Random Collected Videos

Not wanting to spend lots of time blogging tonight, but wanted to share a few videos.... 

So I heard this old song for the first time a few weeks ago and fell in love with it.  It's such a sweet, sweet love song. I know it's bluegrass and some people aren't crazy for that, but I think it's absolutely beautiful.


 "I Heard the Bluebirds Sing," by the Browns



This video is ADORABLE. (Thanks, Will!)


So freaking cute.


Speaking of thanks to Will, he's on a roll as he also shared this amazing find tonight....



The 1967 televised Tony's. The first televised Tony Awards.

I haven't watched it yet, I want to be able to sit down and devote time to it. But look at those names. Gower Champion. Zero Mostel. Carol Burnett. David Merrick.

This is AWESOME.

Vintage Stock Conversations

This past Saturday Brad, Regina & I went up to Vintage Stock. They were looking for games and I was along for the ride. And when we entered the store Brad pointed out a top-loader Nintendo with SMB3 loaded up to play. Well, that made me content so I went to play while they mused over the games.

And after playing for about fifteen minutes I suddenly hear this voice behind me:
"Whoa....whoa.... that is... that is.... that is the ORIGINAL... the ORIGINAL MARIO BROTHERS. On the ORIGINAL SUPER NINTENDO."

I grinned. There was a boy, probably 11-13 behind me watching.

"No," I corrected, "this is on the Nintendo. This is before the Super."

"Wow. Wow."

His friend walked up and the first boy immediately pointed it out.
"Dude, LOOK. That is the ORIGINAL MARIO BROTHERS. On the NINTENDO. That's...that's.... that's so cool!"
(No. I didn't bother to correct the Original Mario Brothers issue. He was too overwhelmed with everything else. :) )
"Wow....that's the original? That's still so cool though!"
"I KNOW. Cause....cause...cause....it's the CLASSIC. This is the CLASSIC."


It was obvious that he had either actually never seen one before or at least never seen a working one before. 

I asked if he wanted to play. Immediately, "No! No." and he just stood there watching.
I asked his friend if he wanted to play. "Sure... I'll try." and as I grabbed the controller he stared at the World 2 Screen. "Where do I go?"
"Oh! Just push down to go to the level."
(After a few minutes of level play.)
"....this is SO different from Galaxy!"

No matter how many italics or caps I use, it will not quite capture his excitement and how enamored he was with the ORIGINAL. It was awesome. I loved every minute of it.

I dreamed last night, I got on a boat to heaven....

Not....exactly.

So last night I had a dream that several of us were in a Mrs. Byland production (and I would add "in college" here, but I'm not entirely sure we were) and it was a children's version of Urinetown. (Not the place, of course, the musical.) But it was very shoddily put together and we were all in a regular clothes because our costumes weren't there for some reason. And we were in full performance mode with an audience. But even though it was Urinetown, in the middle of it there was "Friend Like Me" from Aladdin and a giant Genie puppet that looked awesome, especially in the midst of the fact that we had no scenery or costumes or anything.

And then in the middle of that song Andrea (yes, from OBU) slid onto the stage on her knees with her arms extended in victory because a prop had arrived just in the nick of time. It was a bracelet. I don't know why that was so important.

But then later the UPS guy that had brought it showed up in the balcony and announced "Hey! I'm the guy who got it here just in time. Also, I'm going to be 33 this week." And I clapped for his birthday, but I was the only one and so he left.

And then we had no idea how the show was supposed to end. We hadn't rehearsed it and I guess we hadn't even read the script? So suddenly - in a desperate attempt to figure out how to end the show - someone grabbed me by the wrist and said "Hey Joker, what do you think now?" or something and suddenly I'm supposed to be the Joker. And in the dream I know I have to at least carry out a little bit of time as the Joker or it would just be weird. So I'm running around pretending to be the Joker and after several minutes someone whispers with a sincere grin "Do you like it?" as in "Do you like the way this is wrapping up?" And I yell (as Joker) yell "Do I like it?! DO I LIKE IT?!"

And then the guy who was suddenly "Batman" (again, sans costumes since we have none) suddenly acted like he was putting a needle/shot in my face and I went to the ground screaming in acted agony. And since I was wanting to put us all out of our misery Joker died from it.

And in the dream I remember even thinking "This is just as weird as poison boot." 

And then I had to take some kid I didn't know home. Since it was a children's production and all.

--------

A few nights ago now I dreamed that Holly, Sam, Brad, Regina, Eric & I were all in a car.

And we drove up to this house.

Where, for some reason, our relatives & friends already were. But somehow we had relatives that looked like Godzilla-style monsters and some others which I thought - even in the dream - Wow, these guys look like they're from Ahhh! Real Monsters.

And then there was this Oogie Boogie look alike from Nightmare Before Christmas and he ate some of our relatives.

The monster creature feature looking ones, that is.

And that was okay, apparently, because all of us stayed and hung out.

But before we left we - I guess - suddenly realized we had to free our relatives.

So I started stashing scissors in my back pockets trying to hide them so I could use them as weapons. And somehow Will showed up and all of us were hacking at Oogie Boogie. And we could see the monsters. But Oogie told us that we'd never free them because he was.... too emotional?

And then in the midst of the hacking, I noticed King Ghirdoriah was in there because I saw his three heads. 

And when I woke up I was racing around chasing children and throwing them into the car for safety.
And I ran past someone who was sitting on a stump with an axe.

The end.

I follow directions well. Maybe too well.

Jeff and I playing Lord of the Rings: War of the North for the first time and trying to figure out the best way to beat a large horde. 

Jeff: "Okay, this is working out great! You keep throwing up that protective orb, watch my back and I'll take out the archers on the rooftops with my arrows."
Me: "Got it!"
(ten minutes later.)
Jeff: "Well, I keep getting knocked off the platform. These guys keep attacking my face because someone is facing the wrong direction to kill them."
(silence)
Me: "You told me to watch your back?"
Jeff: "I meant... I... KILL EVERYTHING IN THE CIRCLE! Kill everything that comes in the circle, Sherri!"

(We won. :)  )

Congrats to the Kings!

The LA Kings won their first Stanley Cup tonight in their 40+ year history! Which is awesome and I'm excited for them.

Their goalie's daughter decided to show up at the press conference and steal the show. She's pretty cute, so check out the video:



Congrats, guys!! You looked so happy and I'm happy for you!

(If you want more on the Cup or the games, I have no doubt Will will be detailing it out further soon.)

(My favorite tweet of the night came from Wil Wheaton: "Local LA sports media is trying to figure out how the Sacramento Kings won the Stanley Bowl Trophy for Basketpuck tonight. Good job, guys.")

From 1976

We found this in grandma's under-the-sink stash a few days ago, labeled from 1976:

Can you see it? Can you see what's NEW about this bottle?

NEW Trigger Sprayer action.

And an EXCLUSIVE Mist Sprayer. EXCLUSIVE.

Hm.... I see now where my packrat nature comes from. 

But it's been hanging around our family since 1976. It's practically a member of the family! It should at LEAST get to hit its 40th birthday! It's a keeper.

C&H Love: The Leaf Pile.

Grandma and I spent part of yesterday evening raking leaves. As I was walking around with the large clawed leaf-gripper things, all I could think of was this:

(Ha, and check out that date of publishing! Totally unintentional. It was meant to be.)

Whaddya waaant?

I love Etsy. And I should probably be concerned how much time I can waste browsing through the shops. Nonetheless, I love Etsy.

Etsy is a website where people can create shops to sell their homemade items. The best part is that it ranges everywhere from jewelry to woodcarving to paper cutting to glassware to clothing to...etc, etc. The prices are usually fair, the creativity outstanding, the quality usually high and the possibilities seem endless. Often people will also offer custom services. And while I'm not always the best at going first to the small shop community, I love that I can support everyday people through their work rather than buying from a big business.

And I love that in the midst of all these beautiful objects, there's also a vast amount of quirky.

Like this:


(From spookcityarts etsy shop)

Yes, my friends. That is Godzilla and the Phantom of the Opera in the same photo. Love.

And then this really made me laugh:



I was even more amused to realize my name was already written in as the sample:


Ha, I can assure you I felt this way this very morning! Rar! (From kitschville)

I can't let today go by without wishing my big brother Will a very happy birthday! What would we do without you? I've watched you over and over again embody the very characteristics of love: the ability to always protect, always trust, always hope and always persevere. And you give fantastic hugs. May the rest of your week be awesome and your Godzilla movies be free of wonky trombones and scary fish masks. :)

All the bells & whistles.

It's a little intimidating to post after you haven't for several days. I feel like you're expecting something.

I have this car.

And beforehand, I had a different car. It was a Toyota, it was originally my mom's, and its alarm went off constantly. And randomly. I remember sitting at Sonic one time and suddenly it just started blaring. It wasn't long after we had bought it and mom sat there frantically pushing buttons and trying to search the manual for how to turn it off. (And also for why it was going off in the first place.) Mom said it was possessed and dubbed it 'Lucy' for Lucifer.

So now you know why my last car was Lucy.

My friends have stories. It would go off in their driveways. Late at night. For no reason. I have stories. Cats would jump on it. Youth at VBS would throw things at her tires it to make it go off.

This would go on to continue until its unfortunate fate while searching for turtles. (I know you always dreamed a grander death, Lucy. I'm sorry.)

After it was finalized as being totaled and I was officially car shopping I thought Wow. I can have a car where it will never go off randomly again.

....

Now this is still partially true. My car alarm does not (yet) go off randomly. No, now it goes off because I tell it to. Which is all the time.

See, the Toyota went off whenever it wanted. But the alarm feature on the keychain was indented. Therefore you had to actually intend to push it and I never had to. But on Nissan the alarm feature is even with the other buttons - right underneath lock, unlock and trunk in a neat little row. And even if I never intend to push, I do all.the.time.

Sit on keys wrong in pocket? Alarm. Set keys down too hard on counter? Alarm. Hand slips while unlocking car? Alarm. Press against pocket while shutting the door? BLAMBLAMBLAM.

And it has an amazing range. It doesn't matter if I'm back in my bedroom. Alarm.

So this actually means my car alarm goes off more now than it ever did in the Toyota.

Which is saying something, my friends. Which is saying something.

"Let me hear a duck skydiving!"

Aflac is getting a new duck. Who knew? My favorite part:

"Traci Naman, 42, of Atlanta didn't wait for a prompt to let loose her quackery. "I figured he might have an evil twin," she said of the Aflac icon. "And I thought it was time for him to have a girlfriend too."

"Let's hear a conversation between those three," Beagle said. "You're the first person to present multiple ducks!"

----
The 'Aflac' Casting Call

"The six-figure voice-over job with benefits opened up after Aflac fired comedian Gilbert Gottfried for his fowl, er foul, Twitter comments regarding the Japan earthquake. The comedian later apologized."

Sandwiches. Everyone likes 'em. Sandwiches.

My watch beeped twice today at 4:58. And then again once at 5:00. I find this very confusing. Is it taking after the watch in Stranger than Fiction? Well, if I start hearing voices...hm, never mind. :)

Roadtrip #2: HOUSTON!

"So have you heard about Cameron Mackintosh's latest musical? It's about these people who raise a pig and the rest of the town eats Spam."

How could you not miss misguided conversations like this? ;)

After three years of not making it down to Houston, I finally had the chance and had planned on flying. But I never bought the tickets. And something kept nagging at me. I had never really considered driving, simply because I usually flew. But I wasn't satisfied with the idea of flying. Until one morning in church when I was still mulling over the issue (I know, I know) and the lightbulb went off. What if I drove? But eight hours in a car? At these gas prices?

But Denton was almost halfway in between and if I didn't have to drive all eight hours in one go both ways, I was content. So Philip & Kelly graciously put me up again for another night and made it much easier. The drive though wasn't bad at all. I've never (that I can recall) been on a solitary roadtrip and it was pretty fantastic. Just driving to music? Or riding in silence? Perfect. Besides, no one needs to hear my rendition of Juggernaut after being in the car nine hours. Behind a van that won't go at stop signs.

This was such a great trip! I loved spending so much time with them. They're such a great family and Will is, of course, my very cool big brother so it was incredibly refreshing to hang out with all of them again and soak up his awesome hugs. We drove around the loop, watched the FIF documentary, had cheesebread, saw their cool library.... Ha, and we even got to go to Kroger. :)

While I was in Houston Kim began recommending books to me, and one in particular caught my eye that she had already checked out from the library: How I Killed Pluto & Why it Had it Coming. Written, as stated, by the guy who got Pluto kicked out of planet status (Michael Brown.) It's well worth the read if you have any interest in the topic, because it's not only very insightful on how astronomers and the international space community work, but it's also written well and pretty funny. Also, we almost had 100+ planets. There was so much going on at that time that we had no idea of!
As I was finishing up that one, Will highly recommended Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. I managed to read the first half while I was there (and it is really beautiful) and he kindly lent the book to me to finish. Game of Thrones, my ever backup, will be on hold for awhile because this one has caught my attention more and takes precedence. Even if I haven't returned to it yet. (Still, after GoT I still plan to return to finally finishing Good Omens.)

Also, one night Dave & I had the opportunity to babysit the kiddos! Hm. Mind you, this was the very first time I have ever babysat. I mean, I've watched kids a lot, but not babies. Mostly because they terrify me. But I really wanted to help, and Kim's a great teacher, so we went with it. And, a few hiccups withstanding, everything went fine. They were lovely. I was really happy to spend time with both of them.
And to give you an idea of how sweet Isaac is: babies that small I am ambivalent about. About six months and up, I'm better. But when they can't even hold their head up, there's just too much that can go wrong. So I keep my distance and usually go play with the older kids. But I have to admit that by about the third time Isaac fell asleep against me I was pretty smitten.

Robbie is also a total doll. We played with trains, trucks, in the sandbox, had pillow fights, watched the fish movie, sharks, read books, tickled... You can't beat that. (Okay, so he was bolted past me when I first arrived and hid in the kitchen. But thankfully that was over with pretty quick. :) )

I was able to bust through Texas on the way back - I made it to Denton in a little over four hours, had dinner with Philip & Kelly, and was flying until I hit a screeching halt right. across. the. border. Seriously, maybe six miles into the border. Construction. Ridiculous traffic. As we inched our way along I glanced out of my window at a lady with her foot sticking out of the window while driving. Then a man with a basketball started dribbling up and down the highway and then made a return route doing tricks on the side of the road. And then a laptop caught my eye out of a rear windshield with a phone number on it in huge font. The laptop was then taken down and when it popped back up it read "SO BORED. SOMEONE PLEASE CALL US."
Later I saw the girl in the passenger seat of that car pump her fists as someone had apparently called her. It was pretty funny.
But I made it from Houston on one tank of gas and with that in mind and a new route through the Thackerville construction, I'm ready to go again. :)

"Mis Sherri, Mis Sherri, why did you fill the bathtub so high?! Why did you fill the bathtub so high?!"

"Are you a pillow?"
"No. I'm a Robbie. (beat) Trust me."

Sharks for Snickers

I love this commercial.

At least the rainbows were pretty.

I was in our back room this morning, cutting up and processing the new flowers. I'm mindlessly filling up buckets. And I can't explain why I walked away. I've never walked away. But I guess I wanted this morning to be exciting.
The water hose had been going slow and as I wandered a few steps off I had in a flash completely forgotten about the water hose as I was apparently in Sherri-happy-fun-time-land. There are rainbows.

But when I returned several minutes later I certainly remembered. Since there before me was a layer of water covering the entire back half of the room, flooding up underneath the cabinets, soaking the bottoms of several cardboard boxes, trying to crest our thick standing mat...

I dashed to turn the water off and tried to survey the leakage. It didn't look that bad. Not really. More like a thin layer of water. Just on the back half of the room. I ran up front to grab some newspapers for the small spills that occur. My boss called out that I should treat the amaryllis like callas, don't give them too much water or their tips curl.
I could feel the sheepish grin crawl all over me. Too much water? Sure. No problem.

I threw the newspapers out, grateful I actually had decided to wear my warm, thick boots that morning because otherwise I would have been soaked. And cold. And three layers of newspapers later I finally got the water down enough to where I could sweep the rest of it out the back door. A half hour process. My boss laughed.

Adventures. Adventures.

But that was when I ruled the world.

Our church drama team had a performance this morning. This particular skit is done completely in blacklight, so we had darkened the windows with foil to completely black out the sanctuary. We were rehearsing before Sunday School. I flipped off the lights, hit play on the cd player via the light of my cell phone, flipped it off and BAM!

There was a door. An unfortunate door. That I had not heard close behind me in the sound booth.

Thankfully, it was not that loud of a clutzy move. Instead, I stood at the back with my hand over my mouth trying not to laugh and listened to my team try to figure out if I actually had ran into the door or if they misheard.

Next time I'll try to follow through and fall off the step down at the same time.

Like Grandmother, Like Granddaughter

Snapshots in time from Calamity Ranch 3 (which sounds like a video game title.)

Last night Grandma was talking to my aunt on the phone and assured her she had been taking "brain food." When my aunt asked what it was, Grandma suddenly realized she couldn't remember.

Today I learned that if do not focus on walking while on the treadmill, if I let my mind wander to almost anything else I will nearly fall off the side of it. And since apparently I don't learn from my mistakes this will nearly happen three times. I'm hoping that whenever I finally do get thrown off backwards and land on the floor that I don't crash into anyone.

This evening Grandma & I were leaving a restaurant when I absentmindedly started walking to the passenger side of the car, despite the fact that I had drove, and just about the time I realized my mistake Grandma nearly strangled herself by running into a taunt wire from a telephone pole.

Grace 1 and Grace 3 in action. Seriously, should we even be allowed in the same house? :)