Last night...

... I completed what I thought was a triple play of dining, but now I realize it was not.

It was a grand slam.

Smellin' Coffee and DANCING!

Yeah Boy! I don't know where this is, but I want to go there and do this. The short version says it's clogging. The long version says it tap dancing. It looks like a combination of tap dancing, clogging, AND line dancing. I have a quest.

Best break of the day...

In the interest of full disclosure...

1. Our septic tank was apparently installed backwards. That means we get to have it pumped every 4-5 years to avoid swamp conditions in the backyard. File that under: "Things You Learn When Having Your Septic Tank Pumped Just After Dinnertime." Or "TMI" ~~~

2. I have never seen an episode of 24 either, although I did watch about five minutes of it once.

3. My favorite TV show currently running is Deadliest Catch. Shame on you if you've never seen it. (Ahem...) Unfortunately, I do not own the DVDs.

4. I recently watched the True Jackson movie Trapped in Paris, and it is the most hysterical movie I've seen in ages. Can't miss with DJ Lance and Greg Proops. (Whose Line is it Anyway?)

5. My all-time favorite TV show is I Dream of Jeannie. I still want a room that looks like the inside of Jeannie's bottle.

That is all.

Confession...

I have never seen Lost. Not even one episode. Not even five minutes. Never.

And it WAS weird...

...to see Captain Phil again, knowing he isn't really here anymore.

I loved seeing the Jake and Jake switch. Cornelia Marie and Northwestern. Can't go wrong with that combination.

And I am SO over the Time Bandit and the Wizard. Never heard so much bleeping on one show in all my life.

Deadliest Catch...

I love watching TV shows about crab fishing in the Bering Sea. I know Alaskan King Crab bring in the bucks. They are HUGE. It's the fall season of crab fishing. Opilio (Opi) are smaller, spidery-looking crab, caught during the winter months when the fishermen have to break from dropping pots to knock ice off the boats so that they don't sink in rough seas. It's harsh. And I love it.

This year starts the sixth season of Deadliest Catch. I'm a Northwestern girl, but anyone who knows anything at all about these guys knows that this season all eyes are on the Cornelia Marie. The guy in the picture above is Phil Harris, captain of the Cornelia Marie. A couple of seasons ago, Captain Phil had a blood clot travel from his leg through his heart and land in his lung. By all accounts it should have killed him; few people survive a pulmonary embolism. But it didn't get Captain Phil that time. Throughout season 5 of the show, Captain Phil and his sons, Josh and Jake, struggled with his condition. He ended up back on the boat and actually did well.

But this year, things went very wrong again. During an offload at St. Paul, Captain Phil suffered a massive stroke. He ended up in a hospital in Anchorage, where he underwent intense surgery and stayed in a medically-induced coma for a few days. Then he started waking up. For several days he rallied. Everyone was hopeful. Then he took a turn for the worse, and on February 9, Captain Phil died. That makes me very, very sad.

It will be a strange season. No one knows right now the long-term fate of the Cornelia Marie. Jake is 24 and Josh is 26. They are awfully young to take over the family business. My prayers go out to them.

Night of Christmas Lights 2009: Top 5 Can't-Miss Houses...

Love, love, love the Christmas lights!!! If you can catch only a few, here are the ones not to miss. And if you have only 15 minutes and can go to only one neighborhood, head to #1 and #2. You can actually see them around the corner from each other. Trust me, no still photo could even begin to capture the experience.

5. Pat's Branch Drive in Umstead Ridge. Lights set to really cool Trans-Siberian Orchestra music. The music and dancing lights make this one a lot of fun to watch. One of my besties lives within sight of that house, and I am very, very jealous!

(No picture because the light show moves FAST! By the time we got to the end of the song when all the lights are on at once, I'd put away the camera. Plus, the lights are mainly white. White lights are tough to photograph without looking like one giant flash going off.)

4. Corner of New London and Howard Drive in Stonehenge. Inflatables. Lots and lots of inflatables. Best use of candy canes hanging in a tree award! Great to look at, but on a trafficky road, so be careful! Not everyone out there loves lights as much as we do, so if you are in front of the wrong person, it's a little skeery.

(No pictures because the guy behind us didn't feel the love we were feeling for savoring the inflatable display. I was a-skeert to stop and snap a shot.)

3. Anderson Drive... closer to Six Forks than Glenwood. If you're coming from Glenwood, it'll be on the left. If you're coming from Six Forks, it'll be on the right. Oh. My. Word. You usually have to go to a theme park to find that many giant characters with moving parts. Worth the trip towards Midtown.

(No pictures. Too much traffic. I hate that; it really is a sight to behold. Little kids will LOVE it!)

2. Sleepy Creek Drive. Stonehenge. Lights set to music. Street's not too busy, so you can stop and enjoy. Impressive light choreography, and just around the corner from the #1 house on the tour.



1. Abbey Lane. Stonehenge. Those houses on YouTube have got nothing on this one. Being the owner of an overly-lit home during the Christmas season, I can sincerely appreciate the sheer wattage that goes into this one. You know when you drive up and there's a sign that says "Light Show - 5pm -10pm" that there's something to see. Well, that and the LONG line of cars sitting in front of the house... This house is so spectacular that you do not want to go until you've seen everything else there is to see. This is HGTV-and-TLC-Christmas-Light-Special league. It too is set to music. Look for the singing Christmas tree and Santa in the front yard. Check out the whole Charlie Brown Christmas cast to the right of the driveway and the main attraction of Christmas, the Nativity on the far right of the front yard. On the house itself, a moving sleigh pulled by racing reindeer is perpetually taking off from the roof. And in the front window you'll see the Right Jolly Old Elf wandering through the room and peeking outside. I snapped a few pics, but truly nothing short of sitting there and staring at it for a good little while does it justice.

What the young folks are listening to nowadays...

Very little draws me away from lesson plans and grading papers these days, but my students are going crazy for the group Owl City. And they are awesome. Owl City. My students too.

Check out Owl City in concert:




Their big video for "Fireflies" is on YouTube. Embedding disabled by request, but you can watch it here.

[Kelsey likes them too, but she's pretty cutting-edge with her musical preferences, and now that more people have discovered Owl City, she's on the the next thing. :) ]

Wired4Film...

Wolverine* and Star Trek* hit the theaters over the past couple of weeks in what Hollywood hopes to be its first truly blockbuster summer in a very long time.


Summer movies on the way are:

Terminator Salvation * (May 21)

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian *(May 22)

Up *(May 29)

Land of the Lost *(June 5)

Imagine That *(June 12)

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen *(June 24)

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs *(July 1)

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince* (July 15)

G-Force *(July 24)


How do I know these movies are coming? I went to the local cinema recently and saw a whole slew of trailers. And I watch TV and see a whole passel of commercials. And I surf the 'net quite a bit and stumble on a bunch of ads and industry reports.

Now... here's the BIG question: What faith-based films are either out now or in the pipeline? Besides Facing the Giants and Fireproof. Hmmm... Where do you go to find THAT?


You go here:

Wired4Film.com is a Hollywood Reporter-type site for faith-based films. Click on the logo above to visit the site. I have a buddy who is big in the world of student filmmaking (teaching students to make films) and he is friends with the guy who is trying to get Wired4Film off the ground in a major way.

So if you have a spare moment, pop in over there and show them some love. It's a great site to help you choose where you want to send your movie-ticket dollars. And if you're one of those activist-types, you can pummel your local theater with emails and calls and letters, asking them to show some of these faith-based indy movies.

*Disclaimer: I am not endorsing any of these movies. Goodness... I haven't even seen them, although I'm hearing great things about Star Trek. I'm just making a point that there's lots of publicity out there for this summer's line-up. Y'all are smart people. See them if you think it's a good thing and don't see them if you don't. I highly recommend reading the Plugged-In Online review before you spend your hard-earned cash to walk across the sticky floor and sit and stare at the GIGANTIC screen for two hours.

17 Again...

With the boys all venturing out and doing guy-things this weekend, Kelsey and I decided to have some girls' time.

We went to see Zac Efron in 17 Again. As I seem to be on a trend of rating things, I'm going to have to give 17 Again two thumbs up too. Zac has perfected the slightly-confused, partially-flustered, yet totally-hot look for adolescent males. Not that I find the dude "hot," but I believe the girl sitting to my left actually swooned in a couple of places during the movie.

Before we watch any movie at the theater, I always read the review on Plugged In online. Most of my parents-of-teenagers buds do too. It is, hands-down, the very best movie review resource out there for Christians. I have no idea who these reviewers are, but I stand in awe of their ability to track EVERYTHING in the movie... profanity (words, context, frequency), sexual content (type, context, frequency), drug and alcohol content (type, frequency, attitude), violent content (type, context, frequency, nature), etc. There is no way one reviewer can track all that stuff. There has to be a team with the profanity-counters and spiritual content analysts. And they're smart. And focused. My ADD-self can hardly fathom how they do it.

Anyway... I read the review and knew there were some "things" in it that I didn't want Kelsey to see unless we could talk about them. I didn't want her to walk away from it thinking that the world's way of handling teen relationships was OK ... as long as you love someone, you are fine getting physical. OR... if you make some bad choices, it's nothing that a little medical procedure or a few thousand dollars to an attorney can't fix. But when I actually sat and watched it, I was pleasantly surprised. Instead, the movie is all about owning your choices and embracing your responsibilities. And love. True love. The kind that covers a multitude of sins.

I didn't like the fact that the whole journey for Efron's character was courtesy of a Spirit Guide. Bleh. It said a lot about where we've come spiritually in the last 50 years. The dude looks like Clarence, but is a Spirit Guide instead of an angel. Ridiculous.

I LOVED hearing the abstinence speech coming from the 17-year-old mouth of the almost-40-ish-year-old dad. It was a great speech and a wonderful wake-up call. We all need to be a little more into our kids' worlds. The dad found words for his concerns when he literally lived life in his kids' world; he had no shortage of words (nor a lack of courage to use them) when he walked into the middle of a health class where the teacher was saying the school policy was teaching abstinence, but handing out condoms with the concession that kids will do it anyway, so they need to do it safely.

Yes, there are plenty of opportunities in this movie to see teen girls and guys kissing and hinting at more. But it seems... so... icky. And gross. There is nothing appealing in the way the daughter and her boyfriend "relate" to one another. It's just... yucky. Which is pretty accurate for real life, too, when we jump out of the beauty of our Creator's design for love relationships.

I've been chatting with a friend who shares my burden for young women and their moms. Seems that in just about every bad choice situation, there's an overwhelming lack of communication between parents and children. Not all those situations, but many of them. I bet if we could BE in their world, we'd all find the words (and courage to use them) to tell our kids there's a better way. And we'd do it with a sense of urgency and compassion and love, not so much the lightning-bolt-from-Olympus-if-you-mess-up way.

That said, whoever made the movie had quite the grasp on many cultural undercurrents, from the bizarre back-stabbing nature of the pharma sales industry to the curriculum's-a-joke nature of schools to the tendency for people to put blame for their bad choices on the ones they love the most.

I was SO tired last night and I really didn't want to brave the sticky theater floors to watch a teen movie, but I am oh-so-very glad that the Lord gave me the grace to get over myself and go. Somewhere in the midst of that theater and in our conversation that ran throughout the rest of the evening, I feel like I connected with my girls in HER world.

And that was very, very cool.

Videos that make you go hmmmm...

This time it's not because they're stupid. Actually, it's totally the opposite.

My friend, Suzanne, posted a link on my Facebook to a great You Tube video about how we regularly mangle the language. Suzanne thinks. A lot. She's really smart. She even taught her hamsters how to use a litter box. She was a psych major. I did well not to un-house-train the dog when we got her.

So I kinda got into the What You Ought To Know series on You Tube. It started with this:





And then I watched this:



And next thing I knew, I spent a couple of hours watching lots of videos that really made me think. So I went to their website:

http://www.whatyououghttoknow.com/.

Then I got sad because I found out they ran out of money and are taking a break. Maybe forever. No money'll do that to ya.

So, if you get a chance, toodle over and give a few of the clips a watch. I highly recommend "Bailout! Bailout!" and "Gay Marriage" (the video, not the practice) and "Liberals vs. Conservatives." Not saying that I agree 100% with EVERYTHING he says, but I am 100% behind the idea that we need to be thinking. This is absolutely not the time to be living life in the passive lane.

More Idol thoughts...

Well... in real time, Lil is out and Anoop and Allison are on the uncomfortable slidey stools. And here's what I'm thinking about the guy who shares the same hometown with my alma mater...

Dude... I got two words for you: Bucky Covington.

That oughta get him through the night.

You find things in the strangest places...

I was on wral.com. I clicked the link to astory about Anoop Desai. It had a link to the "American Idol" page.

On the"American Idol" page, there was a news feed that said something about voting for Chris Sligh. Chris Sligh? I really liked him Season Whatever-it-was. I actually ordered the Half-Past Forever CD, which is really good, by the way.

Anyways... I clicked the link to see why I'd be voting for Chris Sligh. Of course there was yet ANOTHER link to SEE if with my own eyes. Y'all are never going to guess where THAT link led. Never...

I imma gonna tell ya. It was a link to the voting page for Gospel Music Channel's Dove Awards. Big Chris is up for the New Artist of the Year Award. The fans are determining the winner for that and for the Artist of the Year. I voted for Chris for New Artist. Guess who got my vote for Artist of the Year. Just guess. Those of you who know me well can probably guess without ever going to the page! :)

Here's a video about the making of Chris Sligh's music video for "Arise":