Vicissitude and Season

A week from today we'll be waking up in Oakland, CA, in a hotel we haven't booked yet, any more than we've booked any other places we're staying in a week-and-a-half's journeys. This is sadly entirely typical (we are somewhat more organized when traveling out of the country, but only somewhat). J and I have a date to figure this out over tea this afternoon. If we're not elsewhere doing something else. I have a ridiculous list full of obscure items like "soak the bitter gourd seeds, do it NOW you idiot."

I did get the tickets to see "King Lear" at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival a week from Wednesday. Close to the last four tickets in the theatre, but still. (No one ever tells you some things are harder when your kids are adults, but scheduling family vacations is definitely one of those things.)

What we have been spending our evenings on, mostly, is mainlining "The Good Wife" - we're now more than halfway through season 3, and it only gets better. I did poke around on AO3 a bit (can't read much fic until we're caught up) and was both stoked and amused to note that Alicia/Kalinda is the most popular pairing. A fandom with femslash, wow. (Though I think Root/Shaw is going to be a big thing, if not up there with Finch/Reese. So happy about Shaw as a series regular.) (Also, the TGW/PoI actor overlap continues: since the last time I reported, Ken Leung and Michael Kelly have made appearances (and Carrie Preston is back, oh Elsbeth you dear thing). Michael Kelly was also (like many of these people) on "Lost," in one episode. He got run over by a bus. (wasn't him after all; guy looks just like him though!) I am eagerly awaiting his reappearance on "House of Cards," where I bet he's going to have a character arc of great subtlety. Or possibly continue to be blandly evil, which is equally delightful.)

Because of this commitment to the legal, political and personal adventures of Florrick and associates, we're way behind on everything else, and have multiple episodes waiting for us of "Doctor Who," "Castle" and "Mad Men." We did remember (at literally the very last second) to watch the finale of "Elementary" (what can I say, it's the show that comes after "Person of Interest" and that wasn't on) which I enjoyed quite a lot and almost didn't fall asleep during. I particularly liked the ending. Nearly all of my bullet-proof kinks come out of Aubrey/Maturin, and "naming a living creature after your friend" is near the top. (I am, naturally, trying to think of how this might translate to PoI. Could Finch come up with a stunning new bit of code and call its result "reesing"?)

As I said before, it's not that I don't like "Elementary," it's that it's on at 10 and I am beginning to be the little old lady who falls asleep in front of the TV. Which does not make me happy about the shift of PoI to Tuesdays at 10, but I guess I'll cope. I just don't understand why CBS makes this show so hard to watch, though. I'm perfectly willing to buy episodes of shows I can't see as they air; for some reason we can't get ABC to come in on our cable-less TV, plus the aforementioned 10 pm thing, so we have watched "Castle" entirely via Amazon Instant Video, and I mostly haven't regretted the money. And we watch cable shows this way too. Helps that our DVD player is programmed to work with Amazon and Netflix directly. But PoI is not available anywhere for money or legally free as it airs, which seems astoundingly impractical. *growls ineffectually at network*

Okay, time to go soak those bitter gourd seeds. Or do the blog post about the ridiculously-late-frost-related death of my Juliet tomato and Romeo pepper duo, titled "Never was a story of more woe."

1) *watches rooftop scene again* I think "It's my process" has to be my favorite line from PoI S2 (so far). It's probably more Emerson than Finch (do computer programmers talk about their "process"? Actors do. And writers) but he makes it Finch, so that's okay. And Reese's eye-rollyness. Comedy gold in the midst of incipient tragedy: so my thing.

2) Not that I need a canonic response to the Boston Marathon bombing, but I do currently have Finch and Reese in an approximate timeline-of-now sitting in a motel in western Massachusetts not-deciding where to go next, and I'm wondering if Boston is mentioned must one accommodate reality, even when reality means a failure on the part of the Machine? On the other hand, the Machine is not feeling well at the moment, and also, why do I care when I'm writing an obvious AU (or will have done so soon enough, I'm sure. YAY SHOW BACK THIS WEEK).

3) Several hours of weeding yesterday = achy back and legs. But there are trashcans filled with weeds (I will try not to think about how many truckloads of weeds are left out there) and podcasts helped. (Not Michael Emerson again, no. I'll save him for something more difficult to dig out than deadnettle and hairy bittercress.) The Nerdist chats are still weird and sometimes irritating, but where else are you going to hear Dominic Monaghan doing Yoda impressions, or Jorge Garcia geeking out about time travel?

4) Speaking of which, the hosts were trying to get Lost-actors-behaving-badly stories out of both of them (neither complied), which made me glad yet again to not have been caught up in Lost fandom while it was airing or at anytime since. (Not that I get caught up in fandoms ever really. I consider myself to be very much on the edge of PoI fandom, or at least firmly embedded in the AO3 puddle and merely peering occasionally into the lake of Caveezle yearning and animated gifs that is tumblr.) (For the record, I look at Jim Caviezel and say objectively, my, that is a fine sample of well-put-together manhood, that does not turn me on in the least. I look at Michael Emerson and go guh. We are not responsible for our biology. Although there is plenty of Emerson-sex-god yearning on tumblr as well, which restores my faith in my own oddities.)

5) It is probably not a good idea to go out this evening and drink lots of microbrew beer and then get up at six tomorrow to go off and run a garden for four hours. But that's what I'm doing. *reminds self to drink water* *congratulates self on having a bullet point without Michael Emerson or Harold Finch in it*

*writes*

1) I have been interrupting yunitsa at her work every day (a welcome interruption, I'm told) with digital cries of "oh, Mr. Finch." Last night was season 1 closer and season 2 opener, a very tense pair of eps despite my being spoiled for the plot. I am actually saying "oh, Mr. Reese" now. He's just so delightfully determined and impatient and actually showing a snippet of emotion in the midst of horrible crisis.

2) We are going to have a hurricane. Sandy (male Sandy I think? I've lost track) is chugging up the coast and is supposed to turn ashore somewhere in our area on Monday or Tuesday. It's nice to have the time to prepare. I should go buy some ice. Need to study the weather maps more, but apparently there will be some kind of epic collision between Sandy and a nor'easter (unnamed. Perhaps we should call it Reese) that means we could really get pummelled. So you may not hear from me for a few days. I told yunitsa I would send her a "oh, Mr. Finch" on my phone to show I was all right if the power goes out. "Ah," she said. "Contingency plan." I laughed.

3) This is great. (Via Language Log, of course.)

English is a little bit like a child. We love and nurture it into being, and once it gains gross motor skills, it starts going exactly where we don’t want it to go: it heads right for the goddamned light sockets. We put it in nice clothes and tell it to make friends, and it comes home covered in mud, with its underwear on its head and someone else’s socks on its feet. We ask it to clean up or to take out the garbage, and instead it hollers at us that we don’t run its life, man. Then it stomps off to its room to listen to The Smiths in the dark.

4) I really don't want to make any more medical appointments, but I guess I should see someone about my right knee. It's been sore and stiff and unsteady for months and really bad lately (I have acquired a Finch-like limp, really not a case of fannish transference I swear). It gets better if I remember to ice regularly and take ibuprofen, and it's probably arthritis, which I can't do much more about, but I'd like to be able to take some long walks in this lovely weather (not the hurricane, I mean, but what we have otherwise in October) and dig in my community garden plot (did I mention that? Next!) and generally exercise to keep the nice weight I'm at through no fault of my own. I need an "ice and ibuprofen" alarm on my phone, perhaps.

5) Community garden plot! (Allotment, for the Brits.) My home veg garden has become increasingly shady over the last couple of years (trees. Who knew they grew?) so I put in for a plot in the local garden, saying I'd take over anything given up this season and pay for it so I had it going into next year. It didn't hurt that the person who runs the gardens for the county is a close friend, but only because she told me what to say; it's all fair and honest otherwise. So now I have a plot, given up recently by the holder because of ill health, but aside from the thistles creeping in from the next plot over, which is a wilderness that has now been seized and the holder banned, it's in pretty good shape (and has peas already growing in it!). So I've been weeding and adding compost and mulching as I get the chance, and I have little herb plants to put around the edges, but otherwise I'll just wait until March to plant.

In other garden-related news, I have been asked to actually teach the vegetable gardening segment (about 4.5 hours worth, which is either way too short or way too long) to the new Master Gardener class in February. *gulp* But I think I know how to make it make sense. I'll also be teaching one day at the community college again in the spring.

6) Off to Allentown again next weekend. Assuming no apocalyptic disaster, which I am not expecting. *crosses fingers*

7) Trying not to worry about the election. I can't do anything about it anyway, besides vote of course, not that even that is tie-breaking in the presidential race. If Maryland doesn't go for Obama, we have had an apocalyptic disaster, and my energy level has not been high enough, even if my social anxiety level was low enough, to go knocking on doors in the parts of Virginia or Pennsylvania that matter. But we do have a gay marriage ballot question, and a horribly gerrymandered congressional race, and other stuff where my vote counts. The gerrymandering favors the Democratic candidate, which I will take happy advantage of and then vote (ballot question) to throw the ridiculous map out. I mean, look at it.

8) I actually read some books (it has been all TV and fanfic for a long while) but that will have to be another post since this one is too long already.

I can do the DVD commentary meme now that I have something to work with. From philomytha:

Pick any passage of 500 words or fewer from any story I've written, and comment to this post with that selection. I will then give you the equivalent of a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what's going on in the characters' heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you’d expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

I have listened to approximately two DVD commentaries (because I really prefer to hear the soundtrack) but never mind that. Commentary on writing is more fun.

On a completely different... wait, I can link them. Were I doing a DVD commentary for "Lewis" episodes "Life Born of Fire," "The Quality of Mercy," and at least one other I can't think of right now, there would be a point where I started saying something like "Oh my God look at the gorgeous scarlet runner beans" and then "Oh look, runner beans again" and so forth. I mean, the number of shots with a character's head framed by runner beans just got funny after a while, and this is not a show that spends a lot of time in gardens. BUT I NOTICE THESE THINGS, OKAY. If I get around to grabbing some screencaps, I may do a post for Grow It Eat It, although it will have to say "Look, people, at the gorgeous English scarlet runner beans. We really can't grow them here." Though God knows I keep trying. But summers where it hits over 95 F on a regular basis just do not work for heat-sensitive plants (plus, Mexican bean beetles adore them).

Well, that's gardening for you: always wanting something you can't have. I may manage to score a community garden plot (Brit. allotment) to replace my increasingly shady vegetable garden, thanks to today's conversation with my friend who administers the county program; not by circumventing the rules, mind you, but by being told exactly how to use them to get what I want. Hopefully the next time we get weeks of scorching temperatures and no rain I'll still want it.

I need to catch up with documenting my life in all the various places I do it, but I seem to be alternatively busy and migrainey, and doing silly things like going all the way over to Derwood just to plant onions, which did actually need planting, but perhaps it was an excuse to drive through the cherry-blossomed streets while playing Mozart's Requiem really loud. (It is not good car music because parts of it are very soft, and my car makes noises. But I needed it.)

The calendar gets checked pretty often these days, as it's hard to believe it's still March; all sorts of stuff is blooming and leafing out that has never done that before this early. What will come of this, I cannot say, but it is hard to harrumph ominously while the weather is so gorgeous. And I ordered a thousand thousand slimy things red wiggler worms yesterday, which is very exciting, at least to me.

We have made a sudden plan to go to South Carolina for spring break, although I can't go for all of it, so I will fly down several days after J. and P. have driven there. Beach house! Charleston! Yay.

Book catch-up: am reading a mystery series by Frank Tallis set in turn-of-the-20th-century Vienna, with a police inspector and a psychologist who are friends and play music together and solve crimes and eat lots of pastry. Good sense of place and attitudes/preoccupations/obsessions; I think one should occasionally get annoyed with characters whose worldview is different from one's own, and I do (especially with regard to Clara. Liebermann: My, she has unexplored depths after all! Me: Well, duh. Why are you marrying her again?) but basically they are both sympathetic dudes who hold my attention and make me want to keep reading. Part of it is context, of course, like the bit in the current book where the killer has painted an oddly-shaped cross in blood on the wall, and you read the description and think and then say "oh shit, it's a swastika." In 1902. And Liebermann (the doctor) is Jewish, and rather Panglossian with it (listen to your dad, Max; he knows what's coming).

More reading before bed. Yes.

Things That Are Surprisingly Like Barrayaran Political Strategy: vegetable garden planning. I am seriously thinking of investing in some colored plastic flimsies to represent crop rotation, succession planting, etc. (This is for the large demo garden I help run, not my own small collection of raised beds, though I could stand some planning there too.)

Things You Wish Reporters Would Ask: I was listening to NPR last evening and there was a story about Burmese pythons in Florida, how they got loose and are wreaking havoc among the local wildlife, 99% reduction in raccoon populations, 85% or something in deer, and they went on with a good discussion about possible other factors like habitat and water loss and so forth, and meanwhile I am sitting there saying THEY EAT DEER? I'm assuming these are the same whitetails we have in excess around here (SEND THE PYTHONS) rather than some exotic Florida form of mousedeer or dik-dik. (My neighbors just got back from a trip to Kenya. Great photos. Dik-dik aw.) Seems... a large initial bite. *has The Little Prince pictures in head* Not to joke, this is a real problem, but I suspect it won't be solved unless the pythons start eating cats and Chihuahuas in large quantities.

Things, Um, About TV: For whatever reason I am still intermittently catching up on "Once Upon a Time" which continues amusingly overacted and hovering on the edge of interesting plotting but not falling over. The most recent episode featured Richard Schiff being obviously bored as King Leopold (Apparently Snow White's Father), his one moment of animation occurring ironically as he was being bitten to death by vicious snakes (not Burmese pythons). And speaking of actors turning up in unexpected places, Hilarie Burton was on "Castle" last week, very not-Sara as a Kim Kardashian clone (with a dog the right size for a python snack), excellent work. And I hear Shirley Maclaine is going to play Lady Grantham's mother on season 3 of "Downton Abbey." Myself, I am not yet finished season 1, in which I am enjoying Penelope Wilton not being the Prime Minister, and Sam Tyler's mother as the head housemaid.