State Fair of Texas

Last week a friend and I went to the State Fair of Texas. We went on a Thursday afternoon so it wasn't too crowded. If you took a Cinemark movie ticket stub, it was free to get in on Thursdays, so we lucked out not having to pay $15 to get in. I ended up only spending $6 while I was there, and that was to ride the The Texas Star (the Ferris Wheel). I know, I know, I sound cheap, but hey, I'm poor. I know everyone says you HAVE to eat the food when you go to a fair, but I don't. I mean, I like corny dogs and all, but I'm not paying $8 for one. And I know a lot of people are going to disagree with me, but I really can't tell the difference between a fair corny dog and one that I can buy at Kroger that comes in a 12 pack for $2. But that is just me. Also I'm not the biggest fans of sweets, so funnel cakes and candied apples don't do much for me. I've also reached the age where I don't have to ride all the carnival rides. When I was little, I had to ride every single ride at a fair (some of them twice). But since I have a season pass to 6 Flags, I can get my roller coaster fix there. I'm so getting old! :)

I thought I would share some pictures of our adventures! I hope you enjoy!

 

Big Tex. For more info on him, click here

 

At the bird show

 

The guy next to us held out his hand and one of the birds delivered a gift certificate to him.

 

After the show, donations to help support wildlife were accepted. One of the birds helped take the money.

 

The Texas Star

View of downtown Dallas from the Texas Star

 

Me on the Texas Star

 

Another view from the Texas Star

 

Monica feeding the giraffe at the petting zoo

Feeding Bevo- it was very slimy. We didn't realize until after we left you were suppose to use feeding shovels and not your hands to feed the animals. Oops.

Petting one of the camels

 

I loved the zebra!

This is comforting...

 

The kangaroo was so cute! This one let me pet him.

 

I know it's wrong, but all I could think was, that is a LOT of bacon!

 

This goat was very sweet.

 

This year's butter sculpture. Yup, that is all butter.

 

I love tall guys! ;)

 

Until next year...

R.I.P. Mrs. Cleaver

I was saddened to hear of Barbara Billingsley's passing today. For those not familiar with her name, she played  quite possibly the greatest TV mom of all time, June Cleaver, on the TV show Leave it to Beaver. Granted, that show aired WELL before my time, but thanks to reruns, I grew up watching it. I remember back in the mid 80s they had a new show called Still the Beaver (or The New Leave it to Beaver as it was called later) with Beaver and Wally all grown up, and Beaver moving back in with his mom after a divorce.  When I was little, I knew her best as the voice of "Nanny" on The Muppet Babies.

I thought I would post some videos in memory of her. Rest in peace "Mrs. Cleaver", you will be missed!

Muppet Babies intro:

Still the Beaver:

One of her more famous "non June Cleaver" scenes:

Wednesday Ramblings...

First of all, today is my anniversary. One year ago today I decided to start a blog. I didn't know what it would be like. I didn't know what I would talk about. I didn't think that anyone outside of my family or close circle of friends would ever read it. But here, 365 days later, I have 132 followers and have made some great new friends through this blogging world. Thank you so much for reading my blog, it really means a lot to me! Thank you for putting up with my obsession of baseball (mainly the Texas Rangers), Chick Fil A,  books, Shemar Moore (sigh) and crime shows. If you would like to go back to the beginning where it all started, here are the first few posts of my blog here.

I had planned to talk today about the evilness of the $1 bins at Target, but I can't focus on anything else right now (sorry). I'm too excited. You've been putting up with me talking about the Rangers since February, you can last a while longer, right?? Right? Still with me? Great!! Last night the Texas Rangers made history. They finally won a playoff series. I know, some of you are thinking, "so what, big deal. It's the first round, not the World Series." It is a big deal. It is a big deal to long time Rangers fans such as myself. Fans who have suffered through seasons where we lost 80 games. Fans who have listened to the national media call your team a joke (I'm looking at you ESPN). Fans who wouldn't be able to hear any Rangers talk on local sports radio after the end of July due to the Cowboys training camp starting up. Until 10:17 CST last night, the Texas Rangers were the only active franchise in major league baseball that had never won a post-season series. That is no longer the case. The Rangers beat the Tampa Bay Rays 5-1 in Game 5 to advance to the American League Championship Series. We are loving it! The winner of this series advances to the World Series.

Screenshot of ESPN (dot) com. Cliff Lee (front) pitched a complete game for the Rangers. He is awesome.

For those not familiar with how baseball teams celebrate a playoff series win, they drench each other with champagne and beer in the locker room (It doesn't sound appealing to me at all. Why would you want to smell all sweaty and like alcohol? But that is just me). Anyways, as you can tell from the above picture, the Rangers ended up doing just that. But, they didn't start with champagne. Outfielder Josh Hamilton has battled back from drug and alcohol abuse, and to show respect for him, and to show how much he means to them, the team had a "Ginger Ale" showering just for him. He was able to celebrate with his teammates before slipping out when the alcohol was brought out. I thought that was neat. Josh didn't ask them to do that, in fact, he didn't even know until he went into the locker room it was planned. I love this team and how they look out for each other! They are truly a family. Rangers pitcher C.J. Wilson doesn't drink and tries to avoid alcohol as well. He helped set it up for Josh. Thank you C.J.!


To see video of the Ginger Ale soaking, click here. It also has an interview with Josh and  later, his wife Katie. I love how Josh tells reporters he has to give all the glory to God. You are a class act Josh. Thank you!

 

Josh Hamilton (r) being congratulated after the game.

Continuing on with my baseball theme, last weekend I went to my first MLB playoff game. And on Friday, night I'm going to my second one! I'm so excited!! I wanted to end my post today by sharing a few pictures from last Saturday's game!

 

Tailgating before the game in the Six Flags parking lot (it's next door to The Ballpark).

 

The American League Division Series logo on the field

 

 

Me and my Bubba at our first MLB playoff game! Yes, I made a sign.

 

Guess who got her first official major league baseball during batting practice?? :)

Pure Country 2

As you are aware, I'm a fan of country music (no cringing please!) : ) You can't be a fan of country music and not love George Strait (AKA "King George".)

Back in the 1990s George Strait made the movie Pure Country. (Please remember he is a singer, not an actor. No hate comments on it please.)  :) I actually just saw it the other day on CMT. It also has Kyle Chandler in it. He's an actor I absolutely adore. He was on that show Early Edition (about the guy who got tomorrow's newspaper today). He is more recently known as Coach Eric Taylor on the TV show Friday Night Lights. I love him! Oh sorry. Anyways, back to Pure Country. I hadn't seen it in years and forgot how much I loved the soundtrack too. It has some of my favorite George songs in it! :)

I saw on a Twitter status this morning that they have made a sequel- Pure Country 2: The Gift. I don't think George Strait has the lead role, but per the trailer I found on YouTube, he will be making an appearance, or two, in it. Wahoo! Yes, I know, it has that cheesey "made for TV" look to it. I don't care. It's George Strait. And per IMDB, it seems that Dean Cain (aka Superman from Lois and Clark) is in it as well. Pardon me while I insert a teenage girl **sigh** here as I reminisce on my past love of Dean Cain.

Okay I'm back. Turns out that the director of Pure Country and Pure Country 2 is Dean Cain's father, Christopher Cain. I never knew that! Oh yes, my blog is a well of random, useless information! Who knows, you might win Jeopardy one day with something you learn here!

So anyways, in case you are interested, here is the trailer for Pure Country 2. If you are interested in seeing it with me, just let me know! :)

 

Happy Monday friends!

So glad it's Friday!!

So, I woke up at 4:00 this morning and was unable to get back to sleep (I hate that!) I tried tossing and turning for about an hour, but at 5:00 I gave up any hope of more sleep, and just got up. I decided before getting ready for work I would update my blog. 

1. What do you listen to while driving?

It all depends. While driving into work, I sometimes listen to music on my iPod or sports talk radio (I know, this surprises most of you). If I can find one I like, I'll listen to an audio book on long car trips.

2. What is your least favorite thing about Fall?

The fact it gets dark earlier. Unless I leave work at 5, it's almost dark by the time I get home.

3. What does your dream house look like, inside and out?
I answered this one during my 30 day blog journal. Click here for that post! (I'm too lazy to retype it!) :)

4. Would you ever own a minivan?

I guess so, if I needed to. They have some sporting looking minivans out there these days! I like the ones that have the sliding doors on both sides.

5. Do you wash new clothing before wearing them?

I normally do. Now, I have been at a baseball game before and bought a new shirt and put it on while I was at the game! :) I think there are some items of clothing it's okay to wear before washing (like a T-shirt, maybe a pair of blue jeans). Bathing suits, panties and bras are ALWAYS washed before wearing. No exceptions. :)

Okay, so I got distracted by the morning news and just realized I only have about 30 minutes to finish getting ready for work, so this is all for now. Before I sign off, I wanted to post a picture of sweet C.J. Wilson, who pitched an awesome game yesterday (I found this online, someone took a picture of their TV). This is C.J. smiling at Josh Hamilton, who had just made a diving catch to take away a hit from a Tampa Bay Rays player. 

 

It's a Texas Rangers thing, you wouldn't understand! :)

Thursday Thirteen and Thirsty Thursday

After taking a break last week, I'm back with my Thursday Thirteen and Thirsty Thursday!

If you might recall, a few weeks ago I listed 13 places in Texas I want to visit, and then the following week I listed 13 places in the United States I would like to visit. I thought about listing 13 places worldwide I want to visit, and I realized the majority of them were in Europe (although there are other places in the world I want to visit). So, I decided this week to list 13 places in Europe I want to visit (because one day I WILL visit Europe.) I might have to take a sleeping pill (or have a couple of adult beverages) for the long plane ride, but I will get over there! Again, there are over 100 place I could list, but I had to narrow it down to 13. This was tougher than I thought!

1. Big Ben-London

2. Tower of London - London (do I really need to specify that?)

3. Buckingham Palace- London

4. The Running of the Bulls- Spain (note: I don't want to actually run with them, but I want to watch from a safe distance!) :)

5. Edinburgh Castle- Scotland

6. Eiffel Tower- Paris

  

7. Loch Ness- Scotland (I'm hoping to see the Loch Ness monster!) ;)

8. Mona Lisa- Musee du Louvre, Paris

9. Parthenon- Greece

10. Colosseum- Rome

11. Brandenburg Gate- Germany

12. Vatican City- Italy

13. Vincent Van Gogh Museum- Amsterdam

For my Thirsty Thursday I will be decked out in Rangers gear and enjoying a refreshing beverage from Chick-Fil-A (I'm off work early and a friend and I are going to eat lunch and then watch the Rangers game at 1:30).

Wanna participate in Thirsty Thursday? Head over to Freckles and Fudge, my friend Vic will take care of you! :)

 

Wednesday Ramblings

I see this a lot on Facebook: "I'm recording insert name of TV show/ballgame here. Please don't post any spoilers." Now, on one hand, I understand that. I hate when I record something and I find out how it ends before I can watch it. But on the other hand, if you don't want spoilers, should you really be ONLINE? Sure, fifteen years ago you could get away with recording a ballgame or TV show and be able to watch it without knowing the outcome (as long as you didn't talk to anyone). But today, with everything from Facebook to Twitter to blogs to smart phones, you could be walking to your car and some 12 year old with an iPhone could announce the outcome of a game you are recording. I thought about that today when I announced to pretty much everyone on the 5th floor of "the big pink building" (what I call my office) that the Rangers had won their game. After I said it, I was like, oops, hope no one was recording it. But everyone in my department  knows I'm a Rangers fan (and that I would be following it) so I assumed if they didn't want to know, they would have told me earlier not to announce any score. :) My sweet boss gave me her radio so I could listen to the game at my desk (how cool is that). I had people emailing me all afternoon for updates on the game. Sorry, I really thought I would write a post and not mention the Rangers. One of these days you'll get through a post of mine Rangers free! I promise!

Anyways, back to my topic on spoilers. So, at what point can you stop saying "spoiler alert" for movies? Six month after a movie comes out? A year? Two years? Some friends and I were talking about the movie The Sixth Sense recently and someone in our group mentioned they hadn't seen it (of course they mentioned that AFTER we had ruined the ending).  Now, this movie came out in 1999. ELEVEN years ago. Is a "spoiler alert" necessary? I figure if you haven't seen the movie by now, you really have no interest. I know, you are wondering if this train of thought has a caboose (fits in perfectly with my rambling title today, doesn't it?) I'm just curious what other people think. Should you not post the final score of a game or the ending of a TV show on your Facebook page because someone might not have seen it? Should it be their responsibility to just stay offline until they watch it? At what point can you talk about a movie and not feel the need to say, "oh spoiler alert" just in case someone hasn't seen it? Comment, email, tweet. I'm curious what you think! :)

 

Yes folks, that is what is going through my head today.  My mind is a scary place to be sometimes. Actually, most of the time! Oh, real quick, I want to thank everyone for the sweet  and encouraging comments, emails, tweets and Facebook messages over the past few days. I am having a better day and hopefully my week is looking up. Y'all make me smile!! **hugs**

 

 **Spoiler Alerts** (just to be on the safe side)

-Darth Vader is Luke's father (The Empire Strikes Back)

-Bruce Willis is dead (The Sixth Sense)

-Dil is a man (The Crying Game)

-The boat sinks (Titanic)

-Soylent Green is people! (Soylent Green)

-He was on earth all along (Planet of the Apes)

-Rosebud is a sled (Citizen Kane)

-They shoot the dog at the end (Old Yeller)

I love free stuff!

So a few months ago I won a gift certificate at work and cashed it in at Overstock.com. I finally got around to ordering stuff last week and got it in the mail today. I was kind of excited (hey, I've had a bad week, little things make me happy!) :) I have mentioned in previous posts that I'm an amateur scrapbooker. I've noticed that this is NOT a cheap hobby to have, so I used my gift certificate to buy some scrapbooking material. I got all of the following (my gift certificate was for $50). BUT, it was free to me, even shipping. Yippee!!

 

 

 

Once I start working on a scrapbook, I'll post pictures of my progress!! I'm hoping to do one for all the stuff in my life in 2010, including the Great Snow Storm of OH-TEN, all the Rangers games I went to, my trip to Atlanta and the upcoming holidays. Fun stuff!!

I saw this on Chuck Greenberg's Facebook page and thought it was great! Any fellow Rangers fans are welcome to print this and use it as an excuse to miss work tomorrow and Thursday to watch the games!  :) I can't promise your boss will honor it, but I thought it was great!!

Have a great one friends!

:)

I'm back!

I know it's been a while since I've really posted anything (besides my blog journal). Sorry for the "sabbatical". It seems that life got in the way of blogging (I guess honestly that isn't a bad thing, but I do miss being connected to my blogging friends!) :)

The past few weeks at work have been insane (I prefer to say "craptastic"), which is one reason I haven't had time to post. After getting home, the last thing I really wanted to do was turn on my computer. I sometimes update my blog during my lunch break, but I've been so busy I really haven't had time to take a lunch break  lately (just don't tell my boss- we are required to take a lunch break). :)

So, is it just me or is it hard to believe that it's already OCTOBER? I was at the Rangers game yesterday with some friends and I was like, "it seems like only yesterday it was Opening Day." Which was in APRIL. It's finally beginning to feel like fall around here. It was about 65 degrees yesterday at The Ballpark (of course being in the sun made it feel a little warmer). I've had my bedroom window open in my apartment the past week. I love saving money by not having to use the air conditioning! Since I live on the second floor, I don't mind having my windows opened (I'll be honest. If I was on the first floor, I wouldn't do it.)

Last weekend I decided to pull out my fall decorations. Yes, when the temperature gets below 80 in Texas, we start decorating for fall! Here are some picture of a few of them.

 Front door of my apartment

Inside my front door

I put candy corn in this bowl and have it on my coffee table. I thought it was adorable!

I got all of these items at the Dollar Tree (I'm not too proud to admit I shop there- it's awesome). :)

Some co-workers and I also decorated around our office.

 Outside my office (okay, my cubicle)

 

You can kinda see the lovely view from my office window- I'm on the 5th floor

Anyways, as I mentioned before, I was at the Rangers game yesterday. It was the last regular game of the season. For the first time in 11 years the Rangers are going into the post season so there is still Rangers baseball left to be played and watched. We found out yesterday we will play the Tampa Bay Rays starting on Wednesday. I'm so excited about the post season (despite the Rangers getting shafted by "The Evil Empire", forcing us to play day games instead of primetime games). It's okay. I have a half day on Thursday at work, so I'll be able to see that one on TV. Just for Game 1 on Wednesday I'll have to follow it online. Here's hoping my I.T. department doesn't monitor my internet usage! ;)

I'll be honest. If you had told me back in April we would make the post season, I'm not sure I would have believed you. If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know I love my Rangers- in the good times and bad times. Sadly there have been more bad times in recent years (my baseball heart has been broken more than once over the past few years), but I think in order to be a true fan, you have to love a team all the time (in good seasons and bad seasons). Anyone can love a team that wins all the time. Don't even get me started on band wagon fans. :) That doesn't mean I won't complain if they do bad (as you might recall), but I still love them! :)

Anyways, if you remember my post a few weeks ago, I got playoff tickets for game 3 of the first round of the playoffs (which will be this upcoming Saturday afternoon at The Ballpark). Rangers co-owner Chuck Greenberg actually helped me get them (go here for that post). Yesterday after the game I was able to meet Chuck Greenberg in person. He was very nice. He was busy signing autographs. His seats are lower, so people kept throwing stuff to him to sign. I asked him if we could take a picture and he said, "sure, come on down." The poor security guard had been trying to keep fans back, and then Chuck had him help me over the seats to get by him. He shook my hand and thanked me for coming to the game. I thanked him for everything he has done for the team!

 

Me and Chuck Greenberg, Rangers co-owner!

I hope to be better about updating my blog this week. I'm going to do my best to get caught up reading everyone's blogs as well!! I know I have some new followers I need to go check out (I promise to get to you, thanks for your patience!) If today isn't too brutal, I'll try to log on tonight when I get home.

Have a great week sweet friends!