2013 Movie Marathon - Week 2

Last time, we left off with "Julie and Julia," bringing Meryl Streep with us to begin a new week.

We begin our second week of the marathon on Sunday, January 13 with Meryl Streep and Alex Baldwin in "It's Complicated," in which Streep and Baldwin are cast as a divorced couple who try out a reconciliation. Can you really go back?? Steve Martin is also cast in an unusual serious role - and I liked it!

Monday, we visit with Alec Baldwin again in "Fun With Dick & Jane," where Baldwin is cast as the President of a major corporation guilty of some kind of financial mismanagement. (you can tell I really had a firm grasp on that aspect of the movie, eh?) Jim Carrey and Tea Leoni are also in this one, as a couple who resort to (gasp) armed robbery in order to survive after Baldwin's antics leave Carrey unemployed!

Also in the movie was Richard Burga, who we brought with us for our Tuesday movie, "In Her Shoes," with Toni Collette, Cameron Diaz and Shirley McLain. Diaz plays an irresponsible, wild and partying young woman, with Collette as her more mature and responsible big sister. McLain is cast in the role of their grandmother. Interestingly enough, a lot of this movie takes place in a retirement village!

Wednesday finds us with Toni Collette again, as a single mother this time, in "About a Boy" with Hugh Grant. This movie was better than I thought it would be. Grant is cast as a rich, spoiled, playboy, with no goals in life, who decides to go to a single parents' meeting to pick up women - only he has to come up with a real son to fill the shoes of the one he lied about. (lying NEVER ends well!!)

We bring Rachel Weisz (one of the single moms from "About a Boy") with us on Thursday to meet up with Ryan Reynolds in "Definitely, Maybe." This is a cute movie about a soon-to-be-divorced dad and his daughter and the tales of his love life and dreams before he married her mom. Was her mom his true love or is she still out there??

We enjoyed hanging out with Ryan Reynolds so much (oh yes we did!) that we brought him with us to Friday's movie with Sandra Bullock, in "The Proposal." This time, Ryan is cast as Andrew Paxon, assistant to his editor Margaret Tate, played by Bullock, who is an illegal alien about to be deported. Can they convince the INS they're in love?

To wrap up the week, we hang out with Andrew's former girlfriend, Gertrude, played by  Malin Akerman, along with James Marsden and Catherine Heigl in "27 Dresses."  Always, always, always a bridesmaid?

We'll keep James Marsden with us as we head into Week 3 ... see you on the flip side!!

2013 Movie Marathon - Week 1

It's been a fun week!! We didn't start the marathon until Tuesday, because the BCS National Championship Game was Monday night, wherein the #2 ranked Crimson Tide of Alabama showed the #1 ranked Fighting Irish of Notre Dame how it feels to meet the SEC -- R-O-L-L T-I-D-E!!! 

Following the game, the girl-child and I went and stood in line for an hour and a half in the freezing cold with about 500 of our closest friends at the local sporting goods store so we could get our National Championship t-shirts (so the girl-child could wear hers to school the following day). 'Twas a late night for a weeknight, but totally worth it for the bonding and memories. It's sad to see the end of that tradition -- next year she will be attending the University of Alabama, and will be playing in the Million Dollar Band, so she will be AT the game :)  (positive thinking!)

But I digress ... back to our movie marathon ... 

We began the marathon on Tuesday, January 8, 2013 with "The Bounty Hunter," starring Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston. Butler is cast as a bounty hunter and Aniston as his ex-wife, for whom he also has a contract to pick up for her failure to appear in court. Aniston is a reporter, on the tail of a big lead she's trying to follow while avoiding Butler. 

We took Aniston along with us to our Wednesday movie, "Along Came Polly." Aniston is cast as Polly, a free-spirit, who bumps into her old classmate, Ben Stiller, an uptight insurance risk agent, who has returned from his honeymoon alone because his wife ran off with the scuba diving instructor! 

Thursday, we watched "Night at the Museum," where we meet up with Stiller again as he takes on the job as Night Watchman at the Museum of Natural History. Things get exciting around there after dark! Nothing like Robin Williams, as Teddy Roosevelt, riding around on a horse!

Friday, Robin Williams invited us back to the museum in "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian." More antics with the museum exhibits, and a few new ones, such as Amy Adams as Amelia Earhart.

Tonight we joined Amy Adams, this time as Julie, a blogging cook, in "Julie and Julia." Adams, as Julie, decides to cook her way through Julia Child's "The Art of French Cooking" - 524 recipes in 365 days, and blog about her experience ... which was, in a strange twist, the inspiration for me blogging about our movie marathon!! 

We will begin a new week of movies tomorrow, connecting with Meryl Streep!! Stay tuned!!

The 2013 Movie Marathon

My daughter and I are somewhat addicted to movies. After a stare down with the cable company, in which I told them to take it away, we decided that with the money saved by not having cable we could purchase movies of our choosing to watch any time we wanted. Spurred on by a book: "Hollywood Blockbusters: The Top Grossing Films of All Time," we began collecting those movies, since we had several of them already. Since that time, we have collected those 100 movies, minus "The Exorcist," "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," (because we have no desire to see them) and "The Poseidon Adventure" (because of the ridiculous price).

Last Christmas, while on our vacation from work and school, we decided to have a Disney Movie Marathon, with accompanying meals/snacks. I posted updates on Facebook, and it was quite well received.

This Christmas, we traveled the US via movie, starting in our home state of Alabama, and heading up the east coast and then out to the west coast and back around, until we returned to Alabama. It was quite tedious to squeeze 50 movies into a week. 

So we decided to put a little twist on our Movie Marathon and this time we're doing a 365-Day "Degree of Separation" style movie marathon. There are certain movies slated for specific dates, e.g., "New Year's Eve" for New Year's Eve; "Valentine's Day" for Valentine's Day; "Groundhog Day" for Groundhog Day, etc. The trick is that all adjacent movies have to connect through an actor/actress in the movie. The pre-set movies create the real challenge! Thus far, we have the movies scheduled through about February 23rd.. We'll be plotting our course as we go, hopefully staying at least a month ahead of the game with the scheduling!!

Due to the BCS National Championship game tomorrow night, we won't begin the marathon until Tuesday, January 8, 2013, and will watch one movie per day/night all the way through January 7, 2014.

So follow along as we see if we can connect all the dots!!! 

The first movie, on Tuesday, January 8, 2013, will be "The Bounty Hunter," connected to the January 7, 2014 movie by the actress Christine Baranske!

DASH-ing Through the Pounds (I hope)

So today is a banner day in the LadyK household. I have, after my scales screamed "GET OFF", started a diet. Yep, I typed it right there -- I'm going on a diet. (sigh)

This has been a long time coming, I suppose. I've always struggled with my weight. Okay, maybe not ALWAYS, but certainly since moving the summer between 7th and 8th grade. That was a summer filled with potato chips and ice cream ... 'twas a blessed summer, that found me 2 sizes larger when school started -- oops.

And here I am, 48 years old, 100+ pounds overweight, single, lonely, and on blood pressure meds.

So -- having done the Weight Watchers thing before (successfully until I quit) and the South Beach thing (again successfully until I quit), I decided to do a more balanced approach. Not that Weight Watchers isn't balanced, because it really is. I simply need something that I spend a little less time THINKING about! It's fairly self-defeating to try to lose weight by thinking about food all the time, and the whole points thing was a lot like math (yuck).

So this time, I'm looking at the DASH diet -- DASH stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. My doctor had indicated that if I lost some weight and got some exercise, there is a very real possibility that I can toss the meds -- helloooo -- that's enough to motivate me right there!!

So, essentially, this is an "exchanges" type diet as follows:

GRAINS - 7/8 servings a day

FRUITS - 4/5 servings a day

VEGGIES - 4/5 servings a day

DAIRY - 3 servings a day

LEAN MEATS - 2 servings a day

FATS & OILS - 2/3 servings a day

NUTS, SEEDS & LEGUMES - 4/5 servings a week

SWEETS - less than 5 servings a week

This looks so simple that even I can figure this out! Nothing's omitted, which I like, because inevitably, if you leave something you like out of your diet for too long, it's gonna come back.

So the journal plan is simple: I'm going to journal my days -- hopefully less than 365 of them to do the trick.

Today: Day 1

Weight: beyond belief, plus 3

Breakfast: I started my day with a bowl of cheerios with milk and a sliced banana. By my best guess, that's 2 grains (1/2 cup equals 1), 1 dairy (although I used whole milk), and 1 fruit.

Snack: I had 1/2 cup of baby carrots (raw -- love the crunch!) So there's 1 vegetable

Lunch: I had some (3 oz?) smoked Boston butt (oops -- I don't think that falls under the "lean" part of the equation, but this is a work in progress), some dill pickles (veggies? they start out as cucumbers!), and (uh-oh) some chips. I don't suppose we can call them potatoes really, can we? If we try, we also have to add the fats -- looks like today's fats are already gone!

no afternoon snack

Supper: Well, supper is going to be my struggle unless I do a little better planning ahead. Tonight we had hot dogs -- with cheese -- and chili - and chips. (but with Diet Dr. Pepper) So, given that they were angus beef dogs (not low fat, but meat, nonetheless), and I had two, that's 2 meats, 2 grains (buns), 1 dairy (1 slice of cheese divided), chips again -- what food group would those fall under? I'm thinking they need to be banished altogether. The hot dog chili is really just a bunch of artificial stuff, so it doesn't count.

Dessert: 1 York Peppermint Patty (miniature)

So not terribly shabby for the first day out of the gate --

4 grain

2 dairy

1 fruit

2 vegetable

3 meat

fats -- off the chart

questionable -- chips (they just don't have a categorical home!)

1 sweet (although 3 is a serving size, so technically I've only had 1/3 of a sweet)

Obviously it's going to take a little better planning, but I really think this is doable.

Oh, and I added WATER (gasp) to my world. Started out with a bottle as I left the house this morning and refilled it twice from the water fountain today, so that's about 48 ounces, plus 2 cups of coffee, and a couple of Diet Dr. Peppers.

Didn't work in any exercise today-- with the cooler weather though, it looks promising to get a little walking in either at lunch or after work for a few minutes every day. The Doc said if I would just walk 10 minutes a day every day for 6 weeks, I'd actually start to enjoy it and look forward to it. I'll have to test his theory on that one.

That's all for day. Thanks for reading (Mom? are you out there? Mom? Momma? Mommy?) ... sigh

Getting Started

Hi, I'm LadyK. I'm a 48-year-old divorced mother of 2; ages 22 and 15. I am a Christ-follower and live in the Southeastern US. I spend my days as a legal assistant, and dream of spending my days reading and writing. Welcome to my world!

I was working on writing a book of Devotions, and had made quite a bit of progress toward that end, until that fateful day when I deleted my desktop. Yes, you read that correctly; I deleted my desktop. Kind of like an electronic version of swallowing your own head I suppose. It's just one of those things that I had never considered as a real possibility.

It all came about simply enough. I was online chatting and the "Download" menu kept popping up, with automatic downloads of files which were titled "Desktop-1," Desktop-2," etc. Every time one would pop up, I'd click CANCEL, and it would stop. Then I'd go look at my files, and there they would be ... all those files just sitting there on the list. And so, fearing they may be attempts to hack my Mac or spread electronic swine flu and the like, I decided to just delete them. I did a global search for "Desktop" and then did a SHIFT+DEL (if you didn't already know, holding the SHIFT key down while you hit the DELETE key does a secure delete, which bypasses your Trash). The computer, knowing what I was about to do, asked me "Are you sure you want to permanently delete the selected items"? "Oh yeah, I'm sure," I thought, and then I did it ... I clicked "YES."

I suppose I should have known something was amok when the little display window showed over 5,000 items being deleted. I knew there had been a lot of download attempts, but that seemed unbelievably high. I could have (and should have) clicked on CANCEL, but I was feeling quite accomplished at having foiled the hacker/swine flu. Then I left the room to let the computer electronically destroy and erase everything in that list.

It wasn't until much later -- too late -- that I realized what I had done. You see, in the midst of that list of all those "Desktop-#" files was this one item called simply "DESKTOP." That one was kind of a biggie ... as in being the actual desktop from my computer. The light bulb in my head (very dim at the moment) went off ... so THAT'S why there were so many files. And then reality hit ... because on my desktop was a folder entitled "Book" which contained over 40 completed devotions and another 50 or 60 partially written entries for my book. Over two years of writing ....poof!

I cried. Not only at that moment, but also each time I turned on the computer over the next week or so and saw the empty desktop. All that work, just .... gone.

So now, it's back to the drawing board, but instead of a book, I'm going to write here, as the mood strikes, in little bits. Maybe one day I'll get back to the book, but I think it's more important to get back to writing!

I welcome your comments, but please keep your language child appropriate. I don't expect everyone to agree with me, and I certainly don't expect to agree with everyone but I do like to hear what others think!

More to come!