I’m trying to get shit done today because tonight is the annual drunken Christmas cookie baking marathon at my sister’s, and I’ll be completely useless for the next two days.
But my dogs are a terrible influence. They’ve pinned me to the sofa. Resistance is futile.
ETA: Also, I’m so pissed — my kiddo’s Christmas surprise got ruined. I got her a rather extravagant gift this year — a nice quad copter drone with an HD video camera that you can control with an iPhone or iPad. It’s a stupidly expensive present, but she’s a great kid, and I knew she’d go nuts when she saw it Christmas morning.
However, it arrived today in a box that said HD DRONE with a big fucking photo of the item on the package, and the kid happened to answer the door when the mail came. Gah! I know, first world problem. But damn.
On the other hand, what a cool drone! I finally got to play with it a couple of hours ago, for about five minutes. Somehow I made it do a roll. Still haven’t figured out how, but it looked professional. It hovers like a champ, and the video is amazing. Once I completely master flying it, I’ll terrorize the dogs and hens with it and share the vid with y’all.
Amir Khalid
Is that the one with the sprained tail, or the other one?
Schlemazel
Nap . . . sounds like an excellent idea. Gray crappy weather once again today, wasting 50 degree temps. might just as well live in Seattle. The pup has the right idea!
Amir Khalid
A Dutchman’s complicated marriage-proposal stunt goes somewhat awry. (But she did say yes.)
Betty Cracker
@Amir Khalid: This one has an unsprained tail. Poor thing doesn’t have enough tail to sprain (someone docked it before we acquired her).
jharp
Anyone know about beet kvass? And is it easy to make at home?
Just bought some at the farmer’s market. I am huge fan of beets and was told it is very good for you.
Thanks in advance.
rikyrah
I just finished watching last night’s Grimm.
WOW for the last 10 minutes.
Anyone want to discuss that and the previews?
SectionH
@Amir Khalid: Oops! Or as the Dutch say, Oeps!
raven
I’m watching the grandson of an old friend from Savannah play for the state championship. Go Benedictine Cadets!
JPL
I’m watching Love Actually and trimming the tree. The lights are up and five ornaments are hung. Nap time.
Betty, It seems that you bought yourself a pretty nice toy!
D58826
OT but given the prevailing political winds kinda fun to contemplate while baking xmas cookies
shelley
For years a good friend and I had an annual cookie bake/exchange. She had a lovely huge kitchen and it was always so much fun. A few years ago she had to move to an apartment and neither of us has a kitchen big enough to have two people trying to bake.
I really, really miss it.
shelley
Ugh. for the first time I think I got a touch of S.A.D. Cause of some medical issues I’ve been pretty house bound so not getting a lot of sunlight (the few times we do have sun). Low energy, sleeping a lot and craving every carb on the planet.
skerry
Now you and the drone can go fishing with Raven.
burnspbesq
Putting gas in the kid’s car and air in his tires, then heading up to LAX to pick him up. Thinking about going to a basketball game tonight: both the Spoiled Children and the Common Little Adults have home games.
greennotGreen
Betty, I can so beat you on the spoiled surprise.
This October while my 91yo mother was in Washington visiting with my sister, my sister and I conspired to have our mother’s rotted deck replaced. The guy did a great job, so I was looking forward to my mother’s surprise. I reversed the battery in the garage door opener so she’d have to walk across the deck to get into the house when I brought her home from the airport. I graciously offered to go on ahead and turn on the lights…at which point I found her back door busted open and her TV gone.
But look! New deck.
BD of MN
open thread? I just found this out today while catching up on my internets (while I was too busy working in the trucking industry this week…) h/t to Charlie Pierce for this little nugget buried on the last page of the summary of the Omnibus Spending bill just passed by the house:
So, fuck the infrastructure (heavier trucks on roads? Freedom!), fuck the truck drivers and the safety of everyone else on the roads (70 hours a week? screw that! Freedom!) and fuck the environment (hazmat spills for freedom!)
Yay….
http://appropriations.house.gov/uploadedfiles/thud_press_summary.pdf
burnspbesq
There was an article a couple of weeks ago about a college lacrosse team that is using one of those drones to take video of practices. Apparently players learn faster when the video perspective matches the way things are drawn on the whiteboard.
lol
Kind of annoying that these little hobby coptors get conflated with missile bearing mini-airplanes in the press.
raven
Just got a brand new used Canon T3i!
Steeplejack
@rikyrah:
Firing up DVR right now and will get back to you. I thought Grimm was in a bit of a slump at the end of last season and the beginning of this one, but it has come back pretty strong. I can tell I’m hooked on a show when I start strongly agreeing/disagreeing with individual characters’ actions or just strongly disliking a character. (Most of them are created to default to “like,” even the villains.) Juliette has been pissing me off for a while; she seems like a cheerless tight-ass who is incapable of adapting to all the “supernatural” information. And somebody has got to clue in Sgt. Wu (the uniformed cop) before he goes crazy. And Hank (the black cop) should be the one to do it, since he’s about the only other “civilian” who’s in on the whole wessen/Grimm thing.
Some of my other stories have been disappointing me. The “winter finale,” or whatever they called it, of Agents of SHIELD was a hot mess, and White Collar has been driving around in circles the last few episodes as it leads up to its final finale in a week or two. I’m hoping for a big finish there.
Elementary is perking along pretty well. Didn’t think I would like the addition of Kitty, but that has been all right. Person of Interest is doing all right, despite the lamentable loss of Sgt. Carter, but it seems to have disappeared temporarily because of the holidays.
Okay, off to watch Grimm.
NotMax
Just FYI.
(Emphasis added.)
Also: So you want to fly drones? Here’s what the law says
dirk
what model/brand of drone did you get?
Steeplejack
@raven:
That’s a funny-looking camera.
raven
@Steeplejack: How bout this one of my boy?
shelley
@Steeplejack: All of our PBS stations are in full pledge-drive. It’s impossible to escape Suze Orman’s manic grinning face.
raven
@shelley: Ours has the high school football championships. 5 games in 2 days!
max
@rikyrah: I just finished watching last night’s Grimm.
WOW for the last 10 minutes.
Anyone want to discuss that and the previews?
Which part? The part with Wu losing his shit? I do believe the man has PTSD. Shoulda told him.
I musta missed the bit where the royals decided to help Adalind, but obviously, everyone is going to be going after Kelly. Which I assume means Kelly is going to be back at season’s end.
Oh, wait, the think with Monroe and the wesen version of the Klan. Ah, yes. That’s going to be interesting.
@Steeplejack: Elementary is perking along pretty well. Didn’t think I would like the addition of Kitty, but that has been all right. Person of Interest is doing all right, despite the lamentable loss of Sgt. Carter, but it seems to have disappeared temporarily because of the holidays.
Yep, Elementary is going along fine although not at they peak they hit at the end of last season with Mycroft. I had to temporarily delay watching POI to watch Forever in real time. (Trying to help keep the ratings up.) It’s fun, if you like a story about an immortal Englishman and his elderly son.
max
[‘No one is watching Constantine? Shame.’]
Keith G
Oh great. People in Florida can buy sophisticated personal drones. What could possibly go wrong with that?
raven
@Keith G: Like it’s a state issue.
dmsilev
Why do I get the feeling that “gift for daughter” was just an excuse for buying something you wanted to play with…
raven
@efgoldman: You can shoot people but don’t fuck with property!
gogol's wife
Maybe not the right thread for this, but I was blown away by the TCM memorial video (for movie-related people who died in 2014) last night — the way they incorporated Shirley Temple is so moving:
http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/1054520/TCM-Remembers-2014-TCM-Original-.html
ETA: The whole thing is very good, as usual.
Steeplejack
@shelley:
Man, last night I happened upon Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case, which was uncharacteristically dark—and great—for that series. Fortunately they held the pledge stuff until the end.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@raven: The Bodhi!
And Betty has a cool new toy. Which I’m sure the kiddo likes even early! The hens, I predict, will not.
ruemara
Wow. I, mean, wow. That’s so cool. Can’t wait to see the footage of hens on attack against the grubs.
shelley
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): After seeing the movie ‘Chicken Run,’ I’d be careful they might seize it and use it as a means to escapel
Steeplejack
@raven:
Serious dog looks serious. On the case.
gene108
@shelley:
I’ve been getting SAD for the last several years. I do not have much good advice, as I trudge through life until April, when the weather gets better and my mood improves.
You are not alone, if it makes you feel any better.
Tenar Darell
@max: Watching Constantine, not sure about it yet.
The Thin Black Duke
@Tenar Darell: Trouble is, it’s not as good as the original comic book series, which was written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Steve Bissette. Besides, the only actor who can play Constantine is Sting, damn it.
gogol's wife
I’m in moderation for a comment on TCM’s tribute to dead actors?
gogol's wife
Anyway, I found TCM’s incorporation of Shirley Temple into their memorial video to be enormously moving:
http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/1054520/TCM-Remembers-2014-TCM-Original-.html
gogol's wife
@Steeplejack:
My husband couldn’t deal with what they had Poirot do in that one. But I ordered the book, and apparently it’s Agatha Christie who did it, not the screenwriters.
Suchet was magnificent. But our local Connecticut pledge-drivers kept referring to him (and Laurence Olivier!) as “method actors.”
rikyrah
@max:
I thought that they were cruel not to tell Wu, but I am glad that Wu approached it like a cop. When he dropped all those Grimm-esque files on Renard’ s desk yesterday, I was like YES YES YES!
He asked the questions about Trubel that others should have long ago. I am satisfied because of next week’s previews of him and Hank – specifically WHERE they are…long overdue.
I am another Forever fan. I was scared for Abe this week.
lamh36
@max: I want too keen on Forever but I did like the concept so I DVR the first few eps and I found that I likes it. I can’t find the time to warch in real time but when I rewatch on DVR I’m hooked
lamh36
lamh36
#I CAN’T BREATHE
lamh36
@Tenar Darell: I am literally sitting here now watching the movie with Keanu Reeves with my nephew.
mtiffany
ZOMG, can’t wait for the vines…
Steeplejack
@gogol’s wife:
Yeah, that was in the original novel. I think I read it when it first came out (early ’70s?). I’ve got to say that it’s sort of gutsy for Christie to tackle the issue of how to—or whether to—end a long-running series. I think a lot of authors, if they consider it at all, put it off too long and then it never gets done.
One of the crosswords I do used the titles of John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee novels last weekend (each one has a color in it), and it reminded me that there was a long-standing rumor that MacDonald had written a final novel called A Black Border for McGee. But it never surfaced, and, according to Wikipedia, the family denies that it ever existed.
One author who did a good, explicit wrap-up to a series was Nicolas Freeling, who ended his Inspector Van der Valk series after 10 (excellent) novels. They were published in the ’60s and early ’70s—highly recommended. The first one is Love in Amsterdam, followed by Because of the Cats.
And of course Sue Grafton is reaching the end of the alphabet with her Kinsey Millhone series.
gogol's wife
@Steeplejack:
I read out loud to my husband while he cooks dinner, and we recently did The Remorseful Day by Colin Dexter. We love the television episode, and the novel is really good too. A very nice series ender.
Steeplejack
@rikyrah:
Okay, I watched last night’s Grimm.
First, Sgt. Wu’s first name is Drew? Drew Wu? Seriously? I vaguely remember that from before, but it didn’t really register.
Okay, as feared by me, they waited too long to read Wu into the program, and, yeah, he really lost it last night—and justifiably so. It will be interesting to see how this subplot plays out. And they’ve heated up some other subplots. It’s looking good going forward.
One complaint I have—and it’s about shows in general, not just Grimm—is what I think of “legislated stupidity,” where a character acts in an uncharacteristically stupid way because the plot or the producers require it. Example from Grimm: Juliette is having weird abdominal pains and even thought she might be pregnant, but now that the home tests came back negative she’s all, “Hey, no big deal.” Forget the fact that she recently took a powerful drug/potion that turned her into another person and she had sex with her husband as that other person. But, yeah, what could go wrong? It looks like that shit is going to get real, though, because the preview showed her morphing into a hexenbeast.
For that matter, Nick, Hank and Capt. Renard have acted with uncharacteristic stupidity in the whole situation with Wu—letting it fester and twiddling their thumbs while he digs up more and more detailed evidence that could blow the lid off the situation in a way not controlled by them. Now it looks like that shit is going to get real too.
Steeplejack
@max:
I have watched an episode or two of Forever. It’s pretty good, but it nags at me because I swear there was a short-lived series in the last five years or so with almost the exact same premise: immortal dude has to adapt to different times and cultures while keeping his secret. Anybody else remember that? And I’m not talking Highlander.
debbie
@Steeplejack:
I didn’t realize Wu had been collecting all that evidence. I thought he was just freaking out over his nightmares. Something’s going to go very wrong between him and Nick ‘n Hank.
I can’t keep straight over who’s on which side over in France. Hopefully, that won’t make much difference.
Steeplejack
@gogol’s wife:
Good one! I thought the TV series handled that extremely well.
I might have read one or two of Colin Dexter’s novels when they first came out, but now I’m sort of reluctant to read more because the TV series (with sequels and prequel) has expanded the Morse “world” so much.
gogol's wife
@Steeplejack:
Yes, I don’t think he’s going to write any Lewis or Endeavour books. But we really enjoy reading them. It’s kind of a supplement to the shows, which we know by heart.
Steeplejack
@debbie:
There has been a scene in almost every episode recently where either (a) Wu fondles his dossier of information at his desk or (b) Wu goes to Renard’s office and says, “Hey, Captain, can I ask you about this extremely weird stuff?” and Renard just casually blows him off—“Eh, forget it, I have to take this call.” As I said, legislated stupidity, because the story arc needed Wu to go ballistic at some point. I think they could have engineered it better, but I’m not a hot-shot Hollywood writer.
At this point, I think, you can presume that all the foreigners are evil. The “resistance” seems to have disappeared into the woodwork after performing its plot duty of kidnapping/rescuing Adalind’s baby.
Mike E
@Steeplejack: I’m glad Elementary is hitting it’s stride after what looked like unneeded “drama” to begin the season. The Good Wife, kinda the same, but with that “ripped from today’s headlines” silliness.
debbie
@Steeplejack:
Thanks, didn’t see the fondling. I started a 12-9 work schedule and so have been missing the first half of the shows for the last month or so. Guess I’m missing more than I realized.
I still think the first season was the best, when the Wessen were more like the dark side of human nature rather than the physical beasts they are now, but I’m still very curious how it will all turn out.
Kathleen
@gogol’s wife: Oh, thank you so much for that link. I really enjoyed that.
Kathleen
@gogol’s wife: Oh, thank you so much for that link. I really enjoyed that.@Steeplejack: I like Forever, which I try to catch On Demand. Does anyone here watch Nashville? I realize I’m probably too late on this thread but I had to ask.
Steeplejack
@Mike E:
Elementary has gotten better, I think, because Joan Watson is finding her footing (and maybe Lucy Liu is getting more comfortable in the role). She’s not just following Sherlock around, being amazed by his insights and providing fill-in information when needed. Their relationship has evened up somewhat, and she’s giving him some push-back.
There was a funny snippet a week or so ago when Sherlock and Watson are waiting in the lobby of some skyscraper office and (paraphrasing) Sherlock announces out of nowhere that a helicopter has landed on the roof.
More of that, please.
Steeplejack
@Mike E:
Elementary has gotten better, I think, because Joan Watson is finding her footing (and maybe Lucy Liu is getting more comfortable in the role). She’s not just following Sherlock around, being amazed by his insights and providing fill-in information when needed. Their relationship has evened up somewhat, and she’s giving him some push-back.
There was a funny snippet a week or so ago when Sherlock and Watson are waiting in the lobby of some skyscraper office and (paraphrasing) Sherlock announces out of nowhere that a helicopter has landed on the roof.
More of that, please.
ETA: FYWP! Had to edit this with some HTML-fu because “Watson” is forbidden.
Steeplejack
@Kathleen:
I haven’t been following Nashville.
shelley
@lamh36: Phew, thought youwere talking about the Keanu movie that’s on HBO tonight. 47 Ronin. He plays a half Japanese, half English samurai whose Lord becomes….oh, honestly, who cares.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL: I watched Love Actually last night! Hadn’t seen it in several years, so had forgotten many of the relationship complexities.
burnspbesq
@Kathleen:
I do. How can I help?
Tenar Darell
@The Thin Black Duke: @lamh36: I never read the series, but I read a few detailed (and spoilery) reviews. I doubt that anyone who had would see Reeves in that part. The movie was so much fun with Djimon Hounsou & Tilda Swinton and peter Stormare chewing up their few scenes that when it comes on I can’t resist watching it.
As for the tv series, I’m not quite sure if I’m enjoying it enough to stick around through the current monster of the week phase. Except for this last episode, which was the first with a connection to the leads’ back stories, and therefore now intriguing. I think I’ll wait for next week’s episode before I decide if I’ll continue in January.
rikyrah
@burnspbesq:
I watch Nashville, and Rayna now beats Scarlett as my least favorite.
I didn’t like Luke, but he has been honest about his feelings. Rayna could not stand being with a man on her level in music.
rikyrah
@Steeplejack:
I would have preferred that Wu found out earlier, but I sort of get the logic. By having Wu put together so many of the dots beforehand, now that they are bringing him in, he can be ALL IN. A battle is coming, and I don’t mean just the fight for Monroe. Before long, Kelly, Mama Renard, Adiland, The Royals and The Resistance will all be in Portland. They will need as many hands as possible. With Trubel’s departure (sob), they will need Wu’s help.
rikyrah
@SiubhanDuinne:
The most heartbreaking one was the woman who chose her brother over possible romantic love.
Steeplejack
@rikyrah:
Okay, I (sort of) get that.
I liked Trubel, and I think (hope) she will be back. Also liked Louise Lombard as Renard’s mother. I have liked her since The House of Eliott way back in the day.
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
Yes, and Laura Linney was perfection in that part.
NeenerNeener
@Steeplejack: You must be the only person who watched New Amsterdam besides me. The actor who now plays Jaime Lannister on Game of Thrones was an immortal police detective who was promised that he could die once he met the right woman. Methinks the writers had “issues”.
Steeplejack
@NeenerNeener:
Yes! That was it. Glad to know I’m not crazy (at least because of that).
NeenerNeener
@Steeplejack: Another point of similarity is the detective became a master carpenter at some point in his 400 years on earth, and his furniture pieces from 200 years ago were prized antiques that popped up in some episodes to drive flashbacks.
I watch waaaay too much tv.