| Poem for Friday |
[Nov. 20th, 2009|12:08 am] |
( Psalm 104 )
It's already 11 p.m. and except for watching the Star Trek episode I need to find time to review tomorrow between New Moon with ![[info]](http://piktures.deadjournal.com/userinfo.gif) perkypaduan and gblvr, lunch with the two of them plus another friend, and dinner with my parents, I accomplished none of the things I planned to get done today. In fact, I overslept, having been woken up by a sick cat at 3 a.m., thus causing me to miss getting the rare Superpoke Pet chicken plushies for myself and younger son, and I'm way late on e-mail and comments and stuff because I was playing with AO3.
So I still have not rewatched "The Waters of Mars," and am going to shamelessly pillage things I already said in conversations with my kids and ethelking, but before I forget, I need to declare my undying love for Adelaide Brooke and express confusion why the Doctor did not simply grab her and abduct her on the TARDIS the minute he laid eyes on her, which is what I would have done. Why did the producers have to cast a 12-year-old companion for the upcoming 16-year-old Eleventh Doctor instead of Lindsay Duncan? Of course they'd probably write her with all the limitations with which they saddle Sarah Jane Smith, since apparently older men can be cool though not older women, but I'd take it: it's no secret that I love Sarah Jane more than I love any of her Doctors, and this latest installment just cements it. ( Spoilers. )
I did like tonight's FlashForward despite no Janis; I like the philosophical musing behind the question of whether finding out that someone was going to love you and change your life would make you fall in love with them before you'd even met them, no matter who they were or what they looked like, and I like the way even what looks like a happy vision of the future can lead to a hellish present, particularly for a parent.
( Maryland Animals ) |
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| Poem for Thursday |
[Nov. 19th, 2009|12:42 am] |
( Exercise )
Wednesday was supposed to be my catch-up day, but the wonderful gnomad provided me with an Archive Of Our Own account code early in the day, and I spent far too many hours figuring out how things worked there. In the afternoon I had four loads of laundries to fold, and because of a conversation with ethelking about "The Waters of Mars," I ended up watching "Tooth and Claw" and "School Reunion." I'd forgotten how good that season was -- I was still in mourning for Nine, I wasn't ready to fall for Ten (nor to have Rose fall for Ten), and ironically he seemed almost lightweight compared to Nine then -- hah, what a change in perspective watching now! I had remembered "Tooth and Claw" being quite dark, so I hadn't recalled, for instance, the Doctor's line about thinking Sir Robert was probably happy to have his wife away and be surrounded by tall muscular men. "School Reunion" is just wonderful from beginning to end, not just bringing Sarah Jane back to the franchise, but giving us Anthony Stewart Head as a giant conniving bat who wants to rule the universe with the Doctor at his side, and who can blame him?
So speaking of Sarah Jane, I promised notes on "Mona Lisa's Revenge," although I don't have a lot because on further consideration I don't think the episode deserves the attention. ( Spoilers. ) And I also promised notes on "The Waters of Mars," but I will save those for tomorrow since I need to talk about tonight's Glee, at least for long enough to say that I am sure it is wrong how much I loved the ( spoilers. )I must confess that my favorite part of the entire hour was the Burger King ad with the old ladies and the construction workers fighting over Team Edward vs. Team Jacob. I am Team Buffy all the way, and couldn't care about that franchise, but I hope it's true that burly guys are arguing about Robert vs. Taylor!
I've always liked Johnny Depp, but I've never thought he was the sexiest man alive, though I much prefer him in his 40s to his 20s. Here are a sitatunga pair at the Maryland Zoo enjoying the gorgeous November weather:
( Maryland Zoo Marshbuck ) |
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| Poem for Wednesday |
[Nov. 18th, 2009|12:54 am] |
( Sad Verso of the Sunny ____ )
I am still totally behind on everything because Adam wasn't home anywhere near the time he usually arrives, prompting a flurry of phone calls, first to the parents of his friends (who didn't know where the kids were), then to the school (which wasn't answering the phone), then to the county to see whether something happened to the bus, before Adam finally got around to calling himself to tell me that he'd stayed after school for a couple of hours for viola sectionals but he was going to catch the late bus home. So the laundry did not get folded. Then we went out to dinner at California Tortilla (and Baskin Robbins for the kids) because the middle school was doing a spirit event where local restaurants were donating a percentage of profits, so I was chatting with people and didn't get anything done in the evening either.
I did finish designing and ordering my fannish holiday cards, which involved spending lots of time hunting through photos on my almost unusable desktop computer, then copying them to my portable hard drive so I could make use of them on the laptop. My family holiday cards have arrived, but they're a big disappointment for the first time from Shutterfly -- I wanted a photo from the Bar Mitzvah and used one taken by a friend, but the image looks much more blurry and overexposed on the cards than it did on the web preview. Adam wanted to see the Penguins of Madagascar, so we watched the Merry Madagascar Christmas Special at 8, which was silly but entertaining, like the movies. So the laundry-folding has been postponed till tomorrow along with e-mail, comments, etc. Apologies!
( Maryland Zoo's African Mammals ) |
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| Poem for Tuesday |
[Nov. 17th, 2009|12:48 am] |
( Stolen Moments )
I spent a delightful Monday with dementordelta, who came to visit on this warm, sunny November afternoon. We had vague plans to go out to lunch and watch lots of Due South, but the weather was so gorgeous that we decided we really should enjoy it and went to take a walk at Great Falls down to Olmsted Island and the river. Then we met my mother at our synagogue's annual holiday boutique, where we looked at lots of gifts and jewelry and shared a tuna salad sandwich in the cafe there. And then we ate chocolate moose pops while enjoying "Starman" through "Body Language," meaning that we got to howl through "All the Queen's Horses" with my kids who stuck around to see Leslie Nielsen. Here are some birds from the zoo yesterday:
( Maryland Zoo Birds )
Watched Heroes, which keeps reinforcing my sense that no matter how irritated I've been with other shows that were just making crap up as they went along, ignoring or distorting their own backstories and changing the characters to fit the storylines, this one is in a class of its own. How is it possible that everyone has forgotten Matt's brief moment of fame wired as a bomb, even if it wasn't his fault -- even if he's been taken out of all the police databases, aren't there people who would recognize him from TV and react to him accordingly? I could go on and on and on and on. Tomorrow I will go on and on about Doctor Who but I am still playing catch-up from the weekend so I am going to put that off tonight! At least the Ravens won! |
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| Poem for Monday |
[Nov. 16th, 2009|12:59 am] |
( Prayer )
We spent nearly all day Sunday in Baltimore, first at the Maryland Zoo, then at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The zoo closes for the winter months since many of the animals can't tolerate being outdoors, and the indoor enclosures there aren't designed for large numbers of visitors -- today, however, the weather wasn't a problem for anyone, since it was 70 degrees and sunny. We went through all three major areas (Africa, Chesapeake, Arctic) and saw the penguins, giraffes, elephants, chimpanzees (who were very playful), polar bears, otters, and dozens of other animals. Then we went to the art museum, which has an exhibit on Matisse as printmaker -- not my favorite, I must confess, as it's lots of very simple line illustrations of faces and nudes, none of the brilliant use of color that makes Matisse's paintings interesting to me -- and an exhibit on Baltimore's Edgar Allan Poe and the artists he inspired, which is brilliant, not only because Gauguin, Manet, Dore, and many other illustrators did brilliant adaptations of images from Poe's writings, but because there are brief summaries of his stories and poems to accompany the illustrations that are quite entertaining in their own right.
( Zoo Pairs )
We missed football in its entirety, which is probably why the Redskins won -- well, that and the Broncos losing their quarterback at the half -- and we spent the evening catching up on evil aliens with The Sarah Jane Adventures' "Mona Lisa's Revenge," which I did not love -- lots of stupid gender issues that this show usually avoids, and way too much adolescent behavior, from the adults as much as the teens -- then Doctor Who's "The Waters of Mars," which I really loved, even though I need to watch it again because I thought there was a significant inconsistency at one point and even though it both exemplifies and doesn't quite provide proper exposition on pretty much everything that bothers me about New Who; it suggests, at least, that the producers are aware of all the problems with the way they've constructed the character and his relationships with companions, particularly humans, particularly women, and may not let him or themselves off the hook. Plus the preview for the Christmas episode made me very happy. Proper commentary tomorrow, as I am really exhausted...oh but I don't want to lose David Tennant's Twittersode so here it is. |
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| Poem for Sunday |
[Nov. 15th, 2009|12:24 am] |
( November 11 -- 2004 )
My family spent nearly all of Saturday celebrating the Bar Mitzvah of the son of my oldest friend, Linda, whom I have known since we were both six years old in first grade -- I was the new girl before she was the new girl. This is the friend whose family Super Bowl party we attend every year, and though I don't know many of her neighbors except for conversations held that one day a year, I've known her parents and local cousins for most of my life, plus her husband's parents and siblings since they got engaged nearly two decades ago. The service was at a big Reform suburban congregation, pretty sanctuary, lots of similarities to other such services I've attended (perhaps a bit shorter than my own kids' Bar Mitzvahs but my kids also had longer Torah portions). Afterward, there was a kiddush luncheon -- bagels and whitefish and cheeses and fruit and rugelach, all of which were delicious -- where I chatted with Linda's sister Alice, whom I haven't seen in the past five years, and many other family members and old friends.
We came home and relaxed for a couple of hours, then went in the evening to the reception which was held in one of the hotels on the lake at Washingtonian Center. The food was endless -- at least ten hors d'oeuvres, then a big dinner buffet with sushi bar, carving station, pasta table and salad bar, then dessert including cake, a sundae bar, and a chocolate fountain with a dozen dippable items -- and the party was a lot of fun, with a big game room for the kids with skee ball, table hockey, basketball toss, and other games including a big screen with some version of Rock Band including drum and guitar. There was a deejay, though we didn't dance much -- I was sitting with two friends from high school, Stephanie and Allison, and chatting with them when I wasn't hanging out with my kids -- and lots of light-up souvenirs and balloons. I am very sleepy, so here are some photos:
( Bar Mitzvah Party )
And Penn won the Ivy title over Harvard, yay! |
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| Poem for Saturday |
[Nov. 14th, 2009|12:52 am] |
( Ghosts )
I went to the doctor Friday morning, forgetting my blood pressure monitor which was the main reason I was supposed to have an appointment this week -- so she could download the readings and make sure it was calibrated right -- but she took my blood pressure three times while I was there and it was around 120/85 each time, so that was all good news. She had my CBC and had some recommendations based on that -- more vitamin D and calcium, multivitamins with iron because I was borderline anemic (I used to be the opposite, but I haven't eaten red meat for more than 10 years), and she wants me to have a liver ultrasound because some enzyme level was marginally boosted, which she suspected was from fat buildup that will go away if I lose weight but wanted to check just to be sure. I'm supposed to avoid both alcohol and caffeine, which fortunately is not great loss -- I miss sharp cheese much more than I'd miss either.
In the afternoon I posted my review of Next Gen's "Imaginary Friend" -- not one of the fifth season's best -- and took Adam and his friend to another friend's birthday party at Shadowlands, the laser tag place where both my kids have had birthday parties in the past. I was going to drop them off and let the friend's mom pick them up, but traffic was bad getting up there and the party was only an hour an 15 minutes, so instead I browsed in the used bookstore run by friends of our county library where one always finds treasures for $2-3 (in today's case, all three issues of the Magic Flute graphic novels, a low-sodium cookbook, a couple of books for the kids, and -- no laughing -- the Rankin-Bass Lord of the Rings and Return of the King on DVD for $3).
We had dinner with my parents (stuffed flounder, there can never be too much seafood), then came home and watched Smallville, which other than ( spoiler ) was enormous fun, highly reminiscent of Superman II in some ways and ( spoiler )! Plus I always love seeing Doug Witter from Dawson's Creek (and John Sheppard's brother too, as I recall). Then we watched Sanctuary, which I liked because it was a Henry episode with werewolf storyline, but found creepy otherwise, and it definitely wasn't one of Helen's finest moments not to have seen what was going on with her staff before it turned violent.
( Calvert Cliffs ) |
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| Poem for Friday |
[Nov. 13th, 2009|12:32 am] |
( I Heard You, Solemn-sweet Pipes of the Organ )
Adam again had a half-day of school -- it's end-of-term week, the kids got report cards (straight As in Adam's case, an A average in all honors and AP classes in Daniel's case, so it was all good news), and the elementary and middle schools close early for parent conferences. Meanwhile the old middle school building, which was also my junior high school, is being torn down, so there were trucks going up and down the main street in the neighborhood with stuff from that. Since he was out early, I took Adam out for Thai food at the mall. At least, he had Thai food, and I had a peanut butter sandwich that I brought from home. I can only deal with yogurt so many times a week. My blood pressure has been pretty good all week, though, so no real complaints.
Loved FlashForward this week though I'm ready for them to stop the tease already about what caused the blackout -- I get that the government doesn't know yet, but Dominic Monaghan obviously knows, so instead of taunting us with that, I wish they'd just say it -- though I adore getting to see Merry Brandybuck playing poker with James Norrington. Also, I adore Janis. I got a wonderful present in the mail from valis2, who makes jewelry -- a necklace and earrings with a pewter Tree of Life pendant, with rhyolite beads and faceted pearls strung together on a gorgeous delicate silver chain -- I will have to take photos when I'm wearing it (maybe to the Bar Mitzvah we're going to this weekend) but I had to take photos in the box right after I got it:
( Necklace Gift )
Happy Friday the 13th! |
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| Poem for Thursday |
[Nov. 12th, 2009|12:44 am] |
( The Burglary )
It was an unexciting day here -- Adam had a half-day of school so I had a bunch of chores I had to do in the morning, then I took him to the orthodontist when he got home, where we waited longer than expected as usual, but there is a new bubble tea place that opened in the same stall where the old bubble tea place closed a couple of months ago, so it was a good trip! Otherwise I have little else to report; I was reminded today in several different places why I no longer talk about politics except in locked entries where I trust everyone who is reading them, and moreover I was reminded that I can't trust everyone I tend to assume I can trust just because they've never said anything that upset me before, and even people who make perfect sense in blogs and journals tend to sound thoughtless when they only get 140 characters or the visible length of a status update.
Watched Glee, was relieved by the absence of several characters from this week's storyline, but I don't think I've ever been less emotionally invested in a gay character on a TV series before -- I miss Jack on Dawson's Creek, he seemed so much more real to me -- and I am so tired of the Jewish girl being nothing but the self-invested diva (am I supposed to find a way to read her ambitions as feminist empowerment, because it's not working). I love the musical numbers a lot, but I find myself wishing it was more like "Once More With Feeling" and the songs really struck home for me because I cared so much about the characters. Of course, I am cranky because Eastwick was not on and this will soon be a permanent situation on Wednesdays.
Here are some more photos from the Swedish festival we visited last weekend. I am not sure why wooden penguins are Swedish, since I thought they lived closer to the other pole, but of course Adam was pleased!
( Swedish Bazaar ) |
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| Poem for Wednesday |
[Nov. 11th, 2009|12:50 am] |
( Fireflies )
I finally managed to have a birthday lunch with vertigo66 -- practically a month late for her birthday, but it was the soonest we could both do it. We went to our usual hangout (The Corner Bakery) and afterward I went to Target, where I bought exciting items like new laundry baskets, a plastic container for storing dry cat food, and two summer shirts on sale for about $5 each. I think everyone in the store decided to check out at precisely the same moment I did, because the cash register lines were insane considering it was neither a weekend nor a holiday. Then I got into another delay driving home, because a gas leak had made people sick inside my local grocery store and caused the shutdown of the entire shopping center -- the police had roped off the entrances, there were several fire trucks and ambulances surrounding the buildings, everyone was trying to get out of the parking lots, and there was general chaos with people making u-turns and honking. I only barely beat younger son home.
I am very sad to report that we have now watched all of Due South, having decided that we weren't impressed enough with V to keep watching (we are in mourning for Eastwick, which we liked much better and which ABC axed last night, though they're going to finish filming the last three episodes and air all 13). As sad as I am not to have any more Due South, though, I cannot be sorry that the show left me wanting more instead of wishing the whole last season never happened, like with Voyager, La Femme Nikita, X-Files, etc. And I could not have asked for a nicer ending for those characters -- well, obviously they all ended up hanging out together at a cabin above the Arctic Circle having lots of sex, including Francesca (immaculate conception hahahaha), but that said, ( spoilers. )
( To Calvert Cliffs )
The DC sniper was killed tonight by lethal injection after being denied clemency by Virginia governor Tim Kaine -- a Catholic who personally opposes the death penalty, but vowed to uphold Virginia law if elected, and I'm not sure how to object to this because I want Catholics who personally oppose abortion to treat the law similarly. I don't understand how an execution is supposed to bring peace to the families of the victims. It doesn't bring me any peace at all. It sure doesn't bring any of the victims back. I have no idea how to talk to my children about why it's supposed to be acceptable for the state to kill someone to show that murder is wrong. |
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| Poem for Tuesday |
[Nov. 10th, 2009|12:43 am] |
( In the North (Westerbork) )
I had a quiet morning doing laundry and tagging photos, then I went with my mother to the mall, where I was looking for a birthday present for perkypaduan (who is in Sedona, so it is safe for me to post this) and where we got frozen yogurt with granola, which is my new favorite thing that I am actually allowed to eat in the mall (sushi, Thai food, and Qdoba all being off-limits nowadays -- on the bright side, though, all my rings are loose and I haven't had a single migraine in five weeks, though I cannot say for certain whether there is a direct relationship between avoiding sodium and the latter). She also got me Brighton's fabulous Washington, DC charm bracelet as an early birthday present! I only got half of Perky's present but since I don't expect to see her on her actual birthday, I have until the New Moon premiere to track down the rest.
I folded laundry while watching the two episodes of Dawson's Creek from the end of the second season -- oh shut up, I had a Mary Beth song stuck in my head and was in the mood to see the Outer Banks, and anyway it was the one where Grams agreed to let Jack move in with her and Jen even though he's gay and she's a Bible-thumper. We watched Heroes, which I liked better than the last couple of weeks -- ( spoilers. ) Then we watched Due South's "Hunting Season," which wins in every way -- ( spoilers. )
( Solomons ) |
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| Poem for Monday |
[Nov. 9th, 2009|12:33 am] |
( Two Gods )
We spent what will surely be our last day at the beach for 2009 at Calvert Cliffs State Park, where we hiked the two miles from the parking lot to the beach after having a picnic near the play area. It was an unseasonably warm November day, 70 degrees without a cloud in the sky, so the perfect afternoon for a long hike in the woods and a walk by the Chesapeake -- access to Calvert Cliffs themselves is restricted since there's been so much vandalism (the region has a treasure trove of shark's teeth and fossils), but the creek we followed through the swamp empties into the bay and there's a narrow, pretty sandy beach with lots of shells, heavy clay-type stones, and bits of shipwreck that wash up (today it was more than bits, there were large pieces of rusted metal strewn along the shore).
Since we were so close to Solomons, we drove in and picked up The Captain's Table's wonderful Cream of Crab soup, of which I could only get away with eating a couple of spoonfuls but it was still worth it. The restaurant is fronted by a harbor with many sailboats, swans, and shore birds, while it backs up to an older boathouse, fishing dock, and the Calvert Marine Museum's protected wetlands and lighthouse, so the views are beautiful all around. We met a couple of fishermen who'd caught huge bass and were eager to show them off before we drove home into the sunset.
( Calvert Cliffs State Park )
We missed in their entirety both the Ravens and Redskins games, which it sounds like was a blessing since they both lost. Then we couldn't bear to watch the Cowboys-Eagles game -- being unable to root for Dallas and unwilling to root for Michael Vick -- so we watched Due South's "Dead Men Don't Throw Rice" and "Say Amen," both of which are delightful -- I preferred the former, which had us all screeching with laughter, but Ray K's cynicism and religious fanatics go so well together, too. Now I have lots of laundry to move before bed. |
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| Poem for Sunday |
[Nov. 8th, 2009|12:34 am] |
( Terminal Etude )
I had a pretty good day, but sorry, I'm sitting here seething as our president (whom I have had to un-follow on Twitter) is trying to force me to celebrate a health care reform bill that utterly betrays women as the greatest thing since Don't Ask, Don't Tell. You'll have to forgive me if I can't throw a party over the passage of a health care bill that gives a giant FUCK YOU to reproductive rights, as even Democrats agreed to toss abortion coverage out, meaning that even those of us whose plans now protect our right to choose will likely have to pay for the procedure entirely should we ever need it. Hey, Barack, who needs Roe v. Wade overturned when you can simply make women choose between being unable to get any health coverage or bearing children they don't want (or aborting them in back alleys, since the deaths or maiming of women surely isn't a problem for politicians)? Remind me again why I was supposed to see Hillary Clinton as the villain in the post-feminist Obamagirl fantasy of change...or never mind, don't tell me, I mean, we live in a country where Sarah Palin could almost become Vice President and Dan Choi could almost serve in the military, right?
Otherwise I had only minor frustrations on a lovely November Saturday. We went to the annual Swedish Bazaar held in a local church, where we only ever buy Swedish food (mmmm Swedish rye bread), but it's fun to look at all the straw goats and dalahast. We stopped briefly at Toys R Us because they were having a Pokemon event and the kids wanted to download to their games whichever Pokemon was available in the store -- I think it was Arceus but that name makes me laugh, so I may be misremembering -- and I may have bought a Barbie and Ken set, which may have been characters from a certain film I have vowed not to discuss, because, you know, Sparkly!Ken. Our plan was then to go to Sugarloaf Mountain for a hike, but the roads accessing it were closed unexpectedly because Frederick County was doing some sort of emergency repairs. So we stopped at Target to get younger son sneakers, where I am not at all ashamed to admit that I bought the first two seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer for $18.99 in a double pack, though I was very angry at Target because they're remodeling their bathrooms in Damascus and instead of letting customers use the employee bathrooms in the back, they set up two stinking, filthy port-a-potties around the side (I went to Wal-Mart, because give me a break, I'm not boycotting a store's clean bathrooms).
Since we were already up in that direction, we went hiking instead at Seneca Creek State Park, where there weren't many leaves left on the trees, but we saw deer, a woodpecker, the mill ruins, and other scenery that made up for it. We were there till sunset, when a park ranger pretty much escorted us out of the parking lot! I called my mother on the way home because I'd left at her house low sodium cheese that she bought me, and she invited us to dinner, so we ate with my parents again. Then we came home and watched this week's Sarah Jane Adventures two-parter, which I did not enjoy as much as last week's but it was pretty fluffy by comparison -- sure, it has Callum Blue whom I learned to love on The Tudors and now get to see regularly as Zod, but the stakes in the story seem so small. ( Spoilers. ) Still enjoyable, though, and better written than either show I watched on Friday night, so this isn't really a complaint, just don't have a lot to say the way I did about Sarah Jane last week.
( Some of Saturday ) |
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| Poem for Saturday |
[Nov. 7th, 2009|12:43 am] |
( Grief )
I had a pretty quiet Friday -- visit to the post office with insanely long line and only two windows open, walk in the gorgeous chilly late fall woods with lots of squirrels gathering acorns for the winter, and writing my negative-to-scathing review of Star Trek: The Next Generation's "The Perfect Mate". Plus lots of getting up to shoo cats off the heating vents -- there are three vents on the main level of the house and three cats, so I have to check the front window, under the desk, and the back window, and by the time I'm finished, whoever I booted out of the front window is already moving back. This is how I woke up this morning (photos by amused husband who couldn't convince the other woman to budge):
( Cold Cats )
thefridayfive: ( Seasons )
fannish5: ( Wardrobe )
We watched our usual fall Friday lineup with football in between and after. Neither sci-fi show impressed me overmuch - big epic tragic stories leave me unimpressed these days, there are just too many of them, and I always expect reset buttons sooner or later. Smallville, at least, had some lovely lines and a guest star I had no idea about: ( squee! ) As for Sanctuary, I already saw ( spoilers. ) |
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| Poem for Friday |
[Nov. 6th, 2009|12:39 am] |
( Sonnet for Caesar )
I spent a very nice afternoon with gblvr, who came over (and even provided her own sushi because I am a terrible hostess) and brought the first season of Leverage. The first time I ever saw Arrested Development, I shrieked because one of the series creators is a boy I went through elementary school with, and I had a similar experience in that one of the creators and writers of Leverage is the guy who was the editor of 34th Street, the weekly magazine of The Daily Pennsylvanian, which is where Paul and I met. I feel that I am probably therefore too biased to evaluate the series intelligently, but I will say that the three episodes we watched were extremely entertaining, especially the comic wedding story our former editor wrote.
( Frederick County Bridges )
As for evening TV, I had read some information about the novel upon which FlashForward is based that gave me an inkling what this week's big shocker would be -- ( spoilers. ) Then I did something I never did before: watched a full episode of Supernatural! I'd read spoilers about the format of the episode and figured that might make it worthwhile, plus I had to review one of my least-favorite Next Gen episodes, "The Perfect Mate," afterward so I figured that even if SPN was as sexist as I've often been warned, it would only help give me perspective. ( Spoilers. ) |
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| Poem for Thursday |
[Nov. 5th, 2009|12:40 am] |
( Southeast of Eden )
I had a spectacularly uneventful Wednesday -- did a bunch of reading, worked on some job stuff, took a walk with a neighbor whom I've known for many years but only recently discovered has an amazing history (she grew up in Palestine, her mother taught Moshe Dayan, she fought in the Israeli war of independence). The county traffic lights are all screwed up because of a massive computer failure that has the lights all out of sync and I kept getting e-mails telling me that local roads were going to be clogged, so I stayed close to home.
I am depressed about a bunch of things from Election Day, but mostly I am infuriated at how the media -- even reporters who should know better -- are trying to spin two weak gubernatorial candidates as a referendum on Obama, and not even talking about the places where the Democrats made gains. Yes, the Maine vote is very disappointing, but as in California with Prop 8, it was very close and involved lots of money from a relatively small group of bigots...the numbers are shifting in the right direction even if it's not as quickly as they should.
( On Catoctin )
We started to watch the World Series and yet again disliked the way it was going early on -- plus we cannot stand the Fox announcers -- so we put on the third episode of the current season of Merlin, which I liked because it had lots of Morgana, but did not like because it was lots of shrieking, sniveling Morgana instead of the one whom Uther says never ran away from anything in her life -- if only Uther were in charge of her storylines. (And if only the Druids had anything to do with, you know, Druids, but that's a whole different rant.)
It's no Witches of Eastwick, which remains my favorite show of the new season, though it still hasn't been picked up for the season (and this being ABC, I am betting they pull a Pushing Daisies and don't actually cancel it but don't pick up the back end of the season, leaving it hanging). For once I felt like all three women's storylines were balanced, and I really liked what was going on with Joanna! ( Spoilers. ) |
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| Poem for Wednesday |
[Nov. 4th, 2009|12:33 am] |
( November Philosophers )
I spent a lovely day with melissaukgirl, who drove down from Columbia for what was supposed to be lunch out but ended up being an afternoon at Great Falls, a quick lunch at my house and then Voyager's "The 37s" and Due South's "Odds" (the hand-holding episode, as starfishchick says). I haven't watched any Voyager in half a decade and was startled by two things: how stiff the acting seemed and much I love the Janeway/Chakotay scenes, still, in spite of everything. Also, I still have very great affection for Sharon Lawrence's Amelia Earhart. The actor who played Fred Noonan, David Graf, died quite young of a heart attack, so the episode is kind of sad-nostalgic all around. By then we had realized that traffic was going to be terrible so I told melissaukgirl to stay for dinner and she got to listen to my kids go on about politics and Spore.
( November at Great Falls )
In the evening my family watched the pilot of V, which was okay yet not particularly good -- decently acted and fun to see a bunch of familiar actors, but predictable and slow to get going. Then we watched The Universe's "Science Fiction, Science Fact," which was a lot of fun in that it had many Star Trek clips (including a diatribe about the scientific implausibility of the destruction of a certain planet in the reboot, heh), plus interviews with Trek's onetime science adviser Andre Bormanis and BSG's Kevin Grazier, who had the best line of the night talking about communicators and noting that our cell phones have more technology than Star Trek's communicator had: "I mean, did you ever see Mr. Spock playing Tetris?"
At 10 we reluctantly put on the news, having already received e-mail alerts with expected bad news about the Virginia gubernatorial race. We watched as they called New Jersey for Christie, took some comfort from the fact that the Democrat had a healthy lead in the NY 23rd Congressional District race, realized that the Maine vote on gay marriage wasn't going to be tallied any time soon and put on Comcast's very good classical channel before Jon Stewart. I hope I wake up to good news. |
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| Poem for Tuesday |
[Nov. 3rd, 2009|12:48 am] |
( 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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| Poem for Monday |
[Nov. 2nd, 2009|12:28 am] |
( 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 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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| Poem for Sunday |
[Nov. 1st, 2009|12:49 am] |
( 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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