Frances Ellen Speaks!

Pensacola Beach After The BP Oil Spill

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How sad! And the oil is still gushing. It’s like the Exxon Valdez all over again–only this time on a daily basis.

A lot of people and politicians are asking why the well can’t be blown up.

From Rep. Phil Gingrey

“For the life of me, I can’t understand why BP couldn’t go into the ocean floor, maybe 10 feet lateral to the — around the periphery — drill a few holes and put a little ammonium nitrate, some dynamite, in those holes and detonate that dynamite and seal that leak. And seal it permanently,” Rep. Phil Gingrey (Ga.) said earlier this month.

Could it be BP is more worried about their bottom line? Do you think they care nothing about people or nature?

Oh, forget I wrote that. No one could be that greedy.

Typewriter, Dictaphone, Mimeograph, Email, Laptop

I bought my first laptop today.

It got me to thinking back to my first secretarial job. Back then the qualifications needed to land a job were a good typing score (on a typewriter) with a knowledge of shorthand, or the ability to transcribe from a dictaphone or ediphone.

If copies were ever needed, you used carbon paper. Suppose you needed fifty or sixty copies? Then you had to rev up the mimeograph machine, but first a stencil had to be typed. Lots of good fun there!  See Boomer with a View.

I remember the first time I used Email. The system was installed into every employees’ computer in the company. Voila! I could actually send a message to someone on the third floor from the first floor. Believe it or not, it was only a test run at our company. The CEO didn’t see any future in it. When the test period ended, Email disappeared from my workplace. Wonder where that guy is working today?

Anyway, I wrote this post on my new laptop. Welcome to the 21st century.

Drop Dead Diva

It’s a lovely piece of fluff. Is there anything wrong with that?

The thing is, it’s different from anything else on the tube. In a nutshell -

• Beautiful model, Deb, dies in a car accident.
• As fate would have it, she comes back in the body of a plumpish female lawyer, Jane.
• Luckily, she is able to convince her closest friend that she is Deb, but in a mighty different body.
• She has a young male guardian angel.
• To complicate matters further, she now works with the hunk she was previously engaged to before she died.

Don’t expect high drama or suspense, but it certainly is worth checking out.

With a title like Drop Dead Diva, I expected it to be way too silly for me. But it wasn’t.

Dieting & Disco Dancing

How many times have you heard this? “If you want to lose weight, you must diet and exercise.” That sentence is at the top of my list of most hated things I want to hear.

I applaud all the people who love to jog, or love to go to the gym. I’m not one of them. However, I do like to listen to music, which brings me to disco dancing. Have you ever noticed how hard it is to sit and listen to disco music. That’s because it’s main appeal is it’s hard-to-ignore invitation to dance. The beat is perfect.

Therein lies the key that unlocks my exercise room. In my case, that’s my living room. I’ve been disco dancing (when no one is around). It’s fun. Finally! An exercise I can love.

You don’t need a partner, so let the gyrating begin.

Bowling – The Pin Boy

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Well, it’s official. I’m really, really old! Yesterday I had to explain what a pin boy was. This “back in the day” knowledge of mine rushes in and sometimes startles me. I can’t believe how much the world has changed since I entered it.

Anyway, for those who lack my firsthand knowledge–The pin boy’s job was to set the bowling pins up after they’d been knocked down. Each boy covered four or five lanes and on a busy night, you sometimes had to wait for him to reset your lane. He was also in charge of clearing downed pins if they tipped over and stayed in the playing field.

There were no electric contraptions coming down to pick up and swish the pins backward. Everything was done by muscle. Oh, and the pin boy had to place the bowling ball in the chute to return it to the player, too.

It may not sound like it, but being a pin boy was a pretty good job. Several kids I knew held the job and loved it, except for the times they got hit in the ankle by a flying pin or bowling ball. But they had elevated steps to stand on located between the lanes, so an experienced pin boy hardly ever got hit unless he was caught off-guard moving from one lane to another. Then the players would hear him scream, “ouch.”

Jeez. Now that I think about it,  I can remember when the guts of a computer took up an entire room…but that’s another “back in the day” story.

NCIS: Los Angeles

Why aren’t more people watching NCIS: Los Angeles? It’s lead-in, the original NCIS, is always one of the top ten programs, yet Los Angeles doesn’t rollover the entire audience. I wonder why?

I love both shows.

When NCIS: Los Angeles first came onboard, I thought it would never be as good as the original, but it easily holds its own. And it has a star power line-up.

If you’re not watching, you should be.