Tag Archive for 'tv'

Yup, still watching West Wing

Published on December 2, 2006 in Muse. 0 Comments Tags: .

Call it the extended TiVo effect; or the Netflix envelope, or whatever.  We don’t watch much live TV – hardly ever.  But we watch a fair number of DVDs.  West Wing in particular comes in season-sized boxes from Amy’s good friend from college.  She sends a new season every couple of months or whenever she flies up to visit us.

So we’re watching West Wing, much much later than everyone else.  It’s not the few hours/days delay that the TiVo gives you, but it’s the couple of years later that waiting for the friend who bought the box set to finish.  It works fine for me; I really don’t miss the daily TV or discussing it with friends.  Discussions happen online anyway, so the immediacy of the watercooler conversation doesn’t quite apply.

We’re finally on the last season.  Amy is far ahead of me, but I have indeed finally found out who the “secret military space shuttle” leaker was.  It was fairly nicely done, with the broad hints in the wrong direction, then the tiny hints just far enough beforehand to make it interesting.  I really like the double-play of the last 2 minutes of the previous episode re-done in the next episode.  Now I’m trying to think back to what previous episodes had the real clues to whodunit – the more I think, the more bits I see in the past.

(I’m not sure why I’m trying to avoid spoilers, since there really aren’t many people who would care about WW who haven’t already figured this out, but that’s how I started, so here we are.)

Someone else remembers Major Mudd!

Published on November 19, 2006 in Muse. 58 Comments Tags: , , .

OK, Google shows that a fair number of people also remember the good Major, so I suppose it’s no surprise.  But it’s still one of those names that made me laugh out loud when I read it in the “Pierced” column of the weekly Globe magazine this week.  I don’t even know clearly what the full memory of the old Muddster was, but it was a happy one, one of those childhood essences of the golden old days.

Several sites have general info (disappointingly not as detailed as I’d like to see) on the whole raft of shows from that era, ones that I every now and then mention to my friends, most of whom go “Huh?” at me.  At least all of those who didn’t grow up around here.  It’s kind of like my standby question to see how long someone’s actually lived in eastern MA.  “Where do you get if you turn left on Spitbrook, right on Daniel Webster?”

If you know the answer, then congratulations, you used to live in MA (or NH) a loooong time ago, just like me.

Ya, we watch West Wing

Published on October 26, 2006 in Muse. 1 Comment Tags: , .

Well, a bit late, actually.  See, although Roxanne now likes watching West Wing – no idea how that happened, it having a stunning lack of Pooh and Tigger in it – it’s really a bit too old for her.  But more to the point: we don’t watch TV when it’s on TV.  We really only watch stuff on DVDs.  In this particular case, when our friend (who bought the series) mails us the next season’s set of disks.

Amy’s way ahead of me at the moment, so it’s a bit confusing.  But I’m hoping to slowly catch up at night, if we can ever get Roxanne back onto a more normal bedtime.  Then I figure I can watch one catch up episode a night and eventually figure out why Josh is working for Santos before Amy watches the season closer.

The dialog is good.  Although I’m also re-reading some old MFK Fisher, and realizing that it’s even more quotable than WW gets to most of the time.

Busy weekend in CT and NY

Published on May 9, 2006 in Muse and Travel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

We planned another long weekend away in CT with Amy’s parents – very nice.  It’s always relaxing down there.  Roxanne loves playing both inside and outside down there, and always remembers their cat’s names.  Days and weeks after we come back from visiting them, she’ll still be saying “Moggie hiding!” and “Cheerio sleeping!”.  (Yes, dear, that’s because they’re scaredy cats and run away at the sound of young children…)

Had a nice dinner and gave out birthday presents to the gaggle of relatives who have April/May birthdays.  Stayed up late watching cable TV – separately, unfortunately.  Amy was getting Roxanne to go to sleep (and watching ???), and Shane was downstairs watching the SciFi channel and Ronin.  What is it about staying over at someone’s house with cable TV when you don’t have it at home?  It’s a guilty and unhealthy pleasure: you just can’t stop watching, but you know you shouldn’t and feel kind of icky when you’re done.

Sunday we drove off to “the City”, as it’s natives call it.  Haven’t they ever heard of the Hub? Geez.  Actually New York City was much nicer than I had anticipated.  Of course we were visiting the upper east side on a beautiful spring Sunday, with a choice of two free street parking spaces, so we definitely had luck and location on our side.  Streets were nice, and the parks especially so.  We meant to just stay for lunch with our friend Birdman (long story), but ended up spending the whole afternoon walking and shopping.  Yum, two dozen mixed bagels to bring home.

We took forever coming home since we tried a few back roads (GPS is great, but tiny display is hard to navigate large-scale on) and visited one of my family’s ancestral homes in far southern CT.  Or rather not visiting: the current occupant (I won’t say “owner”, since they don’t actually own the property – long story) actually tore down the beautiful colonial/split level house that used to stand there and built a neuvaux monstrosity in it’s place.  There go those happy memories, along with several of the live Christmas trees that my family used to buy and then plant in the front yard each year.  There was a small forest of them.  And darn – I forgot to look at the top, since I was betting that some of them still had remnants of christmas lights at the far top branches.
Monday ended up being a laze until we really have to pack to drive home day. Not too bad.  And then complete randomness struck: at the very end of a quick Stop & Shop trip, I met a very old friend from the high school era!  He did remember how to spell my name, but hasn’t emailed me yet – if you’re reading, Admiral, then give me a ping.  Heck, I can tell you how I got to be and Admiral myself.

All in all a very nice weekend.  Roxanne was great, even in the car for long drives.  She loved CT and most of NY, except for being a little wierded out by our friend when we first met him (it’s an on-and-off stranger anxiety thing she’s doing).  I hope she’s enjoying all the cool places we’ve been!