May 6, 2017- The Mets and McCartney

It was raining so much yesterday that it didn’t seem as if there would even be a Mets game but luckily it stopped by around 4:15. There was only a spot of drizzle during it later on. They beat the Marlins 8-7. It hadn’t seemed like they were even going to win.

   I wish that I could be more descriptive about this but my mind is all jumbled. I mainly recall the rude people, particularly one guy, in front of us who often blocked our view. And the fact that neither my brother nor I were smart enough to realize that we could have moved over to avoid this until like the bottom of the 7^th inning.

   Mike was the one who said that we should do so. There wasn’t anyone else in our row so we went over to the end of it. I wish that we had done this much sooner.

    Syndergaard was supposed to be the pitcher but he is injured. This was disappointing. The free Thor t-shirt is kind of cheesy but I am glad that we got it.

   Don Mattingly, my 1980s crush, is the Marlins’ manager. It’s been nearly 30 years since I last saw him in person. I have been to more Mets games over the past 3 years than I was to Yankees games in the 1980s; 6- 2.

   Mike ate a chicken sandwich and fries from Blue Smoke. It was another chilly night, not as bad as the last time though. I was dressed warmer so this helped.

   The subway was extremely packed this time. I felt so anxious. Some music was playing in my head then, 2 songs apiece by McCartney and Spandau Ballet. This helped to calm me a bit as did some by Depeche Mode during the game.

   He wants to go to another game in 6 or 7 weeks. I sort of want to but mostly I am just feeling like this will be too tiring in every way as it has been these past 2 times.

   I ordered Paul McCartney tickets for Mike and me yesterday morning. Our seats could have been closer and also together if I had done the preorder on Thursday. The Prudential Center had sent me a code only part of me wasn’t so sure that I should make this purchase.

   It isn’t as if I am into his music that much anymore as I was in the late 80s and early 90s. At first, that internal voice won over the one that said that I shouldn’t pass up on this opportunity. I am just glad that I was able to reverse this in time to get these tickets. I probably will always be a bit mad at myself for not doing the presale.

   I was surprised that my brother actually wanted to go with me. He is always saying how over-rated that the Beatles (and each member) are. Yet he has their greatest hits. It is disappointing that we couldn’t get seats together but at least we will be in the same section (far from the stage), just 3 rows and one seat apart.

   That isn’t until September. We have the Lionel Richie concert before that in August. Both are at the same venue. Mike will be seeing Janet Jackson there in November; she finally rescheduled her tour dates. His Roger Waters show is also in September.

   He still is hoping that Bon Jovi will be at Met Life stadium this summer. I guess that I will go too. He had about 7 of their videos on yesterday before we left for the game. I am the one that got him into this group in the first place. He likes them more than I do now. I only listen to them when he does.

 

Later-

I read an article and watched some highlight clips of yesterday’s game. I did remember some of this, like how Granderson got a 2 run homerun, that Montero was the pitcher, and that they had 6 relievers. TJ Rivera did well but I only remember the homerun part of this. Their winning run was from a walk in the 8^th.

    There were a bunch of runs for each team in an inning- 6 for the Marlins in the 4th and 4 for the Mets in the 7^th. I think that this is right. Even after writing down these details, I am still doubting my memory. We were happy that Flores was in the line-up.

September 19, 2015-More Friends- Part 2

   In high school I sometimes hung out with Mary and her friends at their table in the cafeteria. They were a year ahead of me. I think that she was a part of the Peer Club that would look after under classmates. They all seemed nice. I just wish that I hadn’t been so afraid to talk to them. I only did so a little.

   Mary invited me to her graduation party where I found out that she also had a crush on Don Mattingly. Someone gave her an 8x10 photo of him as a gift. It would have been good if I had gotten to know her and the other girls better.

   She is one of my Facebook friends as are some of my other former friends and classmates. I don’t really associate with any of them on that site though. I have sent them birthday wishes occasionally. I’m not that interested in social networking that way or even in person. I’m a very strange girl.

   A tiny part of me disagrees with this and was sort of hoping that I could make a connection with some of the girls that I’ve met at DD concerts and events. Of course, I don’t feel as if this could ever truly happen. I have done so a little bit with a couple of them but even this feels awkward to me.

   Tracey and I cut classes one afternoon to go down the shore – Asbury Park.  She borrowed her sister’s car, a Fiero, for this. That’s the only time that I’ve ever done something bad like that during my school days. I only got detention twice and the one time it was the whole class in high school. I can’t remember why this happened to me in the 5^th grade.

   Tracey was a big Springsteen fan. I’m pretty sure she had a crush on him. We didn’t really hang out that much and it was mainly at school. She was nice; I wish that we could have had a closer friendship but I guess that my social anxiety was partially to blame for this.

   Julia and I went to the Westfield Theater to see The Manhattan Project but I don’t really remember anything about that movie. Mom took the 2 of us and Mike to Woodbridge Mall. Julia ran up the down escalator there. Mom bought her a nice pair of jeans that day.

   She rode her bike over to our house one day. We drove her home. I only remember being at her host families house once or twice; I think that it was in Roselle.

   We mostly only hung out together in school though and she seemed closer to a few other girls in our class. I am glad that we were friends and not just because I got the chance to go to Germany and stay with her family. I would have never been able to afford anything but what I had to pay for- the airline ticket and souvenirs-otherwise.

   My 2- 3 year friendship in the late 90s with Lynn was nice; it’s a shame that we drifted apart. We had sent holiday cards to each other for a few years after that. We had a lot of fun going to garage sales and flea markets.  We sometimes did arts and crafts like decoupage. She liked stuffed animals and stickers too.  I gave her my small Friend Care Bear.

   We went to the Flemington Outlet Center with a couple of friends of hers. Matt and I went to her birthday party. I gave her a Gund brand doggie which she loved. She had a pet ferret but I don’t remember its name.

    Gina and Roy were our family friends. They used to live somewhere in North Jersey before moving to a house across the street from us.

   Our parents went with them to a mall in that area one day in 1976. That is when they bought our Shetland sheepdog pup Rusty from a pet store there. They had an adorable doggie named Barky. I am pretty sure that it was part Border collie.

 Mom said that Roy and Gina saw Grease in the movie theater at least 10 times. I liked the big scrapbook of 8x10s of stars that they had in the attic room of their nice house. I wish that I could remember who was in this book. In the early 90s, Mike and I started collecting photos of our favorite stars too.

  Roy and Dad worked in GM. They used to drive there together. Early one morning (it was still dark), Roy was hit and killed by a car when crossing the street to get to our apartment. This was very upsetting. That was in 1980 or 1981, I think.

     

 

 

 

Dreamland

February 25, 2012- Cute Doggie

We were living in our old apartment. Grandma next door was visiting us. In this reality, she got along well with Mom. It was the early 90s. Grandma never had a stroke and my parents were still together. Dad was working at GM- he never took the buyout like in the real world. He’d be able to retire in a couple of years. He wasn’t a control freak here either.

   We had our Buffy spaniel. She was healthy and a few years old. I was surprised and a little disappointed that Ginger wasn’t a part of this; she’s hardly in these holodeck programs.

   Grandma’s friend Ellie gave her an adorable beagle puppy. I was playing with him in the living room. She had just gotten him the day before. Grandma hadn’t given him a name yet. She said that she was going to give him to us and that we could choose the name. She was the one who had given Ginger her name.

   This doggie seemed to like me a lot. I was having trouble coming up with a name for him though. Mike was trying to help me. He suggested the name Eli- as in Manning of the Giants. I laughed and said “What about Peyton?”  I forget what team his brother plays for- Colts?

   The time line was strange here- even though it was the early 90s stuff from the present day was part of the program.

   Other names mentioned-Skippy, Scooter, Buddy, Rex and Simon (as in Le Bon of Duran Duran).Mike tried singing “The Reflex” then. None of them were sounding right for this puppy.

   Buffy was a little jealous of him at first but then they were playing together. Buffy had her tennis ball and the beagle was trying to get it away from her. As I watched them, I was smiling on the inside.

   That’s when I was thinking about Snoopy of the Peanuts cartoon. Why hadn’t I thought to name him after this famous beagle much sooner? Mike agreed on this name and also said that he should have thought of this too.

   Grandma was talking to Mom about having us over for dinner the next evening- she’d be making stuffed cabbage. Yummy! Mike asked if she’d make potato pancakes too. He loves her recipe for this and wishes that he had it.

  Dad got home from work about 40 minutes later. He treated Buffy and Snoopy nicely. I found out that Ginger had lived a few years longer in this reality. She had died of a weak heart which is also sad but not as terrible as Dad never paying to find out what was causing her sickness and just having her put to sleep in reality.

    My brother and I listened to an afternoon Yankees game on the radio. He wasn’t even teasing me about Mattingly which was good. And he wasn’t throwing a fit when they lost like the real Mike would do.

   The next morning, we took our doggies for a walk around town. It was a lovely June day. I did wonder why neither of us was working or going to school but nobody seemed to think that this was strange. Maybe we were both on vacation. These details weren’t really a part of the program though.

     Mike and I were in our late teens, which also were off in the time line by like 2-3 years. We should have been in our early 20s. This storyline was interesting and I was glad that I got to be with the ideal version of my family.

    I went outside after grandma’s delicious dinner; I was only in her yard for about 35 seconds when the scenery suddenly started changing. I was standing on the deck in our yard in our current apartment back on Earth where I had been before I had been transported to the holodeck.

 

                 

 

 
                                   
                                                                            Buffy
                                   
                                                                           Ginger  

80s TV Shows and Crushes

Mike and I were recently talking about the 1980’s NBC Tuesday night’s line up of “The A-Team”, “Riptide”, and “Remington Steele” that we used to enjoy watching.

   I had a little crush on the stars of two of those shows, Pierce Brosnan and Perry King. I wrote a fan letter to the latter once. I got a postcard with his picture on it and a stamped signature in return. He and Tracey Gold are the only stars that I’ve ever done this for.

    Thursday night’s CBS lineup was my other favorite –“Magnum P.I.” and “Simon & Simon”. I liked Tom Selleck a lot in the 1980s. I still have the two posters of him from back then.

    The 1984 Team Volleyball Captain one is messed up though because I foolishly cut across the top part of it. There was a rip in one corner from when I tried taking that sticky stuff that we used to use to hang stuff up off of it.

   I wish that I hadn’t taken apart the” Magnum P.I.” 1984 calendar. Mike lost the one page that I let him have. I might still have the “Riptide” poster. It’s kind of strange that I kept that.

    I definitely have the Don Mattingly one and the scrapbook that has 8x10’s, articles and his cards in it. I wish that I had kept the 6 Yankees yearbooks from the 80s too. My brother used to tease me so much about that crush, esp. when we were listening to or watching the games. This was so embarrassing.

Books About The 1980s

I ordered both of these books from the amazon.com site a couple of years ago. I first saw the Totally Awesome 80's one at a bookstore back in the mid 1990s and kind of regretted not getting it then. My library actually had The Best of Smash Hits and a few weeks after I took this out I decided to look into purchasing it. I never did buy that magazine back in the 1980s but I did get some issues of it from ebay shortly after getting this book. I guess that I was making up for the fact that I was never like my classmates going ga-ga over Duran Duran and other performers back then. I was too busy studying and reading to care about teen idols, MTV and all that. It's kind of embarrassing that I didn't go through my boy crazy phase until my mid 30's. I did have little crushes on Tom Selleck and the baseball player Don Mattingly but it seemed tame compared to how crazy the girls were going over guys like Rick Springfield and all those other idols that were in Tiger Beat and those other teenie-bopper mags.

Scrapbook Stuff 1

I was looking through one of my many scrapbooks the other day and seeing this made me both happy and sad. I miss our sunshine spaniel. This is my favourite scrapbook because it has mostly spaniels in it. I have another one with other doggies like golden retrievers. My brother says that I have too many scrapbooks. I had more stuff in them but over the years got rid of some of this. I was thinking of throwing out some more like from the TV ones. I would never throw out any of my animal pictures and articles though. Other scrapbooks that I have - about 4 tennis, classic actors, 70's - 90's TV, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, James Franco, British TV, Don Mattingly, Duran Duran, Bon Jovi, Travel, Concerts and Events, personal and more also. I use the 1 , 2 or 3 inch binders and put sheet protector pages in them. Maybe some people might think that doing this is kind of teenagish but I enjoy it.

My 80's crush

My brother used to tease me alot about my crush on Don Mattingly. I enjoyed watching the Yankees games with him in the 80's. That crush ended in the early 90's but my brother still teases me about him. My dad got me the 1984 Topp's baseball card but it was stolen from me by a boyfriend 12 years later and I'm still mad about this. I got another one but it's slightly flawed. I should've been more careful when buying it at the flea market. Sometimes I wonder why I even thought that he was cute. I guess my tastes have changed - not really into guys with facial hair that much anymore.

Top 10 Cute Guy rankings

I was looking through my journal and in the entry from August 30,2009 found that rankings list that I am embarrased that I even came up with. This seems so teenagish! I had a couple of other such lists in another journal- at one time Jon Bon Jovi was #2.

1. James Franco
2. John Taylor
3. Marat Safin
4. Tommy Haas
5. Jensen Ackles
6. David Boreanaz
7. Milo Ventimiglia
8. Jon Bon Jovi
9. Tom Welling
10. Orlando Bloom

I even added a plus 5 to this one, which makes it more ridiculous.
11. Alex O'Loughlin
12.Hugh Jackman
13. Jeffrey Donovan
14.George Eads
15. Justin Hartley

I was thinking about the silly crushes that I had in the 80s-mid 90s. Tom Selleck, Harrison Ford, Don Mattingly, Perry King, Lee Horsley, Bruce Boxlietner and a few others. I was never into the teen heart-throbs that most girls my age were such as the guys in Duran Duran, Rob Lowe, Matt Dillon, Kevin Bacon, etc..

My grandmother thought that I had a crush on Michael J. Fox just because I liked Back To The Future. She even brought me one of those teenie bopper mags with him on the cover. I kept it for a little while but it eventually got tossed out. Unfortunately, I put the Back To The Future poster in that one instead of the official souvenier magazine by accident so I no longer have that.

I had a scrapbook that I bought at a fleamarket about the time that I first started getting into Duran Duran which was 1993. There were alot of nice John Taylor photos in it. I went through a purging of my scrapbook stuff phase a few years later so that and some my 80s-early 90s items went into the trashcan. I kind of regret this.

I feel rather foolish for having my cute guys scrapbooks now at my age. I'm pretty much over my semi-obsessive Duran Duran/John Taylor phase, thank goodness. I don't want to part with the books, magazines and various other things that I ordered on ebay though. It is a bit embarrasing that I went so bonkers over them. I guess I was making up for not being into them in the 80s. I never understood back then why the girls were going so crazy over that group but now I can see why.