Watching The Grammy Awards Show And Other Wastes Of Time

Is it just me or is there is an awards show on TV like every other week? I don't know why we get suckered into watching these things, unless it is because the only other thing on TV is even worse, like Sunday night when your choice was The Grammys or Bachelor Wedding. I watched the Grammys and finally got fed up and turned it off after the whole silly lets marry a bunch of people in the aisles thing and bring Madonna out for a few minutes so we can see how young she is trying to look despite her Grandma cane. The cane is because she injured herself dancing? Whatever.

Seriously, usually there are at least a few acts on a show like that where I go, hey, that was really a good performance, but nothing struck me as even somewhat memorable this year. It's pretty much let's see how little we can wear and still be allowed on TV, or as in the case of Katy Perry, let's cover up the fact that we really can't sing all that well by having a bunch of pyrotechnics and dancers and fancy sets around us. And I think that Taylor Swift must be paying people off because in the last couple of shows like this that I've seen she gets on camera dancing or doing whatever an awful lot. Plus, I noticed she always gets to sit in the front row.

It's also kind of sad on a show like these to see old men trying to sing like they used to. And I'm sorry, but the Beatles were not really all that good back in the day and they really aren't that good now. What's left of them, anyway.

So, who cares who won or who didn't because there will be another awards show in a few weeks and better luck next time.

What else is going on around here? Besides stupid TV watching?

Keith had a few days off while waiting to see if his extra training would keep him on the job and finally got to talk to somebody on Monday about getting back on the regular road board and getting back to work. He went out on a job early yesterday evening and hopefully things will go smoothly from here on out. The conductor that worked with him really helped him out a lot with the problems that he's been having and I think things started to click in his head about how to do the job and what he's been doing wrong. He's still nervous about it, but feels a little more confident in his abilities.

And while the rest of the country is freezing and snowbound, yesterday we noticed that some of the trees around here are starting to bloom already. And it's not even the end of January yet. Instead of the usual kind of cold and maybe even wet January (well, cold and wet depending on how you look at it) it's been very warm and very dry and the trees are all kind of freaked out and blooming way too early. Because they don't know what else to do when it's 70 degrees out.

A Little Bit of a Road Trip

We were not planning on going down to the annual Christmas dinner at my sister's in Ventura this year, what with Keith being on the road and who knew if he'd be in Bakersfield or Barstow that day, but it just happened to all work out to where we were able to drive down for a few hours after all.

He had gotten in late Saturday night, sometime around midnight, got himself something to eat and watched some TV while I was sound asleep, and then woke up about 10 on Sunday morning. His tentative call time was for 1:30 am on Monday, so I asked if he wanted to drive on down. I volunteered to do the driving on the way so he could sleep, rest, whatever, and did pretty well with that despite hardly ever driving anywhere these days. The only traffic we hit was after we got to Ventura and got off the freeway onto a very crowded street with everyone wanting to turn onto the same street as us.

We had a nice afternoon but had to leave earlier than everyone else so that Keith could go home and get some more sleep before that midnight call to work. It was still light outside so I drove again, doing okay until we got to Castaic where it was getting full on dark and I was having a hard time seeing since my eyes are really bad in the dark anymore, so I woke Keith up and had him drive the rest of the way home.

When we got in the house he laid down on the bed with all his clothes on just to 'rest his eyes' for a while and never did wake back up. When I got up yesterday he had gone off to work already and should be home sometime this afternoon, just in time for Christmas Eve even if we have no plans and certainly aren't waiting for Santa to come since we didn't do any gift buying this year.

I'm sure he will head back out to work sometime tomorrow, so the extent of our festivities may be breakfast at IHOP if that.

I'm really glad we were able to go to Ventura, though, it was nice to get to see everyone!

Now I'm going to brag about our weather. I feel sorry for all those stuck in icy snowdrifts all over most of the rest of the country while we are going to be enjoying temps in the high 60s all week. I rode the bike up to Winco yesterday and actually had to take my jacket off on the ride back home because I was getting too hot!