HomeWork: Week 27
Which are your preferences? What do you actually have?
Carpet or hardwood floors? I prefer hardwood floors – I’d love to have nothing but hardwood through the entire house – but we have a mix. In the foyer and dining room (which we use as a library/catchall room) are hardwooded floors, in the kitchen and bathrooms are tiled floors, and everywhere else is carpeted.
Blinds or curtains? We have blinds throughout the house, and that’s what I prefer.
Tiles or sheet linoleum? Tiles. Ugh. I hate it.
Paint or wallpaper? We have paint throughout the house, but I think I’d prefer wallpaper in at least the bathrooms. Ah well – maybe in the next house!
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Is it wrong that
this made me laugh until I cried? Been there, done that!
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From my comments:
Hey, have you seen this site? It’s page after page of really creepy pictures!
AGH! Damn you! My eyes! MY EYES!
Could the Spud have her own cell phone? Just in case? Even though the bus thing is all figured out…
She could, but I’m resisting the idea of getting her her own phone at this point, because the idea of a 15 year-old with her own cell phone just screams PRINCESS to me. I know I’m going to have to get her her own phone when she gets her license and a job just so I can keep track of her, but we’ll cross THAT bridge when we get to it.
I’m getting a new computer in a few months…..and I’m sure since Fred is building one for you it will be the greatest(because.. well..You Are The Greatest!). So what all did he get for yours?
He got… something that will make it really fast and… something else that will make it fast… and something else that he swears will make it so fast my eyes will bleed! But most importantly, I got cool new speakers, an awesome yellow case, AND a yellow keyboard and mouse. I’ll slap up a picture of the whole setup once the new computer’s in place. New computer! Whoo!
You know, here in Hell, the school bus costs money, so most of the kids the spud’s age end up getting restricted drivers licenses. Add in the 70,000 college students, and you have a city where the majority of drivers are under 21. DON’T COME BITCHING TO ME ABOUT TRAFFIC.
Yeah, yeah, cry me a river. Hee! Actually, that reminds me of the first day of school when I was driving the spud to school, and she said “This will be better when I get my license and can drive myself to school every day!” and I said “Oh HELLO PRINCESS, just because you have your license doesn’t mean we’re going to run out and buy you a car, and you’re not using MY car every day!” I mean, please. Does she think she’s Paris Hilton? Have our discussions about getting a job and saving up for a car (which, of COURSE we’ll help her buy) gone in one ear and out the other, or what?
Of course, we’re talking about the child who’s more concerned with what the color schemes in her first apartment will be, than how she’s going to pay for that first apartment.
Sony… nice. They’re all I’ll buy. Here’s your camera…and here’s my camera, in case you care. How big a memory stick do you use?
When we were looking at buying the camera we have now, we actually thought about buying the camera you got, but size is an issue for us, since we like to carry the camera around when we’re on vacation.
We have a 256 MB memory stick, and it holds a pretty good number of pictures and short movies. It’s working well for us now, but god knows in five years we’ll be wondering how on earth we could have thought our camera took clear, crisp pictures, and what a big, bulky dinosaur it is, the way we talk about the pictures our very first camera took!
When I was growing up in the Northeast, we had 10 weeks for summer vacation (unless all the snow days got used up – then it was 9 weeks), and we also had one more week of vacation during the year than kids seem to have here in Ohio – we had a week off in February and a week off in April, but here they just get the one week in April. (I think their summer vacation is longer, though – mid-May to late August).
Yeah, my nephew has a week off in February and one in April, but here they only have a week off in March. In the last few years, they’ve added another week off in the middle of October (it’s called “Fall Vacation”. I wonder how hard they had to think to come up with THAT one?), and they always get at LEAST two weeks off for Christmas. I swear they spend more time on vacation than they do actually in school!
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So, I’ve gotta ask – you people in the UK, what’s the deal with the really REALLY short seasons of
Coupling? I’m currently watching Season 3, and there are only 7 episodes! Is that how long all of your series are? This is the first Britist series I’ve ever watched, so I had no clue there’d be so few shows in each season. What the hell do you watch when you’re waiting for the next season to start?
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“Just.. can’t… keep… my… eyes… open…”]]>
The way the British TV seasons are set up would make most American’s head explode 😉 Mainly because there really isn’t a season, it’s kind of like HBO actually. TV shows start and stop at random dates and can have anywhere from 5 to 30+ episodes per season. Plus there can be any amount of time between seasons of a TV show. At least that’s the way it used to be, I haven’t lived there for several years now. Add to that the fact that TV shows don’t regularly start on the hour and half hour. You might get a show that starts at 6:05 and is 35 minutes long, so the next show starts at 6:40 and is 45 minutes long so the next show starts at 7:25 and it’s different every day depending on the shows that are on.
Hmmm, I don’t think you wanted a dissertation on British TV, so I’ll stop, but I hope it helped.
Yep they are short in the UK compared to USA. Yours go on forever like 24 episodes! Ours are mostly 6 or 7.
Btw all kids have mobile phones in the UK, everyone has one, we are mobile phone crazed basically.
Robyn,
You are a perfectly sane individual – I laughed my ass off on the doggy ding dong story. I swear all dogs need to be fixed just to avoid such a problem. GROSS!
I laughed my ass off reading that dog story.
I bet that was one very happy dog, getting an unexpected delight in the middle of his day.
I think the answer re: your Coupling question lies in the fact that a) British TV companies don’t have the kind of budget that allows you to make very long series, b) up until recently there were only four channels available to most people, so shorter series allowed for greater variety c) Because British comedy tends to be written by one or two writers typically, there’s not the same ‘team’ approach as for say, Friends and it’s a lot harder for 2 people to write quality comedy for 22 episodes d) British TV is a lot less beholden to their advertisers (the BBC doesn’t have any) so it allows that kind of flexibility (along with the fact that British TV doesn’t axe shows if the ratings are dropping as US TV sometimes has to – Farscape, American Gothic and Dark Angel for example). Again, sorry for the essay but I hope that helps answer your question!
Cath, Scotland
Cath and Vicki – don’t apologize for the length of your posts; I actually think they’re quite interesting! I love that the advertisers over there don’t call the shots the way they do here.
I just checked the Reading List and have to ask “How did you get a copy of Little Earthquakes?” I’m looking forward to reading it based on what I’ve seen so far and Jennifer Weiner’s previous two bookd and her blog.
wow, you used one of mine! I feel like a celebrity! 😀
Just to let you know that you are not alone in the big old world of bad busses. My 8 y/o who is in the 3rd grade was told today by his bus drive that he could not get on the bus to go home today because he didn’t ride her bus last year. She told him to get on the bus he rode last year. He did and ended up 30 miles from where he was supposed to get off of the bus. Excuse me! Thank God he was smart enough not to get off of the bus and the bus driver ended up bringing him back to the bus depot where he was picked up by his grandmother. Needless to say the bus driver, the principal and vice principal of the school all understand exactly which bus my son is supposed to ride home tomorrow. While I was hysterically trying to find my child I gave serious though to getting my 8 y/o 3rd grader a cell phone and programming emergency numbers into it so this doesn’t happen again.
Keep writing. I love reading
I started watching the outrageously funny British series, “The Office” on DVD and after episode six episodes I was hungry for more. I rushed off to the video store to rent disc 2 and all it had on it was special features with no more episodes. I thought to myself, “What the…?”
Now I know why.
Robyn put my comment in her entry!
Yay! (I’m way too excited, maybe I should get a real life:-)
You could try giving Spud a prepaid phone. My god-daughter got one so she could call to be picked up after practice and “call mom” stuff like that. The cash is limited on it, so she is not inclined to yapyap with friends too much.
LOL Good thing I read this before I checked my stats or I’d have shit my pants thinking the wunderblog was picking on me again lol!
The gross thing is the dog is neutured so he’s like a eunuch I molested. Ew.
hey Robyn, have you seen this?
(on a different note, when entering my name on the comments form, I almost put “Lez” and that cracked me up for some reason. But I’m not a lez. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. heh.)
oops. I must have screwed up with making that link. sorry. 🙂
Recently there was “Supernanny” (great documentary on nanny helping tecah parenting skills to those with out of control brats!) on Channel 4 in the UK – and they only made three or 4 episodes! it was a massive hit, so they will comission more, and i hear it’s going to the US soon too. I think it’s a budget thing – they wait to check popularity before doing a full series. (Rather than comissioning loads then cancelling)
Also, shows don’t tend to run for years like they seem to in america. Teachers – a channel 4 comdey series – is the only comedy on that channel to run to 4 series.
Yeah, but these short series sure do drive me crazy as well. I missed the whole second series of cutting it before I even realised they were showing it again.
And what happened to Spooks – I loved that show. Oh yeah, and what happened to the one where Robson Green is a lawyer, I want that one back too.
I’m sick of Baldrick (is that how you spell it) running around with archaeologists – how come THOSE series seem to go for so long!