August 2011

Review.

I needed a little bit of escapism tonight, so I decided to sit down and watch the Wonder Woman pilot that was not picked up by NBC. After watching the episode, I think with some hefty tweaking in some parts, this could have been a viable series for the network. I’m going to try to do my best to not spoil it for anyone, but if you want to be kept completely in the dark in regards to the content of the pilot, I suggest you stop reading right now.

Initial Impressions

I’m going to talk about this pilot and compare it to the Lynda Carter series of the 70s simply because I haven’t read a Wonder Woman comic in about a decade or so and I don’t know where she is in the whole scheme of things in print. I know that I really dislike the new costume in the comics and I didn’t really like the new TV costume as presented earlier this year. That being said, the release of the photos of the costume really did the whole attempt at rebooting the franchise a disservice because the new costume doesn’t weigh as heavily as you would expect. It gave a really bad first impression of the reboot, but I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

In this reboot, lots of folks know who Wonder Woman is. The world knows that Diana Themyscria, the head of Themyscria Enterprises, is Wonder Woman. People call her Wonder Woman when she’s in street clothes and a few call her “Di” when she’s in her Wonder Woman costume. To escape all of this, Diana has a THIRD identity. She is also Diana Prince, an employee of Themyscria Enterprises. So Diana Prince works for Diana Themyscria in a way. And that is not even a huge secret because her two closest friends/people (Henry, the CEO and Etta Candy, her personal assistant) at work know that she is also Diana Prince and they don’t get why she wants to be that. I found this confusing but I found myself really liking Diana Prince because she felt familiar in some ways. She’s definitely a 21st century spin on Lynda Carter’s Diana Prince.  By the way, it’s a shame that this Diana Prince doesn’t spin because she has the ponytail, glasses and everything.

Oh, and I liked Sylvester the cat.

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Plus! She uses a Mac, like everyone else on television.

One of the things that bugged me about NBC’s attempted reboot of “Bionic Woman” a few years ago was that there were no elements of the original series at all in the new show, aside from the name Jaime Somers. I know I’m a geek but I would have had a better time accepting the new Bionic Woman if she at least had some sort of resemblance to the original version when she was being bionic – we needed some version of the ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch sound. I found myself wanting the same thing here. When Wonder Woman jumped I really wanted a muted version of that squeal sound that the 70s series had, even if it was an updated version of the sound. It would make a connection for the generation that has the opportunity to see both series and when people feel connected, there’s that much more of a chance of the reboot being successful. At the very least, there are a few connections to the comics and the 70s series that I’ll mention below.

The Things I Really Liked

I really liked Adrianne Palicki and I didn’t expect to. I thought she pulled the script off well given what she had to work with. I really liked her as Diana Prince, I  semi-liked her as Wonder Woman and I fairly-liked her as Diana Themyscria.  She did a good job and I could accept her as Wonder Woman in the same way that I could accept Cathy Lee Crosby in the first movie before Lynda Carter had the role. She did well with what she had to work with and I think she should have been given a chance. The script had it’s flaws but I think Adrianne did good.

I liked the way Elizabeth Hurley carried on as the bad guy. She mugged it up a bit but it fit the role. I didn’t find her ridiculous, instead I found her somewhat campy. It felt familiar in a way. And I like the way the current political climate was brought into the show.

I liked Henry (forgot his last name) and Etta Candy. I especially liked Etta, played by Tracie Thoms.

I thought Steve Trevor was kind of hot and I liked the back story (given the context of the script) of why she wasn’t all around Steve this time around.

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More spoilers…

Diana Themyscria says “tits” and “ass” and Etta Candy reminds her that “Wonder Woman isn’t vulgar.”  I appreciated that.

I liked the surprise when Wonder Woman is first seen at the last fight scene. She was in a more familiar costume.

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It was obvious that the cinematography was building up to the more familiar costume after she suited up. I wish I knew why there were multiple costumes.

The Things I Didn’t Like

As I mentioned before, I didn’t like the three identities going on. I found it confusing and I found a disconnection with the character because of this.

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I didn’t like the fact that her plane wasn’t invisible and that it had been made by human technology (apparently). I didn’t like that so much was known about her background and her Amazonian roots.

I didn’t like when Wonder Woman returned from her mission and the staff at Themyscria Enterprises applauded her efforts. Wonder Woman always seemed more humble than that and while she shows some humble tendencies in this version, I still found the whole thing a little off for the familiarity of the character.

I don’t like the way Wonder Woman suits up. I knew the familiar ‘spin with a flash’ thing would be deemed too campy for today’s “sophisticated” audience, but just throwing the clothes on removes any mystical or magical element of the character. She’s Batman in more colorful clothing. Not my thing when it comes to Wonder Woman.

Adrianne seems to channel a rebooted Xena more than Wonder Woman at times and while I always love me some Xena, Wonder Woman seems meaner than Xena when she was a warlord before she found her way to good. When you watch the pilot, you’ll see some definitive Lucy Lawless glares and stares.

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The Things I Really Hated

It really bugged me that people called her “Di” instead of Diana. That’s tapping the geek in me, they did the same thing in the Cathy Lee Crosby movie but I don’t think anyone ever called Diana “Di” in the 70s series. As a strong woman, Diana Prince deserves more than a monosyllabic name.

I hated the fact that everyone knew that Wonder Woman and Diana Themyscria were the same person and I really didn’t like the fact that others also knew that Diana Prince was the other two. I think that many gay men and lesbians identified in part with the 70s Wonder Woman (and all the other superheroes of the time) because of the “secret identity” aspect. I know I did. No one knew that Bruce Wayne was Batman or that Clark Kent was Superman back then. And the secret life holds an appeal for anyone that has every dreamed of being someone else, just for a few moments, but has never shared that with anyone. Wonder Woman has a secret identity as Diana Prince and that’s her business and no one else’s. However, the way the script was written, it wouldn’t have worked any other way. Perhaps this was the biggest flaw of the script.

Now, the biggest flaw of the script is that Wonder Woman is a very vengeful woman in this incarnation. She’s angry and mean and vengeful and considers herself above the law. Whoa! That’s just not right. The first fight scene culminates in something that made me gasp, in the final fight scene Wonder Woman outright kills a guy, and not in a nice way at all, and that was just wrong. I think I might have yelled out when that happened. Wonder Woman does NOT kill unless it is an absolute last resort. She also roughs up Veronica Cale pretty wildly. So much for a lasso of truth and then forgetfulness. And she’s also known for her torture techniques. WHA??? I could not forgive the amount of anger and ruthlessness in this version and I suspect this is why the pilot may have not been picked up. Wonder Woman was just too damn mean at times. I get where they were going with the premise of the show and why she was the way she was, but it did not translate well at all for an introduction.

Things To Watch For

One of the cool things of the version of the pilot I saw is that you can see where the special effects weren’t apparently completed in time for the showing. It was kind of fun to spot the wires or the missing golden lasso. I also know how they smash a car into a person now. Though completely unintentional, it was kind of a geeky goodness to see the pilot without all the effects in place. There are a couple of places where they tell you the SFX are lax, “add police cars here”.

On the whole I think that the pilot could have worked after a major overhaul. I could forgive elements of the reboot if there were more familiar elements from the comics and the 70s series. I kind of liked the romantic story angle of it, it didn’t feel too overly girly. If they ever try again, I think Ms. Palicki should get another chance to redeem herself for the reboot. Unfortunately I had a once in a lifetime chance to see the pilot but I suppose if you searched around online you might be able to find it somewhere.

 

 

 

 

 

Connected.


It’s no secret that I love gadgets and technology and gadgets that are based on technology, so it shouldn’t come as a surprised that I really like my iPhone. Now I know a couple of months ago I decided to give a non-iPhone smartphone a try but that experiment didn’t last very long. It was a grave error in my judgment and will not be repeated in the foreseeable future.

As a quick aside, I don’t think of myself as one of those overly obnoxious people with an iPhone. I don’t talk on it that much, I don’t halt dinner conversations to see who is around me on Scruff or Growlr at any given moment. I usually check into Foursquare and then enjoy the company of the people I am with instead of opting to go into the virtual world. If I deviate from this course of action, I am politely reminded by my loving husbear of my behaviour and I quickly stop. I don’t flinch or anything.

I currently have the beta version of the next version of iOS on my iPhone. This has kept things a little more interesting than usual. The current beta is relatively stable; I occasionally have a glitch pop up that reminds me that I’m still on a beta version of the software but usually things work out just fine and I’m able to recover and carry on without having to carry on in some sort of rage. On Wednesday, however, something with one of my purchased apps made the phone go a little crazy and slow down to a crawl. Quitting all apps, restarting the iPhone and the like did not rectify the issue. Someone had written something bad somewhere on my phone and the only way to resolve the issue would be to do a factory reset. So I did.

Being on the beta, I was hoping that the magical iCloud would load my settings back into my phone from that magical place in the sky, but it failed. Hence, a beta. (Notes were taken and submitted). So instead of I went home and reloaded my iPhone the old fashioned way; connecting it to iTunes and waiting for it to resync from my last backup.

It was working, but it was going _very_ slowly. Two hours into the process and things showed signs of life but very little seemed to be happening. My poking and prodding didn’t seem to help matters, so I decided I should just leave things alone and go to bed for the night.

Normally my iPhone charges overnight in my alarm clock. There are a few reasons for this; first of all I can grab the phone easily if work or someone else calls with some sort of emergency. Secondly, I can set the alarm to play a happy tune off of my phone if I want it to, but I rarely do. Thirdly, the phone can charge and give me comfort by being close by.

At 5:00 a.m. on Thursday morning I woke up in a dead panic. The sheets were drenched in sweat, I think I was yelling out and I had been chewing on my pillow. I had just awaken from an awful nightmare. It went something like this.

Earl and I had parked a rental car in a parking garage. We were only going to be a minute so we left our belongings in the car. When we came back, the rental car was gone. It had been confiscated because the images taken of us on security cameras did not match the names of the people that the car was registered to. Our belongings were returned to us as long as they were not electronic. However, my iPhone had been confiscated. And because it had been confiscated, it had been destroyed by the secret police.

I vividly remember telling some woman that she had no right to confiscate our stuff and further more, how dare she destroy my iPhone. I showed her the rental car receipt and she apologized for the error. Because it had been a mistake on behalf of the government, they would give me a brand new iPhone replacement.

In the dream haze she handed the new iPhone to me. It was an old-style flip phone with a retractable antenna and everything. On the back was an Apple sticker haphazardly applied to the device. She called it the iPhone flip. When opened, it had a regular flip phone keypad and a very small touch screen that used numbers just like on the old VIC-20s. Only four letters would fit on the screen. They spelled FUCK in two rows. I yelled at the woman and that is when I must have yelled out in reality because I jerked awake.

Not to be deterred, I raced down to the basement to where my iPhone was plugged into my iMac. The complete restore had performed flawlessly and everything was once again right with the universe.

I think I am officially an Apple fan boy.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Distraction.

Can you believe that I am easily distracted? It’s kind of like that “squirrel” thing that people talk about when they talk about people that are easily distracted, though I don’t really have any vested interest in squirrels.

I am easily distracted. My mind gets to processing too many things at once. These thoughts are like rivers and I’m in a kayak, running from river to river with my feet hanging down, paddling a bit and then seeing something on the other river that I have to see. For example, every morning I have to do some routine maintenance on one of our servers. As I wait for it to do it’s thing, I end up opening up wikipedia and looking up the title of the song that may be playing at the moment. As I watch the words fly by on the screen showing the status of the server maintenance, I am researching the history of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”, which was in a Stars on 45 medley so I wonder what year “Venus” was written. And when did Pluto lose it’s title as planet? And where does the word lose come from? Glance over to the screen, words are flying by, the phone in the cubicle next to me has rang four times and I know that another co-worker has had beef steak for dinner. Mushrooms were involved. Back to wikipedia, what kind of mushrooms are trippy? I think we need go on a trip. Where should we go? How high is the Sears Tower? Server maintenance done.

I sometimes think that folks miss the boat when they don’t realize that I would be much better off working in a padded room with blunt scissors making rag rugs.

Meditation.

I once had a friend who would sit in a quiet place twice a day and meditate for 20 minutes at a pop. He used this quiet time to calm his mind and find peace in the chaos. He could find the places to do this in what I would consider the oddest places; for example, he could meditate on a crowded airplane. I don’t know that I could do that. I usually want to yell or something. Commercial flight makes me crazy.

While I have taken some meditation classes and I have found ways to calm my mind by simply sitting, I tend to wonder if I am truly wired that way. My true meditation involves movement. If I go on a car ride by myself I find my inner self quieting down. Things that niggle at the corner of my concerns seem to find a way of presenting an answer to a problem when I’m driving on a back country road. My mind goes into a happy place when I’m riding my bike outside of the city limits. The movement allows me to escape.

Each day when I sit in the Jeep at lunch time, relaxing as I sip at my iced tea, I try to quiet my mind a little bit. These purple flowers have recently made an appearance near one of my favorite parking places, and they remind me that I can find solace in the slightest bit of movement. These flowers dancing in the summer breeze help me find the calm amongst the chaos.

My mother called last night. I think she felt compelled to make sure that I was okay after posting my blog entry about the serenity prayer I had posted on my monitor at work, though she didn’t come right out and say it. I think she just wanted to touch base with me and make sure I was firing on all thrusters. She said I sounded tired. I was tired, but her call was very much appreciated.

One of the cool things about technology is that we can now share with many others what grounds us. By relaying these experiences through blogs, tweets and the like, we might help another find a way to sort the calm from the chaos going on. I recently read a blog entry from a friend who mentioned that while he knew he was capable of high grades back in high school, he was bored and settled for the lesser grade. This made me feel good in a way, because I did the same thing. Many proclaim that we should always achieve to lofty heights and how we should do it, but in reality some of us find different ways to reach our own goals. A broadening of the mind isn’t always accomplished the same way.

Purple flowers gently swaying in the summer breeze. I now feel ready to tackle another afternoon of conference calls.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Serenity.

It’s kind of a crazy, stressful time at work. The Big Project™ that I’m working on at work is rather time consuming and while I am just one of a team comprised of several members, I find that the workload is creeping up worse than underwear, especially since everything has been piled up on top of my regular job. I know that I’m going to feel a great sense of pride and accomplishment when this project comes to a close next spring, but in the interim all I’m feeling is stress. Lots of stress.

This stress is considerably different from the stress I felt in my previous job because the old job involved irregular sleeping patterns and being awoken on an erratic schedule.  The Big Project™ isn’t causing me to lose sleep, simply because I have a knack for being able to fall asleep in an instant whenever I need to, but staying asleep can be a little troublesome if I have something on my mind. This happens once in a while, especially on Sunday nights. This occasionally manifests itself as insomnia but in other cases I have been known to walk, talk, dance or jump in my sleep. Luckily I have a husbear that can tell the difference between my sleep walking self from my normal self and he keeps me from hurting myself by falling down the stairs or something. I have a hunch that he laughs at me.

I have been feeling considerably stressed out this week (and it’s only Tuesday), so I took a moment and removed myself from the noise, closed my eyes and recited the first paragraph of the Serenity Prayer to myself.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

After reciting the prayer I went so far as to print out the verse, cut it into a neat little square and tape it to my computer monitor. I now have it as a point of reference whenever I need a little reminder. I surprisingly felt more comfort than anticipated after this little exercise. My stress level went down considerably. I get why this prayer is recited at AA meetings and the like, the words are comforting and make perfect sense. The exercise gave me a chance to catch my breath and regain my focus, the words provided some needed comfort.

Perhaps we all need to just take a moment during the day and find ourselves again.

Duty.

As an American that was raised in the 70s and 80s, like most of my contemporaries I have had a sense of duty instilled in my very existence since a very young age. The morning routine was simple; the buzzer would sound at 9:10, indicating the beginning of the school day, and we stood, placed our hands over our hearts and recited the “Pledge of Allegiance”, as led by a booming voice over the PA system. I am proud that I did that every morning, and even led the high school through the exercise in my junior and senior year, so don’t think that this is some anti-pledge or anti-American rant. Because it’s not.

As we make our way through our school years, we learn about the history of our country, how it affects us today and the importance of keeping abreast of current events and the like. It’s important to know where we have been, where we are and where we are going. This is the reason that I try to keep on top of current events; I have a stake in the future and I want to be part of it. There are many things worth fighting for to further the foundation of our country: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

But, gosh, it is getting harder and harder to listen to the news without kicking in the face of a radio.

In the past 72 hours I have listened to endless coverage of the Iowa Straw Poll. Honestly, the relevance of this exercise escapes me and based on the explanations I heard on the news channels over the weekend, there’s something about passing out tickets, corn dogs, fried butter, a rogue bus with a rogue woman who’s not a candidate, a seal tent with air conditioning and folks dropping out of a race that really shouldn’t have even started yet, as we honestly have more important things to do than to make our elected leader look bad and stupid but saying idiotic things about him when he’s just trying to sort through a mess that just keeps bigger and bigger.

And speaking of idiotic things, here are some nuggets I heard during this coverage. These paraphrased snippets are from folks that were pulling the straws:

* The United States is the oldest country and government in the history of mankind.
* It is more than apparent that Jesus Christ was a Christian and that’s why we should all be Christians.
* The democrats are evil because they don’t support trade unions.
* In Canada you have to wait six months for a chance to go to the emergency room at the hospital because of their “socialist health care”.

This is the stuff that makes me crazy. It’s the perpetuation of the babblings from the ignorant, misinformed and downright stupid. This perpetuation somehow cements it as gospel. It’s like repeating a lie over and over again, say it enough times and it’ll become the truth, because everyone, including yourself, will believe it. Kind of like telling the world you’re a straight man trying to save the world from the gay when you sit in an airport stall tapping your foot for a little lick lick from someone that’s in the same bathroom as you.

I feel it is my duty as an American to know what’s going on and to listen to the news. Last fall when I served jury duty it blew me away that I was the only one on the jury that had any inkling as to current events in our area, and we don’t even watch the local news (the local news channel doesn’t believe in sharing over the satellite systems like the rest of the country). When they were doing the jury selection they mentioned the case that was involved and the name was instantly recognizable because it’s been talked about in our local media for the past 20 years and I was the only one that had heard of it! How can people stumble through life in such a cloud of ignorance and then be trusted to make a sane decision when we elect our next leader? How is this fair?

One of the newscasts I listen to in the morning makes a point of saying how long President Obama has been in office and how many days until the next election. I believe it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 462 days until we elect (or re-elect) our next president, and if the Iowa Straw Poll with corn dogs on a stick and suggestive pictures of consumption of such are indication, it is going to be a very long and dismal 462 days.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Tragedy.

I have watched the video a couple of times of last night horrible tragedy in Indianapolis (the stage collapse prior to the Sugarland concert at the Indiana State Fair). The first thing that crossed my mind was how you see a number of people run towards the fallen stage, looking to help their fellow man. This helps reinforce my belief that we are basically a good lot of people with just a few morons sprinkled in. I hope that in that situation I would have done the same, run towards the stage and help those that were trying to lift it up off the people that were trapped underneath.

The second thought that crossed my mind was that of an engineer: why on earth did they have such a temporary, and apparently not very sturdy, stage setup in such a tornado prone area of the country? I find it mind boggling. My only point of reference is the New York State Fair, which has a pretty sturdy grandstand setup for the concerts that take place there. I find it hard to comprehend why such a temporary rig would be used in a weather-volatile area of the country. It just doesn’t make sense to m.

Our thoughts and prayers are with those that are injured and with the families of those that were killed in last night’s horrible tragedy. The things should not happen and it is horrible when they do.

Memory.

I’ve spent the first half of my lunch hour today chatting with former classmates on Facebook. We have been talking about the old days at school and it is becoming quite apparent that I must have some sort of memory disorder because I remember too many things with too much detail to be labeled normal. I remember the names of teachers, their assigned room numbers (I wonder if my favorite math teacher is still in Room 202?), the names of teachers that retired before I even got to that grade, the bell schedule of the high school and the fact that the bell used to signal a class change was an A-flat played over the PA speakers. I guess it’s somewhat natural, due to my fascination with clocks, that I remember that the bell rang three seconds after the clock positioned itself to the right time for the class change and that teachers would insist we wait for the bell, even though I don’t think they would have been able to cram anymore learning into the moments between 09:36:00 and 09:36:03. I could also share that this quirk appeared in 1981 when the master clock in the main office was replaced but that would be downright spooky.

Ask me what I had for supper two nights ago and I probably could remember if I thought about it hard enough. I know that I’m trying to forget last night’s supper, which was at a Chinese buffet that we lovingly call “China Nazi” because when we go in the hostess, and I use that term loosely, motions us to our table and proclaims, “You sit THERE!”. Her tone makes me want to bark out a “Heil Hitler!” but I don’t because that’s a totally different continent.

I’m pretty good with dates for the most part, though today I wished our friend Mike a happy birthday when his birthday is on Sunday. I always think he’s just shy of a month younger than me when in reality he is a month and a day younger than me. I remember my aunt and uncle’s wedding anniversary in 1979 for no apparent reason (other than they’re family). I remember most my cousins’ birthdays. Earl proclaimed he didn’t know his brother’s phone number the other night but I told him what it was. The digits are nearly the same as 62 WHEN in Syracuse and somewhat in the neighborhood of Route 481, also in Syracuse, so it’s simple math, at least in my head. By the way, his brother lives nowhere near Syracuse but I suppose he would fit in if he lost the Philly accent.

One thing that makes me hesitant with my memory is names. Some may notice that it takes a few encounters before I will address someone I have met during my adult years by their name. I hate getting names wrong because it’s kind of embarrassing. When I was in the hospital in 8th grade, the next room over in pediatrics had a patient named Carrie but I always called her Marcia because I thought she looked like a Marcia. My roommate, Eric, reminded me several times and that made me hesitant to call someone by name if I can’t remember it. I usually have an idea of what a person should be named by appearance. That being said, I don’t know that I have ever actually called someone Creepella to their face. Okay, I did that one time and she was not amused.

I attribute this memory talent, for lack of a better word, completely to my father. I owe him for inheriting that trait, because he could be downright spooky too. During the days of the family store, a customer could walk in, having not been in the store for a decade, and my father would say hello like it was yesterday and remind them of the pound of 10-common nails they had purchased the last time they were there, usually sometime in the mid 1970s (even though the present date was sometime in the late 1980s). The same customer would then look at me, thinking I was really good at math, as I rang them up because I didn’t have to use the calculator or reference a tax chart to compute the tax required for their purchase. It wasn’t that I was doing math in my head, I had just memorized the tax chart. Think of the time I could save on figuring out my purchases today if the sales tax rate was still 4%! I wouldn’t have to use my fingers or anything.

All of this memory stuff comes full circle though, when friends and family remind me of something that they have told me a half dozen times in the past month. “I forgot!”

I think I need to upgrade my RAM. I have too much stuff up there.

 

Service.

Okay, this just made my day. As I may have mentioned once or twice through Foursquare and Twitter, I go to the Dunkin’ Donuts closest to work during my lunch hour on a daily basis. More order is predictable; I get a large, unsweetened iced-tea with lemon and if I’m feeling especially daring, I might add a cookie (but no more than once a week on the cookie).

I have been in conference calls all morning, so when I was able to escape for my lunch break I arrived at the DD and immediately had to use the wash room. When I came out of the wash room I went up to the counter like I always do. Already waiting for me was my large, unsweetened iced-tea with lemon. I didn’t have to ask for it. The cashier had a large, sly smile as she handed it to me before I ordered it.

Now, I know this is a really small thing but it’s that little extra effort in service that makes me smile and aids in my restoration of faith in the American populace in general. I added my weekly cookie to the order and gave the cashier an appropriate gratuity. She thanked me.

It’s the little things that count.

 

Smile.

I occasionally, well okay, I often get cranky in this blog and complain about the ills of the world. Most drivers are stupid. I had pink goo on my bagel. The government annoys the cocoa puffs out of me. The thought of Michelle Bachmann becoming president makes me want to move to Reykjavík, Iceland. These sort of things generally irk me, but I’ve been empty on the irk lately.

I’ve been smiling a lot.

I just wrote on my Facebook that it really seems true that if you smile, the world smiles with you.

I noticed in some recent photographs my expression has been noncommittal. Sort of like I’m carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders, managing it for the most part but not really enjoying the experience.

The truth of the matter is, I’m smiling. I’m smiling a lot because there’s lots to smile about. We are planning a wedding, I have a great job, I am surrounded by wonderful family both at home and at all points around the country.

What’s the sense of getting all crabby about the bad stuff when the good stuff is much more important?

I think folks in what is deemed important places need to learn how to smile again. It’s our job to show them how to do it.