I created this blog on this day in 2012. I'd been thinking about it for a year or two, and it was the middle of a boring day in February with nothing else much to do. (Also, Facebook was going through one of its redesigns, and there was a rumor that the then-popular Notes section would be deleted, so I wanted to keep my favorites.) Mom was visiting with Trinnica, and everybody else was playing some kind of war game in the backyard with Jonathan.
Sometimes people wonder about how it got titled this way; so I put out an explanation of the title right up front. It's a Princess Bride quote, from the novel, not the movie.
The series finale of Parks and Rec, "One Last Ride," aired on this day in 2015. It's one of the most perfect series finales ever. I watched season 7 live, even though I hadn't really met anyone in Pawnee yet, because it was a way to stay connected with everybody at the NSU BCM. (Stephen, Elizabeth, Susan, Bucky and Daniel were especially fans of the show.) I'd just moved to Claremore and RSU, and the humor was a welcome distraction from the roughness of that semester. (There's good people there, but I'm not really a fan of the city of Claremore.) And it was good homework in studying camera angles and shot placement.
Speaking of NSU ministries, Tom Tucker finally completely retired from leading CCF a couple months ago. And Ryan Galdemez became the pastor of Grace Baptist after Geoff Brown left.
It's been raining and raining and raining some more all week - cold and gray and drenching weather is hard to be productive in. But at least there wasn't an ice storm, like it seemed there would be earlier in the week.
Mom, Amy, Trevor and I went to the Gilcrease Art Museum in Tulsa Friday night because there was a traveling exhibit of Norman Rockwell original art, behind-the-scenes photographs, sketches, and the actual Saturday Evening Post covers themselves. It was amazing.
The afternoon was spent running errands in Okmulgee, which was useful.
Being book hunters, once we heard about the Oklahoma City Library System's annual book sale at the state fairgrounds, Mom and I decided we needed to go. It was spectacular. I found some Faulkner, and a history of Broadway for Susan, and a handful of Shakespeare that matched good copies we already had. Mom found Peterson field guides and I don't know what all else. I found a lot of guides for writing different genres in the Fine Arts section; hopefully some of them will be helpful.
It was awesome. People were very polite; always apologizing after running into each other due to the intense focus of finding good titles. Going to Oklahoma City always feels a very long way away, when it's only about two hours west. Probably feels that way because the landscape changes a lot.
Caleb accidentally locked himself out of the truck while at a photoshoot with a friend, so we drove back home through Henryetta so he could get himself unstuck. That's the usual way to get to OKC, it seems like. Nice to drive through Henryetta again; felt like we should be driving back from a Knights ballgame. High school basketball playoffs started last week; it's a little weird to not be actively covering them.
Songs of the Day this week include Bowling for Soup's "1985" and Dustin Lynch's "Cowboys and Angels."
It's the final day of competition for the 2018 PeyongChang Winter Olympics. NBC's overage seemed a little lacking, mostly because there wasn't many of the inspirational stories shown, and because Bob Costas retired. Mike Tirico did better than I expected, but it still felt wrong. The Russian figure skaters had an epic battle in the ladies' event, and the Americans were all entirely without personality or talent. Snowboard cross was awesome, as usual, and snowboard halfpipe and the speed skating events. The commercials were amazingly inspirational. And the U.S. women's hockey team beat Canada in a shootout in the gold medal game, which is great.
The production of Texaco Mornings will be in two weeks. That's exciting, but also completely terrifying. It felt a little strange to write your own press release talking about your own play, though. But the Okmulgee Times people were happy to run it, and hopefully it will draw some more people to come see it.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will be back from the Olympic break this Friday, and it will air their 100th episode March 9. It's been fun to follow their Instagram and Twitter for memories. American Idol returns for its 16th season March 11; I'm predicting Luke Bryan will be my favorite judge this season.
Saturday, February 24, 2018
Saturday, February 17, 2018
Standby
We have these two types of muscle fibers: slow-twitch for endurance, and quick-twitch for explosive movements. Swimming and cross-country running use mainly slow-twitch, tennis and volleyball quick-twitch. Some of us naturally have more of one type or the other. I have more quick-twitch muscles, so I enjoy more explosive sports, like tennis or volleyball.
But if your muscles are tensed up for an explosion that never comes, that can be extremely tiring. It's like when Skye was trying to understand her new abilities after becoming an Inhuman in season two of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - when she tried to force her powers inward, she wound up breaking her own arm. Not anywhere near that dramatic, but that sense of "standby" is kind of where it feels like everything is right now.
Not much is happening in Okmulgee County, so there's not really anything to cover for the ONN. Most of the Frontstretch staff is at Daytona for the opening weekend of the NASCAR season, which meant my news day - Thursday - I was on standby for if they needed backup. They didn't, which was fine, but it's hard to be that tensed and ready to spring if there's nothing to pounce. (I spend too much of the day watching our cats.) Macklin and Smudge have had upset stomachs for the last two weeks, so I've been cleaning up their diarrhea way too often - they've been exiled to the garage until they feel better.
It's hard work waiting for things to happen. For the last six months or so it's felt like things - work, life, church, personal - were just about to fall into place once something happened, like a domino chain. Just hasn't quite started yet.
Another awful school shooting happened the other day in south Florida. Facebook and Twitter have been filled with people arguing over whether gun laws or mental health systems need to be overhauled. My uneducated opinion is that both sides are probably right. .
Finished The Perks of Being a Wallflower recently, didn't like it. Novels about stoners make me really mad, because their lack of ambition drives me crazy - in Children's/YA Lit everyone in class wanted to kill the narrator of The Spectacular Now. And they're unbearably depressing. I still might see the movies of both of those books, though.
Saw Black Panther last night. Trevor was chomping at the bit to see it, and Dad dragged Caleb and I along. The Orpheum was about 80 percent full, which was incredibly impressive (though the offerings were the newest MCU movie and the final movie of the Fifty Shades trilogy, and it's Okmulgee, so...maybe not so impressive).
It had to do a lot - the royal intrigue of a Shakespeare history, with the plot of The Lion King, with the amount of worldbuilding of Iron Man 2, Thor,, Guardians or Doctor Strange. Subtitles would have been helpful - some of the accents were so thick the dialogue was kind of lost. It was all right, but I'd rank it in the 12th-15th range out of all MCU movies so far. Caleb and Mom were both astounded I could rank it within two hours of watching..Some of the most interesting characters were killed, which seems like a waste of good acting talent.
Also, Dad's elbow was jamming into my side and his foot was in my lap, because personal space isn't something he doesn't do very well. That was uncomfortable.
On the way home he was constantly berating Caleb's driving, which was also uncomfortable. Caleb's a really good driver. It was raining, and somebody was tailgating a little bit on the way home. Dad wanted Caleb to either pull over or stop so they would run into us and it would be their fault. In his best impression of Jack Lankford, Caleb calmly stated that he was driving the speed limit and wasn't going to break any driving laws just because Dad told him to. Dad threw a tantrum, saying that it was his truck and that Caleb couldn't drive it tomorrow for disobeying his orders (we were thinking of going to the Oilers game tonight).
They both argued their case to Mom once we got home, while Trevor and I hid in the family room and pretended to care about men's Olympic figure skating.
I have Relient K stuck in my head this morning, and I slept horribly.
But if your muscles are tensed up for an explosion that never comes, that can be extremely tiring. It's like when Skye was trying to understand her new abilities after becoming an Inhuman in season two of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - when she tried to force her powers inward, she wound up breaking her own arm. Not anywhere near that dramatic, but that sense of "standby" is kind of where it feels like everything is right now.
Not much is happening in Okmulgee County, so there's not really anything to cover for the ONN. Most of the Frontstretch staff is at Daytona for the opening weekend of the NASCAR season, which meant my news day - Thursday - I was on standby for if they needed backup. They didn't, which was fine, but it's hard to be that tensed and ready to spring if there's nothing to pounce. (I spend too much of the day watching our cats.) Macklin and Smudge have had upset stomachs for the last two weeks, so I've been cleaning up their diarrhea way too often - they've been exiled to the garage until they feel better.
It's hard work waiting for things to happen. For the last six months or so it's felt like things - work, life, church, personal - were just about to fall into place once something happened, like a domino chain. Just hasn't quite started yet.
Another awful school shooting happened the other day in south Florida. Facebook and Twitter have been filled with people arguing over whether gun laws or mental health systems need to be overhauled. My uneducated opinion is that both sides are probably right. .
Finished The Perks of Being a Wallflower recently, didn't like it. Novels about stoners make me really mad, because their lack of ambition drives me crazy - in Children's/YA Lit everyone in class wanted to kill the narrator of The Spectacular Now. And they're unbearably depressing. I still might see the movies of both of those books, though.
Saw Black Panther last night. Trevor was chomping at the bit to see it, and Dad dragged Caleb and I along. The Orpheum was about 80 percent full, which was incredibly impressive (though the offerings were the newest MCU movie and the final movie of the Fifty Shades trilogy, and it's Okmulgee, so...maybe not so impressive).
It had to do a lot - the royal intrigue of a Shakespeare history, with the plot of The Lion King, with the amount of worldbuilding of Iron Man 2, Thor,, Guardians or Doctor Strange. Subtitles would have been helpful - some of the accents were so thick the dialogue was kind of lost. It was all right, but I'd rank it in the 12th-15th range out of all MCU movies so far. Caleb and Mom were both astounded I could rank it within two hours of watching..Some of the most interesting characters were killed, which seems like a waste of good acting talent.
Also, Dad's elbow was jamming into my side and his foot was in my lap, because personal space isn't something he doesn't do very well. That was uncomfortable.
On the way home he was constantly berating Caleb's driving, which was also uncomfortable. Caleb's a really good driver. It was raining, and somebody was tailgating a little bit on the way home. Dad wanted Caleb to either pull over or stop so they would run into us and it would be their fault. In his best impression of Jack Lankford, Caleb calmly stated that he was driving the speed limit and wasn't going to break any driving laws just because Dad told him to. Dad threw a tantrum, saying that it was his truck and that Caleb couldn't drive it tomorrow for disobeying his orders (we were thinking of going to the Oilers game tonight).
They both argued their case to Mom once we got home, while Trevor and I hid in the family room and pretended to care about men's Olympic figure skating.
I have Relient K stuck in my head this morning, and I slept horribly.
Wednesday, February 14, 2018
Screen Crushes of College
So, a couple years ago I made lists of screen crushes growing up and as a teenager. And last year I made a list of my favorite couples from TV, since the format lends itself better to studying characters and relationships.
Natalie Portman
Why? She's pretty in an everyday sort of way, and in interviews she's very down-to-earth, and on Saturday Night Live she can make fun of herself easily.
Gwen Stacy - The Amazing Spider-Man
Why? Gwen is smart, resourceful, and a bit of a dork.
Hollie Cavanagh - American Idol season 11
Why? This girl could sing. And she was pretty in a Natalie Portman type of way. And the way her accent would shift in midsentence from Texas drawl to classy British and back was hysterical.
McKayla Maroney
Why? She was focused. And extremely graceful on the vault.
Hilary Duff
Why? Her characters are down-to-earth, quick-witted, smart and independent. Who knows why screen crushes happen?
Skye - Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 1-2
Why? She wears her heart on her sleeve (and her face). Fiercely loyal and protective of her friends, prone to making horrible life decisions, and she has an awful track record when it comes to relationships.
Taylor Swift
Why? She's an amazing storyteller with a mischievous personality.
Jemma Simmons - Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. seasons 2-3
Why? She's brilliant, funny, kind and pretty. Why not in S4? Because she and Fitz make such an amazing couple.
Avril Lavigne
Why? Her lyrics are honest, straightforward and thoughtfully arranged.
April Ludgate - Parks and Recreation
Why? Sarcastic, intensely loyal, and with a kind heart hiding behind her growls, April is amazing.
Ann Perkins - Parks and Recreation
Why? She's grounded and realistic, but ready to go on adventures at any moment.
Daisy Johnson - Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 4
Why? S4 Daisy has a lot of Skye in her, especially early in the season.
Aly Raisman
Why? She was always encouraging her teammates on, and very articulate in interviews.
Madison Kocian
Why? She seemed like a normal girl who just happened to be an Olympic gymnast. And she was so graceful on the uneven bars.
Natalie Portman
Why? She's pretty in an everyday sort of way, and in interviews she's very down-to-earth, and on Saturday Night Live she can make fun of herself easily.
Gwen Stacy - The Amazing Spider-Man
Why? Gwen is smart, resourceful, and a bit of a dork.
Hollie Cavanagh - American Idol season 11
Why? This girl could sing. And she was pretty in a Natalie Portman type of way. And the way her accent would shift in midsentence from Texas drawl to classy British and back was hysterical.
McKayla Maroney
Why? She was focused. And extremely graceful on the vault.
Hilary Duff
Why? Her characters are down-to-earth, quick-witted, smart and independent. Who knows why screen crushes happen?
Skye - Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 1-2
Why? She wears her heart on her sleeve (and her face). Fiercely loyal and protective of her friends, prone to making horrible life decisions, and she has an awful track record when it comes to relationships.
Taylor Swift
Why? She's an amazing storyteller with a mischievous personality.
Jemma Simmons - Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. seasons 2-3
Why? She's brilliant, funny, kind and pretty. Why not in S4? Because she and Fitz make such an amazing couple.
Avril Lavigne
Why? Her lyrics are honest, straightforward and thoughtfully arranged.
April Ludgate - Parks and Recreation
Why? Sarcastic, intensely loyal, and with a kind heart hiding behind her growls, April is amazing.
Ann Perkins - Parks and Recreation
Why? She's grounded and realistic, but ready to go on adventures at any moment.
Daisy Johnson - Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 4
Why? S4 Daisy has a lot of Skye in her, especially early in the season.
Aly Raisman
Why? She was always encouraging her teammates on, and very articulate in interviews.
Madison Kocian
Why? She seemed like a normal girl who just happened to be an Olympic gymnast. And she was so graceful on the uneven bars.
Tuesday, February 13, 2018
This Scene Is a Rerun
Stop me if I've written this scene before: Wes is wide-awake while the rest of the world is asleep, listening to Spotify while working on a blog post trying to figure out what's on his mind, because he is an INFJ, and that's part of INFJ-ness. It's cold, and it's been a frustrating though semi-productive day, following another difficult weekend where all his nerves stood on end and howled.
Restless, sad, lonely, hopeless and pissed off at something unidentifiable, that's usual territory.
Taylor Swift's "Never Grow Up" is the current song playing, and he's hoping his nieces are doing well, while trying to not to remember that he and Sam were at one point going to record a cover of that song.
The Olympics have been watched a lot, both actually-watched and background-noise-while-reading. This hasn't been a very good month for reading, though I did dive back through Much Ado because it'd been too long since I'd read Shakespeare. Catcher in the Rye was just as stupid as Crick and Beatrix thought it was - I should've listened to them. Smart characters. I wonder pretty often what happened to them, if the dude who wrote Tent City knows what happened to them.
RSU Theater's Original Recipe shows are running this weekend. They should be good.
Fiction just isn't happening, I think because just the mundaneity of everyday survival is taking too much energy. Texaco Mornings will run in early March, if things go right, and I still want to explore those characters deeper by translating the script into prose, but again, that would be fiction. Susan likes the characters, though, so that's good.
My laptop battery is mostly dead, so I'm waiting on the new one to arrive. This will be the third time I've replaced it, I think. And I've replaced the keyboard twice. It was roughly a year old when I got it.
The internet has been sporadically working lately, including an hours-long stretch this afternoon, which meant I barely made deadline for my Frontstretch column running tomorrow morning.
I've kind of given up on job hunting because of the deafening silence in response to emails and questionnaires
The Eagles' "Desperado" has been a Song of the Day, as has Garth Brooks' "What She's Doing Now."
Restless, sad, lonely, hopeless and pissed off at something unidentifiable, that's usual territory.
Taylor Swift's "Never Grow Up" is the current song playing, and he's hoping his nieces are doing well, while trying to not to remember that he and Sam were at one point going to record a cover of that song.
The Olympics have been watched a lot, both actually-watched and background-noise-while-reading. This hasn't been a very good month for reading, though I did dive back through Much Ado because it'd been too long since I'd read Shakespeare. Catcher in the Rye was just as stupid as Crick and Beatrix thought it was - I should've listened to them. Smart characters. I wonder pretty often what happened to them, if the dude who wrote Tent City knows what happened to them.
RSU Theater's Original Recipe shows are running this weekend. They should be good.
Fiction just isn't happening, I think because just the mundaneity of everyday survival is taking too much energy. Texaco Mornings will run in early March, if things go right, and I still want to explore those characters deeper by translating the script into prose, but again, that would be fiction. Susan likes the characters, though, so that's good.
My laptop battery is mostly dead, so I'm waiting on the new one to arrive. This will be the third time I've replaced it, I think. And I've replaced the keyboard twice. It was roughly a year old when I got it.
The internet has been sporadically working lately, including an hours-long stretch this afternoon, which meant I barely made deadline for my Frontstretch column running tomorrow morning.
I've kind of given up on job hunting because of the deafening silence in response to emails and questionnaires
The Eagles' "Desperado" has been a Song of the Day, as has Garth Brooks' "What She's Doing Now."
Thursday, February 8, 2018
Olympics and Life
The Winter Olympics begin tonight, which I'm thrilled about. Last time that happened I was in the middle of my sophomore year at NSU. Olympics, because they happen roughly every two years, are a good time to stop and reflect on life.
For my speech class that semester, I recounted a history of the Winter Olympics, because it sprang easily to mind. And also I could watch Cool Runnings as research. And the Arctic feel of Ross Hall made watching the events much more authentic.
The other day Jessica asked for help on picking a wedding dress. (I knew watching Say Yes to the Dress reruns would eventually pay off...not that I did that or anything. It's an unexpectedly enthralling show.) Sure, it felt like she was asking basically everyone she knew for advice, too, but still, that meant that she trusts me. And that means a lot.
Skyped with Courtney today, school's keeping her busy, but it's going all right.
Super Bowl LII was Sunday, and it was an amazing game. Philadelphia beat New England 41-33, and I think it was the first time I'd watched the entire game in ten years.
Budweiser won the commercials this year, which were especially lame. Bud's ad was, when you think about it, classy and yet self-aggrandizing at the same time, highlighting their water-donation efforts during the hurricanes last year. Also, for an NFL ad, Eli Manning and Odell Beckham Jr reenacted Dirty Dancing, which was pretty hysterical.
For my speech class that semester, I recounted a history of the Winter Olympics, because it sprang easily to mind. And also I could watch Cool Runnings as research. And the Arctic feel of Ross Hall made watching the events much more authentic.
The other day Jessica asked for help on picking a wedding dress. (I knew watching Say Yes to the Dress reruns would eventually pay off...not that I did that or anything. It's an unexpectedly enthralling show.) Sure, it felt like she was asking basically everyone she knew for advice, too, but still, that meant that she trusts me. And that means a lot.
Skyped with Courtney today, school's keeping her busy, but it's going all right.
Super Bowl LII was Sunday, and it was an amazing game. Philadelphia beat New England 41-33, and I think it was the first time I'd watched the entire game in ten years.
Friday, February 2, 2018
Good News
Last Friday was Amy's cheerleading night with a local Down Syndrome group at a Catholic high school nearby; which is one of the high points of her year. She did great, and had a fantastic time. The Comets were trounced in both games, though.
Yesterday I got an unexpected encouraging note from the editor-in-chief of Frontstretch.com, thanking me for merging smoothly into accelerated traffic late last season and drafting along well with the rest of the staff. And this morning I was promoted to doing a column for the upcoming season.
Caleb was raising money for a Special Olympics fundraiser tomorrow morning, and he reached the goal he was hoping for.
The folk music group the Spencer Family were visiting GBC Sunday night, so Mom and Amy have been listening to their songs all this week. And Mom got to visit with the Guenthers since they dropped by.
Ashland adopted a hedgehog earlier this week, which was worth celebrating. "Lol, I'm a mom!" she texted me excitedly. "By adoption, of course." Hedgehogs are maybe even cuter than coatimundis.
Yesterday I got an unexpected encouraging note from the editor-in-chief of Frontstretch.com, thanking me for merging smoothly into accelerated traffic late last season and drafting along well with the rest of the staff. And this morning I was promoted to doing a column for the upcoming season.
Caleb was raising money for a Special Olympics fundraiser tomorrow morning, and he reached the goal he was hoping for.
The folk music group the Spencer Family were visiting GBC Sunday night, so Mom and Amy have been listening to their songs all this week. And Mom got to visit with the Guenthers since they dropped by.
Ashland adopted a hedgehog earlier this week, which was worth celebrating. "Lol, I'm a mom!" she texted me excitedly. "By adoption, of course." Hedgehogs are maybe even cuter than coatimundis.
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