I do kinda remember old-school "SNICK" rather fondly, though...

I fully admit it: I was born in 1981. People always think I'm 16 or maybe 18 and, rarely, I'm assumed to be somewhere between 21 and 23. Then there will be a moment of shock when they either spy my ID, hear me talk about all the things I've done since high school, or listen as I mention things from my childhood.

I saw the Challenger explosion in preschool and I apparently saw Reagan at the town hall when I was a baby/toddler. Hurricane Gloria blew my Fisher-Price playhouse down the road. Games on the playground were about "Rainbow Brite," "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," and "Indiana Jones." I can proudly say I got to see "Return of the Jedi" in the movie theater first run (What a great brother I have! What teenager wants to take his very much a kid sister to "Star Wars"? I am very lucky!) even if I can barely remember the experience. Side Note: For years afterward, I kept remembering people speeding through trees and what I would eventually find out to be Ewoks. It wasn't until I discovered the trilogy in middle school that I realized what I had been seeing all those years.

We had an Atari, a Commodore 64, and (wait for it) the Nintendo Entertainment System WITH ROB THE FREAKING ROBOT! I remember the days you couldn't save your games and had to leave the machine going all night. My father had an Asteroids (or was it Space Invaders? It is somewhat fuzzy now) machine at his barber shop, and we ended up bringing it home and having it in the family room. A nice old table top version, which we did sometimes use as a table. (I admit that bad habit stuck: right now I have a desk lamp on my desktop.) My first TV was black and white and still had a UHF knob. At some point, I got this neat box that had 24 (I think? 18 maybe?) switches I could use to change channels - two per switch. Not all corresponding to channels we actually had but I do remember the switch for Fox was also the switch for Nickelodeon. This allowed me to watch things I wasn't allowed to watch at that age because as soon as I heard someone coming I could switch it easily to "Donna Reed" (on the same time as "In Living Color"). That was maybe one show ("Lassie" was another) that I didn't enjoy watching, but everything else was love. I watched "F Troop" and "Dobie Gillis." "I Love Lucy" and "The Dick Van Dyke Show." "Get Smart" was one of my favorites and I dreamt of the day I could have a shoe phone (essentially a cellphone with a dial... and in a shoe).

Then it all disappeared. The shows I had been watching were on in the 50s and the 60s. Now it was the 60s and the 70s as we moved through the 90s, then... the 80s became classic. Why was my childhood suddenly on Nick at Nite and TV Land? Why could I watch "Full House" or "Roseanne" where I used to watch "Bewitched" and "I Dream of Jeannie"? Then the 90s broke through, and you can now watch "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air." I loved that show back in the day, but I can't watch it anymore. It seems too new, until I think back and realize my mother probably felt the same way about those shows I used to watch. They were her childhood and her teenage years. Sure I barely remember watching "Taxi" as a toddler with my mom but I ended up falling in love with it when I was older and watching it on "Nick at Nite." To her, that was her "Fresh Prince." It was her "Roseanne." When is "Friends" going to grace the channel? Will "LOST" ever be on it?

Thankfully the internet is a treasure trove of older shows. For some reason, watching something as "new" as "Newhart" on there isn't as jarring, and I can stil re-watch "Welcome Back, Kotter" and "One Day at a Time." It isn't all nostalgia, because a lot of the things I find myself watching are things I rarely liked as while growing up. Even though I've seen them before, they seem suddenly fresh. Fresh in ways that re-watching shows from the 90s doesn't compare to. Why? Because now that I am almost 30 I am seeing things in these shows that I never saw before. Things you don't understand as a child and can only understand when you've lived a little bit. Will I someday find different wisdom in "Frasier" or "Wings" in ten or twenty years that I didn't get the first time around? Will I see the jokes different? The plot-lines?

Meh, who knows. Just another tangent I guess that I began to ponder. So thank you to Hulu and Netflix for filling the void Nick at Nite can't fill anymore. Now if only I could get my NES working... I could use some old school Legend of Zelda action, and the re-release on the Game Cube just doesn't cut it. (Yeah, I know there are emulators... but it isn't the same!)

Raised by Another after Sundown

First off, forgive me because I had already re-watched episodes 1 through 9 prior to coming up with this project. I thought about going back to watch them now and restart, but when I realized my next episode would have been “Raised by Another” if I kept going… well, I thought that was perfect considering last night’s episode, “Sundown.” I will eventually go back, but I’ll work that in later. Besides, for now until I get into the swing of things… this may not take complete shape just yet.

Now, the last episode (“Solitary”) saw Sayid meet up with Rousseau, learn about the “sickness,” “the monster,” and of course… the whispers. This episode begins with Claire having a dream about a very creepy looking Locke (with one pupil black) and then getting attacked. Charlie ran over to Claire after hearing her screams, and saw her hands were bleeding. Jack cleaned her up and they have a discussion about her OB-GYN. Now, at this point, neither they nor we know they are brother and sister. That is an odd thing I keep reminding myself, even watching the pilot and seeing Claire was one of the first people Jack helped.

Things I note during the episode:

- Initially, I thought Kate would end up with Sayid when the series started.
- As soon as the psychic got freaked out and made Claire leave the first time, I thought for sure he saw an evil future for her and her child. As did many others. Looking back, FORESHADOWING! Which yeah, we figured anyway…
- What would Charlie do if he were still alive and seeing what Claire is like now?
- Hurley has always been awesome, and wow he actually did lose a lot of weight during the course of the show.
- He showed signs of a leader in the beginning, with making the list of people who were on the plane. (Hey, is that meaning something considering Jacob and his lists?)
- Did Thomas get some sort of visit from Widmore/Abaddon/someone that scared him away from Claire? Perhaps he was promised fame for his art in exchange for not staying with Claire and the baby. Perhaps that is why Widmore has Thomas’ painting? (Although, granted, that painting of Widmore’s was technically shown earlier than Thomas was painting it.)
- Haha, I love that Hurley was creeped out by Locke.
- When I first started to watch LOST, I never read spoilers. Yet I knew as soon as I saw Ethan that he wasn’t on the plane.
- Aww, Jack and Claire are fighting like siblings even though they don’t know they’re siblings. Cute.
- Shannon made up just as many awesome names for things as Sawyer did. Craphole Island. Rape Caves. God’s Friggin’ Gift to Humanity. <3 I miss Shannon… (I realize I am in the minority. :P)
- Hurley melted Sawyer’s heart faster than Kate ever could.
- “Do you know ‘Catch a Falling Star?’?” Hmm.
- Wait, her dad used to sing it to her? Was this her step-father, or Christian? Was he around at all when she was a child?
- As everyone speculated back then, the Island somehow made Claire’s pen not work. Perhaps that was Jacob’s doing? Or MIB’s? Who knows at this point!
- “Someone promised me it’d be different.” What? A couple raising your son in LA and you not raising him on an island? Well, Jack and Kate were for a while. In LA. :)
- So the psychic (Richard Malkin?) told Claire the couple would meet her and she had to take flight 815 to do so. Technically, she did meet Kate and Jack because of that. :)

As for the rest, I will say honestly I got a migraine toward the end and wasn’t totally focused on the task at hand. I’ll have to rectify this bad ending later when I go back to watch the beginning. This is a work in progress, most definitely.

Yet Another LOST Experiment

Chances are, even if you've never watched a minute of it you probably know that LOST is ending this year. It is all over the TV, the internet, print, and radio, popping up in random places like weeds pushing through the ground. Well, weeds don't always have to be bad things. I find dandelions quite pretty and a lot of people I know enjoy eating them with olive oil and lemon juice, so I can't really get too much LOST information.

If you don't give a rat's ass about it one way or the other, this will not interest you in the slightest. If you are someone that has grown sick of hearing about Others and the Smoke Monster and a million other things you can't begin to understand, then I invite you to walk away now lest you decide to virtually chuck tomatoes at me. When it comes down to it, I'm committing myself to doing this "experiment" (I guess it is more of an exercise) for no one but myself. Well, maybe that is a lie, because who knows what theories/ideas I will inadvertently spread and... um... my non-LOST friends will probably thank me for having somewhere else to dump these conversations.

So enough of my usual long-winded text, let me get down to it: I randomly decided to re-watch the LOST pilot the other day and it of course made me want to keep watching from the beginning. Unfortunately, I'm also following it in "real-time," meaning last night I watched "Sundown" with amazed eyes and creeped out ears. However, while re-watching "Solitary" (Sayid's first flashback episode) I realized how amazing it would be to follow that with this year's season premiere. This show is certainly a well-crafted series of layered novels in disguise as a television series. Maybe that is why I'm drawn to it. Even in the "bad episodes," the writing is something to admire. To date, the only other television series which has managed to capture me the way LOST did in the beginning is what I've seen so far of "Caprica" after happening to catch the pilot's re-airing prior to the series' premiere on SyFy. That, however, is another post.

What will I be doing exactly? I think it might be fun and interesting to re-watch the series while watching this last season, comparing what happened before with what is going on now. I will try not to put spoilers for future episodes anywhere (I went 9 months without reading one, but since this season's premiere I've succumbed to temptation a few times), but if I do I will give fair warning. However, if you are not caught up to the latest newly aired episode then do not expect to be unspoiled. For the record, I'm currently on eastern standard time but do not always get to watch the episode the night it first airs due to unreliable access to cable. I've been lucky lately, but Hulu and ABC.Com work just as well!

So stay tuned... or keep reading... or whatever. Go visit another web page or order a pizza. You have free will, right?

Being a Writer in the Real World Kinda Sucks

Earlier today a friend was telling me about a new project she is working on and after very excitedly talking about it she ended things with a statement that she assumed I thought she was crazy. My response? "You're not crazy. You're just a writer."

While it may be true that many artists, writers, musicians, comedians, etc. do have some serious issues, in reality... who doesn't? The thing is that anyone that does anything which is creative tends to be a little more passionate about things. Plus, with creativity comes the things that are created. To me, her descriptions weren't weird because I've been spending my spare time working on my "Once Upon a Mushroom" project. I've been writing about a gnome going on an adventure with a talking dog, and that really isn't that insane compared to other works out there. Furthermore, it isn't even subject matter which makes the creative types seem a little nutty, it is the insane amount of research, note-taking, and even doodling that occurs in conjunction with it.

So while she was telling me how vast the amount of notes she has for her project it just seemed normal to me since, well, I created a wiki for OUaM because I had too many notes myself to keep track of. Heck, part of why I have so much junk in my house to sort through is because I have over 18 years of journals, sketch books, note pages, and so forth of my creations laying around. Knowing me, there's probably even a notepad tucked away in the kitchen somewhere that has the description of the main villain from "Shadow in the Mirror" (and don't get me started on how many dot matrix printouts and type-written pages that probably still exist at my parents' house).

However, the biggest issue with being a writer is that you tend to also wish you could write out your real life (and since I also used to do a lot of work with video editing and directing, I tend to also think of things in screenplay form many times). I have sadly found that I can (generally) figure out major and minor plot details in most movies and television series I watch just based on the tried and true devices as well as the writer's (and director's) styles. Sure sometimes I'm happily proven wrong, but more often than not I find myself realizing I could see the story unfold just from a mere plot summary.

Valentine's Day is right around the corner right now, and with it comes so many movies and shows about hardships in love. In the end, it is almost always a happy ending. Guy/Girl does something stupid to push other guy/girl away, a bunch of stuff happens, either guy/girl meets another guy/girl who starts out as a foil but ends up their "true love," or the original couple get back together. There is almost always a misunderstanding, but in the end people tend to live happily ever after (unless there's a sequel, or badly written fanfiction). Real life, sadly, doesn't work that way, and even the movies where it shows relationships more realistically still have the whole condensed-timeline thing working for them.

While pretty much everyone I know thinks "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" is one of the funniest movies they've seen, I ask them to imagine if it unfolded in real time. (By now, you should have seen it so I don't care about spoilers!) If we actually had to live through the time she was apart from the man she loved, because her own family didn't like the idea and wanted her to be with a "nice Greek man," would we still have laughed as hard? Being forced to not be with someone you love is not exactly a pleasant feeling. And yes, "Titanic" (again, you should have seen this already) didn't exactly have a happy ending but imagine how much worse that'd be living not only through the disaster, but going on all those years not being able to tell anyone the truth and knowing your (for all intents and purposes) "true love" died before you could spend your lives together. Every day, people deal with relationship roadblocks, however big or small, that they can't get over right away. I know people who were together over thirty years ago, remarried and had kids over the years, and then found their way back to each other recently. Sounds like good fodder for a story, right? Well, of course, but no one is going to want to wait thirty years for that pay-off in a movie (even soap operas don't spend much time on things anymore).

Right now, I'm going through one of the most adult things I've ever had to deal with in my entire life. Something I can't run away from, even though it'd be so easy to do it. How it makes it "adult" is the fact that I'm owning up to all the facts and dealing with it instead of being a coward. My entire life is changing, some for the better and maybe some for the worse, but the rest is still up in the air. There are certain things which are known to be true, and other things which are variables that could destroy that. Since no one can predict the future, no one knows how to proceed because at this point any answer could be the wrong one. Hindsight is 20/20, right? That is part of the problem: We can look back and figure out where things went wrong and how they could have been fixed, but since we're in the now that is impossible. All that can be done is to move forward and see what happens. Day by day, little by little, until the answer reveals itself. Now, if my life were a movie, I'd already know the ending. Of course, depending on the genre there would be several possibilities, but I'd have it figured out already. I'd know the outcome based on everything that has been given so far. Sadly, real life isn't some cliche (well, not usually). Plus, if you just edited out the time it takes between decisions and occurrences, these moments in life would still be a movie you could figure out.

Maybe I'm just rambling now, but to me at least it all makes sense. Trust me, there is not a moment that goes by in my life that I don't have set to music somewhere in the back of my head, with narration going and an idea of where I'd possibly take things if it were actually a story I was working on. That is just how I roll.

I'm a writer, and it does make me crazy sometimes. Then again, you kind of have to be.

This Might Not Be Coherent (Thank You, H1N1 :-P)

If I ever have children, they will one day no doubt ask me what life was like when I was "young." They will have read in their history books of all the "craziness" that transpired in my lifetime, and just looking back right now I already realize I'll have some good fodder for stories. In fact, I can ask myself the very same questions I have posed to my parents over the years and already come up with a few answers.

Why, I remember when my mother told me about how she had to iron her hair because it was so curly and they didn't really have actual hair flat irons. She was in high school in the 70s, and the whole "big hair thing" didn't come into play until she attended cosmetology school (well, back then I guess it was just "beauty school"). So what is the strangest thing I've done to my hair to stay in fashion? I can tell you the things I did to it that were most definitely out of fashion, like when I managed to accidentally crimp my hair before a big middle school dance with these weird hair doodads I bought for myself at Caldors (or was it Bradlees?). While I am most definitely a child of the 80s that had many a crimped-do, this occurred in probably about 1992 or 1993 so you can imagine my horror. I remember I hid the pictures from my mother for years, because I was too embarrassed to show her (even though she obviously saw me when I left the house). However, I suppose the only culturally significant 'do I've had is the "Rachel," made famous by Jennifer Aniston when she played said character on "Friends." I got it right before news broke that it was the "it" hairdo, and immediately felt funny for having it. In fact, I've worn my hair in a lot of styles based on media characters, even if they were cartoon characters (my favorite go-to has always been the "Quistis," especially with my glasses), but that is probably best left for a post by itself (with lots of pictures to match).

Let's see, what else... Oh, there is of course the question of "Where were you when..." followed by a significant moment in history. For my mom, that was "Where were you when JFK was assassinated?" Meanwhile my father, who moved from the Mediterranean to Canada to the US, has stories about where he was when the Nazis attacked his village ("We were all laughing at them at the edge of the cliff. They couldn't reach us from where they were shooting from!") and, before that, when the Italian soldiers invaded ("Your grandmother attacked them with a frying pan, she wasn't about to give them food when she had a family to raise!") Again, whole other post. When I was growing up though, I used to think my generation was severely lacking in a "generation defining occurrence." The biggest thing that I can actually remember from when I was a kid was the Challenger disaster. Then it was Desert Storm. But then, it was 9/11.

What has been made clear is that probably every generation, at first, starts to think the one before it was crazier, or harder, or easier, or amazing, or horrifying. Then something happens and you can't wait for it to end, for all the talk to stop, for all the questions to cease. From the minor little dips into pop culture history to the realities of war, each generation gets those "defining moments" in some way or the other, and is thus labeled as such for the rest of history (until something more exciting happens). Then, you can look back and laugh at it when it doesn't hurt anymore.

This is why I think this point in my life shall be "hilarious" someday. It might take quite a while, but we'll see. When my theoretical kids ask me about the economic crisis, I can tell them I lived it. Our very own depression, oh great. Then there's the health insurance issues, other medical issues, the current and former political state, the fact that my boyfriend and I both managed to get H1N1 (aka "swine flu") and are now both basically quarantined for a week, the hardships of being in a state with some of the highest gas prices in the continental US... It should be funny someday that it all happened to us at once, right? ... Right?

Snuggie-licious!

I do not own a Snuggie. I think the idea of a Snuggie is stupid. It is a blanket with sleeves. It is a backward robe. It is stupid.

Or is it?

Both of us being computer nerds, at some point in the evening we end up on the computer(s). Of course, these days you live your life online so I guess this isn't so weird anymore. Whatever. At any rate, with us being caught up in that whole economic crazy mess that the media keeps reminding us we're in as they also try to sell us some holiday cheer we can't really afford to stay as toasty as we'd like. This tends to make the sitting-at-a-computer-and-barely-moving a pretty chilly task for the evening. We got spoiled when in Boston of all places where we had a passively solar house and a wood stove. I barely needed a blanket draped over me then. But now?

Now we're in a state with high energy prices, and a house that our wood stove is too small for. I end up using that laptop for warmth as much as I do for work, and I covet the puppy as my little heater. If I'm completely under the blanket, only my head sticking out, with her buried underneath like she loves, I stay so toasty warm it is unbelievable. This is the method I use while camping! This is not very compatible to using a laptop, however, as the movement of my arms toward the keyboard just lets in more cold air. With a laptop, you need your arms free, so a better way to wear the blanket is around your back. This causes a lot of heat loss, as the dog ends up in only one side of the blanket and my chest down to my toes are not covered. Sure I can try to adjust, but it never works out just right and I end up still losing heat. Why, if only I could wear it the first way, but with sleeves coming out so I wouldn't lose as much heat.

Yeah, so... it's only 39 outside right now and I'm really wishing I had a Snuggie right now. Although I'll be damned if I ever buy one.

Re-purpose, Re-use, Recycle!

It is the first dreary day after a string of some of the most beautiful Autumn weather we've had in some time, and honestly, it really isn't all that bad. These days just tend to remind me that Winter is right around the corner, but I'm a snow junkie so I don't really care about it that way. Winter is probably one of my favorite times of year, although if you get me talking enough about each season I can probably come up with reasons why each one would be my favorite (except Summer. Strangely, I'm starting to hate Summer. Maybe its because the days of getting the Summer off are long gone. Tell me again why I didn't stick with teaching?)

But this is completely off-topic. My reason for taking time out of my work to sit down and write this is for something not seasonal, per say, but it is definitely something that is at least helping ease the upcoming Holiday crunch. I know I've touched upon it already, but it is something that is just exciting me more and more as each day goes on.

I was raised by a mother who loved to decorate, and our house always looked like it popped out of a magazine. This not only included holidays, but just the everyday style of everything. She, in turn, had learned this from my amazing grandmother, who could go from painting and wallpapering to redrawing blueprints to, well, pretty much anything. I have, thankfully, inherited these interests and the best compliment I think I've ever received was when a friend in Boston told me that she loved coming to our place because it always made her feel like she was actually at home and not in some random dorm or college apartment. When I look at decorating, I don't like things that are sterile and uncomfortable even if they are beautiful. I look at decorating as a way to make the house feel more warm, and all our guests feel at ease.

One thing I'm glad to expand on is the ability to find the old and turn it into the new. My cousin and I used to scour this great little shack of random treasures called "Pick-N-Paw" off of 26 in West Paris, ME and try to figure out what we could re-purpose. It was a veritable junk store, where one person's trash became someone else's treasures. We found replacement windows and doors there, a wood stove, an old ringer washing machine, and so much more. Not all of it was salvageable (and I always wondered about the electronics they left out front and didn't cover in the rain), but occasionally you'd find something extraordinary. I remember this one time we found this awesome wooden bench that needed some TLC, and the lady gave it to my cousin for $5. She ended up repainting it, replacing the seats with new leather and tacking, and adding some throw pillows, effectively turning it into something I'd expect to see in a catalog for probably more than $300. Plus, New England is a great place for those who love tag/yard/garage sales, and I have fond memories of driving around with my aunt through the mountains in Oxford and finding things I both re-used for my own place and other things I fixed up and resold for much more than I paid for. Heck, we used to turn old cardboard and fabric into jewelry boxes that my mom, my aunt, my cousin and I would peddle at craft fairs. I am so happy I picked up these skills at a young age, because it is really coming in handy now.

I think I may just start talking about each of the projects we're taking on here, because it is really a cool concept we're trying to do. Right now we can't do everything this way, but eventually our goal is to one day build and furnish a house without having to buy anything brand new. I know we can do it, and each little thing we do now is just adding to our future goal.

This blog post may be all over the place, and probably in need of some serious proofreading and editing, but right now I really don't care! I've got to get back to my remodeling and re-purposing. But I will leave those cash-strapped (or just environmentally-aware) decorators out there with an option for household plants: If you need to use something to collect water beneath them, the bowls from old dish sets work really well. I had bought some discontinued Fiestaware at Linens-N-Things years ago for $.25 a piece, and while I only have two yellow bowls left they are the perfect depth and size to put under our Jade and Money Tree plants - and the color goes perfectly with the rest of the kitchen! (Pictures coming soon!)

Her Story VII

I can't count for you how many blog posts I've written since I last posted here. Unfortunately, they were all done via a personal favorite of Dr. John Dorian. The Internal Monologue. And like J.D.'s silly and sometimes elaborate tangent fantasies, these telepathic blogs that fail to publish to any known server tend to take on qualities of movies and television shows. No, I don't mean I write stories about my life that end up involving actual characters, but rather as I notice there are things in life that really do come up as if they were a last minute plot contrivance I also go into a sort of "scripting and directing" mode. Thus, the blogs start getting way too planned out for my own good (cue music) and don't exactly translate well to the written page, or pixel if you will. Perhaps that is where I fall short of segueing my J.D. into my Carrie.

My other has been encouraging both these sides of me, however, but I believe he gave up some where around New Years. I mean, there's still the occasional "writing is something you enjoy, do it more" spiel to get me motivated, but at this point he's (rightly) left it up to me to decide.

However, I know he genuinely does want this for me, and I'm glad for that. Especially since I wasn't really in total "writing" mode when we first got together so he never actually saw the regularity that I did it, nor the happiness and (cliche, I know) calm it brought me. The funny thing about it all though is that while he understands my want and my need for it, he doesn't understand how I get motivated.

Take tonight, for example. I have been looking forward to this night for a while. Lights down low, speakers on loud. Maybe a nice glass of wine. Time to cuddle up on the couch with a nice blanket, and watch the season premiere of "Lost"! While this may seem silly, this is one of the only shows I've actually followed start to (and this will be true in a few years) finish when it was first airing. I generally watched reruns growing up (I miss the old Nick at Nite, truly "a TV viewer's dream"), and I know this is cheesy but there is something about wondering what the hell is going to happen next that is exciting. Now that I know there is a specific end (oh how "Stargate SG-1" would have benefited with that, among many countless other series. You know who you are.) I can become more invested in the show. As that happens, I enjoy it more, which then... wait for it (yes it has a point, and apparently a lot more comments in parentheses. I'm like my own MST3K! And if you can't figure out what that is by just those five characters, then me telling you the name of it wouldn't matter anyway to this commenting. But I digress, as usual.). ... Okay, where were we? (<-- Comment put in for attempt at humor.) Oh yes, the more I enjoy something such as "Lost," it gets me more excited about creating my own media, and thus beginning to get more excited about writing! So I turned down all the lights, cranked up the stereo and tuned in intensely to watch... and he just thought it was the silliest thing. He respected it, and he watched it with me (he's missed way too much to understand where they are now, and had unfortunately missed the pre-premiere recap), but he did not get why I got so excited about it. And therefore, how the heck could it help me in my quest?

No matter what anyone's goals are, they may have unconventional or seemingly odd ways of getting there. Take the fact that I just spent precious sleep time (7am open, eww) writing here. Writing this silly, seemingly making no sense entry. Seriously, what does any of this have to do with anything? Well, maybe nothing to you, but...

Hey, I wrote something down, didn't I?