Edition #21
Thirteen Things about THE BUMBLES - and the things we grew up just FINE without...
1. Cell Phones - we actually talked in person to each other and if there was an emergency we used a pay phone 2. The Internet - we had to go to the library to look things up - in books 3. E-mail/IM/Texting - we wrote letters to people to let them know how things were going 4. Wii/Madden/PS2 - we thought that Pong was incredible 5. Remote Controls - there used to be knobs on TV's for changing channels and our job in the family was to get up and turn them 6. Helmets - our hair flew in the breeze as we went headfirst over the handlebars 7. Play Dates - we just showed up at our neighbors' doors and asked if they could come out and play 8. Digital Cameras - we had Polaroids that spit out an instant picture which you could see after you shook the film dry in your hand for a few minutes 9. Cordless Phones - while on longer conversations we used to wrap ourselves up in the cord that connected the ear piece to the cradle 10.Minivans - we fought to sit in the back of the wood paneled station wagon without seatbelts and made funny faces at the car stuck at the light behind us 11.Constant Supervision - we were sent outside in the summer after breakfast and told not to come back in until we could see the fireflies 12.Jonas Brothers Concerts - there was no way our parents were going to pay good money to bring pre-teens to see Donny & Marie, The Jackson Five, or Sean Cassidy 13.HDTV/DVR/On Demand - we had to wait until Saturday mornings to watch cartoons on grainy little TV screens The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. What do you do? Write Thirteen things about yourself, summarize your week in one entry, make it easy for other bloggers to get to know you on a weekly basis. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is not only encouraged, it is part of being a Thursday Thirteener! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun!View More Thursday Thirteen Participants
 MizB asks you to: - Grab your current read.
- Let the book fall open to a random page.
- Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page.
- Share the title of the book the teaser comes from…that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
- Please avoid spoilers!
From pg. 179 of SUITE FRANCAISE by Irene Nemirovsky (fiction)... "He wanted to write a story about these charming little horses, a story that would evoke this day in July, this land, this farm, these people, the war - and himself. "He wrote with a chewed-up pencil stub, in a little notebook which he hid against his heart. He felt he had to hurry: something inside him was making him anxious, was knocking on an invisible door." I know - that is 3 sentences. I have broken my steadfast rule and challenge to use only 2 sentences in Teaser Tuesdays to capture the essence of a passage in the book I am reading. But I don't care. These sentences to me capture how the author herself felt as she was writing this very book. And it makes me sad to know that someone with such passion, and talent with words, was one of millions of souls murdered senselessly in WWII.
Instead of writing about the persecution of Jews leading up to and throughout the war or the battles going on to defend France, Irene Nemirovsky chose to focus instead on the everyday lives of the people whose lives were disrupted during the invasion and occupation in the cities and villages of the Occupied Zone in France. Her work here was unfinished so we will never know the full story of her characters - just as she never found out the full story of the war's result. But we do have entries from her journal to give us a peek into her process and plans. As she wrote July 1, 1942, two weeks before she was sent to Auschwitz and just over a month before she died: "Which all in all would correspond to my deepest conviction. What lives on: 1 Our humble day-to-day lives 2 Art 3 God" If you love lyrical prose and character development, I highly recommend this enjoyable book. As always, you can read my detailed review by following the Goodreads icon link on our sidebar. For those interested, you can visit the Woman of Letters: Irene Nemirovsky & Suite Francaise exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in NYC through 08/30/09 or online. Here are some photos from my visit this weekend:    
Feature Presentation... MONDAY MOVIE MEME
Molly looked around for a weekly meme about movies and did not have any luck. So therefore she decided to start her own! Andy will play along as well - hopefully you will too. Leave a link to your blog post where you’ve shared your response or, if you don’t have a blog, share your response in the comment section at the end of this post.
This week's movie topic is all about Eye Candy... We all appreciate quality filmaking, but somtimes you just want to appreciate the image on the screen, and we're not talking about the cinematography! There are times when an actor or actress is put in the film purely for their looks and then there are times when they win the role purely on acting chops but their physical presence is distracting anyway. Here are some examples of our favorites. What about you? MOLLY: Paul Newman - Cool Hand Luke- 1967 (those eyes, that smirk, and the glistening bod - thank you chain gang)  Patrick Swayze - Dirty Dancing- 1987 (sexy hot body, virtuous summer fling)  Rob Lowe - St. Elmo's Fire - 1984 (long haired, sax playing, ladies man so hard to resist)  Denzel Washington - Training Day - 2001 (utterly cool, irresistably bad)  Clark Gable - It Happened One Night - 1934 (witty, debonaire tease with a sense of humor - much more attainable than Rhett Butler)  ANDY:   Cindy Morgan - Caddyshack - 1980 (Lacey Underall with baby oil)  Nicole Kidman - Dead Calm - 1989 (super sexy and knows it)       
 GYM RATS - #14
With the recession we are always looking for ways to trim the fat. But not the muscle. So when my office park opened a new gym for $30 less than my current membership I thought I would check it out. Saving $360 a year seemed very budget savvy. However, you usually get what you pay for so I wasn’t convinced that this alternative could compare to all the amenities I’d grown used to.
But lo and behold, this gym was brand spankin’ new. All new weight machines - nothing randomly going out of order for weeks at a time. Personal T.V.’s with over 40 channels to chose from - not 15, half of which disappear without any concern. Sparkling new showers - not dark, damp caves that need to be escaped as quickly as possible. Attractive locker room - not dented lockers that only close with effort. Plenty of exercise balls, elastics, steps, mats and free weights all lined up and organized - not a jumble of random items scattered and often missing. Open 24 hours, 7 days a week - not hours that keep getting cut back, closing earlier and earlier. Twenty steps from my office building - not requiring a commute through traffic every evening. All for $30 less a month.
There were downsides. It was much smaller in size, but my later hours would not put me within the busiest time. Most group classes were only offered during the mornings and lunch - not evenings or weekends. But I do not ever take classes or have much of a desire to. Most problematic for me was not being able to work out with Andy anymore.
However, I broke the news to Andy that he would be flying solo with his workouts and went about ending my membership at our current gym. It took me a week before I could find anyone who worked there with the power to cancel. It seems anyone can sign you up, but you’ll get the “not my job” real fast when you tell them you don’t want them anymore. I eventually had to break up with them over the phone.
Last week I transitioned to my work gym and away from the facility that helped me lose weight and tone muscles, but not the fat in my budget. I love my new gym, without the stress of traffic to get there on time, find parking, wait my turn for the equipment I need, and watch my wallet shrink for the pleasure. But one thing I realized is that I didn’t have a lot of that stress because I didn’t have the Gym Rats all around me.
I usually have my new gym all to myself once or twice a week which is great. But that means I can’t people watch. I don’t have Gym Rats to laugh at or smile with or be puzzled by anymore. I just have myself which isn’t that entertaining. So I read a lot more which is a good thing. And I pay more attention to the games I like to watch. But the Gym Rats entertainment is no more so I won‘t have any more posts to share about them. I hope you’ll forgive me, but I just didn’t think they were worth $360 a year.
Click here for previous editions of Gym Rats
 06-07-2005 - Calder Sculpture @ Art Institute, Chicago, IL (click photo to enlarge) Visit
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Edition #20
Thirteen Things about THE BUMBLES - and our favorite food website...
 Have you heard about the website Chowhound? It is the perfect place for everything food. Here are 13 reasons why this site could be useful to you... 1. This is a website devoted to food. How to make it, where to find it, when to eat it, why you should try it. There are Boards set up for regions across the U.S., Canada and beyond. 2. Say you are planning a trip, or are away on business, and need to know a good place to eat. Go to the Board for the region you are visiting to get recommendations from the locals. 3. You can read through the categories of posts in the Board if you aren't sure what you are in the mood for specifically. You can search generically for restaurants by anything from type of cuisine, cost, location, service, atmosphere, etc. Or you can post a question - "looking for cheap Italian with family setting near downtown train station" - and watch the suggestions come in. 4. It is also handy for finding new places to visit within your hometown. Tired of the same old Chinese? Go looking for Sushi recommendations in your area. Or maybe there is a great hole in the wall with terrific Sunday Brunch that the Chowhound locals in your area could introduce you to on your local Board. 5. Staying locally, you can get the inside scoop on chef or ownership changes to your favorite spot - or find out about new places opening soon. 6. Find the perfect bar to meet that special someone after work that has just the right quiet spaces for conversation but some fun pool tables for when you are ready to be more adventurous. Or you need to know where to find a cigar bar to avoid standing in the cold being shunned by the rest of the world. 7. Return the favor and share your own experiences by posting a review of local hidden jewels or places on the road. The site is only as good as it's contributors after all! 8. Find the best sources for fresh produce at groceries and markets to perfect that dish you want to serve for guests. 9. Find and share great recipes to serve at dinner parties or to make in a pinch when there is no time for a proper meal. Videos will even show you how to do it. 10. Look for stories on how to put on that perfect party for everything from casual sports viewing to fancy meet and greet. 11. Find places to host that special event - a Mother's Day Brunch, a Wedding Reception, a Shower or Birthday, Corporate Award Dinners or Holiday bashes. Unique spots for a tea party or a chocolate brunch are the types of finds you could come across. 12. Read blog posts about finding the perfect wine, tips on eating healthy or buying green. 13. Meet other foodies and chat with them to your heart's content - or at least until your stomach starts rumbling and you need to log off and go put all this new knowledge into action! The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. What do you do? Write Thirteen things about yourself, summarize your week in one entry, make it easy for other bloggers to get to know you on a weekly basis. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is not only encouraged, it is part of being a Thursday Thirteener! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun!View More Thursday Thirteen Participants
MizB asks you to: - Grab your current read.
- Let the book fall open to a random page.
- Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page.
- Share the title of the book the teaser comes from…that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
- Please avoid spoilers!
From pg. 92 of SUITE FRANCAISE by Irene Nemirovsky (fiction)... "And the humanity of his words, his gesture, everything proved they were not dealing with some bloodthirsty monster but with a simple soldier like any other, and suddenly the ice was broken between the town and the enemy, between the country folk and the invader. 'He doesn't seem so bad,' the women whispered." Hmmm - being only about a quarter of the way through I have a feeling that some of those women might change their tune about the Nazis. I'm assuming that this Teaser serves the purpose of foreshadowing and how humanizing the enemy makes the business of war that much more dangerous and disturbing.
 raidergirl3 asks - It's Tuesday, where is reading taking you?
I am one of many refugees fleeing Paris as the Germans advance through the countryside of France during WWII. At times I am a bored yet patriotic teenager running off to join the soldiers and fight. Other times I am a rich elitist horrified to be stuck with the unfortunate masses. And there are times where I am just trying to keep track of my family. This book has me seeing many points of view from a variety of characters. (Suite Francaise - I. Nemirovsky, fiction) - Read a Teaser in the post above...
 Feature Presentation... MONDAY MOVIE MEME
Molly looked around for a weekly meme about movies and did not have any luck. So therefore she decided to start her own! Andy will play along as well - hopefully you will too. Leave a link to your blog post where you’ve shared your response or, if you don’t have a blog, share your response in the comment section at the end of this post.
This week's movie topic is all about War... We were determined to make some headway in our Netflix queue on Saturday night but when we turned on the T.V., the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan appeared on the screen. It is impossible to turn away from the entire opening sequence of that movie - regardless of how horrifying the images. We feel it is one of the most jarring images of war you can find in a movie. War lends itself well to film and here are some of our favorites. What about you?
GYM RATS - #13 In the two years that I have been a loyal member of my gym, there is only one employee who is still there from the day I signed up. Makes me wonder why the employees aren’t as loyal to the gym as I have been.
Part of the problem is that the gym requires trainers to be on-site all the time to help members with questions. However, members usually either know what they are doing already, or don’t know anything at all and need a paid full training session. Not a lot of people can afford training sessions on a regular basis so these trainers wander around with nothing to do, get bored and quit.
I’ve seen several members turn into employees, lured by the free use of the gym. This always confuses me because one day they are just plodding along like the rest of us and the next day they are creating work-out routines for paying customers. Their personal routines weren’t that varied. Is there a book of routines somewhere that they hand out when you take the job? Don’t they need some sort of certification or at least trainer training? They never last for very long either.
So it must be that the pay is really low - low enough for that many people to quit a job that doesn’t require formal training, pays you to sit around with nothing to do but check out all the hot members and watch TV.
I stopped trying to learn their names or carry on conversations after a while. It is like one of those friends who always has a new boyfriend - just when you get to know him she is on to someone new. Why bother? A trainer would go MIA for a while and then I would notice and realize that they hadn’t been on a really long vacation after all. For a while I thought they just switched shifts. But there aren’t enough shifts for that many people to all have moved to.
Every now and then, one of them will be too tempted by the boredom and lose any semblance of professionalism or duty. They blatantly goof off, chat on the phone, have friends stop by or put up the self-scanner and go work out while on the job. You start to hear the other employees grumbling about them behind their back and a few days later they are on that permanent vacation themselves.
The sole survivor from my first day of membership mans the desk with a smile, chatting with members about whatever is on their mind, and never works out. He is fat and happy - and must be related to someone in the organization. Why else would he stick around so long?
Click here for previous editions of Gym Rats and tell us who you want to hear about next!
 10-13-2008 - Lucy (click photo to enlarge) Visit
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