Even though our car is out of commission, we were still able to get out to vote yesterday with our rental car, courtesy of our car warranty.  I have to say that after years of driving a loaded mini-van, I kind of enjoy zipping around in the little Malibu they gave us.  My husband pointed out that it’s probably because all the kids won’t even fit in it, so for the first time in a long time, I find myself alone in the car, which means blaring country music of my choosing rather than listening to kids fighting, KidsSongs, or Veggie Tales.  He’s probably right; although I do enjoy the quick pick-up and the fact that I can easily back out from any parking spot I find myself wedged into.  So anyway, the movie theater in the neighboring town was offering free popcorn to those who voted in the election yesterday.  They had a movie called, “The Haunting of Molly Hartley“, which I hadn’t heard about.  But the title sounded promising, as did the fact that the movie came out on Halloween.  But then I looked it up on imdb.com, and it had a 3.8 rating.  Ouch – that’s a pretty stinky rating!  Not only that, but examples of users’ comments on the movie include:  “What’s the point of this movie?”  “Don’t worry about getting up for a snack, you won’t miss anything.”  “A fright fest without the scares.”  “Reminds me a of a Nickleodeon movie.” – you get the idea.

But we decided to see it anyway, and I’m glad we did.  It really wasn’t that bad – it even has replay value; I’d watch it again.  The plot centers around a young girl named Molly who, days before her 18th birthday, begins to have episodes characterized by nosebleeds, anxiety attacks, and hearing voices.  She is really worried that she is “going crazy”, especially given her mother’s mental instability.  The audience doesn’t really know if everything is just in this girl’s head because of past trauma or if there is really more to it.  I would describe the movie as Rosemary’s Baby meets Proof (I’ve only seen the stage play, not the movie though).  In Rosemary’s Baby, a woman is having a baby and is paranoid that her neighbors are demons who will harm the baby.  The movie is done in such a way that the audience is left guessing the entire time if she’s just being paranoid or if her concerns are legit.  And Proof is the story of a woman who is following in the footsteps of her mathmatical genius father, only to worry if she is also inheriting his mental illness.

And I disagree with some of the comments made about the Haunting of Molly Hartley – there were plenty of scares.  The movie had a creepy mood to it, and there were plenty of jump-out-of-your-seat startles.  They were quite predictable, but I’ve seen lots of scary movies, so the predictability of the scares probably had lots to do with my experience of knowing when to expect them.  Overall, I’d definitely recommend this movie to people who like horror movies.  I liked it much better than Saw V, and they’re really two different types of movie since unlike the entire Saw franchise, this one had no gore and was rated PG-13.  Apparently it was too tame and lame for teenagers, which scares me to think about what it must take to shock teenagers these days.  But for grown-up thrill movie fans, it’s worth a view!

I have been disappointed in the selection of Television shows for many years now. Even when you add cable selections, the choice of what to watch is rather limited. I have not gotten into any reality show. If I had my choice those would be taken off the air forever. But it seems like most people like them and they do have a large following. Current crop of comedies, you can have those too. I haven’t watched any of those either. Dramas, boring. Even though I liked CSI and Law and Order when they first came out (in all flavors), I’ve grown tired of them also. I watch a few for the remaining actors on them. If and when they go, well I won’t watch those shows either. I cut my television watching down to 4.5 shows a week. The .5 I only watch because it comes before another show I like. That’s 4.5 hours of Television a week. 3.5 hours coming in two nights. This doesn’t count the occasional sporting event. I don’t plan my days around football on Saturday or Sunday, and I can’t say I watched much baseball this year.

If I had cable, I might watch a few other shows. Especially if I could get some of my old favorite series. I’m not sure if television was better in my youth, but I do remember a few shows that I really liked. Some of them don’t survive the test of time. The Six Million Dollar Man and Knight Rider just don’t have the same kick anymore. Some of the comedies I used to watch just seem stupid today. I’m really not sure what I saw in them.

The shows that I’ve seen recently that have stood the test of time for me are

1. MASH — I’ve seen all the shows at least twice each, and I will still watch if I see it on.
2. All in the Family — At least the early years. Some of the later years, I just couldn’t get into.
3. Star Trek — Pick any of the (except Deep Space Nine) I like Trek.
4. Columbo — Peter Falk was just great in that role.
5. MacGyver — Yep, just saw this on the internet to down load. The hair styles, clothes and cars are a bit out of date, but the MacGyverisms pure fun.

That’s it, for now. I can now check out the internet for many of my old favorites, so this list may not be complete.

For some reason, I was inclined to go to my “About this blog” page today.  I knew it would be outdated, but I was still surprised about how wrong it really was, check it out:

This is a blog about my life as a mom of 3, (soon to be 4!), girls.  I am the matriarch of a family that includes 2 dogs, a parrot, and kids ages 8, 3 1/2, and 1 1/2, and coming soon, a newborn…  Wish me luck!

That was the old original version I slapped up in a hurry way back when I started this blog.  In case you’re not a regular reader, I should tell you that girl #4 was actually a boy (surprisingly, my doctor has a reputation in town for reading the ultrasound wrong when it comes to gender – I always thought the circumstances were exaggerated until it happened to us), and so I now have three girls, ages almost 9 years, 4 years, and 2 years old.  We also have a little boy who is almost 4 months old.  I was right about the needing luck part – 4 kids at one time, especially ones this little (and spoiled!), can be very needy all together and quite a handful.  We still have the parrot and the dogs, and they just add to the chaos.  It’s stressful, but that’s my problem, I have to learn to lighten up about some things.  Most of the time, I have great fun watching them all interact as the daily chaos unfolds.  The little guy loves his sisters!

Oh yes, I know I should be doing my civic duty and watching election coverage on one of 899 channels… I will wait until tomorrow to find out who the new owner of America country will be.  Instead, I caught another film that I missed out on last summer.  I believe that my introduction to the television series Get Smart
came in the 7th grade.  My cousin (whose last name is Maxwell) became a favorite target of our junior high phys ed instructor.  He was known as Maxwell “Get” Smart and I was known as “Get Dumb.”  It was about this time that reruns were playing on Nick at Nite (whatever happened to the “classic tv” that was promised on this channel and its sister channel TVLAND).

The movie, starring the always brilliant Steve Carell as wildly inept CONTROL agent 86 and Anne Hathaway as the capable agent 99 was very fun.  A total update of the series while retaining much of the original.  Clippings in the opening credits of past villains such as “The CLAW” (NOT CRAW… THE CLAW) and Mr. Big (who was not so big after all).  The series of doors that led to the telephone booth that dropped agents to headquarters.  Agent 13 (Bill Murray) hidden in the most ridiculous of places and Fang. Plus a brief cameo by an original series cast member.

I will not dwell too much on the plot because like the series it is just silly, mindless fun.  However as always Max and 99 are hot on the trail of KAOS’ own Ziegfried and (no… not Roy) Shtarker.  Some of the villains had an almost Bondian quality.  There was an 8 foot behemoth whom I almost expected to have a mouthful of steel teeth.  I could have sworn that it was Richard Kiel, the same actor who played Jaws (of The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker) as well as Mr. Larson from Happy Gilmore, but alas it was not.  Shtarker also bore a similar appearance to Oddjob (from Goldfinger).

All I can say is that if you enjoyed the original or if you enjoy Steve Carell’s work, go out and rent Get Smart.  There are enough in-jokes from the series to keep the fans pleased and enough fun and excitement to keep the new entertained.

We’ve been hit with some bad luck lately in our household.  First, our beloved family dog of almost 11 years was diagnosed last week with a few potentially life-threatening illnesses.  Aside from our obvious concerns about our dog’s health, this has also incurred large vet bills.  Next, we lost our expensive digital camera while trick-or-treating, and it contained priceless family photos, including the kids in their Halloween costumes.  Finally (hopefully!) our car decided to conk out – engine wouldn’t turn over.  My husband did some research online and found that it was most likely the pass-key system, which can be quite costly to fix.  While we were trying to jump start the car to fix it ourselves, the keys got locked in, which also stalled our efforts to fix it.

However, the bad luck is slowly changing to good, an unheard of phenomenon for us as people who have experienced more than an average person’s amount of bad luck, I’d guess.  For a few years, we really got dumped upon, one horrible thing after another, but we’ve also had more than our fair share of good luck in life as well, especially lately, and we count our blessings every day.  But rarely has our bad luck turned good like this.  Yesterday, as I was walking my daughter to school (no car, remember?), I found a $10 bill on the sidewalk.  I immediately felt guilty and thought about how much I would like the person who found our digital camera to turn it in, so we called the police – again – and asked if anyone reported it missing.  So far, they haven’t, which means I get to keep it.  The police must be getting sick of us by now since we’ve called about 10 times in the last few days looking for our camera and trying to get into our locked car…  but oh well, in a sleepy rural town such as ours, I’m sure they’re just happy to have something to do.  So anyway, I find the $10, and I think I get to keep it, and then I walked to the local car dealer yesterday, and they gave me a key to get into my car for only $2.50 when we thought it would be at least $35 for a locksmith!  So we find money, save money getting into our locked car, and then today we find out that our car is still under warranty, so the expensive pass-key replacement system will be covered!!!  HOORAY!!!  And get this – we are under warranty for only 24 more miles!   What a blessing of a coincidence, although it makes me afraid to drive the car for fear that something else will go wrong and next time, it won’t be covered!

But anyway, besides the vet bills, as far as the car goes, I think we actually came out ahead on the whole deal.  We saved $ on gas these past two days when I had to do all errands on foot, I found the $10, and there’s no charge for repairs, so yeah, we’re actually $10+ ahead!  Hopefully everything wil go ok with the car repairs so that we can still make it to the early Christmas celebrations we had planned for this weekend in Illinois.  And they say bad things happen in sets of three, so hopefully this is it for at least a little while anyway…

While searching imdb’s newest feature of viewing full episodes of tv shows past and present, I came across a show that I only very, VERY vaguely remember watching in the late 1970s (but do not search for it at imdb).  I do remember other aspects of it; particularly, the series of books upon which the series was based.  The Hardy Boys Mysteries (later to be retitled as The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries to include their female counterpart) starred Parker Stevenson (who was later married to Kirstie Alley) and 70s bubble gum pop singer and teenage heartthrob Shaun Cassidy as Frank and Joe Hardy.  One of the mysteries I happened upon thanks to the NancyHardy channel on youtube featured a young Melanie Griffith as a troubled young girl who seems to be drawn by supernatural forces to The House on Possessed Hill.  Hopefully, my mention of the channel will not cause it to be deleted (I have mentioned the fanofbats channel previously and still receive updates for new old episodes of Batman).

Ok… what I do remember from the past.  I do remember the story of Shaun Cassidy.  He is the son of Jack Cassidy and Shirley Jones.  Shaun’s half-brother, David, was a teen magnet himself on The Partridge Family which coincidentally co-starred Ms. Jones.  Shaun’s self-titled debut album was a stable in my house.  It featured mainly cover songs like “DaDooRonRon,” “Be My Baby,” and a few others.  In their adult years, Shaun and David co-starred in the musical Blood Brothers.

And as I previously mentioned, I do remember reading the books written by many authors under the pen name Franklin W. Dixon and to a lesser extent the books featuring Ms. Drew.

Through the quirky way our calendar is set up, the leap day pushed every day following it up one day in the week. Now most people won’t notice this too much, but since we had two leap years since 2003, the dates of this year (after the 29th of February) fall on exactly the same day of the week as 2003.

I’ve noticed those days. Dates and days etched forever in my mind from 2003, are now falling back on the days they occurred. The warm days of this early November remind me again of the fall days in 2003.

Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years will all be on the same day as 2003. And Dec 30th will again fall on a Tuesday.

The logical person I am, knew that this year would happen. The emotions tied to those dates and days is something I didn’t prepare for.

Forever loved, forever in my mind SJO 7/19/1962 – 12/30/2003. A life too short…

Before Mystery Theater, before Elvira, there were other hosts of the ‘B’ horror movies. The one I was most familiar with ran his show on Saturday afternoons for 15 years. We would sometimes have to go out and adjust the antenna to pick up the station. It never came in very good, but then again we were trying to pick up a TV station over 60 miles away. The station was Channel 2 out of Detroit Michigan. The host of the show, the one, the only Sir Graves Ghastly.

I can remember spending many a Saturday afternoon watch things like Attack of the 50 Foot Woman or Them!. Or any other show about sinister spacemen, Giant killer beasts, angry mutated humans, the living dead or cursed half-man/half-animal combinations.

Most of these show had poor story lines, bad acting and fake looking sets/monsters. Most were done on a low budget. They were released in the theaters/drive-ins as the second feature or ‘B’ Movie. They were played on late night TV for years, or in my case Saturday Afternoon.

Sir Graves made fun of the movies, fun of himself and just made the best afternoon of television. So now I get to watch some of these old ‘B’ movies on my computer, and I remember Saturday afternoons with Sir Graves.

Happy Haunting….

Wednesday, October 22 – Breakfast at Golden Corral – best omlette I’ve had in a long time.  Then it was off to the Magic Kingdom where our group got separated.  It was ironic because they make an announcement on the monorail on the way over to the Magic Kingdom about picking a meeting place in case your party gets separated, and during that announcement, I had a feeling we should probably do that.  We ended up finding everyone but not at the meeting place we had desigated.  The Monsters Inc. show is funny as always, and my husband was chosen again to participate, this time playing “Sully”.  We skipped Space Mountain this time around because the line was long and by the time we remembered to get fast passes, we were ready to leave Tomorrowland.  I also skipped one of my favorites, Peter Pan’s Flight, but it was well worth it to get my husband a wheelchair so he could get off his extremely painful infected toe.  Besides, the girls still got to ride it with our friend, Jamiahsh.  Splash Mountain was fun, although the recent updates the ride incurred saw the song on it changed from the extremely catchy “Zippidy Doo-Dah” to something else I don’t even remember.  That’s 0/2 for me liking the rides they’ve updated this trip, if you’re keeping track.

And this is the second Florida trip where both my husband and I saw a strange and unidentified creature.  We’re not crazy, but both times we both saw the same things.  This time, it was a black figure running across the road which was actually a bridge over another road.  When it got to the edge of the bridge, the black shape just kept going – which means it was airborne.  I didn’t see it “running” really; to me it was a black oval traveling across the road – I couldn’t make out any legs.  My husband, who has better eyesight than I, saw something running and then flying.  Either way, none of this describes any animal I’m familiar with, especially one who is native to the United States.  And since I’m on the subject, I will describe our first unidentified creature encounter.  It was a few years ago on our way down to Florida, somewhere in the wilderness of Georgia in the middle of the night.  I saw something sitting by the side of the road, and then it opened and flapped a LARGE pair of wings and flew a short distance upwards onto a low branch in a tree.  It’s wingspan was huge – a diameter of a full grown man at least, 6 feet or more.  This sighting was witnessed by my husband also, and we call it “Batman”.  I’ve looked up various birds and the largest I’ve found is a condor, but this creature seemed even larger and its body was bigger and shaped less like a bird’s body.  Mysteries as yet unsolved…

Well, anyway, talking about the strange creature on Wednesday night disoriented us, and after we got out of Disney World’s huge tangle of roads, we went to the Boston Lobster Feast where at least one kid stayed passed out.  Because we had 3 of the 4 kids asleep by the time we got back to the condo, Chris and I decided to take our night out that had been scheduled (and cancelled due to kid neediness) for the previous two nights.  We went over to the Fun Spot, a newer amusement park next to Old Town.  We went on an extreme ride – check this out:

It actually was much more mild than it looks – and no, that’s not us in the picture.  The ride was kind of lame, really…  Conversely, two of the 4 go-cart tracks at Fun Spot are wicked, simply put.  And I’m not exaggerating when I say that someone might be killed on those tracks.  Unfortunately, I had to witness a little girl speed out of control and hit the wall at a high rate of speed.  I think she was alright; she was conscious at least, but she was very scared, and it was terrifying to witness.  The one track starts by winding up a ramp, and then when you’re at the top, the track drops off so suddenly that I’m sure a cart could get some air if one was on a suicide mission and wanted to try it.  So your cart picks up speed down this steep hill, and before the track even levels out, there’s a hairpin turn – looks like you’re driving in a bowl – followed by another downward slope.  I can’t believe they let kids drive the course, and I shudder to think what careless, invincible (so they think) teenage boys would do with a go-cart on that track – especially a whole pack of them driving it together.  But for us adults, it was lots of fun, although I prefer something much more mild in a go-cart – the things have no padding!  Another course they had there was very small but it had a lot of sharp turns, and it reminded me of a live version of Mario Kart – without the fake gift boxes and shell weapons, of course 😉

Here is a picture of crazy go-cart course – it doesn’t even show the “32 degree banked bowl”, just the “shear drop”:

Your typical late 1950’s giant monster movie. Huge lizard terrorizing a small western town. Strange accidents occur, people go missing, and we see a lizard and a very large foot. Complete with dark settings and ‘spooky’ music.

As with most of these 1950’s ‘horror’ movies, they do try to write some sort of plot. Bunch of ‘kids’ in this are driving around in ‘hot rods’ and having all sorts of relationship problems. Money, family, girls you name it, they seem to have those problems. These problems have nothing to do with the giant gila monster.

First report of this monster is from a drunk (of course), and he wasn’t in any condition to be believed.

Yes, a typical ‘B’ movie. I had a few laughs watching it. Available on IMDb.