I’m behind on the times, and I’m not ashamed to tell you.
I don’t have cable. I don’t have satellite. I don’t have TiVo, DVR and I don’t know what it’s like to fast-forward through commercials.
I have a little conversion box that cost me $5 with a government coupon. And bunny ears. Foil is involved, and works wonders on Channel 3.
During the summer, while the good TV was on break, I watched TV maybe five times. It was nice to have evenings to discover new blogs and new authors; to get outside and take a few drives.
But now, it’s back — and I think we’re all experiencing it. Many people who know I’m “behind” don’t understand what I watch on TV because I don’t have Bravo or HBO or whatever other networks I’m missing out on. And certain coworkers — ahem, Maggie — made fun of me for creating a Fall TV grid of my own. But Layla did the same too, even if she didn’t write it out.
So what am I watching, you ask?
Here it is. The lineup:
Sunday: “Desperate Housewives” (Probably my favorite) and sometimes, “Brothers and Sisters.”
Monday: I want to give “Accidentally on Purpose” a shot just because I liked Jenna Elfman in “Dharma & Greg.” I also like “Castle,” though I’m not a fan of crime shows.
Tuesday: “Biggest Loser,” which is usually sooo long and doesn’t leave room for anything else.
Wednesday: “America’s Next Top Model.”
Thursday: “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Private Practice” (OMG, I can’t wait for this week’s premiere!) “The Office” is on during “Grey’s,” so I don’t know what I’m going to do … crisis!)
Friday and Saturday are pretty boring when it comes to network TV.
I’ll also catch an occassionally “Dancing With the Stars,” “Amazing Race” or “American Idol,” but they didn’t make my list.
No, I’m not pathetic. I’m sure you do the same thing, even if you won’t admit it. So come on: admit it, we can be pathetic, TV-lovers together.
September 29th, 2009 in
General by
Lauren |
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When I ran over to Tillie’s Coffee for a caffeine boost yesterday morning, I had no idea I was going to have an overload of cuteness at the door. Take a look:
The little dog was the energetic one of the two and wanted to follow her owner into the coffee shop, and to bark at several other dogs nearby. But when the owner told her to stay put, the little ball of fluff managed to do so until the owner got her coffee. The owner said the German Shepherd is supposed to babysit, but that she’s not a very strict watcher.
September 23rd, 2009 in
General by
Layla |
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Did you know today is the International Day of Peace? I didn’t, until this weekend.
The United Nations created the International Day of Peace in 1982, and they made Sept. 21 the official, permanent date of the holiday in 2002. So this holiday is over a quarter of a century old!
And it’s definitely a necessary holiday, too. We should be working for peace as much as possible every day of the year, but it’s good to have a day to stop, reflect on progress, and come up with new ideas and find new supporters.
It’s a little late to get a celebration together, unfortunately. And while there were no events in the local area this year, there were a few in Sacramento and Jackson, including a harvest picnic. Maybe next year we can get something going a bit closer to home!
In the meantime, check out the Web site for the International Day of Peace for information about the holiday and ideas about how to work for peace year-round.
So I walked into the bathroom at work today. No, wait, stop; it’s OK. This isn’t a TMI (too much information) post.
Anyway, I turned on the light and for a split second I thought I’d somehow walked through the wrong door. I’m used to going from the newsroom’s flourescent lighting to a warmer light in the bathroom. Not anymore — the light bulb must have been replaced with one of those energy saving bulbs.
I’m not a fan of those light bulbs. Why would I voluntarily subject myself to more unnatural light than I already get all day at work? (Sometimes I do get to escape the office. Then I get real sunlight and a sunburn. Yay?) Yes, I know the point of the bulbs is to “go green” and save energy, but the combination of those bulbs and the off-white wall paint in my duplex really does make everything green.
I’m not alone: There’s a 109-member “I Hate Energy Saving Light Bulbs” group on Facebook.
Please tell me there’s a happy medium between the normal old light bulbs and the “I want to subject myself to more icky lighting” bulbs.
September 17th, 2009 in
General by
Layla |
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I think every generation has that one moment that is seared into their memories forever, where their world changes radically. There may be other moments that are always remembered, other events that always stand out, but the first one is the one that defines a generation.
For my grandparents, it was the attack on Pearl Harbor; for my parents, it was President Kennedy’s assassination. For my generation, it was Sept. 11, 2001.
I’m not sure what it was like out here. I was living right outside New York City at the time, going to school. My roommate and I had one of the only landline phones on campus — cell phones were already the norm, and they all stopped working when the towers and their antennas went down — so our friends and their friends trickled in and out throughout the day, trying to call family members or loved ones and find out who was safe and who was missing.
There was an aborted trip to give blood later that day. The traffic was bad. You could see the smoke rising from the city from the road. By the time we got to the blood bank, the lines were so long that they were turning people away. It turned out to be for the better; a few months later, there were blood shortages because it was too soon for most people to give again.
Going into the city after 9/11 was an intense experience. For months after, there were flyers with photos of missing persons on them everywhere. I do mean everywhere, from walls lining the streets to subway bathrooms. They were even plastered along the fences of the cemetery at Trinity Church, along with messages from firefighters, schoolchildren and small towns all over the country.
For years, every time you heard a plane, you’d see everyone in the streets pause for a split second and glance up. It became instinctual, even after you stopped wondering if it was another attack or even thinking about it at all, just a hesitation between steps and a look skyward.
The messages from the firefighters and police officers were the most touching. A lot of first responders lost their lives trying to save more people. Many were inside when they towers collapsed. And hundreds more gave countless hours afterward … and, as Sgt. Chris Jacobson noted in today’s Behind the Badge, some are still giving their lives years later.
It’s eight years since 9/11, and the world has changed a lot in those eight years. But we can’t forget those people who died in the attacks, and those who made the ultimate sacrifice on that day and afterward to save everyone they could and bring closure to the families of those they couldn’t.
According to the registration info for next month’s Chicago Marathon, I’m the only “Layla” running it, of about 45,000 people.
This doesn’t surprise me, since my name isn’t that common. But what did surprise me was the fact that there are three Leilas, one Leyla and two Lailas running the marathon. Clearly, their parents were too distracted by the childbirth thing to spell their daughters’ names correctly. (No offense to the Leila I know.) HOWEVER, I will most certainly excuse the parents of one Laila Laursen, who is in the “Top 100″ billing at the marathon. That means she’s run faster than 3:01 in a marathon or 1:21 in a half-marathon — which is really, really fast.
Speaking of the marathon, it starts in a little more than 31 days. Wow, that’s soon! I’m not the panicking type, though I do admit to worrying about things like injuries. I wasn’t nervous before my first marathon last December, and I don’t intend to freak about this one, either. In the last 11 weeks, I’ve missed just two planned runs, and both were only three miles on days that my body said would be better served resting.
Training update: Saturday’s long run of 20 miles went well, and I didn’t bonk at mile 11, as I’ve been doing for a while on longer runs. Including a banana for breakfast may have solved that problem. This weekend has a shorter long run of 12 miles, and the following week is my longest run of 22 miles. I’ve still got something nagging my ankle/Achilles area, but I’m tending to it the best I can on my own until I straighten out doctor/insurance differences.
Anyone who’s known me more than five minutes probably knows I’m a bit of a geek.
So it should come as no surprise to anyone that I like to hang out at LiveScience.com, reading geeky articles about epidemic diseases, genetic experiments and how much spit a person produces (two to four pints a day, if you were wondering).
Which is how I spotted this article: Cars Could Run on Watermelons.
According to the article:
Each year, about 1 out of 5 watermelons are left behind in fields because they are misshapen or because of cosmetic blemishes. In the 2007 growing season, this amounted to roughly 360,000 metric tons of lost melons in the United States alone.
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture now suggest these reject watermelons, which are currently just plowed back into the field, could find use in biofuel.
The scientists propose the sugar in these melons can be fermented into ethanol — more commonly known as drinking alcohol — which is finding increasing use as a fuel worldwide. Watermelon juice makes up roughly half the weight of a melon, and this juice is up to 10 percent readily fermentable sugar.
In experiments, scientists found they could efficiently convert the sugars in watermelon juice into ethanol. They estimate roughly 26 liters of ethanol could be made per metric ton of rejected watermelons.
Pretty crazy, but I guess not all that surprising, since cars can already run off of vegetable oil, waste chocolate, wine and other food items, not to mention solar power and electricity.
So maybe some of these ideas can bring the cost of gas down a little bit. Competition never hurt anyone … and that wine-powered car might bring a bit more business to Lodi, too!
(Seriously, though, food should be for eating before it gets used to make biofuel. And as everyone knows, a watermelon-powered car would be far less efficient than a car equipped with Mr. Fusion anyway.)
Since it’s Labor Day weekend, with the day itself in just a couple of hours, it seemed like a good time to mention something I’ve been pretty interested in lately: the fair trade movement.
Even though Labor Day is now an excuse for a three-day weekend, featuring barbecues, boating or the last camping trip of summer and the kick-off of football season, it started out as a way to protest unfair working conditions like extreme wage cuts and to bolster support for an eight-hour workday and five-day work week, things most of us take for granted now — at least in the U.S.
But a lot of people around the world don’t yet have those rights. For example, a lot of chocolate makers purchase cocoa from companies that use child labor, and sometimes slave labor. It’s not exclusive to chocolate, either — the sugar, coffee and tea trades are also affected.
While there are letter-writing movements to talk to some of the companies that buy ingredients from farms using child labor and get them to change their practices, the great thing about capitalism is it allows us to “vote with our feet” and simply take our business elsewhere. Even a little bit counts, especially nowadays!
Check out the Fair Trade Federation and TransFair USA for more info (and to find out where you can buy fair trade chocolate for those campfire s’mores).
Depressing for a holiday weekend, I know, but I think it’s a good idea to remember what holidays are for and celebrate them in the spirit intended!
More than two months ago, I wrote here about witnessing a horrific car crash. The driver, Joe Pais, died at the scene, and his wife suffered major injuries. She spent weeks in a hospital, but last week Bernice Pais died of her injuries.
Since writing that blog entry in June, I’ve heard from a couple of their relatives. One of their daughters invited me to Bernice’s funeral, and I attended it yesterday. I only wish I could have met the Pais couple before their death: If their daughters and grandchildren are any reflection, Joe and Bernice set excellent examples. I learned yesterday that they immigrated from Portugal, starting out with almost nothing. They were hard workers and, as one family member put it, they were proof that the “American dream” is possible.
It’s very interesting to me that, as politicians as a whole have gotten more corrupt, the everyday people of the United States have gotten more polarized along party lines. It seems to have started in the mid-90s and only strengthened, with the encouragement of our representatives in the federal government.
It’s gotten so bad that it is literally impossible to have a political conversation with anyone, whether you agree with them or disagree. Try it. Within five minutes, the words “liberal” and “conservative” will be thrown around with disgust. Even if you are in agreement with someone, they are likely to start badmouthing “the other side” instead of having an actual discussion.
Non-partisan movements? There aren’t any, anymore. They may start out that way, as the TEA Parties did, or the conservation movement way back when, or many religious service organizations, or countless other groups, but it doesn’t last. Within months, and sometimes within days, they are co-opted by pundits, Hollywood celebrities, radio personalities, and so on, and sometimes by even worse groups, like the Ku Klux Klan.
What happened? When did we stop looking at people and seeing people, rather than a donkey or an elephant? When did we become so divided as a nation that we can’t find any common ground? And where does that leave people in between, who are neither Democrat or Republican?
As soon as you start categorizing people as “liberal” or “conservative” and responding to them based on that label rather than their intrinsic humanity, then “divide and conquer” has worked. And the only people who benefit don’t have any of our best interests in mind.
