Corner of Bourbon & Division

Not a very productive work day, partly because I am really, really tired, and partly because I just cannot seem to "buckle down" when I'm home. I'm not surprised, but I am a little disappointed that even though I made a pretty good attempt to... I don't know, psychologically front-load a bit in order to mitigate what I knew had happened before, I still didn't do very well.

I am super tired, and I am torn between taking a nap now or trying to tough it out a few hours and going to bed early instead. Ugh.

I'd forgotten that I intended to watch a new Canadian TV show called Trickster, and so I jumped on board this week. It's only six episodes, and it was really good (and also quite trippy). It follows the story of Jared, a teenager who lives with his single mother on a reservation, who slowly realizes that there is far more to the world--and to himself--than he ever suspected, and that he has a destiny to fulfil. It's based on a trilogy of books by Eden Robinson, which I intend to pick up now that I know it exists.

Unfortunately, what I didn't know was that there was a scandal/controversy about this a few months ago. The show was meant to be a 100% indigenous production, and it turns out that the director/showrunner/co-writer misrepresented her indigenous heritage. As a result, CBC has cancelled production of the second season, which is very disappointing. I was hoping they'd be able to find different indigenous creative talent to take over. The cast are stellar, and I really enjoyed the plot and writing and overall pacing. Anyway, the first (and probably only) season is well worth watching, if that's a thing you're interested in.

This weekend I am devoting to doing some decluttering and cleaning of the house. I have a lot of small things to do and an even larger number of large things to do. Unfucking my life is a multi-step process.

Spent the day hanging out with Peggy, who continues to be an extremely good dog all around. She mostly didn't even attempt to unlock the back door.

On a friend's recommendation I started watching The Boys, and, uh, yikes. It starts with fridging a woman of colour, and goes downhill from there. Everyone in the show is an asshole to some degree (except Starlight, she has her moments), and it is horrifically violent. I say this, and I watch slasher films for fun. Maybe it's because it's only got moments of extreme violence, so the contrast is especially stark, and the person who recommended it to me didn't warn me about any of it: the fridging, the violence, the subtle misogyny and homophobia, the works. It was billed to me as a satire about superheroes, and instead it's more like a bargain bin Watchmen. I didn't especially enjoy that either, but I think it was done better.

Anyway, so far I can't recommend it unless you really enjoy all of the things I mentioned above. If you are into dark narratives about how superheroes are raping, murdering assholes ruled by corporations and motivated only by self-interest and greed, then you might enjoy this. I think I could enjoy it if there were less rape, and if I weren't being asked to accept yet another woman gruesomely killed off in order to further a man's plotline (actually, the show has several women killed to further the plotlines of men), and if it were better written. The writing is okay, but I feel like better writing could have elevated this show into something really great to watch.

I will fully own that I have watched several episodes. I kind of can't look away, kind of like when I was still watching 24, not matter how bad it got. I'm interested in seeing where the overarching plot goes in the first season, and then I think I will let it drop. Luckily the seasons are short ones.

On that note, it is time to put the puppy to bed, and then eventually myself.

Today was a very lazy Saturday. I hung out with Peggy and the cats and watched multiple episodes of Death in Paradise, which is very enjoyable and requires no intellectual effort or major emotional commitment on my part. It kind of has a revolving door of "eccentric" white male Detective Inspectors, and while part of me wishes they'd depart from the formula, another part of me understands that the whole schtick of the show is the "fish out of water" trope of the white English man in the tropics. Either way, it's a nice way to spend a Saturday with your pets.

Peggy is, as always, too clever for her own good and has learned how to unlock the back door and jimmy it open. She then gets to launch herself gaily into the neighbourhood to chase squirrels and explore and zoom around. A friend cut a 2 by 4 for me to use to block the track of the sliding glass door, but she's figured out how to dislodge it. Anyway, I have constructed a temporary barricade with a chair and a cat tree, and I am going to get a proper barring mechanism from Canadian Tire, or something.

I discovered this year that Peggy is something of a savant when it comes to locking mechanisms. First she figured out how to open her crate on her own. Then she worked out her seatbelt in the car, followed by the kennel she sometimes stays at when she's with her trainer. This year she started training for bird hunting, and she figured out the mechanism of the traps her trainer uses to hold live birds so that she could jump right on top of them and launch the birds directly into her mouth. Too clever by half, is what she is. It's hilarious but also super inconvenient.

In less fun news, my downstairs toilet leaked and started flooding the powder room last night. Luckily I caught it pretty quickly, so there wasn't any water damage, but now I have to call my property managers and ask them to send a plumber to fix it. Ugh. It's just inconvenient, nothing worse than that. I won't have to pay for it (probably), and all I have to do is open a work ticket. Actually, come to think of it, there's an internet portal for that these days, so I'll probably do that. I just don't want to deal with a plumber over the weekend if I don't have to.

I went to bed late yesterday because of Mage, so I am considering an early night tonight. I also kind of want to play Stardew Valley after I've put Peggy to bed. I have to put her in her crate when I'm playing a video game, because bless every bone in her body, she gets into things if I'm not watching her. That means that I try not to play games during daylight hours anymore, because I don't want to coop her up any more than I have to--she already spends a lot of time in her crate when I'm at work on the days she's not at daycare. She doesn't mind her crate at all, I should specify. In fact, she voluntarily puts herself to bed when she's tired. She gets special treats in the crate that she gets at no other time, and she seems to understand it's her safe space for sleeping and being cozy. Still, she's an active, high-energy dog, so I want her to be able to zoom around to her heart's content when I'm home. That means video games are now limited to maybe a couple of hours in the evening, and I only seem to get to them once a week or so these days. It's not the end of the world, but I do miss playing for longer stretches at a time.

I think I had originally planned to talk about work in this post, but ugh. I'll come back to it another time. Things are fine at work, I was mainly planning to chatter to myself about my plans. I'm going to do some work tomorrow on the standardisation of the PSE evaluations, because I want to make sure to have the first draft sent to the supervisors for their input before Monday. I have Quaker Meeting for Worship in the morning and Meeting for Business in the early afternoon, so that should take up the rest of my day. It will still be a quiet day, but much busier than today, that's for sure.

( Trigger warning for cancer and death )

Moving on to stuff that's not about cancer and death...

I've been watching a lot of TV recently. Probably more than is reasonably good for me, but that's actually par for the course. The difference is that, rather than watching it during the down times on my night shifts, I've been doing it more at home. At work I've actually been working a bit more. But in the meantime, at home, rather than do anything productive, I've been watching Veronica Mars (among others) and playing an unhealthy amount of Stardew Valley.

Shockingly, I've been having a lot of trouble managing my time. It feels like I'm juggling too many balls at once (funny story, I can't physically juggle even two balls, I've tried), and so, true to form, I did what I always do when I feel overwhelmed and just kind of, well, avoided everything except the bare minimum of what I needed to do to get by.

The good thing is that I have a puppy, and she needs me to get out of the house every day. I haven't always taken her for long walks, but I have taken her out each day, and I try to work with her on her training each day, so that's probably been the best thing for my mental health. That, and the fact that she is the cutest, sweetest, most loving dog in the universe. It's all very helpful. :)

Otherwise, though, things aren't awesome. I think the trigger for this latest massive avoidance is the extra $1,500 I'm getting charged for university. There's nothing like financial stress to knock me for a loop and make me metaphorically crawl under my own bed and refuse to deal with the world. Is it productive? Nope. Is it my default behaviour? Yep. So, something to work on, I guess.

I'm heading to fearsclave 's this weekend for some romping around in the wilderness with Peggy, and introducing her to the joys of fishing. Or, more specifically, to the joys of fish. fearsclave has a long-standing tradition of letting his dogs lick the fish before they get taken back and cleaned (thoroughly!) for later consumption. Hopefully we will have an excellent day of fishing, which means actually catching fish. Not catching fish is still a good day of fishing, but I would really like to see Peggy's reaction to a fish. My guess is that she will go bonkers. 

I've got a short list of things I want to get done before I leave on Friday. I'm working on keeping things realistic, because I have a tendency to over-plan and have a poor sense of how much I can actually accomplish in a given amount of time. Apparently that's a common thing with ADHD, the inability to properly gauge the length of time unfamiliar tasks will take. That, and forgetting that you need to plan time *around* the task. Also, I get overambitious about plans when I'm on nights at work. I have hours stretching in front of me, and it always seems like future!me is going to have tons of energy and motivation to do all these things, and in practice future!me is way more interested in catching up on sleep. So I hope I've worked it out correctly this time.

Okay, time to get back to work. These night shift duties aren't going to do themselves.

 I got absolutely nothing of value done today. I don't know why I'm in such a contrary mood lately, but I think it might be attributable to the fact that I had no choice but to pack and move house in the last couple of months, and now I'm in a "you can't make me!" phase as a reaction to that. Is it productive or reasonable? NOPE. But there you go.

In short, there's not much to report on. I decided to treat myself to several trade paperbacks of The Walking Dead, so that's my light reading sorted for the next couple of days, I hope. There are also a bunch of new TV shows that I want to try, as well as some that I'm not caught up on. I haven't yet watched Critical Role from last night, and I probably have a few episodes each of Criminal Minds, Elementary, and Blindspot left to watch.

Speaking of Criminal Minds, a few weeks ago I decided to give Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders a shot, and dear God, it is BAD. Not even Gary Sinise can save that Americano-centric, xenophobic piece of garbage. If any of you were planning on watching, do yourselves a favour and avoid it like the plague. I am reasonably tolerant of rah-rah-MURICA stuff when it comes to police procedurals, but this takes it to several new levels of shit sandwich, and it was way too much for me to stomach.

Oh, and on the topic of trash fires, allow me to extend my condolences to my US friends on the passing of the AHCA, in which apparently being a woman is a pre-existing condition and precludes you from getting medical insurance of any kind. I exaggerate only very slightly, which is the sad thing. I can only hope it will be heavily amended in the senate, and that in 2018 all the Republicans who voted for it will be booted out of office. If any Democrats had voted for it, I'd say boot them too, but none of them did, so. I've done most of my yelling about this on Twitter, so that's all I'll say about it here.

Back to TV! 'Cause that's way more interesting... or something. Anyway, yes, lots of new TV shows coming up: Sense8 Season 2 just landed on Netflix, and I'm pretty excited, although an Indian friend of mine has indicated that it is handling the Indian politics aspect of the show in a very worrying way. I've been trying to do my own research as a result, just so I don't come at it with a completely uncritical eye. I am pretty happy about the queer representation, but the fact that many Indian people are indicating that it appears to be supportive of far-right religious extremist politics in India means that the queer representation should not give it a pass.

 Less politically worrying (thus far) is American Gods. I loooooved the book by Neil Gaiman when I read it, and so I really hope that the show will be just as good. The casting appears fantastic, anyway. The same goes for The Dark Tower series (Idris Elba, y;all!). Both of those have either just started or are scheduled to start soon, I'll have to check the dates to be sure. Of course, there's also The Handmaid's Tale, another book I loved (even though it made me want to slit my wrists), but I may need to watch that with a lot of alcohol, given the current political climate.

My summer popcorn shows are coming back, too! Killjoys is coming back for Season 3, and Wynonna Earp, which I just discovered a few weeks ago, is getting a Season 2! They're from the same Canadian showrunner, the one who brought us Lost Girl, and they both do well as low(ish) budget genre TV, with good overall representation and quirky, fun writing. I am looking forward to seeing the stories unfold!

And now, work calls. I'll be working night shifts all weekend. Whee.

The trouble with having a memory that doesn't work well is that after two days I don't remember anything I did at all. :P

 The U.S. continues to travel down the path of political madness. Now Trump has invented a terror attack in Sweden, which made the entire world scratch its head and go "Buh?" There was also yet another rumour of riots in Paris spreading all throughout France (not perpetrated by the President, at least) which as far as I can tell were fabricated by a single website for reasons which escape me. Surely there are enough terrible things happening in the world without inventing more? Of course, the invented ones were all fabricated in order to spread more islamophobia, so I guess that answers my question.

On the house front, I've finally started getting some answers to my queries. Padmapper queries don't get many responses, unfortunately, but I've looked on other sites, and they are quicker to get back to me. I had an appointment to see a house yesterday morning, so with the kind permission of my coworkers I skipped an hour of work (basically I took my lunch super early in the morning) and went to see it. It was in way better shape than the house I saw on Thursday, I will give it that, but the layout was... kind of weird. For one, it had a bathroom practically in the kitchen: a toilet, sink, and shower stall. Now, I've seen powder rooms off of kitchens before, but the weird part is that the master bedroom was on the other side of that wall, with NO door leading to the bathroom. Like, why not have it as an ensuite instead of forcing whoever is in the master bedroom to parade through the living room and then the kitchen in order to go pee or shower? It was just so odd. The basement was unfinished but had lots of room and a decent washer and dryer, and the previous tenants had left behind a ton of stuff: a large black leather sofa, a complete dining room set (one of those tall round tables and four high chairs), a full drum kit in the basement (!!!) and various pots and pans and other stuff. The guy showing me the house was almost as useless as the previous guy from Thursday (what is it with these guys?), but he told me they'd left for a job in a different country. The sticking points for me were: 1) that the staircase to the second floor was incredibly narrow, and I couldn't for the life of me work out how you were meant to get any furniture up there, 2) the house was very cold and I could feel cold air seeping through the walls in the basement, which meant that heating the place would be an expensive nightmare, and 3) the house was also for sale. If the owner managed to sell the house, the new owners could easily tell me to vacate because they wanted to move in, and then I'd have to go through the hassle of finding a new house and paying for another move all over again. No, thank you. There was another family who came to look at the house while I was there, and they noted out a lot faster than I did, so I think my decision not to pursue it was the right one. It was interesting to see what was on the market, but it wasn't for me.

As I was leaving this property, I got a call from a private landlord about another house. I got a weird vibe off her almost right away, because she emailed, texted AND called, all within the space of about an hour. Which, um, is a bit intense. I picked up the call while I was in a Tim Horton's getting coffee for me and my coworkers, and she immediately asked me to tell her about myself. Slightly nonplussed, I replied that I was single, worked rotating shifts, and liked long walks on the beach, which luckily made her laugh. I really need to curb my tendency toward sarcasm, but it's tough to teach an old dog new tricks, I guess. Anyway, I got lucky that she didn't decide I was too much of a smartass, and we made an appointment for 7:30 yesterday evening.

It turned out that that house was WAY nicer than I was expecting. It's huge, though, which might prove to be a bit too much house for me by myself. If I ever end up having kids that will be a different story, of course. Still, for now, it's a lot of house. The layout was more conventional, although the kitchen was kind of close to the front entrance for my liking. That's a detail, though, and not a deal breaker. Each part of the house was in different conditions: some rooms had been recently renovated, some less recently, and a few of the bedrooms were in a state that suggested no one had done anything to them since the house was built. They were all in good condition, however, so it was just a question of how new the floors were and what colour paint was on the walls. There was some very gnarly wallpaper in the master bedroom, which, if I moved in, I'd want to have removed. Again, details. There was a finished basement, and a good-sized washer and dryer, not to mention an actual sink for laundry, which I've never had and have always wanted. That's a big plus. The yard was quite large, but it was covered in snow, and by then it was mostly too dark to see anyway, but the landlady told me that it was all paving stones underneath (that's both a plus and a negative, since it means I wouldn't have to mow the lawn, but it would also mean no grass for the dog at all).

In short, I'm not wild about the place, but it will make for a good backup plan. I have another showing tonight, which I don't think will amount to anything. I replied to an ad showing the picture of a house, but when the management company emailed me the guy said it was the top floor of a triplex. I'm honestly more curious than anything. How is this ordinary looking house actually a triplex? How does it work? So what I want to do is go see for myself, and if the building is a different one from the one pictured, I'll know that this property management company engages in false advertising, and I'll avoid them in the future.

Work has been quiet overall, so there's not much to report there. On our down time my coworker and I have been watching The Walking Dead, which has been growing ever more horrifying. We just started Season 7 yesterday (so no spoilers, those of you who are all caught up!), and it's been both fun and awful to see the arrival of ( Spoilers for The Walking Dead ) 
On my own time, I kind of got bored with The Clone Wars (sorry), and tried Z Nation (moar zombies!) for the second time. The first time I watched the pilot I noped out because there was a terrible, but terrible CGI zombie baby. Anyway, I decided to give it another chance, and I have been enormously entertained now that I've stuck it out. It's a zombie show  that takes itself seriously, but not too seriously, which makes it a lot of fun. Watching it in parallel with TWD has been pretty wild. TWD is all dark and gritty and holy shit grim, while Z Nation has its dark and sad moments but has fully embraced being an utterly, utterly ridiculous show. It's got genetically modified zombies, plant zombies, a guy who can mind-control zombies, a half-zombie talking head, and a whole Mexican biker gang whose entire aesthetic is based in a cringeworthy way off of the Day of the Dead. Anyway, the show has committed wholeheartedly to being totally over-the-top, and while that makes it kind of schlocky, it also makes for some pretty high-value entertainment. I'm just starting the last season that aired now, and I'm interested to see what new ridiculousness they're going to come up with. :)

Next up on my to-watch list is Elementary, which I haven't watched since last season. I actually don't remember a lot of what happened, so I may have to find the older episodes and refresh my memory. I remember the conspiracy with Sherlock's father, but I don't remember the end result. Stupid faulty memory.

Okay. Time to get on with my day. Talk to you later, LJ!

November has arrived again, with its customary dip in my energy levels. I'm experimenting with being off Facebook and Twitter again, after a successful one-month hiatus in May. This time I'm not enjoying it as much. I took a break in May because those platforms were making me a little crazy, but right now I'm finding that I feel more isolated from my friends and community than anything else. Maybe November isn't a good time of year for introspection. At least in May it's sunny and the days are longer.

Apart from that, my news is mostly good. I got the promotion I applied for, despite the fact that I thought I was by far the least likely of the candidates to get it. Apparently I got a bit lucky. There were four of us applying for two positions. The girl I thought was most qualified got one of the positions. Two guys also applied from outside our section, but one of them withdrew without my knowing, and the other one, by all accounts, had a bad day when he interviewed. He'd applied before and been passed over in favour of a more qualified applicant, and it seems that he came to this new interview with something of a surly attitude as a result. My boss told me that it had showed that I'd come prepared, and that I had done really well, so no one on the interview panel doubted for a moment that I should get one of the two open positions.

So, in short, promotion! YAY! Also, in related good news, fully 75% of the supervisor positions in my section are now staffed by women. Go us! The three of us also get along like a house on fire, so it's going to be so much fun to work with them. I'm excited. :)

I'm also going to be spending the next four weeks training to perform a completely new set of functions at work, unrelated to my new supervisory role. Well, sort of related, but I would have had to learn them anyway, regardless of the outcome of the promotion process. That means four week of an almost bourgeois schedule of working 06:00 to 14:00, Monday to Friday. It will be very interesting to see if I can deal with working five days in a row with only the weekend in between for four weeks. I've been working shifts for eight years now, it feels weird to be going back to a "regular" work day, however briefly.

By the way, we are horrifically short-staffed at my office, and we will likely soon be opening up new jobs (again). If you or anyone you know is a Canadian citizen with a high school education or higher, good computer skills, and a more than basic grasp of French (you need to be functional but not fluent), and you want to come work for some great bosses (myself included, now!), drop me a line! I will send you the application information the moment the jobs open again. :)

I've also been nominated to become the Clerk for the First Day School of the local Quaker Meeting. It sounds more glamorous than it is. ;) Basically it just means I'd be responsible for herding the cats in order to keep FDS running smoothly. First Day School is the kids' program at Meeting, a bit like Sunday School, only a lot less formal. There's singing and crafts and occasionally lessons about what it means to be a Quaker/Friend. Honestly, I'm still learning myself how to be a Quaker, so I feel ill-equipped to be the Clerk, but most of the FDS Committee have been there for years, and they're all burnt out. So I've agreed to take the helm, and two of them will be mentoring me until I get the hang of it.

Technically I'm still an Attender at the Meeting, not an official member. I've started doing some reading to become more informed, and the more I learn the less I feel I know. I think that's sort of normal, at least at first. I don't want to ask to become a Member before I feel like I know what I'm doing. The Religious Society of Friends has had a long and rich written tradition, letters and essays and diaries, and there is a lot of history to go through. I basically know absolutely nothing of the complexity and nuance of thinking that evolved over the centuries to bring the Quakers to where they are today. So, that's one of my current projects right now.

The adoption project has slowed to a crawl while we sort out paperwork. I need to get a police check done to prove that I have no criminal record (yes, you may all laugh now) and no history of abuse toward children or anyone or anything else (go on, laugh harder). Also, even though I've been stable and not medicated for nine years, they want my former psychiatrist to sign off on my mental health. So I've been jumping through hoops trying to get him to answer his damned phone. He's moved to a private practice, and I've already left messages several times. His secretary assures me he'll call back "when he gets the chance," but it's been three weeks, so I'm a little irked. I realise I'm not a current or paying client, but sheesh. Once all those papers are in order, I'll find out whether or not I've been accepted as a potential candidate. If I'm accepted, things will proceed as they are right now. If not, I am toying with a Plan B, which I will explore more in depth if needs be. I'm not thinking about it too much right now, as it involves a pretty drastic life change, which won't happen at all if I end up on the waiting list for kids.

In the interim, I've been spending my free time returning to the gym, playing video games on the computer, and watching probably way too much TV for my own good, even though I've become even pickier about what shows I like to watch. The trouble is that, even if I'm picky, there's still a lot of enjoyable programs available, especially once you have both cable and Netflix. Yes, I caved and got cable, because my DSL internet provider, despite promising speeds of "up to" 30 Mbps, never delivered anything above 300 Kbps, and it was rather frustrating to pay for a service I wasn't getting. So I coughed up extra money for much better internet, and got a land line and cable TV out of the deal, too, which really isn't half bad.

The rest of tonight's plans involve sacking out on the sofa with the cats, the dog at my feet, and the latest episode of Sleepy Hollow (or maybe Elementary, I haven't decided yet). Then it will be bedtime. In fact, it will be past bedtime, as I am now old and boring and am usually in bed by 21:00 these days. Kids, lawn, etc.

How's everyone else in LJ land doing? Let me know!

It's likely not a secret that I watch too much TV. I tend to keep shows I like on in the background while I do other things, because that's one of the few times that I do get to watch TV. I'm lucky enough that I can watch TV at work on my night shifts, too, which helps to pass the time (that and the internet!). The net result is that I actually end up getting a lot of screen time in, even though I have next to no spare time outside of work. So I watch when I'm cooking or cleaning or getting ready for work before my night shifts, and while it means I often have to pause and rewind when I figure I've missed an important visual cue, it mostly works out.

I've been watching Hannibal, as I think I've mentioned before, and I think it's far and away my favourite show on the air right now. Once I set aside my objections to a roomful of brilliant FBI agents not noticing the cannibalistic serial killer under their noses (who'd invite them to dinner and make cannibal jokes the whole time), it became highly enjoyable. It's breathtakingly beautiful, and the creator has made serious efforts to include women and people of colour in major roles, where they didn't exist at all in the books (which I have yet to read, I'm ashamed to say). I particularly appreciate the promise that the series will never include sexual violence perpetrated against women. While I do love watching Criminal Minds, the unrelenting rape/violence against women gets pretty depressing after a while. I also love how unabashed the series is about making a huge part of the story about a very bizarre love affair between the two male leads. A platonic love affair, but a love affair nonetheless, directly acknowledged by the characters. Basically, canonical murder husbands, folks. ;)

My other recent discovery is Shameless, which is everything its title promises, except that it's incredibly well written and utterly heartbreaking. It's difficult to find, unfortunately, as it's a Showtime original production, but I've found a website that streams it for free, which is great. The site is glitchy but nothing too terrible, and I've been able to keep up with a number of shows that way. Anyway, Shameless is phenomenal, but it's incredibly hard to watch, in a similar way to how Breaking Bad was hard to watch, because the show makes you care a lot about the characters and then has them make stupid, terrible, awful choices. And the rest of the time you're watching all the other characters dealing with the fallout from these stupid, terrible, awful choices and your heart breaks for them because sometimes there really is nothing else to be done but put your head down and weather the storm until it passes. I'm at the mid-point of the second season, and I am told that it only gets worse and more heartbreaking from here.

That's the thing about good television, like any good storytelling medium. There comes a point when it's not just a story. For as long as I've been a reader, the fictional characters I read about feel just as real to me as the people in my life. For the time the story lasts, I care as deeply for them as I care for my friends, and I want them to be happy. I want them to make the right choices, and I want them to prosper. The writer in me knows that there can't be a story without some kind of conflict, without wrong choices being made, without there being some sort of suffering on the part of these people and creatures I love, but it hurts nonetheless to watch them go through it. And the really good ones stay with me for a very long time.

All the people I know who are readers or who consume stories in any fashion are the same way. We all remember those books and movies and stories that moved us so deeply that they changed the way we interact with the world. We all remember those characters we loved, the ones we wanted to be like, the ones we wanted to befriend, the ones we wanted to love in real life, the ones who, if they were real, we would have followed right into the depths of Moria.

I keep forgetting to do the daily gratitude thing, but this seems like a good opportunity for it:

1- I am grateful for all the stories that have come to occupy my life, that have served to make it richer, to make me a more complete person.

2- I am grateful for all the storytellers out there: writers, artists, performance artists, composers, film makers, and all the others. Without them, my life would be the poorer.

3- I am grateful to live in an age where technology makes all these stories accessible to me in new and exciting ways, like podcasts and podfic, ebooks and fanfiction archives, livestreaming sites and downloading, as well as more "old-fashioned" media like books and DVDs and CDs and MP3's. (Not to mention all the technology that has evolved over the past century, which I won't bother listing here)

It's an exciting age for stories that we live in.

I've been rewatching Criminal Minds lately. I have it running in the background when I'm doing stuff, and it always seems to be re-running on TV on at least one channel, much like Law and Order back in the day.

I've been watching this show from the moment it premiered, and I still really enjoy it. I'd forgotten how much it was essentially "The Mandy Patinkin Show" before he left, and as much as I love him as an actor, I can't help but feel that the show matured and improved considerably after his departure. Patinkin simply takes up too much space with his personality, and everyone else was left to drown in his wake. With his departure and the addition of Joe Mantegna as David Rossi, it felt like the rest of the cast had more room to breathe and more room to grow, and as such became a much stronger whole.

I am not entirely sure why I like this show so much. It's been nearly nine years, and there's no denying that the show is formulaic. It's also very dependent on people doing horrifying things to women about 90% of the time. They've fridged at least one recurring female character in the process of trying to further the white lead man's angst. They once got rid of their two female leads in the same season, and only reinstated one of the actresses after considerable fan backlash, and quickly brought in another woman to replace the one who wasn't coming back. (Though it should be noted that the ratio of men to women in the show is still 2 to 1).

While the cast are cute as buttons and there's enough character development to satisfy my need for such (unlike, say, all the CSIs out there), there's no one thing that says to me "Ah-hah! This is the reason you watch the show!" In fact, from everything I've said, this is the kind of show that should have me rolling my eyes and clicking to a different channel.

And yet, here I am, nine seasons in, still watching avidly. It's not at the level of obsession I've had for Supernatural, and I have no inclination whatsoever to be part of the fandom. I'm not interested in writing fanfic, gen or otherwise, and I certainly have no strong feelings about any of the characters' love lives, whether with each other or with other characters. I'm happy when they find love, sad when their love interests leave or are killed. I spent many years hoping that they'd eventually let Aaron Hotchner have nice things and not wallow in angst. Reid breaks my heart on a consistent basis. I've had a crush on Garcia from the start, and it's likely never going to fade. I miss Emily Prentiss and her extraordinary education and ability to get by in a bajillion languages.

I guess that's my answer right there. I come back for the characters, who are just complex enough that I want to watch them do their thing, week in and week out.

I like to keep TV shows running in the background when I'm by myself and doing things like washing dishes and cleaning and whatnot. It keeps me entertained and allows me to keep up with what's going on culture-wise, especially on Twitter. I watch more TV than I have time for, if truth be told, which is why I am perennially behind on most shows, but I figure it's not a race.

I've been keeping up with Supernatural, although the gilt has faded on that show considerably. I'm more than a little sad about this, because SPN was my first true fandom, and seeing the show go out with a whimper rather than a bang is making my heart twinge. They really should have ended it after Season 5, no matter how heartbreaking it would have been ( spoiler behind the cut ). It would have spawned reams of fix-it fic, and post-canon fic, and then likely the fandom would have dwindled and become, well, a little less crazy. Right now the show is suffering from some very poor writing and what feels like a new show-runner who is ignoring the previous show-runner's two seasons entirely. It's making for, well, mediocre TV.

One show that's bringing me joy these days is Person of Interest, now in its third season, which is well-written enough that I don't feel compelled to write any kind of fic about it. I'm getting all the character development, plotty intrigue, and near-future sci-fi that I could possibly want out of the show, and the writing is very good and very consistent which means I don't have to work out canon problems for myself in fictional format. I'm almost disappointed, because I really do enjoy writing fanfiction. I just don't feel the need to for this show.

Sleepy Hollow became a favourite in its first season. It's fun, quirky, a little twisted and utterly delightful. It's not meant to be taken entirely seriously, and as such I can sit back and enjoy it without thinking too hard about how Ichabod Crane should actually be curled in a foetal position under a table somewhere muttering to himself with his hands clapped over his ears, rather than swanning about the countryside in his old-timey garb solving murders and complaining about the modern state of the nation. Honestly, I could watch the "Ichabod and Abby bicker for forty minutes while nothing else happens" show very happily. The rest is all gravy. What I also adore about this show is that fully 75% of the four main cast on this show are a) not men, and b) not white. Two black women, one black man, and one white guy. A+ on diversity, Sleepy Hollow! This just proves what we all knew: that a woman of colour can carry a show on her own, and that we should have MOAR of this sort of thing on TV.

I started watching Black Sails, but have yet to make it past the second episode. The title sequence is beautiful, but it's somehow failing to truly capture my interest. Also, I am a little over the gratuitous female nudity and "Oooh, look, lesbians! Aren't we edgy?" school of television. Yes, yes, you're very risqué, we're all oh so very impressed. Actually, no, fuck off. :P

I am already a few episodes behind on True Detective, not because I'm not enjoying it, but because I need to concentrate really really hard to catch everything that's going on. It's not a show I can just have on in the background while I putter, because there is so much going on from a visual standpoint. I actually showed my mother the title sequence, and she was quite impressed by the quality of the visuals. If my mother gives it a thumb's up, then you know there's quality work there (my mother, for those who don't know, is a brilliant artist, and has about fifty years' worth of art history expertise under her belt). I will confess that I am not familiar with The King in Yellow, so doubtless a lot of the show's subtleties are being lost on me. So far I've been incredibly impressed with the quality of the acting (though I would kill for a show like this in which the leads aren't necessarily two white guys), the spectacular visuals, and I am very intrigued to see where the plot is going. The show does suffer from the same sort of internalised misogyny that a lot of shows about Angsty and Troubled White Detectives Chasing Serial Killers have, so a fair bit of nudity (gratuitous and otherwise) and some sex that felt a little bit slotted in for the purposes of thrills alone, but right now I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and roll with it.

I've also been watching the new series The Musketeers, though I haven't seen the latest episode. So far it's been a fun romp, and everyone complaining that there couldn't be a "black" Musketeer has obviously never seen a picture of Alexandre Dumas himself. Sheesh. I constantly wonder at the English-speaking world's fascination with this book. How many English screen adaptations are there of this now, I wonder? I can think of at least 6 off the top of my head, and Wikipedia tells me there are at least 26 direct adaptations (not counting animations, or movies about their descendants, or movies in which they are replaced by anthropomorphic animal representations of themselves). Compare this with a handful of French titles. I wonder what it is about this that seems to resonate so much more with the English-speaking world than the French. I don't have a good answer, but I do wonder.

My guilty pleasure for the past while has also been Teen Wolf. Do yourselves a favour and don't watch it. It's actually not very good. The first half of the first season is boring. Then they do interesting new(ish) werewolf mythology stuff for the latter half of the first season, and the second season was a lot of fun. Then the first half of the third season was face-palmingly awful, and now they're limping back into "okay" territory. The show is hugely problematic in how it treats women and POC, though, and just... yeah. The revolving door of interchangeable female characters who get killed off-screen is starting to get old, and I don't even know why I'm still watching, except that it's sort of like a very pretty train wreck. /o\ Kind of like how, back in the day, I couldn't stop watching 24. OMG, I just re-read my entries for my 24 tag, and they are hilarious! Why was I watching that? Oh, self, your life choices are terrible sometimes.

Lost Girl and Orphan Black were both very pleasant surprises. Yay Canadian TV! Especially Orphan Black, which has a really interesting plot. I am intrigued to see where they take it next season.

I will confess to being something of a fiend for police procedurals. They all sort of seem to slot into that lovely niche in my brain that loves to watch other people solve puzzles, especially if those puzzles are other people. So into that category goes Criminal Minds, CSI (though I wish they would put that show out of its misery by now), Elementary (yes, I know it's meant to be Sherlock Holmes, but let's face it, it's a very clever procedural with the same names as in the stories), and more recently Rizzoli & Isles, which is cute so far (I've only seen a few episodes).

There are others, but I think that'll do for now. Otherwise this entry is going to get even more embarrassingly long. :P