Oh, I Think So

Happy Spring 2016!  My landlady has already had a visit from the lawn service who've also turned over her flower beds.  My garage landlady has had her vegetable beds turned over.  It isn't April!  Because we had several days of sustained icy-cold weather, I don't think the bug situation will be terrible this year. I am going to be getting my winter coat cleaned soon, always an indicator that winter's over.  My lightweight winter jacket?  The last day for that is May 10, always.  After May 10, I'm generally not disappointed. Next week: The Gorilla and the Spud

Mascara is a subjective thing.  There are a zillion brands and each brand has a million varieties.  Curling!  Curling and lengthening!  Lengthening and separating!  It could boggle the mind but as a woman, I find this to be far too important an issue to not concentrate upon, pay attention to, and think about in order to make a solid decision.  I am swayed by magazine ads and magazine articles, TV ads, store displays, and QVC.  (The last one is usually right before I go to bed and I've only done it once but it worked out very well and I totally love the mascara.) Then there is the curling of the lash.  Do you curl before you coat or coat and then curl?  I am a coat and then curl girl but I sometimes do the former.  I coat and then curl because I forget to curl first and for some lunk-headed reason I keep the curler in a different part of the medicine cabinet from the mascara.  I've been meaning to rearrange the cabinet ... for 17 y...

I am a big fan of Costco.  I love the place.  The prices, the quality, the volume, the variety, how if you don't snatch something up one day, it could be gone forever, just like getting supplies in the Soviet Union was (as my pal, Mike, used to put it).  There are food and goods demonstrators and samples galore.  Less expensive hearing aids and glasses, great photo processing, ink cartridge refills, and a dazzling array of vitamins await your perusal.  Lower-priced gas awaits pumping.  It is bounty for the cost of membership. For me the best show in town happens when the rotisserie chickens are ready to be put on the shelves.  You can tell because someone starts rushing around the ovens, back and forth, looking at timers, and touching keypads.  Then they go over to the big metal table in front, just to the left of the heated shelves, and they start laying out the bottom portion of the containers.  Black, oblongish containers.  Twenty-f...

Perhaps you're a fan of "Downton Abbey" and perhaps you're not.  It's the world of the Crawley family, a world that no longer exists.  It was very good acting and costumes and hair and jewelry.  It was a time that's now gone that, thank goodness, will never come back but I enjoyed the show and tonight it all ends.  I didn't watch the first season but I happened upon season 1 on Netflix right before season 2 started and, bang, I was hooked.  The days when people dressed for dinner in their finest and when the servants were completely subservient.  When the staff stood when the butler entered or left the room.  It started with the sinking of the Titanic and with it the heir to the Crawley title and estate, a cousin called Patrick who was going to marry the eldest Crawley daughter to keep the title close at hand as Robert and Cora Crawley had only girls.  They find a more distant cousin who practices law, lives with his mother who is a trained nurs...

It's time to relax, be calm, watch Chris Rock host the Oscars and maybe have a couple of laughs. I am going to start the relaxing thing right now.

I am not the craftiest person in the world.  I enjoy crafts like jewelry-making, especially bracelets, and papercrafts, like putting together small books.  These things do not come easily to me as I have almost no art talent.  My art talent has increased as I've gotten older but it is more my ability to stick with it and be willing to learn the craft than actually being able to sit down and just do it.  I went to a bookmaking class once where I struggled to finish the project by the end of the allotted time while there was one hyperactive, hyper-talented art teacher who made two of project simultaneously and left early.  (Her husband was out of town, she said, and she never got to do things like this when he was home.)  I have to plod along in my own fashiion and let it register in my own way and then it certainly sticks and I can do it forever. And then we have crochet.  I've started various projects over the years but have never had the ture stick-...

Hooray for Peyton Manning, the Denver Broncos QB who got the job done.  He was not the MVP (because he wasn't the most valuable) but the man ended his season -- some speculate his career -- on a true high. But, of course, hooray for us because we had Lady Gaga singing the Star Spangled Banner.  Here and now we agree and Lady Gaga has true talent.  She looked and sounded pretty as an All-American girl. The halftime show was great!  All Americans Bruno Mars, Mark Ronson, and Beyoncé brought it and what would an All-American show be without a little British invasion?  Coldplay -- Chris Martin especially -- looked so excited to be there.  I was excited to watch!  Past Super Bowl halftime shows have been missing something because the artist looked damn bored about being there.  Not this time. This next one is from the point of view of someone in the show.  It's a whole different vantage point on the halftime performance gig.  And wh...