Well Planned Life

I like me some Seinfeld .   I haven’t seen every episode, nor am I a huge fan of the show.   But I like it.   Every once in a while I turn on the reruns in the evening just to watch something.   I am familiar with many episodes but can’t spew the dialog the way I can with other shows. In any event, I happened to turn it on last week.   I happened to catch the episode where Elaine is doing some ghost writing for (I think) her boss.   I just happened to actually look at the screen during this scene: It’s not the best capture of Jerry, but do you see what caught my attention?   It’s the planner he’s holding when George comes in to discuss a date that Jerry had just made with some woman or another. Thank goodness I have DVR, which allowed me to rewind it and make sure I was correct in what I thought I saw.   I now have a new respect for Jerry. This planner seems to be rather non-descript, though from the looks of the inserts, I’d ...

Philofaxy ’s last Free For All Friday determined how I would spend today.   I had already decided that I would take today off as a mental health day.   But when the subject of 27 Dresses came up, I decided I would watch it—I had never seen it, and so, why not?   In addition, I just got my 2013 inserts, and so what better plan could I have than to get them up and running while watching 27 Dresses ?   And so, that is what I did. First, I got all of my supplies together: They consisted of my archival box , my personal black Guildford (in which I keep the last year’s worth of inserts), my personal ochre Malden (in which I keep the current year’s inserts while they wait their turn to be rotated into my compact), my compact wine plum Osterley (since that’s what I’m currently using), my 2013 inserts (month on two pages and day per page), and my pen bag (this was a recent Barnes & Noble purchase—owls!). Then I moved any 2011 inserts that were in m...

I don’t have to tell you that we live in a technological age.   Things are changing rapidly, almost too rapidly for me.   Sometimes I feel as if my head is spinning out of control .   The more things go digital, the more I turn back to the good old days. Lately I am finding comfort and relaxation in the simpler things in life; not just taking the time to smell the roses, if you will, but also to live in a simpler time, if only for 30 or 60 minutes. I love my DVR .  It allows me to record shows that I would otherwise be unable to catch due to work and other activities.  The ironic thing is that I tend to record shows that illustrate a more relaxed way of life.  For instance, right now my DVR only contains episodes of “ The Golden Girls ,” “ The Waltons ,” and “ The Mary Tyler Moore Show. ”  (I do record current shows, but as the season is coming to a close, most of what I have right now are these.)  These shows have special meaning to me...

If you’re not familiar with the US television network CNBC , I highly advise you to take a look.  Aside from headline news programs, they often have wonderful news documentary-type programs.  My husband and I have seen many great shows and learned quite a bit: “ The PixarStory ,” “ As Seen on TV ,” “ The eBay Effect ,” “ The Facebook Obsession ,” “ Inside the Mind of Google ,” “ The Oprah Effect ,” “ Supermarkets Inc. ,” and others. The latest show is “ The Coffee Addiction .”  This is one of the better news programs we have seen.  The show goes behind the scenes of the coffee industry, discussing not only America’s obsession with coffee (the US is the most caffeine-addicted country in the world), but also inside Starbucks , Green Mountain Coffee , and other coffee companies.  But what’s really great about this show is how they also go behind the scenes of how coffee is made, from the farmers who grow it to the process by which the beans are cleaned and pr...

Autumn (or fall, as it’s commonly referred to here in the States) is my favorite time of year.  I am not alone .  Many people have commented that the start of the school year, rather than the start of a new year, feels more like a beginning to them, like a fresh start, than the first day of a new year.  I suppose this is true for me too.  I can remember shopping for new school clothes and supplies when I was young, the feeling of going back to school and meeting up with friends I hadn’t seen in a couple of months, and settling into a new routine. Now that I’m no longer in school, I don’t have the school things to look forward to.  But that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything to look forward to.  I look forward to buying new planner inserts and setting them up—the cool, clean, crisp pages are a sign of things to come; they hold the promise of great adventures yet to be experienced; my days are blank, just waiting to be written to my own personal hist...

Autumn is fast approaching, my favorite time of year, for many reasons. One of the things I look forward to is the return of my beloved television shows. Though I don’t watch much TV, what I do watch, I love. A couple of birthdays ago, I asked for a DVR as a gift. (Ask and you shall receive—unless it’s a Filo or bag.) I loathed paying the extra money for a DVR but my reasoning was simple: on the rare occasions that I do watch TV, I’d prefer to watch something I like rather than watching garbage simply because it’s the only thing on (hence the recordings of “ Family Ties ”). Of course, this is two-fold because although I can now watch what I like, I often try out other new shows I wouldn’t normally have tried because I record them and watch them when I have time. Enter the fall premier season . Each August, I write a reminder in my Filo to research the upcoming shows for fall—when they start, the synopsis of new shows, update my DVR spreadsheet (yes, I have a spreadsheet and I’ll expla...

…Stays together. If only in the world of television. Confession: I don’t watch much TV, but what I do watch is a bit out-dated. There are current shows that I record with my DVR and watch when I have time. Then, there are older shows I record and watch when I’m doing things around the house—I have seen these shows before and can leave the room, return, and not have missed much. One of the shows that fits into this category is the 1980’s hit sitcom “ Family Ties ,” starring Michael J. Fox . When the show was on the air, my family watched it together. I was too young to appreciate Fox’s character Alex P. Keaton , as he’s very political, economy-driven, and a conservative republican . His idols were Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon . Back then, I thought he was a stuffy, annoying teenager who didn’t know how to have fun. (And at the age I was, my definition of fun was playing with Cabbage Patch Kids , Pound Puppies , and My Little Pony , to name a few.) Today, I can appreciate the charact...

I have been very stressed out these past couple of weeks with all the things that must be done. This isn’t the first time I’ve discussed this here, and it certainly won’t be the last. I’ve been busy both at home and work, I have family coming this weekend, am preparing for vacation soon, and trying to manage a few different projects that require more than just a date and time in my Malden. This is also the time when I need to do more yoga, but as luck would have it, I don’t have time for any. In addition to everything I need to get done, there is still more—there are those things that other people put on my plate. And while I could say no, they aren’t things I can easily say no to because they are things that need to get done and things I need to be involved in because they affect me. But aside from all of the day-to-day nitty-gritty gotta-get-this-done things, I’ve also been feeling overwhelmed with all the technology lately. Don’t get me wrong, I love technology and I love all the t...

I don’t watch a lot of television, but one of my guilty pleasures is Lifetime ’s (yes, Lifetime—normally, I’m not an advocate of this station) “ Army Wives .” It’s your typical drama series with more going on in a week than most people see in their entire lives. The main difference is that these women (and one man) are wives (and husband) of military personnel. This is what grabbed me about the show—I am a big supporter of the military, so I started watching the show since its inception. I don’t know if what they portray as military life is 100% accurate, but it’s interesting to me nonetheless. Since season 5 just ended, I thought it fitting to discuss the planners I have seen on the show throughout its entire run thus far. The All-Inclusive – Being the general’s wife, Claudia Joy Holden , has a lot of responsibilities on post. She is the head of the FRG ( Family Readiness Group ) and as such, is often in charge of various functions. In one of the early seasons’ episodes, she pulls ou...

Over the weekend I finally saw Julie and Julia . For anyone who hasn’t seen it, it’s about writer Julie Powell’s struggle with finding something meaningful in life as she nears her thirtieth birthday (played by the cute Amy Adams ). She loves to cook, and this leads her to a year of blogging about her adventures of cooking her way through Julia Child’s cookbook. The movie also portrays bits and pieces of Julia Child’s life (played by the very talented Meryl Streep ). The movie goes back and forth between the two lives and stories, but it’s done in such a way that where one story leaves off, the other begins in a related fashion. It was well done, in my opinion. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, probably more than I should have given that it wasn’t a “great” movie, nor was the story itself “great.” But it was entertaining and humorous (though not laugh-out-loud-funny) and I enjoyed every morsel of the film. I got to thinking why this was so – it’s not a ground-breaking movie by any means...

Last night, or early this morning depending on your point of view, a lunar eclipse was visible. Here in the US (EST), it started at 1:33 a.m. and ended at 2:41 a.m. While I find something like this fascinating, I’m not much of a scientific person. I was not planning on waking up for this event. However, I was awake at that time anyway. I looked out the window to see if I could anything. With the temperature at around 25 degrees F, I was not about to step outside to look for it. I couldn’t see anything. I heard from most people that it was too cloudy for anything to be seen anyway, so I’m glad I didn’t get all dressed up in my warm clothes to stand outside in the cold for nothing. The pictures of the event from various places are amazing. While lying in bed, trying to get back to sleep I kept thinking about a movie I used to watch as a kid – The Watcher in the Woods . I remember that it was a creepy kind of movie. A brief synopsis: A family comes to rent a house in the country. The ho...

“It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly-sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address. On the other hand, this not knowing has its charms.” One of my guilty pleasures is my stack of romantic comedies that I watch over and over, some during special times of the year. Each brings a sense of joy to me, each for a different reason. I don’t watch a lot of movies, but when I find one I love, for whatever reason, I may be tempted to purchase it, and it becomes part of my beloved collection. The first movie that started this collection is You’ve Got Mail . This movie is by no means the best ever made but it’s special to me for a specific reason. After graduating college, I stayed in the area, rented an apartment, and got a job. It was the first time I was truly, truly independent and on my own. After a year at the job I decided it wasn’t what I wanted to do. With no idea of what it was that I did want to do, I (shamelessly, in my mind – I wanted to be ...