kerlin

I was shocked and saddened when devildoll just texted me this: Nicholas Brendon, ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ Star, Dies at 54. I knew he had troubles, but also thought he had time to work them out. He's a year younger than me!

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I have watched some TV!

Shrinking: ( spoilers )

Abbott Elementary: ( spoilers )

The Pitt: ( spoilers )

Here is a cool video interview with Alexandra Metz, who plays Garcia. I don't think there are any spoilers past earlier s2 episodes.

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Oscar winner Michael B Jordan! Woohoo! I did not watch the Oscars but I am so happy for MBJ!

Also for Kpop Demon Hunters and "Golden!"

Here are two links I enjoyed this morning:

= Don't Fence Ted McGinley In (NYT gift link) (also, spoilers for aired episodes of Shrinking)

= 'The Pitt,' as Told by Its Patients

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Got up yesterday morning baked 4 loaves of soda bread (here's a picture of 2 of them), ate some myself (I kept the 4th loaf) then schlepped out ot the island to deliver them to my brother, sister, and niece.

We went out for a fun dinner - the onion rings at this place are so good! even if the service was a little haphazard - and then I went home with my brother's family. It was early enough that I could have come back here, but my middle niece was like, "aren't you going to hang out with us?!" so of course I stayed, and ended up watching KPop Demon Hunters with middle and youngest niece (youngest was like I don't wanna! but at the end she was like, that was really good!). I should note that they are 27 and 24, but they still like hanging out with me! <333 And now we want the prequel about Rumi's mother and her demon affair.

My car this morning came 90 minutes early, so I rolled out of bed expecting to be able to have a bagel and a cup of coffee before I had to leave, but there he was, blocking the driveway, so I got home before I was even scheduled to leave.

The amount of benadryl and Zyrtec I have to take at their house because of the cat is ridiculous, and I ended up coming home and sleeping for most of the day. I'm glad I didn't cancel my PTO day tomorrow though - I scheduled it when this dinner was originally planned for tonight. I did tell my boss she could ping me if she needed me ahead of their meeting with the board chair tomorrow afternoon, but I so hope she doesn't.

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Dark Winds, Season 3: continues to be both beautifully acted, thoughtfully and empathically written, and a visual feast. Also heartbreaking in the day it follows up on s2's conclusion for Joe Leaphorn and his wife Emma. ( Small spoilery remark. ) Also I was more grateful than ever that the show takes place in the 1970s and wasn't updated to the present because Bern's new job with border patrol would have felt very differently even before her subplot kicks in.

Young Sherlock: aka the one by Guy Ritchie which doesn't feel like a prequel to his Holmes movies and is the better for it. I mean, I didn't dislike his first Holmes movie, which was the only one I saw, but I wasn't crazy about it, either, and never felt the need to see it again. Also it was made at a time where all the various iterations of Sherlock Holmes seemed to lean into emphasizing his arrrogance. Now, this show is entertaining fluff with only the vaguest nods to when it's supposed to be set: female students galore in Oxford, 1870, for some reason a rich and high ranking visitor takes the carriage instead of the train to Oxford, while someone in the production team actually remembered the Paris Commune happened, they evidently forgot or ignored both the near starvation of the population part of that and that there was also the Franco-Prussian war going on, so everyone makes a trip to Paris for one episode with no armies in sight, but the Folies Bergeres being in business with dancing girls, etc., etc., etc. Not to mentiion ( something extremely plot spoilery ) But honestly, because the show doesn't pretend to be anything but fun fluff, I did not mind. What I do suspect is someone in the production team has watched at least some Smallville and thought, hm, that "Clark and Lex were bffs for a while when young before Lex went evil" premise is great, we should do that with Holmes and Moriarty". And proceeded to follow up on this idea. Young Sherlock, played by a member of the gifted Fiennes clan, and young James M, played by Mat (the second one) from Wheel of Time, have the necessary chemistry and homoerotic subtext, they hit it off famously, and at the same time the seeds for future supervillaindom in Moriarty are there. And the show does make it believable these are two young guys smarter than most others around them and on each other's level. Most importantly, though: this Sherlock Holmes is the first one in what feels like eons who is not introduced being a jerk to the people around him. (I love Elementary ! But while Elementary's Sherlock was never as extreme as Sherlock's Sherlock, he, too, started out being rude to his Watson and everyone else.) It might come with the much younger territory, but while he's cocky, he's not (yet?) abrasive, downright tender with his mother, and, lo and behold, civil to people who aren't awful to others in front of him. Otoh, it may also be that Guy Ritchie and his production team watched the last season of Sherlock and thought, hm, dysfunctional Holmes family drama, unexpected relations, we like it, we like it, but how about giving the women better parts? ( Spoilers were very entertained indeed by the result ) Oh, and absolutely no one gets raped or threatened with rape. Like I said, this fluffy show with a heavy emphasis on the bromance manages to do very well by its female characters. Anyway, whether nor not this gets another season - which it doesn't really need for the story it has told - I enjoyed myself.

Happy Saturday!

I'm going to be doing a little maintenance today. It will likely cause a tiny interruption of service (specifically for www.dreamwidth.org) on the order of 2-3 minutes while some settings propagate. If you're on a journal page, that should still work throughout!

If it doesn't work, the rollback plan is pretty quick, I'm just toggling a setting on how traffic gets to the site. I'll update this post if something goes wrong, but don't anticipate any interruption to be longer than 10 minutes even in a rollback situation.

I finally got some Minute Maid frozen orange juice concentrate and Orange Julius take 2 is way better than the watery version I made last month. Woo!

Tomorrow, I have to get up early and bake Irish soda bread to take to the family - we are going out for St. Patrick's Day dinner (and also the NINTH[!!!!!] anniversary of my father's death - it is his recipe I use; I miss him a lot).

TV quick takes:

Shrinking: ( spoilers ) Anyway, the first few episodes of this show are a little tough to take but it has morphed into a funny, endearing, poignant hangout comedy and I recommend it! Harrison Ford is SO GOOD in it too.

The Pitt: ( spoilers )

I am very interested to see where the rest of this season is going.

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I don't love that Nolan McLean gave up 2 home runs in the same inning in this game, but I do love that Team Italia celebrates with an Armani blazer and an espresso (they literally have an espresso machine in the dugout and if someone hits a homer, he gets a shot) and then the team captain kisses the guy while everyone else does this: 🤌

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Work is currently bananas. Listen, I have a whole document I wrote on how to change/streamline board stuff to foster discussion and engagement, but we were supposed to do it methodically and not implement it until the June meeting, except now we are doing it NOW, and everything got upended in the stupidest way possible. I maybe kind of couldn't control how irritated I am about it because it is basically making me do double the amount of work and is seems to me like it is just going to achieve the exact opposite of what we want it to, but apparently this is coming directly from the new board chair. I told my boss that if I am right, and that this doesn't do what they think it is going to, I might not say it, but I will be thinking the world's biggest "I told you so." And she was like, that's fair. Sigh.

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Ugh, daylight savings, why are we still doing this???

Anyway, I got up at my usual workday time instead of sleeping in so I could get the onions in the slow cooker, and I did both the "soak onions in cold water in the fridge for 15 minutes" and wore the stupid onion goggles, and still by the 4th onion my eyes were extremely unhappy with me. *hands* Thankfully I only had 6 onions total, so it all got done, and for dinner I made French onion pasta as planned, and now I have dinner for 3 more days as well. I do love this pasta dish - and I always use bucatini, which is one of my favorite pasta shapes, so it was pleasing all around. Every time I make it after not having made in a while, I'm like, why don't I make this more often!? and then I remember the onion-slicing and how annoying it is. Anyway, definitely recommended for a delicious and easy dinner (except for the onion-slicing). I also made bacon so I have lunch for the week also.

I meant to mention this yesterday and forgot, but The Mountain Goats collaborated with Mary Chapin Carpenter to cover World Party: Put the Message in the Box (don't worry if you only recognize one or two of those names - the song is good!).

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I had an extremely busy week, so am very late with my reviewes.

( Paradise 2.04 )


( Star Trek: Starfleet Academy 1.09 )

Went to the office yesterday and as much as I enjoyed seeing so many of my co-workers, almost no work got done. it is just not a good use of time if they want us to be productive. Since it's an open office and we are all sitting together with no walls between us, we just chat and jump into each other's conversations and people stop by and also join in, and it's great for socializing but most of my work is stuff that requires concentration and quiet, which is in short supply at the office. But the anniversary celebration is a lot of fun and I probably won't have to attend another one for 4 more years. *g*

Our next in-office day is in late April, and I floated the idea of maybe bringing in baked goods, so I'm already considering what recipe I might choose to make, since I can experiment.

Today, I made these orange shortbread cookies and they're good, though I would zest another orange (I did 2 this time) if I make them again. Also I didn't sift the flour and instead of rolling out the dough and using cookie cutters, I rolled it into a log and just sliced them (after chilling), since they are just for me so there was no need to get fancy.

I also planned to caramelize onions overnight in the slow cooker, but then I ended up engrossed in F.D. Signifier's Tyler Perry video (which is FOUR HOURS long - I have one hour left but I'm taking a break to watch the WBC) and didn't end up doing the slicing I need to do, so I figure I'll do it in the morning, let them slow cook for most of the day, and then make French onion pasta for dinner. Anyway, I have never seen a Tyler Perry movie or show, but F.D. Signifier's videos are always worth watching.

So yeah, I've been sort of paying attention to the WBC and why is the "S" in USA like a strip of curly bacon on the Team USA jersey??? Once I saw it I couldn't unsee it. Also so many of these unis could be cool and yet so many of them are just meh. Design fail, Nike! Come on! Also, I might be rooting for the DR since Juan Soto is on that team; if Lindor were in it, I'd probably be rooting for Puerto Rico. Though of course I was pleased for Clay Holmes just now, and will be interested to see Nolan McLean pitch.

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