Mistaken Identity

 

"I don't even know where the hole for this is." Bwahaha! Love the leather.

 

Jeff mentioned the other day that Daisy Fuentes and Richard Marx are married. WHAT? When did this happen? I'm a pop news junkie, for goodness' sake. How did I miss this?

 

Me: Wait wait wait. Isn't Daisy Fuentes married to the lead singer of Nine Inch Nails?

Jeff (NOT into pop news, Googling...): Trent Reznor?

Me: That doesn't sound right. I mean, yes, he is the lead singer, but it must be another band.

Jeff: No. She is married to Richard Marx.

Me: But she used to be married to a musician with leather pants and tattoos... 

Jeff: *shows me a photo of Daisy and Richard*

Me: Oh. That's not her. The lady I'm thinking of is less "girl next door." Maybe an MTV personality? CARMEN ELECTRA! That's who I'm thinking you said was married to Richard Marx.

Jeff: Totally different person.

Me: Yeah.

We went to Fredericksburg today with KathyL. Bought peaches at Jenschke's and had lunch at Altstadt Brewery. Visited Wildseed Farms. Good times!

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...Someone Else to Catch this Drift

I've been listening to Jagged Little Pill, so I'm in a "girl power" sort of mood!

 

Why are you so terrified of silence? 

Here, can you handle this:

 

... 

...

 

;-)

 

The second season of Who Killed Sara on Netflix is good, but not as good as the first. It's very "messy." The jumping around in time is sometimes throwing me off. There are a lot of things that feel randomly added. So many people involved in too many crimes to count at this point. Still watching!

We binged Halston in a few days. It was also medium-good. It is entertaining and has lots of pretty things to look at. I just couldn't find much to like about the title character. Talented, but his egomania and the careless way he treated most people just didn't give me any sympathy for him when things went wrong. The actress/singer who plays Liza Minnelli is outstanding, and of course, there's the greatness of Ewan McGregor!

I caught Valerie Bertinelli's new show, Valerie's Hot Dish last weekend. Comedic actresses Melissa Peterman and Nicole Sullivan ARE Laura and I cooking together. They are hilarious. I just looked it up, and there is only one episode. What the heck is up with that?! More please!

 

Dr. Mark Escott is stepping into his new role as Chief Medical Officer for the city, leaving his post as Interim Medical Director and Health Authority for Austin Public Health. For Austinites during the pandemic, he's kept us informed, and led at least once weekly press conferences, Q&A's, etc. He's been a voice similar to Dr. Fauci, always clear and firm on what is happening and why, explaining when we don't know the "why's" yet, and such. He's done a superb job. I'm not exactly sure what the CMO for a city does, but I'm sure he'll do that with the same integrity and competence. These days, those things seem in short supply all around.

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Mask Weirdness

I've been laughing at us- people including me- as we navigate not wearing masks and getting closer to each other. Some people are nervous and feeling a little uncomfortable with the huge change, but also, we've spent the past twelve months identifying people without masks as jackwagons, and none of us wants to be mistaken for them.

 

We were at the mall on Saturday, and I would say it was about 80% of a typical Saturday mall attendance. 90% of people were wearing masks. The mall itself is mask-optional for vaccinated people, but individual stores set their own requirements and most currently require masks. We were walking the corridors without masks, but it was SUPERWEIRD.

I've also been to Target and Kohls, both of which are "masks optional" for vaccinated people, and pretty much everyone was wearing their mask. I wore mine in both places. 

 

In the end, my personal policy is to first do whatever the rules require, and if it is optional, to wear it if I'm uncomfortable without it for whatever reason. Over time, we'll all get over the weirdness!

 

Went to Austin Land and Cattle last night for our anniversary. Our actual anniversary is tomorrow, but we thought Monday night would be less crowded. We were wrong. Ha! Super-crowded! The tables there are separated a little more than usual though. Steak was amazing as usual. Any steak would be good after 14 months without, but theirs is definitely awesome.

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No Masks for the Fully Vaccinated!

Your favorite Greek-Italian-American chef, Michael Symon, just said gyro as "jigh-ro" instead of the Greek pronunciation. WHAAAAA?? He says he goes back and forth. Mind blown, y'all.

 

Well, it's official- CDC says masks are no longer required for fully vaccinated people! Yahoo!!!! Finally! Businesses can still require them, but it should be changing soon, even in Austin. Unvaccinated people should continue wearing their masks (if they were wearing them to start with).

We're getting to the end of The Challenge: Double Agents. It's really gotten wacky now. My favorite moment of this season so far was Devin "pulling a Josh" after JUST absolutely destroying Josh for missing the helicopter rope during a mission. I used to find Devin completely obnoxious, but this season especially, he is hilarious.

Jeff took Friday off and we drove off to Blanco to get out of the house. Stopped at Peyton Colony on the way. It's a ghost town founded by freed slaves, with a couple of historical markers and a little Baptist church that has been continuously active since the late 1800s. We took a walk through Blanco's city park off the town square, which has some heeeUGE trees and about a million squirrels. Very pretty! Bought some jerky in Johnson City on the way back.

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Palmettos

Had a great Mother's Day weekend! We drove out to Palmetto State Park near Gonzales on Saturday. It's very shady/swampy, so it was nice in the dry heat. Later summer days at 104 with 1000% humidity, probably not so much. I had never seen palmettos, and didn't think we would have something like them in Texas, but there ya' go. Very cool!

 

Texas Monthly did an interesting write up about the park. I didn't know it is home to "a hairy biped called the Ottine Swamp Thing." Also, otters? Wow!! We didn't see either of those, but we did catch two gigantic black birds hanging out in a tree together on the Interpretive Trail.

 

Here is the other-worldy landscape. The light green is algae covering the water...

 

Afterwards, we tried to visit the Gonzales Museum (with the famous "Come and Take It" cannon), but it was closed. Too bad! Visited Santa Anna Mound, but it wasn't worth the time.

 

We watched The Mitchells vs. the Machines on Sunday. It is really good. Movies during the plague have mostly sucked, but this is a winner for family viewing. 

We also finished Season 35 of The Challenge, and started Season 36: Double Agents. Whee! This most recent season has so many twists and turns, your head never stops spinning. The rookies are putting all the vets up, so vets are falling like flies.

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Catching Up on The Challenge

Since Hulu finally added MTV, we've been binging the last two seasons of The Challenge that we missed since we cut the cord for streaming. We're almost to the end of Total Madness, and all I keep wondering is... Does Sting get a penny every time they play his "MTVeeeeeee" at the beginning of shows?

 

This season has been one of the best ever. LOVED the Bananas/Wes love story. Crossover with Big Bro is awesome. 

 

Speaking of those guys, Big Brother will start again soon! Yipeee!

 

My boss-of-eight-years left the company abruptly last week. Not sure if it was a re-org or she's leaving for greener pastures (or both). I also wonder if it was as much of a surprise to my full-time-regular colleagues as it was to me! (There's too little water cooler chat with the contractor.) I'll have to ring someone up and find out the story.

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Subtitles

Watching The Baker and the Beauty on Netflix, I wonder if the person responsible for the occasional subtitles knows the purpose of subtitles. The show is about a Cuban-American family living in Miami, and it is in English, with a tiny bit of Spanglish thrown in. When even a single word is said in Spanish, they'll usually toss up a full sentence subtitle with that word translated into English. Okay. But often, they just put up the sentence with the Spanish word. Mmmkay. Weirdest of all, they throw one up when there is a loanword used, like kimono. Do we need to see kimono spelled out and italicized to clarify something? So strange. The show is a little schmaltzy for my taste, but it's entertaining enough to watch if there isn't anything else on. The characters are super-likeable.

 

Speaking of weird subtitles... what is the deal with Everlywell and the full-on subtitling of their ads? If it were an ad for hearing aids, I would get it. 

 

We finished the first season of Who Killed Sara? on Netflix, and now we know! It's a keep-you-on-the-edge-of-your-seat Mexican (English subtitled!) drama. The Lazcano family runs a casino in Mexico City. Just when you think they've done the most heinous thing plausible, another skeleton pops out of their closet. Sara is murdered in the first episode, and the Lazcanos force her brother to take the blame. After serving 18 years in prison, he spends this season finding out who killed his sister. The show was just released in late March, and the second season begins May 19. It's a good thing, because something BIG just happened in the season finale. Who did he find???!

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Area State Parks Drive

Thank goodness for the Chauvin conviction this week. We were literally holding our breaths waiting to see if it would go the right way. Not that it wasn't so incredibly obvious, but you never know. One step forward for us all as a country.

 

Last weekend, J and I went down to Bastrop and Beuscher State Parks, about 30 minutes outside of Austin. We drove Park Road 1C through both, which costs only $3 per person. Cheap date! Add two Dr. Pepper slurpees from Buc-ees and you're still in for less than $10. (The park ticket lady joked she would have let us in for a discount if we'd have brought her a slurpee. Ha!) The baby trees are adorable. So nice to see all the green where there was only black scorched earth and tall, ashen tree trunks. 

 

We remember the night the ashes from that fire were actually raining down on us at Kyle Field in College Station during a football game. The orange glow over the sky on the way home... Scary stuff.

 

There are a lot of pretty views in the parks. Beuscher is a quite a bit more lush and shady. The speed limit is 30mph, but you go about 20-25 most of the time. Windows down. All so quiet on the relaxing little hilly drive. If you wanna hike the many trails, it's $5 a person.

 

Progressive's latest ad...

"Now's not a good time, three-fifths of NSYNC."

"Read the room."

 

*snort*

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Genealogy Celebration!

Major genealogy breakthrough on my Wisconsin Kanes and O'Donnells! Whee! At least two other genealogists are as thrilled as I am that we've been able to combine our personal sources to figure out some mysteries we've been trying to solve for years. We brought a total of six siblings together on paper, five generations back, and are about *thisclose* to figuring out the names of their parents (...which will likely put us at a new dead end, somewhere in County Tipperary, Ireland. But I'm not going to focus on that yet.).

I've been playing Zombie Rollerz on Apple Arcade. You kill zombies with pinballs... special pinballs with all sorts of powers, having to do with fire or ice or poison, etc. Best pinball game EVER. I cannot win with the roly-poly robot dude though. Bah. I like it because no game is ever the same. You get all sorts of choices for which prizes you want when you win a match, so your powers are wildly different each time you play. It takes about 1.5 hours to complete all four levels (IF you complete them), and then you start over. The more you play, the cooler the legacy loot you start off with, depending on your character choice. Superfun!!

 

Today, it's been two weeks since my second Moderna shot! Done and done. So happy.

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Vaccination Complete!

Got my second Moderna vaccine on Thursday. I had a fever for about five hours on Day 2, and was super tired Days 2-3. That's it. First round, I had slight nausea, so I was worried about being really nauseated this time. I didn't have any nausea at all after the second shot. Whew.

 

Some lady on an online group was irate that pools aren't fully open, because "they are filled with chlorine," so there is no risk of coronavirus spread.

 

Bless her heart.

 

We finished Broadchurch Season 3. Surprise ending! I thought I had it figured out at episode 1, all the way through. Then BOOM. Who knew? Great show!

Saturday 9: Here Comes Peter Cottontail

 
1) Which do you prefer: colored hard-boiled eggs, chocolate marshmallow eggs, or plastic eggs with coins inside?

Um, Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs? Among these three, plastic eggs.

2) What's your favorite color of Peeps (yellow, purple, or pink)?

Purple

3) All this talk of sweets is making Sam hungry. What's for lunch?

We're going to be scavenging the fridge/freezer for lunch today. HEB was closed on Sunday, so all the curbside spots were taken until this evening. No groceries until then!

4) This song was introduced by country singer Gene Autry and it's still a favorite. Please share some of the lyrics.

Here comes Peter Conttontail, hoppin' down the bunny trail. Hippity hoppity, Easter's on its way...

 
5) Gene Autry was so popular that a town in Oklahoma named itself for him. Have you ever been to Oklahoma?

We visited Jeff's college friend, Steve, in Tulsa once. Steve now lives in Australia. We need to visit him again.

6) He and his horse Champion also had a TV show. Can you name another famous horse?

Secretariat

7) Gene Autry also recorded "Rudolph, The Red Nosed Reindeer," and it was, of course, wildly popular, too. Who is your favorite recording artist?

Ed Sheeran

 

8) In 1950, the year Autry recorded this song, Diner's Club issued the first credit card. Think of the last thing you purchased. Did you use cash, a credit card, a debit card, an e-wallet service (Visa Checkout, Paypal, Google Pay, Apple Pay ...) or a check?

Apple Pay

9) Easter is recognized as the start of the spring season. What are you looking forward to this spring?

 Getting out more! Yay, vaccine!

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