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Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
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12:48 am - Poem for Tuesday
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( Rimbaud's Kraken )
The kids had no school due to teacher's meetings on Monday, so we met my Paul's parents at the visitor center at Catoctin Mountain National Park. The leaves were a bit past peak but the weather could not have been more beautiful -- about 60 degrees with mostly clear skies -- so we hiked to two spectacular views at Hog Rock and Blue Ridge Summit Overlook. Then we drove to two of Frederick County's three remaining covered bridges, Loy's Station and Roddy Road, where there were more colorful leaves at the lower elevations. My in-laws took us out for dinner at the Cozy Inn, oldest continuously operating restaurant in Maryland run by the family that founded it, which regularly serves the staff at Camp David and has been visited by dozens of presidential visitors.
( Catoctin and Frederick )
We got home in time for Heroes, about which I have little to say (bored with traveling circus, fed up with history rewriting, no longer care about long-term regular characters, sick of resurrections of some first-season characters and rewritten backstories of others). Then we watched Monday Night Football, since Philly apparently plays better when we don't watch than when we do -- I am perfectly happy with the idea of the Saints as Super Bowl champions -- and Jon Stewart's team coverage of sports fans was a delightful ending to the evening.
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| Monday, November 2nd, 2009
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12:28 am - Poem for Monday
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( Octopus Visiting Your Garden )
We had a very quiet day after Halloween, in large part due to the weather -- we had intended to drive the two hours to Chestertown for the Sultana downrigging, but it was coming down hard at noon, and we reluctantly decided we didn't feel like traveling all that way in miserable driving conditions to stand in chilly rain on slippery ship decks. We briefly pondered going to the Day of the Dead celebration at the National Museum of American History, but by then we figured it would be very crowded, and having been to the fabulous weekend-long celebration at the Native American museum the past couple of years, we decided to pass. So we did terribly exciting things like grocery shopping, CVS, and (in my case) laundry, which is not going to get done on Monday since we're meeting my in-laws at Catoctin National Park -- the kids have no school due to teacher conferences.
( Annual Scott's Run Photo )
It wasn't a bad football day -- the Ravens won by a big margin over undefeated Denver, the Vikings beat the Packers, we saw quite a bit of both games, and the Redskins had a bye week. In the evening we started to watch the World Series, but when the Yankees went ahead, we turned it off and watched Due South instead -- "Mountie Sings the Blues," which we all loved (Fraser singing, Huey and Dewey writing a terrible country song actually penned by Paul Gross), and "Good for the Soul," which was okay (I don't like over-the-top Fraser at this point, here he seems more like the guy from the first season who doesn't understand how police work actually works, and the mob figures are all caricatures). Oh and ![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif) dark_cygnet made my day by pointing out that Zienia Merton (Sandra Benes from Space: 1999) was minister in Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith! Now we are hoping the Phillies pull this out, yay Pedro Feliz!
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| Sunday, November 1st, 2009
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12:49 am - Poem for Sunday
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( Post-Mortem )
We spent Halloween afternoon at Scott's Run, just as we did five years ago. The weather was gorgeous, quite warm for the season -- nearly 70 degrees. The leaves are just past peak here, still plenty of gold and orange on the trees beginning to turn brown, and lots on the ground with even more falling every hour (we had to sweep the porch twice before evening) so it was a perfect afternoon to spend in the woods and looking at the trees flanking the Potomac River. We saw many dogs, since this is a dog-friendly park -- it was at one time a private estate that the citizens of Fairfax County wrested away from a developer who wanted to cut down all the trees, voting to raise their own taxes to buy and protect the land -- and a heron on an island in the river. Then we came home to carve our pumpkin, which we hadn't managed to do earlier in the week.
( Trick or Treat )
When we got back from trick-or-treating at my parents, it was only a bit after 9 p.m., and we remembered that we were going to have an extra hour of sleep because the clocks go back, so we put on the 1931 Frankenstein with Boris Karloff as the monster. This bears very little resemblance to the novel, which I shrieked to see was attributed in the credits to "Mrs. Percy B. Shelley" -- oh, but her mother would have been displeased -- but it's the basis of nearly every ripoff and parody ever filmed, which makes it both unintentionally hilarious in places and unwittingly epic in others. I hadn't seen it since college, so had not realized how much "The Mob Song" sequence in Disney's Beauty and the Beast owed to this movie when I saw that. I suppose we really should show the kids the Branagh film but I find I'm more in the mood for the Mel Brooks version of the story now!
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| Saturday, October 31st, 2009
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12:34 am - Poem for Saturday
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( I Went To Heaven )
This is going to be an all-fannish entry, so if fannish is not your thing, you may want to move along. I wrote a review of Next Gen's "Cost of Living" -- which I love, though if you can't stand Lwaxana Troi, you'd be forgiven for not feeling the same -- while waiting for the second segment of "The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith" to air. When my family got home, we watched both parts, and I love that episode even more, ( -- spoilers. )
( Happy Halloween )
thefridayfive: ( Memory and Desire )
fannish5: ( Halloween Costumes )
My parents are home from California but my father is sick, so we didn't have dinner with them; instead Paul made apple and cheddar strata with chicken in mushroom sauce, both of which were fabulous. Then we watched Smallville, which I didn't think was such a great episode -- it's like they can't figure out what to do with Oliver from week to week, though Tess is awesome and I love her -- but I forgive everything, even the stupid Good Morning Metropolis storyline, for the last few seconds when ( spoilers. ) Then we watched Sanctuary, which also had some silliness, but also had awesome women -- I always love Magnus, and go Kate! (I don't think Magnus is fooled by her for a second, which is part of the fun.) Also, any episode in which ( spoilers ) gets bonus points from me.
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| Friday, October 30th, 2009
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12:44 am - Poem for Friday
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( The Pope's Penis )
I spent a delightful afternoon with cidercupcakes, who forgave me for not having anything exciting to feed her and brought Buffy the Vampire Slayer seasons one and five. First we had to get my irritable DVD player working; it had decided it was a Region 2 player, and rejected all my professional discs with a "Wrong Region" warning, requiring that the machine be restored to factory settings -- something not easy to learn from the minimal manual. But we figured it out, and then we watched "Teacher's Pet" and "Never Kill a Boy on the First Date" (which I had not seen before, never having watched the first season), plus "Checkpoint" (which I had seen, but it's one of the best ever, with the Council of Watchers and Glory and how Buffy lays the smackdown on everyone and how Giles adoring her).
( South Mountain Creamery )
I am liking FlashForward a lot, though I feel like that could turn on a dime if they killed off the wrong character in the wrong way or just screwed around and dragged things out too long. Right now the pacing is terrific and I like all the characters; I like that the men are as focused on their relationships as the women, and the women as focused on their careers as the men, and it's a reasonably diverse cast without too many obvious stereotypes. ( Spoilers. ) I can't say that I enjoyed the World Series tonight, but a lot can happen in Philadelphia!
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| Thursday, October 29th, 2009
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12:49 am - Poem for Thursday
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( The Freshness )
I don't have a great deal to report other than my delight at seeing President Obama sign the inclusive hate crimes bill into law -- the first time a federal measure has protected GLBT rights along with the rights of other citizens. Now if only he would keep his campaign promise to overturn Don't Ask, Don't Tell, I will feel better about him despite his backtracking on health care and Afghanistan -- it isn't as if Americans hadn't been explicitly told that he intended to overturn it when we elected him, he said so several times -- no one can complain he turned out to be a secret liberal! I had a nice afternoon in that there were three white-tail deer walking in the woods at the same time I was, and I wasted far too much time in the late afternoon and evening setting up a Superpoke Pets club, then inviting people and explaining clubs to them since Superpoke didn't bother to do so before having them go live (and promptly crashing a bunch of other things). I think I may have irritated a couple of people by making Adam an officer, but he wanted an officer badge, and what's a mother to do?
( High Knob and South Mountain )
We watched the World Series until Eastwick, and it was a happy couple of hours indeed...if the entire series goes this way, I will cease complaining about anything the Redskins do this season (I know I said I wasn't rooting for the Redskins till they changed their name, but I simply cannot root for Dallas or the Giants, and now that Michael Vick is on the Eagles, I would prefer the Cowboys in a crunch...the entire division makes me barf). I adored Eastwick this week -- an entire episode about female bonding in which men and what they want are secondary, particularly so far as Kat is concerned -- I am loving her character lately. ( Spoilers. )
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| Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
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12:29 am - Poem for Wednesday
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( My Great-Grandmother's Bible )
I have absolutely nothing worth reporting -- it rained all day, I had a bit of a headache though managed to stave off a migraine, I did lots of dumb organization things and started playing around with holiday card ideas that I ended up scrapping because I didn't really love any of them -- does anyone have any brilliant suggestions for a holiday/New Year card with a Southern/New Orleans theme, preferably with some fannish tie-in that works for both the locale and the holidays?
( Gathland State Park )
Since we have no Tuesday night chill-out show -- maybe when V premieres, if it doesn't suck -- we watched the second episode of the second season of Merlin, "The Once and Future Queen." I liked it much better than the season premiere despite an ongoing shortage of Morgana, who better get lots of screen time in upcoming episodes; I love Gwen, though, so I was happy to see her get so much attention, and ( spoilers. )
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| Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
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12:30 am - Poem for Tuesday
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( Letter to Tsvetaeva )
It was a busy yet unexciting day -- many dozen photos cropped, color-corrected and otherwise manipulated, three loads of laundry washed, sorted and folded, two packages wrapped, addressed and taken to the post office, one long walk enjoyed since the weather was gorgeous, things like that. I tried to read the news but between not being able to figure out who's standing where on the public health care option, not seeing what the problem is if there's no McDonalds in Iceland and not being happy with the direction of Change We Can Believe In, I decided to let Adam try to explain Spore to me instead -- which was probably an even bigger mistake! I did refrain from buying my penguin Tarot cards, which I consider an accomplishment -- I did not refrain from buying myself Tarot cards with my $5 plus 30% off coupon at Borders over the weekend.
( Jumbo's Pumpkin Patch )
After dinner (tuna pomodoro, mmm) we watched last week's two-part Sarah Jane Adventures episode, "The Mad Woman in the Attic," which despite being a reset-button episode was very enjoyable -- more so than the season premiere, I thought. ( Spoilers. ) Then we watched Heroes, which is like three different shows as it follows three different storylines, and as has been happening for the past two seasons for me, it feels so disjointed that I have trouble having any overall positive feeling. ( Spoilers. )
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| Monday, October 26th, 2009
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12:46 am - Poem for Monday
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( Grimalkin )
We had a perfect autumn day -- temperatures in the low 60s, sky brilliant blue with a few wispy clouds -- for our annual fall foliage tour of Frederick County parks, Middletown shops, and pumpkin patches. We went first to Gambrill State Park, then stopped at the Snallygaster before heading to Washington Monument State Park, where we had a picnic before climbing to the tower. Then we went to Gathland State Park, where we visited the museum, which isn't always open, before heading to South Mountain Creamery, which was having a festival with visiting animals and food samples since last weekend's Frederick Festival of the Farm was largely rained out.
We saw more animals at the petting zoo at Jumbo's Pumpkin Patch, but the pumpkins themselves looked so picked-over at this point in the season that we ended up stopping for a pumpkin at a farm stand closer to home that always has large, nice-looking fruit. We came home for a late dinner as it was getting dark, so it was a long afternoon, and I will let the photos tell the story:
( Around South Mountain )
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| Sunday, October 25th, 2009
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12:38 am - Poem for Sunday
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( Refusing at Fifty-Two to Write Sonnets )
Since it was a rainy, gloomy day, we went out after younger son got home from Hebrew school volunteering and lunch to see Amelia. I knew the film had received mixed-to-poor reviews, though I stopped reading after a few because they all seemed to have the same complaint -- that the movie was a pretty straightforward biography, that it was a bit too reverent and didn't seem spontaneous enough, despite a cast including Hilary Swank, Richard Gere, Ewan McGregor, and Christopher Eccleston. I wasn't thrilled to learn that the movie was based largely on Susan Butler's not-the-greatest biography, yet I must confess that those reviews actually encouraged me far more than if the critics were gushing about what an avant-garde retelling of Earhart's life it was or what unexpected titillating details were included. ( Spoilers if you don't know much about Earhart. )
Here in honor of the film are photos I've posted before but feel like posting again of Earhart's Lockheed Vega at the National Air & Space Museum.
( The Fun of It )
Otherwise, I finished my review of "The First Duty", and we watched two episodes of Due South -- the sublime "The Ladies Man" (I love passionately anti-death-penalty TV shows, and okay, Ray K is awesome) and the ridiculous "Mojo Rising." The weather has finally cleared up, so Sunday we are doing our annual tour of South Mountain fall foliage at the state parks!
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| Saturday, October 24th, 2009
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12:12 am - Poem for Saturday
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| Friday, October 23rd, 2009
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12:30 am - Poem for Friday
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( Mom as Fly )
It was not a very eventful Thursday around here. I did some chores, finished tampering with the photos I was working on yesterday so I could burn discs for my parents and sister, did some reading, wrote to my senators about two separate issues, and starting working on a review of Star Trek: The Next Generation's "The First Duty" which we all watched this evening, in honor of which I shall post some photos (reruns from several years ago) of the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in Van Nuys, California where my brother-in-law and his wife were married in the Japanese Garden in 2002, but which is probably better known to everyone reading this as Starfleet Academy.
( Chisen and Sagi )
I liked FlashForward a lot this week -- it's so nice to see someone who's a lesbian when it isn't merely a ratings ploy, and given the state of the world and everyone else's relationships, it doesn't bother me that she has issues with intimacy -- ( spoilers. ) We have had to turn the Yankees-Angels game off twice tonight because every time we put it on, the Yankees come back. At least the Florida State-UNC game is close.
I'm trying to decide whether to see Amelia this weekend despite the mediocre reviews (all the same complaints -- script so bombastic that only the film's score can compete, the actors can't do a thing with the overwrought lines -- basing anything about Earhart on Butler's bio instead of Rich's seems like a bad idea to me to begin with). Yet is there any chance I will not love a biopic about Earhart starring Swank, Gere, McGregor & Eccleston?
Adam shared this with me and made me laugh a lot.
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| Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
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12:38 am - Poem for Thursday
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( Epithalamium NYC )
I had the pleasure of lunch with perkypaduan, originally scheduled for my house with bad TV, but we ended up meeting at the mall, where we went to pretty much every store dementordelta and I didn't hit on Monday plus some that we did -- Bath & Body Works (because I had to buy Twilight Woods roll-on perfume), Temptation ($3 peace-sign bracelets), Old Navy (Halloween t-shirts on sale for $3.75), Hot Topic, Spirit of Halloween, and the food court, to which I brought a peanut butter sandwich because I still haven't figured out what in the mall I can safely eat, which sucks, though means I have more money for stupid stuff like roll-on perfume and bracelets. In the late afternoon my mother came over with old family photos that my sister wanted scanned for a project for her daughter's Bat Mitzvah, so I present to you some not-very-cleaned-up historical family photos scans:
( My Family Pre-1960 )
Glee pleased me this week, not because any of my complaints about the characters or the writing have diminished -- I can't care about anyone, can't feel sorry for anyone, but I love the music despite the bad lip-syncing and I can only be relieved to have ( spoilers. ) Eastwick remains my Wednesday night unapologetic guilty pleasure (spare me the insensitivity-to-Wiccans speech, it's Halloween season and there are more damaging witch stereotypes on half the doors in my neighborhood, plus Eastwick takes itself even less seriously than Glee). I love "The Naked Now" episodes -- well, I suppose this is more the Red Hour from "The Return of the Archons," but it falls into that same fine "hey, let's find an excuse for an orgy!" category, and is just plain fun -- ( spoilers! ) I wish they'd drop the ominous predictions and just have fun, because I get the impression from its ratings that the series isn't going to be around long enough to solve its mysteries.
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| Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
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12:49 am - Poem for Wednesday
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( Gardening in Cardoso )
It was not a terribly eventful Tuesday. The main event for me was my annual mammogram -- it's National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, ladies, go get screened if you're late! I have never found mammograms all that uncomfortable, so the main stress for me is simply having breast cancer in the family and Jewish genes which automatically mean I fall into a higher-risk category. I never want to go anywhere right before a mammogram because of the no-deodorant rule, and afterward I want to go right home and shower and put deodorant on...hey, I am perfectly happy to go out with no earrings, no bra, even on occasion no shoes, but take my antiperspirant away and I feel exposed and icky! So there went my morning and early afternoon, bookended by loads of laundry and a long walk because the weather was simply too gorgeous not to enjoy.
Adam wanted me to track down an eclectic list of songs for him for his MP3 player in the afternoon -- some of which (Weird Al's horoscope song) apparently won't even be released until next week, some of which (some song by DJ Splash) apparently only exist on YouTube videos -- so that took a while. After dinner (low-sodium pumpkin sloppy joes, which were fabulous) I put on Due South to watch while folding laundry and folded very slowly so we could make it through both "A Likely Story" and "Odds," both of which I enjoyed, though I preferred the former...I like the show's self-awareness this last season, the fact that they know enough to try to defuse "all Italians have Mob connections" stereotypes before launching into yet another storyline about Italians with Mob connections, the fact that both Fraser and Kowalski's completely screwed up attitudes toward and relationships with women are discussed. Then we watched this week's Sanctuary since we forgot about it Friday night and I really enjoy the actors no matter what sci-fi flaws the show may have.
( Gettysburg Battlefield Monuments )
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| Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
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12:52 am - Poem for Tuesday
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( Subterranean )
dementordelta and I spent a totally indulgent Monday shopping for silly stuff and watching Due South -- do days get any better than that? We went to the mall in search of the Halloween store, but on the way in we stopped in Claire's, where we got owl earrings and bat sproingers and a penguin necklace and an elephant wallet among other things. Then we walked into Bath & Body Works to smell their wonderful new Twilight Woods lotion and discovered that all the candles were on sale. Then we stopped in The Icing, which had snake rings, and peeked in Brighton, which had owl keychains, before heading to Build-a-Bear, which was sadly out of witch outfits but had the little hats and shoes. Heading upstairs, we stopped in the Hallmark store (lots of bat items), Hot Topic (more Twilight merchandise than I can bear), and Yankee Candle (spiced pumpkin mmmmm) before we finally reached the Halloween store, at which point we were so hungry that we didn't try anything on before leaving for lunch!
Oh, and since we are twelve, we also bought giraffe friendship necklaces. Note for future reference: there are few angles less flattering in photos than smushed-together-for-phone-camera.
I was a very dull lunch date considering that I'm still not sure what I can safely eat out, so I had tuna and stole some of dementordelta's baklava while we watched some of my favorite dS episodes (sad with awesome soundtrack "Juliet is Bleeding" through awesome in every way "We Are the Eggmen"). Then she left to drive home, I had dinner and proofread Daniel's essay on the Doctor Who episode "Blink" which apparently they watched in English class to discuss rhetorical devices in horror movies, and we all watched Heroes, which continues to leave me completely unenthralled (and no Louise Fletcher this week makes it that much less exciting). We've been jerked around so many times, where one minute Sylar, Angela, Noah, et al are supposed to be sinister if not downright evil while they next we're supposed to feel sorry for them, and where Hiro goes from being a brilliant superhero to a feeble doofus and back, that I've really disconnected from caring about the characters. At least the Angels won!
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| Monday, October 19th, 2009
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12:33 am - Poem for Monday
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( Fathers in the Snow )
We had a beautiful Sunday to make up for the miserably rainy cold Friday and Saturday -- the sky cleared while we were driving to Gettysburg to meet my in-laws and stayed beautiful all day. My mother-in-law had a recorded audio tour of the battlefield on cassette tape, so after a brief stop in the visitor center, we drove around while listening to the narration about the locations and the events of the battle that unfolded there. Since the weather was so nice, we stopped and got out to walk in several places -- we even climbed the observation tower overlooking the battlefield and President Eisenhower's farm. The park wasn't very crowded and the temperature was perfect.
( Gettysburg National Battlefield )
We offered to let the kids climb on the rocks at Devil's Den even though we expected it to be muddy, but the kids, who had eaten lunch at 11, were ravenous and we needed to get home relatively early, so we had an early dinner at Red Lobster to celebrate belatedly both boys' birthdays with my in-laws who have been driving to the west coast and back in their camper visiting Paul's brothers, other relatives and friends all summer. I ordered off the lighthouse menu since it was the only way I could be sure how much sodium I was getting, and I must say that their wood-grilled salmon is excellent by any standards; I was sad at first not to be able to order cajun shrimp, but I really didn't miss it.
Once again I'm glad I didn't spend any of the weekend waiting for the Terps, Redskins, or Ravens to win...I think Favre and the Vikings will be my NFL team this season!
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| Sunday, October 18th, 2009
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12:58 am - Poem for Sunday
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( Rules of Contact )
So far this weekend has been a real washout. The Frederick Festival of the Farm was taking place today, where in previous years we visited lots of sheep and alpacas and piggies, but it rained even harder than it did on Friday, so after lunch we grumbled and acknowledged that it probably wouldn't be much fun to walk around in the mud in such chilly temperatures. Instead we did chores closer to home -- Mom's Organic Market (for the best bulk nuts in the area), Petco (for kitty litter, though we had the added amusement of watching the dogs in line for the low-cost rabies shot clinic), Michael's (because it was next door to Petco and had entertaining Halloween decorations), CVS (for shampoo, since I had $14 in CVS Bucks that had to be used this weekend) -- see how boring we were? I've had enough of the rain, and it's supposed to continue nearly all of Sunday!
( National Cryptologic Museum )
We finally watched the first episode of Merlin of the second season, and I must admit to being rather disappointed -- I was expecting something bigger somehow, not necessarily the start of an arc but at least an indication that the characters had grown somewhat from where we left them. If anything, they appear to have gone backward -- ( small spoilers. ) Then we watched the two-parter that started the third season of The Sarah Jane Adventures, which I enjoyed a great deal more. It still has the limitations of the show itself -- apparently Sarah Jane must make a speech about the wonders of the universe and having people to share them with in every single episode -- but I much prefer that to the dooooooom that has overtaken Doctor Who, and I really like all three of the kids -- ( spoilers. )
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| Saturday, October 17th, 2009
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12:41 am - Poem for Saturday
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( The Plums )
My kids had no school on Friday and we had planned to go to some of our favorite places to see the changing leaves -- Gathland and Gambrill State Parks -- with Paul's parents. But it rained from dawn till dusk, so we decided that this really was not the day for it. Instead we went to the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, where we looked at the Hubble deep field photos and watched a Science on a Sphere presentation about how we study the changing Earth. Then we went to the National Cryptologic Museum at Ft. Meade, which was fascinating and larger than we expected -- in addition to exhibits on the NSA and national security code-breaking, there were exhibits on codes and language in general, including the Rosetta Stone, hobo signs, slave quilts, and historical encoding contraptions that Dan Brown would love.
( Science Museums )
fannish5: ( Erasing Characters )
Speaking of Star Trek, here is my review of Next Gen's "Cause and Effect", about which I don't have a great deal to say except that it's very enjoyable. I forgot to mention that I spent a lot of Thursday riveted to the TV watching Balloon Boy, like a lot of the rest of the world, and now that it looks like the parents designed the entire stunt (at taxpayer expense) and instructed their six-year-old to lie to police and newscasters, thus freaking him out and making him sick, I want the biggest possible fine slapped on him and child services checking up on those kids' "home schooling" at every possible opportunity (I'm not sure it serves anyone's interest to put the parents in prison, though if this really does turn out to be fraud, there should absolutely be charges).
Daniel's high school, Montgomery Blair, is celebrating its anniversary tonight and had a big gala at Strathmore Hall emceed by Ben Stein, who is an alumnus. He only just got home, a bit after midnight, because the choir was singing at the reception. It sounds like he had a good time, but we old people are pretty tired from waiting up for him to call!
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| Friday, October 16th, 2009
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12:29 am - Poem for Friday
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( Truro )
Another not-very-eventful day -- yeah, I am having a quiet week. Got up early to get witch plushies for me and Adam so our penguins can celebrate Halloween in style, though mine is happily in Sherwood Forest right now, stealing from the rich to give to the poor. Wrote a review of Next Gen's "Cause and Effect" to post Friday because I won't actually get any writing done, in all likelihood -- the kids have no school, so we are going to the NSA National Cryptologic Museum at Fort Meade and maybe the National Wildlife Visitor Center at the Patuxent Research Refuge. My mom got me some low-sodium stuff from My Organic Market, so now I know where to get salt-free bread. We had dinner with my parents -- my mom cooked stuff I could eat, and I thought the shrimp corn chowder in particular was really good.
( Countryside Artisans Fall Tour )
We all enjoyed this week's FlashForward more than last week's, though I could see how that could turn again on a dime...I am enjoying the actors, both the ones whose work I know and the ones I've never seen before, and I like the tension between work/professional life and family/spiritual commitments that they're all struggling with -- the frequent TV pattern of women being focused on relationships, men being focused on careers isn't much in play, and when there aren't artificially constructed moral dilemmas involving Nazis or terrorists, the characters seem pretty real to me. The rest of our evening was taken up with baseball; I am halfheartedly rooting for the Dodgers, but I don't much care, so long as the Yankees lose.
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| Thursday, October 15th, 2009
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12:45 am - Poem for Thursday
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( A History of Origami )
My day involved rearranging Barbie dolls; folding laundry; taking a long trip to the grocery store where I read literally a hundred labels; doing a lot of research online about ingredients and concluding that, while I can easily live without cheap Chinese food for the rest of my life, I am facing a tragic separation from every kind of cheese I love; trading in SPP to get Adam an animated chimney sweep penguin; and watching Doubt. The latter has terrific performances, as I expected, but it felt overdramatized and talky -- it was very obvious that it had been a play -- and I thought it completely chickened out on addressing the central question, ( spoiler. )
( Countryside Artisans Fall Tour )
Glee...all right, I know it's the most popular thing on the internet right now, but I must admit that I'm thisclose to not watching, and it's really only the music keeping me around. ( Spoilers. ) As for Eastwick, I am doing my best not to get attached because I know it's on the fence and last week it was even beaten by Leno. I readily admit that it's uneven...as far as I'm concerned, there is still not nearly enough Darryl Van Horne, and I'm not just saying that because I want to see Paul Gross. ( Really no spoilers. )
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