Who's Next?

Bea Arthur died today. Sad times.

Grain of Salt

While on my daily cycle of checking email accounts, blogs and other assorted internet related items I stumbled upon a short article about an app that was pulled from the iPhone's repertoire. It was called “Baby Shaker.” Apparently the baby starts crying and you shake the phone (vigorously) and when you stop the baby has red X’s over its eyes.

Seriously? While I may not think it was the best idea for an app, people need to take the “game” as a joke. I don’t think the creator intended to glorify baby shaking. If you want to read the article, go here .

Game 2 Amusement

So during last night's game "Alcohol Enforcement" went down the first row in our section to remove a fan. It turned out to be an Angel's fan. Our section as well as the section next to us stood up and started cheering as he left. About an inning later alcohol enforcement went back down to that row to get (what we can only assume) was the fan's girlfriend. As she was leaving somebody started singing "Stand By Your Man" and everybody started laughing.

Good Times

Game 2 vs Angels

On a whim, Jeremy and I decided to go to the game last night. For some stupid reason they changed the home run theme to "Party Time" from "Funk Blast," needless to say I was unhappy. However, I was very happy to be present in the situation where I found this out. Chavez and Griffey hit back to back home runs. That was Griffey's 400th home run as a Mariner. In the 7th Ichiro hit a grand slam to make the game 11-3. We won again! Jeremy and I had planned to go to tonight's game (4/16), but Ryan Rowland-Smith was put on the disabled list so I didn't want to go. We are going to the Rainier's Opening Day tomorrow. More pictures!

I saw this sweater at the game and had to take a picture and share with you.

***I'm watching Game 3 as I'm posting this and Ichiro just broke the hit record held by Isao Harimoto (Harimoto retired 28 years ago). Ichiro now has 3,086 career hits.***

Mariners Home Opener

On Tuesday Jeremy, Chris, Allie and I went to the Seattle Mariners home opener. We ended up winning the game in the 10th inning on a "walk off bunt." Low points included a "semi-fancy" restaurant not having ranch (burger didn't taste all that great...especially for $12), the Nintendo Fan Network cut many of the food choices that could be delivered to your seat, me having to stand in line for 20 minutes because of this, the lack of garlic on the garlic fries, the chocolate milkshake machine being broken and lack of ketchup. Terrible food day. But here are a few of the pictures I took.

OTR: Gloves Off

This month's OTR gets a different format. This format is of one topic (no subdivisions) and written without a grain of salt. No tongue in cheek writings, just pure annoyance.

Within the past 2 years I have been witness to, at least, 8 situations where a mortgage broker would have been necessary. In the interest of promoting small business I have told said people involved in those situations (as well as many others) about one specific company. One of the owners has had 20 years experience in a banking environment followed by over 15 years in the mortgage industry. This particular business had 3 employees and that included the owner. I promoted this business based on the fact that they didn't have high fees and they didn't engage in unethical business practices. Not one person involved in any of the aforementioned situations even contacted this company for more information.

Result: this company has since gone out of business not due to the economy (people seem to like buying houses when they are cheap), but because people want to give their money to the covetous large corporations that practice unethically and blame the consumer. The corporations that continually give their high executives large raises while passing the burden onto others. This only reinforces those practices and tells small business even though they may be in business for the consumer and not themselves, that it matters who you are.

The 3 people in said business are now all out of work. Because they are out of work there is no income for them to buy luxury items (and sometimes not even necessities). What does that mean? The pocketbooks of other business are hit. Those business have to lay off workers because they can no longer afford that many employees... You can continue the cycle on your own time.

Am I angry, no. Am I pissed, absolutely. So to those who needed a home loan or refinance and knew about this company, I hope every time you look in the mirror you not only see the person you should have been, but the faces of the families you have hurt by your decisions.

Oh Easter

Sad note
1. I never did find my happy bunny story to write about.
2. Tobby (dog) at 5 of my chocolates before we left in the morning. I came home to 2 piles of regurgitated "chocolate."
3. I couldn't find my bunny ears to put on Wally for a picture. This would be considered a happy note for Wally AND Jeremy.

Happy note:
Dinner was amazing!
Imagine turkey, ham, corn, green beans, deviled eggs, green salad, some sort of green marshmallow "salad", jell-o eggs, cheesy bread (extra cheesy=extra cholesterol=extra worth it) and twice baked potatoes*.
Then 6 different desserts including mocha pie, pistachio pie, frosted sugar cookies, cupcakes, pecan pie and peanut butter pie.
Did I mention there was only 25 people for all of this food?

*I won't totally give away the recipe but the twice baked potato ratio was 10lbs of potatoes, 1lb of butter and a few pounds of cheese (I would be more exact, but we always add more cheese than the recipe calls for).

I Can't Believe Some People

Jeremy told me about these 4 stories last night. I made him promise to tell me a happy bunny story because all of his stories were very depressing. Here are the 4 stories he told me.

On April 5 in Kitsap County an 87 year old woman was found murdered in her home. The suspect was a 17 year old male who stabbed the woman to death and stole valuables which included her white Cadillac. As if this wasn’t bad enough, he took a picture of the woman lying in a pool of her blood with his cell phone to show his friends! I don’t know where Jeremy found the article he read to me, but the one I found was from Mason County Daily News.

On April 6 after an Angels’ game a man was killed. 27 year old Brian Powers was arguing with another fan after the game when a third man came up behind Powers and sucker punched him. This caused Powers to fall down the stairs and hit his head. He was pronounced brain dead at the hospital later that night. The two suspects have not yet been found. I got my information from the LA Times.

Early in the morning on April 9, Nick Adenhart, 22, and 3 other people were hit by a drunk driver who ran a stop light. The driver fled the scene (later caught) after hitting the car which collided with a light pole. Two people along with Adenhart died and the other person is in critical condition. Why does this make my news? Adenhart was the starting pitcher earlier that night for the Angels. He went 6 scoreless innings and struck out 5 batters. He was scheduled to start against the Mariners for our home opener on April 14. This reported from the Sun Times.

Last but not least, the Seattle Times reported that the 3 “men” involved in the beating (and robbing) of the ‘Tuba Man’ will get no more than 72 weeks in a juvenile detention facility. Since they were 15 at the time of the attack they were tried as minors.

Sorry to depress you too, but I promise I will post that happy bunny story as soon as Jeremy finds one for me.

Wally: Class of 2009

Mom & Dad are proud of you!

Ah The Movie

As I am too lazy to articulate the good and bad points of the Twilight movie into meaningful sentences, I will just bullet list (with mild explanation) what I think.

• The movie needed to be much longer. Maybe not Lord of The Rings long, but 30 minutes would have made a big difference.
• The portrayal of Alice, Emmett and Jessica were amazing. I thought those actors did a great job being the character. The mental image I had of the characters was spot on with the actual actor's looks.
• Jasper seemed very weird in the movie.
• Bella wasn't as clumsy as she was in the book. I think this clumsiness is important not only in this movie, but future movies based on the books.
• When Bella tells Edward she knows he's a vampire there are some awkward and unneeded camera angles. It's like the director overly dramatized the scene.
• Bravo to the fight scene in the ballet studio.

This next set of points deserves separation from the rest of the movie. The Bella/Edward relationship in the movie wasn't as fantastic as I had anticipated.

• I don't think the relationship fully developed. There was more back and forth "drama" in the book.
• At the end I didn't feel like they loved each other as they did in the book.
• Even at the end of the movie, I thought Bella was still scared of Edward. She seemed to say "I'm not scared" as though she was trying to prove she was tough, not because she actually wasn't scared.

I have no closing thought so...the end.

Happy Opening Day!

Since today is the first day of the 2009 Mariner's season, I have decided to post some player's nicknames.* Some of these names were thought of by me and some were floating around from other fans.

18 Ryan Rowland-Smith ~ Hyphen
45 Erik Bedard ~ Bed-erd
48 Roy Corcoran ~ Corky
34 Felix Hernandez ~ King Felix
41 Chris Jakubauskas ~ Proboscis
52 Carlos Silva ~ Fatty Cakes
2 Kenji Johjima ~ JoJo
32 Rob Johnson ~ Job Ronson
30 Russell Branyan ~ Bunion
4 Jose Lopez ~ (name heavily annunciated)
5 Mike Sweeney ~ Weenie
27 Matt Tuiasosopo ~ Soapy
51 Ichiro Suzuki ~ Ichy
24 Ken Griffey Jr. ~ Griffey

*The list is not of all players, just those who have nicknames I enjoy.

The Reading Disease

All of my life my mom has been an avid “smut” reader, usually historical/futuristic romance. My brother and I have always teased her because she usually finishes a book (about 300 pages) a day, mostly due to staying up until the wee hours of the morning. Whatever her reading disease is called, I have started to show symptoms of it.
Had I not needed to use the restroom, eat, stretch or be social, I would have finished reading all 4 books in the Twilight series in 24 hours. Yes, all 2444 pages. Through unofficial time keeping, I discovered that I can read, when interested, approximately 100 pages per hour.
I’m usually not a fan of the book when a movie is made, but there are 2 books that I like better than the movie. The first is Marley & Me. I felt the movie left out some of the funny stories and showed too much “drama” between the characters. The second book I liked better than the movie was Twilight.
I saw the movie before I read the book and after I read the book, I re-watched the movie. My opinion of the movie barely changed throughout the whole thing. Overall I thought the book did a better job of painting a picture of the characters and the events. My next post will talk specifically about the movie (mostly in comparison to the book).