Anyone who's still awake feel free to talk about tv with me in the comments. :)

The Mentalist: Probably the best ep of the season, though I'm not wild about the ending.

FlashForward: Rather boring, but I liked the Mark/Aaron scenes and the Olivia/Bryce scenes. I like the platonic friendships on this show a lot. Bryce was also a character I didn't care very much about but now I kinda love him.

Supernatural: Pretty much what I expected. I don't love Castiel as much as Little Brother does though. One thing I find myself hoping is that the show actually ends this year. They keep building up to the final confrontation and it's going to be so epic nothing can top it. Plus, I am hard pressed to find a show that went out on a high note of their own volition.

Private Practice: I love Charlotte more every week. Dad watched part of it with me and even though he spent most of that time looking at lolcats and lolcat motivation posters he paid enough attention to say that Cooper is a douche. I wasn't particularly moved by any of the stories other than Charlotte's general awesomeness this week but I definitely feel like they're moving towards something.

Grey's Anatomy: I turned it off about 20 minutes in. I've got a download and I might watch it tomorrow. I just don't get this show's age thing. First, age gaps don't matter, then they matter when plot-convenient, then they don't matter again, blah blah blah. It's pretty annoying.

Final tv note of the night: does anyone know where I can find mp3s of Stephen Colbert singing? I love his voice, especially when he sings with his guests.

So Aaron Sorkin's new tv show is going to be a behind-the-scenes of a tv show.

YAY

Unsubstantiated rumours and speculation has it a news show, a la Keith Olbermann.

That sounds like combining The West Wing with Sports Night...aka My Dream TV Show.

[+] Owww, my head is hurting again. I have no idea where these headaches come from. But I want this one to go away now because I want to have a nice hot bath and a nice cold coke before Lie to Me.

[+] I've been working on NaNoWriMo a lot, using Write or Die on Kamikaze mode to keep me writing. I have a tendency to work on every sentence until it is perfect so having my words get erased if I pause too long is quite the motivator. ;)

[+] The above means that I'll probably be posting a scene or two on the NaNo filter in the next few days.

[+] I have this coming Thursday's episode of FlashForward to watch and I still haven't gotten around to it yet. I feel like this says something about the show.

[+] New icon! I'm considering doing a Donna picspam because my S4 Doctor Who rewatch just cemented my love for her. Also, just watched S3's "The Shakespeare Code" with the fam and squealed a lot whenever they showed Lord Leycester Hospital in Warwick.

Any of my fellow Canucks watching Battle of the Blades? Tonight's the finale and I am pretty GLEEFUL.

To start off with it's a REAL LIFE The Cutting Edge and what do I love more than pretty boy hockey players and pretty girl skaters? Um. Nothing. Throw in George Strombolongname (TM Rainbow Sun Francks) and I'm in heaven there.

I'm totally throwing my hat behind Craig Simpson and Jamie Sale.

I kinda hope they do it again but reverse it and have male figure skaters and female hockey players. Not because I want to see Cassie Campbell or Manon Rhéaume in skimpy costumes or anything. Would never happen though because the girls are probably just too big to be thrown around but still.

The first of my 100 Situations photo meme. This is #78 Kitchen.

I made my famous oatmeal raisin cookies today. And ate a lot of the dough before it could be made into cookies. What?! I like the dough best!

I woke up with a shitty headache that's only been getting worse, so I put on The West Wing and got back into bed.

About a minute and a half into "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen" I literally just burst into tears. By the time Toby found Josh I was full out sobbing.

Clearly something is wrong with me today.

Okay, I'm going to need links and somehow get into Supernatural fandom crazyparts soon because this is going to be GOOOOD.

Jensen Ackles and Daneel Harris are engaged. I've already pissed myself laughing at ONTD but after reading the about Teabaggers bagging on the Holocaust I need some serious hilarity.

Also, Chezza apparently didn't wear her wedding ring on either Saturday or Sunday's X Factor and everyone's buzzing about her leaving that douche Ashley. Unfortch, I doubt she'll leave him for a while.

I've been rewatching Doctor Who Season 4 and my thoughts can be summed up by the following macro.



I need to find a good Donna icon, stat!

Jeez, way to fail AGAIN, America.

I know I have a lot of Americans on my flist but this has to be even more discouraging to you. Why are civil rights even coming to a vote?

My mind boggles. :(

I posted a picture a few days ago of my puppy Ripley in the leaves, so here is a picture of my cat, Kirby, on a bed of leaves as well. If you click on the picture, it should take you to one a little larger for more detail.

Hey, can you guys point me the way of one of those awesome little word counters? I want to be able to keep fastidious track of where I am in my Great Novel of Trashy Celebrity Exploits.

An old picture from February 2009 that I've just gotten around to editing. The stream in Betws-y-Coed is a lovely sight, all the rocks making it interesting. Like most other people on Flickr I have a thing for rocks and rushing water, I find it beautiful, both stimulating and calming. I'd really like to go back and tour Wales in the summer or fall when there are more leaves on the trees and such. That would be up to heartsways though.

I decided to watch Piers Morgan's Life Stories with Sharon Osbourne as a lead-up to Dannii Minogue's interview with him, just so I could reference the feud between them. And now I'm actually upset on Dannii's behalf. Sharon's always been an utter cunt but I kind of liked her for that but badmouthing my girl Dannii is not on.

Who the hell is Sharon Osbourne to talk about bad plastic surgery, anyway?

Which reminds me: I've been following Dannii on Twitter and I've realized I'm completely entranced by her. She needs to leave her boyfriend for either me or Cheryl Cole immediately. Although she posted pictures of them in the Hollywood Hills on her blog and his abs made me a little straighter.

Guys, I've turned into a Minogue stan. I'm absolutely obsessed with both of them, but Dannii a little more.

All in all, last night was a good night of television but the only thing that blew me away was Grey's Anatomy, which was a shock since I've thought it's been really bad for going on two years now.

( The Mentalist )

( FlashForward )

( Supernatural )

( Grey's Anatomy )

( Private Practice )

The Mentalist: B+
FlashForward: B
Supernatural: B+
Grey's Anatomy: A
Private Practice: B+

The pumpkin I carved on Tuesday night. If I can get my cheesecake baked for my dad's birthday early enough I'll probably do another one.

Ripley has been having a lot of seizures again. Usually she goes a few weeks without them but she had three over a 24 hour span between Sunday and yesterday. She goes crazy afterwards; she can't get enough attention, she can't stop moving and she can't stop being desperate for food. Usually it calms down within the day but she's still manic today.

I took her out for her second or third walk yesterday and took my camera. I was trying to capture the look of fall and take pictures of fallen leaves when she jumped in my way, naturally. So I took a few shots of her laying in the leaves on someone else's lawn. I really like how this picture turned out. It may actually be one of my very favourites.

A shot from the drive home from last week's trip to the United States. We were in upstate New York, around the Syracuse area. I made my dad pull over so I could take pictures because it was just SUCH a perfect day. Such a perfect day that we took meandered slowly home, stopping whenever we felt like it, taking eight plus hours instead of the usual five.

D:

Okay, you know what is NOT COOL?!

When an Alexa Chung "I'm a vegetarian but I collect taxidermied things" post on ONTD turns into a POST WITH GIGANTIC PICTURES OF GIGANTIC SPIDERS.

No. Just no.

I was just about to go to bed and now my eyes are really wide, like saucers and I don't think I can close them anymore because I see spider. I am a girl that likes animals and snakes and such (snakes in the water are the exception and a large reason why I don't swim) BUT I DO NOT CARE FOR SPIDERS. And by do not care for I mean they haunt my dreams and even toy ones freak me the fuck out, make my skin crawl and other such things.

D:

This is really a NaNoWriMo poll but I wanted to see if people actually read these books, even as guilty pleasures.

Poll #1476420 Jilly Cooper
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 10

Have you ever read a Jilly Cooper book?

If yes, which ones:

I've pretty much got my main characters and a rough plot sketch worked out, which I'll probably talk about on the filter more.

Last year I bought my mom and movie and never gave it to her. A Bear Called Winnie about how Winnie (of Winnie the Pooh fame) came from belonging to a Canadian soldier to ending up at the London Zoo and inspiring A.A. Milne. It's got Stephen Fry, Michael Fassbender, Jonathon Young (Tesla from Sanctuary), Gil Bellows and Aaron Ashmore. Winnie was named after Winnipeg, the hometown of the company.

We're right at the end and it's been making me bawl the entire time. The man really loved Winnie and so many of the veterinary unit of the WWI military put their careers on the line for the bear. Seriously. I'm really crying hard.

There's a fairly thick booklet that came with it that talks about filming and how they had two bear cubs and just followed them around with the camera and let the bears interact with the cast however they wanted. Apparently the bear that played the adult Winnie, a bear named Bonkers, actually gave Michael Fassbender a genuine bear hug and made the entire crew cry.

Oh, AA Milne and Christopher Robin just walked away and tears are running down my face. I am such a sap.

I highly recommend this movie. All my Canadian peeps definitely need to watch it.

Does anyone have any good tutorials for fixing up screencaps? Particularly The West Wing screencaps?

The show is such an odd colour and so fuzzy. :(

Other shows from tonight.

Grey's Anatomy: I'm not even going to spoiler cut this because to say it was horribly bad is not a spoiler. Jessica Capshaw and Kevin McKidd remain the only good things about the show but everything else just made me rage and feel bad because of how much I used to LOVE Grey's for being a silly, soapy drama that made me laugh and cry.

I am officially done with it. I still want to write Addison/Erica all the time though.

On the other hand, Private Practice actually made me squeal with glee. ( thoughts on the show )

FINAL DIAGNOSIS:
FlashForward B+ (up from last week's B-)
Grey's Anatomy: C (up from last week's D-)
Private Practice: A (up from last week's A-)

ETA: more stuff from the episode

DUDE. Just when I was about to give up FlashForward, ( spoilers for tonight's ep )

DAMN! Someone just posted a clip from Oz in an SVU post over on ONTD and now I've been struck by the overwhelming desire to watch that show again. I haven't watched it in years, probably since around when it originally aired but I've always loved the rough, violent nature of the show.

I only have two eps left of Being Human (and I actually want to write fic for it too) and I think I'm going to download a bunch of Oz eps for next.

Every year I say I'm going to do NaNoWriMo and often times don't even start writing or even think about it. It has negative power; the power to make me not think about writing.

This year I'm going to try to do it and finish it.

I promised heartsways I would write her a trashy novel in the vein of Jilly Cooper's Rutshire Chronicles. Naturally this will also be set in England but less on society and more on an X Factor-esque tv show. I have to avoid local dialects though without serious help. British people have so many accents and phrases that I get confused. I can tell a Geordie from a Scouser now though!

To write "Canadian" all you have to do is make sure you use "grade three" into of "third grade", throw words like "double-double" and "tuque" all over the place and make sure everyone is really polite. Stereotypes to be sure but on Sunday I ate a poutine at Harvey's while wearing a wool & polar fleece hat made to look like a bear. It doesn't get more stereotypical than that.

Obligatory filter poll:
Poll #1474038 NaNoWriMo filter
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 9

NaNoWriMo filter?

Also, I have my icons back. So I'm up to 124 icons. (See my pretty new Dannii icon?) I have a few empty spaces so if people come across any nice The Good Wife, Castle or FlashForward icons you think I might like, link me up.

I've done a small friendslist cut for the first time in five years. If you have even a passing interest in this journal, I've probably kept you. This was mostly just to cull journals that are no longer updated and people I have no relationship with. But consider this the time to cut me if you don't think we have similar interests or if you don't care. This is your Get Out of Jail Free card.

I've been going through some heavy stuff and just have felt blah for a while. I might be posting about that and I know a lot of you are only interested in fannish things.

My Girls Aloud Out of Control Tour DVD arrived today and mom and I are watching it. How much do I love that my mother will not only go to the Kylie Minogue concert with me but tell me to put on the Girls Aloud tour DVD?

My mom rocks. I have to keep explaining the girls though. "That's Cheryl...yes, she's the one married to the cheating footballer...yes and the one from The X Factor." And like most people she has trouble remembering who Kimberley is.

Little Brother and Dad are out because Little Brother came home from school today with an announcement he had to go see "Antigone" put on by the Soulpepper Theatre group tonight. It was on his syllabus but naturally he didn't remember until the last two nights. I hope he actually passes this year.

My fourth LibraryThing early reviewer book came today and I am extremely excited. To start off, the last few books I've gotten have been paperback, not final copies and without a cover.

Today's book, Salt by Maurice Gee, is a final copy and hardcover with a dustjacket. I drew myself a bath and started reading almost immediately and I love it already. It's a YA fantasy novel, a genre I love.

Hopefully within the next day or so I'll post a review.

ETA: LOLing at all the Canadians on tonight's CSI:NY. And The L Word crossovers.

I'm writing BSG fic again. I've figured out why I keep writing it though. I always felt like I couldn't write while it was on because I always wanted to wait to see if my questions were answered by the next episode. I'm a completist. And it's making me write cracky pairings like post-series Lee/Seelix humiliation fic for bsg_kink. What's up with my brain?

I've also realized that fandomsecrets made me a bit of a rabid fan of Dee and Tory just because the people make secrets like "Dee hurt my woobie Billy and I was glad when she died." But I love them for being beautiful and complicated. Plus they can be fleshed out in fic because as minor characters they didn't get the same amount of screentime as Starbuck or Laura.

Even though I skipped out on all my fic commitments last month I'm considering joining apocabigbang. I have an SG1 idea I've wanted to write for a while. I also have a bsgficexchange story I have to write. I wish I could write Fringe fic but right now I can't even fathom it.

NCIS: Los Angeles bored me so much tonight that I spent nearly the entire thing arguing with some doof on ontd_political and then left before the end for a bath. My cheesecake was only supposed to bake for an hour but ended up in the oven for almost two. Now I have to find a place in the fridge (easier said than done) and drizzle chocolate over it for my aunt's birthday tomorrow.

Oh and everything about NCIS proper was love tonight. Ziva is just killing me. Cote de Pablo is absolutely nailing her scenes this season. Now I'm upset my Ziva icons are missing.

In the middle of The Good Wife now. There's just something so empathetic about Julianna Marguiles.

I'm doin' some pimpin' today.

I just joined starfleet_hq and am on team_sisko for obvious reasons. It's a Star Trek based challenge community. As a crew member you are assigned to one of five teams: team_kirk, team_picard, team_sisko, team_janeway and team_archer. You will compete against the other teams for points in challenges such as trivia quizzes, creating icons or other graphics, writing fanfic/drabbles, discussions, puzzles and a whole host of other things. Mostly it’s about having fun and meeting new people who share your love of Star Trek

So I'm nerdy but come and join Team Sisko and join in on the DS9 awesome.

I saw a preview for that movie '2012' in the five minutes I watched tv last night and it made me feel all gross and sick.

On the other hand, the subsequent ONTD post has made me want to throw an End of the World/holiday party on December 21, 2012. Everyone could get drunk and eat candy canes. It would be awesome.

Okay flist, I know you'll have the answer.

Where can I find mp3s of the Glee cast songs?

Oh NCIS, how I love you.

( spoilery stuff )

I watched NCIS: Los Angeles last night but didn't like it. It just didn't gel in the same way for me. *shrug*

However, I am completely loving The Good Wife. I have a small fear that it's going to turn into a simple law procedural but at the moment I'm just loving all the interactions between Josh Charles, Julianna Marguiles and Christine Baranski. Also, Archie Panjabi is really, really hot and does a good American accent.

I like it more as a personal drama with law than a law drama and everything that entails.