Category Archives: tv

Nov17

Almost a carbon copy

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Saturday Night Live was a bit raunchy the other night, but a certain sketch had us rolling on the floor because of the theme of the sketch (how a family kissed each other a zillion times), but the dad in the sketch looked just like brother #2 who I don’t see that often:

fred2

This is comic actor Fred Armisen (I think he’s still a ‘friend’ of mine on MySpace)

And this is my brotherdon

I got the capture of Fred by using the ‘print screen’ button when we were viewing the sketch on the SNL archives. It’s like Fred used a photo of my brother to create his character! Bri and I almost fell of the sofa and chair when we saw this.

Speaking of the sketch, Bri’s family is the kissing family. Kiss, kiss, kiss! We aren’t as much, more huggers I think. I do kiss my mom on the cheek when I say good bye.

Not too much going on this weekend. Had a nice little shopping trip Sunday night at Walmart as I hadn’t been shopping for a while. I told Bri I would save him from going shopping for me. We are probably going to go to the Mendenhall Inn on Wednesday. They have a prime rib special that night. I’ve lived here for over 22 yrs and never have been there. My high school would have their proms there (and I didn’t go to the proms).

Just made the reservation online using Open Table. com (from the Inn’s website)

  • Address:
    323 Kennett Pike
    Rte 52 South
    Mendenhall, PA 19357
  • Cross Street: Hillendale
  • Phone: (610)
  • Dress Code: Business Casual
  • Message from the Restaurant: Thank you for reserving at Mendenhall Inn. We look forward to serving you.

I did take a new self-portrait (meaning ‘I’ took it. Bri tried, but he couldn’t get it the way I wanted:

diside

These were photoshopped in Adobe for the heck of it.

diside4

diside2

Anyway, I think I’ll be finished a cross stitch project that has a 1988 date on the bottom of it soon. That will make 4 projects I have to finish into something!

Also need to get my free turkey and plan my Thanksgiving menu. I may try a few things from the latest issue of Martha Stewart’s Everyday food.

siggie

Sep22

High Def Heaven-finally

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After waiting 3 times, 4 turned out to be the charm, though the tech showed up over an hour late. He was just a young guy, one you’d be a bit afraid to let in your house as he wasn’t dressed in a uniform (at least a shirt or hat), from the company. It’s like night and day with how clear the picture is. All the major channels are high def (if they said on ‘The Insider’ that their Emmy coverage was HD once, they said it 50 times-geez!) Since we have to keep this system for 2 yrs, we went ahead and added 50 more channels for only $10 more a month. Bri says he doesn’t watch much tv, but he is the king of channel surfing. Not too many channels are HD yet, but just wait.

I enjoyed all the glitz of the first hour of ‘Dancing with the Stars’ and then switched over to ‘Heroes’. It’s been forever since that’s been on. Some of it was rather nasty in HD, but I like the show, what can I say.
When the news came on, one of the top stories was this:

MEDIA Pa – Sarah Palin threatened to steal the show from running mate John McCain as she warmed up the crowd at their joint appearance at a rally on Monday in Pennsylvania.

“Sarah, Sarah, Sarah,” chanted the crowd as the Republican vice presidential candidate stepped on stage in the town of Media.

“I see a lot of hockey moms out there for McCain,” she said as the crowd roared its approval. She went on to introduce her family, calling husband Todd ”Alaska’s First Dude,” before pointing out their daughters Willow and Piper.

Palin quickly launched into criticisms of Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, whom she said “likes to point the finger of blame but, tell me, has he ever lifted a finger to help?”

“In order to get others to say ‘Yes’ to change, has he ever told his own party ‘No?’” she asked. “When it comes to reform, he likes to say, ‘I will,’ but has he ever been able to say, ‘We did?’”

The two Republican candidates go their separate ways again on Tuesday, when McCain campaigns in Ohio and Michigan while Palin meets with several foreign leaders in New York.

Well isn’t that special? My hometown got quite interesting visitors. Media is the county seat. They’ve been mostly Republican, but for a while they had a Democratic mayor. Joe Leiberman was even there. This is such a hot story, the local news haven’t undated their websites about it. Thanks Reuters. My favorite Palin ever-Michael Palin from Monty Python’s Flying Circus. ; )

McCain Palin Rally – Media, PA, originally uploaded by H1GHTOWER.

McCain Palin Rally – Media, PA, originally uploaded by H1GHTOWER.

Sean interned around the corner from the courthouse here.

And from a few days ago (my one brother is there somewhere):

PA Media 9-17-08 Joe Biden Visits, originally uploaded by Barack Obama.

Man, I love that Flickr for photos! : )

Tomorrow is my mom’s birthday and I am going down to take her to dinner. Bri has been complaining about a sore throat on one side and he found an ulcer under his tongue. He doesn’t feel that great in general. Mom wanted to come out for a few days, but we’ll see how Bri is.

Sep21

Yeah Tina Fey!

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i’ve been waiting for this! Tina Fey as Sarah Palin, originally uploaded by jenn hsu.

I don’t know Tina Fey personally, but she grew up a stone’s throw away from Media, in Upper Darby, in the same county. How awesome is it to see a talented person win 3 Emmys (I think I got that correct) from this area? Alec Baldwin won for 30 Rock himself. A week or so ago, a ‘best of’ episode show had when he was role playing as Tracy Morgan’s parents during a meeting with a psychologist. It’s one of the best scenes ever——>see vod pod!!

So I did watch the Emmys. I missed all the pre-shows as I decided playing around with paper crafts was more relaxing to me. The show had a rough start where the five nominated hosts for reality shows didn’t know what to talk about. That’s pretty lame. They wasted time and first winner Jeremy Piven gave them a dig about that.

The funniest moment-when Steven Colbert came out eating prunes with co-presenter Jon Stewart (they both won) and of course he was comparing prunes to a certain presidential candidate.

And I enjoyed a skit when some of  the cast of ‘Laugh In’ did a bit announcing nominees through the old psychedelic doors as their most famous characters (yeah, I’m aging myself, but I was under 10 when this show was on) . Lily Tomlin, Joann Worley and Ruth Buzzi were perfect. The announcer-Gary Owens looked and sounded good, but Alan Sues-he was a little shaky, the poor guy.

And the guy who played Ben Franklin won an Emmy for John Adams, an HBO miniseries I didn’t see. We don’t get channels like that.

What I’ve been doing mostly this weekend is rearranging my 46 photo CDs-yes that is correct. I am going through them for Flickr and uploading ones I couldn’t add when I just had the Yahoo account. Also I’m uploading the highest resolution on ones I had downsized and want to replace as they aren’t clear.  I want to rescan some old photos of mine too. When I read on a blog that a lady from Texas lost her wedding photos, well, I didn’t want to ever lose the last 6 yrs of my life. I have tons of film photos. I don’t know if I’ll ever do all of the ones I really love, but I will eventually scan cute baby shots of Sean, etc.

Here’s hoping #4 will be lucky for the guy showing up from Dishnet. We asked that they come in the morning, but they decided to do afternoon.

<<<<<<<<<CLICK for free mammograms! They only have a few days left in their fundraiser and are just over 50%.

Sep15

Productive and Non-productive

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Sunday afternoon was good for me. I finally wrapped up all the pastel things, including teapots and butterflies and packed them away. I got most of the living room cleaned and decorated and started to have an allergy issue. I thought it may be from dust (and there was a lot of it-where does it come from?) But I also feel this was the issue:

We had had Chinese food the night before-I knew it was in it the first bite-way too much. I swore I’d never eat it again (unless the restaurant states they don’t use it, but Bri read most fast food uses it too) and I set myself up for problems. I did make Bri a nice steak dinner, but within an hour after eating,  I felt a bit dizzy (probably my sinuses reacting) and had to lay down. I’m sure I had to pass that toxic dinner out of my system-I’m warning you all! ; )  I did notice the rub for the steak had some in it too. I did start to feel better, but I was a bit scared. I’m about to head for bed. My eyes were bothering me as it was. I sat down to do some ATCs and had to get up.I did go on to watch tv- a new show called ‘Fringe’-interesting and some medical mystery shows-maybe I should have skipped them.

But we also had soy sandwiches for lunch made to resemble chicken. They were on wheat buns and we didn’t care for them-a bit tasteless. I’m not sure if that’s what upset me, but it could have added to it as I don’t eat many soy products. Oy! Hopefully the weather will cool down and we’ll get in the fall frame of mind again. : )

Update-noonish

I didn’t sleep well either. Went to sleep about 4 and had hit the hay at 12:30. I definitely am having allergy issues. Did I say it was 80 degrees last evening?

I’m expecting the dishnet guy here between 1-2, so will try and get my act together.

I got an email from an old friend who is having a rough time. Goes to show, there’s always someone who is going through more stuff than you. I feel so bad for her as she has an Erma Bombeck sense of humor, but her health issues, eyes and post traumatic distress (she lost a daughter several years ago) that she is having trouble coping. I do understand people need to take meds, but if there was some alternative, I’d try that first. I’m one of those people who can’t tolerate meds well. That may be a good thing now, but I hope down the road it won’t effect me too much. Anyway, N, love ya lots!

Sep12

Mom update, etc.

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My older brother came and took Mom to her follow up visit. The eye doctor said it was healing slowly and she couldn’t even read the big ‘E’ on the chart yet. I had called her before she left and she was sweeping down the steps! OMG-with an eye so susceptible! What was she thinking? Thank goodness she is loading the eye up with 4-5 different drops. She said she had a monster headache all evening. The doctor said that was probably from the anesthesia. He also said she was probably ‘feeling’ it as the anesthesia was wearing off too soon. Mom said she didn’t sleep well, was thinking about all the mess in her house. I told her to worry about her eyes. My mom mom always said the dust will be around in 100 yrs and you won’t.  Wise woman. Mom gets rechecked on Tuesday-keep thinking about her please. : )

I forgot to mention that we got a new t.v. on Wednesday night. We went with Courtney’s suggestion, and got a 26″ Samsung LCD-HDtv. We need to get the high def hooked up. It has a really great picture, she was correct. I am still getting use to the rectangular format over the square. I’d like it maybe 2″ higher too.  I am so old-fashioned! We’re getting our Dishnet updated on Monday to HD-made those arrangements late in the afternoon. Won’t cost anything and we can sell back the old receivers too. I was talking with the young lady and she had cataract surgery as she got a hockey punk to the eye, sort of a coincidence.

It’s rainy here again. It couldn’t rain when we wanted tomatoes and peppers. And there was again another Philly police officer, a woman, who got killed by a 16 yr driver who went out of control in an SUV (I believe). Our local stations have been televising the funerals-so sad.

This evening-

Saw James Taylor selling his new CD ‘Covers’ on QVC tonight. You know, I wonder if I could have been in the stinkin’ audience? Ahhh! The QVC studio is about 25 minutes from here. I guess I’ll have to see if they have a calendar. James seems to have a deal with QVC as he’s been on before hawking CDs. He’s sure not comfortable doing PR and must have taken 8 sips from his water bottle in 1/2 hour.

I’m working on one of those canvases I bought to alter and so far it’s not proving easy. My main image was the front of a catalog and she is wrinkling-a lot. My friends swear by gel medium and I use tacky glue or Mod Podge. I’ve been sticking little holes in it to get the air out. I will just have to layer more. I painted it with Gesso first, that got a little crackled. Then I added red and gold acrylics. I can see ‘something’. My 3 pieces of large art that I found (two from a Christie’s auction catalog) are pretty. I’ll definitely share one way or another.

Sep8

Stand up to Cancer telecast

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I don’t know how anyone could miss this hour long show Friday, the 5th as it was on all three major networks. Maybe cancer can be cured in our lifetime. As someone who had a close call with it last year, I appreciate all the research they can do. Meryl Streep talked about how the March of Dimes was started by Eddie Cantor, on the radio, when he asked people to send a dime for polio research. And we are lucky as a vaccine was found for polio. It could happen with cancer too.

I was touched to see Patrick Swayze speak and hear James Taylor and Sheryl Crow sing ‘Fire and Rain’. Sheryl had the calcifications like I did, but hers were cancer. She looks beautiful now and her little boy Wyatt is adorable. Dana Delaney had her mammogram videotaped. The doctor had felt a large calcification-the bigger they are the better.  I had the small microscopic ones.

I went to the site and went shopping for some little things at Cafe Press. I wanted a t-shirt, but all they had were a trucker’s hat, buttons and stickers. I bought the later two for the time being.

I’m going to keep this as a sticky post (something new at WordPress-yeah),

so you can go shopping if you’d like. If I had more moola, I’d buy more. If I get a little more down the road, I’ll send some to this org.

<————–keep clicking the buttons in my sidebar! The breast cancer site is doing a fundraiser of sorts by the number of clicks they receive.

Aug12

Down the pike

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I finally got to my mom’s house after not being there for a few weeks. It was just so hard to drive with a sore shoulder blade. (I do go for my first chiro treatment tomorrow). I went to my brother #3’s house first and got my hair done by C. Got to see my niece play ‘Dance, dance revolution’ on the Wii system. She had to follow-move-dance to arrows that come up on the screen. She did pretty darn good. I said she should be a cheerleader and I didn’t know they had try outs (for 4 graders?) and she didn’t want to.

I then went to mom’s and took her out to lunch up the street-she had crabcakes and I had their famous chicken salad club. Before we went to lunch, I checked out mom’s yard. My brother #2 had chainsawed a bunch of bushes, even the lilies I planted a few years ago next to the house. Mom said they had all bloomed. Mom got poison ivy on her foot from being outside with my brother the day he was working in the yard. You can cut stuff back, but you really need to get the roots to a bunch of things-like the ‘weed’ trees. He had planted a tree thinking it was a red bud tree like 30 yrs ago and they are all over the place now. I never saw any tree grow so fast.

We got to see Mom’s friend who hurt himself, as he stopped by after a doctor’s appt and to get a few things. He’s in an assisted living place until his family helps him find a place to live. He has about a 4-5″ triangle shaped cut on his forehead-I think his friend called it a dog tear? and his nose is scabbed over and looks like frost bite. He has a dimple over the top of his nose, from hitting hard I guess. I think it had to be a paver that wasn’t set correctly and he caught his foot on the front of it and down he went. They are new this year and he never fell before. I worry about mom falling too. We’ll have to fix them in the ground better. My #2 brother put those in.

Sean came to mom’s after ‘work’ (he is finished his internship on Friday) and he was craving brick oven pizza. I wasn’t really hungry as I had a late lunch, but I went with him and ate one piece of white pizza with broccoli.

We went to Pet Smart and talked to the kitties there-so cute! And mom and I went to JoAnn’s and I got a 3 drawer piece for my craft goods and a few yard things for 70% off. If you like Debbie Mumm, she designed many of the things-with roosters too (Zoey!). I got a rooster whirligig-couldn’t resist.

There seemed like a ton of people on the road tonight, we’re thinking tourists.

I missed the last episode of ‘The Mole’ so just watched it online and found out who the mole was-I was right! Yeah! I almost changed my mind at the end, but I said ‘Craig’. I like who dunnits!

We have to start getting ready for our Atlantic City trip. I hope it will be a good time. We have always enjoyed walking through Caesars and to stay there will be awesome.

Aug11

Finally some rain

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Bri kept telling me it was going to rain-he must have known. I did go out and water my plants as it was so nice and cool for a change. I had more energy to do so as it wasn’t humid. I also picked a few flowers to photograph in these cute little vases I have. I’ll share on I photo shopped as a ‘sneak peek’ for Saturday’s Photo Hunt:

I love that Paint Shop Pro!

Ever have a pretzel from ‘The Pretzel Factory’? They are pretty good and we got 10 for $5 plus chocolate and cinnamon dipping sauces. I believe the yeast plays havoc with your digestive as we all took Rolaids. Or it was my homemade tomato sauce (?), but I added a pinch of baking soda to it to help with the acidity. The sauce was good (tasted so fresh) and while we ate, it poured outside. We needed the rain so badly.

My shoulder area is better, but I’ll still go see the chiropractor tomorrow. It’s not my only issue. My neck on the left has been hurting off and on and my knees aren’t that great. We’ll see what happens-never been to one before! My uncle was teasing me-saying that first he’ll use the little rubber hammer, then a metal hammer and I better watch out for the tongs! He had a good laugh, which was music to my ears.

I’m sorting out my papers and craft stuff, or I’d show you a photo of the desk. Bri couldn’t believe it was messed up already. I had to take a break. ; )

Was a bit teary-eyed to see the American male swimmers on the relay team (Michael Phelps was one of them) take the gold a little bit ago! They were hooting and hollering!

Jun17

PS..I ♥ You…pass the tissues

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Sean was nice enough to rent me a movie (he got it free anyway!), so I watched it last night. He had seen it with his gal pal when she visited PSU earlier this year. Hilary Swank is such a good actress (she has 2 Oscars), and every time she started to cry, I needed a tissue! That was meat for the two men here. They couldn’t believe I was getting choked up. I was already kind of down from Father’s Day since I never celebrated it my entire life, and knowing it was really never going to happen again (because my father passed away in Feb, well that didn’t help). And it didn’t help that Gerard Butler, the lead actor ,looked like my late father a little.

Hilary wore lots of hats, and if you didn’t know it, I am a ‘hat person’ as I have a big head. I don’t wear them as much as I should.

I almost missed the third episode of ‘The Mole’ as the movie ended after 10. I’m interested in it as there are (were) three guys from a 35 mile radius from where we live, the closest is from West Grove, a few towns away. Bobby, from Philly, just got ‘eliminated’ last night.

I’m trying to finish up some craft projects that are laying around. I finished an Altered tin swap for a lady in Iowa. I wrote her a note and she said she wasn’t affected by the flooding, but her neighbor was. Then I stained a cigar box that I bought to glue my Amish children and apple tree cross stitched design on. I think I’ll make it into a scissor box because Vonna from ‘The Twister Stitcher’ inspired me! I didn’t do much cleaning, but doing the above motivates me to do more!

My poor mom wasn’t well yesterday-in pain and laid up in bed. She forgot she had hung out clothes a few days before as her dryer is on the fritz. She was using muscles she hadn’t used for a while. I hope she can get that repaired. She’s a constant worry to me. Her car is fixed, but the transmission is going, as are the shocks. Looks like my brother is trying to locate another used vehicle for her.

Mar27

Extreme Home Makeover-local

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About a month ago, the ABC show Extreme Makeover:Home Edition redid a home in Wilmington, DE., very near our neck of the woods. In the local paper it was saying how a local meat/food market provided the food for the crew (gourmet they said). Anderson Homes did the major work, but some local contractors did things like painting and removing debris and went back even after their alloted time was put in. The one guy’s daughter graduated from high school with Sean and I worked with his mom when I did the teacher aide fill in job. It’s a small world! Watch it on Sunday night at 8:00 and you’ll see those guys (other than carpenter Paul DiMeo) with heavy Philly accents!

Mom had me turn on a PBS show the other night as they were showing scenes from the Mushroom festival that takes place here in September, and one chatty lady who was telling them quite a bit about mushrooms was in the church choir with me.

Today, I’m like the lady in the commercial who feels like her head is blowing up like a balloon. My right sinus was achy like a toothache last night. I know it’s suppose to rain for about 1.5 days, so I was wondering if that has something to do with people and their sinuses-like barometric pressure inside your head? Anyway, got a pot of stew cooking to get my mind off my head as I can’t use Flonase until I get my eyes checked next week. I have to stick with salt spray or the homeopathic kind of nasal spray.

Bri has some dental work today, about 3 different spots and he’s just thrilled about that. My mom went to the doctor and he wants her to get a few tests on her spine as he is concerned about her sciatica still bothering her as much as it still does. She weighs about 120, not terrible, but she could stand about another 10 pds.

I want to get to Longwood Gardens before the 31st as that’s the orchid display is only up until. I completely forgot about it! I want some awesome photos!

Here’s some more flower shots from yesterday:

Tulips

Two different colors of roses