I figured out my plot (I think)! It did take a mixture of all the things I was trying. I had an odd little scene that had popped up in daydreaming, and after reading through the rest of the book, I put that together with what I knew about the character, and suddenly the heavens opened and my path appeared before me. And yes, it really was that dramatic. I might have even heard a heavenly choir. I've already made it past the spot where I was stuck before, and I have scenes envisioned for most of the rest of the book. I'll be able to recycle a few scenes, so it's not all starting from scratch, but if this book gets published, there will be a lot of deleted scenes that fall into the "what could have happened" realm. What's really cool is that there was a scene earlier in the book that I was wavering on whether or not I should keep it, and now it turns out that it sets up something pretty crucial.

If I'm really, really good and manage my time well, I could get it done this week, and then I can take that long-awaited vacation next week, creating an extended Thanksgiving break.

In addition to having a creative breakthrough this weekend, I also finally watched the first episode of V. I think I'm still on the fence, but I suspect that has more to do with where I am mentally and emotionally than anything to do with the show itself. This seems like a show that's going to take itself very seriously. It is Important Television, for the most part, and I don't have a lot of patience for that right now. I don't remember how quickly the big reveal in the original miniseries came about, but I think they made a wise move in doing it in the first hour here, since it's not like we didn't already know there's something wrong about the Visitors. I really like the plot line of the resistance movement and the female FBI agent and the priest. I could do without the junior alien scouts/bratty teenage son/family drama plot line, and Baltar the Journalist already annoys me (I know he's supposed to, but that doesn't mean I enjoy watching it). Since it's on a night when I'm always out and I have to watch on tape, I may fast forward through the annoying parts and just watch the parts I like, unless those other parts become utterly crucial.

I have to admit that my main thought upon seeing Morena Baccarin and Alan Tudyk in the same science fiction show again was that she could use her super alien powers to bring Firefly back, and then I'd be really happy. Now, there was a show that managed to have some serious, scary, even dark stuff without coming across as overly pretentious Important Television.

Meanwhile, the folks at White Collar are taunting me. That guy, holding the ancient-looking tome and digging through old books? Arrgghh. I did not want mental casting because I don't want to feel let down if a movie goes into production and they cast someone else.

The good news: I think I've figured out what I need to do to improve the plot of the book I'm revising.
The bad news: It will require rewriting pretty much the last five chapters. A few scenes can sort of stay in a different context, but I think for the most part everything will change. Ack.

I made my second vat of soup of the season, since I'd already eaten my way through the first batch. I pretty much live on this stuff at this time of year. I'll have it for my lighter meal of the day (sometimes lunch, sometimes dinner) or have it as a vegetable side dish with the heavier meal. Someday I ought to do a cost analysis, figuring out the cost of all the ingredients and dividing by the number of servings to see how it compares to just buying soup in a can, but I think this tastes better, there's probably more nutrition in it, and I know there's less sodium because I don't put any salt in it and canned soup is really, really high in sodium. Keeping a batch of soup handy is also part of my flu prevention strategy. I only seem to get sick when I have no good "sick" food in the house, so I figure if I've got several servings of vegetable soup in the freezer, I won't get sick.

I have done a bit of reading while doing the writing/banging my head against the wall.

First, I managed to get my hands on the new Terry Pratchett book, Unseen Academicals (Mom, it's due on the 14th, and if I get the book done in time, I'll bring it over so you can read it, but work has to come before travel). This one wasn't my favorite of the series, but I can't really say if that's because of anything to do with the book or if it was because it was a book that didn't focus on my favorite aspects or characters of the Discworld. I suppose this would be classified as a "wizards" book, though the major characters are all newcomers, with the wizards mostly in the background. I have liked other books where the main characters weren't series regulars and the series regulars were in supporting roles, but I wasn't overly fond of at least one of the main characters here. She's the kind of person Pratchett usually skewers, and while she did come in for a bit of skewering and learned a few big lessons, I spent most of the time leading up to that point wanting to slap her silly. At any rate, I'll have to re-read this one to really judge how I like it, and it may take reading the next one to put it in context, but this time around I may have been distracted from the story that was actually there by my wondering where Vimes and Carrot were and what they were up to, or if Moist von Lipwig was running the tax system yet.

The plot was essentially about university athletics. The wizards at Unseen University have discovered some fine print about a major bequest requiring them to field a football team, and if they don't, they lose the money, which might trim back their snack allocation. Problem is, football is rather frowned upon and is something generally played on the streets as part of a rivalry between neighborhoods. But then the Patrician decides to legalize and formalize football, imposing rules and order, and the university's team will play in the first big game. Meanwhile, there are things going on among the university's below-stairs staff, including a bright young man who seems to be a minority of one (no one's entirely sure what he is) but who may be smart enough to help mold the wizards into an actual team. And there are a number of other little subplots, including one about modeling and ambition. I plowed through the book in one afternoon, and it had a number of laugh-out-loud moments, plus the usual insightful social commentary, but I tend to have to read these at least twice before all the details really sink in.

Then there was Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve, which is a young-adult, post-apocalyptic steampunk adventure. In the very far future on a devastated earth, cities have become mobile, roving the earth and scavenging smaller cities or towns, with airships used to scout out prey. And I have to say that this concept is utterly cool -- so cool it was almost distracting because I'd pause in the reading to imagine what that would be like. Dallas wouldn't get very far because the different parts of the city would all want to go in different directions, so it would just sit there, rocking back and forth. But I can imagine that Fort Worth would either absorb or ally with the Mid-Cities, and then it would go rollicking across the prairie, six-guns blazing, with a mighty "Yee Hah!"

Our hero, an apprentice historian, finds out that things in London aren't quite what they seem when he saves the life of the city's most famous historian, only to get himself shoved overboard by the man he just saved. Soon, he's on the run with a young radical who lives for revenge, and they get captured, rescued, captured again, enslaved, escaped, etc., in a series of adventures as they travel on airships and pirate suburbs in their attempt to get back to London. Meanwhile, the engineers of London have discovered a piece of ancient technology from the last war that they think is just what they need to take over the world.

This was shelved in the teen section of the library and the main character is 15, but the writing style struck me as more of a children's/middle grade book, except then a lot of the events were probably better suited for more mature readers (it gets really violent and there are a lot of pretty horrible deaths, including some major characters). That made for a slightly disconcerting mix, to be reading something that at times seemed almost childish, only to come across something a little too intense even for me as an adult. That's a fair warning for parents because I'm not sure where I'd say the target audience would be -- it's a little immature in a lot of places for teen readers, but probably too intense in places for younger readers. Which means it's just right for adults who no longer care whether what they're reading is too "babyish." I will be grabbing the sequel because I was really intrigued by this world and I liked the characters who actually managed to survive (did I mention the number of deaths?).

On a television note, the new version of V premieres tonight. Sci Fi was running the miniseries on Sunday, but I found I could only stand to watch a few minutes of it (I recall being very into it when I was a teenager). I'll be taping because I have ballet tonight, and then I don't know when I'll get around to watching it. It may get moved to my Friday line-up, before the ritual mocking of Stargate: Universe.

Speaking of Terry Pratchett and Friday-night television, I've decided that White Collar is essentially "Sam Vimes and Moist von Lipwig team up to fight crime." And now I want to read that book.

This was a fairly restorative weekend. Saturday, I celebrated the result of the Texas vs. Oklahoma game by going out for German food with friends (it wasn't a designated celebration, but the invitation came just at a moment when I was feeling celebratory). Then Sunday my choir sang for the early morning service, and while it was a pain having to get up so early, it was kind of nice to have been to church, run some errands, read the newspaper and had lunch before the time I usually get home from church. I'd had grand plans about using the particularly long afternoon to walk over to the river with a picnic lunch, but then I realized that I had no portable lunch-type food on hand and it was a pretty windy day and I already had some allergy issues (itchy eyes, sniffles), so I didn't think being outdoors for several hours was a great idea. Instead, I curled up on the sofa with a good book and some tea, and it was bliss. Now I think I'm even energized for the week (aside from the sniffles and itchy eyes).

I haven't done an HBO report for a while, in part because there hasn't been anything I really wanted to watch and in part because I haven't had the time or attention span for an entire movie. Instead, I seem to have developed a habit of watching crime shows OnDemand or in cable syndication. In spite of loving mystery novels, I've never been that big a fan of crime shows, aside from a junior high fondness for CHiPs (it was mostly about the attractive young men in uniforms with tight pants -- and now the sergeant is Jim's dad on The Office!). Otherwise, most of the law-enforcement type shows I've watched have been more along the lines of science fiction with law-enforcement characters, like The X-Files and Warehouse 13. But I've been developing a character who works in law enforcement, which has meant some research into the topic, which led to additional curiosity about the subject so that the TV shows became more appealing. Unfortunately, the reality and the TV world clash in ways that make my brain hurt.

Take the New York version of CSI, which is pretty much the "mama bear" just-right version for me -- original recipe is too icky with delving into "deviant" lifestyles, and Miami is too icky with the caliber of acting. I've only been able to tolerate either when there was a guest star I wanted to see (and what a waste of Adam Baldwin). The New York version isn't quite so icky (although the murder statistics seem to skew toward rich, white people, contrary to reality) and the acting is far better than Miami. However, I really don't get the concept of the series.

It seems like the people who work in the crime lab do all the work of the entire police department. They collect evidence and document the crime scene, which makes sense, and then they analyze the evidence, which I guess makes sense, though I wouldn't think that the people who collect the evidence would also be running all the tests. That seems to fall into the same fictional trope as the doctors on House who run all their own tests. And then the crime lab guys also go out and interview suspects, participate in interrogations and strap on the Kevlar and go out to take down suspects. The police memoirs I've read all gripe about how long they have to hang out waiting for the crime scene team to show up and how long it takes to get lab results, and I can see why if the crime lab guys are having to do absolutely everything on the case. They do acknowledge that some of the police work doesn't involve DNA tests and does involve legwork, and they have a designated character for that, good old Detective Drudge. A typical scene involves the crime lab guy reporting to his boss that the fibers on the victim's clothing turned out to come from a rare breed of gnu, which the local zoo happens to have, and Detective Drudge is following up on that. A few minutes later (maybe an hour in the world of the show), Detective Drudge will show up to report that the victim's brother-in-law is the gnu-keeper at the zoo, and the victim was at his house before he was killed, which could explain the fibers. There are witnesses who saw the gnu-keeper with the gnus at the time of the murder, so that rules him out. This seems to be the opposite of the way things work in the real world, where the detective manages the case, and when the crime lab sends him their results, he incorporates that into his investigation but he wouldn't have to report any of his findings to them unless it involved some new piece of evidence for them to analyze.

Meanwhile, poor Detective Drudge seems to be the only homicide detective in the entire city. He's at every single crime scene. The crime lab would presumably cover the whole city, since it's too expensive to have one in every precint, but they only seem to work with this one guy. And when he gets a little spare time, he does things like put together huge drug busts. At first I thought that maybe that was just editing, that we only see the cases they work with this one detective, but then those cases do cover the whole city and not any one particular precinct. So instead it's like the crime lab is really responsible for fighting all the crime in New York, and Detective Drudge is their pet detective who does all the legwork.

But then I realized I was looking at it the wrong way. This is actually a science fiction series set in a near-future alternative-reality New York, and Detective Drudge is, you guessed it, a Cylon (or Cylon-type robot). Due to budget cuts and advanced technology, all homicide detectives have been replaced with Detective Drudge units, so there's at least one in every precinct. They're all wirelessly linked, so they all dress the same on each day, and that means you never know which one you're dealing with. They also share info and help each other with research and legwork, which is how he's able to find needles in haystacks so quickly. Unfortunately, the info sharing also means that they all share memories of their personal problems and traumas, which maximizes the angst and suffering, but they haven't yet worked that bug out.

You know, that might make a fun science fiction story.

Anyway, thinking in those terms ups my science fiction quota (since it was starting to be heavily outnumbered by crime shows) and brings killer robots back to my television after the end of Battlestar Galactica and the cancellation of The Terminator series, so I'm happy with this concept. And hey, if you're going to make multiple copies of a guy, he's not a bad choice (dark hair, blue eyes, definitely my type, even if he is a child).

For future CSI shows, it might be fun to incorporate some reality and have them work with multiple detectives, depending on the precinct, so that the detective could be a celebrity cameo role. Who'll be there to introduce the case at the crime scene this week?

And I think I may be adding yet another crime-type show to my slate this week when White Collar starts on USA. I admit that my reasons for watching this are entirely shallow, mostly because when I see an ad for it out of the corner of my eye, my brain says, "Owen!" Which means I must watch it. Oddly, though, I never got the "Owen!" response when this actor was on Chuck, even though from the sounds of things, this character isn't much at all like Owen. I think it's the hair and wardrobe in the ads. Mind you, this is not to be taken as a fantasy casting endorsement, since I'm still trying to stay away from that and keep an open mind.

Weird weather today. It actually got warmer during the night. When I went to bed, it was cold and misty, and when I got up, it was warm and muggy. We're supposed to get big storms today, then it will be cold again tomorrow. We seem to have skipped the transition between summer and fall that we usually get. I usually have a few weeks when I can turn off the air conditioner but still keep windows open and use the ceiling fans, but this year I seem to have gone straight from AC to keeping windows shut and using the big comforter on the bed at night.

I think I've discovered my working pattern on this book. I seem to alternate high-productivity days with thinking days. Yesterday was a thinking day. The big Ballet Class Epiphany turns out to have affected the very foundations of the story and the main character. I don't think it much changes most of what I've already written, but the last two scenes I wrote need to change significantly, and it took a lot of thinking yesterday before I got an inkling of how. Oh, man, will this little tidbit take everything up a notch.

Theoretically, this will be a high-productivity day. I do have to go to the bank, but now that my bank has taken over the bank in front of the post office, I can walk for that and it also counts as my exercise for the day. Otherwise, no classes, rehearsals or freelance projects due, and it should get rainy, so I should be able to write.

TV update:
Tonight's the big Office wedding. I may be in the minority on this, but I don't think that Jim and Pam getting together was any kind of mistake because they weren't a typical TV will they/won't they couple. Their relationship was never based on conflict. They were the only two sane people in a crazy world and gravitated together, and the conflict keeping them apart for the first few seasons involved them dealing with their individual issues. Once they did get together, their relationship didn't really change. I guess there wasn't the angst and longing, but for the most part, they were the same, so it didn't lose a lot of energy or change things. It's nice to see a TV couple you could actually imagine working in real life instead of the dysfunctional, borderline-abusive relationships that pass for "romantic chemistry" on TV.

I finally watched last week's FlashForward, and I'm still on the fence. I don't think it's necessarily anything wrong with the series. The problem is more with me. It's something I'd normally like but which isn't the kind of series I can connect with right now. When I have Book Brain, I can't deal with that kind of complexity in something I haven't already connected with. I can't fall in love with something new when I'm in the process of falling in love with a new story in my head.

However, House seems to have at least temporarily lured me back in. I remembered why I used to like that show this week when they reunited the old team. I'm intrigued by what they've now kicked off, but I worry that it's too big for a show like this to really deal with. Still, you have to wonder what these people were thinking in sidelining an actor who could hold his own against James Earl Jones in favor of a vacant-eyed mannequin.

This may have been a close-to-perfect weekend. Friday I went for lunch with my friends to a Lebanese Food Festival at a nearby Lebanese church, and it was the perfect day for sitting under the trees and eating. Saturday morning it was one of those days when it was warm enough to be summer elsewhere but not too hot, so I walked to the library, taking the long way. When I got back, my neighbor was out walking her puppy, so I got my recommended allowance of puppy kisses and cuddles. Since it was nice outside, I finished cutting down the evil alien vines on my patio. I hadn't tackled them to that extent since I've lived here, and I'm not sure they've been cut out since the house was built, as I found all kinds of things up under them. Fortunately, there were no snake skins (that's always fun to find in the shrubbery), but I did find a couple of things that were either long-rotted tennis balls or dragon eggs. I guess I'll find out when/if the dragons hatch. Soon after I finished the gardening, it suddenly got cool and rainy, so it was good writing weather. Sunday would have been the perfect day for curling up with a book and a pot of tea, but I had a choir rehearsal. However, we're doing Messiah for Christmas, and that's always fun to sing (and that's what the rehearsal was for). Then when I got home, I got more puppy kisses and cuddles (once this dog decides she likes you, you really feel loved) and I spent the rest of the afternoon drinking tea and reading Edgar Allan Poe (my town is doing one of those "one city, one book" things, and it's the stories and poems of Poe, so I thought I'd play along).

Today it's still cool and gray, so I anticipate a productive writing day.

Now, an update on fall TV.

I caught the premiere of Stargate: Universe, and I'm not entirely sold. It kind of struck me as Battlestar Stargate Voyager, and someone really needs to remind TV writers that flashbacks are not the same as characterization. I'm really wary of the geeky computer boy, who seems to have wandered in from one of those "frat pack" so-called "romantic" comedies. That character strikes me as the result of the network or creators being cynical about their audience, like they think we couldn't possibly identify with the highly-trained or educated military and scientific types, so we need someone like us to identify with and relate to, and their image of their audience is a slobby guy who lives with his mother and plays computer games while having delusions about being a secret instinctive genius who can outthink people who have dedicated their lives to studying something. He's giving me major Wesley Crusher vibes, in that he's elevated to his position in a way that bypasses the hard way that everyone else had to take and in that I anticipate that half the episodes will involve him saving the ship in some way that all the experts didn't think of, while the other half will involve him endangering the ship out of doing something stupid.

I guess we'll have to see what the regular episodes are like. My guess, based on the set-up at the end of the pilot is that each week the ship will drop out of hyperspace and dial a gate, an away team will go to investigate and will have adventures that put them up against the deadline of the countdown clock before the ship goes back into hyperspace. So, basically, it's original SG-1, but starting on a ship instead of Earth, and with a stopwatch, but without a sense of humor. It's not like there's much else on, so I'll give it a shot, but it's not really the kind of thing I can get too excited about. On the up side, it is nice to have a show with an actual spaceship in it back on the Sci Fi Channel.

I've been catching the NCIS spin-off OnDemand, as it turns out to be the perfect thing to watch while I eat lunch and read the newspaper after church on Sundays, and that seems to be about right for the show. I adore Linda Hunt and would watch a show just about that character, but in general the premise of the show makes little sense and they seem to be trying way too hard to create the kind of chemistry that just happened on the original show. So, not must-see, but fun to watch.

My other OnDemand show is something that became a kind of guilty pleasure over the summer, CSI: New York. I started watching some of the TNT reruns when I'd watched the NCIS reruns on USA to death, and then started watching the new episodes when they came up OnDemand. I mostly watch it as an unintentional comedy, and it's good for a few laughs. It's funny how the most dangerous place in New York City seems to be an exclusive nightclub, and you'd better be careful around supermodels because people associated with them seem to die a lot. Then you can guess the bad guy based on the casting (the most famous guest star is almost always the killer). Gary Sinise is always a fascinating actor to watch, even when he's slumming mightily (I guess this is easier than a bake sale to fund his theater company), and it's interesting to see that the designated inappropriately young boy toy for 30-something women in 1990s sitcoms has grown up and become a detective (who doesn't get to do much other than be at the crime scene at the beginning before the lab techs take over the entire case). I think I've figured out why there's a backlog for testing in the real crime lab: the lab techs are all too busy interviewing suspects and running around the city with guns.

I may have had my first casualty of the season. I had a splitting headache on Thursday night and didn't think I could deal with FlashForward, so I figured I'd watch it Friday night when they repeated it, and instead watched a TNT CSI:NY episode (see above). Then Friday night I still didn't feel like watching it and taped it while watching CSI:NY, and I still haven't gotten around to watching the tape. I think that's a sign that I'm watching it out of a sense of obligation rather than because there's anything about it that catches my attention. I figure if I haven't watched that tape before the next episode, then I'll consider that a wash.

And now I have to readjust my mental clock, now that I've adjusted my computer clock. Any clock that's around me a lot seems to gain time, and my computer clock was approaching 15 minutes fast, so I set it back to real time, but I'm so used to thinking of the computer clock as being ahead that it's throwing me off. The nice thing about my cable box having a clock on it now is that the time comes from the cable company and doesn't seem to be affected by my rapid time field, but if the entire cable company starts moving forward in time, you'll know I've somehow managed to feed back into the entire system.

First, an announcement: If you're in North Texas and for whatever reason have felt horribly bereft because I haven't had too many public appearances this year, you have one last chance Saturday. Saturday at 2 I'll be speaking at the Valley Ranch branch of the Irving Public Library, which is located at MacArthur Blvd. and Cimmaron Trail (if you're coming north on MacArthur, I'd recommend passing Cimmaron Trail and making the next right into the shopping center where the library is). I'm not sure what I'll be talking about, as I suspect it will be a free-form, winging it discussion, assuming anyone shows up. And if no one does, I have books to return, anyway. This will be the last time this year I go into "author" mode. Then I'll really be retreating into the "writer" side of my life.

Speaking of which, I'm up to 7,000 words in the new book, though I've realized I'll need to do some reworking on the last scene in order to make it do what I really want it to do. I "met" my villain for the first time yesterday, and I think I love her. She's going to be a blast and a half to write. I've found the perfect conduit for the usually suppressed bitchy side of my personality.

Now that most of the fall TV season has started, I've got my preliminary TV score card. Before I get to that, though, I have to rant a bit. Most of my local network stations last night, for some odd reason, decided to show all their widescreen series that should have been letterboxed as full screen. I have a widescreen TV, and yet no matter what screen format I tried, it was still all out of proportion, with the sides cut off. It was extremely irritating because in any shot where a character was near the edge of the screen, either the face was cut in half or cut off entirely. There'd be this nice close-up of someone off to the side, and that person would be talking, but we'd just see his ear. I know it wasn't the way these things were meant to be shown because the network logo in the bottom corner of the screen was cut in half, and the commercials were all shown in the same proportion -- but with the commercials, they were still enlarging them even if they weren't letterboxed, so pretty much any print on the screen was missing the first and last letters. I thought for a while that maybe it was my cable company, but The Office was shown in proper widescreen format. Is anyone else having this happen?

So, now, going by days of the week (and speaking vaguely enough to avoid spoilers):
Monday: I may be alone in this, as the episode got plenty of raves, but I kind of hated the House premiere. I thought it came across as pretentious and calculated. I may watch through the fall, since nothing else is on and it makes good background noise for writing medical radio scripts, but when Chuck returns in the spring I will have no dilemmas about which to watch unless things change dramatically in a way that I like, and it's possible that I might be tempted even now by a favorite NCIS rerun on USA.

Tuesday: Speaking of NCIS, I don't have that much to say, as I think I have to withhold judgment on how the opener handled things set up at the end of last season until I see how they deal with the long-term impact. I must say, though, that they managed to show serious depression from the inside out in a way that was both heartbreaking and hilarious.

I'm very glad that Warehouse 13 has already been renewed because that would have been an EVIL way to end a series. I'm mildly worried by the success of the show, though. It was one thing when it was just a quirky summer series, but now that it's the most successful Sci Fi Channel (I refuse to acknowledge the name change) series ever, that tends to get the network suits involved, and that seldom goes well.

I haven't watched the NCIS spin-off. That's something I'll probably catch OnDemand if I get bored.

Wednesday: I was on the verge of giving up Glee, but they got me with this week's episode. I guess I'm a sucker for football stories involving unlikely heroes, and adding music is a bonus. That episode also actually included a song I know (the West Side Story stuff). Although I'm a nut for musical numbers, after the premiere, the music has focused on music I don't know or like, so I'm sure I'm missing all the irony of using this music in show choir. And next week, there's Kristin Chenoweth!

Thursday: I'm iffy about Flashforward. I love Robert J. Sawyer's books, and this is a great cast, but I've got a feeling this will suffer from Lost-itis, but with the flashforwards used as a substitute for real characterization instead of the flashbacks, and with so much focus on the flashes that nothing much actually happens in the present. It also could suffer from the same problem as Heroes, with such a huge cast and so many disconnected stories going on that there's very little forward momentum in each episode. However, this one does seem to have a central character who will serve to tie it all together, and that character is played by Joseph Fiennes and His Amazing Eyelashes, which could make it all worthwhile. It's also possible that I was turned off by the fact that midway through the episode they suddenly blew the picture out into full-screen, so it became irritating and disconcerting to watch. I'll give it another shot, but it's already on probation, and if they keep doing the weird full-screen thing, I may have to break out my rolodex and use the phone number that gets beyond the main switchboard at that station to complain.

I don't know about Supernatural this year. This was another show that suffered from the full-screen thing last night, and they really use the widescreen format, so it was hard to get excited about watching Dean's left ear emote in the darkness. I finally had to just do crossword puzzles while listening because watching was too irritating. I have to admit I'm not too crazy about this season's storyline.

The Office seems to have returned to its initial subject matter of focusing on how soul destroying it is to work in an office with an idiot boss whose numbers are too good for him to be fired, no matter how bad a jerk he is, after a few seasons that seemed to go more into the personal lives of the characters or else go a bit over the top. Not that I disliked that, but it is fun to get back to more of a focus on the office.

There are a few other things I may try to catch OnDemand, but that's about it for my TV viewing right now. I am finding that I'm getting pickier, that I prefer a good dose of humor instead of straight drama, and that I'm getting a bit fed up with all the darkness, doom and gloom.

It's fall, and it even feels like it today. Yay! It's a good day for a good TV marathon, so I'm rewatching the beginning of Warehouse 13, leading up to the season finale tonight. That show managed to become one of my favorites, which is funny because I wasn't planning to watch it until my mom told me to catch the rerun of the premiere. But when I think about it and match it against all those lists I've made as part of the Ongoing Quest for World Domination, it comes out to being the TV version of the kind of book I like.

For one thing, it strikes the perfect light/dark balance. It has just enough whimsy without being cutesy, and it's funny without being fluffy, but it also gets serious and has consequences that matter, but without going overboard into dark and edgy. I'm a little tired of the general belief in all of entertainment these days, from TV to movies to books, that dark or edgy automatically=good.

I also like that the characters are basically nice people. They're people I would probably enjoy hanging out with in real life, which, again, is kind of rare these days when everyone has to be edgy, with the lines blurred between the good guys and the bad guys. I had an epiphany of sorts this summer when I realized that I was watching people on TV that I wouldn't want anything to do with in real life. Not that every character has to be a decent human being (we do need bad guys), but I need at least someone on the show I enjoy spending time with, and I prefer that the good guys be reasonably pleasant. When I was trying to come up with some pop culture associations as a way of describing this series, it was pretty easy to relate Myka to Hermione Granger -- the brainy, bookish girl who does the assigned reading, is detail-oriented, and likes to follow the rules (and has curly hair). I had trouble finding a character who reminds me of Pete because it seems like these days every science fiction/action hero has to be tortured, haunted or damaged by some terrible tragedy. Pete has a tragedy in his past, but if it did damage him, it seems like he's healed or is in the process of healing. He's pretty sane and emotionally healthy -- enough so that he can be the strong, solid one for others in emotional turmoil. I had to reach outside the genre to find a good comparison. Pete is a lot like Jim on The Office, if he joined the Secret Service and carried a gun -- he's the guy with a sense of humor and playfulness who is also the steady, supportive friend and often the voice of reason. It's a refreshing change from all those dark, moping heroes who wallow in their past tragedy and unhappy childhoods.

That brings me to another thing I like: The relationships among the characters. It seems like they keep setting up and then subverting expectations for this kind of show. The pilot made it look initially like it would be the standard goofball guy/uptight woman situation, with all the bickering that comes with that, probably leading to tons of sexual tension and the will they/won't they romantic build-up. And then before the end of the pilot they were already changing that. Pete and Myka do have their differences, and that leads to the occasional disagreement, but they work well as a team, for the most part. They like each other, trust each other and care about each other. It's the two of them against the world rather than against each other -- and without much hint of sexual tension so far. Ironically, the fact that they don't seem to be building this into a romantic situation makes this a rare TV relationship that in the real world you could imagine actually working and that might not kill the show if it did become romantic, mostly because it wouldn't have to change much. Most of those will they/won't they relationships are based on the conflict between the characters, so if they get together, the relationship has to change or else it looks horribly dysfunctional, and that then takes all the sizzle out of the relationship. Not that I'm advocating for a romance here. I'm just finding it interesting that when TV writers aren't deliberately setting up a grand romance, it so happens that they're actually setting up the kind of thing you could imagine actually working. Then there are Artie and Claudia, who complete the group and create that kind of found family thing I find so interesting. Artie's struggling with the role of "Dad" to Claudia, while Pete fell automatically into big brother mode, and Myka seems to be finding herself growing into the role of big sister. I like that they've allowed these relationships to grow gradually.

Meanwhile, I really like the production design of the Warehouse and the gizmos, that sort of quasi Steampunk with a bit of Art Deco. There's a lot of pseudo-scientific handwaving to explain the effects of the artifacts, but to me it feels like contemporary fantasy that isn't "urban" fantasy -- just the mix of reality and fantasy I like. Plus, cookies!

So, that boils down to a contemporary fantasy with a sense of whimsy but without being overly cute and without being too dark and edgy, with nice characters who have interesting interrelationships. That's exactly what I want in entertainment. Now I need more books that fit this model.

I'm a little sad that the season finale is tonight, but at least it's already been renewed.

My fun new related icon was made by sunkrux.

I'm in my usual post-convention lag. I didn't even have to travel far, and I didn't stay up all that late at night, and yet I'm still more or less in zombie mode today. I feel like I ran a marathon over the weekend. My muscles are even sore, like I was doing a lot of physical activity.

I'm giving myself today to rest and recover, and then tomorrow I think I'll take care of some business-type stuff that I need to deal with, as well as my radio scripts, and then Wednesday I'll hit the new book hard and go into serious writing mode. I want to do a fairly fast first draft -- the "figure out what the book is really about" phase -- and then I get to take my vacation when it's done. I'm already stockpiling books to read on the vacation.

I'll probably write up more of what happened at the convention later in the week when I'm less tired and more coherent. I will say that I tied for last place in the Just a Minute game. That was hard. The talking for a minute isn't a problem. The problem is doing so without repeating any words beyond things like "a" or "the" or the subject and without hesitating at all -- no pauses, ers, ums, or anything like that. It also didn't help that I wasn't being very cut-throat about it. It was the other panelists who were supposed to hit the buzzer (yes, we had real game show buzzers!) when the person speaking broke any of the rules, and then the person who hit the buzzer had to finish out the minute (or try to). Most of the time, I didn't even want to attempt to talk on the topic at hand, so I wasn't about to set myself up for that. I suppose it says something psychologically about me that I preferred not even trying to trying and failing, but I must also admit that I was having so much fun listening to the others attempting to talk on these topics that I forgot to listen for rules violations. I think I was also being terribly southern and feeling like it would be rude to interrupt.

I did continue my run of having something somewhat worrying to deal with come up during the convention. Last year, I got home from the first day of the convention to find a message from my credit card company saying that someone unauthorized had attempted to use my card. This year, my car gave me a minor scare. I was driving home Friday night when a warning light came on the dashboard. It was an exclamation point framed by a sort of squashed half-circle. I had no idea what it meant and assumed it was a pictograph for "check engine," since I'm used to that being just about the only all-purpose warning light. That's not something you want to see at midnight, and definitely not in a car that's only a little more than a year old and with less than 7,000 miles on it. I pretty much prayed my way home, then when I got home, I looked in the manual to see what the light meant. Apparently, I need to learn to speak Ford because it was merely an indicator that my tire pressure was low. That makes sense, as I last had my oil changed and levels of everything checked when it was about 100 degrees, and it had become dramatically cooler quite suddenly. All I needed to do to fix things was put a little more air in my tires, so crisis averted, but it made for a tense drive home that night. However, I am now reassured that my car will warn me before a tire goes flat. I didn't realize it was quite so high-tech. I'm sure with my old car I frequently drove with lower-than-recommended tire pressure and thought nothing of it, but having a warning light makes it seem so much more urgent. It's something that must be dealt with NOW.

And now, even though I swore that I wouldn't leave the house today, I must go to the grocery store, as I'm almost out of milk, and I could probably use a few additional food items. Yesterday, I didn't get a proper meal because I had back-to-back panels around lunchtime, so I grazed in the hospitality suite, getting stuff like cheese and crackers and grapes. Then when I got home, I realized I had nothing quick and easy to have for dinner. All the food in my house would have required real cooking, and I just didn't have the energy for that. So what did I have handy? Cheese, crackers and grapes. I may pick up a couple of frozen pizzas for low-effort meals.

Television note for tonight: It's the season premiere of House, and I suspect I won't enjoy it as this episode is entirely about House, with none of the other characters, and oddly enough, House himself is one of my least-favorite characters on the show here lately, as he mostly acts like a bratty toddler. Because I know this one is meant to be different, it won't count on the "probation" of the series, but I far prefer the House who served as a vicarious mouthpiece who said the kinds of things I sometimes wish I had the nerve to say to stupid people to the more recent bratty, selfish and "damaged" House.

I was such a horrible slug this morning, but it was cool and rainy -- perfect sleeping weather -- and I had nowhere in particular to be, so I let myself sleep in and lie around for a while. This was after a weekend in which it rained the entire time, so I spent most of the weekend on the sofa, reading while marathoning season 5 of The Office.

In other news, I have good news, for a change. Because the people at FenCon love me (and because someone else cancelled), I now have a reading slot. I'll be reading at 1 on Saturday, in a session with P.N. Elrod.

Of course, now that I've made a fuss out of having a reading, I hope someone actually shows up. It would look kind of bad if no one did after they made an effort to accommodate me. Remember, that will be the world premiere of the beginning of what would be book 5, and since I've tinkered with it since it was originally submitted, the only person who's read or heard this version so far is my mom, so this is really a premiere.

Another FenCon premiere: I wrote a short story in the Enchanted, Inc. universe for the program book. I don't do short stories often, so this is special.

I thought of something as I was inhaling hours worth of The Office. It's something of an anomaly for me. Normally, I'm drawn to television series that have a sense of "found family" about them. That seems to be the common thread in the shows that really hook me, where a group of people who are either geographically or emotionally distant from their biological families or else whose work tends to be all-consuming form a kind of family among the people they spend the most time with. I like seeing those surrogate families form as the characters start treating each other like siblings or fall into parental roles. The Office totally inverts that, as it's about a boss who desperately wants that to happen, while the rest of the staff desperately does not want it to happen. Some relationships have formed (like Jim and Pam), and they do have the occasional workplace friendship, but these are all people who'd rather keep their office relationships in the office and resent office things spilling into their personal lives. And yet, those family dynamics do still come up within the office environment, even if they don't endure outside the office. It's fun to watch those relationships develop and shift over time on that series.

And what's really funny is that this is closer to my real work relationships and more what I'd want. I have a family. I don't really want to see co-workers as family, but then I haven't been geographically isolated with them or had to put my life in their hands. That may change matters. I understand that people who work together in police/fire/military type settings do tend to form closer bonds. I have had workplace friendships that eventually extended outside the office, and a few of those even lasted beyond the job, but for the most part, friendships at work are about making the best of a situation you're stuck with.

The really weird thing is that although this has become one of my favorite series, the only reason I watched it in the first place is that when I saw a promo for it before the premiere, they showed a clip of Pam at her desk, and it seemed to me to be a depiction of Katie from my books. Not exactly, because I didn't picture the long, curly hair she had then, but there was something about her face, wardrobe and overall bearing that caught my eye, so I watched the show to see if that held out, and then I got hooked on the show.

On another TV note, I'm sad to say that I was somewhat disappointed by the first episode of Glee beyond the premiere. This is going to sound like a weird complaint, but it's bugging me that the musical numbers sound so over-produced. I know for practical purposes they have to be recorded in a studio and then lip synched for filming, but it seems so painfully obvious that's what they're doing, and they're not just studio recorded, but also studio produced -- and heavily studio produced -- so it doesn't at all sound like something you'd hear in a school classroom or auditorium, and that takes me right out of the show. I guess that sort of fits with the overall over-the-top nature of the series, but I found the episode kind of grating. I'll give it a few more chances, and maybe I'll just fast-forward past the episode stuff to the musical numbers and it won't bother me so much.

My cable company actually got the first episode of Robin Hood up on BBC-A OnDemand. They'll probably skip every other one, but at least I got to see what happened next after the finale. The series seems to have improved somewhat in Marian's absence, but it's still "turn your brain off and enjoy it" material. Meanwhile, my local PBS station reverted to the beg-a-thon instead of showing Mystery, which is annoying because I was really enjoying the series they were showing.

I'm off to a late start this morning, thanks to oversleeping, probably because of a particularly tough (and long) ballet class the night before. Or else my summer streak of early waking is now over. The new book could have something to do with it, too, as there was some daydreaming. I made a good start yesterday, though it was somewhat hampered by a lot of business stuff and errands I had to deal with. I have more business stuff today, then two choir rehearsals tonight (since I joined the a capella chamber chorale), but I still should get some good work done as I tweak the opening to get it just right.

Meanwhile, the new fall TV season is upon us, and I guess it's time to dig out the TV Guide and think about what I'll be watching. I admit to being a TV fan. I far prefer a TV series to a movie, but I've lately had waning interest, possibly because they keep canceling things I like. My planned schedule is looking somewhat curtailed.

On Monday nights in the fall, the only thing I'm really planning to watch at the moment is House, and it's on probation. I feel like the writing has become rather self-indulgent lately, where they do things to be edgy or shocking and not because they really fit the plot or characters. This could easily fall off the schedule. If they're actually updating the BBCAmerica OnDemand offerings (which have been sketchy of late), that usually happens on Mondays, so that may be BBC-A night.

Tuesday night I have ballet, so I have to rely on the VCR or OnDemand. I've really fallen for Warehouse 13 this summer, but there are only a couple more episodes this season. That's a cute, quirky show, and I love the characters. Even though I get CBS pretty reliably OnDemand, I'll probably end up taping NCIS because that falls into the category I call "comfort food television" and is the perfect thing to watch when I've come home from ballet and had a shower (and OnDemand doesn't post the new episodes until the next day). I can curl up on the sofa in my pajamas and have cookies and milk while watching it. Later in the fall, V will be on that night. Too bad it's not on a network I get OnDemand. I loved the miniseries and series in the 80s, but I'm leery of a remake, and it's on Already Been Cancelled. I guess I'll see what the buzz is.

On Wednesdays, this week ends Leverage for the fall. But now Glee's starting, and I think that will be the perfect thing to tape while I'm at choir, so I can come home from back-to-back rehearsals and watch more choir geekery. There needs to be an adult show choir for those of us who missed that experience in high school (or for those who want to relive it).

Thursday night, Supernatural comes back to us this week, and then there's The Office starting next week. I think Thursday's also the night Flashforward will be on. I'm a fan of Robert J. Sawyer's books, but that's not one I'd have picked as a series premise. Still, there will be Joseph Fiennes and His Amazing Eyelashes, so I may give it a shot. Otherwise, my local PBS station is now showing MI-5/Spooks on Thursday nights, and they've just reached the point where A&E abruptly stopped showing it (in the middle of a cliffhanger. Grrrr). I guess that in spite of being an action/crime/suspense show, the fact that it was from the BBC and involved British accents made it too classy for the "new" A&E.

It looks like Stargate Universe will be on Fridays. I never got into Dollhouse, but now they're tempting me with Jamie Bamber and Alexis Denisof, so I might give it a try. Otherwise, that may be a night for catching whatever OnDemand shows that I didn't see earlier in the week that catch my interest.

Saturday there's nothing (a night for movies or OnDemand shows). And then Sunday night it's mostly about Masterpiece Theatre, with mysteries for much of the fall, and then when they switch to Contemporary, I'm not sure what the shows will be, but David Tennant will be hosting, so I'll at least watch the beginning.

There are a few cable series that look interesting, but they just say "fall" instead of giving a start date and timeslot.

The annoying thing is that most of the shows I actually want to watch are scheduled either directly against each other or on nights when I'm out, and the shows I can get reliably OnDemand are the ones higher on my priority list, where I'd either watch them live or would want to watch that same night instead of waiting until the next day. That's going to have a lot to do with which new series I decide to try. I think I've been burned enough by abrupt early cancellations that I'm really leery of trying new things. Which will probably be good for my writing productivity.