Domestic Geek

While surfing around this morning, I came across an article that a former Zoom actor, Jared Nathan, had died. I used to watch the original Zoom from the 70s all the time. This particular actor did one season when they revived the show in the late 90s. He was only only 21 and a student at Juliard in New York. How sad. When I went to his site to read a little about him, he mentioned the Ubbi Dubbi Translator. I loved the Ubbi Dubbi segments, but I could never speak it.

I've been watching that Christmas show marathon on ABC Family most of today to get myself into some Christmas spirit. It's funny because Marcus has never seen most of those shows. He keeps making fun of them and of me (I cry when Nestor the Long-Eared Donkey's mother dies — "Ears, Nestor" *sob*). He was asking about whatever happened to Rankin/Bass since they were the kings of Christmas specials back in the 60s and 70s. Quite a bit of information there on the old wikipedia page. I also found the Rankin/Bass website which led me to these adorable Heat Miser/Snow Miser ornaments that I must have for my collection. The Year Without a Santa Claus comes on here shortly and I can't wait —I LOVE the Miser brothers! I dug out my Miser dolls for the occasion!





I was trying to get the lights ready so that Marcus could get them put up before he left for work. No such luck. Oh, well. It's still supposed to be nice tomorrow, too. I plugged one set in and it shorted bad. I really need to replace a lot of those light strings. I'm pretty sure the one that blew was one that had belonged to my mother. I was bummed that there wouldn't be enough sets to go around the roof, but I found a couple of sets that I had purchased on clearance at Lowes a couple of years ago. Yay! I had bought them to be replacement bulbs (since buying whole light strings, especially after Christmas, is way cheaper than buying bulbs alone.

I painted the bulbs yellow in my new tree top star last night. It looks a lot better than being plain white. I'll see if I can get a decent picture to post later. Marcus set me up a directory on the server for my craft blog. I really want to start documenting my craftiness. I installed wordpress in it and now I need to find or design a cool theme. Not a high priority right at the moment, though.

OK, I'm gonna go work on Christmas cards and popcorn garland while I watch some more Christmas shows. Then I need to make Marcus a Santa graphic for his website, decorate my tree, make my new blog design...wow, I have a lot to do today. What am I doing sitting here?

OK, I've been crocheting away while I've been watching The Polar Express on ABC Family channel. I love that "Hot Chocolate" song from that movie. The animation is a little weird, but still a good story. I've got almost 23 feet of garland done up to this point. Yay, me!



There's a classic Christmas show marathon on ABC Family most of the day tomorrow. I'll have to check it out while I'm decorating. It's supposed to be in the 60s tomorrow, so hopefully I can get most of the outside stuff up before Marcus goes to work. Since the company Christmas party is tomorrow night (and we're not going because Marcus is Mr. Antisocial and I can't go by myself since I'm only part time), they're closing the whole place down so people can attend. They're a 24/7 operation, so the place to be totally shut down is rare. Marcus is using that time to take the networks down and do some work he's been itching to do since he started there.

I had intended on watching my Netflix DVDs early in the week so that I could have Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest here for this weekend's viewing pleasure. Oh, well.

I found a treetop star that $7 at Ace Hardware of all places. Every other one I saw around town that lit up was expensive and ugly.

This stupid ruling that made us lose our NY/LA stations is really pissing me off. I almost missed Medium tonight because I lost all my my timers when the stations went away. Fortunately CSI: New York was a repeat and I only missed the first 10 minutes of Medium, but this sucks. Thursday was always tricky even with both coasts to tape from. Looks like if I can't watch Supernatural live on the antennae, then I'll miss it totally. At least I can watch Ugly Betty on ABC's website. I really wish television would go totally "on-demand" and you could watch what you want when you want.

I took a much needed blogging break yesterday. I spent the afternoon helping Marcus organize his office at work. I designed my Christmas card in my head, so I'm going to making those over the next couple of days so I can get them in the mail by early next week. If you want one, just send me your snail mail addy via email. Then I painted some more wooden balls for my crocheted popcorn garland. As soon as I do some posting here, I'm going to crochet while watching Ugly Betty on ABC's website. Since we lost our East/West coast stations from Dish Network on Thursday (all thanks to FOX, we later found out), there are just some shows I'm not going to be able to watch if they don't have them on their web sites. The senate has a bill to allow some "distant channel" services for some satellite subscribers, but even if it passes, Marcus and I won't be eligible. *sigh* That sucks. I really liked having the New York affiliates. Oh, well. We went ahead and downgraded out satellite package, as well. If only we could get rid of shopping channels, public interest and religious stations. That is over 30 channels right there that I will NEVER watch. What a waste. I really wish they would offer an a la carte type system, like pick 50 channels YOU WANT for $39.95 or something. Maybe someday.