Goodbye Oprah Winfrey Show

Oh Oprah. After 25 years she's saying goodbye to her popular television show this month. Now I'll be honest and say I used to watch her show religiously. TiVo'd it every single day.

During my stint in Washington, DC my friend Renata and I made the trek to Chicago to watch a taping of the Oprah Winfrey Show. It was my first time in Chicago and I fell in love with the city. The taping of the show was everything you'd expect (no camera's so no pics) but we unfortunately had a bad show. It was titled something like "Get Something for Nothing" -- on how to get things free in life. Didn't help me one iota. I would have gotten more out of being at one of her "Favorite Things" taping but no! I'm not bitter or anything.

When I lived in Waco and didn't have TiVo one tv station even had the previous week repeated at midnight which was fabulous for a night owl like me.

Then I got DirectTV and they didn't let me keep my TiVo and in a show of defiance I refused to get their digital recording device. That'll show them!

So, since then I've been Oprah free. Until she went and bought her OWN station (literally and figuratively). Now I'm hooked on Oprah all over again through her Behind the Scenes series. It's genius I tell ya!

When I saw on her website that she was giving away tickets to two of her final shows I had to sign up. I even signed up for two different contests - one for you and a guest (and you had to name your guest so I put my momma because she never goes anywhere); and the other was a paid trip for you and four friends. Alas I won neither but I hope everyone who was lucky enough to win has a blast.

I am sure Oprah will do well in whatever she tackles next...and I'm sure I'll watch.

I'll leave the post with my two favorite quotes of Oprah's:

"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."

and if you take nothing else from Oprah's show all these years --take this:

"Listen to the whisper."

Peace out O!

I have become a painting fool

Earlier this month a friend and colleague wanted to do something different for her birthday so off we went to this painting class. But it's not just any painting class - au contraire mon frère - it's a painting class with wine and hors deouvres. Who could say no to that?

We went to this little place called Painting with a Twist and had the best time. Our art for this visit was a field of bluebonnets. And it is so interesting to see the artwork come to life from beginning to end. At first you are thinking there is no way THIS...


is turning into THAT!


But as you can see it does.

I loved my first one so much that I decided to give it to my mom as one of her Mother's Day Presents then went back that same week to make another painting for my sis. They both loved them and my sis hung hers up that weekend.


My niece has now gotten the bug and has already painted four masterpieces.


I can't wait until next month as I plan to go a couple of more times. To try to redeem myself with redoing the leaves, uhm I mean relieve some stress this weekend, I even made a smaller version of the hibiscus painting for myself while at home.


Anyone up for wine and painting?

Why all the Negativity in Social Media!

I love social media platforms. Twitter. Fun! Flickr. Applause! Facebook. Yay! The only drawback is people who use it to spout such negativity on to other people.

It is no secret that I love watching NASCAR races. And Twitter plays a big part in the enjoyment of the races. So many people are tweeting what the drivers and crew are saying and sharing more information than you can get through tv. There are several drivers who are also on Twitter and interact with the fans which is an added bonus.

But there is a certain breed of people on these platforms that use it to spew negativity.

Focusing on NASCAR here, there are some people that find it easy to attack the drivers, media and other fans with such ease that it is scary. I wonder if they do it only because of the anonymity to a degree that comes with social media. Would these same people say what they write if they had the chance to have a face to face conversation with that person? There is a way to get your message across without getting personal or vicious.

Now I have mentioned my dislike for a driver on Twitter before but not directly to the driver and certainly not attacking them -- more in conversation with another tweep and only what I would say if I were there with that person in the same room.

I imagine the hatefulness gets to these drivers/spouses/media enough that they want to react. I've noticed a trend with some of them that they will retweet a hateful comment that they recieved and this encourages their followers to attack the tweeter. It happened tonight.

Someone attacked the spouse of a driver and she retweeted it with a response. It wasn't a bad response but it was enough to rile her fans. She didn't encourage her followers to attack this person but that is what happened. Yes what he said was uncalled for but it didn't warrant what he got. It could have easily been handled by the spouse responding to this person directly or just ignoring him.

You have to have a thick skin to be a celebrity or someone involved with a famous person. Always remember this: DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS.

There is one driver who actually encourages this kind of attack on people who tweet negativity to him. He's retweeted before with "go get 'em" on the retweet. Is that really necessary?

And it's not limited to NASCAR. A while back one of my tweeps made a comment about her thoughts on breastfeeding in public and within the hour there was an organized effort by a group of women to verbally attack her. It was vicious. She responded to them and it just got ugly. My mouth was dropped the entire time I was reading this.

Don't get me started on Facebook and the need for someone to attack their ex-spouse or family in a public forum.

Sometimes I want to just scream or tell someone something awful in reply - when that happens I write the tweet then delete it without sending it. It works for me. Try it.

Here's another idea: if someone attacks you or is hateful-- BLOCK THEM and go on with your life. No one needs to put up with that. It's enough to discourage people from joining these platforms.