A Time For Everything

 

We ended up with two of them!

Snow is a fairly rare occurrence around these here parts--especially this much. But it was lovely to watch and enjoy while working from home. Technology has its plusses and the ability to work from home is definitely one of them.

Here are a few more pictures:

The water in the bird bath was frozen solid.

Rascal tracks in the snow. :0)

Snow on the driveway / ramp. (This was after the first wave of precip.)

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Image courtesy of Paramount+.

I binged this and it's fabulous. Stallone is great. If you have Paramount+ and you haven't seen it -- go watch it.

From Wikipedia: Stallone portrays Dwight "the General" Manfredi, an American Mafia caporegime who has been recently released from prison in New York and is sent to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he begins to set up a criminal organization.

What they left out is that he was in prison for twenty-five years for covering for the family he worked for and they sent him to Tulsa with nothing.

Can't wait for Season Three. :0)

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Image courtesy of Netflix.

I also watched this movie, and it, too, was awesome.

From Wikipedia: The film is based on the 2019 magazine article "Fighting a Two-Front War", by Kevin M. Hymel, on the contributions of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, an all-Black and all-female battalion, in World War II.

These women have to overcome all sorts of obstacles on top of the basic indignity of being dismissed because of the color of their skin.

The battalion commander, Major Charity Adams, receives orders to Europe from the Army, but doesn't get the commensurate orders from the War Department which will officially allow her to command her troops. She ends up writing her own.

And it snowballs from there. The battalion's original housing is supposedly bombed, so the commanding general picks new housing "especially for them." Which turns out to be a filthy, vermin-infested old boarding school. So before they can even start the mission they're there to complete, they have to clean the building / facilities to make them livable.

And on and on.

I highly recommend this as well.

https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/six-triple-eight-true-story-real-history/

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And that's all I have for you at the moment--this post is already a fortnight late. Yikes.

So...hope all is well with you.

Take care and catch you in a couple of weeks.

 

We've had a lot of rain this weekend as well as this morning. Thunderstorms, even, which is fine. I had a dog beneath my feet this morning while I wrote as a result of the storms.

On the other hand, I wrote more than the minimum word count this morning and got caught up. :0)

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Yesterday, I took some time to cross stitch / relax and decided to park myself in front of the boob tube. As I was scrolling for a Star Trek series, I saw Poldark and decided to give it a try and, wow, I've really enjoyed it so far. It's about a man who returns home to Cornwall after fighting in the American Revolutionary War for Britain, to find his father dead, the woman he loves set to marry his cousin, and the copper mine he inherited not producing. Compelling stuff!

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My body finally wandered back into ketosis, so yay. I'm still trying to incorporate a bit more fat into my diet, because I think that'll help me overall. I did discover a quick and oh-so-easy recipe for keto bread. I can make one serving at a time and make in the microwave. It has two options--one using coconut flour and one using almond flour.

I tried the coconut flour version and it was okay. I just slathered butter on it and scarfed it down, because I was really craving something bread-like. The almond flour version might be better; I need to try it. Anyway, you can slice it in half and use it as sandwich bread or make toast, so I'm looking forward to seeing how that works. I made meatloaf this weekend, so maybe a meatloaf sandwich might be a good dinner!

I also tried wedges of green cabbage wrapped in bacon, because bacon! Anything with bacon is better, right?? And it was pretty good. I had a wedge of cabbage and four slices of bacon left over, so I just chopped it all up and sauteed it in a skillet. That was tasty, too, but I'm wondering what the addition of some red onions would add... I'm also wondering how red cabbage wrapped in bacon would taste like. Maybe I'll try that next week.

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Hope you had a good weekend and I'll see you Wednesday.

And, surprisingly, I'm not talking about the Stars. :0) Although there is a game tonight and I will be there and I will be wearing green.

But I'm talking about the environment... This past Sunday, I took tote bags with me to the grocery store and used those for toting home my food stuffs. It was a little bit of a challenge to utilize the bags in the sizes I had. I mean, you do your own scanning and bagging for long enough, you develop a system and preference on how to sort and bag the groceries in those store-provided bags. It'll probably take me a week or two to get a new order to things and I might need to dig around the closet to see what other sizes and shapes I have to trade out with and see what happens. :0)

Speaking of the closet, as promised on Wednesday, I did remember to find the next 100 Things Challenge item. Which turned out to be a couple of boxes of DVDs that no one has touched in a couple of years. I also found a box of VHS tapes, but those are going straight into the trash.

I culled carefully through the titles and pulled DH's favorites for him to take down to the fireworks store to keep there. Many of these are not available on Netflix.

Speaking of Netflix Amazon Prime, I finally got around to watching The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and it was wonderful. From Wiki: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is an American period comedy-drama web television series created by Amy Sherman-Palladino, that premiered on March 17, 2017. The series stars Rachel Brosnahan as the titular Miriam "Midge" Maisel, a housewife in 1958 New York City who discovers she has a knack for stand-up comedy.


What they don't say in that succinct write-up is that she'd been supporting her husband for years in his attempt to be a standup comedian and one night he completely bombs and when they get home, he walks out. She gets stupidly drunk and ends up at the club in her peignoir (wearing a coat though) and gives a hilarious drunken monologue.

Once DD and I binged through the eight eps of the first season of that, we started on Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, another Amazon Prime original. From Wiki: Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, or simply Jack Ryan, is an American action political thriller web television series, based on characters from the fictional "Ryanverse" created by Tom Clancy.


 If you've seen The Hunt For Red October, Patriot Games, and/or A Clear and Present Danger, then you should be familiar with Jack Ryan. This series serves as a sort of per-cursor to Jack Ryan's roles in those films but set in the present day (cell phones were not a thing in 90, 92, or 94). I've not seen the more recent offerings of The Sum of All Fears (02) or Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (14).

Aside from the premises and plots of the new original series on both Netflix and Amazon Prime that I've watched, one of the things that intrigues (not the right word) me is the format of eight (Mrs. Maisel and Jack Ryan) or thirteen (Grace & Frankie and The Ranch on Netflix) episodes per season.

As a viewer in general, I'd like more of the shows I enjoy. But as a fan of actors, I think it's a great opportunity for them to be able to do other projects rather than being tied to one show for years on end--like Ellen Pompeo in Grey's Anatomy and Mark Harmon from the original NCIS series.

And that's about all I have to ramble on about today. Hope you have a great weekend--

So I finished watching The Astronauts Wives Club, a ten-part tv mini-series, based on the book of the same name, chronicling the story of the wives of the Mercury Seven astronauts. It covers a span of approximately ten years.


The thing I loved about the series is the look into history of the time just before and just after I was born. The clothes, the hair, the seeming simplicity of life, especially for women. The only degree a woman was expected to get was her MRS. Of course, things were beginning to change during the 60s. Women and blacks were experiencing awful oppression and changes were simmering.

It really hit home how gender biased the time period was when one of the wives of an Apollo astronaut decided to get a divorce as her husband had basically abandoned her and their children (one of whom had Down's Syndrome and leukemia and eventually died at four-years-old). She was told even by her own attorney that she was better off staying married because it was so difficult for a woman to obtain a divorce at that time. One scene depicts her access to bank accounts being ended. Her saving grace was that her husband wanted the divorce to marry someone else. As an aside, only seven of fifty marriages (of all 60s era space program astronauts) didn't end in divorce.

Watching some of the women attempt to pursue their own dreams and being put in their place over and over was painful. I know we've still got a long way to go for women and for people of color and for people of other religions and faiths as well as for people of all sexualities, but thank goodness it's still not that...

It might not be a show for everyone, but I really enjoyed the look into the past and liked the show for what it was. I like that it didn't try whitewash or ignore the issues the book brought to light like how much pressure NASA put on the wives to keep all troubles away from the husbands when they were home. The struggles the wives went through, depression and alcoholism. The attempted cover-up of the real reason why three men died in a fire.

Anyone else watched this? What did you think?

Who's Kelly Severide, you ask...

Well, THIS is Kelly Severide: Hunky firefighter from TV's Chicago Fire, played by the gorgeous Taylor Kinney.



In the show, Kelly gives the appearance of being the archetypal bad boy, but for all the dark clothes, leather jacket, broody looks and sleeping around, Kelly is a not a bad boy. He's a fire fighter, he's a local everyday hero.

The other thing that contributes to the appearance of Kelly as a bad boy is his proclivity for muscle cars. The first car he drove on the show was a vintage black Camaro and after that was torched by an arsonist, he restored a vintage blue Mustang which got totaled in a car accident in the most recent episode I've seen--which is a season behind what currently airing, so we'll see what he ends up with next.

The whole point being, these days, I see muscle cars everywhere and it's all Kelly Severide's fault. :0)





Hope you're having a great week!!

Depending on your age, you might or might not be familiar with Riverdale...


Riverdale is the home of Archie, Betty, Veronica, and Jughead of Archie Comic fame. I'm vaguely familiar with the comic, although I never read them as a kid.

But I was looking for something else to watch and finally decided to take a chance on this and was pleasantly surprised as well as pulled into the plot lines.

As far as I know, the original comics were about teens in high school and the related high jinks. Riverdale, while still focusing on our high school foursome, is darker and begins with the murder of the Riverdale High School quarterback, Jason Blossom.


At least one parent of all four teens plays a role in the show. None of the characters, save for maybe Archie, Jughead, and Veronica are what they seem. Betty has a dark side we see glimpses of, and all the adults, except maybe Archie's dad, have some sort of secret.

The writers have done a fantastic of weaving this tale of secrets, lies, and revelations through the thirteen action-packed episodes of season one.

Has anyone else given this a try? What did you think?

It's a thirty-minute sitcom on Netflix starring Ashton Kutcher, Danny Masterson, Debra Winger, and Sam Elliott.

It's not for everyone, that's for sure, with its crude humor, but I gotta say, I laughed my way through the first season. The show, while still humorous, explored some more serious plot-lines through end of season one and into season two, so the laughs were fewer.

I've never paid much attention to Ashton Kutcher over the years, so I'm not terribly familiar with his body of work, but I like his boyish, dumb-jock charm and sweetness in this. He's not hard on the eyes either...


Anyone else seen this? Your thoughts?

DH and I decided to give it a try. We're only a couple of episodes in, but so far, so good.

There's an interesting cast of characters, and few things are more compelling than real life heroes.

Anyone else watching? You like? Don't like?

Have a great weekend...!

DH and I started watching Arrow...a show about a youngish guy who returns to the world after having been lost at sea/on a not-so-deserted island for five years and immediately sets to writing the wrongs of his father and other ultra-rich men who've wronged the citizens and city of Starling City.

It's based on the DC Comic character, which I guess I have a theme (or two) going--still watching Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. with DH too, but we're all caught up with what's now airing on regular TV so that's a once a week endeavor.

Anyway, the premise is interesting and Stephen Amell who plays Oliver Queen/Arrow isn't horrible to look at so.

Most of my gripes center around the fact that friends and family think this guy has returned unchanged from being mostly on his own for five years. He hides most of what he went through from them, but really? You gotta think even even hadn't been captured or tortured, he's still probably got some sort of PTSD going on or something. Why hasn't he been sent to a therapist??

On the other hand, it's a DC Comic character so some suspension of disbelieve is in order.

The other show I've discovered is Designated Survivor.


This show is revolves around the Designated Survivor--the government official not allowed attend the State of the Union in case the unthinkable happens. Which does. The Capitol Building is bombed and the HUD Secretary becomes POTUS.

The writers have done a great job so far. The victories are small and short-lived. But the hits, as Tom Cruise's character in A Few Good Men says, just keep on coming. One after the other after the other.

Anyone watching either one of these?? What do you think?

How about something not related to writing??

DH and I finished our re-watch of The West Wing and decided on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as the next TV show we watch together. He's seen it before. I have not.


Here's the blurb from Wikipedia: The series revolves around the character of Phil Coulson, with Clark Gregg reprising his role from the film series, and his team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, who must deal with various unusual cases and enemies, including Hydra and the Inhumans.

And the premise, also from Wiki:

The first season sees S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Phil Coulson putting together a small team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents to handle strange new cases. They investigate Project Centipede and its leader, "The Clairvoyant", eventually uncovering that the organization is backed by Hydra, which has infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. In the second season, following the destruction of S.H.I.E.L.D., now-Director Coulson and his team look to restore trust from the government and public while dealing with Hydra, a faction of anti-superhuman S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, and the newly revealed Inhumans (who possess special abilities).

During the third season, Coulson begins a secret mission to assemble the Secret Warriors, a team of Inhumans, as Hydra restores its ancient Inhuman leader Hive to power.[8] After the defeat of Hive and with Hydra destroyed, S.H.I.E.L.D. is made a legitimate organization once again for the fourth season, with the signing of the Sokovia Accords. Coulson returns to being a field agent, due to the world believing he is dead, and is tasked with tracking down more enhanced people–including Robbie Reyes / Ghost Rider–while Agent Leo Fitz and Dr. Holden Radcliffe complete their work on Life Model Decoys.

I haven't been overly impressed so far, although, maybe because it's based on Marvel comics, I need to adjust my expectations. I do like Clark Gregg and Ming-na Wen, and the hunky dude is definitely nice to look at. DH says it gets better. But it's part of the time DH spend together, so it doesn't matter much what we watch.

So any Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. watchers out there? Do you like it? Hate it?

Over the weekend I finished watching the AMC show Mad Men...


It has been hailed as one of the greatest tv shows of all time. I'm not qualified to gauge that. It took place in the decade of my birth, the 60s, and it was quite interesting to see the America of that time portrayed. Granted it was a niche view--from Madison Ave, New York and seen through the eyes of the two main protagonists: Don Draper, a successful advertising executive, and Peggy Olson, secretary cum copy chief.


The over-arching theme of the show throughout its seven seasons was identity. Just about every character struggled with who they were versus who they wanted to be.

The 60s appeared to be part of America's "teenage" years. There were a lot of growing pains.

It's not a show for everyone. There was a lot of drinking and drugs (I know--the 60s) and extra-marital sex. Doctor/patient confidentiality wasn't a thing for wives.

Most of the main characters were unlikable, but they were complex and interesting and compelling. So I kept watching.

I'm not sure what sort of rating to give it...I guess an 8. It was hard to watch, sometimes maddening, sometimes frustrating, but always compelling.

If you've seen it what did you think??

Since I don't have access to "live" TV, I am rarely subjected to commercials of any kind, including ads for new TV shows. I hear the occasional ad on the radio, but without visuals, it's not quite the same. But due to my trips to Seattle and Omaha at the right time along with time spent in hotel rooms with live TV, I saw ads for a couple of contenders...

Quantico, Blood & Oil, and Code Black...

I started Quantico, which I'm liking for the most part. It has a flash forward/flash back feature that I'm not sure I want to deal with for a whole season, but I'll keep going for now and see what happens.



The show opens with a group of new recruits at the FBI Academy--an eclectic mix to be sure. Then at some point we fast forward approximately nine months to the site of a terrorist attack. Alex Parrish, one of the recruits--now a newly minted agent--is the prime suspect. Her escape is orchestrated by the assistant director of the academy as she knows Alex (in the image above) is being framed. Alex has 24 hours to clear her name. In order to do so, she flashes back to the her time in the academy and the things she was taught.

I read the description on Blood & Oil, but ultimately decided against watching. Just seemed to soap opera-ish for me.

Code Black actually came across my radar via radio. The premise is an ER in probably the poorest and most violent area of Los Angeles that finds itself under code black night after night after night. The opening sequence alerts viewers that the average ER calls code black approximately five time a year. This particular ER calls code black three hundred times a year... Oh, what's code black, you ask? That's when an ER is overrun with more patients than they have resources (personnel, space, medical equipment/supplies) to handle. So, yeah, sounded intriguing. So far, I'm enjoying it.



Anyone else watching either one of these (or both)?? What do you think?

So I discovered the TV show Madam Secretary starring Tea Leoni as Secretary of State McCord and Tim Daly as her husband...


So I've plowed through all 22 episodes of the first season over the past week or two and am now ready to keep up with season two as it airs on prime time. I really enjoyed the struggles and juggles of the most powerful woman in the United States. There is no blatant indication of which side of the aisle our team is on, which I like. I really enjoy the international intrigue and the drama, as well as the more personal family interactions. It also brings home the fact that the world really isn't black and white.

Anyway, I give it very high marks.

Have you seen it? What do you think?

Not a movie, actually, but a TV series... The BBC's The Musketeers...


Based on Alexander Dumas' novel The Three Musketeers, but aside from the names and perhaps a few background basics, I think that's where the similarities end--though in the interest of full disclosure--I have not read the book.

Anyway, it's a bit cheeky, though not in any way a comedy, and full of lovely men and women and sword fighting!

The series focuses on the core group of Musketeers Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and newbie D'Artagnan and their various missions and the bits of personal trouble each one of them gets themselves into.


Have you seen it? What do you think?

So back in the day, I was a fan of General Hospital. Remember Luke and Laura, Robert and Anna, Patch and Kayla? Well, GH also launched the musical careers of at least two young artists--Rick Springfield and Jack Wagner.



Imagine my surprise as I'm watching the Hallmark Channel series, When Calls the Heart, last week and I see this character and I'm thinking, "man he looks familiar."

I finally see some credits and think--goodness gracious, that's Jack Wagner from General Hospital!

Many moons ago, there was this show on ABC--it was called Sports Night. It was intelligent and funny. Unfortunately, it didn't last too long (two seasons), either because it was ahead of its time or because people thought it was a another sports show, when in fact it was a half-hour dramedy about the people who put on a sports show. There's no doubt it boosted the careers of Peter Krause, Felicity Huffman, and Joshua Malina. It also starred Robert Guillaume of Benson and Soap fame.


Our whole family loved the show, including the kids who were tweens and teens at the time it came across our radar. We'd watched it so many times all of us had lines of dialogue memorized and used to quip them at one another. A few still linger in my mind to this day.

If  you're ever in need of something to watch, give Sports Night a try. And let me know what you think of it.

Ten years ago, on this day, the final episode of one of my favorite TV shows, JAG, aired.



I have a group of friend who met because of their love of the show. Of course, we've grown and changed and moved onto other shows, but our friendships have remained. JAG was my first foray into fandom. I love being a fan girl!

Tonight those of us who live in the DFW area are getting together to hang out, eat dinner, and watch the last episode all over again.

Several years ago, our whole Texas contingent, plus a couple of extras took a weekend trip to Port Aransas and visited the USS Lexington. Some scenes from JAG's pilot episode were filmed aboard her. We had a blast.


Have a great Wednesday.

Today, in honor of the Sherlock convention that happened in London over the weekend and the Unlocked: The Unofficial Sherlock PJ Party that took place online, I'm sharing two things today...

First, the theme to the BBC's Sherlock...



Second, one of the few (the only?) pop culture songs to feature in any episode of the show: Oh, What a Night, by The Four Seasons.



Enjoy!

Almost five years ago, my sister-in-law made us watch this really quirky, over-the-top, ridiculous TV show one night when we were out visiting. I really had no interest in it what-so-ever, but I watched. And as I did, something in the episode spoke to me and I was hooked.


The show is called Glee and last Friday,  the last two episodes of Glee aired...I cried pretty much throughout the finale.

The show itself was about acceptance--whether black, or Jewish, or gay or whatever you are or aren't--in the Glee club you were accepted.

The show was also about finding your joy through song. I can't sing and I can't play an instrument, but I love music. I forget sometimes, but the show reminded me. And it reminded me of music I had loved as child and as young adult.  It introduced me to songs that I would never have heard otherwise.

In July of 2013, the Glee family and the fandom lost its joy. Cory Monteith, one of the male leads, died of an accidental overdose of a toxic combination of drugs and alcohol. It was a blow to his cast mates, his co-star, Lea Michelle (as Rachel, above) being his girlfriend, the crew, I'm sure, the show, and of course the fans.  As you can imagine, the show was never the same without out Cory's particular brand of magic.


My joy has been missing for a bit. I miss it and I want it back, though I'm at a loss right now as to how to do that. Maybe through music...

For the next few posts, I'm gonna revisit the music from Glee. In the lead up to the finale last week, someone online did a top twenty best songs from the show. They of course got it all wrong. Even most of commenters thought so as well. So I'm going to to my own TOP XX. Not sure how many there are going to be at this point, so bear with me for a few days as we--okay I--revisit my favorite Glee covers...in no particular order, but starting in season one.

Even though the Glee club lost at the big competition, the all agreed they still came away winners because of what they learned...

To thank their teacher Mr. Shuester,  they serenaded him with To Sir, With Love--the title song of the 1967 British film of the same name.


The Glee club's mantra through the whole series, was Don't Stop Believing...here is one of their several Don't Stop Believing covers....


I need to take that to heart!

Have a great week.

Back in September, I posted about the book/tv series Outlander. At the time, I was only able to view the first three episodes of it. I borrowed the book and read through all 600+ pages in a matter of days.


I've been waiting patiently for the series to appear on DVD via Netflix since then and the first two discs arrived in my mail last Friday.

I rewatched the first three eps and proceeded eagerly through the next five. Sunday ended up rainy so no lawn mowing. What better way to spend and dreary drippy day than watching a visually stunning tv show. The actors are pretty too.


I have to say they couldn't have arrived at a better time as all my other shows have wound to a close and I needed something new to tease and teach the muse.


So it's the epic tale of a woman sucked two hundred years into the past through standing stones in Scotland while on her second honeymoon following the close of WWII. She must learn to navigate life in the Scottish Highlands in the 18th century while being suspected of being an English spy.

Hope your weekend was as relaxing and enjoyable as mine!