Living In the World, Not on It

Ye gods. Normally, I don't want to post the whole thing each week when there is another two-hour episode of Celebrity Apprentice, but after this last one... well, wow . They both fell flat on their faces. Both teams did poorly and were eaten alive by the executives. They were chewed up and spit out. The mens' team had only three guys who were overworked (but still very relieved not to have Gary). But the little details, like leaving out any - ANY - kind of contact information, was a huge gaff. And while the men used to have the creative edge, they did not have it this time. They stuck to the tried and true methods of what high-end hospitality is. And then there was the womens' team. Ouch. Star Jones was the team leader and as usual she glued herself to the laptop to put it all together. The concept was to create four images that showed how high-end Trump hotels are. Star visualised four different images and there were errors. Star also put together the pitch. It was terribl...

I left the telly on last night when I crashed and did not hear it until 0530. I woke up just in time to see Prince William entering the Westminster Abbey. He looked very nice. Of course, the fuss was all about Kate, who got into the Rolls Royce without really giving away any of what her dress looked like. She was veiled and waving enthusiastically the whole five-minute drive and then she extricated herself from the car. She looked lovely. The dress was beautiful - elegant, simple, lacey arms, maybe an 8-foot train, quite tasteful, not the puffy arms of Princess Di's dress with that unbelievably long train. And her sister Pippa had a simple sheath-like white satiny dress that looked comfortable as well. (Some where already talking about her wearing white, but so what? She hardly out did the bride. No one had any trouble discerning who was who. I find that sort of sniping to be pointless.) The kids where well-behaved and the wedding went smoothly. I fell asleep right at the end of th...

That doesn't sound promising but there it is. I had thought for a while that I might vote for Donald Trump. But a few things I read and learned about him has made me rethink that poor decision. It seems that while he is still a million or billionaire, his properties have all turned into money pits and he is using 90% of the profit to put into other ventures. Doing stupid things with money is endemic I suppose, but that is worse when it is playing Russian Roulette with one's business finances. Last night I read how Donald began harping on President Obama's birth certificate. I was floored. He sounds like a conspiracy theorist, now. How disheartening. I'm very disappointed in you, Donald. I thought (foolishly) that you had more integrity than that. Mike Hucklebee is too scary for me. It will be a cold day in Hell before I vote for any bible-thumping maniac. These ultra-religious people all scare me - they will wade into this with the mindset of taking the separation of ch...

I setup the TiVO to record the Royal Wedding. Why not? I watched a fair amount of the 1981 wedding of Di and Prince Charles, but there was no recording device then - At least we didn't have one then, so I was laying in bed listening to the cast of the wedding. England is five or six hours ahead of us, so I am not getting up at 0400 just to hear the people staffing E! speculating for an hour on what Kate Middleton will be wearing. (Little tip: she will be wearing a wedding dress. Anything else is just gravy.All this fuss because no one's seen the dress yet!) I remember Di's dress, this unbelievably fluffy nightmare with something completely ridiculous like a 30-foot train. Why? I suspect she was dying to get out of that thing. I wouldn't have gotten in it, but it's tough to know if she was pushed to pick an over the top Disney Princess dress or if she really had such poor taste. I don't mean to knock her fashion sense - normally she looked very natty all the time...

Now, this is justice! "As a result of being found in violation of probation , Lindsay Lohan will be collecting trash, emptying trash bins, mopping floors and cleaning windows and restrooms at the L.A. County Department of Coroner's facility. "She won't be handling any dead bodies but she'll certainly see them,” Coroner Assistant Chief Ed Winter tells People of the actress, 24, who also has been ordered to complete 360 hours of service at the Downtown Women's Center, a homeless shelter located in L.A.'s Skid Row. Lohan must enroll in the two programs within a week and has a year to complete them, according to People . The actress – who previously completed a DUI morgue program following her second drunk-driving conviction 2007 – remains free on $75,000 bail (she was sentenced to 120 days behind bars Friday). The trial in her grand theft charge begins June 3. If convicted, she faces a maximum penalty of an additional year in jail." ...

I am on the verge of hitting the 9,000th comment, and it’s likely that someone playing this week’s set of questions might be the one to post it. How cool is that? Since yesterday was April Fools’ Day, I thought I’d post some joke-related questions. I hope you weren’t the victim of too many of them, or that if you were, you at least had a good sense of humor about it! Thanks for playing! Be sure to check back this week and click on the links of bloggers who play along in the comments below! It’s a great way to find blogs you may not have visited and to keep the conversation going! Here are this week’s “Saturday Six” questions. Either answer the questions in a comment here, or put the answers in an entry on your blog… But don’t forget to leave a link to your blog so that everyone else can visit! Permission is not granted to copy the questions to message boards for the purpose of having members answer and play along there. Enjoy! 1. How many times have you forwarded a...

I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed doing these! With this edition of the Saturday Six , I could say, numerically, that if this were a daily rather than a weekly meme, there would be enough editions to have run the course of a full year. Since it’s weekly, though, we’re into year seven . This week’s edition is slightly different in that the off-site quiz I usually throw into the mix is of local origin: I am conducting a reader survey here at Patrick’s Place and I would really like to get your opinion on a few things. As surveys go, this one is particularly short, just 10 questions in all. So I hope you’ll take the quick survey if you haven’t already, then answer the rest of the blog-related questions here. Thanks for playing! Be sure to check back this week and click on the links of bloggers who play along in the comments below! It’s a great way to find blogs you may not have visited and to keep the conversation going! Here are this week’s “Saturday Six” questions. Ei...

First, let me thank those who played last week and who took The Patrck’s Place Survey . I appreciate your input. If you haven’t taken it, please do so: it’s a short survey and it will help me continue to improve the blog and make sure it’s delivering what you want. The big news late this week that ABC is killing two of the few remaining soap operas on the air is inspiring this week’s set of questions. You don’t have to be a soap fan to play along, because the general theme is television rather than, specifically, soap operas! So grab your remotes and get ready to answer six quick questions! Thanks for playing! Be sure to check back this week and click on the links of bloggers who play along in the comments below! It’s a great way to find blogs you may not have visited and to keep the conversation going! Here are this week’s “Saturday Six” questions. Either answer the questions in a comment here, or put the answers in an entry on your blog… But don’t forget to leave a...

Hope you’re having a great Easter weekend! I definitely am, but I’ll go into more details on that in a later post. Here’s another set of six questions…so get those thinking caps on! Thanks for stopping by and thanks for playing. Be sure to check back this week and click on the links of bloggers who play along in the comments below! It’s a great way to find blogs you may not have visited and to keep the conversation going! Here are this week’s “Saturday Six” questions. Either answer the questions in a comment here, or put the answers in an entry on your blog… But don’t forget to leave a link to your blog so that everyone else can visit! Permission is not granted to copy the questions to message boards for the purpose of having members answer and play along there. Enjoy! 1. Do you still have your tonsils? If not, how old were you when it was removed? I have my tonsils, I hate to admit it... they scare me but nowadays, doctors are reluctant to take them out. In fact, I don...

I still have this link on my blog, and the last post was 2006. Still, I wish I'd written this: Interplanetary whiskey on the rocks Unfortunately very short on whiskey (some god or alien or something must have drunk it all a long time ago (Might explain a few things)), but there is absolutely no shortage on ice planets out there. At least if the suggestion put forth to the International Astronomical Union (Not an astronomical large union, just a group of astronomers deciding how big a piece of rock needs to be to be called a planet, and what the before mentioned planet is supposed to be called.) But first: How does the solar system look like today: Well, smack in the middle you have a rather big yellow thingy, called the Sun. (You can see it during the day. It's the big yellow bright spot that appear to play hide and seek among the clouds up there... On occasi...

This week was the worst week in a long time. I lost a good friend. Over the weekend, Todd went fishing, had a great time, came home, played with his kids, went to bed and did not wake up. He had a severe cardiac arrest (not sure if it was classified as a massive myocardial infarction, but those are most often the silent killers when it comes to the heart). Any way you slice it, whatever you call it, a wonderful, warm, intense person died at age 42. Death stinks. It isn't often as much for the deceased that we grieve as much as for the survivors: his wife, a sweet person who is suddenly bereft; their two kids, 5 years and 2 years; his parents and siblings; his coworkers and friends. We are all devastated and lost because someone we called friend is gone, irrevocably taken from us. It is unfair, it is wrong, it is horrible. Nothing can be painted as positive in this save for the fact that his death was a peaceful as one could want. It came 40 years too soon, but other than that, he h...

So to speak! I won't miss him at all. Neither will Lil Jon, John Rich or Meatloaf, who normally an intelligent, verbose, well-spoken man was reduced to gibbering at several points when asked about the task, Gary's being the project manager and other topics. This poor guy has been destroyed each episode by Gary, who has long since lost his marbles, and while he rallies back each time, it's clearly taken his toll. For Meatloaf at most and the rest of his teammates, as well, they all must have slept like babies when Gary was fired! The women, on the other hand, seemed unhappy, even distressed by this. Keep in mind that this is in the last few moments of the show, so we did not really get a feel for why, but if I had to guess, I'd say it is because no matter how much actual cat-fighting went on with their team, they always knew the men had the great Achilles' heal, Gary, who brought down the last three tasks. Now the men, while only numbering three, can make the very st...

Yesterday was a very, very bad day. I find out yesterday morning that a former coworker of mine from my last job, died Monday morning of no apparent cause. (I can make a terribly educated guess, but it won't change the facts or bring the dead back to life.) I feel awful. I'm going to the wake today from 1600 to 2000 and then the funeral tomorrow at 1000. His wife, who spoke to me frequently, must be a wreck. When I looked at them each year together, I knew I was looking at two people madly in love. I know I would be destroyed by losing Luis. I also went to the pharmacy and discovered that my major medical insurance was terminated! WHAT the hell?! I realise this is an error of (to me) epic proportions, but there are few errors in the world that cannot be fixed. The free trial acupressure session I had at 1600 did help a lot, as it followed all the bad news but I still need to move through the first (as is always the case with great sadness) and try like mad to be patient until t...

Remember on 13 March I posted about looking forward to spring? Big mistake! What friggin' spring? It has been rainy and raw. Saturday we had a monsoon and now we have flooding - again. As if the first time five weeks ago wasn't enough. And then the week before last it rained five out of seven days. This week was unique - and great for me - in that between Monday and yesterday, there were eight thunderstorms! I love thunderstorms. Bring 'em on! I don't know what it was like outside today - I seem to feel poorly on Mondays more often than other days, and today was that. (For reasons passing understanding, if I eat at night - you know, night-night, after I've taken meds to go to sleep, if I eat anything, I end up vomiting. Yuck. Last night I made the huge mistake of eating around 0100. At 0130, everything came up, including and most especially the meds that keep me from being in agony. I couldn't eat or take anything until around 1100. I was a mess. And the worst...

I went to the hairdresser (finally) and completely forgot to bring a book, something I never do. I was bent out of shape - it takes about 45 minutes for the dye to soak in, which is all downtime - and I usually don't care to join the aimless twitters of the other customers. Ever notice that? It's usually women in there, and they just yak, yak, yak about mindless things. Or their children, which is where I totally lose interest instead of merely being bored. So I read. However, without a book, I had to begin weeding through the proffered magazines. Most were perfectly dreadful - Redbook, Home [whatever], Cosmopolitan (I remember my mother read that incessantly, and I never could get into it. It's a terribly stupid publication), etc. And then I came across Inside Jersey, which I might normally have bypassed, but emblazoned on the cover is the phrase "TOP HOSPITALS". Okay! This I want to read. It's a huge article, and then it breaks down into top rated hospitals ...