Back in the saddle again
Sep. 20th, 2016 10:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
susandennisThis morning it was back to the gym pool. Yeah. I love a chlorine or salt water pool (the gym pool is bromine). I love a pool with a deep end (the gym pool is only 4.5 feet deep). But most of all - really the very most of all - I love a kid free pool that is quiet and serene with no life guards (exactly my gym pool). So it was a lovely lovely swim.
I've also noticed that my speed has increased. It was hard to tell at the other pools. I thought I was swimming faster but I don't track close enough to know for sure in a strange environment. But this morning, I did an extra tenth of a mile with no increase in swim time. Cool. For me, it's just important to swim vigorously for at least an hour. Speed, technique and style really don't count. I need the muscle movement and cardio. But, I won't lie, it's still fun to be faster.
Also I wore one of the old, now modified, suits and 100% success!!!! Nice.
The shows from the new TV season are collecting on my TiVo. I'm not rushing to watch because I want to make them last. I love TV.
We actually did have a TV as far back as I can remember which was the early-mid 1950's. The first one was a giant wooden piece of furniture with a teensy weensy non-color screen. There was programming only about 8 hours a day. There were a few hours in the afternoon and then they would put up a test pattern and there would be no more until the evening news and then there would be a few more hours til about 11 or midnight and then test pattern again.
I had two very favorite programs:
Pinky Lee and Winky Dink
I could, right this minute, sing you the song from Pinky Lee. It is in my DNA. It was on for 30 whole minutes. A lot of the first TV programs were 15 minutes. One day I was watching him dance and sing and he just fell down and then, after a bit, they replaced his show with words on the screen. I couldn't read. I ran to get my Mom who was not at all interested in going to the TV to read the words. I finally nagged her into it and learned that "Our show is temporarily interrupted." This was a BFD for me for two big reasons.
1. I learned that I needed to learn to read or I would forever be begging people so I could know what was going on. I started teaching myself that afternoon.
2. I adopted the phrase 'temporarily interrupted' and used it in every single sentence for about two weeks until my mother threatened to permanently interrupt me.
Winky Dink was a VERY cool drawing show. You sent off for a Winky Dick kit which was a box of crayons and a plastic sheet. You put the sheet on the TV and then followed the ball on the TV with the crayons and made your very own drawing!!! It was just amazing.
Of course, the plastic sheet was lost immediately but who needed that??? Just draw on the TV anyway, right? Turns out, Mom had issues with that, too! Geesh.
I also have a rule about watching scripted TV. I only watch it at night. I don't watch a lot of TV in the daytime anyway. I watch some podcasts back in the sewing room but mainly I use the living room TV for Front Door TV Network. In the late afternoons I watch Ellen and other stuff - British Bake off, Project Runway, House Hungers. Then after dinner, I watch regular TV.
Except there is still baseball. There's a game tonight. But tomorrow's game is in the afternoon and no game on Thursday so I'll be able to get my real first taste of the new shows then.
Time now to go sew some dolls.
I've also noticed that my speed has increased. It was hard to tell at the other pools. I thought I was swimming faster but I don't track close enough to know for sure in a strange environment. But this morning, I did an extra tenth of a mile with no increase in swim time. Cool. For me, it's just important to swim vigorously for at least an hour. Speed, technique and style really don't count. I need the muscle movement and cardio. But, I won't lie, it's still fun to be faster.
Also I wore one of the old, now modified, suits and 100% success!!!! Nice.
The shows from the new TV season are collecting on my TiVo. I'm not rushing to watch because I want to make them last. I love TV.
We actually did have a TV as far back as I can remember which was the early-mid 1950's. The first one was a giant wooden piece of furniture with a teensy weensy non-color screen. There was programming only about 8 hours a day. There were a few hours in the afternoon and then they would put up a test pattern and there would be no more until the evening news and then there would be a few more hours til about 11 or midnight and then test pattern again.
I had two very favorite programs:
Pinky Lee and Winky Dink
I could, right this minute, sing you the song from Pinky Lee. It is in my DNA. It was on for 30 whole minutes. A lot of the first TV programs were 15 minutes. One day I was watching him dance and sing and he just fell down and then, after a bit, they replaced his show with words on the screen. I couldn't read. I ran to get my Mom who was not at all interested in going to the TV to read the words. I finally nagged her into it and learned that "Our show is temporarily interrupted." This was a BFD for me for two big reasons.
1. I learned that I needed to learn to read or I would forever be begging people so I could know what was going on. I started teaching myself that afternoon.
2. I adopted the phrase 'temporarily interrupted' and used it in every single sentence for about two weeks until my mother threatened to permanently interrupt me.
Winky Dink was a VERY cool drawing show. You sent off for a Winky Dick kit which was a box of crayons and a plastic sheet. You put the sheet on the TV and then followed the ball on the TV with the crayons and made your very own drawing!!! It was just amazing.
Of course, the plastic sheet was lost immediately but who needed that??? Just draw on the TV anyway, right? Turns out, Mom had issues with that, too! Geesh.
I also have a rule about watching scripted TV. I only watch it at night. I don't watch a lot of TV in the daytime anyway. I watch some podcasts back in the sewing room but mainly I use the living room TV for Front Door TV Network. In the late afternoons I watch Ellen and other stuff - British Bake off, Project Runway, House Hungers. Then after dinner, I watch regular TV.
Except there is still baseball. There's a game tonight. But tomorrow's game is in the afternoon and no game on Thursday so I'll be able to get my real first taste of the new shows then.
Time now to go sew some dolls.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-09-20 07:37 pm (UTC)But only with the special crayons on the special screen, kids! Pull green pieces of paper out of mommy's wallet and send them to...
(Yeah, I got grounded for wrecking a picture tube, too;)
I didn't know who the host was at the time, but years later, I learned that the visionary behind this scam was Jack Barry- who was at the heart of the quiz show scandals of the late 50s and didn't get back in the good graces of the network suits for almost 20 years after that. His comeback show was "The Joker's Wild"- where you spun a wheel for card-number prize winnings, with jokers to enhance your winnings and devils to wipe you out. And therein hangs a tale.
During the 1976 presidential race- hotly contested between Carter and Kennedy on one side and Reagan and Ford on the other- the Massachusetts primary was a big deal. My later college roommate had friends at U Mass that spring- and the pollsters were calling. These guys figured out that the pollsters were just working their way down the entire list of phone numbers in a dorm- which were consecutive with the rooms- and within minutes, they conspired to get into every room, answer every call, and tell the pollster that they were voting for Jack Barry for president. It made perfect sense- he'd just pull the lever, and dictate presidential policy on whether a joker or devil came up. Given what we've got now, this seems wiser than it seems.
Presumably the Gallups of the world have ways of identifying such anomalies, because I never heard anything more about it.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-09-20 08:00 pm (UTC)You know, drawing a bridge for the Winky kind of rings a bell. I've forgotten the details. The punishment kind of stands bigger in the memory :)
(no subject)
Date: 2016-09-20 08:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-09-20 08:14 pm (UTC)I got sent to my room.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-09-20 10:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-09-20 10:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-09-20 10:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-09-20 11:00 pm (UTC)My sister and I once had a knock down drag out fight over those words.
She said it was "Hello Hehe, my name is Pinky Lee" - I, of course, was right.
Ok now it is stuck in my head for sure... Let's see if this will fix it... Mare's Eat Oats and Does Eat Oats and Little Lambs Eat Ivy...
(no subject)
Date: 2016-09-20 11:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-09-21 02:39 pm (UTC)We weren't attracted to a whole lot of the new shows. But we did watch the first episode of "Bull", after which I said "I don't like it" and John said "It's worth watching one more", which experience tells me means that we're stuck with it.
Oh, and, speaking of baseball, your guys are supposed to be beating the Blue Jays; what gives?
(no subject)
Date: 2016-09-21 04:39 pm (UTC)Yeah, well, we decided that this just wasn't the right year to be in the playoffs. You know, personal schedules and stuff. Meanwhile Red Sox fans should be ashamed this week. Yeah they turn out when we play them but these Canadians are wild. All of Vancouver and most of Victoria are in the stadium for every game. I just passed a gynormous crowd of more than 50 blue t-shirted folks heading to the stadium... at 9:30 am!
(no subject)
Date: 2016-09-23 04:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-09-21 05:50 pm (UTC)My mother's family got a tv when she was 10, so 1956. She loved Andy Pandy and something called Twizzlers, I think it was
(no subject)
Date: 2016-09-21 05:58 pm (UTC)My Romper Room was led by Miss Melissa. I was 6 and in 1st grade. Miss Melissa's parents belonged to our church. So when Miss Melissa got married at Thanksgiving, I got to to go the wedding!!! My fame in 1st grade lasted until almost Valentine's Day.
And my very first wedding ever was a celebrity wedding!
(no subject)
Date: 2016-09-21 06:08 pm (UTC)Oh that is so sweet, I'm not surprised you remember it
(no subject)
Date: 2016-09-21 06:09 pm (UTC)