Random Musings

The Random Musings posts are the easiest for me because this is how my brain works, popping from one thought to the next with no regard for connectivity.  Here goes!!

Last night I was in bed getting ready to fall asleep  play games on my Kindle and Mr. Big Ed was already fast asleep as he goes to bed about 4 hours ahead of me.  When all the sudden he started jerking, moving and making sounds (reminds of me how a dog barks and runs in their sleep) and then he kicked me!  He KICKED me!!  AND DID IT AGAIN!  I started trying to wake him up and said "Hey, you are kicking me!" And in his dream fog he replied back "Yeah, I know. I was trying to kick the zombies".

Huh?  Zombies?

That was quite the unexpected end to my day!  Can't wait to talk to him about this over dinner and see if he remembers any of it.

A few days ago it was one of my sister's birthday.  She was turning the Big 5-0.  I did that just a few years ago my own self and wanted to come up with something fun to mark the occasion for her.  So I turned to my friend Google, and speaking of Google let me say this:  I do NOT like the new Google logo thing.  But back to the Googling adventure.  I asked Google about what products were put on the market the same year that she was born, 1965 and got a nice long list of really fun things.  Then I set about trying to find some of them.

Here's what I got:

The Sound of Music - they had a 50th anniversary edition available

Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella - similar 50th anniversary edition

Mattel's See n Say, the Farmer says - This was a reproduction and it was the very first toy she was ever given as a Christmas gift so I was really happy to find one.

Operation Game - vintage with all the parts, money, even the original rubber band.

Mystery Date - reproduction of the original.

Spirograph - Be still my heart!  I loved the Spirograph so much!!!  This is an original one with everything still in the box minus the green pen.

Barrel O Monkeys - old, vintage, original.  Cute!

Spaghetti-Os - brand new can

Honeycomb Cereal - of course, new.

I found really fun brightly colored striped and polka-dotted giftwrap papers and wrapped them and set them out in a big pile in my family room because she happened to be in town this weekend.  She and her friend and friend's son all came over for dinner last night and I had her open them and try to figure out the connection between all these things.  I think the "50th Anniversary edition" on the damn DVDs gave it away but it was still lots of fun and I hope she likes them.

AND we broke out the Mystery Date game and played.  That was lots of fun.  We had dinner and I made a birthday cake which we were all too full to really enjoy.

This is the week leading up to the premiere of the new season of Doctor Who.  The 52nd season as a matter of fact.  And months ago they announced that there would be a showing of the first episode for this season in the movie theaters.  They did this last year and I got tickets and we all went dressed in our best Doctor Who outfits.  So the minute I saw this was happening again this year I snagged 2 tickets.  I have been beside myself about this ever since!

Until last week when I watched the trailer about the theater showing and see that it is actually going to be THE LAST EPISODE FROM LAST SEASON with a "special preview" of the upcoming episode.  WTF??

Are they kidding me?  What complete ass whistles.  That was a really crappy thing to do.  And guess what?  The new season starts this coming Saturday.  And this coming Saturday I will be at my mama's house at a family birthday party for my sister.  The one who was here.

Well, sonofabitch.  Now, not only do I NOT get to see the episode beforehand in the theater in 3D, but I also don't get to watch it on Saturday with the rest of the world.  I will get to watch it off the DVR much later then everyone else. Goddammit.

In other news, fall is shaping up to be absolutely gorgeous around here.  The sky is such a beautiful shade of blue, the birds and other critters seem quite happy.  And I have started decorating for fall/Halloween/Days of the Dead.  By decorating I mean I have hung Days of the Dead wreaths on my front doors and put out a package of Pumpkin Spice Kisses and some Halloween flavored Peeps. But it's a start!

Hope your fall or spring depending on your hemisphere is shaping up nicely!

Seriously Random Stuff

Another of those posts that kind of follow my thought pattern.

1.  Do you ever watch t.v. and see a commercial that is either so hilarious or so horrible you immediately think, "Holy shit, I have to remember to blog about THAT!"??

Well, I do that all the time.  And by the time I get to youtube and go to look it up so I can share it with you, I can't remember what it was.  It's gone.  Poof!

2. We are still looking for a home for the little Mama Kitty who is the cutest, sweetest, most precious little teeny kitty you ever saw.  If you are at all interested in providing a loving home for this girl, let me know.

And before you ask, no.  She can not stay here. Angus MacPhee absolutely hates her and would make her life a living hell.  Angus is a dick.

3. My across-the-street neighbor was robbed yesterday morning.  In broad daylight.  While he AND his yard worker were both around.  It was a completely bizarre incident.  And 4 years ago when Ernest T. Bass was dropped off here I tried and tried to get my neighbor to take him.  And if he had, well, I don't think that idiot thieving thief would have made it into the garage.  Ernest T. is quite loud and protective of his property.

4. The Texas wildfires are popping up all over the place.  The area just east of us that is on fire is said to be the size of Connecticut.

5. Did I ever mention here that I am growing out my hair color and going all natural?  Well, I am.  Since menopause is totally kicking my memory's ass six ways to Sunday, I decided that I need to lessen my brain's exposure to chemicals.  Also, I am super annoyed with seeing people in their 70s trotting around with jet black hair.  And I didn't want to be one of them.

So I decided to embrace my silver hairs and let them grow in and let's just see what we shall see!  So far, people are very complimentary of the new color.  I never know if they really mean it or are just taking pity on the poor old gray haired lady.

6. This is the first year that we have kept the round card table up in the living room all year.  We put it up at Christmas time to do jigsaw puzzles near the Christmas tree.  And this year?  It has just stayed up and we have continued doing puzzle after puzzle.  It has to stay in that room because we can close it off away from the cats.

7. Remember the little crocheted bottle cap trivets I was making?  I got 3 more done before I ran out of bottle caps.  So that is 3 Christmas gifts done.  I need to get a source for clean, unsmashed bottle caps.  Any ideas?

8. Our garden is completely dead.  Nothing survived this horrendous drought and 4 months of 100+ temps.   I am worried about our massive oak trees.  I could give two figs for the damn stupid grass, but my trees?  That's another story.

9.  Normally, I have good book recommendations for you, but not now.  Lately, all I have been reading is about food, healthy diets, good food for your body and for the environment.  And you know what?  Some of these things contradict each other!  It's confusing.  I can't decide whether to try out The Diet That Seems Easiest To Work With or The One That Seems Best For the Earth and Hardest For Me.

It's a bit daunting and overwhelming, all this information.

10. And finally!  My last thought for the day.  Well, my last thought to share here, not necessarily the last thought I will have the whole DAY!

Life is good.  It can be as complicated as you want, or as easy and simple as you want.  It's all in how you look at it.

I have a friend who I play Mah Jongg with who has a needlepoint sampler on her wall that says something like "The difference between Stumbling Blocks and Stepping Stones, is in how you use them".  And that's kind of what I have been thinking.  The situation is what it is regardless of how you feel about it.  You can choose to have negative feelings about something but that doesn't make the facts negative, does it?  Facts are facts.  A situation is what it is whether you choose to love it or hate it.  Which set of feelings will get you through the day?

Day 3 Plastic No More

Here it is Day 3 of the Plastic No More Challenge.  I have done a really good job of limiting or eliminating plastic coming in to my home so far.  Here's the lowdown on how I have fared.

1. I haven't had to grocery shop yet.  So that is good.

2. I have dedicated a small bucket to collect any plastic that I do end up with and will take pics of it so you can see what I am dealing with.  For example, the first thing to go in the bucket is the plastic pull strip from around the top of the frozen juice concentrate paper can thing.  The paper gets composted, leaving just the tear strip and the two metal ends to dispose of.

3. When we run out of frozen juice to use, I am buying a bag of oranges and setting them and the juicer out on the counter.  You want juice?  Cut yourself 2 oranges and squeeze them.  Now, wasn't that fast and easy!  Not to mention, good tasting and better for you.

4. I am going to have to go back to making my own laundry detergent when I run out of the liquid we currently have.  The borax and the washing soda are in paper board cartons but the soap to grate is in a clear plastic wrapper.  Alternatively, I can buy a box of Tide powder, but it comes with a plastic scoop inside.  Either way, there will be a bit of plastic to go in the bucket.

5. When we run out of milk, I will have to decide which is the lesser of the evils.
     A. Gallon of milk in a plastic jug, cheaper cost-wise.
     B. Half gallons in the waxed paper cartons, but they have a plastic spigot and cap.
     C. Tetra-pak liters that are completely non-recyclable and still have a plastic top.
     D. Can of evaporated milk and dilute it.  Cost-wise this isn't bad, but taste-wise?  Gaaahhgg!
     E. Box of powdered milk.  I like the Nido milk from Mexico that is whole milk rather than the non-fat kind they sell here in the U.S.  It comes in a metal can with a metal top.  So this might be the way to go. I am the only one who drinks milk or puts it on cereal, so I am just pleasing myself anyway.

****Ding ding ding!!! We might have a winner on this deal!

6. Yesterday I bought 6 books in Japanese from my local used book store to gift my nephew who is studying Japanese in college.  And before my brain had kicked into gear I was out the door with all those books in a damn plastic bag.  Grrrrr.

I am blaming the lady who was in line behind me.  She distracted me by being a wiener and being wrong.  Here's what happened:  She walked in whilst I was at the check-out counter having the guy look up the ISBN number of all these Japanese books to make sure they were in fact Japanese and not Chinese.  Also to make sure they weren't porn or something I didn't want to be gifting my nephew.  So the lady walks in and looks all impatient and stands there with a paper.  The dude working there  looks up from the computer and says to her, "I'll be right with you."

She says "I am looking for books by (consults her paper) Maud Lucy Montgomery"

He says "Who????"

I butt in and said "She wrote the Anne of Green Gable series. They should be in young teenager section back there" and pointed in the right direction.

Then I said "I believe her name is Lucy Maud Montgomery, in case you can't find it the way you have it".

She looked me straight in the eye and said "No.  Her name was Maud.  She just went by LUCY!"

Okaay.

Which is what I said to her. And then went back to my business of making sure I had Japanese and not Chinese and not porn.

So see what I mean about being flustered when I grabbed my bag and left?

Anyhoo, get this.  I went next door to the Bubble Tea place and met up with the rest of my group and we decided to head over to Goodwill.  So I go and put my books in the car and backed out of my parking space and was headed up the aisle of the parking lot when the same lady was coming towards me in her car waved me down.  I rolled down my window and she said, "I found what I was looking for. And I wanted to apologize for correcting you.  You were right."

Awwww.  Wasn't that nice?  Most people would never bother to do that.  Afterwards I said to myself, I should have apologized to her for butting my fat nose into her business in the first place.

I get to Goodwill and what did I find?  A 20th Anniversary edition of Trivial Pursuit in very good, damn near brand-new condition.  That's what I found!

In case you don't know this about me, I love games.  And I love, love, love Trivial Pursuit games.  And I don't have this edition.  And it was marked 1.99.

Who do you think got herself a new Trivial Pursuit game?  And who do you think played the game with Sparky last night and WON?

And who do you think remembered to tell the GW clerk to keep her plastic bag and carried her own game out in her own little hands?

Have a great plastic-free day!

Count so far:
Plastic - 2 items

This is how you win at Pictionary

So the week before Christmas my in-laws were here.  And any time I can get 4 or more people together to play some board games, well, it's a good time here at Chez Lisa Pie.

Ended up me and my s-i-l, let's call her Donna.  Because that's her name.  Me and Donna were one team. Or is it Donna and I were one team?  Regardless, you know the make-up of Team 1.  Team 2 was my son and her daughter.  Cousins who are younger and think they are smarter than we are.  Ha!

They did start out doing really well and at one point I thought we were going to get our asses waxed.  But then . . . . something clicked and we got on a roll and just whipped those young puppies into shape!  I tell you I was totally channelling Kathy Bates from Fried Green Tomatoes, "Face it, you may be younger and cuter, but we are older and have more insurance better drawing skillz".

That would be wrong because we had almost no drawing skillz at all!  Our drawings were so bad, they were horrible!  How bad were they, you ask?  Well, let me show you a drawing that Donna did for me to guess.

Now, when you look at this lovely drawing what comes to mind?
Knives?
Torpedoes?
Sperm?
Balloon animals?

Well, unless you guessed mermaid you would be as wrong as I was.  For mermaid she drew a fish (of sorts) and then put THREE LEGS on it!

We all damn near peed ourselves over that one.  It was so damn funny I didn't even care that we lost that point and had to pass the cards.

But I also wanted to share with you a picture of the winning picture.  Keep in mind we still have the same person drawing (Donna) and the same person (Moi) guessing.

First she drew the thing on the right. (I guessed basketball hoop and was correct)

Then she drew the stick figure person and I started guessing basketball players.

She shook her head no, and colored in his face.  Which led me to confine my guesses to Black basketball  players.

I said "Michael Jordan"

No.

"Wilt Chamberlain?"

DING DING DING DING DING DING DING !!!!!!

And THAT is how you win at Pictionary, my friends.

With plenty of time left on that timer.

(Puffing out chest a little too proudly and not being at all nice about beating the pants off our kids)

Something I am passionate about

I love games.  I may have mentioned this before.  I love card games, board games, dice games, dominoes, even jigsaw puzzles which I guess, technically are not games.  But in my house the puzzles are on the shelves with the games.  Games = fun.

And my favorite game is . . . . . .

Mah Jongg!

Yea for Mah Jongg!

In addition to sharing a bit about this fun game and hoping to recruit some new players, I am also wanting to correct a misconception.  Nothing irritates the beejeebers out of me more than a perfectly good thing becoming twisted into some perverted thing that does not resemble the original and yet still keeping the same name.  Here are a couple of examples of this perversion:

Fajitas.  I have ranted about this for years.  I have grumbled and bitched about this.  I have muttered under my breath and yes, I have resorted to smart-ass sarcasm.  Fajita is a Spanish word.  It means little belt or skirt.  The word is faja, and fajita is the diminutive.  This is the Spanish word for skirt steaks.  Skirt steaks come from cows.  It is a cut of beef, like a pot roast or short ribs.  Do chickens have pot roasts? Do shrimp have short ribs?  Can either of their animals produce a skirt steak?  Quit using that word to mean any possible thing I want to mix with peppers and onions and stick on a sizzling cast iron skillet.  OMG, you just don't know how much this irritates me.  You can bet your sweet ass that I will never order such an abomination and if it is on your menu, there is a really high probablility that I will never darken your doors again.  Be forewarned restaurantiers!!

Right now I am so het up about the fajitas that I can't recall what my second example was going to be. So, on to the Mah Jongg!

Here is what a beautiful Chinese set of Mah Jongg tiles looks like:

And here is a set of American style Mah Jongg tiles:

Aren't they all gorgeous?  I love the tiles.  

Here are some close ups of the actual tiles:

These tiles above are vintage and are the butterscotch color Bakelite, one of the precursors of plastic.

Look at these gorgeous tiles!  They are 2 pieces dove-tailed together.  Typically they are bamboo and old cow bones.  Some of the antique sets have ivory rather than cow bone.

Look how cute this little group of Mah Jongg players are!  This is an American group.  You can tell by the set they are playing with, the colorful tile racks in front of each player and that they also have the distinctive National Mah Jongg League playing card in front of them.  Or you could just assume they are Americans by virtue of the fact that they all look pretty white and non-Asian.

Above this is a closer-up view of more Americans playing with their American version of tiles, racks and cards.

This a shot of the NMJL card for 2008.  The NMJL is in NYC for your FYI.  Ha ha ha ha!!  NY Jewish women are credited for bringing Mah Jongg to the U.S. and making it their own.  Their website is great for information on how to play, where to buy a set, how to get replacement tiles in case you find an old set that is short a tile or two, whatever you need to get your Mah Jongg game up and running, these women have the scoop for you.

Basically the difference between American Mah Jongg and all the other versions out there is the card.  In all other versions you kind of make up your own hands, like playing Gin or Rummy.  In our games the NMJL comes out with a new card each year around Chinese New Year of different hands to play for and point values for each.  They are way more difficult than any hands I would be making up for my own self, that is for sure.

And now I come to my rant and bitch about the subversion of Mah Jongg.  Every time Mah Jongg gets brought up in conversation there is some moron who says "Oh, I love Mah Jongg!  I play that kind of Solitaire on the computer all the time!"  Would you say to a world-class Bridge or Poker player that you know how to play Bridge or Poker because you play Solitaire with cards?  

Well, you shouldn't.  Just because the computer gaming folks came up with some fun Solitaire games that involve some Mah Jongg tiles doesn't mean that you are now a Mah Jongg player. 

Any more than shrimp have grown skirt steaks.

I know, I am a curmudgeon.  Sue me.  

HUGE Rant coming here! Prepare yourselves!

Gird your loins!  or whatever it is that you do to prepare yourself for a really big rant and some really bad news!

I was reading the news on the internet this morning as I am wont to do.  And what did I spy?  An article about a new Monopoly game!  That's what!  OMG!  Guess who loves herself some Monopoly games?  I have more than I can count on one hand, but not more than I can count on two hands, cause that would just be weird and hoarder-ish, wouldn't it?

Or would it?

Anyhoo, back to said article which you can read Here 

Take a look at this horrific thing:

(pssst, did you notice that I figured out how to put a pic up in my blog again??)  : )  Soo happy!!

Here is what they did:  

1. They took the guts out of the game.

2. They took the money out of the game.

3.  They made it ROUND.

4.  They took away the houses and hotels.

5. They took away the cute little metal tokens!!!  

6. They put shitty plastic tabs in place of the metal tokens!

7. There is no way to do side-deals, no way to put income tax, etc in free parking.

8. There is no way to learn to count out money.

9. Basically, they took the game out of the game.  

Grrrr.  Rat bastards.  I am so ticked off right now that I am highly pissed off!  WTF is the point of the game now?  Nothing to hold, nothing to count, it doesn't even seem like a game at all!

I have already sent a scathing email to the rat bastards at Hasbro.  Shame on them.  Imagine coming up with a new game idea in the idea meeting that is basically "Here is a new twist on an old game about buying and selling property; there will be no money to handle, there will be no cute little race cars or slow little irons, no way to negotiate, and let's just squeeeeeeze all the fun right on out of this classic game".  How the hell did this idea make it out of the idea room?  Were they all high?  Were they all "bored"  (get it? BOARD games???)  All I know, is they are all RAT BASTARDS!

And not only will I not buy this travesty piece of crap, I will boycott all of their games if they don't shape up.  Shape up back to a square board game, not a round one.

Update, my ass.  Hhhmmmmppphh.