But Call Me Betsy

I did a great job for the first half of the year writing consistently in this blog. I set a goal to get to it four to five times a week in order to beat my best year of writing consistently (200 posts in 2008) and do way better than last year (only 45 posts in all of 2013), but then I fell off---I am not sure why. My life didn't get busier--it got slower. I am more productive when I have a lot to do and sloth-like when I have less to do. But I will try to get to the blog more often. It's like if someone told me I had to do it, I would, but since I'm the only one paying attention, I let it slide. My Penn degree arrived in the mail yesterday.  I am not even quite certain what the degree is MLA? LPS? MRS? It's a Master's in liberal studies of some kind. It was not inexpensive to get, even though since I worked at Penn, much of the coursework was covered by my benefits. But the way that goes is you can take a limited number of classes per year, so if you don't wan...

We already know that there will be a shocking ending to the show which could mean a few things: 1. Andi decides not to pick either the poet or the former baseball player and to go on Bachelorette in Paradise and roll the dice again. 2. Andi picks Nick and he turns her down, telling her that he just got a call from NBC for his own sitcom. 3 She chooses Josh and Josh throws her a curve ball by letting her down easy. 4. Someone dies unexpectedly, like Nick's non-existent maternal grandmother and there is no resolution. 5. Andi realizes that she is in love with Juan Pablo and sprints off with him to go on a Hawaiian cruise. 6. Andi picks Josh, but Josh doesn't pick her. My guess is that she picks Nick and he tells her to go fly a kite, but in a way that rhymes. Hometown date #1 with Nick  Nick sucks up to the family by bringing very gender-specific gifts such as flowers for mom and a bi g bottle of booze for dad, whose name is Hy, short for?? Hythere? Hylo? Hyfive? Ni...

The worst episode in the series--this time waster of a two hour fest where they bring back all of the dudes to recap what's happened so far, in case you haven't watched any of the program or in case you give a shit. Oh, here's a twist, this old pregnant Bachelorette.  Ashley, takes an ultrasound on "live" TV and they will be finding out the gender of their baby at the same time as us.  What if the doctor is like, Oh, it's a kitten, or oh, it's not moving...This is beyond stupid. This is beyond exploitative. Cue women in the audience being told to open their mouths wide as if in amazement. Never mind anyone in the audience who might have lost a pregnancy or two or five. It's a boy! He will be the next bachelor in just twenty short years. They are going to name it Harrison, after Chris Harrison. God, I hope they're joking. I can't wait to see the live after-birth on the next episode, otherwise known as Cody. Right, so the other part of the re...

Nick's outfit is a mixture of the above.  First fantasy suite card: Nick, the Bad Poet I missed the first half hour of the show due to extenuating circumstances. Here's what I can tell in a flash: they drink a lot of wine. They fly in a lot of helicopters. They touch their own hair a lot and bite their (own) lips. Nick says he has "a sense of wonder," which makes me want to vomit. He is reminding me more and more of Fred Savage. They obviously don't know each other at all because she's asking him stuff like what his most embarrassing moment is. He wears sixteen different kinds of pastels to illustrate that he has a sensitive side. They kiss loudly around a bunch of palm trees. He tells her that he loves a lot of things about her, including just, like, her. They go into the fantasy suite so he can say more things that sound half literary and half like he's never dated a girl before in his life. Second fantasy suite card: Josh, Who Couldn't Care ...

She has whittled her picks down to four lucky bastards all of whom have made gestures toward confessing their love for her (ranging from giving her knucks to saying, I think I, like, have more than the hots for you).. The only catch? They have to introduce her to their parents. This will also be the episode where she discovers that Eric died  and so we are unable to make jokes about it. First hometown: Milwaukee with front runner, Nick Nick takes Andi on the worst date ever, forcing her to polka dance to an accordion player. Nick comes from a large family, and they all where scarves and cry when they get introduced to her. I missed the part where we figure out how many brothers, sisters and uncles he has.Nick wants his sister's advice. His sister is a ginger. Or wait, is this his ex-girlfriend? She wears a dress that's as big as a cocktail napkin and a scarf. I bet if Andi were cast in  a remake of Happy Days, she would definitely be cast as Pinky Tuscadero. She has a c...

I had a hard time getting through this book,  The Church of Dead Girls , by Stephen Dobyns. Not because I was disinterested or the writing was bad or the story wasn't compelling. It was because keeping the characters and their various relationships straight was exhausting. To be fair, the book is about the people of a small town who begin to mistrust each other, and so you can't have like four town members. At least the author didn't do that thing where he named the characters similarly--there wasn't a Todd and a Ted or an Alice and an Anne; everyone had a somewhat distinct identity and role, and yet...There was a reporter named Franklin, whom I kept confusing with the cop, Ryan. Franklin and Ryan. Are those names too similar sounding? It took me half the book to keep them straight. Add to this that they share a common bond of this dead woman named Janice, though I still can't be sure if Janice was Ryan's sister, or his ex-wife or Franklin's girlfriend or ...

I missed a week because we were on vacation in the Outer Banks, and so I don't know who got kicked off, who threw a punch, and who turned out to be there for the wrong or right reasons. My main question is, Has Andi blown her nose yet? And why do the guys hate Nick so much? We start in Brussels with accordions, which I guess is a Belgium type of instrument.  All of them are wearing women's scarves, because that's another thing they do in Brussels that is so cosmopolitan. I can't really tell who is gone, because all of the guys left look exactly the same. Oh, wait, it looks like she finally sent Kewpie back to the gym. That is honestly the only guy I recall as missing. Everyone else in the show has the same moussed hair style, bluish brown eyes, clear skin and orthodontia straight teeth. And no chest hair, as far as I can tell. They've all been shaved down for Andi. First One on One Date with Marcus Merci, merci. Marcus tells Andi that he's been writing i...