Stardate 63970.98 - Charlie Brown Christmas Killed by ABC

I'm not sure if anyone watched ABC's presentation of Merry Christmas Charlie Brown, but they cut up the episode to insert more commercials. My friend Jess does a dramatic reading of a well-written letter to ABC:



NYC

Stardate 62885.83 - Medical Report

As many of you already know, I had surgery last Wednesday for a Right Inguinal Hernia. This is something I'm pretty sure I've had for over a year, but as the doctor told me, "Hernias never get better, they can only get worse." So I finally scheduled the surgery at NYU Medical Center (same hospital where Loren was born).

I know some of my friends and co-workers have already had this procedure, but for anyone else who may need it now or in the future I wanted to briefly talk about my experience. People with no interest in this type of thing can stop reading and hope for a new picture of Loren tomorrow. Some people may feel this is too much information, but I found it very helpful to talk to people who had already been through the procedure so if my experience can help set people at ease who are anticipating this procedure then that is what I want to do.

I had to go in 10-14 days in advance for a pre-surgery screening and other than a 2-hour wait that was uneventful - drawing some blood, an EKG, and a lot of questions. The day before the surgery I received my instructions and my time - no food or drink starting at midnight Tuesday and report at 0730 Wednesday morning. After meeting with every single person who would be working on me (and even the people who clean the room, I think!) and answering the same questions over and over I was finally ready for the procedure. The doctor was running about 30 minutes late, but I was quickly taken into the surgical room around 0900 and climbed up onto the table. There was some small talk, I was given an IV and oxygen, and then I don't remember anything until being woken up post-op and asked to help move off the table onto a gurney.

I was wheeled into recovery and asked if I wanted anything to eat or drink. I was very tired and groggy, so I asked for some decaf coffee. As soon as I drank a sip, I realized I was very nauseous. After lying on the bed for 30 minutes or so they moved me into a chair. They asked me about the pain - on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the worst pain ever (the time I broke 3 ribs and the morning after when I sneezed both came to mind). I replied the pain was a 2 or a 3, but the nausea was overwhelming. They gave me something in the IV for that (along with a lot of fluid), but it didn't help. Later they gave me a shot of something in the leg that was supposed to help. It helped me enough to get into a cab with help from Cheryl and get home around 1330, but I felt like I had the stomach flu. I went to bed and didn't get up until the next morning. I would sleep for 2 hours, get up to use the bathroom, and go back to sleep.

The nausea didn't dissipate until Thursday afternoon, and I didn't completely get my appetite back until Sunday. The entire time from the surgery through today the pain has been around a 1-2. The pain was completely dwarfed by the nausea, which I understand can happen from general anesthesia. In fact, the pain was so low I didn't even use the Percocet they prescribed for me and instead just used over-the-counter ibuprofen. In fact, I haven't even taken an ibuprofen in more than 24 hours as I write this post.

My friend Brian Hampton told me that the worst part would be getting up in the morning, and he was right. Everything is just sore and it is hard to get out of bed, but once I am up I am fine. I have an appointment this Friday with the doctor for a follow-up and I'm hoping the dressing gets removed--think about having a few napkins held on you by plastic wrap. Lets just say the itching really started kicking in yesterday.

So I spent Thursday and Friday off of work and watching nearly an entire season of Star Trek: Voyager (most of season three and the start of season four). Saturday I took it easy with the family, and on Sunday Cheryl took Loren to New Jersey to her parents' place so I could have another day with minimal activity. I worked a half-day from home on Monday and was back up to a full day yesterday (I'll be telecommuting through the end of the week). I should be able to go back to work in person the Monday before Thanksgiving.

Overall, it wasn't too bad. The pain was a lot less than I anticipated but the nausea was much, much worse. Apparently being under a general doesn't affect everyone the same, but for me it was so much worse than any other part of the procedure. I also recommend people really listen and take it easy for several days so that you have time to recover and heal up -- I was pretty tired for the next few days and was in bed by 9 PM for a few days afterward.

NYC

Stardate 62722.19 - What I'm Watching

Around this time each year I share my list of what I am watching on TV, with the new Fall TV season starting because I know I have such tremendous impact on all my friends' viewing habits. I'm sure a vote for me can make or break a series, so Hollywood is waiting for my list so they understand what shows they will be canceling in a few short months. ;-)

The sum total for the shows currently on the air is 6.5 hours. There are 4 hours of programming that are not showing yet, bringing my total to 10.5. Once those other shows start, however, there are usually enough re-runs from my list that the actual total is 7 during any given week. Additionally, shows like Trading Spaces and L&O:SVU tend to stack up on the DVR and I watch them during times when other shows are in re-runs.

Sunday:

• Family Guy

Monday:

• How I Met Your Mother - My favorite comedy. Cheryl also watches this one regularly.
  
• Cheryl's one main show (that I don't watch) is Gossip Girl.
  

Tuesday:

• NCIS - The Navy version of CSI. If I am watching this and Cheryl is in the room she will pay attention, but otherwise she doesn't see it.
• Law & Order: SVU - This one continues to outshine the other L&O shows, including the original even though it is pretty depressing. Also one Cheryl watches when she has time.
  

Wednesday:

• Knight Rider - NEw show that I'm giving a chance because I liked the original as a kid and I liked the movie pilot a few months back.

Thursday:

• The Office - Consistently funny and we've added it to our lineup. Cheryl watches this one regularly.
  
• CSI - This one is the closest to being dropped. I like it, but I'm not sure they can continue to come up with new and interesting cases without jumping the shark. And now that Grissom is leaving the show, I'm just not sure they can successfully pull off the Law and Order-style main-character swap-out .
  

Saturday:

• Trading Spaces - Now that Paige is back!

Shows on the list but not currently on the air:

• Lost - When does this premiere?
• Battlestar Galactica - Final Season starting in 2009
• 24 - Starting in early 2009
• Reaper - Slated to return mid-season.

NYC

Stardate 62669.10 - Labor Day

Today Cheryl took Loren to Central Park so I could get some things done around the apartment and also have some "Curt time."


In the afternoon I took Loren up to Best Buy to return the favor and we purchased a couple of new Dora episodes and a Max & Ruby DVD. For dinner we packed up a picnic and went up to the roof again. The temperature was perfect, the humidity low, and the breeze light and refreshing. The perfect end to a great day!







NYC

Stardate 62160.20 - Voyager

Star Trek: Voyager (VOY) ran from 1995-2001, for the most part concurrently with Star Trek: Deep Space 9 (DS9). I've spoken before about how I feel that DS9 is the superior of all the series and how VOY ranks dead last, but I just started watching VOY again and I have to say that had the two series not been running simultaneously I believe I would have appreciated VOY more. I received the first season on DVD a few years ago and just got around (thank you, writers' strike!) to watching them. Unlike Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS) or The Next Generation (TNG), I haven't seen any episodes of VOY in re-runs on TV since the show went off the air 7 years ago. I find that I have zero memory of some of them, while others I can remember quite well.

For those who never watched, the crew of the Starship Voyager are on a mission hunting rebels when they are pulled 70,000 light years away from home and they spend the next 7 years trying to get back. There were some missteps in the first season (which I am most of the way through), such as screwing up Tuvok's and Paris' ranks for half the season, or having your first two episodes after the premier both be about time travel, but it has not been as bad as I remember. Perhaps that is because I am starved for Star Trek right now (has it really been 3 years since Star Trek:Enterprise (ENT) went off the air)? Perhaps it is because I am not comparing it week after week with the vastly superior DS9, as I did when they were on the air. Whatever the reason, I am actually enjoying watching it through again.

Perhaps I was a little hard on VOY when it was on the air. At the time, TNG had ended, DS9 was on the air also, and we were in year 8 of an 18-year stretch of Star Trek. We could afford to be a little more critical. If it were to come on the air today after a 3-year Star Trek dry spell, would I still rank it dead last? I'm just not sure.

Seasons One through Seven of Star Trek: Voyager are available on DVD.


NYC

Stardate 62075.29 - She's Back!

Paige Davis is back hosting Trading Spaces on TLC again!

Trading Spaces used to be my little guilty pleasure, but I wasn't a big fan of some of the formatting changes they made. Once Paige left it was the nail in the coffin and I stopped watching altogether (some of you may recall that she is on my list). :-)

The past Saturday night was the start of a new season and the return of Paige (and some of the designers who apparently left as well). The show has turned a little more touchy-feely as the lives of the homeowners are taking a more prominent role (Saturday night the people trading had previously been married and had a child together, and one of them had re-married after the divorce), but the old-style format is back. I've added this one to the line-up, and thanks to the writers' strike I'm still below my one hour of TV per day.

Thumb up - way up!

Trading Spaces is on TLC on Saturdays at 9 PM eastern.

NYC

Stardate 61939.38 - Loren's "Boat"

When we purchased our new Panasonic 42" flat panel plasma HDTV for the new place, it took me a few days to get rid of the box. At some point Loren became interested in the box, and wanted to play in it. I put the bottom part on the floor and told her it "looked like a little boat". She spent the next two days spending all of her time at home in the box, wanted to be read to "on her boat". She didn't even watch a Dora episode for 2 entire days! She wanted to play "in the boat"! Of course, now I have a huge box that I'm not sure how I'm going to get rid of...maybe she'll lose interest soon.




NYC

Stardate 61788.09 - All Good Things...

I own the entire 7-series run of both Star Trek: Deep Space 9 and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Other than Buffy the Vampire Slayer, these are the only 2 television series I own on DVD.

For the record, ST:DS9 remains my favorite of all the series, but ST:TNG as the first of the modern (post-1960s) Star Trek television shows holds a special place in my heart. Especially since it was on from 1987-1994, and I was in college from 1987-1992, it evokes strong nostalgic feelings in me.

About 5 or so years ago I worked my way through all of the DS9 episodes, start to finish. It took a couple of years because I only really watched them when I had spare time (and/or when television was in re-runs or I was stuck on a plane). A few years ago I started my way through TNG again and finally watched the finale, All Good Things... I will say that the series holds up remarkably well, even the special effects, considering that the first episode was on television 20 years ago.

It is hard for me to wrap my head around that fact - that the first episode of TNG was on television for the first time 20 years ago, and even the finale premiered 13 years ago. As I close in on 40 years of age, I tend to think about these things. Maybe that is why I keep maintaining the crew roster and my USS Excalibur pages, because I am trying to keep hold on a part of my younger days.

Whenever something ends, it always makes me a bit sad. Cheryl jokes that I always need a "what happened to them afterwards" part of any movie I watch, so that during the credits I find out how everything ends years later. Maybe why that is why I liked the last chapter of the final Harry Potter book when no-one else seems to have liked it.

And that is why I liked that Star Trek kept going - the timeline kept marching on with DS9 and then Star Trek: Voyager and the movies. Star Trek: Enterprise jumped back in time, but in a way things were still moving forward. But the movies ended, Enterprise ended, and there was a lot of nothing. Yes, there is a new movie due out at the end of 2008, but it also jumps back into the past and won't actually advance the time line. So still, for now, Star Trek has ended.

And that makes me a little sad.

NYC

Stardate 61754.73 - What I'm Watching

Since James called me "TV stingy," I feel I should share my list of what I am watching on TV, now that the new season has started. I know that The Office is running at an hour right now and not its normal 30 minutes, so I'll go ahead and count it as an hour of TV (before someone points that out to me). The sum total for the shows currently on the air is 6 hours. There are 3 hours of programming that are not showing yet, bringing my total to 9. Once those other shows start, however, there are usually enough re-runs from my list that the actual total is 7 during any given week (and the office will be back to 30 minutes before too long, bringing the total lower again).

Sunday:

• Family Guy

Monday:

• How I Met Your Mother - My favorite comedy. Cheryl also watches this one regularly.

Tuesday:

• NCIS - The Navy version of CSI. If I am watching this and Cheryl is in the room she will pay attention, but otherwise she doesn't see it.
• Reaper - New show; one that Cheryl also likes and may watch regularly, depending on how the season goes.
• Law & Order: SVU - This one continues to outshine the other L&O shows, including the original even though it is pretty depressing. Also one Cheryl watches when she has time.

Thursday:

• The Office - I didn't watch this during the first season or so, but it is consistently funny and we've added it to our lineup. Cheryl watches this one regularly.
  
• CSI - This one is the closest to being dropped (remember that I dropped Two and a Half Men last year). I like it, but I'm not sure they can continue to come up with new and interesting cases without jumping the shark.
  

Shows on the list but not currently on the air:

• Lost
• Battlestar Galactica
• 24

NYC

Stardate 61746.15 - Reaper

Cheryl and I watched Reaper last night from the DVR after Loren went to bed. We both give it a thumbs up.

In the same spirit as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in Reaper the hero Sam turns 21 only to find out he is manifesting some odd powers. Turns out his parents sold his soul to the devil before he was born. Now Satan wants Sam to collect escaped souls and return them to hell, serving as a type of bounty hunter (or "Satan's favorite tool" as he is described on the Reaper website).

We laughed out loud several times during the show, which is a pretty good indicator that we like it. I think it will become more polished as time goes by, but there is a tremendous amount of potential here. For the first episode of a series to be this engaging and laugh-out-loud humorous is a rare thing. I only watch an hour of TV per day (on average) and this show is now on that list. With Battlestar Galactica and 24 not starting until later in the viewing year, I'm still under my 7-hour per week limit -- thank goodness I don't have to figure out yet what show I have to drop to keep Reaper on the list!

In short, Reaper is a keeper.

Reaper is on the CW Tuesdays at 9 PM (2100) Eastern.

Visit cwtv.com/shows/reaper

NYC

Supplemental - Cheryl Simpsonized

Here is Cheryl Simpsonized.

Here is the link to mine.

NYC

Stardate 61677.78 - Simpsons Curt

Remember what I'd look like as a South Park character? Here is what I would look like in the Simpson's world, thanks to this link here. And thanks to Buddy for finding the link and blogging about it first so I could steal his idea for a post. :-)

NYC

Stardate 61409.07 - Loren Loves Dora

Loren really loves Dora the Explorer. It is the first TV show that she actually requests by name. She will bring the remotes (or "amotes" as she calls them), and will say, "Dora on? Dora on?" And now that we are working on "please" and "thank you" she says "Dora on, please?" They show Dora on Noggin, so we have a bunch recorded on the DVR that she watches over and over. We've also purchased 4 Dora DVDs. Loren has learned the words Map and Backpack and "Knock-knock Door" from the show, and also knows "Dora Spanish" - words like Abre (open). In fact, she uses Abre more than she says open when she wants things opened.

If you haven't seen Dora, she and her friend Boots (a monkey) always have to go somewhere to solve some problem. They use a map which almost always requires three steps to arrive at their destination. For example, "Bananas - Corn field - Little Blue Tree!" The formula is the same in every episode, and people who have watched this show realize how infectious it can be.

One day in the not too distant past, Cheryl and I were going out for dinner while Loren was home with a babysitter. I started to say, "Subway, East Village, Restaurant! We've made it past the subway, now we need the East Village! Do YOU see the East Village? Where is it?" This dialog is precisely what transpires on every Dora episode, but with new place names. I continued to repeat these "Doraisms" as Cheryl and I proceeded to the restaurant (not that I can ever be annoying).

Finally, Cheryl said, "I declare a Doratorium! No more Dora!"

There was a slight pause, and then we both started laughing out loud!

I know that was a long way to go for a joke, but it really made me laugh out loud at the time, and I still snicker when I start to use Doraisms and I think about having to have a "Doratorium" on my Dora humor.

NYC

Stardate 61003.23 - New Year's

For New Year's Eve we drove from my Mom's place up to Andy and Jen's new condo in Arlington (I'm sorry, that would be self-designated "Fun Uncle Andy and Fun Aunt Jen").

We then went out to dinner with them and 4 of their friends at The Matchbox restaurant in Washington, DC (which their condo is conveniently close to - we got into DC, parked, and were at the restaurant in about 20 minutes). The food was alright, although it was a little disappointing that they didn't have the correct number of chairs or the high-chair already at the table when we showed up. We had a reservation, we were right on time, they knew how many people were coming and that we would have a baby, and yet the table was not ready.

Not that it really mattered, because Loren was so sleep deprived that she was not on her best behavior and we had to leave before dessert. Here she is looking mad, with a cut on her nose from her fingernail, and scrapes on her cheeks where she fell trying to run down Nana's gravel road to the creek. (I told her that is what happens when she jerks her hand out of Daddy's hand and tries to run downhill on her own.)


We then went back to Andy and Jen's where we watched a couple of old episodes of The Office (US Version) and Small Space, Big Style until Jen and Cheryl each fell asleep around 10 PM. Then we went to bed. I think only Andy stayed up until midnight to watch the ball drop.

We got up the next morning (today) and drove back home. Luckily for us, traffic was pretty light and we didn't have any problems. Even with a 30-minute stop for lunch, we made it back in less than 5 hours.

NYC

Stardate 60909.04 - Dumping 2.5 Men

I am finally going to have to dump Two and a Half Men from my DVR line-up. I have not been happy with the way this season has started (neither has James), and it seems to be getting worse, not better. Jon Cryer's character has gone from being the lovable loser to completely unsympathetic and annoying. With Charlie Sheen's character already the lovably unsympathetic one there simply isn't room for another. And Charlie's character has gone from being merely unsympathetic to downright cruel. Additionally, as Angus T. Jones has gotten older and his "small child cuteness" factor has diminished, he has been given fewer lines and less of a role and has just become a parody of the "fat loser kid" relegated to one-liners.

I don't know if the writers suddenly changed over, or if they felt that Alan Harper having a steady girlfriend was too upbeat for the character and they needed to completely change direction or what, but I felt like this season has been a real downer and just isn't that funny. Any trace of cleaverness has been replaced by crude sex joke after crude sex joke. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the occasional crude sex joke just as much as the next guy, but you cannot build an entire episode where the only comedic moments are sex jokes only marginally related to the plot.

I feel a little bit sad because I've been watching the show since the beginning, and I was a huge proponent early on. But now I just don't enjoy it anymore, it is no longer funny, and I have other things I can be doing with that 30 minutes (or ~22 once the commercials are fast-forwarded out).

Two thumbs down (although, to be fair, Cheryl never really liked it before, but now she actively dislikes it).

If you want a really funny Monday night comedy, watch How I Met Your Mother. That is a very funny show, and gets two thumbs up from the Sawyer household.

NYC