I'm a pillar of society, albeit planted yesterday
I finished The Liar on Saturday, and I think I promised go4it I would tell her what I thought of it, oh so many moons ago. I . . . liked it. I think. Or rather, I'm not sure. Maybe? It took a little while for me to sort out what was happening, so the beginning was a little trying for my patience, but I liked the middle, the middle clicked along and was highly entertaining; it felt like the book kept ending, but unnecessarily so, like it couldn't figure out how to stop. The revelation that it was all just a game struck me as a lot sadder than I think it struck Adrian. And yet I like how it ended up finally. It would profit hugely from a second read-through I'm sure. Right now I've started Edward Conlon's Blue Blood, this massive tome about life as a New York City police officer, and it's fantastic. I'm only forty-five pages into it or something, but this one I'm already recommending.
Saturday night my parents and I went out for Indian food and then came home to break in the Second Season West Wing DVDs. This is where I declare my undying love and devotion for "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen", two of the best hours of television ever written and performed. As I just told silentfire, one of my favorite scenes (aside from Leo telling Jed, "this is the age of Jed Bartlett, my friend. You're going to open your mouth and lift houses off the ground. Whole houses, right off the ground"; and Toby finding Josh sitting on the ground with his hands pressed to his chest; and that scene in the airport that makes me cry, followed by the scene in Josh's hospital room that makes me cry more) is when Margaret tells Leo that she can sign the President's name.
Leo: You can sign the President's name?
Margaret: Yeah.
Leo: On a document removing him from power and handing it to someone else?
Margaret: Yeah! Or . . . do you think the White House Counsel would say that was a bad idea?
Leo: I think the White House Counsel would say it was a coup d'état!
Margaret: Well. I'd probably end up doing some time for that.
Leo: I would think! And what the hell were you doing practicing the President's signature?
Margaret: It was just for fun!
Leo: We've got separation of powers, checks and balances, and Margaret, vetoing things and sending them back to the Hill.
My mother and I LAUGHED and LAUGHED, waking up my father who had, of course, already fallen asleep in his chair. We made it through "The Midterms" before my parents called it quits and took themselves off to bed, but I stuck around for the last four episodes of Firefly.
This isn't like reluctantly turning the last page of an engrossing and exciting novel and thinking but I want to know what happens next. This is like turning the last page of the first volume of an engrossing and exciting twenty-seven volumes, only to learn that not only do the other twenty-six volumes not exist, but somebody ripped the last fifty pages out of Volume I to boot. The reaction to this one is where's the rest of it, you fuckers?! and you use double punctuation when you say it. When does Serenity hit theaters?
I did three loads of laundry on Sunday, boom boom boom, and left shirts and skirts and a pair of pants hanging all over the laundry room while we went to dinner at cousin M.'s for her birthday. As a birthday present my mother taught her how to make her super-secret family recipe (*cough*) barbecue spareribstalk about a present everyone can enjoy. We drank champagne on her backyard patio before sitting down, and I met my mother at the sliding-glass door when I told everyone to come in. "Mmm," I said, "nothing like champagne on an empty stomach." And she said, "I know, it's such a nice buzz, isn't it? I can say things like that to you now, right?" My mother is adorable. (Today she mentioned she sometimes tries to put the cat on the dog's back, like to give him a ride, but one of them always runs away, and I cracked up.) We left relatively early but it was a school night and my mother went to bed early; I stayed up reading fic until five-thirty.
And today! Today I have done nothing! I pretended to unpack some boxes and I helped set my mother up with the first day of a light weight-training regimen, and I darted out for a five-minute milk run (literallywe needed a gallon of milk for the ziti with quattro formaggi and I drove up to the Farm Stores on 46th).
There's nothing like your father turning to you and askingas you sit with your parents after dinner watching last week's House, M.D."what's a dominatrix?" Luckily I'd seen the show when it aired originally and knew they'd soon explain it, succinctly if not in full. I love House. Don't you just want to take him home with you? In lieu of that, I'll settle for knowing where all the House/Wilson fic is. My mother, who hadn't seen an episode until tonight, wanted to know if they lived together. I think fandom would say she's not wrong.
Tomorrow malelia_honu is coming around and collecting me for a day of romping around Palm Beach County, so I'll make tonight an early one. Relatively speaking.
Saturday night my parents and I went out for Indian food and then came home to break in the Second Season West Wing DVDs. This is where I declare my undying love and devotion for "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen", two of the best hours of television ever written and performed. As I just told silentfire, one of my favorite scenes (aside from Leo telling Jed, "this is the age of Jed Bartlett, my friend. You're going to open your mouth and lift houses off the ground. Whole houses, right off the ground"; and Toby finding Josh sitting on the ground with his hands pressed to his chest; and that scene in the airport that makes me cry, followed by the scene in Josh's hospital room that makes me cry more) is when Margaret tells Leo that she can sign the President's name.
Leo: You can sign the President's name?
Margaret: Yeah.
Leo: On a document removing him from power and handing it to someone else?
Margaret: Yeah! Or . . . do you think the White House Counsel would say that was a bad idea?
Leo: I think the White House Counsel would say it was a coup d'état!
Margaret: Well. I'd probably end up doing some time for that.
Leo: I would think! And what the hell were you doing practicing the President's signature?
Margaret: It was just for fun!
Leo: We've got separation of powers, checks and balances, and Margaret, vetoing things and sending them back to the Hill.
My mother and I LAUGHED and LAUGHED, waking up my father who had, of course, already fallen asleep in his chair. We made it through "The Midterms" before my parents called it quits and took themselves off to bed, but I stuck around for the last four episodes of Firefly.
This isn't like reluctantly turning the last page of an engrossing and exciting novel and thinking but I want to know what happens next. This is like turning the last page of the first volume of an engrossing and exciting twenty-seven volumes, only to learn that not only do the other twenty-six volumes not exist, but somebody ripped the last fifty pages out of Volume I to boot. The reaction to this one is where's the rest of it, you fuckers?! and you use double punctuation when you say it. When does Serenity hit theaters?
I did three loads of laundry on Sunday, boom boom boom, and left shirts and skirts and a pair of pants hanging all over the laundry room while we went to dinner at cousin M.'s for her birthday. As a birthday present my mother taught her how to make her super-secret family recipe (*cough*) barbecue spareribstalk about a present everyone can enjoy. We drank champagne on her backyard patio before sitting down, and I met my mother at the sliding-glass door when I told everyone to come in. "Mmm," I said, "nothing like champagne on an empty stomach." And she said, "I know, it's such a nice buzz, isn't it? I can say things like that to you now, right?" My mother is adorable. (Today she mentioned she sometimes tries to put the cat on the dog's back, like to give him a ride, but one of them always runs away, and I cracked up.) We left relatively early but it was a school night and my mother went to bed early; I stayed up reading fic until five-thirty.
And today! Today I have done nothing! I pretended to unpack some boxes and I helped set my mother up with the first day of a light weight-training regimen, and I darted out for a five-minute milk run (literallywe needed a gallon of milk for the ziti with quattro formaggi and I drove up to the Farm Stores on 46th).
There's nothing like your father turning to you and askingas you sit with your parents after dinner watching last week's House, M.D."what's a dominatrix?" Luckily I'd seen the show when it aired originally and knew they'd soon explain it, succinctly if not in full. I love House. Don't you just want to take him home with you? In lieu of that, I'll settle for knowing where all the House/Wilson fic is. My mother, who hadn't seen an episode until tonight, wanted to know if they lived together. I think fandom would say she's not wrong.
Tomorrow malelia_honu is coming around and collecting me for a day of romping around Palm Beach County, so I'll make tonight an early one. Relatively speaking.