TV roundup

It's officially Fall, which means that television shows are starting or starting back up. I already watch too much TV, but with Boyfriend out of town, I have even more time to waste in front of the idiot box this year (or at least this month). This means that I watched a ton of TV last week. I'll have to figure out how to narrow it down before Boyfriend comes back. Thankfully I have a few weeks to weed things out. In the meantime, here are my thoughts on my massive TV binge

How I Met Your Mother - I love this show. So much. I mean, I'd probably be okay if we never met the mother at all (though I bet we do either this year or next year). But we know that Barney's getting married eventually (possibly at the end of this season, though maybe not until next season, hopefully to Robin). Lily and Marshall are pregnant. Marshall got his dream job at an environmental law firm. And Victoria's back! So excited for Victoria! I predict an interesting season. As long as Nora doesn't hang around too long.

2 Broke Girls - This was fun and has a bunch of potential. I like the concept - two girls trying to raise enough money to open their own cupcake store. They work at a diner together, and one of them also nannies for a family on the upper west side. I can see all sorts of get rich quick schemes and various financial setbacks as they work towards their goal of $250,000 (currently they have ~$350). There's a bit of an odd couple dynamic between Max and Caroline. Max currently works two jobs just to get by and seems to have been doing this her entire life. Caroline grew up rich, but recently lost everything, a la Cordelia Chase. The fact that this comes on right after How I Met Your Mother greatly increases the odds that I'll stick with it throughout the season.

Castle - I just can't stop watching this show. It's really nothing special, just another goofy cop procedural. But it has Nathan Fillion and I've fallen a bit in love with Beckett. This could get booted if I get too busy, but as long as I have time I'll probably continue to tune in. The pilot was a bit heavy, since they had to deal with the aftermath of Beckett getting shot and Castle admitting that he loved her. I'm hoping the rest of the season is more lighthearted, like it has been in the past.

Glee - Oh Glee, why can't I quit you? I honestly wasn't planning to come back to Glee this season. It's still a fun show, but incredibly uneven. Character development doesn't seem to matter and nothing really sticks from week to week, except for the storylines concerning gay characters. But then they brought Marti Noxon on board. Noxon is responsible for some of my favorite and least favorite Buffy episodes. She wrote the What's My Line? arc, I Only Have Eyes For You, The Wish, The Prom, and Doomed, which are all excellent. Of course she's also responsible for Bad Eggs, Beauty and the Beasts, and Living Conditions.I suppose it's still early in the season, but so far things don't look all that different from last season. But the musical numbers are fun and I'm excited about the rumored lack of theme episodes. Because those got old. I like having more of a mix and not knowing what to expect until they break into song.

Ringer - This show appears to be heading into silly soap opera territory. I guess it's just a matter of how long SMG can hold my interest and whether or not any other characters become interesting. Bridgett is bonding with Juliet over the whole drug thing. I think she's still pretending to be pregnant so she'll have a valid excuse not to drink, but that seems like the worst idea ever.

New Girl - I watched the pilot. It was alright. Not really funny or anything. And I don't really care about the characters. The main girl, Jess, is more annoying than cute. The guys she lives with are kind of awful, but at least they have a "douchebag jar" that they must contribute to whenever they do something really douchey. It just didn't catch my interest, so I'll probably be avoiding this show. Which is actually a relief.

The Big Bang Theory - This one may not last too much longer. The early seasons were fun, but it seems to have stagnated. There's never any real progress in any way. I like the introduction of Amy Farrah-Fowler, and she's still a really interesting character. But the show itself just isn't holding my interest the way it used to. The seem completely unwilling to maintain a storyline for multiple episodes. For example, in the season premiere, Penny is lamenting the fact that she hasn't been able to get an acting gig and is considering moving home to Nebraska. Then, right at the end of the episode, she gets a callback for a commercial. And I got really excited, because it looked like we might go back to dealing with Penny as a struggling actress, or maybe see some of what she goes through filming the commercial. But nope, the episode ends with a screening of her completed commercial and by the next episode it's like it never even happened. It gets frustrating.

Parks and Rec - I marathoned all three seasons of this show over the summer and kind of fell in love with everything about it. The premiere was good, if predictable. The big question at the end of last season was whether Leslie would give up her dreams of running for office in order to pursue her relationship with Ben, dump Ben so she could run for office, or try to have her cake and eat it too. But she's Leslie, which means there was only ever one thing she could do. Though it will be interesting to see if she and Ben can actually stay broken up through her campaign. And I'm really excited to see more of Tammy 1.

Community - As far as I'm concerned, this is one of the best shows on television right now. But I can't watch it yet. Boyfriend and I always watch NBC's Thursday night block together, so these will just pile up on the DVR for a few weeks.

The Office - I guess James Spader is joining the cast. But not as the new Michael Scott. I guess we'll see. This is another show that I have to wait on until I can watch it with Boyfriend.

Pan Am - This looks like it could be fun. This show follows four fairly different stewardesses back in the 1960s. Maggie was grounded for refusing to wear her girdle and will probably be the feminist voice of the show. She joins the crew as a last minute replacement for a stewardess who didn't show up (Bridgett). Kate is an international spy, working with the CIA and MI-6 and doing spy things. Her younger sister, Laura, is a runaway bride looking for adventure. And Colette was sleeping with a man who turned out to be married. We'll see how long the show holds my interest.

Three Weeks

After a summer when, despite buying a house together, it felt like we had reverted to a long-distance relationship, there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel. Boyfriend just left for another three weeks in Alabama. But at the end of that he should be home for good.

Since the beginning of June, Boyfriend has spent most of his time in Alabama. All of June, three weeks in July, one in August, four weeks in September, and one week in October. We managed to get weekends together here and there, most of which had been planned vacations. We visited friends and attended a couple of weddings. We spent a week in August on the lake and moved into our new house. But mostly we haven't really had much time to just hang out. To establish a routine in the new house and just live our lives.

In three weeks that should be over. He should be home for good and we can hang out without running all over the country to visit friends. There's another wedding, a few more trips with friends, and the family filled holidays to round out the year. But we'll have the weeks. Evenings after work and time to watch Community and eat dinner and stuff.

Three more weeks.

I can do this.

Ringer Pilot

Spoilers for the pilot episode of Ringer follow. Massive spoilers.

Let's be honest. I'm a total sucker for Sarah Michelle Gellar. I mean, I grew up on Buffy*. So of course I tuned into tonight's season premiere of Ringer. It's probably a good thing that I didn't exactly have high hopes.

First things first, Ringer is not Buffy. Despite an ad campaign that focused almost exclusively on the fact that SMG would be returning to the CW** on Tuesday nights, the show makes it clear right off the bat that this is not Buffy in an opening scene that has SMG on the losing end of a fight with a masked man.

From there, the show proceeds to throw a dozen balls into the air. And I guess we'll spend the rest of the season either witnessing an impressive juggling act or a complete disaster. So what happened in the pilot? I believe we need a list.

• Bridget (played by SMG) is a former stripper and recovering addict. They never specify what her drug of choice was, but she's been sober for six months
• Bridget is the key witness in a murder trial for some big bad guy. Possibly with ties to the mob? If I heard correctly, he killed her fellow stripper by dismemberment.
• Bridget has a crush on her sponsor (I believe that's against the rules). Her sponsor seems to reciprocate those feelings
• Bridget is so terrified of the big bad that she breaks out of protective custody, assaults a cop, steals his gun, and runs to New York
• In New York we meet Siobhan, Bridget's estranged twin sister. They haven't spoken for six years. What better way to reunite than a boat ride? 
• Siobhan conveniently hasn't told anyone that she has a sister
• The boat had some of the worst green screen/CGI I've seen in a long time.
• Bridget takes a nap, like you do, and when she wakes up Siobhan is gone, along with all her prescription drugs
• Naturally, Bridget assumes that Siobhan killed herself. The next logical step is to assume her identity
• Bridget calls her sponsor to tell him all of this.
• There's an FBI agent looking for Bridget because of that whole key witness thing. Also the assault of the police officer thing.
• Siobhan's husband, Andrew, is distant. They don't seem to have any sort of relationship anymore. He doesn't trust Bridget's attempts to mend this relationship.
• Siobhan had a big orange book that she wrote down all of her appointments in to keep track of her busy life. This would be pretty handy for Bridget to flip through, but she seems to forget about it the moment she discovers it
• Siobhan's best friend Gemma is renovating a penthouse apartment for Siobhan and Andrew
• Gemma thinks her husband, Henry, is cheating on her
• Henry is cheating on Gemma. With Siobhan
• In 2005 Siobhan had a son named Sean (quite the tongue twister). She does not have said son any longer. Bridget may have had something to do with this.
• The FBI agent visits Bridget-as-Siobhan to ask her about Bridget's whereabouts. Bridget lies and says they haven't spoken in years. (Technically it was true a week ago)
• Siobhan has a teenage stepdaughter, Juliet. Their relationship rivals the one I have with my own stepmother. But Bridget doesn't know this and is trying to play nice, despite having walked in on Juliet having sex with some random dude.
• Juliet just got kicked out of boarding school.
• Apparently it was for possession of the same drug that Bridget used to be addicted to
• So Bridget tries to kick Juliet out of the house
• A doctor calls to inform Bridget that Siobhan was pregnant. Bridget missed the appointment because she didn't bother to read her sister's incredibly handy appointment book.
• The baby is probably Henry's but there's a slim chance it could be Andrew's. Clearly Bridget herself isn't pregnant, though. But she seems to think this could repair her relationship with Andrew. Glee already did this, and it didn't work out so well.
• The FBI agent finds the letter that Bridget sent Siobhan (she stowed it in a bike locker in the Hamptons. Of course he found it.) He deduces that Bridget-as-Siobhan lied to him. But he still thinks she's Siobhan.
• Gemma calls Bridgett and asks to meet her because she knows who her husband's having an affair with.
• A masked man attacks Bridget (this is where the episode opened, before flashing back to "nine days earlier")
• Bridget shoots the masked man with the gun she stole from the cop
• The masked man was actually looking for Siobhan (if you consider that he accosted her in the very place Gemma asked to meet, this doesn't seem quite as suspenseful as the show wants you to believe it is)
• Siobhan is still alive. And apparently trying to kill Bridget. There must be an easier way to fake your own death.
• Somewhere in there the man that Bridget was supposed to testify against kidnapped her sponsor.
• There are mirrors everywhere. I guess for the symbolism. Nobody owns that many mirrors though. Someone will walk out of the frame, and then you'll see them again crossing the right side of the screen in a mirror. Then they'll appear in a mirror on the left side of the screen. Then they'll finally have exited the scene. It's ridiculous.

So all of that happened in the hour-long pilot. Which is really only 42 minutes when you account for all of the commercials***. Some of these plots seem unnecessary (do we really need a pregnancy?). Some of them probably could have been held off for a few weeks (Juliet's drug possession and expulsion). Some things could have been utilized better (Oh my God, Bridget, read your sister's appointment book). But it will be interesting to see where the show goes from here. I predict disaster. Hopefully it will be an entertaining disaster.

*Probably the best role she's ever had
**Though Buffy actually switched to UPN before the WB became the CW
***Apparently they're remaking The Transporter with Ryan Gosling as Jason Statham.

Worse Than Talking to a Brick Wall

I ordered some stuff from Amazon, but accidentally had it sent to my old address instead of my current one. I tried calling USPS to figure out where my package is and how to get it.

Here's how that phone call went

Thank you for calling USPS. For information about hours and locations, please say "locations". To track a package, please say -
Oh my God
I'm sorry, I didn't catch that
Hmm?
I'm sorry, I didn't catch that. Please repeat your selection
What? No
Did you say-?
NO
*pause*
For information about hours and locations, please say "locations". To track a package, please say "track package"
Track package
To track a package, please say your label or tracking number
<FYI, this number is 20 digits long> xxxxx
I'm sorry I can't find any information on that package. To track a package, please say your label or tracking number
This time, I typed it in
I'm sorry I can't find any information on that package. To track a package, please say your label or tracking number
Let me speak to a person
To track a package -
I want to speak to a person
To track -
No, let me talk to a person. A human.
To end this call please hang up
I don't want to. I want to talk to a person. Please. Person. Human
To end this call, please hang up
Menu?
To end this call, please hang up
*click*

There are few things I hate more than these machines that you actually have to talk to.

Moral of the story: double check your address before using Amazon's handy one-click feature. Also, computers don't care if you yell at them.

Kicking Off Wedding Season

The bridesmaids, bride's brothers, and bride's nephew. Stolen from my cousin's Facebook

I spent Labor Day weekend back home in Colorado for my cousin's wedding. It was an incredibly busy, incredibly fun weekend. And I managed to fit into my dress, which was a huge plus. (It was touch and go for a couple of days there. Apparently this was a common experience among my fellow bridesmaids, most of whom had managed to gain some weight since buying the dresses 8 months ago. One had just given birth and had the opposite fear. But it all worked out)

We arrived Thursday night (half an hour early!) and picked up our rental car. The lady at the counter tried to convince me that I needed a six cylinder engine to make it up the mountain, which is completely not true. She then "upgraded" me to a little red sports car, that would supposedly have an easier time with the hills. It's possible that I should have told her that I needed a car that could handle dirt roads and that a 6% grade really isn't that big a deal. At any rate, we hit a pothole on 285 and a piece from the bottom of the car came loose. Boyfriend knew the name of the piece that half fell off (he also knew what kind of car we'd gotten) and was sort of able to stick it back together. But the next day it completely fell off on the way to the rehearsal dinner at my aunt's cabin. To be fair, though, "road" is sort of a stretch for what we were driving on. It's more a strip of dirt through the field on which grass no longer grows. There was also a hail storm that completely dinged up the car. It's a good thing I got insurance.

We had the rehearsal on Friday, during which the guys were already drinking beer and being fairly obnoxious. I also managed to get slightly sunburned. Then there was the rehearsal dinner, followed by the bachelorette party. This party was a bit more my speed than the one in Vegas. My cousin's 5 and 7 year old nieces were still running around when I showed up. My aunt and the mother of the groom had complete control of the music, which mostly consisted of Eric Clapton, James Taylor, and Joe Cocker. Copacabana came on at one point and my aunt made sure we all knew that it was the best song ever recorded. We all just hung out in the kitchen, drinking beers and talking.

My schedule had me arriving at my other aunt's house the next morning at 10:30 to start getting ready. For a 5:00 ceremony.  I showed up closer to 11:30 and sat around drinking mimosas for an hour. Then I put on some eye shadow and had a sandwich and another mimosa. I finally put my dress on around 1:30 when the photographer showed up. We took the "candid getting ready" pictures, then went to the site for more formal pictures. At 3:30, the guys showed up for their round of pictures and we went off to kill time before the ceremony.

This hour was probably the longest one of the entire day. We were hanging out in the reception area, which was being decorated, so we couldn't touch anything. And we couldn't leave for fear of the groom and guests seeing our dresses. Finally the wedding began.

The ceremony itself was short and sweet. The procession actually lasted longer that the ceremony. But with 7 groomsmen, 7 bridesmaids, and family that needed to be formally escorted in down an incredibly long aisle, that was probably to be expected. The wedding planner spaced us out really far, too. There was a fair amount of dead time between bridesmaids.

After the ceremony came more pictures! Pictures and pictures until it started to rain. When we'd finally finished all the family and wedding party pictures, we escaped inside while the bride and groom took more pictures. Two and a half glasses of wine later, they finally finished and we got to eat.

There was much food and merriment and dancing. The photographers hung around until nearly the end of the reception. Apparently the digital age allows you to get a lot more bang for your buck, since it takes longer to fill up a memory card than a roll of film. My cousin and her husband are going to be sorting through pictures for a week, though.

I'm looking forward to doing this all again in November, when I get to wear the same dress in a different color for my friend's wedding. Hopefully I won't squirt sunscreen on it moments before the ceremony next time.

My Owl Finally Came

I didn't discover Harry Potter until the summer I turned 13, so I'm not one of those people who approached her 11th birthday with secret hopes that an owl would arrive with an acceptance letter from Hogwarts. Nevertheless, the world captured my imagination and, in some ways, I grew up right alongside Harry, Ron, and Hermione. But I was always doomed to be a muggle.

Well no more. With the creation of Pottermore, and my luck to be one of the early Beta testers, I finally got my letter! And now I can begin my journey to Hogwarts.

Pottermore is an interactive, online website that leads you through the books. There are a few neat illustrations for each chapter, done in layers. As you move your mouse side to side, the layers shift and you get a bit of a 3D illusion. There's also a few animations and hidden objects to collect. These object include everything from Chocolate Frog Cards to the salt and pepper shakers from the Dursley's breakfast table. Apparently Harry is a kleptomaniac? Because I cannot figure out why I would want to keep those in my trunk.

The part that has me the most excited is the plethora of new information. There are tidbits all over the place, explaining, among other things, how Vernon met Petunia, the history of the Hogwarts Express, and Wand Lore.

Then comes Diagon Alley. and the world just opens up. You get an account at Gringotts, along with a shopping list and access to all the stores. Well, half of the stores. I can only assume that the rest will be unlocked later on, probably in the third book. Buying the books and school supplies is fun, but the interface is a bit clunky; it works like the stores in a Zelda game. Each item must be bought and paid for separately, which got really frustrating in Flourish and Blotts. Eight books, purchased one at a time. I think the point of this is to give you the blurb about each book as you buy it, but it got a little bit frustrating.

There are also several items for sale that aren't on the school list, mostly advanced potions ingredients. You can buy water from the River Lethe, for use in forgetfulness spells, which made my inner geek squee. And then there are the standard snake fangs and such. I spent a long time trying to decide between a tawny owl and a screech owl for my pet. These are very important decisions.

The last item you buy is a wand, which involves a quick personality test. Once you buy your wand, the site provides a bunch of information about wand lore to explain what your wand says about you. I got an ebony wand with a phoenix feather core, 10 3/4 inches, unyielding. This seems to imply that I'm an outsider who doesn't much mind it because I'm comfortable with who I am and that I'm fairly resistant to external pressure to change. I think that's fairly accurate. Even though it also appears to make me susceptible to the Dark Side.

My only problem with the website is that it is unbelievably glitchy. It seems to crash every fifteen minutes and then takes a long time to come back. On one hand, I understand that this is the beta period. There are bound to be things that need to get ironed out. On the other hand it's seriously eating up a lot of time. As far as I can tell, the site has more downtime than uptime. It gets frustrating.

But I did finally get sorted (Gryffindor!) and learned Minerva McGonagal's epic and heartbreaking life story. Plus, Pottermore! I can't complain too much.

Holy Crap, I Cooked!

Yes, I actually cooked something. From scratch. And here is the photographic evidence for homemade, from-scratch, ricotta gnocchi. Because it turns out that ricotta gnocchi is a whole lot easier to make than potato gnocchi. And by a whole lot easier, I mean Holy crap, that was easy!


So first you mix most of the ingredients together in a bowl. Here's what you need:

• 1 15 oz thing of Ricotta cheese
• It should be noted that ricotta is, in fact, a dairy product. And it makes up the majority of this dish. If you're lactose intolerant, like me, make sure you take a lactaid pill before consuming the gnocchi.
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 10 grinds of pepper (I hope you have a pepper grinder. I don't know how to translate this to teaspoons)

So you mix all of that together and you get this:

Yes, it's very exciting. I know. Technically you're supposed to whisk those ingredients together. But I don't own a whisk. Like I said, I don't cook much.

Anyway, once that's all mixed together, you start adding flour, 1/2 cup at a time, until you get a "soft dough". I'm not entirely sure what a "soft dough" is, so I went with the recommended 3/4 cup of flour, at which ponit it became difficult to stir and looked like this. Note that you are supposed to use a spoon, not a whisk, for this step. Which means that I actually saved on the cleanup part of this experiment.

Once you have your soft dough, put another 1/2 cup of flour on your cutting board and put your dough on top of it. Then knead it, adding flour, until it doesn't stick to your hands anymore. I don't think I added the right amount of flour, it was either too much or too little, but the end product tasted good. My advice is to not worry too much about this step. Knead and add flour until you feel it's right. Make sure to drink wine during this process. It helps with the end result.

Now things get tricky. Slice your blob of dough into six equal parts. (That was the tricky part, especially after all the wine.) Then, roll each section into a snake, just like 1st grade art class with the clay, and cut the snakes into bite-sized pieces.

This is what it looks like when it's been all sliced up. Mmmmm, raw gnocchi

Boil some water (actually, you should start the water boiling back when you start kneading the dough. I hope you read through this whole thing first. If not, don't worry, it's not the end of the world.) Then dump the gnocchi into the water. My pieces actually all stuck together, so I had to pull them apart and toss them in a few at a time. This resulted in a splash of boiling water each time that usually landed on my skin. It hurt. But it was a temporary pain, and the gnocchi made it all worth it, in the end.

Gnocchi floats when it's done cooking! It's nice like that. When all your gnocchi is floating, wait 30 seconds or so and then drain it. That 30 seconds is to make sure it's actually all cooked.

Let's be honest, this is all just a vehicle to get pesto into my belly. You can freeze the cooked gnocchi, but this recipe only makes a few servings, so that seemed kind of silly. I added pesto to all of the gnocchi, because I've found that pasta dishes keep a bit better in the fridge when the sauce is already mixed in. So I'll eat some tonight and refrigerate the rest for tomorrow. Hopefully it works out

Here's a tip: don't dump the freshly cooked gnocchi into a metal bowl. Metal transfers heat really well. Also, that's not the same metal bowl as the earlier pictures. It's a much smaller metal bowl.

Start to finish, this all took me about half an hour. It might go faster if you actually know how to knead dough. Or it might go slower, if I didn't knead it for long enough. Who knows?

Whale!

This almost makes me wish I had an iPhone.