Goodbye Tuesdays

Well, my Tuesdays just got a lot less complicated. The twits at "The CW" have cancelled Veronica Mars, as well as Gilmore Girls. That just leaves NCIS, The Unit (more DH's show than mine), and Deadliest Catch, which isn't on the same schedule as the network shows.

Apparently the CW heads didn't bother to tell anyone in charge at Veronica Mars that the show was cancelled; they found out when someone from TV Guide contacted them to confirm what the CW President mentioned at the "upfront" (where next season's shows are showcased).

From Yahoo's news story:

The CW had already faced major changes in its second year. The network created out of the ashes of the former WB and UPN had already ended the long-running family dramas "7th Heaven" and "Gilmore Girls." On Thursday the ax fell on "Veronica Mars," which starred Kristen Bell as a wisecracking teenage private eye.

The CW had already faced major changes in its second year. The network created out of the ashes of the former WB and UPN had already ended the long-running family dramas "7th Heaven" and "Gilmore Girls." On Thursday the ax fell on "Veronica Mars," which starred Kristen Bell as a wisecracking teenage private eye." type="hidden"> Corporate parents CBS Corp. and Time Warner Inc. had hoped the CW could become a fifth major network by combining the best of its predecessors, but it has often slipped behind Univision in the ratings during a disappointing first year.

The new drama "Reaper" features one of the CW's oldest new characters: a 21-year-old. His parents sold his soul to the devil and he's assigned to track down evil escapees from hell.

In midseason, the CW will bring on a reality show, "Farmer Wants a Wife," about a country guy choosing among 10 women fed up with big-city prospects.

You know it's bad when Univision, the Spanish-language channel, is doing better than a wannabe-major network. The CW's desired demographic is supposedly the 18-34 year old group, and yet their non-reality shows seem to be focusing on kids still too young to drive (Everyone Hates Chris, Gossip Girls, etc.) I'm at the top end of their desired 18-34 age bracket, and I'm not remotely interested in watching any of their shows. Heck, I'm more likely to watch Univision and brush up on my Spanish than I am to watch the CW now. There's another channel to program out of the remote control.

Actually, I refuse to watch "reality" shows, because 99% of them have no connection to any reality I've ever heard of. I'll keep watching Deadliest Catch, because that's reality, folks. What the networks label "reality" seems to be some bizarre form of hyper-competitive, vote-each-other-off junk.

Darn it, I liked Veronica Mars. It was like watching Nancy Drew mysteries as written by Joss Whedon and the Gilmore Girls writers, and it was a real kick. (And it was better than the Nancy Drew movie looks to be. Jeez, people, read the books! The previews make Nancy look like a 12-year-old ditz, not the smart young woman that she was.)

Goodbye Gilmore Girls

Before I head over to Television Without Pity, aka TWoP, I thought I'd record my thoughts on the series finale of Gilmore Girls. Because my feelings may change after reading opinions over there, you know.

Prologue: AKA The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. So you know where I'm coming from, here's a brief history of "me and finales" in case I make odd references.

1. Good finales. These are the ones that don't leave me wanting to slap the writer. They manage to wrap up the major storylines of the show, without leaving a literal or figurative THE END on the last shot. It's the end of the series, but you go away with the feeling that life "there" is still going on as usual.

Examples:

• Northern Exposure (if you can get past the Joel-less last season)
• Due South (sort of - the "what happens to X" parts were a bit strange)
• Newhart
• MacGyver - riding off into the sunset was a fitting way to end (or segue into the TV-movies)
  

2. Bad finales. The opposite of the good ones. They end the show. They may or may not wrap up all the storylines, but you get the feeling that things are over, and if you found your way "there," where ever it is, you'd find empty houses or a vacant lot.

Examples:

• The Cosby Show - mostly because stepping off the sets sort of broke the illusion
  

3. The Ugly Finale. This is the one that leaves me in denial, usually because the show was cancelled unexpectedly and we-the-viewer were left dangling over a cliff the size of El Capitan. Finales with a high body count are in this category, as are finales that were so bizarre that I pretend they didn't happen.

Examples:

• Angel - it was implied, not shown, but the body count was astronomical
• Forever Knight - go ahead, kill off 75% of the cast
• Enterprise - the finale was basically an episode of Next Gen, and I still refuse to watch it again
• Quantum Leap - finale was odd, but that last screen pushed me over the edge
• Earth2 - there's that cliff again

Yes, Scott Bakula, an actor that I love, has had not one, but two finales that I categorically refuse to ever watch again. Even though I own the Quantum Leap DVDs and would buy Enterprise if Paramount didn't want an arm for each set.

Bon Voyage

So, my thoughts on the finale. In short, it was okay, but probably could have been better.

There were a lot of good things, and overall I was left with a comfortable feeling after it ended, although I'm still sad, mad, and peeved that we didn't get more time to wrap things up, after wasting half the season on the mess with Christopher. Rory has a job, although it's a job I can see someone getting right out of college. If she'd been working for the Post or Times, it would have been pretty unrealistic. Lorelai and Luke are on the road to being back together. Friday Night Dinners will continue, and life in Stars Hollow will go on. But it felt a bit rushed, since the Lorelai/Christopher divorce wasn't really dealt with.

(And honestly, the Lorelai/Christopher stuff would have made more sense if it had happened during the Luke/Lorelai breakup that happened after Emily & Richard's vow renewal. They were really broken up then, and I'm not sure the bump after Lorelai's freak-out ultimatum would have ended with a break-up, had she not ran off immediately to sleep with Christopher.)

I can live with that. I just wish that life were continuing on the TV screen, Tuesday nights at 7:00.

So, the lists.

Bad points:

• We never saw Luke giving Lorelai the necklace.
  
• Would Christiane Amanpour really give her business card to a kid in her jammies?
• No mention of April
• No mention of TJ (I realize TJ is an acquired taste, but mentioning him would be nice.)
• Taylor's slightly-nauseating speech at Rory's party

Good points:

• The Kiss wasn't the last scene. The CW has had a bad bad habit of using the last two minutes of the next show as the promo shown after this episode.
  
• Rory didn't get a magical job with C. Amanpour
• I think all the townfolk were seen, if not heard, including Gypsy and Morey. Not sure about Andrew or the Troubadour, though.
• Rory & Lorelai finally discussed their situations re: Luke & Logan
• More wisdom from Liz, who may be a flake, but she's not an idiot. Luke should listen to her more.
• Doula made an appearance (and yes, the name is silly, but it's Liz & TJ, so what do you expect?)
• Mutiny at a town meeting!! Yay!! And only six years too late, because someone should have told Taylor to stay home and comb his beard years ago. The fact that Luke has only flung one frying pan at Taylor is a testament to Luke's restraint, especially considering Taylor's role in the crashing of Luke's Diner last year.
• Richard and Emily came to the party, and Richard actually complimented Lorelai. Emily was still prickly, but then we find out that she wants to continue seeing Lorelai. Yes, some people may say it was out of character for Richard to say what he did, but I can live with it. It's about time this family started working on some of their relationship issues.
• Morey sandwich!

The last scenes made me cry. Ending with Luke, Lorelai, and Rory in the diner seems like a good choice. But I'm with Lorelai, I feel ambushed. I was so hoping for another half-season to get everything worked out so it wouldn't feel so rushed.

Expeditioning & Progress

Not a real word, but the best I can do. "Expediting" doesn't mean the same thing.

Progress:

• 16 pounds of recycling left the house yesterday
• The indoor/outdoor carpet project is progressing. We trimmed the excess last night, leaving 3 inches on each side for wiggle room. Now we just have to pull up the old carpet, and staple and stretch the new. Which won't get done tonight.
  
• I may have a buyer for three shirts I bought years ago (actually, Mom bought them for me, which is why I've been getting her away from the idea of buying clothes for me)

Expeditioning: I tested the new plan for library trips today, and it worked fine. Instead of trying to do the library run after lunch, which is smack in the middle of El Burrito's nap time, I had a brain storm and thought "Hey, doof, why not make the run early and get home before nap time?" So this morning, we were ready and out the door by 11:00, and home by 12:45. It worked beautifully.

Okay, except for the fact that El Burrito apparently decided that today wasn't a good day for a nap. He fell asleep not too far from the usual time, and woke up 30 minutes later. Argh. Eventually, I decided it wasn't going to happen, and fed him some lunch. We made another try at the nap later on, and it still took most of an hour for him to fall asleep.

Plans for tonight: Tuesday means TV-juggling night. The ACM (Academy of Country Music) awards, Veronica Mars, Deadliest Catch, and the last-episode-ever of Gilmore Girls. I may cry. I need to find the tape with last week's episode of GG; my sister hasn't seen the last few, and I promised to loan her my copy.

Mother's Day and such

We actually had a fun and productive weekend. (The last of those until at least June, because the next two weekends are already booked.)

El Burrito and DH took me out for lunch Saturday, instead of Sunday. This being Mother's Day as well as graduation weekend at Mizzou, going out to eat on Sunday would have been insane. We went to a little retro-50's sort of diner nearby, since we had a gift certificate to use there (thanks to the credit union annual shareholders meeting, where we get nice door prizes). Their food is affordable enough that we ordered dessert to use up the whole $25 gift certificate. I got a whopper of a 4-inch-square brownie for $1.99.

Also for Mother's Day, El Burrito picked out a card, I got flowers, and I hear there's a box from Amazon somewhere en route. El Burrito and DH correctly decided that I'd rather wait a few days than pay $8 or $9 for shipping.

We worked on a little home improvement project over the weekend. The indoor/outdoor "carpet" on the porch needs to be replaced. It's 20+ years old and looks every year of it. We priced it at Lowe's and Westlake's on Saturday (and Westlakes was almost double the price, unfortunately), measured the porch, and DH went back out to Lowes to buy a piece. He had some lovely luck, too. We need a piece approximately 8' x 20' (the porch is basically a rectangle with one corner lopped off), and Lowe's had a remnant that was 12' x 20' for $1 per linear foot. So, we spent $20 instead of the $80 it would have been if we'd bought straight off the roll.

We spent Sunday afternoon wrestling it around on the porch - we're on the upper level, so we can't spread it out on the ground or anything. It's a nice piece of fake-grass, with no flaws that we can find, so I don't know why it was considered a remnant, but I won't complain. Now we just have to rip up the old, cut the new to fit, and staple it down.

Had dinner with the in-laws Sunday for Mother's Day, as well. El Burrito got to see his cousins, we've got leftover chicken & dumplings for dinner tonight, and we borrowed some stapleguns from my father-in-law for the fake-grass carpet project.

And then I came home and cleaned the aquarium, and tested the water using the test kits I ordered last week. I've been lax in the water-testing department, figuring that the fish are still alive and breeding like rabbits, so they must be doing okay. iwas a bit wrong on that one. Apparently the nitrate and ammonia levels were high before I changed 30% of the water - I need to test again today and see if that helped. It's a 20-gallon tank, and is fairly lightly stocked right now, at least compared to this time last year. Right now I've got 6 zebra danios, 7 platies, and one very large plecostomus. Last year, the platy population was upwards of 30, because they breed like guppies.

Anyway, it's the plecostomus that's creating the overstocking problem. The general very rough rule of thumb is about 1 inch of fish per gallon. The platies and danios pretty well meet that. It's the gigantic 12-inch-long plecostomus that causes problems. And I'm stuck with him. The local pet store is a chain, so they don't do trade ins, and I have no fish-keeping friends who want a pan-sized fish. I need to think on it for a while. And in the meantime, I need to change the water and filter a little more often. Once a month isn't enough for the water quality, and it also helps the funky-smell problem.

There's an internet superstition about plecos. Most people online spell it pl*co, as the superstition is if you spell out the name, the fish will die. It doesn't work for me. I've had Squiggy for 8 years now, and he was not a young fish when I got him.

More on Squiggo later. I'm back to laundry duty and feeding El Burrito.

Not a bad day

We made it to the library today. Which, since the library is maybe 2 miles away, shouldn't be that big a deal. But it is. I got wise and decided to go before lunch (aka nap time) today, since I had books on hold to pick up. The library will only hold them for a week, and I've been waiting a month for one of them, so I didn't want to miss it. El Burrito and I were dressed, he was strapped in his soon-to-be-outgrown car seat, and ready to go at 11:15. I called DH to find out where he parked, so we could get the stroller frame that's in his car, and decided instead to take him out for lunch. It's one of the perks of living where we do - his "commute" is a mile if he takes the long way around, and his office is on our way to the library.

So we had lunch at our favorite BBQ place, and he & El Burrito stayed in the car while I ran into the library to drop off and pick up. And I left a big pile of coupons in the coupon swapping box at the library, too. That's a small step in keeping ahead of the clutter.

News flash - Gas prices just broke the $3/gallon mark here. $3.059 for non-premium gas right now. It may not be a shock for people on the west coast, but it's a noticeable thing here. Other than the day or two right after 9/11, I don't ever recall gas getting over $3. I'm sure the newspaper will have at least one letter to the editor in the next few days, ranting about gas prices. There's at least one person locally who will always swear that gas is cheaper in St. Louis or the next town up I-70, no matter what. This is directly contradicted by an article in the paper this week, saying that gas in St. Louis is higher because of emissions laws that require them to use a "boutique" blend of gas there. Go figure.

I'm just so so glad I don't work at my library job anymore. That was a lovely 120-mile per day commute. Even with my current car getting 30 mpg when I was commuting with it, or the 34 mpg that the previous car got, it was still a big chunk of money going out. I was stopping at the gas station every third day. I may have been racking up some serious points on my Waldenbooks credit card at the time, but it wasn't enough to offset the gas costs.

And I always thought it was a bit odd that a 1985 Tempo was getting better mileage per gallon than a 1999 Escort. Not a big difference, just 4 mpg better, but at the time the Tempo had passed the 100,000 mile mark. I kind of expected a car 14 years newer to at least match the mileage.

Back to work. Email to sort through, papers to shred, all sorts of fun.

Other things I'm working on

So, for a not so crummy-mood post now. Because if I don't vent here, the poor fish have to listen to it. :)

I'm working on my sister's website a little more. It needs an update, and I'm working on the "look" of the background. She wanted blue, and the best color I could come up with then just doesn't do much for me. So I played with Paint Shop Pro this morning and came up with some other options for her.

Normal page
Test 1
Test 2
Test 3
Test 4

I got the spacing wrong on 1 and 2, it's supposed to be a dark border down the left edge of the page, not a page that's dark halfway across. But I like the blue on 3 better than what's there now.

And now I'm getting offline, because it's starting to rain again and I hear thunder. We've got a surge protector, but it's a new PC and I'd rather not risk it, you know?

* * * *

And now I'm back online. Another thing I've managed to accomplish lately - I got $2.48 in refunds from Amazon this week when they dropped the price on things soon after I bought them. This is all thanks to a website called Refund Please, where you can enter the things you buy and they'll email you if the price goes down within 30 days. They just ask for your email address, the date, and the item ID number, so I'm not worried about fraud issues. And they've saved me about $5 so far. It would have been more, but I got a bit behind on asking for refunds.

And I think I've got a copy of the Stargate episodes we missed being mailed to us. Only 8 (I think) left until the end of Stargate. :( :(

Things that bug me

Random things that bug me:

• Spam email. Nuff said.
  
• Chain letter emails. I was getting some from a name I didn't recognize recently. Finally thought to do a search in my email program (Eudora) and found out they were from someone I'd purchased from on Ebay about 18 months ago. Sent a polite request to be taken off their list, and we'll see if it works.
• Chain letter emails, part 2. I got one this morning from a relative. She does email *me* as well, unlike some friends who only send out the impersonal forwarded junk. This one bugged me because of this:
  

Once you have been hit, you have to hit 15 pretty Moms.
If you get hit again, YOU will know you are REALLY pretty!
If you break the chain, you'll have ugliness for 10 years,
So hit 15 pretty moms on your friends list to let them know they are pretty (but you know you are beautiful no matter what, mama!)! "

Gee, thanks. So if I don't know anyone else bored enough to bounce this around with, I'm not pretty? Sorry folks, I don't think I know 15 other moms, pretty or otherwise.

She also sent this to my sister, who isn't a mother unless you count the dogs and cat. Which leads to the next thing that bugs me:

• The insane greeting-card industry. Take Mother's Day. I think, in my opinion, that on this day I should send a card to my mother, DH sends one to his mom, and DH buys one for El Burrito to give me. Hallmark, on the other hand, has Mother's Day cards for everyone - mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, nieces, and more. I saw a Mother's Day card from the dog. I don't get it. Okay, I do, it's all about the money. But sending a Mother's Day card to someone who isn't a) your mother or b) a mother at all, makes no sense to me. I don't send my husband a Mother's Day card. You don't send someone a birthday card if it isn't their birthday, or a holiday card when it isn't that holiday, right?
  

• Having to turn the AC on in early May. We broke down last week. At 10:00 that night, it was 67 degrees outside, but 82 inside. Even with both doors open and a fan parked out on the deck, supposedly blowing cool air in, this place wouldn't cool down. And there was a nice breeze, but not blowing in a direction we could take advantage of. We have a door on the west wall, and one on the north wall partially shielded by the next building, so the air circulation is not optimal (and that's an understatement).