The Tiger Friday, Mar 30 2007 

Uncategorized noodle77 8:13 am

Sonny

I wanted to test post a photo, so here is my awesome orange stripey cat. He is very squinty all the time, for some reason.

 

The Princess of TIVO Friday, Mar 30 2007 

Putting the "Pop" in Culture noodle77 7:55 am

I was frantically cleaning my (very small yet somehow unbelievably dirty) apartment last night for a weekend guest.  When I’m doing something like cleaning I like to have the TV on and to my utter delight, there was a big fat Office marathon on NBC.  I was a little late on the Office bandwagon and have still never seen the BBC version, but the American version never fails to amuse the hell out of me.  It’s so satirical that it’s not really satire at all, maybe?

I’m a real TV addict.  Always have been.  I only really listen to music in the car or when I’m exercising.  If I’m at home, the TV is on.  And when TIVO came into my life two Christmases ago (thanks Mom and Dad!), I was so ready to make it my bitch.So here’s a look back on TV shows I have known and loved…

Three’s Company was a favorite when I was little.  I’m talking 3, 4, 5-years-old.  Odd viewing choice, maybe, but that crazy threesome with their wacky hijinks was a winner with me.  Also winners?  Family Fued and Mork and Mindy.  I had a Mork and Mindy lunchbox.

The Facts of Life was another early fave — it made me want to go to boarding school.  And I had this theory that the four main girls were somehow based on the four characters from Little Women, with Blair = Meg, Jo = (duh) Jo, Natalie = Beth (the only one who didn‘t really fit) and Precocious Tootie = Precocious Amy. 

Of course, most kids who grew up in the ’80s remember the Thursday night combo of The Cosby Show and Family Ties.  Michael J. Fox was my first celebrity crush, big time, when I was in the 3rd grade.  He even made me want to be a Republican!  (That went away pretty quickly.)

From the age of 10 – 13 my family lived in Germany.  We only got one TV channel (tragedy!), the Armed Forces Network.  It showed everything from live feeds of CNN to outdated cartoons and Sesame Street to the Today Show (live at 4 p.m.), Oprah, two soap operas (running about 6 months behind the states) and then, in the evening, a mix of sitcoms and dramas.  Again, we would get shows about a season behind the States and there were a lot of shows we didn’t get at all.  Basically, you watched what was on.

It was during that time I fell in love with two awesome female television characters – Murphy Brown and Julia Sugarbaker (from Designing Women).  Murphy Brown was the first time I fell in love with the idea of journalism.  I wanted to be some combination of Murphy (without the alcoholism) and Julia. 

We returned to the States right before I started high school and quickly readjusted to having more than one channel.  I finally started watching Beverly Hills 90210 my senior year of high school (the show had been on for quite a while by then)  – it was really one of the first groundbreaking teen dramas.  That was also about the time that MTV started running The Real World, which kicked off the whole reality TV show craze.

In college, TV was frequently a group activity – on Wednesday night’s we had a 90210 room and a Dawson’s Creek room.  Seinfeld, another favorite of mine, finally ended.  And because I was free a lot more during the day, I got to watch a lot of old syndicated eps of favorites like Kate & Allie, The Love Boat and, naturally, Three’s Company.

Sex & the City and Ally McBeal were staples in the first apartment I shared with my friend after college graduation.  Monday nights were our nights.  The country got so swept up in Survivor that we ran a pool at work.  I was quickly suckered into a variety of reality shows that followed – The Amazing Race, Big Brother, The Apprentice, American Idol, Project Runway, America’s Next Top Model, etc. etc. etc.  And I finally decided that perhaps I was too old to watch The Real World.  Plus I discovered Television Without Pity, which brings the art of watching TV to a whole new level.

And now?  My beloved West Wing has ended, although both it and Sports Night live on on DVDs.  I had big hopes for Sorkin’s new drama (Studio 60 blah blah blah) but have been mostly disappointed.  Gilmore Girls is a long-time favorite, but quickly waning.  For me, Desperate Housewives was kind of a flash in the pan.  I’m over it.  I still love Grey’s Anatomy but really, must every doctor sleep with every other doctor?  It’s all so incestuous and wrong.  I was on-again/off-again with The O.C., but wow, the last few eps really got me hooked again.  I’m not into a lot of the “supernatural” shows that are on now – Heroes, Lost, etc.

And yet my faithful TIVO is always full and I find plenty to keep me amused, entertained and slightly chagrined that I’ve wasted hours of my life watching certain shows…(The Search For the Next Pussycat Doll, I’m looking at you.)

I’m also chagrined I’ve managed to babble on this much about TV.  I was a communications major, what can I say?

 

Sagittarius Wednesday, Mar 28 2007 

Working Girl noodle77 11:56 am

I’m a recovering West Wing fanatic.  Man I loved that show, especially in the first few seasons (i.e. when Aaaron Sorkin was still writing it). 

One of my favorite WW moments came in the last couple of episodes of Season 2 — you know, when President Bartlett has begun telling his staffers he has MS and they’re trying to figure out how to break it to the country and then his awesome secretary Mrs. Landingham is killed in a car accident and things are a total mess and Jed ends up railing God in the National Cathedral?  Anyway…the senior staffers have taken over a basement conference room to plan this big announcement and it’s guarded by a Secret Security agent and the password is Sagittarius. 

The Josh/Donna relationship (Deputy Chief of Staff and his assistant) relationship was a pretty key one throughout the series.  At this point in the episode, Josh knows about the President’s MS, but what he doesn’t know is that Toby, a fellow senior staffer, has told Donna about the President’s MS, because Josh needs her to know but might not want to break the news himself. 

(I swear I’m getting to a point here…)

Finally, we see some weak but patented Josh/Donna banter.  She knows it’s time to reveal that she’s in the know and simply says, “Sagittarius.”  Bingo — he knows she knows and they can move on.

There’s a very sensitive situation at work right now that I’ve been brought into to assist with and I’ve spent the last couple days treading lightly, not always knowing who knows what and if they know I know what’s what and ohmigod, my head might explode with trying to be all vague and discrete and whatnot.  I wish I could just walk up to someone and say, “Sagittarius,” and bingo, we’d be ready to move on and actually work this damn issue.

But I think that if I went around muttering “Sagittarius” to people under my breath, they’d think I was talking about my astrological sign.  And possibly that I might be a little bit crazy, which is certainly not going to help my cause any.

For the record, I’m a Scorpio.

 

100 Things Monday, Mar 26 2007 

It's All About Me noodle77 2:44 pm

100 Things About Me

  1. Yes, my nickname is Noodle. 

  2. I am 29.

  3. I was born overseas.

  4. The place I was born does not exist anymore.  And I don’t mean the hospital doesn’t exist.  I mean the locality itself does not exist. 

  5. I spent the first 18 years of my life as a military brat.

  6. I’ve only lived in 2 U.S. states.

  7. However, I lived in 3 countries outside of the U.S.

  8. Sometimes I claim to be fromI llinois, although I have never actually lived there.

  9. Sometimes I claim to be fromVirginia.

  10. Most of the time when someone asks me where I am from, I launch into a rambly 5-minute answer.  They probably regret that they’ve asked.

  11. I’ve traveled to 4 continents.  Or 5, depending on how you count Central America.

  12. I have 2 younger brothers.

  13. They’re 5 and 10 years younger than I am.

  14. Yes, I am the bossy older sister.  And I’m damn good at it.

  15. My parents have been married for almost 35 years. 

  16. Both sets of my grandparents were married for more than 50 years.

  17. I’m single. 

  18. Sometimes I think it’s awesome to be single.

  19. Sometimes it sucks.

  20. I live alone with only a stripey orange cat for companionship.

  21. I have the most awesome stripey orange cat in the world.

  22. I love anything stripey.

  23. Or polka dotted.

  24. My favorite color is red.

  25. My car is red.  Her name is Ruby.

  26.  I have an obsession with office supplies.

  27. Particularly notepads and notebooks.

  28. Currently I have 10 different kinds of notepads and notebooks on my desk.  Each serves its own special purpose.

  29. I’m also very enamored of file folders.  (Wow, I have never sounded more pathetic in my life!)

  30. I don’t cry at books or movies.

  31. But I cry in front of my boss. A lot.  I have no idea why.  He’s not mean.  It’s some bizarre uncontrollable reaction.

  32. I work for the government.

  33. I like my job.  A lot.  Most days.

  34. I’m also obsessed with proper grammar, punctuation and spelling.  It’s part of my job and the rules have been drilled into my head.

  35. My grammar pet peeves include overuse of commas, blatant abuse of quotation marks and being too damn lazy to use the shift key.

  36. I work in a cubicle farm.  It’s like Dilbert in here.

  37. I work with two of the most annoying men I have ever met.  It’s my lot in life.

  38. Someday I want to write a book. 

  39. I write a lot.  I just never manage to finish anything.

  40. I wear only silver jewelry.

  41. Except for my gold sorority badge, occasionally.

  42. I was a sorority girl in college. 

  43. I went to a small, private liberal arts college.  I loved it.

  44. Now I’m a sorority advisor. 

  45. It’s harder and more time-consuming than I thought it would be.  But also more fun and rewarding than I could have imagined.

  46. I once lost more than 40 pounds.

  47. I’ve gained them all back.

  48. I’m trying to lose them again.

  49. I’m thinking about taking up running. 

  50. I buy a lot of makeup.

  51. The number of lip glosses I own is sort of staggering. 

  52. I blame my best friend for my descent into the insanely priced world of department store makeup.

  53. I love her anyway.

  54. I have awesome friends. 

  55. Along the way, I have also lost touch with some awesome friends. 

  56. I wish I hadn’t.

  57. I have been in 5 weddings.

  58. I’m practically a professional bridesmaid at this point. 

  59. But I can throw an awesome wedding or baby shower.

  60. On occasion, I selfishly think to myself that my friends owe me a LOT of presents.

  61. Every time I’m involved in the planning of a wedding, elopement sounds better and better.

  62.  I keep arranging and re-arranging this list.  Because I want it to “flow.”

  63. I am a perfectionist.

  64. When I was little, I would ask my teachers for a new worksheet if I messed up.

  65. Or I would throw away the whole page from the coloring book if I went outside the lines.

  66. I will sometimes re-write notes and lists THAT ONLY I WILL SEE because they don’t look right.

  67. If I ever have kids, I’m going to have to figure out a way to dial down my perfectionist tendencies.

  68. I want to have kids.  Hopefully before I’m too old to really enjoy them.

  69. For now, I adore, spoil and borrow my friends’ kids. 

  70. My cubicle is filled with pictures of other peoples’ babies.

  71. I’m obsessed with baby names. 

  72. Generally, I try to keep my opinions on baby names to myself.

  73. I have a lot of opinions. 

  74. I am a liberal Democrat.

  75. Politics fascinates me. 

  76. I’m not nearly as smart about it as I’d like to be.

  77. My friends think I’m some sort of one-stop resource library.

  78. I have a tendency to learn and retain lots of useless trivia.

  79. I am a masterful Trivial Pursuit player, but probably a rather obnoxious one.

  80. Actually, I’m pretty much an obnoxious game player in general. 

  81. I’m super competitive and don’t like to lose.

  82. I enjoy a good debate. 

  83. I don’t understand people who can’t get themselves all riled up about at least one topic.

  84. I hate passive-aggressiveness.

  85. I talk out loud to myself a lot.

  86. I’m stupid about math and numbers. 

  87. I used to skip the number 12 while counting my addition and subtraction facts.

  88. I like reality television.  And most television, really.

  89. My best friend and I once sent in an audition tape for “The Amazing Race.”  We would have been awesome.

  90. I love a good margarita (on the rocks with salt, please). 

  91. I’m trying to teach myself to like wine. 

  92. I can’t stand beer.

  93. My favorite foods are sushi and a really really good steak.

  94. There aren’t a lot of foods I don’t like.

  95. My best friend and I love to go out to frou-frou restaurants.

  96. We were supposed to go to Italy this year (the year we turn 30).  I think her two young kidlets will make that not so do-able.  Maybe we’ll go the year we turn 40.

  97. I also want to visit Greece, Ireland, Egypt, China, Argentina and Thailand.  Plus return to Spain, England, Germany and Japan.

  98. I hated Paris.  HATED IT.

  99. I’m not really a beach person, but I can’t imagine not living near the ocean.

  100. I’ve always wanted to write one of these lists.  And now I have.

 

Hello world! Monday, Mar 26 2007 

Uncategorized noodle77 12:44 pm

So…I have a blog.  Because all the cool kids are doing it?  Because it is free?  Because I read 80 gazillion million blogs and feel like maybe, I should try my hand at it?  Because it might be a way to kill a little time at work?  Because I liked the pretty yellow template with flowers? 

 No clue.  But here it is…