Miscellaneous Stuff
Sitting here in front of the computer, not tired enough to go to bed, even though I really should. So, a bit of a ramble, since I haven't done one of these (or anything else :P 'round here recently).
Real Life: Having a pleasant enough summer. It's been quite rainy (it's only in the last week or so that we've had 3-4 days in a row without rain the entire summer) but I rather LIKE rain, so I haven't minded. Did another NYC trip in June - this time with both the niece AND nephew (12 and 10). Mom & I were a bit tense about managing and keeping track of two of them, but after a mini-crisis on the first day when it looked like we might be losing the nephew because we couldn't do one of the things he wanted to do RIGHT-THE-F-NOW(!!), everything went swimmingly. Other than some basic sightseeing spots, the two biggest hits were probably Ninja, a theme restaurant that the kids loved (though it would have been pretty corny without kids), and an "Escape the Room" thing where they lock you in a room for an hour and you have to puzzle your way out.
On the theater front, we took the kids to see Wicked, and then I went on my own to see Fun Home and Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. (I was patting myself on the back for ordering tickets early, because both had just won Tony's for best musical/play the week before our trip and there was lots of chatter around me of how tough it suddenly was to get tickets. :) Fun Home, in particular, really wow'd me. There was a point near the end where I started to cry so hard I was afraid I was going to embarrass myself by actually bawling out loud. It was an actual struggle to keep it down. I haven't had even really good theater hit me that hard in the 'feels' in a long time.
I have one more week of work, and then two weeks off for my annual family vacation in Michigan. Due to some confusion over sleeping accommodations, I'm not actually going up TO Michigan until Tuesday or Wednesday instead of leaving at 3 AM Saturday morning like usual, and I'm almost looking forward to those 4-5 days of being home alone with NOTHING to do almost as much as the actual days at the lake with everyone. :)
TV:
I've been really enjoying the new Sci-Fi Friday block on the SyFy network this summer. I go back and forth with Defiance, but the arc this season has been mostly good, and the two new shows - Dark Matter and Killjoys - are really quite fun. Both are nice throwbacks to the sort of series that used to show up on Saturday afternoons in the era of first-run-syndication. Not the biggest budgets in the world, but fun action-adventure with characters I'm becoming quite smitten with. Hope they both last.
I've also been catching the BBC America airing of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and looooving it. No, it's not coming anywhere close to covering the complexities and cool footnotes and stuff of the book, but Guh! Bertie Carvel as Jonathan Strange is just so frickin' FUN to watch, the rest of the casting is fantastic (esp. Norrell, Arabella, and Childermass), the magical feats are occasionally really cool, and if one accepts that they needed to streamline the story to fit into the time allowed, they've done a pretty decent job in abbreviating it to something that stands one its own pretty well.
And, other than that, I'm still pretty certifiably obsessed with Teen Wolf. The fourth season was a bit of a mess, but I'm really enjoying Season 5 - not surprisingly, given how much torture they're putting Stiles through. :)
Real Life: Having a pleasant enough summer. It's been quite rainy (it's only in the last week or so that we've had 3-4 days in a row without rain the entire summer) but I rather LIKE rain, so I haven't minded. Did another NYC trip in June - this time with both the niece AND nephew (12 and 10). Mom & I were a bit tense about managing and keeping track of two of them, but after a mini-crisis on the first day when it looked like we might be losing the nephew because we couldn't do one of the things he wanted to do RIGHT-THE-F-NOW(!!), everything went swimmingly. Other than some basic sightseeing spots, the two biggest hits were probably Ninja, a theme restaurant that the kids loved (though it would have been pretty corny without kids), and an "Escape the Room" thing where they lock you in a room for an hour and you have to puzzle your way out.
On the theater front, we took the kids to see Wicked, and then I went on my own to see Fun Home and Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. (I was patting myself on the back for ordering tickets early, because both had just won Tony's for best musical/play the week before our trip and there was lots of chatter around me of how tough it suddenly was to get tickets. :) Fun Home, in particular, really wow'd me. There was a point near the end where I started to cry so hard I was afraid I was going to embarrass myself by actually bawling out loud. It was an actual struggle to keep it down. I haven't had even really good theater hit me that hard in the 'feels' in a long time.
I have one more week of work, and then two weeks off for my annual family vacation in Michigan. Due to some confusion over sleeping accommodations, I'm not actually going up TO Michigan until Tuesday or Wednesday instead of leaving at 3 AM Saturday morning like usual, and I'm almost looking forward to those 4-5 days of being home alone with NOTHING to do almost as much as the actual days at the lake with everyone. :)
TV:
I've been really enjoying the new Sci-Fi Friday block on the SyFy network this summer. I go back and forth with Defiance, but the arc this season has been mostly good, and the two new shows - Dark Matter and Killjoys - are really quite fun. Both are nice throwbacks to the sort of series that used to show up on Saturday afternoons in the era of first-run-syndication. Not the biggest budgets in the world, but fun action-adventure with characters I'm becoming quite smitten with. Hope they both last.
I've also been catching the BBC America airing of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and looooving it. No, it's not coming anywhere close to covering the complexities and cool footnotes and stuff of the book, but Guh! Bertie Carvel as Jonathan Strange is just so frickin' FUN to watch, the rest of the casting is fantastic (esp. Norrell, Arabella, and Childermass), the magical feats are occasionally really cool, and if one accepts that they needed to streamline the story to fit into the time allowed, they've done a pretty decent job in abbreviating it to something that stands one its own pretty well.
And, other than that, I'm still pretty certifiably obsessed with Teen Wolf. The fourth season was a bit of a mess, but I'm really enjoying Season 5 - not surprisingly, given how much torture they're putting Stiles through. :)