I couldn't help but wonder...

So... Sex and the City 2.  There's not a lot I can say about it that hasn't been said.  However, here's the thing that bothers me. It's not the fact that they went on this extravagant trip, because I can understand that.  I wish I could take an extravagant trip to a beautiful hotel with my own personal butler and spa treatments and lovely things.  It's not the ridiculous plot lines, though I find some to be worse than others.  It's this.

I've felt that SATC the series always teetered on the edge of women power vs. man hating.  Sometimes, it would drift one way or the other, but mostly I thought it kept a good balance of not being man-hating while still being in the power of the woman.  THIS MOVIE, especially Carrie's story, is very... man hating!

Maybe it's just me, but I feel like marriage is a lot of give and take, but it's all worth it.  Sometimes, I get my way and sometimes, Hubs gets his.  It sucks when I don't get my way, but I'd like for him to win too (though... not as much as I win, of course!).  In all seriousness, I revel in my husband's happiness because, well, I love him the most.  He deserves to be happy!  He deserves to get what he wants out of life.  He deserves to do what he wants, within reason :)  For most of this movie, Carrie seemed to want Big to do whatever she wanted and just... accept that what SHE wanted is what THEY wanted.  That's just not right, at least to me.

I'm probably reading way too much into this, but that's what I'm feeling about this.  I read this in a review somewhere, but I truly feel that certain Season One girls would really despise the Second Movie ladies they have become.  I always thought the point of growing older is to actually... grow.

Dad

My dad's side of the family is very female-heavy.  He's got 4 sisters, his dad had 3 sisters, and he has lots of female cousins.  I credit this female-centric family life as the reason why my dad is so sensitive and so wonderful to his wife and daughter.  This past October, when my grandpa died, I grieved for my own loss, but at the time I also grieved more for Dad, who not only lost his awesome father, but who became the sole man in his family for the first time in his entire life.

Recently, I've been following the story of my dad's closest male cousin Larry.  About a year ago, Larry was diagnosed with an aggressive esophageal cancer.  He wasn't given much time, but he did lots of research and started a strict regime of meds and natural remedies.  Amazingly, he was given a clean bill of health after this regime.  We all celebrated this miracle.  Unfortunately, this was only temporary, and his cancer resurfaced, worse than last time.  And, early this morning, Larry passed away peacefully, surrounded by his wife, daughter, and other family members.

I met Larry only once that I can remember, and it was at his wedding when I was about 13.  He was lovely and friendly, and I have loved hearing stories about him.  However, in this instance, I am again grieving for my father.  My poor father has lost so many men in his life, from his best friend Randy to his amazing father, and now his cousin, even though they acted more like surrogate brothers to each other (Larry had 2 sisters).  My Dad was the number one awesomest guy on my list up until I was 20 years old and started dating my husband.  He deserves to be happy, not to deal with these sad tragedies over and over.  I just wish there was something I could do to make him feel better...

However, today, Dad is at Grandma's house in NC, along with all 4 of his sisters, my cousin Sherry, and her 2 daughters.  As usual, surrounded by his strong female family.  I'm sure he's there to visit and to be with his family, but I also know he's there for them, to be the strong male presence they need to lean on.  It's reasons like that why I love my truly awesome dad.

Woo Woo 3 Day Weekend!

To celebrate Memorial Day, I plan on doing pretty much nothing for the next few days.  It will be epic.  It will be awesome.  It will be at least 2 full days of knitting, sleeping, and watching a marathon of something on DVD.  Then, on Monday, I'll be heading into Richmond to catch what could be the most creatively panned movie ever, Sex and the City 2.


I am not mad at this movie.  Granted, I don't have high hopes.  I've been an SATC watcher for many, many years, and I have a group of 3 other fabulous ladies that I always watch SATC with.  (I'm the Miranda.  Also, if we were Golden Girls, I'd be the Sophia.)  I loved the series, just loved it.  I can watch it from start to finish, then start it all over again.  So many episodes are SO well-done, and I especially think the series finale wrapped up everything so well.  Even The Hubs watched an episode, but JUST ONCE, and JUST because Michael Showalter was set to guest-star (and then I got to TELL Showalter this story in person, and judging by his reaction, he seemed to like it...)

He looked a little like this... just kidding.

HOWever, I know it's going to be ridiculous.  I know the plot is going to be nonsensical.  I know I will not be watching something that will win any kind of awards, except possibly Razzies.  I don't really care.  I'm more excited about seeing those other three ladies, and having a cocktail, and just relaxing for a little while.  I don't see anything wrong with that.

Plus, I'm kind of excited to see the terrible terribleness.

Don't Panic.

Today is Towel Day.  This statement makes the nerdy Anglophile in me oh so very happy.  What, you ask, is Towel Day?  And how does it relate to nerds, Brits, and... towels?

Towel Day is the annual celebration of the life and work of Douglas Adams, an awesomely nerdy Brit who was famous for "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."  It started as a radio series on the BBC in 1978, which he adapted into novels starting in 1979.  H2G2 (as it's known to other nerdies like me) has been made into a TV series and a film (though lots of people don't like it, but I do because I'm not a purist) and stage shows and so on.  According to the official Hitchhiker's Guide, the most important item for any good hitchhiker of land, sea, or space is... a towel. 

So, in 2001, two weeks after Douglas Adams passed away, his army of followers proclaimed May 25 as the official Towel Day (and also, the unofficial Geek Pride Day).  If you see people wandering around with towels and you're not at the beach or at Water Country USA (or insert water theme park near your town here), then they are celebrating the life and times of a famous, well-written nerd.

The Hubs got me to read H2G2 many years ago, claiming I would find it to be dry, witty, and silly.  He'd tried this with books before, and I'd been burned.  However, I was pleased to find that he wasn't messing with me this time.  It's so totally random, but it's got some really hilarious passages, and it gave me a chance to say Slartibartfast.  Also, if Radiohead likes it enough to name their most epic and awesome song (IMO) after Marvin the Paranoid Android, it's worth it.

Happy Towel Day, everyone!  So long, and thanks for all the fish!

LOST no more.

So... wow.  Seriously.  Just... holy... well... wow.

As you can see, I can't really verbalize (or blogalize) my feelings about the series finale of Lost just yet.  I'll just say that I thought it was really well-done, enough of my long-standing questions were addressed to keep me sated while still some are left open to keep us talking about this for years, and those last few scenes?  In the church?  Oh my.  OH my.  Lovely. 

I do get the feeling that this finale would have been revered or reviled, no matter what happened.  Even if it was an hour of Team Darlton rattling off answers to every unanswered question, and everything was tied up in a neat little bow, this finale would have angered viewers all over the place.  So far, I've seen only two types of responses: a) OMFG AMAZING LOVES IT WOWEEE and b) WTF THAT WAS TERRIBLE LIKE A BOWL OF STEAMING POO.  There is no inbetween.  I have not seen ANY comments of the "meh" or "it was alright" nature.  All SUPER YAYS or SUPER NAYS.

There are lots of things I want to say about Lost.  I can't muddle through my brain yet.  More to come.  I do think that this finale will be discussed more and complained about more than anything that's come before it, even Greedo shooting first.  However, until I can wade through my thoughts, check out what The Ack Attack had to say about last night's event.  I will say this: her take on the finale (one of the first paragraphs in this entry) is pretty much exactly what I took from it as well.

Namaste.

Follow Blog Friday

In case you were on the edge of your seat last night thinking about this, this was my TV watching schedule.  8 pm: an episode of Bones that I will equate to the TV version of Breaking Dawn (huge build-up which leads to... nothing, really), 9 pm: a solid, if not semi-boring, finale of The Office, 9:30 pm: began the DVR'd Grey's Anatomy, at which time The Hubs went upstairs so I could cry and gasp and react and have a near-coronary due to stress, and finally, 11 pm: began the DVR'd Community because I was all keyed up from Grey's.  Seriously, I think my blood pressure was through the roof watching Grey's last night.  Oh man, it was just great.  AMAZING performances from the entire cast (though, as usual, Chandra Wilson and Sandra Oh were STAND-OUTS!), really great writing, directing, all of it.  Just great.

So, I get to work today, and I do my usual mosey over to Google Reader to see what new blog posts have popped up today.  After seeing another highly hilarious post on Fail Blog, I decided to acknowledge some of my favorite blogs.  Kind of a #FF post, just... you know... not on Twitter.  SO, besides FAIL, here are a few of my faaaaaavorite blogs (though, no people I know personally are on this list, just because).

*Cake Wrecks: Messed-up cakes.  Cakes full of typos and black icing and shaped like objects no cake should ever be in and blobs of junk you would never, EVER want to eat.  The mascot of the blog is a mohawked baby riding a carrot.  How are you not there right now, looking at these terrible confections??

*Go Fug Yourself: This has been one of my old stand-bys for a long, long, long time.  In fact, writer Jessica was the first person I didn't know to @ reply to me on Twitter, and you would have thought I'd died and gone to 15 minutes of fame heaven.  Jess & Heather find pictures of celebs dressed like... well, like they didn't put the lights on in their house, and they mock them.  Incessantly.  Also, they love George Clooney.  Thus, I love them.

*The Bad-Ass Geek: This is a relatively new find for me, and I'm glad I happened upon it.  This Geek writes about the ponderings of his mind, and all of this entries start with the words, "In Which."  Kind of like Friends, but... a blog.  And it's way funnier than the last few seasons of Friends. 

*Looks Good From the Back: This is the brainchild of two ladies who take pictures of what they wear each day, tell you why they wore it and where it came from.  Occasionally, they will go to stores and try stuff on, and then post pictures of the stuff they tried on.  It's kind of like going shopping with your girlfriends, but while you sit at your desk and drink your coffee.  They also own a LOT of really cute shoes that I covet.

So, a question to my bevy of followers (or perhaps only to myself...), are there any blogs you love?  What are they?  Let me know, because I'm kind of a blogaholic.  In a good way.

Ventin' & Plannin' (the original Wishin' & Hopin')

Having another one of those frustrated days.  Every time I feel like I have a hold on this feeling, I have a day like this that thrusts me right back into the pit.  It's such a pain.  I'm just so... burnt out.  I'm so irritated and frustrated.  The worst part to me is that I'm irritated and frustrated about a topic that I can't discuss on the interwebs, but this is my best way of expressing myself and dealing with things, which then makes me more frustrated, and there was an old woman who swallowed the fly.  Blah blah.  I could write it down, but I'm nervous to write it down because THAT'S how I make crazy discoveries about myself, and I really don't want to have one of those epiphanies that backfires.  I don't know why she swallowed the fly.

This isn't helping.

I just feel like I have a lot of responsibility on my shoulders, more than I'm used to dealing with.  It feels like it's starting to cave in, though it's probably not.  The stress and anger and issues of the past few years seem to have just piled up, and I feel unable to stop it.  It's like a self-inflating balloon... which I don't know if that even exists... maybe a better metaphor is one of those inflating punching things.  You know, the ones with the weighted bottoms so where you can just punch it and punch it and no matter how hard you hit it, it keeps popping up and mocking you with its stupid clowny face?  Ugh, THAT is what it feels like.  Like I'm punching this crap as hard as I can to make it GO AWAY, and yet it KEEPS COMING BACK.  When will this feeling end?  When will I feel like I'm finally on some kind of track?  I don't care about my instinctual feeling that everything will turn out right; I want to know WHEN it will.  Errrrrrrrrrgh.

Surprisingly, that DID help.

Lots of TV tonight, and I'm loving my DVR because of it.  If I didn't have it, I'd be dooooooomed.  It's a delicate process, and this two hour Grey's has really thrown a wrench in the usual clockwork of Thursdays (I originially typed "wench" instead of "wrench" and now I can't stop laughing).  So, at 8, it's live watching Bones and taping Community, at 9 I would LIKE it to be live watching Grey's and taping The Office, and then I'd like to watch the taped stuff tomorrow.  HOWEVER, I'm fairly certain I'm gonna lose that battle, and we're gonna live watch The Office at 9 followed by the recorded Community, and I'm gonna end up staying up later than I want to finish this crazy Grey's. From the 7 minute clip I saw on Hulu, it looks VERY similar to the plot of ER where Carter and Lucy got stabbed, which is like my favorite ERs ever, so... I'm pretty much stoked.  That might sound a little disturbing, but I don't much care.  I'm so excited.  I'm so... scared.