another MTM Show celebrity spoken to!

(A note before you begin: I tried and tried to fix the font size in here but can't seem to get the swing of it. Sorry!)

I went to see Cloris Leachman at the UGA Fine Arts Building. She was giving a lecture (more of a question & answer session, really) as a follow-up to her one-woman career retrospective show (that I didn't get to see...). If you have ever met me or seen my walls, you know that I am a ridiculously huge fan of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. I first saw Cloris on MTM--she plays the ever-on-the-go, perfectionistic neighbor/landlady who's friends with Mary and always at odds with Rhoda (Valerie Harper, an actress I *almost* saw years ago but who was unable to perform in the play I attended--boo!). She is brilliant. Most recently I've seen her as the loving, half-drunk, serious-when-she's-gotta-be mother of Tea Leoni in Spanglish--but she's done lots of work before Mary, lots of work in between Mary and Spanglish, and is still really active.

Jim & I went to see her today. The theatre wasn't the fancy one I remembered--we must have been in a different studio or something. Harsh overhead fluorescent lights, a smattering of fans and actors-in-training, and a microphone that didn't work. With the heat (or AC?) blasting continuously the entire time, I missed out on about 1/2 of what was said. Despite the frustration that accompanied that, I was thrilled to see her in person. She looks amazing at almost 82 years old--in good shape, able to walk swiftly up and down stairs, and really quick witted and extremely silly.

I wish I'd taken a photo of when she started scooching her chair closer and closer and closer to the host, prompting lots of laughter from the crows. I did get a few good shots, though. Here's one of her in a girlish pose, feet hung over the side of the chair.

When Jim & I went to leave, I had a feeling she was going to call us out. She did. We started walking quietly toward the exit and she said, "Excuse me," to the crowd. Looking towards us, she asked, "Where are you going?!' I told her I was going to work; she asked me what I did. Then she looked at Jim and pointed. "What about you?"

"Oh, I have to go to the doctor," he explained. She, like any woman over 60 (or perhaps any woman of any age?) was charmed by Jim and expressed genuine concern for his back problem. After their quick talk, she snapped back into stage-Cloris and said, "All right. You can go."

I love her.

The end.

Happy Birthday, Mary!

It's Mary Tyler Moore's birthday today. She was born on December 29, 1936, so that makes her 71.

This is my 221st blog entry. My birthday is 2/21--it's a SIGN!!!

sickypoo strikes again

Last night I couldn't fall asleep. I had the strangest ball of pain in my stomach. Unfamiliar, unsettled pain. It wasn't the lurching pain of an upset stomach or the hard rocky feeling of a gassy stomach (ew--did I just say "gassy stomach"?).

Around 6 AM, after having napped about twenty minutes between 2:40 and 3:00 AM, I got up suddenly and was sick sick sickeroo. Food poisoning? I'd only had Chick-fil-A and a few handfuls of snack food at Dallas's earlier in the day. Did I overnog it? I had a mug full of pumpkin eggnog that was marked "sell by Dec. 24." Does that mean it was bad by the evening of Dec. 26th?

In any case, I was sick and then lay down in bed in more pain, whining and moping and not falling asleep for another hour or so. Today was shot, and by the time I did get up I was weaky mckinserson and couldn't do much of anything without getting winded. Taking a five minute shower just about knocked me out!

I'm grateful to have this time off work. Nothing much is going on right now. Obviously it would have been nice to help Jim with dinner despite my tendency to grunt about helping (truly--I'm not very good!), and dropping all my stuff off at the post office would've made me feel as if I'd accomplished something. But no such luck, eh?

My dearest Denise did send me a link to a "fun" website, though. For all of you with whom I've bitched about misplaced or completely unnecessary quotation marks, this site's for you!
http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/

Hope everyone's in good health! Remember that Mary Tyler Moore's birthday is this Saturday night, 12/29!!!

1/26/06 - MTM is the coolest...

January 26, 2006 - Thursday 8:26 PM - MTM is the coolest... I love Mary. Did you all know that? Oh, I think you do. I am watching That 70s Show on purpose for the first time in my life. Truth be told, I'm not a fan. But I do enjoy the jokes that are throwbacks to The Mary Tyler Moore Show! I'll bet not too many folks my age are getting the subtle humor of these not-too-hilarious moments. Meeting MTM was my dream for so long. I remember the dramatic day I met her in May of 2002. This story I don't tell often, and I won't tell it now. I recall being in a cab a couple of hours after the fateful meeting, traveling with my mom & sister to a graduation party--I was still really overwhelmed. My mom kept talking about it after I had asked her not to--and soon I just snapped and asked her rather pointedly to drop it, that I had requested that before and she had agreed. My sister scolded me for being short with my mom, and within seconds I was crying. As I've said before, I'm closer to the verge of tears when my family is around. This, in conjunction with my long-time meeting MTM dream coming true and an impending college graduation (plus the move from New York to Florida a week later), was too much to take. I am a crybaby, what can I say? These are but a few of the thoughts I have as I watch this episode of That 70s Show, which films on the old soundstage on which The Mary Tyler Moore Show was filmed.