• Kraft Macaroni & Cheese boxes - that “push in and pull back to open” directive never seems to work the way it is intended.
• Jon & Kate Plus Eight - Why on Earth are they letting their 7-year old daughter get her ears pierced, when she still can’t manage to get her teeth brushed? Gross!
• The writer of the op/ed letter, “Dallas minors raising babies” in the Dallas Morning News. Seriously, if you actually think these situations aren’t apples and…forget oranges, let’s try apples and staplers, then your head isn’t screwed on straight. Right. It’s because those kids are white. Sheesh. This level of ignorance frightens me.
• The fact that Daisy seems to love going for a walk…for about ten minutes. Then she decides the sky is falling and does everything within her power (and resistance of her leash) to get back home. Then once we’re back inside, she’s dying to go out again.
• How Kristy Lee Cook managed to stick around on American Idol until last night.
• Why I can’t play Mesmo’s TV Squares on my PC. Doesn’t work in Firefox, doesn’t work in IE.
• The price of used textbooks. It was nuts nearly twenty years ago, and it still is today. Thank God for Half.com.
• Why my neighbors across the street haven’t cleaned up the dead bird on the sidewalk in front of their house. I see them walk past it at least half a dozen times a day.
• Bloggers who pander to their audiences, and try to sound way cooler than they really are. Why not just be yourself?
• How some of the folks in my MBA program are managing to pass their classes. Please tell me I won’t have to compete with these people for jobs.
• Why one of the neighborhood kids can’t get up five minutes earlier. I’ve watched him literally run for the bus every day this week. He just passed my house.
• Why when I single-click a .csv file on my Mac, 50% of the time it lets me change the file name (which is what I want to do), and the other 50% of the time it launches Excel. That isn’t what I want to do.
• Why I can’t manage to blog more during school. Maybe I need to schedule it in…like a root canal.

Thirteen of the Most Annoying TV Characters Ever

• Rosalind Shays - L.A. Law: I loved this show in high school and college even though, in retrospect, it was probably way too adult for me. There’s a reason everyone in American cheered when she fell down that elevator shaft!
• Oliver Trask - The O.C.: Up until this point, the award for “Most Annoying Oliver” went to Cousin Oliver on The Brady Bunch. I still never quite understood why the producers of one of my favorite shows ever decided to go there with Oliver and Olivehis (hee) stupid neuroses and pathological lies.
• Ray Romano - Everybody Loves Raymond: I’m not sure which was the better scene on this show…Romano’s arm getting cut off (and Neela’s reaction) by the helicopter, or the helicopter falling out of the sky and squishing him. Oh wait, wrong Romano. Well, could still work for both.
• Carlton Banks - The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: Maybe it was the dancing. Maybe it was his oddly-shapen body. Maybe it was because this show was on when I was in college, when I was just annoyed in general.
• Lyla Garrity - Friday Night Lights: I loved Lyla the first season of FNL, but can’t stand her now. It is unclear to me why the producers decided to take her all Jesus-freak and high-and-mighty this season, but she’s just dull as dirt. When the tent revival she has sold her soul to packs up and leaves town, she could go with ‘em and I wouldn’t mind a bit, Itellyouwhut.
• Rhonda Volmer - Big Love: Ohhhhhhh this girl drives me completely insane! She’s troubled! She’s psychotic! She’s a child of the Lord! She’s a narcissist! She deserves whatever she gets!
• Harriet Hayes - Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip: Take the Lyla Garrity argument, and flip it. I didn’t like Harriet’s character because I felt like Aaron Sorkin kept beating me over the head with the idea that Christians can be witty and funny and…gasp…tolerant! And then…Harriet had to talk about it…every flipping episode. Um, really? Then, as soon as Sorkin et. al. realized that wasn’t working for them and started to make Harriet more normal, Jordan had her baby and the show was cancelled. Sigh.
• Matt Fielding - Melrose Place: There’s a reason poor Doug Savant is still referred to as “Big Gay Matt” - ten years after Melrose Place ended. Melrose Place premiered back in the day when it was considered edgy to have a gay character on TV. The problem was, this was the wrong kind of gay. Matt was the kind of gay who couldn’t handle a steady relationship of his own, because he was too busy trying to marry and get green cards for Russian immigrants and their cute daughters. And of course, Matt was a social worker. Really? That’s all they had?
• Kelly Taylor - Beverly Hills, 90210: Rape victim (date and stranger), drug addict, cult member, shooting target, diet pill-popper, sexual harrassee, amnesiac, successful boutique owner and cute Alpha girl! You name it, it happened to her. I think the only thing someone didn’t do to Kelly was strap her to a circle, spin her around and throw knives at her. Then again, I think Dylan may have done that during one of his weird benders toward the end.
• Serena Southerlyn - Law & Order: {heavy sigh} Yes Serena, they fired you because you’re a lesbian.
• Merle “The Pearl” Stockwell - Eight is Enough: Yeah, this is a bit old school - but for a show I absolutely loved, I couldn’t stand Merle. Maybe it was because Sacramento didn’t really have a major league baseball team, and I just didn’t buy that he drove to San Francisco or Oakland for games. I didn’t get what Susan saw in him, and thought he was an idiot for agreeing to that silly double wedding with Steve and Janet.
• George Williams - Desperate Housewives: You have to admit…if you were Bree you would have just sat there and watched him die, too.

What excruciatingly unbelievably luck that today is Valentine’s Day…because now I get to list out:

Thirteen Love Songs Which Make Me Want to Poke Knives Into My Eyes

Sure, I could go all oogly-googly and tell you about the love songs I like…but where’s the fun in that? You all know that you have a similar list somewhere in your head…

• “When I’m With You” - Sheriff: This song was very popular my senior year of high school. I remember my boyfriend at the time liked it, and I believe this is the first song which made me want to poke knives into my eyes. Momentous!
• “Amazed” - Lonestar: I really didn’t have that much of a problem with this song until every freaking chick on my 2001 Weddings board at iVillage (yeah, yeah…I know…) declared it to be her First Dance song. I couldn’t get away from it. After that, my goal was to find the song least likely to be played at anyone else’s wedding for our first dance.
• “Afternoon Delight” - Starlight Vocal Band: Seriously? A song about a nooner?
• “Look Away” - Chicago: Ladies, take note: if a man ever says these sorts of things to you, run away…baby, run away. I think it’s this sort of male mentality 20 years ago which yielded all the girly-boys being raised in America today.
• “On Bended Knee” - Boyz II Men: Again, don’t beg. I don’t care if you don’t want Lisa Turtle to leave you…don’t beg.
• “Saving All My Love For You” - Whitney Houston: The video for this song was great, as La Whitney - in all her early 20’s glorious goddessness - saved all her love for a married man. Ugh.
• “Roni” - Bobby Brown: Still don’t get this one. If anyone wants to explain the truth about Roni to me, I’m all ears. The ears will likely be covered with my hands, but I’m all ears.
• “Let’s Wait Awhile” - Janet Jackson: Let’s not. Face it, teenage premarital sex is a rite of passage. Besides, if you wait, you won’t have any good stories to reminisce about when you’re 36.
• “Strong Enough” - Sheryl Crow: Any song which begins, “God, I feel like Hell tonight” is sure to be a winner.
• “Picture” - Sheryl Crow & Kid Rock: Ironically, this one begins, “Living my life in a slow hell.” With all the cheatin’ and the druggin’ and the drinkin’…I oddly feel as though I should be rooting for this couple, since if I do, maybe they’ll be on Wife Swap next season.
• “My, My, My” - Johnny Gill: Er, I think this was a love song.
• “Criminal” - Fiona Apple: She’s been careless with a delicate man - no doubt, a man who listened to a lot of Chicago when he was a teenager.
• “I Don’t Wanna Cry” - Mariah Carey: I do.

I purposefully left out some all-time cheesy love songs, because…ahem…I like them.

I was watching Urban Cowboy earlier this week on VH1 Classic, and was thinking about how great the soundtrack to that movie was. Now granted, it was slightly before my time but my mom owned it, and played it about eleven gajillion times, so now it’s stuck in my memory.

The obvious choices (Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Purple Rain, Footloose, Dirty Dancing) aside, what other soundtracks have received the Snarkwife Seal of Approval?

• Urban Cowboy - I can’t hear Boz Scaggs’s “Look What You’ve Done to Me” without thinking of Bud cheating on Sissy with that oil baron’s daughter: “Daddy’s in oil. And all that implies.”
• That Thing You Do! - I loved everything on this soundtrack except for that insipid Diane Dane song…she was such a tart, flirting with Jimmy the way she did! For shame!
• Singles - Was there a defining soundtrack for my generation? If it wasn’t this one, it’s the one below.
• Reality Bites - Goodness gracious, whatever happened to The Juliana Hatfield 3?
• The Bodyguard - I think I literally, wore this CD out…and the cassette tape I dubbed it to so I could listen to it in my car.
• Sideways - Technically a score versus a soundtrack, but you can’t tell me the music in that movie isn’t great.
• The Commitments - I just rediscovered this one, and downloaded all the songs from iTunes. I had the CD back from when the movie originally came out, but didn’t seem to have it anymore. Regardless, remember when Andrew Strong was dubbed The Next Big Thing?
• When Harry Met Sally - “Harry who? I don’t know who he is, but he sure is hot!“
• Tin Cup - This wasn’t exactly a great movie, but it was definitely a movie which was saved by its soundtrack - which always makes me smile. If only there had been a song titled, “The One Where Don Johnson Gets That Smug Smirked Wiped Off His Face.”
• Hope Floats - Another one of those “average movie, great soundtrack” entries…Trisha Yearwood’s “To Make You Feel My Love” hooked me, and the rest of the songs kept me coming back.
• The Little Mermaid - I know just enough French from “Les Poissons” to probably get me laughed out of Paris…thanks, Disney!
• Almost Famous - Have you seen this movie? Seriously…you need to. It’s one of Capt. UberHusband’s all-time faves, and the soundtrack is a fantastic compilation of early 70s classic rock. I didn’t know all the words to “Tiny Dancer” until I saw this movie.
• Say Anything - If you were a young woman in 1989, you had this cassette tape. If you were a young man in 1989, if you were smart, you blared it from your boombox in front of your girlfriend’s house.

It was tough to narrow this one down to just 13. Juno barely missed the cut…but the movie and soundtrack just came out, and I really can’t with good faith put it on my list of all-time fave soundtracks just because I’m enjoying it right this second. Honorable mentions go to Elizabethtown, American Graffiti (again, a little before my time), and St. Elmo’s Fire.

Which soundtracks pop into your head?

Awhile back I did a “Top 10 ways my grad program is different than my undergrad program post” - so this is a bit recycled, but expanded.

• The proliferation of the internet. How did I make it through the early 90s without it? I’m able to do more research on a project in two hours now than I could do then in two weeks.
• No wine coolers within a mile and a half.
• The semesters go by a lot faster…I have no idea why that is.
• Better guy in my bed.
• My car has all its original hubcaps.
• There’s no need to sell books back at the end of the term to pay my electric bill.
• I’ll probably actually use this degree (See: “What are you going to do with a Poli Sci degree?“).
• I can afford to drink two glasses of wine during asinine project team conference calls.
• I don’t have to write my papers on this thing.
• Less poufy hair.
• No credit card debt!
• No microfiche!
• Better GPA…a lot better.

On this day seven years ago, I was getting ready to be a bride…a cold, frozen, rather regrettably sleeveless January bride. This seems like a good time to list out for you…

Thirteen Reasons Capt. UberHusband Is the Sexiest Man Alive:

(more…)

As I’ve watched our old fence be demolished and hauled away, only to observe a brand, spanking new fence being erected in its place, I began to think about all of the other things I’ve been more than happy to say, “Sayonara” to…and geez, the list was longer than I thought it would be:

1. My first car, an incredibly unsexy 1985 Nissan 200SX: I got it my third year of college, and managed to put 90k miles on it over the next five years. When I finally unloaded it, coughing and sputtering, on the fine folks at Carmichael Honda…they gave me $700 in pity money for it. I then drove away in my sexy 1996 Honda Civic.

2. College: Seriously, I was so happy to get out of college. I graduated in 1993, and while my contemporaries were modifying their schedules in 1992 so they wouldn’t be able to graduate the next year and instead could “ride out the recession” within the safe confines of university life, I wanted nothing more but to get the hell out. I remember “adults” telling me that “the real world” was hard, but all I could think was how I didn’t care if I worked eight hours a day as long as I’d get my evenings and weekends free. Now look where I am. On a related note, The Powers That Be have changed the name of my old dorm…now that I am sad to see go.

(more…)

In my quest to blog every day for the next year, I figured I’d better have some regularly scheduled posts to help break up the monotony caused by (a) the writers strike, (b) the upcoming Spring semester, and (c) the biannual writing funk I have fallen into:

With that, I am jumping into the Thursday Thirteen pool…this first one is sort of a gimmee…didn’t really require all that much thought, but it’s topical enough as an inaugural post.

1. Try to floss every day. This sounds lame, but I am getting tired of my dental hygienist getting on me because my gums are inflamed. Plus, it’s just the right thing to do.

2. Slow down…and I don’t mean that in a, “…and smell the roses” sort of way. I mean, literally, slow down so I quit walking into doors or countertops and causing physical harm to myself.

3. Get to the gym at least three days a week…preferably five. This really isn’t a lofty goal, because I used to go every day. Our facility just got all brand-new equipment last week (which we tried out this past Monday…fantastic!), which is incredibly motivational. Plus, I am a heck of a lot happier and amenable when I’m working out regularly.

4. Blog every day.

5. Learn how to make a great mojito…not a good one, but a great one.

6. During school, make sure I read at least one book for fun every month. I remember back during my undergrad days, I went months without reading anything for fun and sadly, when I graduated it took a long time to find reading enjoyable again. I’ve got a fairly good stack of books from Christmas to sift through…because life can’t all be about strategic marketing and market research textbooks.

7. Read my magazines before the next month’s issue arrives. This should be easier now that we’ve let our subscriptions to Food & Wine and Conde Nast Traveler lapse. Women’s Health is an easy read on the bike at the gym, and I generally blow through Everyday With Rachael Ray the day I get it, anyway.

8. Walk the doggies more…even if it seems like Daisy hates every second of it.

9. Work my way through my Netflix queue…the goal is 4 movies a month. I think we have something like 60+ movies in there now…including all those “classics” I’ve never seen like The Godfather.

10. Cultivate a better attitude about my current job. Painful, but necessary.

11. Learn the ins and outs of my camera…seems a waste to have such a powerful little device and not know how to unlock it’s full potential.

12. Do a better job of keeping up with and commenting on my favorite blogs - I’ve already added all of them to Google Reader, so I’m on my way with that one.

13. Scratch the doggies more…and scratch Capt. UberHusband more.

How about you?