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Sunday, May 01, 2011
Sunday snippets...
Okay, just let me get this out there. I watched the Royal Wedding. From the pre-game shows until the Royal Kiss. Well, all right, just before the Royal Kiss. I did miss that part after falling asleep right before dawn. But I watched. I watched because I enjoy the Royals way more than I enjoy reality shows and Entertainment Tonight and the red carpet before the Oscars. But I have a beef. If you didn't care to watch it live, then I think you should be happy to watch short clips of the really interesting bits the next day. I get really annoyed when the news shows and other bona fide programming get pre-empted to show the ENTIRE. WEDDING. OVER. AND. OVER. But I suppose that if you've paid big bucks to send the likes of Shepard Smith over there to eat the overpriced food and stay in a fancy hotel at jacked-up rates, you want to get the most for your money, so you replay all his gaffes OVER. AND. OVER. AND. OVER. And I'm not picking just on FOX, though their choice of correspondents was particularly offensive. CNN seemed to be colluding with FOX to make sure they both replayed THE. ENTIRE. WEDDING. OVER. AND. OVER AT THE SAME TIMES. ENOUGH!
And while I'm on the wedding topic, wasn't The Dress exquisite? Do you think maybe, just maybe, sleeves and gorgeous necklines will now be back in style instead of every single bride in the country looking like a clone and worried to death (or hoping, in some cases) that her strapless bra is going to fail during the meet-and-greet at the reception? Probably too much to ask, but I can dream. Lace really is lovely.
Please. Don't even get me started on the hats. I'm so embarrassed for the Brits I can hardly speak about it.
Some of you may have caught my note on Facebook that I gave up on the book Fall of Giants. I would never watch a TV show or a movie with THAT level of graphic, lurid activity, so why should I have John Lee read it to me? It was shaping up to be a great story, but I have my boundaries and Ken Follett went way beyond them. Pillars of the Earth I could handle and truly enjoy...but World Without End (another one I couldn't finish) got worse and this one was promising to be off-the-charts pornographic. Some folks grew up reading this stuff in teen "romance" novels, but I didn't and I'm thankful that the needle on my meter can still be exploded.
So what did I do? Picked up an audio book about the history of Hawaii (Unfamiliar Fishes, by Sarah Vowell) that I couldn't wait to be done with. I did finish, but I'll recommend that you not bother with it. After living in Hawaii twice and visiting there quite often, I love the state and its history, and I grieve over how the US treated Hawaii. But I had little interest in hearing a pseudo-historian with a hatred of all things American read her caustic, one-sided rant. To make it even worse, she read her own work, and her voice is the most grating I think I've ever heard. No wonder she does silly voices in animated movies...but does she have to do the same voice while reading books to grownups? Fortunately she reads at a snail's pace, so I dialed up the audio to 3x normal and just gritted my teeth and got through it. Not sure I'm any the better for my trouble.
On a happier note, this past week we had our upstairs re-carpeted (with vinyl in the bathrooms and one bedroom), and that gave my kids the impetus to a lot of cleaning, de-cluttering, rearranging, and decorating on the second floor. Every single one of them got involved, signaling that it really is a different era around Granny's House :-)
Tomorrow Kristen and the elves arrive for an extended stay...they'll arrive with five children and leave with 20% more than that, and in the meantime we'll enjoy their presence with us, not to mention that we'll enjoy having another one of them born in our home. If you've got an extra slot on your prayer list, please use it to ask God to get Dave down here in time to see the little one born! (And no, we still don't know if it's a boy or a girl. Some of us are positively medieval that way!)
Summer around here is going to be much more math-heavy than it usually is. Due to some hiccups that I won't go into (or for my daughters: "into which I will not go"), my remaining two students need to put a couple more months into finishing this year's math, so none of us will get a complete summer break. I think I'll schedule summer math for 6 am on weekdays, and maybe that will encourage them to speed through the rest :-)
So I see that Mitch Daniels, GOP governor of Indiana, signed into law a bill that will make his state the first to ban federal Medicaid funds from being used to slaughter babies (or to fund organizations that say they give mammograms but make their profits from the slaughter of babies). Looks like he's trying, as I heard someone say this morning, to "get right with the right"--as he should. I think his statements about not fighting cultural wars hurt him even though many misunderstood him, and this will go a long way toward regaining the trust of those who acknowledge the sanctity of every life, no matter which end of the birth canal a baby occupies.
Will Daniels run? Perhaps...it's a strange field so far. My opinion is that we've got a lot of people that are right on many of the issues but they're either annoying for some reason or another, or they have a habit of shooting off their mouths, thinking they need to have expertise or opinion on everything all at once. Gingrich? Please, no. Trump? Uh, can we talk? Bachmann? Smart lady, but something about her just doesn't say "President" to me. Romney? I may have to eat this, but right now I say NEV.ER. Huckabee? I think he's already decided not to run and I don't think he has the fire to raise the obscene amounts of money necessary. Pawlenty? Still has the "Pa-Who?" factor going against him. Paul? I might have softened a LITTLE on this guy, but I'd rather wait for his son, who seemed to inherit the brains and respect for the Consititution without the wacky factor. Palin? She peaked during the last campaign and she's definitely climbed higher on the annoying scale. Stay tuned...maybe The Papa will run.
Note to self: next time you get a survey in the mail on how you feel about your military medical care, don't be specific. Every time you do, that particular aspect of care gets worse. (And David C., that was NOT about you!)
Labels: Books, Family, News, Political Observation, Social Observation, Summer, Sundays
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