When does a collecting hobby cross the line?  I’ve heard of people who collect things and sometimes get kinda crazy about it…  Like this one guest on Dr. Phil who collected Star Wars stuff.  No problem there, but once he started talking about the details of his obsession, it became obvious he had an unhealthy problem.  His wife felt like she came in second place to the Star Wars stuff all the time, and he even had a storm trooper costume he wanted to be buried in.  When Dr. Phil pointed out the fact that the guest would never fit into the costume, he insinuated that he would be dismembered or whatever it took to get his body into the costume for burial.  I guess it’s easy to say you’ve crossed the line when your spouse or the people you live with start to get annoyed and ask you to give them more room for their  stuff and to get rid of the things you collect.  Or maybe it’s obvious you have an unhealthy addiction when you start to spend more money on your collection than things you should be spending it on to ensure a healthy lifestyle, like food or clothing.  Anyway, the reason I’m bringing this up is because my husband and I are developing an extreme board game collecting hobby.  It started years ago when we visited a few garage sales and saw some games we both had as kids, so we picked those up.  Then we started visiting thrift stores in the area, and we enjoyed doing that so much that we visit often and pick up several games each time we go…  it’s kind of like treasure hunting – you never know what you’ll find.  Games are anywhere from 25¢ to $3 and since they usually have all the pieces, it’s a pretty fun hobby to check out all kinds of different games.

Now, we’ve moved to a bigger house and have allowed ourselves a big game closet.  The problem is, we’re getting so carried away that we’ve outgrown the game closet – there are games now stacked on the floor since we’ve gotten so many that they no longer fit on the shelves.  When we go out to thrift stores, I can’t even remember what games we have and I’m always tempted to buy more, but my husband says, “we already have that one”.  It’s really not that big of a problem, I guess we just need a bigger closet…  we do invite friends over nearly every weekend to play games, so we are getting use out of them; it’s not like they just sit on the shelves (or floor!) collecting dust…  And the only family member whose living space is getting crowded because of all the games is the parrot.  He’s been screaming at me while I fold laundry so much lately that I don’t mind if he gets crowded out!  But I can just tell that it’s becoming an addiction because when we’re at the thrift stores, I always feel like getting new games, even if we already have them apparently…  I don’t see an end in sight, but I think it’s still in the collecting stage; it hasn’t graduated to hoarding yet.  After all, the duplicate board games we have are only for spare parts, and the other day, I had a brainstorm:  If we knock out one of the walls in our game closet, we can combine it with another large closet and have more than twice the space for all the games!  For some reason, my husband doesn’t share my enthusiasm for this idea…

I don’t know about anyone else, but I thought this season of “The Office” on NBC started out as great as all the others.  Then, enter the writer’s strike…  Many precious weeks of laughs lost.

After the writer’s strike I could see some rusty red-brown.

Not that is wasn’t funny.  Hey, I would take the worst episode of “The Office” over the best episode of “Home Improvement” or “According to Jim” any day.  It was just not AS funny.

But last night’s season finale was PERFECT.  Vintage “The Office”…  Jim & Pam, Dwight & Angela, Andrew Bernard…  AND MICHAEL!

The magic and chemistry (of the cast) that makes this show was back big time in the finale!

Watching Jim work so hard to keep Michael from moving too fast with the new Toby replacement — you know, the one Michael claims he loves!

Seeing the new Toby replacement (boy, I need to lookup her name — it’s HOLLY) interact with Kevin all the time thinking he is “special”.

Learning that Jan is pregnant, but not with Michael’s baby — she got some of the good stuff from the sperm bank because “maybe if I were younger, I’d let Michael be the father of one of my children, but not now, not when it counts.” (she’s getting older).

Then seeing poor Michael miss out on an opportunity too go out with a clearly interested Holly when she hints she would like to got out and get some desert.  She ends up going with Kevin.  You know, the “special” one.

Ahh, “The Office”.  This season reminds me of many a football season as a Chicago Bears fan.  They start strong then take a big loaf in the middle of the season…  Then, they start picking up momentum again only to end the season with a big win!  But, no playoffs.  Hey, that was the Bears LAST season!

Anyway, I will miss you Dwight, Michael, Jim, Pam, Inmate Ryan, Kevin, and others.  See you next season!

We put in the movie Mrs. Doubtfire for the kids the other day, and I was curious about what happened to the youngest daughter in that movie, Mara Wilson, because I’ve always thought she was so cute.  So I looked it up on imdb.com, and discovered that this movie is 15 years old already!!!  Which means that little Natalie, the cute girl from the film, is almost 21 years old!  I looked her up elsewhere on the internet because I get curious about the “where are they now” aspect of celebrities, and I found the following interview she did while promoting a Cinderella stage play she was in.  It was from 2006, when she was 18, but little “Natalie” is all grown up, and it’s weird to see her as an adult…  well, a legal one anyway.  Here is a link to the video:

https://www.spike.com/video/2702330

Well, this is my second post with the new “backend” of the tangents.org website, and I have to say, so far I like it better!  It really wasn’t that difficult to get used to the changes, and so far anyway, I’ve found everything I need.  If you’ve read my post called, “When Technology Attacks” then you know that I am reluctant to learn new ways of doing things on computers, etc. once I learn the original way to do them.  It seems right after I learn something new, it changes, leaving me right where I started – feeling dumb, frustrated, and like I’ve wasted my time.  But with the new tangents.org updates, I have to say that I’m pleasantly surprised since I’ve figured out everything I’ve needed to use so far by myself without it even taking any extra time!  After that warning from O Mighty Admin, I have to say I was dreading the day when the updates would take effect, but now I see that my concerns were unfounded – for now at least!

So the other day I was waiting outside Walmart for my husband to get our Wii-fund…  I know, I said I wasn’t going to wait in the car with the kids anymore, but I dropped him off and went home to get some forgotten items for our Mother’s Day excursion, so I wasn’t sitting there the entire time.  Good thing too, because I went home, bumbled around the house for a bit, came back and still spent a good 10 minutes waiting for him to make his return.  But I turned the car off right away this time, and I was fully expecting it to take awhile because he was making a return at Walmart on a Saturday after all.  I even made the joke, see ya tomorrow…

But while I was waiting, I heard the cargo door of our minivan open up, and I thought, that’s strange, I didn’t know he was going to be buying anything he’d have to put back there…  so I look in my rearview mirror, and there’s a strange lady standing there with a confused look on her face.  “Sally?”  she said.  “Um, no, I think you have the wrong car…”  I replied as my 2 little girls turned around in the back seat and stared at her.  The van she was waiting for then pulled up beside us, with the driver – Sally, I assume – laughing hysterically while her friend loaded her items into the correct van this time and hopped in the passenger side.  She rolled down her window and tried to justify her mistake, “See they look alike; I’m not crazy!”  Well, her friends’ minivan was a Chrysler Pacifica, whereas ours is a Chevy Uplander, and her friends was 2-tone with gray on the undercarriage, but I guess they were similiar in color…  but still, it was a funny experience and probably really embarrassing for Sally’s friend – just a testament to what a circus Walmart can be on a Saturday no matter where you live…  Sunday I have to go there just to pick up my daughter’s birthday cake, ugh.  Maybe I’ll send my husband instead…  no wait, I’d better not – I’d like him to make it back in time for the birthday party!

While serving on the board of a local community agency, a certain personality type came to my attention: teacher’s pet.  Yes, these people are alive and well and living as adults.  Surprisingly it’s not something one grows out of when he or she leaves school; rather, the behavior seems to evolve and follow the person into adulthood.  I use the term “teacher’s pet” loosely here because I don’t know how else to describe it, so I will try my best to give examples.  Back to this person on the board – it starts when the person stops the flow of the meeting to contribute to every item on the agenda.  I think it’s good when people participate and share their ideas, but there is a fine line when their comments and “helpful” suggestions cross the line into being disruptive.  Case in point – at a meeting recently, an item on the agenda involved discussing traveling to Chicago for a board training seminar.  The teacher’s pet of the group spoke up and went into great detail about how the board of this organization should actually be taking more than one vehicle on trips like these in case something happens to the vehicle.  He explained that if the vehicle carrying the entire board of the organization were to crash or something else horrible were to happen, we would no longer have a board if the President, Vice President, etc. were all riding together.  Good point, but a little extreme, I would say…  This board is not in charge of running a country or anything close to that scale.  I’m not saying that it’s not important or that steps should not be taken to safegaurd the staff involved, however, I don’t think dividing up into 2 vehicles has anything to do with preventative safety and actually seems like it might put a strain on the budget (insert another gas prices gripe here).  It’s a good idea for the President and Vice President of the United States and other heads of government to travel separately but when talking about this particular group it just doesn’t seem like a logical idea, especially not an idea that should have taken 20 minutes or longer to discuss.

A second example of adult teacher’s pet behavior happens often in community theater.  My husband and I are active in our local theater group, and while directing a few plays together, we’ve come across at least one individual who was a bit over eager to please the directors.  Again, don’t get me wrong, enthusiasm, especially for community theater, is a great thing.  But when you interrupt the process of producing a play in order to offer “helpful” suggestions that aren’t really helpful at all and just keep the entire group waiting for you to finish talking, then it’s probably better if you just let the director do what he or she needs to do.  It’s also especially annoying when people offer things to help with the show; be it labor, props, etc. only to not follow through and actually deliver the work and/or goods.  Makes me think they were just sucking up to the directors! 

So when I say ‘teacher’s pet’, I guess I just mean those people who are so overzealous about showing and proving to others that they are participating in the group that they come forth with ideas that aren’t always well thought out.  Like I said, it’s not that I discourage contribution, and by no means should people be made to feel that their ideas are stupid, however, they should use discretion in bringing up topics that are relevant to the conversations at hand and also make sure that they are going to follow through with what they say they will contribute.

POST DISCLAIMER:  None of the above comments have anything to do with anyone who is a regular reader of my blog!!!  🙂

How long does it take you to “run in” to a store?  I suppose it depends on the size of the store and what you need.  If you’re running into the gas station to pay for gas, then it will probably take a fraction of the time it would take you to “run in” to a Super Walmart and pick up milk, diapers, and say, deoderant, or something else that is usually located all the way on the other side of the store. 

But apparently the phrase “running in” has different meanings for different people.  To me, it means ‘get in the store and get what I need as quickly as I possibly can’.  To my husband, it means ‘get some shopping done so my wife doesn’t have to get out of the car, and we don’t have to bother unloading the kids’.  The problem here lies where my husband is the slowest shopper you will ever meet.  This is not an exaggeration.  I’m very thankful sometimes that I was blessed with a man who doesn’t mind shopping, in fact, he even likes it, depending on what we’re shopping for, of course.  But it takes him forever to get anything.  I still can’t figure out why…  is it because he reads every package of every brand of every product in which he’s interested in order to comparison shop?  Is it because he is unorganized and doesn’t remember what he’s at the store to get?  Is it because he gets sidetracked and ends up shopping for three items when he’s in the store to buy only one?  It could be a combination of all the above; I haven’t figured it out yet.  But what I have figured out is to no longer put myself in the situation of being the car babysitter while my husband’s 5 minute “run in” to the store turns to 10, 20, sometimes upwards of 30 minutes!

Now that I’m in the third trimester of my pregnancy, I don’t always want to go in the store, whereas normally, I don’t mind…  like most women, I don’t mind shopping, even if hubby is taking forever and a day in the electronics section.  Which reminds me real quick – TANGENT ALERT – a brand-new Super Walmart in a town nearby has the right idea.  They put a really nice big magazine section right by the electronics department with benches in between for the wives to park themselves while the husbands wishfully browse the electronics – Walmart doesn’t often earn my kudos, but this is an example of some good store planning!  Anyway, back to my venting…

So before the pregnancy, for some reason I was never the one who got to “run in” to the store – I always got the ‘babysit-for-the-3-bored-kids-in-the-car’ job, ugh.  I finally put a stop to it because hubby’s “running in” took so long, and then I got pregnant and don’t have the foot power to last very long in stores anyway.  So the other day, we’re coming out of a store, and he says, very smoothly as he’s already walking toward the Office Max and away from the car, “I’m just going to ‘run in’ real quick and check for something.”  Uh-oh.  Did he say ‘run-in real quick’?  You may take me for a fool, but I believed him.  I thought he would be really quick because we had a meeting with a start time about an hour away, and he knew I wanted to make a few stops before the meeting, so surely he wouldn’t jeopardize my errands by letting Office Max take too long…  So I was under the impression that after I waddled to the car and pulled up to Office Max, he’d be ready to go…  WRONG!  I’ve been through this enough by now to know not to worry…  I used to sit there and seriously think, ‘what if he’s being held hostage in the Office Max or what if he’s passed out and gotten hurt or something?  But we’ve been together for over a decade, so I now realize he’s just a “forever shopper”.  I finished reading the daily newspaper and glanced around – no husband.  I put on the radio and listened to a song or two…  no husband.  I checked the time and started to get irritated, dreaming of the ice cream stop that was going to be one of my errands before the meeting…  no husband.  I put on the mp3 player and listened to about 3 songs, trying to keep calm and not cry out of frustration (impatience+pregnancy−ice cream = easy tears) …  no husband.  Now our new car starts to rumble and shake.  Since we got rid of the Ford months ago, I didn’t think it was a mechanical problem…  then I remembered that the gas light had come on earlier, before my husband “ran in” to Office Max.  I turned off the car, and waited some more.  Finally he came out of the store – empty handed.  I hadn’t thought to turn off the car while waiting for him since he was just “running in”, and now we were out of gas after idling for a good twenty minutes or longer – I hadn’t been keeping track.  Luckily there was a gas station right across the street, and instead of walking there and having to buy a gas can, he pushed the car and I steered it over to the gas station…  it gave us time to blow off some steam…  well, me anyway.  I was also wondering what could possibly take a person so long in a store only to have them come out with nothing?!?  But, I was literally too peeved to ask and I didn’t want to talk about what happened at Office Max.  All I knew is that my errands weren’t going to happen and I was going to the meeting ice cream-less.

In my husband’s defense, he doesn’t do this because he’s not thoughtful or considerate; it’s actually the opposite.  He wants to save me from having to go into the stores, and save me from the trouble of having to deal with shopping hassles…  and he takes long in stores even when I’m with him, that’s just how he is…  He just doesn’t have a very good concept of time, and he doesn’t realize that I’d much rather entertain the kids and myself in the store than in the car.  Also, being a woman makes me prone to thinking ahead, while he is impulsive.  If he had thought ahead about the Office Max errand, we could have discussed it, and I could have planned to get my errands done at the same time, or even gotten gas while I waited.  Instead, since the Office Max errand was brought up at the last possible second when I couldn’t even say no because he was too far away to hear me, I thought it’d be quick enough where I could leave the car on and not run out of gas.  The good news out of all this is that the meeting ended early enough that I was able to get my daughter’s birthday party stuff before that store closed, so really the only errand I missed that day was my ice cream.  And I can do without putting more weight on my poor feet right now anyway, I guess…  And this experience reinforced my mantra that I will NOT wait in the car while my husband “runs in” to anywhere ever again.  At least not without a full library of reading materials or a laptop so I can blog about him while I wait…  In case you think I’m being too hard on him by the way, I told him I was going to be blogging about this incident – he took so long we ran out of gas, for crying out loud!!!  And NEVER will I wait in the car for him to ‘run in’ anywhere while the kids are with us!

I have a love/hate relationship with electronic technology.  I love and appreciate the advances that have been made in the world, and I use lots of technologically savvy stuff every day.  But I hate learning the new stuff, and if I procrastinate, it seems that when I finally break down and learn it, something new immediately comes along to replace what I have just learned.  And I am married to a technology addict.  I know it’s a common thing for men to be into electronics and the latest gadgets and all of that, but I think our house is exceptionally up-to-date on the electronic gadgetry, especially when it comes to computers.  My problem with it lies where the technology becomes more of an inconvenience than it is a convenience.  I have a few examples I will share:

1.  Hi-Def Tv – My husband will sit and flip channels in the middle of a show just to try to find the hi-def version of the show.  Of course he doesn’t choose to do this during a Chicago Bears game or something he is inclined to watch.  For those shows, he will actually think about it ahead of the show’s start time.  He’ll sit and flip looking for high-def while I’m watching something, during shows like Dr. Phil or pointless reality shows.  I know, these are dumb shows, so I shouldn’t care about missing them.  But if I’m going to sit and watch something, then I want to watch it, I don’t want to miss any of it, otherwise I’m wasting my time.  So, if I’m watching Dr. Phil, and hubby comes over and tries to find Dr. Phil in hi-def, I might just miss the backround of a guest’s story and not know what is going on for the rest of the show.  Like I said, it’s not like we’re talking about high quality tv here, but who needs Dr. Phil in hi-def anyway?!?

2.  GPS –  I cannot tell you how many times our GPS guy has gotten us lost.  Yes, we have a GPS system in our car with a male voice – he was on sale.  I’ve always thought I was pretty good at navigating; pretty good at being a human compass and learning the layouts of strange cities and towns pretty quickly.  In the years before we had GPS (and kids!) we used to travel by car A LOT, and I was always our navigator.  I’d like to think I got us out of more than a few scrapes with just my sense of direction and an atlas…  But my past experience gets me no where compared to the GPS guy.  He has taken over.  My husband will insist that we follow Mr. GPS’ directions, even while I’m saying they don’t make sense.  For one thing, he’s led us into a lake before, literally.  Well, luckily common sense did prevail there at the last minute…  my husband stopped the car before he drove into the lake, but he was tempted to trust Mr. GPS, and drive into the lake, I know it.  Maybe it sounds like I’m jealous of Mr. GPS, but I’m not, really I’m not.  I just suspect that he might have it out for us, or that he is a practical jokester who gleefully directs us into predictaments just to see how we get out of them…  Kinda sounds like a dumb sitcom – tune in each week to see how we maneuver our way out of whatever mess Mr. GPS has finagled us into this time…

Don’t get me wrong – I do appreciate all the technology most of the time, in a way.  If my husband weren’t so into all these things, I wouldn’t have all the cool gadgets that I have, and I would not know how to use anything, including my computer probably!  But how ironic is it that this post has been sitting in my drafts for weeks now, not getting finished, just because other things kept coming up that I wanted to write about, so I wasn’t getting a chance to finish it.  But how ironic, that today when I went to tangents.org, I got the following message about learning new technology?!?  If you don’t hear from me for awhile, I’m just procrastinating learning the new “back end” of tangents!

Well my friendly bloggers…  I have some great news that is going to make you all very mad!  Yes, you read that right.  Tangents will be updated with the latest versions of the blog software by next Friday and as soon as today (whenever it is released).  Why will this make you mad?  Because the backend you have worked to learn is going to look significantly different.  But don’t worry!  You have the basics down.  Once you take a few minutes to get used to the new layout you will be comfortable again and blogging on Tangents.Org will be better than ever!

While we’re on the subject of politics, I was reading about Jenna Bush’s upcoming nuptial’s today, and I discovered an interesting article about the parallels of opposites between Bush’s daughter and former President Roosevelt’s daughter Alice, both of whom will be married while their fathers were Presidents of the United States; Jenna’s wedding taking place over a century after Alice’s. 

From CNN.com:
Doug Wead, a former aide to President George H.W. Bush and author of a book on presidents’ kin, calls Jenna’s ceremony “the anti-Alice Roosevelt wedding.” Former President Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter was married in 1906.

“That wedding took place during a time of prosperity and peace; this one at a time of economic struggle and war,” Wead said. “The Roosevelt family was outgoing, flamboyant; this is a private family. That was one of the most popular presidencies in American history. Even John Adams didn’t go on Mount Rushmore, but Teddy Roosevelt went on Mount Rushmore. This is an unpopular presidency. Alice had no bridesmaids. Jenna has 14.”

And one more little tidbit about Presidential offspring:  Jenna is the 22nd child of a United States President to marry while their fathers were in office.  Not that money is usually a problem for a president, but I wonder how many of those were daughters whose daddy’s were expected to foot the wedding bills?

While I am a current events junkie, I am most reluctant to follow politics for some reason. Give me true-crime stories, entertainment news, or natural disaster tales any day – I can’t get enough. But when it comes to politics, I have trouble even forcing myself to follow the news, even though they talk about it on one of my favorite channels (CNN) nonstop lately. You’d think it’d be enough motivation for me to follow politics just to be “in the loop”, but it’s a natural instinct of mine to tune out political news. How interesting then, that my husband is really ONLY interested in current events involving politics… I guess you could say we compliment each other that way. So while he had on CNN following some of the last of the primaries tonight, I heard an interesting story developing… it seems poor Hillary Clinton, who lost horribly in North Carolina today, couldn’t even get a break today at her wrap-up party after the primary… They had 2 confetti machines ready to shoot confetti over the crowd, and they malfunctioned, only to shoot the confetti a pathetic 4 feet from the machine… just not Hillary’s night, I guess…