Reviews and More

Private Practice 2×21 — “What You Do For Love”: I thought this ep was ok, at least compared to the rest of the season. Things definitely did pick up at the end here. As soon as they showed the mom-to-be’s brother-in-law there with her instead of her husband, I knew he was in love with her. Then when it was revealed that she needed a heart, I figured he would do something. I thought he was going to commit suicide so she could have the heart… I was totally wrong about him poisoning his own brother! That’s cold!

The other patient of the week, the one who was having sex with her underage student? Eww. I just don’t understand how those sickos can do such a thing and try to justify it by saying it’s real love or whatever.

Dell bugged with his friggin’ attitude towards everyone. How hard could it possibly be to locate his ex and their daughter? He knows she went to St. Louis, knows the name of the company she works for, and even knows her Social Security Number (presumably, since they were married). That’s enough to track anyone down!

And it’s Bill Buchanan! Wow, good to see him reincarnated over here, even if it is just for a couple of eps. But why is he wining and dining Naomi so hard? She seems like an average doctor, not the best.

Private Practice 2×22 — “Yours, Mine, & Ours”: Wow, that stuff with Violet was absolutely crazy!! I can’t believe this psycho woman thinks Violet stole her baby and is somehow carrying it in her womb now. WTF?? And the living room C-section had me squirming quite a bit. How awful! Of course Cooper chooses this time to pick Charlotte over Violet — even though he could hear muffled moans coming through the door… way to go.

Ugh, I just do not care about Sam and Naomi as a couple. They don’t have any chemistry together, and are both completely annoying when they’re around each other. Speaking of which, the same could be said about Pete and Violet. I know that due to screen time constraints and so forth, most of these types of shows have characters dating/sleeping amongst each other, but seriously… PP just doesn’t have enough possible combinations to make this work.

I can’t believe that Addison came thisclose to snatching a married man away from his pregnant wife. How utterly desperate and disgusting! Why would the writers make this once likable character behave like that?

Will I be back for Season 3? At this point, I would say no. I might tune in for the premiere to see what happens to Violet and her baby, but beyond that, I’m ready to let PP go.

Since I’ve been working out regularly, I find that I’m getting through books and movies at a much faster clip than I usually do. That’s probably because I listen to audiobooks or watch movies on my husband’s video iPod while I’m walking on one of the treadmills at the health club.

Now, I’ve actually got a bunch of book and movie reviews queued up waiting to be written, so this is more of an organizational post for myself (so I don’t forget what I need to write about) than anything else. Just bear with me!

• Angels Flight by Michael Connelly
• Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli
• America the Book by Jon Stewart
• The Mist
• The Jane Austen Book Club
• Sweeney Todd
• Bee Movie

Yikes! I’m farther behind than I realized. Looks like I’ll be spending all day tomorrow writing up reviews!

I hate how the MLB playoffs has been messing with the broadcast schedule for the shows I watch on FOX. There was no Prison Break this week, which I guess I didn’t mind all that much, nor was there a new episode of House last night, which I minded a great deal since I love that show. Maybe if I was a Red Sox or Indians fan I’d be singing a different tune now, but since I’m not, I’m getting a little anxious to see the baseball season wind down.

I’m not sure why the major networks even bother to air the baseball playoffs anymore anyway. It seems that each year the national ratings get lower and lower because people outside the cities involved in the games simply don’t care. I mean, they had the Diamondbacks vs. the Rockies in the NLCS… I don’t think they could have found two smaller markets if they tried! Really, it’s time to put the MLB playoffs on ESPN or TNT, don’t you think?

Oh, well. I guess not having new eps to watch gave me time to do other things, like browse through some indoor Kichler lighting options and order my holiday cards.

Someone recently asked me what my pet peeves are as far as movies go. One thing I really hate is how long movies tend to run these days. Remember when you could generally count on a film being just 90 minutes? Didn’t matter what the genre, they were all more or less limited to that magic number. Heck, even the screenwriting books cite 90 as the number of pages a script should be because the general rule of thumb is that one page of script equals one minute of screen time. But now it seems like most movies fall into the 105-115 minute range — or more. And most of the time, the films would actually benefit from editing out those extra minutes.

Another pet peeve is character stereotypes where the writers are too lazy to create anyone unique and memorable, so they just throw clichés out there. For example, instead of giving the town seductress an actual personality, they just let the audience know she’s a seductress by decorating her room with animal print bedding (most likely leopard skin) or something like that. That type of characterization is not original and it’s not interesting!

These are the two biggest pet peeves that jump to mind. I know there are others, but it’s far too early in the morning for me to remember them all!

My husband’s grandmother was recently placed in a nursing home. Her health has been slowly deteriorating over the years, and she’s now got a few issues that can’t be taken care of at home. It was a hard decision for my mother-in-law to make about her own mom, but it’s really for the best.

We went to visit for the first time last weekend and were encouraged by what we saw. Unlike most of the other residents, my husband’s grandmother wasn’t hooked up to a respirator, portable oxygen concentrator, or a monitor of any kind. It made us feel good to see that, comparatively speaking, she was doing pretty well.

Anyway, we’ll keep visiting as often as we can, and we hope that her status remains the same!

We’ve been thinking for quite some time now about remodeling our bathroom. It’s just not big enough for our taste, and since we do have a bit of space that we can expand into, we think we should just go for it. That way, we can get a nicer tub (preferably one with a jacuzzi/whirlpool), new tiles, and a better countertop. I also want to put in one of those magnifying makeup mirrors that light up. Our current lighting in the bathroom is too soft and isn’t very good for applying makeup.

At any rate, this project is in the middle of our list of home improvements that we’d like to make, so who knows when we’ll actually get around to it. We’ve got to paint and redo the kitchen first!

As expected, everyone’s still talking about Sunday night’s series finale of The Sopranos. The reaction has really run the gamut between love and hate, with some people calling creator David Chase a “genius” who left fans with a “brilliant” masterpiece, while others feel they’ve been given the “middle finger” after following the show for the last 8 years.

In my recap yesterday, I told you that fan speculation about the meaning of the final scene fell into three distinct camps. Well, from what I’ve read today, it seems to me that the majority now believe that the ending shows that Tony does indeed live on, but with the extreme paranoia that naturally comes to someone in his position. He’ll never again be able to enjoy a quiet dinner out with his family because he’ll always be looking over his shoulder and wondering if the stranger at the next table is there to take him out.

Anyway, here’s a thorough article by Jocelyn Noveck that nicely sums up the general reactions of critics from some well known publications. Check it out!

My four-year-old son loves looking through family photo albums and asks to see them almost every day. One of his favorites is the one containing pictures from a Florida vacation that my husband and I took back when we were just dating. We drove there from Chicago and spent a week in Daytona Beach, Orlando, and Key West.

It was actually in Key West that my husband proposed to me — on the beach at sunset. It was so romantic and perfect! Looking at those old photos now brings back a flood of great memories and makes me want to take off for another family trip soon. It’s no wonder that Florida is one of our all-time favorite vacation destinations!

I just realized that my new theme uses different function names for wrapping texts around images in posts. For example, if I wanted an image to appear on the right side of a post in my previous theme, I typed in

class=”alignright”

But for this new theme, I have to type

align=”right”

The result here is that all the images in my archived posts will appear to the top left of the text. I hate that look, but am not about to go through six months’ worth of posts to manually correct the problem. So if you’re looking through my archives, that’s why the images float at the top like that.

I just realized that there’s another unfinished task I can add to my list: I haven’t found a new template for this blog yet. Scratch that. What I mean to say is that I haven’t even tried to find a new one. I didn’t get to it over the weekend like I wanted to, so now it looks like I’m going to have to look at this boring one for at least another week. Sigh.