Three Good Things (Day One)

1. My credit (FICO) score is climbing. Apparently, since getting my first credit card in college, auto loans along the way, bankruptcy with the ex-husband, and Mommy & Daddy listing me as an "authorized user" on one of their older cards back in the day, I've gained an education in managing my finances over the years. I am happy to report that I currently have a healthy relationship with money and my creditors.
2. Glorious, sunny, windy Eight-Zero Degrees (80ºF!) at 5:45 p.m. W00t! What this means, really and truly, is probably that my allergies are going to come back, with a vengeance, just as I was getting over them, again. Seriously, I would love to last through a solid week without any residual coughing or congestion. Honestly don't see that happening until our early Spring. I don't care. I will deal with my stupid allergies for as long as I have to, if I get more glorious, sunny, windy 80º days.
3. Stephen's soup is delicious. He really has gotten great with the crockpot cooking. What this means is that I am blessed to get to eat good food that's well made. Yay!

4. Had a couple of tours today that could have been less-than-ideal. Both times, before the scheduled tour times, I was informed of the less-than-ideal conditions, and then, just as the tours were supposed to go, I was informed of the "change in plans". I love it when I don't have to make arrangements to improve less-than-ideal conditions. Both tours were pretty good, so I had a lovely (glorious, sunny, 80+º) day on tour. It wasn't windy until I got home.

Yeah, I know I said I would try posting THREE good things daily. It's my blog; I'll post more than three if I feel like it!

Is it better to Burn Out than to Fade Away?

I'm not exactly planning to do either, but what I really wanted to title this blog post was "I got nothin' to say"... which immediately transposed itself to Clancy Brown's gravelly voice quoting the Def Leppard line in the original Highlander movie.

So maybe this is a free-association post. I had a thought; I was on a particular train of thought; my train got derailed; the wheels of the bus go round-and-round; Magic Bus; take you on a magic carpet ride

Hey, Mister Tambourine-Man, play a song for me...

no, I really don't know where any of that came from just now.

We have a "Challenge of the Week" at Warner Bros., and since I typically work on weekends only (of late), I get to learn about the new challenge on Sundays and then forget all about it until I return to work on Saturday, having not really "implemented" it into my tours in any particular way, because I wasn't there to do so. For the month of February, our Challenge is to list three positive things that happened today. Yes, it's a Challenge for the whole month. I don't know if we'll get a new, additional challenge tomorrow; I'll find out when I get there.

Here's the thing. I tend to be the first person in the room to Count my Blessings. I'm just typically the most optimistic person I know, even when I'm in the throes of a depression. But last Sunday was a truly horrible day of giving tours, because it was in the wind and rain, and I was soaked to the bone almost immediately, and I have no galoshes or any other water-repellant footwear that I could have worn for giving tours, so my feet were also incredibly uncomfortable all day, no matter how much relief I was able to find for the rest of my body. Last Sunday was the start of that "Challenge of the Week" which is becoming a Challenge of the Month.

Here is a recap of my Blessings for last Sunday:

1. God is washing my car for me. Thanks, God!
2. I'm too "petite" for any of the available raingear.
3. My misery makes people laugh.

.., and so forth. I was somehow able to list a total of SEVEN "good things" that happened last Sunday, but not one of them was really a good thing. So when I got in to my morning meeting today, I was handed a small sheet of paper to write down three good things that had happened to me, either today or yesterday, and I had a hard time thinking of anything better than "getting enough sleep", "blogging daily", and "hubby made good soup". Found out after I'd written my three things that we weren't expected to hand in those pieces of paper, we were just being reminded to count our blessings.

Frankly, I'm a bit put off by this exercise. I understand that it's meant to contribute to all-day positivity, which will of course spread joy into our tours, especially if we're interacting with other like-minded individuals. But I'm really feeling like this is something that Management may not have a right to "force" onto Labor. I'm not sure about it. To take it out of that workplace context, it still feels wrong. How does it make you feel, when you're having a totally shit day, for people around you to remind you that, no matter how bad things get, you're still blessed and that you should be grateful and mindful of those blessings? I'll tell you how it makes me feel. It makes me feel like you've somehow never had a shitty day like I'm having, and if you keep telling me to smile, I might just have to punch you in your damn teeth. Argh.

This is not at all where I intended to go tonight. But, as I said, maybe this particular post is going to be an experiment in free association. Magic Bus. Free Love. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Oh, yeah... every time I open my browser (on my imdb page, of course), I'm lately seeing an ad for Chi-Raq, and that ad sends me back to the hippy-dippy 60's (in my mind, at least). It's starting to come into focus. Hmm.

Maybe I'll attempt to list three good things each day for the next week (starting tomorrow, of course). Maybe we'll see if the goal they've set at the Bros. can be obtained in the real world. They're calling it the Tetris Effect. Wish me luck!

Another movie review, outta the blue!

Over Christmas, the Bros. opened up the DVD/Blu-Ray vaults and allowed employees to go upstairs and snag some free discs. It was a pretty cool day, getting to snag some free discs that we did not already have on the shelf. It was quite an eclectic group of discs I was able to snag that day.

Included in the bunch was the movie we watched tonight. We knew nothing about it, going into our viewing, other than who was starring in it, and that it was a baseball flick.

I love baseball. Of all the sports I could ever be "subjected" to sitting through, baseball gets me going, revs my engine, piques my interest. This movie was more about the scouting side of things, rather than Love of the Game, per se. That's okay. It was a relationship movie, delving into the father/daughter relationship, the romantic relationships we have or witness, the employer/employee relationship, as well as the celebrity/fan relationship. Interesting, to me, that a baseball film could cover so many relationship bases, but this one definitely did. And did it pretty well, too.

Don't get me wrong. There was baseball to be watched in this movie. And the chance to hate the rising-star, soon-to-be-a-celebrity for the way he interacted with fans and others, and then the rejoicing when he gets his well-deserved comeuppance. And the baseball was good, although there isn't a complete game to watch. But really, all the baseball was more about the relationship with baseball that both players and fans have.

I've just come to realize, while typing all this up, that while we enjoyed this baseball movie, there was actually insufficient baseball in this movie to call it a baseball movie. Now I'm sad. I mean, maybe not really, because we did enjoy the movie, but I guess because it was smartly written and well performed and not badly directed. But it's not a baseball movie, and now I'm sad. Who knew this would be a sad review? Certainly not me, when I started.

Wow. Great movie, just not a baseball movie. Lots of great relationship stuff, while not a "chick flick" in its relationshippiness. There were plenty of manly men in it, and not the kind of manly men that attract women to a movie. Hmmm... what exactly was this movie about? I guess you'll need to watch it, and weigh in. It's a good flick, and you'll enjoy it. But will you please tell me what it was about? Thanks.

Not sure how this one ended up in the queue

but we watched it last night, and we both loved it. Somewhere along the way, we must have seen a trailer for it, and so Stephen probably did a search. Or maybe DirecTV gave us another free weekend for one of the premium channels, and it was in the guide over the weekend, and the blurb sounded interesting. I really don't know how it made its way into the queue. But I'm glad it did.

We both had yesterday off, and I didn't feel like going anywhere. Stephen left for a little bit to do some in-person browsing at Barnes & Noble and Ikea. When he got back, I think he did a little more writing, and then we had plenty of evening ahead of us for television and/or movie watching.

So we watched this little sleeper of a film from 2014. Tragedy strikes just past the opening, so we pretty much knew that things had to get better, and there'd be conflict along the way. Watching it, you immediately know which characters you like, and which you don't like, and for whom you'll be cheering, and who will have major growth arcs, and for whom you'll shout "Good Riddance!" when they leave. It's not like this particular flick leaves you guessing.

Still, it's a completely enjoyable journey. We learned a little, along the way. We laughed a lot, along the way. We both gave it thumbs up at the end of the viewing. It probably didn't get much attention when it was in theaters due to both a poorly-run ad campaign and its lack of earth-shatteringness. It's no The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, but then again, how many movies out there are? Even the Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel isn't. ;)

We like our little Brit-flicks. We like a little slice of India, here and there. I don't think we'll be expanding the Bollywood section of our Blu-Ray collection anytime soon, but we do like the ones we've seen, including all three of these.

Welcome, Trinidad and Tobago!

Your countries are so geographically small on my map that I can't see your greenness, but I am glad to see new readership. So welcome. Please check out past posts to see if you have interest in my topics, and join the conversation if you feel inclined! Bring lots of friends on you next visit, and then the greenness will show up on my map! I'm always open for a new geography lesson.

*****

In other news, I bet you believed, your whole life, that if you were falling in a dream, you would wake yourself before you landed, because if you didn't, you'd die. Well, I'm here to tell you that It Ain't So. Last night, in the middle of the night, I fell from a great height in my dream. I landed s*p*l*a*t on some concrete surface, and I died upon impact. And then my spirit walked around, trying to reconnect with my survivors. My spirit didn't float or drift, it walked. I mean, I walked. It was me, with the full knowledge that I was dead. And no one could see me or interact with me. And it wasn't sad. It was just different. I eventually awoke because my bladder was full, and I realized that I had had the falling dream and had died in the dream. And I wasn't sad; I just felt weird.

So for all you dream interpreters out there - what the heck was that all about?

Did the rodent see his shadow?

I wasn't paying attention to news or weather or anything like that today. I did what I always do on February 2nd, if I'm not working.

I spent the day watching Bill Murray grow in his character of Phil Connors and then start back at one to do it again. Seriously. Every Year, I marathon Groundhog Day all day...

So what happened in your/the world today? Anything fun?

Hello, February!

Yesterday, our weather in Los Angeles was Miserable. Not "Les" Miserable, just Downright Miserable. Yes, of course, we need the rain. We're grateful for the rain. But we don't need it during tours at Warner Bros., we don't need it during the taping of the "Grease Live" event, we don't need all the wind that accompanied it (seriously, one or the other, pretty please), and we certainly don't need the temperatures to drop back into, I dunno, winter?

I survived. Got up today, and had no reason to leave the house until I had a reason to leave the house. Stephen was off today, so after we'd both accomplished all the productivity we were likely to accomplish inside, we decided to walk over to Costco with a short list and a few empty grocery bags. We did the walking, sampling lunch, purchased about thirty pounds of foodstuffs, and walked home with our stuff.

We were both dressed for the cold temperatures and the biting winds. We got back in, and I was downright HOT. (Yeah, I know, "quit braggin'".) I changed into a tank top to cool off... a little later, I went back downstairs to check the mail. Big mistake. I didn't dress for that quick trip into the cold winds, and now I've spent the last several hours trying to cough up a lung and keep my nose from running away.

Seasonal allergies, man. They suck.

Tomorrow, if I'm not booked for work, I intend to watch Bill Murray re-live February 2nd Eleventy Million times.