That Hobbit Lady

Last night the Albama Crimson Tide proved to be a better football team than LSU. It was a scary game through the first three quarters, but when push came to shove, we pushed and we shoved and got it done to the tune of 38-17. I’m glad it was a good win, by a substantial margin. Now nobody can say anything like “Oh, you were just lucky.” No, we weren’t lucky. We were just better.

Yesterday morning on College Game Day, ESPN ran this little video that showed how the Offensive Line gets together to have dinner once a week.

http://youtu.be/7BJ3j9U5m0E

I love this! I think it goes a long way to explaining why it is that our Offense just keeps getting better and better.

LSU was the big hurdle we had to get over. Now there are a three more regular season games before we get to the SEC Championship. At the beginning of the season, we didn’t think meeting Auburn for the Iron Bowl would be a big deal, but lately, more and more, it’s looking like another hurdle.

But let’s consider this: LSU beat Auburn. But we beat LSU. So, we beat the team that beat Auburn. Therefore…what’s likely to happen?

Our place at the top of the chart is secure…for now. And if the universe behaves the way it should, these guys will be soon eating steak instead of hotdogs and hamburgers.

Let’s hope.

The other day Russ and I were walking in Wal Mart and I saw a display of Holiday Barbie Dolls, and they all looked so lovely in their beautiful white dresses, fancy earrings and long curls, that it made me wonder why Barbie is always so thin and attractive. (Unnaturally thin and attractive, if you ask me…) It made me ask the question: why doesn’t somebody make dolls that are fat and ugly? And then I suddenly realized that somebody DID make dolls that are fat and ugly. They’re called Whimsies, and you can see how long that lasted. Two whole years, 1960 and 1961.

Now of course I’m being facetious. Though Whimsies are nowhere near as attractive as Barbie, they are by no means ugly. And they’re not fat, either—they’re just sort of shapeless, and I must admit, they have big butts. Most normal little girls play with Barbies, but I was one of the weirdos that liked trolls and Whimsies. And I still do.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

In 2005, I did my first NaNoWriMo, which is this crazy, out of control attempt to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. That year, I succeeded. The next time I attempted it, in 2007, I failed. A few years later, I did another WriMo during August, and this time I succeeded again!

Every year I long to be able to undertake another one of these insane challenges, but most years, as the time draws close, I have to get real and admit to myself that though the spirit is willing, the schedule is jam-packed. It was a horrible feeling that year I had to give up, and I don’t want a repeat of that failure. If I feel there’s any way I can complete the challenge, I’d love to try. But this year, with The Drawing Room, The Marvelous Zone, and Whimsieville, as well as….oh, a full time job and a house in need of a good top-to-bottom cleaning and de-junking, I know it’s simply unreasonable to even think about trying.

So once again, sadly, I must say “No,” to the WriMo. 🙁

Sigh…

But, wait…I just had another idea! The idea of achieving an amazing accomplishment in November does not have to begin and end with the WriMo!

Sure, writing takes a lot of time (as I once heard from famous writer Harry Crews, “You put your ass in a chair and keep it there for a long, long time,” or something to that effect.) But one thing that does not take a particularly long time is EATING RIGHT. I mean, eating takes as long as it takes, whether you’re eating junk food or healthy food. You’re going to spend a certain amount of time preparing and eating food ANYWAY, so why not make an effort to eat only good food?

And why not engage that OBSESSIVE SPIRIT that fuels a NaNo to the task of committing to eat completely healthy for one whole month, with an aim to improving my overall health, and also taking off these eight pounds I have recently put back on?

As you may know, I recently lost a bunch of weight….jeez, could it really be 30 pounds off my highest weight? Wow! I haven’t thought of it that way until now, but when you consider that number…sure does sound impressive!

However, in the last several months I’ve allowed a couple of vacations and a funeral to derail the Health Train. Now, I’m terrified I’m going to get all the way back up to where I was when I started. So, I’ve made a decision: THIS HAS TO STOP…NOW!!!

I know it’s “the holiday season,” or at least it’s approaching the holiday season, and that’s a terrible time to think about trying to lose weight, but in another sense, it’s also the BEST time to think about it, because that’s when we need it the most.

Unless I make some changes in the way I’m eating (and the amount of exercise I’m doing, but that’s another story, and I’ll get to that later), I’m just going to continue putting the pounds back on. I do NOT want to do that! In fact, I would like to RE-LOSE the eight pounds that have come back to haunt me. And I would like to do it before Thanksgiving.

That’s 33 days from now (if you don’t count today), so it’s sort of a tall order, but not impossible, if I’m really strict and really healthy. So, I’ve made a commitment to do this.

My goal is that when I go to Thanksgiving Dinner at Russ’ brother’s house, everyone will say “OH! Look at you! You lost weight!” We don’t see his family often—I think I’ve only seen Richard and Karen and Rick one time since Marianne’s funeral—so this could be the kind of thing where if I make a really good effort, it could be noticeable.

In fact, if I reach my goal, I’ll treat myself to a pretty new dress to wear for Thanksgiving, in a style that is slimming. (Maybe vertical stripes??)

Anyway, I know it sounds kind of shallow to make “what other people say” my goal, my barometer of how I’m doing, but it’s a motivator that works for me. (Sometimes it’s more productive to be honest than it is to be “good.”)

I’m setting the parameters of this challenge from today until just before Thanksgiving for a couple of reasons. First, I’m starting with today because…well, what better time to start? There’s absolutely no sense in waiting until the first of the month or the first of the year. I need to start helping myself NOW. So here we go.

And I’m ending the challenge on the day before Thanksgiving, because I don’t want to miss the fun of the holiday. Now, when I think about it, I realize: isn’t a lot of my weight problem due to the fact that I “don’t want to miss the fun”? For me, eating is fun, it’s part of celebration, part of making every day a holiday. But it’s time to grow up and admit that every day is NOT a holiday. Some days are just days, and you should not be eating like it’s Thanksgiving every day. But on Thanksgiving…that’s the day to eat like it’s Thanksgiving. So that’s what I want to do.

As I mentioned, this gives me 33 days, which is more than a month, and which is more than the NaNo nuts have to get their novel done. It’s a reasonable amount of time, enough to see results, but not so long as to be discouraging.

And there’s yet another method to my madness (MMWAAHH HAA HAA HAA!). The way I remember it, every year at Thanksgiving I sit down and enjoy a huge feast of all kinds of delicious foods, and it’s GREAT! But afterwards, on Thanksgiving night, I kick myself for overeating, and vow that next year will be different. I vow that by next year I’ll have lost the weight, and won’t feel so fat and bloated. Then next year, I’ll look better and feel better, and won’t have to be consumed with the GUILT that plagues me after the Thanksgiving gorge.

So this year, I’m planning ahead. I’m going to make my progress BEFORE Thanksgiving, rather than vowing to make changes after the holiday. And by the way, we know what happens right after Thanksgiving, don’t we? We immediately launch ourselves into the Christmas Season, so all those good intentions about “getting serious” are put on hold until January, when we make a little progress, but by February, it’s back to all the old habits again.

I’d love to break that vicious cycle. Oh, if anyone knows how to break a Vicious Cycle, please tell me! Why can’t I go on Amazon and buy a Vicious Cycle Breaker? That would be easy.

This won’t be easy. But then neither is writing a 50,000 word novel in one month. And I’ve done that before. So I think maybe I can do this too.

At least I’m going to try. I just need to start.

I’m making this a top priority. If anyone wants to join me, please come along! I have some ideas for documenting my progress, though I don’t want to get too bogged down in “documentation,” which can be time-consuming. I’ll still need oodles of time for my other projects, but for this new project, I just need (mostly) a whopping dose of gutsy determination.

I mention December being the Christmas Season, another dangerous time for Those Who Would Be Healthy. How will I deal with it? I don’t know yet. One step at a time. As Mom always says, “Nothing succeeds like success!” and hopefully by the time I get to the 1st of December, I’ll have had so much success in November that I can just continue to build on the momentum.

Cross that bridge when I get to it. But for right now…

I begin.

I have just discovered the healthiest cookie recipe ever! When you read the recipe, it looks like something that isn’t going to work, because there’s NO FLOUR and NO SUGAR, and yet when you put these together, they are chewy and delicious!

I found the recipe online, advertised as “Gluten Free Oatmeal Cookies.” I’m not sure exactly where I stand on the gluten-free issue. Thankfully, I do not have Celiac’s Disease, so I don’t need to eat gluten-free, but I think I feel healthier when I avoid gluten. So I tried these cookies with FIVE ingredients readily available in my kitchen.

Here’s how you do it:

Heat the oven to 350 degrees, and spray a cookie sheet.

Drop from a spoon onto the cookie sheet, flatten into cookie shape, and bake for 15 minutes.

Now, you have something that looks like a cookie, and while it doesn’t exactly taste like a cookie, in some ways it’s better, because it’s extremely SWEET!! And all the ingredients are completely natural! (And imagine how much fiber there must be in these cookies, with all those oats and fruits?)

The recipe I found online said you could experiment by replacing some or all of the mashed banana with pumpkin puree, or applesauce, or maybe even sweet potato or butternut squash. Maybe add dried cranberries, or chopped walnuts, or maybe chocolate chips? Anything goes, you decide.

Cheap enough, and good enough to try at least once. Don’t pass this recipe by!

The Whimsies have weighed in on the new TV show Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, and now it’s my turn. I have more to say than they do, because I’ve done a little research about the show, and its public reception. Since the day after the premiere episode, I’ve been reading articles about the ratings, which invariably include comments from common folk saying why they do or do not like the show. The ratings have been up and down, and so many comments show a total lack of understanding regarding the concept of the show. So I want to have my say.

First, the numbers: after the first episode, they were high. As expected. After the second week, there was a sharp drop off. What’s this? Is the show failing…already…in only its second week? Well, hold your horses. Apparently there’s a new factor when considering TV ratings. Back in the day, if you wanted to see a show, you had to watch it when it was on. So, in this case, you would have to choose between SHIELD and NCIS (another very popular show, I’m told), and I think the other contender is that American Idol type show, The Voice. Back in the day you could watch one, but not all three.

Nowadays, everyone’s got a DVR. (And even before the DVR, everyone had a VCR.) But with the DVR, it’s so incredibly easy to tell your TV to record a show for you. Two of the four people in my office made the decision to watch NCIS, but RECORD SHIELD for later viewing. If 50% of my office is using their DVR for SHIELD, how is that playing out in the rest of the country?

Well, apparently very well. I guess the powers that be have some way of determining (or at least guesstimating) how many people are watching live, and how many are watching later. And when you combine all this data, turns out SHIELD didn’t do worse in its second week, it actually did BETTER.

In fact, what this says to me is that the show is doing so well that people are saying, I’ll WATCH NCIS or The Voice, but not only do I want to watch SHIELD, I also want to KEEP it. I want to have it to watch again and again, or I want to be able to stop it so I can go back to rewatch the really cool parts, and I want to have it available so that when Aunt Mabel visits on Sunday, we can watch it together.

So there’s that. Ratings: not actually as bad as first predicted. In fact, by some accounts:

Based on Live + 3 Day data for the 2nd episode of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the new ABC drama saw significantly bigger TV playback gains than for its premiere telecast. The show surged 51% to 4.92 Adult 18-49 rating (vs. a 3.26 rating in L+SD), up from a 38% increase for its debut telecast. Additionally, the second episode of the show built 39% in L+3 to deliver 12.07 million Total Viewers (vs. 8.66 million viewers in L+SD), up from a 31% increase for its premiere.

In English, that all means…doing better, not worse.

Now. About those comments. I’ve seen totally baseless claims like Joss Whedon (the SHIELD Executive Producer) never had a hit TV show. Hello! Yeah, his last one, Dollhouse, went way over the heads of most viewers and only survived two seasons, and the one before that, Firefly, was another concept most people didn’t “get,” (futuristic western), (and FOX showing the episodes out of order on the worst night of the week for television viewing certainly didn’t help) yet it enjoys a tremendous cult following to this day. But before this, Whedon was responsible for both Buffy and Angel, seven and five seasons respectively, which generated a plethora of contributions to pop culture. So people who say Whedon never had a hit simply don’t know what they’re talking about.

And then I read this: my eight year old son will not watch SHIELD because the Hulk is not in it.

Well, first of all, your eight year old son is not the target audience for this show. Just because it takes place in a comic book universe doesn’t mean it’s for kids. It’s been 40 or 50 years since comic books were strictly for kids, so get over it. And how about this novel idea: you could watch a show that doesn’t ALSO appeal to your eight year old! (Hey! You could record it on your DVR and watch it after he’s gone to bed.)

Secondly (and this is the misconception that irks me the most), nobody ever said the Hulk would be in the SHIELD TV show. No one ever said Iron Man or Thor or Captain America would make an appearance. In fact, it was specifically stated before the show aired, that these characters would NOT appear. This is NOT The Avengers, and never claimed to be. This is a show about ordinary people in an extraordinary universe. Well, not exactly ordinary, because they’re all like super-spies, with skills galore. But it’s the HUMAN side of fighting crime, not the superhuman.

Besides, those superhero guys are all too busy making sequels to their multi-BILLION dollar movies. They don’t have time to mess around with television. Though we have already been treated to brief appearances by Maria Hill and Nick Fury….so maybe…maybe… Who knows? It could happen. Just don’t hold your breath.

Another comment I heard is: I keep waiting for something to happen. Again, this sort of thinking springs from expecting the SHIELD TV show to be like one of the Marvel movies, which it explicitly is NOT. Things are not going to move as fast on a TV show as they do in a movie. Yet, having said that, I have to wonder why last week’s unidentified object with the capability to obliterate the entire planet does not qualify as “something happening”? What? You want something more to happen than THAT? Buildings blowing up, genetic experimentation gone wrong, gunfights in the jungles of Peru, an explosion on a plane? Not good enough? What else are you waiting for?

And again…if you’re waiting for the Avengers to show up, it’s not going to happen.

Okay, here’s another one. I honestly can’t believe I read this one: All the actors are so young and attractive….what is this, Dawson’s Creek? Well, perhaps we should have a team of agents who are all old and ugly? Would that make you feel better? Get real. Young and attractive is the STAPLE of television, and of all fantasy literature. Unless you’re watching a situation comedy about a frumpy old married couple, almost everyone on TV is young and attractive. (And even the frumpy old married couple have attractive children.)

I mean, really? Are we now MAKING UP reasons not to like this show?

I could go on, but you get the idea. Apparently there are a lot of people out there who just don’t “get it,” who are not willing to let this show be what it is: NOT The Avengers. It’s not a movie, it’s not The Avengers. But as a TV show, it’s at least as good, and probably better than most of the offerings out there.

Apparently in the Marvel Universe there’s a team, appropriately called Damage Control, that comes in afterwards to clean up the destruction created during the super battles between superheroes and super villains. They are the janitors and construction workers of the Marvel Universe. I’ve heard it jokingly suggested that perhaps there ought to be a show about these people. I don’t know that something like this would go over really big, but I feel certain that if anyone were to undertake such a creative endeavor, there would be a ton of people out there bellyaching because the main characters are too attractive and don’t have superpowers.

Look. An apple is not an orange. It’s an apple. When you’re eating an orange, enjoy the orange, but when you’re eating apples, don’t hate them because they’re not oranges. Enjoy the apples for their appley goodness.

SHIELD has a lot of that tangy appley goodness. The writing is sharp, a ton of great lines. The characters are all coming into their own. They have flaws (as all good characters should) but by and large they are mostly likeable. I’ve only seen two episodes so far, so we’ll have to see how it progresses, but right now the stories and situations look like they’re going to be at least as good as anything else on TV. Episodic, as any show is in its infancy, but every character has already been given a backstory, there are mysteries, and we are eagerly awaiting the development of some arc storylines. If there’s one thing Joss Whedon knows how to do, it’s the arc storyline.

I am willing to give this show a chance to stand on its own, with only a thin lifeline connecting it to the larger Marvel Universe. I believe we can have magic, if we just give it half a chance, and stop wishing for Captain America to swoop down and rescue us. Sometimes we need Captain America, but until we do (and are willing to shell out $10 for a ticket to see him in the movie theater), the Agents of SHIELD have things well in hand, thank you very much.

I often experience strange coincidences, but if I don’t document them right away, I forget. Well, today I had an incident happen that was really weird, and I wrote it down right away, so I would remember it, and now I’m sharing it. Some of the names have been changed to protect the innocent, but it goes something like this:

Today at work I was cleaning up a list of almost 400 new names that we are adding to our database. It’s a big job, and I’m almost done, but I’m getting tired, so I think, well, I’ll stop for a moment, take a break. But before I take a break, I’ll take a quick look at the list of who’s just signed up for a seminar. Wait! First, let me mark my place on my list of 400 names. Where am I? Frederick Waddelsworth? Okay.

Now I go to the list of who’s signing up for seminars, and yes, there is a name there. But only one name. One person has chosen this moment to sign up for a seminar. Who is it? You guessed it: Frederick Waddlesworth.

I kid you not. The VERY SAME person whose name I had just stopped at has chosen THIS moment to register for one of our seminars. Thousands of names in our database, thousands of potential customers, and this ONE person is on both lists at the exact same moment.

It wasn’t even like: Oh, Waddlesworth! I remember putting his name in ten minutes ago. No. It was: this is the VERY NEXT name I’m going to work on.

I don’t know about you, but that strikes me as strange. Strange but true….because I’m not making this stuff up. There would be nothing remarkable in making up stuff like this. If I was making this up, it would be like looking at a crazy photo that was clearly photoshopped. No fun in that. But this moment was NOT photoshopped.

As I said, these sorts of things happen to me all the time. When it happens again, I’ll try to make a point to record the incident. If they happen enough, I’ll really have to start to wonder what’s going on.

When I developed an interest in college football, I also discovered the Paul Finebaum radio show. This show deals mainly with SEC football, which is right up my alley. As a call-in show, it features a lot of telephone “personalities,” and I’m sorry to say, each one has proven to be more obnoxious than the last. Some of these callers are tolerable, but lately I’ve found there are just too many recurring characters that, when I hear they’re about to join the show, I simply turn off the radio.

I also noticed something else recently. A disproportionate number of the ads are for bankruptcy lawyers, payday loan companies, and services offering to help if you are having trouble with the IRS. It makes me wonder what is the core audience for this show. It makes me wonder if I’m really in the right place for getting my sports news and opinions.

And now, here’s the icing on the cake: this past week, on TWO occasions, my ears have been assaulted by callers berating other callers, which seems to actually be a staple of the show, but now instead of confining their insults to the individual caller, the complainer takes on the entire demographic.

It is never cool to make vast generalizations based on individual circumstances. Except, of course, if you’re on the Paul Finebaum radio show, which apparently values ratings more than decency.

Specifically, I’m talking about male callers who have said something along these lines:

Women should stop calling in to these sports shows, because they don’t know what they’re talking about. There’s no place for women in sports or sports radio, and they ought to just go back into the kitchen and cook, and clean, and do the things women are supposed to do and leave the sports to us men who understand what we’re talking about.

To which Paul replied….absolutely nothing.

Now I understand that outrageous statments are the backbone of this show. Apparently a lot of people consider this to be entertainment. I don’t, but I have put up with it to a certain degree, because there are a lot of callers that make intelligent comments and ask intelligent questions. Paul also has a lot of interesting guests, like former football players and coaches, and ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreet and ABC Sports’ Gary Danielson. I always enjoy listening to them.

But from this point forward I’m sticking with ESPN TV and ABC Sports television to listen to these guys. Because I am so done with Paul Finebaum. It bothered me not only that I heard such sexist garbage being spouted over the airwaves, but also that I heard it TWICE within one week, and it mostly bothered me that Paul said nothing at all in defense of what surely is a significant portion of his audience.

But I guess IDIOTS comprise a larger portion.

I understand that controversy is the lifeblood of radio call-in programs, but when you rely on controversy, you’re walking a thin line between entertainment and outrage. Personally, I have been outraged. I don’t suppose Paul Finebaum will be too upset because I’m not going to listen to him anymore. However, I wonder if he would care if ALL his women listeners turned the dial?

Am I being too sensitive? Let’s just put this issue in a different light for a moment, then you tell me.

What if someone called in and said:

You know, those JEWS don’t know a damn thing about football! They should stay off these radio shows and go back to their banks and law offices and leave football alone! Better yet, they should all go back to Isreal!

Or…

African Americans are great at playing football, but they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about when they call in and give such asinine opinions that don’t agree with mine! All black people should stop calling into this show and just go back to eating watermelon and fried chicken!

Get my point?

Everybody today is so “politically correct” that it would not be tolerated if you picked on a different demographic. So why is it okay to pick on women? Why does Paul not say anything? Why does nobody else say anything?

Well, they may be saying something about it at this very moment. I wouldn’t know, because I have stopped listening. The whole tone of the Paul Finebaum show is just too negative, so I don’t feel I’m really missing anything. My time is too valuable to waste on negative energy. When I’m in a football mood, I’ll stick with the TV guys from now on. Somehow they are able to expound on the world of college football in a way that is informative and entertaining, without disrespecting entire segments of the population.

I’m so excited because the idea I had to start a website for my Whimsie dolls is now up and running! It’s called Whimsieville, and you can find it here.

Russ helped me create this great banner for the site. I would have never been able to do this on my own. I love the images, and the lettering. I think this banner exactly conveys what the website is going to be about.

When we started our Dark Shadows podcast, we prided ourselves on the fact that NOBODY ELSE was doing exactly what we were doing. Well, I think I’ve hit another home run when it comes to being unique! But then again, nobody ever accused me of being mainstream…

Each of the girls has had a chance to speak once so far, and they’ll be speaking a lot more, since it turns out they have lots to say about all kinds of things!

Please go and take a look, and if you think you might be interested in hearing more from the Whimsies, click on the RSS link at the bottom of the page to “subscribe,” so you will never be behind with the latest goings-in in Whimsieville!