J.P.

Smash.

So last night Earl and I sat down to do some catching up on the DVR. Our choices in DVRed shows has wained this television season, so the “to watch” list isn’t as long as it has been before after a vacation, but there were a few things I wanted to watch so it was good to just sit down and relax.

One of the shows that I have completely lost interest in is “Private Practice”. The original reason for my interest in the show when it premiered was because Amy Brenneman was part of the ensemble cast. There’s just something very enjoyable I find in Ms. Brenneman and her presence on “Private Practice” has been a definite attraction for me, but when blood was spilled on the floor of her character’s home for a second time, I decided that the show had jumped the shark as far as I’m concerned and I haven’t watched it since. Earl kind of wants to see how the season ends up before taking it off the DVR permanently, but I guess we’ll just let the episodes sit there until we have nothing better to do until we make the final decision on that.

We did watch “The Big Bang Theory” last night and while I found it mildly amusing, the thing I instantly noticed about the show is that they had a new laugh track that sounded completely out of control. Instead of the usual chuckles (and Lucille Ball’s mother going “uh oh”) being piped in from an audience from several decades ago, this laugh tracked laughed and chortled and screamed in hysterics in such a way that could only mean several hyenas were in heat. While there were elements of the episode that I did find funny, and I think I may have laughed out loud on one occasion, the canned audience was going absolutely nuts in a cocoa-for-cuckoo-puffs way that sounded completely out of place. I found it disconcerting. In fact, I found it as equally disconcerting as Sheldon’s new “I’m covering up my thinning hair” hair style he adopted late last year. Oh, as a quick aside, I personally find Kaley Cuoco to be the driving force of the comedy of that show as Sheldon’s character has gone way down Urkel Boulevard.

The other show we watched last night was “Smash”. Now, I have a little bit of hard time wrapping my head around this show for a variety of reasons. First of all, back in the days when I found “American Idol” mildly amusing, I found Katherine McPhee to be kind of snotty. Her snottiness actually rubbed off from her mother, whom I found takes herself way too seriously. Granted, Ms. McPhee has a lot of talent and it is being wonderfully showcased on this show, but it took me a little while to get beyond the “oh there’s the snotty girl” stage when watching her character on the screen.

Another struggle that I’m having with “Smash” is Debra Messing. First of all, I enjoy Ms. Messing and I’m glad that she’s trying to break out of being typecast as a Grace Adler (from “Will and Grace”) character, but because her character is often paired with the obnoxious gay guy I find myself looking for “Grace” moments. “She made a Grace face!” “She almost spun her finger and went ‘whoa’!” “She said the same thing to Will!” The personality of her character on “Smash” is riding a fine line of being rather similar to her character “Will and Grace” but perhaps this will change with the progression of the show. I like her, I just need to stop watching for the Grace moments.

I think the blonde character on the show is named Ivy. I get that she’s suppose to be unlikeable but I think the actress plays her way too unlikeable. Maybe that’s the rub; perhaps I’m suppose to want Katherine McPhee to stomp her bleached head into the dirt, but I don’t think that I should want to put a combat boot through our HD TV. All I hear is auto tune when she sings and on the episode I watched last night I wanted her to have some sort of hideous, grotesque side effect to the steroids she was taking so that she would be gone; I find her über annoying and if others weren’t in the room I’d fast forward through her parts.

I will say that I enjoy the premise of the show and I enjoy the music because it sounds less contrived than on that I’m-going-to-lose-my-gay-card-because-I-don’t-like-it “Glee”. The singing sounds less robotic than on “Glee”. Oh, speaking of which, I did catch a few moments of the latest episode of “Glee” and I was completely lost so apparently we were watching some alternate universe of the show or character development went in eighteen different directions at a really fast pace because people were getting married, others were pregnant and a really bad green screened truck slammed into a car in a very special episode.

Back to “Smash”. One of the things that I appreciate about the show is that based on the theatre folks I have hobnobbed with over the years, I think the show is in the right ballpark as far as the going ons in that sort of theatre setting. I’m going to give it a few more episodes to make a final determination but right now it’s still on my “enjoyable” list.

One show that I am anxious to catch up on is “Happy Endings”. We have watched a couple of episodes this season and I have thoroughly enjoyed them. I bought the entire season on iTunes so we can catch up during any rainy days this summer. I am looking forward to that!

Bug.

I seemed to have developed some sort of sniffly bug over the past 48 hours or so. The sniffles started on Sunday night when I went to bed. I got little sleep that night and had the sniffles and sneezes in full effect all day on Monday. This made returning to work after a week and a day vacation that much more pleasant. This morning I woke up congested but feeling better. As I write this during my lunch hour, I am feeling a marked improvement in my condition, though the congestion is still lingering around.

On a conference call today, it was mentioned that one of the intended participants couldn’t join us because, like me, they were on vacation last week and then had contracted some sort of bug and was at home sick this week.

That kind of sucks.

During the conversation a couple of people mentioned that these sorts of colds happen when one lets go of the stress that’s been building for a while. Your body has some sort of reaction to not being so tense all the time and all the bad stuff leaves by way of a grand sort of cold. I kind of think that’s what happened to me during our vacation. My work is relatively stressful, mainly of my own design due to the goals I set for myself along my career, and when I had the chance to relax last week at the House of the Mouse I took advantage of it. Subsequently, my body is purging all the bad stuff that’s built up and that’s why I appear to be getting over a 48 hour bug of some sort. This is just speculation, but I have a hunch that this is what’s going on.

And none of it’s a bad thing. It’s annoying to have the sniffles, but it’s not entirely bad.

My spirits are still good and I’m still feeling relatively relaxed so in the long run it’s all good. Less stress is always good.

20 March 2012 by J.P. Ponderings and Musings 2

Brief.

I’m surprised that Earl doesn’t embrace Twitter more than his casual use. He is so good at conveying a thought in as few pixels as possible that it seems that a tweet would come natural to him.

Me: “Please make sure you send out your iPad today. The repair company sent me a reminder to include insurance and tracking.”
Him: “sent”

Me: “I hope that you have a great day today! Enjoy your Monday. I love you lots!”
Him: “loveyou”

Me: “Mr. Husband, this is an inquiry as to the status of your afternoon and it’s subsequent progression. Fondly, Amy Farrah Fowler.”
Him: “conf calls”

He’s a man of action when he’s in work mode. It’s a good thing that after all these years I know the weight of the meaning behind the few words he shares over email.

19 March 2012 by J.P. Fun and Games Dept 0

Monday.

So today is the first day back to work after a most excellent vacation. Though I am officially halfway through the day and currently enjoying a beautiful afternoon during my lunchbreak, I have not finished going through the email that I received during my absence from work. I was braced for the onslought of email, so I’m not stressed about it, but it can be startling seeing message counts up in the four digits waiting in your Inbox, especially after the rules have done their magic and moved things around for you.

My allergies seem to be enjoying the springlike weather we are enjoying here at the tailend of winter. People are doing ‘May stuff’ in March. I know I enjoyed racing around the back lawn this morning as I tried to coax a cat that is deaf back into the house. Sometimes I wonder if he feigns his lack of hearing. He can be tricky like that.

So as I try to get back into the swing of things at work, spring fever runs rampant in my head. I’m looking forward to the ride home in the sunshine.

It’s a good reason to smile on a Monday.

19 March 2012 by J.P. Life In Motion. 0

Sushi.

In 1997 I attended my first radio convention. Orchestrated by a trade magazine called “Gavin”, I flew to New Orleans to hob knob with others in the radio and records industry and to check out a few new acts. It was at this Gavin Convention that I got to hang out with France Joli (best known for the disco hit “Come To Me”) and a Canadian group called Temperance, who did a remake of the Alphaville 80s hit, “Forever Young”. We were also to meet a new group called the Spice Girls, but they weren’t feeling the whole convention thing and they never showed up for their appearance.

There was a big cocktail party during the convention where anyone that was anyone would undoubtedly be in attendance at and I found this to be rather exciting. Coming from a market that could be best described as “midget”, I was fascinated with the special effects and the costumes and the atmosphere of the whole ghastly like encounter. There was a lot of fog, it was rather dark, Pat Boone was running around in a leather jacket and a bad wig and people were doing the Kathy Griffin-say-hello-to-no-one routine. I was asked on a couple of occasions if I had passed by N’dea Davenport or if I had engaged in any conversation with Stacy Ferguson from Wild Orchard (she’s now known as Fergie)¹. The answer to both questions was ‘yes’. N’dea was quite nice but Stacy was kind of doing her own thing but she seemed nice as well. I had a very good conversation with a head of lettuce which was actually a human head dressed up as a head of lettuce sticking up through a table. No photos allowed. The lettuce will wilt.

Finding myself in a conversational vacuum of undoubtedly my own creation, I wandered over to a table that had a bunch of wooden slabs with little pastries on them. Though it was a darker corner of the whole affair, I could make out the round bits of this and that that were being presented and I took a couple, put them on a plate and started munching on them. Expecting a confectionary delight in my mouth, I was a little surprised at what I tasted. I was must have had a weird look on my face as my friend Lynda came over to make sure I was doing ok talking to heads of lettuce and the like.

“Are you having a good time?”, she asked in her southern drawl.

“I am. I can’t believe this party!”

“Oh, they convention parties are always like this. You’ll find out”, she replied with a big smile. The radio station had just been given “reporting status”, which meant that the industry cared what we played. It was something no one had thought we would achieve and being a reporting station made us very popular with the record companies.

“So much fog and lighting and lettuce heads!” I must have sounded like a country bumpkin fresh out of the cabbage patch.

“No expense when it comes to reporting stations, darlin'”.

“I’m a little concerned about these pastries, though. I think they’re bad or something. They taste like fish.”

“Honey, that’s not a cookie, it’s sushi!”

I was eating sushi and I didn’t even know it. I had never had sushi before. I thought I was nibbling at a Lorna Doone or something. The little old program director from Upstate New York couldn’t tell the difference between raw fish and a cookie.

“That’s alright, darlin'”, Lynda quickly interjected, always trying to keep me feeling at ease, “we won’t tell anyone you thought the sushi was a cookie.”

And she never did.

But it got me hooked on sushi. Imagine my delight this afternoon when Earl came home with some sushi for dinner.

Now if I could only have a Lorna Doone for dessert.

¹ Listen to me throwing around names from my radio days.

18 March 2012 by J.P. Ponderings and Musings 2

Spring?

Today is the 18th of March. Winter doesn’t officially depart until later this week, but I think someone needs to remind Mother Nature of her timetable. It is currently 79ºF in Upstate New York. The lilac bush is celebrating out front by showing a few buds on her branches. I love lilacs.

I know it’s 79ºF outside because the first thing this morning I installed the new weather station that had arrived before our departure for Florida a week and a half ago. I guess I’m like a kid during the holiday season when it comes to gadgets, because I was up fairly early to install everything on top of the pole Earl and I had cemented into the ground in a snow storm.

Everything is level and the parts that need to be pointing north are pointing the right way per the compass on my iPhone. I have a nifty display in the kitchen that has all the stats I need. I occasionally bark out the time, temperature, relative humidity and wind speed to anyone that will listen. I even do this when the room is empty.

The installation of the weather station spurred more work in the yard. The solar lights have been installed and the patio furniture has been put in place.

The patio still needs to be powerwashed, but at the very least we can enjoy some sun. The big umbrella was full of dead wasps and they came pouring out when I opened everything up. Usually there’s nests up in there when I first open the umbrella. I guess they didn’t do so well in the last cold snap before the current heat wave.

Tom was delighted to see us when we arrived home last night. I guess he can only entertain himself for so long, even with frequent visits from trusted folks during our absence, because he was quite vocal for a while. To celebrate his 17th spring, he took a walk across the lawn. He can’t hear a thing but apparently he doesn’t care because he seemed quite kittenish in the sunshine.

We still have plenty of work to do in the back lawn to get it ready for the good weather, but we made a good start today. There was talk of putting in a small pond or as the fancypants like to say, “water feature”, during our ride home from Florida. I wouldn’t be surprised if I came home to a backhoe in the back lawn one night this week.

In the meantime, we are quite content with this.

18 March 2012 by J.P. Life In Motion. 1

Repeat.

Here is a shot of Earl and me from the same set of stairs at Disney’s Hollywood Studios as the shot on the front page of jpnearl.com. This photo on the main page was taken in 2005, this shot was taken on Monday.

I tried to snap a few photos at “Fantasmic!” but without a tripod and the unwillingness of the audience member in front of me to tolerate my using his head as a steadying stand, the long shutter speed proved to be a bit of a challenge. These photos were taken with my Canon Rebel.

Daylight shots are so much easier. Here’s Earl, Jamie and Scott waiting for me to take a photo. We don’t know the woman in pink.

I have been using my iPhone for photography more than anything other purpose on this trip and this has contributed to the feeling of relaxation that I am enjoying this week. I hear that it’s just as warm at home as it is here in Florida. Quite a contrast to a few incidents of our return home in previous years, where we couldn’t get into the driveway due to the amount of snow we received.

Yesterday was spent at the Magic Kingdom where we enjoyed the entire park, ending the night at Tomorrowland. I would share the photos from that adventure but the Photo Stream syncing thing that Steve talked about last year doesn’t work as well as one would expect. The photos are sitting on my iPhone waiting to be shared with my other devices when they’re not just on the same wifi, but apparently on the same better wifi.

I think Tomorrowland is best enjoyed at night. Space Mountain is a great ride to enjoy right before going to sleep. I’ll have to share the photos when the wifis are speaking to each other.

Today we are headed to Epcot, Part 1. I love Epcot. We choose to divide Epcot into a two day adventure; today we’ll enjoy the front half and then tomorrow we’ll enjoy the World Showcase Pavilion (or something like that).

I often wonder what life would be like if Disney had gone forward with Walt’s vision of Epcot as a real community. I think it would have been awesome.

– Proudly posted using BlogPress from my first generation iPad

14 March 2012 by J.P. Fun and Games Dept 4

Noodle.

Jamie and I are just back from our spa and massage experience at the Saratoga Springs Spa. Margi has hands of wonder. It has been much too long since I have given my body the honor it deserves and at the end of the massage and subsequent steam room visit, my body said, “Thank you. Thank you very much.” It didn’t sound like Elvis.

Tomorrow I go back to the exercise routine I have started. It is certainly helping with clearing my mind and giving me the centering and balance I have been missing for quite a while. I need to remember to be kinder to my body. I feel much better when I do so. It only makes sense.

13 March 2012 by J.P. Spiritual Stuff. 0

People Watching.

I love people watching. I simply adore the sport and quite frankly I could spend hours and hours in my own little place of a busy space and watch the people go by going through their routine, wherever it may be. Whether it be a busy airport, a restaurant, the shopping mall; these are all wonderful places to do some pretty good people watching. Walt Disney World is no exception.

One of the things I find fascinating about Disneyworld is the mixture of cultures that is found here, both from folks from different parts of the country and from folks around the world. This morning I watched a family come trodding through the bushes to the bus stop, wearing what looked like Hefty bags for rain gear instead of the Disney-branded rain ponchos just spontaneously start conversing with a family that was wearing high-end foul weather gear that had arrived in a decked out Escalade. Forced to sit next to each other on the bus, it was only a few moments where the matronly woman of the Hefty bag set was talking to the Grand Dame of the Escalade set and before you know it they were talking like they were long lost friends. The southern accent and the New England lack of “r”s were contrasting in the conversation, but they found a common ground and seemed to be getting along really well.

I find this fascinating.

I watched a couple that appeared to be my age play on the bus with their two children. He looked like the business type, she looked like the well groom mother of the 00s type and they had two daughters that appeared to be adopted as they were both from differing ethnicities. That made my heart warm. No worries about color or the like, just lots of love.

Wonderful.

A waiter at one of the restaurants today commented on my moustache and how he used to have one until he moved to the states, where at 21 or 22 years old (quite a while ago) he shaved it off to fit in better. His father was dismayed as he felt that a man should always have a moustache, at least where he is from. I didn’t know that there was that much importance on moustaches elsewhere in the world.

You learn something everyday.

The weather has been soggy for most of the day. It’s the only day of our vacation where the weather forecast indicates rain and the showers have been right on cue. Watching how people find ways to still enjoy themselves in the rain has been interesting to me. Some choose to just wear their regular clothes and go all out wet, others make it a wet t-shirt contest and the majority of park guests don the ponchos and still stand in lines to see the attractions. It’s good to be in an atmosphere where the spirits are high.

My heart and mind are soaring.

– Proudly posted using BlogPress from my first generation iPad

11 March 2012 by J.P. Fun and Games Dept 0

Walt Disney World’s Saratoga Springs Resort and Spa.

Well we are settled in safe and sound at Saratoga Springs Resort and Spa at Walt Disney World. This was after about 22 hours of driving. I found the drive enjoyable.

We made a side trip to visit my godparents for a little bit on our way to Orlando. They live about 40 minutes outside of the city and have become Upstate New York snowbirds. These are the folks that find a place to retire to during the more harsher months of the year back home. They found a quaint little trailer in a small retirement community. The visit was enjoyable; we had not seen them since before the holidays. It’s always good to visit with the relatives from time to time.

Upon our arrival at the room, we freshened ourselves up (I had been wearing the same clothes for three days) and headed over to the Magic Kingdom. This is a tradition in our family; we always spend the first night at Tomorrowland at Magic Kingdom. The first ride is on the PeopleMover.

We made our way around Tomorrowland, enjoying the Carousel of Progress, Space Mountain and the Buzz Lightyear attraction before calling it a night.

Now we are just waiting for our groceries to be delivered so we can pop some corn before hitting the hay.

– Proudly posted using BlogPress from my first generation iPad

10 March 2012 by J.P. Fun and Games Dept 3

J.P.

Smash.

Bug.

Brief.

Monday.

Sushi.

Spring?

Repeat.

Noodle.

People Watching.

Walt Disney World’s Saratoga Springs Resort and Spa.

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