Marilee J. Layman

09:25 pm: Rain and Light
Just as I got ready to go out, it rained, poured, rained, and then sprinkled, which is when I actually left. I had to buy a bubble envelope at Giant, so I went there first and then packed some beads to send to a friend and stopped by the post office. I came home and unloaded and put away groceries and then went back up to the shop to leave the van so the light could be fixed. The manager took a quick look at the shop and said he'd take it in, they could probably do it then. When he came back out, he said the front right signal light had been corroded in place, so it's probably the original one. I would have been fine with them having the van tomorrow, since Lucila is coming and I'll be home, but it's nice to have it here, too.

Lucila stopped by to see if it was okay if she came at 4:30pm tomorrow instead of 11am and of course that was fine with me! Her son is out of school and he thinks my house is boring (reasonably) and her husband will be home by then to care for him. I would have happily taken an afternoon time to begin with!

Last night's Masterpiece Theatre Mystery was the second episode of Inspector Lewis and a character mentioned reading Arthur C. Clarke. This had to have been done before he died, so not a hommage, just a word to the wise. But a woman said "Yes, he was in prison, but he's out now. He's a rogue, a lad, but he's my bit of a lad!" Would one of my UKan readers please define that version of lad? I'm guessing not entirely lawful? I didn't figure out the murderer until about halfway through, which is very good. L&O:CI and In Plain Sight both gave away the criminal near the beginning.

I'm throwing a baby shower for the first time in decades. Fortunately, since it's in conjunction with bookgroup next month, it's not too complicated. I sent email to the folks in the group, gave them the registry URL (and told them that of course, they can give whatever they want) and told them we'd just have cake and presents, since we still want to talk about the book. The two are having a baby almost exactly nine months from getting married, but we won't joke about fertility. I hope. I'm actually thinking of cupcakes which don't require plates and forks. I ordered a couple of small things from the registry, but I also ordered yarn for a blankie. I expect to finish my BFAC project tonight.

Tags: baby shower, cleaning, errands, tv

05:50 pm: Oobleck on TV!
Yesterday, I was offline at 4:30, went straight to a nap in the recliner and woke up at 11:30. I watched the shows I'd taped Friday night, and Numbers had oobleck at the beginning and end! They called it "non-Newtonian fluid" but it was oobleck! Then I read some papers, went to bed and read more of Little Brother, and turned the light off at 7am. I set the alarm for 2pm and so far don't feel sleepy, and I hope that lasts.

Shiva is still not eating morning food with Spirit, I assume he'll have to wait a bit to realize I'm not going to give him more meds. I'm washing bed linens and putting new linens on, and every so often I'm vanishing into the workroom to work on a beadswap. It's a nice low-70s day today and the cats are watching the birds and squirrels at the feeder.

Tags: cats, housekeeping, tv

05:50 pm: Changing Clocks, PBS Show, and Dream
I changed the car DVD player's time before I turned the engine off yesterday (and then had to turn the power back on to put the windows up because I was so careful to remember the time). One VCR, my radio-signal alarm clock and the computer all changed by themselves. Last night I changed the time on the other VCR, the TV, and my cell phone. Today, after I got the right wrench, I took the analog flower clock mostly apart (because cleaning ladies had been loosening the screw that holds the quartz movement and hands straight), put it back together tightly, and changed the time.

I took advantage of the extra hour last night to watch the first two episodes of a miniseries on PBS: The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard. It's about a supermarket manager who accidently talks to a TV crew after breaking up a candidate fight in front of her store. She thinks politics should be brought back to the people and as she is interviewed more and more, and acquires political and financial sponsors, other new candidates all over England join her Purple Alliance. It's been fascinating so far seeing how the English "machine" works and how the change affects her family. There's another ep tonight and the last one next week.

Right before I woke up today, I dreamed that I had a husband who had come home from war, bringing a little boy who had lost all his family. As I started going through his stuff to clean and repair, I realized that there was a code and a message, but the message was incomplete. He had one bag he'd forbidden me to open and I was sure the rest of the message was in there. He was moody and withdrawn and I was worried that it wasn't just the war, but whatever this message was, so early one morning, while he and the boy were asleep, I opened the bag. And then I woke up. Not fair!

Tags: clocks, dream, tv

04:36 pm: TV and Mattress, Rain!
The mattress topper expanded to where it should be pretty quickly, but the cats are afraid of it. I wonder if they smell the plastic and I don't. I'm going to go start putting it on the bed (taking sheets and mattress pad off, washing sheets, washing pillows, putting new sheets on, etc.) when I finish this.

I was up later than I'd planned last night because right before I was ready to go to bed, all three cats came and piled on me and on each other. It's not fair to get up then, so I watched the last show I had on tape. I watched Viva Laughlin! last night and I like it. It incorporates music into the show, but there's a real story there, too.

It rained today! We had 34 days without rain and this won't make up for that, but it's a start!

Tags: tv, weather

04:05 pm: TV and Underwear
I watched the Women's Murder Club on Friday. It slips Angie Harmon back into her Law and Order milieu but as a detective. Her friends the medical examiner and the assistant district attorney talk about the murder of the day and a reporter appears destined to be the fourth of the club. It was pretty good and I like crime shows, so I'll watch it until it bores me.

In one of the WashPosts I read last night, there was this interesting exchange of letters between a judge advocate and an attorney for a prisoner at Gitmo. The Navy lawyer accuses the prisoner's lawyer of sneaking in a Speedo and Under Armour briefs to the prisoner. The lawyer explains that he's searched on the way in and taped all the time he's there and proposes that since the base carries Under Armour (popular with sailors), that one of the guards gave the prisoner the contraband undies. I can see a number of things being contraband, but comfortable undies?

Tags: politics, tv

05:43 pm: TV, Less Pain, and Errands
I napped between 6:30 and 10:30 last night and I screwed up one VCR setting (wrong channel) so I didn't see Cold Case and Shark and PBS showed something different than Mystery during the right time I taped on the other VCR. I'd already decided I could miss Desperate Housewives, it's like a soap -- things always get talked about in the next ep. As it happened the Inspector Lynley Mysteries was one-third of the way through when I was sitting down with beading expecting to watch the entire thing on tape, so I got most of it, plus a little beading done. No newspaper reading, though. I'm a week and a half behind. The big problem is how much time I'm spending online. I have to get better at skimming and not spending time looking things up for people.

I woke up about 8am (halfway through my sleep period) in a lot of pain and got up and took a couple of acetaminophen (logged them) and went back to sleep. I was fine today to take the foam stuff to the dumpster, the cardboard to the public works cardboard dumpster, and the end table and a bag of clothes to the thrift store. As long as I was out there, I hit the ATM for the money for the week. Today's mail still isn't here -- I'm not sure what's happening with our regular mail lady.

Tags: furniture, health, tv

05:11 pm: TV Shows
I watched Aliens In America on Monday and it definitely looks interesting. A Midwest family has a son who is a luser (people putting the L on the forehead) and mom is pretty concerned, so she's talked into taking an exchange student that's coming from London. She's envisioning a tall Nordic guy who will make her son part of the "in" crowd. What the counselor doesn't tell her is that the exchange student is coming through London from Pakistan. Yes, a Muslim in the Midwest. Very funny.

I watched second eps of Bionic Woman and Life and they were much better than the premieres, so I'll keep watching until I get bored.

Tags: tv

04:03 pm: Other New Shows I Watched
I was going to tape Reaper on Tuesday and watch it later, but what was on the tape was fluffy, glittery, and princessy. Comcast swapped the channels for CW and ABC Family without telling me. I'd noticed it was to be repeated last night so I watched then. A couple sold their first-born's soul (at 21) to the devil in order to save the husband's life. The series starts when their son turns 21 and has some odd powers. He finds out what happened and that the devil wants him to repossess souls that escape from hell. He's given a dustbuster to do it with. Boy, was this stupid.

Bionic Woman -- This is really different from the original. It's dark, angry, and bloody. The protagonist is not the first Bionic Woman, the first (played by Katee Sackhoff) is evil and apparently they'll be fighting each other. The project is making more Bionic People and if I had to go by the premiere, I'd say this is going to be like superheroes with black costumes. I'll watch it once again and see.

Life is about a policeman who had been jailed for 12 years for a triple murder but has been exonerated and awarded many millions of dollars. And what does he do? Go back on the force. We're shown that he read about Zen in prison, and it's clear that he's supposed to be following (or trying to follow) it, but it's not shown very well, and it annoys the new partner. As you might expect, he turns out to be the key to finding the answer to the murder, and even though he professes not to care who set him up, he has a big wall layout about it. I really disliked his character, but I'll give it one more chance.

Tags: tv

05:23 pm: Signs, Shows, and Scare
From yesterday and today, I've seen equal numbers of houses with signs for the state delegates, which is better than usual for the Democrats. Usually there's lots of signs for the Republicans and just a few for the Democrats. That could change, of course.

I watched the new shows last night:

Big Bang Theory* is about a couple of geeks who have a pretty airhead move in across the hall. It was actually quite funny, both in dialogue and in sight gags. I'll watch this again.

Chuck is about a guy named Chuck who works for the Nerd Herd at the Buy More store (hmmm). Someone he hasn't seen since college sends him an email with an RPG question as security. He gives the password and sees lots and lots of pictures which give him all the US' intelligence data. The intelligence agencies want to kill him, but by the end of the show are shielding and using him. The "diffuse bomb in seconds" bit from the local TV Week? Well, he didn't defuse the bomb (they should get knowledgable people to watch the previews). What happened was that the bomb was controlled by a type of laptop that was sold only in their store. Earlier in the show, while he was giving his Nerd Herd the day's rundown, he told them that a new virus was making those laptops die. So he remembers that at the last moment, grabs the virus, and the laptop dies and never sets off the bomb. Some interesting character interaction already set up. I'm looking forward to watching this one.

Journeyman is about a guy who suddenly is pulled unpredictably into the past to do good work. The first two-thirds of the show made me think it wasn't going to work, but they pull it off at the end. His wife now believes him, although the boss and cop brother don't. To complicate it, in the time he was pulled into, he kept running into his first love before she died. And then after she died. Things start getting interesting. I'll watch this one again, too.

Now, the scare. The last time the board put a handicapped spot next to mine, one of my neighbors tried to kill me. I didn't get a restraining order because I think she's the kind of person who, on receiving a restraining order, will act to kill. Today, the board had her move her car and painted a wheelchair on the spot again. I've written a long long email spelling out what's happened and how and when that was a handicapped spot (and why it wasn't after a while -- the neighbor scared the ealier board into painting over the wheelchair logo) and asked why the heck there's another spot there because Helen will almost certainly think again (wrongly) that it's my fault and try to kill me again. I'm going to have to be very careful going out for a while.

*I first typed that as "Bing Band Theory" which sorta makes sense.

Tags: condo, politics, tv

04:20 pm: The Lost Room
I taped the six hours of this and watched it last night. We come into the mystery gradually as the police officer protagonist gets a key that opens the lost room -- a motel room that "resets" every time you open the door. His daughter goes through the door and is lost (an excellent Elle Fanning for the brief time we see her) and in order to find her, he must learn more about the magical objects and how they work together. He is betrayed several times, makes allegiances with groups that are at odds and is physically in danger.

I never felt the daughter was really in danger, which would have added to the story. The story loses cohesion and plot toward the end and while he gets the daughter back, there are new questions asked and they never find out how the room became lost and the objects magically-charged. It felt like a series book rather than a stand-alone and I suspect the ratings will determine whether there is a TV series of this or whether we are just left to hang.

Tags: tv

06:19 pm: TV Stuff and Dream
First, the stfnal things. The week before last, NBC had two shows, "Heroes" and "ER," where the story "A Sound of Thunder" was mentioned. This week, CBS had two stfnal moments, the first during the beginning narration of "Criminal Minds" when Cory Doctorow was quoted and credited, and the second at the end of "Numbers" when Buzz Aldrin shows up to lead Larry to the shuttle and as they come down the ramp, we hear Elton John's "Rocketman."

Less heart-warming, Oprah has decided to find more ways to give so everybody knows it:

First, the network has ordered eight episodes of a reality series called "Oprah Winfrey's The Big Give," in which 10 people will be challenged to take Oprah-dispensed money and resources and come up with "the most powerful, sensational, emotional and dramatic ways to give to others," ABC announced. The Washington Post 12/16/06

There's another reality show, too. She says she's a Christian, I wonder if she's forgotten Matthew 6:2-4:

Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth:

That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.

I got up and spent an hour ordering the paper the way I wanted it and watching a tape of "Meet the Press" and then I slept in the recliner for four hours. I had an unusual version of my stepmother pushing me out of my own house -- this one was set in a very modern city with canals instead of streets.

Tags: dreams, tv