Aug. 31: Month in review

Here, in a nutshell, is my summary of August 2013.

Special days I celebrated this month and how:

• My in-laws’ fiftieth anniversary was in June but the family was all here to celebrate it this month. We had a big photo shoot, made gifts at the ceramics studio, and went out for dinner. I feel fortunate to have such lovely people in my life.
• Jack and Katie registered for middle school. There wasn’t a lot of celebrating, exactly, but we’re all happy about it, and for very, very different reasons.
• Dina’s husband gathered a few of her friends and took us out for her birthday. We went bar-hopping and generally made a lot of noise. We do excel at making the noise.

Movies and TV shows worth mentioning:

• Ever since we ditched the VCR many moons ago, we haven’t owned a watchable copy of The Princess Bride. Now we’ve got it on Blu-Ray. It was fun to introduce Katie to it—she liked; yay!—but Jack is still resisting a forced viewing. If we have to chain him to a chair, we will. OUR BOY WILL LOVE THAT MOVIE.
• We’ve been watching the James Bond movies, in order, on Amazon Instant Video. It’s amusing to see how they started off with Bond as a classic British spy and then veered way away from that into a campy, near-ridiculous, hardy-har-har series. Ugh. But for every stupid fake sound effect, there’s at least one memorable, ever-so-watchable moment—psychotic villains and shark-ful fight scenes, Q’s “futuristic” gadgets, and one absurdly-named Bond girl after another after another.
• Also on Amazon, I watched the miniseries Titanic: Blood & Steel. It focuses on the construction of the Titanic and the people who built it—from working class to financiers. Of course, there’s some romance and intrigue amid the strikes and religious prejudices. I thought it was a well-done series.
• Orange is the New Black sure is a fascinating show. I have no idea how close it is to reality, but fake or not, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to go to prison. I’ll be honest; I was pretty sure of that before I watched OITNB too.

This month’s disappointments:

• At least two friends lost someone close to them. So sad.
• Our sweet wheaten terrier niece, Finn (Sonya’s family’s dog) passed away. We were glad to see and cuddle her one last time.
• My 2½-year follow-up to cancer treatment showed that some lymph nodes have grown quite a bit since my last CT, and now I have to go through more testing. Boo.

My accomplishments:

• We painted the master bathroom, got new towels and hardware, completely re-organized storage, and changed up the décor. Freshening up a room that’s become boring is one of my favorite things. I still have some work to do, but the majority of the bathroom is done and I LOVE the way it looks.
• We re-did the cushions on one of our sofas and it’s like a brand new piece of furniture! The cushions were saggy and squashed and had completely lost their shape. Check out these before (gross) and after (new extry-firm support!) shots:

 

• I finally, finally, got all the PTO stuff turned over to Wendy, the new president. It kinda bummed me out more than I thought it would. However, I spent most of my free time in August doing non-PTO things and I haven’t had an August like that for at least five years. Awesome! It looks like I might actually enjoy a PTO-less life.

Anything else noteworthy:

• Taking Jack to and from his many football practice sessions will consume slightly less of my time starting in September, when his team goes to just three practices a week. Now, though, we’ll actually have GAMES to go to every Saturday! So excited!
• (I’m not really very excited.)
• OMG, I’m going to be a great-aunt! Erin, my former step-niece—who will always be my niece because she’s fab, duh—and her husband will be having a baby in February. Nowadays I find the whole thing so exciting when it’s happening to someone else.
• Here are some sillies because I think you need ‘em:

That’s it for August 2013, doods.

Dec. 31: Month in summary

It’s the end of the month and time for my recap of December 2012. I would love to do a summary of the entire year, but my memory isn’t long enough. Also, I kinda did it in our Christmas letter.

Special days I celebrated this month and how:

• At school, we got to reward the entire student body for their fundraising efforts during our Jogathon. We brought in Presto the Magician on Dec. 7 to perform for them, and it was truly magical to see the students’ excited faces during this event. I also found out that Presto lives just down the street from me—how cool is it to have a magician for a neighbor??? I plan to consult him the next time the neighbors behind us start in on another loud Live Like You Were Dyin’ marathon. He’s gotta be able to fix that hillbilly nonsense, right? If not, then I want to know which of my neighbors is a voodoo expert.
• Well, this month held Christmas, so we celebrated that. Mother Mary was here. We got together with the other Manullangs on the 22nd, which was a blast. Many of them joined us on Christmas Eve for our traditional Chinese dinner at home. On Christmas Day, it was just us and MM around the tree. Later that afternoon we saw Les Misérables on the big screen (more on that below). The day was perfect.
• My father-in-law turned 80. The family celebrated together on the 23rd; we went to Wellington’s favorite brunch place and then home for entertainment. The granddaughters sang “What a Wonderful World,” Alec performed a beautiful piano piece, and Presley showed off her Hawaiian dancing skills. It was a beautiful day and well-deserved. He is much-loved by many.
• I didn’t do a lot of celebrating on my friends’ birthdays, but I can’t not mention them because it sucks to have a birthday so close to Christmas: Cassie, Stephanie, Fancy Lori, and my bloggy friend, Jen E all turned another year older in December. Our niece, Presley and our brother-in-law, Chris, also had birthdays. Exciting month!
• Tonight we’re joining a small group of friends to usher in 2013.

Gifts I gave and/or received this month:

• It was Christmas, so I gave Christmas gifts. Duh.
• The use of beekeeping supplies I purchased last month were finally revealed in gifts I gave to several friends: Mom and I made lots of skin care products—hard lotion, eye cream, cuticle butter, and tinted lip balm—with all-natural ingredients. I’m not done yet—I’ve been creating recipes for some other cool stuff too. Why am I into this all-natural stuff? The idea of taking petroleum-based skin care products out of my regimen is most appealing, but I also like using specific combinations of essential oils to create really special potions. Yay!
• We Manullang kids got Wellington an iPad for his birthday. This gadget was given with all the grandchildren’s phone numbers and email addresses, as they will provide tech support better than any of us can. I was excited to see him using his new gadget at his birthday party, but within an hour it was back in its box. What do you wanna bet it’s still in there?
  
• As mentioned in my last post, I got an iPad mini for Christmas, and I. Am. Loving. It. My favorite apps right now are Kindle, Nook, and Kobo; although I have them on my iPhone, it’s much easier to read books on a larger screen. Happy Jen!

Books I read this month:

• I started re-reading the Tales of the City series. I plan to read one every few books, I think.
• Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro. Odd story. Fascinating, and an easy read, but odd. I’ll remember it, however, as the first e-book I read start-to-finish.
• I just started on Falling Together, by Marisa de los Santos, but the story involves three friends and I keep getting it mixed up with Never Let Me Go. I’m diving into Anna Karenina instead. Someday I’ll get through that list of 100 books. Someday.

Movies and TV shows worth mentioning:

• We loved the Les Misérables movie. Russell Crowe was fabulous as Javert, but his singing was so-so. Otherwise, we enjoyed the cast. I wish movies like this could use talented singers, not big box office stars. My choices would be Alfie Boe for Jean Valjean, Michael Ball for Marius, and nobody would play Cosette because her voice hurts my head.
• Vic and I finally saw Skyfall, the newest James Bond movie. I thought it was one of the best Bond flicks in a long time. The plot was actually follow-able, and although I didn’t love the ending, I hope that the new M and Q signify the return of a more traditional Bond.
• I saw, for the first time, A Clockwork Orange, and found it utterly unwatchable. What a waste of time. I’ve never been a Kubrick fan, and I’m also not much for futuristic/dystopian stories… I should’ve known better than to think I might enjoy this movie.
• The new version of Footloose confused me. It’s updated, yes, and the new cast was fine, but did a remake really need to be made? I’m still not sure.

New recipes or restaurants I tried:

• I made my version of baked French toast for Christmas morning. I’ll share the recipe soon.
• A new teriyaki restaurant opened nearby. So far, so good.

This month’s disappointments:

• There were the shootings—the local one and way worse one. I have no words.
• Seriously, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are having a baby? This is a sure sign of the apocalypse, isn’t it? Neither of these people have any business procreating, and certainly not with each other. Gah.
• Of all the pets we’ve had in our 15 years in this house, none of them has ever had fleas. It’s not that we’re good at preventing them, we simply did not ever have a problem. When Lucy started scratching a few weeks ago, we assumed it was a skin allergy and changed her food, which made no difference. Then Mom actually SAW a flea hop off her. DAMMIT. Now it feels like they’re everywhere and I’m constantly itchy. We’ve done all the standard treatments to the dog and house, and the fleas appear to be mostly gone but I can’t stop thinking about them. This is soooo not fun, but I am glad we don’t have to change to fancy prescription food for Lucy.
• Santa didn’t bring me a pony.

My accomplishments:

• Lots of school-related stuff… but no time to reflect, because we’re already busy planning the carnival in February!
• We undecorated the house yesterday. Sometimes this doesn’t happen until mid-January, so yay us.

Anything else noteworthy:

Just some funny pictures to share...

I think I need this shirt. Val definitely does.

How cute are these iPhone shelf backgrounds???

That’s all I got. Be careful tonight.

Oct. 25: Bond movie revelation (I’m so ashamed)

My first memory of James Bond is from seeing the commercial for For Your Eyes Only in 1981. I remember the guy with the weird glasses in the car on the side of the mountain, and Bond kicks the car and it falls down the cliff. Bad. Ass. Of course, the Sheena Easton theme song was huge at the time, too. I didn’t see the movie until I was in high school, but it quickly became one of my favorites. Roger Moore was my preferred Bond (this was before I had any sense at all), and I rented and watched it over and over.

I’ve always known that Topol was in For Your Eyes Only, but never paid much attention to who he played. Besides Lynn-Holly Johnson—still riding high from Ice Castles—this film wasn’t exactly star-studded. After we saw Fiddler on the Roof on stage in August, I’ve watched for For Your Eyes Only to air again, just to see Topol in another one of his well-known roles. I didn’t remember his character, but Vic said he played a good guy. Seems like every time it’s been on, I miss his scenes.

For Your Eyes Only was on Bravo this morning, and I watched as I v-e-r-y slowly drank my coffee. I kept waiting and waiting for a recognizable Topol. I was checking email on my phone when I heard a recognizable voice… and I looked up to see it was coming out of a very UNrecognizable Topol. And then I started yelling like a fool for Vic to GET IN HERE RIGHT NOW!

This is the Topol I’ve known all my life:	And this is how he looks in For Your Eyes Only:
Tevye, a poor Russian milkman	Milos, a rich Greek playboy with pinky rings

Vic just laughed at me. He couldn’t believe I’ve been watching this movie for 25+ years and never knew this character—this kind of major character, who happens to be in many scenes in the last two-thirds of the movie—was Topol.

But come ON! The pinky rings! You can see how they’ve thrown me off all these years, right?

Jan. 24: Dreamy. Very dreamy.

The next James Bond movie is no longer Bond 21. The producers have revealed the title, and what's most shocking is its lack of sexual innuendo. I guess we'll look for that in the film itself, hm?

And I know you can't get past Daniel Craig's ears, Kath, but I think he's yummy. Maybe Lori can settle this one.