The Oscars

Did you watch the Academy Awards?

I didn't. Not because I haven't seen any of the movies. I saw 1/2 of them. But because I got tired of being held captive while people who think they're better than me tried to force me to listen to their opinions - about politics/social injustice/war, etc. Meh. I go to or watch movies for entertainment. That's not to say that occasionally I don't watch those "based on a true story" movies. But even then, unless it's a real documentary, it's still acted out.

Anyway. I read last week that viewership of the Oscars last year was down almost 75%. WOW! Well...there was a pandemic. Not a lot of movies were made. Not a lot of theaters showed those movies, so, duh. I guess they were hoping to bring people back in. Now, all that being said, what do you think about the slap seen 'round the world?! Was that real or staged? I mean, that seems pretty out of character for Will Smith. And Chris Rock handled it remarkably well. Hmmmm. 

If it wasn't staged and it was a real moment, (brought to you by actors) why is it so hard to believe? Because they're actors? Because you think Will Smith is a nice guy? Or is it because of our fake culture? Shouldn't we be more concerned that if it was real, we aren't appalled at the violent outburst?

I personally think almost everything in reality tv, is scripted. And I don't bat an eye anymore when an entertainer lip syncs a live performance. Marketing execs used to at least try and make you believe in the illusion. Now, everyone knows that pictures are photo shopped and air brushed. Everyone knows that a Whopper will NEVER look like that one in the commercial!! And still, we accept that. There have been tv programs that show you how it's done. No secrets. People will call out obvious photo shopped mistakes on social media. It's so crazy!

It all seems pretty coincidental, doesn't it?

What has YOUR state done?

One of the channels I subscribe to on YouTube is The World According to Briggs. Briggs is a funny guy. All he does is lists. Lists about states. Top ten states with the best weather. Top ten states that no one wants to move to. Top ten states with affordable housing. Top 10 reasons not to move to Wisconsin. He does city and small town stuff too. Some of it statistical and some of it based on opinion/surveys. But they're fun. Last week he did one called, Coolest Inventions From Each State. Ready?

Alabama - the electric hearing aid 
Alaska - ranch dressing

Arkansas - movies with sound in 1923

Arizona - the taser

California - the iPhone in 2007

Colorado - the cheeseburger

Connecticut - vulcanized rubber (and nylon)

Delaware - Kevlar

Florida - air conditioning (and Gatorade)

Georgia - the cotton gin

Hawaii - surfing

Idaho - the television

Illinois - the transistor

Indiana - the washing machine in 1874

Iowa - the 1st gas powered tractor

Kansas - helicopter

Kentucky - bourbon (and the song, happy birthday)

Louisiana - Jazz

Maine - the diving suit

Maryland - bottle caps

Massachusetts - Facebook

Michigan - the automobile assembly line

Minnesota - rollerblades

Mississippi - Pine sol cleaner

Missouri - the ice cream cone

Montana - the portable heart monitor

Nebraska - the ski lift

Nevada - blue jeans

New Hampshire - the Segway

New Jersey - the lightbulb

New Mexico - the atomic bomb

New York - toilet paper

North Carolina - the airplane

North Dakota - the Kodak camera

Ohio - the traffic light

Oklahoma - the parking meter

Oregon - Wiki pages

Pennsylvania - bubble gum

Rhode Island - automatic sprinkler system

South Carolina - the military submarine

South Dakota - the cyclotron

Tennessee - cotton candy

Texas - the electric typewriter 

Utah - airbags

Vermont - sandpaper

Virginia - chap stick

Washington - Windows operating system

West Virginia - steam boats

Wisconsin - the blender

Wyoming - the first National Park

..."be nice to each other"

I'm SO excited!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's Time!!!

Senate passes bill to make daylight saving time permanent!

It's time again!

You know...it happened again...changed my clocks. Ok, well I didn't actually change any of them. They all changed magically, by themselves :-) Except for the one in my car, which I don't ever change anyway because it's so complicated! I did see this year though that there is more talk about ditching the change! You know I'm all for that!!!

https://indyscootergirl.blogspot.com/2021/11/tell-me-again-what-time-is-it.html

what's next?!?!?!

-Inflation, that's what! And I'm not just talking about the price of a used car or a new home or an extra buck at the gas pump either.

You know, for the last 6 weeks or so, our grocery bill has been about $40 to $50 more. We do a full shopping every couple of weeks and fill in where necessary. As the bill has gotten higher, I've thought to myself, we're so fortunate that we can afford this increase. But last week, it really slammed  into me!! We went to the store for "some" things. We did buy a couple things we don't usually but we didn't buy any meat, and very little produce. Anyway....$151.00. OMG! It literally made me feel nauseous. $151!!!!!! Holy smokes. Then, this morning, my fella put 3/4 of a tank a gas in my car and it was $60.00. Thank heavens for teleworking. It's only 2 days a week but it's going to make a big difference. When he told me that, how much it cost, my first thought was, lots of people won't be able to afford to go to work! How freaking absurd is that?!?!?! 

I don't know how this can go much further. Some prognosticators are pretty confident that we'll see $6 + a gallon for gas. It's pretty close to that in some states already. 

I suspect Aldi and Walmart will become a lot busier. There will be less vacation travel for sure. The world we live in right now seems so precarious, in so many ways. It makes me sad.

Quilled cakes!

There's actually a category for cake quilling!

Look at these beautifully delightful cakes!!!

Wow!!!  Wasn't that fun to see?

Pandemic Life 2022

Using data from Johns Hopkins University's interactive dashboard

The COVID-19 pandemic has claimed 5.9 million lives globally as of February 28, 2022. More than 940,00 of those deaths have been in the United States.

Currently, approximately 1.4% of known COVID-19 infections in the US have resulted in death. This percentage varies from state to state, however, and in some parts of the country, infections are far more likely to be fatal than in others.

These are the top 10 excuses for not getting vaccinated;

10. Hard for me to get a vaccine  1.9%

9.   Dr hasn't recommended it 9.6%

8.   Don't think covid is a beg threat  25.1%

7.   Other reason  25.0%

6.   Don't know if a vaccine will protect me  26.1%

5.   Plan to wait and see if it's safe  31.0%

4.   Don't believe I need a vaccine  35.3%

3.   Don't trust the government  39.8%

2.   Don't trust covid 19 vaccines  47.5%

1.   Concerned about possible side effects  55.6%

I was really surprised at #9.

I heard someone say the other day, it's hard to trust "the science" when it's been wrong so frequently. Good point. I stand by what I said over a year ago...if they had come out in the beginning and said, we don't know how this is going to play out, we don't know how this is going to affect people, we don't know...but lets try this fill in the blank. I think people would've responded a lot differently. If the effing media hadn't politized the issue, I think people would've responded a lot differently. Oh well. Live and learn I guess.

Reviews

When you buy things, go out to dinner, pick a doctor, do you research them and look at reviews? I do. When I'm looking on Amazon for something, I look at the reviews. I read at least a couple pages of reviews, good and bad, before I decide. I don't usually look at restaurant reviews though. That's too subjective for me. And I don't think I've ever picked a doctor based on their reviews. But I have left a couple reviews on my dentist - he's fabulous!

I think I'm pretty honest when I leave a review. I try to be. Even if it's for something I don't like, I try and find one little nice thing to say, you know, unless they totally suck! The other day, I ordered a personalized gift off of Etsy. It's really pretty. But the name is small and hard to read so I only gave them 4 stars. And I said why in the review. They emailed me and said they strive for complete customer satisfaction and wanted to know how they could've done better, so I would've given them 5 stars. So I replied...they responded with, "thank you for letting me know. I respect your comment but this font is popular nowadays so we are using this on all our products and get hundreds of compliments about it. Please make your review 5 stars, we will appreciate it."  Ummm, NO! That ticked me off. I said the product was lovely, nice quality, etc. but I was disappointed in how they did the name. humph.

Also, you have to be pretty bad for me to write a complaint to a company. I'm more about telling a company when they've done a great job. People don't hear that enough.

Last night, we went to Best Buy and bought a sound bar for the TV. We had one in mind when we went. I could've gotten it off Amazon for $2 less but I don't want to give them ALL my business. Anyway, for the first time, they were not helpful. There were 3 salesmen in that area, just standing around and I had to go to them. The man that opted to help us, was a little condescending. We ended up getting something better than what we had intended but I didn't appreciate being talked down to. Also, there was no one at the cash registers and when we asked if someone could help us, a young woman begrudgingly came to check us out. It was really an unpleasant experience all around. I'm still trying to decide if I want to let Best Buy know that or not.

This is an interesting article about fake reviews, which was really all I originally wanted to talk about!  :-)

https://www.wthr.com/article/news/investigations/13-investigates/many-of-those-5-star-reviews-you-see-online-are-totally-fake-yelp-google-facebook-false-accounts/531-f175843b-1316-494a-a746-5bdfcada43fa

guns and death

Yesterday, a landmark, historic settlement was made by the gun manufacturer, Remington. In a suit claiming that the gun manufacturer is responsible for a massacre/mass shooting, it settled out of court for $73 million dollars.

It's a slippery slope, isn't it? No matter what side of the issue you're on. I've had several questions, as a casual news reader. One is, why did they settle instead of go to trial? Did they think they would lose? Did they settle because if they lost it would set a precedent, which would be bad for other gun manufacturers. Now that they've reached a settlement out of court will other gun manufacturers be targeted? The other thing that was really curious to me was, even though this was "breaking news" when it happened, I couldn't find a single headline about it in any news outlet that was in even the top 10! USA Today, Fox News, NY Times, MSN...The way the media covers anything about guns and gun control and the 2nd amendment is so aggressive, I just don't understand why they didn't have a million words to say about this?!!?

Gun related deaths in the US topped 45,000 during the pandemic. (There was a spike in homicides.) Is that a moral issue or a gun issue?

I didn't/don't follow this case but I gathered that part of the suit against them was how they market their firearms. That made me wonder, why is it ok for Anheuser-Busch to market (target) a young audience?

Did you know, drunk drivers cause more than one third of all traffic related deaths. Alcohol related deaths, ie excessive alcohol use, is responsible for more than 95,000 deaths each year. Who is responsible? The drunk driver, the bartender who served them, the alcohol maker, the store they purchased that alcohol from?

According to CDC statistics, drug overdoses  accounted for over 91,000 deaths. Is that a health issue or a big pharma issue? What about the doctors that prescribe the drugs?

Cigarette smoking is estimated to cause 480,000 deaths annually. 

Where is the outrage, exactly??

Tiny things

When my ex-sister-in-law died a couple years ago, my youngest niece took her miniature house. She said she has some nice memories about her mom and working on that house.

Last year she started remodeling it. It needed it. It was in pretty bad shape. I've put together several miniature houses so she hit me up for tips and ideas. I obliged :-) She's doing a fabulous job too. She has a decorating flair and she's good with power tools! She's even given her journey it's own Instagram page and named her house, 918 Victoria Lane. You can find it on IG at victoria.lane.mini  

Occasionally she'll send me a text with a picture of some miniature food and say, Hi Aunt Cindy, isn't this sooooo cute?! I can't say no, so I'll make it for her. So far she's gotten this;

With more requests backed up. It's fun. I like doing it. 

Anyway, it's really made me want to do the keeper house I still have in a box in my craft room. It's 3 stories with a shop on the bottom. It's so awesome! I've had it for about 15 years!!! I don't even know why I haven't put it together. I guess it's a little intimidating.  And it can be expensive. But I even go to the Miniature House Museum's attic sale whenever they have it and but all sorts of cute little tiny things for a fraction of the cost! I really just need to jump in though. I love tiny things. I love miniature houses! 

It's hard to get started on things sometimes. 

D.E.I.

 D.E.I. stands for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

It's a "thing" now, where I work. We now have a DEI committee. What is their purpose you ask?

The purpose of the DEI committee is to develop and promote strategies and best practices within the realms of racial, social, sexual, and gender diversity. The DEI Committee further serves as an opportunity for non-committee members a place to provide suggestions and challenges for the DEI.

Before the committee was created, I was invited to sit in on the discussion about DEI and the need for a committee. We were given handouts. The first is the definitions and the 2nd was part another visual aid.

For now, I want to talk about the 2nd image. We were all asked if we had comments about this graphic. Almost everyone did. But the one comment that stuck out for me was, well this is a nice graphic but why are all the kids black?  Which of course made someone else say, this makes it look like African Americans are always on the outside and they don't have the opportunity to see the game from the stands. In my head, I thought, the big kid is just a jerk for not giving his box to the little guy. My next thought was, boys are stinkers, trying to watch the game over the fence. It didn't even occur to me that were black. Apparently, I'm part of the problem...that racism is so ingrained in our culture that I can't recognize that it's a problem.

The point of the graphic is; Equality = everyone benefits from the same supports. Equity = Everyone gets the supports they need.

A better graphic would have been;

Regardless, I didn't like being told that I was part of the problem because I'm white. I don't like feeling bad for black people because I'm white. I've had a couple honest conversations with black people about this. It's been interesting and sometime enlightening. Clearly, I can't know what it's like to be a person of color. I know what discrimination feels like though - because I'm a woman and now because I'm a senior. But I don't know what racial discrimination feels like. I'm naïve, I know that. I'm not that naïve though. I know there are more people than I can imagine, that still feel negatively towards people of color. I'm not one of them though. And I would be delighted to have conversations about it...but not hateful, argumentative, mean spirited ones. 

happy music

Do you have happy music that you love? You know, those songs that you hear that you literally can't sit still for?

I have a few. Walking On Sunshine by Katrina and the Waves. BEST happy song ever!

Faith by George Michael. Uh huh...my head is swaying just thinking about it!

You Make My Dreams Come True by Hall and Oats. My fella likes Uptown Funk by Bruno Mars and Can't Stop the Feeling by Justin Timberlake. I love the video for JT song. 

Anyway, those are the ones that get me every single time. I know there must be more though, so I looked it up :-) I found a really great list of happy songs! Here are some of them;

* Bob Marley - Three Little Birds

* Lionel Richie - All Night Long

* Bobby McFerrin - Don't Worry Be Happy

* Ricky Martin - La Vida Loca'

* Whitney Houston - I Wanna Dance With Somebody

* Bill Withers - Lovely Day

* ABBA - Dancing Queen

* Luke Bryan - One Margarita

* Earth, Wind & Fire - September

* The Turtles - Happy Together

* The Kinks - Come Dancing

* Chubby Checker - The Twist

* I Feel Good - James Brown

* The Monkeys - I'm a Believer

Here's a fun little article about happy songs;

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/634936/happiest-songs-according-to-science

Life

Do you remember when you were little and you thought the year 2000 was SOOOOO far away?! Maybe you were going to be 50 years old in 2000! Or 40!!! That's ancient when you're only 10. Now it's 2022. If you turned 50 in 2000, you're really old now. If you turned 40 in 2000, you're climbing that chart too. Now when you look back at 2000, it seems like it's so far away again. 

I remember when my mom turned 50. I was 31. 50 seemed old to me. But when I got to 50, psshhh. NOT old! I was still getting drunk at 50! hahahahaha Now? Nah. The recovery time is too long. 

Do you wish you had taken better care of yourself, when you look back on your life? You know, had better eating habits, took better care of your skin, exercised, saved your $$, had children, not had children, paid attention in school, waited longer to have sex or not waited 😊 All those youthful things.

Now you look around at all the things you've "collected" in your life and you think, who's gonna get all this stuff. I have things that are very important to me, sentimentally. Nobody else is going to care about that though. Ewwww. I'm still enjoying all my things (and will continue to) and it's not depressing me but it is weird to think about.

Some things about getting older really take me by surprise. Like, the 70's were 50 years ago?!?!?! The movie, ET, is 40 years old this year. Mick Jagger is 78. Seinfeld ended  24 years ago! The women on the reboot of Sex In the City are the same age now as the Golden Girls were! Holy wow! When someone says, "30 years ago" they mean the 90's. Ugh. We've had our flat screen TV for almost 17 years - but we really still appreciate how great HDTV is. Sirius XM has been on the air for 20 years? 

The other thing that happens when you get older is....death. More often than I'd like, I see an obit or find out that someone I went to high school with or some co-worker, has died. It always makes me think, am I that old?! Just recently I found out that my high school sweetheart died last year. That really made me sad. My 16 year old heart mourned him.

I don't mind about getting old(er). I don't care that I don't have the stamina I used to or that I'm not as strong as I used to be. I'm not one of those people who looks back and regrets things  but just recently I started thinking about the things I still want to do or learn or accomplish. I hope I have enough time!

Movies

What are you watching, on streaming platforms? You know, Netflix, Hulu, Paramount +, Disney, etc.

We get our TV from an antennae now so we stream almost everything we watch. I thought I might miss television. I don't. I have found some things that I like and some that I don't.

If you like quirky, dark humor, you should watch Ricky Gervais on Netflix - After Life. The British sense of humor is fun sometimes.

If you like delightfully quirky, you can also watch Picket Fences on Hulu. I loved this show when it was originally on. I'm so happy I can stream it now. 

Also, I never watched this when it was on but I'm watching it now on Prime Video, Eureka. Also delightfully quirky and original and mostly lighthearted. 

Have you watched Sweet Tooth, on Netflix? Other than being based on the outcome of a virus, (and I LOVE virus movies/shows) I'm really enjoying this story. Season 2 is coming late this year. I can't wait to see Big Man rescue all the hybrids!

Have you seen, Don't Look Up, on Netflix? Wow is it ever absurdly plausible! It has a little bit of a slow start but it's kind of got that dark, twisted thing going for it. It's about a planet killing comet hurtling toward Earth and no one cares. 

One of my favorite "looking" actors did a movie for Netflix called, Sweet Girl. It was a get even story, a little violent, but the end was a complete surprise. That alone made me love it. It's always a good movie for me if I don't see it coming.

I've heard there are a lot of great shows out there. Some of them I bailed on right away though. One for instance was Yellowstone. I watched the first 3 episodes and bailed. It didn't having any characters to root for. No redeeming qualities in anyone. They were all assholes. I need something good.  Same for a show called See, and Game of Thrones. I've been told I should stick it out for a few episodes. I don't know. I wanted to like the reboot of Lost In Space, but after a few episodes I discovered the only likeable character was Will Robinson and the robot. Not for me. 

Now, we're watching 1883 on Paramount +. It's depressing - their lives. If you like westerns, you'd love this one. I totally buy it, that life is being accurately portrayed. It's hard and it's depressing but I'm rooting for all of them. 

And just for fun, Ghosts on CBS. Pretty funny so far.

And if you just like nature shows, Disney's Welcome To Planet Earth, with Wil Smith is good.

There's A LOT out there to watch if you look around!!!

Happy New Year!

I was going to write, Pandemic Life 2022 but that pissed me off so I went with Happy New Year. It is a new year after all. So far, it's not shaping up to be any better than the last TWO. It's so absurd! My fella and I have both been vaccinated, twice AND had our flu shots and still couldn't hide from the 'sick.' At this point I think they should stop trying to get the unvaccinated, vaccinated. Just let everyone get it. Seriously. How are we ever going to achieve herd immunity otherwise. Where I work, we've had at least 40/50 people out sick, every day since before Christmas. One lady, had covid in the very beginning, got vaccinated when she could and got the booster when she could and has covid again! And the numbers their spewing? Honestly, they don't mean anything. How many tens of thousand of people, like me, didn't get tested because they already knew that's what they had?!!! There's no place to go to get tested where the line isn't 2 hours long, at a minimum. There are no home testing kits to be found anywhere. In less than 2 weeks time, we have family all over the country with covid now! Arizona, Utah, California. It's gonna happen eventually. You're going to get it. I'm convinced. sigh. So not only are we starting off the year with yet another flu variant, now we've got inflation and labor shortages to deal with as well. Sometimes it seems like the world is on the brink of great change.

Onward...can you believe it's 2022? 2021 seemed so long sometimes but other times I feel like it went by in just couple months. Humph. Did you have a good Christmas? Has your year started off well? We did some fun things over the Christmas break. We went out to Kokomo to see Seiberling mansion. It's over 10k square feet, built in 1889 by Monroe Seiberling. Really beautiful place. We love those old homes. All that woodwork is so impressive.

 

Then one day we went out to Huntington, Indiana to eat at a little diner called Nick's Kitchen. Founded in 1908, it is the birthplace of the pork tenderloin sandwich. A staple in the Midwest!! Everyone should eat in a 100 = year old establishment. It's fun. 

We also had our first piece of sugar cream pie. The state pie of Indiana. It was kind of like custard pie with sugar on top. Ick. And I like sugar! 

It was a lovely holiday break :-)