| The Boss |
[Nov. 21st, 2009|10:43 am] |
Last night Paul and I went to see Bruce Springsteen in concert at Baltimore's 1st Mariner Arena. This concert was a very big deal for Baltimore because he hasn't played her since 1973 and getting him was a big coup. Especially since 1st Mariner is pretty tiny in comparison to the size arenas he usually plays.
I'm not a huge Springsteen fan. I obviously know the hits and have copies of a random single here or there, but I've never bought a Springsteen album in my life. The tickets were a gift to my husband for our first anniversary because the first anniversary is the paper anniversary and you know tickets=paper. My husband is a Jersey boy so he of course is somewhat of a Springsteen fan. I think they put in the water there or something.
I went into the concert realizing that I probably wasn't going to know a lot of the songs that he was going to sing, but I have always heard that Springsteen is an amazing performer so I thought I might enjoy it anyway. I most certainly did. Bruce is an awesome performer. You can tell that even after all these years that he loves what he is doing and is having just as much fun out there as the crowd. A lot of concerts you go to you can tell the musicians are just going through the motions. Not so with Bruce. He was out there giving his all and having a grand old time. He's amazing spry and limber for a man that's 60 years old. He also played for 3 and half hours, which is by far the longest concert I've ever been to by one artist.
He is also really appreciative of his fans and makes sure that he is giving them what they want. I've never been to a concert where so many fans were pulled up on stage. He really rewarded the true fans who put in the effort to get in the front of the general admission standing room only section on the floor. Most musicians comes into a concert with a set list that they rarely deviate from in any way. Not so with Bruce. He certainly had certain songs he intended to play. This tour they've been playing entire albums, and last night he was playing the entire Born to Run album. So obviously that was planned as well as the first few songs that he played prior to starting that album, but after that for the most part he seemed to be playing audience requests. Lots of people on the floor came with signs requesting songs they wanted to hear played. He collected them at various points throughout the concert honoring requests from the best signs or also just stuff you could tell he wanted to play. He'd pick the sign, show it to the band then prop it up against the mic stand and then start playing. I think it's pretty impressive that he and the E Street Band can do that given the extensive catalog of music that they have. It was lots of fun and very rewarding to the crowd that is full of long-term fans. Even though I'm not one of them, it was fun to be in a crowd of people who were such big fans and to watch them enjoy themselves.
I kept track because I was curious how many songs I would wind up knowing. The answer was 8 and 2 of them aren't really Springsteen songs per se. The 8 I knew were Hungry Heart, Born to Run, The Rising, Radio Nowhere, Dancing the Dark, Glory Days, plus the 2 which technically aren't Springsteen songs Santa Claus is Coming to Town and Your Love is Lifting Me Higher. Granted I know that Santa Cluas is Coming to Town is a big hit for Springsteen and is one of the singles that I actually own. And as I mentioned he played for 3 and half hours so needless to say there were a lot of songs that I was not familiar with. Despite that I still thought it was an amazing concert.
The only thing that dampened my concert going experience was the couple that was sitting next to me. I totally don't understand the point of paying a ton of money on concert tickets only to get so wasted that there is no chance you will remember any of it. These people showed up the concert that way. The guy could already barely stand up when they got there. His wife was slightly better, but not much. Of course he continued to drink and even smoked a joint so he was just getting more enjoyable as the night went on. He kept falling into me every time he tried to stand up, which was a lot because people were on their feet for most of the concert. He kept having to sit down, but then trying to stand back up again and falling all over the place. Once he even wound up flat on his back on top of my feet. He obviously is not going to remember anything as is evidenced by the fact that he already didn't remember it while he was there. He kept babbling on and on about how Bruce just had to play Baltimore Jack, which in case you don't know is actually a lyric from the beginning of the song Hungry Heart, which was the third song he played. Then later when he was going on about this again for like the 4th time I heard his wife say I really hope he plays Thunder Road, which is the first song off the Born to Run album, which Bruce had already finished playing several songs ago. So these people already had no clue what had happened at the concert. The only blessing in the situation was that they wound up leaving after 2 hours, which gave me an hour of half to actually enjoy the concert without the worry that this guy was going to fall into me and knock me over or puke on me or something.
I'm still not the hugest fan of Springsteen's music and my enjoyment of the concert isn't going to make me start listening to it any more than I already do, but I would pay money for tickets to another one of his concerts in a heartbeat. That is definitely the mark of a true performer, when someone who doesn't care that much for your music would love to see you again. |
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| Year 4, Book 78 |
[Nov. 20th, 2009|01:31 pm] |
78. The Case for God by Karen Armstrong
This book was incredibly tedious to get through and not really what I was expecting based on the title. As opposed to the Case for God I would have called it the history of religion. At least to me it didn't seem to focus very much on God. Only peripherally as she went through seemingly every single religious idea and their thoughts on God and also science in many cases since the beginning of time all the way up through today. Obviously with covering that many ideas there is limited space to get into any detail on the movements, and I just didn't find myself getting much out of this book at all. It's a shame because I've really enjoyed some of Armstrong's other books on religion. This one just didn't work for me though. I give it 3 out of 10. |
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| Year 4, Book 77 |
[Nov. 20th, 2009|01:27 pm] |
77. When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
This is a very short novel written about the Japanese internment camps during WWII. There are 5 chapters told by members of an unnamed family. The first by the mother, the second by the daughter, the third by the son, the fourth by a mix of those three, and the final chapter by the father who has been separated from his family the entire time. The book has some haunting details in it, but like most books where the characters remain anonymous I had a hard time relating to them and getting drawn into the story. It is a quick read though and does cause you to stop and think about that horrible situation in our nation's history, so I would recommend it. This book was Loyola's common text for freshmen this year and I saw the author speak about it, which I actually found far more compelling than her book. I give it a 6 out of 10. |
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| Year 4, Book 76 |
[Nov. 20th, 2009|01:22 pm] |
76. Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor
I expected this to be more of a travel writing book than it actually turned out to be. The book is written in alternating chapters by Sue Monk Kidd and her daughter Ann Kidd Taylor. The backdrop for the story is various trips they took together to Greece and France, but those places are really just the setting for self-examinations that they share with us. Sue Monk Kidd's chapters focus on her mid-life crisis of dealing with menopause and what that means to her as a woman. It's very based in mythology and rather esoteric. I liked Ann Kidd Taylor's chapters better probably both because they were not so steeped in tedious mythology and because I can better relate to the quarter-life crisis issues she was experiencing. It was an okay book, and I did admire their relationship, but it was not the fun travel read that I was expecting. It was very melancholy for most of the book. I give it 5 out of 10. |
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| Year 4, Book 75 |
[Nov. 20th, 2009|01:16 pm] |
75. The Shack by William P. Young
I have had a ton of people marvel about the wonders of this book to me. It's a Christian fiction book that uses the experiences of the main character Mackenzie to elucidate the holy trinity. The first third of the book was kind of a crime fiction type novel with the story of Mackenzie's daughter begin abducted during a family camping trip, which leads him to doubt God. The last two-thirds of the book are some supernatural experience in which he meets God (who is an African-American woman named Papa), Jesus, and the Holy Spirit (an Asian woman named Sarayu) at the shack where his daughter's killer was found. They help him come to terms with what happened as well as teach him about who they are. I found the crime part gripping but once we switched over to the rest of the book I found it tedious and boring. All the people raving about it claim that it has given them new perspective, etc. I either already had the perspective or didn't get nearly as enlightened while reading this book because it did a whole lot of nothing for me. I give it 3 out of 10. |
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| Year 4, Book 74 |
[Nov. 9th, 2009|10:15 am] |
74. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
I absolutely adored Niffenegger's first book, The Time Traveler's Wife, so I was very excited to read her newest novel. For the first 60 pages I was in love with this book. It was everything I hoped it would be. The beginning chapters had so much heart and wonderful turn of phrase. Then the ghost showed up and everything went downhill. The story starts with the death of Elspeth Noblin. She leaves her flat in London to the twin daughters of her own estranged twin sister with the condition that they must live in the flat for one year before they are allowed to sell it and that their parents are not be allowed in the flat. There are two other flats in the building containing the other major characters of the book. The flat below contains Robert, Elspeth's younger lover, who is writing his thesis on Highgate Cemetary, which borders the flat. The flat above contains Martin a man crippled by OCD, whose wife of 25 years leaves him in the beginning chapters to return to her native Amsterdam as she is no longer able to live within the confines of Martin's OCD. The beginning chapters detailing the Robert's loss of Elspeth and the separation of Martin and Marijke were beautiful. The introduction of Elspeth's nieces Julia and Valentina and the bizarre stipulation of their inheritance leaves an intriguing mystery about what happened between Elspeth and her twin Edie to result in this absolute estrangement. The book at this point had such potential, but then Julia and Valentina come to live in the flat and discover the ghost of Elspeth living there as well. Then things go from bad to worse with a ridiculously contrived plot that turns the novel into a farce. I won't share what that plot is in case you actually care to read the book as I wouldn't want to give anything away. I'm horribly disappointed in this book, not because it didn't live up to The Time Traveler's Wife, but because it didn't live up to itself. I give it a 4 out of 10. |
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| Year 4, Book 73 |
[Nov. 9th, 2009|10:07 am] |
73. July and August by Nancy Clark
This is the book one of my book clubs was reading for November. The story revolves around an extended family who all seem to descend upon the remaining family matriarch, a spinster aunt named Lily, for the months of July and August. The setting is a small town in Massachusetts named Towne. Some of the characters do actually live in Towne, but the majority of them seem to have some reason to come visit and then some seemingly contrived reason about why they can spend 2 months sitting around this town where they don't live helping Lily out at her farm stand. The whole book just felt really shallow to me. It bothered me that all these people were randomly stepping out of their lives for 2 months to hang around with each other, and there were a lot of characters so you never really got more than a cursory glimpse at any one of them. The author has written a couple other books that I'm not familiar with, but that based on the titles I suspect may have featured some of the characters. In which case some of the back story alluded to may have occurred in previous novels. As it is I sort of felt like I was abruptly dropped into these characters lives and was reading the second half of a story. I don't know if the answer is in the previous books or not, but at any rate I definitely felt like I was missing something while reading this book. I give it a 5 out of 10. |
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| Year 4, Book 72 |
[Nov. 9th, 2009|10:00 am] |
72. Closing Time: A Memoir by Joe Queenan
I picked this book up randomly at the library when I was there to get another book I had placed on hold. Now I kind of wish I hadn't. It wasn't a completely horrible book, but for some reason I found it rather tedious to read. I'm not sure why. The story is of the author's life growing up poor in Philadelphia with an alcoholic father and a mother who didn't much care to be a mother. He mostly focuses on his relationship with his father and the men his life who he used as surrogate father figures due to his father's failings. He does have some interesting if not conflicting insights about poor people. As someone who grew up in poverty and is now very well off he seems to both equally blame them for being in the situation they are while also admitting that the experience of their lives and the system keeps them where they are. I give the book 4 out of 10. |
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| Year 4, Book 71 |
[Nov. 9th, 2009|09:45 am] |
71. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
I was excited to read this new book by Sarah Waters as her novel previous to this one, The Night Watch, was one of my favorite reads of the year. Unfortunately this book didn't live up to my hopes for it.
Like The Night Watch, The Little Stranger is set soon after the end of WWII in England. The similarities end there however. The story revolves around 4 main characters: Mrs. Ayres the elderly matron of a once large and glorious estate named Hundreds, which has fallen on hard times since the war, her two grown children Roderick and Caroline, and Dr. Faraday. Dr. Faraday's mother was once a maid at Hundreds when he was a child, and the house always fascinated him. He is called to Hundreds in his capacity as a doctor and winds up becoming quite involved with the Ayres family and Hundreds Hall. Many mysterious things begin to happen at the house and it appears as if it may be haunted a conclusion all its inhabitants come to, while Dr. Faraday continues to try and rationalize all the mysterious happenings at the house.
Waters writing is excellent in the book, which is what kept me reading even as the story fell somewhat short for me. The relationship between the characters interested me, but when the story became more and more about the haunting I became less and less interested. Also I felt the story lacked a good conclusion or explanation for what really happened. I guess in some ways it is left up to interpretation, but I wanted a definite answer about what really happened.
As I do enjoy her actual writing style though I think I will check out her earlier novels set in the Victorian era. I give this one a 6 out of 10. |
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| Attempting to get the H1N1 Vaccine and how Baltimore City Health FAILS |
[Oct. 23rd, 2009|03:17 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  sick | ] |
As someone with a chronic illness who takes lots of immunosuppressents, I fall into the high risk category for both contracting and having complications from the H1N1 virus. Thus when Baltimore City announced they would be having a flu clinic on Wednesday I decided to go stand in line and attempt to get myself vaccinated. Herein I will describe how things actually happened and how they should have happened.
How they actually happened the day before the clinic:
I can only take the inactive shot version of the vaccine and not the live virus nasal spray version, so before I took a morning off work and wasted my time standing in line I attempted to make sure there would actually be shot versions available. The website statement was rather ambiguous as to whether or not they only had the nasal spray version for H1N1. So I called the Baltimore City Health Department to find out if they were going to have it available at the clinic the next day. The woman I spoke to on the phone had no clue. She said they just ship it to us they don't tell us what kind it is. Huh? How can the Baltimore City Health Department not know what type of vaccine they are giving out.
What should have happened the day before the clinic:
The website should have been written in an intelligible manner and people staffing the phone should be able to answer simple questions like do you have the shot available.
How things actually happened the day of the clinic:
I decided that it was in my best interest to go to the clinic despite not being assured that there would even be any vaccine I could take when I got there. Having been apprised by the news of people arriving hours early to stand in line I did decide to get there an hour prior to the clinic opening. There was already quite a line formed around the outside of the building at 9 am. The clinic opened at 10. Once the clinic opened they did have people coming around informing people in the line that vaccines were for high priority people only and who qualified. Once the clinic opened they started handing out numbers up to 750, which is the amount of vaccine they had to give out. This total included 4 things though: seasonal flu shot, seasonal flu mist, H1N1 shot, and H1N1 flu mist. There was a person handing out numbers as you reached the door to go inside the building. It took me until 11 to actually get to that point and receive my number. I was number 404. There was still about a 20-30 minute wait standing in line at that point to reach the entrance to the processing area. At that point you entered a large room with lots of chairs set up for people to sit in. You were directed to a chair and then they called people up in groups of 10 to register for their vaccine. After calling up the group with numbers 360 to 370 they got on the loud speaker and informed the people in the room that they had just run out of the shot version of the H1N1 vaccine, so that anyone who could not take the flu mist version such as myself was out of luck. So I wound up waiting in line for 2.5 hours to fall short by a handful of people from getting my vaccine. It also did not appear that they informed anyone who had not yet reached that area that they had run out so I would have hated to be anyone still standing outside even just to receive a number only to find out they no longer had what I needed.
How things should have happened on the day of the clinic:
After the clinic opened instead of having one big jumble of numbers they should have distributed numbers in 4 groups, one each for the types of vaccine they were providing, giving out a numbers up to the point where they no longer had anymore of that vaccine. So for example for me they should have given out 250 numbers for the H1N1 shot and then everyone in line beyond that point should have been informed and told to go home. They might even hand out a few provisional numbers to people letting them know they might not get the shot if they stay, but they might be able to get one if people who request that particular vaccine are not approved for it during the vetting process that appeared to be taking place prior to people actually receiving their vaccines. Also the person handing out the numbers should have been walking down the line handing out the numbers to people in the line instead of standing at the door waiting for the line to get to him. That way I would have received my number probably no later than 10:15 instead of 11:00. If they had done it my way I would have been there for 1 hour and 15 minutes and realized that I wouldn't be able to get my shot, and that includes 1 hour of waiting that I chose in order to be there early. Their way I spent 2 and half hours waiting to find out that I couldn't get the shot.
They're having another clinic on Oct. 30, where I will try again, showing up even earlier to try and guarantee I get the shot I need. Hopefully someone in the Baltimore City Health Department stumbles across my blog and makes things run smoother for the next one. |
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| Year 4, Book 70 |
[Oct. 20th, 2009|10:13 am] |
70. The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care by T.R. Reid
I wish I could force every member of Congress to read this book right now. It is an excellent fairly unbiased look at American health care compared to other mostly successful health care models from around the world. Reid makes no qualms about the fact that he thinks that American health care is broken and that it is a moral travesty that the United States does not provide universal health care coverage, something I am in complete agreement with. He however does not espouse any one model over another.
He begins the book with a look at how the American health care system currently stands and how we spend more on health care than almost any other developed nation in the world with much worse result and the reasons we have these issues.
He categorizes health care models into 4 types.
The Bismarck Model found in countries such as Germany, France, Japan, and Switzerland has both private providers and private payers with insurance plans usually financed jointly between employers and employees through a payroll deduction. This is similar to what we currently have in the United States with the major difference being that in these other countries the insurance companies are non-profit charities that are required to cover everyone.
The Beveridge Model found in Great Britain, Italy, Spain, and Hong Kong involves the government providing a health care system that is financed through tax payments. Most doctors are government employees working in government owned facilities. Americans use the Beveridge model to run health care through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Indian Health Service, which provides government run health care for Native Americans.
The National Health Insurance Model found in countries such as Canada and Taiwan combines elements of the Beveridge and Bismarck models. The health care providers are private entities, but the payer is a government run insurance program that all citizens contribute to. This type of system is used in the United States for Medicare.
The Out-of-Pocket Model is found in the worlds poorer nations. Citizens of these countries have minimal access to health care and the health care they receive must be paid out of their own pockets. Thus generally the only the rich are able to receive medical treatments. For millions of Americans who cannot afford health care or who have been denied access to health care by insurance companies, the out-of-pocket model is the health care system they are living under.
As is evidenced in the previous descriptions the American health care system combines elements of all the major health care models, which Reid claims is part of the problem. Too much overhead and administrative costs go into reconciling all these different forms of health care causing many of our high health care costs.
Much of the book is spent visiting countries who use each of these models in their health care systems. Reid has an issue with his shoulder that he gets looked at in the U.S., France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada, and India. For each country he describes their health care system, the history and culture of the country that led it to the system it currently employs, and his own personal experience as a patient in that country. He is blatantly honest about the benefits and drawbacks of each model. His main point is that no system is perfect and pretty much every system is dealing with rising health care costs, but that of the systems running in the developed nations all of them are doing better than the U.S.
By the end of the book Reid seems much more optimistic than I am about being able to enact meaningful health care reform in the United States. He thinks one of the major failings of health care reform to date is that it has been framed around economics. He believes that if we reframe the debate as a moral issue than meaningful progress would be made. I however am doubtful.
I thought this was an excellent book and think that it should be required reading for anyone with a stake in health care reform. I give it a 9 out of 10.
Read on for my own personal thoughts on health care.
I like Reid fundamentally do believe health care is a moral debate. It honestly boggles my mind to hear people say that our health care system is not broken or essentially that not everyone deserves coverage. I have thought about writing a blog post on this topic for months now and I haven't been able to do it because it literally pains me to think about.
I am currently lucky that although I have a chronic health condition I am insured. I don't know what I would do if I wasn't. I certainly wouldn't be able to afford my medications or doctors' appointments. I at this point am healthy enough to work and have a job that is good enough to provide me with affordable health insurance. I am lucky on a secondary level in that at this point should I get sick enough to lose my job and thus my health insurance I have a husband whose insurance I could receive coverage under.
For millions of Americans these things aren't true. They may not have a job that provides them with health insurance or a spouse they can rely on to provide their coverage. They may have a chronic condition that leaves them uninsurable in the private market. I definitely would be.
We as Americans are basically at this point saying it is ok for us to let people die because we don't want to have to pay for their insurance. There is such a me mentally that I can't abide. I think people who say that we can't cover everyone because there aren't enough doctors to go around now and they don't want to have to wait for health care just pain me. If there aren't enough doctors then we need to change the system so that there are or learn to wait for things that aren't immediate threats to our lives.
People try to use Canada and Great Britain as examples that "socialized" medicine leaves people standing in line and unable to get health care. Canada does have a long wait, but the average wait times for Great Britain are no longer than I already wait to see specialists here. And I've had a lot of interaction with people in Canada who also have Crohn's disease and not one of them wishes they were in another medical system. You see far more Americans on these list servs complaining about our access to health care than the Canadians. Generally the Canadians feel sorry for us, not the other way around.
As I mentioned I feel less hopeful after reading the book than the author did after writing it because reading about all these other health systems no matter what we might choose in order to effectively work and provide universal coverage would require way to many changes to our current model. And too many powerful people, particularly the doctors and the insurance companies would lose their current way of life. One thing that stood out in all other countries was that doctors make much less money than American doctors and that insurance companies are either government run or private non-profit entities. I don't see any way that these people will not fight tooth and nail to hang on to their bottom line nor do I see Congress willing to go against them in their fight because obviously money is more important than human life. |
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| The Oregon Grille |
[Oct. 19th, 2009|04:01 pm] |
Yesterday was my and Paul's first wedding anniversary. My parents kindly offered to buy us a gift certificate for wherever we wanted to go to dinner to celebrate. After reviewing some options I finally decided on The Oregon Grille. They had the best sounding vegetarian option for Paul. Too many fancy restaurants ignore the fact that there are a lot of vegetarians in the world today. I guess the chefs don't feel they can showcase their skills with vegetables or something.
We had a very nice meal. There were a few missteps, but nothing major and nothing that would not make me go back.
I had the 8oz filet mignon, which was cooked to my liking of medium rare. I don't like sauces on steak, so I didn't apply the herb butter that arrived with it on the side or request the bernaise sauce that was also available, thus I would have preferred a little more seasoning to the steak. It was still good though. It also came with fried onions, which are like skinny, skinny onion rings. They were really good. Usually you have a few sprinkled over your meat, but this arrived with a half a plateful. I also ordered side dishes of garlic mashed potatoes and green beans. The green beans were excellent, but I didn't think the mashed potatoes were that great.
Paul ordered their vegetarian plate, which consisted of an array of items including Roasted vegetables, sweet potato polenta cakes, mushroom-asparagus turnover, cabbage spring roll, and
linguine with feta, olives and tomatoes. It looked good and it was nice that they actually put some thought into preparing a vegetarian plate. Paul said everything was very good, although he didn't feel like the spring roll fit well with the rest of the food. That may have just been his taste though.
For dessert I had the Bailey's cheesecake that was topped with chocolate ganache and had a side of cranberry compote. It was really good. Paul had something I had never heard of which was called savarin. It was described on the menu as a yeast cake marinated in Grand Manier. It too was tasty.
So for the most part the food was really good. The service was decent, although not quite as great as I would hope for this type of restaurant, except for the water guy who practically refilled my glass every time I took a sip.
The first misstep occurred when we arrived and there was no one at the host stand to seat us, and if you've been there you know the host stand is in a hallway situated right as you come in the door and is thus walled off from the dining room so that no one can see you've arrived and you can't immediately try to flag someone down. This was the same situation on the way out when we had to go digging through the coat closet on our own to retrieve my jacket.
The second misstep was that our waitress took way too long to come back after we were done with our meal. Also when she boxed up my leftovers she did not give me everything on my plate. My steak came with fried onion straw things and she did not include those in my take home box. I already figured they were going to be soggy and not very good by today and thus I probably wouldn't have eaten them, but unless I tell you I don't want something you should include it. This common issue and the reverse where you get all kinds of crap off your plate you don't want are why I much prefer to box up my own leftovers. I've seen many a foodie complain about restaurants that force them to box their own food, but I prefer it. That way I get what I want.
The final issue was that our bill came to 95 dollars and change and we had a gift certificate for $100. Instead of bringing us money for our change we received it as a rewritten gift certificate for $4 and some odd cents. Granted we did like it enough that we will have no problems going back and applying that $4 to a future meal, but I feel like an establishment such as The Oregon Grille would do well to treat its customers a little better by giving us back the change in money and eating that $4 instead of acting like some horrible chain restaurant that won't give you back a single cent. I would understand having a cutoff for the amount of money they give back, but for anything under $5 I think they should just give change. We can't even buy anything but a cup of coffee or tea off their menu for less than $4.
But all in all an enjoyable meal in a nice setting, so we'll go back eventually I'm sure. Plus we have that $4 to spend. |
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| Fall 2009 TV Diary |
[Oct. 15th, 2009|08:34 pm] |
So here's what's in my line-up this fall. Not too much new this year, but I probably don't have to watch anything else at this point anyway.
Sundays
The Amazing Race
Now in something like its 15 season, I'm still enjoying the Amazing Race. I haven't decided who my favorite team to win this year is, but I can definitely tell you the team I don't want to win.
Dexter
Now in it's fourth season Dexter in case you don't know focuses on a serial killer who works for the police and tries to blend in to society. This season he is coping with trying to balance his activities as a serial killer with his new role as husband and father. John Lithgow has joined the cast this season as another serial killer named Trinity, which I'm rather enjoying. The will Dexter get caught thing that happens every season is getting a little old at this point. I get why the show feels compelled to do it, but it's pretty much lost its suspense since if he gets caught the show is pretty much over.
Mad Men
Many critics argue that this show is the best show on television. It won an Emmy for best drama this year in addition to several others. It is a total character study. If you're into fast plot that moves along then this is not the show for you. I've seen some critics complain that this season isn't living up to the past two seasons, but I am still enjoying it. Some episodes have been better than others, but I could say the same for the first two seasons as well.
Mondays
House
I'm sorry to say but House is not nearly the show it once was to me. I watched the first three seasons on DVD before starting the fourth season in real time. I could not wait to watch this show at first. I would sit down and devour 4 or 5 episodes at a time going through the first three seasons. Then came season 4 in which they got rid of Cameron and Chase almost entirely. The beginning of this season hasn't been horrible because Cameron and Chase have gotten a lot of screen time and their horrible replacements Thirteen and Taub have been much less present. If I could only really believe that they quit for good.
***Spoiler Alert***
But I know that is not true and will be super sad in a couple more episodes when Cameron is written off the show for good. I must say that if I was Jennifer Morrison I would be pissed that I was kept on contract at a show that gave me no screen time for 3 years only be written off. And what is up with the credits on this show. How do Olivia Wilde and Peter Jacobson still not make the opening credits after 3 years, but yet Jennifer Morrison (who is soon to have no screen time) and Jesse Spencer who have barely had any screen time in the past 2+ seasons still make the opening credits.
***End Spoiler Alert and Rant***
How I Met Your Mother
Although not as good as it was in the first several seasons, this show is holding up rather well for being in its fifth season. It still provides me with frequent laughs and it still feels like it's going somewhere, which at this point in their careers many shows don't.
Accidentally on Purpose
This is one of the new shows we started watching this season. It's not great, but apparently not horrible enough for us to not watch it. I do find the actress that plays the sister to have an incredibly annoying and grating voice, so the less screen time she gets the better. I don't see this show lasting past it's first season, so I'll probably keep watching the rest of the season to see how it plays out.
The Big Bang Theory
I admit I have become a convert to this show. I watched the pilot and was not really amused and pretty much wrote it off after that. Paul started watching back episodes through BitTorrent and then last season started watching in real time, so I wound up watching too. Now I quite enjoy it.
Castle
The premise of this show was good for the first season. Richard Castle is a crime fiction writer along the lines of James Patterson and he winds up shadowing one Detective Kate Beckett in order to do research for his new novel. That worked fine for one season. Now that the novel is written it seems less plausible in season 2 that he would be allowed to continue to be involved in the police work like he is. I like the characters though and I enjoy the show so I just try to ignore the entire premise the show is based on. It seems to be working for me so far.
Tuesdays
There is not a darn thing on Tuesday nights that I am interested in watching. We generally use it to play catch up.
Wednesdays
Glee
Oh Glee how I love you so. This show is so entirely ridiculous that it is tons of fun. The singing is awesome, and it's done in a way that doesn't seem like a cheesy musical. It really is just the kids practicing songs for their show choir performances (well, mostly). The characters are over the top and the plots entirely ridiculous, but that is what's so great about it.
Modern Family
This show revolves around 3 family units part of a larger family. One is Phil and Claire and their three kids, Claire's gay brother Mitchell, his partner Cameron and their adopted baby Lily, and Mitchell and Claire's father Jay and his much younger Colombian wife Gloria and her son Manny. I would normally be entirely turned off by this show because it employs the ever increasing documentary film style employed by shows like The Office, which I can't stand. However I heard such good things about this show leading up to the fall season that I decided to try it out anyway. Even though I do find the documentary thing annoying I laugh enough at this show that so far the good outweighs the bad.
Friday Night Lights
This show hasn't premiered yet. For the poor fans of this show who don't have DirectTV and are waiting to watch it on NBC they have a really long wait ahead. Until next summer in fact. I however do have DirectTV and thus get to watch it starting Oct. 28. Now heading into it's fourth season I will be happy to reenter the lives of the people in Dillon, TX. The first season was amazing, the second season sucked, and the third season was back to its original glory. Hopefully the fourth season will continue to play out as well as the first and third. It really is just a brutally real show. The characters are amazingly real and the show plays out like real life would. The characters who have graduated have moved on and are no longer on the show as it should be. None of the contrivances that so many shows based in high school use to keep the original cast once they're at graduation age.
Mythbusters
'nuff said
Thursdays
FlashForward
I didn't have much interest in watching this show, but some article Paul read made him want to check it out. Thus we started watching it. I am totally intrigued. The premise is that everyone in the world blacked out at the same time for 137 seconds and during that time they all had visions of their future in 6 months. Obviously some people had good visions and some people had bad visions. Now everyone is trying to figure out what happened, why it happened, and of course living their lives either trying to fulfill or prevent what they saw. I do want to know the mystery of why things happened, but even more so I am totally intrigued by the whole psychological nature of this show bringing up the questions of are people actually doing things that they might not have done because they feel their future is predetermined or some other crazy psychological stuff that I started to try to explain, but couldn't. But it makes sense in my head anyway. I'm intrigued.
The Vampire Diaries
Yes, I know I am a 13 year old girl. I read all the stupid Twilight books and saw the movie and have been working my way through the 7 seasons of Buffy on DVD, so I've got vampires on the brain. Thus I couldn't resist giving this show a try. It was a little slow in the beginning, but as it started 2 weeks earlier than other fall shows and I had nothing else to watch after getting home from working late on Thursdays I kept watching. Now it's getting good. We're finally getting into some real meat with the stories. Don't get me wrong it in no way lives up to the greatness of at least the first several seasons of Buffy, but it's good enough for me to keep watching.
Fridays
Ugly Betty
This show actually doesn't premiere for the season until tomorrow night, so I can't say anything about it so far. It definitely lost its mojo last season as evidenced by its move by ABC to the Friday night death slot. We'll see how things go this season.
I recently read rumor that NBC will be bringing Chuck back sometime this fall rather than it's originally announced March airdate, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for that and hopefully sometime soon Chuck can be added to this list officially. |
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| Year 4, Book 69 |
[Oct. 13th, 2009|03:52 pm] |
69. Persuasion by Jane Austen
I read this book for the first time probably about 10 years ago. I was studying abroad in London and found a bunch of classics including all of Jane Austens books on sale for 99p at a bookstore in Covent Garden and bought a bunch of them. I read it again recently for one of my book clubs. I didn't remember much about it as it seemed almost wholly new to me upon reading it a second time. I think part of the problem is that to some degree all of Austen's books are the same plot and have too many of the characters named the same thing. This book is typical Austen with a plot revolving around marriage and the issue of suitable partners based on class. I give it a 5 out of 10. |
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| Year 4, Book 68 |
[Oct. 13th, 2009|03:25 pm] |
68. The Black Girl Next Door: A Memoir by Jennifer Baszile
Baszile recounts her experiences growing up as a black kid in a well-to-do white neighborhood in California. She shares her feelings about being out of place as the only African-American, but also facing criticism from her parents when they feel she is straying from her roots and not spending enough time with other African-American children. I honestly found a lot of the book boring. I felt like it had the potential to be a lot better than it actually was. I give it 4 out of 10. |
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| Year 4, Book 67 |
[Oct. 13th, 2009|03:19 pm] |
67. The Whole Five Feet: What the Great Books Taught Me About Life, Death, and Pretty Much Everything Else by Christopher R. Beha
This is another book in the seemingly ever increasing genre of I did some ridiculous thing in a year's time and now I'm going to write a book about it (see recent entries by A.J. Jacobs on living by Biblical laws and reading the Encyclopedia Britannica and Julie Powell's book Julie and Julia). In this particular version Beha spends the year reading the Harvard Classics, a selection of books compiled into large volumes by a past Harvard president. The amount of shelf space needed to house the books is approximately five feet, which is where the title of the book comes from. Like other books of this ilk Beha mixes in knowledge he is gaining from reading the books along with anecdotes from his past as well as talking about the experiences in his current life as he reads the book. It was a quick read, but I didn't find it as compelling as some of the other books of this genre that I've read. I give it a 5 out of 10. |
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| Year 4, Book 66 |
[Oct. 13th, 2009|03:09 pm] |
66. The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
Wow am I behind with my postings. Looking I see my last post was almost a month ago after I went to Abbey Burger Bistro for book club. As luck would have it we also went there again for this month's meeting and that was last night. Geez! The lack of posting does not leave me horribly behind in book reviews though because the lack of posting is due to the insane busyness that has been my life as of late especially at work, which has also led to a lack of reading.
This is the second book in a series of three that Stieg Larsson wrote and submitted to his publisher before promptly dying. I read the first, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and enjoyed it for what it was, which is a mystery, thriller type novel. However, these type of books aren't usually my thing and I probably felt more compelled to read this one because of all the threads left hanging in the first book. Many of these threads were resolved, so I don't feel completely compelled to read the third one when it is released in the US in the spring aside from the fact that I know it's the last one and I now feel compelled to find out how everything is tied up. That of course is if it is because who knows how the author left things not knowing he would die before writing anymore books.
Anyway, this book picks up where the last one left off. It delves more into Salandar's past and the main mystery of this book revolves around her and things that happened in her past. Blomkvist also becomes involved first because it relates to work at his magazine Millennium, but later because he realizes that Salandar has been caught up in the investigation. The book is a pretty quick read despite its length and Larsson does know how to write in such a way that you want to keep reading to find out what is going to happen. I give it a 7 out of 10. |
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| Abbey Burger Bistro |
[Sep. 16th, 2009|12:31 pm] |
Last night one my book clubs had their meeting at Abbey Burger Bistro in Federal Hill. The restaurant is a decent size as far as Baltimore restaurants go. About the size of your typical rowhouse restaurant with probably 10-12 tables and the bar. Every single table was full while were there, so they apparently are still doing a brisk business despite the economic downturn. The menu as you would suspect from a place named Abbey Burger Bistro is primarily burgers. There are also a few salads and appetizers, but if you're going here expect to eat a burger. Vegetarians fear not there is a veggie burger, grilled cheese, and a mushroom burger to appease you. In addition to the specialty burgers listed on the menu you also have the option to create your own burger. When you are seated you receive both the regular menu as well as a create your own burger checklist that allows you to completely control your burger from the type of meat, temperature of cooking, bun type, and toppings.
My other dining companions had the bison burger and turkey burger and both seemed pleased with their choices. I being somewhat boring and adverse to weird things on my burger made my own with a regular burger on a bun with cheddar cheese, pickles, ketchup, mustard, and raw onion. I refuse to eat my burgers anything but well done, which at many restaurants translates into a charred hockey puck of a burger if they don't know what they are doing. I'm pleased to report that Abbey Burger Bistro nailed it. There was no evidence of pink in my meat, but the burger was still amply juicy. It was a darned good burger I must say. The sweet potato fries I got to go on the side were tasty as well. The burgers come with homemade chips for free or you may substitute with fries, sweet potato fries, or onion rings for $2.
If I'm in the mood for a good burger I will definitely be heading back to Abbey Burger Bistro. Plus I need to return to try the Berger Cookie milkshake, which I tried to have last night but couldn't because they were out of Berger cookies. |
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| Year 4, Book 65 |
[Sep. 14th, 2009|03:16 pm] |
65. Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder
In some respects this book reminded me of Three Cups of Tea because Paul Farmer and Greg Mortensen as they are both very driven in their pursuits to make a difference in the world to detriment of everything else in their lives. In the end though I came away with a much more favorable view of Paul Farmer for whatever reason. He is a Harvard doctor who made his life's work providing health care in Haiti and attempting to eradicate diseases such as TB and malaria. His involvement in Haiti also led him to get involved in other areas of the world including Brazil and Russia. It's a very interesting look at how one man has caused great change. I give it 7 out of 10. |
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| Year 4, Book 64 |
[Sep. 14th, 2009|03:04 pm] |
64. Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture by Ellen Ruppel Shell
This book got a lot of press when it was released so I was surprised at horrible editing in it, but we'll get to that in a minute. First I have to say that the book wasn't really what I was anticipating for the first 2/3. The last 1/3 was more what I was expecting in that it addressed the effect buying cheap goods has on society, which you would expect based on the title. The first 2/3 though was more psychologically based on why we are attracted to certain prices even if they don't make sense and how and why prices are actually set and things like that. I have a psychology background, so I'm not saying I didn't find it interesting because I did, it's just not what I was expecting. But back to the bad editing. Based on the references in the book to lots of studies and conversations with experts it appears that this book was fairly well researched, but I had a hard time putting a lot of credence in anything being said based on all the typos and misspellings in the book, not to mention calling Bernie Madoff, Michael Madoff. I've never read a published book that had so many errors in it. It was kind of embarrassing. So in the end my psychological perception of this book was probably altered by a bad editor and thus I can't really recommend it like I thought I might prior to reading it. I give it a 5 out of 10. |
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