Snow disasters

It would seem that there has been a bit of ribbing from the rest of the country about how wimpy Seattle folks are in the snow.  This is me, to a tee:

Cold

Worried

Afraid 

Isolated 

Anxious about what I am missing

We got snowed in.  We lost power.  We lost phone service.  We live on a steep hill surrounded by ice. 

We feel like we live in a 3rd world country!

Our Favorite Pemco Insurance Ad

There is a local insurance agency, Pemco Insurance, that produces simply wonderful ads saluting its Northwest clientele.  My current favorite perfectly describes me this week (in which we've been snowed in!) 

Check out "First Snowflake Freakout Lady" on YouTube here.  (I do live on a hill!)

(While you're at it, check out their 'Goat Renter Guy' ad and the 'Super Long Coffee Orderer' ad - they have a whole bunch - just double click on the one you want to watch.  We love these guys!) 

Comparative analysis

Mark is a psychologist. He may dabble in usability issues in software and websites in order to make some practical application of all that education, but at heart he is an experimental psychologist.  And that often means measuring things that are not easily measured - values, likes/dislikes, beauty, happiness.  One of the ways of honing down such otherwise unmeasurable 'stuff' is by making a comparison - which is better (or worse,) which do you want more, which would you rather be/do/live with/drink...

And so there is often a conversation at our house about Denise Richards and Oprah Winfrey.  It appears that they are on the bottom of nearly every comparison.  One might 'win out' over the other on a given scale but just about ANY scale comes down to one or the other.  It starts as a simple comparison:

Who is more irritating to listen to -
Dick Vitale or Chris Berman?  (Dick Vitale) 
Dick Vitale or Larry the Cable Guy?  (Dick Vitale)
Dick Vitale or the guy on the Ford commercials with the very low voice?  (Dick Vitale, still)
Dick Vitale or Judge Judy?  (Judge Judy - by a long shot!)
Judge Judy or Whoopi Goldberg? (Whoopi)
Whoopi Goldberg or Rachael Maddow?  (Rachael)
Rachael Maddow or Oprah Winfrey?  (Oprah)
Oprah Winfrey or... nope, sorry, can't think of anyone more irritating than that.

OK...

Who is skankier?
Sarah Jessica Parker or Kelly Osborne? (SJP)
Sarah Jessica Parket or Drew Barrymore?  (Drew, according to Mark.)
Drew Barrymore or Brittney Spears?  (Drew, again)
Drew Barrymore or Carmen Electra?  (Carmen)
Carmen Electra or Denise Richards?  (Denise) 
Denise Richards or...  We're at the bottom.  Really - think Denise Richards trying to play a Nuclear Physicist in that James Bond movie, and partnering with Charlie Sheen!

(I didn't say we were nice people, in the privacy of our own conversations...  And in our defense, it's been snowing here for 2 days and we're a little wonky.)



PS - Happy Birthday tomorrow, Carl!

What to do?

It's the winter doldrums time.  The Christmas decorations are down and put away and now what?  Dark, cold, rainy January, that's what... which always leaves me wondering what to do with my time.  And I feel like my alternatives are becoming less and less appealing. 

My old refrain about there being 'nothing' on TV has reached a new low - HGTV has let me down with its near-constant focus on House Hunters instead of Candace Olsen or Sarah Richardson, my cable company has inexplicably eliminated the Animal channel, I have already memorized every episode of NCIS, and we are finding the local 'Evening Magazine' program to be just too 'fun' and 'bright' and 'cute' to tolerate more than once in a while.  And really, how many Republican candidate debates can one actually attend to?  I realized that if 'Say Yes to the Dress' was the only thing I could tolerate it was time to turn it off.

My options for reading at the moment seem to be with a 'second-in-the-series' book without the 1st, and a bunch of magazines whose singular focus on 'getting organized' makes me more tired than inspired.

Mark spends a lot of time perusing the Internet but I don't really know where to go there.  After so many 'headlines'  reading like 'Chaz Bono is Saving Up for Penis Surgery' and '6 Airports You Don't Want to Get Stuck In' and 'Woman Lives After Bungee Cord Snaps' I get discouraged.  And again, how many times can you read opinions about whether Romney can beat [insert name here.]

So - too early for gardening, too late for shopping, too fat for baking...  What to do?