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

Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Technology strikes again.
Josh has joined our church's summer chorale (I haven't because this chronic cough I've had for most of my pregnancy keeps me from being able to sing).  Since we were driving to Waterloo, Iowa to visit my grandma in the hospital right after church (coming back home would have been too out of the way) and Josh had to be there at 7:45am to sing for both the 8:15 and 9:30 services, we planned on driving up separately so I could get more sleep and dropping one car off at Epic on our way out of town.  Swell plan -- until our power went out about 9am just as I was about to blowdry my hair.  Checked the breaker box and all was normal, so I quickly finished getting ready, lamenting the fact that my hair would have to air dry (which never results as well as if I can blow it dry).  That's when I realized I had no idea how to get out of the garage.  We have one of them fancy electric garage door openers, and I had no idea how to manually open it.  I couldn't call Josh, so I began a search for the manual.  This would be where our lack of organization came back to bite me.  We did actually organize all our papers and stuff at our house in Racine, but everything we've gotten since we moved has yet to be put in the correct place (that's something we really need to do before we have no time to).  I never did find the manual, and finally had to get our neighbor Brad to help me open and close it -- though by that time I ended up being half and hour late for church.

As far as my grandmother, after her initial surgery she wasn't doing very well and they thought she might have been in kidney failure.  They had to perform another surgery late on Saturday to try to figure out what exactly was wrong and hopefully fix it -- which, very thankfully, they did.  She was doing much better on Sunday when we visited, though she was still in intensive care and hadn't been awake at all yet when we got there.  By the time we left several hours later the most she had done was barely open her eyes and wiggle a finger or two, but it was progress nonetheless.  ICU is weird because they only let visitors in for ten minutes every two hours, and only four people at once, so we had to take turns and sit in the waiting room the rest of the time.  I've certainly never experienced anything like that before.

Anyway, thankfully it seems our power wasn't out too long, since we had just bought a bunch of groceries on Saturday and would have been less than thrilled if they'd all spoiled.  And if we'd had no AC all day.  :-P
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Thursday, July 20, 2006
In welcome news (sort of)...
We got almost three inches of rain overnight, though I could have done without the constant thunder and lightning and the 60 mph winds whipping the rain into the windows and shaking the house -- and making me kind of nervous at times about a window blowing in or some other kind of damage, which did apparently occur elsewhere in the area (gusts of 80 mph were apparently reported -- that's hurricane strength, folks).  As for us, it knocked over some of my container plants on the patio and even our patio set table was on its side (good thing the chairs weren't out or they might have flown who-knows-where).  I didn't sleep terribly well as I was constantly being woken up -- but the rain part was good.

In not-at-all-welcome news...
My grandmother is having heart surgery tomorrow morning.  This is the first really serious thing like this she and my grandpa have had to deal with, so it's pretty scary for them and for the rest of our family.  Prayers would be greatly appreciated.
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Wednesday, July 19, 2006
A very long weekend recap.
Interesting doings at the Jamie Farr Owens Corning Classic last weekend.  Second round play was suspended Friday afternoon due to severe storms with torrential rain, the end result being a golf course that received five inches of rain Tuesday through Friday and that the powers that be weren't sure would be playable at all on Saturday.  This is what we found out when we got to our motel in Michigan Friday night.  Come Saturday morning word came that second round play would resume at 11am, which was good, because we wouldn't get there until about noon.  :-P

Now, the good thing about the second round not finishing on Friday is that meant we got to see at least a little of players who might not make the cut.  Of those I listed in my previous entry, Heather, the defending champion, was already finished with her round on Friday, so we couldn't see her.  Angela wasn't finished yet, so we were able to follow her for several holes.  Nancy also wasn't finished, and we could have seen her, too, if it weren't for the fact that she was on the other side of course from Angela and getting around wasn't very easy because most of the bridges across the creeks that run through the course were underwater (they took players across some of them on carts that could go through water of a certain depth, but spectators weren't allowed to cross most of them).  Angela was at +6 when the day started, with the projected cut oscillating between +1 and +2, so we figured this would be our only shot at seeing her.  As it happened, she made four birdies in the remainder of her round to end at +2 -- the same score as Heather -- and be in limbo as far as making it to "weekend play."

By the time Angela was done, we still had quite a while to wait for the remaining players to finish their second round, so we eventually parked ourselves in front of the big, handwritten leaderboard-type-thing so we could keep track of where the cut might end up falling.  The board has columns for each total score through two rounds that has come in, and then lists each player who finished with that score.  They mark the 70th spot (since the cut is made after the top 70 players and ties), and move it up with each player who comes in with a score better than the one where 70th currently is.  So whatever column the 70th mark is in when all the players are done and up there is the worst column to make the cut.  Make sense?

Anyway, we were sitting there watching the cut line move its way farther and farther up the +2 column toward the +1 column, knowing that once it moved to +1 it couldn't move back and neither Heather nor Angela would make the cut.  As it happened, it came down to the very last players, and the cut ended up exactly one player away from moving to +1.  It was literally as close as it possibly could have been.

The third round teed off at 3:20 (which was actually fairly impressive), and we decided to mostly follow Heather's group since we hadn't gotten to see her yet.  We did manage to catch the leaders at one hole, and I came as close as I ever have to being hit by a golf ball as Paula Creamer overshot the green and her ball whizzed to my right by only a few feet.  We had to move out of her way for her next shot, and thus got a very up close and personal view of it.  That was kind of awesome.

We left long before play was suspended for darkness to go meet my friend Liz (Lizzie of The Comments) who drove from the Cleveland area, and I finally got me some Skyline Chili for supper.  After that we all hung out in our room, where we taught Lizzie nerts (that's a card game) and had what amounted to a mini-baby-shower when Lizzie gave us way too many baby presents -- but it was tons of fun!

The next morning we slept in a bit and decided to forgo trying to see any of the remaining third round and went out to breakfast instead.  Then the three of us headed to the course and decided to just park ourselves at the 17th green to watch most of the groups come through, since they had bleachers that were in the shade and would be all day (and I had really tired myself out the day before walking around).  Even sitting still in the shade, it was still superhot and humid and kind of miserable, and was only made more miserable by the fact that we were sitting on rock hard bleachers all day with no cushion whatsoever and no back support whatsoever.  Man, was my butt bruised after that.  :-P

After the last group came through, we, along with everyone else, of course, moved to 18 to watch them play the final hole, though we couldn't get anywhere near the green to be able to actually see anything.  It went to a playoff between Mi Hyun Kim (who's won several times) and Natalie Gulbis (a high profile player but one who's never won -- though she has come close many times, especially this year).  We stuck around for one playoff hole and then decided we really needed to leave as it was 7pm and Josh and I still needed to drive back home that night (it turns out they went a total of three playoff holes before Mi Hyun Kim won).  We got home around 1:30 in the morning (2:30 eastern time), and despite the fact that it was after 10pm on a Sunday, we still managed to run into some slow traffic in the Chicago area.  Figures.

Okay, so, the end.
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Friday, July 14, 2006
Iffiness.
Three of the players we most wanted to see at the LPGA tournament this weekend:

Heather Young -- defending champion (she won the event last year) and probably my favorite player:  +2 most of the way through her second round and set to miss the cut if it stays where it's projected to be.

Angela Stanford -- probably my second favorite player:  +3 after one round and set to miss the cut unless it or her score moves in the correct direction.

Nancy Lopez -- a hall-of-famer and true legend of the game (even people who've never followed the LPGA should have heard of her) who only plays a couple events each year, so opportunities to see her actually play are rare:  +10 after one round and will obviously miss the cut.

So things aren't exactly going well on that front.  Granted, there's still a lot of golf to be played (about half the players still have yet to tee off in the second round), so some things could easily still change, but not necessarily.  Even if none of the above make it to weekend play, we'll still be able to see Annika and others we like (just not quite as much), but you still want to be able to see your favorites, and when you can't it sucks a little.  Makes me wish this were a 54-hole tournament so the cut wouldn't come until AFTER Saturday's round and we could see everyone we wanted to for one day at least.  Booger.

Also, we really need there to not be thunderstorms this afternoon around O'Hare and Madison so that Josh's flight isn't delayed -- the later his flight, the later we get going and the later night driving we'll have.  Oh, and while we're at it, could we also have no traffic delays through the Chicago area?  Thanks, that would be great.
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Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Question.
When you go to one of those haircut chains (Great Clips, Cost Cutters) to get your hair cut, are you supposed to tip? Ready... GO!
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Tuesday, July 11, 2006
I'd thank you not to do that to me again.
As if I weren't already a worrier, and emotional because I had recently left Josh at the airport and was facing four days of loneliness without him, I went through a few seconds of intense panic when I got a call yesterday -- when I knew Josh's flight was between Chicago and Dallas -- from someone asking if I was Mrs. Prins and identifying himself as Officer Something-or-other. Not. Nice.

And no, I will not be giving the State Troopers money this year.
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Friday, July 07, 2006
girl
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Say what??
So the Emmy nominations came out yesterday and, um, what?

First off it's important to note that the Emmys are usually crap and nominate the same people/shows year after year while overlooking the same often-more-deserving people/shows year after year.  This year things were decided a little differently for some of the major categories in an attempt to de-stalenize the nominations and give good shows on more minor networks (basically anything that's not ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, or HBO) more of a chance at getting nominations.  It was even dubbed the "Lauren Graham System" by some in the media as it seemed tailor-made to finally get actors like the "Gilmore Girls" perennial snubee (yes, I'm just making up words all over the place) the nominations they've deserved for years.

Well, it didn't seem to quite work that way.  Not in most cases, anyway.  Instead, the new system resulted in some of the same old same old and some of the weirdest -- though not necessarily deserving -- nominations in recent memory.

First off, neither "Lost," last year's Best Drama winner, nor "Desperate Housewives," the single most-nominated show last year, were nominated this year.  My theory is that "Lost" suffered from its intensely serialized nature and complexity, which is too bad but not necessarily a big shock considering the one-episode-submission thing.  Personally, I'm thrilled about the "DH" snub, because that show certainly wasn't deserving of it this year, and this proves that ratings aren't everything.  But Alfre Woodard getting the only acting nod for the show?  That's called name recognition and nothing more; she's usually a wonderful actress, but she was given nothing to do on the show this year.  If anyone was going to be nominated, it should've been Marcia Cross.  But whatever.  I don't really care that much.

One happy surprise:  "24" was very atypically the most-nominated show -- including pleasantly surprising noms for Jean Smart and Gregory Itzin -- and deservedly so.  Also, Chandra Wilson for "Grey's Anatomy."  She's the best thing about that show.

Other surprises, many of the not-so-happy variety:  Lauren Graham was looked over -- AGAIN.  Kristen Bell, "Veronica Mars"' only hope, and not a bad one at that, was looked over -- AGAIN.  No "Gilmore Girls."  No "My Name Is Earl" or Jason Lee (I figured both were shoo-ins).  No Jason Bateman, Jeffrey Tambor or Jessica Walter, who are all usually nominated for "Arrested Development" -- but, shockingly, there out of the blue was Will Arnett, who's deserved it since the show started three years ago but has never received an ounce of (official) recognition for his hilarious performace.  So kudos to the voters for that one.

Thrilled "The Office," "Arrested Development" and "Scrubs" are all up for best comedy, since they all deserve it (and frankly I was a little worried "AD" might have ended too long ago to be on the radar).  Not thrilled with -- and in some cases completely baffled by -- the nominations for Kevin James (huh?), Stockard Channing (did her show even last a full season?), Jon Cryer, Geena Davis (sorry, still don't think she's a good actress), Allison Janney (I don't watch "West Wing," but from what I hear at the very least this year should never have qualified her for the Lead  Actress category) and anybody from "Will & Grace" (are we still nominating for nostalgia's sake?).  At least the show itself wasn't nominated this year.  And no Hugh Laurie??  Um, okay...

If you don't watch much TV, I'm sure most of this makes no sense, and you're to be commended for reading my ramblings this far.  But, hey, this is the stuff I follow.  And it's not like I have anything else important to say.  ;-)
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