a99kitten's Musings

Angelus says it is too deep in the backyard – fix it. :)

But I do think I wore the huskies out. They are both sound asleep tonight. And not even looking at the front door.

Doing stuff around the house and work on my computer this afternoon so I turned the TV on. I like the noise. I can generally put on show or movie that I like, that is familiar, and can have it on in the background and get stuff done too. Occasionally, it can’t work in the background and I get sucked in (hello Star Wars, Raiders or The Godfather…) Today I put on Sex and the City. Love that show. The clothes are drool-worthy and the girls are fun! But I’ve seen most of the eps so many times that I won’t get too sucked in.

The shows that were on today is the arc with Carrie and Petrovsky played by Mikhail Baryshnikov (the final series episodes.) I have loved him since I was a kid. Not sure why – never really been into ballet or “the arts” (nose stuck up in the the air.) But I saw “White Nights” and loved him :) I went and saw him live when he came with his White Oak Dance Project. Amazing. And truly – I am NOT into “the arts” (I say pooshah to those people!) But he is amazing. I remember when I knew he was going to be SATC when it was first run – I was excited! I was not an Aidan fan so a good boyfriend (after Big) for Carrie would be great!

Watching the show now, his character is so, so perfectly romantic. Everything he does for Carrie. He is so storybook. Of course, in that TV/movie boy kind-of-way. He wants to take her to the ballet, read poetry to her, stay for days in his apartment hanging out and reading without needing to leave, go out to dinners in cocktail attire and drink champagne, make dinner at home in his fantastic apartment in cocktail attire and drink champagne! Plus he has a cool accent :) But then they are sure to show the self-absorbed artist side as well. But they make sure you fall for him before really showing too much of that.

But at the end of the day, when Big comes back and wants to win Carrie back, I can’t help but root for him. Big, for all of his many faults and mistakes, comes back and realizes Carrie is for him. Realizes that he made a huge mistake in letting her go and does whatever he has to do to get her back. He doesn’t give up. He flies to Paris for her! Sigh….To get her back from this “fairy-tale” that she is in with Alexsander in Paris. He can’t give Carrie up. And THAT, not his money or job or driver and car or house in Napa or nice suits or blah blah blah, is what makes girls keep rooting for him over all others. He wants her. And he doesn’t give up. Although I’m sure all men in the world would argue that. But then they are all searching for the 25 year-old supermodel nymphomaniac who will dote on them like King Henry, keep the house, run all the errands, cook dinner AND make a million dollars.

Now…let’s be real..Big is a TV/movie guy too. I am 100% convinced there are no men out there like Alexsander or Big. The rich guy cheating part – oh, that’s real. The guy who wants an awesome girl to be at their side but not more than their own selfish needs? Oh – that’s out there plenty. They definitely make Big more awesome than the real life guy would be. They make him a great movie/TV guy. And I can’t help but root for him. But just need to keep remembering it’s all Hollywood folks.

And just to make sure you remember that – E Online runs commercials for pure tacky, ghetto trash like The Kardashians, RuPaul’s Drag Race, The Dance Scene and other horrific “look at me” shows to make sure you don’t get too caught up in storybook fantasy. Society sure has taken a digger when this is popular entertainment. Gross.

Oh – look! Moulin Rouge is on! Listening to Obi Wan sing “Your Way” or “Come What May” (can listen to him sing this song over and over…this is where I developed my Ewan crush) is definitely decent romantic snowy Sunday afternoon fare :)

6:00am – Wake up and see it’s raining outside. Sigh…lay in bed a few more minutes. I feel like Indiana Jones when he looks down into the Well of the Souls and sees all the snakes. “Rain…why did it have to be rain?” (for the the zillionth day in a row!) (and yes..I do actually say that to myself in that voice in my head as I remember the scene in the movie – kookie!)

6:15am – Get up, feed huskies, get dressed in rain gear, leash the boys up and go…

6:30am – Stops raining!!! Praise Bejebus! Super fun time on beach with the huskies and their friend Yogi! And I’m 100% convinced that I benefit from the walk just as much as they do. Yesterday the rain and wind was so bad, we didn’t make it 10 minutes before going back home. And I was grumpy all day!

8:15am – Home, shower, get ready for work. As I am about to leave, husband says only time to beat storms is leave by noon. Otherwise no go until Sunday. Sigh. Pack for Tahoe. Need to call boss on way to vet.

9:30am – Take Stormy to his ultrasound appointment. Stress the whole drive in and curse at the stoopid Prius and truck drivers.

10:00am – Storm’s appt. Stress in waiting room. ALL CLEAR!!! YAY!!!! Doc says how great he looks :) Why a guy. Nurses give him cookies. He is loved :)

11:00am – Post office and then home and pack up car.

11:30am – Drive…rain….rain…….80 still closed, go to 50…drive……hail….drive…overturned vehicle….drive….accident…..drive….(at least not as hellacious as last week)

4:50pm – Get to Incline Village – SUSHI! Take huskies out first and walk them a bit.

5:20pm – YUM! EAT! First meal of the day!!!! See guy walk in for dinner and comment “he looks like an 80s hair band guy” Oh..he is. Guy from Whitesnake. Hysterical!

8:00pm – Get home. Drive down snowcave of a street and driveway. Let huskies out of car and run around. Tromp through waist (yes, waist) deep snow into house to disarm and unlock. Good thing I’m not some dumb, high-maintenance girl. Feed huskies dinner. Give them a lot of extra chicken for being such good passengers :)

8:02 (or…maybe 8:03pm) Husky dinner inhaled. Take huskies back out (this time in snow gear).

Seeing huskies so happy to be in snow – a good use of a day off after all :) Excited to see what snow adventures we will have this weekend!

The weather forecast this morning said big storm tonight and Saturday but cleared out Sunday and basically clear for the rest of the week. Now it says snow tonight through Monday. Huskies say don’t mess their snow making super wonder twin powers :)

I have 3 DVRs. I try and record the TV shows that I will want to watch. I very, very rarely watch non-sports related live TV. Cannot handle it. Although – I will say that when I do, I run around doing stuff during the commercials doing stuff so it is productive. But I usually have time for 1 show at night and then 1 show while I am exercising on my stepper.

So what bugs me is even with this many DVRs I thought I was missing shows. And I might be. But it really seems that shows have not been on for weeks. All I have is re-runs of a lot of shows. In March.

Growing up, I seem to remember that TV shows ran from late August/early September with a hiatus during the holidays and then again in January through May or early June. Kinda like school. But now, you are lucky to get 3 or 4 new episodes in a row. WTH? These are shows I really like – Bones, Big Bang Theory, Grey’s Anatomy, The Good Wife, Criminal Minds. I do really love watching them. But I don’t have time to look around and check my DVR for missed episodes, etc.

Blue Bloods is a new police show on CBS. They scheduled it for Friday so I assume they didn’t want it to succeed? But it did do well (I really like the show) so they moved it to Wednesdays and the ratings popped up. But then back to Fridays and then preempted because of March Madness. WHY??? Keep it on Wednesdays! Or a night/slot where we can know when to watch it. And play it through. No re-runs or skipped weeks.

It’s bad enough that well written and acted shows with story lines are canceled and crap reality shows like Jersey Shore, The Bachelor, The Kardashians, etc etc are kept on the air. But then the few great shows that kinda make it, are moved around or not given a good chance or supported. I look at shows like Friday Night Lights, Damages or Stargate: Universe and wonder how people cannot be sucked in to these excellent character and story driven shows?! But Jersey Shore and Teen Mom gets renewed over and over. Is the majority of the TV-viewing public just a Borg collective of mental retards who can’t process shows that makes you think at all or remember plot lines or sit through weeks of charter development? I can’t find another explanation.

No wonder the major networks are losing market share and networks like TNT, USA, FX and SyFy are making original shows (ignoring HBO and Showtime who both produce fantastic shows and runs them straight through so we can be sucked in!)

You know what was smart? When 24 and Lost realized they need to run their episodes back to back – no reruns – to keep their audience sucked in and loyal because of the nature of their shows and plots. Yes! Exactly! Guess what? I never missed one of those episodes. Why play 2 or 3 and then run a few re-runs and then run a few more news ones, etc etc etc.?!?!?

Guess what networks – fans like (some of) your shows. But fans don’t want to play guessing games with when they will be on. People have shorter and shorter attention spans. So give them reruns, they will turn away. Sad but true. And TV viewers – you need to watch the quality shows so they stay on the air. Studio execs only care about the bottom line – numbers/ratings.

Meh. I should just read more anyway.

I got them Tuesday but finally just tried them on last night – HOT! LOVE them! They are very much keepers!!!!!

Now I want the gray pair :) But I don’t need them. But if they had them in chocolate brown (or, let’s face it, pink) they would be mine too!

I used my 25% Friends and Family coupon PLUS I got 7.5% back going through ebates.com so not a bad price for hot shoes at all!

Yesterday was my 12th wedding anniversary. Yikes. I’m old.

We were supposed to go up to Tahoe early Thursday (today) morning since a big snow storm was coming. But for some reason my husband didn’t want to drive up and potentially be stuck in the traffic/highway closures that have accompanied all the storms. I say “for some reason” because normally, he doesn’t care – he just wants to get up there into the fresh snow. So we stayed here and will try the drive up late Friday night/early Saturday morning depending on the weather/highway conditions. I was pretty excited to get up there for the storm but whatever. These are probably the last of the big winter (spring?) storms and I want some white, fluffy snow. But being stuck on the highway for 8 hours last Saturday was no fun either.

Husband had a dinner meeting Tuesday night. Around 5pm, he asked if I wanted to come. I was still at work and, since I took Monday off, I had a lot of stuff to do. Plus I got up at 5:30am, after not sleeping well again thanks to his snoring. And I was in my “drive into work from Tahoe” outfit of jeans and a sweater – not really “dinner in the city with business partners” clothes. Turns out (I found out the next day) his partner brought his wife so my husband was bothered that I didn’t go. Hi – she has no job. She stays at home, exercises and shops all day. Of course she could go to dinner in SF at the last minute. But yes – clearly that was my problem. I got home after 8pm from work and unpacked everything and ended up going to bed around 11:30pm and he was still not home. So yeah – that would have worked out well for me who gets up early.

Wednesday morning came and I got a “Happy Anniversary” as I was on my way out the door to work. He had just woken up since he got home so late. At work all day – no calls, no flowers, nothing. Ok. Whatever. He was with the same partners in meetings all day.

Around 4pm he texted and said we should go out to dinner and to pick a place. Ok. He got us a reservation at my favorite local sushi place for 8pm. I brought a bottle of bubbly since the last time we were there, they had actually run out of champagne (?) and I love the combo of sushi and champagne. Plus it was our anniversary.

We got there and had a nice dinner. I gave him his card and gifts, that I put time and effort into considering he is impossible to buy anything for. I got nada. Not even a card. A simple $2.00 card. Nothing. I guess dinner was it.

When we got home around 10:30ish – he went straight to his computer. I went to bed.

I’m pretty much come to the conclusion that this is the amount of effort he wishes to put into this. It made me sad. We’ve been together a long time. But things just die a slow death when you don’t care for them and put effort into them. I guess I shouldn’t care either then.

It’s been snowing all day. Well, actually it’s been snowing since Saturday night. I have been out a lot having plenty of snow fun with the huskies since we got here. And they are pretty tired now – even Angelus! So I decided to just take a walk on my own. On my walk I met up with a LOT of doggies and skooshed them all and they were following me so I felt pretty much like Snow White :) Shhhhhh……don’t tell the huskies!

They just closed Interstate 80 again due to whiteout conditions! Crikey…no wonder the Donner party got lost up here….

p.s. I am a goober sometimes :)

From our first walk yesterday after we FINALLY arrived.

And then after our walk this AM.

Angelus playing in the driveway.

This is our local weather guy, who has been far more accurate than the news weather guys…

“Resort Totals page updated as of 6 a.m. Resorts West of the lake reporting 18-36 inches with the highest amounts on resorts furthest West. Resorts East of the lake reporting 6-8 inches as there was good shadowing overnight due to the direction of the flow from the South.

This series of storms Wed-Sun is going to drop several more feet on top of the massive amounts we have already received in the past week. Looks like we could finally have a break after next weekend, but it may not last as we could see storms return the first week of April. Stay tuned……”

It seems to me that this spring is looking like a good one. I also believe wholeheartedly that the huskies have a deal with the weather gods :)

Took the huskies out this AM to pee before breakfast. They ran around in circles in the snow with big smiles! Stormy ran right inside for breakfast though. No keeping him from breakfast. I had to entice Angelus back in though! They inhaled breakfast and were ready to get out there! The driveway was about mid-calf on me. This was just from about 2am when the snow plow came and did our driveway and easement road. But this is belly high on Stormy.

When we got up our easement road to the street it was even deeper as the town snowplows hadn’t come yet. It was high enough for Angelus’ chest to have to push through the snow. Stormy toughed it out with his naked belly but we lasted about 25 minutes out and he wanted to turn back. The snow was coming down so fast that it was getting on our eyes and I think he was like “Mom, inside sounds good to me!” So we went back home and dropped Stormy off. Then Angelus and I went on our way….

We came across a couple with a little black doggie who had to leap through the snow. But he was having a good time. He and Angelus played for a bit and then Angelus got bored so off we went. The streets were unplowed so they are just like a giant snow field. No cars on the road and nice and quiet out. Perfect. Then we met another doggie – a standard poodle – who was as tall as Angelus but afraid of him. His Dad was like “you are the same size?!” Heh. Angelus got bored there too so off we went. We tried to find his friends the other huskies down the street but they weren’t out. Darn.

We played in the snow, Angelus dug in a lot of snowpiles and then we got back home. He is resting up for our next outing. I-80 is closed. Some of the resorts are even closed. Snowed in! Time for me to make some Star Wars pancakes!

That was the worst drive up to Tahoe EVER. I was dumb and left late. You wouldn’t think 7:30am is that late but it is. Especially when there is one snow storm clearing out and another coming in so this “break” in the weather was the time to go. Plus the highway was closed yesterday from 2pm to 1am. So people couldn’t go yesterday. Between the traffic, the snow, the idiots driving up in their non-4-wheel drive cars who need to put on chains the highway was a parking lot.

They should NOT allow vehicles up to the mountains during snowstorms that are not properly equipped. Vehicles that need chains create traffic jams for the chain on/off procedures, create traffic due to their having to go SLOW the entire way AND destroy the roads in the process. JACKASSES. I HATE YOU.

THEN, after you FINALLY get past chain control, which took 5 hours. Yes…FIVE hours of sitting in traffic due to m-fers who drive stupid cars and create stupid traffic jams and then the stupid CA Department of Transportation puts up chain points for no good reason (you would needed them for MAYBE 5 miles…MAYBE.) Anyway – after that, you get a free and open freeway of snowy highway with no lane markings (because of the snow.) So people just create their own lanes. And create their own non-lanes to pass trucks and other cars. Passing on right, left doesn’t matter. And then cars just stop in the middle of lanes to remove chains, or fix their chains, or whatever. Just stop…right there in the driving lane. Idiots. Hate you. So much. And as proof they are idiots, half of them (you could see them as they got out of their cars to deal with the chains) were wearing shorts, or jeans with flip-flops or sweatpants and flip-flops and t-shirts. And standing there shivering. Hello? It’s 25 degrees and snowing out. Plus it was 40+ degrees and raining wherever you started your journey from today so WTF? You have no sense. None. You are idiots. Please do not breed.

Anyway, got here at 3:30. Almost 8 hours later. I say almost because I stopped to get gas and a coffee on the way. But basically an 8 hour drive on what should be a 3 (4 with snow) hour drive. The amount of anger I have towards people who think driving up to the mountains in a snowstorm in cars without 4 or all wheel drive and for the Department of Transportation is unmeasurable today.

Luckily, I have 2 awesome huskies who patiently drove with me with no complaints. Who jumped out of the car when we got here and ran around in the snow, big smiles on their faces. Who let me inhale a glass of water and taco (hadn’t eaten anything today and was getting punchy) before taking them out on a walk with still no complaints. Who then took me on a jog through the snow down our street and back and then around in various driveways where the snow is currently belly high for them and then running all around our easement road, neighbors driveways and our driveway. Angelus and Storm were BOTH (yay Storm!) running around and chasing each other through the snow. Dummy me left my phone in the house in my rush to get them out so missed some GREAT video of them. Dangit!

So yes, I still HATE the above mentioned idgits. But thanks to 2 fluff-monsters my blood pressure has been restored to normal and the steam has stopped coming from my ears. The amount of snow here is crazy. It’s lightly falling now but another big storm is supposedly coming tonight and tomorrow. YAY! And then snow is forecast every day for the next week. Wheeeeee! But I shall be staying out of my car and off the highway and away from the real world of annoyances and will be here in the forest with 2 fluffy beasts. Better for my health :)