lIfe earlier this week
I had to kill no wasps today! What a marvel.
Yesterday the death count was only two - I cannot imagine why as spring and war weather approaches there should be fewer of the little buggers, but that is what I find.
Today I was the only one at home. Mom was off being a librarian and dad was off doing his work thing. I'm not quite sure what he's doing, something at a school.
On Monday I read my full delivery of Magic Tree House books to see how they're put together and what I should include in mine for verisimilitude.
I found I need lots of dialogue, and illustrations and animals that are so friendly they must have escaped from a Disney cartoon.
Seriously. In Polarbears Past Bedtime Jack and Annie hung out with Polar Bear cubs and when they all got stuck out on thin ice the mother bear came and rescued the cubs and did not savage the small hairless foodstuffs.
We have overly friendly dolphins and freakishly intelligent (and therefore friendly) cats and Pteronadons too. It grew to be quite annoying by the seventh book I read.
Things are so damn simple in magic tree house word.
And something that bothered me even back in the nineties when I read these the first time. Morgan Le Fay is a librarian? I'm sorry. No. Unless you're Lirael Daughter of the Clayr, you don't get to be and enchantress librarian.
I guess I do kind of like the books, or else I wouldn't be writing one right now. But ye gods, I want to make the world less shiny/happy/friendly.
Sunday night when I got in from Houston I watched my backlog of TV, the first two episode of New Amsterdam and 1x05 of Ashes to Ashes.
A2A is definitely disappointing, after a shining first episode, Alex has not kept up with my expectations.
New Amsterdam on the other hand, now that's been fun. Monday nights 8/9 central. It's smart and I'm enjoying it.
No fingers itching to hit the ten second fast forward key.
I hear nice things about the Sarah Connor Chronicles finale but I got impatient with the series around episode five or so - when it seemed that nothing was ever going to happen and that John Connor could not be a bigger idiot or any less self aware.
I listened to the new free Big Finish adventure, Cuddlesome, on my muddy trek about the crawfish ponds today. I quite liked it although five didn't seem particularly Fiveish. This may just be me being aware that the script was an Audio Visual one first.
I've also watched The Time Meddler these last few days - with commentary and without. It's a smashing good story with Bill Hartnell while he was still sprightly and mischievous as anything. It's got a good script and has some absolutely classic lines.
Peter and Verity Lambert and some other people commentate - they don't particularly focus on what's happening on screen, but that doesn't matter they're asking each other very interesting questions about various aspects of the program that they've always been curious about. Splendid stuff.
I got my hands on 92.8 % of the 25th anniversary edition of The Five Doctors and enjoyed one commentary on that particularly much. It's David Tennant and Phil Colinson and some other people commentating all the way back in 2006 before Time Crash was even a twinkle in Russell's eye. Fascinating that David is still recording season two and so all that's broadcast of his is the Christmas invasion. A fun time capsule.
They spend a lot of time saying gosh, this must have been devilishly expensive for the time an isn't Richard Hurndal not a good William Hartnell replacement.
There's a second commentary with Matthew Strickson and Nicholas Courtney and Carole Anne Ford ( and someone else?) And while they aren't terribly funny you do learn some nice things. Carol Anne thinks that Richard Hurdall did a good job being Hartnell so there you go. I'm going to go with the opinion of David's bunch though.
On the drive from Houston to Baton Rouge I got Julie to listen to Shada!!! It was so great! She watched all of season one and I lent her my season two disks. --I just left her a voice mail explaining that she'll have to download GOM or VLC to play them. Silly of me to forget to explain that.
At nicht when I've got my parents held down to one spot to eat dinner I've been showing them Top Gear. I'll put an episode on the iPod and let it play. So far I've shown them the African, Polar, and American episodes and the indestructible truck segments.
Something utterly STUPID I did was try and put my DVD I'd burned ( it's got menus and everything) in our DVD player at home. It didn't recognized the disc so I fiddle around a bit and put it in PAL format. BIG MISTAKE. Now the TV and DVD player aren't communicating any more. The screen goes all black when I turn it to DVD input and I can't see to navigate the complex menus back to NTSC! I'm so screwed. I've never actually permanently harmed anything before by pressing buttons!
There had to be a first.