Belated Oscar Notes

I watched the Oscars on Sunday, and noticed something very interesting. There was a woman nominated for best actress, and she looked so familiar, but I couldn't place her. Neil Gaiman tweeted about her, and things finally clicked. His daughter, Maddy was the one who put it all together. Carey Mulligan is the actress who played Sally Sparrow in the Doctor Who episode, Blink, one of my all-time favorite Doctor Whos!

Below, you can see how she looked in Blink, before she got her head mowed.

I love Sandra Bullock, and I'm glad she got an Oscar, but by the time they announced the winner, I was rooting for Carey.

Being a ground-breaking woman's rights person who campaigned by living a life full of things women supposedly weren't able to do, I was also happy to see that a woman got an Oscar for directing.

Some of the other awards seemed to go to the picture rather than the person, though. Maybe that's just me, and I can't really say that I could judge fairly because I didn't see most of the movies that had people nominated for working on them.

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The Legend of the Seeker will be back for a third season, although where it will be shown is still up in the air. Locally, I can watch it on the CW on Sunday nights, but if you're local, or watch it on the CW, you should know that they frequently list a different episode than they actually show (at least on the Comcast digital TV guide).

In the new show that was on last week (and, due to a mix-up, again this week), Zed has frozen some people and is describing them so that his crew can impersonate them. He describes the man as being "formidable." Richard says "He doesn't look like a fighter." and Zed says he's not, he's got a way with the ladies and describes him as "his reputation is not the only thing that preceeds him into a room!"

Lost is on again tonight! As usual, a recap of last week, and then the new episode. The recaps are excellent, because they add notes about things you might have missed.

The season finale for White Collar is also on tonight! It promises to be the best yet, which is saying something!

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Back near the end of last month, I ordered some great yarn from Herrshners. Everything seemed to go through just fine, and I've been running downstairs to check to see if it's arrived every day lately. Well, it's been a while, and I was starting to wonder what happened to the yarn.

At this point, I still don't know what happened, but it apparently didn't go through, and I'm very disappointed! It seemed to go through, and I got a confirmation email from Herrshners (which has since disappeared), and now that I go back and check for the charge from my checking account, it's not there.

I am very, very disappointed!

The worst part of all this is that I had a ball of it left from another project, and started knitting a project which will be a present for someone who reads this blog, so I can't talk about it here. But I've knit all the yarn I have, and have been waiting for the additional yarn.

This particular yarn has been discontinued, and I love the yarn, so I'm sad about that, but it is possible to find it here and there on line. I ordered some today, but it's not as inexpensive as what I originally ordered.

Back to waiting for it!

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I found a fabulous infrared photo of Cassiopeia on line today! You have to check this out!

Please click the link and go to NASAs website to find lots of other neat photos!

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I think today is the warmest day we've had here so far this year. I really need to get off the internet and get outside!

I hope things are going as well for you as they are for me!

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Addition:

Read about the knitting soldiers! His blog is here.

And the most important news of all: the second chapter of Jim Butcher's book Changes is out today! Changes is the latest book in the Dresden Files series and is due out in April.

Grey Saturday

Last night all the walking and other stuff I've been doing (including dental visits) caught up with me.

The sinus/throat/ear infection with bronchitis that I had last summer and still have in spite of a ludicrously large doctor bill flared up last night. I took some stuff for it, and feel much better after a good night's sleep, although my colitis is still annoyed with me that I did so much walking.

I wanted to go to Michaels to cash in on their sock yarn sale that ends today, but Holly's car still isn't fixed, and I just can't do that much walking at this point without making myself really sick.

I have to walk over to Safeway to get a few things no matter what, though. I do have a supply of Chicken and Stars, but the way I feel, I want some more comfort food. I need to get food no matter what, it's just a matter of choosing things that I'll like better when I'm not feeling well.

But I did get some yarn while I was out on Thursday, and plan to make a hat and mitts. I lost a mitt somewhere in my travels that day, and until I can get to the WalMart that does carry the yarn I want, I won't be able to replace it.

But here's a photo of the mitts so far. One is done, one has the knitting done and needs the ends darned in, and one is just started. I haven't decided how I want to make the hat.


Progress has been made this last week on the second of the commissioned Christmas stockings. Here's the second one almost finished. It just needs the toe and back seam done, darn a few ends and block lightly. The third one will be underway shortly.

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Practical Magic will be on tonight on ABC Family. It's not action/adventure, but it's one of my favorites. When I got my first DVD player, this was the first DVD I bought, and I still love it.

The thing you really don't want to miss this weekend is Harold and Maude, which will be on Turner Classic Movies tomorrow. This was a cult movie that truly deserved it's following.

Another not-to-be-missed event on TV this weekend is two Doctor Who episodes which, together, make up a whole story. BBC in America is showing both of them back-t0-back today, and possibly on Sunday. The two episodes are Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead. They were both written by Steven Moffat, who also wrote the Doctor Who episode, Blink. As usual, he has written horror, but, as usual, it's kind of low-key. But you'll never look at books quite the same way again.

I have to go get some cough drops, and other stuff from the supermarket.

Have a great weekend, and don't miss Harold and Maude and Doctor Who!

You Have to See This!

I'm going to be putting up short posts most of December due to having bitten off more than I could chew with this commissioned project and trying to finish all the Christmas presents I'm making.

But I saw this on the internet, and for fans of the Doctor Who episode Blink, you have to see this! Even if you are not interested in costume making, scroll down to the bottom for her funny story about what happened to her at the con. It involves someone you may know. You will love this!

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For those of you who missed the new Librarian movie, TNT will be showing it about a dozen more times this week, along with all three movies, in order, on Sunday. If you like Indiana Jones, you'll love this!

And for those of you who missed Leverage, TNT will also be showing that about a dozen times this week.

Leverage may or may not be science fiction, but it's really good, and should appeal to everyone in this economy (unless you own several billion dollars and got it by taking advantage of others). Their tag line is "Get ready to get even."

I say it may or may not be SF because it includes some very cutting-edge tech which may or may not exist as yet.

This is a bunch of thieves and criminals run by one honest man. They were taken advantage of in the pilot, and set out to get revenge on the their persecutor. They wound up with (each) so much money that one of the characters said "This is retire and buy an island money." So, they're out to get even for others who have been victimized. 

A wise person told me one time that the way to judge a person is-- how do you feel after you've been around them for a while? Well, when you watch this show, you wind up wanting to laugh from pure delight! It's a do-not-miss show!

Check your local listings for reruns of these shows this week! 

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While I was writing this, there was a knock on my door, and the Christmas Card Paper arrived! Now I know why they charged me so much for regular shipping (more than the cost of the paper). It arrived almost instantly!

Now I don't have any excuse to wait to put together my cards and print them. 

Well, except that I plan to make something tiny to go in each of them, and I haven't done that yet, so I want to make at least one so that I'm sure it'll be as nice as I'm hoping before I write a poem about it and include it on the inside of the card.

I feel like I'm drowning in Christmas stuff-to-do!

Have a great Wednesday!

Don't Blink!

The episode of Doctor Who entitled Blink will be on BBC in America later today and sometime tomorrow. This usually means that it will be on at least once next weekend, too.

This may be the best Doctor Who episode ever, even though the doctor only appears as a peripheral character. It's a little horror story, perfect for the Halloween season, and it stands on it's own, even if you're not interested in the Doctor.

Check your TV schedules, and don't miss it!

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Back last summer, Holly and I went to see Stephanie Pearl McPhee at Borders nearby, and while we were there, we met a wonderful woman named Tonks. There is a newspaper story out about her, and it tells a lot that I was completely unaware of. She's a great lady that you will be enriched by reading about. If you're a member of Ravelry, check out her projects from the first link.

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It's a rainy, chilly Saturday, and I'm not going to bother to do much of anything today except knit and watch TV. I had planned to go to the grocery store, but today is one of those days that make retirement worthwhile. You can look out the window at how dreary it looks and just not go out at all.

It's not raining, but otherwise, this is a very appropriate photo for your enjoyment.

Have a great weekend!

Important Notice!

The Doctor Who episode, Blink will be on tonight (more accurately, tomorrow morning) at 5 AM on the SciFi Channel (check local listings for exact time where you are).

This is a stand-alone story. You don't have to be interested in Doctor Who to watch. It's a quiet, understated little horror story. The Doctor does appear in it, but he's just there to provide the time travel aspect of the story.

This is the only episode of Doctor Who I've found that nobody dislikes. It's the one episode that everybody wants made into a spin-off series.

This is not really a post. I'll put a post up later.

But this is important.

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Addition:

I just found a neat group on Ravelry: Folklore and Fairy Tales. They're having a Fall KAL with the theme of Tam Lin. 

For anyone who doesn't know, it's an old Scottish legend about a knight who falls from his horse and is caught by the queen of fairies. She keeps him prisoner for 7 years, during which he meets a girl and they become very close (she's having his baby). At the end of 7 years, the queen must pay a tithe to hell, and Tam Lin is afraid it's going to be him. He tries to get his girlfriend to save him.

Fairport Convention did the song, and I love it. The lyrics to the song are here. There was also a movie made, which was originally called Tam Lin, but has been rereleased as The Devil's Widow, which is a name that does not fit at all. 

Anyway, I started to realize that I really do like fairy tales, so there is a whole new Fairy Tale section in my Amazon store, and a link for it in the sidebar full of stories and movies recommended by the participants in the group.

I may or may not get an actual post up here today.

Photos and Science Fiction

No, I don't have  a photo of the mittens yet. I haven't blocked them.

But I have so many photos today that another one would really jam things up.

Friday, after I left JoAnn Fabrics, I was standing out by the curb, waiting for the bus and I looked up and saw this:

One of the prettiest skys I've ever seen. The fact that hurricane Hannah was arriving later in the day may have had something to do with it. It really was pretty, though.

Yesterday, I bought my bad weather boots. By that I mean boots for bad weather. Pay attention to this. It doesn't seem like it, but this will eventually be knitting-related.

I have a choice between a long scarf and boot toppers or a really long scarf to finish up my blue multi set of stuff.

I chose the boot toppers. So, the finished parts of the set include: mitts, watch cap, and mittens. The still-to-be-finished part includes a scarf and boot toppers. The boot toppers haven't been started yet.

So, the photo shows you what one of the boots looks like all by itself.

I have to have my charms project for the Harry Potter KAL done by the first of October, and I just got the final component to make them, so I started on that last night.

Here's a photo of the sample swatch. I just want white (glow-in-the-dark) stars strewn across a dark blue background. I used the fluorescent orange beads for the sample because I can't envision a project that could possibly use beads in orange, so I can keep the swatch without unravelling it because I know I won't need the beads.

Here's where I've gotten so far:

The navy yarn does not glow in the dark. All the white stuff does. It's going to be very Ravenclaw.

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Now on to the science fiction news!

The SciFi Channel is putting on some neat stuff this week during their daytime rotation.

Tomorrow will be a synopsis of the first year of the new Doctor Who, starting with Rose, and finishing with The Parting of the Ways. Since there are too many episodes to fit in that time frame, they will be skipping some of them. One that will be skipped that I will miss is Boom Town. The story isn't among the best, but I love the scenes with Rose, Mickey, Jack, and the Doctor. They're such a terrific group! 

But The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances will be included, as will Bad Wolf and The Parting of the Ways. So, you'll get to see the episode where we seem to first get to meet Captain Jack Harkness. You'll also get to see where we actually first get to meet Jack in The End of the World, even though you won't recognize him. And you'll get to see what Rose does that will change Jack forever.

Oh, and, very important, the Doctor Who episode Blink will be on SciFi on Friday morning at about 5 am. Blink seems to be everyone's favorite episode, and the Doctor hardly appears in it at all!

Continuing with the daytime schedule on SciFi, Wednesday will bring us Stargate SG-1. Highlights from that include 200, where the team tries to help Martin Lloyd with a script for his TV show, and The Quest (a two part episode) followed by Line in the Sand, where the team has an adventure based on the Arthurian legend.

Thursday during the day on SciFi we have The Twilight Zone, followed by Dark Angel on Friday.

Tuesday evening, SciFi will be showing a new episode of Eureka, (Phased and Confused) right after they show again the episode from last week and two weeks before that. If you want to watch Fringe, the new Eureka episode will be rerun later.

Tuesday evening will also be memorable for the premier of Fringe on Fox.

Well, it's Fall on TV. We new that good, or at least new things were coming.

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In the meantime, I'm looking forward to Saturday and the Renfair. The question is, do I want to dress up for this? Holly pointed out that Malaia and John will be wearing garb, and she probably will, too, unless it's really warm.

Well, that about does it for one day.

Have a great Monday!

Quiet Day

There's not much going on at the moment.

I'm still working on getting charts for cables put together for computer/internet use, without much success so far.

I'm still fighting with Comcast about many things, although I have concentrated my battle with them on just getting closed captioning on channel 50 for today. 

I finally got in touch with someone at the local Comcast office who tried channel 50 and agreed that there is no CC signal going out with the picture and sound on that channel. She did talk with the techs, who keep insisting that ABC Family is not broadcasting it to them. They did send out some kind of information for the main office to check it out with the network and try to get it turned on.

Before that, I "talked" to someone over Comcast's chat system who assured me that none of the CC that my TV displays is sent through the cable along with the picture and sound. I guess she thinks it just magically appears.

While waiting for the Ravelympics to start, I have been knitting a shawl in Caron's Simply Soft in navy, mainly because I had most of what I need for it in my stash. It's getting to big to fit on the Options size 8 needles with the 24 inch cable, and I'm going to have to transfer it to other needles. I'll be glad when the money situation eases up and I can get the entire set instead of just one set of #8 tips and one set (2) of 24 inch cables for them. I haven't tried the wooden ones, but have fallen in love with the nickel plated ones!

Tomorrow in late afternoon/early evening (here), the SciFi Channel will be showing a movie called A Sound of Thunder, which involves time travel and is based on a story by Ray Bradbury. I haven't seen it yet, but it sounds like it could be good. I looked it up on Amazon, and it has very mixed reviews.

The BBC in America will be showing a Doctor Who marathon tomorrow, starting at 1 pm here. Among those episodes being shown will be Blink, probably my all-time favorite, and one that works without the Doctor Who background. This is definitely worth watching!

Great Weekend!

The weekend started on Thursday evening, when my sister, Lynn arrived.

Lynn was determined to cheer me up, and she was wildly successful. We stopped by Arby's for a quick bite, and went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

It was wonderful! Everything you would expect from the next Indiana Jones movie, and everything they need to continue the stories. I loved the movie! I could go on and on about it, and, in fact, I did, all weekend to the total annoyance of everyone around me, no doubt.

I loved it so much that I want to run out and buy lots of Indiana Jones stuff (especially a hat), so I added a page to my store.

But I don't want to include any spoilers here, and anything I said would spoil it. 

On Friday, Lynn and I had planned to go to the IRS office and get all my problems straightened out. Well we went, and they weren't there.

The people from IRS on the phone promised that I could get my problems straightened out at their local office. Well, from what I could tell, there where a whole two people there! And one of them was a security officer, so there was only one person available for help, and they told me that they couldn't do anything that the people on the phone said they could.

They urged me to come back another day, but that's pricey on public transportation, and would have me walking a couple of miles from the bus stop on a foot that's been aching and making me think there's something seriously wrong with it. With no guarantee that they wouldn't help me then, either.

So, Lynn and I went out of there wondering what we were going to do with the rest of the afternoon. I made a few suggestions and asked her what she wanted to do. She said "Why don't we get you some new glasses?" At first, I didn't think she meant it, but she did, and I had an eye exam and new glasses.

They have a gunmetal finish metal frame which is a little bigger than I might otherwise want for glasses, but there are sunglasses that clip magnetically to the frame. They are the perfect size for sunglasses. Lynn and the saleslady said it was silly to buy glasses and not get bifocals, and the difference between line and no-line was a whole $7.50, so I have no-line bifocals.

Talk about the ultimate present! She said these are for my birthday, Christmas, my birthday next year and Christmas next year, and probably a few other presents, too. It's a present for the rest of my life!

Friday and Saturday evenings, we watched some TV and movies and talked. Movies seen were: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (she hadn't seen it before) and Practical Magic. Movie shows included Ghost Whisperer, and the Blink episode of Doctor Who.

Saturday, we went to the Potomac Celtic Festival, and met Holly, Everett and Jeff. 

There was no cider! They had a problem with some of the equipment that puts various drinks on tap, and so they had just beer and (I think) stout. They could only sell two drinks, so they eliminated the cider.

We wandered around and found loads of neat stuff, and then the sky got grey, and we shopped our way back to the cars. I wanted to go back to Echo and Wild and buy a sterling rune pendant that I had seen, but all the sales booths were being packed up for the rain that was coming and I couldn't find it for a while. I bought a beautiful silver Algiz (or Elhaz) pendant. Most runes have several names. Algiz is a rune of protection, and it's a rune that also appeared in New Genesis  (also known as Twilight of the Dogs--I'm in photo 13), a movie I worked on.

I bought my rune (which I love), and it was just starting to rain, so I headed across the field, directly toward the entrance, and the sky opened up and rained harder than I've ever seen it do. I had an umbrella, but my pants were soaked through before I could get out of the open and to shelter. This was not just rain, it was a storm. When I got toward the edge (near the exit), I hid under a tent with a lot of other people who wanted to get out of the rain, and called Lynn. She had gotten back to the car, and had pulled up near the entrance. She moved a little so I could see her headlights, and I made a run for it. We also picked up Everett and Jeff, and drove them out to Holly and her car.

After a little milling around in confusion, we went to Pizza Hut and had some wonderful pizza (what else), with all the usual stuff. It was wonderful! It gave us a chance to talk and catch up, and was loads of fun!

On Sunday, Holly got together with Lynn and I for lunch and we got a chance to talk and catch up on more things, we saw Lynn off on her trip home, and Holly and I went to see The Happening. It was spooky, and strange (you were expecting something else?). I was slightly disappointed with the ending.

We went to Borders so Holly could get a copy of the next Dresden Files book, and she bought a copy of Lord Foul's Bane to loan me and to read after I'm done with it.

Then she dropped me at home, where I crashed and burned with the current cold/sore throat/misery that I'm still fighting off.

What a weekend! I feel like I've been through an adventure to rival Indy's!

Have a great Tuesday! More on cameras and photography tomorrow

Blink!

For anybody who missed it, the Doctor Who episode, Blink will be on the SciFi Channel in the early hours of Friday. Here it will be on at 5 am. Check local listings.

This is one of the best ever horror stories.

Even if you're not a Doctor Who fan, if you like horror, you'll love this. Doctor Who appears primarily as a DVD recording. He's necessary to the story, but it's really about Sally Sparrow and her friend, Kathy Nightingale, although Kathy disappears fairly early in the story.

Set your VCRs and DVRs and record this!

You're going to love it!