Team Saturdazzle: The One Where I Finally Say Something About President Trump

 Wow.  This year is flying by fast.  It's already the last Saturdazzle of the month for the 2nd time this year.  

If you are a regular reader of this blog, or if you are joining in from my Facebook page, you may be confused by the title of this post.  "What?!? Roller talks about Trump all the stinking time.  He even had his Dad teach him how to play bridge so he could say No Trump. more often.", you might be thinking to yourself. (You may even be thinking parenthetically, that you're not sure if thoughts  should be in quotation marks).

The truth is that  in this blog, I have not written a thing about President Trump all year.  That isn't to say I haven't had thoughts,  I've had thoughts! Here's two I'd like to share today:

1. President Trump is My President.

I don't know where it started, or where I first heard it, but it seems very likely regardless  of who  is the  current president, or who's the governor of your state that you may hear or read someone mention, "He's not my president."  or  "She's not my governor".  This bothers me in many ways, but mainly linguistically.  

If I live in Elgin, Illinois,  (#Ido), the mayor of that city is  my mayor.  It doesn't matter, if I don't know his or her name (#IdoIjustlookeditup) or if I voted for him, (#Idid), that's my mayor.

On January 20th 2025 10:00 A.M. central time Joe Biden was my President.  No, I didn't vote for him.  No, I don't agree with him on a number of issues, but I'm a U.S. citizen as he was in the last hour of his presidency  for that hour he was  still my president.  

In the same way by noon central time  Donald Trump had again become my president.  I trust Trump about as far as I can throw Mount Rushmore.  I didn't vote for him in the 2016, 2020, or 2024 primaries or general elections but yet he's my president.

Saying someone is not your president, when they are is not to me an act of defiance, nor a nod of a disapproval.  It's more like saying I'm only part of my country when I agree with their choices.  I understand  the voting process the way  we elect our public officials but then those  elected officials  work for all of us and represent all of us.  This is why they are our elected officials.  While it's an essential part of our democracy to speak up when we disagree with our elected officials, disagreeing with them in no way makes them no longer our leaders.  It's because they are our leaders that we can  ask them to change. I live in the state of Illinois and a Republican presidential candidate has not won the state of Illinois since 1988.  Does that mean that President George W. Bush or President Trump aren't the President in Illinois.  No! Nor does it matter that I haven't voted for a winning presidential candidate in over 2 decades.  The President of the U.S. is my president and this brings me to my second point.

2. President Trump is not my savior, but he's not the devil either.  

As stated before, I have not posted on this blog  about President Trump all year.  This can not be said when it comes to  posting  my Facebook account.  Several times  I have written there about our current president.  A few weeks nto his most recent term, I asked my FB friends to mention one thing Trump had done in those two weeks which they liked and one thing he had done which they didn't like.  

I have 441 FB friends. Two gave me one thing they liked and one thing they didn't like.  My submission made for a total of three.  3 out of 442? Wow!

 I'm not exactly sure why it was this low.  Many people on FB say good things about him and many people say bad things about him.  How come so few can  mention both the good and the bad?  

We are all created in God's image, so we all have good inside of us.  We also are all sinners who have  fallen short of the glory of God so we all have bad coming out of us. Finding both good and bad should not be that hard of an exercise.  And if it is, then since we are called to pray for our elected officials maybe we should spend more time trying to think about good and bad things that they are doing to aid in our prayers.  

One of my FB friends asked why I hadn't done such an exercise when Biden was President.  I had  in fact done a very similar exercise when Biden was president. But I'll go ahead and conclude  this segment by  saying one good and one bad thing about both President Trump and former President Biden.

Donald Trump 

Good:  When he was on  The Apprentice, I liked how in the board room segments he would make  the contestants take responsibility for their actions.  There was one episode where a project manager was talking about how great he ran his team for that week. Trump turned it around on him and asked, Did you win?  Which of course he had not, which is why he was in the board room to begin with.

Bad: As a candidate and as president I have never seen him follow his own advice and admit a mistake.  This is shown most in his inability to concede the 2020 Presidential Election.

Joe Biden

Good:  Biden thought about the good of the country and the good of his party before choosing to drop out of the 2024 election.  

Bad: I didn't mind that he pardoned his son Hunter, I just don't like that he did it after saying that he wasn't going to.

Note: The things I mentioned about Trump are not the same things I mentioned on my Facebook Page.  Here is what I said on Facebook: 

 A good thing I think Trump has done is pardon the 23 people who were being prosecuted under the F.A.C.E act Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances. A bad thing Trump had done is the pardoning or commuting the sentence of all 1500 people convicted of crimes during the events at the Capitol on Jan 6, 2021

Coming Soon: Levi A to Z

Sometimes I like to use Team Saturdazzle as  a place to start the conversation about topics I'm preparing future posts about.  

A to Z challenge Update.  I believe I have a topic for the upcoming challenge.  I am in the process of preparing posts and making a theme reveal post as well.

Speaking of Alpha and Omegas: I have some future posts featuring a pair of  Levi's.  This pair is well worn on the pages of my blog.  The first is Allen Levi, a member of my Big 5 list of favorite musicians.  Actually I have 2 upcoming posts featuring Allen.  The second Levi, is Chuck Bartowski, Flynn Rider, Captain Marvel and Kurt Warner rolled into one, Zachary Levi.  I watched The Unbreakable Boy earlier today and hope to post a short review before the next Saturdazzle.  

 There are 24 hours in a day but  only 24 minutes left of  this particular Saturdazzle.  So on that mathematical non sequitur, I bid you farewell.  

Team Saturdazzle: The One Where Captain Abearica goes to work.

Team Saturdazzle is in the house.  I had many ideas this week for our time together.  Some of them I discarded, others I forgot what they were, still others, I discarded , forgot about them, remembered them again, bit forgot that I had previously discarded them, and then discarded them again.  This one  happened organically but took about a week to culminate, so I'll share a little of the genesis. 

Monday or Tuesday of this week I found out that our school was having yet another pajama day.  I thought that I might participate this time.  There also had been some talk about a lot of snow coming into our are Wednesday and  some thoughts that the regular school day might be replaced by an  e-learning day.  The main difference between a weather related closure, or snow day and an e-learning day is that an e-learning day does not be made up and a snow day does.  On E-learning days teachers give assignments to students, the students check in with them over the course of the day and it counts as a day of instruction.  E-learning days had their beginnings during co-vid 19 and can be used for weather related closures and other times when meeting at the school is not possible.  I think for the most part teachers like these e-learning days but as a building sub at least in my district I do not because I don't work on those days and when I don't work, I don't get paid.  In a traditional snow day situation,, I also don't work and don't get paid, but when the school year is extended because of the closure I work and get paid making up for the day I missed.

It turns out that our school was not cancelled.  But there was still a lot of snow in the forecast for the majority of the day.  So, I wore sweat pants, a tye dye t-shirt and then put warm pajama bottoms  over the sweat pants and a thick robe on over the ensemble.  As I was leaving I decided to bring 

Captain Abearica, the Build-A-Bear Captain  America my daughter Lucy brought for me and that I've been using in various ways as a Sub since 2019. I figured what goes better with pajamas than a stuffed animal.

Pajama Day  came and went.  The 6th grade science classes that I subbed for that day that weren't too cool for school enjoyed his appearance.  On Thursday after school I decided to take advantage of the perk I have at the movie theatre where I work and watch the new Captain America movie for free.  My plan was to bring Captain Abearica  in as well, because family members also get in for free.   I remembered to bring him to work on Thursday but forgot to take him into the theatre.  

Thursday was the soft opening of the new film whose full title is Captain America Brave New World.  The hard opening was Friday, I was working and I figured the place was going to be a zoo.  I have a very logical mind, at least to me. I thought if the place is going to be a zoo, why not bring a bear, especially one who's dressed for the occasion? 

I talked to my manager, who thought it was a great idea and provided me a name tag for "Cap".

Captain Abearica AKA Steve Pawgers

The Captain was a big hit and some people even offered to buy him.  My manager is letting me bring him back for my shifts for the rest of the run of the film.  Who knows maybe he'll even let me dress up like this?

I'll probably have to wait until the next pajama day.

April Blogging from A to Z Challenge 2025 SIGN-UP March 24-April 5 a-to-zchallenge.com

The A to Z Challenge blog posted yesterday for the first time since May of last year. Besides introducing the above 2025 badge.  They posted the schedule for this years challenge: 

 

2025 #AtoZchallenge Schedule: 

 The THEME REVEAL (optional bonus hop) : March 9- 15 

 Official Challenge Sign-ups : March 24 to April 5 

 Reflections (optional bonus hop) : May 2-9 

 Road-trip (sign up to keep visiting others all year _ optional bonus) : Opens May 10

I'm not sure exactly what I might be doing for the challenge.  I've had 4 ideas and I like all of them, but unlike some of the past years I'm only going to do one of them this year

Even as a big fan of the challenge,   I still take umbrage with the way they schedule the reflection so early .  This year challenge ends on a Wednesday and you have all of Thursday to reflect on the challenge before Friday when the reflection  sign up begins.  That's not enough time to reflect!!!  Well that's my rant.  Remember if you are missing any umbrage, I took it.  

Now for a new Saturdazzle feature:

 Something I said on Facebook this week

My friend's BIL posted on FB this week that he found the Super Bowl game boring. I so did not! So I said this on FB this week:

I loved everything about this game. The Eagles delivered in every aspect of the game after being overlooked in all the talk about a 3peat. Not a KC hater nor an Eagle lover but this was a quality football game Jeff. I’m sorry you didn’t like it.

That's it for this week.  That's my Saturdazzle and I'm sticking to it.   

Team Saturdazzle: The One where I Mispronounced Meme Twice.

Another Saturday, another Saturdazzle .  Todays Saturdazzle could also be called The one with the 14 year old video.  After I statrted this blog in 2009, I started in short order a few more blogs most notably Crazy Uncle Dave's Sport-O-Rama and Dave Out Loud. Dave Out Loud was my attempt at a vlog.  A few years ago I combined all 3 blogs into this one. 

As I often do in the early months of the new year I've been cleaning up this blog.  Spending time looking at old posts, and revamping the look of it.  While I was doing that I came across this video talking about my the previous week at our home school.

I was participating in a meme called weekly wrap up where you share post about your week and link your post up to a site.  These things still happen and I hope one day to see if I can make Team Saturdazzle a weekly link up.  

A few years after this post I discovered that I had been mispronouncing meme.  In it's correct pronunciation it's pronounced like it thymes with theme.  However, I was pronouncing it me me.  So when I learned of my mistake, I just corrected my pronunciation and moved on.  

What I didn't realized was that there was evidence of my earlier failure to communicate.  I invite you to watch what I am calling exhibit A.  Where I mispronounce meme not once but twice.

Now if you were wondering what I was thinking when I pronounced meme me me, it is this: Most of the memes I knew at that time were blogging memes and it seemed like the purpose of the blogging meme was to get the attention of other bloggers.  It was to me as if you were shouting Me! Me! Look at me,  That's why I pronounced it me me.  

Memories of Kite Fest 1999

Amy and I were married in April of 1998 and her two brothers gave us a wedding gift of a weekend  in Madison Wisconsin, where they both lived and still live.  We went up in early February and discovered there was a kite flying festival taking place.  I have pictures similar to the picture below in a photobook some where. If you click on the caption below the picture, it will give you more infor about the event this year.  While that festival no longer exists.  There is a kite flying event on the same lake today as part of a new winter festival in Madison.  

Kite Fest 1999 Madison Wisconsin
I do not own this picture, click on the caption for the full story.

Team Saturdazzle At The Movies

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Top 10 Films  January 2025 

and by default

 top 10 Films of 2005 as of 1/31/2005

10. Baby Girl Up 2 from December

9. Wolf Man

8. One of Then Days

7. Den of Thieves: Pantera

6. A Complete Unknown Up 1 from December

5. Wicked Down 3 From December

4. Nosferatu Up 2 from December

3. Moana 2 Down 2 from December

2. Sonic The Hedgehog 3: Up 1 from December

1. Mufasa: The Lion King Up 3 from December

Team Saturdazzle: The One with Bits and Pieces.

Today's Team Saturdazzle is just a quick compilation of stories, clips and jokes.

Like many days when I was a kid it starts with Sesamee Strret and it ends with a snack,

One of the things I liked about Sesamee Street from an early age was the guest appearances.  One of the ealriest I remember probably since I like puns so much is when the cast of Bonanza came on the show.  They were on a lot of season 2 and did segments where they counted or recited the alphabet or demonstrated math problems like the video below.  

 

In the episode I remember they do a play on the Ernie and Bert banana in my ear sketch (original sketch below) except instead of saying banana in my ear they actually say Bonanza in my ear. Epic!

Sesamee Street has continued with their guest appearances.  I just discovered this gem with Billy Joel and Marlee Matlin (CODA, West Wing, Children of a Lesser God) . I'm a big Billy Joel fan and also love writing new lyrics to old songs and Joel does this by tweaking one of his standards and adapting it to Oscar The Grouch.  

###########################################################

Yesterday I had one of my days where I was out of the house at 6:30 and not back for good until after midnight. I was home for about 90 minutes in the afternoon.  My wife and daughter were preparing for  an impromptu game night, where they had invited several people a day or less before the party was slated to begin.  A few people did manage to come, but when I was home the only people they had heard from were unable to attend.  This gave me an idea for a wry observation which I shared on my personal FB page:

A lot of times when people can't make it to an event youv'e asked them to attend, they will respond something like that sounds great, but I'm busy that day. Just once can't they say that sounds like an awful time, but I'm not doing anything see ya at 7?

#############################################################

This morning, Amy and I were judging another speech tournament.  This time it was at held at Lucy's old high school.  When you walk in the hallowed halls of a high school there are pictures of accomplished student athletes and plaques with the names of students who received accolades, awards, accomplishments, and some words that don't start with A like scholarships. None of those halls in any of those schools contain my picture.  I wasn't that kind of athlete, and I was not that kind of student.  However the apple must have fallen far from the tree because my daughter class of 2024 is pictured at least twice and her name is engraved on a plaque as a recipient of a scholarship for mastery in Language Arts.  

Ending the day with a snack

My college friend Angela Rumbold's birthday was earlier this week.  We had many fine times over the years.  When she first moved from Illinois to Georgia, I had occasion to visit her there and she introduced me to boiled peanuts.  It was love at first soggy bite.  years later when I lived in South Carolina for 2 years the boiled peanut became my go to snack as there was a street vendor outside our local Walmart.  I generally did not go more than a fortnight without grabbing me a bag.  

When I ventured back to Illinois in '97 to forsake all others and marry my best friend, I also  ending up forsaking regular visits with my favorite boiled legume.  This +25 year absence of a boiled peanut routine ended about 2 years ago when I discovered inside A BP in Frankfort, Illinois where my sister in law  lives, a boiled peanut station.  So now 4 or 5 times a year on visits to her family I get the fruits of Jimmy Carter's first job (Boiled Peanut deliverer).

Tonight was one of those nights.  My Niece Gracie was in a production of Finding Nemo Jr.  Which is not it turns out a quest to find Nemo's progeny but a children's adaptation of the musical Finding Nemo.  I was glad to attend, but everyone in my family knew there was a boiled peanut quid pro quo in my attendance.  

By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo - https://www.flickr.com/photos/jenniferwoodardmaderazo/3563681031/, CC BY 2.0, Link

Well that's all the Team Saturdazzle I have for you today.  We learned some math, heard some jokes, watched some videos, I shared some stories and  even had a snack.  It's not exactly 3 points and a poem, but it will have to do.  

Team Saturdazzle: The One With The Made Up Holidays

Hello and welcome to the last Team Saturdazzle post for January 2025.  Last April for the A to Z Challenge I wrote about Holidays. On most day of the challenge I found an event that was already taking place on that day and pair it with the letter of the day. 

For example each April 2nd is International Children's Book Day so since the letter of the day for April 2nd was B, I wrote about that Holiday and title my post, B is for Books for Children.  

Writing about made up holidays turned out to be not enough for me.  SO, I actually made up 5  holidays and added them into the challenge  for all the letters that were vowels.  Now that it is 2025,  It has come to my attention that these holidays are coming up again this year.  

A chart or graph of some kind might be helpful here:

Name of Holiday with link to         2025 Date           (When it occurs)

A to Z Challenge Post

Adult Children Appreciation Day                  April 21, 2025.  (The Monday after Easter)

 

 Wedding Planner Black Friday                     April 4, 2025     (1st Friday in April)

Indicted Illinois Governors Day                     April 10, 2025   (10th day in April)

One More Time and You Get A Parade Day   April 16, 2025   (Third Wednesday in April)

                        

Undecided, Undeclared & Unsure Day           April 30th 2025 (Final Wednesday in April)

This is me talking about one of the new holidays last year.

Team Saturdazzle: The One With Downtown Chicago

Third Saturday of the year. Third Team Saturdazzle post. For Christmas this year I gave Amy tickets to a Bulls game. We used them this weekend and drove to the city to watch The Bulls lose a close one to the Charlotte Hornets. Amy likes either playing sports or watching them live. I like those as well as watching sports on TV. , listening to sports on the radio and reading the accounts of a game in a newspaper or online.  But being with Amy makes everything even losing to the Hornets better.

Horace Grant 87-94 Bulls (1st 3 championships)
Randy Brown 95-00 Bulls (Last 3 championships)

A case in point is after I gave Amy the tickets she decided that staying overnight in Chicago would be better than driving back to our home in the suburbs. This is why I sit here at a Chicago hotel chronicling our adventure so far early on a Saturday morning.

One thing Amy and I like about staying in a hotel is television. In the 26-plus years we’ve been married many of those years have been spent without a TV. A few more years have been spent owning a TV. You can only watch DVDs or video cassettes.  So on those  occasions when we have stayed in hotel rooms we have enjoyed watching broadcast television. Yesterday after the game we watched a couple episodes of Seinfeld followed by an episode of Friends.  After that we turned on TUBI and watched a part of an episode of What's Happening and part of an episode of The Floor,  We watched the former because one of the Bull's bench players, Jalen Smith gives off a big Roger vibe from the show.

The latter is because we have been catching up on the 2nd season of the Fox game show sporadically over the past few months.  

This morning I went downstairs for some breakfast and I encountered a young man with a Hornets hoody and a Bulls Cap.  It's the kind of thing I would do with Cubs and Sox gear so he let me take a pic of him. The breakfast was good.  I don't see grits as an offering very much in the Chicago area but was glass to partake.

Bulls Cap Hornets Hoodie

Breakfast these days takes grits and hard-boiled determination.

Checkout at the hotel wasn't until noon.  So we lingered and then on the way home we stopped by a restaurant I'd seen on Friday that appealed to several parts of my nature.  

1. It's a classic Chicago Hotdog spot.

2. The name of the place, LuLu's is also one of our nicknames for our youngest daughter.

3. Three Words: Home Made Chili

4. Art work reminiscent of the Little Lulu comics without giving any of the credit. 

5.  When I went  in I decided I would see if they could put Chili on my Polish.  Not only could they but the Chili Cheese Polish, which I thought I had invented seconds before, was their special of the day.

While I don't subscribe to the no ketchup on hot dog 

theory, I do appreciate the wry wit of this poster.

For the last 3 years our Saturdays were too busy in the winter to get away for the weekend.  Almost every weekend, we were judging a speech tournament which took a huge portion of our Saturdays.  Even yesterday we drove by a high school on our way home blissfully unaware that the Larkin Speech Team was participating in a tournament there.  

Last 5 Sporting Events

1/17/2025 Charlotte Hornets Defeat Chicago Bulls 125-123 @ The United Center Chicago Illinois

11/16/2024 Class 7A Football Quarterfinal IHSA Batavia 17 Downers Grove North 7 @Batavia High Scool Batavia IL

11/2/2024 Dad's Day Weekend Minnesota 25 Illinois 17 Memorial Stadium Champaign IL 

10/26 Mt Carmel 34 Loyola Academy 20 Mt. Carmel High School, Chicago IL

10/19 100th anniversary game of Dedication of Memorial Stadium Illinois 21 Michigan 7 Memorial Stadium Champaign IL 

 

Team Saturdazzle: The One That Got Post Dated

I had big plans for the Team Saturdazzle segment in 2025.

First, I was going to post content for the segment to be published each Saturday of the new year.

Then, I would attempt to generate a little readership for it by linking it through the blogosphere via other established blogs , memes, and various Social networking sites.

After a while, I would gauge interest in making it one of those segments that others could link their content to.

All these plans were contingent on stringing a number of Weekly Saturdazzle posts together.

the Jan 5th edition went fine, in the sense that there was a Jan 5th edition. I had a few ideas for this edition. 

One idea came to me when I took my waiting with my Mom on one of her recent doctor appointments. She kept on talking about going to get cookies. My Mom often brings cookies up to her room which she gets from the dining room at the place where she and my Dad stay. Instead of eating her desserts in the dining room she brings them up to her room and puts them in her refrigerator aka the place where desserts go to die.

This was made on Christmas by my youngest daughter and my Mom. Left to 
 my mom’s devices it would have stayed in her fridge until the 15th anniversary of Covid.

As my Mom kept on talking about cookies, I thought that it might be cool to bring my daughters over there on Saturday and do some baking.  My parents have been living in  a senior living facility for the past few years where there meals are served to them.  While they have an oven and stove int heir apartment neither one of them is really able to use it anymore.  I thought it would be nice to have the sweet smell of baked goods wafting through their kitchen.

Due to being triple and quadruple booked for most of the weekend, we did not get over there on Saturday.  This was actually a good thing as it gave me a moment in the madness of a weekend with little sleep to rest a while.  We rescheduled the baking for Sunday when a number of us visit my folks anyway, which seemed like a good solution.  

The only problem was that the baking expedition was going to be the main point of my Saturdazzle feauture and now I would need to write about something else.  Then I remembered technology.  Blogger allows me to predate my posts and it also allows me for some reason to post date them.  So here's what I did, I went baking on Sunday am blogging about it now and back dating the post so it looks like it appeared on Saturday.  This was if and when I build a following with Saturdazzle, and the Saturdazzled (tm) pending are looking for back issues there will be continuity that it gets posted each Saturday.

Here are the pics from our multi generational cookie day

Gather the ingredients at home

Assembling The Troops



Giving the aged sharp objects

Giving the aged with sharp objects supervision

Obligatory Baking Picture (OBP) #1

   

OBP #2

OBP #3

Finished Product: Happy Parents

Overall the event was highly successful.  My Dad kept on saying he didn't remember the last time someone came over to bake for him.  We left a good amount of cookies in a tupperware on the table and took the rest home so none would be subjected to the refrigerator where desserts go to die. 

The first comment of the year

To many.  comments are the currency of the blogging world.  To some, it's page views, but having someone stop by and write about your content is a gratifying thing.  I blog for me.  I would like to have a large readership, but it doesn't matter that I don't have much of one.  

I post on other people's blogs and participate in their blogging events in part so either people will see and comment on my blog.  But even when they don't I still like to post content here and comment on their content there.  

SO it wasn't surprising on January 8th that I still did not have one single comment on any of my posts since last year.  I was glad that I got 3 comments in somewhat rapid succession the next day.  I work both my jobs in Wednesday and and in between them I stopped at McDonalsd for a snack knowing I wouldn't be eating dinner until 9:30.  I got one of my favorite snacks, a deconstructed root beer float.  That's my name for an ice cream cone and a glass of root beer,

While eating it, I remembered there is a way to post my content by sending an e-mail and did that.  I posted it on here, and linked it to the Wordless Wednesday page of Comedy Plus. On Thursday Morning I received this nice comment from Sandee the proprietor of Comedy Plus.  I received two more a few minutes later from another one of my posts.

Well that's it for this weeks installment of Team Saturdazzle.  Next time I hope to actually release it on Satuday and not fix it in post.  

Team Saturdazzle: The One With a New Title?

Team Saturdazzle 

Welcome to the 1st 2024 Iteration of Team Sturdazzle, a hopefully weekly postpourri of random thoughts and regular segments.  

Occasionally I will try to curate ideas from my FB pages and share some of the comments here. Today was supposed to be one of those occasions.  On Thursday night I posted the following on both my personal FB page and the FB page for my blog:

Am approaching the 16th anniversary of my blog. On Jan 6th 2009 I published the first post there http://dave-homeschooldad.blogspot.com/2009/01/why-we-home-school.html A few years ago I changed the name from Home School Dad to Leap of Dave. I’m considering changing the name once again. Here are some ideas I have for a new name:

1. Sustainable Bedlam

2. Toaster Pastries w/o A Toaster

3. Blogging, People Still Do That?

4. A Hat, A Brooch, A Pterodactyl

Let me know which one you like, or If I should stick with Leap of Dave, or perhaps make a title suggestion of your own. I'll post results and suggestions in my next Team Saturdazzle post.

As of 11:30 Friday night I had no comments on either page.  I did ask 3 members of my family the same question over a rousing game of Catopoly, which I am winning.  The results were mixed: my wife Amy prefers Sustainable Bedlam,  my daughter Emma is a fan of Toaster Pastries w/o a Toaster, my daughter Lucy likes Blogging, people still do that?, and I am fond of A Hat, A Brooch, A Pterodactyl.  Certainly, there is no consensus on the nonsensical.  

I will put this post on both my FB pages again and see if I can get more votes.  If you happen to be reading this, please leave a comment with which one you prefer or a suggestion of your own.  

The Mountain Dew Code Red of Trailers

On January 3rd, 2022, I published a post called The Mountain Dew Code Red of Trailers about a movie trailer for The Unbreakable Boy, which was due in theatres in March 2022. The movie, based on a book based on a true story, starred Chuck actor Zachary Levi as the father of a middle school boy who had brittle bone disease and autism.  

Days before the March 22 release date The Unbreakable Boy was pulled from its release schedule with little to no explanation.  Fast forward to yesterday, January 3, 2025 when I was working at my movie theatre 3 years from the date of my original post.  I was patrolling the theatre and ensuring all the movies started successfully when I saw this new trailer for The Unbreakable Boy:

Apparently, Lionsgate has a February 21st 2025 release date.  I'll believe it when I see it.  

Team Saturdazzle At The Movies

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Top 25 Films 2024

25. The Fall Guy 92.9 M 24. Red One 96.81 M  23. Bob Marley, One Love 96.89 M 

22. Alien Romulus 105.31 M 21. IF 111.15 M  20. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire 113.38 M 

19. Mufasa: The Lion King 128.14 M 18. A Quiet Place: Day One 138.93 M 

17. Venom: The Last Dance 137.73M 16. The Wild Robot 143.19 M 15. It Ends With Us 148.51 M

14. Sonic The Hedgehog 3 151.56M 13. Gladiator II 164.55 M 

12. Kingdom of the Planet pf the Apes 171.13 M 11. Bad Boys: Ride or Die 193.57 M 

10. Kung Fu Panda 4 193.59 M 9. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire 196.35 M 8. Twisters 267.76 M

7. Dune:  Part Two 282.14 M 6. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice  294.1 M 5. Despicable Me 4 361 M 

4. Moana 2 404.02 M 3. Wicked 432.94 M 2. Deadpool & Wolverine 636.75 M 

1. Inside Out 2 652.98 M (Movies I watched are in bold)

10 highest-grossing movies I watched this year by rank on Box Office Mojo

90. Here  70. Cabrini 68. Unsung Hero 53. The Forge 52. Reagan 51. The Boys in the Boat  27. Wonka and the aforementioned The Wild Robot (16), Twisters (8), and Wicked (3). 

Top 10 Films December 2024

10. Interstellar 2024 Re-release 

9. Kraven The Hunter

8. Red One - Down 3 from November

7. A Complete Unknown 

6. Nosefartu

5. Gladiator II - Down 2 from November

4. Mufasa: The Lion King

3. Sonic The Hedgehog 3

2. Wicked  Down 1 from November

1. Moana 2 - Up 1 from November

Top 5 Films for 2025

5. Wicked

4. Nosferatu

3. Moana 2

2. Sonic The Hedgehog 3

1. Mufasa The Lion King

That's all I have today, for your weekly dose of Saturdazzle.  Please comment especially about changing the blog's name or anything else that struck your fancy today.  

You Can't Take It With You - Saturdazzle Adjacent Post

The past coupla Saturdays I've tried and failed to put out a Team Saturdazzle post. The truth is my Fridays have been frenzied lately and my Saturdays have been swamped. The phrase 20 pounds in a 5-pound bag aptly describes them. My best friend noticed yesterday that yesterday at least until mid to late afternoon was anything but dazzling and told me to stop what I was doing, go home, and spend a quiet evening with my wife. This worked out well for my best friend and my wife as they are the same person.  

So I went home, and we watched a movie together.  The Movie was the 1938 Film: You Can't Take It With You.  I have blogged about it before here,  as the Y entry in "A Month at the Movies" from the  2023 A to Z challenge.  

It did Saturdazzle my weekend right up.  So much so, that I am taking some time on a Sunday to breathe a little and blog a little.  In the A to Z post, I shared the below YouTube video which is a good synopsis and review of the movie.  

 

T.V. in the Background: A Very Brady Christmas 

Team Saturdazzle: What Phrase Do You Hate?

 TEAM SATURDAZZLE

Today, on my Facebook page, I asked: What is a phrase you hate? Here are the answers I received. I have listed the contributors by First Name, Last Initial, and where I  first encountered them.

• Have a good one. Dave R - Mother's Womb, Illinois
• Welcome in. Amy R - Macomb, Illinois
• Behind your back Patrick G - Elk Grove Village, Illinois
• A whole nuther. Valerie T - Peoria, Illinois
• God showed up. Stephanie D - Elgin, Illinois

I will leave my question out there for a little longer if I get any more responses I'll add them here.  

Yo Yo Man

First, the good news.  I have lost 20.2 lbs this year, 7 lbs this week alone.  The bad news in addition to losing 20.2 lbs this year, I have also gained 13.2 lbs.  In other words, the 7 lbs. I lost this week is the only weight I truly lost all year.  And since I tend to gain back all the weight I lose, we really can't be certain that those 7lbs we'll stay gone.

At the end of last year, I weighed myself as I do every Saturday and I weighed 259.6 lbs.  I estimated by losing 1 lb a week for 10 weeks I could be below 250 by Saturday, March 11th. Today is March 11th and I now weigh 252.6 pounds.  During those 10 weeks, I lost weight 6 different times and I gained weight 4 times. 

Perhaps a little historical perspective would be helpful here.  I weighed 174 lbs when I was a Freshman in high school. When I graduated high school I weighed 174 lbs.  During high school, I could eat all the time and never gain weight which is exactly what I did.  Between 18 and 33 the year I got married my weight went up gradually to somewhere between 200 and 220.  In the first 16 or so years of my marriage it continued to go up until about 8 years ago I weighed myself and saw that I was 285 lbs.  

In the past 8 years is when the yo-yo-ing began.  Yo-yo-ing is only marginally better than unchecked gradual increases.  Since June of  2021, I've gone from 262 pounds in June to 227.6 on Christmas Day 2021 but was back up to 263 by January of this year. That's a year 1/2 long yo-yo. 

I've been wanting to post about my weight loss/weight gain struggles here for a while.  I feel a little like Piglet in the opening of Winnie The Pooh and The Blustery day. He's raking leaves and generally gets blown around by the wind when he says I don't mind the leaves that are leaving, But I don't like the ones that are coming.  I don't mind losing 20 lbs in 2.5 months. I just hope the next time I say that I weigh 20.5 lbs less than I did 2.5 months before not just 7. 

Januarying

 January 2023 is in the books, more proof that the calendar plays for keeps.  My wife thinks that this January would never end and was glad to see the back of it (Sorry, she had Downton Abbey on , and I couldn't help myself.). For me, January ended too quickly, I hadn't finished all my Januarying. 

I've always been  a little bit uncertain when it comes to  what I think about New Year's resolutions.  On one hand, I think that they are a colossal waste of time because we should always be trying to improve ourselves and we  don't need December 31st telling us what to do.  On the other hand, there are definitely things I like to try to accomplish every year and January 1st seems like a good time to start accomplishing those things.

Some of these goals (I do like goals better than resolutions) vary from year to year and many of them don't get accomplished.  I do spend quite a bit of time each January planning to accomplish them, which is why I call making a game plan for the goals, Januarying. 

One goal I have every year is to average 10,000 steps a day for the year.  2022 is the only year so far I have met that goal.  I had come close in 2021 averaging around 9,200 steps a day.  It really was a tale of two halves where I averaged just 7,000 steps from January to June and then averaged close to 11,500 to close out the year.  I made my goal for 2022 to be averaging at least 10,000 steps for the entire year (In 2005 White Sox parlance we call that going wire to wire). To that end I walked 26,122 steps on Jauary 1st.  We had a small party at out house on New Years Eve  and after our guests left, I walked our neighborhood for a little while.  Most of the steps came later that day when I got the job of patrolling the movie theatre where I work which means walking up and down 12 theatres every 20 or 30 minutes to make sure  the equipment and audience members are behaving appropriately.  

This year I decided to approach repeating my accomplishment differently. I made a calendar in my mind and decided in advance how many steps I wanted to get on the given month.  At the end of the year, If I make all my goals I will have again averaged  over 10,000 steps for the year.  In January, I set my goal for far lower than 10,000 but still beat the average I set for myself by more than 1,000 steps a day.  

Some of my other Januarying goals have to do with or are chronicled on my blog.  I will be posting more soon about my goals of watching 12 new movies (to me) and reviewing them here, and my reading goal for the year.  So. Ill just table such discussion for now, except to say that I have spent quite a bit of Januarying plotting out some of the books and films I want to consume this year and going about consuming them.  Each December and January I spend time redesigning my blog. I have especially enjoyed  linking some new blogs to mine in a space called Blog Try Outs. One such blog is called Laws of Gravity The caretaker of Laws of Gravity is a substitute teacher like myself.

At my advanced age of 58 years, 4 months, 1 week, 4 days and 12 hours (It's actually 11 hours, but I still have to edit this post.) , I am beginning to hear more and more about finishing well.  I feel like I might be a tad young for that, but Januarying has been instrumental in helping me start well.  

Snow Kidding!

These "kids" are now 17 to 23

 

Roller Time

 This week I finished a 6 week subbing assignment relieving a 1:1 aide who was on maternity leaveem.  I worked with the same student for 6 weeks which was new and very rewarding for me. Each morning I would pick the student up at the bus and bring them to the class room.  Each afternoon I would take the student back to the bus.  Usually by the end of the day, my student would start to get very excited about going home and would start repeating momma time over and over again.  Sometimes if the student was having a particularly difficult day they might start saying momma time before it was near to the time school ended.  I Kind of  saw it as a suggestion/protest. One day Momma Time was being chanted at about 8:30 a.m.  

One morning  3 or 4 weeks into the assignment as I was picking my student up from the bus, the bus driver asked me what my name was.  I said it was Mr. Roller. She said that explains it, your student has been repeating Roller time, Roller time for the last 15 minutes.  I hope that means that I made as much of an impression on my student as  they did to me.  

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Yesterday I almost went to a movie.  That's right I almost went to the movie theatre with my wife and watched a movie.  It's been almost a year since I've even thought of doing that.  The reason we didn't go was not because of any co-vid concerns, we e looked the movie up in my favorite ratings website, Plugged In, and realized that it might not be for us.  Our daughters went to the Disney dragon movie and both enjoyed it. 

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Speaking of Disney, my younger daughter and I have been watching Wandavision on the Disney App.  We have been watching it the Friday it drops and watched the 9th and final installment yesterday.  If I were reviewing the show, my review would be uneven.  I'm not reviewing, it though.  I will say this, it's been super fun having a little vestige of appointment television and the experience was well worth the effort.

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My Other Blogs

Besides this blog, I have 3 other active blogs.  Here are links to my most recent posts in each of them.

Crazy Uncle Dave's Sports Blog

Hall of Fame Voting Results 2021 - 2/13/21

Dave Out Loud

Quick Random Takes: A to Z Challenge 3/6/21 (currently now quickly becoming then)

Random Acts of Roller

Born on March 2nd 3/2/21