My Firsts and Lasts

Saw this at Linda's Blog and thought I'd give it a try....

FIRSTS
First job: Probably babysitting my siblings. First job with an actual paycheck? McDonald's, one of the worst mistakes I ever made in my entire life. Ugh. I hate the lady who owns the North Cape May MickeyD's, and I still haven't figured out to this day why I was "let go" (i.e, fired).
First screen name: starwenn, which I still use (The star is from "Star Wars," my favorite movies series. The wenn is from my favorite TV show "Remember WENN.")
First self purchased CD: I don't remember. Mom bought my copies of the "Can-Can" original cast album and "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Um...the cast album for "My Fair Lady," or maybe the soundtrack for the first movie version of "Annie?"
Vinyl Album: By the time I was old enough to be buying my own music, vinyl was on the way out. And now, all the cassettes I have, some dating back to the mid-80s, are going out, too...
First piercing/tattoo: One in each ear when I was nine, and that's it. I can't handle pain enough to get anything anywhere else.
First true love: Have I ever been in love? Maybe Josh Kingston, although I don't know if he'd agree....
First enemy: Most of the boys in elementary school.

LASTS
Last big car ride: To northern Virginia for my sister's college graduation in from American University in Washington, DC.
Last kiss: From someone other than a reletive? More than a year ago.
Last library book checked out: Bethlehem Road by Anne Perry. One of the best of the Inspector Pitt/Charlotte Pitt books I've read, very evocative and thoughtful.
Last movie seen: Disney's Sleeping Beauty, which is also a first for me - the first movie anyone bought me on video : 0 ).
Last beverage drank: Skim milk.
Last food consumed: Browned Butter cake.
Last phone call: To my family. I was bored and ended up over their house to get out of Wildwood.
Last CD played: Wicked Original Broadway Cast. Wonderful when concentrating on the two leading ladies, less successful when concentrating on the politics of Oz.
Last annoyance: Trying to get around the mess in Rio Grande people around here vaguely call "Road Construction." : 0 p
Last pop drank: Um....I don't drink soda that much...the root beer I had at my parents' house on Monday night?
Last ice cream eaten: Turkey Hill's Peanut Butter Cup, also at my parents' house. I don't often buy ice cream, either. It's so expensive, even in small amounts, and I hardly need it.
Last time scolded: Mom's worried about my weight, and I have been gaining again, but I can't help it. I get hungry, and I like baking.
Last shirt worn: Light green-yellow knit with three-quarter length sleeves for St. Patrick's Day. : 0 )

I....
I AM: afraid I'll never really fall in love.
I WANT: a decent job that gives me 40 hours a week in the winter and where I don't have to handle 500 obnoxious people a day and can actually use what I learned in college.

I HAVE: lots of stuffed animals, which are my babies. : 0 )

I WISH: someone down here needed a writer or an editor or an organized person.
I HATE: writing rain checks.
I FEAR: being declared insane...losing my independance, my income, and my home...being made fun of...being hurt...fighting....
I HEAR: Chita Rivera and the original cast of "Chicago" belting "All That Jazz" ("Wicked' just finished).
I SEARCH: for a good movie to watch during dinner to cheer me up after a hard day of work.
I WONDER: If I'll ever find someone who'll move in with me or find a place with me who isn't going back to school, can afford to move, and is ready to leave their family.
I REGRET: keeping my mouth shut at some of the bigoted comments I've heard both customers and co-workers make at the Acme recently.
I LOVE: my family and friends.
I ALWAYS: do my grocery shopping on Fridays (which also happens to be when I get my paycheck).
I AM NOT: bold or witty.
I DANCE: in front of the mirror, imitating Fred Astaire or Eleanor Powell.
I SING: often, especially in the shower, when I do dishes, and at work.
I CRY: when I'm angry, upset, or very sad. I've cried a lot lately over my financial problems.

YES or NO:
YOU KEEP A DIARY: Yes. I just wrote in my offline journal the other day, and I have this blog.
YOU LIKE TO COOK: I live alone, so I either cook or eat out every day. I don't have the money to eat out every day, so I cook. : 0 )
YOU HAVE A SECRET YOU HAVE NOT SHARED WITH ANYONE: Many, but I'm not sharing them here. They wouldn't be secret if I did! ; 0 )

DO YOU...?
HAVE A CRUSH: Do my crushes on Ben Stiller and Ewan MacGregor count? ; 0 )
WANT TO GET MARRIED: Not at the moment. I broke up with my boyfriend of three years not long before Christmas 2002, and I'm not in the hurry to get another one. Most of the guys my age in Cape May County are idiots.
GET MOTION SICKNESS: Nope.

THINK YOU'RE A HEALTH FREAK: See my reply to the last food I consumed. ; 0 )
CURRENT HAIR COLOR: Brown
EYE COLOR: Gray, like Anne Shirley's
BIRTHPLACE: Broward County Hospital, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

FAVORITES
NUMBER: 14
COLOR: Fire Engine Red
DAY: Sunday
MONTH: September
SONG(S): more than I can mention here
SEASON: autumn
DRINK: Don't drink alcholic beverages. Orange juice.

PREFERENCES
CUDDLE OR MAKE OUT: Cuddle. It's safer.
CHOCOLATE MILK, OR HOT CHOCOLATE: Neither. Crystal Lite Iced Tea and Lipton Orange Tea.
MILK, DARK OR WHITE CHOCOLATE: All of the above, in great quantaties. ; 0 )
VANILLA OR CHOCOLATE: Chocolate.

IN THE LAST 24 HRS, HAVE YOU...
CRIED? Yeah, but it was a good cry. I laughed so hard at one of Matt at X-Entertainment'srecent blog entries, I cried. : 0 )
HELPED SOMEONE? Today, no.
BOUGHT SOMETHING? A dish pan and birthday cards from Dollar Tree, a renewal for my non-driver's ID from Department of Motor Vehicles, and a Shamrock Shake from McDonald's (in Wildwood). I couldn't resist the latter. I hate beer of any color, so I had to celebrate with some kind of green food today! ; 0 )
GOTTEN SICK? No.
GONE TO THE MOVIES? No.
SAID 'i love you'?: No
WRITTEN A REAL LETTER: No.
TALKED TO AN EX?: He hasn't written me in a while.
MISSED AN EX?: Sigh, yes.
WRITTEN IN A JOURNAL?: Just in this blog. I only write in both every once and a while.
HAD A SERIOUS TALK?: With whom? I live alone.
MISSED SOMEONE? Yes.
HUGGED SOMEONE? Yes. My stuffed animals count. ; 0 )
MADE A GUY MOAN? No

Saturday Morning Fever

I have fond memories of Saturday mornings. I the morning person was always up first, sometimes before the channels were. I remember watching the test patterns on Nickelodeon and The Disney Channel before they went 24 hours. Yeah, that's how much of a couch potato I was when I was a kid - I watched test patterns. ; 0 )

When the channels did start, I'd watch "Mousercise" on The Disney Channel or "Lassie" on Nick before switching over to the networks for one of the joys that, unfortuantly, can no longer be relished - cheap early-morning kids' programming. Our shows were "Captain Noah" (a "Captain Kangaroo" variant) on ABC and "Starstuff," "The Candy Apple News Team," and "Dr. Fad" on CBS. (I totally don't remember what was on early on NBC or if Fox ever did any early morning shows.) "Candy Apple News" was the most charming - a kind of "WKRP In Cincinatti" for kids, with puppets and humans trying to keep a struggling radio station afloat. Ironically, since I still consider it to be the best of the lot, it was the first of these shows to vanish. The news team was gone by the mid-80s.

"Starstuff" was....well, let's just say it was unique. It was another puppet/human show, only they didn't interact in this one. It had something of a plot - a boy in Philadelphia contacted a girl in space using his huge computer. The puppets' segment was a very, very weird parody of "Flash Gordon"-style space operas that always began with this odd, thumping music and orangy-pink flashing blobs on the screen and had nothing whatever to do with the kids or the compuer. The rest of the show was given over to "Sesame Street"-style short educational segments and, yes, silent "Laurel and Hardy" shorts. The boy was a big fan of Laurel and Hardy and popped in a video of the boys whenever the dialogue ran short (which, as you can imagine, it frequently did). My love of old movies began with "Starstuff" and Laurel and Hardy.

"Starstuff" will forever be my definition of "so bad it's good." Except for Ollie and Stan, it was really terrible - the puppets were just odd, the computer was years out of date, the dialogue was stiffer than a board, and the kids couldn't act. Even so, I couldn't take my eyes off the screen, and it must have had its fans, because it outlasted "Candy Apple News Team." I believe I last saw it around 1988-1989.

"Dr. Fad" was the only one of the three I remember that didn't involve puppets. The good Dr. was a hilarious, energetic Japanese-American fellow who hosted a show on fads and inventions. The fads spotlighted ranged from the Twist (performed by Chubby Checker himself, or a really, REALLY good Chubby Checker imitator) to Gumby to Slinky to Barbie. There were segments where kids created their own inventions and silly skits about inventions that supposedly didn't make it. "Dr. Fad" started in the late 80s and was still running in 1992 when we had our cable turned off.

My sisters rarely joined me for the early morning stuff. I occasionally got Rose up for "Starstuff" and "Dr. Fad," but the girls and my parents usually slept until 8, when it was time for the main attractions. CBS was our most-watched station - Saturday morning allumni from Columbia Broadcasting include "TMNT," "Muppet Babies," "Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures," "Galaxy High School," "CBS Storybreak," "Teen Wolf," "Pee Wee's Playhouse," "Garfield and Friends," "Dungeons and Dragons," "Back To the Future," "Super Friends," "The Adventures of Raggedy Ann and Andy," "The Wuzzles," "Pac Man," and a short-lived favorite of Rose's, "Wildfire."

NBC was our second most watched Saturday station with "The Smurfs," "Alvin and the Chipmunks," "The Snorks," "Kidd Video" (which also ran on CBS for a time), "The Amazing Spiderman and the Incredible Hulk," "Punky Brewster," and later "Captain N: The Game Master."

ABC ran a distant third with "The Real Ghostbusters," "A Pup Named Scooby Doo" (and many other Scooby Doo variants, including re-runs), "Beetlejuice" (a favorite of Anny's - she also loved the movie) and various incarnations of "The Bugs Bunny Show."

And then, we had Nick, who ran oddball foreign cartoons like "The Mysterious Cities of Gold" and "Arcadia of My Youth," syndicated cartoons like "Inspector Gadget," "Loony Tunes" in prime-time, and the three-some-hour "Pinwheel." There was also The Disney Channel, which specialized in it's delightful puppet kid revues "Welcome to Pooh Corner" and "Dumbo's Circus," along with one of the earliest "kids do wild stunts" game shows, "Contraption," and the live-action Canadian action programs "The Edison Twins" and "Danger Bay."

When Rose and I were really young, Mom and Dad let us sleep together on the couch bed in the living room on Friday nights, so we'd have the TV all to ourselves in the morning. We'd make a "tent" with the couch pillows while Mom made breakfast. Later, we'd let our folks sleep in and grab a bowl of cereal or toast. I don't remember there being that much arguing, odd as it may seem. I was usually the last one left before Mom would tell me to go out and play, or go in my room and play if the weather was bad, or let Dad have the TV if he was home.