’s read the blog several times in the past few weeks and made comments, this one’s for her.

(yes, dear readers, that is a purple skirt with attached suspenders and garfield on the belly. hot stuff! and, yes, it does appear that maren is about to bash in my lovely smiling face with that lunchbox. what’s up with that, maren? jealous of the suspenders when all you get is that crappy hand-me-down dress with the bow on it?)

Dear Maren-

Remember when we were little girls (pre-Kyle) and I had that Cabbage Patch doll named Rachel and one day I was trying to be a good Cabbage Patch Mom and washed her face with toothpaste which caused some of her painted on right eye to come off and be blurred? Do you then also remember how after that instead of playing just regular “dolls” with moms and errands to run that we started playing “orphanage” and Rachel was a baby who had been given up for adoption by her parents who beat her?

I was thinking about that the other day and what led us to pretend play like that. It’s not like we were beaten or knew anyone who was beaten. It’s also not as if we were really exposed to tv or movies we weren’t supposed to see. I mean, we weren’t allowed to watch The Simpsons (which I still don’t) and You Can’t Do That on Television. I mean, for a really long time, I thought crap was a really bad word, so where did this orphanage play scenario come from? And we didn’t just do it for a short time, that bad boy popped up for years. I wonder what that says about our childhood and the adults we have become? Just something to think about.

Love you tongs,

Briannechristinagenow

P.S. It’s okay, I know you don’t want me to, I’ll sleep on the top”.

For those of you job hunting I have a recomendation of what not to do. In our super cool useless information daily calendar we learned this:
“Approximately sixty circus performers have been shot from cannons. At last report, thirty-one of them have been killed.”
Uh, those are not good odds. At first Meghan and I thought, “why would anyone ever do that?” But, now I’m starting to wonder what exactly is the problem and how do they all die and I think that may be what makes them do it. I think this is a situation of curiosity literally killing the cat and I think it’s a good thing I’m not a circus performer or I might volunteer to do it. So, job hunters, stay away from the circus. (That may be a good tip for all of us, actually)

I am so happy to have gotten my first issue of my ESPN the Magazine subscription. It has made me so happy. And while my first instinct was to read it through immediately, I have instead been savoring it slowly,  a few pages at a time and it’s been great. I have already learned so much:

1. Bush senior put in a horseshoe pit on the White House lawn.

2. Clinton had it torn out

3. W had it put in immediately upon moving in. Those Bushes seem to really like their horseshoes.

It’s my hope that Obama has it taken out again.

I have also learned way more about the Winter X Games than I ever wanted to know. I don’t know what it is, but I just can’t get into the X games. Sure, the snow stuff is interesting in the Olympics, but much like curling and the trampoline, I don’t want to see it more often than every four years. Okay, I would watch curling more often. That’s awesome.

I can’t wait to keep reading this issue. If  I time it correctly, I can finish this one with only a day or two before the next one comes which means I can have an almost daily dose of the glory that is ESPN the Magazine. One might say it’s “Shaqtastic”.