Off we go to Sweden

Here's another piano book special, except of course that my version wasn't nearly this jazzy.

Put your little foot right out

I loved this song when I was in 5th grade and thought it was excessively romantic. I loved playing it in my piano book!

January TV roundup

Since it seems like none of my favorite shows are going to have new episodes this week, this is as good a time as any to catch you up on what I've been watching.

In syndicated TV news, I finally caught up with Grey's Anatomy! That means I needed to find a new show to watch every weekend, and I settled on Medium. I'd seen promos for this show for years, but it didn't look like the kind of thing I'd be interested in. Then I found out it was produced by Glenn Gordon Caron, who also did Moonlighting. That struck my interest, but I didn't actually watch it until this summer by accident. While I was on vacation, I'd set my VCR to tape Grey's Anatomy, but Lifetime moved it while I was gone, so I ended up with two episodes of Medium instead and decided to watch them. That was all it took to hook me! So now that I have the Grey's Anatomy slot open, I'm going to start watching it on purpose.

On DVD, I'm watching The Critic. It's a cartoon that my father loved desperately during the summer between my freshman and sophomore years at UND, and then when it moved to Fox, I had to watch every episode just to remind him that I could and he couldn't! So far I don't remember seeing any of these episodes, so I'm enjoying them with fresh eyes.

I'm so glad that Friday Night Lights is back. It's a little disconcerting that they're in September and we're in January, but I can deal with it. I also miss Jason Street, but I hear he'll be back for at least a few episodes this season. I'm just so glad to have my family back!

I'm still enjoying Privileged, but I can see the cost-cutting all over the place. I bet the CW is ruing the day that they decided to make two of their shows about insanely rich people! But it's not the trappings of wealth that I watch this show for; rather, it's the human interactions.

I'm glad Fringe finally came back, and I'm very glad that they didn't have Olivia langor in captivity for weeks and weeks as some shows might have been tempted to do. And she didn't even need to be rescued by anyone; she took care of it all herself!

The jury's still out on Ugly Betty. It was off for so long and it's just hard for me to get back into it.

I watched the new show Lie to Me this week, and I actually liked it quite well. But when Life comes back in February, it will be no contest.

Well, there you have it. A lot more of my shows are coming back in February, and I'll tell you what I think about them then.

A follow-up

I suppose I should say belatedly that I did watch the inauguration and found it an enjoyable experience. It also triggered a memory of watching a previous inauguration and hearing Maya Angelou recite a poem. Obviously that was one of the Clinton inaugurations, since those were the only two that she spoke at. Maybe we watched it in POD in high school. (That would have been my senior year, 1993.) Making us watch the inauguration sounds like something Miss Irmen would have done.

Inauguration Day

So Inauguration Day is finally here, and I happen to have the morning off from work. I guess that means I should watch it, right? But actually, I don't think I've ever seen an inauguration before. Usually, I've been in school when it happened, and the other years I guess I just didn't care. How could the daughter of such a political person have become so apolitical? Or on the other hand, maybe it was inevitable that it would happen. I think I had OD'd on politics by the age of 5! At any rate, to all my friends (and there are many) who are very excited about this day, I'll try to enjoy it by imagining your pleasure.

Some good news for online TV watchers

Since Time Warner in Athens switched all the channels around while I was gone and I didn't realize it, on Tuesday night instead of taping Privileged, I taped an hour of the Trinity Broadcasting Network instead! I wasn't looking forward to watching Privileged on the CW's website, since I had such trouble trying to watch Gossip Girl there last fall, but I'm happy to report that they have ironed out a lot of their troubles since then. Of course, I'm so far behind on Gossip Girl that I don't think I'm going to try to catch up now anyway, but it's nice to know that I could!

A cockeyed optimist in the best of times

Whenever I read one of those ubiquitous news articles about the current economic crisis, I think of this song by Styx. The fact is, it's perfectly possible for any individual to succeed even in the midst of generally bad times, and I intend to be one of those people! If that makes you think I fit this other song , go right ahead!

So please believe in me

Moving ahead so life don't pass me by

I'm back....

.... and the only things I accomplished on my list were #7 and #8. Oh, well, there's always next year!