Category Archives: tv

Fall TV So Far

So the first few programs have come and gone and let’s see what the scoreboard says.

Kitchen Nightmares (Fox) – Wow. Nice way to take an amusing and interesting British series and screw it up, Fox. Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares (on BBC America) has been a great show, with Gordon Ramsey showing his personable side and helping and urging on restaurant owners in difficult situations. Fox’s version is, let’s take Ramsey in his “I’m a dick” persona from Hell’s Kitchen and instead of shouting at aspiring chefs, make him shout at failing restaurant owners. What can wrong? Yeah, this Season Pass was deleted.

Survivor: China (CBS) – They say they’re in China, but for all the chintzy theming and such they could be at any of their standard Pacific island locations. I’m not seeing a whole lot new and different, and if this week’s episode doesn’t hold our interest, this may be the first season that we’ve bailed on the show completely. Keeping the Season Pass (for now).

Heroes (NBC) – Sweet. Nice to see it back. #1 on the Season Pass list.

Chuck (NBC) – There’s good possibilities here. A lot of geek wish fulfillment and some outright silliness (My comment on the now-deceased ex-roommate-spy’s derring-do: “Man, Neo did it so much better in The Matrix.”). I’ll be curious to see how it goes from here. Keeping the Season Pass.

Reaper (The CW) – This show has had great buzz, and I see why. I loved this show. Despite the sidekick’s Jack-Black-wannabe moves, the story carried it along well, and the humor was pretty darned good. Kevin Smith produces the show and directed the first episode (which, by the way, if going to be re-run Thursday night). I urge everyone to check this show out! Season Pass stays in the top five.

Still to see this week: Journeyman (my expectations are low), Bionic Woman (ditto), House (one of takaza‘s shows, I’m going to see how I like it).

Townhouses, Beer, and Heroes!

In retrospect, we didn’t really do all that much last weekend. On Friday we stayed in and were couch potatoes for the evening.

Saturday, we hit the road. takaza wanted to check out a couple of townhouses under development, and I think we finally found a floor plan that is just perfect for us. The Wilmington floor plan in NeuHaven in Antioch would be fantastic – the “Optional Extended Kitchen” means that the kitchen, dining room, and great room are all one continuous space, and that fits our style of living and entertaining very well. The downstairs family room approximates Dan’s idea of a basement enough to keep him happy; we’d just need to install a bar and an entertainment center and we’d be good to go! The salesman was annoying and couldn’t wrap his head around “January, 2009” and kept trying to sell us on a unit for summer, 2008, but they’re still building and should have some models that match what we’re looking for when we are ready to buy. And hey, we’d be about a half mile from aureth‘s parents’ place 🙂

While we were out, we also stopped by Antioch Packing House and put in the order for steaks for the LAFF Softball picnic (20+ pounds of steak. And it’s not too late to put in your RSVP!). Then it was down to Wine Knows where they were doing their Oktoberfest beer tasting. Holy cow, that was a lot of beers! After trying a couple of interesting beers from Summit Brewing and Brewery Ommegang, I moved on to the next table, where they had the entire line of Unibroue beers available. I have to admit I got about halfway through before I had to surrender – most of those were 7% – 9% alcohol, and they weren’t being stingy with their pours! All of them were pretty tasty, though. The one real horror of the tasting was the Rodenbach Sour Ale, which may be true to its style, but was truly horrible to my taste. The runner-up was the Wells Banana Bread Ale; being a homebrewer, I’m afraid I associate the smell and taste of esters in my beer to be a sign that something has gone quite wrong with the fermentation.

After the tasting, I walked out with a four-pack of Brewery Ommegang’s Hennepin Farmhouse Saison (extremely tasty!), as well as a bottle of the Woop Woop shiraz and a very tasty and inexpensive Spanish tempranillo/cabernet blend. I was feeling a bit tipsy, so Dan drove us to get some food. My first choice, The Full Slab, was closed due to equipment issues, so we settled for Bill’s Pub North. Um, yeah. As my review says, we chose poorly. ‘Nuff said. The rest of the evening was spent relaxing and snuggling 🙂

Sunday we did a bit of housecleaning, then dexcat came over and he and Dan talked MFF publications stuff. I was peripheral tot he conversation, but it sounds like Dex has a lot of great ideas and can really improve on our already pretty nifty con book, pocket program, and restaurant guide. I ran tot he grocery store, then made a tasty roast chicken. The rest of the evening was spent watching The Simpsons and a couple of other programs before heading to bed (not nearly early enough).

Oh, and tonight? Oh yeah, Heroes is back!

One more thing: As of today, I am no longer a contractor but a full time employee at $employer! W00t!

Indian Food, Parties, and Movies!

You know, as exhausted as I felt at work on Friday, I was astonished at how much energy I had when I got home. It turned out that the power had actually come back on at 8:30 AM, which meant that while the freezer was pretty much OK, some serious culling needed to be done in the refrigerator. Fortunately, it wasn’t too bad – mostly party leftovers and anything with dairy in it (including, sadly, the Keke Key Lime Pie liqueur). Once takaza got home, we talked a bit about dinner and decided that we both wanted something more than a hot dog. We decided that Indian food sounded good, so we met up with roho and genet for dinner at Bombay City. The food was, as always, delicious and the company was excellent as well. It was fortunate that we weren’t far from home, because once the food coma set in, I was very quickly ready to fall asleep.

Saturday found Dan and over at his mother’s house with some family to play some games. I have to admit I had some trepidation going in, but I was readily accepted and we had a whole lot of fun. We played Scene It, Apples to Apples, and Taboo, and it was a blast. It was even better since we moved the table out to the deck and we got to enjoy a perfectly beautiful day outside. At about 7:30, it was time to head south to wyldekyttin‘s birthday party. Because it was such a beautiful evening, we wound up taking back roads through Crystal Lake down to Randall Road, all the way down to Aurora. It was a very pleasant drive along the western edge of the densest Chicago suburbs. When we got to the Holiday Inn Select Naperville (her party was held in conjunction with Duckon), we hung out for a little while, but as is always so typical, between being tired and having a long drive ahead of us, we had to leave before the party really got going well. It was a pleasure to see so many of our friends, albeit briefly. One nifty thing: On the way out through the parking lot we passed by the Tesla coil demonstration. I thought to grab our camera out of the car and grabbed a quick 30-second video of the powerful electrical arcs, which were set to music:

On Sunday, we met up with Roho and Genet to see Waitress. It was a lovely movie, and I really enjoyed it. Not too deep or profound, but enjoyable nonetheless. Keri Russell was fantastic in her role, Nathan Fillion was adorable as always, and the late director was also very good in her supporting role; it’s a crying shame that she passed away before the move was released. After the movie we retired back to our place for a marathon of home improvement shows, including Hometime, The Real Estate Pros, and Flip This House (as well as some Good Eats and Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares). We ordered some pizza somewhere in there, and mainly just relaxed and hung out. Quite a nice, low-stress day. Right before bed, though, I was contacted with an interesting bit of news that left me a bit gobsmacked and made getting to sleep difficult. Nothing bad, just surprising.

And so we have this week. Looks like I may have to work some off hours this week (and maybe the next few weeks) to support a project here, which is fine. If anything, it’s unusual that I haven’t been asked to do this before, and it’s not as if it’s mandatory (the boss is cool like that). We’ll work something out.