My insane 4th of July nails:
OPI Coca Cola Red
Sinful Colors White Striper
Sinful Colors Endless Blue
Wet & Wild The Star of the Show
Wore it for about three days before it drove me nuts and I removed it.
Summer 2014
I know, I know… The updates are few and far between these days. But here's a sampling of what I've been up to this summer!
In May: Malvina's baby shower –
Look at all that delicious flavor! Or, it would be that now I see the cheese ball is missing. Huh. Anyway, the food seemed to go over well with the guests. I was worried that there wouldn't be any parking, but it was literally the only day this entire year (that I've noticed) that the visitor parking across the street from my house was totally free. Go figure.
We had a mini high school reunion –
And then the baby was born about six weeks later!
In June:
I (and my dad) repainted my living room. We removed the valances above the curtains (see above pic – aren't they awful??) and it was a lot of work and a big construction disaster for about a week. I learned I can't live without curtains; it creeps me out.
Yes, I didn't take down my Christmas tree. From 2009. 😉
I think this is the first time I've posted the china cabinet on here. I refinished it in the fall of 2012 – that was a big job too. I still should paint the handles. Ah well, eventually. One of my coworkers saw these pictures and said… "You have a lot of stuff." I just laughed.
In July: birthday and box game at the A's.
Met up with Felicia on the 4th (my birthday weekend) for breakfast, and Sarah and Bill for dinner on the 5th. Had a great birthday dinner with the family on the 4th – my mom parents got me a Fitbit! And Abby got me Season 1 of Game of Thrones… it makes so much more sense after watching 4 seasons, haha.
And now it's August. I'm actually knitting a sweater, so I think I might document that later. Unless I get eaten by alligators next week… stay tuned!
Why I’m Irritated at the HIMYM Series Finale
Yes, it took the ending of a beloved television show to get me to post again.
But seriously guys, the series of How I Met Your Mother has really annoyed me.
It didn’t send me into rage spirals like the LOST finale (STILL MAD ABOUT THAT ONE, even though it’s been over for like 4 years already), it didn’t perplex me with its sheer wtf-ery like the Dexter finale (random lumberjacks!) and it didn’t pull the “Oh wait, what – it got canceled six months ago and I didn’t know about it?” crap that the poor The Glades got last year (and the last episode was a cliffhanger! Phooey!).
SPOILERS AHOY
So what the HIMYM finale did was negate an entire series with the last five minutes of the finale. How I Met Your Mother was not, in fact, about meeting the mother. It was about how Ted fell in love with Robin, never got over her, met the mother and had kids, then eventually got back together with Robin after the mother died. This whole time, Ted wasn’t telling stories to the kids about how he met their mom, he was telling them about his life so that he could justify getting back together with Robin several years after losing his wife.
Now generally speaking, had the show not gone on for so long, this could have been perfectly acceptable. It works in books and isn’t uncommon in real life. But the show went on for nine years and the entire last season took place over Robin and Barney’s wedding weekend. Then, in the final episode, they had Robin and Barney get divorced and Barney go back to his philandering ways – which the show had spent YEARS developing Barney into a better person. And the show had spent YEARS developing the idea that Robin and Ted were wrong for each other and that the mother was the love of Ted’s life.
Had the events that took place in the finale took place over the entire final season, I think that would have been much better. HIMYM has proven over the years that while generally a comedy, they can have tough stories lines and go about them in a serious way (Marshall’s dad dying and Robin’s infertility issues) – I actually think they could have done that whole final episode over the final season and those fans who expected Ted to wind up with the mother wouldn’t be so PISSED that they got cheated out of what they thought was the ultimate end game for the series.
Because ultimately that how I feel – cheated out of what I thought the show was about. While I can appreciate the creator’s artistic vision (the plan all along was to kill off the mother), the title was a misdirect – it wasn’t “How I Met Your Mother”, it was “How I Hard Time Dating, Met Your Mother, She Died, and Got Back Together With Robin.” And as someone who never thought Ted & Robin actually worked as a couple, I thought that was lame. I liked Robin & Barney together.
So, points I guess for taking a storytelling risk (the finale has been almost universally panned by fans/critics from what I can tell). I didn’t care for it, am disappointed by it, but wish that if that’s what they wanted to do, that it had been executed better.
Still, I did love the early years of this show. Lily & Marshall are probably one of the best TV couples ever, and it brought us the glory of NPH. I liked the flashback/flash forward structure which was unique to sitcoms. And I don’t feel like I wasted a bunch of time watching it like I do LOST, so there’s that!