Kim's Thoughts
Just a few thoughts I feel worthy of jotting down!
Hiccups – Uugghh!!!
I get the hiccups a lot — the deep, hard, painful kind!!!! They come on suddenly and always at the worst times!!!! Here it is bed time and I’ve got a nasty case of hiccups nagging at me……
I have a fool proof cure, but it’s not working!!!!
My hiccup cure:
- Get a glass of water
- Take a deep breath and hold it
- Take at least seven (7) sips of water, swallow between each sip, hold your breath all the time (sip, swallow, sip, swallow, sip, swallow, etc…)
- Continue past seven sips, if you can hold your breath that long — I take as many sips as I can before I have to breathe again
- Sometimes, for tough hiccups, it takes a second round
Dang – four rounds and they are still there!!!!! I’m doomed!!!! Any suggestions?????
Wednesday
What is special about Wednesday?
- Hump Day – half way to the much anticipated weekend days
- The day I gather all the trash and take it to the street for Thursday pick up
- I was born on a Wednesday – October 24, 1956
- Project Runway is on Bravo at 10:00 pm
- It is spelled funny – why is there a “d” and “e”? Why not spell it “Wensday”?
- Wednesday’s Child is Full of Woe
- Ash Wednesday – first day of Lent – Catholics apply ashes to their foreheads as a sign of Penance
- The daughter on the Addams Family was named Wednesday
If Wednesday’s have special meaning to you, leave a comment to tell me about it!
For more interesting tidbits about Wednesday, click on this link:
Katie Holmes In Mad Money
I just read on AOL that the critics are SLAMMING Katie Holmes’ performance in Mad Money!
First, I rarely agree with the critics – I read their opinions for entertainment, but don’t listen to them. If a movie peaks my interest and is the type of movie I enjoy seeing, I go see it and form my own opinion! I never understood why some people stay away from a movie just because the critics say it isn’t worth their time!!! It is a shame that critics have the power to kill a movie before the vast majority have a chance to prove them wrong! There are a lot of movies that end up being huge hits on video after they were declared duds and dropped at the theater because of bad reviews and subsequent low box office turn out!
Now – about my opinion of Katie’s performance in Mad Money: I think she was adorable and was perfect in her role as the hippie-ish cart girl. The critics thought her dancing made her character look childish and unbelievable. Quite the contrary — I think her dancing was charming and put the cherry on top of her character – it made the character! AND made her ability to pull off her part of the plan go unnoticed by the security cameras. I think she looked like she was having fun — not only was her character having fun, but SHE was having fun playing the character!
BRAVO, Katie — job well done!!!
Get a grip, critics — not all movies have to live up to A Streetcar Named Desire; not all characters have to be as deep as Blanche DuBois or Stanley Kowalski; not all actors have to be as powerful as Vivian Leigh or Marlon Brando……………..I absolutely agree that Streetcar was an amazing film and the characters/actors deserve their spot of honor in classic movie history – BUT – some movies/characters/actors are just plain entertaining and give us something to smile about!!! And that’s OK, too!!!
Snow In Sanford
We had our first snow of the season here in Sanford yesterday – well, second, if you count the faint, 2 second showing of snow that you had to squint to see a couple weeks ago – I am not counting that day – yesterday was the REAL first snow!!
JUST KIDDING – this isn’t my yard and not even in Sanford and not even this year — it is a photo my brother sent me of HIS back yard after a nasty storm they had in my home town last year. THIS is what I saw looking out of my den window this morning – there was a little more of an accumulation late last night, but not much more than this!
The weather reports called it a “winter storm” and predicted 1-3 inches for our area. Now, remember, I grew up in the Buffalo snow belt on Lake Ontario in Western New York — in my books, 1-3 inches is a minor annoyance – not a winter storm!!! Tell me you are predicting a foot or more in a 24 hour period and I’ll start paying attention!!!
Saturday Matinees
The first movie was 27 Dresses — the story is about a girl who has been a bridesmaid in 27 weddings and has all 27 dresses in her closet! She is in love with the idea of weddings and being a part of them! She goes above and beyond to fulfill the duties of the devoted bridesmaid! Without giving out too much detail: there is a guy who becomes quite smitten with her, but he starts out with an ulterior motive before he falls madly in love with her and, of course, the ulterior motive can’t be stopped and gets in the way; there is a guy who she has secretly loved “forever”, everyone but the guy sees it, but the guy is oblivious to it; and, finally, there is the younger sister who comes to town and the “secret love” guy falls for the sister and the sister, of course, asks her to be her bridesmaid and help her plan the wedding! All this comes together in a hilarious series of events that culminate to the perfect happy ending! Aahh…… It is familiar and predictable — same old story with a different theme, but it really is funny and cute and entertaining — I enjoyed it.
Mad Money was everything I thought it would be — great characters, great story, funny, fun, entertaining, well put together and well executed!!! They couldn’t have cast it better — Diane Keaton, Queen Latifa, and Katie Holmes were perfect for their roles and made the movie a success!!! The idea of stealing worn out money from the Federal Reserve that was in queue for destruction in a way that it wouldn’t be detected was ingenious! Diane Keaton plays a socialite who’s husband lost his job in a downsizing effort and finds herself in a situation of needing to find a job or lose their beautiful home! She takes a job as a cleaning lady at the Federal Reserve and begins to think as she sees the way things are done there! She elicits the help of two key employees – Katie Holmes, who delivers the locked carts of money to the shredding room, and Queen Latifa, who runs the shredder! The entire place is under high security and video scrutiny – EVERYWHERE, EVERY SECOND, EVERYTHING! But, Diane watches and learns and comes up with the perfect plan (gotta love a woman who puts together a perfect plan) – and it WORKS!!! The entire movie is a gem! I loved it!My Wish For The Girls
My girls have it made — they really do! They live a loved, pampered, protected life – extreme opposite of the life they would have had if we hadn’t found them abandoned and in desperate need of a friend to help them!
But – if there was just one more thing I would wish for them, it would be a roof over their back yard! I have a large fenced in back yard that they LOVE to play and run around in! They love to be outside until they tire themselves out and then they want to be inside where they can curl up on the couch and snooze!
BUT – on days like today, where it is supposed to rain and be messy all day long, they get very frustrated that they can only go out for short little “visits” in the back yard to take care of business and then are made to come right back in! Mind you – they don’t care that it is raining and wet – they don’t mind getting soaked – but I don’t want that mess in the house and I don’t want them getting sick! So they are doomed, on what is usually a day of play and rolling in the grass, to spend their time cooped up in the house! Which always gets me to wondering — is it REALLY that bad if they get soaked and track in a mess? After all, I do have mops and towels and a vacuum – I can clean it up! The alternative is listening to them whine, bark, and scratch at the door that leads out to the patio and putting up with the running and roughhousing in the house! Hhhmmm……let’s see – clean house or my sanity – which will win out? ha-ha!
If they just had a roof over their back yard, they could go out regardless of the weather and play without getting all wet and muddy!!! Of course, it would have to cover the entire back yard so they can have as much fun on rainy days as they do on sunny days and it would have to be RETRACTABLE so that we could reel it in so they could lay in the sun on nice days (they love to sunbathe)……..oh well – looks like they’re gonna have to wait until I win the Lottery to have a way to enjoy their back yard regardless of the weather!!! Until then, we’ll deal with the pent up energy on rainy days – cause, yes – a clean house wins out over sanity (cause when you get right down to it, sanity is highly overrated)!!!
Poor babies — what a mean ol’ Mom they have………
Yep, I knew it….
I knew it would happen — call me psychic, but I knew that I would wake up this morning with a sore throat and runny nose and guess what???? It happened!!!! All that running around in the cold rain yesterday started a nice little cold — I will NOT let it get me down, though — I will fight this thing and I will WIN!!!
Please go through your day and weekend chanting “Kim won’t get a full blown cold, Kim won’t get a full blown cold, Kim won’t get a full blown cold…..” — I need all the Karma I can get!!!
Happy Friday!!!
Cold is an understatement!
As my Poppie used to say: “It is colder than a well digger’s a** in January!”
It was definitely that cold today! The temp was low, but not really THAT low — it was the cold rain and dampness that made the cold drill right down to the bone!!!! I just couldn’t get warm today anywhere I went! I woke up cold – then I had a doctor appt this morning, so I was out running around and in and out of the car all morning with the doctor, filling prescriptions, having some breakfast at the dairy bar – all during the heaviest rainy time. I had the car heater turned way up and blaring hot air at me, but I was so cold that I couldn’t get warm! Then, my office was cold when I got in to work, so no chance of warming up there! Then, I had to go out in the cold rain and walk to another building across the campus for a meeting and got chilled to the bone AGAIN! I wasn’t there long enough to stop shivering and had to walk back in the rain to my cold office!
Bottom line — I stayed cold all day long!!! Until I went to Renalds for dinner and had a cup of wonderful corn chowder — that really hit the spot and “warmed my innards” (and the rest of the dinner was great, too) – ha-ha! I hated to go get back in the car to come home! But — the house was warm when I got here and now I’m nice and toasty! I plan to put a nice pair of flannel jammies in the dryer to warm them up and snuggle down in the covers! Should help me recover from the chills quite nicely!
I sure hope tomorrow is less bone chilling — if it just isn’t as damp and rainy, that would help!
Sunday Ramblings
Good Morning! I woke up singing to the girls this morning – the song was “Good Morning” – that great show tune performed by Debbie Reynolds, Gene Kelly, and Donald O’Connor in Singing In The Rain! I often sing show tunes to the girls to set the mood for the day! They LOVE it when I sing to them – they dance around, whine and bark, and excitedly egg me on (or maybe they are trying their darnedest to get me to stop – not sure, but either way, it is fun!)
So – today promises to be a great day!!! Not weather-wise, unfortunately, though — it appears that my choice of using a song from Singing In The Rain might have been one of my more appropriate choices of the day! It is supposed to get up to around 50-ish, but rain this afternoon sometime. Oh well – that’s OK – it won’t spoil my mood or my day — in fact, maybe it will prompt a full blown rendition of the title song from that movie later on – me singing lead and the girls singing back up! You can get your tickets here – it is sure to be a Grammy winner for “Best Living Room Performance by a Whacko and her Dogs”!!! ha-ha
Yesterday was really nice, too — I saw the movie that I reviewed in the previous post — again, what a treat that was! Then, I had lunch with some friends at the Brathaus (the authentic German restaurant here in town) — wow — what a good lunch! I had the Goulash – I haven’t tried it yet and it was a good time to do it! Like a lot of truly authentic food, it wasn’t what I am used to for Goulash – to me, Goulash is macaroni, tomato sauce, hamburger, onions, peppers, etc….. this was big chunks of tender, delicious roast beef in a thick, rich gravy that tasted like heaven!!! For $4.99, I got a nice size bowl of Goulash and two slices of garlic bread – it was good, filling, and really hit the spot – can’t beat that with a stick!!! I then did some shopping and went home.
The only problem with yesterday was the issues with the internet!!! I’m not sure what was going on, but I think it was all over the place — my Mom in Western NY was having some of the same problems I was having and another friend in another state wrote me an email late last night saying they started to send me something earlier, but kept getting kicked off!!! I got on line, checked some emails, wrote one to my Mom telling her all about the movie and my day, and started to write my movie review post and I lost my internet connection and the cable modem didn’t have the right lights flashing to show that I would be able to get back on!!! I was about 1/2 way through my brilliant description the movie and I was at risk of losing all that I had written!!! uugghh!!! If I tried the usual shutting down and resetting the modems and starting back up, it would be all gone and I would have to start all over again!!! So, I kept the frozen IE window open with my half written post still showing and I quickly opened up AOL to sign on using DIAL UP, which gave me back my connection to IE and I was able to finish my post! WHEW!!! But – I wanted to include a pic of the movie poster and since I was signed on using DIAL UP, it was taking an eternity – so I just posted it without the pic and went back later and added it (nice touch to the post, huh?)! In the mean time, I could hear my AOL account in a minimized window repeatedly saying “Hello, Gorgeous” and “See You Later, Babe” (the sounds I have set up as the greeting to me when a buddy comes on or leaves. What? You mean to tell me you don’t take advantage of shameless ego boosts whenever possible?). It was going on constantly, one after the other, taking turns as someone was coming and going over and over and over……………..I toggled over to AOL to see what was going on and found it was Mom — she was on and off and on and off — she was getting kicked off and going through the auto reconnect and instantly getting kicked off in a vicious cycle – she finally gave up!!! I was OK with DIAL UP (well, by OK I mean I was connected – not that I was being particularly productive or speedy) for a while – then, I started going through the getting kicked off cycle and finally got to where I couldn’t connect or stay connected with DIAL UP OR CABLE!!!! I guess it wasn’t necessarily AOL, Charter, the phone lines, the cable lines, or anything specific to the area — it must have been something out of whack with the universe or a major pile up on the information super highway (hope there were no casualties) — at any rate, I was a couple hours where I was not able to be connected!!! Luckily, the phone and cable TV was unaffected!!! ha-ha
Anyway — as for today: I have to go in to the office for a little while to finish up my monthly reports, but that won’t take me long – I may even just pop in long enough to grab my laptop and bring it home to do that later tonight instead of doing it in the office – not sure, yet! I’d like to see the movie 27 Dresses, but it’s only playing at the Crossroads 20 in Cary and I hate to drive in there, if I can avoid it (traffic is horrid and I find it hard to get in and out and around in that area) – I wish I knew if Sanford was going to get that movie soon or not — might help me make that decision! We’ll see – you might see another movie review later or maybe not! If I do go in to Cary for the movie, I might take the opportunity to run into Cary Towne Center and PetSmart while I’m there and get some things that I’ve been meaning to get and haven’t wanted to go up there for……hhhmmm, a trip up there is sounding better and better! Or, maybe I’ll just stay home and veg out watching LifeTime movies all day…….afterall, it is Sunday – the day of rest!
So — here’s to the day being as lovely as I think it will be………the girls are enjoying it, so far – they are outside running like the wind and playing and rough housing and burning off a ton of energy – hopefully, that means they will be good and tired when they have to be inside when it rains later!
Happy Sunday!
Movie Review – "The Bucket List"
I got so wrapped up in the lives of the characters – they became real and I felt every emotion they were going through. I laughed and I cried and I cared about every aspect of them both! Of course, there was no doubt about how wonderful Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman would be in their roles and there was no disappointment there! They both bring so much to any character they portray – no exception with these characters. Sean Hayes was very good in his role as the assistant to Jack Nicholson’s character. I liked him in Will & Grace, but this brought out a very different side to him and he was perfect for the role. The incredible Rob Reiner was the Director – enough said there!
The characters – Edward Cole (Nicholson) and Carter Chambers (Freeman) – discover fairly early in the movie that they have 6 months to a year to live due to cancer. They were total strangers and from very different lifestyles before they were thrown together in this situation. They decide to do what is necessary to give their life meaning and find joy in the things that they want to accomplish before they die. They travel the world together and do a lot of exciting things – but that is really just the back drop! The meat of the story is in what they discover about each other and about themselves and what they do once they return to their lives. They find the true joy in their lives – how wonderful it must be to leave this world content and knowing you left something behind that you can be truly proud of!
The ending (no worries, there won’t be any spoilers here) is absolutely PERFECT!!!! I sobbed, composed myself, and went to the car and sobbed some more!
To summarize – I loved this movie! I went through the whole gambit of emotions – laughed, cried, and found myself in love with the characters. Go see this movie – get involved in the lives of the characters – discover how they find themselves – you won’t be sorry!
Now – with that said, here is my favorite quote from the movie! When the quote was spoken, I gasped out loud and ROARED!!!! Jack Nicholson’s character is speaking to Sean Hayes’ character – imagine Jack Nicholson saying this in true Jack Nicholson form and voice:
Kim's Thoughts 
Recent Comments