Here There Be Dragons

Life has been pretty status quo the last few weeks.  Nothing new and amazing to report and nothing really to rant and rage about.  I guess that's a good thing - it just doesn't make for a very exciting blog.

Hope everyone is doing okay!

I am getting some friendly pressure from my BF to run in next years 1/2 marathon for the Derby Festival and I really don't want to do it.  Mainly because I am lazy.

Maybe lazy isn't the right word.  I am NOT physically prepared to run 11.1 miles (I know some of you can do that in your sleep) and I don't have the time nor the inclination to train for it.  Gone are the days when I could just "do it".  The race is next April and while that seems far off - believe me I will need all that time and then some to get my runners legs back.  I will have to train and train hard.  I haven't run in over a year and it's been months since my bike has seen the light of day.  I have been on a yoga binge and that is where my work out quota has been spent. As great as Bikram is - it won't prepare you for a half marathon.  I am flexible and lean and feel strong - but it's a different kind of strong than what I need for running.  Night and day.

I can't believe I am stressing over this so much - I should just say no and mean it.  

I am going to get the Lasik procedure done on my eyes this year.  I am soooo tired of wearing contacts.  I was outside for a bit today and I swear the darn things froze to my eyeballs - most uncomfortable.

I say I am going to do this every year, but I never end up doing it.  I don't know why as I am a good candidate, I know people who have had it done and they love it and my insurance pays for it.  So really, no reason not to do it....except for that whole laser cutting of your eyeball thing.

 

As much as I enjoyed our holiday festivities, I am glad to be back in the real world and what passes for normal this time of year.  

Just skimming through my friend's page, I see that I missed quite a bit of fandom goings on, hopefully tonight I will have some time to sit down and catch up as I feel so out of the loop and out of touch at the moment.

I hope everyone who celebrated had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

I have been seeing pictures this morning of the wind and water damage to the eastern seaboard and the storm hasn't even arrived in force yet.

It is unbelievable the devastation this storm is predicted to bring.

Even some of the inland states will feel the fallout:

Eastern Kentucky is expected to get 24" of snow in the next few days when Sandy meets the arctic blast coming down out of Canada.  I don't think we will see anything but colder weather in my part of the state; keeping fingers crossed that is the case.

To all my friends in the path of the storm, hunker down and stay safe - check in with us every now and again via posting or email to let us know that you guys are okay.

It’s that time of year when everyone gets out their Halloween decorations, the kids start scrambling for their trick or treat costumes, and bags and bags of candy fill the aisles of the local stores.

It is also the time when I begin to mourn the death of Halloween…

When I was a kid, Halloween ranked right up there with Christmas, Easter and birthdays on the anticipation scale.  It was a big deal in the little town I grew up in.  In school, we spent class time making paper jack o’ lanterns, decorating trick or treat bags (remember those brown paper grocery bags?) and spent our lunch periods talking about our costumes and our “candy routes”.

Of course, the highlight of the holiday was visiting the haunted house that was sponsored every year by the city.  It was full of hokey, scary stuff – you know vampires, werewolves, mummies, ghosts, witches – none of that gore fest / slasher sickness that passes for haunted houses today. 

And TV? Oh, my gosh – it was a scare fest!  There was a different “monster” movie on every night in the week leading up to Halloween – movies featuring vampires (the scary kind, not the sparkly kind), werewolves (again the scary kind, not the hot sexy kind), Frankenstein, gargoyles, etc.  It was the good kind of scared because you knew it was just pretend and those things really didn’t exist in the real world.  The scary movies touted about today (serial killers, torture flicks) – well, those are too scary for me – because stuff like that is REAL and it is not the least bit entertaining.  If I want to be scared like that, all I have to do is watch the evening news.

When my son was little, we  tried to recreate the Halloween of our childhood – it didn’t work, the world has changed too much, and so has the perception of Halloween, so we stopped celebrating it years ago.

Somewhere along the line, the spirit of Halloween was lost, and that makes me really sad for today’s kids.

The crazy begins today!

I will be able to visit the fangirl world only sporadically this month (which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as I think I need a little break from it), but 
I will try my best to hit DW at least twice a week for ncis_verse stuff (can't let my team down).

And the silver lining to this cloud?  When I am able to get back to the fandom world on a regular basis - it will only be about three weeks until the season 10 premiere of NCIS.  *\0/*

I hope everyone has a good month and I will check in as I can!

I think lightning just hit our air conditioning units - both of them.

Not good.  Not good at all.  

Hubby is now in a foul mood.  He gets cranky when he gets hot and I think it's gonna hot in here really fast, and who knows how much it is going to cost to fix them.  

We better get some good rain out of this... just saying.

 And I mean that in a good way....

After church we headed off to our friend's farm to pick wild blackberries. 

There were a kabillion of them.  Seriously, the branches were so heavy with berries they were bent under the weight.  It would have been easy pickins except for the briars. 

My hands, arms and legs look like I lost a battle with a wild cat.  I was bloody and sweaty when I left, but I had a bucket full of berries - totally worth it.

My friend (who puts Julia Child to shame) whipped up a blackberry cobbler practically out of thin air - complete with whipping cream.  It was one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten.

Other than that, we spent the day in the pool lazing around just eating and chatting.  A great day, but not productive at all.

I am leaving Wed for my girls trip - I haven't even begun to get my stuff together.  Normally, I would be a little antsy about that.  Right now, I am kind of "whatever" as I am too pooped to care.

a 7:00 p.m. bedtime is looking pretty good right now.

That's what is great about being an adult: not only can you stay up as late as you want to, but you can also go to bed as early as you want to.