Hers: Softball
Things have certainly been crazy here at the Taylor house this week! Josh talked about Pier 14 Softball in his last post, and I am going to update you on the news: Josh broke his thumb in two places on Tuesday! He was the catcher, and ended up colliding with another player and smooshed his hand! He went to the hospital and they casted it yesterday, so he has a nice white cast for the next three weeks!
We were pretty sad that he won’t be able to play softball for the rest of the season, since we have both enjoyed it so much!! It has been nice to be outside a couple times a week for awhile and get some fresh air and hang out with friends. I know that Josh has enjoyed the physical activity as a stress-reliever. We will still be there to support the team though!
I personally have little experience with softball. I played a regular season and an all-star season when I was in third grade and discovered it was really not my thing. Hand-eye coordination= no such thing. I was between two very good batters, and regularly struck out. I did play first base, which was fun.
I think that is all I have today, so I am going to sign out. Have a wonderful Thursday!
His: Pier 14 Softball
There is nothing quite like watching grown men cry from crushing 
defeat in softball, and nothing worse than being that man. Fortunately, I play church league, so there's a home run rule.
Sports after graduation happen few and far between. Really, outside of Thanksgiving and Fourth of July, it's rare to actually participate on the field. Twenty-two you're just entering the world, looking good, taking it all in. Twenty-three you settle down a bit get into a rhythm. Twenty-four, things are good, you're cruising. Twenty-five? Pounds ago, more like it.
It's hard to find time to be active as an adult. When I was younger, it never occurred to me that I couldn't have afternoons all to myself to play and be outside. College left me completely unprepared with it's 2 classes a day, four days a week and soccer matches three times a week. Now it's a morning commute, work, an evening commute, dinner and by then it's almost 7. Time to work on house projects in the summer, might as well be midnight come January. Running in the evening, you say? My threshold is 15 degrees to 80 degrees. Sadly, that's like two months in Indiana.
What it really takes is some external motivation. For me, that comes in the form of an obligation. I'm not obligated to work out because I paid my gym membership dues. I'm not obligated because I moved up a pants size (just mildly depressed).
As much as I'm fickle about commitments to myself, commitments to other people I do my best to uphold (or feel horribly, horribly guilty for the rest of my life about them). This year I committed to a softball team in the league my church belongs to, one committed to fun and sportsmanship.
We don't play too much, once or twice a week, but I'm going to be there. It may not make a huge difference in my exersize levels, but it's a start, and one I can stick with.
We've got a double header tonight, head on over to Hummel at 6:00 if you want to check it out!
Hers: Movies
So the topic is movies. To be very, very honest, movies are not really my thing. Sure, I enjoy a good comedy now and then (or the superhero movies, I have a thing for those!), but I don’t go out of my way to see new movies. There are two reasons (and more about me!):
1. I easily have nightmares. VERY easily. You can ask poor Josh, as he usually has to suffer through them with me. By censoring my media intake, I can usually minimize/prevent them. This makes it very difficult to go out to the movies with friends, since I am never too sure how it will end up later. This is definitely something that embarrasses me, but it is who I am! So those of you who have asked us to go to a movie and I have declined, it is because of that! I truly like you and would love to hang out, but I am sure you would not appreciate a call at 3:00 in the morning when I have trouble sleeping. J
2. Theaters are expensive! To go to a movie, it costs us about $25 on a good night. (While that is not regularly in the budget, we did go and see Thor…..shhhh….) To avoid this, we used to rent the movies after they were released. As prices rose there too, we justified buying the movies. Again, that got expensive! So here we are with Netflix, so Josh can meet his movie cravings because his silly wife struggles watching them!
As Josh mentioned in his post, we did get Netflix in April. I caved, and bought him the subscription for our two year anniversary. Looking back, I don’t know how we did without! We have enjoyed watching through various TV shows together, and he gets to watch an occasional movie when I am out of the house. It works rather well.
Since I am fond of giving numbered things in my posts, here are my top three favorite movies:
1. Harry Potter. Yes, I am one of those people who love Harry Potter. Do I wish there was a Hogwarts? Perhaps….
2. Miracle. The one with Kurt Russell about the Olympic hockey team that beats the Russian team. Love it!
3. Pride and Prejudice. Both the old and the new, mind you. In college on Valentine’s Day a bunch of us girls would come and watch it all day (the 5 hour version) with me and my roommates. It was fabulous. One of my roommates and best friend said that the reason we are such good friends is that I am like Jane and she is like Lizzy. I agree. J
So there is my take on movies. Crazy, I know! I would love to hear what other people’s favorite movies are, so please leave a comment! I’m sure Josh would like more movies to try out…
Thanks for reading!
His: Movies
My wife and I regularly watch movies. When we got married, we decided that cable was too expensive to justify. We counted channels we would want, and didn't get past a single handful. I was onboard for only ESPN, Discovery and BBC. She only added Food Network and some other station with cooking. Despite that, we knew we still wanted a TV to watch the Colts play (and the Yankees world series run!) So what were we to do with our TV besides rewatch movies from my collection?
After dropping hints for a while, like "man, it would be so much easier to Netflix this than drive to a redbox..." and "I bet we could've found it on netflix!", we finally bought in. As a gift, my wife subscribed to Netflix for me. I've always loved movies and well done television series, and I've got to say: Best. Invention. EVAR. There's nothing quite like sitting on the couch browsing for something to watch, only to suddenly relive your childhood when you stumble accross "Rockadoodle" on demand.
It has revealed to me, however, that things aren't always as good as I remember them. As a kid I loveloveloved the Jetsons movie. It was every bit as awesome as the cartoon was, except feature length. I ran across it for streaming the other day and decided it was a good time to relive that movie as well. Unfortunately there's a big difference between 10 and 25. As a kid I never noticed how over-the-top the animations are. Silly eye rolls, exaggerated movements, really bad integration of computer graphics and traditional animation. We ran it for about fifteen minutes before we gave up.
It's nice to be reminded of things you loved as a kid, but I think from now on I'll just be excited that I found them and avoid watching them.
If you've been thinking about getting Netflix, let this stand as a strong recommendation for it. While there are certainly gaps in availability of titles and it's not the timeliest service for new movies, there is no beating the low subscription price and the unlimited access.
Hers: Graduation
Graduation, what an exciting time! All of the good wishes, parties, cake, gifts, dreams…love it! Josh has said pretty much what I was thinking already, so I won’t repeat it all. I did find out the other day that not all parts of the country do graduation open houses for high school grads. My aunts that live on the East Coast have never heard of them! Graduation open houses are BIG here, and Josh and I know that because we went to 27 of them last weekend! We are sponsors for the youth group at Plainfield Christian Church, so we made the official rounds last weekend and really enjoyed it despite the heat. I suppose my closing thought is a message to the graduates: remember who you are rooted in when you leave. Life will always change, but when you know who you are in Him, you will always have a path.
I apologize for the short post, but life for the Taylors has been hectic! See you next week!
Airdrop – incoming!
It's been about 36 hours since the WWDC party started, so it's safe to say I'm coming in to this way late in the game. The developer's conference is always a big deal: fun new features, exciting innovations, and the things that always seemed obvious but were never done finally get, well.... done. Since I have a MacBook and an iPhone, it's an especially great week for me.
Everyone seems to be focused on great things like iCloud (and the small detail about, you know, paying for storage for music not from iTunes... makes sense, but... yikes...) and that low, low pricetag to upgrade to Lion. Who wouldn't be excited about a $100 drop in the normal OS upgrade?
My favorite part, however, is the AirDrop feature. Transfer files to any other mac user up to 30 feet away without any wifi or network requirements. Real life scenario: I'm at work and need a file from my iPhone to be on my computer (or a colleague's). Right now there are two options.
Option A - Connect the phone via USB to the computer, sync with iPhoto.
Option B - Add the file to my dropbox via the iPhone app, download it on the dropbox app installed on the computer.
Both are easy to do, but neither is very efficient given the technology we have available. In the age of cloud computing (which we are in and have been using in some form for two decades) Taking full advantage of our wireless technology and lack of need for a hard medium, Apple has finally made it possible for me to simply send the file between computers using pre-installed software. Drag. Drop. Done.