1. BeachBody needs a weedwhacker workout video I've decided. As mentioned in the previous post, we've had no internet, phone or tv all weekend and were forced to do yard work. Though I am a mom in my 40s and look it, I can do a surprising number of "burpees"/squat thrusts, can run a 5K without much trouble (not fast, but I can), and lift light weights a couple of times a week. Yet my arm muscles are literally trembling from the exertion of holding the weedwhacker just so to get down the tall grass and such growing around our fence line. (And if you're thinking that is perhaps less a commentary on how the weedwhacker taxes otherwise unused muscles and more a measure of how tall we'd let the grass grow, you are not a nice person.)
2. "Mom, we were just mugged in Harlem" is not the text you want to get from your teenage son on a field trip with his history class, but I did. The whole class was touring the area and visiting the Apollo as part of a broader tour of New York. The two kids actually attacked are alright -- one completely so and the other with nothing worse than a shiner. I think the class got a bit more education than the moderator planned. The attack happened just as the tour guide was saying that Harlem's reputation for violence is unjust.
3. Ever wonder what happens to those people who don't get off the Metro train after the announcer says the train's going out of service? I sure have. Your train is bound somewhere and one stop before yours comes the message that the train is now out of service and everyone must exit. There's always someone who is zoned out and doesn't hear the message. You see them alone on a darkened train now traveling in reverse. Where do they end up?
Tuesday after the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast I found out, since I was the zoned-out person. I suddenly noticed the train was empty and the lights had dimmed and we were now going backwards -- and we ended up stopped in the dark (not pitch dark, just darker) in a tunnel in the bowels of Metro somewhere. Bit of a creepy feeling, but before too long an employee came through making a car by car check and the train deposited me at a station to get home.
4. I have succumbed to the cult of the Mac. It wasn't intended. I've had a Dell Vostro for 1000 years that's never had a virus and never given me the blue screen of death. It was becoming unfashionably large in comparison w/ anything else, but it was trusty and I was attached. But then I dropped it but good and it began slowly to die. And you can't get a new PC w/o Windows 8, which everyone says is awful. So I caved. I'm kind of "meh" about it. Although I do like the fact that the battery life is so long I don't even have to take my charger to work anymore.
5. Babies are chocolatey. Some new study finds that new baby smell lights up the same part of the female brain as chocolate. Please don't binge-eat them, though.
6. I caved again and watched Frozen. I had a good streak going there for awhile -- I'd never heard THAT song and was proud of it (and if I never hear it again that will suit me). But there was a rainy night and nothing we hadn't seen already so I watched. Meh. I liked the dresses. Youngest Weed has his own parody version of Let It Go, in which the dog sings about what happens when the kids forget to walk him in timely fashion.
What I enjoyed much more was Swiss Family Robinson, which the little boys & I watched last night when everyone else was out. It wasn't earth-shattering cinema or even one of Disney's best, but it's so much more better at every level than Frozen. And it's a Disney movie where the parents don't die, so there is one.
7. Something Other than God. Our lovely 7 Takes hostess, Jen Fulwiler, has just published the memoir of her conversion. Haven't yet read it, but the reviews make it seem delightful. More Quick Takes at Conversion Diary.
