blueflower.orgtag:www.blueflower.org,2010-02-02://122014-05-22T17:56:56ZMovable Type 5.01End of the Linetag:www.blueflower.org,2014://12.33822014-05-22T17:39:54Z2014-05-22T17:56:56ZI doubt anyone is even going to read this because at this point we are closing in on almost three years since my last blog entry; however, if you do still happen to be checking in on me, I thought...♥k!http://www.blueflower.org So, what’s to become of this site? Blueflower.org isn’t going away altogether—I still utilize other aspects of the site,—but I have no need for a blog anymore. What remains of the blog will disappear soon, and I plan on turning this into more of a professional site instead. I am trying to land a writing job in the Madison area these days, and I want to turn the public portions of this site into a showcase for my résumé/CV and possibly a portfolio of writing samples. In short, I want to put this site to better use than the unused state it has languished in for the past several years.
On a closing note, I want to thank everyone who followed my blog for all those years. I know my following was small, but you guys were also pretty loyal, and I do appreciate it. Thanks again, and I hope to see you all soon.
♥k!]]>
Don’t You Forget about Metag:www.blueflower.org,2011://12.33532011-06-10T15:01:21Z2011-06-10T15:29:33ZEleven years. Wow—that’s how long this site has been around now. Seems like only yesterday.Many things change over the course of eleven years, most especially priorities, and what was a priority to a twenty-year-old kid isn’t necessarily of much importance...♥k!http://www.blueflower.org Many things change over the course of eleven years, most especially priorities, and what was a priority to a twenty-year-old kid isn’t necessarily of much importance to a thirty-one-year-old. As I noted a couple months back, I’ve lost interest in blogging about every little detail of my life. Or, more succinctly, I’ve lost interest in writing long-form about my life. I have Facebook, I have Tumblr, and now I even use Twitter. I suppose there’s instant gratification involved in firing off a tweet about what’s on my mind right now that is lost in taking the time to plan, compose, edit, and post new blog entries. And then there’s my diary, which pre-dates this Web site by two years, and where I continue to write out lengthy entries.
But I haven’t completely given up on blogging—I just plan on doing it differently. Rather than writing about my life, I want to punch out essays and other longer pieces not necessarily related to me personally. I can’t guarantee that anyone will be interested in reading the pieces that I publish, but I guess this has always been more about me than you. I might write about baseball or books or movies or life in the city. I might even write personal anecdotes when it feels right. Basically, I love writing, and every different format offers different possibilities for personal expression. For those of you who have stuck with me and continued to follow my writing over the years, I thank you and hope you’ll continue to follow me in the future, but I also understand if what comes next isn’t to your liking.
♥k!]]>
Changing Prioritiestag:www.blueflower.org,2011://12.33522011-03-21T14:56:53Z2011-03-21T15:13:04ZThere’s a very good excuse for why you don’t hear much from me here anymore — it just isn’t high on my priority list. The older I get, the less interested I am in broadcasting every minor detail of my...♥k!http://www.blueflower.org I’m not really sure what direction this blog should take now. Should I even bother pretending to maintain a blog here anymore? The site itself won’t be going away any time soon because I still use it for numerous private purposes (such as my customized, personal start page and my online media catalog), but I’m undecided what to do with the public portion of the site. I guess if you check back here regularly you’ll know what I decide to do once I’ve decided to do it.
Thanks for checking up on me!
♥k!]]>
Happy New Year!tag:www.blueflower.org,2011://12.33132011-01-01T19:51:11Z2011-01-01T20:15:29ZMy plans to come home this weekend collapsed like a house of cards yesterday when all of the flights into both Appleton and Green Bay suddenly went from half-full to overbooked. I didn’t look into the details, but the only...♥k!http://www.blueflower.org While the rain/sleet/freezing rain that we got Thursday and Friday definitely made the ground icy and treacherous, more disruptive to airline travel was the icing conditions in the air. Planes were arriving Friday afternoon and evening here in Minneapolis completely covered in a thin sheet of ice, while the leading edges of the wings, tail, nose, and engines were completely caked in ice. Deicing operations were taking considerably longer than usual, as it was quite a chore to remove all of the ice from the aircraft before they could depart, and that was making planes that were already delayed even later still. With conditions such as this, it’s easy to understand why the airlines might start canceling flights.
My preparations for coming home were not totally in vain. I mean, I never got around to packing yet before I found out I wouldn’t be able to come home (so I don’t have to bother with putting clothes away), and the cleaning that I accomplished around the apartment was needed anyway. The only problem with things around here is that I don’t have much food around the apartment because I was planning on using the rental car I was going to drive back to go grocery shopping before returning it. I have enough to make it by until I do finally get around to shopping for groceries, but I certainly wasn’t planning on needing to feed myself this weekend.
And I have to say that I had a good New Year’s Eve. I met up with some friends after work for one friend’s birthday, and then we all went over to a party which I hadn’t planned for in advance, so I didn’t have any beverages to provide. Thankfully, a friend brought multiple bottles of wine and was willing to share. I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, but one thing I decided not long ago was that I want to start making a point of being more outgoing and carefree, so I followed through last night by making conversation with several people who I only vaguely know. I mean, I knew pretty much everyone who was at the party, but there were people there who I don’t know quite as well as some of the others, and those were the people who I attempted to chat up throughout the night. Plus, I was my usual dancefloor terror, so there was that. While I wish I could have flown home this morning, the fun I had last night definitely helped dull the disappointment of being stuck here once again. I haven’t completely eliminated the possibility of trying to go home next weekend yet, and I will definitely be there for almost a week at the end of this month, so I suppose I’m just being forced to delay gratification, not cancel it altogether.
Happy New Year to all, and may 2011 be your best year yet!
♥k!]]>
Very Busy Young Mantag:www.blueflower.org,2010://12.33102010-12-29T15:47:28Z2010-12-29T16:04:18ZIt would obviously be a considerable understatement for me to say that I have been missing in action here on the Web log. Days without a new entry turned into weeks, and weeks soon turned into months. Where one small...♥k!http://www.blueflower.org For those of you back in Appleton, I will be in town twice in January — the first time will be this weekend, and the second time will be the last weekend of the month for trivia. I’ll fill you in on my plans for trivia when we get closer to that time, but the plan for this weekend is to arrive in town Saturday morning and leave either Sunday night or early Monday morning (depending upon the weather and how tired I am).
I hope you all had a very merry Christmas (not to mention Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, etc.), and I wish you a safe and happy New Year.
♥k!]]>
Same As It Ever Wastag:www.blueflower.org,2010://12.33082010-07-09T04:42:30Z2010-07-09T05:01:22ZHello, all!As you can clearly see, I haven’t been in much of a mood to write here in my blog lately. It’s not that I haven’t had anything about which to write, but rather that the things I have had...♥k!http://www.blueflower.org As you can clearly see, I haven’t been in much of a mood to write here in my blog lately. It’s not that I haven’t had anything about which to write, but rather that the things I have had to write about have been pretty private, which means I’ve been writing page after page in my diary instead of here. In the grand scheme of things, not much has changed in my life. Still working the same, old part-time, dead-end job with not a single lead toward something better. I just got the word yesterday that I’m getting bumped to the night shift for the next two months starting on the 18th of this month, so there goes any hope I might have had of having a social life this summer. I’m hoping to at least be able to pick up enough hours to justify giving away my Wednesdays so I can go to trivia, because that’s pretty much the sole bright spot in my existence at the moment.
Because I haven’t been writing, I failed to recognize another important anniversary in the history of this Web site — the tenth anniversary of my first blog post. Last Saturday — July 3rd — was the tenth anniversary of the day that I inaugurated the Web log on this site, which is pretty much the only reason that this site ever became of much interest to anyone beside myself. I’m not lying when I tell my mom on the phone every week that nothing exciting happened, because lately every day has been pretty much the same, which doesn’t make for interesting blog posts either, hence the dearth of updates. I’m sure I’ll get back to writing more once I actually have something to write about, but that simply isn’t the case right now.
So, hopefully everyone is doing well. Nothing new to report here, but you’ll be among the first ones to know if there are any significant changes in my life.
Later, gators!
♥k!]]>
Happy Birthday, Blueflower.orgtag:www.blueflower.org,2010://12.33072010-06-08T20:13:21Z2010-06-08T20:19:24ZIt was ten years ago today — June 8, 2000 — that I first registered the domain name “blueflower.org” … and the rest is history.At the time that I registered the domain name, my Web site had outgrown the capabilities...♥k!http://www.blueflower.org At the time that I registered the domain name, my Web site had outgrown the capabilities of GeoCities, which I had been using as a host for my site for nearly two years. I wanted to expand the scope of the site, and — more importantly — I wanted to add a Web log using Blogger, which I had only recently discovered.
For this purpose, I needed a new host, and I also wanted to register a domain name associated with it. Trying to settle on a domain name, I made a list of possible choices, and whittled the list down until I settled on Blue Flower. Where the heck did I come up with that name? I was a German major at the time, and, well, I’ll let Wikipedia explain, if you really want to know. Blueflower.com and Blueflower.net were already taken, so that’s why I arrived at Blueflower.org. I have several times over the last ten years considered changing the name, even going so far as to register new names, but I eventually settled on keeping everything the same.
As for the new host for the site, I went with Crosswinds. (Worst. Host. Ever.) They advertised unlimited space — for free! Sounds too good to be true? It was. I created the new site, got the blog up-and-running, and stuck with this arrangement for the first several months … until Crosswinds started randomly deleting pages from my site. What? Yeah, I never got an explanation from them as to why they deleted half of my site, but I know they were on a big kick not to host any illegal content (unauthorized photos, MP3s, etc.). Since my site had none of those, I have no idea why they randomly deleted my pages, but they did (thankfully, I had them backed up on my hard drive), so I set out in search of a new host, and finally decided to pay for hosting rather than dealing with the same B.S. again. By December of that year, I had moved to my new host, and I haven’t had any problems with them (more or less).
I have continued to blog off-and-on, of course, over the last (almost) ten years. If you’re really interested, there’s a history of the site ranging from my pre-GeoCities days up until July 2005 here. It only just occurred to me while looking up that site that I haven’t updated the history of blueflower.org in the last five years. Since I’m probably the only person who cares, I’m in no particular hurry.
Anyway, I hope you all are doing well. Today is my day off, but it’s a rainy, stormy, gloomy day, so it isn’t exactly conducive to leaving the apartment. Inside the apartment, I have apparently lost electrical power in the wall that separates the kitchen and the bathroom, which means no light in either room, and no power in one of the outlets in the kitchen. It was all working this morning (the coffeemaker is plugged into said kitchen outlet, and I was able to make my coffee this morning), but ceased to function at some point between when I first made the coffee and when I went back to fill my second cup. I went down and checked the fuses, but those are fine, and the power is working everywhere else in the apartment, so I’m not sure what the trouble is. The caretaker just stopped in, played with the circuit breaker himself (now I have to re-set the time on the VCR), and said the fix-it guy would be in the building tomorrow, so he’ll have him stop in. Basically, I guess that means I’ll be peeing in the dark tonight.
Later, gators!
♥k!]]>
Back from My Sleep-Deprived Abysstag:www.blueflower.org,2010://12.33062010-04-26T18:43:28Z2010-04-26T19:09:44ZWow, it really has been awhile since I last updated all of you … but not without good reason.You see, since my last entry here I have spent all of my time either working or sleeping. Well, almost all of...♥k!http://www.blueflower.org
has been awhile since I last updated all of you … but not without good reason.
You see, since my last entry here I have spent all of my time either working or sleeping. Well, almost all of my time — the rest has been devoted to baseball. (And, yes, someone turned thirty in there as well, but we’ll go ahead and leave that topic for another day.) My work schedule was changed on April 11 from 5–9 PM (my previous work schedule) to 4:30–8:30 AM, a change which completely screwed up my sleep schedule. Sure, it was nice being done with work at 8:30 everyday, because, theoretically, you have the rest of your day free. Unfortunately, the reality wasn’t so pleasant. Most days I came home from work, read a little, ate lunch, and then passed out from exhaustion. I would typically wake up from my daily unplanned nap late in the afternoon or early in the evening, eat dinner, listen to the Twins game on the radio, and then go right back to bed. My alarm went off at 2:45 AM signaling it was time to do it all over again. Ugh. I’ve long believed that if you have to be woken up by artificial means (i.e., an alarm clock) then you probably didn’t get enough sleep, and the previous two weeks only confirmed my belief.
But now it’s over.
Yesterday was my last day working early in the morning, I am off today and tomorrow, and then I start my new schedule on Wednesday — 3–7 PM. In the end, I think it worked out quite well for me actually, because two important and positive changes came out of this. For one, I was exposed to “how the other half lives” — I got to experience first-hand what the morning crew did and didn’t do, — whereas all I had to go on before were stories from others who had worked on that shift. And for two, my new afternoon shift is actually about a million times better than my old evening shift, as I get started earlier and get done earlier. Getting out of work at seven o’clock means I might actually get to experience a social life again (when I can afford it) for the first time in years. Win!
I slept in today until 9:30, and I’ve done absolutely nothing so far but sit around sipping coffee all day. I have every intention of being more ambitious tomorrow — I have laundry that needs to be done, dishes that need to be cleaned, and an apartment that needs to be picked up, after all — but my plans for the rest of the day today are to do nothing more than continue the recovery process. We’ll get this sleep schedule thing back on track in no time.
♥k!]]>
Who ARE These People?tag:www.blueflower.org,2010://12.33052010-04-10T06:39:16Z2010-04-10T06:56:45ZI first signed up for Facebook back when it was in its infancy. No, I’m no Harvard grad (obviously), but I was part of that next wave when the site expanded to other private East Coast colleges, meaning that when...♥k!http://www.blueflower.org Why do I bring this up? Because on occasion I get curious as to who else from high school is on the site, so I take a little peek. Browsing the list of people claiming to be part of my graduating class, all I can ask is, “Who the f–– are these people?!” Yes, yes, I know that many of the ladies have married and adopted their husbands’ last names, but that’s not what I mean. I wasn’t exactly popular in high school, per se, but I at least knew who most everyone was, regardless of whether or not we were friends. Nevertheless, I have no idea who these people are. What I do know is that they definitely were not part of my graduating class.
That being the case, I just have to ask: why? Why would you claim to be part of the graduating class of some random high school in Wisconsin? I don’t know who you people are, but you were never in any of my classes or anything. Then again, as was always my response when my parents asked me why I wasn’t among those listed in the paper each semester for having a GPA of 3.7 or higher: “Umm, probably because the people on that list aren’t in any of my classes.” Are all you people among the random folks who were part of our graduation ceremony but never actually attended our school? I seem to recall people at our commencement ceremony who didn’t even go to our school and being quite confused. Whatever.
♥k!]]>
Thank Goodness for Joe Mauertag:www.blueflower.org,2010://12.33042010-04-05T05:10:19Z2010-04-05T05:53:25ZI should preface this entry with an apology — I’m sorry. I’m sorry for writing about baseball. I promise not to turn this into a baseball blog again, but what I have to write this evening just had to be...♥k!http://www.blueflower.org Did you see the Yankees–Red Sox game tonight or catch the highlights? Seeing Victor Martinez and Jorge Posada in action just makes me as a Twins fan appreciate Joe Mauer that much more and highlights so many of the reasons why the Twins were willing to make Mauer the 284-Million-Dollar Man.
Take, for example, Martinez’s decision to attempt to throw out Derek Jeter at second, down 4–1, and with Brett Gardner on third. What the f—— was he thinking? Did he even look at Gardner at third? Clearly not. As if his decision to even attempt to throw out Jeter at second weren’t bad enough, worse still was the throw itself. I could make a better throw to second than that, and I’ve never seen anyone in my life less capable of making an accurate throw than me.
And how about Mr. Passed Ball — Jorge Posada. He, of course, being among the top-ten all-time in modern baseball history in passed balls. Unlike most of the other catchers on that list, our Mr. Posada has never caught a knucklerballer — he’s just an awful, awful defensive catcher whose pathetic defense has been ignored because he averages 25 HR / 98 RBIs / .277 AVG. He had yet another passed ball tonight that conceded the winning run. Poor Chan Ho Park got charged with the loss, but the loss should really go to Posada.
(And, unlike Mauer, who has won three batting titles — and last year also lead the league in slugging percentage and on-base percentage — the only offensive category Posada has ever lead the league in is Double Plays Grounded Into.)
I guess all I mean to say is that seeing Posada and Martinez play makes you appreciate Mauer and what he gives the Twins that much more. Even with their outsized payrolls, that's the best the Yankees and Red Sox can get for catchers. If Mauer had tested the open market after this season, his annual salary might well have challenged that of Alex Rodriguez, but by accepting “only” $23 million per year to stay with the Twins he̵ll instead be filling the heads of New Yorkers and Bostonians with dreams of what could have been.
Thanks Joe for staying home.
k!]]>
The Bad, The Good, and The Kick-Asstag:www.blueflower.org,2010://12.33032010-03-27T04:38:24Z2010-03-27T05:02:37ZI decided to check the balance on my checking account this morning because I hadn’t seen my paycheck yet and I wanted to know how much I had been paid yesterday. Checking my account activity, I noticed a $1 charge...♥k!http://www.blueflower.org On an amusing side note to this, she asked if I’d be willing to press charges. I said, “Umm, over a $1 charge? No — doesn’t seem worth it — I just want to cancel the card.”
Of course, this is the second security scare concerning my account in recent months. It was only about three months ago that I had to close my account and open a new one after my landlady lost my rent check. Because she wasn’t sure if she had lost it or it had been stolen, I talked to the WF people and they suggested I just go ahead and open a new account. Just like now, it was a minor inconvenience for about a week, but it all worked out in the end. In fact, that incident actually worked out quite well in my favor because my old checks still had Corey’s address on them, whereas my new checks with my new account number have my current address.
What else today?
I got both an early start and a hold over at work today. I ended up starting at 1:30 and getting done at 9:45, which means eight hours at straight time and an (easy) hour at time-and-one-half. Works for me! It kept me from getting my dishes done today, and it prevented me from stopping by Target after work to pick up some Diet Coke (I’m down to only two cans all of a sudden — how the heck did that happen?!), but I made enough extra money to make it okay.
And I still made it home in time to catch almost all of Crap from the Past on KFAI — in my opinion, probably the best show on the radio. Yay!
♥k!]]>
Taking It Easytag:www.blueflower.org,2010://12.33022010-03-18T19:50:43Z2010-03-18T19:50:28ZSo far today I have accomplished, well, nothing.As for the rest of the day, I intend to accomplish … wait for it … nothing!Okay, that isn’t really true. About the rest of the day, I mean. I’m going to do...♥k!http://www.blueflower.org
nothing.
As for the rest of the day, I intend to accomplish … wait for it … nothing!
Okay, that isn’t really true. About the rest of the day, I mean. I’m going to do a little cooking and baking later, and — if I’m feeling really ambitious — I might even get that darned census form filled out. Maybe.
Good thing I got all of my errands run yesterday.
It took me awhile to gather up enough ambition to leave the apartment yesterday, but I finally headed out around three in the afternoon to take care of a little business. My first destination was the library downtown to return a book I’ve been hanging onto (but not really reading) for nearly two months. Hopped on the bus, it was pretty full, and I sat in one of the few open seats. Next to another dude. He didn’t appreciate it much, so he got up and sat next to his friend. I had my headphones on, so they thought I couldn’t hear them, but they spent the entire trip downtown bitching about how I had the gall to think they aren’t entitled to three seats each on the bus. His friend kept saying I was lucky I hadn’t sat next to him because he’d have just popped me one, boom! (I think those were his words.) I’d love to see a scientific study that tests whether dudes who ride the bus really have larger testicles than the general population (therefore necessitating them taking up two or sometimes three seats so they can spread their legs as wide as possible). Or maybe they’re all just rude assholes.
Lemme see… So, I returned the book, and then I caught the light rail back around to Lake Street. Before heading over to the grocery store, I made a quick stop at Savers, where I picked up a few vintage/retro dishes on the cheap. I got a glass tumbler with alternating yellow and white stripes that reminds me of some of my grandma’s glasses; I got a white porcelain bowl with a neat black pattern around the edges (cannot decide if I should use it for eating or to replace the red melamine bowl I toss my keys and wallet in by my front door); and I got a white Pyrex loaf pan with a little blue print pattern on the side, so now I can finally try my hand at making breads or meatloaf. Sweet.
I have dishes already (love my Orla Kiely for Target dishes — use ’em every day), but I’ve also slowly been picking up mismatched pieces from thrift stores on the cheap. Probably my fave is the mod dinner plate covered in blue flowers that I picked up from Savers a few weeks ago. A full matching collection of dishes is great, but there’s something really neat about pairing up a mismatched collection as well. Kind of nice to have both, depending upon your mood, you know?
I finally made it to the grocery store after that. I was in a bit of a hurry because it was already 5:30 and I had to be to the VFW by 7:00 for trivia, but I picked up everything I needed. Between coupons and buying items when they’re on sale, I’ve been pretty good recently about saving nearly as much as I spend on groceries. The only downer was that I nearly missed my bus (had to chase him down) as I left the store because of the stupid cashier. The girl ahead of me on line must have been previously employed there, and the cashier took her sweet-ass time ringing up the girl’s stuff as the two of them yakked. The girl seriously had about seven items, but it took the cashier TEN-FUCKING-MINUTES to complete the transaction. The bus was pulling away as I exited the store, so I had to chase him down at the next stop. And the asshole charged me. The buses were free after six last night for St. Patrick’s Day, but because I got on 5:58 he charged me. What an ass.
Got the groceries home, put the perishable items away, then grabbed my jacket and headed back out the door. I couldn’t believe it when I made it to Lyn-Lake at 6:54, because I was certain I would be late for trivia when I didn’t even get out of the grocery store until almost six.Turns out it didn’t matter, as registration started at seven — the questions didn’t actually start until seven-thirty. Joined up with a team of people most of whom I had never met before last night (and the one I had met before I had met one drunken night at karaoke a few months back), but had a lot of fun. I couldn’t possibly tell you how many beers I had, as we were drinking pitchers, but I’m sure it was a lot. I’m actually surprised I wasn’t more drunk since I hadn’t eaten a thing since the cereal and banana I had for breakfast. Oh, and we finished second. There was actually a two-way tie for second, so they split the second- and third-place winnings between us and the other team, resulting in us getting four drink tokens. I used mine on one more beer. I got lucky when I left because I hadn’t consulted a bus schedule in advance — I think I waited about two minutes for a bus.
You know what would be sweet? If the bus took a detour on all trips after midnight through the drive-thru at White Castle so we drunks without cars could get some sliders. Man, that’d be sweeeeeeeeeeet!
Woke up this morning largely intact other than feeling a little dehydrated, which I treated with a half-dozen strawberries and a glass of OJ. Here we are, mid-afternoon, and I’m actually still nursing along the last of my pot of coffee. Thinking about following this up with either some tea or hot chocolate. I’m just in no rush to do much of anything today. I opened up several of the windows around the apartment for the first time in months to take advantage of this beautiful weather to air the place out. I really don’t even need to do any cleaning today, as I’ve done a pretty good job of keeping the place picked up since the larger cleaning project last week. Okay, I suppose a little dusting and a quick sweep of the floors wouldn’t hurt, but it’s doubtful that either of those will get done today. Too lazy; zero ambition. I actually get more stuff done on workdays when I know I have to get up and get moving than I do on days off. Oh well.
Sorry about overusing and abusing the word “sweet” today. Ma bad!
♥k!]]>
A Bloggy Saturday Hodge Podgetag:www.blueflower.org,2010://12.33012010-03-13T19:48:02Z2010-03-13T19:48:12ZHappy weekend, everyone!For those of you of the Monday–Friday set, congratulations on reaching the weekend. As for me and my rotating days off, today is my “Monday” (I was off on Thursday and Friday this week). Saturday isn’t such a...♥k!http://www.blueflower.org For those of you of the Monday–Friday set, congratulations on reaching the weekend. As for me and my rotating days off, today is my “Monday” (I was off on Thursday and Friday this week). Saturday isn’t such a bad day to start your work week when a reduced schedule means not much is going on. I only have to survive today and tomorrow, because I’ll be spending Monday and Tuesday at work seated in front of a computer monitor making my way through my annual recurrent training. Meh — recurrent training is boring as hell, but it gets you out of other work for eight hours. And then I’m off next Wednesday and Thursday; Wednesday, of course, is St. Patrick’s Day — the first time I can remember being off on St. Patrick’s Day in forever. Then again, it probably doesn’t matter, as I’m likely to celebrate by sitting at home and watching TV. What’s so great about a bunch of non-Irish morons getting drunk and pretending to be Irish for one day a year anyway? Most of them are probably descendants of the people who treated the Irish (like my own Irish ancestors) as second-class citizens; not unlike the people who spend 364 days a year being racist toward Latinos, but then go out and party for Cinco de Mayo. Whatev.
There wasn’t a whole lot that transpired this week — nothing worth blogging about on its own, anyway — which is why I’m throwing together just one entry to cover the last five days. I went grocery shopping last Monday, and saved almost as much as I spent. Yay! for discounts and coupons. I shopped on Monday knowing that rain was forecast for the rest of the week (and waiting for the bus with grocery bags in your hands in a steady downpour doesn’t work too well), and the forecasts didn’t disappoint — it did, indeed, rain pretty much all week, and when it wasn’t raining it was still cloudy, foggy, and gloomy. Perfect weather to make you want to sit at home and do nothing, which is exactly what I did with my days off.
I called my old roommate from grad school, Laura, on Friday, and we spent three-and-a-half hours getting caught up on everything that has transpired since the last time I got off my lazy duff and called her, which was last June. Like seemingly everyone else of my general demographic, she and her boyfriend had bought a house since we last spoke. I know my generation is lagging behind previous generations, but, as we get to the ripe-old age of thirty, all of my friends seem to be finally reaching the point now when they’re starting real careers or buying houses or getting married or having kids … or all of the above. Well, everyone except me, that is. I guess I’m a little behind the curve.
Single-game tickets for Twins home games went on sale at nine o’clock this morning. I tried to buy a ticket just before ten for the game on my birthday, but it was already sold out. I know it’s only the second game ever at the new Target Field, and I know it’s against Boston, but it’s also on a Wednesday afternoon (12:10 start) — shouldn’t you people all be at work? A 12:10 start on a Wednesday afternoon at the Metrodome would have been half full, but not so much in the new ballpark. Actually, I have a feeling that most of the tickets were probably bought up by scalpers, but I refuse to pay a king’s ransom just to see a ballgame, whether its on my birthday or not; I guess I’ll be listening on the radio. In fact, from the way it sounds, I probably won’t get to see a single game at the new stadium this year. With season-ticket holders accounting for more than half the seats in the new stadium, it sounds like it didn’t take long for most of the open seats to sell out this morning. That, and there aren’t any “cheap seats” like there were in the Metrodome. Being a resident of Hennepin County, I’m the one paying for the stadium, but the only ones who can afford tickets to the new ballpark are the richies out in the ’burbs. Oh well — at least the extra revenue generated by the stadium tax is subsidizing the libraries being open now on Sundays and Mondays, so I guess we poor county residents are getting something out of the deal.
One more thing before I go: don’t forget to set your clocks ahead tonight for the start of daylight savings time. It’s still weird getting used to the change coming in March instead of April, but the extra hour of daylight at night is always welcome.
♥k!]]>
In Which I Ramble on for Far too Long about the Oscarstag:www.blueflower.org,2010://12.33002010-03-08T20:24:09Z2010-03-08T20:25:25ZLet’s try this again.This is, I believe, draft number four of my entry concerning last night’s Academy Awards ceremony. No, the first three weren’t lost or deleted by accident; I simply changed my focus several times now. I started out...♥k!http://www.blueflower.org This is, I believe, draft number four of my entry concerning last night’s Academy Awards ceremony. No, the first three weren’t lost or deleted by accident; I simply changed my focus several times now. I started out writing a simple post about how I did with my predictions (first draft). That mutated when I got sidetracked by thinking about the last time the Academy nominated ten films for Best Picture (second draft). That turned into a convoluted mess, which I attempted to clean up and turn into a comprehensible narrative (third draft), but by the time I was half-way through doing that it was late and I was tired, so I decided to give up and attempt again today when I would be more coherent (fourth draft). As if you really needed to know all that.
So, how did you do with your Oscar picks? I tallied up only eleven correct predictions out of the twenty-four competitive categories, but I figure that isn’t too bad considering the fact that I haven’t seen even one of the films that was nominated for awards last night. Of course, even if you’ve seen them all, it’s hard to predict exactly which way Academy members will lean when filling out their ballots, so it’s probably not really much of a handicap not to have seen the films.
I correctly predicted all four acting winners and Kathryn Bigelow for directing, but those five were pretty easy since they had more-or-less run the table in pre-Oscar award ceremonies. Pixar is always a safe bet to win animated feature, so picking Up there was no-brainer, just as one didn’t actually have to see Avatar to know that the award for visual effects was a given. As for the other four I got right, I kind of cribbed those from Roger Ebert’s picks.
As for the categories I failed to predict correctly, picking winners among the shorts is tantamount to throwing darts at a dartboard, and I stumbled on documentary feature because I didn’t think they’d give the award to that guy from Short Circuit. I clearly underestimated the momentum of the Oscar buzz that The Hurt Locker had accrued in recent weeks when I picked against it for original screenplay, the sound categories, and, of course, Best Picture. I had Nick Hornby winning for adapted screenplay only because I thought the Academy would reward a critically-praised film that wasn’t going to win the other awards for which it was nominated, but I certainly can’t complain about the award going to my fellow Tischie Geoffrey Fletcher, one of two Tisch alums to win on the night (the other was Juan Campanella for foreign language-film winner El Secreto de Sus Ojos). And I couldn’t agree more with Roger Ebert concerning the cinematography award when he tweeted: “WTF? Cinematography for “Avatar” and all that CGI and green screen? Not for Basterds or White Ribbon?” Then again, cinematographers are the ones responsible for it even being nominated in the category, so they have nobody to blame but themselves for it winning.
Here are some of my other thoughts about the telecast (and bear in mind that I missed large chunks while I was at work or commuting home):
What was with the opening starring Doogie Howser? I’m not against song-and-dance routines, but it just seemed weird and misplaced. Did the producers mistake the reaction to last year’s opening starring host Hugh Jackman and nominee Anne Hathaway for a request to see the show open with another musical number starring a guy whose best-known film role was a cameo in a stoner movie?
I missed it, but I hear Farrah Fawcett was missing from the In Memoriam portion — what’s with that?
The extended build-up to handing out the awards for Best Actor and Actress is getting a little tedious. How about if we get back to the nuts-and-bolts, and then it won’t be such a big deal giving the winners more time to give their acceptance speeches, which is really what we want to hear more than praise from some co-star from years back.
Is Ben Stiller done making movies and now relegated to adding comic relief to the presentation of lackluster awards?
I appreciate the producers trying to keep the show moving and get the last award handed out before the clock strikes midnight on the East Coast, but the rushed manner in which the Best Picture winner was announced made the moment completely anti-climactic and almost seemed insulting to the Hurt Locker team. The only excuse I can think of for doing it the way they did was so that Ms. Bigelow wouldn’t make it too far backstage after accepting her directing award to make it back out on stage in a timely manner.
Was there any rehearsal whatsoever this year? Were all the jokes and dialogue scripted Sunday morning? I honestly can’t remember so many gaffes in the middle of the ceremony before.
And, finally, if you really want to save time and keep the show moving along, let’s go back to only five nominees for Best Picture. I realize that adding five more nominees allowed films from the likes of Peter Jackson and the Coens to garner nominations that they probably wouldn’t have gotten had there been only five total, but if we all knew they weren’t going to win anyway, then what’s the point?
Okay, so the second half of this extended blog entry started with a conversation at work during the ceremony. It was noted on several occasions during the telecast that it had been sixty-six years since the last time there were ten Best Picture nominees. Off the top of your head, can you name the nine runners-up? I mean, pop quiz: can you name the four runners-up for Best Picture from last year’s Oscars? Whether they’re worthy nominees or not, what value is there in naming lots of nominees? How long does the glow from being nominated really last?
Having not had the opportunity yet to see the nine runners-up from the ceremony sixty-six years ago, I was interested in their pedigree. Were they all worthy of being nominated, or was it really a matter of only one or two real competitors that prompted the Academy to revert to only five nominees for the next six-and-a-half decades? One mustn’t forget that, while Casablanca was hardly a forgotten movie, it’s real bonafides weren’t really considered too deeply until the American Film Institute named it the second-greatest American feature film of all time. Here’s a geeky look at the other nine films that were nominated for Best Picture that year.
For Whom the Bell Tolls, based upon Ernest Hemingway’s fantastic Spanish Civil War-novel of the same name, garnered acting nominations for co-stars Gary Cooper (recent winner for Sergeant York) and Ingrid Bergman (co-star of Casablanca, who would go on to win the first of her three Oscars the following year for Gaslight). Nominated for nine awards, the film won one — Katina Paxinou for Supporting Actress.
Heaven Can Wait, directed by the great Ernst Lubitsch, was nominated for three awards. It stars Gene Tierney and future-Oscar-winner Don Ameche (Cocoon), in addition to Charles Coburn, who won Best Supporting Actor that night for his role in Best Picture-nominee The More the Merrier.
In Which We Serve was written by, starred in, and co-directed (along with future-multiple-Oscar-winner David Lean, making his directorial debut) by the legendary Noel Coward.
The Human Comedy, directed by Clarence Brown, was nominated for five awards, winning the Best Story Oscar for writer William Saroyan. It starred Mickey Rooney (nominated for Best Actor), and also featured Frank Morgan, Donna Reed, and Van Johnson.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer threw everything they had behind Madame Curie, which was nominated for seven awards, but won none. It was directed by Mervyn LeRoy and featured an all-star cast (many of whom had worked with Alfred Hitchcock over the years) that included then-reigning Best Actress-winner (for the title role in the previous year’s Best Picture-winner Mrs. Miniver) Greer Garson, her Mrs. Miniver co-stars Walter Pidgeon, Henry Travers, Reginald Owen, and Dame May Whitty (also appeared in Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes and Suspicion); Albert Bassermann (Oscar-nominated for his role in my second-favorite Hitchcock film Foreign Correspondent); Robert Walker (known to fans of Hitch as Bruno in Strangers on a Train); C. Aubrey Smith (he was in Hitchcock’s Rebecca along with a host of other well-known films); and, of course, Van Johnson and Margaret O’Brien. Oh, and it was narrated by James Hilton (Oscar-winner for writing Mrs. Miniver), who also penned the novels upon which the films Goodbye, Mr. Chips and Random Harvest were based. Both of those films co-starred Greer Garson as well; and Robert Donat (who starred in Hitch’s The 39 Steps) picked up the Oscar for his role in Goodbye, Mr. Chips, beating the heavily-favored Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. Plus, Hilton co-wrote the dialogue for Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent with the hilarious Robert Benchley (seriously, if you’ve never seen Foreign Correspondent you need to rush out and rent it right now).
The More the Merrier, directed by George Stevens (A Place in the Sun, Giant, Shane), picked up six nominations, and won one — the aforementioned Best Supporting Actor for Charles Coburn. It co-starred Jean Arthur (nominated for Best Actress) and Joel McCrea (star of, you guessed it, Foreign Correspondent — why haven’t you seen this movie yet?! It was nominated for six Oscars, but is always overshadowed by Hitchcock’s other film from that year, Best Picture-winner Rebecca).
The Ox-Bow Incident, directed by William Wellman, was nominated for just this one award. It didn’t win, of course, but it was the National Board of Review’s pick for Best Film that year, and it has since been added to the National Film Registry as well. Oh, and it starred future-Oscar-winner Henry Fonda, along with Dana Andrews and Anthony Quinn.
The Song of Bernadette was nominated for a whopping twelve Oscars and won four of them, including Best Actress for Jennifer Jones (who just passed away back in December) and Best Score for Alfred Newman (one of his nine career Oscar wins).
And then there was Watch on the Rhine, written by Dashiell Hammett, based on the play by Lillian Hellman, and starring Paul Lukas (who won the Best Actor award) and — with all due respect to Meryl Streep and Katharine Hepburn — perhaps the greatest film actress of all time — Bette Davis. It was nominated for four Oscars, winning just the one, but was named Best Film that year by the New York Film Critics Circle.
Whew.
Going into the ceremony, Casablanca wasn’t the clear favorite to win Best Picture, and, as you can see, the other nominees had legitimate pedigrees, but they’re largely forgotten anyway because they didn’t win. So, does that justify nominating ten films, or, for brevity’s sake, should the Academy go back to only five again next year? The debate will go on and on, and everyone has their opinion.
I’m done. Enjoy the rest of your Monday, everyone.
♥k!]]>
The Passing of Another Yeartag:www.blueflower.org,2010://12.32992010-03-06T20:50:49Z2010-03-06T20:53:13ZIt just occurred to me that today is March 6th. What’s the significance to me of March 6th? Today is my three-year anniversary at my current job. Yeah, I can’t believe it either. When I started this job three years...♥k!http://www.blueflower.org
any job for three years before — not even any of the various jobs I had while I was in school. Three years. Hmm — I suppose it’s pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but it seems rather significant to me given that those three years have spanned (or, rather, will have in just over a month) my final three years as a twenty-something. Here I am on the precipice of thirty and I’ve still never had a “real” full-time job.
How on earth did I get to this point? I guess one day turns into one week, which turns into one month, which turns into one year. And then another year. And then another. When I first started this job, I was still applying for other jobs on a regular basis, still optimistic and convinced that a better-paying job was just around the next corner. I got a handful of interviews, and I received more rejection letters to add to my growing collection, but no new job offers ever came along. And then two significant events happened at once — (a) the economy turned south, and (b) I wearied of my mounting pile of rejection letters. “What’s the point of even applying when I know I’m not going to get the job, right?” Well, that's the way I felt at the time anyway. Add to that the fact that nobody was hiring (and the few employers who were hiring weren’t taking on entry-level newbies since they had stacks of applications from floor to ceiling from unemployed folks with oodles of experience), and I actually went something like five months at one point last year without even bothering to look for a job. (It should be noted that those five months coincided with a stretch of time when I was working 50- and 60-hour weeks at work, so looking for a job on the rare day I had off wasn’t exactly high on my priority list.) I would hardly say we’re in the clear now, but I’ve definitely noticed an uptick in the number of job postings out there recently, and, as a result, I’ve finally started looking for work again. The hard part now is getting back into the routine I was in before. I mean, when you’re really on a roll and applying for jobs left and right customizing your CV and cover letter for each posting and sending them off is like second nature, but once you’re off the bicycle getting back on and into the rhythm again almost seems daunting. “How do I do this again?” “What are employers looking for here?” I would say that I’m back on the bicycle, but I’m wobbling a bit as I try to find my balance point again. It will come.
Now I don’t want to speak ill of my current job or employer. I might come home frustrated on occasion, but it’s still honest work for honest pay, and it has kept food in my belly, clothes on my back, and a roof over my head for the last three years. On the other hand, I can’t stick with it forever either. Not only would that be a major waste of my very-expensive graduate-school education, but my prospects of ever seeing an upgrade to full-time employment there aren’t any rosier now than they were the day I started. I pick up all the overtime and extra shifts I can, but that stuff isn’t guaranteed, and there are definite boom-and-bust cycles. Banks, utilities, and landladies don’t care about boom-and-bust cycles — just checks that don’t bounce.
On a positive note, another year in the books means another pay raise, and that’s never anything to thumb your nose at — unless we’re talking about the dreaded one-penny raise. (If you’ve never heard the one-penny-raise story I’ll have to fill you in some time. It was pretty pathetic.) It’s Saturday, the sun is out, and I’m headed out shortly to start collecting on that pay raise. Have a good weekend, everyone!