Author: the outside lane

Happy. That about covers it.
baseball, Health, music, swimming

You Betta Work!

the outside lane

I’ve picked two actual workouts to rotate into my lap swimming.  Thus far, I have swum to the clock without much attention to how many laps I am getting in during a workout.  Going forward, I’ll be swimming to a set routine.  I think that will help a) with the ennui of back and forth, b) boost the physical benefits, and c) keep my mind off my fears because I’ll be too busy thinking, “Wait…was that four or five?  Dang it!  Better call it four just to be sure.”

I am listening to the World Series, avoiding watching the nail biter.  I watched until Lewis walked two to load the bases.  Then, I couldn’t watch any longer.  It isn’t like it’s MY team.  My team is the Braves.  My American League team is the Yankees.  But, if I can’t have a series with the Braves and the Yankees (and wasn’t I having a ball that year?! two hats!  I rooted for whichever team was at bat.) then I’ll root, root, root for the home team–my home team, the Rangers.  If they don’t win, it really will be a shame.

Although, if they do win, I won’t be able to taunt my brother-in-law and husband any longer with, “Remind me…  How many World Series have the Rangers won?”

I’m an odd sports fan.  I really do love watching sports, but I have these huge gaps in knowledge of rules of play.  I still don’t know the difference between all the numbers they call on the football field–you know, the ones that determine for how many more plays the offense has the ball?  No clue.  But I get excited just the same.  I confuse baseball rules with softball rules half the time.  I know zilch about hockey, and basketball foul rules confuse the hoop out of me.  But I love watching sports.  I know when to yell.

Like right then!  Beltre homerun!!!  We’re in the lead at the top of the 7th!  Two more innings to play, though.  No getting cocky.

In other news, I am seriously considering (and by seriously I mean starting to plan) giving a stab at auditions for the next X Factor. (HOMERUN CRUZ! WOO!)  I’ve always said that the only thing keeping me from auditioning for American Idol was the age limit.  I think I could have a very decent shot at being an Over 30.  I mean, I’m no homeless, James Brown impersonator, but I’m pretty good with a mic.  I’ve thought how much fun it would be to live blog the process, but wondered if cell phones are allowed?

Do I want to be a known commodity, though?  No.  Do I want validation from Simon Cowell?  Yes.  Ha!  I want to vanity audition.  So the question is, if I don’t really want to sing for a living, do I fool with it and potentially rob someone of the chance, who is truly passionate about performance as a lifestyle?  That is assuming that I am good enough to make it through the producers, onto the actual audition.

I know what I would wear…

Reviews

American Horror Story

the outside lane

I’m not much for scary stories.  Ghost stories are all right (because I don’t believe in them), but toenails scraping on the windshield stories?  No.  Can’t do it.  However, in light of the fact that some of my favorite actors/characters from other shows are popping up on American Horror Story (Tammy Taylor, Zoe,  Albie Grant, Sylar, Russell Effing Edgington!), when I was flipping channels and found it on last night, I stopped for the last half of the episode.  30 minutes later and my skin was crawling.  I had nightmares all night.

What is so scary about it to me?  Certainly not the ghosts (because I don’t believe in them), but the family’s very real feelings of helplessness, anxiety, and fear.  Dylan McDermott and Connie Britton are brilliant actors–even in half an hour they had convinced me that they were what they are pretending to be.  I especially liked watching the subtle changes in McDermott as he told a great, big whopper of a lie.

What else is scary?  The universal fear that everyone else is in on the joke.  Everyone else knows the important secret and no one is telling you.  That is central to this show’s plot.  So is the twilight lighting in every scene.  Just on the edge of dark, where your vision plays its easiest tricks on you, graying out the fringes and starting to turn shadows of innocent chairs and lampshades into lurking monsters.  And just so you know, I’d have taken one look at that house and demanded to go to a Motel 6.  I don’t care what kind of money problems we’re having.  We are NOT living there.  No.

When we moved to Texas, we moved into a suicide house.  Of course I didn’t know this immediately.  I found out after I had been sleeping in the suicide bedroom for months.  I was eleven, and already convinced something was horribly wrong with our house.  Finding out that someone had taken his life right where I was sleeping…no.  I did believe in ghosts then.

 

So here is what I thought was wrong with the show:

  1. Jessica Lange’s plastic surgery
  2. The lighting–Connie Britton is looking harsh in that light, and everyone’s skin looks dirty
  3. The editing.  At one point, Britton and McDermott are having a violent argument with ghosts, and the very next screen–inside of the same scene even–it is as though they don’t even realize that was happening.  And, there was the hospital scene that set us up for horrors and then…petered out?
  4. Continuity.  Dang.  So the Harmons (B&McD) leave the house to go to the hospital (after their house was home invaded by murderous people 2 weeks ago), leaving their daughter alone (in the home invasion house).  Enough time passes that the daughter misses a loud knocking at the door, then a murder in front of her house–literally–ambulances and police sirens and lights, and a hysterical woman screaming on her lawn, and I am assuming she misses the entire crime scene and investigation because when she finally does hear a knock (long after the trick-or-treat traffic has gone–Did I mention it was Halloween?) all she sees is the guy who helped her father kill that other girl–no cop cars behind him.  And her parents, who have conceivably just found out they are expecting Rosemary’s Baby, say they are on their way home when she calls to complain of him.  Britton is STILL IN THE STIRRUPS  when she calls.
  5. Glee.  I hate Glee.
Uncategorized

Good Advice from Wolverine

the outside lane

Arwen linked me to a grouping of letters written by celebrities to their younger selves.  Tell you what, Gillian Anderson shot up in my esteem, and Hugh Jackman cemented his place in my pantheon of nice guys.  Hugh also gave himself some advice I wish I’d had, and which I now plan to give to Thor as he grows.  It goes like this:

Keep writing down one list…and one list only…the 5 things you love to do, and the 5 things you are good at…they will keep changing, but one day they will match up…and there is your path…but even then keep writing your list just to make sure you are still on the right track.

What does your list look like?

Here’s mine:

5 Things I Love To Do

  1. Write
  2. Sing
  3. Tell people what I know
  4. Make people laugh
  5. Be with my family

5 Things I Am Good At

    1. Being part of my family
    2. Writing
    3. Singing
    4. Teaching
    5. Making people feel good about themselves

If you put those lists together, I think I’m on the right track.  Given that I don’t want to write or sing for a full-time living, but that I love to write and sing on the side, and given that my world is my family, I like to think I use my other Love To and Good At in my day job.

What do I wish I could do more of?  I miss the amount of volunteer work I have done in the past, and when Thor is at an age I have pre-determined, we’ll start volunteering together.  Well, I’ll be volunteering.  He’ll be coming along whether he likes it, or not.  Helping other people is healthy.

And because I brought it up, I’m wondering how much I did?

I started volunteering at Teen Court in 1983, and worked steadily for them until 1994.  I racked up over 1200 hours of service at DFW Medical Center, back in the day.  I volunteered as a Visitor at several nursing homes in my area, just going around and talking to the elderly for 15 minutes at a time.  And I spent 12 years putting in 10-15 hours a week volunteering at church. 

It’s been about 8 years–you know, planning  wedding, being a newlywed, getting pregnant, having a baby, having a toddler, having a…you get the idea–since I have been in a committed volunteer relationship.  I look forward to the time I can commit again.

Uncategorized

The 100%

the outside lane

I’m not going to get into percentages because I am really not good at math, but I want to talk about Occupy Wall Street. 

Listen, I’m a big old Capitalist and Libertarian (thanks, Honey!) and I am far from being the person to say you should penalize the Haves to give to the Have-Nots.  I don’t think that is a healthy system, and I don’t think that solves any problems long-term.  I’m all about teaching the man to fish, though I don’t mind keeping him in sardines and bait until he learns.  I don’t think the Rich owe anything to the Poor, and I don’t think the Poor have a right to ask the Rich to fork over their goods.

What we do have a right to do is to question the ethics of the gamemakers, who are the Rich, and question how they stack decks in their own favors, and demand accountability for how their business dealings affect our economy, and our ability to work and provide for ourselves.

In recent years, big mistakes were made by the biggest players that affected the smallest workers.  In the housing industry alone, the banking breakdown meant thousands of lost jobs.  One of my dear friends lost her administrative position for a builder in the bust.  She was one of many who lost her job within that company, and was one of the lucky few who found work quickly.  I, along with a good quarter of my coworkers, lost my job within a luxury vehicle captive credit finance company when the bust affected the way we had to do business.  It took me months to find work, and then it was at a 40% pay cut.  Did I whine about it?  Heck yeah!

The downturn hit my family at a hard time.  We had just bought a house (well within our means–we live debt free outside of our mortgage, thank goodness!!) in a new, developing neighborhood, in a sector that was slated for major growth.  When the economy busted, it meant everything planned for that community was put on hold, including road improvements we’d been counting on for our commute.  We could not have predicted the bust, nor could we have predicted how it would affect us. 

I’m sure the scores of homeowners in our neighborhood who were foreclosed upon in the past couple of years couldn’t either.  And we certainly could not have predicted that the many short sales and foreclosures around us would force us to drive our asking price down so low, we could end up losing money when we finally do sell. 

Funny thing is, the guys in charge could have, should have, and need to be held accountable for their own avarice driven willful ignorance.  My understanding is that this is the basis for the Occupy Wall Street movement. 

It is a Catch-22.  If you bail out the individuals affected, you haven’t touched the source and the hemorrhaging  continues.  If you bail out the source, you reward bad behavior, but you stop the overflow.

Thing is, we’re all in this together.  The Rich will not remain so at the continued expense of the Poor.  You can only tell a guy to eat cake for so long before he breaks open your windows to have a bite of yours.  As a nation, we have to be the 100%.  There will always be the outliers of greed and sloth, but we have to hope that the ethical, responsible average works out to our combined benefit.

I have no answers, being a simple person and no economist.  I’m just glad to know that Thor’s school offers lessons in Mandarin, so he will be able to communicate with his new overlords when China buys us.

Uncategorized

Sick Bay

the outside lane

Here is what I wish someone would invent and develop nationally, though I realize the liability would make it nigh on impossible to do:

 

A sick bay for children with low-grade illnesses, where parents could drop them off with peace of mind that they would be cared for, still allowing the parent to go to work.

 

You would have to staff it with medical professionals, so it would be cost prohibitive to most working families anyway, but it’s a nice idea.  Maybe you could staff it with nuns?  Why do I think nuns=nurses?  Too many war movies is why.

 

I was thinking about it because dinner (at the Black-Eyed Pea in Richardson on Beltline–don’t go there!  Horrible service, cold food.) last night made me ill.  After a short, but very violent burst of my body rejecting the chicken fried steak, I feel better, but my stomach muscles hurt like someone has jumped on them.  I was thinking about how frequently I threw up as a child, and how I always felt better immediately after, but still wasn’t quite ready to move along.  A sick bay would have been a great thing for my working mother.