Thanks for the tip about the videos, Janet. AMC was running them during breaks in the movies, but I didn't have time to watch any of them.It's so cool to see the "Dances With Wolves" set in South Dakota.
DD, I have a question about your hair: If you put it up in a bun every day and "forget it's there," why do you bother having long hair? I mean, why not just cut it short and save all the time of combing and save the money on shampoo? Just curious, because I know you've mentioned before how you put it up every day, and I've just always wondered.
~~~
I was surprised to hear people saying the Who looked old during their Super Bowl halftime show. I've read it on BW and on other sites/blogs as well and I just don't get it because they are freakin' old. I mean, they were old before they did the halftime show, so is anyone surprised?
So while I'll agree they're old, I can't agree that they didn't sound good. They sounded great. Roger Daltrey has one of the best rock 'n' roll voices ever and Pete Townsend rocked the hell out of the guitar. Their light show was so cool and the pyro was amazing. I didn't really watch the game; I was baking and doing laundry while it was on. But when the Who took the stage, I sat down and watched the whole thing.
One of the comments on BW was, "All their songs sounded the same and just sounded like one long song." Um, it's called a hits medley. They don't have time to do a real concert, so the halftime groups just do a medley of their hits and don't take time to do entire songs.
Of course, music is subjective, so it's silly to just repeat, "They were great!" and "They were terrible!" But I was pleased to get to work today and meet up with coworkers who loved seeing them as much as I did and who thought they sounded great. Of course, it isn't the same without John and Keith, but it was cool seeing Zak Starkey rockin' the drums in Keith's place.
Someone said, "I'd rather have seen Beyonce" and to that I answer, we see Beyonce every frickin' where we look. We never get to see the Who, so that's what made it special.
If you can't take the rock, my friends, back away from the amps. 
Woo to the hoo! 
Neither hubby or I cared about who won the Super Bowl. We don't care about either of the teams that were playing. So when there are games like this, it's all about the boards: we don't care which team is ahead, we just care what the score is at the end of each quarter. Hubby gets on several at work and this year, he got on one that was $20 a square and at the end of the first half, he had the right numbers so he won $500!
And that, my friends, is what Super Bowl Sunday is all about. 
~~~
I went over to my elderly friend's house this afternoon and sat and visited with her for a couple of hours. She is pretty lonely and her house is way too empty without her dog so she was craving some company. I also did a few chores for her and carried some stuff hither and yon for her that she just isn't able to carry since she has to use her walker in the house.
~~~
I've been watching "Silverado" on AMC this weekend. I love that movie, so I've watched bits and pieces of it as I've caught it here and there. Hard to believe it's 25 years old already.
Anyway, the bar in Silverado in the movie is called the Midnight Star, so that's what Kevin Costner named his bar/restaurant/casino in Deadwood, S.D. We ate there when we were in South Dakota a couple of years ago, and it's a really cool place. The food is good and the decor includes all of the costumes from Costner's movies in big glass display cases on the walls. I walked all over that place looking at all the costumes and it was so cool because I've seen nearly everything he's been in.
Gotta love the Midnight Star.
~~~
Patina, twice a year has been fine with me so far as well. Someone I work with said, "You're supposed to get your hair cut every six to eight weeks" and I just laughed. I said, "That's probably a time period the hairdressers came up with so we'd have to pay them more money."
I can see having to get haircuts more frequently if you have short hair, but with long hair like mine, there's really no point.
Thanks for the hug, Afton. It's been a wee bit trying, but this too shall pass.
Thanks for your good thoughts, AD, Holliday and CC. I've been fretting all day about my friend's dad, but I haven't heard anything. I need to call her husband tomorrow. I fear the worst. 
~~~
I want to get some new shoes. I've always wanted a pair of Doc Martens and now may be the time. They're perfect for spring, you know. I don't want to order online, but I do want this pair. I love blue shoes.
I hear tell that Famous Footwear often has them, and we do have one of those stores here, so I may have to go check them out. And the extra benefit of having them is if I ever get in a street fight, I can use them as weapons to stomp on attackers. Or rabid wolves. Or grizzly bears. You know ... whatever happens to be threatening me at any given time.
~~~
Sorry for everyone out there who's having too much snow. My crocuses are blooming and the daffodils keep working their way out of the soil. I expect to see the hyacinth popping out of the soil any day now. Doesn't mean we won't still get snow -- we usually get snow covering the daffodils or hyacinth even after they're blooming -- but I always feel like spring is on the way once the flowers are up and blooming.
~~~
It's been a week for haircuts. I got a few inches cut off mine Thursday. I usually get it cut a couple of times a year, but it always feels so good when I get it cut, I might have to start going once a quarter. And last night after I got home from work, I cut hubby's hair. And now, of course, I can't keep my hands off it. I love rubbing my hands over a skitch haircut.
DD, my great-aunt and I bonded over our love of Nick. He's always been my favorite, though I liked Heath and even Jarod, as well. And I totally agree with you about Audra's voice.
But I love Victoria Barkley. I always thought Barbara Stanwyck was beautiful and a great actor and I loved watching her on TBV.
I really liked the added twist of Victoria having to accept Heath, even though he was the surprise bastard son of her dead husband.
~~~
Crazy hard stuff going on around here lately. Hubby's dad has cancer and now has been rehospitalized. My elderly friend had to put her 13-year-old constant-companion dog down last week and she's struggling with the emptiness of her house. My parents are in a bad way (I'm actually praying for my mother to die, and that's some kind of fucked up). And a good friend's dad had open heart surgery this week, and now is in critical condition and they've called for family to gather. She lives 13 driving hours away from her folks, so is hopping the first plane she can get.
This is just the suck.
Every night I ask myself the same question: Why am I staying up so late? And every night I have the same answer. I dunno.
I've been watching some "The Big Valley" on Hulu. My great aunt and I used to watch that one together. She loved it. She liked how Nick was so wild and always losing his temper.
Nowadays I'm just jealous of Victoria Barkley's beautiful hair. sigh
Afton, it's too bad you can't see "Legion." The Betanny-ness of it makes it all worthwhile. And let me just say that I was hoping it would be much more scary than it was because I like that sort of thing. And the previews looked -- I totally agree -- like this was going to be one freaky movie.
But what you saw in the previews was the whole thing. I think that's what disappointed me most about it: they gave most of it away in the previews because I had seen that old transform and crawl across the ceiling on her hands and knees so many times that when that actually happened on the big screen, it was all very "ho-hum."
In fact, the most upsetting thing to me about that scene was how they had that old lady who was playing the angel curse. All I could think about was how that old lady had to say those lines.
Now, this particular old lady may regularly spout obscenities like the stereotypical longshoreman (which I can say with confidence because my father was a longshoreman) but I tended to imagine her as a very nice grandmother who took the role because she desperately needed the work (there not being any parts in Hollywood for women over 40, you know, unless you're Meryl Streep) and so the cursing was repugnant to her. So repugnant, in fact, that often after rehearsals she could be found back by the key grip's plate of doughnuts sobbing her old eyes out. She managed to get her lines out and now is embarrassed every day when one of her friends calls to tell her they went to the movie and just why did she ever agree to say those horrible things, anyway?
But goodnight nurse, I never got to see quite so much of His Bettany-ness in the previews as I did in the movie. If you can't watch it, I hope you can see some movie stills. This is about as good as I found at IMDB, but there are more delicious scenes in the movie.
And can I just say that sometimes searching images in Google brings up things so horrific that you can never unsee them and you just wish you could bleach your eyeballs.
We had sunshine today. Since it rained all day yesterday, this was a welcome change. And it's definitely staying lighter later. Couple this with all the daffodils sprouting in my flower beds and it's almost time to prune my roses. Hee!
Can I just say that I never gave much thought to Paul Bettany as a looker? I mean, I liked him in "A Beautiful Mind" and he was good in "Master and Commander" but in "Legion" he was downright good lookin'. If he would like to play an action hero in his next movie, I would happily pay to see it.
~~~
The cold of death and destruction is making its way through my office and I am hoping against hope I do not get it. I am disinfection the hay-ell out of everything I touch but those darn germs always seem to find their way in. Some folks have called in sick but that isn't much of an option for me unless I'm hospitalized or requiring surgery or something like that. So please oh please, don't let me get sick!
I should have learned to be sneakier. That's all there is to it. But I yam what I yam. And that's all there is to that.
~~~
Just as I have never understood the need to create some sort of competition between forums (be they "Bonanza" forums or any other kind), I also don't understand the need to create competitions between "Bonanza" characters.
It always struck me as so juvenile and ... weird. Like there are some people who have these weird obsessions about trucks. Hubs talks about some guys he works with and/or knows who are adamant about the brand of truck they drive (which is fine) but just as adamant that if someone drives a different brand of truck, they are wrong, wrong, wrong.
Really?
It's like being in a schoolyard hearing people go on about how it has to be either Ford, or Chevy or Dodge. I think brand loyalty is just fine, but because you like one brand, doesn't mean everyone else who likes a different brand is wrong.
(All you normal people out there are nodding your heads.)
So should it be for fans of "'Bonanza." There is no right or wrong. So what would possibly make a Joe Cartwright/Michael Landon fan feel the need to build her favorite character up and tear down the fans of every other character?
Read that previous paragraph over again. Can you tell me it doesn't sound absolutely ridiculous? Because it does.
And yet feathers get ruffled, feelings get hurt. sigh ...
The people who need to try to tear others down to build themselves up aren't doing much building at all. They're just making themselves look petty and small and ridiculous. And in the end, that just ends up making people think worse of them. What have they built? Nothing.
Afton, I was thinking perhaps "Up on the Housetop" was a song that was so old, perhaps only us geezers knew about it, so I'm glad you do remember it. When I was a kid, I thought that line "Up on the housetop, click, click, click" was so stupid, because if there really were reindeer up there, they'd be making a lot more noise than a few clicks. But since "thump, thump, thump" wouldn't rhyme with "good St. Nick" I can see why they had to do it. Just sounded dumb.
~~~
CC, maybe you misunderstood. I was responding to this comment you made on my blog: "... but I seriously can't take all the bad news that doesn't affect me. ... If I've read about one tragic accident, I've read about them all, and if I've heard about one terrible storm, I've heard about them all."
And I said I can't put my head in the sand like that. I have to know what's going on, good or bad or tragic. We're just different that way. I wasn't specifically talking about reading newspapers or anything like that. Not every subject and tangent I got off onto was a response to you. Just the bit about me being different in that I want to know everything and you would rather not.
But that's what I was talking about when I talked about the concentration camps. Of course, I didn't think the Nazis published news about the camps in newspapers -- that's ridiculous. It wasn't the news ... it was what was going on in real life. There were camps located right by towns and the townspeople in them KNEW the camps were there and they knew what was going on there (even though many insisted they had no idea). They knew and they chose to ignore it and did nothing about it. The brave hid Jews from the Nazis, at great danger to themselves. The rest just went on about their business and pretended not to see.
I think this is all on my mind because we just finished watching "Band of Brothers" and the second-to-last episode told about how Easy Company liberated a death camp and how angry they were at the townspeople who knew and did nothing. It was heartwrenching ... I cried through most of that episode.
Anyway, it's a long way of saying, I always want to know. No matter how bad or tragic or horrible, I always want to know.
~~~
It's off to the college basketball game tonight. It's a doubleheader, and we got free tickets, so double score!
I love xkcd.com and I keep a feed of it on my Netvibes pages so I always can see the latest comic. But this one just struck me as poignant and sad and ... I dunno. I like it a lot, but it almost makes me cry.
"On Jan. 26, 2274 Mars days into the mission, NASA declared Spirit a 'stationary research station,' expected to stay operational for several more months until the dust buildup on its solar panels forces a final shutdown."~~~
CC, I could absolutely never put my head in the sand like that, but, of course, whatever you do is fine for you.
I just tend to think that that's exactly how the Germans who lived within sight of Nazi concentration camps before and during World War II handled things. They lived in towns with concentration camps on the outskirts and said, after the Allies liberated the camps, "We had no idea that was there." It's easy to have no idea if you're not looking around you at all. Yes, there is bad and sad news in the world. I think sometimes everyone has to see it, read it and hear about it, no matter how bad it makes him or her feel. But that's just me. I want to know what's out there. I don't want to be clueless.
That's why I listen to and read a lot of opinions that are different from my own. It's easy to listen to people who agree me.~~~
Folks, today when I went out to get the newspaper for hubby before I left for work, I looked down at the flowerbed next to the driveway and saw one of my daffodil shoots just poking through the soil. Yes, it's the end of January and the daffodils are up. Spring is around the corner!
Would you like 2 exchange blog links? Best wishes... 
Merry Christmas, Jeanie!! 
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