March 1, 2010

So what did you think about the conclusion of the Bachelor? Did you see the handwriting on the wall from the beginning of the episode?

• Did you think it was weird that Jake’s family changed their opinion of Vienna so easily?  His mom seemed to be pretty intuitive from the beginning, and Jake was totally defensive about it, and was freaking out that he might have given his family a negative first impression of Vienna.

• You knew it was trouble when all Jake could say to Tenley was I love your eyes, your smile, your positivity, blah blah blah.  That isn’t the way you talk to someone you’re in love with.

• How harsh/stupid/mean was it for Jake to say that he and Tenley didn’t have physical chemistry?  Was he placing the pure lust he seems to feel for Vienna, above the emotional connection that he seemed to have with Tenley?  Ouch.  I would have been hurt too.  We all know that the lust stuff can wear out, and then what do you have left if that was the whole basis of your relationship?  Eventually you have to stop rolling around in the mud, and join reality:  start doing dishes and cleaning out the garage and taking the kids to soccer practice.

Do you believe me now when I tell you I heard that Jake isn’t with the woman who got the last rose, and in fact they had already split by the time “After the Final Rose” was shot?  We’ll see.

~BigSis

February 25, 2010

I swore I’d never watch another one of these ding dang things!  After that whole Jason debacle, I was so hissed off that I swore I’d never again waste my time on this show!  I didn’t watch Bachelorette last year and I didn’t start Bachelor this year.  That is, until Bry moved in!  Gah!  I hope he doesn’t lose his man card for this, but some chickadee got him hooked on the show and I started watching it with him.

Even though I’ve been watching, I still don’t feel very invested in the “characters”. Maybe I’m protecting myself since Jason burned me so badly when Kind Humble Man turned into Flaky Man and traded in Melissa for Molly after the fact.  This season just feels a little shallow to me, which I guess would mean the other seasons have been full of deep meaningful content? 

One interesting tidbit this season was the whole Rozlyn travesty of a mockery of a sham and her appearance on the “Women Tell All” episode this past Monday. Really? Does she honestly think we believe a teensy weensy word she has to say?  You get caught red-handed (or red-whatever) by several people, and still lie like a rug?  And then you attack Mr. NiceGuy Chris Harrison in the process?

Two thoughts about that.  #1, didn’t Forrest Gump say stupid is as stupid does?  He would probably say the same thing about pretty.  It doesn’t matter how gorgeous you are on the outside if the inside is contaminated by a lack of character with a big dose of mean and nasty.

#2, don’t be hatin’ on Chris Harrison, friend, just because you’re caught in a corner.  That’s just not right.  I happened to see him at a local Jason’s Deli with his family a while back, and he seemed like a pretty lovely man to me.  PS, he’s more handsome in person.

So, back to our story.  Will it Be Vienna, or Tenley, or neither?  All I’ll say is that I heard from a little bird that it doesn’t matter which one gets the final rose, cause Jake isn’t with the “winner”.

Already.

Glad I’m not invested.

~BigSis

February 24, 2010

I need to snap out of it. I haven’t been able to focus much on anything since Sunday because I’ve been so preoccupied thinking about how Bry is doing at Basic Training. I know he’s in good hands so I’ve got to make myself stop worrying.

Sometimes we get so caught up with what’s going on with ourselves and our own little world, that we forget about others who have far worse problems than our own. I don’t know why today was the first day that I actually took the time to watch the We are the World 25 for Haiti video, but I’m glad that I did. There’s some awesome talent on this video and some unbelievable shots of the tragedy in Haiti.

Even after watching the video, it’s not possible to understand the magnitude of the loss and devastation in Haiti. I don’t know how much money has been raised so far, but you can still go to World25.org to download the video, donate, and download the song from iTunes.

It’s amazing how this group of talented artists of all ages and genres came together to help the people of Haiti.

~LilSis

February 14, 2010

One, two, three, four, five.  Five.  It takes five Texans to build an igloo!

This is my friend SAA and her family, with the igloo they built during Dallas’ 12.5 inch record snowfall on February 11.  I’ll bet I never get to say those words again…

Way to go SAA and crew!

~BigSis

February 14, 2010

Last Thursday, the Dallas area got a whopping 12.5 inches of snow; shattering the previous record of 7.5 inches to smithereens!  I can’t even tell you how gorgeous it was and what a treat it was to see this. My neighborhood looked like some kind of fairy tale North Pole scene.  Even though it was beautiful – and lots of schools closed to the delight of kids everywhere – it did cause a lot of problems.  100,000 people are still without power today.  Thankfully, my power was back on Friday night after being out for the whole day.  We had trees down all over town, and branches ripped off the ones still standing.  Those poor little trees weren’t used to holding up all that snow, and ended up toppled over on power lines.

Since this may be the biggest snowfall I’ll see in my lifetime if I continue to live here, I wanted to remember as much of it as possible so I took a zillion photos.  Here are a few:

Adios, snowstorm of 2010!  You were a bit of a pain, but you were a blast while you were here! 

~BigSis

February 8, 2010

Drew Brees Family at Super Bowl

Happy Monday-after-Super-Bowl, everyone!  LilSis is still in Big D, and without Big T’s influence, we wouldn’t have watched the Super Bowl at all.  We were watching “Death at a Funeral” during the game, so we recorded it.  Our plan was to forward through the plays to just watch the commercials, but it became clear that the Saints had showed up!  We ended up watching most of the 4th quarter, and were actually more impressed with the game than with the commercials!

So congratulations to the New Orleans Saints this morning!  It’s always fun to see the underdog prevail, and it’s especially nice to see New Orleans get a much-needed boost!

Photo credit: Getty Images

~BigSis

February 1, 2010

Did you watch the Grammy Awards last night?  I’m a big fan of Pink, so her performance blew me away, as usual!  It also made me want to run for the gym!  Can you imagine being in front of all those people in that *outfit*?  Wow!

I like watching awards shows, but the Red Carpet is my favorite part by far.  Here are some photos from the Grammys Red Carpet 2010.  As you might imagine, it was not a boring evening!

Adam Lambert

Beyonce

Blackeyed Peas

Carrie Underwood

Heidi Klum and Seal

Keri Hilson

Lady Gaga

Lea Michele

Mary J Blige

Pink

~BigSis

January 4, 2010

Happy new year, everyone!  I hope that you had a wonderful holiday time, and that you’re fired up about the new year and ready to get it rolling!  I love that it always feel like a fresh start to me.  Who among us doesn’t need a fresh start in some area of their life?

I talked last year about how I don’t really like resolutions because I feel like I’m setting myself up to fail somehow if I make official “resolutions”.  Instead, I like to think about what I did the previous year…what worked, what was a disaster, what do I want to do differently, what do I want to add to my life.  For me, a new year is about reflection and reevaluation.

This new year, I can see that it’s going to take extra workouts to achieve and maintain the level of fitness I’m comfortable with.  I was on that train for several months in 2009, but wandered off it and have to get back on now.  I’m not totally out in the weeds, but I’m a bit off course, and that slight veering off the path can quickly turn into a full-blown physical train wreck when you’re forty-plus!  If you don’t know what I mean, you will eventually!

The biggest change for 2010 is one I’ve been seriously contemplating for the last few months, after having it in the back of my mind for 15 years. It’s time for me to stop fiddling around and finally go vegan.

When I first stopped eating all meat products, I also stayed away from eggs and dairy for quite a while, but finally succumbed and adopted a purely vegetarian diet rather than vegan.  Since I know that the egg and dairy industries are probably more abusive than the factory meat farms, I’m going to put my money where my mouth is and stop putting eggs and dairy there.

I started out telling myself that this vegan business was going to be really hard; harder than going vegetarian was since that was pretty darn easy for me.  The biggest challenge is definitely going to be learning how to bake in a completely different way, and for me this is pretty major since I love to bake more than I like to cook.

I’ve decided this change will be fun, as well as the right thing for me to do, and one thing I’m going to do from square one to make it funner is to blog about it.  I realize that most BigSisLilSis readers aren’t vegan or even vegetarian, so I’m going to start a brand new blog for my vegan ramblings. I’m still noodling it around, so I’ll bust it out when it’s a bit more finalized.  I do know it’s going to be a little adventure, and I’m excited to start.  I’m in the process of cleaning all the butter and eggs and other holiday baking remnants from my kitchen, along with the holiday leftovers.  Once that’s gone, away we go to Vegan Land! Wheeee haw!

So, my goals or resolutions or whatever I’m calling them, are to:

• Exercise with a new motivation and keep it up, with the goal of building more muscle and getting stronger. That means getting back to Jillian Michaels’ videos, yoga class, and using the new Wii Fit I just bought myself with Christmas money.  I also joined RecipeGirl’s 10 in 2010 program as LilSis did.

• Adopt a vegan diet asap and blog about it.  You’ll notice a lot of new cookbooks in my left sidebar reading list now, since I’m going to need some help to keep my food interesting and nutritious!

• Learn how to bake without eggs and dairy!  The 2010 SPCA Bake Sale is only 11.5 months away!

• Find a new church and plug in.  It’s time already; stop messing around and commit to one.

• Work toward balance between all aspects of my life: work, blogging, social, health, and spiritual. This is a toughie when you’re an all-or-nothing personality like me!

There you have it.  I bet that some of my goals and LilSis’ goals are the same as yours, so let’s all rally around each other, and make some positive changes in 2010!  We can do it!

~LilSis

November 27, 2009

I really don’t like the fact that somewhere along the line, the biggest shopping day of the year was named Black Friday! I just don’t like it. I never go shopping the day after Thanksgiving. I guess if there was an amazing sale on a specific large ticket item that I needed for someone, I might venture out, but not at 4 a.m! Never!

I’m sure most people are out shopping and not at home reading, but that is exactly what I should be doing today. I recently received two of my favorite magazines, both which have some beautiful Christmas cookies on the cover.

I’m dying to find time to sit down and look through both of these, but I have a problem. I’m a little behind on my reading!

And, there’s more.

And, still more!

I don’t know how I let this happen AGAIN! I guess there’s just too much going on each day that prevents me from being able to leisurely sit down and thumb through each of these as they arrive.

In the summer, one of my favorite things to do is to sit down at the beach and thumb through a really good magazine. And I love all of these that I subscribe to but something’s gotta give. I just canceled my subscription to Food & Wine (gasp!) because I realized that out of all the magazines I receive, it has the most unread issues.

When my stacks become overwhelming, like they are now, it stresses me out because it becomes just another chore that I’m behind on and then it’s no fun at all!

So, I need a plan. I wonder if it would help me dig into them if I put them in nice little stacks like these in order by issue?

I think I’m going to have to start with the most current and go backwards because otherwise, I won’t get to my December issues until next Summer!

~LilSis

October 16, 2009

LilSis and I are still in Sin City, so we’re super excited to have an awesome guest poster today!  SAA is a coworker of mine, and she had the incredible opportunity to see U2 live in Dallas the other day.  Call me jealous!  She’s agreed to share her experience with us all, so take it away, SAA!

Photo by SAA!

It’s hard to describe a concert experience like U2’s 360 Tour in the new Cowboys’ Stadium Monday night.  Was it epic?  That’s close, but it falls short.  Life changing?  Well, I don’t want to be dramatic…but that might be more like it.

The story started when I lucked into a last-minute ticket for the Dallas stop on U2’s 360 Tour on Monday.  Basically, a friend figured out he wouldn’t be able to make it because of work, and $65 and 24 hours later I found myself a mere ten yards from the 2-inch platform shoes of Bono himself.  Yes, Bono wears 2-inch platform shoes because, yes, he has a bad case of Short Man’s syndrome.  But I digress.

If the Cowboys’ Stadium isn’t staggering in and of itself, walking inside and seeing the towering, alien-like 360 Tour stage will make your jaw drop (see http://360.u2.com).  Add 70,000 people and the era’s greatest (arguably) rock band, and, well…the phrase “life-changing” doesn’t seem as dramatic.

I could try to go into detail about what it felt like when The Edge strummed the first note of With or Without You (my personal favorite), or when Bono made eye contact with me from only eight feet away and I went weak in the knees, or when the stadium sounded like it was about to burst during Where the Streets Have No Name.  But I’d be setting myself up for failure.  Words just can’t do it justice.

I will say that U2’s old stuff will always be nearer and dearer to my heart than their more recent songs.  They actually opened with two songs I didn’t know from their newest album, and I had the sinking feeling that the concert might be a let-down.  But, happily, the set list only got better from there.  BigSis had predicted that Bono would find a way to throw in a political issue, and she wasn’t wrong: before the concert started, event staff passed out rather creepy masks of Aung San Suu Kyi (picture here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U2360-Suu_Kyi-tribute.JPG), an imprisoned Burmese democracy advocate, for those of us on the floor to wear during Walk On.  But really, Bono wasn’t preachy about it, and it was a worthwhile issue.  I can’t say I’d personally like for thousands of people to be wearing my face on a mask, but maybe that’s just me…

Unfortunately, time won’t permit a longer post.  But I will leave you with this advice: if the 360 Tour is coming to a city near you, go.  It will be something you tell your kids and/or grandkids about some day.  Thank you, BigSis and LilSis, for the posting space.  And, in the spirit of U2, walk– err, blog on