Do you remember this movie? About the dog who thinks he’s a movie star? And his voice is provided by John Travolta? And his owner’s voice is provided by Miley Cyrus? And her name is Penny? Which is the same name of the girl in Inspector Gadget, who also works closely with a dog sidekick that’s smarter than a regular dog? And Bolt thinks he has to save her from the Green-Eyed Man’s evil henchmen?
Okay. So that is basically the rundown. Or at least, that’s what I know of the movie, because around 1:10 into it, the library DVD started skipping, then froze, and we feared it actually broke our DVD player. We did get the disc out eventually, and I wrote a note to the library about the giant gash in the DVD, and we returned it, and Drew just read the plot synopsis for the final half hour that we missed.
It was basically exactly what we had guessed it would be. Which wasn’t satisfying, because the whole experience was so frustrating…haha. So, this is just not one of our favorites. No recommendation!
Last night I did something really cool – I went up to the SF Opera for a dress rehearsal of Cinderella (or, La Cenerentola) as one of their live tweeters. There were eight of us in one box (and at least one more box full of people somewhere else), tweeting our thoughts throughout the 3-hour performance. SO FUN! I would definitely do this again.
Below is a selection of my tweets from last night. (If you like this, check out twitter for the full account…)
My biggest takeaway from this experience was that I had a hard time keeping up with what was going on, while also looking down at my phone. During the first Cinderella/Prince scene, I noticed someone else had tweeted something about “one song together and they’ve already kissed? scandalous!” I was like, “They kissed?!?” I completely missed it while I was commenting on something else.
It’s a grand life lesson – you miss a lot when you’re staring at your phone! Live tweeting is a double-edged sword! (?)
I’m suffering from this new dilemma. It has to do with Facebook. (Doesn’t everything?)
This isn’t about how the Facebook newsfeed is now all shared articles, video ads, or people sharing photos attached to recipes. (Where are the pithy status updates of yore? I never thought I’d miss them, but I do.)
This is a relatively new dilemma. Here it is: I’ve started seeing photos where, even when I study each face, I have no idea who anyone in the photo is.
Sometimes, while scrolling, I’ll pass the header telling me “So and so is tagged in a photo.” Then I stare at the photo and try to figure out which one of these people is my friend. When I can’t figure it out, I scroll up, go, “Oh yeah, wow, she’s really changed since middle school” (or whatever), and then go on my way.
But it makes me wonder what is the point of being friends with people if:
a) I never talk to them;
b) they never talk to me;
c) I can’t recognize them in a picture; or
d) there are more than 2 degrees of separation between us.
Not to sound exclusive or anything, but if I’m going to waste time on Facebook, I’d prefer to waste it on people I actually know in real life and care about. (Along those lines, I guess I should also excise those people I’ve hidden and thus forgotten about.)
Oh Facebook…what will I worry superficially about when you’re no longer a thing?
I’ll back up a bit. I was at Barnes & Noble the other day, and their 2014 planners were 50% off. I picked up a cute polka-dotted one, but then I stood there thinking, “When was the last time I even used my planner?”
I just pulled it out of my purse. It’s open to the week of October 28.
I love scheduling things and all, but scheduling is so much more straight-forward when you do the same things week after week. My planner was extremely useful when I was juggling three part-time jobs and making sure that I could get to all three of them, and also trying to coordinate seeing shows around the Bay Area. Now that I just go to the one job, and I don’t go out anymore, it’s a lot easier to keep straight in my head where I’m supposed to be. (Answer: work. If not work, then go home.)
Also, Drew and I had a wall calendar this year, which we actually used. And that makes more sense, since it’s accessible to both of us.
I guess my purse planner has been replaced by a combination of kitchen wall calendar and iPhone calendar…which I hate to admit, but there it is. The thing is, I can put appointments into my phone, and they’ll show up on my work calendar as well! Which is very helpful.
So, I guess I don’t have a dilemma, so much as I have a sad fact to face: 2014 is gonna be the first year in many years that I don’t bother buying a planner for myself.
Even though it was $4 at Barnes & Noble, and very cute. Did I mention it was covered in polka dots?
But I didn’t buy it. Instead, I bought the board book version of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, which I later discovered Drew has never even heard of. So I think it was a good choice. (Chicka Chicka Boom Boom also has polka dots on the cover.)
Happy New Year! Let’s raise a glass to 2014 and to moving on, however (un)willingly we do so.
For the most part, I’m useless with fixing things. In particular, I think of how helpless I am whenever my computer or my car starts to show problems. I can put oil or windshield washer fluid in the car, I know generally where things are under the hood; and with my laptop…I’m a master of Ctrl-Alt-Del and I know how to remove the battery, I guess?
But sometimes something just clicks for me. One such instance is when our Baby Einstein Nautical Octopus suddenly stopped playing music. Unlike almost every other Baby Einstein product, this one has no easy access to the battery pack. So this broken octopus just got moved around the living room, back and forth, for months, until finally, inspired by the physical presence of my parents and my desire to show what a capable, initiative-taking mom I am, I decided to Do Something About It.
I used a seam ripper (owns a seam ripper, +5 pts; knows where it is, +5 pts) to cut open the underside of the octopus, and pulled out some of the fluff. When it became apparent that I couldn’t get the music box out of the opening I’d created, I used a pair of scissors to just chop up the rest of the underside (used clunky giant scissors for delicate surgery, -3 pts). I got the box out, found the right size screwdriver to open it up (+3 pts) and discovered that the octopus needed 3 watch batteries.
For a week or so, I looked for the right size batteries everywhere I went, but never found them. Finally I decided to check Amazon, where I found a 3-pack of LR44 batteries for $1.77 with free shipping (+10 pts for luck!).
Finally, on Tuesday morning, I got around to replacing the batteries, which didn’t immediately fix the problem. But I decided to see this project through to the end, so I stitched up the octopus, held my breath, and pulled the purple fish cord…
…and it erupted into bubbles! And then, when I did it again, into nautical-themed music! And then bubbles again! And then different music!
Recovering from surgeryReunited and it feels so good
==
The throwback aspect of this post is that this reminds me of a time back in 2003 when I lived in the dorms, and I had to Save the Day.
Some friends and I went to the local movie rental place and picked up a VHS copy of Orgazmo, a 1997 film by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of South Park. We got it back to our dorm room, where we had already borrowed the TV and VCR from our RA (my roomie and I didn’t have one of either). It had been quite a hassle to move it down the hall, so this was kind of a special night for us.
But when we tried to play the tape, it just whirred and whined. And when we popped it out, the film inside was twisted around one of the reels. But on the outside of the tape, there was a sticker across the seam, so that if you opened up the case, They would know, and then They could fine you.
But then in a flash of brilliance, I realized that I could just take out the screws, crack open the tape like a clamshell, keeping the sticker firmly attached to each side of the opened case, and adjust the film.
Which I proceeded to do, proudly, while purporting modesty. I put the whole thing back together and we popped it in the VCR, and then we enjoyed 95 minutes of NC-17 comedy.
==
Ten years later…and I still have these Orgazmo pictures on my computer. Crazy.
In high school, I sucked at sports but my friends didn’t. So in order to hang out with them, I kept stats for the softball and girls’ basketball teams. Kind of dorky, but it was fun, and I was good at it, and I have a lot of good memories of away games (and home games too, for that matter).
But things would be very different if I were doing this in 2013. For example, two vanfuls of girls used to drive back from an away game in Ukiah or Willits or Fort Bragg or Colusa or wherever. When we got back to the high school parking lot, the one coach (a father of one of the girls) who had a portable phone would unpack this briefcase so we could all call our parents to come get us. The reception was terrible (likely the fault of the isolated county, and not the briefcase phone).
Oh, the good old days.
An even better example – but one that it’s possible I’m slightly misremembering – is the time we were headed up to Hoopa for a big annual softball tournament. (I think it was softball.)
This was a very exciting event for us, not least because it was so far away, and we would have to spend the night, and we could probably also fit in a trip to the big mall in Eureka. (No mall in our hometown!)
(I loved the Bayshore Mall growing up, but now Yelp gives it 2.5 stars and calls it a “small town mall.” Ouch.)
The way I remember it, we drove all night long, but now that I’m looking at the the driving time and everything…we probably just left early in the morning. I was in a car with our chemistry/physics teacher, beloved by everyone, his wife, and his daughter, who was on the team. Side note: I love everyone in their family. They were and still are awesome all around.
I remember sitting in the backseat in a pile of blanket and pillows, and driving through the dark. Marilyn was asleep in the far backseat. (Like I said, it was like 2am…right?) There was some weird station on the radio and they were playing Dr. Demento and some other similar song, and the only part of it I remember is an increasingly insane “Poppies poppies poppies poppies!”
When the internet first became the thing that it is today, I searched for that song a little bit, but now I think I prefer not to ever find it and know what it is.
It was pouring rain and I guess it eventually got light outside but I don’t really remember that part. I do remember arriving in Hoopa to find out that the fields had been completely flooded and the tournament was canceled.
I guess there was just someone hanging out at the school, telling everyone that it was canceled. And probably, they made some phone calls in the morning when they had to cancel the tourney. But if the only number they had was the school, and no one was at the school…and none of us had cell phones that the calls could have been relayed to anyway. So we made the entire probably 5-hour drive for no reason.
Well…not NO reason. We did go to the mall and go shopping and get lunch or whatever.
And then…we drove back home. I guess.
We were in Lakeport this weekend and so I’m being sweetly sentimental about a lot of late-90s/early-2000s things. But, I’m also very happy to have internet and a smartphone and all the improvements technology has brought into our lives. I’ll even take the complications.
I suck at technology. I’m not saying that in a braggy, isn’t-this-funny sort of way. I suck at computer-related things, car-related things, and iPhone-related things.
At some point I got into my head that I did not want to download the new operating system for my phone. So I just never did. But things started slowly dropping off the map: certain apps wouldn’t let me update them because I didn’t have the new iOS, then there were new apps I couldn’t even download, then I couldn’t even use some of the apps I had. Ridiculous.
So I tried to download the new iOS…and for some reason I couldn’t complete it. I downloaded the new iTunes, I downloaded the new iOS, but my computer consistently got stuck on backing up my phone. I left it plugged in for hours, and no dice. One night I left it plugged in overnight, hoping that when I woke up magic would’ve happened…but apparently when my laptop went to sleep, it shut down the backup. Disappointing.
I knew I needed to just go to the Apple store. But who has time to do that?
Well, finally, one day a couple weeks ago I magically found time to do just that in the middle of the afternoon. I dropped by the Apple store at the Hillsdale Mall and was told that all I needed to do was to make an appointment at the Genius Bar. Which I did. I went back a couple days later, at my appointed time, and spoke to Johnny. He was a delightful and helpful Genius with an assortment of tattoos, including the Apple logo.
I was prepared for the fact that they might have to wipe entire phone to update the iOS, so I had backed up everything the night before. It was still nerve-wracking: I sat there and watched the status bar progress, just hoping that everything would go okay.
A 30-something in a suit sat down next to me and told Johnny about how his phone had stopped charging and he needed to buy another one. Then I felt grateful that I didn’t have to buy another phone. (Then my thoughts started spiraling out of control, and I found myself at the point of “I’m glad I’m just losing my contacts and not my family,” etc etc.)
When I got home that night, I plugged my phone into my laptop to sync everything back up, and EVERYTHING – contacts, apps, photos, texts – repopulated in the phone. A complete success. And all thanks to Apple! Great products and awesome customer service!
(I did end up deleting all photos and videos anyway, because they were taking up all the available space. After I did that, I could update all apps and even download new ones, and start taking more pictures! Life is good.)
Back in the day, I wrote a post called Google Me about all my iPhone search terms, and I reminisced about why in the world I needed to look up these things. Well, it’s been awhile and I noticed the other day that my search history has been getting kind of eclectic again. So I thought I would share.
mary reilly imdb – My parents were here the other day and we were naming Julia Roberts movies, and then Drew mentioned this one and it sounded interesting so I looked it up. (Julia Roberts plays Dr. Jekyll’s maid, and she falls in love with both him AND Mr. Hyde!)
healthy horizons burlingame – A breastfeeding center that we went to the other day to weigh the baby
goose goslin – A baseball player with a funny name
peninsula library catalog – I wanted to look up the book Insurgent and see if it was at the library. It is…but I shouldn’t go check it out because I’m already in the middle of 3 books (4 if you count Harry Potter) and I should try to focus a little bit.
obama birthday – When is Obama’s birthday? Answer: August 4th, 1961.
aspirated w – I was checking if this is really the term used when you do that funny/annoying pronunciation of the wh in words like “white” and “wheelhouse.” (It is.)
kellan lutz – He appeared on an episode of 30 Rock, and we had no idea who he played in the Twilight movies.
fontanelle – I needed more info about babies’ “soft spots,” like, Am I going to injure my baby via his fontanelle? And, when will his head get hard so I don’t have to stress out about his fontanelle?
edd – edd.ca.gov, just looking up claim status information.
giants game – My lazy way of just tracking the scores of the World Series’ games on my phone, for the games we weren’t home to watch.
third rock from the sun cast – We were trying to remember the name of French Stewart. (We were thinking Stewart French.)
1 month old baby eyesight – I wanted to know how far he could see at 1 month, and what kind of tracking/focusing skills he “should” have. (To be honest, there were a lot of baby-related searches, but I wanted to show a range here. Just know I google a lot of questions I have about babies.)
robert louis stevenson – We were looking up when he died, because I was thinking his story “The Bottle Imp” was set in the 1940s, but I was way way off – he died in 1894.
walgreens pacifica – My pharmacy. I am constantly googling this to get the phone number.
giants schedule – Self-explanatory.
plutos locations – We were in Lodi, craving Plutos, and wondering if there was one nearby. But Sacramento/Davis seemed too far out of the way. So we just went home.
…Seriously, what did we ever do before smartphones?
Today, The Hunger Games posted this picture on Facebook:
It’s nice, right? I mean, it’s kind of a cool poster. People seemed to like it. I think it’s fine.
But Jonathan and I started reading all the comments, and making fun of them. The most random and ridiculous we hit “like.” Some of them were composed of text speak and annoying symbols (~~~*** etc). One of them was like a chain letter in a comment. (We totally followed the instructions, although we didn’t post it on 15 other people’s walls.)
But then this comment popped up:
Uggghhhhhh…this comment really bothers me for some reason. I think it’s partly the combination of absolutely no punctuation (except for the 4-dot ellipse), spelling errors (kmovie), text speak (idk), and blatant ignorance (“are ready” = “already”). But the icing on the cake is that “there were like this big dogs or something,” but, despite this being the climax of the movie, she didn’t really get what was going on.
And yes, I understand that the kids commenting on this FB post are probably all like 14 years old. But since when is that an excuse? This is still life. You can’t get through life like that.
Is this really the generation that’s going to be in charge in a few decades?
The Cameraphone Diaries 
