With the NBA Finals over (Yeah Celtics!), the Stanley Cup won, March
Madness completed and the race for the Triple Crown decided, we can
finally relax because the demon (a.k.a. the Super Sports Freak) has
subsided…at least for now. Summer is upon us and the only sport we need
to worry about is baseball and no one really cares about the outcome of
these games until Labor Day. Well, except my husband…and millions of
other men around the world.
I had no idea what I was getting into when I married a sports fanatic.
When we were dating it didn’t really seem important. Then when we moved
in together, I realized that if I wanted to spend any quality time with
The Man, I better get interested in the game. Any game. I initially
picked basketball because it seemed to have the least amount of rules
and was over quickly. Of course, my skill at retaining useless
knowledge and obnoxious competitive streak soon had me winning the office pool for March Madness and
using my husband’s vast love for the game to help me pick the right
players for my Fantasy Basketball Team, which I also won. The men in
the pool, i.e. everyone else, were not amused.
High Tech, Low Tech, and On-line Afflictions
Technology
Snowflakes in Southern California
Jeff and I go to the gym early every morning. Since it’s still dark out when we leave, it’s been pretty chilly lately. This morning when I turned the key in the ignition, the dashboard starting flashing. It also began to beep—a subtle bing, like the musical “fasten your seatbelt” bing that you hear on airplanes. “Great,” I sighed, “something else is broken.”
Jeff, never one to presume the worst, leaned over, looked intently at the dashboard, and said matter-of-factly, “Nothing’s broken.” “It’s not?” “No. It’s just a snowflake,” he said. “What’s just a snowflake?” I asked. “On the dashboard. Look at the temperature,” he said. It read 39 degrees. And there it was—a cute little snowflake.
Apparently Volkswagen was thoughtful enough to alert its drivers when it’s cold outside. Having driven the car only in Southern California, we had never seen it before. If this keeps up, I’m gonna have to ask my mom to let me borrow some of those gloves and scarves I gave to her when we moved here.
Checking It Twice
This is not about making a Christmas list, although I should do that, I guess. It is about my need to check and monitor things constantly, as if I were the Chief of the Baguette Patrol for a supercollider. Not all things. I do not monitor the dust balls in the corners of my dining room, the balance in my checking account, or Sam’s grades.
These things I consider on a need-to-know basis; if company is coming, I vacuum, if I get a menacing call from Comcast, I check the bank account, and if Sam claims he has no homework for the third day in a row, I check his grades using the magic of Power School. I know people who are very concerned about one or all of the above, which is why they have cleaner houses, better cash flow and more disciplined children than I do.
The things I am compelled to monitor include my e-mail, Facebook, my blog stats, and (when I am away from my computer) my Blackberry. I cannot walk by the computer without looking at my Inbox, deleting all irrelevant items, and (unless I am dragged away by a raging family member) answering the legitimate messages.
Sketchfest San Francisco
This past weekend I was in San Francisco for The 8th Annual
Sketchfest. This was a two week long Comedy Festival with comic
performers ranging from Stand-up, One Person Shows, Improv Groups,
Sketch Companies and then there were shows that sort of defied
description. Some of those were the ones I took part in.
I was lucky enough to see a few shows besides our own. I saw
The Lampshades; the best fake lounge act I’ve seen in a long time. The
physical work they do is sublime and hilarious. I took a peek at
2-Headed Dog, but they were doing a sketch that had three men running
around in their underpants and little else. They were dancing in a
manner that had their peculiar distributions of body fat jiggle in a
way that caused me to run out of the theatre. I’m not saying I’m the
Venus DeMilo, but I don’t choose to subject anyone to the sight of my
sorry flesh sac.
The Theme Park Improv Show had Scott Adsit from 30 Rock and Oscar Nunez from The Office. They were outstanding, but what was really impressive was two of the performers in the troupe were the event promoters. You just never figure people that talented would have it together enough to pull something like this off. They did some of the best improv I’ve seen in a long time.
Pinterest (uh) What is it Good For? Absolutely Something
As you may know, I like to view my very-nearly-fifty-year-old self as all hip and early adopterish. I have an unnatural dread of youngsters snickering as I hold up my new-fangled thingamabobber and look at it over the rims of my glasses, saying something like “tell me again, what button I push to see the grandkids in their space pod?” So when I started reading about Pinterest, I begged an invitation and checked it out.
As it turns out, Pinterest can be a useful tool or a waste of time and energy, or both. I am finding it tremendously useful, but it took some time and tinkering to sift out what I really wanted to see and “pin” to my virtual pin boards. At first, I saw no point in looking through hundreds and thousands of pictures and picking those that struck my fancy. A lot of what I saw seemed like nothing more than an extension of the bumper sticker or the Facebook profile - one more way to show off a little and tell the world that one had read (and liked) “Bleak House,” or spent time in Uruguay. There were also hundreds of cute animal pictures, cute kid pictures, and inspirational sayings of various kinds, things that might be diverting for two seconds but I am unlikely to “pin” and revisit anything along the lines of LOLCats.
The beauty of a good “pin,” though, is that there is a narrative portion that can tell you whether a picture is just “for pretty,” or whether one can click through to a recipe for that cupcake, or directions for making wall sconces from Dollar Store funnels. For me, the recipes and how-tos have been amazingly useful. I admit that I “collect” pretty pictures of things that I like, moons, owls, birds, flowers, and Paris street scenes…images that make me smile when I am stuck someplace for fifteen minutes and want a reminder of the beauty in the world. That’s good, but that’s the fluff.
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