Hello! See, I did two whole posts in between Broadcast posts, haha. On this week’s episode, we talk about Bridgerton, the final season of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and the dumbest WTF moments of Trump’s presidency. (Remember when he stared directly at the eclipse? Catered the McDonald’s feast? “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.”? That crazy Boy Scouts speech from 2017 when he talked about drugs & sex parties on a yacht among other inappropriate things? It’s been a long 4 years.)
The player below will have the chapters marked out, but in case you’re listening through a podcast feed, here’s the breakdown of the timestamps. Everything is approximate because of ads:
7:00 minutes: Start of political talk featuring Shandy’s pocket tyranny book
19:39 (12:30 minutes later): Most laughable WTF moments of the Trump presidency
26:04 (13 minutes later): End of all political talk
29:00 (3 minutes later): The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (season 4)
49:16 (20 minutes later): Bridgerton
1:14:00 (25 minutes later): End of TV talk/Start of feedback
If you do want to check this episode out, you can listen to the latest episode below or via jayandjack.com, iTunes, Spreaker, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, etc. You may have better luck searching for us as “The Broadcast with Amanda, Shandy, and Colleen” since there are a few other shows called The Broadcast.
The book Shandy recommended, “On Tyranny” by Timothy Snyder:
As always, happy listening, and thanks for listening!
It’s Palindrome Week and we all know how much I love palindromes. 1-21-21 will be remembered (to me) as our first full day without Donald Trump as president. Breathe.
I loved all of the Bernie Sanders memes from yesterday but to me, this is the picture that said it all:
He. Is. Gone.
We still have a long way to go to deprogram half the country from the cruelty that was Trumpism, but may the man himself fade into obscurity without his platforms and bully pulpet. We can do that, America. Let’s do that.
Since we’re all in this pandemic together, I wanted to share my experience flying on Southwest on flight 3598 from BWI to RDU on Sunday, January 3. My decision to fly was a last-minute decision, but I based it on a previously great flying experience that I had back in October. I flew on Delta and was really impressed by the safety measures they had taken; my flight was very spaced out and clean. I (mistakenly) thought that all airlines were still taking the pandemic seriously and following protocols. In addition to having had a good experience in the fall, Wake County offers free COVID testing and I had just had a negative one a few days earlier, so I also felt that I was not a safety risk to anyone else.
The day started out well. The flight out of Raleigh was a little more than half-filled. We socially distanced without issue during our layover. Our connecting flight to Long Island had like 37 people on it, which was awesome. We were able to sit like 10 rows away from everyone else and as such, I let the kids eat their snack when they offered cabin service. (The RDU/BWI flight did not offer cabin service.) We landed at 11 a.m. and I was turning around to fly back to Raleigh solo at 4:10 p.m. I expected the trip back home to be the same experience as my previous ones.
The flight home was when I realized that, of course, we had crossed back over into “profits over safety” territory (and yes, I get it; there are a lot of factors at play here, so don’t come at me). The first flight from ISP to BWI was my first indication that perhaps something was off. I went all the way to the back and sat by the window, hoping that I had another half-filled flight and wouldn’t have anyone else in my row again. There was someone in the aisle seat but I also came close to having someone sit in the middle seat. I noted that there were only a handful of people who needed the middle seats, so I dismissed it as maybe they were last-minute purchases or the flight attendants let someone traveling with a lap infant take up a seat and that threw off the count or something explainable like that.
NOPE.
Flight 3598 from BWI to RDU was completely full, middle seats and all. Southwest booked a completely full flight during a fucking pandemic. To make matters more stressful, once we boarded, we sat at the gate for another 45 minutes while they repaired something to do with the air conditioning. It was so warm on the plane that once the captain gave us an update, he said something along the lines of, “Whew, it’s hot in here! Let’s get that A/C going!” On top of all of that, they still did cabin service, which means people seated 6 inches apart would be taking their masks off to eat or drink on a packed plane that had limited airflow for 45 minutes. (Thankfully, the two other women in my row also declined cabin service.) As soon as I got home, I took my clothes off in the garage and put them straight into the laundry, and washed them on a hot water, heavily soiled cycle.
I waited two weeks before talking about this because I wanted to have two negative post-flight COVID tests, which I thankfully now have. I just thought I’d pass along my experience for anyone out there who was considering (or has to) flying right now. Southwest’s website touts physically-distanced practices, but as of Jan. 17, that only applies to boarding, not the actual flight itself. I never noticed that the language about not booking middle seats had disappeared. You’re not “physically-distanced” if you’re sitting 6 inches from the person next to you. I feel really lucky that after 14 days, I’ve tested negative but I don’t think I will be flying again anytime soon. Just another lesson not to assume and a reminder to do your due diligence. Good luck and stay safe and healthy!
I promise I won’t cheat by only posting Broadcast stuff on here, but I did want to share that the bloopers & outtakes from the first half of Season 5 are out on The Broadcast’s feed. I changed up the usual format of how I do them this year and added one section that I really enjoy, haha. My next post won’t be podcast-related, I promise!
If you do want to check this episode out, you can listen to the latest episode below or via jayandjack.com, iTunes, Spreaker, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, etc. You may have better luck searching for us as “The Broadcast with Amanda, Shandy, and Colleen” since there are a few other shows called The Broadcast.
As always, happy listening, and thanks for listening!
Helloooo! I’m here! I’m glad that you are too! Happy New Year!
I know it’s been a while, but I have been wanting to get back to blogging more frequently. I wish I could say that I have been doing great big things that have kept me busy, but truth be told, I’ve had other outlets (The Broadcast, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) to share things on and anything else, I no longer felt like I had any authority on or interesting/exciting way to say it. Plus, kids, work, life, and the amount of time/effort that goes into editing The Broadcast each week had me worn out and feeling otherwise stretched thin. (Don’t worry, I’ve had other hobbies; I started Geocaching in April 2019 and have gotten really into solving puzzles to find coordinates, I go for 5+-mile walks/hikes to relax, and I still try to be crafty.)
Over the last year or so, I’ve stopped checking Facebook as much and I’m rarely on Instagram nowadays. I was spending an unhealthy amount of time on Political Twitter and it was making me angry, so I’ve been taking a little break from that too. Thanks to the pandemic, we haven’t done a whole lot to have many personal stories to share on The Broadcast and honestly, I think the show is much better off (and easier to edit) without my stupid rambling and taking too long to get to the point. There’s also an element of the older I get and the older my kids get, I realize that I don’t always have to say what I’m thinking or share every little detail about everything.
Anyways, I’d like to try to get back into blogging in 2021. I have some of those writing prompt challenge books that I’ve acquired over the years in an attempt to get back on the horse and I’ve been jotting down ideas here and there. I can’t promise I’ll blog as frequently as I used to, but I am going to try to hold myself accountable to blog more this year. Even if no one reads them, I’ll have things for myself to look back on, like I sometimes do with recipes I’ve posted in years past or even to remember a story or event I shared, haha.
Zachary (Zachy) and Alex (Lexi) are getting so big now. Zachary is six and in first grade. Alex is going to be three next month, although you’d think he was going to be 15. They may look a lot alike, they’ve got very different personalities. Zachy is really creative, smart, and caring and loves to build things. Lexi is goofy, tough, and clever and loves to play with action figures and toys. They’re both such loving little boys. I’m so proud of them. I love them so much and I love watching their relationship with each other grow.
On that note, it’s late and I have to get up early tomorrow for a long day. I will leave you for now with a picture taken in late November.
It’s time for the third annual Broadcast/Real Weird Sisters crossover! Shandy, Amanda, and I had a blast chatting with Martha and Alice this past week. Just like last year, we had enough content to do two weeks’ worth of shows, so be sure to listen to both parts!
On Ep. 4.27, “The Real Broad Sisters (in Bed), Part 1,” we play catch up, learning that Martha is now only the moderately weird sister and chat about The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and Sex Education. We also discuss Greta Gerwig’s version of Little Women and then visit the Twitter party #AddAWordRuinABook. It’s a fun, smooth-flowing show and we hope you have as good of a time listening to it as we did recording it.
My little sister Christie ran in the NYC Marathon last Sunday! I flew up solo for a quick weekend trip to cheer her on and I had a BLAST doing so. Seriously. It was so much fun.
About a week before the marathon, she had sent out a spreadsheet listing where she would approximately be running by if she kept up her target pace and then gave us assigned spots to cheer her on from. It was really helpful for coordinating and going to a target area vs. meandering along and hoping for the best.
Bisquick is an old nickname (& her first AOL screen name!).
My sister Katelyn, my parents, and I met up with Christie’s boyfriend, Nick, at our first assigned stop in Brooklyn, right around the 8-mile mark. We got there with a few minutes to spare, but we were so nervous because we didn’t know what to expect! Katelyn and Nick have both cheered on runners in the NYC Marathon before and I have cheered friends on in the City of Oaks Marathon (in Raleigh), but we were all still pretty nervous and excited for Christie. She knew exactly where we would be and although we were tracking her via the Find My Friends function on our iPhones, we were still so nervous that we almost missed her! In fact, the picture I took is of the dude running next to her, hahahaha!
After Brooklyn, we split into two groups. Nick, Katelyn and I jetted up to the E. 72nd St. subway station to catch her at the Mile 17 marker. We were way more prepared this time around. We even had time to stop to use the restroom and get coffee and bagels! We had a great spot, knew from tracking her on her phone when she was approaching and had our cameras and air high-fives ready!
After we left the Upper East Side, we walked over to Central Park to catch her at our next assigned spot, which was around the 23-mile mark. We ended up getting there much quicker than we anticipated so we decided to walk as far along the course as we could go before it got too crowded or we were stopped.
We got as far as the boathouse when Kate has to use the bathroom. As we were waiting for her, Nick spotted fellow bystanders with beer on to-go cups so we went to investigate. Turns out the Central Park Boathouse knows what’s up and sells beer. We grabbed a beer and then headed back outside. The area outside of the boathouse was surprisingly quiet, all things considered. It wasn’t very crowded and we found a spot along the fence where we could sit and rest our beverages on, so we decided to stay there. We were somewhere between miles 24 and 25 and we had to have been fairly close to mile 25.
We waited a bit, chatting and tracking her progress. I took a few minutes to find a virtual geocache or two that were near where we were set up. My parents, my grandma and aunt, her college friends, and her work friends were all at different points of the race as well. My parents and her friends also went to a few different spots, so she never had to go more than a few miles without having people to cheer her on. She even got to give my grandma a hug at Mile 20, which was an awesome pick-me-up when she really needed one. 🙂
Christie definitely looked like she was over it by the time she got to us. She told us later that she was expecting us to be around Mile 23, so when she saw us, her thought was, “Holy shit, I have another 3 miles of this?!” Hahaha! She realized after a few minutes that we had not, in fact, been where she thought that we were and therefore, she had gained at least a mile. Woo-hoo, mental boosts for the win!
She finished the marathon in 4 hours and 10 minutes. We are so proud of her! It really was such a great day and a great experience. Have I mentioned yet how proud I am of my little sister?! She has inspired me to get back into running a little bit. I used to run all of the time, for anywhere in between 45-75 minutes a day, but my knees couldn’t take it after a while and I had to switch to walking/hiking. I would love to run a marathon someday…I think, hahaha. Even if I wasn’t bitten by the marathon bug, I was definitely bitten by the marathon spectator bug.
Family!
Oh, and speaking of the marathon bug…the funniest moment of the day was when we asked Christie if she’d do it again. She was hugging my mom and still had her face buried in her embrace. She looked up at us and bluntly said, “Fuck no.”
I told one of my amazing marathon-running friends, Shandy, this story and she went, “Mmhmm. Everyone says that after their first one. We shall see…”
Either way, I’m totally in for another round of cheering while eating bagels and drinking beer. So proud of my little sis!
The latest episode of The Broadcast is out! This week’s, we talk about having a lowkey Election Day, how dumb it is to end daylight savings time, the NYC Marathon [blog post], what our safeword or phrase would be in the event of our kidnapping, and more. We also take a couple of Buzzfeed quizzes to determine our favorite Halloween candy and what they are most thankful for and end the show on a singalong that gets somewhat dirtier than planned. I hope you’ll check it out!
I love Halloween! Since Zach was born, I’ve made sure that we always decorate and do something to celebrate. So far, we’re five years in and I can still pull off family costumes, which I am going to do for as long as I possibly can, haha. Luckily, Zachary shares my enthusiasm for Halloween, dressing up, and parties. We’re still working on Alex lol and Jay humors me.
This year, we weren’t able to do a Halloween party and both times we planned on going to a pumpkin patch, we got rained out! Instead, I took the party to The Broadcast and had a live show where the three of us dressed up and read spooky stories from the Internet/shared our own. [Check it out here: iTunes, Spreaker, jayandjack.com, Google Play, Spotify, etc. al.]
I digress. Back to #GlatsquaredDoesHalloween. This year, we asked Zach what he wanted to be and be said, “Mr. Potato Head!” So, the theme became Toy Story 4. Jay was Woody, Alex was Buzz Lightyear, and I was Bo Peep. I had found a Jessie costume for Zoe on Amazon but it sold out before I could buy it! I don’t think she minded though 😝.
Despite the thread of storms, we were able to get some good trick-or-treating in during our neighborhood’s annual hayride around the neighborhood extravaganza. Jay’s family came over for some pizza and Halloween fun. Zach was super into it right away and Alex freaked out when he saw me putting on my costume, including the blonde wig (I make an awful blonde hahaha). I thought having him see me get ready would help, but nope. His face got darker and darker with every new piece of the costume and he kept backing up slowly. When I went to pick him up and reassure him that it was me and all was well, he started crying. He then screamed and protest-cried for the next 10 minutes as I changed him into his costume.
So, I’ve wanted to find a certain geocache in Raleigh pretty much since I started geocaching back in February, hahaha. When I lived in my old apartment, one of my walking/running routes went over a bridge that has a quarry on one side and Crabtree Creek on the other side. I have passed this area for years and always wondered what was down there on the non-quarry side. I’ve considered checking it out before but my view was always from like 100 feet up while on top of the bridge, so it was always a “pass!” kinda thing.
Then, I started geocaching and I started looking at any caches that were hidden in areas that I was familiar with. I noticed that this one was hidden along Crabtree Creek, less than a quarter of a mile from the road. All of the logs from previous finders mentioned a breathtaking waterfall. Obviously, I had to see it for myself. However, I didn’t feel safe going alone (unknown terrain, snakes, the 0.2% chance that I could get kidnapped in the woods, etc.) so I had to wait until the time was right.
My dad came to town on Sunday. He, Zach and I have geocached together on Long Island, but never in Raleigh. He’s an avid hiker and mountain climber, so he was down for the adventure.
And adventure it was!
We had such a blast hiking to the area where it was hidden (once we got Zach to stop freaking out about potential snakes in the higher grass areas lol), the search itself, and finally making the find. We got “lucky” in that Raleigh hasn’t had a lot of rain lately, so the water levels were really low and that helped our search a bit. We decided to give up after about 35-45 minutes. Just as we had resigned ourselves to come back another day, something caught my eye and we found it! Yay!
The waterfall lived up to the hype and my dad & I plan on going back to check it out after we’ve had more rain to see it in full action. This experience was a joy from start to finish. We took the more woodsy way out and Zachary found a spot that he wants to possibly hide his ammo can from Fall Fling 2019 in. I can’t believe this cache has gone unfound since Nov. 2014. It really is in such a great spot. I also can’t believe that it’s one of the few undisturbed spots in the area. What an adventure.
We celebrated with beer and burgers at Lynwood Grill afterward. It was a really fun afternoon with my dad and my son. 🙂
