Michael & Liz are Bloggable

Contrary to what my last blog post may suggest, I don't sit and watch TV all day long. Maybe just on the weeknights after work? For the longest time we've wanted to make our third bedroom livable and this past weekend the stars aligned where I finally had the time and the tools to get the job done. Thank you Bobby for the tools!! The goal is to make it look the same as our second bedroom which I finished back in 2008.

So Friday night we went to Lowes and bought all the supplies and most of the day Saturday and Sunday I spent installing beadboard. I finished Sunday night but it was too dark to take pictures. All that needs to be done is painting the beadboard white and then painting the rest of the room a decent color other than it's current bland cream color. We also need to clean up the riff-raff, put some crap in the attic, and put the furniture in the proper place, but other than that we've gotten it up to livable standards. 

Here are the before pictures:

And now for the after pictures (ignore the terrible caulking job, it will be covered by paint):





I guess I still took the pictures when it was too dark outside. That is the advantage this room has over the other one. The sun sets on the other side of the house, so after about noon, it's super dark in there.

As active and busy as we keep ourselves, we love our TV shows. I'm a little ashamed to admit that it's probably (definitely) more than the average person. Then throw in movies that we watch and boy are we putting a lot of time into the TV.

This past Spring we had a couple shows we were watching that were canceled. Those include "V" and "Mr Sunshine". We enjoyed them, but they deserved it. So with those gone, we have a couple shows we've picked up. We try and strike a balance, although recently the balance seems to be on the heavy side.That probably can't last too long.

These are the shows we've always watched that we'll continue to watch when they premiere this Fall. :

•  Survivor - CBS, Wednesdays @ 8PM, Begins 9/14 - The show seems to go in waves. They'd introduce a new rule every 4th or 5th season (Exile island, Hidden Immunity Island, All-Stars, Fan vs. Favorites, Heroes vs. Villains) and it would be awesome and then start to tail off. Redemption Island has totally revived my interest in Survivor. I love picking my horses and rooting for them.
• How I Met Your Mother - CBS, Mondays @ 8PM, Begins 9/19 - Brilliant writing. This show is so original and creative in so many ways: Slap Bet & Countdown, Barney's Dating Playbook, The Goat, creative flashbacks, Marshall's Family; I could go on. There's no show on TV like it. I think most of all what I like about the show is Jason Segel, the real star of the show.
• Glee - Fox, Tuesdays @ 8PM, Begins 9/20 - Liz loves this show more than I do. It certainly is creative, but the plot craziness is something that is hard for me to handle. I also completely disagree about the moral integrity behind what they decide to air on TV, especially considering how many teenagers are watching.  It's as if they are willing to do ANYTHING to get ratings. Sometimes it's difficult to take seriously, which hurts my enjoyment. The best part though is the songs. The cast is awesome and the songs are hilariously random and really well done.
• The Biggest Loser - Tuesdays @ 8PM, Begins 9/20 - Can I express just how much I love this show? Some people may hate reality shows, but there is no other show that is more beneficial to it's contestants. The show is truly meant to change people's lives. The downside though is that last season was the first time I started to see that it's going downhill. Unlike Survivor, their twists and changes in the game rarely make it more interesting. It is what it is. The show is completely dependent on how interesting the cast is. They better continue to do their best to cast great people, otherwise it'll continue to decline.
• The Big Bang Theory - Thursdays @ 8PM, Begins 9/22 - I still can't believe this show made it. We watched the first season and were predicting that it wouldn't be renewed. Now here it is about to start season 5 and on the verge of syndication. Amazing. What this show has going for it is science. Most, if not all of the viewers, probably don't understand a word of what they are saying, but that's part of the show's draw.
• The Office - Thursdays @ 9PM, Begins 9/22 - I'm really afraid that one day I'll say the words "The Office ended when Michael Scott left, it just didn't get canceled at the same time." This season the old boss is gone (Steve Carell) and the new boss, at least from my perspective, is a huge downgrade. I'm really afraid that this show's good days are over. If they manage to concentrate more on office hi-jinks between Dwight and Jim and less on story narrative, it may survive.

And now the new shows we'll be picking up in our schedule:

• Parenthood - NBC, Tuesdays @ 10PM, Begins 9/13 - Randomly we'd see this show on TV in the Spring and we decided to get the DVD's through Netflix and check out the first season. It's an amazing show. I actually usually hate scripted dramas, in particular all the lame CSI, Law & Order, ER type shows. They really bother me, but Parenthood while it is scripted drama, is much different. I think they do a fantastic job of telling real stories (the autistic young son for example) and add humor that is subtle and done through character personalities, not cheap jokes. The writing is really well done. 
• Terra Nova - Fox , Mondays @ 8PM, Begins 9/26 - Holy cow this show looks awesome! It's basically looks like a mix of Lost, Jurassic Park, & Avatar. Apparently they are way over budget and it's crazy expensive to make. Hopefully that is a good thing and not a motivation for cancellation. Their previews of a dinosaur attacking a car better be a frequent occurrence, because if it is, I'll be hooked. It better not be like Lost where they advertise this crazy dinosaur noise, and then not talk about it until Season 3. I have high hopes. 
• Last Man Standing - Tuesdays @ 8PM, Begins 10/11 - We may not be able to watch this, we already have two other shows on at 8PM on Tuesdays. I don't know how that would work. With that said, it's blatantly obvious that ABC is doing this because the show's premise is exactly the opposite of Tim Allen's old hit, Home Improvement. This plot is that Tim Allen is the father of 3 young daughters. See it now? The concept of seeing Tim Allen completely flipped over, really intrigues me. To say I'm a fan of his show Home Improvement is an understatement. I watched it live when I was little and then watch the reruns religiously. I really want to see how this show works, but with it's difficult time slot, I might not be able too.

What shows are you watching?

P.S. - Thank goodness for DVR. We always tape the shows and skip commercials, that saves SOOO much time. 

Recently Liz and I were listening to the radio (country station) and she says "I really like the Zac Brown Band". Sometimes you never really realize you enjoy something so much until it's pointed out to you. It made me realize just how much I really like them also.Two songs in particular just hit me every time. I love just pausing and listening. We also watch the country music channel and they come on fairly often as well. I'd like to share them here.

I think the reason I love country music is because they always tell great stories. There's no genre of music that tells a better story than country music. Overall that's what attracts me to the music.

Ironically both songs are completely contrary to each other. In the first, he wants so badly to be close to his son, but he can't make it work. The second song, which I imagine is the case with a lot of men in the world, is that he can't help but want to be free. He wants both the girl and the adventurous life.

The first song is called "Highway 20 Ride":



The second song is called "Colder Weather":



I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

I'm exactly the kind of person that would *not* pick up Tina Fey's book, Bossypants. I am a young (relatively) male who just had his wife say "you won't like this, it has a LOT of girl stuff in it". But I am a huge Tina Fey fan so I couldn't resist.

Something she talks about in the book is how woman were never looked at as funny or relevant in comedy. I'll comment on that real quick.  

I used to be one of those shlubs that thought that. You ever think back to the 80's and 90's (cuz that's as far back as I can think) and wonder where the women of SNL were? There were probably a bunch of them, but they never got any camera love? Name all the stars from SNL and the list of males grows endlessly. To be entirely honest, gender would not have even registered on my mind while listing Dana Carvey, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, Jimmy Fallon, Dan Akroyd, Chris Farley, etc.

I actually can't tell you whether or not the women who appeared with those guys were funny. I haven't seen any clips of them because the guys hogged the spotlight. I actually remember speaking the words in the early 2000's, "I don't know any women comedians that are funny." When Tina Fey arrived on SNL, my world got rocked.

She is legitimately funny. No, I'm not adding "for a girl" on the end of that sentence, she puts most guys to shame (I say "most" because I don't have a favorite, but she's in the list of my favorites). She is inventive, creative, and uses humor much better than anyone I have ever seen before. She opened up the SNL world to women in comedy and Kristen Wig (who is also amazing) has stepped right through. I knew Tina was awesome long before her book Bossypants but it put a huge exclamation point behind awesome!

So now back to the book. The overview is that it's a story about her going from a weird philly nobody to being the Bossypants executive producer of her show 30 Rock. There's a lot of information in this book about her life, including, like Liz said, a LOT of women stuff in it. Some of it is gross and not something a guy wants to hear, but I understood most of it and once you get past that stuff, and the whole book is hilarious. Either she put a lot of effort into making the reader laugh every single paragraph or she is much funnier and talented than I had ever thought.

What I enjoyed most about the book was her lessons on improv comedy. Not only did I learn a lot about how to improv, but I actually noticed she used those skills in her writing style. I could give a million examples, but the one I love the best comes from her responses to her fan mail.

She says that the first rule of improvisational comedy is to always say "yes". Accept whatever is given to you or told to you, and go from there. Someone can say "I have a gun!", and your response cannot be "no you don't, that's your finger." Improv over. That is breaking the first rule. So remember that rule while reading her response to fan mail:

She was sent:

"Tina Fey is an ugly, pear-shaped, overrated troll."

Her response:

Dear Fan,
First let me say how inspiring it is that you have learned to use a computer.

I hate for our correspondence to be confrontational, but you have offended me deeply. To say I'm an overrated troll, when you have never seen me guard a bridge, is patently unfair. I'll leave it for others to say if I'm the best, but I am certainly one of the most dedicated trolls guarding bridges. I always ask three questions, at least two of which are riddles.

She continues on in her response to further destroy the writer with humor. Disregard the brilliance and hilarity of her response, and notice how she accepted the input of being called a troll and went with it. I just about exploded with laughter when she said "when you have never seen me guard a bridge". Pure genius. She used almost every rule of Improv in her book and in her humor, and I really got a lot out of it, not just laughs.

Should you read this book? Yes, absolutely you should. It is filled with page after page of more genius. Just skimming through it, I so badly want to erase my memory,  read it again, and laugh for the first time once more. I will resist ruining any more of the book for you so you can laugh for the first time yourself.

By the way, I read the book in 2 days while on vacation. That is definitely saying something.

This has probably been the most fun challenge that I've had. I really like running and being forced to run every day has made me realize that. You know what they say about exercise, that it somehow increases the endorphins in your body giving you a feeling of well-being and happiness. I totally buy that. Every time I walk back in the house I am pumped about having run. Even while sitting on the floor recovering (because I don't want to get our furniture nasty from sweat), I feel like going back out and running some more.

Here are my stats for the month so far:

August Day:	Miles:
1	3.5
2	1.8
3	1.2
4	3.5
5	1.2
6	1.2
7	1.2
8	1.2
9	2.7
10	3.2
11	1.7
12	1.2
13	1.2
14	7.5
15	1.2
16	1.2
17	4
18	3
Total:	41.7
Average:	2.3

The reason for all the 1.2's is because that's the distance around the neighborhood.

I actually was fairly proud of my numbers until I wrote them down here and calculated the total. I'm only averaging 2.3 miles a day? Half of the 18 days were measly 1.2 jaunts around the neighborhood? That's pretty pathetic in my book. I guess the upside is that those are the days I probably wouldn't have run anyway. When the month started, I was actually thinking about trying to beat an average of 3 miles a day. Maybe I can start making it up?

What has been tough is working around my schedule. Most of those short runs were either late at night when I barely had time to run or on days when I had softball and didn't feel like doing more than just a lap around the neighborhood. The downside to running so late at night too is that it's right after dinner, so there were 2 or 3 runs I did on a full stomach. Those runs were rough.

I actually have enjoyed this challenge so much that I think I will continue it into September but up the ante a bit. Lets see if I can run 2 Miles a Day? Now that I think will be a big challenge!

These changes aren't as dramatic as the shelf I installed, but they are necessary to make the kitchen look much better. What is missing in these pictures is shoe molding (I didn't feel like doing that today). There are a lot of nail holes and scuff marks but those won't mean anything once it's all painted. I also left a gap between the floor and the base board because our linoleum floors are hideous. We'll eventually get hardwood floors 1 or more years down the line and I wanted to leave a gap to make the pulling up of linoleum much easier. The shoe molding will cover it up.

So the only thing left to do in the kitchen now is:

• Shoe Molding
• Fix up a few spots like nail holes and gaps that need putty
• Paint
• Drawer and Cabinet Hardware
• Enjoy a sweet new kitchen.

While this does seem like a pretty short list of to-do items, we are fixing up the kitchen on a fixed budget. So it may be until mid-September that we can buy all the paint we need. No big deal. There's no rush.

Boy have I been slacking on the whole posting thing.

Best movie of the month, without a doubt, was Secretariat. If you see any of the ones below, definitely see that one!! Here are the movies we watched in July

• The Plain Truth (2004) - 3 stars - This movie was based on a book that Liz had read. She said the author "is very well known for twist endings". So I was expecting it and guessing and I was totally wrong. It was enjoyable.
• Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief (2010) - 4 stars - This was my second viewing and I enjoyed it even more the second time. It's very Harry Potter-esk with it's magic and mystery. I really like the demi-God idea as the plot for a movie, but I never thought it was that good until this movie. 
• The Kids Are All Right (2010) - 3 stars - Movies where the plot revolves around infidelity make me uncomfortable. I don't like watching it because I'd like to remain in my little bubble of "it doesn't happen". It really is a life ruin-er and I don't want any part of it.
• Rescue Dawn (2006) - 3 stars - I continue to be impressed by Christian Bale's acting skills. He did an amazing job in this one as well.
• Hall Pass (2011) - 3 stars - Another infidelity movie, although in this one the outcome was expected. He got into a fight with his wife, they went on a break, and then with his "Hall Pass" he realized how terrible not being married was. That's pretty much how I feel about the whole situation.
• You Again (2010) - 2 stars - Kristen Bell is awesome, but this movie was super boring and dumb.
• Sudden Impact (1983) - 1 star - I stopped this after a while. Like I've always said, most old movie are terrible, this one included.
• No Strings Attached (2011) - 4 stars - I want so badly to hate Ashton Kutcher (mainly because of Punked) but as it turns out, it's the opposite. He played the good guy throughout this movie and I enjoyed it a lot. I'm actually really looking forward to seeing what he does on Two and a Half Men.
• Kevin Hart: Seriously Funny ( 2010) - 1 star -Seriously not funny. If you can't make one joke without cussing, then you are not a funny person. Cussing is a crutch. It's kind of like hitting a home run with an illegal bat. Sure people laugh, but it's not because of you.
• The Kite Runner (2007) - 3 stars - Liz watched it without me. She says "It was a good movie, a little slow paced and there were sub-titles, but it was good."
• Secretariat (2010) - 5 stars - You know that feeling at the end of a movie that makes you want to stand up and throw your fist in the air and yell "YES! YES! YES!" Anyone? Just me? OK, well that's how I felt at the end of this movie. I'll have to see it multiple times before I can actually declare this to be true, but it might be up there with Rudy and Cinderella Man as one of the best "sports" movies I've ever seen. I've never thought of horse racing as a sport, but it's in the genre. The races kept me on the edge of my seat and it really built up to a fantastic ending. Absolutely loved this movie.
• Alice in Wonderland (2010) - 2 stars - We thought this would be a good movie, but it was actually weird and dumb. Johnny Depp is always awesome, but he sure does like weird roles. There was also a cameo from one of the original Alice in Wonderland actors, that was funny to see. 
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II (2011) - 5 stars - The best Harry Potter movie without a doubt. You can read my thoughts in this previous post.

Last weekend a friend of ours let me borrow his nail gun and miter saw. To say that I'm excited to have the proper tools to make something awesome is an understatement. So over the last week I built several things in the kitchen. Really they are all somewhat mediocre except for what I finished tonight.

Liz wanted a shelf built into the end of the cabinets along with crown molding around the top of them. Nailed it!

Now the next step is to put the base board around the bottom of the cabinets and we're ready to start painting. I think Liz is going to love her new kitchen.