lewis and clark had a journal. you, beth-annie, have a diary.

Thursday, August 28, 2003
Jack was evicted.  Boo.  Boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Now, I have a bit of a question for all y'all.  Josh and I had a discussion recently (yes, old married folks do talk on occasion) about popular music and he mentioned that he greatly prefers female lead singers.  The vast majority of music I like is sung by male vocalists, and it made me realize that I do prefer male vocals over female.  Huh.  Who knew?  So I guess it's just got me wondering if others have any sort of conscious or unconscious predisposition to one gender or the other when it comes to singing (and we're not talking opera or choral music or anything--just popular music).  I already have plenty of evidence that liking/not liking Danielson Famile is drawn along gender lines, and I'm wondering if this might be also.  Or, if not, just whether anyone else has any kind of preference one way or the other.  Please, discuss.

One more bit of business:  there is about an 86% chance this will be my last blog entry for about a week and a half.  Please enjoy this brief hiatus.  I know I will.  :)
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Wednesday, August 27, 2003
I am very not happy with what is going down in the Big Brother house (as I would assume moM is also not).  If Jack leaves tonight I just may stop watching.  I won't, but I may.  :P

Now that I got that out of the way...

Avant et Après, Installement Deux.
I promised you the bathroom pics today, and lo and behold I'm actually delivering.  I don't really have much to say here, so I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.  Except to say that the transformation, in person especially, is quite remarkable and I am so so happy with how it all turned out.  And anywhere you can see the shower curtain it's actually the fabric I'm going to make the shower curtain out of but just haven't had time to yet.  I just threw it over the rod so you could get an idea what it will look like when it's 100% done.  Enjoy.
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Tuesday, August 26, 2003
"The O.C." it is good (two words: Adam Brody). Even Josh thinks so, and he has much more discriminating taste than I when it comes to television. Tonight. FOX. 9/8c. Be there.

Bathroom pics tomorrow.
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Monday, August 25, 2003
Good disc golf.
I forgot to mention that last weekend during our disc golf outing I scored a +9 and Josh scored a -2, both career-bests for courses that don't inflate their pars to force a certain total number (like 70 or 72).  I beat my previous personal best by three strokes and my typical score by about seven.  It was a very happy day.  But moM and daD are still going to kick our behinds on our Disc Golf Tour of America next week because I'm sure they go much much more often than we do (of course, regular golf is taking away from some of our potential disc golf time).

Good golf.
Heather Bowie, probably my third favorite golfer on the LPGA Tour, made the Solheim Cup team yesterday.  The Solheim Cup is a biennial event in September where the twelve "best" U.S. golfers take on the twelve "best" European golfers, much like the PGA's Ryder Cup or President's Cup.  It is a big deal.  I am very happy as I get to see my three favorite golfers play in the most prestigious event in women's golf (two of them rookies to the event).  Yipee!

Bad golf.
We have been going to the driving range about once every five days.  Every time we have seen a marked improvement... until this past weekend.  To put it simply, we both sucked.  It was like neither of us knew how to hit the ball anymore.  Now, perhaps it wasn't the smartest thing for us to go on an evening when we had spent the entire day doing nasty yardwork with lots of heavy lifting, as we were pretty exhausted.  A little bit of tired can affect your golf swing a big bit, apparently.  I was extremely frustrated with not only not improving, but feeling like I had actually taken a step backward.  That feeling was only made worse by the fact that it was the first time I was using my brand new golf clubs we bought on Friday.  I had felt the last couple of times out that my improvement was being very limited by the fact that the only club we had that was the right length for me was a small-headed (read: less forgiving), steel-shafted (read: heavy) 5-wood (read: not a driver).  I was sick of not having real clubs.  So we spent way too much money (almost four times what we spent on Josh's, though to be fair mine also came with a very nice bag, four headcovers, and a putter) on an all-graphite (read: lightweight) set.  They should have greatly improved my shots.  It was a very major bummer that the first time I used them I sucked it up so bad, because I felt like we had just wasted $150.  In reality I know that I was just having a bad day and next time my new clubs will actually help me a great deal, but at the time... well... I wanted to hurt someone.  I'm still excited about them though, so here they are:

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Friday, August 22, 2003
I am going to be frank with you all. I have nothing to say. Oh, I suppose I have some movie thoughts I could share, but that just sounds like so much work. Or I could show you some before and after pics of our living room, kitchen, and bathroom, but that sounds like even more work. I did actually get the bathroom painted yesterday, amazingly enough, and was even ambitious enough to do a ragging finish on it (which basically means I would paint a section of the wall and then blot it with a damp washcloth to take some of the paint off--so the wall is blue with a bit of white showing through). It was quite messy all over my hands, but I only had to do one coat and didn't even have to be very precise with that. And now look at me going to the effort to show you a picture of it. I will show the full before and after shots once we get the room completely decorated. Look at that, I did manage some semblance of an entry. Good for me.
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Wednesday, August 20, 2003
"Hurry up and wait."
Wow.  I already have 30 seaQuest episodes out of the 59 that exist.  This all may go a little more quickly than I thought.  Somehow I think I'm going to be giving Kaly quite a few CDs...

Spontaneous Redecoration.
I just decided last night that I really want to get our main bath painted before moM and daD get here a week from Friday.  This on top of all the other stuff I still have to do before then.  My mind must be going wonky.  My plan is to prep today and paint tomorrow, but I have one question for anyone who's ever painted a bathroom before (moM?  Kim?):  how do you paint behind the toilet tank?  I know I can put a plastic sheet between the tank and the wall, but how do I reach the paint that far into such a skinny area?  I see this as a problem...

Random Facts About Your Friendly Host, Beth-Annie.
The only real instrument I can even remotely play is guitar.  If I could choose any instruments I WISH I could play, they would be piano and cello.  Cello ain't ever gonna happen, but maybe at some point I can learn a little piano.
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Tuesday, August 19, 2003
Do I really still look like I need my mommy?
It has happened yet again.  I was working one of the cashier tables by myself at the very tail end of our church's rummage sale on Saturday.  It was actually a few minutes past the end time of the sale, but I could see there were still a few shoppers left (while most of the other workers were starting to pack things up).  A woman came by and said she was the church treasurer and could take my cash box.  I was silent for a moment as I was somewhat confused that she would ask for it when there were obviously still people who needed to check out.  Before I could say so, she asked, "Is your mother around?"  Oh dear.  I did not say what I wanted to say, as that would have been not nice.  Instead I politely mentioned that as there were still a few shoppers about, I still needed the box.  So she walked away.  Like I would've just blindly given her all that money anyway, as I didn't recognize her and theoretically she could have been anyone.  She probably was actually the treasurer, but you never know.  I later placed my cash box directly in the hands of the rummage sale director, who I know quite well.

For those not keeping close tabs on my exact age, I am now 24.  Harrumph.
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Thursday, August 14, 2003
"In your face, space coyote!"
I don't know how you feel about BB spoilers, moM, but I'll just say I was quite pleased with how last night's HOH endurance competition went. Whew. Please let me know if you want me to completely shut my trap in the future until things have been shown on the actual show. And, no, I DO NOT have the live feeds and vow right here and now that I WILL NOT get them at any point during this season. Thank you.

Random Facts About Your Friendly Host, Beth-Annie.
I like the soggy french fries.
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Wednesday, August 13, 2003
This is getting a little ridiculous.
Yet again, I have managed to miss a free concert I really wanted to go to.  Earlier this summer it was not one, but TWO Guster concerts, a Pete Yorn, a Wallflowers, and a Sheryl Crow.  Now I can add Turin Brakes to my list, a new discovery of mine who were doing a free show last night in Chicago, of course, during Josh's final softball game of the year.  That one especially hurts since they are a UK group and aren't over in this country all that often.  Of course there are more important things in life than music (though not many), but, still, it kinda bites.

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And now, in the vein of the gone-but-not-forgotten "Things That Bug Me," we have a new recurring feature here at The World of Beth-Annie, a.k.a. That Blog Which is Still Soul-Searching in Hopes of Discovering Her New Identity:

Random Facts About Your Friendly Host, Beth-Annie (OR, things which would not typically come up in normal conversation that many people, though not all, may not know about me and that will not be particularly life-enhancing to those people once they do know).
I cannot swim.  Just never learned the durn thing.  I know you wait with bated breath for the next installment.
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Monday, August 11, 2003
I loves me a bargain.
We always said Bethy would get her own new set of golf clubs first (and not for a while), because she was the one who started this whole golf craze.  We were wrong.  Because we weren't counting on finding a full set of men's clubs on clearance at K-Mart for $40.  Booger. Booger, booger, booger.  For anyone who doesn't know much about golf club prices, for the name brands you can pay a few hundred dollars per club for woods, and around $500 for a full set of irons.  A full el-cheapo set of clubs (three woods and eight irons) from a discount store will cost you anywhere from $100 to $250, with most falling in the $150-$170 range.  So $40 is a purty durn good deal, especially for all graphite shafts.  Less than $4 per club, and we'd been paying $2-$3 for 20+ year-old used ones at Goodwill.  Yeah.

We also bought a breathtakingly beautiful putter (I can hear you laughing, stop that) for a whopping $12 on sale, which is about as cheap as new ones ever get.  We tried it out on the practice green at our driving range, and I like using it as much as I like looking at it.  So yay.  And off the tee I only whiff about 5% of the time now, usually when I'm trying to swing too fast.  So yay again.  Yay for improvement.  Boo to our money going down the drain.  :P
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Friday, August 08, 2003
Yes, I am very well aware that "it's all pretend, you know."
But I can still be very happy, ecstatic, even, when my husband miraculously finds and downloads for me the one Very Important Episode of the Television Program "Ed" that I have never seen and is also therefore missing from my taped collection.  And I do not exaggerate in my use of "very important," as this was the episode right after the Carol's Non-Wedding Episode, where the gang locks Ed and Carol in Stuckeybowl to force them to hash out their wacked relationship.  I literally wept last November when I realized I had set the VCR wrong.  Now I weep for joy.  I believe I know what I am doing tonight.

In a similar vein, he also discovered a treasure trove of "seaQuest" episodes available for download, something I have looked for many a time but never had any success.  Seeing as there are quite a few episodes I don't have at all and many of the ones I do have are afflicted with tracking and other problems that make them close to unwatchable at this point, this is a very happy thing.  It will likely take months to get all of the episodes in their entirety (and in all actuality even that is probably grossly optimistic), but, hey, I'm a patient person.  Well, okay, not so much, but it's all relative.  And I feel not-guilty-in-the-least about downloading them, seeing as the powers that be refuse to either  1) release them on DVD or even VHS for that matter, or  2) broadcast them in any way, shape, or form anywhere in the world.  Note to these powers:  I promise you that if you give me the option of buying the entire series on DVD, I will plop down the dough faster than you can say "copyright infringement."  Until then, you may kindly bugger off.
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Thursday, August 07, 2003
Alexander, dear.
After reading your latest JAW, I believe we need to talk.  IM me, please.

Steve, dear.
A very happy anniversary to you.  I always knew you two crazy kids would make it. :)   And, in defense of VH1, they are very much not unaware of that which is more than 25 years old.  They have simply already exhausted most of the "all-time" lists and so have had to come up with other lists to keep the kiddies entertained.  You need comments.

Patricia, dear.
You need comments.

Matthew, dear.
You need non-enetation comments.

Andrew, dear.
I strongly believe you need to find a way to make a living from your art.  You are quite simply brilliant.  And you need a blog.  With comments.  Because I really need one more thing to read online everyday.

Karleen, dear.
You need a blog, too.

Everyone else I know, dear.
You have not put interesting things on the internet for me to look at, or if you have you have not bothered to tell me about them, or have allowed me to forget about them, so you are not worth my time.
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Wednesday, August 06, 2003
"That man sees umlauts in his sleep."
My blog is not entertaining. My blog is not funny. I would like you all to instead start reading Guster's road journal, as it is much more of both. Even their news section makes me laugh. You may still read my blog for updates on my life, however. Just do not expect a Guster-esque level of wittiness.
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Tuesday, August 05, 2003
Some grammatical things that are grammatically incorrect.  Grammatically speaking.

1.  Anyways

2.  That's besides the point.

3.  The reason why is...

4.  I'm going to try and...

5.  Guess what?

Please just stop it.
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Monday, August 04, 2003
Spanking those white boys.
To become good at something, or sometimes even marginal, one often must practice.  This is much the case with golf.  Probably, in fact, much more the case than with most other things.  Simply put, it takes hours and hours and hours and hours of practice just to be able to swing the club right and actually hit the ball off the tee, say, 70% of the time.  Notice I did not say hit it well (well in this case meaning into the air and more than about 60 yards).  To do that requires many many more hours of practice on top of that.  And that quite pathetic definition of "well" is still not good enough to actually go out onto a golf course, as hitting the ball 60 or, yes, even 90 degrees too far to the left or right isn't so conducive to either  1) finding your ball, or  2) making friends with the person on the next fairway over that you just hit in the head with your shot.  So, guess what that means.  More practice.

The biggest problem with all this necessary practice is that there just aren't a lot of options as to where to do it.  It's not like disc golf where you can go to any open area and practice your throws, or for that matter to just about any actual course and practice for real and for free.  You have to go to a driving range.  This costs money.  Sure, $10 for a bucket of 150 balls doesn't seem like a lot, but if you do this once a week, that's an extra $45 a month.  And hitting only 75 balls a week will not help you improve your game very quickly (not that you even have what could be called a "game" at this point).

Anyway, point being that on Friday Josh and I went to a driving range for the first time.  It was a nice place, with the row of tees up on a ridge so you felt like your shots were going farther than they actually were (never underestimate the importance of boosting confidence, falsely or not).  There were even several greens of varying distances and directions with flagsticks to give you something to aim for, not that we were really at the aiming part yet.  And it was a very casual, not-uptight-at-all place.  Thank goodness.  Thank goodness also that there were very few people out there, so we could distance ourselves from them nicely and keep the embarrassment factor to a minimum.  It was a lovely day, partly sunny but not too warm, and when a strong thunderstorm passed just to the south of us, part of the sky got blissfully dark and the wind became wicked strong (especially up on that ridge).  We both had to run after our hats a time or two when they flew off our heads.  It was awesome.

At the beginning I was whiffing (not hitting the ball) about 90% of the time.  By the end I was probably hitting it about 70% of the time.  Quite an improvement, I'd say (though not much of that improvement stays with you to the next day, unfortunately).  Most of the time when I did hit it I topped it (hitting too much on the top of the ball instead of square on), which makes it travel a very short distance, or I hit off the heel of the club and sent the ball not very far again and to the left.  A couple times, though, I actually got a good whack at it and managed to send it relatively straight and about 120 yards (for comparison, Annika averages about 270 yards on her drives).  Josh had a bit more success than I, with plenty of his own whiffs and tops but with a better hitting percentage and longer average yardage.  His biggest problem seemed to be hitting it off the toe of the club and thus way right, a couple of times almost hitting me, who was one tee to his right.  It was really rather frightening.  :)  He managed to get about 220 yards out of a couple of his drives, though.  The dork.

We went to a different range Saturday morning, which I didn't like as well--the tees were not elevated, there were more people, it was hotter, and I didn't feel I improved nearly as much.  (And Josh lost the head of one of his woods on one of his shots.  I think it went farther than his ball did.  It was rather strange, as I didn't think the heads of clubs were supposed to fly off like that.  Apparently I was wrong.  So one club down.  :P)

Overall it was loads of fun, but gave me three nasty blisters on my non-gloved right hand and made my left wrist rather sore (I decided to look into a glove for my right, too, then, but thus far haven't found any.  Because of course there are so few female golfers, there can't possibly be any left-handed ones, right?  Boo.)  And anyone who thinks you don't have to be in any kind of shape to play golf would be wrong.  It may not be aerobic exercise, but pretty much every muscle from the waist up hurts like, um, heck, after those two days.  Neck, back, shoulder, elbow, upper and lower arms, pectorals, abs, you name it, it was worked.  We went disc golfing Sunday morning after church (our new weekly time, as we've discovered the course is nearly empty), and with my screaming muscles and bandaged fingertips on my throwing hand I shot a marvelous 24 over par, my worst score ever on the Parkside course (and that was even with finishing up well after being 21 over after 12).

So now I just have to figure out a way to get good at golf without spending a fortune.  It's especially tough since we don't know anyone to the best of my knowledge who really knows how to play, so we kind of have to figure out on our own what we're doing wrong and how to fix it.

But enough of me golfing.  Time for Annika golfing.  She finally won the British Open yesterday, the only major she hadn't yet gotten (and after having missed the cut last year, too.  Annika NEVER misses the cut).  I was quite ecstatic, especially since she never even led in this tournament until the final round.  Way to go.  I only wish the STUPID POWER HADN'T GONE OFF in the middle of it.  I didn't miss seeing anything important (recording is a different matter), but that was really just inexcusable.  I suppose that's what I get for complaining about no thunderstorms.  I can never seem to have it both ways.  Anyhoo, of the four majors this year she's now won two, come in second at another after losing a playoff, and got fourth in the last after missing another playoff by one stroke.  Not too shabby.  Please don't retire.  At least not until you shoot that 54 you're still looking for.

Now I have to go finish my book so I can find out who the murderer is before I "accidentally" turn to the back.
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