It’s a heatwave!

Summer has finally caught up with southern California! While the rest of the country was already roasting we had unusually cool weather. But now they are predicting a high of 105 in the next couple of days. Oh boy!  So, I was thinking, since many of you will be trying to stay indoors and stay cool, you may want a little entertainment….so you should switch on over to my new blog site! It is the same Woman in the Middle, just at a new location in the world of the Internet!  Just go to womaninthemid.com  where you will see “Subscribe to blog via email” in the upper right hand corner. Enter your email, click the “subscribe” button, and you will get Woman in the Middle coming, once again, to your mail box!

 

Hope you are staying cool this week!!!

Hey Hey Hey!

No, this post is not about Fat Albert! It is about reminding you to head on over to womaninthemid.com and signing up to follow this blog at its new home. I hope you will do that soon because I miss you! The latest  post is called “Thank you.” If you did not get that then you are no longer following the REAL woman in the middle! It is complicated, I know, but, goodness, you wouldn’t want to miss any posts about the Rock, would you????

To My Wonderful Followers

As I mentioned in my post yesterday I have, with the help of friends, moved things around and this blog is no longer hosted on WordPress. Just some housekeeping issues, no problems. However, doing that did create one problem that we could not fix. Everything was moved seamlessly to the new site except my followers. Boo Hoo! So you 41 wonderful people, if you would still like to receive email notification of my posts, please go to womaninthemid.com and sign up once again to follow me. My post yesterday was called “Books are so Wonderful” so if you did not get that one you know you need to sing up again to follow me. The “follow me” tool is conveniently located in the upper right hand corner so you can’t miss it. Hope to see you at the new site!

Changing things up

Hello! If you are seeing this message and are a regular reader of Woman in the Middle, then I need you to bookmark a new site! Right now you have bookmarked womaninthemid.wordpress.com. If you could just start using the womaninthemid.com domain then you will be able to see my new and improved website! I just made a few upgrades…well I didn’t make them, my computer savvy friends Don and Joe made them! I hope you will mosey on over to womaninthemid.com and keep on reading! All the new stuff will be posted over there and I am SURE you don’t want to miss a single word of my scintillating posts! See you there!

The Rock makes it Debut

The infamous rock from my fair city is in place in its new act display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and will officially be revealed this Sunday June 24th!!! To celebrate the museum is giving the residents of all the cities the rock passed through , including mine, free entrance into the museum for a week starting Sunday. I plan on taking advantage of the opportunity to see the rock and I will take photos, of course! Let me know if you hear about the Rock(someplace other than here). I think the amount of publicity this boulder has gotten is hysterical!

My New Addiction

I have a new addiction, to a television program that is. It is a nice change of pace from the crime shows (or blood, guts, and gore) that we usually watch. Many of you will be surprised that we hadn’t found it yet. I am happily settling in to watch Big Bang Theory every night this summer. It makes me laugh. While we are not theoretical physicists as are some of the characters, their nerdiness does hit a bit close to home and probably makes it that much funnier to us.

By the way, I doubt I will be watching it every night. I do have to share the TV with the rest of the family and they probably will want to watch something else occasionally. Sigh. On the Big Bang Theory website they have lists and lits of quotes from the show. I picked out a few that made me laugh and posted them below. Happy Thursday!

Sheldon: Ah, gravity – thou art a heartless bitch.

Sheldon: Why do you have the Chinese character for ‘soup’ tattooed on your right buttock? Penny: It’s not ‘soup’; it’s ‘courage’. Sheldon: No it isn’t. But I suppose it does take courage to demonstrate that kind of commitment to soup.

(The guys are playing Dungeons & Dragons, with Sheldon as Dungeon Master.) Sheldon: The entrance to the dungeon is a moss-covered door. You manage to open it only to find yourself face-to-face with a hideous, foul-smelling, moss-covered ogre. What do you do? Howard: I say, “Hey Ma, what’s for dinner?”

Sheldon: I think that you [Leonard] have as much of a chance of having a sexual relationship with Penny as the Hubble telescope does of discovering at the center of every black hole is a little man with a flashlight searching for a circuit breaker.

Viva Las Vegas

We just spent the weekend in Las Vegas. Hubby and I were just there last November but the girls hadn’t been in a while so we had a little family get away. Las Vegas is an interesting place. On this trip the “interesting” started on the way there! Here are some highlights/comments on our Vegas get away.

1. Four young men in a car heading to Vegas. In one of the side windows a handwritten sign read “Show us your boobs.” Dream on boys! Since I had two young ladies in my car (the age group the sign was directed at) I gave them a dirty look as we drove by for good measure!

2. Once we got to Vegas on Saturday Youngest Daughter went to meet up with some friends who also happened to be in town. One of the girls saw her sun glasses and asked, “Are your sunglasses Fendi?” “No,” my Youngest replied, “I got them at the 99 cent store. But they were originally $15!” I am still laughing about that one!

3. We stayed at the Monte Carlo. It is in a good location on the strip, isn’t too expensive, and we have had pretty good luck there. We ate at the buffet Saturday night. It was yummy! In the past it was just called the “Monte Carlo Buffet.” They have changed the name, I kid you not, to the “Big Belly Buffet.” It was there in huge letters along with a cartoon drawing of a cook with a HUGE belly. Seriously? Who thought that up? Who wants to eat at a buffet with a name that reminds you that eating there will just make you fat?

4. The Time: Midnight. The Place: A crowded and hot elevator in the Monte Carlo Hotel.  The Incident: An Asian gentleman whips out his cell phone and starts talking on the elevator in his native tongue and in a loud voice. I refrained from yanking the phone from his hand and screaming “Oh no you don’t!” But only just.

5. Speaking of elevators, they were always hot, even the ones inside the buildings. Why oh why?

6. We went to the Penn and Teller show at the Rio. I highly recommend it. The whole family enjoyed it!

7. The best part was getting to spend time together as a family. I have a very funny family and we had some good laughs along the way.

Traditional Dad

I was born in 1961 and I had a very traditional dad. He did the yard work while my Mom did the inside housework. The only time (or at least almost the only time) he cooked was over a grill. He took care of the cars. He paid the mortgage. My mom bought the groceries…anyway, you see how it was. But the one way he wasn’t traditional was in his plans and expectations for me. He expected me to go to college and told me I could be any thing I wanted to be. He did not put any restrictions on my future because I was a woman. I am very grateful for that. Because of that I have a bachelors and a masters. I have worked in fields where I was often only women in the room. They say that girls need a dad in so many ways. In my experience I can see why.

My girls are very lucky that they have a dad who also encourages them to do what they want, regardless of their gender. That is why one plans to be a high school English teacher and the other plans on being a mechanical engineer.  Obviously, in our house we like to cover the gambit of possible careers!

A belated Happy Father’s Day to all of the wonderful dads out there, including the ones in my life!

Some Updates

A few updates on some of the things that have been going on lately:

1. I survived my picture-taking today. The photographer insisted on taking some with me smiling with my lips together. While not as bad a making me put my chin down (thus creating even more chins)  I still don’t think that is one of my best looks. Hope they choose one where my teeth are showing!

2. We have survived six days with the repaired window and thus far no golf balls have come near it. Oh boy! The weekend is coming!

3. I was back in my local 99 cent store a couple of days ago and I am happy to report that no one showed me their bra or other undergarments. As a matter of fact all the other shoppers ignored me. I liked it that way!

4. That blog post I started, the one I titled “That’s Creepy” but I couldn’t remember what I meant? I still don’t remember. Oh well. I am sure there are lots of other things I don’t remember, but I don’t remember that I don’t remember them….do you think I can get one more “remember” in this sentence? What was I supposed to remember?   I think I just like typing remember….

On No! A Photo!

The good news: I have gotten a freelance position with the local paper to do a twice monthly column on local history. It starts in July.

The bad news: They will be taking my photo which will run with my column. This photo will show up in the paper at least TWICE a month.

Oh lordy! When I look in the mirror I keep expecting to see my 30-year-old self at least 50 lbs ago.   But that is not what I see when I actually look in the mirror. Sigh.

I have put in a call to my hair dresser. When you have had the same hairdresser for 26 years you can count on her in emergency situations such as these.  I  made a visit yesterday to the Clinique counter in my local department store. There a kind woman named Eva made me over and I bought an obscene number of products designed to show me at my best, or at least what passes for best when you are 50.

I have my clothes picked out as well. Nothing new, just something from my closet. I have enough office type clothes around that coming up with an appropriate top and a pair of black pants was not a problem.

Now I am just praying I don’t get the news photographer that makes his/her subjects always tilt their chin down. I can always tell when someone in the paper had their photo taken by that photographer. When I tilt my chin down multiple chins appear so it might result in a show down if any chin tilting is requested.

Whew! I feel like I have been preparing for battle and now I just have to wait until dawn…Actually I have to wait until 10:30 a.m. on Friday. We shall see how it goes. I am comforted by the fact that the picture will be very small when it appears in the paper!