Hope everyone remembered to wear green! 
This weekend was SO MUCH FUN! It was a “Tim” weekend. Yay! Tim finally came to Marshall and it was great. There are a zillion things I love about Tim, but high on the list is the way that every time we see each other…even when it’s been awhile, it’s like it’s only been a few hours since we last talked. I just think that’s the greatest thing.
So, I got to show Tim our little world of Marshall, Shreveport, and Longview. He and David and I went to Shreveport to Pieworks (YUM!) where he got to try my SpaghettiWorks pizza, and we also went to the Boardwalk. On Sunday, Blake and Tim and I went to Longview and hit a few of the high points….including lunch at Papacitas. (YUM!) So yes, it was a great weekend for food, haha.
We got some hilarious pictures that I can’t wait to post on my myspace! The ones we all took at Papacitas are just great.
As usual, time went by way way way too fast. It’s always been like that with Tim! Even in high school, anytime we spent together just flew by. But the weekend was excellent, and I didn’t even realize how tired I was until I went to work today and immediately went into “zombie mode.”
In other news, I think I have hit a brick wall with our DirecTV DVR. Either that, or I’m about to hit the DVR into a brick wall. I haven’t quite decided. The dvr on this thing is nearly impossible!
Sometimes I wonder if I’m just hitting a wall altogether on electronics! I think I’m at some kind of saturation point where everything is just starting to seem too complicated — like it’s adding work TO my life instead of making life easier. Oh my, I am getting so old.
I still remember when my grandparents hit their wall with technology. It was in the 80’s and we had finally bought a VCR. (Or, according to my grandmother, a “VRC”.) hehehe! We had spent an interminably LOONNG day shopping for the thing. I was still pretty young at the time, so the day really did seem endless.
They bought the vcr because they wanted to watch some of my dance recitals. (I know, I know. You’d think I would have gained some sense of rhythm, wouldn’t you?) They got highly annoyed at trying to learn how to use it, so it was pretty much always up to me to operate the vcr anytime they wanted to watch something. (I will never forget how hard we laughed when we discovered the fast forward button. WOW. Watching little kids dance in fast forward is even more funny than watching them dance at normal speeds! We howled and howled.)
So the VCR was the end of the line for them. They finally even got rid of it completely, so now they don’t use anything. I think that’s kind of unfortunate because I’d love to buy them the season sets of Walker, Texas Ranger. Man, they love Chuck Norris. (And yes, they also love Chuck Norris jokes.)
I say all this to say: Is this DirecTV dvr going to be my technological undoing! IS IT?!?! It’s really trying itself.
Here’s the deal: we got rid of our Dish Network and got DirecTV because Dish’s dvr kept eating all our stuff. We’d come home to find out dvr totally emptied out…just completely deleted….and all our upcoming events deleted. That was really annoying. However, I am almost thinking that I prefer that total annihilation of digital media to the way that DirecTV is just toying with us.
Case in point: We had set up Saturday Night Live to record. After this, David set up another show to record at 11 pm, which would have put it in the middle of SNL. The dvr is supposed to search for conflicts and then warn you before it sets up the recording. The dvr “forgot” to search for the conflict, and the next thing you know, SNL is interrupted by some re-run that the dvr should have caught in the first place.
Case two: TWO times last week, the dvr just randomly decided to record “The People’s Court.” Why!? I have no idea. Who really loves “The People’s Court” enough to brother to set it up to record in the first place? But two times, on two separate days, I came home to find “The People’s Court” just innocently sitting there on my playlist. I guess the dvr just felt like watching trashy litigation. None of the manuals have anything to discuss about what you’re supposed to do with dvrs who like court shows. I just don’t think there’s a cure.
Have a good week!
Oh man, things are so exciting! I found out something WAY cool when I was typing my blog the other day about Cirque du Soleil. I had referenced the show, “Jon and Kate Plus 8” and while I was on the website getting the link I found out that they’re coming to SHREVEPORT!!!!! YAY!! YAY!!!!! YAY!!!!!!!
They’re going to be speaking at Noel Memorial United Methodist Church on November 1st….and we’re going! I completely cannot wait. I hope they bring the kids! Getting to see them in person completely ranks way up there on the list of people I’d like to meet. I’m as excited about seeing them as I would be about Reese Witherspoon or Ellen DeGeneres! (And if you know me, you know how much I adore both of them. When Reese is on “Ellen”….that’s a perfect day.)
We already ordered our tickets. You can get them from the church website if you’re interested! Yay for November! I really do not wish away this spring or summer, but I am very excited to actually look forward to fall for once! Fall usually just brings on gloomy thoughts of coats and cold, but this year I will be happy.
By the way, my title is from one of the Jon and Kate episodes. It was the Christmas episode and they were showing the kids opening their presents. One of the little girls opened her box and squeals, “I GOT MONKEY JAMMMMIIIIIIEES!!” and it was so cute. We probably burned up our DVR from rewinding that so many times! Kate then went on to explain how much the kids all loved their “jammies” and how excited they always got over new jammies. I can totally relate! I love my jammies too, even if mine aren’t “monkey jammies.”
(The monkey jammies have shown up many times in the episodes that were filmed after that one, for sure!)
Our long-awaited weekend finally came!
I learned one very useful lesson this weekend: when it snows in East Texas – GO SHOPPING!
I took Friday off from the bank so David and I could start our weekend getaway a little early. I had already decided that I’d go to Walmart while he was still in school, and I REALLY waited too long to go shopping this time. I don’t think we’ve ever been so low on food and everything else as we were this time. As I’ve said before, I adore grocery shopping, but I want to go when I’m motivated to go and can enjoy it! That motivation took way too long to kick in this time!
I woke up on Friday to find…SNOW!!!!! What a rare occurrence! We have actually had snow twice this year now. The first time, it only snowed for a few hours and absolutely nothing accumulated anywhere. This time, it was snowing really hard and the flakes were enormous. It wasn’t building up anywhere on the streets, but the cars and grass and everything else was pretty solidly white. I was like, “Oh great. I cannot put off going to Walmart, and now I’ve got to do this in the snow. Very funny, world.”
So, I went, and it was the best Walmart trip ever! The place was deserted. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t have to dodge huge families of people roaming the aisles, wild children running around by themselves, or carts with random purses parked in my way. I was in there forever, but I really enjoyed it.
After David got home, the snow had mostly stopped, so we got ourselves together and went to Shreveport. We went to the Boardwalk for dinner (at Saltgrass Steakhouse — AWESOME sweet tea!) and then I decided to do some shopping for new work pants. I HATE clothes shopping, but again, the snow saved me! This was the greatest clothes shopping experience! The stores were deserted! I went in almost every clothing store, and I was the only one in the place most of the time. The employees were bored, so they were extremely helpful. Again, I absolutely enjoyed the trip. I even found some pants!
Anyway, let me get to the important stuff!
Cirque du Soleil was SO COOL. We saw the “Saltimbanco” show. I could not believe how amazing the performance was! I can’t figure out how it is possible to be so flexible and also so strong. They had tons of different acts! I don’t even know how to begin to explain it! I finally was able to find a review on the show that was in Variety magazine. I loved the way the show switched from hilarious to really cool to “please don’t fall!!” moments. The finale – a “bungee ballet” — was my favorite. The show is really something that you have to see live. There’s no way a dvd could replace it!
Wow, tons to talk about! I decided to divide everything up into two postings because I think my Priceline stuff is going to be really long, and I have TONS to say about Cirque du Soleil!
This weekend was our Valentine’s Day celebration weekend! David found out that Cirque du Soleil was performing in Shreveport, so he got tickets for us for Valentine’s Day! I was very excited because we didn’t know much about Cirque until several months ago when we watched an episode of “Jon and Kate Plus 8” on TLC where they went to Cirque du Soleil. It looked like so much fun that I knew I wanted to go someday. We had no idea at the time that we’d ever get the chance!
Anyway, we decided to turn the trip into a weekend getaway. (I LOVE weekend getaways with David. They are the greatest!) We had heard about Priceline.com and decided to give it a try. (Side note: I’d be curious to hear other people’s thoughts on Priceline, so please share.)
First, the whole idea of Priceline is to “name your own price” for hotels, rental cars, etc. Basically, you put in a price for a hotel room and Priceline searches for hotels that will accept your price. It’s pretty simple, but here’s the deal:
1. You can choose the city, but not the exact location. The Shreveport/Bossier area, for example, had three “sections” to choose from. You could narrow your hotel search to only these three sections — and they were pretty wide areas!
2. You can choose the “star” rating of your hotel, but that’s it. You can’t choose between smoking/nonsmoking, bed size, or amenities.
3. You must enter all credit card information when you start your search. If a hotel accepts your bid, you are immediately charged and after that, you find out what hotel accepted you. After that point, no changes can be made. If you don’t like the hotel they chose, you can choose another, but you’ll then be charged for both the original hotel AND whatever other bids you make.
So, to me, that doesn’t really give you a lot of control! The location part didn’t scare us too badly since we mostly know our way around Shreveport, but the rest of it just felt weird!
Anyway, we tried it out, and we did save $35! That was exciting. We were accepted at a LaQuinta Inn in Bossier City. The thing is, even after you’re accepted, you still aren’t given any idea about what type of room you have! I had to call the hotel directly to find out that we were assigned a nonsmoking double room (two full-sized beds.) Priceline said that you could request to upgrade your room if you called the hotel directly. We really wanted a king-sized bed, so when I called, I also tried to upgrade. I was told that we could try to upgrade only when we checked in, but that there were no gurantees and that most of the time, the only available king-sized beds would be in smoking rooms. That’s no help to us, hehe.
So, obviously, when we got there, we weren’t able to upgrade. I can see LaQuinta’s stand on this though. Obviously if we’re paying a lower price for the room, they have no incentive to try to upgrade us! We just laughed because it felt like we were in a 50’s sitcom with our two beds.
I can’t really complain about the hotel. It was clean and nice and all of that! I just don’t feel like we’re that excited about trying Priceline again! They really need to allow you to set more parameters on the room you want, and then only accept higher dollar amounts depending on how picky you are. It just didn’t feel like we had enough control, hehehe.
More on the rest of the weekend in a moment!
(Side Note to Bonnie: Good news! This LaQuinta did not have “killer bathtubs!”)
Explanation: Several years back, my friend (and former supervisor) Bonnie went on a trip to West Texas for our job. We went to Amarillo and Lubbock, and we stayed at a LaQuinta in Lubbock. I can’t really explain this fully, but the bathtubs there must have undergone some kind of renovation. It was almost as if an entirely new tub was fitted over the old one, which means that it was nearly twice as high off the ground as it usually would be.
There were signs all over the bathroom about using caution when getting in and out of the shower! The problem is that over all your years of getting in and out of the tub, you develop a “sense” for how high off the ground you are and what it’ll take to get out of there. (I’m sure you can see what’s coming.) I promise you, I was standing there READING THE SIGN as I was getting out of the tub, and I still nearly died! The next day I was talking to Bonnie about the tubs and found out that she did the exact same thing! We have laughed about it ever since.
(She had another opportunity to stay at the same hotel several years later. Why would she have possibly passed that up??)
