· February 11, 2013 ·

Good morning & happy Monday! After Saturday's blog I went through the mail, watered the plants, cleaned the dishwasher, did the dishes & cleaned the counters & video game system, & dusted my PC. Then I made egg salad for Pete & I & when we finished eating we went up into Princeton to pick Josh up. When we got home Pete & I watched The Legend of 1900 while I worked on the EMS afghan I'm making with the Knit Wit. After the movie I checked facebook & then it was back out to watch another movie & work on the lace doily I'm crocheting. I made slow baked BBQ baby back ribs for dinner & then we watched another movie while I worked on needlepoint. I ended up doing 3½ rows of needlepoint on the project before deciding to throw it in the trash. I had bought it on eBay & it was old. It looks as if a moth had eaten through some of the yarn on the card & the black yarn was missing. That's what I get for trusting people on eBay to not rip me off given the slightest chance. I pulled out the next project & ended up throwing it in the trash too. Also from eBay, I tugged on the yarn & it broke in my hands. Old. Ripped off again. The 3rd project, although in a needlepoint kit, when I took it out it turns out that someone had already started the project & instead of using needlepoint, they were cross stitching it. They made a mess & when they completely screwed up the project, shoved it back in the packaging & sold it on eBay. JERKS! That's 3 out of 3 so far. FOURTH one now ... ah ha. One I can use! Very nice ... a little cabin at the end of a long winding driveway back in the trees. Cute little scene. Everything is included, no one had already started the project using the wrong technique, & it was in mint condition. Tried to break the yarn in my hands & almost cut my finger. Strong yarn. GOOD! I'll start that project next week when I do needlepoint again. I have so many different crafts that I enjoy that I had to spread them out over 7 days & even at that some days have 2 different crafts scheduled. Yes, I schedule crafting time. If I didn't schedule things I enjoy, I'd never have a chance to do them. I need to re-arrange my office. Not the furniture, just all the "stuff" in it. I'm completely out of room. I do 10 different crafts. Each with their own materials & charts. Where do I put all this stuff? I need 10 shelves free & open. HA! Hmmm ... of all the bookshelves in my office, they're all full. The wall unit has space, but I can't reach it easily due to all the STUFF piled in front of it. Boxes of stuff from the other house that needs to go on eBay plus piles of books that Kyle just evicted out of his room that I need to either put on eBay or find empty shelving for in here (my books). the wall unit is off limits until I can REACH it ... someday. The white bookshelf is next. It's completely full with books. My diaries going back to 1993, misc books, home books, organizing books, crafting books, & educational books. Next bookshelf, section 1: Candles & desktop calendars, 1 each per shelf. This is an end piece on the bookshelf ... a very thin, rounded set of shelves. Nothing else will really fit on them. Section 2 - Shelf 1: EMS & Firefighting books. Shelf 2: Empty notebooks, binders, & folders, EMS & Fire catalogs, & my CD collection. Shelf 3: My weather station display, Sims 3 manuals, & some space. Shelf 4: My EMS & Fire Monopoly board games. These are here for display only, they can be moved to the very top of the shelving, freeing up the entire shelf. Bottom shelf: Stuff. Can easily clean that out & have another entire shelf free. Section 3: A rounded corner piece that is IN the corner. Concave as compared to the end piece. More space in here & everything in there is for display purposes. I don't have room to display things anymore. Every square inch needs to be used for functional things. Books I actually use, crafting projects, etc. As much as I love my Zippo lighter collection, I simply need the space for things I USE. 5 more shelves will get freed up here. Final section. Short little column of shelves. My scanner & more display stuff. OK, decor goes out the window in exchange for functional. This is why I no longer buy decorative items. There is NOWHERE in this house to put anything decorative. Every square inch of space is needed for things we USE. Yes, we could have easily bought a larger house, but why? Why have 4,000 square feet of huge house so you can fill it with decorative items that you need to dust for the rest of your life? I'll admit I WANTED a huge house, we looked at them, we almost bought a couple of them ... but in the end, we loved THIS house. It's small, yes. But the yard was beautiful, neighbors wonderful, street was like something from a painting, etc. For what it was lacking in square footage, it made up for everywhere else. The large houses were great on the inside, but you step outside & had a strip of "lawn" no wider than a push mower circling the house. All the houses on the street were brick & all looked the same. No charm, no individuality, no beautiful scenery. The driveway would hold a small car, but my truck was too long to fit so I would have had to park in the street. The whole neighborhood was off of a major highway & there was no traffic light at the entrance (there still isn't). I would have had to make a left turn across rush hour traffic (2 lanes), into a suicide center lane where people were trying to make a left into the neighborhood from one side & a left into a gas station from the other side, almost having a head-on collision with each other & here I come into the center of the mess from the side as people were doing the same trying to make a left out of the gas station across the street ... then if I survived that I would have had to eventually floor it to merge into the fast lane of traffic while the sun was directly in my eyes heading east to take the kids to school. This would have gone on every morning, 5 days a week for years. Oh hell NO! So you see, we may have a smaller house than most of you, but there were MANY reasons we chose to live in this house. Many reasons. Anyway, back to my crafting. I can use the wall unit after moving a bunch of boxes of books that are SO heavy I can barely slide them across the tile floor, but then my projects would be safe on shelves that are protected by glass doors. Then when that fills up, I've got all the shelves that I can free up on the large shelving set near my desk. Looks like a large part of today may be rearranging stuff in my office. If I don't have time, which I normally don't, I'll do it 1 day at a time until each craft is eventually put away in here safely. 10 crafts, 10 days. I have time to do it that way. I normally hate doing things piecemeal like that, but sometimes that's the only option when there's no time to do a full project all at once. 1st thing I did when I woke up yesterday was clean the house. I wanted to get that out of way so it was DONE. I went through the Sunday paper, checked facebook, had Hormel Completes for lunch, cleaned out my e-mail from the week, went grocery shopping & picked Josh up from work, found a neat online coloring book that had useful mandalas that I downloaded for crafting projects in the future, spoke to Kathy for a bit, & then worked on my machine knitted afghan for a couple hours. Progress, I love progress & I love how this afghan is coming out. The scrap yarn thing keeps it interesting. I like seeing how the pattern looks in each different color / type of yarn. Yesterday I was working with a dark purple yarn that's on the thick side. It looks great. :) When my 2 hours was up we dropped Josh off in Princeton & then came back & I showered, made cheeseburgers for dinner, watched some YouTube, & then settled into the nighttime routine with Pete. This morning was a busy one of the FD. A commercial fire alarm closely followed by a MVA on the highway. Milligan Water meeting tonight.

All-time favorite American playground games top 10:

1. Kickball
2. Tag
3. Wall Ball
4. Simon Says
5. Flag Football
6. Whiffle Ball
7. Hopscotch
8. Jump Rope
9. 4 Square
10. Dodgeball

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Final episode of Arrested Development airs on Fox (2006):

Celebrated by critics and beloved by its relatively small but devout fan base, the Fox television series Arrested Development airs its last episode on this day in 2006. Arrested Development, created by Mitchell Hurwitz, premiered in November 2003. It was almost universally acclaimed by critics, who praised its sharp, complicated writing and stellar acting, as well as the multi-layered plotlines and interesting camera work that set it apart from run-of-the-mill network sitcoms.

Arrested Development was narrated by Ron Howard, the former Happy Days star-turned-Oscar-winning movie director (2001’s A Beautiful Mind), in an uncredited performance. Jason Bateman starred as Michael Bluth, by far the most responsible member of a madcap family whose patriarch, George Bluth Sr. (Jeffrey Tambor), has been sent to jail for dubious accounting procedures. With George Sr. in prison, Michael is forced to take over management of the Bluth Company and provide a much-needed stabilizing force for the rest of the Bluth clan: his manipulative mother (Jessica Walter); his magician older brother (Will Arnett); his self-obsessed sister (Portia de Rossi) and her aspiring actor husband (David Cross); and his child-like youngest brother (Tony Hale), who still clings to the hem of his mother’s fur coat. Rounding out the comedy, Michael’s sensitive son (Michael Cera) harbors a crush on his cousin (Alia Shawkat), with whom he is forced to share a room after the clan starts sharing a model home on one of the Bluth Company’s developments.

At the 2004 Emmy Awards, Arrested Development won no fewer than four statuettes-- for directing, writing, casting and for Outstanding Comedy Series. Bateman also won a Golden Globe Award in 2005 for Best Actor in a Television Series--Musical or Comedy. Despite critics’ rapture and the enthusiasm of its fan base, the series earned low ratings from the beginning. While Fox renewed Arrested Development for a second season, it shortened its run to only 18 episodes--a fact that was worked into the jokes on the show, along with jokes about its corporate sponsor, Burger King, and jokes about its much higher-rated Sunday-night competition (ABC’s Desperate Housewives). A few of the memorable guest stars during the show’s three-year run included Liza Minnelli, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Henry Winkler, Scott Baio and Charlize Theron.

During its third season, Arrested Development’s audience averaged around 4 million viewers, compared with 6 million during the previous season. With the threat of cancellation hovering, rumors flew that Arrested Development might be picked up by HBO or Showtime--either of which might have been a better fit for its offbeat, often racy humor. References to these rumors were also worked into the script.

In February 2006, to the dismay of fans, Fox pulled the plug on Arrested Development for good. The following month, it was reported that Hurwitz had closed long-running negotiations with Showtime and determined that Arrested Development as a TV series was over. With the program named as one of the 100 Best Shows of All Time by Time magazine, buzz began to grow about an Arrested Development movie--exciting news for the show’s loyal fans.

If you're afraid of being in a bank during a bank robbery, don't go to the bank on Friday mornings between 9:a & 11:a. That's when most bank robberies happen.

I've been asked to make an announcement by the fire department. They've asked me to announce that if you flick your Bic, you better have a lighter. -Johnny Carson 1975

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Pop superstar Whitney Houston dies at age 48 (2012):

On this day in 2012, Whitney Houston, one of the world's top-selling singers from the mid-1980s to late 1990s, is found dead in the bathtub of her suite at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. Houston's death was the result of accidental drowning; heart disease and cocaine, which was found in her system, were determined to be contributing factors. The 48-year-old pop diva, known for her soaring voice and beauty, won a total of six Grammy Awards and 22 American Music Awards (more than any other female), and was credited with influencing several generations of singers, from Mariah Carey to Jennifer Hudson.

Whitney Elizabeth Houston was born on August 9, 1963, in Newark, New Jersey, to John Houston, a theatrical manager, and Cissy Houston, a singer who backed up a variety of artists, including Aretha Franklin and Elvis Presley. Growing up, the younger Houston sang in her church's gospel choir. In high school, she performed background vocals on songs for Chaka Khan and others, and modeled, becoming one of the first African-American women to appear on the cover of Seventeen magazine.

In 1983, music producer Clive Davis heard Houston perform at a New York City nightclub and signed her to a recording deal. Her self-titled debut album, released in 1985, sold more than 25 million copies around the world and featured the hit singles "Saving All My Love for You," "How Will I Know," "You Give Good Love" and "The Greatest Love of All." Her next album, 1987's "Whitney," was also a top-seller and included the hits "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)," "Didn't We Almost Have It All," "Where Do Broken Hearts Go" and "So Emotional." Her third album, 1990's "I’m Your Baby Tonight," was another big commercial success.

In 1992, the songstress made her movie debut, starring opposite Kevin Costner in the blockbuster "The Bodyguard."  The film’s soundtrack featured Houston’s recording of the ballad "I Will Always Love You," which became the best-selling single by a female artist in music history. She went on to co-star in "Waiting to Exhale" (1995) and "The Preacher’s Wife" (1996), and also performed on the hit soundtracks for both movies.

In 1992, Houston married singer Bobby Brown, whose bad boy reputation was a contrast to her then-wholesome public image. The couple had a daughter in 1993. Houston and Brown's relationship was tumultuous and became frequent tabloid fodder. They divorced in 2007.

In 1998, Houston released "My Love is Your Love," which, like her previous albums, sold millions of copies.  However, over the next decade, her career was marred by substance abuse and erratic public behavior and she spent time in rehab facilities. In 2009, Houston released what would be her final album, "I Look to You." In 2010, she embarked on her first world tour in more than 10 years, with concerts in Asia, Australia and Europe. However, these shows received mixed reviews, with some critics and fans complaining Houston’s voice sounded strained. In 2011, she entered rehab again for drug and alcohol treatment.

On the afternoon of February 11, 2012, Houston died at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where she was expected to perform that night at a pre-Grammy Awards party hosted by Clive Davis. A week later, on February 18, her televised funeral was held at New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, and featured musical tributes by such performers as Stevie Wonder, Alicia Keys and the gospel singers BeBe and CeCe Winans. Tyler Perry, Kevin Costner and Houston’s cousin, Dionne Warwick, were among those who spoke at the service. The following day, Houston was buried next to her father at Fairview Cemetery in Westfield, New Jersey.

When relationships are strained & the air charged with emotion, an attempt to teach is often perceived as a form of judgement & rejection.