Is the weekend over already?
My weekend has been less busy than I expected it to be, but I suppose that's not a bad thing...
First, I was supposed to have an Anticipation meeting with Terry on Saturday afternoon. (No worries, gurudata, he said it wasn't anything he felt you needed to be at - he only told me that he wanted to meet when we were both at Lisa and Irwin's place on NYE.) He was at the SFContario meeting yesterday at the North York Central Library, and I was supposed to meet him after that was over. I hadn't heard anything from him by 3:30 (I was expecting a call from him to let me know when the meeting was nearly over), so I decided not to wait any longer. I put my laptop and newspaper into my backpack and headed up. When I got there, however, it appeared that the meeting was over - there was nobody in any of the meeting rooms. So I tried calling him, but got his voicemail. After leaving a message, I noticed that he had left me a voicemail as well. So I listened to that, and he had called around 3:50 to let me know that the meeting was over. (Big help that was.) So I called him again to let him know that I had gotten his message, and would wait around until he showed up. He called back about 10 minutes later to let me know that when he couldn't get hold of me on the phone, he had left, and was already about eight subway stops south of where I was. *headdesk*
I was then supposed to go out with cuteteenboy, as we hadn't seen each other in quite some time. The last couple of times we'd made plans, one or the other of us had cancelled and we hadn't been able to reschedule. So after the aborted meeting with Terry, I came home, made dinner and called him. However, he felt that it was too cold to go out and preferred to reschedule... again. So now the plan is that I'll have dinner out at his place on the 17th, spend the night out there and then we'll go to the Polaris meeting together the next morning. (I think Eric might have been a little disappointed that he wasn't going to get to meet cuteteenboy, as he was going to stop by here first and I had said that I would introduce them before we went out - but OTOH, it meant that Eric had me all to himself for the night. He had to go to bed early-ish, though, as today was his first day at his new job.)
Today, I decided that I had had quite enough with my desktop behaving badly - it's been running slowly, Norton claimed that I had a virus but couldn't actually get rid of it (and I was never that worried because the virus didn't actually seem to be doing anything), and Firefox was downloading files I succesfully downloaded months ago without my initiating any downloads. So I ran a couple of spyware scans (Ad-Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy), and upgraded my Norton Anti-Virus to the 2009 version and ran a basic-level scan (it now claims to have gotten rid of the aforementioned virus). I also upgraded to the latest version of Firefox and Flash Player. (I think that part of the problem causing my computer to slow down may have been a memory leak - at one point this afternoon, Task Manager said that I only had about 4Mb of available memory. I've been spending too much time surfing YouTube recently.) And miracle of miracles, everything seems to be running smoothly. When the screen saver activates, it no longer takes ten minutes to respond when I re-activate the computer. *knock on wood*
It occurs to me, though, that maybe I should upgrade to the latest version of iTunes as well, in case that has something to do with the memory leak.
Fortunately, thanks to a mention in the Globe and Mail on Friday, I knew that tonight's episode of Desperate Housewives was a new one. I think they caught a nice balance tonight - there was drama, but it wasn't over the top, end-of-the-world type stuff. It was nice to see Bob and Lee get something to do - they've been sorely underused. (I just loved Lee's scenes with Susan, though I think she should have reacted more strongly to his line, "Pile on the makeup. Drag queens get the first drink free.") And the struggle between Bree and Melina (I think that was her name) for the affections of Andrew and Alex is going to be fun. And it was nice to hear Gale Harold, even if it was only as a voiceover - I haven't seen anything recently on the QAF lists, but I gather he's recovering quite nicely from the motorcycle accident he had a few months ago.
I suspect, however, that Gaby is going to pay for putting Carlos into the situation where he felt that he had to accept the job he didn't want. And I don't think that Edie's throwing Dave out is going to end well...
I guess a lot of the newer fans (ie. people who saw the show for the first time with Christopher Eccleston) have become accustomed to the idea that the Doctor regenerates, since I haven't seen the wailing and gnashing of teeth that accompanied the transition from Nine to Ten. However, I've seen some wailing and gnashing of teeth in other areas...
First, yes, Matt Smith seems awfully young, and his resume very short. I would have liked to have seen an older actor, someone who would portray the character a little differently. It seems to me that they were basically looking for a clone of David Tennant, and possibly for someone who could portray the romantic aspects of the role. I will, of course, keep an open mind until I see how he handles the role... he may (and probably will) be perfectly fine. I just had my own preference, which was not what came to happen.
Second, that being said, I'd rather they avoided the romantic plotlines. (And yes, I'm aware that Ten and Donna had no romantic interaction. I'm sure that once I finally get to see those episodes, I'll find the lack of angst quite refreshing.) In fact, I wouldn't at all mind seeing a male companion, though I don't expect that'll happen.
Third, with regard to the complaint I've been seeing that they've again cast a white male actor... I'm perfectly willing to admit that my knowledge of the rules around regeneration are lacking. That being said, while I have no problem with the idea of a black Time Lord, or a Time Lady, why do people think that it's even possible for him to regenerate into anything other than a white male, since that's what he started as? "Curse Of The Fatal Death" notwithstanding, I don't believe there's ever been any suggestion that he could regenerate into a woman, is there? (I'm perfectly willing to accept it if there has been, I'm just not aware of it.) You may as well suggest that he regenerate into a Dalek.
Well, that's it for now, I suppose... back to the grind tomorrow.
First, I was supposed to have an Anticipation meeting with Terry on Saturday afternoon. (No worries, gurudata, he said it wasn't anything he felt you needed to be at - he only told me that he wanted to meet when we were both at Lisa and Irwin's place on NYE.) He was at the SFContario meeting yesterday at the North York Central Library, and I was supposed to meet him after that was over. I hadn't heard anything from him by 3:30 (I was expecting a call from him to let me know when the meeting was nearly over), so I decided not to wait any longer. I put my laptop and newspaper into my backpack and headed up. When I got there, however, it appeared that the meeting was over - there was nobody in any of the meeting rooms. So I tried calling him, but got his voicemail. After leaving a message, I noticed that he had left me a voicemail as well. So I listened to that, and he had called around 3:50 to let me know that the meeting was over. (Big help that was.) So I called him again to let him know that I had gotten his message, and would wait around until he showed up. He called back about 10 minutes later to let me know that when he couldn't get hold of me on the phone, he had left, and was already about eight subway stops south of where I was. *headdesk*
I was then supposed to go out with cuteteenboy, as we hadn't seen each other in quite some time. The last couple of times we'd made plans, one or the other of us had cancelled and we hadn't been able to reschedule. So after the aborted meeting with Terry, I came home, made dinner and called him. However, he felt that it was too cold to go out and preferred to reschedule... again. So now the plan is that I'll have dinner out at his place on the 17th, spend the night out there and then we'll go to the Polaris meeting together the next morning. (I think Eric might have been a little disappointed that he wasn't going to get to meet cuteteenboy, as he was going to stop by here first and I had said that I would introduce them before we went out - but OTOH, it meant that Eric had me all to himself for the night. He had to go to bed early-ish, though, as today was his first day at his new job.)
Today, I decided that I had had quite enough with my desktop behaving badly - it's been running slowly, Norton claimed that I had a virus but couldn't actually get rid of it (and I was never that worried because the virus didn't actually seem to be doing anything), and Firefox was downloading files I succesfully downloaded months ago without my initiating any downloads. So I ran a couple of spyware scans (Ad-Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy), and upgraded my Norton Anti-Virus to the 2009 version and ran a basic-level scan (it now claims to have gotten rid of the aforementioned virus). I also upgraded to the latest version of Firefox and Flash Player. (I think that part of the problem causing my computer to slow down may have been a memory leak - at one point this afternoon, Task Manager said that I only had about 4Mb of available memory. I've been spending too much time surfing YouTube recently.) And miracle of miracles, everything seems to be running smoothly. When the screen saver activates, it no longer takes ten minutes to respond when I re-activate the computer. *knock on wood*
It occurs to me, though, that maybe I should upgrade to the latest version of iTunes as well, in case that has something to do with the memory leak.
Fortunately, thanks to a mention in the Globe and Mail on Friday, I knew that tonight's episode of Desperate Housewives was a new one. I think they caught a nice balance tonight - there was drama, but it wasn't over the top, end-of-the-world type stuff. It was nice to see Bob and Lee get something to do - they've been sorely underused. (I just loved Lee's scenes with Susan, though I think she should have reacted more strongly to his line, "Pile on the makeup. Drag queens get the first drink free.") And the struggle between Bree and Melina (I think that was her name) for the affections of Andrew and Alex is going to be fun. And it was nice to hear Gale Harold, even if it was only as a voiceover - I haven't seen anything recently on the QAF lists, but I gather he's recovering quite nicely from the motorcycle accident he had a few months ago.
I suspect, however, that Gaby is going to pay for putting Carlos into the situation where he felt that he had to accept the job he didn't want. And I don't think that Edie's throwing Dave out is going to end well...
I guess a lot of the newer fans (ie. people who saw the show for the first time with Christopher Eccleston) have become accustomed to the idea that the Doctor regenerates, since I haven't seen the wailing and gnashing of teeth that accompanied the transition from Nine to Ten. However, I've seen some wailing and gnashing of teeth in other areas...
First, yes, Matt Smith seems awfully young, and his resume very short. I would have liked to have seen an older actor, someone who would portray the character a little differently. It seems to me that they were basically looking for a clone of David Tennant, and possibly for someone who could portray the romantic aspects of the role. I will, of course, keep an open mind until I see how he handles the role... he may (and probably will) be perfectly fine. I just had my own preference, which was not what came to happen.
Second, that being said, I'd rather they avoided the romantic plotlines. (And yes, I'm aware that Ten and Donna had no romantic interaction. I'm sure that once I finally get to see those episodes, I'll find the lack of angst quite refreshing.) In fact, I wouldn't at all mind seeing a male companion, though I don't expect that'll happen.
Third, with regard to the complaint I've been seeing that they've again cast a white male actor... I'm perfectly willing to admit that my knowledge of the rules around regeneration are lacking. That being said, while I have no problem with the idea of a black Time Lord, or a Time Lady, why do people think that it's even possible for him to regenerate into anything other than a white male, since that's what he started as? "Curse Of The Fatal Death" notwithstanding, I don't believe there's ever been any suggestion that he could regenerate into a woman, is there? (I'm perfectly willing to accept it if there has been, I'm just not aware of it.) You may as well suggest that he regenerate into a Dalek.
Well, that's it for now, I suppose... back to the grind tomorrow.