Category Archives: Uncategorized

Song Lyric of the Day:

When you’re with me there’s a light and I can see my way / When you speak to me it’s a song and I know what to say

The Raconteurs / “Hands”

11:30PM.
This year, I’m thankful for:

• my husband – he does more than I could ever say thanks for; and, well, look at him:
• my family
• my friends – even the ones who move away without saying goodbye
• my job, which has brought even more wonderful friends and people into my life
• not having to participate in a medical experiment for Christmas money this year
• being able to breathe through my right nostril again
• being close to my family and Rich’s family
• everything I have – I never forget that I’m fortunate to have everything that I do

Song Lyric of the Day:

I wait peacefully / Now I’m waiting for a signal or a sound

TV On the Radio / “Satellite”

9:57PM.

Dear CBS,

We’ve been together for a few years now. Sure, I’ve known of you since I was but a wee fetus (you are much older, after all), but these last few years I really feel our relationship has hit its stride. You’ve become one of my closest friends. I run home to you on nights when no one else will do. Where to begin? CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Without a Trace, CSI: Miami, CSI: NY, Cold Case, Late Show With David Letterman, Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson are a start. And how can I not commend you for featuring my Fantasy Second Husband© (love you, boo!), Wentworth Miller, in a guest appearance on Ghost Whisperer‘s series premiere?

This year our relationship has only been strengthened by the completely justified cancellations of Love Monkey and Smith, both after only three episodes. Understandable, of course. Because every single successful TV show in history has found its loyal, core audience in three episodes or less. And charming, funny shows about young, New York City-based record company executives and thrilling, dramatic crime shows featuring antagonists as the protagonists have been overdone to the point of being boring. Tom Cavanagh‘s charisma and wit (and terrific supporting cast) aren’t needed in today’s TV landscape. I think I made it pretty clear early on what I thought about the nerve this quirky, original show had. Talk about cojones!

And, as a woman, I appreciate you taking someone as blindingly attractive (and talented) as Simon Baker off the air. Now, he was nothing but a distraction from housework. I mean, look at him:
How on earth was I going to ever get anything done around the house? My husband thanks you, too.

I also think that Academy Award-nominated movie stars Ray Liotta and Virginia Madsen, and the impressive Amy Smart, were way out of their league in a weekly, movie-quality TV show with top-notch production values. I won’t even get started on how likeable Jonny Lee Miller is. And the natural, darkly comic interaction between Baker’s and Miller’s characters? Pish posh.

Sure, you finally, quietly put all seven filmed episodes (including the four unaired ones) of Smith online*, but who wants to waste their time watching them? And for free, no less? Being left hanging after three episodes, seeing the twisty directions in which the show was headed and the possibilities that promised, well, that should be enough. Case closed.

Even more icing on the cake came in the form of the multi-talented Kevin Federline’s appearance on CSI earlier this season. Nothing, but nothing, lets fans know TV show writers, producers, and network executives genuinely have a show’s fans in mind when they dare to cast such a gifted individual in a pivotal guest role. Frankly, he was so impressive I almost didn’t notice the rest of the cast. I mean, look at him:

But what has really, truly made me see the good in you — and love you all the more for it — is Without a Trace‘s move from Thursday night to Sunday night this season. Brilliant! I didn’t remotely enjoy watching my favorite drama at 10PM on Thursdays last season. Talk about inconvenient! All of us WAT fans are now guaranteed to tune in Sunday night no matter what, least of all because we have to make sure TiVo manages to record the entire show thanks to football overruns. (Poor Cold Case…) I also like knowing that a new show airing at the same time on another network is putting the hurt on WAT‘s ratings, since WAT deserves nothing more than to be knocked down a (Nielsen) peg or two.

So thank you, CBS. Thank you for always having us fans at heart when deciding which shows should continue on or be put out of their (and our) misery. Thank you for well-thought out, non-publicity-seeking casting decisions. Thanks for your genius scheduling changes. And, before I forget, thanks so much for the quality reality programs you have gifted the world. Nothing beats a well-written, well-acted, quality original TV show than mass-produced, carbon copy reality programming.

Now if only Fox would get its act together. First, they do the right thing and cancel O.J. Simpson’s book deal and TV show. Then they announce that Prison Break‘s second half will likely return to the airwaves almost two months earlier than planned, thanks to improved ratings and fan demand. Come January, we’ll see season six of 24, uninterrupted by pesky repeats and lengthy hiatuses for its entire run. Talk about a network having its head up its ass.

Sincerely, your loyal viewer,

Patricia Sanchez Lee

P.S.–I’m still having nightmares about that ugly Simon Baker. I mean, look at him:

Gorgeous smile, thick, wavy blond hair, clear blue eyes? Yuck.

*Discovered upon a fortuitous visit to SimonSphere.

Song Lyric of the Day:

Skillet on the stove is such a temptation / Maybe I’ll be the lucky one that doesn’t get burned / What the fuck was I thinking?

Jenny Owen Youngs / “Fuck Was I”

10:00PM.
Owie owie owie!

Song Lyric of the Day:

And I take my medication / And I spend the rest of the day / Waiting for it to wear off

Spiritualized / “Medication”

Pattie’s alive. I know that’s first and foremost what everyone wants to know. She came through the surgery with flying colors (though not as much black and blue as we had expected!) and is recuperating quite nicely here at home.

We arrived at the hospital a bit before her “call time” and got the paperwork done. Then she was taken back to her room and prepped, while I read in the waiting room until they called me to come back as well. I got to spend some time with her prior to the procedure, but happily, post-narcotic drip installation… She was loopy, silly, and eventually nodded off to happysleeply land until the doc came to explain the anasthesiology procedures, then the other doc came to say hello and that she’d be taken to the OR shortly. They came for her, they shooed me off to wait again. A couple hours went by, and then the doc came out and told me that everything had gone quite well, exactly as expected, and that she’d be coming out of it soon. Quite a few pages later, the nurse came out and summoned me to come see our darling Boriqua of the slight bruises.

She was in quite a bit of pain, but alert enough to talk softly for a bit. Not too much swelling, but some on the side where the bone had been shaved back. They had already removed the packing they had used, and still had her on an IV drip. We sat and she rested a while, trying to shake off the nausea so we could get her packed up and home. Once the IV ran out the nurse unhooked her, had me sign some papers, and had me help her get dressed. We got her home without too many bumps (thanks Broadway roads project) and into bed pronto. She slept for several hours and is now awake again, on the Good Stuff ™, and preparing for a run of CSI season one episodes… After laughing at something and then wincing in pain, she realized that Arrested Development might be a really bad idea, so CSI it is!

Stay tuned for more episodes of “Pattie Struggles Not To Sneeze” and “As Pattie Summons Her Faithful Slav”– I mean Husband!

Song Lyric of the Day:

The iron hand / Did not understand / The plight of the common man

Starsailor / “Four to the Floor”

11:03PM.
Still trying not to freak out about my surgery; I have a pain threshold akin to that of the Republican party’s sense of humor. The fact that I can’t eat or drink anything from midnight tonight until after my 1PM surgery tomorrow isn’t helping; I’m going to be nice and queasy by the time I get into the operating room. Which is why I’m going to enjoy a nice, big chocolate chip cookie and a glass of chocolate milk as soon as I finish this post. The ensuing stomachache will totally be worth it.

I did manage to get a lot done at work today, so I didn’t leave any critical projects up in the air. If all goes well, I’ll be back at work Tuesday. Of course, if I’m still bruised and look like I got caught in the middle of a Britney/K-Fed-Ex smackdown, I’ll work from home that day. I’m just not that good with makeup.

Speaking of dumping a lot of talentless dead weight — not to say that “Popozao” isn’t an insta-classic; it most definitely is, just not for the right reasons — the world seems to be going break-up crazy lately. Reese filed for divorce from Ryan. Daniel Baldwin kissed sobriety goodbye again (sadly). The Republicans dumped good ol’ Rummy. And America tossed the Republicans out of the Senate (thank you, Virginia! Woot!). Of course, those last two prove that not all breakups are bad.

Song Lyric of the Day:

Lookin’ for somebody / Young enough to take it on / Clean up the corruption / And make the country strong

Neil Young / “Lookin’ for a Leader”

10:03AM.
Good News
Well, the Democrats are in control of the House once again. Now we just need to win the Senate; here’s hoping Virginia and Montana get it right.

Bad News
Unfortunately, here in Tennessee we did not get it right, and that weenie Bob Corker is now our Senator. The only consolation–and it’s a tiny one at this point–is that Harold Ford, Jr. really gave him a run for his money. He may not have won, but he came pretty damn close and is still the better man.

A Nose Job
Okay, it’s not really a nose job. But I am doing my best not to freak out about my sinus surgery tomorrow. A while back, my allergist confirmed that I do indeed have a slightly deviated septum. Fast forward to an ENT appointment a month or so ago, and it turns out my septum isn’t just a little bit bowed, it’s way out of whack–to the point that I haven’t been able to breathe through my right nostril for quite some time now. Thanks to my septum not being where it’s supposed to be, my left turbinate has grown out of control. So in addition to having my septum destroyed and rebuilt, my ENT has to shave down bone, too. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? You can see why I’m nervous. My doctor assures me that I won’t be in an excruciating amount of pain and that he’ll have me on good drugs (his words, not mine); I won’t even need packing. I’ll just need to not cry like a little baby because of the pain.

11:37AM.
Well, as expected, Tennessee and Knox County had lousy voter turnout. Of the state’s registered voters, only about 51% made it to the polls. And only about 50% of Knox County’s registered voters tried to make a difference. Talk about disheartening.

In other, nose-related news, I’m really starting to freak out about my sinus surgery. I’d cancel it right now if the prospect of finally being able to breathe well weren’t so damn appealling.

1:51PM.
The day suddenly brightened upon hearing the news that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is outta here. Lucky him–it’s not every day you’re sacrificed (officially, he’s resigning, but whatever) by your political party. You know, this actually helps take the sting out of Ford not winning just a little bit.

5:23PM.
Guess what? My ENT’s office just called a few minutes ago to cancel my surgery for tomorrow morning. My ENT had a family emergency arise, so it can’t be helped. Still, it stinks (no pun intended). I’ll find out tomorrow morning if they can squeeze me in for 1PM Friday afternoon instead. If they can’t, who knows how long I’ll have to wait for the next available slot? My ENT is a very busy man.

Political Song Lyric of the Day:

I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies / This is the dawning of the rest of our lives / On holiday

Green Day / “Holiday”

9:19AM.
Rich and I voted in the primary election on our way in to work this morning. I was particularly happy to do it; I’m cautiously optimistic about the turnout, despite what happened last time I got my hopes up.

As excited as I was to vote, I got a bit depressed when I asked one of the polling volunteers what kind of turnout they expected and he said only 50 percent. How sad is that? People in other countries are literally dying to vote (just look at Iraq this past year), and yet here in the grand old US of A most of us can’t be bothered to take a little time out of our day to do it (I was in and out in 15 minutes). It wouldn’t bother me so much if I didn’t know that the people who will bitch the loudest about the election results will likely be the ones who didn’t bother to vote anyway.

Here’s to the right to vote.

8:48PM.
Still waiting for election results. It’s going to be a long night.

Song Lyric of the Day:

In the stillness of the evening / When the sun has had its day / I heard your voice a-whispering / Come away now / New York, New York

U2 / “New York”

11:44PM.
This trip has been a total whirlwind. My tootsies are killing me from walking so much. I’ll post photos and do a proper update once I’m home this weekend, but in short we have so far, in no particular order:

• celebrated the fact that I even got here
• eaten lots of pizza
• toured the harbor
• said hi to my Food Network colleagues before taking a guided tour of the office and studio
• caught a Broadway show featuring foul-mouthed puppets
• seen an exhibition of polymer-preserved bodies
• gotten lost
• at long last met up and grabbed drinks with MetroDad
• walked in a Halloween parade
• walked Brooklyn Bridge
• eaten brunch at a French restaurant
• gotten lost again
• listened to a Latin jazz band with my aunt and uncle
  
• shopped
• window shopped
• shopped for windows (not really)
• hit the holy land of used book stores
  

And we still have almost one full day left…

Song Lyric of the Day:

I’m dressed in white noise / You know just what I want

Goldfrapp / “Strict Machine”

8:35AM.
I’ve been up since 3:50AM this morning. Why? To catch my 6:10AM flight to New York City. But it’s 8:36AM now, 26 minutes after my original scheduled landing time. I should be getting my luggage in LaGuardia Airport right about now, but instead I’m using the nearby Hilton’s free WiFi connection (thanks, Paris & Nicky!) to blog from Knoxville’s McGhee Tyson Airport. From gate 3, to be exact.

So what happened? Well, I woke up, showered, woke Nan up (she stayed over last night to drive me to the airport), and headed to the airport. I got to Gate 5 with plenty of time; 5AM, to be exact. As boarding time neared, a Delta representative informed us that our plane was experiencing mechanical difficulties, was being worked on, and that we’d be boarding a bit late. Okay. Fine. About a half hour after our scheduled takeoff time, we were updated that the problem was still being worked on. About 15 minutes after that update, we were told to switch to Gate 3 where we’d board another plane. Okay. Great. Don’t want to fly on a defective, potentially unsafe plane, right?

We boarded our replacement plane at about 7AM. I read a bit and then settled down for a nap while we waited to taxi down the runway. I had just fallen into a nice, comfortable sleep, when–despite my earplugs–I heard the flight attendant announce that this plane–the replacement plane–was experiencing mechanical difficulties and that we’d be taxiing not down the runway but back to the gate. Okay. Fantastic.

After sitting on the plane until almost 7:30AM, we were told that maintenance workers had filed paperwork and that once they got it back it would take about an hour to fix the plane. To fix the thingamabob needed for landing. We would be getting off the plane and going back to our gate. I and my fellow passengers scooped up our carry-on luggage and our complimentary sorry-you’re-missing-your-flight-to-New-York-City water bottles and blankets (an heirloom-quality creation I’ll someday pass on to my children. Or cats.) Okay. Wonderful.

Our options are to either wait for our plane to be fixed (fingers crossed!) or wait for flights to Atlanta leaving Knoxville at 11:30AM and arriving in New York City at 4PM. Pray for our plane to get fixed. I’d rather not lose a whole day of my vacation, and neither would my fellow passengers.

So now here I sit, on my two-year blogging anniversary, hoping that Mechanic Mike will pull through for us and get our plane fixed. After countless text messages to Rich from on and off the plane, I booted up my trusty MacBook to write a blog post in Word to be posted later. But, lo and behold, I got free WiFi instead. Now I just need to get to New York City.

Did I mention I’ve been up since 3:50fuckingAM?

10:00AM.
Guess where I am now? At 9AM, we finally got to reboard our plane. Everyone got settled in and our flight attendant was buckled into her own seat; everything was ready to go. Then our intrepid pilot came over the PA system. Turns out LaGuardia Airport is not taking any inbound flights right now due to some storms that moved into the area. So even though we were finally ready to go and cleared for flight, we now can’t go anywhere. They think we’ll be sitting here on the tarmac for at least an hour, until LaGuardia has all the earlier diverted traffic under control.

Disclaimer: If I have to update again about anymore unforeseen, not-so-funny-ha-ha delays here in Knoxille, it will be a posthumous post as I will have gone ahead and killed myself out of sheer frustration.

I think I’m going to nap until takeoff; at the rate I’ve been reading my book–which was supposed to last me the whole trip–I’ll be done with it before we get airborne. When I got to the airport this morning, I started reading at the beginning of Chapter 4. I’m now up to Chapter 20. Keep in mind that I’m reading Tess Gerritsen and not James Patterson, so the chapters are longer than two pages each. Shit, if I was reading a Patterson book, I’d have covered 83 chapters by now.

10:19AM.
I want to either be in the air or to get off this plane!!! I wonder which power that is I pissed off. Who knows?

In the interest of not climbing the walls, I’m going to do this fun movie trivia challenge again. See how well you do–the challenge is to figure out which movies are represented by the scenes created using office stationery. It’s harder than it sounds.

10:36AM.
Pattie’s ghost here. Pattie just killed herself with that handy-dandy elastic strap on the sample oxygen mask the flight attendant uses in her demonstration. She snapped over the latest and not-so-greatest update from the pilot: LaGuardia is still a mess, trying to sort out all the incoming traffic and dealing with really high winds. Apparently, East Coast airports are all a mess right now.

But don’t be sad for corporeal Pattie–be happy for her. She’s in a better place now. She got in one last, meaningful phone call with her loving husband, Rich. She even managed to squeeze in reading some infotainment news before she caught that on-time flight to the great airport in the sky.

Her ghost will probably update again later, though, since she, like the corporeal Pattie, is beyond bored sitting in this hot aluminum tube.

Song Lyric of the Day:

I hear in my mind all these voices / I hear in my mind all these words / I hear in my mind all this music /And it breaks my heart

Regina Spektor / “Fidelity”

11:23PM.
Rich landed safely in NYC this morning. We had to wake up at 3:50AM to make sure he got through security in time for his 6AM flight, the same one I’m catching on Saturday morning.

To celebrate having the house to myself (miss you bunches, honey!), Caren came over to make cupcakes and watch Ugly Betty. Caren found this recipe for Wicked Cupcakes on the Food Network’s website the other day. After talking a bit, we decided we wanted to try to make them. I mean, look at them–how cool do those cupcakes look?

Caren got to the house around 7:20PM. I gave her the grand tour before we started Operation: Wicked Cupcake. I ordered a pizza from Brunetti’s, put on a Michael Buble CD, and we got to baking. Let me tell you, making things from scratch is interesting. Also time consuming; I would’ve starved to death in the olden days from laziness alone.

The whole time Caren and I worked on making the cupcakes, Caleb stood between us, his snout pointed toward the counter and his eyes full of hope (“Dropsomethingdropsomethingdropsomething”). After lots of stirring and mixing, we got the cupcakes in the oven and settled down to start watching Ugly Betty while they baked. We’d just settled into watching the show when Caleb used his big-boy bark at exactly the same moment that the pizza delivery man appeared in our back door window. I screamed, Caren laughed, and I went to pay for the pizza. It was our regular pizza delivery guy; he said he just figured coming directly to the back door was a preemptive strike since Rich and I always go out the back way when he rings the front doorbell.

The cupcakes were baked and cooled by the time we finished dinner. We watched a bit more TV and then started working on making the frosting from scratch. The most challenging part was using food coloring to try to create different colors; we ended up with teal, orange, and green frosting. Caren’s attempt at making a witch cupcake just like the one in the photo didn’t quite work out — the cupcake cone for the witch’s hat crumbled. We then decided to just go with general Halloween-themed cupcakes: ghosts (really blobs with eyes), witches (with chocolate graham cracker hats), medusas, vampires, and spiders. Here are some camera phone shots of our culinary masterpieces (Rich has our digital camera with him in NYC):

While they’re not remotely close to the Food Network cupcake photo, we know they’re delicious and will be appreciated by our coworkers. Caren’s taking a pan in and I’m taking the other one in to work tomorrow. Should be fun!