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

Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Why I love DirecTV, Part One.
-- Lingo, an original game show on GSN.  We're both addicted.  Play a simplified online version here.
-- TRIO running episodes of "Now and Again" I've never seen, on their Brilliant But Cancelled series of shows.  Now, if only they'd show "Nowhere Man," the most brilliant of all brilliant-but-cancelled shows.

Why I hate DirecTV, Part One.
The many glitches we have experienced in the few weeks we've had it, ranging from the occasional digitally garbled/frozen picture to a total loss of signal, in one instance causing me to miss all but six minutes of a show I had taped.  Grrrrr...
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Monday, March 29, 2004
The question of the week is what it is is what it is.
How stupid is it to plan a week-and-a-half Florida road trip/Bahamas cruise for the beginning of September, aka the height of hurricane season? Discuss.

The Seth Cohen quote of the week is what it is is what it is.
"Can't a child just admire the beauty of his parents in the morning light?"
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Friday, March 26, 2004
And life is STILL good.
Both the men's and women's Iowa State Basketball teams won their games last night to each advance to the final four of the NIT and WNIT, respectively.  The women's game was uberexciting, with no more than four points separating the two teams up until the last couple minutes.  And the men's game, though only televised locally, we were actually able to watch because they just happened to be playing Marquette (which is in Milwaukee).  Woo hoo!

Wow, it DOES pay to Discover!
Of course, we already knew that with the not-insignificant chunk of money we get back from them via our Cashback Bonus Award, but it's nice (and, sometimes, good for a chuckle) to know they're looking out for me.  I got a call from their fraud protection department earlier this week to confirm what they considered "unusual activity" on my card.  What, they think a dozen charges between Illinois and New Jersey and then back again in 36 hours is "unusual?"  What weirdos.
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Tuesday, March 23, 2004
"It's a good time to go up to Northvale and buy bowling pins."
So cryptically said Rob Burnett, co-creator and writer of "Ed" several weeks ago when the auction/tag sale was not yet "official." Heck, even now, the show has not "officially" been cancelled by NBC, but seeing as how they just sold off the whole set, well, we aren't idiots, now, are we?

We arrived at our hotel in eastern Pennsylvania a little after midnight Firday night, at which point we suddenly realized we had left our entire bag of toiletries at home. Crap. We looked in the phone book and found a Wal-Mart in another town about 15 miles away. We called. They were open 24 hours. It was a miracle. Thank goodness for college towns. So we drove all the way there and back at 12:30 in the morning to buy deodorant and toothpaste and a hairbrush, etc. As we had to get up at about 6am, we got a little more than four hours of sleep that night. You know, the night before we had to drive through the night. :P

(He he. Yard sale.)

It was a beautiful day in Stuckeyville (okay, fine, Northvale), sunny, low 50s. We got to Stuckeybowl at 9:30am (sale started at 10), and there were probably about 60 people ahead of us in line. By the time the doors opened there were easily a couple hundred people waiting. We got in before they started cutting people off to let them in in smaller groups, and if we hadn't we never would have gotten one of the surprisingly few bowling pins they had. They were all snatched up right away, despite the fact that they were $30 a piece. Quite a premium, but we swallowed it. There is no single image that represents Ed better than a bowling pin.

The next hour was a blur.  The main room was huge and filled with stuff, stuff, and more stuff, not to mention two other big rooms also filled with stuff as well as the show's prop storage room filled with... stored props for sale.  There was just all this STUFF everywhere, and you didn't know which way to run or what to snatch up before someone else did.  It was actually quite overwhelming.  When we started grabbing bigger things we quickly realized that we would have to stash our stash off in the corner and take turns guarding it while the other one looked around.  (Incidentally, someone scored the pool table within the first few seconds... it was actually a collaborative effort by several people from stuckeyville.com to get the table for one of the sort of legendary message board members who spearheaded much of the SAVE ED campaign, designed and submitted the ad placed in Variety, etc.  So it's all good.)

The two things I really wish I could've gotten but they were just too expensive:  the "FRESH PIE" neon sign at $175 (pie is a running... thing... on the show), and one of the "STUCKEYBOWL" letters which they were selling individually for $150 each (except the bowling ball "O" which was marked at $200).  That would have been something.  I still can't believe they were selling them at all.  It's too bad they weren't selling anything with the word "Stuckeyville" on it, but they had a whole bunch of the signs hanging on the wall that we could see even if we couldn't buy one.  And of course the sign for The Smiling Goat wasn't for sale either.  Bummer.

As soon as some of the chaos died down (and Liz's mom was kind enough to stand guard over our stuff so Josh and Liz and I could all walk around and look at stuff together), I was finally able to really take a moment and digest things... where I was, the complete dismantlation of the places I know so well and love so much... it was sad.  As cool as it was to see it all and even take home some of it, it really broke my heart in a way.  To know that the big rooms full of junk were until very recently divided into all the individual sets -- and as far as I'm concerned still SHOULD be -- to see parts of the bowling alley itself ripped apart -- a big empty hole where Ed's office used to be, the snack bar torn out --, covered in plastic, or painted over -- like the "STUCKEYBOWL" Shirley painted above the lanes -- was pretty horrible.  But at least I got a chance to say goodbye in a way, something most fans never will.

Okay, enough with the blubbery stuff.  Coolest thing we saw that we didn't buy, even though it wasn't too expensive:  a huge whiteboard with a list of episodes, their writers, shooting dates and air dates, along with another set of dates I can't figure out (any ideas?).  That would've rocked if A) it hadn't been way too big, and B) we could've somehow preserved the writing on it forever.  Now, I suppose you're all wondering what we DID buy, besides the obvious.  First off, what I don't have pictures of, because I didn't see much of a point:  a nice set of five surround speakers, and three Avid SCSI harddrives used for video editing.  Now, chances are they were wiped clean of any "Ed" stuff, but you NEVER know, especially with some of the stories I've heard from other people who bought stuff and found scripts, production notes, etc. in drawers and the like.

We smooshed everything into our car and only had to fold down one third of the backseat to do it, though both our backseat and trunk were filled, so we couldn't have fit much more in there if we'd wanted to.  We took a little extra time driving around northeast New Jersey to see some of the outdoor filming spots I had managed to get locations for, like the exterior of the courthouse, the church where Ed and Carol's circus wedding was, the church and route Ed drives in the opening credits sequence, the street corner on which Ed told Carol that Molly read to him from her diary and she freaked out (end of season 3), the Rialto Theatre where Ed was going to propose to Carol, and The Pond, site of many an Ed-Carol walk and also home to The Bench.

Then we drove home.  Through rain.  And fog.  Sometimes very dense fog that made us have to drive 45 mph on the interstate.  Stupid mountains.  And then bursts of heavy snow in Indiana.  We took turns sleeping, and didn't have much trouble with the staying awake thing until we were about an hour from home.  We pulled into our driveway at about 6:15am, unloaded the car faster than we ever have, and crashed.  And accidentally slept through much of the 8:30 service we were supposed to sing for.  Oops.  We made it to the congregational forum between services and the second service performance, though, and our choir director knew what we were up to, so he understood.

And now that you've read through all that crap, you can finally take a look at our loot.  I won't tell you how much we spent, only that we didn't spend more than $45 on any single purchase.
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Monday, March 22, 2004
63 gallons of gasoline:  $110.
1 night hotel:  $40.
Replacing the toiletries you left at home:  $16.
Owning your very own piece of Stuckeyville:  PRICELESS.
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Thursday, March 18, 2004
The good, the sweet, and the downright disturbing.
There are now, on average, about 18 minutes of commercial time per hour of television.  That means that someone like me sees a heck of a lot of commercials, whether I like it or not.  Most of them are entirely forgettable, but a few, well, aren't, whether in a good or bad way.

Commercial Most Likely to Induce Vomiting:  Anything showing too-close interaction between a human and an animal, which I'm sorry to say there are several.  Among them would be a Bud Light ad in which a chimp comes onto an attractive woman (huh?) and another where a huge dog "makes out" with a woman's date because his breathmint is just that good.  Ew.

Commercial Most Likely to Actually Make Me Unsorry That Commercials Exist:  Nike's new campaign that shows Andre Agassi playing baseball, Lance Armstrong boxing, Randy Johnson as a professional bowler, etc.  It's brilliant.  If you haven't seen it, watch it.

Commercial Most Likely to Make Me Cry:  The AT&T Wireless ad with a father on a business trip, all exhausted and sitting in an airport, and his little daughter suddenly shows up next to him and starts talking to him about what she did today and how much she misses him.  Dang it, it gets to me.  I'm such a sucker.  Come to think of it, another ad from the same campaign, where a mother's stuck on a crowded city bus and listens to her son's piano recital over the phone is a goodie, too.  And a funnier one from the same line involves a guy who's at the symphony with his wife while he's missing an important basketball game.  You know what, allsathem from that campaign are good, really (except the backpackers one), and you can see them all here with more media player options.

******

I'll return to y'all on Monday with an "Ed" sale report.  Toodle-oo.
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Tuesday, March 16, 2004
This.
People who regularly watch "Arrested Development," (and those who don't) please do not forget that there is a special showing of it -- a new episode -- tomorrow (Wednesday) night at 9:30/8:30c.  Also, on Sunday FX will be showing a marathon of the first six episodes starting at 2:30/1:30c.  Of course, this does you no good if you don't have cable, but that would be your own fault, wouldn't it?  Also, please read a humorous article on the humorous show with several humorous quotes from the show's humorous creator about the show's humorous lack of anything resembling ratings.  Also, I believe I have succeeded in making humorous cease to sound like a real word.  But from the article:  "Hurwitz claims that he has basically stopped calling in for the show's Nielsen numbers and has instead started to troll the Internet looking for evidence that the week's jokes were appreciated by individual viewers."  Just add that to my ever-growing list "Things I Love About 'Arrested Development'."

And that.
I dreamt of the "Ed" tag sale last night.  No big surprise as we had just finished watching about four straight episodes.  Still, though, in my dream we were able to fit the pool table from The Smiling Goat in our car.  Somehow I think I will be disappointed by reality.  (Seriously, though, if anyone has any idea how we might be able to transport such a thing home, whether with us or shipped, and how much such a thing might set us back, I'd love to hear it.  Because word on the street is that the table will be very much in our price range.  And, I'm hoping, so will be the Burtons' grandfather clock if it wasn't auctioned.)
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Monday, March 15, 2004
Booger!  Booger, booger, booger!
It's extremely annoying when you are all excited to see the 2004 USA Curling National Championships broadcast on TV next Saturday, and then on Monday you find out you were wrong, it was actually THIS PAST Saturday and you missed it.  Aaaarrrgh!!

Also, I have not yet received a single curling magazine.  Hmmmm...
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Thursday, March 11, 2004
It's not rocket surgery.
If you've been reading my comments and not just my blog, you know that Josh and I have been planning to be complete nuts and drive 13 hours to New Jersey Friday night/Saturday morning for the "Ed" set auction that afternoon, and then turn right around and drive another 14 hours to get back home in time for our various musical performances in church early Sunday morning.  The problem with this plan is not all the driving, or even the driving through the night -- we've done all of the above before.  The thing that's been making me so nervous about such an undertaking is the possibility of anything delaying us (car problems--especially in the middle of the night--, weather, etc.) to the extent that we might not make it back for Sunday morning.  This would be a HUGE problem seeing as the two of us cover literally about four people's parts for this particular bell piece, and there's just no way they could get enough or good enough subs for us at the last minute to perform the piece on all of 20 minutes of rehearsal.  Not to mention the guitar playing Josh has to do.  In a nutshell, it would probably be fairly irresponsible of us to embark on such a trip this weekend, however small the chance that something could go wrong.  Murphy's Law and all that.  So crazy we shall not be.

THIS weekend.

NEXT weekend is another matter entirely.  Next weekend is the performance of our choir's Lenten Cantata, which is important, and which we should be there for, but which could still easily go on without us if something came up so that we couldn't make it back in time.  Next weekend is also the "Ed" tag sale.  I called the auction house that is handling both the auction and sale, and inquired about the difference between the two, especially in the items available.  The answer I received leads me to believe that, while the auction would certainly be interesting, the tag sale probably has more the kind of items we would want/could afford/could fit in our car.  I mean, sure, I'd buy Ed's whole office and set it up in my basement if I had the money and the means to get it home, but I have to live in the real world sometimes, at least.  The tag sale will contain many of the smaller things, as well as some bigger things they just don't have time for in the auction (like Molly's bedroom and Dr. Burton's office).  Salt and pepper shakers and tablecloths from the Smiling Goat (a local bar), holiday decorations, bowling pins...  We could conceivably come out of the sale with a whole load of random stuff from the show (and probably for not a lot of money), as well as walk around all the deconstructed sets where the stuff will be for sale.  Sounds pretty good to me.  What would I like to get my hands on the most?  At least one bowling pin, bowling ball, and a pair of bowling shoes -- actually preferrably one pair for each of us that actually fit.  I so want a pair of "Ed" bowling shoes.  And of course some prop food.  You gotta get some prop food.  :)

So, to sum up, we're being just as crazy but a bit more responsible next weekend instead of this one.  Not too tough a decision when you consider everything.

Hey, Liz, you work NEXT Saturday?  ;)
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Wednesday, March 10, 2004
"Excuse me, sir, there seems to be some sort of red crap on my cheesecake."
Giving stuff up is hard.  Of course, it's supposed to be, and that's the whole point of doing it during this time of the year.  But I've found that this year the hardest part isn't the deprivation, but rather keeping myself from accidentally consuming some of the forbidden fruit:  chocolate.  Do you know just how many forms chocolate takes in our household?  Certainly more than I relaized until I had to start actively thinking about what contains it.  The absentminded snacking we always do, on things like M&Ms or Oreos, has on more than one occasion caused each of us to go "Oops" a while after we ate some without thinking.  Chocolate is also a sneaky little bugger, hiding in places you don't always think of, like your Hunts Snackpack pudding cup, a specialty coffee from Starbucks, or the stupid gallon of chocolate milk you bought last night because it was way on sale.  D'oh!

And yeah, the title's a stretch, I know... but it's at least in the same vein, don't you think?  Thanks to Joey (yet again) for the line.
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Monday, March 08, 2004
Some things are just worth a lot of money and asking your relatives to do crazy things.
This is a quite pointless plea that goes out to those people who live a mere six hours, zero minutes from 199 Paris Ave. Northvale, NJ. Please drive there this weekend and buy me a bowling pin or a sign or a piece of prop food. I will pay you. I would go myself (and the scary thing is I'm not even kidding), but our bell choir has to perform, plus Josh has to play guitar, at church on Sunday. It can be both my birthday and Christmas presents for this year (still not kidding). And you know what else? I'm not kidding.
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Also it occurs to me that I did not wish Kim a happy birthday on Saturday, but my lame excuse is that I don't blog on Saturdays.  Or Sundays.  Usually.  So now it is Monday and verily I say to you, "Happy Birthday."

I realize that it is now too late to wish for you to have a happy birthday, since the day that was your birthday is now past, but I do the best I can with what I have.  And what I have is my incredible lameness.
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Beth-Annie's Embarrassing Admission of the Week.
I dig Britney Spears' "Toxic." Please do not hurt me.
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Friday, March 05, 2004
You young'uns hev gon an' did whut huh naow?
We've switched from cable to DirectTV, just in time to see Guster cover an entire Violent Femmes album tonight on MTV2's Album Covers program.  So besides now getting MTV2 and Fuse (better music stations than MTV or VH1), we also get TRIO (yay!), IFC (Matthew, you may ask us to tape stuff), Noggin (though we don't know if they still show episodes of "Square One"... if they do, rest assured we'll be taping those for posterity as well), BBCAmerica (so we can finally check out "The Office"), and we can now see every Cubs game and every Iowa State sporting event that's televised.  Plus we get a whole bunch more new channels that we have varying degrees of interest in, from some (DIY - do it yourself) to less than zero (SOAP - uh, soaps).  While I appreciate the addition of some of the new channels, for someone like me who both watches a lot of television and hates change, having to completely relearn a whole new channel-lineup (both the order and what number is assigned to what channel) is awfully annoying -- yes, I had the old one pretty well committed to memory, all 70-odd channels of it.  I also do not like that I've lost my Chicago stations, at least for the time being.

Hmmm, I wonder if I'll be able to watch the Big 12 Gymnastics Championship this year...  That would rock.

Now I'm off to try to discover the identities of the songs over the end of Lost in Translation and the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind trailer.  Wish me luck.
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Thursday, March 04, 2004
I do not love Paul Shirley. I LIKE him a NORMAL amount.
But I will be watching a few NBA (which I hate) games just to see him now that the Bulls have signed him.
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Tuesday, March 02, 2004
"Good as new.  Better than new, 'cause it has a story."
This is actually no longer the main project on my mind (as I'll explain in a moment), but since it's the one we've been talking about I'll stick with it (it needs to be figured out eventually anyway).  I've made a quick page that shows some pictures of the dilemma I'm facing with the stupid bedroom furniture.

Now, onto the REAL dilemma...  You see, we have these kitchen cabinets.  That suck.  We knew when we bought the house that they weren't the most attractive things we'd ever seen, but it didn't seem like a big deal.  After a year of living with them, both aesthetically and functionally, we've come to realize the fullness of their sucking.  The hardware is ugly, the doors and drawer fronts are plain, flat slabs of thin, wafery, apparently crap-grade wood, many opposing doors don't fit against each other properly -- the whole cabinet job smacks of an amateur do-it-yourselfer who either didn't particularly know what they were doing or didn't particularly care how good a job they did.

(And here are a few more pics of our ugly cabinets.)

We would like to make our kitchen look better both for our sakes and as an investment in our house for when the time comes to sell.  Here are the three main options we're considering (and for each one we would do all the work ourselves except for anything that might require more specialized skill, like working with the gas lines).

A)  Replacing all the cabinets themselves.  If we were planning on staying in this house indefinitely, I would say it would be worth it to sink a bit more money into replacing the whole cabinetry system, but since a few years here is really all we're planning on, I'm not sure this is the best idea.  Especially since we have a separate built-in oven and cooktop that are at least a couple of decades old, and if we were bothering to tear the whole kitchen apart, we'd probably replace them with a single unit (much cheaper than replacing two separate ones), and thus have to replace the countertop as well  (which Josh says we could make a tile one -- he knows that's what I want) because the current one is tailored to the built-ins.  The downside:  lots of money, lots of work, lots of time;  the grandfather clock would have to wait.  The upside:  our kitchen would be pretty much completely updated, both aesthetically and functionally; we could design it pretty much any way we want, including making better use of storage space (lazy susans, corner cabinets, etc.); no more unfinished, uneven plywood shelves or oddly-shaped cabinet frames.

B)  Refacing the cabinets.  This would involve buying all new doors and drawer fronts (and hardware), and then covering the visible cabinet frames with a wood veneer that matches the new doors.  Our current cabinet doors are very much NOT standard sizes (though we do have some leeway in some areas for slightly different door dimensions), so we would have to either slightly modify parts of the cabinet holes to fit the available door sizes or special order sizes for almost all the doors (or, most likely, a combination of the two).  We would also probably need end panels for the areas that are too big to veneer (like the side of the oven cabinet that goes almost to the ceiling).  The downside:  having to work with the crazy dimensions of our existing cabinets; there is a lot of area to veneer, including some oddly-shaped spaces, and that would all be a lot of work;  no improvement in the ugly insides of the cabinets or storage space.  The upside:  a huge aesthetic improvement for less than half the cost of replacing just the cabinets (not including countertop or any appliances);  we could probably still get the grandfather clock.

C)  Painting the cabinets.  This would involve removing all cabinet doors and drawer fronts, and then sanding the finish off, priming, and painting all of those PLUS every other bit of wood left on the cabinet frames.  That's a lot.  The hardware would of course be replaced as well.  We could possibly also use the router we now have to create a slightly more decorative edge, but there's a limit to what we could do due to the thinness of the wood and the low quality of it.  The downside:  A LOT of work (though most of it of the tedious sort), and probably the most time-intensive of all three options;  also the least result of all the options; a painted crappy surface will never look as good as a nice, new, wood finish.  The upside:  cheap;  we could still get the grandfather clock.

Incidentally, if we did either A or B, we would likely go for a light maple look like this one.  I hate oak.
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Monday, March 01, 2004
"So that happened."

Oscar highlights:

-- Jack Black and Will Ferrell's song.
-- Mitch and Mickey's (Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara's) performance of "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow."
-- Allison Krauss and Elvis Costello's performace of "Scarlet Tide."
--Johnny Depp and Heath Ledger

Oscar lowlights:

--Everything Lord of the Rings (sorry, LOTR fans -- it just made for a sleep-inducing telecast).
--The lack of inclusion of Jonathan Brandis in the memorial segment (not that I expected it, but still).
--Did I mention Lord of the Rings?
--No surprises: all the favorites won, and hardly any teeny (meaning small, not meaning teenagey) movies got anything. BORRR-RRRING...
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