The storm this weekend meant that we got in one day of baseball movie watching. First up was Little Big League. This is one of the many children’s baseball movies that came out in the 90s, movies that I remember awfully fondly. (See also: The Sandlot, Rookie of the Year, Angels in the Outfield) Dan campaigned for this one to be included in our study because it holds up to the test of time despite a very weak actor playing the main character. And he was right. It’s a great, if unlikely, story, about a kid whose grandfather dies and leaves him the Minnesota Twins. After arguing with the Twins’ manager, twelve-year-old Billy names himself the manager. It’s fairly straightforward from there: single mom is romanced by the first baseman. Old grizzled reliever resents having a kid as a manager. But what this movie has going for it are a bunch of really fun team members, clever trick plays, former MLB players playing the baseball players in the movies (including former Met Kevin Elster!), the Twins’ actual radio announcer, Chris Berman doing Baseball Tonight, and cameos from big-name 90s baseball greats like Ken Griffey, Jr, Pudge Rodriguez, Paul O’Neill, Randy Johnson, Lou Piniella and Rafael Palmeiro. You don’t see that kind of thing any more, and it’s just flat-out cool. Oh! And don’t let me forget that this movie contains a sweet baseball montage to “Centerfield” by John Fogerty. Which is kind of essential. It’s a good story and it’s funnier than you think. Good stuff.
Bull Durham was next, and this one carries a lot of weight. I’ve only seen it once, but both Dan and my brother list it among their very favorite movies. This was part of Kevin Costner’s late 80s baseball movie trifecta, and it’s GOOD. I mean, this is an amazing movie. Because this movie focuses on a really terrible minor league team, it’s unique. It’s about baseball and love and loving baseball, and about wanting to make it in the majors. And about sometimes not making it. Tim Robbins is hilarious as a clueless hotshot rookie who has no control on the mound, while Susan Sarandon is the woman who adopts one player each year and makes him great. But it’s even more about Kevin Costner’s character, and old catcher whose last hurrah will be grooming Tim Robbins to make it big. Maybe this movie’s strength comes from the fact that it was written by a guy who played in the minors for five years and really understands what that means. Another “Centerfield” montage, a fast-talking manager, and a really great cast of characters only add to Bull Durham’s charm. It’s funny, it’s sexy, and it’s a great story. So, so, so good. Don’t watch it with kids. But I love it.
Brick red has always been one of my favorite crayons. I was surprised, though, that all of the bricks I encountered this week weren’t quite brick red-y enough. The first two are shots I got this week; the rest are just some favorites.
- Gold Bond Hand Sanitizing Moisturizer. I work with the public. I wash my hands a lot. I use a lot of that alcohol-based hand sanitizer. My hands are always, always, always crazy dry. I wash my hands, I put on lotion. The non hand sanitizer style Gold Bond lotion has really saved my hands from true horrors this winter. So I finally tried this new stuff, and I know this is super geeky, but it just makes me so happy. It gets the job done (while preventing me from thinking too much about how germy my workplace is), smells good, and it feels like I just put lotion on afterwards. Awesome.
- Every few months, my lips get monstrously chapped. Sometimes I blame it on my allergy medicine, but that’s just a guess. It’s horrible; not your standard-issue chapped lips. They feel tight and then they crack and peel and flake and when it gets really bad, it’s like it spreads around the perimeter of my lips. And I have tried Every. Damn. Lip Balm. There Is. Burts Bees, straight up Vaseline, the new Neosporin super healing one, everything. And nothing really works, and I’m left just waiting it out. Well! I finally found the answer. And I am sharing it not because I think you care about my chapped lips, but this has been such a magic solution that you might want to know, too. It’s Aquaphor Healing Ointment, and I bought it in a pack of two 0.35 ounce tubes that are more chapstick-sized. My lips got really bad on Monday, and by Thursday they were back to normal. This is unprecedented. And amazing. And not even expensive! Also, it’s not medicated so it doesn’t sting, and it doesn’t smell or taste like anything. Hooray!
- I finally joined listography, after long coveting the books and just loving that they even have a website. I added a link to the sidebar with what lists I have going now. Since writing lists features heavily on my 28 Things To Do While I’m 28 List, I thought it would be fun to have them over there. I may actually transition my books read/to read/movies seen lists over there exclusively, but I’m not sure yet.
- And finally! I added the most current links from my delicious page in the sidebar, as well. I used to just star items in Google Reader, but I am not fond of the methods Reader offers for getting back to the items. Plus, I like that delicious allows me to just tag any site on the web. I’ve been using this for links I want to refer back to – recipes, craft ideas, wishlisty things, but mostly things I actually want to do or make or try, rather than just things I think are pretty. So in case you’re interested, that’s over there too.
Apparently I can’t resist a photo project where color is the focus. For the LOVE of COLOR week just ended, and I have had so very much fun looking for the brightest colors (spring green, fuchsia, orange, yellow, royal blue, purple, and bright red). Spring seems to finally be close, and this week of super saturated, cheery colors has gotten my mind even more primed for some springtimey goodness.
During that last crazy snowstorm, I spent a lot of time bouncing off the walls of my apartment. I had a Wednesday evening to myself, then all of Thursday and most of Friday off thanks to the snow. The problem was that I ran out of things to do. I’m not currently working on any crafts, I painted my nails the first night, and my dvr was mostly empty by Thursday. So Thursday evening I sat and stared at my craft bookcase and pondered how I could organize it more efficiently. I mean, it wasn’t necessary to reinvent the wheel, but organizing soothes me in a way that I couldn’t possibly explain without sounding like a nutcase.
After collecting the boxes and baskets and organizey things from Target, Staples, and the Container Store, I finally have it all set up exactly how I imagined. And I’m pretty psyched about how it turned out. Here are the before and after shots:
This is where it all started: the binder with clear protective sheets. Each sheet holds either scraps of paper organized by color or sheets of labels. Geeky? Perhaps. More efficient than a giant pile of mismatched paper? Totally.
I wanted a better way to organize the notecard sets, index cards, old daytimer pages, and other similarly-sized stacks of blank paper I’ve been stockpiling. So I got a photo box and then some 5×8 index card divider tabs. Of course, if I had gone to Staples first I might have bought an index card box and then I wouldn’t have needed to cut those 5×8 dividers to fit into the photo box, but I stand by my choice because I doubt the index card box would have been hot pink. I also put my shipping tags and the deck of cards I use for crafts in the back to keep the box orderly.
My full-sized 12×12 scrapbook paper posed one of the bigger dilemmas as I took on this project, because I really wanted a nice box to store it all. I used to just keep it in a giant pile on one of the shelves. The Container Store sells these boxes meant for legal sized documents, and the short side is 12 1/4″ wide. Which fits most scrapbook paper but not all, because some of the sheets have this little strip for the barcode and brand information. But it’s good enough. My nitpicking has a limit, people. So this box stores the bigger sheets of paper, my clipboard, some stray felt, my graph paper pad, and the box of transparency sheets I took from the library because they were going to throw it away.
This plastic bin holds the supplies that don’t fit the other categories: paint, binder rings, safety pins, and a couple extra things I’ve bought for crafts that I still haven’t gotten to. These would be really good to buy in bulk, because of how nicely they stack. And how crazy cheap they were compared to most of the bins and boxes at the Container Store.
Last of all, I wanted a smaller box that would hold the supplies I use most frequently: the tape, glue, glue sticks, stamps, and punches and corner-rounders. And I wanted it to be prettier than that clear plastic bin. I originally ordered one from the Container Store, but my inability to visualize measurements backfired, because that original bin was GIGANTIC. So I sent it back and found this one at Target, which I somehow missed on the previous trip. It’s perfect.
All in all, this was a really satisfying project on a small enough scale that I could tackle it very easily. Just don’t ask what my closets look like, and instead enjoy my overly organized ridiculousness for now.
When I wrote my 28 To Do List last summer, #11 was to watch some of those movies everyone thinks I should have seen, but I haven’t. There are a lot of important cinematic classics that I’m embarrassed never to have seen. Like The Godfather. Or Terminator 2. Or most of the classic baseball movies. But it’s not like I have a list of movies that fit this criteria, it’s more that I hate that feeling when someone can’t believe I haven’t seen something so ubiquitous. So this list item has been knocking around in my head, without a good solution. But my friends, baseball season is drawing near, and what better time than now to start an extended marathon of the classic baseball movies? (Prior to this project I had seen Major League once, Bull Durham once, A League of Their Own a bunch of times, and Rookie of the Year a million, billion times. Also frequently watched: The Sandlot. And Angels in the Outfield.)
So I consulted my brother and my boyfriend to make sure the list of movies was complete. We left out most of the children’s movies (see above: I’ve seen them a million times). The ones we included were ones John or Dan loved, or ones that were important to the baseball movie genre. Or simply ones I really need to have seen, just for the sake of completeness. We aren’t planning to watch these in a standard marathon, but over the course of the weekends in March, leading up to opening day. Maybe this will be a new tradition!
We started off with The Natural. I loved it. And I think I have a crush on Robert Redford now. This one had all of the best things non-comedy baseball movies should: solid montages, a spitfire manager, someone trying to take down the team, and best of all, old timey uniforms. Dan and I really like old timey baseball. It has a certain something modern baseball just can’t get at. I think, though, that this one I’m definitely going to need to watch again. The problem with watching a movie that you know is classic and well-regarded is that you’re on pins and needles waiting for something bad to happen. This happened when I finally saw the Shawshank Redemption three years ago, too. I was waiting for something horrible and sad and heartbreaking to happen at the end; to end up sobbing. It’s hard to relax and enjoy a movie with that in the back of your mind. But nothing as catastrophic as I feared happened in The Natural, and the scenes on the field at the end are pure baseball magic. Classic through and through.
Next up was Field of Dreams. I’m no stranger to the creepy whisper-shouted If you build it, he will come. I didn’t expect that the building of the baseball diamond in the cornfield would be finished so early in the movie, and that a larger spirit-quest would ensue, with further mysteriously whispered and unintelligible instructions. Before I say anything else, I do want to point out that I’m obviously approaching all of these movies with the open mind of a true baseball fan. But Field of Dreams? It was a little MUCH, wasn’t it? It was all Important Swell of Music and Long Pauses Before Meaningful Moments. It felt like they were bashing me over the head with these Meaningful Baseball Moments, rather than just letting the moments develop in a meaningful way just because it’s a good story that pulls your heartstrings. (See: The Natural). Maybe it was because the story is about life and nostalgia and this one man’s journey, rather than about the game of baseball… But I could do without this one. I’m glad I saw it, but I don’t know if this needs to be added to my personal rotation or anything. Of course, Dan’s brother Dave yelled at me for saying all of this. “This is one of the few guy movies with non-cheesy emotion! How can you mock it?!” Ooops.
This is going to be such a fun project.
This week’s color for the sixty four colors project was timberwolf, a gray crayon that I definitely don’t remember from my many childhood days spent coloring. After looking at the super fun Crayola timeline, I discovered that timberwolf was added in 1993. So even though that may have been still firmly in my coloring heydays, I’m almost positive that my little plastic briefcase of 96 crayons had been mine for quite some time. AKA, I didn’t need new crayons after 1993 and probably never had a timberwolf one.
Anyway! It’s a very pale gray, and it felt like the whole world was timberwolf this past week. So it was fitting as we wind down the end of winter.
Macaroni and cheese was an interesting color this week for sixty-four colors. It’s a very warm yellowy orange. And a lot of my hesitance was more about the fact that this color definitely didn’t exist when I was a kid. But I love that they let kids vote on the names for the new colors, and I’m sure as a kid this would have been groundbreaking stuff. In the end, I only found one new shot for this color last week, but I found some pretty good matches in the archives (and from that trip to the beach on Presidents Day!).
I found out from my pal Jodi that oh, hello friend is hosting this thing called the lovely package exchange. I can’t tell you how excited I am. I was just thinking yesterday about how much I love writing letters and sending packages… and an excuse to send a pretty package just because? Sign me up! (Especially if it means getting something pretty in return!)
(Confessions One) (Confessions Two)
- As a music fan, I feel like I am incorrect somehow because I don’t like Radiohead. Or Pink Floyd. (And don’t even get me started on the NJ superstars of music.)
- My favorite pasta shape is rigatoni. Because I secretly love spaghetti best, but am embarrassed to eat it in public because I still cut my spaghetti.
- I listen to AM news radio almost always in the car. As a twenty-something, this makes me feel like I’m rushing the aging process. But I like to know what the weather will be. Every ten minutes. Because sometimes I forget to listen the first time. (Sometimes I do listen to sports radio, but this is much less frequent during the baseball off-season.)
- I strongly prefer meals that can be eaten out of bowls.
- I’m still not interested in learning how to cook meat. Unless it can be mixed in with rice, chili, pasta or other such stew and I don’t have to touch it or do anything to it beyond stirring. And I can eat it out of a bowl.
- Piles on desks and tables bring out my compulsive need to straighten said piles. In a department meeting last week I was strongly tempted to line my boss’s inbox tray to be parallel to the corner edges of her desk. I refrained. It was hard. I straighten piles in stores, often without realizing it until afterwards.
- I drink too much diet coke. I don’t buy it for my apartment, thinking I’ll drink it less if I don’t have it, but that just leads to buying it in 20 ounce bottles when I’m out.
- I still look at the pictures from my car accident sometimes. To remind me that I’m so lucky.
- I spent a lot of time thinking philosophically about shoes. Like, if I were going to spend $300 on a perfect pair of Frye boots. which pair would I get? Or what my shoe “style” should be. Am I casual and funky? Brightly colored? Converse all the time? Should I transition to wearing cool heels with jeans and blazers now that I’m an “adult”?
