Category: Uncategorized

A Tosy meme.

1.Have you ever been searched by the cops?

Yes, in May 1972.

2. Do you close your eyes on roller coasters?

Generally not.

3. When’s the last time you’ve been sledding?

Pre-Lydia, i don’t remember.

4. Would you rather sleep with someone else, or alone?

Depends on who, I reckon.

5. Do you believe in ghosts?

Maybe.

6. Do you consider yourself creative?

Didn’t use to. Now, maybe, I think I might be.

7. Do you think O.J. killed his wife?

Don’t know. I followed this case about as little as one could and still live in the United States.

8. Jennifer Aniston or Angelina Jolie?

To do what?

9. Do you stay friends with your exes?

Many of them, yes. I think I invited at least four to my wedding with Carol, and at least two came. But my most recent ex, I have no contact with, even though she lives 30 minutes away

10. Do you know how to play poker?

Perfunctorally.

11. Have you ever been awake for 48 hours straight?

Yes, cramming for a calculus final exam my freshman year of college, which I passed; I was going to fail the course if I failed the exam. I looked at the calculus textbook a couple weeks later and understood almost nothing.

12. What’s your favorite commercial?

Ever? I don’t know. Probablty a Rice Krispies commercial where Snap, Crackle and Pop sing all the words to the song, and on the fourth verse all sing together.

13. What are you allergic to?

Penicillin, naprocyn, probably some grasses that give me hay fever.

14. If you’re driving in the middle of the night, and no one is around do you run red lights?

No. But the last time I drove in the middle of the night, I didn’t have a license. (The satatue of limitations HAS passed on this.)

15. Do you have a secret that no one knows but you?

Yes.

16. Boston Red Sox or New York Yankees?

Let’s go, Mets!

17. Have you ever been Ice Skating?

Yes. I’m really bad at it. In fact, the only reason I went last time I did was to woo Carol. (And it worked.)

18. How often do you remember your dreams?

When I sleep well, almost never. When I sleep poorly, almost always.

19. When was the last time you laughed so hard you cried?

Don’t remember, but it’s not a totally unheard of thing for me to do.

20. Can you name 5 songs by The Beatles?

Yes.

I saw here standing there, penny lane, strawberry foields forever, got to get you into my life, tomorrow never knows were the first ones off the top. I can give you about 155 more.

21. What’s the one thing on your mind now?

Paying my oral surgeon’s bill.

22. Do you know who Ghetto-ass Barbie is?

Thankfully, no.

23. Do you always wear your seat belt?

Yes. I HAVE been in cars when it was broken (usually in the back seat, ansd some years ago) – HATED that.

24. What cell service do you use?

None currently. Had Verizon Wireless, which cost WAY too much for the infrequent number of times we used it.

25. Do you like Sushi?

Not a lot. I’ll eat it. My wife LOVES it.

26. Have you ever narrowly avoided a fatal accident?

Yes, and I’m glad I had a seat belt on. My friend Lynn was driving in New Paltz on Route 32, heading south, and I’m in the passenger seat, when this car, which had been waiting for several seconds, sudddenly makes a left turn right into us. Lynn had a neck brace for six weeks. I was OK.

27. What do you wear to bed?

Depends on the weather. Usually T-shirt and pajama bottoms.

28. Been caught stealing?

Yes, candy or gum from a grocery store when I was about 6. My mother found it at home, and I had to bring it back and apologize. How mortifying.

29. What shoe size do you have?

10

30. Do you truly hate anyone?

Don’t think so, but let me think on that.

31. Classic Rock or Rap?

Given my lack of understanding of quite a bit of rap, though I loved the really early stuff, I guess classic rock, though certain songs can become so overplayed as to really irritate me.

32. If you could sleep with one famous person, who would it be?

Hmmm. I think this is a question more suited to Tom the Dog.

33. Favorite Song?

Oh, I can’t have A favorite song. It’s so dependent on mood, what I’ve listened to recently. It’ll change every time. This moment: As by Stevie Wonder, especially the “preach” part.

34. Have you ever sang in front of the mirror?

Yes, but not at the Y.

35. What food do you find disgusting?

Canned beets.

36. Do you sing in the shower?

Yes, but not at the Y.

37. Did you ever play, “I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours?”

Yeah, I was comparing scars with someone.

38. Have you ever made fun of your friends behind their back?

Probably, but no more so than I would to their faces.

39. Have you ever stood up for someone you hardly knew?

Yes, or didn’t know at all.

40. Have you ever been punched in the face?

The latter asked last week the favorite thing his readers have won. In the day, I was very good at winning things from the radio stations I listened to, because I had very good dialing fingers, an advantage lost when the redial button was invented. WENE in Endicott, near Binghamton, was my first station of choice, when I was in high school.
It was followed by WNPC, the New Paltz College station. From them, one of the first things I won this album by this singer I’d vaguely heard of named David Bowie, an album called “Hunky Dory”, with a bunch of weird songs which I liked for the most part. My roommate Ron, however, did not, except for this one song called Changes.

In my early Albany days, I listened to, and got stuff from WQBK-FM, Q-104.

46 – Sleep, maybe 6.5 hours in bed, sleeping, or attempting to do so

38 – Work, including some time at home getting rid of junk e-mails I get at work

16 – Specific Lydia time. This involves getting her up, fed, clothes changed in the morning, and stories, diaper changes in the evening, often also including going around the block with her. On the weekends, it’s a bit more concentrated, with Carol going grocery shopping, and me playing with or reading to Lydia.

14 – Eating. About half of this, at lunch, usually also means reading the paper or a magazine. Much of the rest of the time involves Lydia at dinner and especially breakfast.

12- Watching TV. Right now, this includes the nightly news, JEOPARDY!, CBS Sunday Morning, ABC This Week and The Closer, almost always on tape, because Carol & I decided that Lydia REALLY doesn’t need to see the news right now. Also, catching the weather, the first five minutes of the Today show to see if the world’s imploded, catching the weather. When watching taped programming, I generally have a newspaper to read while the commercials flash by.

8 – Racquetball, including time getting there, and showering and dressing afterwards.

7 – Blogging. It’s not like it’s an hour a day, every day. Some days, it’s the five minutes it takes to post. Other days, it’s whatever free time I can find: the last 15 minutes of my lunch break, the 20 minutes it takes for Carol to put Lydia to bed, a half hour of insomniac musings, the hour Carol takes Lydia swimming on Saturday morning. And the blogging also includes my time reading others, which could be 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there.

5 – House stuff: putting dishes in the dishwasher, washing the pots and pans, picking up Lydia’s toys, putting away my CDs.

4- Church, including choir and committees

3- Phone, mostly family. I spend a lot of time at work on the phone, so I tend to avoid it when I can.

2- Reading the paper while listening to music.

13 -All that miscellaneous stuff: getting to and from work, errands, weekend showers (weekday showers counted under racquetball), occasional movies, taking out the garbage, musing on life

I pull out my trusty The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present by Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh. I know there’s a list in the back of the book that addresses this issue. But NO LIST. Huh? I’m not crazy (really, I’m not, I swear to Rudy). I was looking at my 8th edition (c. 2003), so I pull out my 5th edition, c. 1992, and the list is THERE. So they dropped this list? How else has the back of the book changed?

Appendix 1 Prime Time Schedules – in both volumes
Appendix 2 Emmy Award Winners – ditto
Appendix 3 Top-rated shows by season – ditto
Appendix 4 Longest-running series – ditto
Appendix 5 The Top 100 series of All Time – ditto (#1 is 60 Minutes, BTW)
Appendix 6 Prime Time series reunions – ditto
But then
Appendix 7 – Series Airing in Prime Time on More Than One Network – ONLY in the 1992 version
Appendix 8 in the older book, Prime Time Spin-Offs, is Appendix 7 in the new book
Appendix 9 in the older book, Prime Time Series Based on Movies, is Appendix 8 in the new book
Appendix 10 in the older book, Prime Time Network TV Series that Also Aired on Network Radio, is Appendix 9 in the new book
Appendix 11 in the older book, Hit Theme Songs from Series, is Appendix 10 in the new book
The new book does have Network Web Addresses as its Appendix 11. But then for Appendix 12, nine pages of “The Ph.D. Trivia Quiz”

As a reference librarian, this is the kind of thing that makes me frustrated. I’m forced to hold on to the old reference source (or at least to Xerox those pages) because the new edition of a reference source inexplicably drops a perfectly good, even unique, reference point in favor of piffle, in this case, a trivia quiz. This has happened in our business library as well. It’s maddening (no, wait, I said I WASN’T crazy…)

Dear Messrs. Brooks and Marsh:

Please bring back “Series Airing in Prime Time on More Than One Network” in your Complete Directory for your next edition. It is a list not easily found. If you need more space, feel free to drop the trivia contest. Quizzes are not why people buy your book. They buy it as a reference source.

I’m guessing that perhaps you dropped the chart because you didn’t know how to handle the so-called “netlets”, WB and UPN, or even FOX, because they don’t broadcast the three hours of prime-time programming that is associated with a “network”. Of course, the early years reflected in your book, the schedules were pretty sparse, too. Perhaps, your calculations this will be easier, now that the CW has replaced the netlets. I would ask you to include the CW (and its antecedents) as well as FOX.

Thank you.

Four and a half years ago, I went to an oral surgeon to remove one of my upper wisdom teeth (#16), because my dentist doesn’t do such tricky extractions. I was told that if it were just the tooth, it would cost X, but if it involved patching up the sinus area, it would cost about 4X. (The day of the extraction, wee were almost killed sliding into a snowbank.) It turned out that it cost X.