Will Wrap for Food

I rarely drink. I don’t smoke. I never swallowed, inhaled, applied, smoked or otherwise imbibed in an illegal drug.

But I am addicted. I admit it. It’s time. It needs to be put out there for all to see. I need help, you see, and I don’t think there’s a support group for my particular affliction.

Yes, everyone, I am coming out of the closet and admitting: I love to wrap things in paper. Like presents and such. In wrapping paper. Forget those wimpy little bags. What fun is that? Where is there any kind of difficulty in unfolding tissue paper and stuffing it into a bag?

None, I say. None at all.

But a perfectly wrapped gift in a perfectly-sized piece of wrapping paper? Priceless.

I don’t get all elaborate with bows or anything. Just the paper and a tag saying who it’s for and from. That’s all that’s needed.

I even have an extensive collection of Christmas wrapping paper so I can have a bouquet of sorts under my tree each year. I have Santas and snowmen and holly and candy canes and pointsettias and you name it, if it has to do with Christmas, I have it on paper.

I buy people more gifts than I should because that means I get to wrap them. I offer to wrap presents other people buy for people who aren’t me. When I lived at home, I even wrapped presents my mother bought for me. I’m not much for surprises, anyway.

Whew! I feel better now that it’s out there and everyone knows. Please be kind in your comments. It’s hard enough living like this.

A Latecomer’s Thoughts: Harry Potter

When the first Harry Potter book hit the stores, I heard raves from family members, friends and even complete strangers. I had no interest. I’m not sure why. It just didn’t appeal to me, based on what little information I knew about it.

Mostly, I knew there was a nerdy-looking little boy on the cover, it was about sorcery and a lot of fundamentalist Christian groups didn’t like it because it was about people doing magic, which of course was going to initiate all the little children into the world of devil worship. Those devil-worshippers sure hide well, don’t they?

Anyway, I managed to ignore the phenomenon. I didn’t even get stuck seeing the movies, even once Emma got interested in the series. Somehow, she always ended up going to the movies with other people (wish I could say the same about the Twilight movies).

But over the years, I’ve caught bits and pieces of the movies and even found myself enjoying them. Writers I trust and admire have sung the glowing praises of author J.K. Rowlings’ talent. I’ve been told that the movies very closely follow the books. Emma, of course, owns the first five movies (the sixth just came out on DVD), so I made a decision to watch them all, finally, all these years later.

Over the past two weekends, that’s exactly what I did. All five. And all I can say is that I am impressed. I can’t wait to see the sixth movie. I will probably see the last two in the theater. And, one of these days, I’ll even tackle the books.

Communication, People. Communication.

It’s their business, being a cell phone company and all. You know, keeping in touch, letting people know what’s going on in the world. You get it, right? Communication!

Apparently, for my cell phone company, this is not a given. And not only does this company not communicate well with its customers, the several layers within the company do not communicate with each other.

I know this because on Sunday, I got to experience this problem first-hand, so that a problem that could have been resolved in, oh, five seconds, took more than an hour to fix. More than an hour!

I was all warm and cozy, laying in bed watching Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (more on that tomorrow), when Emma came upstairs telling me Chris was calling me on her cell phone. Well, my cell phone was laying on the bed next to me, turned on, and hadn’t rung all day. So, I asked him why he didn’t call my cell phone.

“I did,” he said. “I’ve been calling all day and it goes straight to voicemail.”

(That may or may not be an exact quote, but you get the idea.)

Very odd, indeed.

And then I remembered that earlier that day, I’d taken a photo at the mall and tried to send it to my e-mail (see my January 2 post for the rest of that story) and it wouldn’t go through. So, after hanging up with Chris, I call my phone from Emma’s. Voicemail. I try to call Emma from my phone. A man’s automated voice informs me that my account cannot be verified (or something like that). I try to call the cell company from my phone. Same automated voice. Same message.

So, I call from Emma’s phone. The girl on the other end has me dial *228 to reprogram the phone. It won’t go through (something about the wrong code). Then the girl sends me to tech support. He has me call *22899. Same result. He tries I don’t know what else (other than checking for any outages), but an hour later he wants to wipe out my phone completely (this includes asking me to write down the more than 100 contacts so I can re-enter them and I would lose all my photos, which would have denied my good blog readers the pleasure of my January 2 photo blog). At this point, I’d already reset my phone to factory settings, which meant that later I had to fix it all.

In the end, the techie concludes the problem is specific to my phone, it’s broken and I need a new one (I got it in September). He wishes me a good day, a Merry Christmas and sends me on my way. To a cell phone store. The Sunday before Christmas.

I resigned myself to spending the rest of my life in said store, but I needed a phone, so off I went. Pulling into the parking lot, I was pleasantly surprised to find it relatively empty. It was dinner time, so I suppose that probably helped. I walked to the kiosk to check in and wait my turn. An employee approached and asked the problem. I was flustered, but managed to get my point across.

“Try calling *22801,” she tells me.

I do, without much optimism. I don’t get the automated voice or error message this time. The phone resets. I call Emma to check and see if it works. It does! Hooray!

She and another employee then informed me that they did something with the satellites Saturday night and it affected some phones, but not all, and it was only in this area. Nowhere else. They said they’d been dealing with it all day. They said the phone techie guys were not aware of it, but “probably will be tomorrow after we’ve fixed them all.”

Shouldn’t someone pick up a phone and let them know? Isn’t it that simple?

My 21-Year Love Affair

Val as Madmartigan in Willow.

I was 12 when I fell in love — true, real love — for the first time. It will soon be 21 years since that day. He’s grown older. He’s gotten fat. He’s lost that beautiful, youthful glow he once had. But my love remains true. Probably because he was my first, but I just cannot let go.

I was in sixth grade and my best friend, Carrie, and I walked into the Arnot Mall movie theater in Big Flats to see Willow for the first time. Who knew it would change my life? I certainly didn’t.

We both adored the movie, but even more than that, we both met Val Kilmer for the very first time. (I pause to take a big, nostalgic and dreamy sigh.) I saw the movie in the theater several more times and bought all the magazines and posters and you-name-its that came along with the marketing.

I learned through the articles in the Willow magazines (which I read over and over and over) that Mr. Kilmer (VAL!!!) starred in three movies prior to Willow: Top Secret!, Real Genius and Top Gun. I’d never seen any of them and never heard of the first two. Of course, I had to drag my parents to the video store right away and rent them all.

Oh boy was I glad I did! Especially Top Secret! and Real Genius. I won’t go into the plots or any other details, but anyone who hasn’t seen these movies must — MUST — go now and get them and watch them. And watch them again. And then again. And even after you’ve watched them 50 times, you will still find new things to laugh at and notice, whether it be a subtle joke you didn’t quite catch the first 49 times or something happening in the background of a scene that didn’t stand out before.

I immediately introduced every one of my friends to these movies. I showed them to family when they visited. I have since brought Emma into the fold and she loves them as much as I ever did.

Oh, My Val, what happened to thou?

Suffice it to say, seeing Val in those movies did nothing to assuage my love and general worship of the man. Even when he got married, it was fine. I mean, he married his Willow co-star and I loved her, too. Just not in quite the same way.

Since those days, My Val has gone on to make many more movies, get divorced and start an obscure music career. He isn’t quite as good-looking as he once was. OK, he’s really not even slightly as good-looking as he once was. But the love remains.

Two years ago, I bought Willow for Emma for Christmas. She’d never even heard of it, but based on the movies and books she likes, I knew she’d love it. We watched it the day she opened it. I hadn’t watched it in many years at that point. And, like the man, the movie still holds its special place in my heart. It was incredible. It made me very happy. I need to watch it again soon.

The Sunday Quote Part VI

Don’t sit too close at the ballet; it spoils the illusion.

Unknown (due to my failure to record the source when I wrote it down and I can’t find one on the Internet. It came from a book or movie or something, though.)

So Cute, it Should be Illegal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bmhjf0rKe8

Blog Award!

From Lee at Hormones, Headaches and Hotflashes:

It went out to all her readers, but she went through the time and had the patience to list all our blogs with link! Gotta love her. And read her, because she’s very funny, a great writer and engaging. Her vlogs are relaly good, too. Not everyone can pull off a vlog and be so natural in it.

A Blessing and a Curse

Like most people my age and older, I grew up without the Internet. When I was 16, my grandfather got Prodigy and put all of his children on his account, so that was my first foray into the world of cyberspace, but it was a far cry from what we now know as the World Wide Web.

Over the next few years, the Internet became more and more available and by the time I was 22, I lived in a house with a dial-up Internet connection and had my own e-mail account. We all know what the next eleven years entailed (yes, I’ll be 33 on December 26. Stop by and say hello!).

This marvel of modern technology allows people to stay in touch across vast distances. When I was a kid, a move to the next town led to a lot of lost friendships because it wasn’t easy to keep in touch. These days, my daughter keeps in touch with friends in three states through e-mail and Facebook (and that wonder of wonders, the cell phone. Remember when you had to wait until after 7 p.m. to make long distance phone calls and they were kept to ten minutes because it cost 10 cents a minute to talk over and above the regular phone bill?).

I’ve mentioned before in this blog that I have reconnected with old friends I never thought I’d see or hear from again. It’s been a wonderful experience. For all these reasons, I love the Internet.

But there’s a dark side. And, no, I’m not talking about what a lot of you probably think I’m talking about. That particular problem hasn’t been an issue in my life, thank goodness. No, this is a personal issue I have, and apparently I am not alone.

I had dinner a couple weeks ago with Leslee from Waiting for the Click. The subject of the Internet came up, and our discussion was about how we feel when we spend too much time online, especially doing specific things.

Like I’ve mentioned before, I have set goals for myself as far as writing and reading. I want to read a book a week (I did manage to read two in the past month and am on number three). But I tend to find ways of procrastinating on these goals, and one of those ways is to waste a lot of time online. And I don’t like it.

When I joined Weight Watchers, it was the online program. Weight Watchers Online has message boards, and of course I got sucked in. Now, I have met some of those people in real life and others have become good cyber friends. It’s almost like having hundreds of pen pals, if that makes sense.

I find, though, that the Internet, especially when it’s a place frequented by people who don’t know each other outside of that context, brings out an ugliness in people. There are people who post on that board who I sincerely hope are much nicer and more positive people when they aren’t there. And I know that sometimes I can be grumpier on that board than I ever would be if I were face to face with someone. Couple that with the fact that something you type might come across very differently if it was said in person, and people react harshly online when they might not if you were face to face.

All of that makes message boards in general very stressful places to spend one’s time.

But I do. I go there when I’m bored or procrastinating. I don’t feel good, spiritually, when I spend too much time there. I feel much better when I spend that time writing or reading. I’d rather be with friends having a lively conversation. I prefer all those things to time online. Yet I get sucked in almost daily. Because, I guess, at heart, it’s easier to be lazy.

I don’t spend gobs of time on Facebook. I will check it to see what’s happening and if I have any messages, then log off. There really isn’t anything else that takes up so much time. I do read quite a few blogs regularly now and look for new ones, but I feel enriched by that. I get inspiration from the words and writing styles of others. Somehow, I need the strength and wherewithal to just never even open that website again.

Brain candy is nice sometimes. But I should be spending more time doing things that make me feel alive and fewer things that make my teeth clench.

How to Avoid Being Shot While Driving

It’s a good thing I am not actually homicidal, and also that I don’t own a gun. It’s especially a good thing I don’t have a gun in my car. Because if I were going to be homicidal, it would be while driving.

In an effort to keep drivers safe from my wrath, I offer the following list of offenses that would get you shot were I carrying a gun:

• Driving below the speed limit (exceptions made for inclement weather).
• Driving on my bumper when I’m going below the speed limit in the middle of a blizzard that’s reduced visibility to five feet and obscured the line where the road ends and the ditch begins. I don’t care that you’re driving an SUV with great traction. You can’t see any farther than I can. Just sayin’. (This does not happen in Florida, but happened all the time in Buffalo.)
• Turning from a side road onto a road with two lanes and turning right into the lane in which I’m driving instead of the other lane where there is no traffic, then failing to speed up so I almost run into your bumper because there’s no room for me to get out of your way.
• Not using turn signals.
• Running a red light and almost plowing into me.
• Turning left when a huge tractor trailer is turning right on the opposite side of the road, which will, if it hits you, plow you right into my car, which is stopped at the red light of the cross street. (I wish I could include a picture of this here.)
• Not turning your headlights on when the sun is nowhere to be found because it’s the middle of the night.
• Not turning your headlights on when it’s raining. Especially when it’s raining really, really hard. No one can see you, idiot.
• Refusing to pass a police car that is going way below the speed limit. They won’t pull you over just for passing. I promise. And if you’re still not going to pass, then move over and let the rest of us by.
• Swerving all over the road because you’re eating, talking on the phone, texting, changing your clothes, smoking a cigarette, putting on makeup, reading or any other activity that you should not be doing while driving, especially when it’s incredibly obvious to those around you that you cannot safely do both at the same time.
• Turning in front of me (cutting me off), especially when there isn’t another car coming behind me for miles.
• Ignoring the “no right turn” signs that are there because there’s a service road and if you turn right from the main road, you run a good chance of mowing down the person turning from the service road, who has the right of way.
• Doing any of the above, then giving me the finger for honking my horn at you. You deserved it. You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you.
• Playing your bass so loud my whole car shakes and I end up with a migraine (if I didn’t already have one). No one cares that you have a nice car stereo. It doesn’t make you look cool. It makes you look like a jerk and kind of a loser who needs something more substantial in his or her life.
• Getting angry with me for not making a left turn when there are cars coming in the other direction.
• Driving drunk. There is no excuse for this. Plan ahead, call a cab, just don’t drink. I don’t care what you do to avoid this, but do something. If I had my way, someone who gets caught driving drunk should be charged with no less than attempted murder. You’re lucky I don’t get my way.

That’s all I can think of for now, but I’m sure there are plenty more. I’ll probably think of them on my drive home this afternoon. I do live in Tallahassee, after all. It’s the home of The Worst Drivers in the World. And I’ve driven in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., New York City (Times Square on a Saturday night), New Jersey and Boston, to name a few.

Anyone else want to add to my list?

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne

All I can say is that I simply adore Nathaniel Hawthorne. Adore him.

In high school, I read The Scarlet Letter. In college, two of the books we were supposed to read (but never got to) were The Blithedale Romance and The House of the Seven Gables. I very much enjoyed The Scarlet Letter, but never read the other two. I started them both several times, but just couldn’t keep my concentration because the language is from the mid-1800s.

I guess I’m finally old enough that either I get the language better or just have more patience for it, but I’m finally getting through Blithedale. I’ve wanted to read this one in particular for a while because of its subject matter — a group of people trying to live on a commune. It’s based on a real commune with which Hawthorne was associated prior to writing the book.

This man is excellent at making a political point but not shoving it down his readers’ throats. It’s just a story, but it says a lot about the subject.  I think, in today’s world, this is a must-read. And I will add that everyone should also read The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.

I won’t give you all my thoughts on these books because I think you should all draw your own conclusions. I think you’re all smart enough to figure it out.