tagryn's musings

Been really enjoying watching Kings on NBC, but have to agree with AVClub that the odds of it lasting out its first season seem slim and none. On a niche station, like SciFi was for BSG, it would have a better chance, but in primetime on a standard network? Not likely to have much patience with allowing it to grow an audience. Still, the writing at times shows real promise, and I enjoy seeing Ian McShane get work after his performance in Deadwood. The guest stars have been quite high-quality, also.

The BSG finale was frustrating; this interview with the director answers (with spoilers) some of the questions about why certain things were done the way they were (although it also makes me glad they decided to end it, since from some of the things said - which see: comments on Daniel - it appears Moore was starting to lose his touch). I have to agree with Donna that Dean Stockwell probably came up with that idea for Cavil (see interview) because he didn't feel like going through what filming the original concept would have entailed. Hey, the guy's been in the business forever, he gets to call his shots once in a while. Hopefully The Plan will tie up some of the loose ends.

* We had a lovely visit from our San Jose friend Paula this week. I unfortunately had to work much of the time she was here, but I can tell that Donna really enjoyed having her around and showing her the area.

* I got a flu shot at work on Wednesday, woke up Friday with a sore throat that's continued into today. It's kinda weird, because I don't have the runny nose or eyes that accompany colds, and I don't feel sick per se. Seems like a decent bargain if it means I don't get the flu this year, which I know from previous experience would knock me out for a week and a half and not fully recover from for another one or two weeks.

* Each day I'm getting on average a half-handful of cherry tomatoes from our plants. There's many regular-size tomatoes on the vine as well, but they're all still green. Having a week of 90-ish degree temperatures helped get them along, I think.

I've researched what to do in a couple of weeks when the first frost hits. My Mom suggested putting them in paper bags to help them redden, but the consensus here seems to be that this just changes the color, but doesn't make them any riper. One suggestion from this thread is to cut off the branches with green fruit on them and bring them inside prior to the first frost, and put them in a sunny windowsill to ripen inside. I'd have to put up some barrier so the cats wouldn't eat them, but that sounds like an idea.

Hm. Actually, we still have our indoors greenhouse from last year, which I have to put together anyway to have a place for our herbs to overwinter without the cats getting them. I can probably put the cut tomato vines in there to ripen, as well.

* The recent student aid bill could be a big help to our finances down the line, it means that if I stay in federal employment for ten more years and keep up with my student loan payments, the remainder of the loan would be forgiven. Ten years is a long time in today's job market, and who knows if this bill's provisions will be reversed between now and then, but I'd despaired of how we were going to pay off my student loans on top of the house mortgage and other bills, and this might be a way to get that done.

* Have been wasting more leisure time than I should playing a PC game: Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters by "Toys for Bob". It's a sequel to Star Control I, another game I wasted a lot of leisure time mastering back in the day, and its even better: the writing is witty, the plot is more complicated than SCI (which was a series of scenarios, not a full campaign), and there's plenty of action and quests along the way. In fact, the downside is that I know that even with the walkthrough, I'm never going to have enough time to finish it with all the other things I need/want to do. sigh.

Did I mention its a freeware download? :)

Also, as it turns out "Toys for Bob" was responsible for writing The Horde, which was another of my favorites that unfortunately didn't transition well to XP conversion.

* TV. We're back in our autumn television watching habits. Regular shows being watched by us, or recorded for later watching, include Survivor: China, Heroes, Journeyman, The Office, plus Back to You when we remember when its on, and NFL football on Sundays. Donna's also been watching Dancing With the Stars. We've also started watching Reaper, which is a surprisingly funny comedy on the My20 featuring Ray Wise (Leland from Twin Peaks) as the Devil, which is a great role for him. We dropped 30 Rock this year, since it runs against Survivor on Thursday nights this year.