Too much of a good thing

So I've already done 5 hours of instruction this week, I've got 4 more coming up today (!), and 2 more tomorrow, to make a grand total of 11. I know some people probably do that much instruction every week, but it's a brave new world for me, and it's made a lot more difficult by the fact that I've got 6 entirely different groups of people I'm talking to here, with very little that can be recycled between the various sessions. Come here again on Saturday and see if I'm still alive!

New life for Life?

So I'm very glad to hear that NBC has done their first schedule rearranging of the season, and two moves seem to work in my favor. Life will now be on Wednesdays after Pushing Daisies, which is an hour that I previously had open, and is hopefully a time when a lot of people who don't like Private Practice will find it. Lipstick Jungle will be moving to Life's old slot at 10 PM on Fridays. This is still a horrible slot, but I've been having to watch LJ online on Saturday morning anyway, and now I can watch it on tape on Saturday morning instead! Plus I'd rather have it be in "the death slot" than be cancelled, which is what most people were expecting. It really is a good show in the old school soap opera tradition, so I'll be glad to see it continue.

Something by way of explanation

So someone at work told me recently that I must have had someone put cayenne pepper in my oatmeal. (You know that can't possibly be true, because I hate oatmeal!) But at any rate, I know it's true I've been a little bit reckless lately, and I just remembered this song that nicely explains why.

Top of the world

I've just had very, very good news, enough to rouse me out of this mood I've been in for the last couple of weeks. Now this is all I can say:

Goodbye, Ex-List!

So I just discovered that Crusoe has been moved to 9 pm on Fridays, opposite the Ex-List. This makes my decision to jettison the latter show so much easier! I'd rather be looking at lush tropical landscapes than feeling ishy about my past any day.

Thank you, CJOB!

Here's another one of those "Canadian songs" from my youth.

Mid-October TV report

It's been a while since I gave you a TV update. In truth, there was a week there where I didn't watch anything live at all, and then last weekend I had to catch up by watching a lot of things that my VCR had taped. And then I had to watch online the things that my VCR didn't tape. But I think I'm mostly caught up now, and all the new shows have finally aired, so here's an update on my thoughts.

First, the shows that have been on for a few weeks. I'm only commenting on them when my thoughts have changed since my last TV post.

• Gossip Girl-- I'm sure this will surprise you, and it even surprises me, but I've stopped watching it! The reason is that I'm not home on Monday nights, and if my VCR is going to be taping something, it makes most sense to have it tape the two-hour block of Chuck and Heroes on NBC. So I thought I would watch Gossip Girl online, but the CW posts the episodes only sporadically, and when they do, it's such a pain to watch, with a tiny window even in "full screen" and banner ads over part of the picture, so I've just given up on this show. Surprisingly, I don't miss it much, and I figure they'll probably repeat it over the summer or something, right?
• Pushing Daisies-- I liked this week's episode more than the first two. The ratings aren't looking good, though, so I'm not getting too attached.
• Ugly Betty-- It also seems a little bit better than it did in the beginning of the season. I was really surprised that Gio came back this week. I thought he was off the show for good. Who knows?
• The Ex-List-- I'm still on the fence about this one. A show that makes its target audience want to dig their eyes out with a spoon isn't a good thing! And by the end of each episode, I feel really ishy inside. Someone has suggested that the target audience really isn't single 33-year-olds like Bella and me, but women my age who have been married for 15 years and want to be reassured that their life would be even worse if they were still single. At any rate, the only reason I'm still watching is the promise of a different cute male guest star each week. But I'm not sure how long that promise is going to hold me.

Now on to the new shows.

• My Own Worst Enemy-- Well, I didn't hate this one, but I just don't see what's going to happen every week, and why I should care. It kind of seems like Chuck without the funny, and what's the point of that? Ultimately, I guess whether or not I watch it will be determined by how wired I am when I get home from work on Monday night. If I feel like I could just crawl right into bed, I won't watch it, but if I feel like I need to unwind, I will. It's that simple!
• Life on Mars-- I liked the second episode better than the first, which I already thought was just fine. It does seem like it works best when you just ignore the "mystery" of why Sam is stuck in the past and just treat it like an old-school police show. There sure is a lot of punching going on, and that takes me back to my childhood! :)
• Crusoe-- This got pretty bad reviews, but it made me suspend my disbelief, and that's really all that I require on a Friday night. Plus, the scenery is gorgeous. I'm not exactly sure how they can sustain the show every week with just two main characters, but I guess we will find out. Oh, and I like the dog!

It felt good to get out of the rain

Got to be bold

Because I grew up in the country, I never got to see MTV until I got to college. By then they were already starting to show fewer and fewer music videos, and it was a rare occasion when it occurred to me to turn to that channel and they actually had some on. Yet it did happen on occasion, and this is one that I remember the best.

Another dream

I guess this is a sign I was watching too much Grey's Anatomy yesterday, but I had a dream that I was a doctor and could cure people by writing them a poem! It's been a long time since I thought of my writing as having a positive affect on people, but maybe this is a sign.

Weather forecast

So I've heard the weather forecast for North Dakota this weekend, and this is all I have to say.

They said it really loud on the radio

So this song has multiple meanings for me right now (see how many you can guess!), but all of them have to do with the broadcasting of various secrets and whether that is ultimately a good or bad thing. I guess we know what Donna thinks on the subject, and I must agree with her or I wouldn't be posting this.

Welcome, international friends!

This blog now gets way more traffic from the outside world than from in the U.S. I'm still not exactly sure why that is, but I always wanted to have pen-pals all over the world, and now I guess I sort of half do. Just in the past month, I've had visitors from Jamaica, England, Denmark, Australia, Peru, Poland, and Spain. So welcome to all of you, and I hope that what you've found is to your liking, and didn't make your hair curl too much!

The aftermath

So I keep getting better and better at rejection, which is kind of like getting better and better at job interviews: a skill you should never have had to develop in the first place. But what is there for me to do but keep on trucking?

Take it easy on me

And here's the song that my previous post is reminding me of:



"Yes, it's all up to you, but whatever you do, take it easy on me."

Three little words

So today is a kind of a milestone for me! 8 years ago, someone I love very much who was about to move away sat on a chair in my living room and asked me, "Is there something I need to know?" And I wanted so badly to cross the gap and say that I loved him, but I just couldn't. I thought it would be responsible and "nice" and easier to just stay silent, so I did. And a couple of months later, I regretted it mightily when he invited a different girl to move there with him, and I was left thinking, "That could have been me."

Today, someone I love very much asked me the same exact question in the same exact words, and this time, even though it was very, very hard and I'm still half-convinced that I did the wrong thing, I told him the truth, that I love him. And I have no idea what will happen, and maybe things won't turn out any differently in the end, but what I do know is that he'll always know that I love him now. And that makes all the difference.

Clouds in my coffee

A sad and wistful song for a gloomy morning. There's a promise of sunshine for this afternoon, but I'll believe it when I see it!

Television roundup

What a week I've had! Somehow I wasn't as busy as I have been other weeks with work, but I felt busier. Maybe that's because the TV season is finally in full swing and I'm still in sampling mode. So I guess I'll tell you a little bit about what I've been watching and what I think. I'm going to do something I haven't done before and try bullet points this time!

• I loved the return of Brothers and Sisters! Who didn't know that whale was going to break? (Actually, I thought the whole window was going to break, so I was actually relieved that it was just the shelf that fell.) It seems like they've got plenty of stuff going on this year, and I will be tuning in to find out!
• Chuck was great fun. The only thing is that I expected something to change in the status quo after that episode, but somehow it all went back to normal in the end. I would have liked to see Chuck become assistant manager, especially.
• Heroes is great! What else can I say?
• I've always liked Life, and I still do. It's not like it's a groundbreaking show or anything, but it's very well-executed. And apparently I have a thing for redheads.
• Fringe really stepped it up this week. I love Walter so much, but we all know I have a thing for eccentric college professors. And I'm glad we got to see the cow again.
• I really like Privileged much more than I ever intended to, so it figures that the ratings are in the basement. But seriously, if you haven't watched it, watch it, and you'll be surprised!
• I feel quite blasphemous saying this, but the premiere of Pushing Daisies didn't do anything for me. It felt like they were trying too hard, and there were some pacing problems. But of course I'm going to watch it again next week and see if it returns to form.
• I wasn't quite as put off by Dirty Sexy Money, but it seems like they're trying to change the show a lot, and I'm not exactly sure where it's going to end up.
• Lipstick Jungle, on the other hand, thoroughly pleased me. Who would have thought it would be beating DSM for my affections in that timeslot?
• Ugly Betty is another show that seems to be floundering a little bit. It seems like they're setting a lot of dominoes up, but right now I'm not quite sure what's going on.
• The Ex-List is a real wild card for me. I totally identify with Bella, especially when she said she's 33. (That's exactly my age!) But it kind of seems that going through all her romantic failures week by week will be exactly like going through all of my own. And what's fun about that? The premiere left me wanting to fall on my sword by the end, but I'll watch it again next week and see how I feel then.

Notice something missing? The one show I haven't gotten around to watching online is Gossip Girl. I can't really account for that, and I'm sure if I ever do watch it I'll get back into it, but I wonder what that says about it and/or me.

Ok, now I guess I know why I'm feeling so frazzled. That's 11 hours of TV I've managed to watch this week. And yet, back in the olden days I could probably manage to watch that much on one lazy weekend day. Being an adult isn't all it's cracked up to be!